But up in the stillness of space we had our own problems.
◆◆◆
I had just woken up in the sickbay, loosely strapped to the bed, when I got the word: Nadia needed to talk to me, urgently. My wrist was wrapped up in a light plastic foam casing, and it itched like hell. The break had been an ugly one, with both bones in my underarm broken into several pieces near my wrist and piercing the skin in several places. The major artery in my arm had been nicked, and I had bled quite a lot before they managed to haul me in after my rather undignified entry into the land of the lower spheres. Nothing that couldn’t be repaired though, but after crudely fixing the break and the leak, the operation had been postponed until the proper medical team could be assembled. Apparently fixing the arm that held the key to the treasury was not enough of a priority to disturb the chief medical officer in her beauty sleep. Not that I cared too much, I was stoned out of my skull on morphine at that point.
I rose out of my intoxicated slumber like a behemoth rising from the deeps and took a couple of the pills that were offered. I figured they would be good for me. They were. When I was nice and presentable, I found myself face-to-face with the lower sphere counterpart of our radiation expert, albeit the more attractive one. At the moment though, it was concern that was dominant on Nadia’s features. I was mildly disturbed to see her pushing so hard to meet me that she would condone the use of drugs to have me up and running prior to schedule. My escapades in space had left me a little worse for wear, and with more than four months remaining in our trip, whatever she had to talk to me about could always wait a day or two. Anything ship-critical would’ve been forwarded automatically to the captain. I slowly sipped a drink of water through the obligatory custom straw and waited for her to make her move. She hesitated, fidgeted just a little, and seemed to decide to plunge ahead with what was on her mind.
“I have seen some disturbing movements lately. . .” She actually wrung her hands.
“Yes, I was kind of free-floating through space at a rather steep angle and going about ten times as fast as I should have been. I can see how that might have been disturbing. Or if you were referring to my bare ass as I reached for that can of water, I can see how that might disturb you also.” I sipped my water and did my utter best to keep a straight face. The look I got in return showed that my little joke was not appreciated.
“Well, yes, I know we haven’t spoken much since we were back on Earth, and you know my field of study is radiation, its impacts on hexapod invertebrates and how to counteract those. My work naturally includes the study of the very nature of the radiation that assaults us out here, radiation from the sun being foremost of those. I have been continually accessing the NASA solar view database, but the updates have been spotty at best due to our radio link issues.”
She would not meet my eye while she delivered the speech, and she was clearly disturbed by going as far outside of the normal chain of command as she currently was. Technically, I did not have a rank aboard the ship. In reality, I was the ship. Every soul on it was here on my say-so, and even though I had not met every one of the crew personally prior to departure, they all knew that it was my signature at the bottom of their golden ticket.
However, I did not partake in any of the normal administrative running of the ship. The captain was king on his bridge, the chef would have kicked me out bodily if I tried to enter his domain, and the cleaning crew regarded everybody else as garbage-throwing monsters from another dimension. In short, I had bummed a ride. For Nadia to approach me in the manner she did was highly irregular, and it spoke volumes about the seriousness of the matter she was about to present to me.
“You do realize that this information would be best relegated to the captain, don’t you?”
“I do, and I apologize for inconveniencing you at such a time, but if my calculations are correct, then time is of the essence. In fact, I have already tried to address the captain, but he would not listen to me. There is nobody else I can turn to, and I know I’m right!”
She half rose out of her chair as she talked, and I knew she would’ve bounced off the ceiling had she not been wearing the obligatory mag-boots. She was clearly distressed, and highly agitated besides. If this was not a legitimate emergency, then she clearly needed to calm down a few notches. Either way, the situation needed to be dealt with.
“All right, slow down. Pretend I have no idea what you’re talking about. You won’t even have to do much pretending, and talk me through it. And also, pretend I’m not wearing a see-through hospital gown and I’ll stop pretending you are.” I giggled hysterically for a few seconds before regaining control.
She wrung her hands again and continued. “There’s a pattern to them. The solar flares, you know. The sun runs on an eleven-year cycle, in which the flares reach a peak and then decline. The cycles vary by a few years now and then, but the average cycle is between ten and eleven years long. Our current cycle is in its sixteenth year, and it has yet to reach its climax.”
I giggled.
“This is important, damn you!” Her intensity finally broke through my drug-induced high, and I could feel my brain laboring to work through the morphine.
“Important how?”
“Important as in our lives depend on it. A few days ago there was a lot of chatter on the survey boards about the possibilities of a solar superstorm. When the radio died, the updates I was looking for were pushed back in the queue, and I didn't get a good look at them until just now. There were several observers who had voiced concerns about the activity they were seeing, and some thought a superstorm might hit soon, maybe as soon as within the next couple of days. After seeing the numbers, I tend to agree with them.” She finally locked eyes with me, and the fear I saw in them sobered me up like nothing else could have. This woman was scared in a way that no one is unless their life depends on it, and the room seemed to light up with the realization. It turned brighter, and brighter, and as I looked out the window I saw a dance surrounding our ship. A dance of bright green, dark purple, vivid blue, and searing white. A dance of death.
