“So how fast are we going?” Benny asked.
“One point five two percent the speed of light. We’ll get about twelve hours before we get kicked.”
“We could probably hit one point nine eight,” he said. “The pros can reach a solid two-point oh four for up to a day, but we won’t get anywhere near that.”
Yvonne closed her eyes. “That would knock twelve hours off the trip.”
“Is that enough?” Elizabeth asked. Davey heard the desperation in her voice. It was hard for him to imagine that Matthew was really in that much danger. He could take a bullet through the chest, but something as simple as an infection could take anyone.
“It might be or it might not,” Yvonne said. “The faster we get Matthew to Ganymede, the more likely he lives.” Her eyes snapped open and locked onto Benny. “How much do you know about this? Enough to actually pull it off?”
“Please,” Benny said. “I’ve been following the Rudaski Racing team since I was twelve and—” He broke off when he saw the looks everyone was giving him.
Davey eyed him. “Yes or no works better right now.”
“Then, yes.”
Yvonne stood to her feet, dinner forgotten. “Follow me to the hold. You’re going to tell me everything you know about frame-skipping. Everyone else get ready. This might be a long couple of days.”
AN HOUR LATER, THEY had their plan. If all went well, they would be at Ganymede in about thirty-six hours. Yvonne and Grace would handle the cockpit. Grace would be learning to fly the Sparrow as they went so that when Yvonne needed to rest or attend to Matthew, she would be able to take over. It made Davey a little uncomfortable to think about her flying the whole ship, but this was about the simplest it could be. The Sparrow would enter frameshift at one point nine eight percent the speed of light. When they were inevitably kicked out, less than four minutes later, the pilot would reaffirm their current heading, and as soon as the frameshift device had recharged, they would set out again.
Thirty-six hours of four-minute marathons.
In the hold, Abigail, Davey, and Benny would form a bucket team. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough hosing to run water all the way to forward engineering from the main water tank, so they would be filling buckets of water at the entrance and running them to the exposed heat sinks of the frameshift device. They’d sealed off as much of the machinery as they could with tarps so that runoff would flow down to the floor. Elizabeth and Candace had squeegees and mops to refill another pair of buckets to ensure the room didn’t fill with water as the hours wore on.
“Standby for the first frameshift,” Yvonne said over the intercom.
Elizabeth fidgeted nervously with her squeegee. “God, give us endurance. May it save my son’s life.”
“Amen to that,” Davey muttered. He was finding an even deeper respect for the woman. How she kept going without cracking under pressure was nuts. She’d lost her house, her farm, and now her son was in danger of dying.
The intercom crackled to life. “Frameshifting in three, two, one.” There was the familiar moment of disorientation as the Sparrow suddenly lurched to ludicrous speeds.
Abigail hefted her pre-filled bucket. “I guess I’ll go first.” Benny and Davey followed her into engineering. She approached the exposed heat sink like it was going to explode. “So is it hot already?”
“Warm,” Benny said. “Give it another thirty seconds.”
“None of this makes any sense,” Davey said. “Like I get that we weren’t prepared with enough hosing to just soak the thing, but racing teams really do bucket brigades? Why aren’t they better prepared.”
“Because it’s against the rules,” Benny said.
“I’ve never understood organized sports,” Abigail said. “They always have to do things the hard way. Like the whole dribbling thing in basketball.”
“I know,” Davey said, setting his bucket down and gesturing widely. “Like, just run down the court. Who thought that bouncing—”
“Time for the first bucket,” Benny interrupted.
Abigail lifted her bucket and carefully poured its contents across the heatsink. Water hissed down the ribbed fins of the meter-wide module. Most of the water ran down to the floor. “That’s it?” she asked.
“Refill and repeat,” Benny said. “Davey you’re next.”
Over the next two minutes, it became clear that the heatsink was getting hotter and hotter despite their efforts. The humidity rose rapidly, and Candace and Elizabeth tried to stay out of the way as they fought to keep the water from pooling on the floor. One of the first lessons Davey learned was to pour the water from as close as he could to keep scalding droplets from splashing him. Which meant also trying to keep his body as far away from what was starting to amount to an exposed cooking element.
“Thirty seconds to probable dropout,” Yvonne said over the intercom.
“So how do we know if we’re doing this right?” Elizabeth asked. “If we’re keeping the system cool enough?” The edges of the heatsink had started to glow, and it was enough to make everyone a little jumpy.
“We don’t,” Benny shouted from outside forward engineering. He poked his head back in with a freshly filled bucket of water. “We’ll give it an hour, and Yvonne can run a diagnostic from the cockpit. It’ll take a few minutes, but if we’re damaging the lattices, it’ll let us know.” There was the brief jolt as the frameshift dropped. “Now we get about forty seconds to rest,” he said.
“What have you gotten us into,” Davey said, stretching his arms. This would be fine for an hour or two. But for over a day?”
Yvonne must have left the intercom channel open. “We’re buying precious hours to save Matthew’s life. We’ll take some breaks and set the Sparrow at a more sensible speed when we must.”
