Gravlander

by Erik Wecks

  Even as it did, Katy could see several small silhouettes sprinting away from the coming accident. The shuttle was having none of it. Now freed of its containment field, the ship’s plasma erupted in a ribcage-pulsing thud. A bright purple-red ball of fire engulfed the shuttle and those trying to escape the disaster. When the explosion receded, at least two of Neilson’s or Mercer’s fighters stood burning like candles.

  Horrified at both the deaths she witnessed and the loss of the project that she had worked so hard to create, Katy turned her head away, sickened.

  Three months later, Katy sat quietly on the edge of the field, eating her very stale nutriment paste. It was a warm morning in St. Justina. As always, the local sun shone bright in a nearly cloudless sky. It brought a flame-red tinge to the already rust-colored soil of the southern plateau. Katy savored the quiet drift of the morning breeze. In the afternoon, as the desert behind her heated further, the wind would reverse course and on occasion became a gale that carried a nasty haboob, but that was quite rare, happening only once in the three months she had lived on the planet, and Gantry had told her that only three or four times in the last dozen years had such storms grown to beyond a mere nuisance.

  Breathing carefully and deeply, Katy watched as the underground watering system slowly turned the soil from rust to a dark umber. She enjoyed watching the slow progress of the water across the field. Katy sighed. It was her last day on Salvador. The start had been disastrous, but three months later they had much to show from their work. She would leave today with a container full of valuable lithium salts—a life-changing container for the Clarion—but the small, green barley shoots in front of her were the evidence she needed to believe that her time and vision had paid off.

  It hadn’t been easy. They’d lost the container of medicines the night of the attack when it crashed into the ship’s boat from Brutus. She’d done what she could, and along the way, Gantry had been able to acquire a few nanites that made a huge impact on some of the worst affected children. Still, she’d watched helplessly as several of them passed away. One small infant had died in her arms. She still cried about that sometimes, but she no longer feared doing so.

  It helped that when they had time to finally inspect what was left of the administrative compound, they found that Neilson had been holding a large quantity of relief supplies for his gang of thug enforcers. It was Katy’s suggestion that this clean food be doled out by Gantry and his staff to any children under eight.

  The container that had made a hard landing had held parts for the reclamator, and when Katy had first looked inside, she’d despaired, but the damage hadn’t been as bad as it first appeared. With some sweat and ingenuity on the part of a couple of mechanics in St. Justina, the reclamator was up and running only a week later than planned. Neela and Freddi had even found a set of replacement parts that were due to arrive today just as Katy left.

  Her only real fear was that someone from Maximus would show up on the planet one day and try to undo everything she had done, but it hadn’t happened. The only message they had heard from Maximus was a text note to Soren on the Clarion, saying, “The day of reckoning will come.”

  That may be so, Katy thought, but today isn’t that day.

  Katy watched the ground darken just beyond the ditch in front of her. Underneath the reclaimed soil, a thin one-way membrane created a barrier that kept the deeper salts from mixing into the field. It also created a positive pressure that flushed out any salt that might have been blown in or otherwise made its way into the field since the last watering. When combined with the salt tolerance of the barley, Katy had high hopes that this experiment just might work.

  The soft noise of footsteps in the arid soil behind her caused her to turn. Still a ways off, Craig Gantry walked toward her. The quiet man waved.

  Even months later, Katy still had a hard time believing that the man who had seemed so scared was the same person who in battle had become one of the most composed people she’d ever met.

  She smiled in response, then turned to watch the field in front of her.

  Gantry soon joined her. Without speaking, he settled on the ground, arms wrapped around his knees, matching her posture. Together they sat for a while without speaking, both fully lost in enjoying the moment in front of them.

  An awareness of his proximity intruded on Katy’s quiet, and her skin tingled. She felt a pleasant rush of adrenaline that she enjoyed, but it threatened to undo her calm. He was perhaps fifteen years older than her, but that was hard to estimate due to his rough life as a re-ed. However, he was also incredibly gentle, soft-spoken, and kind. More than once, Katy had seen him down on one knee, talking directly to one of the many children that populated St. Justina. Even thinking about those moments made her heart beat a little faster.

  Katy took a deep breath. Thanks, friend, she thought. He is the kind of person I would want. Then, continuing to meditate on the field in front of her, she let the moment pass without either fear or indulgence. She felt little pressure to act on it.

  After a time, Gantry spoke without taking his eyes off the field. “I thought I might find you here this morning.”

  Not feeling the need to respond, Katy just nodded and let a slight grin play on her lips. Silence came again. After a while, she said, “Somehow I find the best meditation here.”

  Gantry let the comment sit for a beat. “You’ve worked hard for this.”

  “I have.”

  Gantry licked his lips and rubbed them together, a habit easy to pick up in the dry salty air. “Before all the fanfare of your departure begins, I wanted a word.”

