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  “So, what's with the slap I got in the Med-bay?” I asked gently. I knew that she had taken my death quite hard, being there and all.

  She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Mica, I know why you saved Abby. It wasn't because you were being chivalrous. You're in love with her, or as close to it as you can get. I was pissed at you for not telling her before you died. She deserved to know. She deserves to know NOW.”

  I blinked, “How did you know that I ...”

  “Does it matter? Any woman would have been able to tell by the way you were all moon struck and gaga around her. I've got eyes you dumb-ass. I wanted to bust open and tell her myself, but, after you died, I couldn't.”

  “Well, I just wasn't sure about the possibility of a relationship with a Zee...” I trailed off.

  “Listen, buster, she has the same equipment as a human female,” adding air quotes around her last two words. She ticked off with her fingers, “Psychologically, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Watching and listening to her, I know she's just waiting for you to get off the mark. So, stop being such a doofus. You men are so stupid sometimes.” With that she turned and walked away, but I saw a slight smile begin to form on her face. A 'my work is done here' kind of look.

  Because of the amount of time the Zees had spent here, they were not going to be able to go back to Zee'ville. The parts of them that were here, both human and AI core, were staying here. Their original plan for closing the rift had been time sensitive. They could have gone back after that, but Ranger's decision to stick around to aid their friends in this dimension changed that. Ranger knew he had sealed their future. Anyway, I was now a married man. Just two organic constructs in blissful wedlock.

  29 Unto the Breach

  As far as honeymoon's go, it was just fine by me. Traveler had done herself proud constructing a luxurious five-room suite for Abby and me. Not only that, she'd replicated Martin's hard-light holo-tech, and used a large cargo hold to create a multi-level playground for us. It came complete with a real Auto-Chef, so we could have real food at the Hard-Light Cafe.

  The rest of the area had several walking paths that doubled back, around, over and under each other, providing Abby and I with ever changing scenery as we came out of a covered walkway. The changes were seamless.

  At the ocean vistas, Traveler made the air smell salty and created a suitable sea breeze as we gazed out over an endless expanse of water, into multi colored sunsets. My favorite area was the jungle. She had added a waterfall and pool below; we spent a lot of time there. Oh, and there was a zoo, populated with all sorts of tame animals in their natural habitats. A real paradise.

  I think Traveler went the extra mile because she saw Abby, who had sprung from Traveler's AI core, as her twin sister. If I ever write a book the title will be My In-Laws are Space Ships.

  On this trip, I wasn't too concerned for my own safety, but my concern for Abby's was twenty on a scale of one to ten. Actually, she was safer aboard Traveler than anywhere else she could be. Abby would stay aboard Traveler, manning the science boards, while I would be the human connection to Traveler’s defensive and offensive weapons array during times of likely encounters. We even had repeater screens and controls in a small alcove in our honeymoon suite.

  ✽✽✽

  Martin had located the Surron library planet easily enough. It was just a matter of broadcasting the correct encrypted handshake and getting a reply. Shortly after receiving the call back from the library AI, a fleet of mean looking warships popped into local space at our transmission point.

  The source of our broadcast had been detected. We were 750K klicks away, cloaked and emissions dark, when our communication drone broadcast the encrypted authenticating signal and relayed the response back to us. Our recon had determined that the closest alien ships were thirty-four light years away. The fastest human jump-drive ship would have taken two days to get there. One faction of the warring aliens arrived six hours after our drone's Q-transmission. Just in time to see the drone auto-destruct.

  Hornblower leaned into the sensor screen. “I wonder how good of a scan they got before our drone blew up?”

  Ranger tapped his screen. “Before the plasma charge detonated, they had a twelve second window. Plenty of time for a deep, hard scan. They got just enough info like we planned.”

  Hornblower stroked the stubble on his chin. “Well, I guess they know someone is cruising along out here. They're fast but at least they don't have a jump-drive that can hide its signature. Let's back away from here before they start sweeping the area.” We found out what we needed to know about their response time.

