Waypoint Magellan

by L S Roebuck

  And she thought of North. She pictured his strong form, toned muscles and the solitary scar on his face. He was physically attractive and would make a good mating partner should she ever decide she wanted to have natural children. But was he more than a friend?

  North loved Amberly; she knew it now. Part of her longed to reciprocate that love — as if someone loving you is reason enough to love them back. That was too simple, she decided. She wanted more. She wanted someone who challenged her, who thrilled her, who puzzled her, slowly teasing her with piecemeal revelations of the depths of his soul in a mysterious dance of ideas and passions, someone who believed in something greater than himself. She thought about the revolutionary Dek Tigona, his messy brown hair, his deep eyes, his calm confidence, and his mind, open and full of ideas.

  Could she love Dek? Did she even believe in love? A chemical response to a mate designed by eons of evolution? Or an irrational emotion that poets had tried to mystify and even deify?

  No, love is real, Amberly thought. It wasn’t an empirical reality, but something transcendent. There must be more to life than simply what could be observed. The proof was the ability of people to be selfless. Selflessness had no place in evolutionary theory, where survival alone was the great guiding hand. She had seen selfless love. She remembered how her father was willing to sacrifice so much for her mother, to try to make her happy. What happened to dad? What is mom hiding?

  Amberly fought tears. Dek? North? What does it matter? Will we all be dead? She thought about her friends.

  A white-knuckle resolve began to grow in Amberly. She needed to plan, to think strategically and tactically like her mother. What were her goals, and how was she going to get there? I have to save them. I must.

  Amberly reasoned that she may agree with Chasm, but she knew her strategic priority was to save her friends. She didn't have enough knowledge about what was going on to develop tactics so, for now, she would prioritize information acquisition. And probably the only way she was going to get any real information was to convince her mother that she was in the Chasm camp and ready to follow orders.

  Amberly wasn’t sure of the exact time, but she knew they had to be getting close to Magellan. Which meant she needed to work quickly. The first step of the plan that was developing in her brain: drive a wedge between Dek and her mother.

  Amberly knew just how to do that. She pulled out her fresh clothes and makeup and went to work.

  On the bridge, Dek knew that Raven One’s threat to airlock any one who didn’t follow her orders about Amberly was not idle. She would airlock any Chasm member for the slightest insubordination at this point, Dek thought, as he sat at Firebird’s navigation station. “We are in instant communication range with Magellan and the American Spirit now. Looks like our ETA is unchanged, so we’ll be at Magellan in about one hour and 30 minutes,” he said to Kimberly, who was sitting in the command seat.

  Of course, Dek agreed with Kimberly’s hard line. Too much was at stake now. Everything they had been working toward for their entire lives, and generations before them, could come down to what would transpire in the next few hours. The Chasm team’s resolve had to be hardened, now more than ever. And if the promise of glory in a perfect world did not steel a Chasm believer, then fear of death might keep the weak on course.

  Kimberly’s dark black hair was wound into a bun, efficient and tight. She had changed into a white European-cut karategi, which did less to hide her petiteness than the bulky protective garments she had worn under her space suit. Dek had heard the rumors that Kimberly was not only a genius of Einsteinian proportions, but she was also a master of many hand-to-hand combat forms. Dek had never witnessed Raven One in combat, so her fabled melee skills may only be a myth, perhaps of Kimberly’s intentional creation. Or she really could be a fighting master. Either possibility wouldn’t surprise Dek.

  “Dek, go check on Amberly,” Kimberly said. “I need to fill Capt. Järvinen in on the plan. Our agents on the American Spirit are going to need to be ready to do their part.”

