Moral and Orbital Decay

by J. S. Morin

  “There’s no way I’m letting you take control of me again,” Esper warned. “You barely let go last time. And even if I do, what damage will you do in the meantime?”

  “It was a nice body to try out,” Mort said by way of oblique apology. “Not my style. Wouldn’t want to keep it. But still, it felt good filling real lungs with air.”

  “Get out,” Esper said. “Get out right now, or I’m conjuring a false Cedric in my head and rolling in the lawns of Mortania Castle with him while you’re tied to a chair.”

  Mort opened his mouth, aghast. The wizard scowled, but one sudden move toward him by Esper and he was gone.

  # # #

  Roddy slunk along the corridors of the visitors’ ring. He could only read the non-digital signage in flashes and was using welding goggles to shield his eyes from the solar glare. Rather than alternately getting blinded and cast into darkness, he could see nearly half the time and was completely blind the rest.

  He had to get back to the Mobius and start work on the repairs. It wouldn’t be long before the ship would pass the same point of no return as the doomed station.

  In his head, he ran through the resuscitation sequence.

  Waste recycler.

  Comms.

  Main engines—the Mobius was spry old bugger, not needing as much coaxing to turn main power back on as the station would.

  Guns.

  Maneuvering thrusters.

  It wouldn’t be a pretty escape, but the Mobius had the firepower to carve itself a hole and use that as an exit. If Roddy had the time, he’d bring the shields up, too, in case the fit wasn’t clean.

  After that, he had plenty of time to get life support and navigation up and running before anything too horrible happened to them. He had to hope that everyone would have the common sense to get themselves back to the ship in time to abandon the station.

  “You there!”

  It was one of the guard patrols. Roddy had been lucky so far to have avoided them. The station was huge and gangly. There were only so many stray personnel to enforce the station-wide curfew.

  Not in any mood for talking, Roddy ran.

  The guards broke into a run of their own.

  If it was to be a chase, Roddy didn’t like his odds. He was beat from a long day’s work already. He’d never been big on athletics in general. The tool kit he’d pilfered was pretty handy and would make a nice addition to his workshop on the Mobius, so he hesitated to ditch it. Plus, these guys knew the station light-years better than he did.

  Dropping into a partial all-fours stance, with one hand still clutching the tool kit, Roddy took off down a maintenance shaft.

  “Rogue mechanic!” one of the guards announced, possibly decrypting the file that had a laaku and a tool kit in the same directory.

  Roddy didn’t have time to form an elaborate plan. He dropped the tools in front of an access panel to the ventilation system. Digging out one of the station mechanics’ custom interlocked security wrenches, he popped the bolts and slid the panel aside.

  He didn’t have long before the guards arrived at the end of the shaft to see what he was up to.

  Hustling to one of the panels across the way, Roddy left the tool kit behind and only took the custom wrench. Popping just the lower bolts, he managed to pull it open wide enough to squeeze inside, taking the wrench and loose bolts with him.

  Roddy covered his mouth with a hand to muffle his panting.

  The guard’s footsteps arrived just outside the panel. “He’s gone into the ductwork. Jones, get to Concourse L. McMannis, trace the other end and see where it comes out.”

  “Distributor center by the core, I think,” someone who was presumably McMannis answered.

  “You won’t get away with deserting your post!” the first guard shouted.

  The footsteps broke up and separated in two directions.

  Roddy waited a minute and squeezed back out into the maintenance shaft.

  Taking up his stolen tools, he headed off again in search of the Mobius.

  # # #

  Roddy was out of breath by the time he found the Mobius in its hangar. Somehow, in all the sunken chaos aboard YF-77, a tiny voice in his head told him that maybe it wasn’t going to be. But there it was, cargo ramp down and everything, just the way he’d last seen it.

  No one was there waiting for him, and the nagging voice changed tactics, suggesting that everyone had split up to search the station or some fool notion along those lines.

  “Hello?” he called from the cargo bay, picking his way by the light of a glow rod through a mess he was largely responsible for creating.

