Elegance of Light was already in hyperspace when we woke, the muted psychedelic swirls of its energy vortexes shining in through the large circular viewport that dominated the room. It always made me wonder about that time in earth’s distant past when such visual stimuli was so tied up in mind altering chemical use. Staring out at those shifting patterns could play havoc with your mind if you weren’t careful, which is why most sophont species either used special filters on the viewports, or didn’t have viewports at all, opting to rely on their sensor feeds completely.

  Personally, I find the patterns meditative at times, but that’s through the filters.

  Jo stirred where she was, laying sprawled on top of me, her shock of purple hair hiding her face. A low grumble came from beneath the hair. “What time is it?” she asked sleepily.

  “About time for us both to get up.” I responded after bringing up my implant’s HUD like interface. I reached down and gently caressed one of her ears.

  She uttered a curse and leaned into my caress. “Damned duty shifts.” She reluctantly pushed herself up so that she was straddling my stomach, her adorable bedhead and the spread of naked green flesh presented to me made me tempted to make us late for our shifts. But the serious expression on her face negated that thought. “Thomas, about last night…”

  I felt my face pulling into a frown before she shook her head, “No. It was wonderful, and if you think we’re not doing this again, think again. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page about behavior outside private quarters. We keep it low key in front of others. Professional, okay?”

  That was something completely expected. Popular media was full of references against commanding officers fraternizing with their crew, which is what had me worried at first. Possibly part of the reason I’d been so clueless about her interest. “Sure thing boss. Strictly sfw, HR appropriate, no PDA on shift or outside quarters.”

  The quizzical look she gave me made me chuckle, and I was sure she’d be looking up the acronyms later. “As long as we’re clear. I don’t know what rules your Commonwealth has about it, but for giobhioni, this would get us split up if it becomes a problem. So don’t let it, okay? I might be, how do you say it, head bitch? - but I have to play by the rules too.”

  “I get it. I will endeavor to keep my behavior strictly professional, even when your ass taunts me.”

  We quickly got showered - taking turns to prevent any delays - dressed and ready to get to our stations. I silently checked with Stacy to see if there was anyone in line of sight when we left, and was relieved that there was nobody hanging around. I didn’t think anyone would ask awkward questions, but you never knew.

  The next six days were blessedly quiet. Miles showed up in engineering on the second day with a hesitant request to be shown around and maybe given some work to get him started learning about giobhioni technology. Since I was mostly running diagnostics at that point, I gave him the two tic tour, afterwards setting him up at one of the spare consoles with some of the material Stacy, Boudya and I had come up, a sort of primer on the differences between terran and giobhioni technical principles.

  Other than that, I spent a lot of my duty time either helping the twins get Void’s Cutlass ship shape again, or putting together design concepts for Stacy’s requested body. Now that I wasn’t so confused by giobhioni tech, the challenge of working on something that basically amounted to an android - pardon me, gynoid - gave me a great deal of satisfaction.

  Earth did have a questionable market for such things, even if the twenty-first century’s obsession with humanoid robots ended up being mostly a fad. There were still manufacturers and purveyors or “companion bots” out there, but they were not as complex as Stacy wanted.

  She did however make a lot of comments regarding the…feature set of some of those models, and drew from them on certain aspects of her design criteria. It was a fact that sometimes gave me pause, as I wasn’t quite sure if she was playing with me, or if she had the kinds of intentions my instincts were telling me she did.

  Jophixa, for her part, hadn’t batted an eyelash when I’d told her about Stacy’s request. She simply shrugged and commented that her having a way to physically interact with things could end up extremely useful.

  Have I at all mentioned that if you’d told me twenty years ago that I’d be serving on a ship with three women I was sleeping with, and a fully sentient AI that seemed to have designs in that direction, I would have laughed in your face? Yeah, I still pinch myself occasionally to see if I’m asleep and dreaming. The fact that none of them seem at all bothered by the situation, without even talking about it, really confuses me at times.

  Three days later, Stacy still hadn’t made any progress on unlocking the mystery of TOI-532c and how there came to be remnants of the giobhioni language present there. Three days doesn’t sound like a long time, especially when we were so far out on the edge of Commonwealth space, but we’re talking about an AI that’s been able to break into Fleet Intelligence encryption in minutes. The lag time of communicating via the StellarNet’s hypercomm network would slow her down, but not by that much.

  The whole thing was frustrating her greatly, I could tell. Her usual flirtiness had faded, and was replaced by a level of snark that I hadn’t experienced since Jesse was a teenager.

  It was day five before we heard back from Admiral LeBeau about the issue.

  Jo called me into her office while she was discussing the information with the admiral, and I was surprised when I got there and also found Jesse present.

  “He’s here now Thea,” Jo said, waving me to take a seat beside my sister, “now, forgive my bluntness, but could you please tell us what it is you’ve found?”

  The holo-image of the admiral turned to nod in my direction. “Like I said, I apologize for making you wait until they were both here, but after some of the trouble that was directed their way I wanted to inform them directly.” She paused for a moment to take a deep breath. “I had to pull some strings to get this information released, even with my security clearance, it seems someone - and I’m thinking we will all have guesses as to who - went to extreme efforts to make sure it didn’t get out.

