A
humming noise drones its way into my little corner of hapless oblivion. 

I
groan.

“Sol!  Man, wake the fuck up!” Danther says, his words
fuzzy.

“Fucking
fuck, Danther,” I grumble as I roll over. 
“Shit man.”

“Get
up, kid,” a voice—a damned familiar voice—says, lazy amused drawl… th-the guy—The Artifact guy. 

My
blood runs cold and sobriety hits me hard and I scramble, sitting up. 

Nausea
runs through—.

I
taste—!

I
lean forward to throw up, but the man—Khal—grabs my shoulder with nonchalant
force.  “Here,” he says and holds up an
injector, eyes asking my permission.

I
nod, covering my mouth.

He
presses it to my neck and I feel the pressure jet force the liquid into my veins. 

I
lean back, trying to relax.  A minute
later, the nausea subsides. 

Khal
gestures to the couch I’m on and Danther scurries, taking a seat. 

I
swallow.

Staring
at him, I try not to let my fear show.  I
saw him once—he….  He’s dangerous—real dangerous, not some bender or thug.

“Mister
Starwind, your friend Mister Minth has racked up quite a tab,” he says with the
type of toothy grin one might expect to see on a—fuck, what are those things called? 
My head’s groggy.  Shorks, shakes—something like that.  “He’s requested your council.”

I
look over to Danther. 

He’s
white, staring down… fuck, he’s in shock.

I
turn to Khal.  “W-what kind of tab?”  I curse myself inside.  “—h-how much?”

“E-eight
hundred million,” Danther mutters. 

I
look to Danther and then to Khal.  I
stand.

Two
huge men edge forward, but Khal raises a hand. 
“That’s a lot of credits,” he says, almost musing the idea—th-the fucking guy.

“What
the f— …what are we supposed to do?”

He
raises an eyebrow.

“W-what?”

“We,” he says, grinning with what looks
like genuine respect—I—no, not now.  “I like that.”  He strokes his chin.  “Take the rest of the year—it’s the holidays,
after all—and ponder your situation. 
I’ll get in contact with you on the second.”  He beings out.  “Come time, we’ll settle our accounts.”

We
leave Dowin and ride to dock seven in a priority transport pod Voice somehow
obtained.  I try to absorb all that has
happened, but my mind keeps getting stuck. 

“I-it
talks?” Danther asks, the words pulling me out of my distraction.

“She talks,” Voice replies, aloud, and he shudders.

“She?”
he asks.

“She,” Voice confirms.

“Well
I suppose that isn’t terribly strange,” he says, seeming to latch onto the
idea; he doesn’t realize he’s half mumbling to himself. 

I
grin; I can’t help it.

“Are
you the ship’s A.I.?” Danther asks, still not getting it.

Voice
snorts.  “No,” she replies with
derision.  “I am and the ship is my
ship, not the other way around.”

He
turns to me, thunderstruck.  “She thinks
she’s alive, Sol.”

“Excuse
me, but I am alive—alive as much as
you, flesh nugget.”

And
just like that, he’s lost again. 

We
arrive at the dock a little while later, my mind still buzzing.  I stare at the ship, perplexed, and then turn
to Danther.  I laugh.  “Mind overdrawn?”  I ask, giddy. 

He
just nods.

“So,
uh… permission to come aboard?” I
ask.

 “Permission granted,” the voice replies,
amused, and the main hatch opens. 

The
vault-like hexagonal door shifts open and the walkway we’re on adjusts gravitational
orientation to match that of the ship. 
Danther closes his eyes as his skin turns white; for all his mental
aptitude, he can’t seem to rationalize the instinctual response to gradually
shifting to point at the southern horizon. 

“Can
we just go in already?” Danther asks through his teeth.

“Weak-stomached flesh nugget,” Voice mutters.

I
snigger.

“Shut
up the both of you!”

We
enter the security checkpoint, which is apparently also an airlock, an old
Earth portal-thing used to keep air from spilling out of the ship.  After the machines scan us, the main door
opens. 

I….

It
smells.

