Tomiko just stared at him, one eyebrow raised in her very Tomiko way. When she did that, it could have a hundred meanings, but Rev knew she wanted the results.
Rev bent over Willow, who then lifted her arms and demanded, “Up!”
He raised the little girl to his shoulders, grabbed her legs to make sure she wouldn’t fall, and said, “One.”
Tomiko raised her eyebrow further.
“Kel.”
That got her attention.
“Kel?”
Rev nodded.
Tomiko leaned back on the sofa as Aspen put a hand on her shoulder and babbled on about something Rev couldn’t interpret.
“Wow. And . . . ?”
“They don’t want to separate.”
“I was wondering about that, but I didn’t think it would even be a question,” Tomiko said. “So, there’re two of you.”
It wasn’t really the two of them. It was the two AIs, but Rev didn’t correct her.
“Maybe more,” Rev said, parroting what Kurt had told him. “Not everyone got tested.”
“And still won’t.”
“Well, Kel and Diana just proved that if our battle buddies are sapient, it doesn’t mean anything has to change.”
Tomiko pulled Aspen in closer and gave her an absentminded kiss on the cheek.
Rev almost mentioned his theory that maybe the IBHU and the battle buddy together were part of the mix, but he left it unvoiced. Tomiko was adamant that she didn’t want Pikachu tested, and even if she’d only been an IBHU for a short amount of time, he didn’t want to stress her out.
“Punch was with you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How did he take it? I mean, maybe he was hoping to have another one like him.”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking now. He’s never had to learn all the nonverbal cues and stuff like that, so it’s like staring at a statue sometimes.”
“Daddy, go over there,” Willow said as she pointed to the wash basin.
“I bet he’s disappointed,” Tomiko said as Rev followed his orders.
He carried Willow to the sink where she could see the mirror screen display the image of her perched on top of his shoulders. As usual, she seemed fascinated by the sight.
“Like I said, Miko. I don’t know what’s going on inside his brain.”
“It’s got to be strange for him. There’s a lot of adjustment, and now, he’s all alone.”
“He’s not alone. He’s still got me. And he’s spending a lot of time with the gennies.”
“That’s not the same, and you know it.” She paused for a moment and added, “I wonder if he regrets it now?”
Before Rev could answer, the door chimed, and Kat entered.
“You’re early,” Tomiko said.
“What, I can’t spend more time with my girls?” she asked as she walked up to Rev and held out her hands to Willow, who willingly slid off Rev’s shoulder and into her arms.
“Hello to you, too, Kat,” Rev said.
“I’m not here to babysit you, Rev, no matter how much you need it.”
Rev just scowled.
Aspen jumped off the sofa and ran to wrap her arms around Kat’s thigh, her babble never missing a beat.
“I’ve got them if you want to head off early,” Kat said.
Tomiko locked eyes with Rev, who then nodded. He’d planned on spending a few more moments with the girls, but the brief was going to start soon enough that a few more minutes wasn’t going to make much difference one way or the other.
“I guess we could get down there early,” Tomiko told Rev, then to the girls said, “Now you be good for Auntie Kat.”
“OK, let’s go,” he said.
He kissed both girls, who barely noticed. They seemed more interested in telling Kat something about a “dragon unicorn.” They gave Tomiko only slightly more notice as she kissed them.
“It would be nice if they’d at least acknowledge their father,” he grumbled as they walked side by side down the passage.
“They haven’t seen Kat for two days now, Rev. It’s natural.”
Rev huffed but didn’t say anything. He knew it was silly to be jealous of his sister. Still, he felt a little pang.
They reached the CO’s stateroom within a minute. Command Master Chief Umman was already there, and he gave the two a nod but nothing more as they took their seats. Rev and Umman should be natural allies on the mission, being the senior enlisted for the military sides of the house, but at best they were neutral most of the time, and Rev gave the command master chief a wary berth for the rest.
Slowly, the rest of them arrived. Top Klipsinger sat down beside Tomiko. The three were the only Marines present.
“I’m not sure what the big deal is,” Top said. “Another mission, another target.”
Rev was mildly curious, too. It was a little odd that they were getting the brief in the CO’s outer stateroom, which was often used for sensitive or classified briefings.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” he told the top.
More people trickled in, all of them in the upper echelons of the Navy and civilian staffs. Finally, Dr. Njuguna, accompanied by Captain Nyad, arrived.
“Thank you all for coming,” the captain opened. “This is our mission selection brief. But as you can tell, based on where we’re holding this and the limited attendance, there are some particular issues that Dr. Njuguna and I thought we should address first.”
“Njuguna and Nyad know something and haven’t briefed you?” Tomiko hissed.
Rev had to fight to hold back a scowl. He was one of the three legs of leadership in the expedition. Four legs, if you counted Tata Eleven. If there was something peculiar about the next target, then he would have appreciated knowing beforehand.
“Dr. Hyung, if you please?” the CO asked.
A star chart appeared over the center of the conference table. Rev couldn’t make much of it. For all he knew, this could be from human space.
A single star turned red, and the text “EFP-07” appeared beside it. That perked Rev up. Most of their objectives had been initially identified while humanity was trying to find the Naxli homeworld. These systems were designated with the “NP” prefix. The “EFP” stood for “Exile Fleet Planet,” and those had been discovered by the expedition itself.
