Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games by Marion G. Harmon

local grid, and you never know when you might need a scout or lookout. I call it Snoop.”
     
    Back in cat form, ‘Snoop’ regarded us all with regal disinterest and turned to washing himself.
     
    “A.I.?” I asked weakly while Jacky snickered. Shell looked unhappy.
     
    “Emulation A.I. only. It’s pretty dumb.”
     
    “Anything else?”
     
    Ozma softly chanted to herself. Transforming her royal scepter into a something like a drum-major’s long baton, she smiled triumphantly.
     
    Shell shrugged. “Nope, that covers it. Your passports, visas, credit cards and other papers are in your coat pockets. You and Jacky are traveling as Japanese-American cousins in Japan to visit Ozma. FYI, Jacky’s the only one of you over sixteen.”
     
    They all looked at me expectantly.
     
    They’d met every condition. We were going.
     

 

     

Chapter Eight
     
    “Superhumans are the gateway to the Solar System. Not considering the few breakthroughs who can survive indefinitely in a complete vacuum, there are many superhuman flyers. More than a decade after the Event, we still don’t understand how they fly, but many of them display all the characteristics of the science-fiction concept of reactionless drive; they move by will alone, sometimes at supersonic speeds. What this means for space exploration and development need hardly be articulated, but for those who like hard numbers I will try.”
     
    Dr. Donald Piers, NASA Ways and Means Conference.
     
    ----
     
    Ozma told Nix she was staying to keep an eye on Grendel—a royal command the tiny doll accepted happily since she absolutely adored the big guy. We packed everything tight, double and triple checking like we were packing full field-loads, folded up the tables, and strapped it all down in the cargo space before we buckled up—a more involved process for me as I locked myself into the Integral Center Flight Frame and Shell closed the pod up.
     
    For in-atmosphere flights I preferred to use the exterior lift harness, but what we were about to do required extra-atmosphere travel and that required a spacesuit even for me. Which was why the flight frame (a cross between a harness and an open cage) was inside the pod hull, anchored both top and bottom—I flew the thing by standing in the center of the pod and lifting it from inside, pushing against the frame with my shoulders, chest, back, or feet.
     
    Of course I could barely see outside through the pod’s small and thick windows, but they weren’t designed for piloting. That was what quantum-ghost friends were for; as she closed us up, Shell brought up a full-surround ghostly representation of the outside from the pod’s cameras for me to see.
     
    “All internal systems are good, navigation and external cameras are working with full redundancy, Captain. Are you ready to boldly sneak where no one has sneaked before?”
     
    I burst into uncontrollable giggles; Virtual-Shell stood beside me with feet apart and hands folded behind her back, her ears transformed to Spock-ears, and she wore a blue and black Starfleet uniform for the occasion.
     
    “Are we clear with LAX airspace and North America Command?” I asked as soon as I got it under control.
     
    “Aye aye, Captain. We are clear to go.” She gave me a wink that said And they never saw a thing . Being able to do this meant somebody somewhere would be forgetting our tracked flight-path.
     
    I lifted us, guided by the pressure on my shoulders and the changing virtual view. It had taken me a couple of weeks training with Watchman to get the hang of lifting like this, but now it was like riding a bike and we rose above Restormel and kept rising into the morning light as Shell painted LAX flightpath lines for me to see. I turned us towards the sun and accelerated.
     
    “Our path to orbit is clear,” Shell reported. “Turning off our transponder and going radio-silent, clear to turn in three…two…one…now.” High enough that nobody in LA could