Nara

by M. L. Buchman

The cold seemed to bypass the rock and leave a warm silence around them.

  “Carla liked sunsets. She and I would sit here and watch them back before The End.”

  The stars slowly turned overhead. They were a projection of how the stars would have moved above the Arctic Circle in Finland where some of Carla’s ancestors originated. A meteor streaked by, disappearing near the northern star high in the sky.

  “You said this was her coat.”

  Ri wrapped her arms around her knees as an icy chill penetrated through the coldsuit.

  “I never met her.” His voice was the only warmth in the cold night. “I used to sleep in that small room behind the bar until I overheard a conversation one night about the empty biome. So I went exploring. Didn’t take much to override the hatches without setting off an alarm.”

  She turned to face his dark form. “How did you do that? No meals show either, omelette or otherwise. Olias nearly stumbled on the activity in that dead man’s file, but I was able to divert him.”

  “Thanks. I don’t think he’d like what he found. Though your Captain is a little too sharp for comfort.” He raised a hand as if to stare at it. “I was one hell of a good trouble-shooter on the shuttle run. And before. Odd jobs. Hiding and changing an identity isn’t as hard as it might seem. I eat as one person, pass through computer databases as another, and bypass hatch seals so that they operate locally and then I’m not registered anywhere.”

  “So, that’s why my security override didn’t open those hatches anymore.”

  He nodded and lowered his hand. “No magic. Just a little bit of reprogramming.”

  “The anonymous bartender.” Ri tried to imagine living separated from the world like that. She had double-thumb security codes, command crew clearance, Olias and his damn t-card, and always a line of people who had just one more question. She hoped that Olias didn’t put together, as the Captain had, that Ri was in and out of the Arctic biome for a reason.

  “I guess being his, um, progeny, you’d learn to be good at that.” She could feel him pause until he was stiller than the frozen rock beneath them. “No one knows other than Devra and me, and I think she’s only guessing.”

  “Does she know who I am?” He relaxed only the slightest bit.

  “I didn’t tell anyone, but I don’t know how much longer that will hold up.”

  “At first I hoped that you hadn’t heard me, or that I’d been drunk enough to only think I told you.”

  She rested a gloved hand on his arm. “You said it and I heard it. But that doesn’t change who you are, does it? You’re still my anonymous bartender and occasional breakfast cook.”

  He rested his hand over hers and held it tightly in his hand, made even larger by his gloves. His grip was so hard that she almost pulled her hand free, but it wasn’t as if he was trying to keep her there, but rather to hold on himself.

  They sat without moving and awaited the Arctic dawn.

  Chapter 25

  15 January 1 A.A.

  Jaron held the R4U mug in his hand, so strange for it to be warm with coffee rather than cold with beer.

  “Thank you for making your charming establishment available to us on such short notice.”

  Bryce nodded slowly to the Captain’s comment.

  Jaron was wondering if the Captain intended to insult the man. Apparently Bryce wasn’t sure either.

  The scuffed R4U logo shown above Bryce’s head where he leaned back against the wall. Ri sat beside him, her mug bright with orange juice. Olias, on the Captain’s left, appeared uncomfortable here in the bar. Robbie, looking little better for a night’s sleep, completed the circle.

  “And so, what have we learned in the last twelve hours? No reasonable idea should be left uninspected. At this juncture, I might even entertain unreasonable ones.”

  Ri set her juice on one of the small tables.

  As she moved, Jaron noticed an odd bulge at her hip. It was a slim, dangerous looking handle sticking out of a holster. Armed? What was wrong with these people? Didn’t they know they were inviting trouble? He leaned forward to protest, but Ri was already speaking.

  “We shut down all external air locks some days ago. I missed the maintenance hatches for servicing the Icarus and the vator balance in R1. Those were not used often, but certainly more than they should have been. There were two attempts to use them after I shut them down last night.”

  Bryce was shaking his head. “But they’re just going to feel more trapped. More caged.”

