The Fortress at the End of Time

by Joe M. McDermott

  For months, we pushed on, and I saw the enlisted quarters for the first time through a work crew. I had known, intellectually, the conditions they lived in, but I did not realize how spartan it was until I saw it firsthand. My humble quarters with a bed and a desk and a private bathroom were a palace to the long communal room. Opposite of the hangar bay, the enlisted had cots with cubicle walls in a long row. On one side of the room, potted plants and algae tanks under lights improved the air quality in the large chamber, with a fan constantly blowing over the greenery into the main room. Women were sealed off with large curtains, though, and the fresh air never reached into their side. They had a cot and a locker. The male showers were all behind a wall on one side, and the female showers were all behind a wall on the other. It wasn’t a very sturdy wall, and curtains and bits of scrap metal had been rigged to reinforce female privacy behind their section of the long room.

  Sergeant Anderson was with me to escort me into the female side to check a bulkhead wiring issue underneath the female showers. Men were not permitted past the barrier without an escort—not even officers.

  “This is where you live?” I said, pointing to the long cubicle walls of men, where everyone was playing music on tablets too loudly, watching approved media on large screens that rolled around the floor like cubicle walls to whomever got the screen first after shift.

  “We have most volleyball practice here. The ceiling is as high as the garage, but there is no danger to mission equipment. We actually came up with the wall to the women’s side on our own. When I first got here, it was not done that way, but it has helped us to stay sane with all these men.”

  A thought occurred to me, then, regarding supply closets, and the lack of cameras in many of them. It did not involve volleyballs, or anything salacious.

  I went, after that work detail, to Wong’s office, near the prison cells where I would soon be spending much of my time. “This is unexpected. What can I do for you, Lieutenant Aldo?”

  Pulling up a map of the station on my tablet, I flagged a few supply closets where members of my staff had been sneaking off for some time to themselves, away from working cameras. I handed them across to Wong. Sealed rooms, presumably, but a little bit of minor locksmithing could open nearly any supply closet. It was part of their design in cases where maintenance had to get through, or there was some sort of emergency. The old ship was easier than the bubble attached to her hull on the other side.

  “I want to open up some rooms, very quietly. I don’t think Q needs to worry about what happens in them, considering that I will be in charge of their maintenance, and you will be in charge of door security and smoothing over HR. Thoughts?”

  “Who are they for?”

  “I want to give sergeants their own rooms, like us.”

  “Just the sergeants?”

  “For now,” I said. “I don’t understand why we can’t expand our living quarters a bit. We could give the enlisted roommates until they reach a certain rank. They still have no privacy in the showers, but at least they can close their eyes behind a door and have a little privacy.”

  “You know we are being recorded.”

  “I don’t think what I am suggesting is particularly subversive, or corrupt. I am not considering any bribes or favors. I want to improve morale, reduce suicides.”

  “So do I,” said Wong. “Nobody cares about clones except clones. A level of self-attrition is expected. It’s in the manual. They do not test the psychological fitness of enlisted personnel for conditions like this. You and I were tested.”

  “My background was unique. I was raised on a boat on the Pacific gyre. It is not unlike close quarters here. You?”

  “My family lived in a small apartment complex, with three families per unit. I shared a room with six other boys until I left for War College in Beijing. It is part of why we are chosen, yes? We have thrived in difficult living circumstances.”

  “I didn’t know that about you,” I said.

  He shrugged. “We have never been good friends, Ronaldo. The past is a galaxy away. Let’s go open some rooms and improve morale for soldiers here. We can set them up for female enlisted first. I don’t care about the sergeants. I care about the women. Two sergeants are women, and the other two women can share quarters behind a door that locks.”

  Together we selected the rooms least likely to draw the attention of other officers. We quietly put cots from old storage in them, and extra footlockers. The sergeants would each take a room. The two other enlisted women would share a private quarters. Wong insisted on one extra room, in case we needed to buy anyone’s silence with a private room.

  Upon completion, we quietly went up to the enlisted quarters, entering from the women’s side after a polite knock.

  The women there looked up, confused. Wong winked and pressed his finger over his mouth. He gestured for the women to follow us. I mimicked him, to encourage silence, with a finger over my mouth. Wong went looking for the ranking male sergeant on the other side, to let him know what was going on, and I opened the first room, pointing at the enlisted women. There were cots for them, with privacy screens created with boxes of ancient supplies. Once the door was closed, I spoke in a hushed tone.

  “This is the best we can do. You can get a break from the men for a while. If Q . . . I mean, the admiral finds out, it’s probably over, so keep it quiet. Sergeant Anderson, we are going to quietly upgrade you and Sergeant McAvoy to your own private quarters. It is odd in a station this big and empty that ranking enlisted soldiers have no private space.”

  Adebayo had a look of shock on her face. “The admiral does not approve?”

