Bram sipped more water. “You don’t have to worry about bodily fluids boiling off into space, but pressure suits are being worn for comfort and support when working, and to supply oxygen. We might change that to just an oxygen mask, if you get to feeling more comfortable. It’s freezing down there, mind.” Bram didn’t elaborate.
“Burgesses’ molten centre doesn’t mean we lack magnetosphere. Solar radiation isn’t a killer, but there are plenty of others!”
I raised my hand. “Can I ask a question?”
“No.”
“Mumsy is a red dwarf and therefore sunlight on Burgesses is in the infrared.” Bram paused. “I think this says, of the electromagnetic spectrum.” He flipped a page, skipping over some more of the writing. “Blah. Blah, Blah. Oh, surface temperatures. It’s cold. Fucking cold. The boffins on the surface built structures that fire off additional protons and give warmth. That’s to boost photosynthesising plants or something. The good news is that means we have no worries about ultraviolet folks.”
I glanced around to see if everyone else was as lost as I was. If they were, they hid it well. Bram thought of something funny and snickered. “Hey 304, I mean Jonti, the cold means no worries for you there, right old gal, ya ginger-minger.” I wondered if he was referring to Jonti’s freckles or something else. Bram guffawed again.
“The soil on Burgesses contains most of the main elements crucial to life, including sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon. Molecular oxygen only exists in trace amounts. Large amounts of elemental oxygen can be also found in metal oxides on the surface, in the form of pernitrates. Terraforming Burgesses essentially entails liberating the oxygen while maintaining a positive atmospheric pressure.” Bram looked at us with eyes that might have been nailed there. “We have been lucky to find this planet. Our job when we get there is to undertake the tasks the boffins deem too dangerous to do themselves. We will be fed, watered, and if, after the thick end of twenty years, ten in my case,” Bram emphasised this, as if reminding the Skree in the room of the deal he’d made, “you’ve made a good job of things then you will be given the option to accept Burgesses’ citizenship, or to return to Earth as free men, all convictions rescinded. That’s assuming you live so long.” Bram finished by laughing all by himself. He’s was either scared, fearless, or mad. I couldn’t decide which.
Chapter Eight. Bravo Team.
“Okay, let’s introduce ourselves again, for the benefit of everyone. Might as well know each other by first names before we die!” Bram then changed his mind. “No. On other thoughts, Paul, come out here. Tell us your life story in one sentence.”
I reluctantly got to my feet, hobbled a bit from the pain in my ribs. Bram, in a squeaky, piss-taking voice said, “You’re not in high heels petal. This is not a beauty contest, get yourself up here tout suite, Sugar.”
I sped up, stepped onto the platform, conscious of my gangly legs. “Hello, my name is Paul, I’m 32, not yet married. Hope we get along.” It was lame, and I was racking my brain for something else to say and was just about to reopen my mouth when Bram cut me off, “Thanks Daisy, but nobody here wants to marry you. Sit down. Next?”
Up came R301. He was of an athletic build, good-looking, but prematurely grey. Taking my lead, he said “Hi I’m David, 26 years old, I have a son called Nathaniel.”
“Okay Twinkle-toes,” Bram sniggered. “Sit down. Just think, if you live, you can see Nathaniel in about fifty years-time, you might want to call him Gramps though.” Bram thought this real funny and threw back his wrinkled face, laughing like a maniac. David sat down with a sheepish grin, unsure as to whether to laugh or cry. Next came R302, Jenna, all head and no hair. She took her time and Bram said, “Come on ya fuckin’ head-on-a-stick, we haven’t got all day.”
Jenna seemed composed and not at all overawed by her situation or Bram’s insults. She said cool as a trout, “I’m Jenna, and I mean to get through my 30 years with or without your help.”
“Nice,” Bram said, “let’s hope your colleagues here remember your wise words when the time comes to save your sorry ass.” Jenna sat down with a scowl. “304, you’re up next.”
Jonti, all chin and red faced got up. “Yo, I’m called Jonti, but you can call me J.T. I don’t particularly like my name.” J.T. sat down again.
“Okay, Jonti it is,” said Bram unable to think of an insult.