  “The only way they would know that is by trying to use those locks to dump a body or kill themselves. We made no announcements. No one else would even know.”

  The Captain nodded her agreement. Ri took a breath and returned the nod before continuing.

  “I had a team randomly stop the recyclers in R4 several times. Only once did they find any body parts, little more than bone fragments really. A DNA ID is being run.”

  Perhaps Ri’s weapon was not such a bad idea. Robbie had turned white as a sheet and Jaron rested a hand on hers. She clamped on with so much pressure that he could not have recovered his hand if he’d wished. He could feel the heat rise to his face as he glanced around the circle. Bryce was smiling at him, but it was a kind smile rather than mocking. None of the others seemed to notice.

  Olias slammed his mug down. “Switch off the goddamn recyclers.”

  “No.” Jaron cleared his throat. “No. We can’t. The ecosystem of Stellar One is carefully balanced. If we shut down the recyclers we could be in a breathable air crisis within, I don’t know, days.”

  Ri, thankfully, chimed in to support him. “It won’t work, Olias. It would build to a catastrophe within a week, two at the most. That is why those systems always rise to the top of the hot lists for the repair crews. And it is one of the few they still respond to, they understand. Only decompression and fire have a higher priority code.”

  “I knew that.” The big man appeared chagrined. “Damn. At least we could lock down any vacant spaces.”

  “I detailed an armed squad to do precisely that,” the Captain noted. “They are doing a sweep on a corridor by corridor basis. Any space with three or fewer accesses in the last ten days is being inspected then shut down to non-command personnel.

  “We sealed the top two levels of R4 East ag-bay. They found twenty-seven bodies in various states of decomposition before I pulled the teams and sealed it.”

  She faced Ri. “The team leader admitted no expertise, but reported that it had clearly gone back to being wild with probably no proper tending in a month or perhaps not even in the two months since The End.”

  “I should have caught that, Captain. I’m sorry. I never could find the time to check all of the ag-bays. I’ll run the sterilization routine. It will break down all the organics, we can repopulate the bacteria and reseed later.” Ri shuddered and looked toward the floor. “If we ever get a chance.”

  “No reflection on you, Commander Jeffers. I am only now beginning to understand the scale of the task you picked up when Marcus James was trapped on Earth. Is there any more new information that is applicable to this meeting?”

  Bryce and Ri looked at each other beneath the R4U sign. Was something going on between them? And whatever it was, did it involve the ham-handed man with all the teeth he’d met last night? According to the logs, Ri had certainly been spending a lot of time aboard the Icarus lately.

  “We,” she pointed, “Bryce and I, reviewed the numbers in some detail last night. No clear patterns emerged. R1 is safer, R4 isn’t. But we knew that.”

  “Well, I for one am personally glad of that.” Olias’ jest raised no laughter. “I have an idea.” He scars glistened in the light as he grinned.

  “Sorry, Bryce. It would mean closing this charming place. I think we would all fit in the first three rings. Let’s just shut down this R4 disaster. Easier to police and
patrol then.”

  “We can’t.” Jaron’s voice echoed down the corridor. He hadn’t meant to shout. “We can’t abandon the jungle.”

  “Or the ag-zones.” Ri cut in. “Many of these crops, like the jungle, exist nowhere else.”

  Devra Conrad raised her hands. “I am not retreating and that is final. Commander Ri. Did you have more to add?”

  “Nothing beyond the fact that we could find no errors in the numbers. Yesterday’s data was right on the curve.”

  “Ring Four Uninhabitable.” Jaron had no idea what could have made him say that, but the big red and gold R4U was looming over them.

  The meeting collapsed into a stunned silence.

  “It must mean something else.” The excuse fell into the silence without the slightest ripple.

  Bryce was just staring at him. It was a blank look of first meeting with a complete stranger.

