Chapter 3

Stella was flipping idlythrough her Health and Usage Monitoring System. You’d think the HUMS would show some sign of what was wrong with her but, as always, by the time it told her there was a problem it was too late anyway. But she didn’t have anything better to do while her pilot enjoyed her downtime.

Takara hadn’t even hooked up with a Stinger pilot this time. She was bedding down with a some moonrunner athlete. It was the latest sport approved for the New Olympics. With Earth out of bounds, there had been a marginal agreement among five of the remaining nations to adapt the sports to what was available—Luna. The high jump was now measured in dozens of meters, hurdles stood a story high, and running distances ranged in the thousands of kilometers. The Brazilians were sending a team from their outpost on Mars, and the Scots on Luna Farside were trying to use their power as hosts to resurrect caber-tossing though there were no trees from which to make the long heavy poles.

Her pilot’s pairing off with a civilian based on the moon meant that Stella saw even less of her than before. Takara still treated her like a person, even if she didn’t know that Stella had “woken up.” But she and Jess had agreed that humanity wasn’t ready to handle an artificial—as if she herself wasn’t somehow real—intelligence and they should just keep quiet about it for now.

Stella tried to find any enthusiasm for Luna security and decided that if India figured out how to fire their beam weapon right through the moon and cook the Olympic competition, all she could be bothered to do was get out of the way.

If only—she sighed as well as any machine could; it was more like a gentle power surge that left her feeling unbalanced on her stabilizers. It was only her 824th thought about Jess today. She graphed the number of times she’d thought of him since his loss a year before. Flat line—just like Jess—an average of 2,321 times per day with a standard deviation of only?—

Action Alert!

Action Alert!

Level Eight!

Mission parameters flooded into her high-priority comm channel. She slapped a hold on the message and let it spool into the queue.

Stella triggered max-rush recalls to the crew and began checking ship’s status.

She rolled through more of the message to see what she’d need.

It broke down to a one-ship assignment, going in fast and quiet. “Danger in-bound from the asteroid belt.” She’d need full stealth once past Mars orbit—blast hard then coast down onto the target. She’d have to nail the trajectory.

Standard crew of four and a dozen Royal Delta Marines—the RDMs were the elite soldiers of the corps. If they were aboard, it was going to be hot and messy.

“Good morning, Stella.” At the standard double rap of Takara’s knuckles on Stella’s nose cone, she greeted her Captain.

“Good morning, Captain Olmsted,” she kept it rote and by the book. Besides, Takara had abandoned the memory of her true love and didn’t deserve more.

With only a small part of her attention on the four members of the ship’s crew, Stella continued her own inspection. She’d let things slip, a lot of things now that she looked.

She slammed out food and supply orders to the quartermaster. A quick call to the munitions team had a restocker arm lifting out of hatches in the hangar floor.

The RDM team rolled in and Stella hummed impatiently while their leader flirted with Takara.

Wait!

If Takara was with someone military instead of a civilian…

Stella rerouted a dozen tasks to enter by different hatchways in order to keep the couple isolated. She slapped a hold on the restock request where Takara and the RDM Senior Lieutenant were getting acquainted by the starboard midship’s thruster. It took a little doing, but she managed.

The shielding crack in her tail section—Jess would be furious that she’d let that happen—would take dock time that she didn’t have. She’d simply have to fly so that no one came at her from that angle.

She checked her Jess tally for the day. He was still holding steady. He was like her personality, so entwined in her logic circuits that she could no more erase him than her own existence.

The RDMs dragged aboard more gear per person than any other outfit, and would wear less of it than any other when they actually launched into the fray. The elite force liked to be prepared for anything but be light and mobile when they hit vacuum.

She checked on the RDM team leader again. Still with Takara, which wasn’t like her. Captain Takara Olmsted had always been a full-charge woman when a mission was on.

Something else was happening.

Stella searched through what she’d observed of human behavior. Exhibited attraction signals were already at a four out of ten and rising sharply. Takara’s voice had risen in both tone and volume, while the DR’s had lowered. Skin temperature up point-three on both.

All of the curves were rising too fast, at least for Takara’s standard mating rituals. Even Rick Coralto hadn’t caused such sudden shifts.

Then Stella focused on the DR.

Senior Lieutenant Max Harding stood at a hundred-and-ninety centimeters which placed Kara’s eyes level with his chin. His shoulder span was a hundred-and-nineteen percent of norm, which sounded very familiar. She ran a quick search of her records. In moments she had Rick Coralto’s profile on display. Even his eye color and some basic facial characteristics had a high correlation.

Stella considered.

Maybe Takara did still miss Major Rick Coralto. It wouldn’t be conscious for a human, of course, but perhaps the similarities between Rick and Lieutenant Harding were sufficient to evoke similar feelings. Was that how humans worked?

Experimentally, Stella pulled up an image of Conrad, another Stinger-60 Block III. That was the ship closest to Jess’ configuration even if the on-board computer was no smarter than the one that Oxford University had launched into orbit.

Nope.

Nothing.

She pulled up an image of Jess that she’d captured as they were cleaning up that mess down by Mercury during the Moore Rebellion. And immediately wished she hadn’t. He had a way of banking a turn like no other ship, somehow defying orbital mechanics for best angle of fire. She missed him so much that it hurt right down to her core circuits. It?—

Road to nowhere, Stella! She had to find a different dataspace for her thoughts and she needed to do it now.

“Captain Olmsted,” she called out and released the starboard side loaders to complete their tasks. “Departure ETA fifteen minutes.”

“Right, Stella. I’m on it.”

Stella watched carefully and the smile that Takara sent toward the RDM leader matched several of the shape profiles that Stella hadnot recorded since the loss of Jess and Rick.

Maybe there was hope for Stella as well. If she only knew where to look for it.