R305 was probably the oldest of our team. He certainly looked it. He had a large round, pale face, probably from an ethanol habit. His left eye twitched as he spoke, giving his features a lopsided tilt. He had a bald pate, like a monk’s. “I’m Patrick, 32 and am glad to be going on this mission. I was one day away from execution before I was chosen.” Bram looked impressed and began moving his index finger across his thumb. “Know what that is?” Patrick shook his head. “World’s smallest violin. Sit down. Next.”
That just left R306 who looked like he had not hit his twentieth birthday yet. Adorned with a thick mop of dark hair, he wore a pair of oversized glasses that looked as if they belonged to an idiot. They were massive, round-rimmed things. Perhaps they’d been supplied by the Vanguard to improve his eyesight. They did nothing for his looks. “Name is Henry. I’m good with my hands, open to success. I don’t want to die just yet.” I marked Henry down as brainy.
That was our team, nearly ready as it happens, for our journey to Burgesses, a planet I hadn’t even heard of ten minutes ago.
“Okay,” Bram said, “that’s it spunk-bubbles for now.” There was a nod from one of the Skree present. “Oh yes, nearly forgot. We’ll be getting on the monorail in less than two days. Our ship is called Rubicon.” Bram looked at his notes for the last time. “The other people on the vessel are: two cooks, three Skree specialist construction crew, five Vanguard - that includes a doc, a nurse, two marines and a pilot… oh and six Skree colonists and of course a captain. The ship lies in orbit 400 kilometres above earth. It’s an M Class frigate, 63300 metric tonnes of supplies, all shuttled out and ready to go. Us Scrits won’t be doing much with the Vanguards, except for doing what we’re told. They’re bluebloods. When we get to the planet, we go down as a team and we do exactly what is expected by those in command. There are about sixty in the population at Blue Base. That’s the name given to the biosphere where we will live. I’m guessing we’re gonna be the removal men.”
Bram looked at his wristcheck. I was amazed he had one. They were state of the art mini computers and an attribute of the Vanguard. “Last communication from Blue Base is always more than eight years old, but as far as we can tell, everything is okay.” He said this as if he’d read the information from off his wrist, but that was impossible. “That’s not to say that the Scrits haven’t taken a pounding. Out of the original ten, six have been killed. Guess what? We are their replacements. Things might have changed drastically by the time we get there, but that’s not within our control.” Bram chucked his notes onto the table and they slid a couple of feet along the polished faux mahogany. “Right. Paul, after dinner you take your lie detector test. The rest of us will be going to the simulator for a workout. We’ve got to tone our muscles before they go into hibernation.”
Bram sat down with us, turned off the projector and waited expectantly. Some message must have been passed because four service Scrits came in to the room bearing food. All were women, middle-aged, except one young girl with beautiful, long blonde hair and bumps in the right places. She was beautiful. I wondered if I’d ever find a wife, raise a family, or even have sex again.
The food was mainly protein cubes, but there were some curious fresh foods. Round, red- skinned fruits that tasted both sour and sweet and were not universally popular with the diners, despite their appealing appearance, were shunned. Conversely, a spiky plant, brown and green when sliced, revealing yellow segments, tasted divinely sweet but looked terrible and smelt worse. These were wolfed down albeit after a sniffy pause. Coffee was then served. It actually tasted like the coffee that I’d sometimes o
btained on the black market.
I’d eaten some of the fruit and sipped some coffee, but the imminent lie detector test somewhat jaded my appetite. Bram proposed a toast raising his coffee carton, “Here’s to team ‘No Hope’.” We’d been christened. We chorused without enthusiasm, “No Hope!”
The meal finished, and Team Nope went with Bram, single file, under the ever-watchful eyes of the Skree, to wherever the aforementioned simulator was kept. I was left waiting for what would come. My heart hammered like a fat clock. Coupled with sweaty palms and flushed expression, I probably told my inquisitors all they needed to know about the guilt I carried in my head, long before they even got started on the test.
Two oily thugs came into the room followed by what I assume was a Vanguard, wearing a shell-suit with string. He carried with him a briefcase and a white device, the size of a large brick. He placed it on the table. It had the imprint of a hand moulded upon the top. He pointed at my right hand. “Press your palm on the tablet.” As I did, a sensory wristband snaked around my wrist.
