LIGHTNOVELONLINE 42. Finding Home
When the time came to leave the institute, I was almost sad. I’d had the idea a number of times over the last month that certain events were changing my life, but none were quite as apt as this one. In the four weeks I spent at Celeste I had gone from a broken body and gay bachelorette to badass and gorgeous girl bod with an almost excessively hot girlfriend. Unlike some of the other changes I’d gone through recently though, I was wholly happy with this one. I hadn’t really been able to get the silly grin off my face for mine and Echo’s last two days in our comfortable quarters. Of course, the difference between those nights and all the ones that came before was… pleasurable to say the least. Eye opening, to be certain.
Casey returned to pick us up once Echo called. The enby had spent some time in the capital city after leaving us at the Institute, but had gone back to Illume after a few days to help out around the station. We were already waiting at the pad when the Hrafn landed.
“Damn, Adresta!” the pilot said upon catching sight of me. “You clean up nice!”
I giggled openly back at them. “Thanks, Casey. It’s been a transformative experience.” My smile was back in full force, not that it had ever really left. The compliment from what, to me, was a near stranger felt incredible.
Echo shoulder bumped me, groaning at the pun. “I would complain, but I made the same joke when I was leaving.”
The two of us were holding hands as we finished approaching the shuttle. I had my bag slung over a shoulder and Echo’s in the hand that wasn’t entwined with that of my girlfriend’s. I’d insisted on carrying hers out this time after she had carried mine into the campus.
It was curious to me to think about how easy that was for me. Having grown up on a space station and then living and working on a starship, I hadn’t ever really dealt with anything higher than point eight Earth equivalent gravities. Even Telemachus IV only pulled at a meager point eight seven. Yet, the one point two Gs of Procyon VI, more than thirty percent higher than anything I’d ever lived with, felt like no more effort than walking around with a crate anywhere else, and that included the weight of the bags.
Casey, noticing the interlocked fingers, raised their eyebrows mischievously. “You two finally screw? About freaking time. Micky owes me fifty creds when I get back, ha!”
My mind flashed back to when Ned, my former coworker, had crudely inquired if I’d gotten Echo “in the sheets yet.” I’d been frustrated then, but now I could only blush brightly and try my best not to hide behind the girl that had I had indeed done the deed with now.
“Be nice, Casey,” Echo chastised. “She’s still a bit fragile, and it’s still a pretty new thing for both of us.”
The pilot chuckled and shrugged. “You know I’m just teasing, Echo. Congrats though, seriously. Some of us were beginning to wonder when you would end up dating again.”
At my questioning look, Echo sighed. “My ex-girlfriend ended up being a prissy bitch and I broke it off a long time ago. Haven’t gone out with anyone since, couldn’t find someone that I really vibed with, y’know?” I nodded in semi-understanding. Having never actually gone on a date before, I was inexperienced in that kind of thing, but I could entirely get no one feeling right.
We tossed our luggage into a cabinet once we’d boarded and began getting ourselves sorted out. I was thrilled to find out how comfortable the Hrafn was when you weren’t stuck in a chair. Echo and I ended up seated together on a passenger couch at the back of the cockpit for the departure. Being a private shuttle, the Erickson family’s personal ship was built with a lot more comfort in mind than a standard spaceliner. So instead of rows of economy seating, there were family style couches and armchairs that could all be turned to face forward for acceleration; they were also, of course, equipped with harnesses to be used in case of emergency.
With it only being the three of us, Echo and I were able to get cozy in the back while Casey got settled up front, grinning at us the entire time.
“Don’t be getting too frisky back there, you two. I’m not that kind of pilot and I don’t need that kind of distraction while I am flying.”
“Just fly the damn ship, Casey!” said Echo while rolling her eyes. “Or else I’m going to make sure you end up on galley duty for the next month!”
“Aye, Aye, Captain,” fired back the enby.
With a roar of power, the ship lifted off the pad and into the air. It was a cloudy day outside, so my view out the ‘windows’ was obscured, but the white puffs of suspended water zooming past just made it even more obvious how fast we were moving. It boggled the mind that just a few centuries ago, a human civilian craft couldn’t possibly hope to attain these speeds, let alone break orbit and then get shot across intergalactic space to meet up with another group of humans in another star system a hundred lightyears away. Meanwhile, that was exactly what we did, all as part of a routine task in our time.
Once clear of orbit, Casey ran the calculations for our warp jump and then punched the throttle. The light of stars stretched into infinity as the spatial displacement field began warping the weave of space itself around us so that we could exceed the stellar speed limit without tearing ourselves apart.
When stardrives were still in their infancy, scientists believed that seeing the supposed impossibility of faster-than-light travel would be incomprehensible to the human mind and drive a person mad with information overload. As a result, it was mandated that blinders were installed on all ships. They were right, to a fashion, but the reality of warp sickness was much more mild than they’d presumed. It could be unpleasant to a person who’d never seen it, but at worst, it turned out that most people would only become a bit motion-sick. Even for the small amount of the populace that was severely affected were easily protected with simple visors made for the purpose.
