“Who gets to check the ships out?” asked Tamsin.
“You can,” answered Leanne, “as long as Bud doesn’t mind.”
“Whoever. I wasn’t given any orders about delivery acceptance, just to pick them up.”
“All the same,” said Tamsin, “best we check them out before issuing them to pilots.”
“Probably true. I know if Jane was still my ship AI, she’d just do it without asking.”
Both of them smiled at this. They knew their mother. What I wasn’t sure if they were aware of, was the likelihood they would need to clone AIs for the new ships themselves, and I wasn’t sure if they were ready for that, or not. I wasn’t going to ask yet, though.
Ground control wished us a safe journey, and seemed to be assuming we’d be back for more sometime soon. Maybe we would be. But as I was about to tell Leanne to move us, I had a thought.
“Anyone know why Corona isn’t joining the Imperium?”
“Should be pretty obvious,” said Tamsin, grinning at me.
“Spell it out.”
“They won’t leave their planet, so there is no way anyone can attend Imperium meetings.”
I thought about it for a moment, and opened a coms only sized rift to Haven, to link the two systems. Then had another thought. Which was immediately answered when I thought about it.
“Get me a channel to the person we spoke to originally, on our first visit here.”
It took a few moments, but his full body half sized image popped up on the console.
“Hello again,” he said. “Can I help you with something?”
“You can. And maybe it’s me who can help you.”
“Do tell.”
“Can you change into a full hollo standing on my deck please?”
The hollo jumped a couple of meters, and now was full height.
“Thanks.”
He nodded, but I was looking at Leanne. She jumped us to Haven, putting us not far off the shipyard. The station AI supplied her the location of another container, and I moved it next to the other one. Both were close to shafts leading down to the hangar decks. Almost immediately, cargo droids opened both containers, and started moving the contents downwards.
The hollo hadn't so much as flickered when we jumped. He was now looking out the viewscreen with surprise on his face.
“What just happened?”
“I’ll explain in a minute.”
I made a head movement towards the Haven station, and Leanne started moving us that way. I left it to her to arrange docking. Curiosity swept over the meercat’s face as we approached the station. But I continued to say nothing until we were docked. A thought produced a rift down to the main airlock, and I unbuckled and rose.
“Please follow me.”
He nodded, followed me to the rift, and watched me step through, doing the same himself. Again, no flicker. I indicated the ramp in front of us through the open doors, and started walking down. He hurried to catch up, and side by side we walked around the station to the Terminus rift, with him behaving like a first time tourist, looking at everything. I noticed some degradation of his hollo in a few places, but near where the public information and media screens were, his hollo was as strong as back on the ship.
Through the rift, and once again walking around the station, and his hollo hadn't changed. My arrow was pointing me to an administration section, and we walked into an obvious outer office. The receptionist looked up in surprise.
“Can I help you gentlemen?”
“Is Councilor Tollin in?” I asked.
“Yes, but he has a full schedule.”
“You’re going to want to juggle it. Tell him Bud is here with a guest.”
She did just that, but the meercat had no idea she’d done anything. He was looking confused now.
David Tollin opened the door, looked at me for a moment, shifted his eyes to the meercat, and did a double take, before grinning.
“Come in.”
He waved us to follow him, and took the seat behind his desk, where there were already two chairs in front of it. We sat.
“Councilor Tollin,” I said. “I’d like to present the ambassador from Corona.”
“Welcome,” he said, to a now completely confused meercat.
“This isn’t a virtual reality? Is it?”
“No,” I said. “You appeared on my ship in your system, the ship moved to the Haven system, where we docked at the main station there, and walked to the Terminus system’s main station, which is the Imperium’s diplomatic hub.”
Confusion turned to amazement, and even Tollin was looking amazed now.
“How did you manage that?” they both asked together.
“It occurred to me with their superior bandwidth and the fact we put entertainment level holographics almost everywhere, if I put a com rift between their planet and Haven, we might be able to get them here using their normal hollo system. It appears to be working.”
“This is really real?”
I laughed.
“Yes, it’s really real. Your image suffered a bit in places on the way here where the holographics nearby wasn’t up to it, but no-one noticed anything but a new visitor shape they hadn't seen before. I’m not sure you even noticed the drop off yourself?”
“No. I was too busy looking around. That was two stations you said?”
“Yes. I’m not sure exactly how far along the network you can go, but I’d guess maybe another one or two stations without needing some sort of signal booster at your end.”
“Really?”
“Really. If you want to test it out, be our guests. Someone will be assigned to give you a tour if you want one.”
“This changes everything!”
“Yes, I thought it might. Before you leave, and please do that where someone vanishing won’t freak people out, why not find out everything you need to know about Imperium membership.”
“I can help you with that,” smiled Tollin. “Thank you, Commander. I believe you have other duties?”
I stood, wished them both a good day, and walked out into the reception area. The receptionist was gone, so I jumped myself back to Judge, and then sent Jane a ping saying if she didn’t see it, she needed to talk to Tollin, and then start thinking about expanding the freight network to allow military sized loads to be sent to shipyards or wherever. She acknowledged, but said nothing.
Less than an hour after leaving, Judge jumped back to the same spot it had left.
Repair droids began completing the new fives, with the expectation of human pilots.
Twenty Three
We did have pizza for lunch.
Tamsin announced the delivery arriving in the mess, and within a couple of minutes, everyone had arrived from their ships, or in the case of Norden, by gig to a topside airlock. The whole concept of a large circular flatbread, topped with cheese, tomato paste, and varying kinds of extras, was something my people had never thought of. I’d seen it before on stations, but never tried it.
It was tasty enough, and filling, but some of the combinations were quite bizarre. I mean, who puts fish on cheese? Metunga of course had several large ones to himself, and they had nothing but variations of fish on them. Had to be custom orders.