"This is barbaric," Amara complained as Tanya confiscated her tablet and sealed it in the storage container along with their comm units and work devices. "How am I supposed to manage your business interests if I can't access communication networks?"
"It's one night, Amara," Tanya said, amused by her business manager's obvious distress at being disconnected. "Besides, it's tradition. Let me explain the history while we walk."
They made their way along the dirt path toward the celebration grounds, where the glow of bonfires was already visible against the darkening sky. The sound of laughter and music drifted across the fields, along with the distinctive aroma of roasting meat and wood smoke.
"Like all the Eden worlds," Tanya began, "Eden-Five was terraformed by the Empire about three hundred years ago. Once the atmosphere was breathable and the ecosystem was stable, they needed people to live here and work out any remaining problems, such as checking for pathogens that might have formed during the terraforming process, developing local agriculture, that sort of thing."
"And they volunteered, I assume?" Amara asked dryly.
"Not exactly. The Empire rounded up displaced populations from the Core worlds, the refugees, the homeless, people who'd been economically squeezed out of the expensive systems, and shipped them here to 'tame' the world. They convinced themselves they were doing us a service by giving us someplace to live and build something for ourselves." Tanya kicked at a clod of dirt. "This period was called the Taming, and it gave rise to the founding families who stayed and built permanent settlements. That's how the Furrow name came about. My ancestors were part of the original wave and chose the name when they decided to stay."
They crested a small hill, and the full scope of the celebration came into view. Hundreds of people were gathered around multiple bonfires, with tables laden with food and drink. Children ran between the groups playing elaborate games of tag, while adults clustered around the fires sharing stories and laughter.
"Tonight's Founding Day," Tanya continued. "To honor the founders and remember the hardships they faced, it's traditionally a day without technology. People unplug, come together, and celebrate community over convenience."
"How wonderfully primitive," Amara muttered, though her tone suggested she was beginning to appreciate the charm despite herself.
"In reality," Tanya said with a grin, "it's an excuse for bonfires and getting drunk while the kids run around burning off energy. But don't tell the town council I said that."
Her mother appeared almost immediately, as if she'd been lying in wait for their arrival.
"Tanya, dear, you made it!" She turned to Amara with the kind of warm smile that brooked no argument. "And Amara! I'm so glad you could join us. Come, let me introduce you to some of the neighbours."
"Actually, I should stay with Tanya—" Amara began, a note of panic creeping into her voice.
"Nonsense," Tanya's mother said, linking arms with the protesting business manager. "Tanya knows everyone here. You need to meet people properly."
Tanya watched with barely contained amusement as her mother led Amara away, the sophisticated corporate executive looking like a deer caught in headlights. Even someone as formidable as Amara Okafor was apparently no match for determined maternal hospitality.
"Poor woman," Marcus said, appearing beside her with two bottles of beer. "Mum's going to parade her around to every family on the planet. She's been planning this ambush since she heard Amara was coming."
"She'll survive," Tanya said, accepting the beer gratefully. "Though she might need therapy afterward."
"David's taking bets on how long before she cracks and starts talking business," Marcus added with a grin. "I give her twenty minutes."
She joined her brothers and their wives around one of the larger fires, quickly discovering that they'd had a significant head start on the evening's drinking. David's wife Sarah was regaling the group with stories about Sophie's latest adventures in creative destruction during a recent babysitting session, complete with dramatic reenactments that had everyone in stitches.
"She decided the kitchen needed 'improving,'" Sarah explained, gesturing wildly with her beer. "Our food preparation methods were 'inefficient.' Do you know what a five-year-old considers an improvement? Reorganising all our spices by colour instead of type."
"That actually sounds useful," Tanya said thoughtfully. "Visual organisation might be—"
"Don't encourage her," David interrupted. "You don't understand that the spices had to be liberated from their containers. It would be easier, she said."
Meanwhile, Marcus's wife Lisa was maintaining a running commentary on the relative merits of various unmarried men at the celebration, a topic that had become her personal mission for the night.
"There's Tom Henderson," Lisa said, gesturing with her beer bottle toward a tall man tending one of the distant fires. "Took over his family's transport business last year. Very responsible, stable income, owns his own ship."
"And very boring," Sarah added. "What about Jake Morrison? He's got that artistic temperament that might appeal to creative types." She nudged Tanya meaningfully.
"Jake Morrison has the artistic temperament because he's unemployed half the time," David pointed out. "Though I'll grant you, his sculptures are impressive when he actually finishes them."
"What Tanya needs," Marcus declared with the authority of several beers, "is someone who can keep up with her intellectually. Someone who won't be intimidated by all the engineering genius stuff."
"Someone who won't get jealous when she makes a name for herself," Lisa added.
Tanya settled in to enjoy the familiar rhythm of family banter, letting the alcohol and the warmth of the fire wash away the stress of classified projects and government oversight. For a few hours, she could be the youngest Furrow sibling, listening to her sisters-in-law analyse the romantic prospects of every bachelor within the system, while her brothers offered increasingly unhelpful commentary.
