Sanctuary Thrive

by Ginger Booth

  Sass boggled. “Why is that better than the courier ship carrying it surface to surface?”

  “Fuel dominates the cost, generating the warp pattern. That and lifting and landing anything in Denali’s gravity well. But once the gate is open, you can throw unlimited mass through it.”

  “For 23 minutes maybe,” Teke quibbled from offscreen.

  Cope shot him a look. “Yeah, well, at the moment, we got a limited armada. Not to mention stuff worth sending across space.”

  “Farmer’s Joy,” Teke quibbled. “Tourists.”

  “Bakkra,” Cope added. “Microbes are a sticking point, from Denali. Every shipment needs to be rendered dead. Except Farmer’s Joy drugs include live bacteria. How to kill one and not the other is a challenge. Any noxious substances on Sanctuary?”

  “Yes, in fact,” Darren supplied. “We have a nanite-murdering compound.”

  Cope recoiled. “That’s fun.”

  “Not a problem to Denali,” Teke argued from his right. Denali didn’t use nanites. “You could start a triangle trade route.”

  Cope offered him a friendly backhand punch for that suggestion. “You’re talking to the geeks, Sass. We don’t make the business decisions. Fortunately. I suck at it, and Teke is worse.” He ignored Ben’s protestations that Prosper operated at a profit.

  Sass clarified, “The nanite-murdering compound is isolated in a lake. Should be safe for cargo transport. I’m still floored. This is an actual possibility? You’re considering coming to Sanctuary?”

  “I’m not,” Cope admitted, and received a revenge backhand from Teke, and a Boo! from Ben on the shuttle. “It would be great to see you, though. What?” he snarled at Teke. “She understands. I’ve got three kids. Abel has two. Sass, tell him you understand!”

  “I understand,” she intoned piously, followed by a grin.

  In the end, the probe orbited Sanctuary 8 times, not 10. Cope got his error bars. Sass reported each pass, and barely left her office. She enjoyed the hours to the hilt, visiting with every person on Prosper for the test and re-wedding. She even talked to each of the five kids, Cope’s three and Abel’s two. She caught up with Jules, another major surprise like Teke. Both teenagers when she lived with them, they’d grown impressive.

  In the wee hours of the morning, the probe streaked briefly into the thin atmosphere near the horizon, and Sass was sorry to say goodbye.

  Wish you were here.

  Though by now she loved her new crew, too.

  41

  “Thanks for the lift, Remi!” A few days later, Sass and Clay and their picnic basket crowded into the shuttle’s compact airlock to cycle out.

  Sass declared time for a holiday. Things were going well for a change. Hugo reported that he’d tested the lake water on removing Shiva’s control on people inside the colony, and the results were ‘good enough.’ With that settled, finding another way to remove the nanites was moot. Darren was freed from his unhappy lack of nanite progress to help Remi finish repairing the ship at last.

  The captain and first mate could afford to take a break.

  For today, Clay chose to borrow three-wheelers from the Loonies to show Sass a good time out on the range. She conceded their relationship probably needed a dose of Clay’s idea of a good time – danger sports. She hoped she didn’t die more than once today.

  Poor Remi, Sass thought unrepentant. The third officer was a bit daunted at being left in command. But after this long on the ship, the captain considered it overdue. She had every confidence her creative flock would find trouble to get into. And Remi would get them back out of it.

  They cycled into the Loonie garage, as Remi took off. To Sass’s surprise, Ling met them just inside the lock, looking sharp and spry.

  “Ha!” the Loonie mayor said, grinning at Sass. “Clay didn’t tell you!”

  Sass looked to her partner in question, annoyed.

  “Your story, Petunia,” Clay invited, smiling. “You tell it.”

  The elderly woman folded her arms. “Hugo Silva’s band of brats caught me with their water pistols a few days ago. Shiva’s damned nanites in my brain died within hours, and I could think straight for the first time in years. Did you realize that, captain? That the AI hadn’t released us after all?”

  “No! Well, maybe. You still didn’t seem to be thinking clearly. I feared y’all were out of practice.”

