As it happened, no two of them were eating the same thing. Jordan had a plate of Arcadian-style cuisine, warm vegetables, a light pasta, and birdflesh served under a caramelized berry sauce. Redfire was eating his customary rice cakes and whole grain vegetable sandwich. Max, almost fourteen in Sapphirean years, was eating a small Thessalian pizza and a large Baden Baden Baden style deep-dish pizza. Sam, twelve, had recently decided to only eat foods that began with the letter ‘B.’ His plate held beans, butter, bread, bacon, beets, and berries and he was eagerly relaying what he had learned in school that day. “We learned about Sumac.”
“Oh, really?” said Jordan, a piece of vegetable poised on her fork. “What did you learn about him?”
“We learned that he was a prophet, and he started the Sumacian Warriors, and he built the Unreal City.”
“Did you tell them about Tamarind?” Jordan asked. Tamarind was the Warrior-Prophet who led the resistance on Bodicéa.
Sam’s eyebrows knit together. “Neg, I didn’t think about Tamarind.”
“We should do a report together on the things Tamarind did on Bodicéa,” Jordan suggested.
“Maybe I can make a holoposter of Tamarind,” Sam said.
“Maybe you can.” Jordan had proven to be an unexpectedly good mother. Better then Redfire would have expected. She almost made up for his myriad inadequacies as a father.
“Maybe I could help,” Redfire put in. “I haven’t worked in photonics for a long time, but I used to be pretty good.”
“Mom says you were good at destroying things,” Max said, challenging him.
“There is a difference between destruction for its own sake and creative destruction,” Redfire explained. “Creative destruction is an elemental force in the universe. The iron in our very blood was formed in the hearts of exploding stars.”
Sam asked if this meant Redfire would help him and Redfire agreed. Max looked unimpressed. “May I be excused?” Max asked after consuming two-thirds of one pizza and one-half of the other in the space of the brief dinner conversation.
“Where are you going?” Jordan asked.
Max was already standing. “I think I’ll go back to the habitation deck, clean my room, and study calculus.”
“Where are you really going?” Jordan asked.
Max grinned deviously. “On my way back to my room, I am probably going to go back to Basil and run a practice simulation. My exam is tomorrow.”
“You may go, then. Make sure you secure the ship when you’re finished.”
“May I go,” Sam asked.
“Neg!” said Max.
“Za, you may,” Jordan said. “After you have finished some of your beans and berries.” Sam grimly dug into his plate.
“And don’t bother your brother during his simulation,” Jordan added.
“I never bother him,” he said, presenting his plate to show that he had eaten enough.
Max turned as he left the table. “He will, you know.”
“Consider it an extra challenge you won’t have to put up with during the exam,” Jordan told him. She watched as the two boys crossed the mall.
“Are you sure it’s wise to do a report on Tamarind?” Redfire asked when the boys were out of earshot.
“Their lives on Bodicéa were traumatic, from what you’ve told me.”
“The war was a real part of their lives. It’s healthier for them to deal with it directly… than to deny it.”
Redfire nodded, rubbed his chin. “I wasn’t there. I guess you know what’s best. They are your kids.”
“Do you ever think of them as yours?” she asked.
Redfire bristled. “I can’t., but I know they need a strong male figure in their lives…” Jordan was composed, as always. “Growing up, they had Tamarind, Tobias, and a camp full of disciplined, dedicated warriors. On this ship, they have you.”
“You could do better,” Redfire said, and that was all that he said. No need to rehash the failings of their marriage.
Main Bridge/Primary Command
Tactical Lieutenant David Alkema was feeling fine.
Not very often, and not nearly as frequently as he would have liked, he was in command of Pegasus. It was the pre-dawn watch, from 0000 to 0700 hours, the one set aside for junior officers to practice command. His turn only came about every four weeks or so, and his main duty was to alert the real command staff if anything happened, but it didn’t matter. For those hours, the 4200 meters and 400 decks of Pegasus, one of the most powerful, certainly most beautiful ships ever crafted, was in his charge.