“Just relax,” he said. I was about as relaxed as a spring-loaded gun.
“I want you to answer my questions immediately, without thought. If I believe your answer comes too slowly, then I will fail that question and it will count against you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, gulping back some coffee flavoured bile I’d burped into my mouth.
“Keep things simple. Yes/No answers will suffice.” Without further preliminary he began asking.
“Did you ever get in trouble as a boy?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever committed a crime?”
“Yes.”
“Did you love your father?”
“Not always.”
“What’s your favourite colour?”
“Blue. No, purple.”
“Do you hate the Vanguard?”
“Yes.”
“Will you sabotage the mission to Burgesses?”
“No.”
“Do you like people?”
“Not always.”
I answered about fifty questions at a guess and as the machine released my hand, I waited to know whether I was to live or to die. The Van didn’t say a word to me. Instead he picked out the same, silver dog-collar worn around the necks of my compatriots from his briefcase and snapped it tight round my neck. “Take him to join the others.”
I must have passed.
In any case I was taken out of the room, gulping down my Adam’s apple past my new choker. This time, instead of using the stairs, we took the elevator six floors upward. The elevator opened to a landing made of slipnot metal with encompassing railings. I was surprised, I expected a room.
Stepping onto the landing, what was set before me was a cathedral sized space with small glass-built cubes dotted about here and there. I saw technicians working in some of them. Climbing off the landing, the Skree selected one of three travellators and pushed me onto it. He pressed his wristcheck and we were whisked across the flooring as quickly as a man can sprint. As I held tightly to a moving handrail I wondered how we were going to get off the thing without causing ourselves great injury. The moving path, answering my question, descended and then slowed, stopping outside one of the many glass cubes. I was pushed off. The Skree opened the glass door in front, where I could see my colleagues standing around a chamber the size of a hover-pod.
As I arrived in their midst, Patrick of the squinty-eyed red-face features, was moving about in an internal chamber. I saw his startled face through a helmet he wore skewwhiff. The rig was a full immersion kit with oversized haptic gloves. Whatever he had been doing was done, and he began climbing out of the cabinet and then was helped out of the helmet by Bram. As it twisted to the right, it opened with a pop and a whoosh of air, as if his head had been inside a hot flask.
Bram turned to his new arrival – me. “Just in time,” he said. “Your turn.”
He saw the look on my face. “Now don’t be worrying Daisy dear, we know you’re a bit crocked. Get that suit off Patrick and go stand in them there boots.”
I searched the floor.
“Not down there, dimwit, those, there… there look, in that chamber.” I saw where he pointed and moved toward them slowly. “Come on we haven’t got all day.”
I got the uniform on. “It’s only gonna give you some idea of the gravitational effects on Burgesses. Nothing to worry about.” He laughed, “Unless you don’t fix the suit up proper, then you’ll get some idea of the temperature on the planet. By the way, did I tell you the temperature range on the planet is from -60°C to a balmy 2°C in full sunshine?”
The suit was peeled off Patrick. After I stripped naked and with the help of the others, I pulled the rubbery shell over my body. It was slick with sweat and stunk of several hours of use. It slid over my limbs with the accompanied odour of stale urine. It was a horrible GUI suit.
“Get used to it love.” Bram twisted on the helmet, “don’t activate the helmet till you get into the machine, or else you’ll cook your head like a pork cheek.”
“How do I activate the helmet?” I asked nervously as the neon-violet telemetry began skidding instructions across the visor.
“Ask for helmet activation and the right words will appear.”
The door to the chamber opened and I was practically pushed inside. Black boots were on the floor with a handle to hold onto in front of them. It was very cold. Remnants of freezing mist hugged the floor after Patrick’s go. I stepped into the boots as they sucked onto my feet in a vacuum.
“Activate the helmet,” I said aloud, feeling scared.
The words helmet activated, appeared in blue across the viewfinder. At once warm air circulated across my face. As I breathed with ragged expectation, I heard an exhaust port at the back of my head ejecting my CO2. It sank in pearls of grey and white, a slow-moving blanket that only shifted when I moved. I wondered where the suit got its oxygen, but decided not to ask about it right now. I just wanted to get this thing over with.