Gate travel was significantly more distressing to view, although I personally rather enjoyed the phantom glimpses at stars and other celestial bodies as we zipped through the artificial wormholes.
Illume Station was exactly as we had left it when Casey brought us in towards the massive travel hub. The person was a natural behind the controls and made it look easy. Even at their younger age than myself, I fully believed they could give me a run for my money in an obstacle course.
Echo’s mother, Rachel, was waiting for us inside the hanger as we touched down. She rushed up and made it to the hatch even before we could and boarded the ship without even waiting for us to get off.
“Welcome back, my daughter!” The two hugged and the woman turned to me. “And Adresta? You look lovely, congratulations.” Her eyebrows then waggled at the both of us. “I hear that additional congratulations are appropriate as well?”
My girlfriend slapped a palm to her face and called back to our pilot. “Just couldn’t hold your tongue, could you? Gossip whore!”
“And proud of it!” answered the younger person. “Only thing that travels faster than a gate is rumors.”
With a sly look of my own, I kissed my girlfriend passionately and was delighted to find that not only did she respond eagerly, her mother had blushed and looked away.
If they were going to embarrass us, I could play that game too.
Echo wasn’t the only one to get a warm welcome though, a strange beeping seemed to echo inside my head for a second before a familiar voice came through. “Miss Adresta? Local sensors indicated that your identification chip was identified entering the premises. Am I correct in assuming that your transfer and subsequent recovery have been successful?”
I swore, my face was going to get stuck with the silly grin that once again pushed its way out. “Hey, Vox, yeah, I'm back. I missed you too.”
There was a pause, but when her voice answered back, I could definitely tell that it was properly Vox, the digital sentience rather than Vox, the assistive intelligence. “That’s great news, Adresta. You are happy?” I answered in the affirmative, as to say anything else would be a blatant lie. “Then I am very happy for you, my friend. Congratulations.”
My heart yearned for another chance to hug Vox. She’d been one of my first real friends and I hadn’t even known the extent of it until recently. Perhaps I would have to convince her to use my new hardware to reconstruct that virtual environment, just so I could.
“Thanks, Vox. What have you been up to with the Ericksons while I was gone? I know we didn’t get to talk much.”
The tone I got in response felt almost dodgy. “I have performed a number of tasks at the behest of Captain Erickson during your absence. None of them are of consequence at the present moment, however.”
“Vox?” I inquired with a slight, but loving edge.
My message got through loud and clear to the SAI who answered sheepishly. “It was the captain’s request that I not discuss the details with you and as you have returned, I may now pass along his additional request to you to not spoil the fun.”
I sighed. Vox had definitely picked up some very human qualities over the years even if she’d carefully kept that fact hidden. “Alright. It had better not be anything bad, though.”
This time her tone was lighter and more confident sounding. “I can assure you that it is not.”
While I chatted with Vox, Echo, Rachel, Casey and I secured the ship and offloaded our bags. Echo thanked Casey for taking care of us and allowed the enby to leave as they were still technically on vacation. Echo, her mother and I meanwhile departed the hangar and made our way back to the Erickson suites. My girlfriend tossed her bag into her neighboring rooms but all three of us followed Mrs Erickson into the family home.
“So where’s Momma M and Dad? Did the Ratatosk get a job?”
“Yes,” said the mother. “A mining station called Teeter Epsilon, out in the fringe, requested the shipment of supplies for the crew, but the contracted ship they usually make use of was unavailable. So we were hired to act as substitutes.”
The fringe was an odd area outside of even the outer rim of the bubble. The Terran Union could only make a token effort to enforce jurisdiction that far out and so the entire region of space was primarily controlled by the megacorps. There were few slipspace gates that far out, so most travel was limited to standard FTL drives. It made for slow transport between systems.
“When Marcus called a couple nights ago,” Rachel continued, “they were headed back to the nearest node of the gate network, but he told me that it would be another week before they reached it. It will still be some days before they return. He does miss you though, Callisto.”
Echo hummed agreeably. I figured that she had to be used to the life of a ship’s crew and she didn’t seem at all fazed by her father and other mother being absent.
The mother that was here, though, changed the subject. “So, Adresta, now that you are back, do you know where you will be staying? I know I said I would look into arranging some quarters on the station, but I couldn’t sign a lease for you with station authority. I did set aside one of the Erickson Enterprises-owned workshop hangars for you, however. I figure that you’ll want some room to house the core for your AI.”
I gaped slightly, not having really thought about that particular issue. My girlfriend coughed and saved me from the awkwardness though, having already made a decision apparently. “I figure she can stay with me for now. I have a spare room and well… it's not like I'm not comfortable with you, Addy.” I certainly hoped not, especially after the two of us had gotten quite cozy back at the institute. She wasn’t going to get any argument from me.
Her mother, on the other hand, found that hilarious. “Ah, to be young again. Just make sure to keep your door locked, alright?” She laughed at us, but this time Echo and I managed to keep good natured about it this time. “Now then, how about some dinner?”
Just like that, Rachel was back to being her motherly self and we all sat down to chow down on her homemade lasagna.