Alkema was the ship’s youngest officer, a handsome man with full, ruddy cheeks and thickets of curly black hair. For the first four hours and seventy-six minutes of his watch, he had done little but observe the smooth course of his ship – his ship – into the 14 001 Horologium system. Far ahead of the ship, probes plowed through space, like heralds, looking for life, for the money planet on which Pegasus would call and, perhaps, find some remnant, some forgotten side street of what had once been the Human Galactic Community.
“Probe One is picking up something,” the telemetry officer, a Republicker named Thelonius Diderax Electric reported.
“Probe One shouldn’t be in range of the inner planets for another sixteen hours,” Alkema stated. He was sure the telemetry officer knew this, but had observed that command officers often pointed out the obvious.
Electric continued. “Long range scan, sir. It’s detecting something … metallic, possibly in orbit of the third planet.”
“Display,” Alkema ordered. A holographic image of the planet arose, a fuzzy white snowball. In the foreground was a tiny, blurry gray dot. “That’s it?”
“Probe one thinks it is about 16,600 kilometers above the surface, primarily composed of heavy alloys and composites.” Electric shrugged. “It could be a satellite, maybe a ship, or a piece of debris.”
“Order Probe One to track to it, but don’t get too close,” Alkema said, feeling a surge inside of him. He gave an order. People did it. He wondered if the thrill would ever wear off.
He could hardly wait to see his girlfriend.
Hangar Bay, Dock 19 (The Next Morning)
The Aves Basil had been built at the CloudBuster Avian artifactory on the Sapphirean moon of Hyperion, as were most of the Aves in Pegasus’s Flight Groups. The Aves were the resident shuttlecraft Pegasus carried, eighty-four active at any time, forty-four more on stand-by, nearly a hundred spares stored in the cargo areas of the UnderDecks. All had been built during the last two years of Pegasus’s construction, but Basil had become quite older than any of the other ships. Like its captain, Jordan, Basil had been stranded on the planet Bodicéa for eight years, call it sixteen.
Aves were designed for far longer than 20 years of service, but they were also designed for regular maintenance and periodic complete refurbishment from bow to stern. There had been little of the former and none of the latter on Bodicéa. Furthermore, the ship had been under near constant assault by the Aurelians during its entire stay. Its condition upon recovery was almost unsalvageable. Two Aves, outfitted with heavy-lift recovery systems, had had to tow it back to Pegasus.
It had taken nearly eight months to re-outfit Basil to its new role as a training ship. Her pilot, Flight Commandant Jordan, now had sixteen flight cadets, the first class, being trained for duty. Eleven of these were adult crewmen from different Specialty Cores looking to advance their skills. The remainder were the fourteen to sixteen year old children of adult crew members, training for primary assignment with Flight Core.
One of them was Trajan Lear.
In the months since leaving Bodicéa, Trajan had endured a growth spurt that added height without bulk, making him lean as a sliver. He was growing out his white-gold hair into an almost angelic ringlet of curls, encircling gray-blue eyes far too serious and calculating for one so young and privileged.
He sat in a simulation pod on Basil’s Main Deck. Flight Commandant Jordan stood over him. “This is an
advanced test mission,” she explained to him. “Your assignment is to deploy a satellite microprobe around the fourth moon of a planet.”
A slight pout came to Trajan’s lips. “Why not a combat drill?”
“My experience has been that aspiring pilots tend to run plenty of combat drills on their own time.
However, non-aggressive missions will make up the bulk of your flight duties, and can often be just as challenging if not more so.” She spoke from experience.
Trajan sighed an a pouting expression settled on his lips. This expression was part of the reason that he had a reputation for being spoiled. The fact that he really was spoiled was the rest of the reason. The canopy on the pod closed. The holographic generators kicked in. Suddenly, he was in the cockpit of his own ship, in the Primary Landing Bay of Pegasus. In his mind, the name of his Aves was Prudence, the ship that had saved his young life more than once .