  This area was hot. As we'd planned, the aliens we called the Centaurs, had detected our drone transmission, but not the reply from the Surron library.

  The Centaurs looked a bit comical to me. They had four short stubby legs on the underside of their horizontal body section, which ended in wide, lumpy pads of flesh for feet, they didn’t wear boots. Good for traction, I thought.

  On the vertical front section of their bodies, they had two arms. At the end of each arm was what appeared to be leathery prehensile fingers. Their heads and exposed skin looked like rolling waves of gray flesh, with large fleshy ears sticking out each side.

  I bet they didn't wear hats much.

  Other than that, they had a head with the standard two eyes, nose hole and pie hole. Everything we knew about their culture had been data scraped from their entertainment channels. Sojourner had concocted a base-line translation of their language so we could listen in and understand their military coms.

  On a scale, with human tech at one end and Surron tech at the other, the Centaurs tech was less than a quarter of the way to the Surron end. That tech separation was a wide gap, so, with Surron ships, we held a considerable technical, but not numerical, edge.

  Their sensors were hot-tech. Probably a necessary evolution from fending off and attacking the other two species for many generations. The all-out war in this galaxy had been going on for over twelve hundred years. Currently, a back and forth armed and fragile three-way stalemate existed. The war was in one of its many warm phases. We couldn't tell who wore the 'white hats', if anybody did.

  To complicate matters, our library planet was smack dab on a disputed boundary line. We had enough of each side's data to make drones that would strongly resemble their tech in design, scanner, and communication transmissions. The species on the other side of the border, facing the Centaurs, we named the Raptors. I guess it was more flattering to them than calling them Satan's Spawn. They had the most unsettling red eyes and short lay-flat mottled feathers. They even had vestiges of wings that nature was trying to breed out of them.

  I guess you could say we sprang into action, but it was more like a slow amble. On each side of the border, we released hundreds of drone-packs, resembling those of the opposing sides. I hoped we could draw away a significant number of ships on both sides to make our target neighborhood a bit less crowded with trigger happy fleet admirals.

  It worked to a degree. Each side left only a token military force on each side of this stretch of the border. They’d sent their main fleets to engage what looked like several small invasion fleets deep in their interior.

  The library AI had made preparations to be quickly retrieved. There wouldn't be enough time to safely collect all the artifact crates on this run. We didn't want returning fleet elements to stumble over our little dig and start a gunfight. A fight they would lose. Hornblower was adamant that we avoid those situation.

  Hornblower insisted on leading the retrieval team. He'd been like that as a rock-hopper whenever we had to touch down on a possible find. Even as a captain back then, he was a hands-on type. His crews liked that. Roger, Dodger and Sojourner's cargo bots were his crew on this drop. This was really going to be a snatch and grab. We were going to leave behind a small dumb AI programed to take over the AI defensive systems until we could return to gather up the artifacts we were leaving behind.

  Onb
oard Traveler, I was sitting at Weapons Control. Sandy and Abby had Fighter Command. Ranger had taken the hot seat in Hornblower's absence. Martin was assigned as a detached overall observer. He never missed a thing and he was very good at big picture strategies and tactics.

  We had a hundred cloaked fighters Abby controlled as our combat space patrol. The other hundred, controlled by Sandy were sheltering the library planet. Each fighter had a plasma self-destruct package in the event that we couldn't get them back aboard before we left. Our motto was ‘Leave no tech behind'.

  Skies were clear. Traveler monitored military coms channels on both sides of the border. Sojourner landed while Traveler maintained a stand-off position. Because of the library AI's preparations, it took the cargo bots only ten minutes to get him aboard and secured. Sojourner returned to Traveler with the AI on board.