I lifted one booted foot. It felt as though I were trying to shift great balls of lead with my calves. Not knowing what to do next, I tried walking. Think walking underwater against a strong current and you can get an idea of how difficult it was. The extra heavy effects of the gravitation on Burgesses was well-simulated.
With small steps I got the hang of placing one heavy boot after the other. After a couple of circles and an uncomfortable few moments fighting off the panicky effects of claustrophobia I came to realise I was going to have to get used to wearing this kit. I settled into the walking pattern and tried to ignore the pulling of my bruised ribs against muscle. I soon got the hang of it, and the extra gravitational pull eased somewhat.
A pipping sound went off and after a couple of minutes of whooshing air the door opened. I left the chamber and stumbled forward with the exaggerated effect of normal gravity, already fooling my senses in reverse. That was the beginning and the end of my training for our trip to planet Burgesses, barring a couple of lectures still to come. Those in all honesty, I wish I’d skipped.
I was extremely tired by the time I got back to my cell. After another meal and only one painkiller I slept until what was probably morning. Without the benefit of sunrise or sunset, who could tell?
Chapter Nine. Rubicon.
The next day was more prep and lectures and then the following; well the Skrees had us up, shit, showered, shaved and shoe-shined in about the same time it took to eat a breakfast. We were leaving. It was time to board spaceship Rubicon which we had been told was via a shuttle, perched upright, in a desert, fifteen hundred miles away. We were to ride the great chrome monorail through the mega-city of Pangropolis and were as excited as kids before a trip to the circus. But to get to the monorail, we had to walk to a time-stop on subway level three. Chained together at the ankles and clanking like a large unhappy centipede we reached topside via a massive service elevator. I say topside, but we were still three floors below surface.
We trudged along a concourse of glass and chrome and the Vans we passed - all wearing Nu-glow and pin-stripe - were too aloof and hard-boiled to give us a second glance. I saw a few noses raised skyward, as if by merely looking at us from a distance they could somehow sense a bad smell.
In a far-off dream, one that was both literal and metaphysical to all us Scrits, our team Nope was swept across vast lobbies on travellators that only slightly decelerated at intersections and exit points. It was like riding on a wave of ice and was as exhilarating as it was awesome. The travellator began its incline and I saw Glide cars and pedestrians, small as needle-points, busying themselves far below. They were almost invisible by the time we climbed to our departure lounge. There would be no final tearful goodbyes or celebratory Fizzling for us. In fact, we arrived at a sterile tubular glass and metal structure, a terminal so devoid of any other passengers, I felt like a germ in isolation. We were allocated a ‘special’ Skytrain and our shackles were removed on entering the pristine tube of light and air - conditions normal for Luckies.
All seats were forward facing and I chucked my small bag into the open locker above the first stall that felt right. I was one of the first to sit down, bagging a window seat. Although, since most panels were transparent, there was pretty much a panoramic view for everyone to enjoy. Heavy duty seat belts, well, more harness than belt, lay limp on the cushioned seat and a video was playing on a loop telling me how to fit the thing.
“Get sat down ladies,” roared Bram, “and I strongly suggest you buckle up well, we’ll be travelling three G’s.” He finished his sentence with a “Yee-haw,” as if he were a cowboy from one of those olden time films. I guess the adrenaline surge created by using the travellator was merely a prelude to what Bram obviously knew was coming.
Gliding like oil on water, we set off toward the space ship Rubicon. The carriage didn’t make a sound. At first, we moved at walking pace and a few comments were passed about the tardiness of Vanguard travel… and then… whoosh, a fucking great whir. I was pressed bodily backward and felt as if I was melting into my seat. A blur of a building and then into a grey-scape. We must have swept past hundreds of skyscrapers in a heart-beat, only noticeable by the beetling of sunlight flashing off thousands of panes. I was sorry I couldn’t see Pangropolis in any detail, but right at this point I was trying to keep my head facing forward, not pushed into a drooling sideways leer. Then we were into green and other colours, all merging into a kaleidoscopic smear.
Beyond the Rubicon Page 5