  “The admiral might approve if he knew about it,” said Wong, coming up the hall. “I’m certain HR would approve considering the circumstances. Why bother over trivial details like this.”

  “There are no explicit instructions against it,” I said. “Wong and I will get blamed, not you. I will show you your private room, and if you do not wish to stay in it, I will not be offended.”

  “The biotic crew is already pushed to the limit,” she said. “These are more rooms to monitor.”

  “I have already figured out the scheduling issues. It will be fine. We merely scale back one of the storage closets to a monthly check instead of a weekly, and move all the supply to another closet. We fill these rooms in that open spot instead. Private Giles, you can sweep the rooms yourself, yes? They are low population, low impact?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Sergeant Anderson, I appreciate your dutifulness. Have you ever had issues in the night with the men? I understand that sometimes it is hard to find real privacy.”

  She trembled and looked at her hands. I realized she was about to cry. I had not expected that. “Do not show me this so it may be taken away. Do not do that.”

  She left and went back to the women’s quarter, alone.

  That weekend, we had our third or fourth attempt at a water slide. It was rare to see the soldiers smiling, laughing, and I wondered what it must be like to see letters from their families, describing vacations in verdant lands, and marriages and children and this circling place, so far away from anything they remember, all gunmetal gray and fading plastic. The huge sheeting ran from one end of the hall to another, with biotic vacuums running to redirect the liquids into the pipes with the ancient soaps we used for extra lubrication. The man with the highest and fastest completion rate got the first run. Griggs, our engine man, was a hard worker, though I found him loathsome. He cheered and pounded his chest. He took a running start and dove, sliding as far as he could down the hallway. “Mark his path! Mark his path! Winner gets first run next time!” He slid deep past the vacuum rigs, dodging them as best he could while flopping on his stomach. He slid on, into the hallway as far as the soap would send him. To great cheers, we marked his spot in erasable wall marker. Next man had to try and beat the distance. It was goofy and wild and the enlisted cheered each other on. The cleanup afte
rward took an hour with all hands on deck. I took the numbers from the next three days of work to see if there were any improvements in completion rates. The first day, the work was slower. The second or third, it was as if nothing happened, and everyone continued on. The military could not measure joy.

  This was at the same time as the new admiral’s continuing effort to improve morale. The admiral brought Brother Pleo up on a direct data line for video confession and private meetings with any who wished to discuss their situation, theologically, ethically, etc., everything helps. I managed to skim time off the data line to actually see Amanda, and let her actually see me.

  Amanda connected with me in the monastery’s underground garden, under a vitex tree, bathed in red and green light. She was more beautiful than I remembered. I felt a great disconnect between this person I was seeing and looking at, and the person I had been writing every week.

  “Hello,” she said. “I see you.”

  “I see you,” I said. “You are more beautiful than I remembered.”

  “Oh, stop. I just got off shift in the orchard. It’s dark. I’m sweaty. It’s nice to see you, Aldo. I don’t even have a picture of you. We should exchange pictures.”

  “We should,” I said.

  We sat in silence, uncomfortably.

  “So . . .”

  “So . . .”

  “Any exciting adventures in the stars this week?” she said.

  “It is all quite secretive, I’m afraid. I’ve started a cabal with Captain Wong. We are recruiting. All very top secret, unless you’re in the cabal.”

  “I’ll pass. My father sends his greetings.”

  “The lighting is so strange. Has Brother Pleo been holding his confessions in that weird light?”

  “He thinks the sight of the tree is soothing,” she said, giggling. “But the purple glow is definitely not. You should alter the light of the confession room. Put in some yellow or green or something. Make it look different.”

  “I will put in a work order immediately.”

  I recall asking her about the desertion that nearly ruined me.

  She was coy about it. “If Jensen had remained there, in her posting, do you think she would have been effective?”

  “Define effective. She would have performed her duties adequately, I believe. What have you heard about her? Is she well?”

  “I believe so,” she said. “I’ve asked around, like you wanted. I hear that Jensen got a job quickly, and her boss is very rich. She’s out in one of the isolated houses, where someone can afford to build away from the monastery. Ex-military, for sure. They would probably know she’s a deserter.”

  “Do I know her employer?”

  “Probably before your time,” she said. “I don’t know exactly who it is.”

  “I don’t think Wong is going to spend much energy interrogating you, relax.”

  She snapped her fingers and pointed at me. “Hey, I’m on official business, by the way. One of my tasks is to negotiate some sort of mutual newsletter for both the station and the planet, to keep everyone connected to the news. Births and deaths, marriages. Stuff like that.”

  “We have only deaths up here.”

  “We could just send you our newsletter and you could forward it.”

  “I can do that.”

  “If you happen to hear about Jensen’s births, death, or marriage, I’d like to know that regardless. I’m due for a downcycle someday, if we can clear the taskboard enough. I want to talk to her.”

