After a rather anti-climactic lunch of vitabars and food in tubes, Francesca and her fellow merchant marines donned pads and sparred. She was pleased to discover that with combat in space raw strength was no advantage and finesse was everything, which meant she was in her element. Kick. Slash. Spin. Thunk. She rapidly dispatched guys that she would have thought twice or three times about taking on back on Earth. Her capabilities seemed to be freed from limitation; not by her sex, not by her size, not by her strength. If she was only limited by her imagination she might finally have chance to become invincible.
Francesca imagined herself finally becoming superhuman, like in the comics and in her head, but this time for real. If she wanted to walk on the ceiling like Da Girl Fly there was no problem with that. Pick up anything and throw it like the Bitch, a little more difficult because it would also throw her, but then again, she also could do it anytime of the month.
And there was the tech they made up for combat in space; it would put Batgirl to shame. Francesca had always been good with gear because it was the great equaliser whereas the boys would forget to use it because they thought they were badass enough already, but when fighting with her this was a fatal mistake.
And of course, there was the No G dropstick, non-sparking because of the high oxygen atmosphere. After all the training, a dropstick felt like a part of her body and was a much more powerful appendage than a dick. When a dick ran up against dropstick it always lost, poor thing. Maybe that was useful in some situations, but she’d rather have a dropstick. And then there were these wrist mounted web-shooters that were actually better than the ones Spiderwoman had, that would spin out these steel-silk wires tipped with this nano-velcro that could hook into nearly anything and would let go just when they needed too because they had direct neuro-links into her arms. Having the custom micropores drilled into her hand had stung like a bastard but had been worth it.
And then there was flying, always the specialty of elite superputas like Andromeda who got a free pass on gravity. Up here everyone had that power, but not everyone knew how to use it. Francesca learned early. The trick was to throw other stuff and let the flying take care of itself. There was this cool neuro-app that she downloaded that would superimpose lines on her vision of the trajectories of anything she’d throw and also the anti-trajectories where it would throw her. She trained with it but then stopped using it after her body got the hang of it and it was making her go too much up in her head.
The best neuro-apps Francesca found were the ones that would paint virtual Avatars over her body. Girls on Earth would use these to pretend to have great clothes and asses when they couldn’t afford them. There was an endless supply of these and she checked out the heroine range, having great fun exploring the options. Soon though these became confining and so Francesca designed one of her own, Nagualita, who was like a cross between Shamaness and Cat Woman. Just by thinking her body would change into any animal spirit, but she also got to have all the nasty gear and the hot stretch suit.
Doing this made Francesca sad and think of Elena and their superheroes. Why did she keep doing this and bringing herself down? The only superpower she couldn’t have was the one to turn back time and change everything on one day, and that wasn’t one being in Space could help her with.
“You okay?”
It was Raoul, who she had been ecstatic to find crewing the lunar transport when she boarded it at the end of her training. Dark liquid eyes, emotional Aquaman, a man of dreams. Too good really which was the whole problem.
She’d experimented with sex in Space with a couple of the other grunts, which was a whole other dimension in mind blowing, but she only picked the stupid ones and stopped playing around when it became apparent that casual sex wasn’t a good idea when you were going to be locked up in space with the losers for the long trip to Tsuchinshan. It was a little messy extricating herself from those mistakes, but these guys were thankfully rough enough to take it and leave it.
Raoul was a whole other thing, and it pissed her off to have him see her cry.
After their training in zero-G at the Earth orbital space station the new recruits had joined seasoned Comsec, including Raoul, on-board the Lunar Ferry to the moon, where they would wait for the freighter from Tsuchinshan to drop of its precious cargo of ice and collect them.
“We’re sure to have a lot of room to ourselves on the ferry,” joked Raoul, in that way of his that suggested a good use for that room without actually moving to seal the deal. He could be so frustrating that way. In any case, there wasn’t a lot of room.
As the Tsuchinshan freighter stayed parked, rocket after rocket arrived bringing a horde of construction workers. By the time it headed out their asses were crammed so tightly together that if she ever tried to grab Raoul’s ass she’d probably grab somebody else’s instead. Three days of that, sitting in those damn chairs that wouldn’t recline without causing the jerkface behind you to bitch about it. And then it took another whole day to shuttle them all down to the Moon.
The Moon. What could she say about that? Who would have thought someone like her would be going to the Moon? It wasn’t until Francesca had bounced across the powdery ground to the Luna City airlock with the Earth floating overhead that it really sunk in. She had to stop herself from just falling over in amazement. The quarters were tight but the view, as she dropped off to sleep, was incredible.
Raoul and Francesca got a jump on their shift by waking early, a habit they had gotten into to sneak in a little quality conversation, which was a happy way of saying they hadn’t gotten started up with sex. With Raoul, Francesca was okay to take it or leave it; the important thing was spending time with him.
“Hey Geek.”
She should never have told him about the comics.
“At least I read.”
“Why do you mock the illiterate, mi cielo?”
His sky. She was all over that. Francesca stuffed her mouth with corn flakes and pretended he didn’t exist.
“You crunch so intently, you know that?”