The control surfaces of Aves were customizable to the preference of each pilot. Trajan preferred the primary side-stick approach with a primary level neural interface surrounding his right eye.
“Aves Basil to Pegasus Flight Core. Systems check complete. Standing by for launch clearance.”
“Pegasus Flight Core to Aves Basil. Confirm Course profile.” Trajan checked the map of his course, beginning at Pegasus, weaving through the rings of a gaseous planet to a moon on the far side. “Course profile confirmed, Pegasus Flight Control.”
“Pegasus Flight Core to Ave Basil. Commencing Launch sequence.” The pod simulated his ship being lowered to the launch rails as he continued the standard back-and-forth with Flight Core. Finally, he came to the command, “Launch when Ready.”
The kick backwards as the ship pretended to fire down the launch rails felt real enough, as did the sudden emergence into a velvety black night speckled with bright white stars. In this simulation, Pegasus was some distance from the planet, and Flight Commandant Jordan made him endure every minute of the two-and-a-half-hour journey.
Finally, he came to the planet, a great purple and blue pearl lit by the faint light of a distant sun. He swung around, just above the ring system. The ice crystals in the rings, marching round and round the planet like a great orderly snowstorm, made a pale and ghostly reflection of his ship.
When the fourth moon emerged, it was not shaped like a sphere, as he had expected, but more like a tortoise, very much like a tortoise in fact, as though the simulation designers were trying to be humorous.
Its orbit was also peculiar, highly elliptical. He had to recalculate the trajectory of the micro-satellite. This was a quick operation. He passed over the rough brown and rust colored surface of the moon and released the satellite from the rear hatchery.
He was just about to confirm orbital insertion when the lights in the Flight Deck flickered and failed, replaced by emergency lighting. “Failure in primary engine core,” his ship reported.
He ran a diagnostic of his flight system. The ship’s primary reactor and gravity engine were off-line.
He activated his ion thrusters and was kicked back into his seat by the simulated acceleration.
It was insufficient. His ship began to fall toward the purple planet. He attempted to re-initialize the gravity engine. “Initialization failed,” said the ship. “Atmospheric entry in forty-three seconds.” He checked his charts. No way was he that close to the planet. Then, he saw that he wasn’t, but he was that close to the largest moon, which had an atmosphere of sulfuric and hydrochloric acid. His chances of surviving a crash landing would be nil.
He fired the ion thrusters to improve his orbital position. With the primary reactor off-line, he would not be able to sustain an orbit for every long. He began to re-initialize the primary reactor core. This time, he followed it through to the point of failure. He saw it soon enough. No containment around the reactor core, but the secondary reactor was still on-line. He would have to use such power as he had to make a stable orbit, and save the tertiary reactor for life support.
An idea went off in his brain. He could fire a brace of missiles from the rear of the ship. Without the gravity engine to counteract the force of the launch, the kickback would give him a little more altitude. He had the ship calculate the additional force. It was not as much as he had hoped. However, it occurred to him that detonating one of the missiles might push him completely away from the moon.
Then again, it could also destroy the ship, and knowing Flight Commandant Jordan, it probably would.
Then, he got a better idea, or at least one he thought he could get away with. He swung his ship around and feathered his ion thrusters, aiming his ship toward the tortoise moon. He might have just enough power to make it.
The tortoise moon came up with excruciating slowness. Keeping his ship on course became a struggle.
Every little nip and tuck he could manage with the ion thrusters was countervailed by the bigger, nastier moon.
Just when he thought he would never make it, he broke free, and started drifting downward. The surface of the tortoise moon was pitted and cratered, covered with thick rust-colored dust. Now, the challenge was to slow down enough for a soft landing, and not crack his ship to pieces.
