do?”
Max’s look turned serious. “Can do.” He tapped his wrist compad to feed the coordinates to the Uhuru . Then he looked at Jack and Nikola. “Done. What next?”
“Next?” Jack looked to Nikola. “Miz Star Peeker, you want to join me and Max as we jet out to Ishikari? I need to look over my new ship and meet this O’Dowd woman. And you can check on the mechbot construction of your new reflector scope in the crater.”
Nikola smiled softly, her blue gaze traveling over him slowly. “Yes, I choose to join you and Max. While I must stay here to finish building my new scope while you two head off on your crusade, we three can take a few moments to give homage to the memory of your grandpa.”
His heart beat faster. His eyes felt wet. And Jack knew that Nikola’s love for him was as deep as his determination to kick Alien interlopers out of the Kuiper Belt. It was a duty his grandpa would have understood. And that his Dad supported, even though the man had never understood Jack’s drive to discover the meaning of what it meant to be human. His drive to learn more and more. His drive to look beyond the next horizon and see what surprises the universe had in store for him. Well, maybe when they returned from this upcoming Kuiper trip he would hear some spy news from Cassandra. Make love with Nikola. And perhaps gain more ship allies.
Whatever happened, he knew the future held more surprises for him and his allies!
CHAPTER SEVEN
Just beyond the orbit of Neptune, at the aphelion curve of the Centaur comet 5145 Pholus, Jack brought the new Uhuru into a matching vector above the dark red surface of icy Pholus, a place rarely visited by man or his machines, though the Communitarian Unity feared it. The Unity feared Pholus the way a person avoids a crack in the sidewalk—it knew the comet would not soon curve in and impact Earth, nor would any of the other Centaur objects that roamed between Jupiter and Neptune—but still it kept a nervous eye turned this way. Which made all the more urgent his and Max’s vow to bury on Pholus four crewmates murdered by the Rizen aliens. But burial in space is never easy.
“Max,” he called back to the man who’d figured out how to make their gravity-pull drive work. “Are the Wolverine and the Badger matching our vector change?”
Max glanced up at the front screen of the Pilot cabin, which now showed multiple overlays from NavTrack, the gravitomagnetic sensor, passive infrared and ultraviolet sweeps, and local synthetic aperture radar. The heavy-built, red-tanned man squinted. “Yup. Captains Kekkonen and Aldecoa are flying wing-position to either side.” The man from Lodz then looked over at Jack and grinned. “Course, you might want to check with Madame O’Dowd on whether she’s ready?”
The third person in the Pilot cabin cursed in rough Gaelic. “Max Piakowski,” grumbled Maureen O’Dowd, “you’re just hopeless! Housebreaking an Engineer to social politeness is like leashing cats—an Alice in Wonderland delusion.”
Jack smiled to himself. But he did not let Maureen, a 78 year-old grandmother and military historian who’d fought in the Belter Rebellion at the tender age of fifty-two, see his smile. She had a stinging slap, as he’d discovered when he’d interviewed her at 253 Mathilde, much to the amusement of Max. “Maureen,” he said evenly to the woman sitting to his right, in the Combat station seat, “are the geo-penetrators ready for firing?”
“They be so,” Maureen said with a hearty Belfast accent. “Your four crewmates will rest deep inside Pholus for the next few million years. Once we launch them into space.”
Burial at space . . . it was a hard subject for Jack. His grandfather Ephraim had died in the Belter Rebellion twenty-six years ago, and the man’s distrust of the One World dogma of the Communitarian Unity had been passed on to Jack. Along with a native-born Tennessean’s
Max’s look turned serious. “Can do.” He tapped his wrist compad to feed the coordinates to the Uhuru . Then he looked at Jack and Nikola. “Done. What next?”
“Next?” Jack looked to Nikola. “Miz Star Peeker, you want to join me and Max as we jet out to Ishikari? I need to look over my new ship and meet this O’Dowd woman. And you can check on the mechbot construction of your new reflector scope in the crater.”
Nikola smiled softly, her blue gaze traveling over him slowly. “Yes, I choose to join you and Max. While I must stay here to finish building my new scope while you two head off on your crusade, we three can take a few moments to give homage to the memory of your grandpa.”
His heart beat faster. His eyes felt wet. And Jack knew that Nikola’s love for him was as deep as his determination to kick Alien interlopers out of the Kuiper Belt. It was a duty his grandpa would have understood. And that his Dad supported, even though the man had never understood Jack’s drive to discover the meaning of what it meant to be human. His drive to learn more and more. His drive to look beyond the next horizon and see what surprises the universe had in store for him. Well, maybe when they returned from this upcoming Kuiper trip he would hear some spy news from Cassandra. Make love with Nikola. And perhaps gain more ship allies.
Whatever happened, he knew the future held more surprises for him and his allies!
CHAPTER SEVEN
Just beyond the orbit of Neptune, at the aphelion curve of the Centaur comet 5145 Pholus, Jack brought the new Uhuru into a matching vector above the dark red surface of icy Pholus, a place rarely visited by man or his machines, though the Communitarian Unity feared it. The Unity feared Pholus the way a person avoids a crack in the sidewalk—it knew the comet would not soon curve in and impact Earth, nor would any of the other Centaur objects that roamed between Jupiter and Neptune—but still it kept a nervous eye turned this way. Which made all the more urgent his and Max’s vow to bury on Pholus four crewmates murdered by the Rizen aliens. But burial in space is never easy.
“Max,” he called back to the man who’d figured out how to make their gravity-pull drive work. “Are the Wolverine and the Badger matching our vector change?”
Max glanced up at the front screen of the Pilot cabin, which now showed multiple overlays from NavTrack, the gravitomagnetic sensor, passive infrared and ultraviolet sweeps, and local synthetic aperture radar. The heavy-built, red-tanned man squinted. “Yup. Captains Kekkonen and Aldecoa are flying wing-position to either side.” The man from Lodz then looked over at Jack and grinned. “Course, you might want to check with Madame O’Dowd on whether she’s ready?”
The third person in the Pilot cabin cursed in rough Gaelic. “Max Piakowski,” grumbled Maureen O’Dowd, “you’re just hopeless! Housebreaking an Engineer to social politeness is like leashing cats—an Alice in Wonderland delusion.”
Jack smiled to himself. But he did not let Maureen, a 78 year-old grandmother and military historian who’d fought in the Belter Rebellion at the tender age of fifty-two, see his smile. She had a stinging slap, as he’d discovered when he’d interviewed her at 253 Mathilde, much to the amusement of Max. “Maureen,” he said evenly to the woman sitting to his right, in the Combat station seat, “are the geo-penetrators ready for firing?”
“They be so,” Maureen said with a hearty Belfast accent. “Your four crewmates will rest deep inside Pholus for the next few million years. Once we launch them into space.”
Burial at space . . . it was a hard subject for Jack. His grandfather Ephraim had died in the Belter Rebellion twenty-six years ago, and the man’s distrust of the One World dogma of the Communitarian Unity had been passed on to Jack. Along with a native-born Tennessean’s
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