Not
bad, exactly—not good, either.

“You
go on,” Danther says and I turn, seeing him hunched against a wall.  I just roll my eyes and proceed.

After
a few steps—seeing a little more—I realize what the smell is. 

It
smells… old.  You don’t get that smell much anymore,
everything fabricated and refabricated as it is. 

Walking
through the ship, I feel a heaviness in my heart.  Pictures hang on the walls, furniture is
strewn about.  There are carpets on the
floors. 

This
isn’t a ship. 

It’s…
a home.

It’s…
it’s the fossil of a home. 

“Oh,
Voice,” I say, my heart
breaking. 

“When
are you going to stop calling me that?” she replies, but it is hollow… empty.

“This…
this was your home, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,
Soma,” I say, immediately realizing
my slip up.  “V-Voice, I mean.”

The
little girl appears before me out of nothing. 
“How… how long did you know?” she asks, voice very small.

“I
recognized your voice as soon as you…,” I admit.  “You were just too convenient—too—.”

“Obvious?”
she asks, tone depressed.

I
grin, bittersweet.  “A little obvious,
yeah.”

She
looks down.  “I’m not very good at being
a person.”

My
heart, not nearly as broken as I had estimated, shatters.  I stoop down, wrapping my arms around
her.  “You’re not very good at being alone.” 
I squeeze her a little.  “I can’t
imagine being here—in this ship—all this time with every sight a memory and
everyone….”

“Gone,” she says, finishing what I can’t.

“You
can join us,” Danther says from behind, surprising me.  “I mean this is your ship and all, but Sol
and I lost our parents.”  He’s silent for
a moment.  “We’ve been like brothers—are brothers in every way that mattes.  You…,” he says, trailing off.  I turn to him.  “You could be our sister.”

“What
happened to me thinking I’m alive?” Soma asks, somewhere between spiteful and
curious. 

“I
understand now.”

We
are all silent for a little while.  “Do
you want me to show you around?” Soma asks.

“Yeah,”
I reply.

“Sounds
good,” Danther adds.

“A-alright!”
Soma says, looking at each of us in turn. 
“Well the room we’re in is one of the two cargo rooms—the other’s on the
starboard side.”

“So
this ship’s bilaterally symmetric?” Danther asks.

“What?”
I ask.

“Same
on both side,” he answers with offhanded ease.

“Yup,”
Soma replies. 

Danther
nods.  “Something about that is soothing—not
just to me,” he says when I look at him. 
“People have been designing most ships that way for centuries—at least
on the outside.”

“It
would make sailing easier,” I say.

“What?”

“You
know sea ships.  —even distribution of mass.”

He
nods, contemplative.  “I suppose the same
holds true for force distribution of modern engines—at least marginally.”

“That,
and it must be easier to only have to design half the ship and copy it over,” I
add.  Danther stares at me.  “What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“Sometimes
it surprises me how insightful you can be, is all.”

“Oh,
fu—!” I begin looking down to Soma, who gives me a hard stare.  “…nny.”

“If
it is all the same, I would prefer civil conversation aboard my ship,” she says
and Danther snorts.

“So,”
I say.  “Uh, what are those hexagon
things?”

Soma
goes on to explain that the ship, a retired Earth-spec gunship that fits the
modern classification of F-Class Hunter Corvette.  It utilizes a “modular” design, whereby a lot
of the parts and systems can be rapidly interchanged.  The hexagons in question are four of sixteen
utility pods. 

We
reach a tall hallway that houses another, larger version of these hexagons—this
one of four—before heading down a cramped decline that empties into what is
obviously some sort of dining room.

My
mouth drops.

Within
the dining room—along with table and it’s implements—sits twin housings meant
to fabricate, ready, and fire ten-meter-long torpedoes.  Two sit ready to fire, another pair in the
ready, and two more within the fabricators themselves. 

I
turn back to Soma, only to see something even more… damn.  At first, I can’t exactly
tell, but my scanner indicates it’s some kind of weapon—a huge weapon.  It’s no wonder
this is designated a hunter class; the ship is practically built around this
monstrosity. 