  Major-and-mayor Petunia Ling nodded. “Certainly that. I confiscated one of the water pistols and dosed Lumpkin and Tharsis. Then I found my old waterworks engineer and spritzed him, plus our football team for muscle. Once their brains were back online, we contaminated the colony’s water supply with that chemical for a day to free everyone, newborn on up.”

  Sass’s jaw dropped. “Just for the Loonies?”

  “Hell, no. All three boroughs. Lumpkin and Tharsis would have dithered forever.”

  “You did it! Congratulations! The colony must be a madhouse.”

  “It is indeed,” Ling said with relish. “I don’t envy Tharsis. Lumpkin and I stuck him with setting up new communications. He’s arguing with Shiva to produce and deliver external devices like yours. And – ha! – Lumpkin has to figure out child care. She’s motivated. All three of hers moved into her one-room apartment, and they’re driving her nuts. As they should.”

  “As they should,” Sass agreed, grinning. “And you?”

  “Facilities,” Ling replied. “Restoring them to our control instead of Shiva’s. Putting everyone back to work. It’s good for them! I ran facilities most of my career.”

  “I’m so happy for you!” Sass encouraged. “And Clay’s a rat for not telling me.”

  Ling laughed. “I’ll let you enjoy your picnic. Two wheelers, extra air canisters, as promised. Have a great time! And soon, we need to talk about the future of this colony. Won’t be this week.”

  “I understand completely,” Sass assured her.

  The harried mayor left them with a wave. They changed from their pressure suits into the lighter navy blue uniforms the Loonies wore, compatible with the face mask air supply system of the wheelers. Then they let themselves out onto the bright yellow landscape to play.

  Once outside, Sass double-checked. “You didn’t tell her where we were going, right?”

  “Of course not.” Clay fished out his tablet and did a comms check, to make sure Remi could hear them if they called for help. Not that they expected to. His plan had them pitching a tent overnight and roughing it. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Clay liked sleeping on hard ground far better than she did.

  He re-stowed the tablet in the wheeler’s sporty little trunk with his p-suit. “I hope you’re happy with yourself. You caused complete chaos in a perfectly controlled society.”

  “The guilt is crushing,” Sass assured him. “Though I wish we could watch the chaos. Maybe head into the colony…”

  “Veto,” Clay pronounced. “This is Hugo and Ling’s triumph, not yours. Let them call us when they’re done inventing a new world order. Or get the plumbing sorted out, at least.”

  “Point. Ready to roll?”

  He flashed her a boyish demonic grin, then tore out ahead of her up the closest rise, at maximum speed.

  His lugged balloon tires left her in a cloud of yellow dust. She belatedly bent to study the controls. The settings were similar to the horses, substituting gears for gaits. The brakes puzzled her, until she realized the grips on the handlebars took care of that. Unlike Clay, she hadn’t ridden snowmobiles in her youth. The snow had vanished by then. Soon she was experimenting her way up the hill, to the right of his route to avoid his spume of dust.

  As she reached the flatter top of the rise, she revved her bouncy tricycle up to max to see if she could get it to spin donuts in the dirt. An unseen rock flipped the wheeler. For a split second, she thought she was doomed to break her neck as her ride landed on top of her. But no, the wheeler had gyros! The trike hastily rolled her upward before landing to bounce twice, tires still spinning madly.
The third time she landed, the lug tread caught purchase. She finished with a tight turn, laughing out loud.

  She paused to look for Clay, hoping for applause. But no, he’d continued on without a backward glance. He lay blotto a few hundred meters down the rise and up the next one, his wheeler upside-down beside him. Broke your neck, didn’t you?

  She gunned her wheeler to reach him, then righted his before leaning down to check on him.

  “Want any help?”

  “It hurts if I move,” he confessed. “Check my airline for me?”

  She unkinked his hose and set the machines down to idle. They sported cute little wing-like solar collectors, so she unfolded those to recharge a bit.

  Then she settled beside him with their picnic box. “Want anything to eat?” She fished out water bottles, and carefully gave him a sip, moving his breath mask temporarily out of the way.