She crunched and smiled, spraying soggy flakes as she answered. “It’s better than those tasteless bricks they usually feed us. Let me enjoy this.”
“Life is to be lived.”
Then why don’t we stop playing games? The answer. Because playing them is way too much fun.
“Salvador. Ferriz.” Stony, their butt ugly ComSec unit sarge called over as he came in.
“Who, us?”
They were the only ones in the mess.
“No, them,” Stoney pointed to the empty room, “you guys sec level five?”
“Yeah. I mean at least I am,” answered Raoul proudly.
“I’m nine.”
Raoul tripped on that. “Wow, a licence to kill.”
“Only the people I love.”
“What the hell? Shovel that food down and follow me,” Stony turned, expecting them on his tail.
Francesca gulped down her bowl, trying not to look at Raoul because it would be all over her if she laughed.
“I feel somehow inadequate,” he said as he tipped his unfinished bowl into the Terrapod chute.
That almost did it.
They quick-stepped to catch up with Stony, Francesca dribbling milk off her chin. They followed him out by the rear airlocks where they fitted back into their space suits.
“What’s the brief?” Francesca radioed to Stony once they were in a buggy rolling out away from lock. It was weird that they hadn’t been given one.
“I’ll tell you soon.”
It must be something so secret they didn’t want anyone listening in on. Francesca grinned. It always felt good when she was in on things that others weren’t.
Once they’d gone through a tunnel and must’ve been out of range where the bluetooth could be picked up, Stony pointed out another buggy loaded up with a tank as they caught up to it.
“We’re escorting that.”
“What is that?” asked Raoul.
“Enough
antimatter to take out a good hunk of the moon. So, you’ll keep a good eye out for anyone who might want to disturb the load. We don’t anticipate that, but the job safety analysis requires us to baby sit. My understanding is that we are mainly around to handle those.” Stony pointed to some bucket shovels in the rear compartment.
“You need a five sec level to dig out a bogged buggy?”
“No Ferriz, you need it to know about the antimatter.”
Yeah, about that? Francesca knew enough not to ask questions that were stupid because there wouldn’t be an answer.
As they bumped on for hours Francesca prayed that the suspension in the antimatter buggy worked better. She and Raoul passed the time trying to wig each other out with crazy ‘it’s the end of the world’ faces until Stony stopped them with a stern look, which was even more hilarious. Loping down rolling hills they descended into a long dark plane and turned East, skirting the edge of it.
“Mare Frigoris,” Stony announced. “We’re near the North Pole of the moon.” For some reason, even through her thermometer hadn’t changed much, it felt colder knowing that.
An hour or so later, they entered a complex of tents that looked like dunes rising out of the regolith.
“Camo,” explained Stony, “Rigged so you can’t see this through telescopes.”
Talk about commercial-in-confidence; it looked like a military operation. Which made them the military.
Stony hopped out and motioned for them to follow, stopping first to talk to the buggy operator, a stubble headed dude who kept going on about what he was going to do with his bonus. Then they followed Stony over to a rise towards some person overseeing whatever it was they were building.
The guy greeted them with a friendly salute.
“Hey. Come up here to check this out.”
The voice sounded familiar, and it took a few minutes for it to sink in that they were actually standing there with August Bridges, who was only the most famous guy alive.
“Now that you and your crew have brought in the antimatter, we get to see if this thing actually works.”
What if it didn’t? Raoul pulled another facing-total-and-utter-annihilation face when Francesca looked over her shoulder. She returned a contorted dead-already face. A crew commenced rolling the antimatter tank into place, bolting it onto some kind of machine wrapped around a huge donut-shaped machine. She looked back at August and thought she saw tears welling in his eyes. Hopefully it was some kind of an allergy. There was a countdown and then this weird flash, red and blue at the same time, and then, well, nothing. Maybe the thing didn’t work.
She looked over to convey her sympathies to the Boss, and was surprised that, instead of being down, that he was ecstatic. He bounced into the air and hugged her fiercely.
“Hey man,” Raoul objected protectively.
“It worked. It worked. We did it!”
Francesca looked sceptically beyond the embrace at the donut whatever-it-was. After the light-show nothing seemed to have changed.
“Uh. Are you sure?”
August turned around, all smiles.
“Well, for starters, we’re still here.”
That didn’t sound too great. “Yeah. Okay, but...”
“I’ll show you. Follow me,” and August Bridges hopped down the rise expecting them all to follow, which they did of course.
Francesca had expected to see something more interesting closer up but was disappointed. Besides a shimmer that looked like an aurora around the rim, the donut hole itself just looked like a hole. She couldn’t quite make out what August kept asking them to look at more closely.
“Watch this,” proclaimed August as he climbed up a step ladder and jumped over the rim, standing in the circle on the other side. So what? He was just standing there.
“Look at the rim side on,” whooped August, bouncing around like a kid who wanted his parents to give a shit.
