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EPILOGUE

Clement returned command of the Antietam to Captain Kagereki before taking his personal crew on one last shuttle ride down to the surface of Bellus. Nobli and Reck had been recovered safe and sound and Kagereki was already patching the hull hole to his now useless reactor room. She would have to catch a ride home to Kemmerine in the LEAP bubble of one of the remaining cruisers with an operable reactor.

Once they were back on the surface of Bellus, they were greeted like heroes by both the settlers and the natives alike, but Clement didn’t feel like one. He avoided the celebrations that followed their “victory” and received frequent reports from Letine that the “Protector Mary” was busy fixing systems throughout the whole Trinity star system, and would be contacting him “shortly.” Clement was fine with that.

The Solar League fleet departed without another contact, no doubt with its tail between its legs. He thought about Elara DeVore one last time, thinking about his regrets before putting them away. She had made her choices, and he was certain he would never know her fate, good or bad.

He found a small bungalow inside the village, far away from the bustle of the people, and slept away the better part of two days. He reflected during that time on what had been lost fighting for Trinity: too many young men and women (including Kayla Adebayor, who he felt a special responsibility for), too many ships, and one beautiful young native girl that was denied that most human of things, a chance to have her own life, free of the obligations that her society placed on her.

For the most part no one bothered him, except for the occasional native bringing him meals or Lubrov stopping by for instructions on what to do next. “Wait,” he told her. Wait until Mary contacted him again, as their fates were in her hands.

On the third morning of his rest he got a visit from Yan.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding out. It’s nice,” she said, reaching into a bowl of fruit and grabbing something similar in taste and texture to a yellow apple and taking a bite. “God, these are delicious. I wouldn’t mind eating these all year round, which I guess you can on this planet.” She sat down on the edge of his modest bed while he sat in a side chair, drinking tea, and put down the book he had been reading. “What do you have there?”

The Guns of August. It’s about the prelude to a great war on Earth five hundred years ago. It’s from my father’s collection. I read it once as a student, but not in the last thirty years or so.”

“Gods, Clement, you avoided one catastrophic war and now you relax by reading about another.”

He took a sip of his tea. “I am what I am,” he replied, then set the tea down. “Would you like some?” he asked her.

“No, thank you, this apple-thing will likely keep me hydrated for days.” Clement smiled at that. “So,” she said between bites, “what happens now?”

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, Yan,” he said. She looked annoyed at his answer, and then changed the subject.

“You know, I think I’d like you to stop calling me that. It seems kind of distant for all we’ve been through. I want you to use my given name from now on, in casual conversation, anyway.”

“Tanitha?”

“No,” she put the apple-thing down on the bed table. “My real given name, Xiu Mei.”

“All right, Xiu Mei then.” She looked up at the ceiling, thinking about that for a minute. “Say it again.” He repeated her name three more times before she waved him off. “Let’s just go with Mei.”

“Mei it is. And no more ‘Clement’ please. I rather liked Mary calling me ‘Jared.’”

Yan shifted on the bed. “You had affection for her, didn’t you?”

Clement nodded. “She was special in every way. I admired her, her strength, her will, to make that choice . . .” He trailed off.

“Jared, I’m leaving the Navy,” Mei said abruptly.

He nodded. “I’ve considered the same thing,” he replied. “This has been a wearying experience.”

“Time to go home and start having little Clements?”

“I don’t really have a home anymore, Mei. Ceta is a failing colony, the Rim as a whole holds nothing for me. If they allow it, I might just choose to stay here.”

She stood to go. “Certain things are only possible without the responsibility the Navy places on us. I just came here to communicate that to you.” Then she grabbed the apple again and leaned over the chair to kiss him on the cheek.

“Make the right choice for you, Jared. You deserve it.”

He watched her go, having no idea what that right choice might be for him.


The next day he was called to the platform by Letine, who promptly informed him the “Protector” would be contacting him shortly. He didn’t have long to wait.

Less than a minute later the floor of the platform began to take form, growing into a physical reflection of Mary. “Hello, Jared,” she said, as if her “appearance” was an everyday occurrence.

“Hello, Mary,” he replied, “if that is the proper way to address you?”

“I am now part of the Machine and the Machine is part of me. Where the one ends and the other begins, I could not tell you, Jared. I have all the feelings and emotions and share all the experiences of the woman you call Mary, but I am now also bound to this world, this entire star system, in a way that I could not comprehend before. When you met me on your first trip to Trinity, I was a simple village girl. When you encountered me for the first time here in these caverns, I was augmented, enhanced to my full potential, but I was merely a servant of the Makers. Now, I am the hand of the Makers, the protector of the people of Trinity. I now understand their purpose in creating these worlds, and I understand the great responsibility that has been given to me.”

