“Afterward,” Grace went on, though she eyed Deke sidelong, “I was approached by the DSI. They were recruiting for something they called the Cadre. It involved physical augmentation, and I was already pretty broken up and ready to get some payback.”
“That’s where you met Colonel McIntire,” I guessed.
“Well, she was Lt. McIntire at the time, but yes.”
“Where are the kids?” I asked her, the thought striking me as I set down the cup and looked around. “We didn’t wake them up, did we?”
Harold and Grace looked at me as if I’d grown a third head.
“John is staying at a friend’s house,” Harold told us. “And Missy is… married now.”
I rocked back in my chair, and Vicky’s mouth dropped open.
“What?” she blurted. “She couldn’t have been more than five when we left!”
“That’s been fifteen years, honey,” Grace told her gently. She shrugged. “I know, twenty is young to get married, but out here it’s hard enough to find someone you can spend the rest of your life with, no one wants to wait.”
Fifteen years. Fifteen years. Fifteen years.
I guess I should have known it had been that long. We’d spent years in stasis, and we’d been warned that there might be time dilation effects from the warp drive going that distance. But the idea that we’d been gone long enough for that little girl to grow up and get married…
“Now that old home week is out of the way,” Deke interrupted, “can we get down to business? If you’re Scorpion, we’re here about the intelligence you have. If it’s anything but bullshit.”
“It was important enough for me to pay that bum freighter pilot a hundred kilos of prime beef to get him to send the message through the Instell ComSats at the next wormhole jumpgate he came to,” she snapped, scowling at Deke. “You think we can afford that out here? You know how valuable that is for us?”
“Fine, fine,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “So, tell us. What do you know about the… AI drones or whatever they are?”
“It was called,” she told him, “Project Rho, I suppose because that sounded sufficiently generic and nondescript that no one would think twice about it. I only knew about it because Kara heard the rumors and told me instead of her superiors. She was too smart for that. I hadn’t thought about it in years until the Confluence showed up.”
“The Confluence?” I repeated.
“They’re…” Grace looked at her husband and he shrugged. “They’re hard to explain.”
“They showed up about a year ago,” Harold put in. “When things were… well, really damned bad. We hadn’t had any supply shipments for months, the Corporate Council station had been abandoned years ago, after they were disbanded, and no one had taken their place. We were only able to buy raw materials from the occasional independent shipping firm that bothered to stop by to take our orders. Then those ended too. Everything started breaking down and people were on the verge of starving. That was when the first of their ships came.”
“We thought they were pirates at first,” Grace said. “Or worse, given what happened with Captain Eld and that Tahni asshole Zan-Thint. We gathered up our weapons and set up defensive positions, but when they landed they…” she shook her head. “They brought us processed ore, fuel for the reactor…”
“Thank God,” Harold added, “because we were close to running out, and wouldn’t that have been a fucking disaster.”
“And eventually, they brought people. Refugees from the war who needed a safe place to stay. They set them up with their own reactor in their own settlement farther west. They call it Sophia, for some reason.”
“Who the hell are they?” Deke wondered. “Are they from the Pirate Worlds?”
“They’re something new,” Grace told me. “No one knows where they’re based, and that’s how they want it. They’re… a weird group. A lot of them are Tahni, which is why we didn’t trust them at first. Maybe a third. The others are Evolutionists—Skingangers—and a bunch of former Predecessor Cultists, plus people they picked up along the way who were refugees or bandits before.”
“What the hell would Evolutionists and Predecessor Cultists be doing hanging around together?” Deke demanded. “They started a Goddamned war with each other in the middle of half a dozen colonies! They can’t be in the same fucking city without killing each other!”
“That’s how we heard it too,” Harold said. “But there they were.” He frowned. “I’m sorry, where are my manners? Would you all like more tea?”
“No, I think we’re good,” Deke told him. “The Confluence, whatever they are… what do they have to do with Project Rho?”
“They’re nice people,” Grace said, then shrugged. “Mostly. They’re trying. But they are still just people, and while the Tahni and Evolutionists are pretty close-mouthed, the former Cultists have recently rediscovered just how much they like to get drunk, and when they drink, they talk. And these fellas… they talked about what happened when a group of raiders stumbled across one of the worlds they were helping and tried to attack them and the colonists.”
She shaped the story with her hands, as if trying to make sense of it.
“They said they hadn’t been aware of anyone escorting them, but once the attack started, a dozen ships popped out of T-space and… well, this is the part that caught my attention. They said that the ships were boosting at twenty gravities, constant. Hard enough to kill a human being.” Grace shrugged. “Now, that by itself means nothing. All it would take was a few unethical coders willing to install your basic AI in a few cutters. But the thing they said that impressed them the most was how the cutters all acted together, like a swarm. Like nothing these guys had ever seen, and some of them were former Attack Command pilots from the war.”
“It’s still not impossible that someone else did it,” Deke said, but the protest was half-hearted.
“Yeah, and who would have the time, resources, or money to pull that together?” Grace shot back. “Particularly since everything fell apart? Do you even know a force that could muster over a dozen military cutters with proton cannons?”
“Okay, okay, granted.” He spread his hands. “But if no one knows where their base is, how do we find them?”
Grace’s eyes narrowed, and she fell silent for a moment.
“They’re coming back here, aren’t they?” Vicky asked her.
“You can’t cause trouble here,” Harold said, face clouding over with anger. “You have to understand, we need their help to survive. You people claim to be the new Commonwealth government, but how long is it going to be before you can do anything for us here in Trans-Tahni space? And what the hell do we do if the Tahni decide they want these worlds back?”
“Our kids live here,” Grace insisted. “Our grandkids soon, I hope. You can’t start a fight here. You have to promise me, Vicky.”
I don’t know why I felt insulted that she asked Vicky instead of me, as if I wouldn’t have cared as much about her kids, but I did.
“You have my word, Grace,” Vicky assured her, ignoring the dirty look from Deke. He clamped his jaws shut like he was biting back an objection, but at least he had the good sense not to argue. “We just want to talk to them.”
Grace and Harold exchanged a look and he nodded, though I thought it was with reluctance.
“They’re bringing in a supply shipment here to Gamma Junction in three days.”