Page 2 of Captain Santiago and the Sky Dome Waitress (Interspace Origins)

Lucie had saved for over a year to pay for a short tour of the known worlds. She had planned and researched, and gone without. So the cramped appointments of the Saint James interspace liner caught her by surprise. Apparently a journey from Darwin to Charlton City was an ordinary event for everyone else. A work-a-day thing requiring bland décor and an absence of comfort.

Lucie realized she had been building up this interstellar flight in her mind, making it far more significant and in need of luxury appointments and fanfare only because it was her first interstellar journey.

The way everyone shuffled along the aisles with barely any conversation, let alone excited chatter, picking seats and stowing their packs beneath, made her think they did this every other day. And perhaps they did. She was a very new Varkan and, as she was constantly reminded, having once run an entire city had taught her nothing useful about humans.

She found a seat, jammed between a large man travelling on his own and a woman shepherding three small children, who all sounded tired and fractious.

This was what her hard-earned savings had paid for? Well, not just this flight, for this was the first of five flights, plus three nights’ accommodation at each point on the journey. From Darwin to Charlton City, the original home of the Varkans; to Nicia, the sea world, in the Sunita system; on to Cathain, and the ruins of the Ivory City; then Shanterry and the tech cities and the Varkan implant workshops; then back home to Darwin.

Lucie gripped her hands together and tried to stop staring at everything, and also tried to ignore the small foot kicking her shin.

Most of the seats in the big room were full when a chime sounded over the P.A. system. Everyone still standing picked up their pace and settled in a chair. The floor and Lucie’s seat shivered and she felt the ship rise. She was pressed into her seat with a giant invisible hand as the ship’s rate of ascent increased.

Her heart zoomed. They were leaving!

The ship rose for what felt like hours, but the digital side of her mind said it was much shorter interval. Eight minutes, thirty-seven seconds. There were also an additional twenty-nine milliseconds, but including them was a new Varkan thing, so she ignored them.

The walls showed no windows or ports where Lucie could view Darwin falling away beneath them, or the slow change from blue sky to indigo, then the blackness of space and the stars. She couldn’t see Darwin’s moon, which would be somewhere ahead of the ship.

The gravity pushing her into her seat eased to normal. The ship had stopped rising.

It held still for a moment or two. Everyone else in the cabin looked bored, but Lucie’s heart kicked up a notch, for now the ship was out of the gravity well of the planet. Now was when the pilot, on the bridge somewhere at the front of the ship, would pull the ship through Interspace. This was an extra dimension that only Varkans—digital sentients using human bodies—could access. Not all Varkans could find Interspace and use it. It took experience, and a deep understanding of space. It took more understanding than Lucie, as a new Varkan, could muster. It didn’t matter that she had been acquiring knowledge for over a hundred years.

It also didn’t matter that she had been sentient for nineteen of those years. She had only been a Varkan for ten years, and didn’t have the range of flesh-and-blood experiences and exposure to space travel that would teach her how to reach Interspace.

It didn’t help that she had been a city-mind, not a ship-mind. Her experience with space travel consisted of a lot of research and this flight.

So far.

But this was more than exciting enough. Lucie held her breath, waiting for the jump.

The ship shivered beneath her feet. Lucie felt what seemed to be a wave of cold air wash over her. It made her blink, and her thoughts to stutter, just for a second.

Then she was aware once more of the seat beneath her and the kicking heel of the child next to her. Of soft conversations around the room. A man yawned and went back to his reading.

That was the jump?

They had really crossed 1,200 light years…and just shivered ?

A jump of that magnitude really should be announced. Received with more fanfare than a yawn.

The ship moved sideways. It felt sideways to Lucie for her row of chairs ran parallel to the spine of the ship. The ship was really moving forward.

Oh, how she wished there was a window! Or even a screen showing the view beyond the fuselage. Something to show her what hung in front of the ship’s nose.

The surge halted but Lucie could tell from the subtle vibrations through her feet that the engines were still working to push the ship through space at an even speed.

Then, the ship settled, dropping a few meters, and came to a halt.

Instantly, everyone got to their feet and retrieved packs and luggage. The mother rose and pulled her children in around her and shepherded them toward the wide door they’d entered through.

So did everyone else.

They’d arrived at Charlton City.

