Building New Canaan - The Complete Series - A Colonization and Exploration Space Adventure
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Jude didn’t seem to believe her. He climbed into her lap, hugged her, and lay his head on her chest.
Isa wiped her eyes.
The two of them sat like that without talking, Jude lending his silent support, or perhaps seeking comfort, until finally the yelling stopped. Not long afterward, Erin came down to the terrace.
“I’m going to work,” she said and leaned down to kiss the top of Jude’s head. “Bye bye, sweetie.”
Isa caught Erin’s hand in her own. “Did Martin apologize for what he said?”
“He did,” she replied, “but it was obvious that he didn’t mean it.”
“I’m sorry. You know I don’t agree with him, right? I know you love Jude just as much as we do.”
“I know, but it’s good to hear you say it.” Erin kissed Isa goodbye and then left.
Isa hugged Jude tightly. For a short while, she’d seen a glimmer of hope that what had been broken last night would be fixed. Now she didn’t know if that would ever happen.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
STELLAR DATE: 05.12.8941 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Elevator terminal, Heliopolis, Ithaca
REGION: Troy, New Canaan System
Erin was still fuming over Martin’s comment as she strode through the elevator terminal. She knew why he had made his crass, unfair statement; he was overprotective of Jude and it was making him lose perspective about what happened at Isa’s party. Erin suspected that, deep down, he didn’t really believe his words. She didn’t think he could be that blind or misguided about how she felt about their son.
Yet that didn’t change what he’d said, or the fact that he’d used his love for Jude as a weapon against her. It was a horrible, low blow. When he’d made his half-hearted apology, he hadn’t even been able to look her in the eyes.
said Walter.
Erin said as the car began to climb the strand.
Walter’s comment started her fuming again. Martin didn’t see the invasion drill the right way. All he was seeing was that a bunch of soldiers had terrified Jude, and that the woman who’d arranged it didn’t seem to care about his son. But it was because Tanis cared about Jude and all the other kids in New Canaan, and all the adults, too, that she had done what she did.
Stars, Erin thought, he should be thanking Tanis for the drill.
But it wasn’t the drill or Martin’s inability to see the wider picture that was the problem. It was his hurtful statement that had gotten to her, worse than anything anyone had said to her in a long time.
She knew from the first time she’d met him that Martin could be difficult and stubborn, but she had never imagined he could hurt her so badly. She wondered if he would ever truly retract what he’d said, and if he did, if she would be able to forgive him.
* * * * *
Erin’s foul mood hadn’t dissipated by the time she reached Messene Station. If anything, she felt angrier and more crushed. Fighting off Transcend invaders was nothing compared to navigating the pitfalls of relationships. She wondered if she’d stumbled on the reason it had taken her so long to venture into the world of romantic partnerships again.
Her feelings clearly showed on her face. As she entered the control center, MacCarthy took one look at her and immediately glanced at Linch, who switched his gaze to his console. They were clearly talking over the Link. Probably something along the lines of, ‘Watch out. The boss got out of the wrong side of the bed today.’
She slumped into her seat. “OK, guys. We’re finishing off the maglev mainline today, right? Shouldn’t be too hard. Did someone check that the last of the sections were delivered last night?”
“Double checked. It all came in on the latest shipment,” Linch replied. “We’re set to begin.”
“Let’s do it, then,” said Erin.
Laying a maglev track wasn’t complicated, but it would take time to install all the sections across the entire length of the station. Like most of the construction work, it was carried out by remote drones. The station’s AI hadn’t yet been appointed, so Walter coordinated the machines. Erin would also monitor their progress via the feedback they sent and feeds she pulled from several checkpoints across the construction site.
The task was so straightforward that it was too simple for her right then. She wished she had something more complicated that required deep concentration and would distract her from her thoughts.
As she monitored the track laying through the central concourse, the image of Martin’s face as they’d yelled at each other in the bedroom that morning kept flashing into her mind. She entertained a vision based on the events of the previous evening, in which it was Martin she’d jumped on and knocked to the floor. That would have shut him up.