  # # #

  Ri couldn’t rise from her chair as the Captain and Olias departed. Robbie waited for her boss part way along the corridor. Bryce and Jaron stood at the far edge of the bar. Long silences punctuated the brief sentences they offered one another. She leaned her head back against the solidness of the dusky yellow wall.

  The Captain was right, if they retreated, they would probably never recover. The Arctic was dead already, but it had been nearly as irrelevant as the desert biome to mankind’s survival. But to lose the jungle; that was over twenty-five percent of the entire ship’s biomass.

  She closed her eyes against the weariness that pulsed through her limbs with a dull throb. Even talking over the implication of the retreat when the topic had reemerged, was exhausting.

  Groping through the depths of her brain, Ri tried to recall the last time she’d really slept. It was…three days ago in Bryce’s chair in the Arctic. It felt as if she’d known him a month, not a few days. She watched him talking with Jaron. Their stances had softened, though it was hard to tell with Jaron. Bryce’s hands were stuffed deep in his pockets. At long last, he pulled one free and shook hands with Jaron. A brief nod with no smiles on either side and Jaron headed for his biome. Robbie fell into step close beside him.

  Bryce slid down into the chair next to hers and rested his long legs on the chair Olias had occupied.

  “Male bonding?”

  His response was slow in coming. “I suppose.”

  “If you won’t tell anyone what the bar name means, you’re going to have to live with the guessing games.”

  “I suppose.”

  Ri closed her eyes and let him mull over his choices at his own pace.

  “You never make guesses.”

  Ri shrugged without opening her eyes. “I always figured that you’d tell people when you were good and ready. Whether I were to guess ‘Ready for Urbanization’ or ‘Reality for the Unwashed,’ it wouldn’t really matter. Some day the time will come and you will tell people.”

  “Are you always so patient?”

  That made her blink and she looked into his deep, dark eyes. “No. I’d have to say I’m not, but you don’t appear to be on my list of things that aren’t happening fast enough.”

  “I don’t know whether to be flattered or disappointed.” His slow smile accompanied a crinkling at the corners of his eyes.

  She tilted her head to one side to inspect him. He was handsome, and had a nice smile on the rare occasions when it showed. But there was more than that. She was simply comfortable around him, and she had to admit that didn’t happen very often.

  “Flattered,” unsure why her voice sounded so certain when she spoke.

  “So what isn’t happening fast enough to satisfy our honored L0 runner? A certain Captain Turner?”

  “No. He’s already happened and ceased happening.” She sat up and turned to face him as the implications slammed home. “Where did you hear about him anyway? Is my life on some public newsletter I don’t know about?”

  “No. Just something I pieced together from the available data.”

  “I’m not so sure I like being data. You seem to know something on every topic that comes up. Like Wilkson’s data. That was scary. To what other careers have you applied these skills before you turned shuttle mechanic and bartender?”

  “Nothing of any use.”

  Two women from air con and a man from water stopped opposite the bar.

  “You pouring yet, Bryce?”

  “No.” They displayed their disappointment for Bryce’s benefit before slouching off down the corridor.

  Bryce grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. She didn’t argue as he led her into his brewing room and down through the hatch. Bryce led her anti-spinward. It was so disorienting she actually careened into pipe. She always ran to spinward, into higher gravity and harder workout, but the Arctic was much closer this way. And, she couldn’t help smiling, that was just fine with her at the moment.

  Bryce reached an arm across her shoulder and steadied her against his side. His strong hand held her gently, but it was the warmth and power of him that sustained her. A wave of heat rippled up her side radiating from where his body rubbed against hers as they walked. It was both horribly distracting and invigorating at the same time.

  As they crowded into the small maintenance lock, she was nearly overwhelmed by his male scent in the closed space. The blast of Arctic air stopped her reverie abruptly.

  “Damn. I only have the one coat here. The lab isn’t far though.”

