Tales of PulchraGea, Vol. 1

11: Tribunal (final/1379)

  Katy, Crystal, and I all looked at Doug. Who's flying us home, indeed? Our pilot was dead, or close to it. I sheepishly raised my hand when it was clear that no one else would. Katy raised one eyebrow in disbelief.
  "One of the first things Robin taught me was how to fly a UT Pod," I said. "I'm not a big fan of the holographic controls, but I can fly it."
  "And we can't exactly call someone to come pick us up," Crystal admitted. "We can't just waste time finding out how they jammed our comms; the cryo-pod will only hold him stable for a day or so. We don't have that kind of time."
  I stepped onto the grav-lift that took me to the cockpit. The controls appeared in blue light as I took my seat. The HUD was standard, and the warm-up sequence initiated automatically with the press of a holographic control. The hover pads on the bottom of the UT Pod thrummed with activity and the craft rocked gently as it rose a foot in the air. The rear cargo door was closed and I pulled up on the hard light yoke. We rose through the cavern and out the crater at the summit. I reoriented us toward Oasis and looked for the autopilot control; all the newer model Pods with hard light controls had them.

***
We sat in one of the many rooms under the Oasis Law Office, facing down a military tribunal. High ranking personnel sat across from us at a long table. They asked us questions, and Katy answered. I might technically be the King of PulchraGea, but Katherine Greyson was unquestionably our leader in this instance.
  She covered our entire journey there, our suspicions, the attack on us, the jamming, everything. The generals asked her questions and she provided concise but insightful answers. However, when they asked our purpose there she deftly deflected with "royal business," and "classified." The brass definitely us were unhappy with these answers, but were nominally respectful.
  "How do you suppose they might have jammed or otherwise blocked a quantum link?" one finally asked.
  This time it was Doug's turn to answer.
  "I think I can provide that," he said. "Our ability to communicate with quantum entanglement relies very heavily on some obscure theorems and is not the natural state of the particles involved. Ordinarily we wouldn't be able to use it to transmit information without the collapse of the link."
  Doug brought out a rolled chart and stuck it on the wall. It seemed to be a complex diagram. He pointed at it with each statement.
  "As you can see here, it's ordinarily impossible to observe the information. The quantum state exists in both binary states at the same time," Doug explained. "Once you observe it, that quantum state collapses back into a single binary state. All that would be necessary to block communication is to observe the connection. This permanently ends the superposition and bricks the devices."
  "We all had to buy new handsets," Katy admitted.

***
  Once the tribunal was satisfied, Katy slipped away quietly. Doug excused himself to go work on his crystal tube, and Crystal went to practice her archery. I was left alone with Bridge and Robin in the Law Office.
  "Clair Vendum called me while you were getting grilled," Robin said. "Your aircraft is finished."
  "That was fast!" I marvelled.
  Robin looked confused.
  "That's probably the longest I've ever heard of a custom order like that taking to be built after drafting," she said. "If it wasn't for all the extras, and Galileo behind it, I'd be insulted."
  Bridge chuckled.
  "Clair is hand-delivering it," he said. "She hoped you wouldn't mind, considering it's, and I quote, 'the culmination of my life's work'."
  I nodded.
  "It's whatever, I guess," I said.
  Robin suddenly had a serious look in her eye.
  "Katy told me about your panic attack," she said. "Do you want to talk about it?"
  I really didn't, but I also knew Robin well enough by then to believe she wouldn't have brought it up if she didn't think it was necessary.

"I don't know what to say," I admitted. "It's never happened to me before."

"Well, if you ever need to talk, you know where to find me," she said. "Let's go check this bad baby out, huh?"

***

We reached the launch just as the fighter landed. She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Purple paint, cerulean highlights, Trion engines, retractable laser cannons, my baby was the whole package. And best of all, free. Galileo had said he was honored to make a fighter worthy of a king. No king had used his services before, relying on more public forms of transportation. I was so excited to try it out.

  Robin White stood hugging it with her cheek pressed against it, while Clair Vendum stood at a holographic console from which was running a diagnostic program. She was lecturing me about proper maintenance of the energy shield emitters and why it was a bad idea to activate them while I was on the ground. I half-listened, instead reading an old work from the Library on my refurbished holophone.

  "Are you paying attention?" Clair shouted at me from below.

  "Yeah!" I returned absently.

  "OK! I'm going to charge the shields' capacitor array then drain them and allow them to self-charge," she shouted. "Ready?"

  "Yeah!"

  An electrical hum filled the air, followed presently by a loud snap. Claxons rang throughout the cockpit, startling me back to the current situation. The part of my HUD that displays the charge of my energy shields blinked bright red for several seconds, then slowly returned to its normal shade and began filling back up with blue light. When full, the bar turned green.

  "Everything's green!" I called.

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Clair. "I'm going to miss her. I'd love to make more, but Galileo insists that she's a one of a kind masterpiece."

She looked at the fighter with both pride and longing.

"Her name is Storm," she said definitively. "Maityl in the old tongue."

"Storm," I repeated.

I stood and stared at the craft for a while. The others moved away. Bridge retreated to his office, while Robin fired up a UT Pod to take Clair back to Clifford.

The chirping of a call broke me from my stupor.

"How's our pilot?" I asked.

"He's doing fine now that he's got all that blood replacement goop in him," Katy replied. "They're surprised he's still alive at all. They said a laser blast like that should've gone straight through him instead of stopping at the rib cage."

"I bet it went through a water barrel," I said. "Probably sucked out most of the energy."

"Maybe. I actually called to tell you that Shepherd's itinerary suggests that the next keystone is in Silva," she said. "I have Doug and Crystal following another lead back in the Capital Valley."

"That's good!" I said. "It'll give me a chance to take the new wings out for a spin!"

***

The first flight with my new ship, to the city of Silva, was fantastic. It was so unlike anything I'd ever experienced; the sim did no true justice to the abilities of this design. It floated on the wind like a balloon, but could fall like a falcon at the drop of a hat. It could sit in midair thanks to the hover-panels on the underside of the wings, or fly like a shooting star. It was equal parts Zephyr, the gentle north wind, and Typhon, Titan of the storm.

  Inside, the seats were supple dragon leather, soft as silk. Every control was analog, as opposed to the more common holographic facsimiles. There was a second seat behind the pilot's seat in the cockpit, as well as a storage space behind that that had inertial dampeners and gravity pads to keep everything in place. On either side of each seat was room enough for weapons, which were also inertially compensated to keep them from hitting you in the face while you do barrel rolls.
  It was so beautiful!
  The landscape passed underneath me at just below mach seven. In no time at all, the massive southern Forest of Illusions came into view. Seconds later, the sprawl of Silva was visible as well.