  “First of all, there was, indeed, an anthropology dig on TOI-532c approximately twenty five years ago. A dig that was subsidized by the Commonwealth parliament at the time due to some of the relics the initial survey uncovered. Seems they wanted to make sure the fleet had control of any technology discovered, just in case.”

  “So the usual governmental bullshit.” I grumbled, rolling my eyes. I’d been involved in a salvage op in my early career that fleet officials had seized under the guise of interstellar security. It would have been my first big payout otherwise.

  Jo scowled at me and was about to say something, but Admiral Lebeau sighed, “Believe it or not, sometimes it is genuinely important to keep some discoveries under wraps.” she explained, “I’m also aware that the knowledge doesn’t help when said discoveries, or say - a salvaging job - that would make your career, gets steamrolled under those auspices. All that work, and the military just steps in and steals it from you.

  “But back to the data on the dig.” she continued, taking off her AR glasses and setting them down to the side, “The initial survey of the planet, as well as the registration for the dig site, was filed by a company named Deep Black Explorations. A now defunct exploration and survey group that was a wholly owned subsidiary of none other than Enigma Osiris.”

  The trio of us all spat out epithets that should have peeled the anodizing off the deck plating. Of course Enigma Osiris was involved in the dig site! “Void’s fucking asshole, and let me guess, a particular former executive with Enigma Osiris was somehow in a management position within this Deep Black Explorations?” I growled out.

  “Got it in one.” LeBeau smiled sardonically. “Fisch was the chief of operations at the time, not actually working for EO proper yet. He wouldn’t shift over there until a few years after DBE shut down. His involvement has me digging further into the records, since someone is still putting up roadblocks to their release. I have a strong feeling that this might have been where Fisch first learned of the contagion, and how his idea of using it for himself came about.”

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  Jo’s reactor looked to be about ready to lose containment at this information. “Is there any record of what happened to the giobhioni who visited TOI-532c? Any signs there might be survivors? Maybe in stasis?”

  A sad shake of the head, “Nothing in what I’ve gained access to so far. The files were all archived on an airgapped data center after the dig was shut down due to a fatal incident. Again, I don’t have all the details yet, but one of the anthropologists was found dead in a rather mysterious way. Officials got spooked because of it and ended the research there.

  “That brings us to the reason I asked for the Aacens to be here for the briefing.” she paused again, “The name of the anthropologist who died at the site was one Madeleine Elodie Aacen.”

  “Thomas…”

  I was deep in the tantaja tubes, making some necessary adjustments to a power conduit to accommodate a kaon beam emitter that I’d finally worked out the specs for. I really didn’t want us to not have that edge available to us if we ended up in combat again. Its ability to cut through ktonshi like a knife through butter might be all that saves us in a head to head encounter.

  “Thomas!”

  A growl burst from my throat as I shifted to look back down the tube to see Boudya awkwardly shimmying towards me. “Kinda busy here Boudya.” I said as calmly as I could manage.

  “Right, busy.” she said, “I’ve watched the calibration readings from that conduit jumping all over the place for the past two kilokrats. I haven’t seen you this indelicate with calibration since our junior year. What is going on?”

  Letting my head drop to the tube’s grated decking with a muffled clang, I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment before responding. “I really don’t…”

  “...Want to talk about it?” she finished, “Like you didn’t want to talk about things after the inquiry? Thomas, Tommibear, bottling it up won’t help you, talk to me.”

  She’d used one of Stacy’s pet names for me, she’d never done that before. I really didn’t want to talk about this right now, just like I hadn’t wanted to talk about it with Jo after the briefing. This was a grief I thought I’d put behind me decades ago. “Boudya, I just…I just found out something. It’s brought up some old memories and has me out of sorts, okay? I need time to process it.”

  She was quiet for a minute or so, clearly trying to decide whether to push it or not. When she finally spoke, it was thankfully to give me space. “Alright babe.” she said softly, “I’ll give you some time, but I won’t leave you with it forever. You leave it too long, and I’ll tie you to the bed and tease you mercilessly until you let it out. No bottling it up okay?”

  “Alright.”

  I watched her wriggle backwards through the tantaja tube, one of the rare instances of her innate grace failing her. I almost laughed, the confines of the space were so limited, even with how slender she was, her height and long limbs were a detriment.

  I second her worries, Tomminoms. Stacy whispered through my implant, her tone as concerned as Boudya’s was. Please don’t wait long. You know Jesse is locked in her quarters crying? The Commander even relieved Toftri early so he could go check on her, but she changed her door access to lock everyone out. I’m half tempted to open it for him, but I remember how mad you were when I let Boudya in…even if it was good for you.

  I'll try to talk to her in a bit, Stacy. I sent back, but Mom’s death shook us all up back then. I was only a teenager, Jesse only a kid. They told us she’d died in a shuttle accident, that her body was unrecoverable. And now we find out she was at a dig, and her death was suspicious in some way. I just…

  We just don’t want to see you fall apart again, she said, we love you, and we’re worried.

