PrincessColumbia

  “Di, those look lovely, but if you fuss over them anymore, they’re going to turn stiff in the oven.”

  Diane looked down at the counter and realized she was making a batch of cinnamon rolls. I haven’t made cinnamon rolls since... She looked up, already knowing what she was going to see, and sure enough her mother was sitting at the dining table.

  Ah, I’m dreaming again. Since climbing in the pod she’d been surprised by how lucid her dreams were. Having given it some thought on the days she could remember having dreams and the contents of them, she’d come to the conclusion that it was specifically because she was ‘jacked in’ to a computer, which had a much more orderly mechanism than the true randomness of chemically stimuted dreams.

  She sighed, “You’re right, mom. Thank you.” So saying, she grabbed the rolling pin and started fttening the dough. As this part of the process was mostly mechanical and she had it down to muscle memory, she took the opportunity to look around.

  She was in her apartment in Houston, standing in the kitchen of the great room that took up about three-quarters of the floor pn. The streaming screen was showing some random ship schematic (it looked like a mishmash of the different ships she was hoping to build) and the massive floor to ceiling windows that normally showed the bay were showing a FTL tunnel, as though the apartment were flying through space.

  Having rolled out the dough, she grabbed the cup of melted butter and basting brush and started liberally coating the surface of the dough.

  “You’re so beautiful now, you know. It’s good to see you happy.”

  Diane felt her eyes moisten with tears, “Thanks, ma, but you know it’s not real. Hell, you’re not real, you’re just a figment of my imagination in a dream.”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the lovely young woman my sweet girl grew up into, now does it?”

  Diane had never met her maternal grandparents, but she knew they were from Irend from how her mother had talked about how they’d met and fell in love before moving to America. That was before the war, her grandfather’s company had transferred him and paid the family’s moving expenses. Turned out they were trying to get all their employees behind the American military’s protection before the war broke out. Every so often, a touch of the Irish would creep into her mother’s speech patterns, an affect that Diane had never picked up herself but loved when it came out in conversation.

  “I guess, if you were really here, I couldn’t begrudge you that.” Butter applied, she grabbed the brown sugar and cinnamon mixture and began spreading it on the buttered surface, using her fingers to sprinkle it evenly.

  “Precisely! And as your mother, I must say you’ve turned out splendidly. Even if you did lean harder into your dinosaur obsession than you had to.”

  Putting down the ramekin she’d been using as a mise-en-pce bowl for the sugar and cinnamon and threw her hands in the air dramatically, “It’s not an obsession, it’s totally a normal hobby! And besides, I got into Star Trek just like you, remember?”

  “Darlin’, don’t you remember? I got you to sit down for Star Trek because of the dinosaur episode.”

  Diane huffed, “Yeah, okay, sure. But can you bme me?” she said as she started rolling the dough, “The dinosaurs were so cool, and it made it that much more of a big deal when Janeway found a way to beat them and steal some of their tech in her escape.”

  Her mother shook her head, “That’s not what you said at the time, darlin’. You were so sad the dinosaurs weren’t there to help Voyager and become friends with the humans that you cried.”

  Diane frowned as she grabbed the floss-twine she preferred to the dough scraper for cutting out cinnamon rolls. Funny...I didn’t know this technique back then, but I guess I always kept it in the back of my head just in case. “Yeah,” she mumbled, “Kids are dumb, and that includes me.”

  “You weren’t dumb, silly girl. You were young, and young people tend to be idealists. You lost some of that, I think.”

  It was getting harder to fight the tears, “Yeah, well, losing your mom and then your dad will do that.” She cut the roll of dough into rounds and transferred them to the baking dish, not lifting her eyes to meet her mother’s.

  Before she could move the now filled dish to the oven, arms circled her waist. “I didn’t want to leave you, you know that, right?”

  Diane sobbed, “Yeah...I know, mom.”

  The older woman turned her daughter to face her and then leaned back in to a warm, loving hug, “Oh, my sweet, silly dinosaur girl...you’re on the right path.”

  Diane’s arms went around her mom, almost disappearing the smaller woman, “I’ve got tits, mom.”

  Her mother giggled, “Aye, and a bit of a cheat on that. No other woman on either side of the family tree is that blessed.”

  Diane giggled wetly in reply, “We fixed that bug in software.”

  They ughed for a moment, then simply hugged silently.

