Winter

by James Wittenbach

  “I can’t take you to the Upper Decks…” Constantine growled.

  “Shut Up, Connie, we both know you can.”

  “Not without my Sliver.”

  Hunter contemplated this. “What if we go outside the ship, climb over the hull, drop into the Missile Hatchery directly.”

  Constantine shook his head, which hurt and he could feel his brains sloshing around. “Even if we didn’t have to get into space gear, we’d never make it in time.” Hunter knew he was right. “Slag,” he said finally. “All right, we go through the ductwork. When I reach Deck 1, it’ll set off the intruder sensors. Maybe that’ll give the Watch time to get to the hatcheries.”

  “I’m not taking you,” Constantine insisted.

  “You don’t have a choice,” Hunter told him.

  “The defensive systems will attack you…. Probably me too, without my Sliver.”

  “Oh, for just one nanosecond forget about the slagging chip. Why do you always have to be such a pucker puss?”

  “This is no joke, Hunter.”

  “If I wanted to laugh, I’d pull your pants down.”

  Constantine grunted, grimly resigned to the reality that he could not pull this off without Hunter. He was beginning to feel like he could move again, and took a cautious step forward. With this movement, he discovered painfully swollen muscles in his calves, but he thought he could locomote.

  Hunter turned to Ghost. “This is too dangerous for you,” he whispered, tracing a finger gently along her cheek. “Go back to the cargo decks and hide. I’ll find you again… or you’ll find me.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Go!” Hunter hissed urgently. “This isn’t safe, and I don’t trust Connie. If there were an open airlock and he only had time to eject me or the intruder… I’d be touring the ship from the outside.”

  “It’s my ship, too. I’m going.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then pulled her in and kissed her.

  With Hunter and Constantine both in pain, and limping, they made their way to the UpShaft, a great hollow pillar of steel about two meters in diameter. The UpShaft transported materials quickly from the artifactories in the UnderDecks to Pegasus’s Inhabitable Areas using air pressure and microgravity. The access hatch on this level was about half the size of a standard ship’s hatch, and the opening it left after Hunter pried it open, was somewhat smaller still. A stiff wind blew out.

  “These weren’t intended for use by humans,” Constantine called out over the breeze.

  “Why should that bother you?” Hunter shouted back. He looked about to leap, but then swung and grabbed Constantine by the shoulder. “One more thing, Connie, when this is over, I will beat you to the edge of death for that handcuff trick.”

  “If we live long enough for you to try…”

  Hunter would not let him finish, but leaped into the shaft.

  Pegasus – Lt. Navigator Change’s Suite

  Matthew Driver was deeply perturbed. This was not the proper purpose for the Convergence Rite.

  On Republic, a couple to be joined in matrimony lay together in bed – surrounded by family to make sure nothing marital happened – and attempted to share one another’s dreams. It was a test of compatibility and connection. Sometimes couples could not connect, but this was not considered an impediment to a happy marriage. It only indicated the couple needed assistance in either forming the bond or compensating through other forms of intimacy. In theory, the Rite of Convergence enabled the couple to determine the course of a life together. The Rite had nothing to do with Iest, everything to do with risk aversion, which was almost its own religion on the planet Republic.

  But the Rite was never done as a litmus test. The answer to a marriage proposal was never meant to depend on the outcome of the convergence. Republicker ethics were quite clear on that. But Eliza Jane Change was not bound by Republicker ethics. Driver tried to tell himself it was just one more thing to get used to about her.

  Eliza Change met him at the door, dressed in the one-piece jumpsuits she favored in her private time.

  She didn’t even engaged him in pleasantries, but just asked “Are you ready for this?”

  “I am,” he told her.

  She led him into her sleeping chamber, a very small alcove off her living space. The unit was small, and very simple, a slab of padding and linen covers just barely big enough for the two of them. “Are you ready?” she asked him one more time.

  “This still feels wrong,” Matthew protested.

  “You can still leave,” she told him.