  The common room door opened, and a faint blue light spilled out. “There you are!” Carl shouted down. “You ready to get this bird airborne?”

  “That’s the idea,” Roddy replied. “This station’s toast. Figure if we can get the guns and at least a couple engines online, we can make our own less-than-graceful exit.”

  “I was thinking of Esper forcing the doors, but we’ll try your way first,” Carl confirmed. He clanged down the stairs toward Roddy.

  “Am I the last one back?” Roddy asked.

  Amy appeared in the doorway above. “Not quite. We’ve still got Yomin and Shoni out there.”

  Thrust reversers fired in the planning portion of the laaku mechanic’s brain. “Shoni’s out there?”

  “Don’t worry,” Amy replied. “It was the station chief who wanted to see her. She didn’t get pressed into grunt work.”

  Spare parts welded themselves into a piece of industrial artwork in Roddy’s mind. “Wait a minute. With no computers, they needed someone to figure out whether we were going to hit atmo at all, didn’t they?”

  “That’s my guess as to who put the timer on this crash,” Amy confirmed.

  Roddy turned to exit down the cargo ramp. A human hand caught him by the arm. “Not so fast, Romeo,” Carl warned. “We’ve got a ship to coddle into behaving. Finding Shoni doesn’t do any of us any good if we can’t get her off here.”

  “We can’t just hope she decides to come back in time,” Roddy protested. He would have tried to break free of Carl’s grasp if he hadn’t remembered needing a beer supply for the search. “You’d do the same for Amy.”

  “Yeah, but I’m an idiot,” Carl shot back. “It’d be the wrong play, I’d know it, and it’d be someone else’s job to make sure I didn’t do it. Lucky for you, I’m here. I’ve got your back.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  They both turned to look up at Amy in unison.

  “Remember that part about me being an idiot?” Carl asked.

  “I know how long we’ve got,” Amy countered. “And I’m not planning on taking shit from anyone along the way. Shoni’s not a fool. Once she knows the plan, I’ll be the one racing to catch up to her. I’ll track down Yomin while I’m out there, too.”

  “Yomin’ll be at one of the computation nodes,” Roddy said. “We got split up once they realized our specialties.”

  “Lemme grab a blaster,” Amy said, retreating for the door.

  “What good’ll that do?” Roddy shouted after her. “Everyone knows tech is down. Even if yours works, no one’s gonna believe it until you fire.”

  Amy ducked her head back through the door. Back lit in already paltry light, it was impossible to read her expression. “Right. Good point.”

  “Then where are you going?” Carl shouted as she disappeared again.

  “Crazy ones are more fun, right?” Roddy asked, elbowing Carl in the ribs.

  In truth, much as he’d have wanted to find Shoni himself, he felt better about Amy going than Carl taking on the search himself. She was competent and not easily distracted. Hers wouldn’t be a haphazard search by the skin of her teeth—the way Carl would have done it.

  “All set,” Amy called down. She was wearing Carl’s sword buckled at her belt. She carried a backpack that clattered with the telltale song of hardcoin terras.

  Carl gave the sword a meaningful g
lare. “You don’t even know how to use that thing.”

  “Never stopped you from carrying it around,” Amy argued. “And no one’s going to wonder whether it’ll work. Like I said, this girl’s not taking shit from anyone today. That includes you, sweetie.” She planted a kiss on Carl’s lips before shouldering past him.

  “Um. Good luck,” Carl called after her.

  Roddy watched her go. Silent prayers to that ancient God of hers seemed like the least he could offer to aid her search.

  Carl shook his head. “Never can predict what she’s gonna do.”

  “Funny how life works. I’m a smart enough guy, but Shoni makes me look like an acting school reject. You’re one of the craziest fuckers in the galaxy, and…” He swept a hand toward the path Amy had just carved on her way out of the Mobius.

  Carl clapped Roddy on the shoulder. “Wistful Time is over. Grab whatever-the-hell you need and play tech psychologist.”

  Roddy nodded. “Aye, captain!”

  He headed off to the engine room. First stop: the strategic beer reserves.