  Moreno stood in the center of Central Command, a gleaming white round room consisting of a multi-story atrium circled by three floors of workstations. Each workstation opened into and faced the center of the atrium. Those working at the stations – 12 stations on each balcony, 36 total — could view whoever was on the platform that Moreno was standing on now. She was barking orders at a half-dozen civilian workers. The command platform was designed for a crisis workflow to facilitate quick and accurate communication between the person in charge and the various technocrats and military officers supporting operations. Every major function of the Magellan from life support to harbor control was represented with a primary and backup station. The person in the middle could orchestrate the operations of the station like a maestro directing.

  Moreno was conducting today.

  Twenty minutes earlier, she had arrived with the detachment of five of North’s Marines to a chaotic Cencom. Seven people were in the center when Moreno’s general quarters was ordered, five civilian operators and two Marines — from Johnson’s unit. Both Marines were Chasm operatives, who had realized that the final plans for Magellan had been or were about to be set in motion by a signal from Johnson.

  Worried that a non-Chasm force might prevent Raven One from taking control of Central Command once she returned, the two drew their weapons and attempted to take the civilian operators hostage to force them to initiate whatever commands, however destructive, into Magellan’s control computer.

  Unfortunately for the Chasm operators, just as they were drawing weapons on the technocrats, Moreno and her Marine detachment entered. One of the mutinous Marines lost his cool right away, figuring that Moreno already knew everything and they were going to be doomed as traitors. He pointed his stun gun at Moreno, but before he could pull the trigger, Marcos DeLeon, one of North’s privates, had already gifted his traitorous colleague with a half dozen pieces of hot lead.

  With Cencom secured, Moreno started reestablishing control over the chaotic waypoint headquarters. She told the computer to undo Johnson’s communication lockdown. Moreno looked at DeLeon, now at the communication station on the second terrace, and gave him orders. “Call the governor on his emergency channel. Get North on speaker as well.”

  Moreno started waving her hands at the magnetic imaging screen, causing the three-dimensional display to jump to life.

  “I have North,” DeLeon looked up from the communication station.

  “North, Moreno here,” the acting commander said, “Report.”

  “We’ve secured the docks,” North’s voice was tinny and slightly garbled as it sounded though micro speakers on Moreno’s console. “Just outside the civilian access one of my troops noticed that Johnson and some of his men were congregating with the civilian police… hold on…”

  “Johnson? What is he … oh crap,” Moreno said. She could hear the public intercom in the background of her connection with North.

  “Lt. North, you are under arrest for the assassination of Commander Anderson and Wing Commander Jindal. You and your men have two minutes to surrender before we will use deadly force to apprehend you,” a voice called out. Moreno assumed it was just outside the main civilian access to the Magellan’s space dock, two plexiglass retractable double doors about three meters wide and that many high.

  “Did you hear that?” North called over the channel to Moreno. “The bastard Johnson told them I did it.”

  “I got it. Your orders are to hold that position, copy?”

  North had strapped his field infopad to his forearm and was using it to speak with Moreno.

  “Wilco.” North looked through the plexiglass at the gathering force in the corridor. He could see down the corridor to Chinatown, the restaurant where he met Amberly the night before this violent conspiracy started to unravel. He was desperate to talk with Amberly. Was she a part of this Chasm cult or just an innocent bystander?

  The five Marines with North were prepa
ring for a firefight. Two of them had assault rifles, the other half just their stun sidearm.

  “North, we’re now tracking the stolen runabout,” Moreno’s voice came over North’s radio. “Looks like she is headed back to port. Just more than an hour out. I am not going to allow Firebird to dock until we have full control of the station and we have defused the situation down there.”

  North thought about Amberly, hopefully safe aboard the Firebird, being abducted by Dek, and he ground his teeth in frustrated anger. At least he hoped she was abducted. Is it possible she was one of these Chasm butchers? The thought overwhelmed North, but then he quickly cleared his head. Got to stay in the game.

  North could feel a hardening deep inside. His joyful life was imploding. Amberly’s rejection in the Shard Caves threw him off center. He hadn’t time to process the trauma of seeing Anderson and Jindal murdered in front of him — and narrowly escaping with his own life. He knew he would never be the same, and he knew that if he didn’t hold fast, he could be overwhelmed by what was yet to come. “We’ll take care of everything down here, XO.”