  “Sorry,” said Amanda. “I can’t let you spend any downtime with anyone but me. Come down. I miss you. It’s no fun windsurfing alone.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  Of all my sins, perhaps the greatest is what I did to Amanda, in the end, when I betrayed her. I don’t think forgiveness is possible for that.

  It wasn’t long after our friendly conversation that I felt the betrayal of lust for another, in its great sinfulness, unexpectedly. I was on a low deck, wearing leg braces, and prepping to dive into a tank to help Sergeant Anderson with a clogged pipe where some new biotic infestation had manifested, suddenly. We were going to blast it with acid and run it through so much algae the otherwise harmless plaque-causing organism that had evolved here would be dead and devoured by the natural systems of cleaning supplies, algae, and high heat. We were out of crewmen, who all had critical maintenance and no time for an emergency biotic infection in a pipe. Instead of reaching out to Wong or Obasanjo to borrow a crewmember, I grabbed Sergeant Anderson and took her down to the low decks to find and clear the clog.

  We strapped braces to our legs to handle the gravity. We had back braces, too, because we’d be doing lifting in the high-gravity environment. She got her gear on first and looked up at me with a bright smile. “Race me!” she shouted, jumping to her feet and taking off. I was slower; I chased after her. She dove into a pool of clean water, laughing and kicking into the huge pipes, swimming underwater from one tank to another.

  I dove in. The pipes were wide enough for me to hold my hands at my sides and not touch the sides. There was room enough for racing. The water was clean, too. This was our reserve, and it was supposed to be kept as clean as distilled. I swam into the pipe from tank to tank, coming up for air in each tank, while she was out farther ahead. The water was thick and heavy in that gravity, like swimming in a goo, but it was pure H2O. I opened my eyes underwater, seeing her swimming out ahead, her legs kicking hard and her arms churning. I had forgotten the joy of swimming, but my body remembered. I reached the last tank far behind her, gasping for air. She was smiling.

  “About time you caught up,” she said, leaning on the edge of the last tank. The water made her clothes cling. She had little hair on her head, close-shaved as she was, and her legs floated toward me, kicking lightly to keep her in place.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “You did not catch me,” she said. “You will not stop me swimming back through you, yes? I will pass through you and you will be unable to stop me.”

  “I will not stop you,” I whispered.

  “I want you to try.”

  “I will not, Adebayo,” I said. I got out of the water, my hands trembling. “I can’t stop you. I’m powerless against you. I respect you.”

  She lingered there, smiling her mercurial smile. She was as bad as Wong with her stupid grins. Without saying another word, she climbed from the tank. She helped me set up the flush to send the water back into the recycling network, to be refilled from the pipes we just repaired. We were going to have to flush the tanks, whether we swam in them or not. Nothing is ever wasted.

  We did not speak about this moment for a long time. I noticed, as well, like a goblin in the back of my mind, that she said very little about her husband, lately.

  * * *

  Sergeant Anderson refused to budge from her bunk in the common quarters, with the sheet separating women and men, and she did not help me keep the new women’s quarters clean. I went in, myself, sometimes with Private Giles, others with Private Detkarn, to sweep and clean the biotics and pass them along to the station technicians. I learned very quickly that Detkarn and Wong were having an affair. He was in her room, half-dressed, when she came storming in. She threatened him, jokingly, with the hot water hose, and bleach. Laughing, he dressed quickly, and escaped. He paused in the hallway and saw me.

  I had my eyebrow raised, and nothing else.

  “The military rules of the interior planets are not always so useful to us on the frontier,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Captain Wong. I was busy calibrating the machines for the biotic sweep of this storage closet, and I don’t know why you’re in this hallway. Do you need assistance from me, Captain?”

  “No, thank you, Lieutenant,” he said.

  He left quickly. I said nothing to Detkarn. She didn’t seem to realize how concerned she should be to fraternize with an officer. It could end their careers, if the admiral didn’t like it. I was not en
vious for her. My heart pined for Sergeant Adebayo Anderson, honestly, even as I was writing letters to Amanda Garcia.

  I assumed I was going to be in trouble for opening the rooms to the women enlisted when I was summoned to the admiral’s office unexpectedly. I braced myself for consequences.

  On my watch, since those first four, there were no more suicides. I saluted and sat down.

  “Lieutenant Aldo,” said Q. “I wanted you to be the first to know. I’m being promoted out. I’ve been selected to run a station in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way. Here, I’ll be stepping down into retirement, and a new admiral is being selected to replace me.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. Shock settled in. I had never imagined anyone here would transcend. That it was Q was shocking to me. He never seemed more than just competent, and I knew he had some violations in his early days regarding treatment of the female enlisted. He had to have more ghosts in his record than I did. “What do you need from me?”

  “I want to know if you think I should do your performance review now, or wait until the next admiral comes to evaluate you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m demoting Wong. I’m throwing him out, entirely. It was a long time coming. If I do your performance review now, I can promote you into his job.”