He took a look at the strange crew gathered in the belly of the ship. Abigail ran on battery power, so she’d be good for a long time, and Elizabeth was as tough as a woman her age could be. He thought Benny would run on stubborn pride long past his own strength, but he was worried about Candace. He wasn’t sure why she was on oxygen, but he didn’t think that could possibly help.
Nothing for it. Matthew was dying of an infection that neither his body nor Yvonne’s medicine could fight off. They were all in. “We’ll
go as long as we can,” Davey said and meant it.
“Good,” Yvonne said. “Because we frameshift in five seconds.”
TWELVE HOURS IN, YVONNE called a two-hour break.
Elizabeth ignored her protesting arms and pulled herself up the ladder. She made a beeline for Matthew’s room. Yvonne had already beat her there. “How is he?” she asked.
Yvonne put aside the thermometer. “The fever is higher and the drain in his chest is now beginning to fill with pus.”
“I’m not dead yet,” Matthew said. He didn’t open his eyes, and his voice was distant.
“No,” Yvonne agreed. “But you are very, very sick.” She stood to her feet. “And I don’t know that I can do anything for you.” She left the room without another word.
Elizabeth covered her mouth with her hand and sat by the bed. She was too exhausted to cry. Instead, she took his hand and squeezed it. “Hang in there, Matthew. We’re trying so hard. Even Benny and Candace. She has to take a lot of breaks, but she’s doing what she can. We all are and...”
“Lot of trouble,” he said. “Over just me.”
“Your crew loves you, Matthew. Those kids, you’ve become their father. They need you, especially Davey, and they’ll do anything for you.”
“It wasn’t what I imagined when we found them stowed away.” He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably and winced. “Now I can’t imagine anything different.”
“I’m proud of you,” Elizabeth said. “You’re a good man.”
“There is none righteous, no not one.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re my son, not my priest. I’ll call you good if I want,” she said and smiled in spite of herself.
“Only if you promise to do the same.”
He opened one eye and cracked a sad half-grin. “I’ll see what I can do.”
THE SECOND LEG OF THE frame-skipping marathon was brutal on the entire crew. Lack of sleep and physical exertion was getting to everyone, even with Grace taking shifts with the bucket gang. Abigail did her best to pick up the slack as the others’ flagging strength began to fail, but there was only so much she could do. Eventually, they had to lower their speed by point oh three to reduce the heat load.
When they called a second break, nearly everyone passed out in minutes from sheer exhaustion. Yvonne took a pair of caffeine pills and downed a cup of coffee before marching to Matthew’s room.
He refused to rouse from the fitful slumber into which he’d fallen.
“I’ve messaged ahead to both the Vatican and University,” she said quietly. “Ultimately, we decided to take you to the Vatican hospital. They’re waiting on you and have a full team standing by to board the Sparrow the second we hit the ground.” She unbuttoned his shirt and stared at the sickly redness that had spread across his chest. “Every antibiotic in the colonies. Ready to go.”
“But I don’t know if you have that long. And I’m...” She choked up. “I’m sorry.”
She gave him a shot of a topical anesthetic just in case he woke up. Doubtful. Then she took a pair of medical scissors and one by one began to cut the stitches.
“I don’t know what else to do. I don’t even know if this will help.”
Scalpel in hand, she slowly cut through the wound and fully reopened it. The smell worsened and she was careful to only breathe through her mouth. Using her tools, she began to cut away some of the infected tissue at the edges of the wound.
“This is the last of my saline. There’s nothing left for the IV after this.”
She irrigated the wound with the precious fluid. Maybe this would slow the infection and buy Matthew a few more hours. She was rolling dice at this point and running out of surface to roll on. After ensuring that there was no residual fluid in his chest cavity, she lightly bandaged the wound. No more sutures. It would be open for the doctors at the Vatican.
Despite the heavy dose of caffeine, being up for almost two full days had taken its toll on her. She slumped into a sitting position beside his bed, her chin dipping until it rested against her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “for everything.”
A FEW HOURS LATER, they started one last frame-skipping session. It would be a short one as they were nearing Jupiter. They were ahead of the original schedule but not as fast as they had hoped. The time spent recuperating had eaten into their efficiency. Now, they would go until they could go no longer. Matthew’s pulse was faint, his breathing shallow.
Elizabeth and the kids had said their goodbyes.
But Abigail refused. Stubborn tears burned her eyes as she fell into her rhythm. For every bucket Benny and Davey poured, she did three. Her armor carried her on, untiring, their resting periods enough to keep its batteries charged.
But it wasn’t enough, was it?
What good was a suit of power armor if it couldn’t save the people she cared about? No matter how hard and long she worked, it wasn’t going to be fast enough. Matthew was going to die. He was going to die alone because they were all too busy trying to save him to actually be there when he went through death’s door.
She was aware of the tears slowly dripping down her face, probably leaving ugly dirty trails.
She passed Davey in the engineering compartment, and his eyes lit on her face. “Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. It’s...” He laid a hand on her arm, but she shook him off and he fell down in the brackish centimeter-deep water.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling him to his feet. “I just...”
“It’s fine. I know.”
An hour later, they arrived at Ganymede.