  “I am going to send you whatever reinforcements I can,” Moreno said over North’s communication unit. “I’m am trying to raise the governor now. He can call off his police. And I’ve locked down the hangar access door from here — no one is going to override it, so if they want in, they’ll have to break it down. ”

  The main floor of the Magellan docks was one of the largest open spaces in the waypoint, nearly 200 meters from the hangar doors to the inside wall. The civilian access point, with its large translucent doors, was situated on one inside wall corner; the other inside wall corner led into the Marine base. On the far exterior wall were the main space doors and gangway access.

  A few meters from the civilian access point was a processing center, a collection of desks and other office furniture, and behind that was the air pressure curtain, currently up. Before a ship left the hangar, a failsafe required all personnel move to the area between the pressure curtain and the interior wall. When the curtain was engaged, its atmospheric seal protected dockworkers and others from the deadly vacuum of space, which could then be opened.

  North and his men had taken up positions behind the processing desks but in front of the pressure curtain drop line. This way, Johnson or the others could not simply try to perform a normal hangar traffic depressurization to eliminate North’s forces.

  North’s men were all crouched below the counter now, so Johnson’s forces and the civilian police did not have a direct line of sight on them.

  “Snyder, can you get a bogey count for me?” North, still crouching behind the counter, called out to the Marine the furthest away.

  Snyder was above average height, with a conservative haircut and average build. He was old for an enlisted Marine at age 42. He was born on Waypoint Cortez, studied art and tried to make a living as an artist. His digital paintings of Earth scenes (based on both photos and his own imagination) were somewhat popular on two or three waypoints, but those brought him little income. So he enlisted in the Marines and eventually was transferred from Cortez, which had a surplus of recruits, to Magellan, which at the time had a shortage.

  Marines did drills, maintenance work and other tasks, but because there was little to no threat of real battle, Snyder thought signing up would bring him many days of peace where he could use his free time to pursue his art. North looked over at Snyder, both men crouched behind cover. Snyder’s face was pale, and North thought he may vomit.

  “Snyder!” North grunted. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes sir, I’ve just never been in a real firefight before. I mean, we could get killed,” Snyder said, with a slight shake in his voice. None of us have, thought North, but knew he must instill confidence in his men in this hour they never thought would come. The Magellan Marines will defend our waypoint, from enemies without, and enemies within, North recalled the oath from his commissioning.

  “No more people are going to die, Snyder,” North insisted. “Do you hear me? No more. We will defend this waypoint from enemies within.”

  On the other side of North, another member of the unit, Leo Kendrick, chuckled as he checked the ammunition clip on his assault rifle.

  “You know, Snyder, if you do get killed, maybe your paintings will become worth millions,” the blond, baby-faced Leo snarked. “You know, like Van Gogh. The guy was a beggar while he was alive, but now his paintings are worth billions.”

  North shot Kendrick a glare. “Not helpful.” He turned back to Snyder.

  “Get me a bogey count, now!”

  Snyder peeked over the desk. He counted five police officers, flanked by at least that many Marines. He slipped back under the cover of the desk.

  “Ten, at least,” Snyder said. “Half of them are police. It looked like they were rigging some sort of explosive to take out the door. They were in a two-line formation, police in front, Marines in back. I saw Johnson for sure. He looked pretty beat up”

  “Idiots,” North shook his head. “If they damage the fail-safe, no one is going to be able to use the docks.”

  “Or worse, they could disable the fail-safe with an explosion, and someone pops the hatch. We’d all be frozen space debris,” Snyder said.