  He shook his head. He was resigned to this. He sighed and pulled himself onto the sleeper. She joined him and they lay beside each other. Eliza Change lay her fingers gently against his temple, and he lay his against hers. The physical contact was not necessary to make a connection, but it did make the couple feel more comfortable and relaxed.

  Matthew stared into her Eliza’s. Eliza stared into Matthew’s. They breathed as one. Deep in their chests, their heartbeats synchronized into a single pulse. Together, they departed consciousness, and joined each other in the space of a shared dream-realm.

  Matthew had no memory of the path he had taken to arrive here, only he was aware that he was with Eliza, and they were dreaming together. He felt happy. “We have connected.”

  “We’ve always been connected,” she told him. It was the right thing for her to say, but he sensed, somehow, she meant it differently than it sounded.

  “Now what happens?” he asked after a long, empty silence.

  “What do you feel here?” she asked him.

  He looked around. “It’s a big empty space.”

  “How do you feel?”

  He had to think about it. “Comfortable?” he hazarded.

  “To me, I feel very warm and secure,” she told him. “I’m feeding off the emotion you feel for me.” That much gladdened him.

  “The connection is good,” she told him.

  Matthew saw a crooked smile break across his own face. Did this mean…

  He felt her calling him away. “I have to show you something.” There was no wavering light, no all-consuming flash, no tangible sort of transition. Suddenly, he was both watching and participating in a kind of diorama.

  The quarters were larger than her or his had been. He saw himself, sitting on a couch, reviewing a mission log. He couldn’t focus on himself, couldn’t see himself clearly except in brief flashes that left more an impression of feeling than of seeing, and what he felt was gnawing anxiety, a desire for solitude.

  The Convergence was only intended to enable people to connect, to feel the full range of emotions felt by each for the other. Driver realized that Eliza was doing something different, showing him their destiny as a married couple.

  She came in, Eliza, his wife. He could see her clearly. In this dream he could sense an aura around her, a dark red glow like a sun’s corona at sunset. “Would you clean that stuff off the table,” she grumbled.

  “Right away,” he told her, indifferently. She crossed the room, ignoring the couch, where he sat, and going to the solitary chair, the one he knew she always chose.

  Present Matthew was thinking he should go over and message her shoulders, kiss her, snuggle with her… she was his wife! Future Matthew wanted to retire to the sleeper unit immediately. “Would you like anything?” Future Matthew asked, hoping she’d decline.

  “Chilled water,” answered Future Eliza without looking up from her star charts.

  Future-Matthew was thinking. She’s cranky because she’s missed four rendezvous since we came to the Orion Arm. He gamely tried to engage her anyway, knowing he would fail. “Would you like to go to the Recreation Nexus later?”

  She shook her head. Puzzlement riddled Present Matthew’s brain. He could feel the thoughts of present Eliza, but future Eliza was a blank slate to him.

  Future Matthew was running through his mind either echoes of past arguments, or outlines of arguments he would never have th
e gut s to deliver. For seven years… for longer, I have been waiting for her to give me credit for what I do, and to respect me as a man. She doesn’t. She is incapable of it. She never will.

  “Nothing I ever do seems to be good enough for you?” he had never told her. “My Flight Group saved both ships at Crucible. I rescued you at Dominia. We fought off the Ghost Fighters at Extremis. When I come home, all I hear about is some spill in the cocina, or how the automech doesn’t make the bed the right way.” She would just scowl at him and say. “You wouldn’t have any planets to fly to, if I didn’t guide this ship to the right stars. So clean up the spill in the cocina, and make the bed the way I like it.” Was this all they had to look forward to?

  Negative.

  There was an even sorer topic. Children, and Eliza’s refusal to make any. Present Matthew wanted to know why, but future Matthew was so averse to the topic, his feelings on the issue were buried inside him, locked in a vault and tossed into the deepest, most impenetrable chasm of his future inner self.

