Spaceship Thrive (Thrive Space Colony Adventures Book 2)

by Ginger Booth

  Clay sighed. “Settlers absorb over 100 mSv a year these days, Sass. Copeland probably took worse than that in the phosphate mines.”

  “I should’ve thought of that,” Sass murmured. “I looked up the safe levels. They live on the Thrive now, Clay. They can be safe.”

  “Am I still running this meeting?” Abel interjected. “If the auto-doc advises a doctor for Copeland, I’ll fetch one.

  “Updates round. Me first. I spoke with the Hell’s Bells again. Text messages, anyway. They have the parts we need for another star drive. Captain, Gossamer is willing to share their gun-training data. I need to cash in some ‘goodwill’ to acquire what they want in return from MO. Might cash in a guilt trip, too, for exposing our people to radiation. Gossamer is not willing to visit MO. So we meet them at their asteroid. Clay, you reached Genevieve Carruthers on Sagamore.”

  “Yes. She demands a trip back to MO in payment for further information. No freebies. A few tantalizing hints. These days, she’s focused on radiation treatment, actually. That’s why she wants back on MO. Radiation isn’t much of a concern underground on Sagamore, or on the ring ships. She doesn’t like Sagamore Orbital. Need to follow up with Ingersoll on whether she’s welcome back.”

  “Alohan,” Sass corrected him. “Ingersoll is passing the buck, transitioning to the new captain.”

  Clay nodded abruptly. “Good thing you’ve invested in goodwill.”

  Sass winced. Her adventures in plumbing should have buttered up Pollan and the MO rank and file, but. “Kinda had a run in with Alohan.”

  “Of course you did,” Clay growled.

  Benjy raised a hand. “Clay, does Carruthers know two of her lab rats are on the Thrive?”

  “No. Let’s keep it that way until we get her.”

  Benjy nodded thanks.

  “Eli?” Abel prompted.

  Eli fingered his new dosimeter thoughtfully. “I’ve recovered my experiments from the Dr. Bertram setback. He won’t talk to me over a comms channel. And I can’t bring my work to him. Captain…”

  “You want that nut job back on my ship.”

  “Yes.”

  “Under advisement,” Abel declared. “Kassidy.”

  “Have dosimeter. The minute this meeting is over, I hit the orbital and start to film. Still waiting on you or the captain or somebody to take me out on EVA.”

  “Can we make that happen today, Sass?” Abel inquired. “I’ve only been out once. I’m willing to spot for Kassidy for hire, but I’d rather you did the initial training. I told her no one goes EVA alone.”

  “Agreed. Tomorrow.” Sass’s eyes drifted to Benjy and Clay. Both recoiled. “Yeah, just the three of us. And Kassidy, most of your practice in zero-g needs to happen in the hold. Too much radiation outside.”

  “Understood. Finally! My fans will adore you,” Kassidy vowed.

  “Jules,” Abel prompted.

  “We gave out a lot of food, captain. Could we get some of that protein printer stock back, that we brought for the orbital?”

  Sass jerked her head to indicate Abel.

  “I’ll see to it,” Abel agreed. “Captain, did you have plans?”

  “Set up dosimeter tracking and guidelines. Still thinking about whether going to Sagamore is a good idea.”

  Clay cut in, “Copeland was a shock, Sass. Don’t overreact.”

  “It’s not that,” Sass denied. “Ingersoll warned us that Sagamore was too risky.” She chose not to repeat the part about confiscating the ship and throwing them into the slave pits. Charming. “But yeah, I’m worried that the radiation risk is too much for our settler crew.”

  “I want to go to Sagamore,” Benjy piped up. “And I want freedom of the orbital, too. I’m a grown man. I’ve got friends on the station now.”

  Sass reflected that nothing made a guy look quite so young as claiming, ‘I’m a grown man.’

  “Kid has a point, captain,” Abel said.

  “Fine. Just be careful. Maybe you could chaperone Kassidy?”

  Kassidy leaned forward on her elbows and batted her eyelashes. “Did I miss something? I thought I was your client, Granny Sass. I don’t take orders from you. I don’t need boy wonder with me to venture out and make friends.”

  “Not granny. Nobody calls me granny!”