The rest of the hold crew lacked the strength to take the ladder, but Abigail was up it in a shot. “How is he?” she demanded as she entered the cockpit.
“Hanging by a single thread,” Grace whispered. She sat in the co-pilot’s seat, her knees hugged to her chest.
“Vatican Tower Control, this is SPW 5840,” Yvonne said. “I’m coming in hot. Please respond.”
“We see you, SPW 5840. Proceed to pad twelve. Emergency personnel are on hand. You’ve got ten thousand people praying for your safe arrival.”
Abigail stumbled to Matthew’s room and opened it. He was pale as death, and she thought the room stank of it. She gently took his hand. He wasn’t going to be alone anymore, and she wasn’t leaving his side until they made her. Soon the engines burned to slow their breakneck descent, and when they hit the ground with a heavier than usual thud, she still didn’t move.
Only when half a dozen strangers loaded with medical equipment barged into the room and insisted she remove herself, did she let go of his hand. Twenty minutes later, they were moving him by gurney to the hospital. Abigail followed, the only crew member left standing, the only one able to be there for their captain.
It was a lonely and terrible hour in the waiting room. She dozed and dreamed of restless searches for something she had forgotten. She knew it was the most important thing, but it kept just beyond her knowledge, just beyond her ability to reach.
“Abigail, dear. Be at peace,” came a gentle voice, one she knew. She opened her eyes to warm brown hands on her arm. Bishop Elias had come from Antioch. The weight of it all fell on her at last, and she broke and wept freely as the old man wrapped his arms around her.
Chapter 9: Splintered Bonds
I will never cease to be amazed at both the astounding resilience and utter fragility of the human body. We are capable of amazing feats of endurance, capable of being driven to the point of death and yet survive. But even the strongest may be felled by disease or simple injury. Despite the greatest of our advances in science, some die when they should live.
We have never outrun the tragedy of mortality that haunts us, nor shall we ever. Not even Moses could help us there. How could he, when it seems even he was mortal?
The fairness of these things is never in question. If there are rules to this game, we did not make them and are subjugated to their tyranny.
Yet those same rules give us breath and allow us to live our lives. They allow the babe to both cry in pain and be nurtured in love. The cold and cruel universe harbors our spark of life in this quiet corner of the Milky Way against all likelihoods. This terrifying fact is one that we must accept in a manner not that different from faith, else it drive us to nihilism.
Mark Mallick
Pediatrician, Freeport 3
Died 132 AM
HE LIVED. BARELY.
It was three days before the hospital would allow more than one of them into the intensive care unit where Matthew wandered through dreams beneath the veil of consciousness. Two days further before he began to stir beyond minimal alertness. One quiet afternoon nearly two weeks after they arrived on Ganymede, when he was finally moved to a normal room, Abigail took the kids with her to visit him. Yvonne and Elizabeth had spent the morning there, and Candace and Benny planned to go say hi to him sometime after dinner.
They were taking visiting rights very seriously in their determination not to leave Matthew alone.
As they walked through the halls, Abigail wrinkled her nose in disgust at the hospital’s bland white walls. “You’d think they’d make this place a little cheerier. A little bit of color would go a long way.”
“Imagine if you hated the color of your hospital room,” Grace said. “Like if it was mustard yellow.”
“Why would you paint a hospital mustard?” Davey asked, frowning.
“I don’t know. It was just an example.”
The pair of armed Swiss Guardsmen parted when they reached Matthew’s door. “And I’m sorry I brought it up,” Abigail said as she knocked. There was no an
swer, so she carefully pushed the door open. Matthew was out cold, campero over his face and snoring lightly. Grace snickered and closed the door behind them. “Don’t wake him,” Abigail whispered. “We’ll wait.”
Davey had come prepared with the massive book he’d been lugging around. Abigail wasn’t quite sure what had possessed him to dig into the Iliad and the Odyssey of all things, but he’d been making a steady dent this week. Grace hadn’t brought anything, but she turned on the screen, muted it, and flipped it to the channel the hospital had playing endless old movies. Not very good ones. They were probably just the cheapest stuff they could show that wouldn’t offend the sensibilities of the legions of devout Catholics around here.
Abigail leaned against the wall and yawned. She still hadn’t caught up on the last bit of sleep from their desperate flight to Ganymede. She glanced at Matthew and tried to unwind the knots of anxiety her stomach was in these days. It had been so close. The very brink of death from what the doctors had said. A few more minutes and he’d have been beyond their help. Life without Matthew, the Sparrow. It had nearly all come undone. And she was so stupid and emotional when the old bishop found her alone in the waiting room. Thank God, no one else had been around to see that. Grace had been giving her a hard enough time lately as it was.
Matthew sneezed under his hat and then groaned in pain and almost came up out of the bed with clenched teeth.
“You okay?” Grace said, at his side in a moment.
He leaned back and set the hat aside. “That hurt. A lot. Remind me to never sneeze again.”
“How are you feeling?” Abigail asked.
“The same as every other time someone asks me,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m having the time of my life.”
Injured Matthew was even grumpier than usual. Maybe it was the pain medication making him so sarcastic. “We know,” Abigail said softly.
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