by Alex Deva
Foggily, Gaines recalled the recent events.
He'd been holding the girl up by her neck, by sheer physical force and determination. He didn't care about killing her; it was war. People died in war. It was the only way to win. And he was a soldier. Not just any soldier; he was a cruiser commander on his way to the top. And some top that was going to be.
What had happened next, he was not completely sure.
A slowly pulsating light on his visor reminded him that the camera had been recording all along. He remembered having started the recording as he'd been making his way into the ship. His aching fingers slowly gestured inside the glove, and forearm sensors interpreted the muscle movements as interface commands. The recording was accessed and played back in his helmet, in a corner of his visor.
The helmet hadn't been on his head at the time, so even though the camera had an excellent wide angle, it wasn't an ideal one. On top of that, it was upside-down.
He heard himself say, "...and you're gonna give it to me." Then, there was silence for a few seconds. The wide-angle recording showed a pair of bare feet hanging limply. Not a sound was captured. He dimly remembered having felt triumphant and confident.
The next instant, a huge, horrible scream filled his helmet headset, so loud that the active control player had to instantly reduce the volume to avoid causing ear damage. Two dark shapes had sprung at him like meteors impacting the Moon, dead on. By now, he remembered feeling surprised and not comprehending what exactly was going on.
He slowed down the playback, scrolled back, and the two dark shapes resolved into two people, dressed in United States space suits, who were roaring at the top of their lungs.
They'd knocked him off his feet so badly that he'd felt his bones crack. Before he'd even touched the floor, one of them smashed him in the face, harder than he thought a human being could hit. He'd been already falling with his head half-turned; a frontal hit, he was sure, would have driven his nose right up into his skull.
The other raging monster had gripped his arm and forced him to release the girl. He didn't know exactly how, he only remembered sharp, acute pain in the back of his palm and his fingers automatically releasing their hold.
And then, fallen on his side, his clattering helmet, still attached to his suit, still working, continued to record the mother of all beatings, in which two mad bastards were kicking seven shades of shit out of an American officer.
And so it came to be that, from where he nearly had his hands on the greatest discovery in the entire history of mankind, commander Steven Gaines was now floating freely in a slowly decaying lunar orbit, with his ass glued to a disarmed atomic bomb.
And that turn of events was, indeed, ironic.
XXXI.
A little earlier.
It was his fourth spaceship. He didn't know whether four spaceships were a lot in the life of a modern Earthman. What he knew for sure was that four spaceships were exactly four more than he'd ever believed to exist.
That he was in his fourth spaceship was amazing.
That he was flying it was... impossible.
And yet, there he was, weaving around the thin stream of green light that Mark had called a "laser" with which the Americans were trying to "get a lock on them".
It took some pretty interesting flying; or maybe that woman, who called herself a targeting officer, was not trying hard enough to aim well. It was miraculous that he could even fly in a straight line for the first minutes of the trip; now he was turning this way and that, subjecting himself and Mark to weird changes of weight which were proportional to the amount of input he made to the control model, to which their American space suits were responding automatically but still, somehow, taking him by surprise.
After a particularly tight barrel turn during which he also yawed a hundred and eighty degrees, he risked a glance at Mark. The Englishman was white as lime.
"Fuck it, let them shoot us, just stop," he muttered, clutching the arms of his seat.
Aram knew that he wasn't serious. Or, at least, he hoped so.
He was flying like a, well, fly. With sudden and extreme changes in direction and attitude, but always getting closer to Doi, he somehow managed to maintain his spatial orientation. He always knew where the Moon was; where the cruiser and Doi were. He barely had to look at the moving map. His instincts told him how to plan each manoeuvre, and his hands seemed to do it automatically. At times, for fractions of seconds, he looked at himself, thinking I am flying over the Moon and not believing it one bit.
But the white laser and the constant reminder of the danger that they'd left Doina in made him a believer again and again.
"Running out of propellant, I think," Mark said.
Aram hadn't considered that. He also hadn't considered the battery charge, or what his flying was doing to the ship, or how much air there was left. Those problems were too remote to someone who couldn't even believe he was doing what he was doing. Fortunately, Doi was close.
And an identical crate was parked just above its opened airlock.
"How are we gonna get inside?" he wondered, for the first time.
"Well, I've been thinking," said Mark.
Not that sick, after all.
What they did was crazy. They put their crate on a collision trajectory with the parked crate, flying backwards, for the last few tens of metres; then they jumped out into space, through the airlock inbetween the dying thrusters, staying on the same general trajectory, but slowing down relative to their own crate. Mark had figured out how to use his suit's own stabilisation thrusters. This way, they managed to keep the crate between themselves and the cruiser, and when the two ships collided, they were only a few metres away from Doi's airlock.
There was no explosion, the crates didn't even break up. They were built for war, made to transport troops under heavy enemy fire. But still, the impact was enough for the parked crate to lose its fix, and they both went tumbling through space, away from Doi and the Moon.
The Dacian was genuinely sorry to see them go.