“This is EFP-07, a system we noted during the last mission. It’s located approximately two hundred and forty-seven light-years from our present position. It wasn’t until the standard analysis was being done that we picked up some interesting readings. There is little doubt that there are industrial emissions in the atmosphere of the fifth planet.”
Rev looked around at the rest of the expedition’s leadership. This was certainly interesting, but he wasn’t sure how to process it just yet.
“Are we sure whatever’s in the atmosphere is related to industry? Could it be volcanic discharges?” Lieutenant Commander Norton asked.
“We’re sure. The type and amount are similar to what was being discharged into the air during the late Nineteenth Century on Earth. What we have here is proof of a post-industrialized civilization.”
“But friend or foe?” Rev asked.
He was in charge of planetary security, and this was his primary concern.
“We can’t tell that,” Hyung said while giving Rev a troubled glance, as if upset at the question.
Rev and Hyung had usually been allies during the expedition, and they were on friendly terms, but it was Rev’s responsibility to consider anything that could be a threat.
“What we are seeing, Sergeant Major, is a snapshot of the situation only two hundred and forty-seven years ago,” Captain Nyad said. “There hasn’t been enough time for technological advances that would elevate the civilization on the planet to be much of a threat to us. They may not have even taken their first baby steps into their own system.”
“With all due respect, sir, that’s assuming they advanced at the same rate as humanity did. We have no way to know if they are or are not a threat to us now.”
Captain Nyad didn’t quite suppress a sigh. “We’re not going to just land on the planet and declare our godhood, Sergeant Major. We already have security procedures in place. And, I might add, our prime mission is to ascertain if there are any threats to humanity out here in the void. We can’t do that by hiding.”
The captain was right about the mission, and Rev wasn’t going to argue the point. But he was still tasked with the security of the expedition while on any planet. And that whole seeking-out-potential-enemies mission was back when they had six ships, four being capital ships. Now, they were down to the Galaxy Explorer, which, while it had some weapons, was hardly a ship of war.
“I’m just asking the question, sir. It’s my place as part of the leadership to understand the situation before I agree to a specific mission.”
“Boom,” Tomiko whispered out of the side of her mouth so quietly that it took Rev’s augmented hearing to pick it up. “That’s the way to remind them that you’re part of the decision-making.”
“And it is a valid question, Sergeant Major,” Dr. Njuguna said. “But let’s go on if we can. Dieter?”
Dr. Hyung nodded and continued. It soon became apparent to Rev that the decision had already been made without him. It also became apparent the reason the meeting was called like this. Instead of the three of them deciding whether to change the next objective from the one assigned by Titan, Njuguna and Nyad had called together all of the leadership. By convincing them, they probably figured that Rev wouldn’t buck the larger consensus.
The thing is, Rev didn’t know if he wouldn’t have agreed anyway. The lure of discovering an industrial civilization was pretty strong. And finding out if they could be a threat was still their prime mission. But he was angry that he’d been boxed out, so he wasn’t going to make it easy on them.
“What does Titan say about a switch in objectives.”
“Uh . . . comms has been down,” Nyad said, stammering.
How friggin’ convenient.
The quantum communications had been problematic even though, theoretically, they should work fine. The accepted reasoning was that the manufacture of the cloned communicators required much tighter tolerances than had been required for communications within human space, and the sheer distance involved introduced irregularities.
But the comms had been spotty, not completely down. A simple text message should have been able to find a window to get through. Rev was sure that the two were using the difficulties to their advantage.
He couldn’t prove it, though, so he switched tacks. “I’d like to know what security procedures would be implemented should EFP-07 become our objective.”
“Well . . . the SOP that we’ve emplaced,” Captain Nyad said.
“Once again, with all due respect, those were emplaced after the battle with the BGs, and we lost the other ships. As I understand it, we’re not just going to hop into the system and then hop out if the BGs or another aggressive force is there. You want to investigate the planet. So, our security measures certainly need some tweaking to take into account the difficulties.”
Rev had been an important contributor to creating the new SOP after the battle with the enemy they now referred to as the “BGs,” for “Bad Guys.” If anyone, he had ideas on what would have to be changed. But he wanted to put the captain on the spot.
The captain punted, though, pulling in Lieutenant Commander Norton and Lieutenant Fubon, who obviously had no prior warning, and fumbled around for twenty minutes as they tried to come up with something on the fly.
Rev finally took pity on them and stepped in, building on what those two had come up with to present a rational semi-plan with the understanding that more details needed to be worked out during the jump through bubble space.
Captain Nyad pounced on that last statement as acquiescence from Rev, and in a way, it was. Rev could read the writing on the wall, and if he did object, he was sure he’d be overruled, which would further erode his position of authority.
And the fact of the matter was that security misgivings aside, he was pretty excited. Rev had been born BA, Before Aliens. He’d fought against the Centaurs and Naxli, and he’d fought with the Kanters, Breel, Uauii, and Niklith. Sia, too, in a way. And here was another race—hopefully one less aggressive than the BGs. But these were exciting times, and Rev wanted to be part of it.
Without Rev interrupting, the meeting petered out with their next objective decided. They were going to investigate another sapient race.