The relaxation was interrupted by the deep thunder of engines overhead. A medium-sized ship descended toward the celebration grounds, its hull gleaming with royal blue paint and silver inlays that caught the firelight. It was clearly expensive and was the kind of vessel that announced its owner's wealth and status from orbit.
"Well, that's not traditional," Marcus observed as the ship settled onto the designated landing area with precision that spoke of expensive auto-navigation systems.
"And definitely not local," Sarah added. "Nobody around here has that kind of money for decorative hull work."
Amara appeared at Tanya's elbow, having escaped her mother's social tour. Her expression was grim. "I apologise in advance," she said. "He can be a stubborn bastard when he wants to be."
"Who?" Tanya asked, watching as the ship's ramp extended with a soft hiss of hydraulics.
"Garret Velon. One of the experts you're scheduled to meet tomorrow."
A short, middle-aged man emerged from the ship, his expensive clothes looking completely out of place among the casual celebration attire. What struck Tanya as odd was his prominent bald patch. It was rare to see wealthy people with hair loss, given the availability of cosmetic treatments. She wondered if it was some kind of fashion statement or a deliberate choice.
Garret's face lit up when he spotted Amara, then immediately soured when he registered her expression. He approached with the kind of forced smile that suggested complicated history and possibly poor decision-making.
"Mara," he said, using what was clearly a nickname that earned him an even colder stare. "How lovely to see you again. You look... formidable as always."
"Garret," Amara replied with the kind of professional coolness that could frost windows. "The meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. You should return to the station."
"How could I wait?" Garret said, his attention shifting to Tanya with obvious excitement that made her immediately wary. "When there's someone so brilliant here, someone who's going to reinvent our understanding of vortex mechanics? After I saw the briefing, I simply had to meet her immediately."
Tanya, who was several beers into the evening's festivities and in no mood for business discussions, waved her bottle dismissively. "I'm in no condition to talk engineering right now. My brain feels like it's been replaced with cotton. Come back tomorrow when I can think straight."
"But surely just a few questions—" Garret persisted, pulling out a tablet despite the no-technology tradition. "I've been studying the theoretical papers, and I have some ideas about dimensional coordinate systems that might—"
"Garret." Amara's voice carried enough ice to freeze a small lake. "Leave. Now."
Something in her tone and the combination of personal history and professional authority made the engineer step back, his enthusiasm dimming like a candle in a cold wind. "Of course. Tomorrow then." He retreated to his ship with the air of someone who'd been thoroughly outmanoeuvred and knew better than to push further.
As the ship lifted off again, Lisa leaned over to Tanya. "Old boyfriend?" she asked with the kind of gleeful curiosity that came with alcohol and family gossip potential.
Amara heard the question and laughed, though there wasn't much humor in it. "Ex-husband, actually. I built his company from nothing, turned him from a brilliant but impractical engineer into one of the most successful vortex drive manufacturers in the Empire."
"What happened?" Sarah asked, clearly intrigued.
"A young intern with more enthusiasm than sense," Amara said simply, her tone suggesting the wound had healed but left interesting scars. "Standard story, really. Brilliant man, terrible judgment in personal matters."
Tanya stared at her business manager with new appreciation and a growing understanding of why Amara had reacted so strongly. "I'm surprised he's still alive."
That got a genuine chuckle from Amara. "He's lucky he really is a talented engineer. That bought him just enough goodwill to survive the divorce proceedings. Though his company's profits did take a rather significant hit when I left with all the business expertise."
"Remind me never to get on your bad side," Marcus said with obvious respect.
"Smart man," Amara replied, settling in by the fire as if dramatic confrontations with ex-husbands were just another part of her evening routine.
They returned to the warmth and camaraderie, but part of Tanya's mind was already thinking about tomorrow's meeting. If Garret Velon was willing to crash a cultural celebration just to meet her, he was either very eager to help or very eager to steal her innovations. Given his history with Amara, she suspected it might be both.
The next morning brought a hangover that felt like a small construction crew had taken up residence behind her eyeballs, complete with power tools and a supervisor who enjoyed shouting. Tanya made her way to the newly finished meeting room, stopping twice to appreciate the fact that the ground wasn't moving beneath her feet.
The non-prefab office was finally complete, and she had to admit Amara had outdone herself. It was likely the most stylish room on Eden-Five, all flowing lines and sophisticated holographic displays that projected quiet competence and success. The kind of place where serious business happened.
Amara was already there, looking irritatingly fresh despite having matched Tanya drink for drink the night before. She stood beside three figures who represented decades of engineering expertise and probably more collective knowledge than Tanya's entire university program.
"Tanya, let me introduce our consultants," Amara said with the smooth professionalism that suggested strong coffee and possibly medical intervention. "You've already met Garret Velon, our vortex drive specialist." Garret nodded, his enthusiasm from the previous night tempered by professional courtesy and what might have been slight embarrassment.
"This is Elizabeth Siles," Amara continued, indicating a woman who had to be in her seventies, with silver hair and eyes that missed nothing. Everything about her posture suggested someone accustomed to being the smartest person in the room. "Master builder of power systems, forty years of experience with everything from civilian reactors to dreadnought cores. If it generates power in space, Elizabeth has probably improved it."