  As Hornblower took back the command chair, Traveler announced that Raptor military chatter was describing an imminent attack on a Centaurian civilian refugee ship. The planet it was orbiting was being evacuated. It was well into Centaur territory across the now thinly defended border. Five Raptor cruisers were cloaked and lying in wait to trap and destroy the civilian ship. It had over twenty thousand souls onboard. Two small frigates were escorts for the refugee ship.

  The Raptor's had a half-assed cloaking system that didn't hide them from us. It did work against the Centaurs scanners until they were at knife fighting range, but that would be too late.

  Characteristically, Hornblower wanted to intervene on the side of the defenseless. He thought we might be able to scare off the attackers, leading to a no-harm, no-foul resolution. We popped in close, cloaked and undetected. The Raptors had just sprung their trap.

  The attack concentrated on the Centaur frigates. That uneven fight lasted only fifteen seconds. Seeing that the refugee ship would be easy pickings after the last frigate had been destroyed, Hornblower dropped us in the middle of the Raptor formation. Uncloaked and defensive shields up.

  As soon as the unarmed civilian ship took its first hit, Hornblower pressed the Big Red Button. There wasn't really a button, but it gives a better visual understanding that it was his deliberate decision, and his alone, not some verbal command that would be carried out by an emotionally detached AI. It was a 'Hobson's Choice' situation … act or don't act … damned if you do …. Well, you know the rest.

  The Raptor ships were trapped. They had shut down their jump-drives to remain undetected. Hell was unleashed. Hornblower used the Thumper wave on the three Raptor ships that were firing on the unarmed civilian ship. One of the other Raptor ships attempted a fifty-gee boost away from us. Hornblower reached out through Traveler's systems and shut off their inertial dampeners. That ship's entire crew ended up as gooey stains on the aft bulkheads just seconds before the ass end of the ship tried to catastrophically catch up to the pointy end. He then started slicing up the remaining Raptor heavy cruiser, continuing long after they'd gone dead in the water.

  He was both an avenging angel and a specter of death. I stood behind him and placed my hands on his shoulders. “It's over, Captain, ease up, ease up. Hornblower, it's over.”

  He removed his hands from the controls and fell back slowly against the backrest of the command couch, eyes closed, hands covering his face. He simply said, “Traveler, take me home.” He said take me home, not take us home'. He was alone. Hornblower left the bridge.

  The in-system part of our return voyage was difficult for all of us. We had all been witness to Hornblower’s actions. Sandy and I would have done the same thing, we told ourselves. I’m not sure about the others.

  30 Mice and Zen

  We were back in the Satchel system. Hornblower was avoiding everyone, speaking only in one-word sentences, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Traveler continued in-system at the posted speed limit, while a cloaked Sojourner popped into orbit around Satchel so we could land and unload the new Library AI. Hornblower stayed aboard Traveler. Sandy stayed with him, everyone else had boarded Sojourner. I was worried. Sandy told me to give him time.

  The new Surron AI was the one that supposedly held the information we needed to help the Zee's friends solve their problem. Someday, we would be going back to the Centaur system to gather up the treasure trove of artifacts we'd left behind. The Bears, in their very pleasant way, were insistent about that.

  The Zee’s friends faced disaster. It wasn’t alien invasions, or unrecoverable environmental disaster or a supernova threats, nothing like that. It was simply a slow and insidious decline in their fertility rates. As a species, they were dying of natural causes.

  Traveler told us that a good translation of their name was The People. Claiming that title sounded kind of uppity to me. She said you had to understand their culture. They considered all life on their planet as part of The People. OK, I get it, but I started calling them the TeePees. Everyone else slid into using that label.

  The TeePees were not a space-faring race. In fact, they had no technology at all. They had no capacity, no desire, or need for it. What they lacked in high-tech they more than made up for in brain power. That's what made them special to the Zees. Apparently, the TeePees could stand toe to toe with them in any scientific or philosophical discussion. The Zees liked that. I guess to them, it felt refreshing.

