Chapter 276 - The Window

Luca walked down from the FTL comms room and entered the tactical room. Emily had gotten there ahead of him and had materialized a coffee out of nowhere at his place that he had not asked for.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey." She did not look up from her tablet. "I pulled up the notes from the call."

He set his palms flat on the back of his chair and waited for her to finish.

Luis came in a moment later with his own laptop, a small bean-shaped pendant on his leather necklace catching the light at his collar. Luca had known that Luis was Emily's admin and would be running the commissary, but watching him slide into the chair at Emily's elbow and open his laptop, in this room, was something he'd need to get used to.

Ryan came in next with a fresh coffee, Zoe a half step behind him, and Danny last, carrying his computer and working through a yawn he was not bothering to hide.

"Sit," Luca said, and stayed standing himself. "Two updates from the call, then we can talk."

"First, our mission window is still two years. The timeline hasn't changed. What changed is what we have to put down. Emma's first colony ship launches in eleven months. Between staging and shakedown, Emma and her people are arriving on Proxima b in eighteen to twenty-four months. Which means the version of the outpost we have planned for isn't going to cut it. We need more prep, deeper foundations, and a real investment in the place. Habitation, defense, food, comms, all of it running on its own without us holding it up. Emma's bringing twenty thousand colonists, and the outpost has to be ready before they drop out of FTL."

"Two," he said. "Titan's trying to buy their own shipyard out of the Planetary Control Tower System Store for fifty-two billion credits. Apparently, the UER is suddenly in favor of competition, which is great for everyone except us. While Titan's fundraising and putting pressure on the UER for credits and tax breaks, our window of being the only ones in Alpha Centauri isn't going to last, and Karen wants Hyeon Logistics to own the whole corridor end-to-end before anyone else can fly it. Our outpost and our base will be at the end of that line, and it has to be standing when she gets there."

Danny set his coffee down. "Hold on. What? Colonists now?"

"Eleven months out from Earth, eighteen to twenty-four to land."

Danny was looking at him. "Luca, we don't even know if we can get the Varnathi out of stasis, and you're already setting up a colony for Karen. Why didn't she tell us this at the Genesis Platform?"

Ryan set his coffee down, too.

Luca pulled his chair out and sat. The coffee Emily had put in front of him was still warm. He took a moment to answer the question.

"Danny, we all knew Proxima b was going to be a colonization target, and we all knew Emma was going to send ships. We just didn't expect it on our heels. That's the part that's new. As for why Karen didn't say anything at Genesis, my understanding is that she didn't know yet either. Titan moving into a shipyard is what changed the picture, and that happened after we left her. She's adjusting to it the same way we are right now."

"And the Varnathi?"

"The Varnathi mission doesn't change. We have the plans we wrote months ago, and we will execute them. The stasis question is still the priority, and it's still yours and Ryan's to figure out. What Karen's asking us, we can run alongside the mission. We are not trading one for the other."

Luis was writing fast, mouth slightly open.

"Zoe, I need finalists for landing sites as soon as you can put them together. Eleanor's been working the orbital data for the last two weeks, but you have a whole team now, and Gabriel is your Outpost Director, so pull him in and start running her work down to the sites we'd actually pick. You know what you need to do."

"Ryan. Defense first, manufacturing second. The Tower goes in the moment we land, and the second that thing pings green I want us on a path to self-sufficient. We've got all of Angelo's stuff, binders, manuals, the whole library. We've got a budget. The Store is your lever. Habitation, utilities, defensive emplacements, food production, in that order. We'll fabricate what we can, buy what we can't. I need a list."

"On it."

"Danny, I know your workload is the highest here." Ryan made a small coughing sound. Luca did not look at him. "But I need a feasibility study from you. Crops, husbandry, and forestry. Resource extraction across minerals, metals, and extra-planetary gas. Basically, everything renewable or extractable for a long-term colony, so we can plan the outpost around what the planet and the system actually support."

Danny set his tablet down.

"I can do that. Eleanor will want to be in those meetings, and I'll pull Anya for the geology side. The first thing I'm going to need from Ryan is hydroponics and greenhouses on the Store list, because we are not learning Proxima b's growing season the same week we're trying to feed people on it."

"Already on Ryan's list," Luca said. "First Store buy after the Tower is up."

Danny tipped his head. "You know it's taken thousands of years for humanity to domesticate crops, right?"

"Yeah, and that's why we have you."