They all backed up and bent over and saw the most amazing thing. When she looked at the ground under the rim it was lower by exactly the width of the donut rim than she had expected from looking in from the top. August Bridges’ legs were prancing around down there, while his top parts above the rim seemed to hover a meter higher than they should be. It was like one of those magic tricks where they chop the assistant in half and pull the boxes apart. Except this was a better trick because when you bent to look lower the leg part went further up the body, and when you stood up the top half extended back down. August used to be a regular height, but now he seemed tall enough to play forward for the Lakers.
When August climbed back over he was all good spirits.
“That - that is going to change everything.”
Then he hiked over to where the crew had assembled and gave an emotional speech, about how, because of their efforts and their discretion, they had made something that would make them all heroes for all who would follow. About how they were like the gods who had brought fire to human beings. About how now humanity would outlive even the burning out of the Sun, and how it would be the destiny of themselves and their children to inherit not just the Earth but the whole universe. And it was all due to them.
Raoul listened enraptured, but Francesca couldn’t help looking around during a speech. It was an old habit from having to listen to too many idiots lecture her in her life. The thrill of what she had seen was taking a while to digest, it was just too amazing. Scanning the horizon, she picked out some dude out by the edge of the scramble zone she’d help set up to stop unauthorised transmissions. She zoomed in on him with her neuroview vision enhancer app. What was he doing? Standing there pointing his chest out in a weird way. Zooming in further she picked, the guy had a transmission dish secured to his breast. If he was legit, Francesca reasoned, he wouldn’t be hiding that shit and wouldn’t be standing a sprint away from where he could send out a copy.
Francesca kept her face sideways from the guy and started to slowly shuffle to the back of the pack. Like she was just trying to get a better view of how awesome August Bridges was. She jockeyed slowly around the back until she could gauge the distance she’d have to cover to intercept him on the shortest route out of the scramble zone.
He noticed her and then that was that. Francesca charged. Channelling her inner Gazelle to juice her metabolism into high gear, she cut a line to where she knew he’d run. With meters to spare she slid under his feet which smacked him into a roll that very nearly ended outside the scramble zone. The guy, unused to the low gravity, couldn’t compete with a seasoned Space chick such as herself. She picked him up by the boot and flipped him, using a big moon rock to stop her own equal and opposite flip. The guy looked funny bouncing off his head while she grabbed his kicking feet holding him upside down.
By then Raoul had got there, her hero, followed by some other ComSec. The guy stopped flailing because it was clear he wasn’t going anywhere. August Bridges was there too. Francesca thought he would be pissed off, but instead he couldn’t stop thanking her. It was unbelievable. The only guy in the universe who really counted these days and he was all over her with admiration. As someone who had always been a nobody, Francesca didn’t know how to take it. It felt pretty awesome at the same time. Raoul tried to do the talking for her, which sort of pissed her off, especially because he did it badly. She couldn’t hold it against him that he wanted a little bit of her limelight to rub off on him. Who wouldn’t want some of that?
And then August Bridges decided to hitch a ride back with them, like they were old friends or something. He chatted with them, but then went quiet until they were halfway back when he startled Francesca by suddenly talking. He talked and talked and talked and Francesca didn’t mind listening. It was an amazing story, and especially the bit where the final message came in and August had to develop it in secret because others would have shut it down. Of this Francesca had no doubt. People could be petty little shits.
She really had to admire this guy. As far as her life was concerned people like him just didn’t exi
st. As the time passed she noticed she felt a bit disappointed that Raoul seemed to be as totally into August and his story as she was, but she wasn’t sure why she felt that. At the same time, it made her respect Raoul even more, and created this shared moment when they had both been in on something truly big.
As they rolled into Luna City, August stopped and looked them up and down carefully and asked, “You are headed to Tsuchinshan?”
“Yes, we are,” answered Raoul.
“Good. Out of the way. Not a word of this to anyone. Okay? If anyone finds out it could all be shut down.”
And of course, they agreed, not just because August was the boss, but because they had both gotten hooked. It made Francesca feel proud to be part of this story. It was one of the first things in her life that she could feel was genuinely amazing and not generally moronic. And August could trust her. She had kept his secret about the clone’s covert downloads, hadn’t she? It was a fair bet that if she had blabbed the whole project could have been derailed. And she’d nabbed that jerk before he had a chance to give the game away. So, in a way she’d had an important part to play, and, better yet, it was one that only she would ever know anything about. For the first time in her life, Francesca felt completely proud. Nobody could take this moment away from her.
As they blasted upwards from the moon towards their hook up with the Tsuchinshan freighter, Francesca wondered if any of this might in any way be of any use to Elena. She couldn’t see how it could, but maybe, for a little while, that didn’t need to matter so much.
Chapter 16 - August
The glistening panels of silicon and germanium bent under the impact of the cosmic wind. The blinding radiation filling space funnelled from the panels down into the gut of the machine generating intense magnetic fields. These fields sifted and divided the more direct blast of particles entering the wide horn at the front of the ship, accelerating and colliding them, before harvesting an essential few into large magnetic 'bottles' at the cooler stern. The antimatter factory performed its work motionlessly, the pressure of the sun's might was countered by the competing gravitational pulls of the sun and the crater pocked planet Mercury below. Occasionally engines would stir to keep the orbit perpendicular to the torrent of light.
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