Then the lights went out.
I fought my way clear of the sheets and the loose restraints on the bed and pushed off to fly over to the adjacent wall. In my mind I could still see the room as it was before everything had turned pitch black: Nadia with panic in her eyes, my bandaged wrist reaching out to comfort her, and the one thing I needed the most right now. I timed the jump to near perfection, but in the heat of the moment (or the fog of the drugs) I forgot about my broken wrist and tried to catch myself with my damaged arm. I could feel the bones grinding and twisting as the arm took the full weight of my momentum, and I sucked breath through my clenched teeth as I tried in vain not to pass out. I could feel myself go, and I welcomed the blackness of mind as I previously had welcomed the blackness of space.
A piercing pain jolted me out of my stupor. “Wake up! Don’t you pass out on me!” Nadia’s slap was probably meant to hit my cheek, but the back of her fingertips had struck my eye, and the sharp pain focused me as much as the morphine had sedated me.
I reached for my target on the wall, and briefly wondered why I could see anything at all; if all the lights were out I would for all purposes be blind. The multipurpose first aid kit that was present in every room in the ship popped open and I reached inside with probing fingers. After a few seconds of fumbling I found what I was looking for, and the light from the emergency flashlight shone brightly upon the chaos. I could hear screaming from somewhere a few hatches over, cursing from one a bit closer, and sobbing from the one I was in.
“Nadia! I need you here, and I need you focused!" I reached out and grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me. “Talk to me. Tell me what happened.” Her sobbing abated as sudden as it has started, and she drew a ragged breath.
“A storm, a solar superstorm. That’s what happened. We’ve been hit by a solar flare, a huge one, and all the electronics are out. Lights, navigation, life support. The shield. It
’s all gone. Every circuit on the ship is fried.”
“It can’t be gone. The shield is designed for this purpose specifically! Radiation, solar flares, micrometeors, they promised me it would protect us from it all!” I could feel the anger rising as the situation slowly gained momentum, and I crushed it down, cold and hard. Anger had its uses, but it would be useless in a crisis. I took a deep breath and forced myself to be calm. “All right, it’s gone. Tell me how to get it back.”
“You can’t! You can never get the backup generator online without any of the subsystems working! The main computer is dead and we are drifting through space! In a few hours we’ll be too cold to work efficiently, and it’ll be a race to see if we die of asphyxiation or hypothermia!”
She was on the brink of a breakdown, and it was one she had been working on for quite some time. All that was needed was a catalyst, and this flare was it. That was the problem with bringing amateurs into space, they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Put a first-timer out of an airlock in a spacesuit, and it’s even money that they won’t last five minutes without having a breakdown. The human mind is just not equipped to deal with a combination of infinity, the loss of gravity, a loss of orientation, and no ground to tread upon, all at the same time. We humans need soil beneath our feet to feel at home.
I’d had enough of explanations. I valued results, and I’d get none where I was at now. Without a word I pushed off and went in search of the vivid cursing that was still flowing freely from a nearby hatch.
As I approached the domain of profanity, I slowly realized that not all the light in the room was coming from my flashlight. There was a flickering orange light that would increase and retreat, all in perfect unison with the intensity of the cursing emanating from the room. I poked my head around the corner and was greeted with a sight I’ll never forget.
Small globes of liquid fire were floating around the room, hungrily consuming whatever they latched on to. Some were fast movers, popping across the open space in the blink of an eye, and some were lazy bonfires, crossing the expanse in their own timely fashion. In the midst of it all was Johanson, my chief engineer, with no shirt on, frantically trying to grab floating fire with a soaked t-shirt while stringing out a line of curses that were surprisingly innovative even for him.
“Johanson! Do you need a hand?” In my opinion he needed several.
“Fuck, yeah! We need to stop them from spreading!” He clumsily swept his t-shirt around a floater and squeezed it tight. A small flicker of burning cloth escaped his entrapment and went searching for more food. I tried to emulate his actions and waved my shirt to try and catch it, but only succeeded in hastening its hungry journey.
“Right, stop! There’s not that many of them here after all. We can’t just stand in the middle of the room and catch all those that break free, we need to stop them at their source.” I pointed to the wall closest to him where two or three fires were starting to catch. “Get those, I’ll get those on the other wall. Just ignore the floaters, they’re harmless as long as we get them when they land. Concentrate on the hotbeds, and we’ll deal with the rest as they connect.”
Working in unison, we quickly managed to get a hold on the situation and extinguish the flames. Fire in zero gravity is a truly terrifying and intoxicating vision; it moves like waves, like globes of expanding liquid. It will detach from the original source and float freely through the room, latching on to any object and starting the process anew. Left unchecked, a firestorm is the end result, wave after wave hurtling through every nook and corner until everything, including the very air you breathe, is burning. This fire had originated in a circuit board that had overloaded, and as the circuits popped, small sparks had been flung out and had floated through the room. Luckily, Johanson had been in the area and had noticed the flying sparks when the lights went out. He had been fighting the fire with only his t-shirt and a squeezer of water until I arrived, and I grudgingly had to admit that he had done a pretty good job considering the conditions.