“It
is a gravity dilation accelerator cannon,” Soma says.

“A
what?” I ask.

“I
swear, do you ever listen when I’m
talking to you?  Do you have any idea how
gravity works?” Danther replies, shaking his head.

“Well
it sort of just pulls stuff,” I
reply, a little sheepish.

 “I suppose that’s technically correct—in as much as a firearm just shoots stuff.”  Danther sighs, rubbing his temple.  He looks up. 
“Einstein described gravity less as a force than the universe’s reaction
to uneven distribution of mass and energy. 
Dr. Albert Heidman later discovered in 2123 A.D.—never mind the
history.  Gravity is essentially an
exotic force that leaks in from the endoverse as mass stretches space time.”

“If
you think of space in two dimensions as a porous membrane,” Soma says and a helpful,
colorfully designed holographic plane sort of just appears before her.  She then drops a ball onto the plain and it
creates a decline. 

“So
this slope is gravity?” I ask, dubious. 

“No,
no, no!” Danther says, rolling his eyes. 
“Look closer.”

The
hologram grows and I see the way the ball stretches out the membrane, exposing
little holes.  I point.  “So the gravity comes from those?”

“Gravity
comes from the endoverse,” Soma says. 
“It enters through the holes.”

“But
how does it work?”  I ask.

“Well,
mass is attracted to the holes—it’s sort of like a ‘vacuum force’ in the way
that it operates.  The holes open
independently—infinite points attracting everything around them—and as the
vectors align and create wells, the holes dilate, creating stronger points of
gravity.”

“So,
like singularities?”

Danther
nods.  “Yes, actually.  Those are gravitation singularities, the
dilation of which is directly proportional to the mass stretching the universal
membrane.  We call them gravitational
windows.”

My
head swims a little.  “So how does that
thing work, then?” I ask, pointing over to cannon thing.  “It sort just dilates stuff?”

“It
creates a region of intensely dilated monodirectional gravitational windows,”
she says and I can tell by her expression that my face makes it obvious enough
how lost I am.

“It’s
like dropping a projectile toward a ultra-massive black hole for thirty or so
meters,” Danther says, exasperated. 

“See,”
I say, the idea clicking.  “Now that
makes sense!  Why not just say that?”

Danther
sighs, eyes closed and brow furrowed. 
Soma just shakes her head, grinning.

I
take a more analytical approach, applying a more information-heavy filter to my
sight.  “I can see now why everyone
wanted to get here.  Look at all the
resources in that thing.”

“Holy
shit!” Danther exclaims, apparently only having just realized how ridiculous the
weapon actually is.

“Language!”
Soma yells.

“Sorry,
I…,” Danther begins.  “This thing… it….”

“Has
enough material to outfit a—quote unquote—modern
lineship, I know,” Soma says, the smug grin on her face downright
wonderful.  “Back in the day, we didn’t
spread resources so thin.”

 The two go on to discuss the gun, words
quickly devolving into math talk I neither understand nor care to
understand.  I meander about, inspecting a
torpedo rack with about as much appreciation as my limited understanding can
muster.  “Yes, Sol, torpedo go boom!” I can almost hear Danther say.  I roll my eyes.

I
move onto the next room and freeze.

My
mind doesn’t know where to start, though my eyes lock onto the obvious point of
interest.  A five-meter sphere floats in
the middle of a large room, some fish of species I have never seen before
swimming within.  A wash of different
blue shades illuminates the area, moving in gentle patterns, shadows cast by a
wild growth of bamboo and other foliage.

“My
mom had it fabricated to surprise my dad… had fish delivered from Earth itself,”
Soma says, a slight edge of emptiness to her voice.  I look over my shoulder, seeing Soma—another
hologram of Soma—speaking to Danther behind me. 
“She was a doctor, my mom.”  She
grows quiet and respect it.  “She died
before the war… treating people….”

“Soma…,”
I say, kneeling and putting an arm around her shoulder.

