Earth Song: Twilight Serenade Read Free

huge lie, as it turned out. All the higher order species used starships, though some more than others. While humanity had only one ship, it was supremely vulnerable.
    With Bellatrix only a few million kilometers away, Lilith dropped her ship below light speed, no longer generating a tachyon shockwave ahead of its travel, the means with which the Remus detection grid had noted her entering the star system. She took a slow approach around Romulus, as agreed with Var'at and Kal'at to give them time to calibrate the array. She entered a perfect polar orbit over Bellatrix at exactly the time she'd planned. And just as planned, her mother checked in.
    “Are you home, dear?” her voice came over the local communications network. There was no need for the quantum communicator this close.
    “As planned, mom.”
    “I'll be up in a couple hours, just finishing some work at Fort Stuart in Jerusalem.”
    “No need, I'm coming down.”
    There was a slight pause as Minu looked surprised. “Are you sure?”
    “Yes, it's been a while since I came down, and I wanted to meet the new First among the Chosen in person.”
    The distant chuckle from her mother was honest. “I'm no different than when we parted company a few months ago. Maybe a little fatter…”
    “How is my baby brother/sister?”
    “Still cooking.”
    “I'm sorry?”
    Minu laughed again. “He or she is fine. Just saw the doc a last week. He said I'm a kilo lighter than I should be.”
    “Then we should have dinner at your cabin.”
    “That's a great idea dear. Why don't you meet me there in three hours?”
    “Perfect. That will give me time to drop off Kal'at.”
    “That is appreciated,” the Rasa scientist said over the radio.
    “See you soon.”
    Lilith wrote a series of command subroutines and stored them in the Kaatan’s semi-autonomous controls. She could command the ship from almost anywhere in the galaxy instantaneously through the quantum communicator, if absolutely necessary. It was much better to be onboard if anything serious happened. She was confident that between her ship’s sensors and the new array on Remus, she'd have the better part of an hour’s warning should a ship decelerate into the system, plenty of time to return. No starship would risk passing through a star system at superluminal speed. Even a powerful ship of the line like the Kaatan would be hard pressed to survive an impact at more than the speed of light.
    The housekeeping work finished, she informed Kal'at she was ready and floated out of the CIC and down the corridors with gentle hand/arm motions that the computer converted into slight nudges from the ships force fields. At only 175 meters from needle bow through bulbous central section to cylindrical stern, the Kaatans were not a large ship, but they packed massive firepower and adequate space for a large crew if necessary. The ships boat hangar carried four needle shaped shuttles for her to use as needed.
    Just outside the hanar, her ground side transport awaited, a huge spider shaped bot with a null-gravity bubble projected on its back. Using the bot she could spend extended times on a planet with quite high gravity.
    Though she'd worked with her body to get it stronger, being born and raised in zero gravity had left her without the physique Bellatrix raised humans took for granted. Her bone density was only forty percent of normal humans her age. An accidental fall could break limbs.
    “Ready to go?” Kal'at hissed, a pair of crab bots passing them, all weighted down with baggage, samples, instruments, and all manner of other equipment. Scientists of all species were the same, they never traveled light.
    “I am. Do you look forward to returning to Romulus?”
    “It is not the planet of my birth, but it is now home. I look forward to seeing how the maturation of our young proceeds!”
    Lilith nodded and gestured, following her reptilian friend into the bay where one of the shuttles was already on the deck. They`d spent