  “No chewing. No talking. Feel free to play while I heal.”

  “Nah, I’ll keep you company.” She gazed around the landscape. The dust in this valley wasn’t yellow, she decided, only tinged by the sunlight. A gravel wash coming down from a saddle ridge to the left reminded her of glacial moraine. Though she’d seen little evidence of much water on this world. If she pretended the yellow was green, the terrain reminded her of a mountain pasture in the Rockies. Pictures, anyway. She’d never left the Northeast before leaving Earth forever.

  “I was talking to Husna’s team. They think this place is a paradise for terraforming, compared to Mahina.”

  “That wouldn’t take much.”

  “True. Water is a problem, obviously. But Husna thinks she’s found water pockets down deep. Drill a few. Get ozone spires going on them. Wait 20 years. In the meantime, dome over some landscape and start building soil. They even have clouds. Field crops would take some bioengineering to cope with the orange sun. Or just supplement with star drive light.”

  “You don’t believe that’s the right move for them. Not if this Sylvan or Cantons is an option.”

  “If they’re not brain-dead, I might tempt them back to Aloha.”

  “Not Aloha to Sylvan?”

  She considered it, but shook her head. “Mahina is crap land, but we paid blood for it. It’s our crap land.”

  He chuckled, then complained that chuckling made his neck and back hurt.

  “Ready to go visit Loki?” she asked archly. “Or do you plan to heal up and break yourself again? Gotta say, waiting for you to heal twice in one day seems excessive.”

  “I died.”

  “Congratulations. I don’t understand why you do that on purpose. And I don’t want to.”

  He was quiet for a time, then explained, “Your life really does flash before your eyes. But it’s a different life each time. Like what’s important to me has changed, yet stays the same.”

  “This is getting deep,” she complained.

  “Don’t you ever wonder what’s really important to you, Sass?”

  “I know damned well what’s important to me. So do you.”

  But did she? As he fell quiet again, she considered how value came and went over the years, what she felt was worth living for, fighting for. Oddly, she couldn’t answer that question at the moment. Before her son died, she would have said him. Since then, for decades she would have said Mahina. But now?

  In irritation, she rose and dusted herself off. “I’m not made for deep thought. Better to keep moving. You healed yet?”

  He raised a hand for help levering himself up. Then he grimaced as he rubbed his neck. “Next up, Loki. Can I ride behind you? The horses had a come-along line… Found it.”

  They arranged their wheelers and he mounted behind her, arms around her waist, cuddly and comforting with his head resting on her shoulder, face down in his breath mask. She took off at a leisurely pace, weaving through the scenery. One of the shallow valleys featured those artful sculpted buttes. Another ridge offered a long view of the lake, and the sparkling colony dome nestled beyond a headland.

  The sun was lowering, around 14:00 hours today, when they reached a rise above Loki’s place.

  “I don’t understand,” she murmured. “Clay, check the map.”

  Because there was an old pitted courier ship there, much-seamed from space repairs, similar to Thrive’s scars. Loki’s ship sat like an old RV or mobile home, parked so the long side faced the lake. But dust drifted up against its sides, blocking the trapdoor, the cargo ramp, and the door airlock, facing uphill. As she drew closer, she saw bits of wall and a collapsed greenhouse, as though once upon a time the homeowners tried to make a nice little yard. Those were half-buried by blown dirt, too.

  “This is it,” Clay confirmed. “You called ahead?”

  “Of course.” Well, she’d left a message. But Loki confirmed with a text. Sass parked the wheelers neatly, avoiding a broken lawn chair. They dismounted and unfurled the solar wings. Their comms couldn’t call Loki directly, only Thrive, so she didn’t bother.

  Using her boots and gloved hands, she dug the dirt off the door-style airlock. Clay retrieved the picnic, then bent to help her with it. She expected Loki would open the door and greet them before they were done. But the place seemed so still, deserted. She spotted a few grave markers off to the side, simple crosses of extruded foamcrete.