  He offered her Carla’s coat, but there were some things she couldn’t do and wearing Carla’s coat was one of them. She shook her head dumbly. After a long moment, he pulled on the coat. Turning her back to him, he dragged her deep into the warmth against his chest and wrapped the open flaps over both of them. The waddle to the lab left them both hysterical with laughter. They fell through the thermal shield and the heat slammed against her.

  She was only vaguely aware of Bryce lifting her into his arms and setting her on his bed. With a faint whisper, the sheets slid over her shipsuit. She tried to mumble a ‘goodnight’ but didn’t know if she succeeded before sleep overwhelmed her.

  # # #

  Ri jerked awake from a nightmare of running down the blistering summer-hot streets of Nara. There was a horrible buzzing against her thigh. She scrabbled the covers aside trying to wipe off the giant cockroach. The giant bugs were… She slapped at the vibration again and felt the outline of her t-card. She pulled it out and keyed it on.

  “Ri?” A tinny voice issued from the microspeaker.

  “Sicily?” She couldn’t keep her voice steady. Nara had been so real.

  “Are you okay?”

  She cleared her throat. “Yea. Sure. What’s up?”

  “Could you come meet with us aboard the Icarus? We have a few ideas we’d like to discuss.”

  “Where’s Jackson?” She looked around her room. It took a moment before she recognized the Arctic biome lab. Bryce was nowhere to be seen, probably gone on shift, late afternoon or early evening.

  “He’s here, but I thought it would be better for me to call.”

  “Good guess.”

  Sicily’s good-natured laugh trapped her.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  She signed off and swung out of bed. Carla’s coat hung over the back of a chair. Bryce must have nearly frozen on his way to the hatch. She stroked the fabric. Its fine nap tickled the inside of her palm. She glanced at the thermometer readout. A steady -20°C, definitely still January out there despite the weak sunlight peeking over the horizon.

  She wrapped herself in the coat and could imagine Bryce’s warmth surrounding her as she walked to the main hatch. As before, she left the coat on a boulder just inside the hatch and locked herself through into the corridor. She hardly noticed the slide up to the core.

  But by the time she reached the drop into R1 she was already
trying to puzzle out why they needed her aboard the Icarus. Any new security problems would have come to her from Command. She kept her eyes closed as the increasing gravity twisted at her gut. Her feet hit bottom and she held on a moment longer until she could feel her equilibrium return.

  She stumbled into the Icarus. The entire crew awaited her in the main lounge. Jackson’s smile was completely in place. He must not have any idea how much that grin gave a woman the creeps. Why she’d ever thought it was charming was beyond her present mental capacity.

  “What?” That sounded ruder than she’d intended. “Why did you folks need to see me?” A little better.

  Hank looked to Sicily who looked at Jackson. Suddenly nobody would meet her eyes.

  Jackson signaled to Donnie by sliding a finger across his throat. Instead of agreeing he should be killed, his computer specialist turned to a nearby console and tapped a few keys. The lock hissed shut behind her.

  “All locked down, Cap. No signals in or out. All hatches sealed, signed, and delivered.”

  “Am I being kidnapped?” Ri nudged her weapon with the side of her arm to make sure it was there in her holster. Why would the crew turn against her? Was she about to be dumped out an airlock because she’d slept with their Captain once and had refused a repeat engagement?

  Jackson’s grin just widened. “Kidnapped? Wasn’t planning on it. I could probably arrange it though if you’d like.”

  Ri turned back to Sicily. “Then what the hell am I doing here?”

  “We had an idea.” The older woman glared at her Captain before continuing. “We don’t know if we can pull it off. Or even if we can, should we? The only thing we agree on is that we can’t do it without you.”

  Ri sat down and looked at them. “I’m listening.”

  But Sicily did not continue. No one else made any move to help her out.

  “Shit.” Donnie looked disgusted. “No guts, no glory they say in the old vids. Remember I told you it looked like crashed code out there in the rings?”

  Ri shook her head.

  Donnie sighed. “Well, I did. And I got to thinking about code and patching crashed chains, even chains you can’t quite suss the flow of and…”