"I guess that's fair."

"Good," Luca said. "One more thing. Danny, Zoe. Check your interfaces."

He pushed the Noble Command Layer invitations through.

Danny asked, "What is this?" and accepted it before Luca had finished opening his mouth.

"Danny."

"What?"

"You didn't even read it."

"I will read it after."

Zoe's eyes were unfocused as she read it. "No," she said.

"Zoe."

"No."

"It is the officer mesh. Biometric and tactical overlay, location, threat triangulation. Our abilities anchor on each linked node and extend coverage out to where the node is standing."

"I do not want a thing in my head that knows where I am and what my heart is doing."

He had expected this. He had not expected to be glad about it, and he was, because at least someone took things seriously.

"You can disable it," he said. "Any time. The reason I want it is coverage for all of us. With all five of us in the mesh, the coverage extends to wherever each of you is. And once we're on the ground, that coverage moves with you. My ability range anchors on each of you in a fight, not just on me. Tactical overlay and threat triangulation come with it. Without the nodes, the abilities only cover whoever's right next to me. With them, all five of us are covered wherever we are."

Zoe held his eyes.

"You can disable it," he said again.

"Fine," she said, and tapped accept so slowly that Luca was pretty sure she wanted them all to watch her do it. "For the record, Luca, I am doing this under protest."

"Noted, for the record," Emily said, without looking up.

Luis wrote that down too.

Danny looked up from his tablet. "Hold on. Noble Command Layer. Does this mean we're nobles now?"

Luca had not, in fact, considered this.

"I am not actually sure," he said. "I don't think so. I'll ask Karen and see if she knows."

"Got it." Danny went back to his work.

Luca's stomach was grumbling when he came through the hatch of the officer mess at thirteen hundred with Emily a step behind him, and for a moment, he was confused. Lemon and charcoal, with a hint of cinnamon? He didn't understand until he did. The long table was already half full.

Two generous bowls of Leila's saffron rice sat in the middle of the table, golden, with wedges of the crisp bottom crust laid across the top of each. Tahdig, Emily had told him. The whole idea was that the rice would be scorched and crispy. Next to the bowls was a platter of grilled chicken dusted with a red spice called sumac, and Aya's sesame-cucumber salad in a long tray beside that. Zayaan had sent up flatbread from the galley; a basket of it was warm in front of Luca's place. Lemons cut in half sat at his elbow with a bowl of garlic yogurt and a smaller bowl of something dark green that Luca would investigate later.

Ryan, Sabrina, and Zoe were already eating; Danny had a tablet propped against the water carafe and was working through his rice one-handed. Eleanor at the far end had her cane against her chair and a small portion neatly arranged on her plate, looking faintly amused at the rest of them.

"Whatever happened to waiting for your captain?" Luca asked.

Ryan looked up, rice dripping from his mouth. "Are we doing that?"

"We should if we invite any of the teams to eat with us," Emily said.

"Plus, it's rude to eat without everyone present," Luca added.

Joey came in behind them, took one look at the table, and stopped.

"Oh," Joey said.

"Sit, Joey," Emily said.

He sat. Chris came in last, hair still damp from the gym showers, and made directly for the rice.

Luca took his chair at the head of the table and looked at the spread, and a sentence began assembling itself in the back of his head about how this was a great deal of cooking for what was, after all, a normal day on a starship. He set a piece of flatbread on his plate, spooned rice next to it, and laid two pieces of chicken across the rice. The lemon at his elbow had been placed there for a reason, and Luca soon figured out that when somebody who could cook put a lemon next to a piece of chicken, the move was to use the lemon. He squeezed it over the chicken and took a bite.

The chicken was charred outside and astonishingly moist inside, the rice underneath had picked up the lemon, and the bottom-crust wedge was crisp in a way that rice should not be allowed to be. The yogurt with the garlic in it was cold and sharp and reminded him of the sour-cream-and-onion dip his mother used to put out at Christmas, except this one had been made by somebody who actually put some effort into it.

Emily kicked him under the table.

She had a forkful of rice halfway to her mouth and the other hand on her water glass, and she did not stop chewing when their eyes met, and she said, around a full mouth and with absolute conviction: "Morale."

"I didn't say anything," Luca said.

"Your face said it." She swallowed. "Morale, Luca."

"Morale," he agreed.

Sabrina had heard the exchange and was openly grinning, a piece of flatbread in one hand and Ryan's wrist in the other.