Then she felt bad about her wish-fulfilment daydream. She loved Martin. If only he wasn’t being such an asshole.
She suddenly stood up. Her movement was so quick and unexpected, MacCarthy and Linch jumped a little in their seats.
“I’m going to take a skiff out and tour the station,” she said. “It’s about time to give it a good visual inspection.”
“OK,” MacCarthy said. “We’ll keep an eye on the track laying while you’re gone.”
“There’s no need for that,” she told him. “I can fly a skiff and monitor the installation progress at the same time, you know.”
Another look passed between MacCarthy and Linch. Erin decided that leaving the control center for a while was definitely a good idea. Her discomposure was clearly showing.
She walked out of the room and turned down the corridor that led to the newly built administrative shuttle bay. The vast space was nearly empty. Most of the ships wouldn’t be delivered until the management crew was assigned in a few months, but the construction teams had the use of a few shuttles and skiffs for carrying out inspections or transporting engineers
across the site to fix anything that required human attention.
Erin took the nearest vessel, flew it out of the bay and over the station’s half-finished structure. Almost immediately, her tension slipped away; the image of Martin’s angry face finally fading from her thoughts.
There was something calming about the near-emptiness of space. Things out in the black were simpler. The shell of the pinnace was all that lay between her and death. Out in space, you did what you had to in order to survive. You defeated the bad guys and moved on.
Erin sighed. This colonization stuff is hard. Counting my time at the Kap, I’ve spent the majority of my life doing it, too.
When she reached the eastern end of the station, she turned the skiff so that its roof faced the construction site. Ithaca and Syracuse were below her. Due to centripetal force, the side of the station facing the planet was ‘up’. That’s where most of the current construction was taking place. Viewing the work that had been completed so far and observing the automated machinery and drones busily working lifted her spirits.
She flew over a long section a few dozen kilometers from the eastern end of the station, which was covered in a ten-kilometer dome that Linch had grown from pure carbon. Beneath was a vast learning campus with parks and buildings that Erin was tailoring to house an engineering academy and science center. She felt that Troy’s next generation of engineers would be deprived of vital experience if they didn’t have the opportunity to work in an off-planet environment. Though whether the Trojans would use her space as she intended, she didn’t know—especially with their recent isolationist bent.
If the current trends continued, the planet’s future was murky. Erin had concluded from her conversation with Tanis that she, Isa, and Martin might have a difficult decision to make in the near future. Should they remain on a seceded planet, or go live on one that remained within the New Canaan government’s control?
Martin.
Her tension mounted again. Her reflections had led her back around to the subject she’d been trying to avoid.
Damn Martin and his heartless…I do love Jude just as much as he and Isa do.
The pinnace veered sharply to the right, throwing Erin to the side as the a-grav system strained to compensate. Her eyes snapped to the forward view, and she saw a large grey object slide by only centimeters from the front of the ship as collision alarms blared.
said Walter, sounding peeved.
Erin groaned.
She cursed Martin’s insensitivity one last time as Walter steered the skiff back to the bay.
CHAPTER TWENTY
STELLAR DATE: 05.12.8941 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Heliopolis, Ithaca
REGION: Troy, New Canaan System
Isa flew her aircar high over Heliopolis, skirting the city’s edge. The route wasn’t the most direct from her home on the coast, but she was taking it because she was considering adding the cityscape to her gallery’s installations.
She also admitted to herself that she’d decided to take the indirect course because she was delaying her return to her gallery. She didn’t feel like seeing the destruction the drill had wrought in the full light of day. She’d left the place quickly the previous evening, too tired and dismayed to properly assess the damage after the drill was over. Then Martin and Erin’s argument that morning had put the seal on her unhappiness. Going in to work in order to begin the cleanup was the logical thing to do, yet it was hard to face it all.
Isa’s gaze drifted over the sea of white buildings, which glared almost painfully bright in the morning sunlight. She recorded what she saw as she flew, though half-heartedly.
Up until then, all her art creations had been entirely natural landscapes. She was uncertain whether a cityscape would work, though cities had their beauty too, especially the ones in New Canaan. All the system’s metropolises had been planned for aesthetic as well as utilitarian purposes.