Lucie remained in her seat, staring at the shuffling wave of humans and Varkans pushing toward the door, which was now opening. She saw bright lights beyond the door. Heard the clank of machinery, hissing steam vents, and the ticking of cooling metal. And voices. Shouts and directions. The clang of tools.

It was so prosaic that Lucie had to sit a moment more while she adjusted to the simplicity of it. The ordinariness.

She got to her feet and pulled her pack from under the seat and shouldered it. Then, reluctantly, she joined the end of the thick line of people moving off the ship.

As she climbed down the ramp, she looked around. Never mind trying to look like she did this every day. This was Charlton City ! If there was a home world for Varkans, Charlton City was it.

Charlton was a sprawling city hanging in space over a planet no one could ever remember the name of. It was the city where Varkans had first come together in large numbers, and from where they had saved human civilization from the Periglus—the freaky, noncommunicative giant aliens who had taken over both the Soward system and the Sunita system, forcing millions of humans and Varkans to give up their homes and evacuate.

So far, thanks to the Varkans, the Periglus had not harmed a single person. Instead, the aliens and the rest of the known worlds stood apart and incommunicado.

Lucie didn’t realize she was holding her breath as she looked around the landing bay, while also trying to stay within the safety lane painted on the floor, and at the same time, trying to glimpse the city itself through the large windows running down one side of the bay. The safety lane directed everyone to a small door in the far corner of the landing bay.

“Blake! Blake!” A man bellowed the name behind her. He wasn’t the only one shouting, although the other shouts were from farther away and Lucie couldn’t make out the words.

She tried to peer ahead over shoulders and around bodies to see what lay beyond the door of the landing bay. Once she had her hostel room sorted out for the night, she intended to visit Celestial, the village dome that was supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful. It was also the village where Yennifer Charlton and Connell had lived together for years after they had helped save the city and humans from the Periglus.

Of course, they didn’t live there anymore. That had been nearly two hundred years ago. But it would have been so much fun to actually run into them. To meet them. Maybe even spend a little time in their company and hear their stories about the dawn of the Varkan Age—

A hand gripped her arm and yanked Lucie around to face the other way, almost taking her off her feet. She dropped her pack, as her fingers went instantly numb under the power of the grip on her arm.

“What the hell, Blake? What are you doing here?” a very large man shouted at her.

Lucie stared at him. “Excuse me?”

He took hold of her other arm and gave her a little shake. “ You’re alive !” His face worked with a range of emotions that Lucie didn’t have time to analyze. His eyes glittered…were those tears? “Blake…!” His voice was hoarse. His hands squeezed.

Lucie scrambled to understand what was happening. She felt flat-footed and stupid. The man holding her arms was taller than her. Maybe two meters high. But not spindly, not at all. His shoulders were wide and thick. He had muscle and strength, as his grip on her arms told her. His thick brown hair was not cut super-short, but waved back from a high forehead. Thick dark brown brows, and a sharp jaw. His chin had a dimple, and a prickling of whiskers.

Lucie couldn’t remember being this close to anyone since waking as a Varkan. The doctors, of course. Nursing staff. Physiotherapists who had to handle her while they taught her how to walk, how to feed herself and more.

But no one since, except for a child’s kicking foot. And now this man, who felt as though he could easily move her around to any area in the landing bay whether she wanted to go there or not.

This man, who was staring at her, his gaze moving over her face, while…yes, stars, it was grief playing in his eyes, making his features contort.

The moment only stretched for a few heartbeats, but seemed to last forever.

“Oh….!” Lucie whispered, as she put it all together so it made sense.

“Captain Santiago!” someone shouted.

The man’s gaze flickered sideways, then came right back to Lucie. His fingers worked against her flesh. “Blake…” he said again. His throat worked. “You’re actually here… I thought you were dead. Everyone thought you were dead.”

Lucie nodded. Pity mixed with her embarrassment. She was going to have to destroy this man’s hope, the happiness that was building in his eyes. There was nothing for it, but to do it as quickly as possible.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” Lucie said, as gently as she could. “I’m not Blake.” She looked into his eyes, because it was important that he understand this. “I am a Varkan.”

She saw his dawning pleasure die. Puzzlement replaced it. “Varkan,” he repeated, his tone wooden.

“I used the interplanetary DNA pool,” Lucie added. “Your friend, Blake…she must have donated her DNA to the pool.” She could feel her cheeks heating, because only the poorest and most desperate of sentient computers, those who couldn’t find a more lucrative way of raising money for their transfer to a Varkan body, used the interplanetary pool. She would be paying for the transfer for ninety-nine years, at an interest rate that made her look desperate.