His power-levels continued to drop until he dared not fire the thrusters again, lest he lose communication and life support.
Then he remembered, communication. He tapped his commlink. “Pegasus, this is Aves Pru … Aves Basil. Preparing to crash land on the fourth moon of the outer planet. Activating beacon. Repeat…” Then, suddenly, there was a jolt as his ship hit the surface. A rust-orange sandstorm exploded around his canopy. He was down. The simulation vanished, and the pod began to open. Flight Commandant Jordan was standing there with a scoring pad. The first words out of her mouth were, “Do you know what you did wrong?”
“I fired thrusters before considering my situation. I didn’t follow the first diagnostic to isolate the problem.”
“You also could have run a diagnostic during the trip out. You could have saved the primary reactor if you had discovered the containment failure before you reached the planet. You also never hailed Pegasus until you were almost down. You should have sent a distress call immediately. If you had lost communication on landing, which you did, you never would have been able to hail Pegasus, and they wouldn’t have sent out a rescue party before you ran out of life support.”
“What about the automatic distress beacon?”
“Not in my simulation.” She tapped more observations into her datapad. “Also, you should have taken the larger moon into account when calculating your trajectory.”
“I was too busy correcting the orbit of the micro-satellite.”
Jordan nodded. “You were supposed to be. It was a test of situational awareness. A few cadets remembered to check their charts when they adjusted their course…” But, I wasn’t one of them, Trajan thought.
She tapped in a few more remarks. “I do give you credit, however, for completing the mission objective, also for thinking of crash landing your ship on the inner moon, knowing you could hold out there longer than you could in orbit around the other moon. Not every cadet considered that strategy.
One of my cadets actually detonated a missile to lift himself into higher orbit.”
“Did it work?” Trajan asked.
Flight Commandant half-smiled, enigmatically, and handed him the scoring pad. He checked his score. 73.3%. He was in eleventh place. He looked to the top score.
Max Jordan.
99.7%
Why was he not surprised?
C h a p t e r T w o
Pegasus – Telemetry Laboratory Conference Room
“I can see why it’s called Winter,” Kayliegh Morgan told the Prime Commander, the TyroCommanders, and a smattering of Section Chiefs meeting in her Geological survey laboratory. “Its mean surface temperature is 15 degrees below Sapphire’s and 4 degrees below Republic’s.” The object of their discussion was displayed as a holographic sphere two meters in diameter projected in t
he center of the room. Layers of white and gray clouds raced through its skies, occasionally showing glimpses of bruise-blue oceans and rocky, sea-tossed shores. Other displays showed the thirteen largish landmasses scattered across its crust. Most of these looked weathered, surrounded by the crinkling jags and inlets of fjords.
Keeler stated the obvious. “So, we’re talking about a planetary scale deep freeze.” Morgan answered him. “Not quite. It is a very cold damp climate, but not entirely glacial. Most of the surface area is ice-free, and there is vegetation on more than 45% of the land area. We have even detected native animal life, mostly in the seas, but some of it terrestrial.” Her knowledgeable, easy-going manner had made her the go-to scientist for presenting data to the command staff when Pegasus arrived at new worlds. “Also, because the planet’s orbit is nearly circular, and its axis is constant, there is no seasonal variation. Every day is like late Winter in Sapphire’s northern continent of Boreala. No summer. No Spring. No Autumn.”
“Sounds nasty,” Keeler said.
“Bleak may be the better word. The level of atmospheric activity is relatively low. It snows heavily from time to time, but driving wind and white-out conditions are rare except at high latitudes and elevation.”
Keeler quietly marveled at Morgan, rattling off this information like an informaton and/oroid at the New Cleveland Museum of Science for Children. If only I were twenty years younger and interested in Climatology.
“Also, the planet rotates every nine-point-one-seven hours. There are only four hours of daylight at the middle latitudes, nights, likewise, are only four hours long.”
Winter Page 2