Forsaken Skies

by D. Nolan Clark

  Most likely he would come out of this with a bunch of lawsuits on his record. More important, he would probably get fired, too. Without a job—well, he didn’t know what he would do then. The job was all he had.

  So he sent a drone swarm out to recover the cargo containers and as many of the barrels and boxes and broken crates as they could chase down. He sent a quick message to the maintenance staff asking them to make sure the Hexus hadn’t been damaged irreparably by flying debris. Then he switched traffic control over to the autonomics and logged out for the day.

  He had a mystery to solve. To wit: What the hell were people doing onboard a cargo ship?

  The noise was the worst of it. The cargo container vibrated like a struck bell, and every so often they would feel the pull of acceleration and be squashed up against one barely padded wall, sometimes hard enough that red spots would burst behind Roan’s eyes. But the noise was worse. Booming, mechanical noises that resonated inside the container and made her teeth hurt.

  She had a vague idea of what was going on. The container had come loose from the freighter somehow and they’d gone tumbling off into space. She’d thought they were lost forever until the noise started. That had to be a drone or something grabbing the container in mechanical arms. Dragging it back to safety, she hoped.

  Very, very slowly. It had been more than an hour already and she had no idea how much longer it might take.

  The two of them, Roan and her teacher, Elder McRae, were low on breathable air—they’d barely budgeted enough on life support to make the twelve-day trip—and the container had started to stink the first time they’d had to use the chemical toilet. There had been nothing to do during the slow journey to Geryon. They had exactly what they needed to survive and nothing more. The only illumination inside the container came from a single display foam-sealed to one wall, a flickering plane of light no wider than Roan’s two hands laid side by side. It showed nothing now but the hexagonal Centrocor logo, slowly rotating as it tried to reestablish communication with the freighter’s computer brain. And failing.

  “How much longer?” she asked, just to hear her own voice.

  “Patience is not one of the four eternals,” Elder McRae replied. “Perhaps it should be.”

  The elder had her eyes closed. Her lined brown face barely stirred as she took one shallow breath after another. Roan envied her composure, her discipline. For years Roan had studied to come close to the kind of inner peace she saw in the elder. The woman had been like a second mother to Roan, and a great teacher.

  Right at that moment Roan hated the elder’s stupid face.

  Which of course immediately made her feel deep shame and regret. She was forgetting her disciplines, forgetting all she’d learned—

  The container lurched sideways so suddenly it was all Roan could do to grab one of the nylon loops attached to the wall, to keep herself from being thrown about like a pebble in an empty can. The elder, of course, had already strapped herself down.

  The movement was followed by a new suite of noises, each louder and more ear-piercing than the last. A nasty thud rocked the container and Roan felt that they had stopped moving. Maybe they’d finally reached their destination, she thought.

  Then the whole container began to spin around them, and Roan felt all the blood rush out of her head. She was certain she was going to be sick.

  The Hexus had six long arms, each of which rotated on its long axis to generate artificial gravity. Valk’s traffic control station was in one of the vertices between the arms, a place where he could just float and not have to use his legs.

  Going into one of the arms—going into any place with gravity—meant agony. But the only safe way to pop open the cargo container and extract its stowaways was to bring it inside, into heat and air. If Valk wanted to see what was inside that container, he had no choice.

  He had the drones bring the container into one of the giant spin locks, a huge drum at the end of Vairside, one of the six arms of the Hexus. He floated in beside it as jets flooded the drum with air. The walls started to rotate and then, almost gently, Valk and the container settled down to its floor. It took three minutes for the lock to match the rotation of Vairside, during which time Valk felt himself grow heavier and heavier.

  The second his feet touched the floor, it began. Cramps in what were left of his feet, first. A throbbing in his thigh muscles. He became far too aware of the shapes of the bones inside his legs, felt his kneecaps grind back into place.

  His suit knew what to do. It massaged his calves with custom-made rollers. Heating elements in his boots activated and warmed his aching flesh. A white pearl appeared in the corner of his left eye, offering painkilling medication.

  He blinked it away.

  The hospital had given him his special suit after his accident, seventeen years ago. He hadn’t taken it off since. At least a dozen times a day that white pearl appeared before him, asking him if he wanted the drug. It was proven not to be habit-forming, they told him. There was no chance of chemical addiction. It wouldn’t impair his ability to work.

  Valk knew if he started saying yes to the white pearl he wouldn’t stop. Why, when the pain would always be there? Blinking away the white pearl had become a reflex after a few years. Now it was a tiny victory every time he did it. Tiny victories being the most he let himself hope for, these days.

  He gritted his teeth and waited for the pain to suffuse him. To become just part of who he was. Over the years he’d grown so familiar with it that he could, if not ignore it, at least grunt his way through it.

  Eventually the spin lock reached the correct angular momentum and the big doors opened. Drones picked up the cargo container, their segmented arms straining under its new weight, and carried it into the broad, open entrance vestibule of the Vairside arm. Other drones waited their turn, big construction models that could cut the container open without damaging anything inside.