But she had been desperate to gain the freedom that came with being a Varkan. No human had offered her their own DNA, which was the other common way of gaining a Varkan body. So she had bought DNA from the common pool.

The man, Captain Santiago, let go of her hands. He straightened, frowning. “But…you look exactly like her…” Raw pain strained his voice.

Lucie’s pity increased. “It happens sometimes,” she said. She had done a moon’s weight of research before becoming a Varkan, and she had transferred many of those memories into this body. But the truth made her feel even smaller and more embarrassed to expose her poor beginnings. “There’s no control over gene expression when you elect to use pool DNA, you see.” That was an option the soon-to-be-Varkans with luxury budgets could afford. “And they didn’t tell me whose DNA I was given.” She got to choose gender, and that was all.

Santiago cleared his throat. Understanding was building in his eyes, along with awkwardness.

“This is…it’s unusual,” Lucie said. But it wasn’t rare . As long as humans donated their DNA to let Varkans build clone bodies to house their minds, it would always be possible to meet people who’d known the original human. But in the two hundred years since Bedivere X, the very first Varkan, had made his famous first jump through Interspace, protocols to handle the situation had arisen. Customs had formed to minimize upset for either party.

“I’m sorry you got your hopes up,” Lucie said, even though she longed to ask this man all about the woman whose DNA she wore.

Santiago pushed his hand through his hair, staring at her.

Lucie could see in his face the thousands of questions that he wanted to ask her. The chief of those would be: “I want to talk to you for much longer, while I pretend you are Blake and can have her back in my life for a little while.”

Which was exactly why he could not ask that of her. On this, the social rules were firm. The Varkan institute where she had been transferred had been just as firm. In situations like this, it would be unfair to Lucie to linger in the company of someone who’d known the human her DNA came from.

It would also deliver nothing but pain for this man.

Lucie shook her head, anticipating the unspoken question.

One of the uniformed crew came up alongside Santiago. “Captain…”

Santiago blew out an impatient breath. “I’ll be right there.”

The crewman glanced at Lucie. His eyes didn’t narrow. He didn’t look shocked. Clearly, he had not known Blake whoever. He trudged away again.

Santiago shook off his distress. Lucie could see him do it. He understood the etiquette, too.

But it was taking everything he had to distance himself. She could see it in the fine trembling of his hands. The way he was squaring his shoulders and breathing heavily. His pulse was visible on the side of his neck, beating hard.

“I’m sorry,” Lucie repeated. She picked up her pack. “I’m only in Charlton for a few days, then I’ll be gone.”

“To where?” he asked, trying to sound disinterested. Merely polite.

Lucie hesitated. Should she tell him where she would be? It would be better to make a complete break. Just disappear out of his life with no clue where she had gone.

But he was trying to be polite, to smooth over his gaff. Was he embarrassed?

It seemed only fair to meet him half-way. “Nicia,” she said. “Three days here, then three on Nicia. It’s sort of a grand tour, you see…” She grimaced at the her patently peppy tone.

“Charlton, Nicia…” He raised a brow. “The Ivory City…and…Shanterry?”

Lucia felt her lips part. “How did you guess?’

“All the Varkan historical hotspots,” he said. “You are a new Varkan, aren’t you?”

She could feel her cheeks heating. “I’ve been sentient for nineteen years.”

“And how long have you been a Varkan?”

She pressed her lips together. “Ten years.”

Santiago smiled. He wasn’t laughing at her, she knew that. “A mere baby,” he said softly. Then he frowned. “Nicia in three days? That’s my flight.”

Her middle sank. She suddenly didn’t want to be on that flight. Not at all.

This was getting worse.

She squeezed the strap of her pack. “Well…I should let you get back to work.” She could see past him, to where the crewmember was standing a discreet distance away, clearly waiting for Santiago to finish chatting with the passengers.

Santiago’s fists tightened. He nodded. “Yes,” he said firmly. He stood for a moment more. “Have a good life…”

Was he waiting for her to supply her name?

Lucie nodded. “Yes, you too, Captain Santiago.” She turned and hurried along the painted lane toward the landing bay door. The bright lights beyond the bay now beckoned for a different reason.

Once she was beyond the door, she could slide amongst the people out there and really disappear.