Silent Flyght – Chapter 1

The setting sun casts the sky in bright reds, oranges, and singed yellows. It’s another beautiful end to the day on Ossun. I enjoy coming to Mayashu, but it’s never easy to be on my home planet and not actually be home. I have a job to do, though, and my return to Sakata City is only a few days away.

“So, I guess I won’t be seeing you guys until the contract signing, huh?” Asteria smiles as she jams her hands into her pockets and rocks back onto her heels.

The Amagi is still without an AI, so we needed Asteria to fly us from Lee Shipyards to Ossun. Following the advice from Jinzo, Asteria doesn’t know about Tomu, my brother, caught trying to sabotage the Amagi only a few days ago. He was quiet in his room the whole return trip. Probably plotting his escape, the fucker. He doesn’t realize just how committed I am to making him pay.

But, anyway, now that we’ll have a new AI within a day or two, we won’t need Asteria to pilot us from one planet to another. Skylar will be glad to get her pilot’s chair back, but we’ll miss seeing Asteria around the ship. She has become a good friend, something I’m happy about since I was so worried Jinzo’s family wouldn’t accept me.

“You’re always welcome here with us,” I say, advancing on her to give her a hug. We both embrace, and it brings a smile to my face. “Let’s get together and do something fun next time. Instead of, you know, getting into trouble.” We both chuckle.

“Sounds like a plan. A boring plan, but a plan nonetheless.” Her lips jerk into a sardonic smile. She twists her wrist to check the time. “Okay, I’ve gotta go if I want to eat before boarding the shuttle home.” She takes a few steps back. “Mom said not to be a stranger, you two. Come home again soon.”

Jinzo and I lift our hands to say goodbye as she waves and walks off into the terminal, her bag on her shoulder.

Jinzo lets out a relieved breath, his shoulders sagging. “Thank goodness she never suspected your brother was onboard. I’m glad that went off without a hitch.”

I cross my arms as I watch Asteria’s retreating back. “Even if she had found out, I don’t think it would’ve been the end of the world.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Jinzo pulls out his datapad. “We’ve got ten minutes until our appointment with Malina’s AI guy. Think we’ll make it?”

I pull up the directions via my wristlet and Ai pipes into my ear. It’s good to have her back in a limited capacity. She’s a great concierge. “Captain, if you take the next light rail train to stop A22, you will make it with a minute to spare.”

“Thank you, Ai,” I say while smiling at Jinzo. “Ai’s got this covered. Let’s go.”

When we walk up to the AI dealer, I’m relieved to see it’s nothing like Eamon’s flashy place. Mayashu is a city of low buildings. This place reminds me of a home, not a business. The front porch is lit with soft lights, welcoming dusk and an impending night. To the right of the door, an older man with graying hair sits and drinks a beer from a sweating pint glass.

Jinzo steps to the side and urges me forward.

“Liam Castillo?” I ask, stopping at a respectable distance to bow.

The man rises from his seat, wipes his damp fingers from the beer glass on his pants, and comes forward to shake my hand. “That’s me. You must be Vivian Kawabata.”

“Oh, good.” I pump his hand and smile. “I was worried I was in the wrong place. Is this your home? I don’t want to intrude on your evening.”

“Nonsense.” He waves his hand. “It’s my home and my place of business. Never saw fit to separate the two.”

I can understand that. According to Malina Tsing, my friend and newest business partner, Liam Castillo is a single man with a singular passion for his business. He used to be a teacher at Malina’s school when she was younger. Now, he’s an AI programmer with influential friends and never a need to hawk to the public. Malina told me his backlog for custom AIs is months deep. We’re lucky to have him working with us.

I introduce Jinzo, and we join him in his house. The front room is set up much like an office with a couch and a desk for Liam to sit at. No fancy wall screens or men in suits trying to sell us a product. Just him and his work.

“So, Ms. Tsing filled me in on what happened with your ship. There was a fire?” He sits back in his chair and calls up a holographic display of the Amagi. My eyes pop in surprise. “Oh, this is the specs from the manufacturer.” He turns the Amagi around and zooms in to Carlos’s den of technology.

“I see. Well, that room looks nothing like that anymore,” I say, deferring to Jinzo.

Jinzo rattles off server specs, how the room was reconfigured, and what we replaced of the existing equipment. While he’s talking, I look around the room, getting the measure of this man before we do business. I didn’t trust my instincts with Eamon because Skylar vouched for him. I won’t be making the same mistake here. But I’m pleased with what I see. This room is clean but lived in. Small pots of succulents line the window ledges around the room, and the kitchen area to the rear of the office is modern and well-appointed.