  # # #

  Amy was getting vertigo. The spin of the station made it impossible to look up without getting pulses of light blinding her every few seconds. If anyone had mentioned the effect, they’d downplayed it to the point where it hadn’t registered in Amy’s head as an obstacle to account for. She had some shader lenses back in her quarters that would have gone a long way right about now.

  “Shoni!” Amy shouted. “Yomin!”

  There was no point keeping her search secret. This wasn’t time for playing nice and sneaking around. This was the time for getting the hell off this doomed station before they became permanent residents of the planet below.

  “You there!”

  Amy stopped and rolled her eyes beneath closed lids. Just what she needed. Station security was guarding the cookie jars aboard the ENV Titanic.

  “What?” she snapped. “I’m looking for two of my crew mates.”

  “Travel is restricted,” one of the guards barked like a boot-camp drill instructor. Navy grads never had stories as awful as the ones the marines told, but the vocal inflection was always the same. “Return to your vessel until the station curfew is listed.”

  “Listen here,” Amy said, drawing Carl’s sword and squinting against the intermittent glare at the four patrolling officers. “I’m finding a human and a laaku. I’m escorting them back to my ship. We’re not planning on setting foot on this station again. Either we leave out an open hangar door or we crash together with this station. But lemme tell you this: I’m willing to kill the four of you if you try to stop me.”

  “Ma’am, drop the weapon and get down on the ground,” the lead guard ordered.

  They carried stun batons. Without tech, each was just a thin metal rod with some decorative electronics stuffed inside. As weapons, they’d be as effective as broken pool cues—something Amy had faced once or twice on shore leave during her navy days.

  Still hoping to avert a conflict, Amy jabbed the tip of Carl’s sword into the floor at her feet. “This thing’s sharp enough to cut steel. Picked it up on Rigel IX from a wizard blacksmith. Never got much cause to use it—prefer blasters myself—but it’ll cut you boys in half. If you wanna bring me up on charges once your stun batons are working, fine. But unless those anti-plasma vests you’re wearing under those uniforms are protected against magic swords, get the fuck out of my way.”

  The guards scattered but fell in behind Amy from a safe distance, keeping up surveillance.

  “Shoni!” Amy shouted, doing her best to ignore them. “Yomin!”

  “Amy?” Shoni called back. The laaku scientist raced down from one of the maintenance tunnels. “I’m looking for Roddy. Have you seen him?”

  “He’s back on the ship,” Amy replied, almost stumbling and using the name of the Mobius with the guards within earshot. Last thing she needed was them causing trouble at the hangar. “Just need to find Yomin, and we can all head back there.”

  Shoni caught Amy glancing back at the guards. “Trouble?”

  “There’s a curfew I’m violating,” Amy explained. “I may also have threatened them with a medieval-tech bisection if they tried to take me in.”

  “You four,” Shoni shouted. “Get over here this instant.”

  The guards approached warily. “Hey. That’s you. The laaku working for Chief Fujita.”

  Shoni neither confirmed nor denied the claim. “Names and employee ID numbers,” she demanded.

  The guards stammered.

  “Now!” Shoni snapped. “We’re forty minutes from repair completion. I’ve been given dispensation to return to my ship, and you’re interfering with my escort. I’m going to make sure the favor the chief promised me is you four getting fired.”

  There were muttered apologies and promises that Shoni allowed to hang in limbo as the guards retreated and left their sight.

  “This place is almost fixed?” Amy asked quietly once she was confident they were out of earshot as well.

  “Not in this universe,” Shoni muttered. “Let’s find Yomin and get off this accursed station. I’ve had my fill of this adventure.”

  # # #

  Mort cackled.

  Esper sat alone at the head of her bed, legs tucked under her in a meditative pose that wasn’t working.

  “You’re all screwed,” Mort taunted. “Monkey said so himself. He might not know a cantrip from a candle, but he has a gut feel for putting his tech back into marching formation after an ‘incident.’ Knows his math, too. Sixteen hours are more than two, and that means this whole imitation moon is going planetward.”