Carefully braking them both, Mark got into the airlock and pulled Aram as well. The bomb was still there, unmoved, unchanged. To Mark's endless gratitude, the wall responded to his touch and he shut the outer iris immediately.
And then, of course, they ran through the panels that Doi had left open, saw her unconscious in Gaines' death grip while they were still in the spoke, and they both charged into the room screaming bloody murder.
Aram hit Gaines in the head. Mark's reflexes kicked in, and with a nerve technique he hadn't had to use in many years, he quickly forced the American to let go of Doina.
He wanted to tend to her, and he did. He began to resuscitate her, compressing her chest and forcing air into her small lungs. He didn't have time to feel, he only had time to do. But he knew that, if he were to fail again, this time he would choose to not go on. And, in a remote sort of way, he almost wished for it.
Counting and pressing, his arms carefully locked at the elbows, fingers intertwined, he blocked all thoughts and pushed on.
He did not fail again.
And, as soon as Doina drew in her third breath by herself, he got up and joined Aram.
They beat Gaines quietly and methodically, while the girl crawled away and refused to look. They stopped when they thought he was about to die. They discussed what to do next, and again Mark had the winning suggestion. They carried him to the airlock, and Doina made the ship glue the officer to his bomb. Then, they calmly explained to him that they were going to jettison them both, so if he was going to disarm the bomb, that would be a good time to do it. Gaines didn't answer, so they gave him a minute, and then did just that.
The bomb did not go off. Mark's plan worked.
Which was good, considering that Aram's plan had been to just go on with the beating for a while longer.
After a few good minutes, one of the smaller ships approached (it was a Wing, as Gaines had called them), to recover their cruiser commander. But nobody ope
ned fire anymore. Nobody attacked. They just moved out of the way.
Still sobbing, shocked and physically hurt beyond any immediate ability to speak, Doi moved to Room One and took the starship out of Moon orbit, leaving behind only death, pain and betrayal. Mark was never more than a few steps away, not talking, just being there. Aram sat on the floor with his eyes closed, clutching his right shoulder, an ancient man with bloody knuckles who suddenly knew what it was like to fly, and wanted nothing more than to do it again.
XXXII.
Doina took the starship out of the solar system plane, just to get away. She had about enough sense to make it fly slowly, way outside relativistic effects, although she was sorely tempted to escape at near-light speed and come back in a few hundred years or so.
They ate in silence.
As soon as they'd left, Mark had told Doina everything. The truth about his past life, just as he'd told it to Aram in that cell inside the American cruiser. He'd tried his best to make the story a little less gruesome, and a little easier to digest. But the girl had understood everything. She'd listened in silence, nodding while she was preparing another compress for Aram's shoulder.
They ate in silence.
The men still wore their American space suits. Aram was using his left hand. They had detached the suit helmets and abandoned them to one side. They didn't look at each other. Mark's face was bruised, and he took small, careful bites from a red meal bar, trying to not use his lips very much.
After a few minutes, Doina stood up, wordlessly, and went into the room below. Aram glanced at Mark, but said nothing. After a few seconds, the girl returned with their former clothes: Aram's pants, blouse and leather shoes, and Mark's shirt, jeans, socks and Timberlands. They were neatly packed into two bundles, tied with grey elastic.
The men accepted the bundles, then looked at each other, and finally back at her. Sober, in her dark clothes, with her usual ponytail, and with those ugly bruises on her neck, she returned their gaze in silence.
"Thanks," spoke Aram for the first time, unpacking his third century clothes.
"Thank you, Doi," added Mark as he began to undo his own bundle.
And then, he stopped.
"Actually, I have an idea," he said, putting the bundle down.
He made a pause, then spoke slowly and sombrely:
"We have all bled for this ship, all three of us. We didn't ask to be here, but the ship chose us, and we are here, and we're all trying to make the best of it."
He stood up in front of their small, improvised table.
"We all want to believe that we are here for a reason. And I sincerely hope that is so. But we know we're not going back to our times."
He met their eyes and carried on.
"The three of us, unarmed, landed right in the middle of a space war, and not only are we still alive, but we actually didn't do too badly at all. Considering the space war."
Aram nodded approvingly. He knew a thing or two about the life expectancy of people who ended up in random wars.
"We all bled for Doi-the-ship. This ship chose us. We are now its crew. I think it's time to act like a crew, and not like three random people brought together by fate."
He pointed at Doina's black suit and, with a nod, he said:
"A ship's crew must have a ship's uniform."
They agreed on black. Black pants and jackets worn over t-shirts, with small, high collars, basically adapted copies of Doina's own creation, made of the same strange, but incredibly strong material. For footwear, after some discussion, they settled on soft shoes, which seemed perfect for their environment. They added the word "DOI" in silver letters on the sleeves and on the left side of the chest, in exactly the same writing that stood on the outer hull. When the men had changed and floated back into the room, all three looked at each other, forming a small triangle in the middle of the floor. For a few seconds, nobody said anything, then Doina reached out to both men and took their hands.
