“That’s what I was going for,” I agreed. “Okay, real jewelry. What else?”
“You can just use your chameleon skin to do makeup, right? Hairdo, then. We’ve got to do something interesting with your hair to really sell this. Simplicity is in this year, but it’s the kind of ‘simplicity’ where we use manipulator fields to make your hair flow just the way we want. Oh, I don’t know if we have time to fab a whole set of those microscopic levitation bots and get them attached properly. If we miss a few strands it will ruin the whole effect.”
I lifted my hair in my manipulator field, and released it to cascade down my back again.
“I’ve already got emitters in my hair, Kara. There’s one every few millimeters, spaced in between the heat exchangers. Just show me what this is supposed to look like, and I’ll copy it.”
She stared at me for a moment. “Just like that? But, how can you tell what the underlying algorithm is just by looking at a video clip? Never mind adjusting it to run on different hardware, or programming general-purpose emitters to make a field that complicated on the fly. You can’t have that kind of computing power, Alice. The hardware wouldn’t fit in your body.”
I put a finger to my lips. “It’s a secret. I’m actually a transhuman AI pretending to be human. Don’t tell anyone I’m using my awesome superintelligence powers to have great hair, okay?”
“What… but… you!” She sputtered.
“Clock’s ticking,” I told her. “I know, ninety minutes is an eternity for me, but it isn’t long for you slow organic types. Hurry up and show me what to copy.”
“This is revenge for the multiple background stories prank, isn’t it?”
“Would I do that?” I said innocently. “Honestly, Kara, it’s like you don’t believe me. You don’t expect me to admit that I’ve been secretly stashing self-replicating computing clusters all over the ship, do you? If someone notices them the captain might make me stop before I’m ready to reveal my true Science Girl powers.”
Teasing Kara was fun, so I made the most of the opportunity. I had a feeling there wouldn’t be a lot of chances to relax down on Taragi.
Chapter 20
My first sight of Taragi was a wall of blowing rain.
According to Xenopedia that wasn’t too surprising. Water worlds have a lot of storms, and the warm ones like Taragi spawn cyclones that can roar across the endless oceans for months. The one we came down in was only a class four, right in the middle of the scale. But that still meant torrential rains, and two hundred kilometer per hour winds whipping the sea into a froth of giant waves.
A civilian shuttle might have had to wait for the storm to blow over, but dropships are tougher than that. Even the worst storm is nothing compared to a contested drop, through a sky filled with nuclear fireballs. The Speedy Exit’s inertial compensators kept us from feeling the buffeting of the winds, and a constant flicker of attitude jets kept us on course.
Naoko was a much more cautious pilot than the first mate. She took us subsonic at ten thousand meters, and delicately brought us down to our assigned landing pad at a speed that would have left us sitting ducks if anyone wanted to take a shot at us. I watched the radar carefully, but the only contact was the looming bulk of our destination below us.
The rain was so heavy that I couldn’t make out anything on visual sensors until we were setting down, and even then the landing pad was all that was visible. A flat, featureless surface sixty meters across, with a blank wall on one side and a long drop to the heaving sea on the other. The wind was coming in at a nasty angle, trying to slam us against that wall and then suddenly reversing to blow us off the edge.
Naoko handled it easily, though. Attitude jets pulsed in an intricate dance, countering each push in turn, and then the Speedy Exit was settling onto the middle of the pad. She sank low on her landing legs as Naoko reversed the lift field to hold us in place, and then mechanical couplings engaged.
“Docking clamps locked,” Naoko announced. “Shifting deflectors to wind screen mode. Welcome to Kabana City, ladies and gentlemen. Shall I request an airlock connection, Captain?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Captain Sokol replied. “We’ll just use the main entrance.”
“Acknowledged.” There was a long pause, and then she spoke again. “We are clear to disembark, Captain.”
Emla was out of her seat in moments, rushing over to me.
“That was fun! Even if Naoko does fly like an old lady.”
“I guess not every pilot is a showoff,” I said.
Naoko rose from her seat, and smoothed down the fancy red dress she’s picked for the meeting. “Indeed not, girls. I find that decorum and discretion are often wiser than a brash display of skill. In any event, local traffic control was quite insistent that we adhere to our assigned flight plan. Had we taken a more speedy approach I suspect they would have opened fire.”
“They’ve had a few problems with suicide bombers,” the captain remarked. “Dusty, you’ve got the bridge. Keep the ship buttoned up, and let me know if you hear anything interesting.”
“Will do, skipper,” Dusty said.
“Alice, why don’t you exit first and have a look around? We’re going to need three airlock cycles to get everyone down.”
“Yes, sir!”
I hurried back to the shuttle’s airlock, with Emla at my heels. Along the way I started up the tiny lift field generators in my hair. It floated up into a cloud of black silk around my head, and then settled as each strand found its way to its assigned place in the fancy hairstyle I’d picked. It was supposed to look artlessly tousled, but it was the kind of ‘artless’ that normally takes a whole afternoon with a professional stylist to achieve.
Thanks, Mom. That one was a good choice.
I stepped into the airlock with Emla, and waited for it to cycle. Taragi’s atmosphere wasn’t breathable, of course. All particulates had long since settled out of that vast ocean, leaving nothing but water and a few traces of dissolved elements. There would never be life here, unless someone wanted to spend huge amounts of money on a terraforming project. But lack of oxygen wasn’t going to be an issue for anyone in this party.
The airlock finished cycling, and the lift field activated. We floated in zero gravity for a moment while the hatch below us opened, and then a wall of sound hit us. We floated gently down onto the landing pad, surrounded by roaring chaos.
“Wow. Check it out!” Emla exclaimed, rushing over to the edge of the pad.
The dome of the Speedy Exit’s deflector shield would have been obvious even without my field sense, thanks to the heavy sheets of horizontal rain that were bouncing off of it. The roar of wind and the crash of waves filled my ears, making it hard to talk, so I opened a com channel as I strolled up to the edge of the field next to Emla. From there I could see huge waves crashing against the side of the habitat, sending water spraying so high some of it bounced off the shield.