  Diane suddenly squeezed her mother a little more firmly, as though holding on tighter would keep the moment from just being a dream, “I wish you were here, mom.”

  The scene faded, as dreams do, and her mother said, “I’m always with you, my darling girl.”

  Diane woke to a pillow soaked with tears.

  She didn’t leave her quarters that day, telling Katrina to lock everyone else out and have her food left at the door. Norma tried three times to get Diane to open her door, but Diane ignored all of them.

  The following day Diane pretended nothing unusual happened, and after a few moments of looking at her askance, Norma and Russe allowed her the pretense and resumed their breakfasts.

  In the time they’d been on Mortan, Katrina had gone to the effort to identify a handful of the people that had been living on the station with some native ability to prepare food and set them to the task of preparing meals for the staff and crew, dialing back the synthesizer process to generating the ingredients needed for the foods being made instead of preparing the entire meal straight from the synthesizer. Not only did this reduce wear and tear (and reliance) on the food synths, it wound up producing better food overall.

  The addition of the shipments from Mortan helped as well, providing things like salt that could be ‘perfectly’ created on the station but salt harvested from a pnetary environment provided things like trace elements that boosted not just the fvor but the nutritional value of the food served in the mess hall. It wound up being…well, not anything like the five-star restaurant they’d dined their st dinner on Mortan in, but certainly nding in the “home cookin’” category that turned mealtimes from when people had a chance to sit down and eat to communal events where the station’s small popution gathered to enjoy good food and good company.

  While Diane had been quite pleased with this development, they learned on their second day back that the ‘command’ breakfasts should probably be taken in her private dining room. They had decided that Diane would open the ‘care packages’ from the women of Mortan, one package at a time, at breakfast.

  The went fine for the first day when the contents of said care package had been a Morvish riding vest accompanied by a note that Norma took great pleasure in reading aloud, “’To: The First Found Daughter – My gran made this for me for my first hunting party, and all my daughters and granddaughters are grown and have long since had their first hunt. I know grandmother would want this to go to you, please wear it for your first hunt.’” she smiled down at the note with a slightly wistful smile, “Awww!”

  “That is sweet, you should let me take a picture of you wearing it so we can send a thank you in reply,” suggested Russe.

  Diane shrugged, “No reason not to, I guess, though it might be a logistical nightmare to try and reply to all of ‘em like that.”

  Norma carefully re-folded the note and put it back on top of the vest in it’s shipping box, “Then maybe we have a form-note made, you know, ‘Thanks for the gift of insert-whatever-it-was-here, I greatly appreciate it, signed First Found Daughter’ or something.”

  The second day had forced them to alter their burgeoning breakfast tradition when Diane opened a box to reveal a perfume scented envelope resting on top of translucent and vaguely belled package of some sort of fabric contents. Continuing the pattern established the previous morning, Norma snatched up the envelope and gently tore open the top as Diane found a zipper seal on the package.

  “Oooh, flowery handwriting! Don’t see that often in space, let’s see… ‘Dearest First Found,’ wow, already on a first name basis with a woman on your first port of call? You’re going to get a reputation,” Norma teased as she gently fanned out the several pages of the letter, a small square of photopaper nding picture down on the table from the pages. Diane rolled her eyes and started fishing the fabric out of the psticine container as Norma continued, “‘I hope you like what you see, I look forward to finding out if you’re a progenitor or a proliferator under those…tight…pants?!” her voice tightened to a squeak and her face started turning bright red as her eyes continued to scan the note, now doing so quietly as Diane held up some ‘clothing’ that certainly wasn’t fit for a work environment.

  Except for maybe a brothel.

  Sitting almost frozen with a deer-in-the-headlights shocked look on her face, her entire head turning bright red from her bangs down to the st visible skin above the neckline of her shirt. She finally stammered, “…this is way too small for me.”

  Russe had picked up the fallen photo and was staring at the picture, somewhat sck jawed and very red as well, “That’s…because it’s not for you. She…ah, modelled it for you.” He swallowed thickly and whimpered, “…for such a small dy she’s got…wow…”

  Norma leaned over to look at what had Russe so tongue tied and her eyes bugged out, “Whoah! She’s huge!”

  Diane was busy stuffing the lingerie back in the package, doing her best to not think about the… ‘assets’ that the much shorter and smaller woman this would have to fit both the bra and panties she had just held up for the entire mess hall to see…including the giggling teens at the next table.