  “That’s a wrap on the meeting, I think,” Abel proclaimed. “Kassidy, EVA tomorrow work for you?”

  The antiseptic med bay hush was punctuated with a susurrus of air pumps, a ticking noise, and faint beeps.

  Sass checked the patient first. Copeland slept heavily as though drugged, his face gray in the low lighting. Sass took in the readings on the auto-doc control screen. The display was well-organized, the key datum in a big amber box – another 29 hours of captivity on the countdown.

  She regretted unleashing Benjy and Kassidy onto the station. She worried about Sagamore. But most of all she was horrified what she’d done to Copeland. She paged through data on the screen.

  Clay let himself into the chamber.

  “I spot-checked our exposure the first two days,” Sass murmured. “Watched it like a hawk.”

  “I bet,” Clay agreed. “What was different yesterday?”

  Sass shrugged. “Without Benjy? The two of us drained a heavy water tank on deck 5. I don’t know why it was called that. No heavier than the other tanks.”

  Clay stepped over to knead her neck. He murmured softly, “Heavy water means radioactive, Sass.”

  She froze. He continued massaging neck muscles turned to stone. “That should have a yellow radioactive logo. Not a hand-written sticker saying ‘heavy water tank.’” The radiation trefoil was distinctive. That she would have recognized.

  “Would you have drained the tank anyway?” Clay asked.

  “I would take precautions! I wouldn’t let Copeland near it!”

  “Shh. My point was, Pollan set you up. Or maybe Alohan.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know.”

  “Like hell he didn’t,” Clay claimed. “Pollan is a professional engineer from Mahina Actual. Over twenty years’ experience in environmental systems.”

  “He’s smart,” Copeland said, eyes blinking open blearily. “Pollan. You shouldn’t call me an engineer. Just a mechanic.”

  Sass swallowed. “Sorry to wake you. You should’ve had a chance at a degree, Copeland.”

  He shook his head slightly. “Hated school. Teachers hated me. Wrong side of the tracks. What does that expression mean, anyway?”

  Sass laid a hand on his shoulder. She’d take his hand, but they were encased in the over-body arch of the auto-doc. “Means grew up on the poor side of town. Old Earth expression. How are you feeling?”

  Copeland appeared to take stock, counting his toes perhaps. “Not so nauseous anymore. Am I broken beyond repair, or fixable?”

  Sass turned the display for him to read. Copeland’s baby boy Nico spent days in this device. The engineer knew intimately how to read it. He’d devoured the manual. Now he breathed deep in relief, and nodded.

  “Heavy water,” he murmured. “Alohan put Pollan up to it. Don’t blame them, cap. Needed doing.”

  “You were awake.”

  “Ish.”

  “Can I get you anything? Water? Maybe gelatin?”

  Copeland shook his head slightly. His eyes closed on his look of revulsion, and didn’t open again. His breathing deepened.

  Sass craned her neck around to check the read-out. Yup, sedatives applied. The auto-doc didn’t approve of agitation for patients in its clutches. Clay preceded her through the door as they tiptoed out.

  “We’re too ignorant for this old tech,” she vented as they reached the scrubber trees in the hold. “I’m gonna get us all killed here in the rings. We should go back to Mahina.”

  “Glad you got that out of your system,” Clay allowed. “Without venting at Copeland. But we’re all volunteers. Sass, that man isn’t here for you. He wants a better world for his kid. So do I. That’s our decision to make, not yours.”


  “It’s my ship.”

  “Even so.”

  Kassidy and then Benjy clattered out onto the catwalk above, providing an unwelcome audience. Clay nodded to them and headed upstairs.

  Sass hung poised a moment. She pictured herself seeing Kassidy and Benjy off, loading them with advice and warnings.

  She tried to envision a single captain she’d ever known being so obnoxiously paternalistic, and laughed softly at herself.

  Radiation exposure tracking procedures – that she could do. Funny, she’d never thought of strict rules and regs as a constructive outlet for maternal urges.

  9

  Radiation levels near Pono were far higher than Earth life was adapted to handle. Of course, radiation levels on Earth were also toxic by the end, and species went extinct in droves.

  Kassidy found herself tumbling out the umbilical into the cargo dock in league with Eli and Benjy. They hadn’t planned to visit the station together. But new dosimeters in hand, they gained their freedom at the same time.