  Centrocor wasn’t taking any chances. If the people inside died on Hexus property the poly could, conceivably, be sued for wrongful death. It would never happen, of course. Centrocor had more lawyers than the Navy had pilots. But Valk supposed you didn’t get to be a Multiplanetary Development Monopoly by taking risks.

  As the drones moved in to dismantle one of the short ends of the container, Valk walked over to stand where he could get a good look inside. Steel dissolved to bubbling foam as the dismantlers did their work and then a drone with a floodlight came up to illuminate the interior.

  There wasn’t much to see. The interior walls of the container had been lined with soft plastic, studded with the nylon hand loops you saw everywhere in microgravity environments. There were a few pieces of life support and sanitary equipment but the cavernous interior was otherwise completely bare.

  Then the stowaways came forward. An old woman and a teenage girl, both dressed in colorless but clean tunics and leggings.

  Instantly a hundred Centrocor drones came swooping down on them, all talking at once.

  A fist-sized plastic drone drifted into Roan’s face with a whir of ducted propellers. Manipulator arms and sensors on flexible stalks dangled from its underside. It spoke to her in a voice that wasn’t human at all.

  Welcome to the Centrocor Hexus.

  Another one bobbed up beside her, and another until a cloud of them had gathered around her head, all speaking at once.

  Please do not move while the scan is in progress.

  You have certain rights, some of which you may have already waived.

  How can we help you explore Vairside?

  Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.

  State your language preference so we can proceed.

  Please fill out these forms, which are vital for public health and safety.

  You may be under arrest. Authorities will be with you presently.

  Please speak or enter your Centrocor Rewards Club number now.

  She winced backward, overwhelmed. She bumped into Elder McRae, wh
o put a steadying hand on her arm, but the teacher looked just as confused and frightened.

  Then a giant in a heavy space suit loomed through the cloud, batting at the drones with his hands. One by one they moved back, away from the big man. He had to be two and a half meters tall—taller than anyone Roan had ever met. His suit gave bulk to his already wide shoulders. His helmet was up and polarized to a glossy black. She expected him to lower the helmet, to show his face, but he didn’t.

  “You just have to show them you mean business,” he said, shoving one last drone up against the wall. It protested in a high whine for a moment, then fell silent. “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “Who are you?” Roan asked.

  “Tannis Valk. I’m in charge of traffic here. I’ve got some questions for you.” He leaned farther into the cargo container. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “Serious about what?” she asked. Roan didn’t like this, not at all. Why wouldn’t the man show them his face? “Are we under quarantine or something?”

  “Hmm, what?” Valk asked. “No. Serious—I mean, where are you two from?”

  It was all too much. Roan wanted to shrink back into the container, to get away from this strange man and the swarm of drones.

  “Why can’t we see your face?” she asked.

  “I had an accident awhile back,” Valk replied. “Trust me, you don’t want to see what’s under here. Listen, I need some answers. How long have you two been in here?”

  “Twelve days,” Roan said. The elder squeezed her arm again, but she ignored it. “We’re from Niraya.”

  “You came all that way in this?” Valk asked. “In a cargo box? It’s a miracle you made it. That freight hauler you were attached to didn’t even have a human pilot. It barely knew you were alive in here. Which I’m guessing was the point, huh? You knew it was illegal to travel like this.”

  “When you don’t have any money,” Roan said, “you have to—”

  The elder’s hand grabbed her arm again. This time she pinched hard enough to make Roan fall silent.

  “M. Valk,” the elder said, stepping forward, “are we under arrest?”

  The giant shrugged. The hard shoulder plates of his suit lifted and fell, anyway. It looked like an exaggerated shrug, like the gesture of a cartoon character. “That’s kind of an open question. Technically you broke the law, stowing away like this. But Centrocor’s interest is in limiting its liability, so maybe they don’t want to start a docket on you two. If you could just tell me why you came here, and what you—”

  The elder cleared her throat to quiet him. She drew herself up to her full height—a good head and a half shorter than Valk. But she got that look on her face, the one she used when Roan was being obstinate and refused to learn a lesson.

  Roan lived in mortal terror of that look.

  “Are you going to detain us, M. Valk? We have business here. Urgent business.”

  “I don’t have much authority in that,” Valk told her. “I can guarantee you’ll be monitored until we clear this up. Your movements will be logged and you won’t be allowed to leave the Hexus.”

  “That’s acceptable,” the elder said.

  Valk nodded, his helmet bobbing forward, then back. It was like he was pantomiming human gestures. “Listen,” he said. “If you just tell me what’s going on, if you give me enough to file a complete report, we can avoid—”

  “If we aren’t being detained, we’ll be on our way,” the elder told him. Then she grabbed Roan’s elbow and pushed her toward the slagged end of the cargo container and into the cavernous space beyond.

  Up ahead a massive portal opened into light and noise and the unbearably enticing smell of cooked food. A four-meter-wide display hung in the arch, reading WELCOME TO VAIRSIDE. CIVILIAN REGS APPLY.