  It had been a week since that…particur incident, and now when they encountered a care package of the racier persuasion, they had a ugh of it in the privacy of Diane’s suite.

  Today, though, the package had been from the Morvuck equivalent of a css of kindergarteners, apparently the girls who had watched Diane and the Matron bond in the street. They had wound up almost forgetting about their breakfasts as the poured through the adorably (if inexpertly) hand-crafted notes, cards, and pictures.

  “Oh…my…gosh, this one’s adorable!” gushed Russe, “She writes that they voted to make you an honorary member of their css since they’re special to the Matron and you’re special to the Matron so you’re obviously sisters!”

  Diane couldn’t help the ear-to-ear grin that was threatening to start actually hurting from how hard she was smiling, “Okay, keep that one separate. I want it framed and hung in Ops.”

  Norma cackled at this new soft spot in their commander, but this swiftly morphed into a cooing, ‘oooh,’ as she pulled a drawn picture from the pile. “Omygosh, someone must have told them you’re a station commander, look at this!” The picture was on a material that wasn’t quite bck construction paper, and amid a field of glittery, silver puff paint star dots was a child’s idea of a space station. It was incredibly crude and looked almost nothing like her station, a blob of the silvery puff paint next to a little blue and green ‘pnet’ that sadly looked more like Earth or Mortan than the gas covered ball of rock and water the station was actually in orbit of. Taking up most of the picture, though, and rendered crudely in gold, white, and yellow puff paint was a dragon with a little white-suited blond woman riding on the dragon’s back.

  “Okay, this is going in my office!” she said with a slightly scratchy voice as she gently took it from Norma with the tips of her fingers.

  “Are you crying?!” ughed Norma.

  Diane wiped the tracks of liquid from her face, “No, you’re crying! Shutup!” she said without heat as Russe and Norma ughed good naturedly.

  Before they could do any more appreciation of the children’s artwork, Cynthy’s voice paged over the PA, “Commander to Ops, unscheduled inbound ship from out of system. Repeat, Commander to Ops, unscheduled inbound ship from out of system.”

  The trio gnced at each other in confusion before standing to leave, Diane grabbing a pastry off her pte, which fortunately represented most of what she hadn’t eaten yet.

  By the time they’d made it to central Ops, the station’s popution was buzzing, but it wasn’t at all positive. Diane’s Morvuck hearing gave her tiny glimpses into the already avaible information that was cascading through the grapevine; some people recognized the ship type, and it wasn’t exactly good news.

  As the lift doors opened, one of the staff in Ops caught sight of her and barked out, “Commander on deck!” It seemed there was no shortage of old salts from ships in various service, and so their military discipline habits were starting to bleed out into the tasks and duties of every other person who’d started working directly for the station with the intent to stay in their home.

  “Report!” barked Diane as she rounded the still inactive shipyard status consoles to get to the main floor of Ops.

  “Ma’am,” began Cynthy, “Inbound ship, no faction affiliation tag and broadcasting independent cargo manifest codes for ‘livestock, other’. The automated systems accepted the request to dock since everything is on the up-and-up for their transponder IDs and manifest safety certificates are all coming in clean.”

  “The problem,” came a grizzled old voice from the tactical console station, “Is it’s a Zephyrus Viper-css live cargo carrier.” Mr. Bendenson (he’d refused to give her a first name, insisting that only his dead wife and the government got to know that) volunteered.

  Faces around Ops turned grave and Diane gnced around at them in confusion. “Anyone want to expin what the woman who grew up pnetside isn’t picking up here?”

  Russe came to her informational rescue, “About 40 years ago the Zephyrus pnetary government colpsed and the military factioned off under the various generals and admirals. Some of them joined the rebellion, others sided with the fallen government, and a bunch of others tried to build their own private military. A lot of the ships from that time wound up being captured or sold to other parties, a lot of whom were...less than legal. That doesn’t mean they’re bad automatically,” he hastened to expin, “There’s plenty of people who are freencers that will pick up a Zephyrus ship on the cheep because it’s all they can afford, and they keep it going long enough to upgrade to something better or restore it to better-than-new. But there’s a lot of them that are owned by...well...”

  Diane frowned, “Criminals and other assorted scumbags. Got it. And let me guess, there’s no way to tell unless they come out and say it?”