Some, like Heliopolis, had been heavily inspired by cities of ancient Earth. From what Isa understood, there had been places on humanity’s home planet that had developed an intrinsic charm and grace over hundreds of years of building and rebuilding. Other cities in New Canaan were based upon the principles of pleasing design, like the Golden Ratio, and optimum functionality.
Isa frowned as thoughts of Erin and Martin’s fight pushed back into the forefront of her mind. Try as she might, she couldn’t achieve the mental state she needed to do her work. She decided there was no point in flying around aimlessly all morning, vexed by her troubles. She couldn’t fix the antagonism between Erin and Martin; that was their problem. But she could do something about another important area of her life: her business.
She set the aircar on a direct course for the gallery.
As the vehicle set down, the first damage that would require fixing was easy to see. Erin had made a hasty repair to the entrance hatch so that no one would be able to open it, but the jamb and door were bent and fractured. Isa wondered what the Marines had used to bust the thing open. The loud bang that had reverberated through the gallery before they stormed the place still remained vivid in her mind.
Isa unlocked the hatch and climbed down to the upper mezzanine. She checked around, but the damage seemed minimal on that floor. Aside from Erin, no one else had been there when the Marines attacked. The troops had passed through, focusing their attention on the first floor, where most of the partygoers had gathered.
The corner of Isa’s lip lifted in a wry grin as she remembered Erin’s plunge from the stairway. Joe’s description of her as an avenging angel had been spot on. Isa had had the surprise of her life when the soldier who had been guarding her and Martin had been felled by a human bomb falling from above. Clearly, the Marines who had passed through the upper mezzanine had figured that one small woman in a dress couldn’t do much harm, but Erin had proven them wrong.
Isa crossed to the lower mezzanine. The damage caused by the troops here was greater. They had scraped a few of the 2D images, and one screen was cracked. Yet even so, the repairs required were minimal. The images were easy to replace, and a new screen would only take a few minutes to install.
Having completed her assessment, Isa walked to the elevator and rode it down to the first floor.
On the first floor, the caterers’ automatons had cleared up all the debris
from the party, but the wreckage from the mock invasion remained. Some seating had been broken, another of Isa’s screens was cracked, and one of her art displays had been fully smashed.
The piece had been made of wildflowers that she and Jude had picked along the shores of the Black Sea. The preservation technique had retained all their natural color and turgidity so the flowers had looked real, but they hadn’t been rendered robustly enough to withstand the tramping of Marines’ boots.
Isa gazed at the remains. It wasn’t the fact that the art piece had been destroyed that upset her—it was that the work represented her memories of spending time with her son.
Nevermind, Isa told herself, there will be more happy times and more good memories.
Singh shortly announced his arrival, and Isa let him in. After greeting her, he stepped through the doorway, put his hands in his pockets, and strolled along the edge of the room, studying carefully everything he saw. When he reached Isa’s smashed artwork, he paused and tutted.
“What a shame. You’re right. You’re the one who should claim for compensation for your own possessions. How much do you think you’ll ask for this?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Isa replied. “It’s hard to estimate the value of any of my pieces. They were never for sale. They only existed to introduce the customers to the moods and concepts of the installations. I don’t think I would part with any of my work no matter what price was offered—I’ve invested too much in them in other ways.”
“You should try to get as much as you can,” Singh said. “I’ve heard the compensation fund is large and the administrators are generous. Personally, I’m hoping to profit considerably from the invasion drill. This isn’t the only property of mine that was targeted. Another place—a meeting hall—was attacked too. I just came from there. The damage was considerable.” He gave her a wink.
“I wouldn’t be comfortable with applying for more compensation than is fair.”
“Do you think everyone else isn’t going to exaggerate their claims?” asked Singh. “I’m sorry, but that’s naive. It’s standard practice to claim more than you’ll pay in repairs and replacements. That way, when the administrators reduce your payment, you end up with the amount you really deserve. Besides, Troy will secede soon. After that happens, we won’t be able to benefit from the system’s funds, so we might as well grab as much as we can now.”