  Roan glanced back and saw Valk inside the cargo container, running one big finger across the soft plastic that lined its walls. Then the elder steered her through the portal and into the welter of sensations beyond, and she stopped thinking about anything else.

  Clean.

  Way too clean.

  Valk squatted down on his haunches before the life support system the stowaways had left behind. The old, old agony in his knees flared up and he had to wait a second for the red haze of pain to recede from his vision. When it cleared he studied the little unit as if it were an archaeological find.

  Valk couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a water recycler so crude—it ran on actual batteries, it looked like. And the air scrubber had weld marks and sticky bits of tape all over it, as if someone had built it from spare parts.

  Yet when he opened it up the filter inside was immaculate, as if it had been scoured clean very recently.

  Valk gave his suit a command. A grid of tiny holes opened in the flowglas of his helmet, just big enough to let a little air through. He inhaled sharply through his nose. The container stank. Well, two people had been living inside for twelve days. He had seen chemical toilets in better shape, too. There probably hadn’t been much they could do about that—but everything inside the container that could be cleaned, had been. Assiduously.

  He went over to the display that had been mounted on one wall and pinged its logs. Only a few entries popped up, just standard stuff. They had used the display to communicate with the freighter’s autonomic pilot. Once to let it know they were alive and it needed to be careful with them. A couple of times during the journey, they’d logged in to check on their ETA.

  There were no entertainment programs on the display. No games or videos or anything to help them pass the time.

  They must have spent most of their twelve-day journey cleaning and fixing things. Keeping themselves alive. How had they not gone crazy in the dark and the lack of stimulation?

  Niraya. The girl had said they came from Niraya. Valk had heard of the place in a vague sort of way. It was one of the planets the Hexus served, but not a lot of traffic went through there. He patched his suit’s computer into the display and looked it up.

  Lines of text scrolled across the screen, giving him way more information than he wanted—climate data, historical logs, financials. He went for the quick version instead. He saw right away why he’d barely heard of the place. It was about as far from Earth as you could get and still be in human space, hundreds of light-years away in the direction of galactic center. It had been settled during the Brushfire as a colony for the followers of some minor religion or other. Centrocor had taken on responsibility for its development, and nobody had ever challenged their authority. No other poly seemed to think the place was worth conquering. In exchange for their patronage, Centrocor had built a mining concern there—though the operation had never been very profitable. Nobody was paying big money for iridium or cobalt. Niraya was dirt poor, so broke it hadn’t even finished terraforming operations. Even now, a hundreds years after it was settled, it was barely fit for human inhabitation.

  Well, the place’s poverty might explain why the two of them had to stow away in a cargo container rather than buying passage on an actual passenger ship. And if they were adherents of some strict religious order—judging by their clothes, they weren’t miners—that might explain the fanatical cleanliness.

  But what in damnation would people like that want on the Hexus?

  He walked out of the container and over toward the arch that led to the dubious delights of Vairside. Whatever vice or kink you had, you could get it serviced in there. The crews of passing ships and Navy personnel on leave went there to blow off steam, to gamble away their pay, to generally raise hell. It was the last place in the galaxy Valk could imagine religious types wanting to go.

  Valk didn’t like any of this. He didn’t like mysteries, never had.

  Which meant it definitely wasn’t his day. While he stood there, staring through the arch as if he could see the stowaways out there, his suit chimed at him. A blue pearl appeared in the corner of his vision, telling him he had a new message from the traffic control autonomics.


  The FA.2, the fighter he’d seen racing down into Geryon’s atmosphere, was back, requesting clearance to dock at the Hexus. There was no sign of the yacht the FA.2 had been chasing.

  Mysteries on top of damned mysteries. And getting answers meant spending a lot more time on his feet.

  As if sensing his frustration, the white pearl appeared in the corner of his eye again, offering painkillers. He blinked it away.

  Lights.

  So many lights!

  The Hexus must have had power to burn, to squander. Lamps on high standards lined the narrow streets of Vairside, shedding a dusky glow on everything. Bulbs burned inside every shop and restaurant. Huge signs floated overhead, blasting out light, advertising products Roan could scarcely imagine. Drones zipped by overhead shining lights down on the crowds—

  The crowds! So many people, throngs of them in every winding side street, floods of them spilling out of doorways, clustering in little parks hemmed in only by wrought-iron fences. Thunder roared overhead and then a train pulled into a station, spilling out more people, as if the street weren’t crowded enough. Dressed in a hundred different kinds of clothes, jumpsuits and flight jackets and paper overalls, long coats that brushed the heels of their glossy black boots, some wearing nothing but shorts, some of them were almost naked, men and women both. So many people, babbling a dozen languages, adorned in so many bizarre ways. Some had metal pierced through their noses and cheeks. Some had patterns of scars up and down their arms. Many, so many had dyed their hair unnatural colors. From the back of the train a dozen more pushed past, all falling down, holding on to each other. They wore space suits with painted shoulders, Navy people, she thought—she’d heard their suits were their uniforms, and they never took them off. They laughed and stared at her and a few gave her looks that made her blush.