"Capitán," she said. "I am from a country that takes lunch seriously. This is not a luxury. This is a religion. Tell Zayaan I love him."

"Tell him yourself; he will be back up in a minute," Emily said.

"I will. I will tell him in front of Ryan, so Ryan knows."

"I am right here," Ryan said.

"I know, mi amor."

After lunch was over, Luca had been summoned to his own tactical room, and by the time he came up, Emily had the party planning committee in full session at the table he'd been standing at four hours earlier. Luis was sitting by her. Mark sat on her right, Sarah across from him, spinning a pen, with Takashi and Aya beside her. Noa had taken his chair, the captain's chair, at the head of his table.

Emily looked up.

"Captain."

"Reporting as ordered."

"Sit down, Captain."

He sat down, even though his personal captain's chair had been taken, without permission.

"Tomorrow night at twenty hundred, we're holding the launch party in the crew lounge," Emily started, for his benefit. "We've got the rest of today and all of tomorrow to set up, which is the only reason any of this is even possible."

Emily tapped her pen once on the edge of her tablet, the way she did when she was about to drive a meeting and wanted everyone to know it. Mark, Sarah, Noa, and Takashi all sat up half an inch. Luca decided he was going to enjoy this.

"Drinks." Emily set her stylus down. "We are opening stores for this one."

Mark grinned across the table.

Luca raised an eyebrow. He had signed off on every pallet of alcohol on this ship personally, with Ryan at his shoulder slipping in extra cases and pallets whenever his attention drifted, so he knew exactly how much they were carrying.

"How much are we opening, exactly?"

"Enough," Emily said, eyes flicking up just long enough to warn him off counting out loud in front of her people.

Mark cleared his throat, still grinning. "Okay, so we're bringing up two kegs and two cases of red wine, and we're opening the bar. Soda for those who don't drink, water by the bar, and plenty of ice. I think we're good, Captain."

"Sarah?"

Sarah stopped spinning the pen. "We're getting the stage set up and laying out the dance floor tiles. Diego and Carlos are running audio checks tomorrow morning. They were already arguing about it before I came up, which I'm taking as a good sign."

"It is a good sign," Takashi said quietly, without looking up from the page Noa had been writing.

"The issue," Emily said, and the way she said issue told Luca everything before she had finished the next sentence, "is the music."

"What is wrong with the music?"

Emily took a breath and exhaled slowly.

"Joey," she said, "was given the responsibility of curating the ship's audio library for the mission. Joey curated two years of indie rock and lo-fi."

"Lo-fi is nice," Noa said.

Aya looked at Emily over her tea. "What is lo-fi?"

Luca sat back. He thought, briefly, about Joey's face the morning he had volunteered for the job, and immediately regretted the whole idea. "Crowdsource it," he said.

Emily looked at him.

"Everyone in this ship came aboard this ship with their own music libraries. We will have more music than we can use by the end of the week."

"Noa," Emily said. "Takashi. Get the request out across the ship before dinner tonight."

"On it, boss," Takashi said.

Luca cleared his throat.

Emily did not look up from her tablet, but the line of her shoulders tightened.

"I want to open a pot," Luca said. "Five thousand credits to buy in. We can open the crap tables and poker."

"You want to turn this into a casino night," Emily said, point-blank.

"No, I, uh, isn't it the same thing? Not everyone wants to dance."

"Everyone's dancing."

"Or...?"

"Or else."

"And casino night?"

"We can save that for the next occasion."

He decided that he wasn't going to argue with her in front of everyone.

"Permission to spike the punch," Aya said.

"Denied."

"Denied?"

"Denied, Aya."

Aya made a face that was the closest thing to a pout an adult could make, and went back to her tea.

"Anything else?" Emily asked.

"Lounge rules," Luca said.

Emily closed her eyes.

"Loungewear only. No shoes in any of the lounges, ever. No food in the lounges, ever. Drinks are allowed on special occasions, of which tomorrow is one. I'll post it before dinner, so nobody can claim they did not see it."

"Send it tonight before dinner," Mark echoed, already typing.

Emily opened her eyes again, looked at Luca, and the corner of her mouth went up half a degree.

"Anything else, Captain?"

"Nope, you are doing a great job."

Emily turned back to her tablet, already moving on to the next problem.

They had one night left to act like the mission was still ahead of them instead of already closing around their throats.