  “I can’t stand this any more,” Matthew heard himself screaming inside his head, but the vision of himself in this dream said nothing, resigned to stick with her, stick with his vows.

  There was a fleeting sense of something else, it was akin to the loss of things he had given up to remain with her, but it was quick and sharp, and there was a sense that he could not allow himself to recognize it.

  “Matthew…” Eliza was calling to him in the present time. He opened his eyes. He was rolled into a fetal position on her sleeper. She was sitting up, above and over him. He didn’t need to look at a chronometer to know several hours had passed.

  He met her eyes. His present emotions were confused with what he had sensed from the vision of himself in the Convergence dream. “Do you understand now?” she asked him.

  Like a bright star on which a pilot might fix his course, there was one point of absolute clarity. He loved her now, and she loved him, but if they tried to make a marriage out of it, they would hate each other. The Convergence was the only we she had of showing him this destiny.

  She pressed the starfire back into his hand. “I do love you, Matthew, I could even be your lover, but your religion does not allow that. For marriage… we will both end up miserable and unsatisfied. Isn’t it better to know now, than seven years from now?” she asked.

  He realized then, she had made up her mind about this a long time ago. In the midst of it, he thought he should have found himself furious at her, for making him waste his time on her.

  “I never asked you to stay with me,” she reminded him. “I’ve done everything I could to warn you off.” She touched his forehead, tenderly. He winced. “It just can’t be,” she told him. “We are not meant for each other. I should have told you a long time ago. Now, we both know. We are good friends, we would be terrible lovers.”

  Matthew rose from the sleeper and turned away from her. “I told you I got it. Here’s where the story ends, right?”

  She stayed in the sleeper, looking up at him from beneath bed-tossed hair, not pleading, but just saying. “We can still be friends.”

  He backed out of the room. “I already have enough friends,” he said, and then, with depressing force, came the realization that this was not true.

  Pegasus – Hanger Bay 22

  “Traj, wake up.”

  Someone was slapping him lightly around the face calling his name. “Trajan, Wake up! Wake up now!”

  Trajan Lear slowly opened his eyes, finding himself on the floor of the hangar deck. He immediately remember how he had gotten there. “Max!”

  “Max is gone,” Alkema told him. It was Alkema and Pieta who had awakened him. “Basil is out on a training flight, authorized by Flight Commandant Jordan, but Jordan is asleep in her quarters.” Trajan’s head hurt, and tried to get around what Alkema was telling him only with great difficulty.

  He tried to stand. “I’m going to hurt him.”

  “Easy companion,” Alkema said, trying to help Trajan to his feet.

  “How do you know?” Trajan asked.

  “What do you mean how do we know? You told us.”

  “I did?”

  “You called us on the commlink, said Max had knocked you out and taken Basil. Then you passed out.”

  “I did? I don’t remember any of it.”

  Pieta looked toward Basil’s dock, and then to the little utility niche where they had found Trajan. “I’m guessing thruster backwash from the launch probably knocked you back here.”

  “I’m really, really going to hurt him,” Trajan said, although saying made his teeth throb. He was sure at least one was loose. “How long has he been gone?”

  “Basil cleared the launch twenty minutes ago.” Alkema told him.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to get into an Aves and track him down, talk some sense into him.” Alkema sounded completely confident as confident in his ability to talk sense into anyone as he did in his ability to steal an Aves.

  “Just send a search and rescue ship,” Trajan protested. “Send out some Accipiters with grapplers to pull him back.”

  Pieta was just as insistent. “Max doesn’t need a rescue team. He needs friends. He needs us. He needs…

  you.”

  Trajan’s gut response was that Max was not his friend. Max was the better pilot, the Golden Boy, He Who Could Do No Wrong.

  “We don’t have much time. Come on.” Alkema grabbed his arm and began pulling him across the landing bay.

  Trajan tried to break free, physically and rhetorically. “Look, if we send the Accipiters, they’ll pull him back. He probably won’t be allowed in Flight Core now, but after a year or two, he’ll get his chance.”