“I’m sensing that a final decision about my peoples’ fate has been reached?”

She nodded. “As protector of the people I must think of them first. The destruction of the complex on the world you call Camus was from an enemy of the Makers, and it happened nearly four thousand of your years ago, when the Makers were still living here in this system. Since then the people have been happy, but stagnant. That will now change under my guidance, but because of this decision, I’m afraid it’s not possible for your people to stay here. The people of Trinity must make their own way, free of the influence of colonial forces, friendly or not.”

“Mary, we came here because our worlds cannot support the people we have now. Sending these people back to the Rim worlds will be sending them to their deaths, and will be condemning the entire Five Suns Alliance to the same fate within decades.”

She smiled at him, a very human gesture. “Perhaps not.” She motioned with her right arm and three shapes began to emerge from the nanomaterial on the floor of the platform. They grew in size and shape into four-sided pyramids less than a meter across.

“What are these?” he asked.

“Hope, for your future. A gift from the Makers. These ‘pyramids,’ as you call them, will terraform your Rim worlds. They will make them as beautiful and lush as any of the Trinity planets. These devices are my thanks for all you have done for Trinity. Take them back to your worlds, and make them into the paradise you want them to be.” She formed a small device out of her hand, the size of a small data storage unit, and gave it to him. “This will explain all you need to know about their function. You will find that as your worlds grow, these devices will replicate themselves until the entire planet is rich and green. This is my gift to you.”

“Thank you, Mary,” he said.

“Thank you, Jared.” Then she hugged him, but she was cold and hard, almost mechanical to the touch. He pulled back, took the storage device and wished her and her people well. Then she was gone, and he made his way back to camp, there to tell his people to prepare to depart Trinity forever.




Two Years Later

Jared Clement stood on the back deck of his parents’ home on their family farm, munching on a piece of toast made from fresh-baked grain bread and topped with his mother’s strawberry preserves. He watched her from the deck as she tended the orchards herself. It wasn’t work to her; it was an act of love, connecting with the soil of their adopted family home. On the “far forty” acres of the farm his father was running the harvester through the wheat fields, kicking up dust. Clement thought his father had been as happy as he had ever seen him these last few months.

The sky above them was ever bluer, and the surrounding hills, once barren and dead, were full of greenery, and getting greener. In the distance he could see his father’s reborn fishing pond, recently stocked again. Above it all was the looming artificial pyramid mountain near Ceta City, spewing out its life-giving water vapor, organic material and seedlings. The city was now twice the size it had been before as new homesteaders made their way out to the Rim and the great opportunities it represented.

“Are you going to stand there all morning?” came the voice of his wife from behind him. He turned, putting the last of the toast in his mouth and crunching it down, then walked to her. She was sitting on the white country swing while she gently fed their son from her breast. He bent down and kissed her, then sat next to her, admiring what they had created.

“I might go fishing later,” he said. “Maybe take little Cletus here. He needs to learn the basic skills.”

“He’s four months old.”

Clement sighed. “You never know what he might pick up.”

“Like fishing and catching rabbits and shooting birds?”

He shook his head. “No, no shooting. And no more violence in our lives. If you ask me, we’ve had quite enough.”

“That we have.” The baby squirmed then in his mother’s arms. “Ow! Cletus Graham Clement, you’re as bad as your father.”

“What happened?”

“He bit me. Damned teeth. I wish they’d stay this small, without the teeth.”

“Personally, I can’t wait for him to grow up.”

She switched the baby to her other breast and he settled in comfortably. “Are you going to show him the stars? When he grows up?”

Clement pointed to the brass telescope on the back porch. “Perhaps from here. Maybe someday we’ll take him to Kemmerine Station and to visit your parents on Shenghai. I’ll tell him a few tall stories.”

“I’m sure you will.”

He reached over and kissed her—not as the mother of his children, but this time as his wife—with passion. “I love you, Mei. I think I did from the first time we met. It just took leaving the Navy for me to be able to express it.”

“I know,” she said. “Duty and honor and all that. But we’re done with that, and if you keep kissing me like that little Cletus here is going to have a baby sister soon.”

“I’ll look forward to that,” he said, then he kissed her again.

They sat together, hand in hand, gently swaying on the swing.

Contemplating the universe from their back porch.


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