While I train my eyes on the room, a large fluffy black and gray striped cat saunters out of the kitchen and heads for a back room. It pushes the door open with its rump and reveals a bedroom.

Liam turns and follows my line of sight. “Ah, my cat goes to bed a lot earlier than I do. He’s an old man, just like me.”

“What’s his name?” I smile as I watch the cat jump on the bed, circle, and lie down for sleep.

“Baboo.” He laughs. “One of my ex-students named him. It’s unfortunate that it stuck.”

“Malina said that you were a teacher?”

“Yeah. I taught mid-level for twenty years, math and science, of course. Then I transitioned back to programming, which I had done before I became a teacher. Malina was in several of my classes. A bright young woman. She’ll go far.”

She already has.

He tilts his head to look at the Amagi specs from another angle. “When was the last time you tested all of your room sensors?”

I glance at Jinzo. “Hmm, we haven’t,” he says, placing his hands on his knees. “We only tested the sensors of the rooms affected by the fire.”

Liam flattens his lips and turns the Amagi around. “And the exterior sensors?”

“We replaced six of the thirty sensors recently.”

Liam swipes his hands down, and the Amagi disappears.

“Okay. By my calculations, we’re going to need three days to get this done. I have the perfect AI for you. She’s got a generic personality, but she handles ships like this all the time. I call her Martha. You can change her name if you like. She has a few accents to choose from — Southern Rio, High Ossun, and Belemish.”

My head bounces as I listen to him rattle off more about the AI, what it can do, what it can’t, and where it will manifest on the ship. This is similar to what we had with Ai. Jinzo lets him know that we still have Ai on the ship to act as a concierge, and he’s okay with that.

My spirits lift as the meeting continues. Jinzo and Liam click, and they talk about sensors and conduits and algorithms and mind-boggling stuff that I don’t understand. This is not the first time I’ve felt way out of my league with technology. Still, it’s nice that they include me in the conversation without making me feel like an idiot. I’m not an idiot, just unversed in this line of work.

Then my mind trips and falls when Liam says, “Great. So we’ll need access to the whole ship to test everything for at least twenty-four hours before we release the AI.”

“The whole ship?” My lips bumble over the words. I can’t give him access to the whole ship! Tomu is a prisoner in cabin thirteen, and he needs to stay there.

“Yeah.” His eyes narrow, and he pulls back. “Is that a problem?”

“No.” I jolt forward with my hand out. “How are you with goats?”

Jinzo’s glare is intense from the corner of his eyes.

Liam laughs. “I don’t know. Never had the chance to socialize with goats before.”

I’m not sure where I find my smile, but I dredge it up from the silt at the bottom of my soul. “We have a goat, ducks, and some sheep. There may be other animals on board the ship too. Would you like us to remove them before your people come to work? I can ask my animal handler to escort them outside.”

His expression softens in a smile. “That would be a good idea. I’ll be employing six other men to help with the process. I’m not sure how much they like farm animals, though I’m fine with them.”

I straighten up. “Consider it done. We’ll take care of it.”

We all stand, shake hands, and say goodbye.

I’m quiet with Jinzo for several blocks until we’re closer to the Mayashu spaceport.

“That was a masterful cover-up, Vivi.”

I blow a frustrated breath through my nose. “But now I have to figure out how I’m going to hide Tomu for three days.”

We come to a stop on the sidewalk outside the spaceport and watch a shuttle take off and streak towards the stars. There are moments when I would give anything to fly away from all of my problems. The bags under my eyes have their own luggage at this point, and I think my hair is falling out. My problems didn’t go away when I found Tomu. They multiplied and had babies faster than rabbits in heat.

“That’s what we do,” Jinzo says, pointing up at the retreating shuttle. “We hire a shuttle for a few days. We’ll use it to get around on Ossun and keep Tomu away from the ship.”

I close my eyes as I wonder how much it’ll cost us. I don’t want to hire a shuttle too on top of every expense.

Jinzo’s hand on my arm brings me back from the numbers ticking through my head. “I’ll check the schedules from Lee Shipyards. There’s bound to be a shuttle nearby we can hire at the family rate.”

“There’s such a thing?” I wonder what else we can get at a discount.

He laughs. “Of course. Come on.” He grabs one of my hands and pulls me forward. “Let’s go figure it out now and then grab a drink at that bar we passed.”

“Okay. A drink sounds perfect.”

One problem solved, another one surfaces.

Just another day in my life.