  She tugged on Benjy’s VR gear, clutched under his arm. “Really? You’re finally free to explore a strange new world, and you bring your virtual?”

  “It’s not for my virtual,” the younger crewman defended. “They got some kind of shared world up here. Secret personas. This woman D’Onofrio offered to set me up.”

  Eli scrunched his nose in distaste. “Not in the racks, I hope?”

  “Of course in the racks,” Benjy claimed. His plumbing coworkers told him all about it, or so he thought. “I guess. It’s a woman, so maybe the library or something. Who knows?” He shot Eli a boyish grin.

  Eli looked even more repulsed. Though the station smell might have contributed to that.

  Kassidy gave the kid a playful pummel. “Good luck, tiger!”

  When they reached the stairs, Benjy trotted down toward deck 1 tankage, his accustomed haunts of recent days.

  Eli checked his dosimeter as the two urbs climbed past deck 3 engineering.

  Kassidy rolled her eyes. Then she shrugged and addressed her fans through her closest drone camera. “Paranoid much, Eli? OK, fans, I’m going to stop and consult my dosimeter, too, just so you aren’t worried about me. Says 13 micro-Sieverts. No big deal!” She tucked it away. “Eli, we’re urbs. We have nanites.”

  “They’re urbs, too. They have nanites. I wonder why they fail,” Eli murmured, thinking aloud.

  Kassidy frowned and considered that. “Recording off. Don’t talk about sensitive stuff while I’m recording, Eli. I’ve got settlers on my live –”

  Actually, she wasn’t allowed to livecast from here. Mahina Actual would need to approve all footage. And they refused to watch hours and hours of the little stuff. Security agreed to vet her weekly show after editing, and that’s all. She’d have to do her own editing and soundtrack work, because she couldn’t beam anything raw down to the moon. She still hoped to find a news outlet with a journalist willing to help her stretch the constraints. Downright vexing how much the restrictions would cut into her income.

  “Never mind,” she added with a sigh. She didn’t re-engage the cameras, though, as Eli reversed course and stepped back down to the door into engineering. “Weren’t you headed to,” she checked the floor plan on the wall, “hydroponics, decks 6 through 8?”

  Eli waved the dosimeter. “I’m going to retrace my steps from our original tour. And then to the officer’s mess and back. And watch for hot spots along the way. Give the data to Sass.” He nodded to himself.

  “She got you spooked,” Kassidy observed. “OK, you’re the scientist. My understanding was, we urbs carry full-custom nanites in our bloodstream. They scurry around re-asserting our DNA to its pristine reference pattern. No mutations allowed. Why wouldn’t that work here?”

  Eli cast a nervous eye up and down the empty stairwell. “It doesn’t work on Mahina, either, Kassidy. That’s why urbs stay in the city. The nanites can only correct so much. And radiation damages them. People get cancer in the city, too, you know. Haven’t you known…? Sorry. I forget how young you are.”

  Kassidy pursed her lips. Eli was nearly twice her age. “My mother’s an endocrinologist. Dad’s a nanite design engineer. I’m not an idiot, Eli. I just play one on video.” She preened with a toss of her long curls.

  “Yeah, well your parents would advise you to wear your sunscreen outdoors.”

  “True,” she conceded.

  Eli waved his dosimeter. “I want data. And drop in on medical, too, I think. Get the skinny for the non-layman.”

  “Now you’re worrying me.”

  “Don’t worry. Get informed.” He hauled open the engineering deck door, to retrace his steps through the grav generators. “I shall report at tomorrow’s meeting.”

  She batted her eyes and smiled at him. Once the door shut behind him, she re-enabled her cameras. “Alone at last, fans! One companion down to the joys of VR escapism. The other to paranoia. Let’s go find some fun! Am I right? Let’s check out the viewport! Level 5, here we come!”

  She trooped up another few flights and found the viewport chamber. She shared in depth with her imaginary friends. A savvy marketer, Kassidy kept several avatars in mind when she turned to the camera for an intimate closeup. Alice was a bored settler farm wife, desperate to feel pretty and wanted, even vicariously. Settler Josh worked himself to the bone and needed light entertainment. Urb Beauregard was naturally sophisticated and employed in city administration. He required her smart commentary to allow himself to enjoy Kassidy’s physical silliness as a guilty pleasure. Urb Eliza was tired of the scientific rat race, always a put-down from her seniors. She adored permission to be a girl.