"Thank you for saving my life," she said to them both.
"Let's have a rule," said Mark. "I know we all agree, but it needs to be said. This is our home, now. Has to be. None of us have anything left other than this ship, and whatever future lies in front of us." He met their approving looks, straightened, breathed in and said, simply:
"I swear to protect this crew and this ship."
Aram also straightened up and said:
"I swear to protect this crew and this ship."
The twelve-year-old girl, too, stood straight and sounded like a very mature woman when she repeated, without a trace of hesitation, loud and clear:
"I swear to protect this crew and this ship."
Every fibre in Mark's body wanted to snap to attention and throw the sharpest salute of his life. But this wasn't about Her Majesty (was there even still a British Empire? he wondered briefly) and certainly not about the Army. There was no chain of command, no other oath of service than those nine words they had each uttered. There was nobody to salute but themselves. He didn't move.
Aram sighed and looked down.
"I know why you're here, Doi," he said, slowly, looking down. "You run this ship. Hell, you are this ship, far as I can tell. And I know why you're here, Mark. You can think. You know what to do, and how, and when."
He kept his gaze down.
"Until a few hours ago, I had no idea what my part was in all of this. I know I can throw big rocks out of the airlock, but I don't really think that's it for me." His lips tightened into a small smile.
"Then I had to fly one of those damn crates, and fucking hell if I wasn’t actually good at it. I mean, I didn't just pull through. I didn't break anyone's face in a fist fight. I actually flew... a space ship. On my own. It was more than I ever dreamed of. It was more than the birds can do. It was..." he dug for a word and came up with: "magnificent."
"That is was. That it really was," said Mark, softly.
“You know, now that I've done that, part of me thinks I could die happy. But I don't wanna die. Happy or otherwise. I wanna fly. 'Cuz I think I'm good at it. And, you know what? I miss it. I really do. I miss that little crate. I wish we had one."
Then, for the first time since they'd arrived behind the Moon, Doina smiled. It was a big, full-face smile, the sort of smile that someone makes when they know they're about to drop a huge surprise.
"Why?" she asked Aram. "What's wrong with ours?"
XXXIII.
"Doi, this is Effo, over."
"Yeah, he loves this," said Mark.
"I heard that."
"Aram, aren't you a little close to those rocks?"
"You mean these huge mountains?"
"Mark said they're called asteroids."
"Hey, check this out!"
The sleek, small ship matched its speed with one of the larger asteroids in the belt beyond Mars, moved about a little looking for a flat spot, and landed softly, in one smooth manoeuvre.
"One small step for a Dacian," murmured Mark.
"Well, I guess I'm the first Dacian on an asteroid," confirmed Aram, proudly.
"Are you sure it's safe?"
"Feels alright to me."
"Doina?"
The girl looked at the enlarged three-dimensional projection and shrugged.
"Far as Doi can tell, he's just landed on a piece of rock. It's a hard rock. I don't think it'll explode or anything."
"Well, it's a hard rock hurtling through space at thirty kilometres per second, together with a few hundred thousand others, constantly colliding with each other. Not to mention, who knows what's inside."
She smiled and looked up at him.
"Yeah, but look how happy he is."
A while earlier, they'd found the small ship parked right underneath the airlock. Doina had no previous knowledge of small spaceships (or the outer space at all, for that matter), so she hadn't known what it was, and had just set it aside next to another thousand things that she didn't yet understand. But, when she'd seen Mark and Aram leave with the
American soldiers in their transport they called a "crate", she'd made the connection. The thing under the airlock was to Doi what a boat was to a ship.
It was round, and with its flat bottom it fit perfectly underneath the starship's central airlock cylinder. Right in the centre it had a smooth bump, which, when parked, fit in the thick floor of the airlock, and could be accessed through an iris. They'd all gone to the airlock to inspect it; when Doina found on the wall the correct glyph to access the ship underneath, Mark said:
"How many other surprises like this do we have in store?"
"I really don't know," said the girl, with a slightly embarrassed smile. "I don't really understand what most of the stuff we have does."
"I'm happy you can fly us around, Doi," he said. "But some of these things could really, really turn up to be useful."
She understood the implication. In those times where none of them belonged, they needed every edge they could get.
"I'll try to explore it more. I promise."
Aram was peering down inside the opening.
"Doesn't look anything like the crate," he said.
"It's configurable," she pronounced carefully.
Like the rest of the starship, thought Mark.
"Meaning?" asked Aram.
"You'll see."
The small ship, connected to Doi's larger intelligence, embraced Aram the moment he climbed down inside. It detected his physiology, generated the correct atmosphere, and moulded itself into a comfortable seat. And then, all of a sudden, it closed the iris.
"Hey, hey, hey," said Mark from above, in alarm. "Open it back, Doina."
"I can hear you fine," Aram's voice came from the walls.
"You alright in there?"
"Yeah, I don't feel anything wrong. I can breathe and everything. I'm sat down on something that came out of nowhere, but it feels fine."