Chapter 2

Can’t sayas I ever saw a living soul on the Aquitna battleship, but I’m sure they were there. You could feel ‘em. Maybe the walls themselves were sentient. It looked like something we would build, but never so exact. It calls to mind those “ever so perfect” space stations in the old holo-shows.

Every seam was straight, every corridor exactly hexagonal. Right, not square—six-sided. And I’ll wager it would check out to the millimeter and ninety-whatever degrees.

A hundred-and-twenty degrees?

You chaps still care about things like that with death lurking right out there? Amazing. Just amazing. Gives a man a bit of hope for the future it does.

It’s almost like they’re a fictional ship, even prettier than the Enterprise-R in the interactives.

I mean here in the Alice, you can’t walk down a single corridor without spotting a blow-out patch. And they’re slapped down any which way, as long as they cover the holes put there during the Colony War. We yet have the tails of red caulk waving where it squished out around half the edges. Oh right—I suppose those tails flapping about would act a signal in case of a further leak. Never thought much about that, but you chaps would know.

For all I can tell, the Aquitna don’t even walk on their corridors. I was making the place dirtier just by breathing on it.

Robotic? Hadn’t really thought about that, but then I’d likely have seen them as clear as I’m seeing you. If the whole thing was a machine, they wouldn’t have had the corridors and rooms. The voice out of the speaker box introduced itself as Katrain.

Oh? Yes, I suppose I should have mentioned that sooner.

Nice voice hers—least it sounded like a her to my old ear. Sweet and low if you know what I mean. Leaves the creature to the imagination, in a good way.

They had air, too, just like we do. Air so clean that you’d think you were standing on a mountaintop facing ten thousand klicks of pure snow. A high mountaintop. The air was dashed thin, but I breathed it and I’m not dead, which is a good sign. But there was more than that. I’m not one of those chef-types, but it was almost like on Earth where we’d have that little taste of salt on the air. Oh right, you were mostly born up here; makes me feel old just to look at you. Well, Earth air near the ocean tastes a little like table salt. Their air had something halfway between, strange as it might sound, mushrooms and whisky.

Thanks, I will have another.

Deucedly odd under any circumstance. And their language is no better, all sorts of old Terran bits and pieces that I mostly couldn’t follow.

Oh.

I suppose they probably did pick it off the radio waves we sent beaming out into space over the last couple centuries. We all had United Colonies-mandated Manderanto hypno-planted just a few decades back—not that a common language made the UC one bit more United—so I guess they must come from farther out and listened to older broadcasts.

You’re right, not that much transmitted in Manderanto what with the Colony Wars and no one much talking with anyone else after that. Pity that Shakespeare, King, Cartland, and all those other greats will be meaningless in a single generation. Well, except to you chaps and lasses, but I guess that’s progress. Too bad the Chinese didn’t survive long enough to enjoy it. They were big fans of Manderanto.

Anyway, the Aquitna caught on fast enough that I mostly only had the two languages outside Manderanto. Problem they had was their English is no better than my prep-school Hindi, in other words, terrible.

The Aquitna are recalibrating, whatever that means. I’ll be heading back over shortly. Docs gave me some sort of shot for the thin air they breathe and said I should have a bit of a lie down, but I decided a splash of whisky was more use to me than otherwise.

You want me to ask what?

Well, I can certainly inquire. Bit strange if you ask me.