  Norma shook her head, “Nope. The st Zephyrus ship that docked before you took over was a pirate patrol. We...didn’t do well in that. That was when my father died.”

  Diane reached out and squeezed her friend’s hand, “I’m sorry...”

  Norma shook her head with a frown, but turned her eyes on Diane with a determined expression. “That was then, this is now. Thanks to you we have access to the weapons lockers and we can kit out our security teams. We can respond if necessary.”

  Diane smiled fiercely at the small spitfire she’d decided to work with instead of evict and had gained more than she ever thought she would, “That we can!” She turned to her de-facto comms officer, “Miss Rodre, have we tried hailing them?”

  “Aye, ma’am,” affirmed the young ginger, “We received only a text response that they’d meet with the station’s commander after docking.”

  Diane frowned, “Not the friendly sort, are they? Alright, what about the ship? Are there any clues we can gather from what we can see?” she gnced over to the main viewscreen, “And can we get eyes on it, please?”

  Katrina manifested her holographic form next to Diane, “Putting the inbound craft on-screen now.”

  The picture window view dissolved, obscuring the visual of four empty construction pads, soy farms, and the rim of the station and showing the starfield of space interrupted by a, honestly, very ugly, bulky ship. Clearly designed in a space drydock and never intended for an atmosphere, it was an almost bulbous affair with two rings that intersected at ninety degrees wrapping from nose to tail with the requisite FTL rails and system thrusters mounted on said rails. In pure mass it dwarfed the Ad Astra, but that was entirely due to cargo space; the majority of the green painted vessel was clearly intended to be a shell to house whatever they were transporting.

  “Ugly thing, isn’t it?” opened Diane. “Alright, so nothing that looks like weaponry, or at least not that could pose a threat to the station, if I’m seeing this correctly...”

  “Not necessarily,” advised Katrina. She waved at the screen and sections of the ship highlighted in a series of patches on the hull that weren’t visible to the naked eye, “There appear to be reinforced sections of the hull that could simply be refurbishments to a structure that wasn’t initially designed to st over the life of the vessel or they could be breakaway panels that are hiding weaponry. The composition of the hull and the limitations of the present sensor equipment make it impossible to determine.”

  Diane sighed. “Fabulous,” she groaned sarcastically, “Okay, so Mr. Bendenson said it’s a ‘viper’ css live cargo ship?” she gave the grizzled old man a questioning look. He gave her a curt nod, which she returned as a silent ‘thanks,’ “So why is it a ‘viper’ css? That sounds more like an attack ship designation than a cargo hauler.”

  “It’s ‘cause the Vipers were meant to haul troops,” answered Mr. Bendenson, “When the ships started getting sold off the tinpots didn’t have enough troops for the carriers, so they were the first to hit the market. Since they carried troops, they were easy to convert to carrying anything else that needed to be hauled in a can that could keep it alive. Pnts, livestock, even people. Make for shitty people transports, they aint cruise liners, after all.”

  Norma scowled, “That doesn’t mean they can’t carry people, and that’s the problem.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Diane.

  “Sves.”

  Diane just stared at Norma for a moment, throat bobbing and jaw clenched. “There’s a sve trade in this g...” she caught herself just as she was about to say ‘in this game.’ She took a deep breath and repeated, “There’s human trafficking going on in this gaxy?”

  “Sentient trafficking,” crified Russe with the haunted tone of someone who’d seen far too much of what he was talking about. “Humans don’t have a monopoly on the sve market.”

  “So this is a sve ship?”

  Katrina interjected, “Not necessarily. While some svers use this type of craft, it is also used for a variety of legal commerce, such as Mr. Bendenson’s mentioned livestock.”

  Diane stared at the ship on the screen. Finally she asked, “When do they dock?”

  “ETA 15 minutes,” answered Cynthy.