  Kassidy shared the glorious view with all four in mind. In the spaciousness of the little viewport auditorium, she zeroed out her gravity and practiced some gymnastics as well, psyching herself up for her first EVA tomorrow.

  The door opened. “Turn off that gravity device!” a woman barked at her. “And get out.” She looked familiar.

  Kassidy hastily flipped around her bellybutton to approach the floor feet-first. She took her landing at one sixth g before cutting off the device. “Hi! I’m Kassidy Yang –”

  “I know who you are. Get out.”

  Belatedly Kassidy recognized the face, despite the uniform blouse. At the welcome dinner the woman wore a loud Hawaiian shirt.

  Kassidy complied with the exit order first, herding her camera drones, to soothe the bigwig. “Commander Alohan. Could you share a few words with my fans? Fans, she’s first officer of this whole –”

  “I would not,” Alohan cut her off. “Any footage of me gets edited out. And from now on, you ask permission before recording anyone. I see any face, or any voice on the videos you send moon-side, there better be a signed release to go with it.”

  “Oh. Usually I just –”

  “Do I look like I give a damn?”

  No, Kassidy conceded. “Yes, ma’am. Understood, ma’am. Sar.” Dammit, that was a ton of red tape. No fun, no spontaneity. “But sar, may I ask –”

  “We are exiles from Mahina, Yang. We have family in Actual. Maybe we don’t want to be seen disgraced up here, alright?”

  Kassidy hadn’t considered that. She hazarded, “But wouldn’t your family –”

  “You leave my family out of this! Move along. And stay out of officer country.”

  Kassidy skedaddled into the nearest stairwell and sprinted up the steps to deck 6. She wended through a creepy access corridor through the ‘racks,’ following the occasional ‘You are here’ maps on the bulkheads to find the atrium.

  The corridor grew busier. When she paused at a map, pedestrians jostled her. One guy dared to cop a feel on her butt. She smacked his hand away. He just walked away, secure from retribution among the crowd.

  The stunt woman tried to summon in her drones to explain the incident for laughs.

  “You’re blocking traffic,” a passing man in coveralls complained.

  “No standing in the pa
ssageways,” his companion added. “Noob with boobs.”

  “I’m not a newbie, I’m a visitor,” Kassidy protested, but the two were already past her. They didn’t bother looking back.

  Not a friendly place, this station.

  She fell in with traffic. She got groped again twice on the way to the atrium, slapping hands away each time. She tried to complain to another woman in the crowd. The other woman walked faster to escape association with Kassidy.

  The male majority among the onlookers favored her with ugly grins. “Want to see my rack, chick?”

  “Yeah, what’s your handle in virtual?”

  “Leave her alone,” a third guy said. For his trouble he got slammed against the wall. Kassidy tried to thank him, but he scowled and slunk away.

  This wasn’t going well.

  But the station wasn’t very big. In a matter of minutes she found the 2-story atrium and left the thoroughfare behind. A smattering of people sat on benches, or lingered by the railing on the sides she could see. Dense jungle blocked her view of the far side.

  The video star claimed a bit of railing alone first. She needed to get her head back into the business of fun before any more conversations. She gazed dolefully into the pocket garden. She sniffed. A fungus and moss mustiness, with a tang of urine and beer. Back in Mahina Actual, there was a corner of the ugly swamp biome where teenagers hid to get drunk and grope. This spot reminded her of that. The plants were prettier than the swamp, except where they were dead.

  Alice and Josh wouldn’t see it that way. They’d see it as fancier than even the potted rubbery shrubs and peacocks in the visitor gallery of Mahina Actual – exotic. The thought got her head back on straight.

  She turned and summoned the drones. “Isn’t this cool, fans? At the core of Mahina Orbital, they have this two-story jungle. Look how the light pipes highlight the gaudy plants down below. Pretty, huh? Almost makes me homesick!” She scrunched and rubbed her nose, adding a wink for Beauregard and Eliza. “Reminds me of the swamp back home.”