“I
tried to keep them alive, but… it-it’s been over three hundred years, and….”

“It’s
okay, Soma.”

“They
were my dad’s fish!” she says, crying.  I
wrap my arms around her.  “He really
loved those fish!  —named all of them
with my mom before she…!”  She sobs,
embracing me. 

I
start tearing up as well.  I never met my
parents, but the void is of a similar sort. 
Even so, I stay still for her… try to feel strong and breathe….  She stills after a while.

“The
coral’s still alive,” I whisper.

She
sniffs.  “I know.” 

She
pulls back, looking at me.  “Thanks
Soma,” I say.

“For
what?”

“For
sharing even though it hurts.”

A
bittersweet grin flashes on her face, disappearing a moment later.  “Thank you for listening.”

“Do
you want to tell me their names?”

She
nods and we head over to the tank, I getting stuck in the bamboo and making
Soma laugh.  She tells me about the
fish—Bob, the yellowtail damselfish; Star, the angelfish; Basil, Leaf, and Boo,
three inseparable clownfish, and many others. 
She tells me how they would swim about and do various fish things,
little subtleties of their limited personalities coming out over the
years. 

“What
are those?  —those clear things in each
of the fish?” I ask after a while, having noticed them a couple times
already.  “Are they like, micro-A.I. modules?” I ask, mushing
appropriate sounding words together.

“They
are what’s left over…,” Soma says, sad. 

“What
do you mean?” I ask, but I think I already know.

“They
are diamonds,” she replies simply.  “I
took their remains and turned the carbon into diamonds.”

“Do
you think… when we start traveling, I mean—you might wanna get more fish?”

“They
will just die too.”

“Everyone
dies, Soma.”

She
looks at me, a strange, sad forgiveness in her eyes.  “I don’t.”

We
get our final clearance a little while after I speak with Soma, who seems okay,
if a little shy; it’s quite cute actually. 
All the ships line up, Legacy
in the lower left of the plane a huge sphere-looking thing dead center,
surrounded by six identical ships Danther says are part of a study.  Miln says they paid extra for prime
positioning, all seven of them Dowin ships. 

“Incoming
communication,” Soma says and a large holoscreen shows up, light of the giant
aquarium shining through.

“Greetings
racers,” a subdued voice says.  “The
following is today’s route.  The race
will begin in five minutes.”

“Bringing
up route analyzer,” Soma says, appearing before us by the screen.  “Potential routes plotted.”

“Thanks,
Soma,” I reply.

She
turns, grinning and avoiding eye contact.  “It
wasn’t that difficult.  Hmm,” she
says, turning back.  “Calculating,” Soma adds,
several paths showing up in a large planet’s atmosphere.  “Hmm, I’m going to need to run scans when we
get closer for weather conditions, but based on previous data, I have a
tentative optimal route.”

“You
are going through the atmosphere?” Tavin asks.

“Yes,
Tavin,” Soma replies, obviously still
annoyed at the man.  “Sol, it looks like
today’s race will consist of several stages. 
The first is a straight shot to Delan IV, presently 3,514 light seconds
away—but we’ll take a rift gate to within 12 light seconds.”

I
nod.

“Next
is a near complete loop around Delan IV, then a warpfield, then a short jump
through dedicated rift gates, and finally a trip around Delan proper, this
system’s sun.”

“Sounds
good,” I say, as a big “60” appears on the holoscreen, counting down.  “Everyone take your seats; I fly with
inertia, so—.”

“You
what?” Tavin exclaims.

“It’s
on a logarithmic scale,” Danther replies and that seems to calm the man, though
I’m not sure what that means.

“Ready Sol?” Soma whispers over neural a
little while later after I run through all the final checks, holographic
representation of her giving me a significant look from the holoscreen.

I
give her a nod.  “Hell yeah.”

She
narrows her eyes.  “Language.”

3
flashes red; I crack my neck.

2
flashes orange; I ignite the antimatter engines… the ones no one expects to see.

1
flashes blue; a shiver runs through my spine.

Green
all across the board; I push the accelerator to max.