  “Something you know intimately,” Esper mumbled. It didn’t matter how quietly or indistinctly she spoke. Putting any voice to the words at all seemed to allow Mort to understand her perfectly.

  “Well, mine was on purpose. It was a real moon, and it was glorious,” Mort allowed. “But what if I told you that I could work the same trick in reverse?”

  “Dragging up the rubble of a moon from the cloudy skies of a gas giant, restoring the lives of the millions of residents—”

  “More like thousands.”

  “—and placing it back in its proper orbit?”

  “Mostly the last part.”

  Esper blinked. “Wait a minute…”

  Mort nodded. He stomped an incorporeal foot on the bedroom floor. “Might be overridden in here, but this whole place still has gravity. Ever stop to think why?”

  “Science can’t create gravity,” Esper whispered to herself. “There’s a gravity stone here somewhere.”

  “Jolly good-sized one unless I’m mistaken. This ant farm is as gangly as a spider—one of the spindly ones, too, not the chubby, fuzzy kinds. Any gravity stone that can cover the whole thing must have a gravity stone sized to match.”

  “I wouldn’t have the strength to move this whole station… would I?” Esper asked.

  Mort nodded with resignation. “Probably not.” He allowed that pessimism to linger for a few breaths. “But I do.”

  Esper shook her head. “No. I can’t. I’m not letting you have free rein again. Not after last time. You have no idea how horrible it felt, waking up from a nightmare to find it was all real.”

  “I live that nightmare,” Mort replied.

  Esper swallowed.

  “You consider yourself so high and mighty,” Mort continued. “But you’ve gotten callous. I’m not even alive in the traditional sense at the moment, but I’ve got compassion for those poor souls trapped and living a hellish life on a desolate space station. What are there, a few thousand people living in this tin can? Maybe about the same population as Ithaca’s Little Brother? You’re following in my footsteps quite nicely.”

  “You did that,” Esper said. “I’m just helpless to stop this. There’s a difference.”

  “Not to the impending dead.”

  “I won’t let you twist me into thinking of the two acts as equivalent.”

  Mort harr
umphed and walked to the door as if to open it for Esper. “I don’t. You’re already doing that for yourself. You’re not willing to make the tiniest of sacrifices to save all these people. Pride—to value your own inconvenience over all those lives. Sloth—sitting here and waiting for Carl and the monkey to save you. Lust—seducing my boy when there’s work to be done. Don’t pretend you didn’t do it half from hedonistic greed and half from wrath, just to spite me. You’re treading a path befitting an old sinner like me, frankly, except I’m a married man, and I’ve kept my oath to Nancy despite thousands of Mort-years alone.”

  “You’re not the better man here,” Esper protested in a whisper. “You’re trying every rhetorical trick to get me to give in.”

  “Someone’s got to talk some sense into you,” Mort argued. “I’m just the only one you can’t shut away when he says what you don’t want to hear.”

  Esper bolted from the bed. She couldn’t take this any longer. Too much of what Mort said was true. But that didn’t mean that his conclusion was the correct one.

  “Atta girl!” Mort cheered as Esper flung open her door.

  # # #

  “I’m going to save this station,” Esper announced.

  The common room’s few occupants looked cockeyed at her, as if she’d just announced her candidacy for Prime Citizen or vowed to cure the common hangover.

  “I’m serious,” Esper stated. “This station has its own gravity stone. Anyone who’s been out there knows that it’s working fine. It has to be huge to keep a place this size stable. Mort once used a gravity stone to crash a moon. I’m going to use this one to prevent that same tragedy.”

  Carl scratched at the back of his neck. “How many people you willing to kill along the way? Folks out there are scared. They know this is wizardry causing their problems. If they get a whiff of a wizard out there trying to work magic, even trying to save them, they might lynch you. Or try, anyway, hence the question.”

  “None,” Esper said. “No one’s dying out there. If I fail, we all go down with them, but short of that, I’m not allowing anyone to pay for the troubles we’ve brought this place.”