"And Klein McDonald," she finished, gesturing to a man in his early fifties with the practical bearing of someone who'd spent decades making things move efficiently through vacuum. "Designer of propulsion systems for everything from racing yachts to bulk freighters. He holds patents on half the thruster configurations currently in use."
The cover story was simple: Tanya was a young genius shipwright that the government was sponsoring to build a new class of deep space explorer. Not entirely false, just missing some key details about artificial storms and hostile territories and alien-enhanced navigation systems.
Tanya had expected Garret to dominate the meeting, given his dramatic entrance the night before and obvious enthusiasm for her work. Instead, it was Elizabeth who took charge, studying the holographic display of Tanya's pathfinder design with the critical eye of a master craftsman who'd seen every possible way things could go wrong.
"Interesting concept," Elizabeth said finally, her voice carrying the authority of someone accustomed to being listened to. The other two engineers deferred to her immediately, confirming her status as the senior expert. "The design lacks refinement and shows clear signs of amateur work, but there are flashes of genuine brilliance here."
//I like her already. Direct assessment without unnecessary diplomacy,// Sage whispered approvingly.
"The fundamental problem," Elizabeth continued, manipulating the hologram to highlight various systems with practiced efficiency, "is that you haven't considered power load distribution over operational time. You're thinking about peak requirements during single events, but not about how those requirements change and cycle during extended missions."
She projected her own modifications onto the design, pointing out bottlenecks and inefficiencies that Tanya had completely missed. The changes were elegant, showing the kind of intuitive understanding that came from decades of practical experience.
"Your power system is fighting itself because you've placed high-draw components too far from the reactor core, and you haven't accounted for the cycling demands of multiple rapid vortex jumps. The capacitor banks are undersized, the power coupling is inefficient, and your backup systems will fail the moment you actually need them." She rearranged the internal layout with swift, confident gestures. "By redistributing these components and adding proper load balancing, we can get power where it needs to go when it needs to be there."
Klein stepped forward as Elizabeth finished, his modifications overlaying hers seamlessly in a display of collaborative expertise. "The propulsion system presents different but related challenges. You've optimised for mathematical perfection, but that's actually working against practical manoeuvring requirements. That a sphere presents."
He highlighted areas where the spherical design created control problems that Tanya hadn't anticipated. "The ship has no preferred direction of movement, which makes control chaotic and unpredictable."
His proposed solution involved breaking the perfect symmetry deliberately with additional manoeuvring thrusters positioned to give the ship a defined orientation, along with visual cues and control surfaces that would work with the spherical hull rather than fighting it.
"Think of it as giving the sphere a face," Klein explained. "Something that tells everyone which way it's looking, which way it prefers to move. The mathematics might be slightly less elegant, but the practical performance will be far superior."
Finally, Garret overlaid his contributions, his excitement carefully controlled but still evident in the rapid-fire technical explanations. "I don't know how you plan to get the spatial coordinates for your navigation system, and I'm not asking, but given the accuracy and number of jumps you're proposing, you'll need at least three independent vortex drives that can cycle rapidly."
His modifications showed a sophisticated understanding of the stresses involved in rapid vortex manipulation. "No single drive can handle that kind of rapid-fire operation without burning out over the long run."
"Three drives will consume too much power," Elizabeth interjected immediately, her mind already calculating load requirements. "The power coupling alone would require—"
"Unless we stagger the charging cycles and use the capacitor banks I mentioned to buffer the draw," Klein added, building on both their ideas. "The propulsion modifications I suggested actually provide more mounting points for the additional hardware."
"And if we use Garret's cycling approach," Elizabeth continued, getting caught up in the collaborative problem-solving, "we can reduce the total power requirements by never having all three drives charging simultaneously."
And then all four of them were talking at once, diving into a deep technical discussion that made Tanya's head spin even more than the hangover. They critiqued her designs, suggested improvements, and built on each other's ideas with the fluid collaboration of experts who genuinely respected each other's abilities and enjoyed the intellectual challenge.
Tanya found herself explaining her thinking, defending certain choices while accepting corrections on others. The sphere wasn't just about dimensional mathematics but also about maximising interior volume while minimising materials and manufacturing complexity. The multiple short jumps weren't arbitrary precision for its own sake, but essential for navigating around obstacles that couldn't be directly penetrated.
She suspected the master builders had already deciphered the real purpose of the ship, and the design requirements made it fairly obvious that this wasn't a standard exploration vessel, but they were too professional to ask uncomfortable questions.
"The integration challenges alone will require several sessions to work out properly," Elizabeth said finally, as the afternoon wore on and the holographic display became increasingly complex with overlaid modifications. "This is sophisticated enough that we'll need to test each subsystem individually before attempting full integration."
"Tomorrow then?" Klein suggested, clearly energised by the collaborative work. "Same time? I'd like to run some stress calculations on the modified thruster arrangements."
"Absolutely," Garret agreed with obvious enthusiasm. "This is the most interesting project I've seen in years. The engineering challenges are fascinating."
"I'll prepare detailed power distribution models," Elizabeth added. "We need to see exactly how these systems will behave under operational loads."