  On many levels the Zees did appreciate the science, technology, and cultures of the millions of civilizations they had encountered in their billions of years existence. But it was only the TeePees who could engage in century-long conversations, using abstract math, thought, and applied reasoning, on a specific topic while never once repeating themselves.

  The TeePees are a sentient, plant-based race. We were headed for another intergalactic road trip. This time we would be talking to the trees.

  You couldn't accidentally bump into their planet. Long before the Surrons had emerged, another race, at the behest of the Zees, had used their scientific and engineering prowess to completely hide the TeePees entire solar system from discovery for the last ten billion years or so. Sandy wanted to know how they performed that trick. Martin said it had to do with phase-slipping.

  Finding and communicating with the TeePees would have been impossible if we didn't have the new Surron library. That information would allow us to incorporate phase-slip tech into our ship.

  As you can imagine, talking with plants was not something that ambulatory animals do very much. Even if they tried, the plants would most likely ignore them. We needed the communication methods the Surrons had learned from the Zees. So, while we didn't have a cure for what ailed them yet, we would be able to talk with them and work through the problem.

  The Zees on the other side, were already talking with the TeePees about us and the project. Not only reassuring them about us, but also letting them know that we humans had relatively short life spans and that their responses to our requests and questions should be held short and to the point. No esoteric, philosophical side discussions.

  Before we could visit the TeePees, we needed to make a side trip to pick up a medical and genetics research team. A team of highly qualified Bears. That was the group that would search for the cause and solution to the TeePees breeding problem. I wondered if the new Bears would bring their pet snakes. Sandy would like that.

  We were going to be phase-slipped. I wasn’t too comfortable about that. Hey, I've been shot at (almost), kidnapped (almost), dropped back in time, shot forward again, smeared off a cliff, trapped in a surly AI’s mind, and been in an inter-species war. This better be the last of it. I'm a married man, and I just want to settle down.

  Hornblower is sitting this one out. He let us know in two words: “Not going.” I guess that was all he really needed to say. So, it looks like I'm going to be the head-honcho for this mission.

  Ranger's position was that everything done on this side of the dimensional curtain had to be led by native humans. Not sure why he stood on that principle. After Hornblower stepped aside, Sandy gave me a 'don't look at me' protest. She's goin
g but didn't want any more authority or responsibility than she already had.

  I'll tell you one thing I've notice. Since being dumped into my new body, my mind seems to be much clearer and sharper. Another thing I've realized is that since my great escape from Vector's AI core, I haven't had, or even wanted a boost of booze. Anyway, I can lead this mission. No sweat.

  As we planned our mission, I worried about Hornblower. He frequently visits with the Bears, but other than that, Sandy was the only one he had more than a word or two with.

  Speaking of Sandy, she and the Bears took a trip to their Galaxy onboard Sojourner. The Bears needed to make covert contact with some of their friends to gather up a volunteer research team without causing an alien abduction scare. Yep, just a simple, ‘Hey, a few of my alien buddies want you to come along on a mission to another galaxy to help save a race of smart trees’.

  Actually, that was very close to what they told their people. So, no problem. The Bear team came back with them. All thirty of them.

  ✽✽✽

  Our traveling show was ready to go. We popped in close to the TeePee's solar system, or rather, close to where our information said their solar system should be. Nothing there. As a side note, this wasn’t even in the neighborhood of where they'd first started.

  The long-forgotten race that had cloaked their entire system, had first moved their planet to a much more stable and long-life star. Not only that, they had done some system house cleaning by removing all other matter, except the sun, from the new system before dropping them in. Must have used one hell of a big moving van. I wonder what the company logo on the side of the truck said. Universal Planet Movers?

  The Zees, back in Zee-land, let us know that the TeePees were expecting us. I held my breath and gave the order to phase-slip, hoping my constituent atoms weren't going to be sliced, diced, and pureed in the process. To work, the phase-slip equipment had been spliced into our defensive shield.