“Now what?” Beads of sweat glittered on Robbie’s forehead as he took in his surroundings.
“Now we fix the ship.”
Through the window I could see the orange flicker of liquid fire in the adjacent globe.
8. The Engineer
Robin Johanson levelled the gun at the youth kneeling in front of him. The clouds rolled in the narrow strip of sky visible in the gap between the buildings on either side of them. There was a certain poetry to the scene: one man kneeling, one man standing, the shadow of the gun levelled like a spear into the strip of dirt between them. Sunlight flickered on and off as the seconds ticked by, each one an eternity for all the actors in the play.
“Why did you do it?” Robbie’s voice broke at the end, and the gun wavered for half a ragged breath.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The man, a kid really, looked him straight in the eye, not a sliver of fear showing in his blue eyes.
“Why did you do it?” The scream echoed down the alley before disappearing into the hard asphalt.
The youth flinched a little, and a smile formed on his smooth features. “You know why. You and your friends are the result of our actions. This country needed a wake-up call, and I was proud to be a part of that alarm clock. A few dead mommy’s boys and girls was a small price to pay to cleanse this country of evil. And speaking of evil, that gun of yours is not exactly standard National Guard issue, now is it? In fact, it kinda looks familiar.” He cocked his head as he studied the gun in Robbie’s hand.
“You little bitch, I finally found you. I finally found you.” Robbie cocked the big handgun with his thumb and took a step forward. His finger tightened on the trigger, but before it hit critical pressure a figure dressed in the same urban camouflage fatigues as himself stepped into the alley.
“Hey Robbie, what’s taking so—” The figure stopped and seemed bewildered by the scene in front of her.
“None of your business Becky, get back to the unit.” Robbie did not take his eyes off his target.
“Like fuck this ain’t any of my business, what the hell is going on here?” The woman took a few tentative steps towards the duo, but stopped as the gun was raised almost imperceptibly as she closed the distance. The sun briefly caught the small red cross on her helmet and the larger one on her chest.
“Don’t, Rebekka, just don’t. Stay away, this is something I’ve been waiting years to do.” Robbie’s voice was again as rock steady as his gun.
“This is him, isn’t it?” Rebekka Loams, or Red Becky to the National Guard unit she was attached to, carefully raised her hands in a complacent way. “Are you sure it’s him, though? It’s been four years since your daughter was shot.” She braved another step forwards. “Can you be sure?”
“It’s him. What the hell do you think I see every night when I close my eyes? The face of this fucking murderer!” Robbie screamed in the face of the youth and his gun briefly flicked to the side as he leaned forward to lend power to his words. The kid dropped his hands and lunged forward, failing miserably as he tried to get his feet under him. The shot rang out and echoed down the alley. The lunge turned into a slump as the bullet took the kid between the eyes, killing him instantly.
Robbie held the smoking gun for a brief second, still pointed at where the kid had been a moment earlier, before lowering it to his side. His head slumped forward, he released his white-knuckled hold on the gun, and the clatter as it hit the ground was almost as loud as the shot had been.
Rebekka stared wide-eyed at the dead kid on the ground before turning to the silhouette of Robbie. “You’ve been hunting him all this time?”
“Every second of every day.” The words were flat, dead.
“You never told me.” It was meant as a statement, but came out as a question.
“No. I knew you’d send me home. ‘No place in the gunners for personal vendettas.’ Your words, that first day of the draft, back in Florida.”
Rebek
ka nodded and walked over to him. “I would have sent you home in a heartbeat. I almost did when I heard your girl was one of the very first victims of the university shootings. You volunteering the information barely saved you.” She knelt beside the body on the ground, checking for a pulse almost by instinct. She pulled her hand away and examined the weeping third eye between the kids’ eyes. “You will go to jail for this, you understand that?”
“Yeah, I know. Was worth it, though. Some monsters just can’t be allowed to run free.” He straightened and looked at her. “You shouldn’t be here, you might catch some flack for this.”
Finally, an emotion besides shock broke through Rebekka’s features. “Some flack? I’ll catch some flack? This will be my job, right here, right there on the ground! I vouched for you! I put my word on the line, guaranteeing that you were stable and ready to do your duty for the country! ‘What I experienced will be my strength as I help clean this country of guns.’ Your words! That first day of the draft! You lied to my face, and now you’ll go to jail and I’ll be out of a job! Nobody will take me after something like this, not these days!” Her knuckles were white and her nails burrowed into her palms as her fury rode through her like a wave.
Robbie flinched and took a step back, but did not break eye contact. “I’m sorry it went down like this, but this was always the way it would turn out. This bastard shot my girl at that first university shooting, and I’ve had my eyes peeled ever since. No way would he live while my baby was in the dirt.”
Rebekka let out a pent-in breath and looked back over her shoulder at the sound of running feet. “That’ll be the sarge and the boys, I told him I would look for you when you didn’t show up for the briefing. Been nice knowing you, Robbie.” She turned and walked back the way she had come.
“Hey, Becky!” The shout stopped her, but she did not turn back.
Martian Dictator Page 6