  “I’m not worried about his career,” Alkema said. “Something happened to Max. I don’t know what it is, but ever since he got back from Winter, he hasn’t been the same…” he broke off, a thought too horrid to finish.

  “What?” Trajan demanded.

  Alkema swallowed. “I wonder if the Aurelians could have gotten to him somehow. They can do that.

  Put parts of brain in your head. They lie dormant until its time to act, then they force you to do something. Maybe whatever happened on the surface set it off prematurely… unbalanced him. I don’t know… but I’m going to help him.”

  “So, help him, but leave me out of it,”

  Alkema was all but dragging him to the hangar bridge. “Trajan, I hate to put it this way, but don’t be a selfish brat about this. Max would do this for you…” he paused. “Flight Captain Driver would do this for Max.”

  This set Trajan to seething, but he knew Alkema was right. Bastard! He put up no more resistance as Alkema and Pieta led him over the bridge to Hangar Bay 19, where the Aves Prudence was docked. “Open it up,” Alkema ordered.

  Trajan could not believe what they were asking him to do. “I can’t just take out the ship. That’s Matt… that’s Flight Lieutenant Driver’s ship.”

  Alkema remained as forceful and persuasive as ever. “It’s the only ship we can take. You’ve been training on it. You’re encoded into its sympathetic systems.”

  “I can’t just take out a ship, there’s launch codes, clearance codes. We can’t even get to the launch-rails without them.”

  “Will the Commander’s over-ride codes do?” Alkema asked, Keeler’s technical disinterest working for him yet again.

  Trajan looked at Prudence. The ship had never seemed so big before. Also, he was acutely aware that the ship was not his. What would Flight Captain Driver say if he so much as scratched it? “I can’t,” he said.

  “You will,” Alkema told him.

  He’ll make you do it, even if you don’t want to, said Trajan’s brain.

  “If we don’t launch now, we’ll never catch him,” Alkema told him.

  Defeated at every turn, Trajan placed a flat palm against the side of his ship, and thought the access code.

  Alkema turned to Pieta. “When
I met this kid, he wouldn’t sneeze without a note from his mother.

  Now, I’ve got him stealing a spaceship. I’d say he’s progressing nicely.”

  Prudence – The UnderDecks

  There was a sensation, not so much of flying, but of falling upward. Hunter, Ghost, and Constantine fell up, caught like scraps of paper in a fierce updraft. A few seconds of this, and they were dumped on Deck Minus 12, landing in a heap, with Hunter on the bottom.

  “Ewwww, Connie, you touched a girl,” Hunter said, rolling out from beneath the pile. He stuck out a hand and helped Ghost to her feet, left Constantine to figure out how to stand on his own.

  They over-rode the hatch above Conveyance Tube 122. This was part of the Intraship Transport System, a highway for tranport pods, seldom used, except for the occasional inspection crew.

  Normally, Constantine could just think about hailing a transport pod, and the neural transponders in his skull would handle the rest. If Hunter or Ghost were a part of the regular crew, they could have just touched the “Taxi” pad, and one would come.

  However, all three, as far as the Great Ship was concerned, did not exist. There would be no Transport Pods. They would have to make it up to Deck Zero on their own.

  “We’ll never make it in time,” Constantine groused.

  “Oh, ye of little faith and small genitalia,” Hunter sighed. A few meters off was a maintenance locker.

  Hunter walked over to it and forced it open with a few brutal thrusts of his prying bar.

  From its interior, he withdrew two slabs of poly-alloy about 1.5 meters in length, maintenance sleds.

  “The transport pods travel on an electromagnetic fields. The sleds hover above the deck using a similar principle. If their polarities are reversed…”

  “We’ll shoot down the conveyance tube like …” Constantine could not finish, his mind was just not up to the task of creating a metaphor for shooting through the ship on waves of Electromagnetic energy at high-subsonic speeds.