  Diane put a hand on her hip and drummed the fingers of her other hand on her thigh, deep in thought. Finally she said, “Norma, get anyone not security or critical station personnel off the docking bay and into the life deck. I don’t want anyone presenting a tempting colteral damage target if we can avoid it.” Norma nodded with a grim smile and headed to the lifts, pulling out her mini-tab to pce a call. “Russe, you stay here in Ops, you’re my eyes and ears here, make sure I know everything you deem important,” Russe gave a jaunty salute. “Mister Bendenson, keep the weapons systems ready but don’t deploy if they’re actually docked. I don’t want our only docking bay sheered off because physics decided to make some svers our problem. If they start causing problems while they’re coupled to the station, let a boarding team handle it. If they’re hostile and you gotta go hot, wait for the docking cmps to release. The second they go, unleash hell.” The old sailor nodded grimly. “Cynthy, monitor comms in case they change their minds. If they contact you asking for me for a voice chat, rey them directly to me. Just, you know, warn me in case I’m in the middle of discussing the best ways to blow their ship up or something,” she gave the girl who’d basically made the comms station her second home a reassuring smile and got a wan, smiling nod in return. Cynthy’s face had gone pale as they began discussing the possibility of combat action against possible svers. “Now...can someone direct me to the weapons lockers?”

  Diane had, thanks to Katrina’s holographic guidance, made it to the weapon’s lockers before the completely green security team. She was in the somewhat amusing position of having enough experience outside of VR that, even though her character was ostensibly just a newby scrub from the foster system on Earth, she was probably the most trained and experienced agent on the station.

  She took advantage of the extra time to dig out a second holster for her anti-A.I. weapon. Yes, it stuck to her body and was intended to do so if the game’s physics engine allowed it, but the ease that she had removing it from her person indicated the physics engine only allowed so much ‘magical physics’ to exist, so she wanted the security of the second holster to ensure it didn’t get knocked off her person if there should be a physical melee. Diane selected a back holster for the weapon so she could keep her jacket over it. Having an NPC ask questions about an empty holster in front of possible rogue A.I. would have been problematic at best. She had just finished putting her jacket back on and grabbing a thigh holster for one of the pistols from the weapons locker when the first of the ‘security’ team ran in.

  She made a show of checking the time on a nearby comms panel, “You’re the first one here, sergeant, but your reaction time is lousy. I’m scheduling drills for your team starting tomorrow.”

  The woman, likely Korean descent from what Diane could tell, was taken aback, “But...I’m not a sergeant?”

  “You’re the first one here, you are now.” Diane thumbed the biometric scanner next to the pistol she had selected. When the light registered green there was a ‘thunk’ as the pistol was released from the safety harness. She pulled it out and examined it as she talked to her brand newingest security sergeant, “You and your team have five minutes to get kitted out and to the docking bay. Remain out of sight if you can until you hear me give the signal, then come in guns bzing.”

  “Yes...sir?” said the woman as she opened the locker with the tactical harnesses.

  “I’ve got tits, sergeant, it’s ‘ma’am.’” Having examined the pistol enough to be confident it operated like just about any other pistol she’d used save for throwing energy bolts instead of metal slugs (so a lot like her anti-A.I. weapon), she holstered it. “Four minutes, sergeant.”

  “Yes ma’am!” she barked as she slid on a harness as two more people ran into the room. The Sergeant (Diane would bother to learn her name if she did her job well enough today) began barking orders at them, “Let’s move, dies!” In the time honored tradition of military-order field commanders throughout history, neither of the new people were females, “You have three and a half minutes to get harnessed up and armed!” as she’d been barking her orders, several more people arrived, “Move!”

  Diane tuned the other woman out as she left the room and headed to the parking garage entrance of the Ops building, “Katrina,” she asked the air, “Any chance there’s a station mini-tab of some type I can use?”

  The hologram shimmered into pce next to her as she walked, “Of course, I’ll have a bot drop one in the car before it deploys. It’s already registered to your retinal scan, fingerprint, and facial recognition and will grant you full access to all station functions.”

  “Perfect. Once the security team is ready get them a vehicle to the docking bay. Recall any cars that are in the area. How’s the traffic outside?”

  The promised car pulled up as Diane walked through the door leading to the garage, the promised mini-tab sitting on the seat that would be the driver’s seat in a non-station controlled vehicle. Diane snatched it up and sat down, Katrina ‘sitting’ in the seat next to her. “Floor it with this thing, Kat, I want to be at the dock with time to spare.”

  Katrina smirked as a harness snapped itself up and around Diane’s torso, strapping her down to the seat. “You’ll want that for safety,” said the hologram as the electric motor in the car unched the vehicle out of the garage at a ridiculous speed.

  “My kingdom for a transporter!” cried out Diane as her lungs felt like they were trying to relocate into her spine. She was no longer surprised that Katrina ughed, though a bit discomfited that it was at her distress.

  PrincessColumbia