But What Will The Gods Eat Tomorrow?

The Stellar Fleet wouldn’t sell them on the open market, and if one had been stolen, I figured I would have heard about it. "How did the Cult of Timay get an Aardvark?" I asked rhetorically.

"Though there are an infinite number of possibilities," Tempest said in a lecturing tone. "I compute that only three have a significant probability."

"It was a rhetorical question," I mumbled, then waited for Tempest to tell me what the possibilities were. He didn’t. "Well?"

"I’m not saying another word until you apologize for your earlier comment!"

"After all the abuse you dish out, you can’t take one off-hand remark?"

"I was warning you of a possible threat to your person and an unprecedented anomaly which is affecting your spaceship. You used my honesty and vulnerability against me." The whirring inside the console grew to a whine, and in the cockpit, Tempest’s tone took on a mixture of anger and hurt. "I may make fun of you, Jonny. And though my comments are all comical, perhaps I make a few too many of them. But when it comes down to business…When we have a mission to perform or you ask a question about the status of this ship, I try to set aside my hatred and conduct myself seriously."

I didn’t like being made to feel guilty by a matrix of nanochips. "You’re right," I admitted. "I apologize."

"I just expect the same level of professionalism from you."

"I said I apologize."

"And even though I constantly remind myself that you’re an inferior lifeform, with frailties even my complex intellect can only begin to understand, I can only take so much–"

"Tempest!"

"Sorry," he answered, almost chagrined. "One. They pirated the ship from the FEDs. This is the least likely as the media would be all over a story of such magnitude."

"The theft of a capital ship from the Stellar Fleet?" I mused. "We’d hear about it for at least six months."

"Two. That is not an Aardvark, it only looks like one."

"I compared it to Fleet specifications. It’s an Aardvark."

"It could be an incredibly convincing fake. Or a ship of similar design, but reached through completely independent research."

"What’s the third option?" I asked, my exasperation growing.

"A traitor has infiltrated the Stellar Fleet. To get schematics and construction blueprints for an Aardvark, he’d have to be pretty high in the hierarchy. He could be working for the Cult, or he might be a mercenary, selling information to any party willing to pay. The former seems safer, for the traitor at least, but in my opinion the latter is more likely."

"A traitor?" I repeated. "There hasn’t been a traitor in the Stellar Fleet for over seventy-five years! Not since Tomos the Eunuch (9)."

"At least none who’ve been discovered."

"A traitor," I repeated, actually considering the possibility. "We’ll have to tell High Command."

"I’ll plot a course to someplace from which we can nova home," Tempest said, a bit too eagerly.

"Not yet, Toolbox! We still have a mission to carry out." The noise in the console dimmed to a low hum. "Can we nova behind the ships without being detected?"

"By an Aardvark?" Tempest mocked. "Are you serious? They’ll detect any nova within the system, even if they aren’t looking for it. We’ll be lucky if they don’t spot us sitting here among the asteroids!" A siren went off on the console, followed closely by a second.

"What are those for?" I asked, then followed the first with an even more important question. "Can’t you disengage those things and just tell me what the problems are?" I was getting annoyed with all the bells and whistles.

"No," Tempest admitted. "But they are annoying, aren’t they? I’ll look into the problem.