  At last they clambered into the airlock, which was still powered. For safety reasons, a small airlock on a vessel didn’t normally require an access code to enter, only permission to pass into the interior. So they entered with no difficulty. The ship, the Beagle, still had power, though it was eerily quiet.

  “Computer, please tell Loki that Sass Collier and Clay Rocha are here.”

  Rather than reply, the ship lit the green light to say the air was good to breathe, and a click announced the inner door unlocked. Lights came on in the hold beyond. Sass and Clay took off their breath masks, ready to greet their host.

  A single inward breath was enough to drop Sass to her knees, paralyzed. Only her eyes could move, to see Clay in the same straits. Then she toppled slowly forward onto him as her world blacked out.

  42

  “What are you?”

  The question, mild and clinically detached, seemed to echo around Sass, coming from nowhere and everywhere. The voice was familiar. She opened gluey eyes onto an inexplicable scene. A dingy grey overhead – she was on a ship, not her own. A complex beam arched over her chest, replete with lights and sensors. This reminded her of an industrial-grade auto-doc, like the ones in the hospital at Mahina Actual, though no model she’d ever seen.

  She tried to raise a hand to rub her eyes clear, but found her wrists restrained. Naturally, she also tested her head, feet, and torso. Yes, that’s what a complete set of restraints felt like. Unlike the general public, Sass had sorry experience with this position. Her first time was back on Earth. At the police academy, the cadets role-played the perpetrators they aspired to apprehend.

  She licked her lips, and continued her visual survey until she looked to her extreme right, straining her eye muscles. A polebot stood there. But this one was as tall as a human, with four light arms to the familiar heavy one.

  “What are you?” the disembodied voice repeated. “I know you are conscious.” There – the voice came not from the polebot, but from a speaker grille above.

  “Shiva.” Clay sounded groggy to Sass’s left.

  And with a sinking feeling, she realized he was right. The experience in the airlock came back to her. “What have you done with Loki?” she demanded.

  Loki Greenwald’s southern drawl emanated from the same speaker grille. “Aw hell, Sass, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about –”

  His voice cut off, and Rosie the Shiva’s even tones resumed. “Captain Lief Greenwald of the Beagle died one year after he reached Sanctuary, in the bed where you now lie. He was confined to that bed for the last five years of his life, subjective. He broke his neck on Sylvan during an encounter with a wild beast called a smurf.”

  Shiva illu
strated this by projecting images onto a ceiling-mounted display, no doubt installed for Lief Greenwald to watch entertainment. An image of the masked man raised a fist of triumph in a clearing in an odd-looking wood, presumably on Sylvan. Followed by an image of the same man, heavily bandaged and secured to a bed in a med-bay that offered two gurneys to Thrive’s one. Sass hungered to study that image. But it was quickly replaced by a picture of a vicious smurf, hissing from a misshapen bough, in a tree of mixed-pastel foliage reminiscent of a weeping willow. A final image showed a closeup of the little graveyard outside. Sass winced to see that each cross bore a name, including one for Greenwald.

  “What are you?” Shiva repeated, her pleasant tone no different the third time than the first, creepily absent of malice.

  “You know who we are, Shiva,” Sass countered. “I am Captain –”

  “I did not ask who you are,” Shiva corrected. “I asked what you are.”

  “We are human beings,” Clay growled. “And you harmed us, in violation of your prime directives!” Shiva already killed seven of their crew. But Shiva justified that as fighting off an intruder.

  “Incorrect,” Shiva noted. “You are not human. You died, falling off a wheeler. And you self-repaired. Therefore you are a biological android.”

  Drat. Sass realized with a sinking feeling that there was nothing to prevent Shiva from installing communications in a wheeler, whether or not the AI had ever done so before. Everything she and Clay said on their outing today, the AI overheard. She guiltily reviewed, but didn’t think they’d discussed their Shiva problem.

  “I am not an android,” Sass lied. “I am a nanite-enhanced human being.”

  Clay added, “A human being plus, is still a human being. Thus you are violating your prime directive. Release us at once.”

  “Captain Collier, admit that you are an android,” Shiva countered. “Or I will kill him.”

  “Go ahead,” Sass replied.