  I put my tools away and sighed. “Alright Digibits, I’ll go try talking to Jesse. I’m clearly not going to get this calibration done with my focus so scattered. Boudya was right about that.”

  “Good, Jesse needs you, and you need her.”

  Toftri was still outside Jesse’s door when I got there, staring at the call panel like he was arguing with himself about using it again. The tips of his ears were curled downwards and his shoulders were slumped; overall, he looked as despondent as Jophixa did when she’d found out how long they’d all been in stasis. The youngster was usually so upbeat and sure of himself, especially at the helm, that it was hard to see him that way.

  “Toftri,” I greeted him as I approached him and put a hand on his shoulder, “She still not letting you in?”

  He looked up at me and shook his head. “Do you know what’s going on? You both came storming out of the Commander’s office and bolted off the bridge. Then the commander gives me the rest of my duty shift off and tells me to come check on Jesse, but she won’t even answer her door.” He shook his head again, “You’re her brother, maybe she’ll respond to you.”

  Shaking my head, I gave him a small smile and squeezed his shoulder, “Don’t feel too bad, hotshot.” I told him consolingly, “I was doing much the same thing deep in a tantaja tube up until a few minutes ago. It took both Boudya and Stacy reading me the riot act to break out of my thoughts. It’s a family thing, you see, and it was kind of drilled into us as kids that family business doesn’t go beyond family. Boudya had to threaten drastic measures, and then Stacy told me that Jesse was doing much the same as I was, and not letting you in.”

  Reaching across the door, I tapped the call panel, but got no response.

  “I think she might have hacked the door panel and turned off the chime.”

  “Really now?” I said, raising an eyebrow, then letting a grin spread across my face. “Well, two can play at that game. I don’t even need to get her made at Stacy to do it either. You might want to make yourself scarce though, Toftri, wouldn’t want her thinking you had anything to do with this.”

  “Please ask her to ping me? Just so I know she’s okay?”

  “Will do.” I said, “no guarantees she’ll listen to me though.”

  After he’d walked off towards his quarters, I turned back to the door - or more accurately, an access panel beside the door.

  All of the doors to personal quarters on the Elegance were fairly secure things, they could even be made air tight in case of a hull breach. They weren’t easy to override either, or at least, not to the casual person. You could, for example, override the hardware with an Optimaster, if you wanted to pull the call panel off the bulkhead in order to access the optical cabling connecting to it. As luck would have it, I didn’t have mine with me, however.

  But the doors were ultimately locked down using mechanical means. All you needed to know was where the right mechanism was and…

  The door opened a few centimeters with a muffled pop, followed by an exclamation of “What the fuck! Stacy!” from inside.

  “She had nothing to do with it.” I said calmly, curled one hand around the edge of the door and pulled it open wide enough for me to walk through. I paused just briefly to reset the mechanism, and slide the access panel back into place. “Did you forget your brother was the ship’s chief engineer? Geesh.”

  I ducked, and what I imagined was a plushie - perhaps a gift from Toftri whizzed over my head. Don’t look at me like that, I know my reflexes aren’t that great normally, but I was expecting her to throw something at me. We grew up together after all.

  “Oh, it’s you.” She growled, “I thought it was Toftri.”

  Chuckling, I bent down and picked up the plushie - something vaguely lionine, but with an extra set of eyes and coloured a bright green. Then I stepped inside and keyed the door to close. “Aiming a bit high for Toftri, don’t you think? This cute lil fella would have missed him completely.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Really, Jesse?” I sighed, “I know I’ve been a stranger for a decade or so, but she was my mother too. I came here so we could maybe, I don’t know, lean on each other about this? Mom wouldn’t want us to shut each other out. And yes, I’m aware how hypocritical that is after all those years.”

  “Damned right it’s hypocritical.” she growled at me, picked up another plushie off her bed, this one looking like a chibi giobhioni, and weighed it like she was going to throw it at me. “I could have really used you a few times during those years Tommy. It was fucking hard getting through that time all on my own. Dad gone, Mom gone, and I had no idea if you were even still alive!”

  “I…”

  “Don’t.” She said, and sighed, “Tindron told me that the whole disaster with Barstol had you all messed up.”

  “Tindron told you?”

  She shrugged, “He walked into the mess hall while I was ranting to Toftri about it a while back. Didn’t go into anything in depth, but said I should give you a chance to reconnect. And you did…you tried your best to protect me, even sending Boudya to keep me safe. So yeah, I’ll do what Mom would have wanted.

  “But if you ever disappear on me again, and I’ll get Boudya, Stacy and the Commander to help me hunt you down. And when we find you…”

  Laughing, I walked over and hugged her. I had no intention of disappearing on her, or the others. I was well aware that Stacy could likely track me beyond the galactic rim if she had to, even without the transponder in my head.

  You can bet your hot crossed buns I could, my sweet hunk of sugar pie. Stacy commented in my head, And I’d make sure all the ladies in your life took turns making you regret even trying.

  The Salvager’s Plague

  Ko-Fi or on