  The third Marine, Jana Smith, was shaking. Smith was perhaps the smallest Marine, no more than one and one-half meters tall. A mess of her shoulder-length brown hair stuck out of her hastily donned combat helmet over part of her eyes. She was small, but kilogram-for-kilogram was perhaps the strongest Marine in North’s strike force. When she wasn’t taking care of her official Marine duties, Jana frequented the Marine’s private workout gym, doing calisthenics routines, while watching documentary vids about animal wildlife back on Earth.

  Snyder fancied Jana, who was a decade younger, though he would have never acted on the feeling. Snyder had found loneliness a better muse than any women. Still, occasionally he would daydream that he and Jana married and moved to a homestead on Arara, raising corn and children.

  However, now seeing Jana was frightened for her life, a wisp of bravado entered his lungs. He would be strong now, no matter what end came.

  North’s radio buzzed. Moreno’s voice came through.

  “North, do you copy?” Moreno asked. “I have Governor Rillio on the line.”

  The governor’s dark face appeared on North’s infopad.

  “Lieutenant North,” Rillo spoke directly to North. “Lieutenant Johnson says you killed your commander and Jindal, as well. XO Moreno, however, says you are innocent. Can you help me out here? I am not sure who to believe.”

  “Sir, I witnessed Johnson do it, but that doesn’t matter now,” North spoke quickly, but evenly. “Johnson is part of a conspiracy to take over or destroy Magellan. They have hundreds of trained militia —”

  North could see the governor frowned. “That’s a bit of a stretch. Why don’t you turn yourself in, and we’ll sort all this out at the civilian justice center?”

  Moreno jumped in the radio conversation. “Sir, I have a confession from one of Johnson’s co-conspirators. This is no joke. We must take it seriously. Anderson and Jindal are dead, and we know Johnson was hoping to kill North and me, too, so he could completely control the military.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense, Rita,” the governor said.

  “I know, Thor,” Moreno said. “You are going to have to trust me on this one. We have some intercepted transmissions that also corroborate North’s story.”

  “I don’t know,” the governor said. “I need to confer with my police chief on the ground there. Hold the line.”

  North peered around the side of the desk. He saw Chief Allison Kim take a call on her radio. He also saw officers Franco and Ioder, both nervously fingering their stun guns.

  She looked over at Johnson, and then spoke excitedly back into her radio. North imagined she was incredulous that what she was hearing from the governor was true. Kim, an average looking 30-something, was close with J
ohnson. North had always suspected they were romantically involved.

  North’s radio crackled to life.

  “Lieutenant? This is the governor again. Listen, if Johnson and his men put down their arms, will you do the same and let the police bring the lot of you in?”

  North immediately bristled at the idea of going down to the brig with Johnson, but realized that the governor didn’t have a lot of options. If a mutual surrender could prove the real threat from Chasm to the governor in the shortest amount of time, North would have to do it.

  “XO?” North asked Moreno, who was still on the line.

  “Do it. I promise I’ll make sure this gets worked out, hopefully with no more deaths,” she said to North. Although the words seemed like an order, Moreno did not put the finality of command in her voice. North knew the decision was up to him.

  “Fine. We’ll put our guns down as soon as we see Johnson’s men disarm. Then Moreno can open the front door here, and we’ll all take a stroll to the brig. It hasn’t been that long since I visited anyway,” North agreed.

  “You are making the right choice, son,” Thor said. “I’ll signal Chief Kim to collect Johnson’s team’s weapons now and you put yours out on the floor in plain view. Hold the line.”

  North could see Johnson and Kim arguing, and then North realized their mistake. There was no way Johnson would agree to disarm. He reached for the radio to have Thor call Kim off, but he was too late.

  Kim was clearly frustrated with the uncooperative Johnson, but didn’t view him as a threat, North saw. He strained his ears, but he couldn’t hear the conversation through the plexiglass doors. Still, even though he couldn’t hear, it was clear Johnson wasn’t giving up his weapons.

  Kim reached to grab at Johnson’s rifle, but he stepped back and pulled the trigger, and shouted an inaudible command to his unit. They all opened fire.