  She’d sensed as much. “What’s on your mind, Craig?”

  “I guess I wanted you to know that I’m not going to let you down. I’m going to take care of everyone.”

  Katy furrowed her brow. These weren’t the words she expected. “I’m not your conscience, Craig. And don’t misunderstand, the reclamator might seem like salvation to you, but for us it’s profitable as well. That’s the key. Charity can’t ever do what self-reliance can.”

  “I know. That’s not exactly what I meant.” For a moment, Gantry went silent again, shoulders a little rounded. “I guess I wanted you to know that I care about these people like you do. I saw you cry when the Bellow infant died. What you’ve done for us has been a miracle and at great cost to you. I wanted you to know that I want to do everything I can to protect your legacy here.”

  Katy’s throat caught. She wanted to push away from the kind words and the vulnerability of Craig’s praise, but instead she sat very still and waited.

  Craig waited with her.

  A tear escaped the confines of her lashes and meandered to water the ground at her feet. When she thought she might safely speak, she said, “Thank you.”

  Gantry acknowledged her words with a tip of his head and a small smile. Then both of them lost themselves in the morning.

  After a bit, Gantry spoke up again. This time Katy noticed he shifted uncomfortably. “There’s another reason I found you.”

  Katy raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  She was surprised to see Gantry blush. It made her uncomfortable.

  “Yes. I wanted … both Alia and I wanted you to know that we’ve been seeing each other.”

  Suddenly grateful for her earlier forbearance of her own instincts, Katy said with honest joy and surprise, “Really? That’s fantastic!”

  Gantry relaxed immediately and smiled. “Yes.” He offered nothing more than his own enthusiasm for the word.

  “Well, I’m happy for you both.”

  There seemed little more to say on the topic. Katy took one last deep cleansing breath, enjoying the unique salt tang she had come to love.

  She was about to stand and suggest that they go back when Gantry spoke once more. This time she noticed a familiar gleam in his eye. “What will you do after this, Katy?”

  Katy thought a moment about how much she wanted to say. She trusted Craig wholly, but she had no desire to giv
e him information that could be extracted from him through torture or worse. “I’m not quite sure. The captain and the crew on the Clarion have been discussing several options. We haven’t settled on anything specific yet.”

  “But something similar to this?”

  Slightly uncomfortable about telling Craig anything else, she kept her answer curt. “Possibly.”

  “Well, if you do go forward with another project, I have a suggestion.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Listen to the people before you decide how to help them.” He paused for a moment to let the words sink in.

  Since they already matched Katy’s own thoughts about her time on Salvador, she also kept silent.

  “You were lucky. The rebellion here had been in the works almost a year before you first arrived. We were in the final planning stages when you started talking to Neilson. As soon as I got wind of what you wanted to do and how Neilson intended to keep the advantage for his own, I knew that we had to act. If I hadn’t been here, prepared and ready …” Gantry let the statement hang in the air.

  I would have been sold to Chapman, and I’d probably be dead right now. Katy shuddered. She breathed again, looking out at the field in front of her. “You’re right, of course. Before we do anything like this again, someone will need to make contact on the ground and figure out who to trust.”

  Satisfied, Gantry stood and reached down. Katy gratefully took his hand as he pulled her up. “Good. I just don’t want to see anything happen to you. You’ve got a good heart.

  22

  Home

  Katy flopped back onto her mattress on the Clarion, grateful for the familiarity of her bunk.

  Fourteen months and five development missions had come and gone since she had returned from Salvador. She still thought about that place quite often. The last she had heard from Soren, Alia and Craig were still together and the barley was just starting its third planting, with several new fields added to the mix.

  The trip back from her last assignment on Pau Pau had been a pretty long one and had included nearly eleven hours locked in a dim sealed container that had launched itself into space, waiting to be picked up by the Clarion. Without an intraspace connection to distract her, Katy had ended up with a lot of time to think and plan.

  At some point during that time, she’d surprised herself when she realized how comfortable she’d become on the Clarion. She was part of the team—though Soren would have said family—and she enjoyed it. It didn’t always fit right, but most of the time it was okay.

  She had relaxed considerably since she had first come on board. It felt as if an undiscovered part of her had finally escaped its cage. She’d found that she liked to tease and be teased in return, something the uptight version of herself could never have accepted. Knowing that she had a place where she felt so safe made it easy to go out and come home again.

  Exhausted, Katy slept twelve hours without waking.

  At the officers briefing a couple of days later, Katy sat shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the senior crew as she accepted a plate of breakfast passed to her by Freddi. Even the most compact buffet line was too large to fit in Soren’s cramped office, so each morning Todd and his assistant, Lilah, served up food in the corridor and handed plates in to the senior crew gathered for the meeting.

  Morning didn’t really mean much on a cargo ship headed outbound from Ursis, particularly for the deck officers. Technically still in command of the boat, Jones stood yawning in the corner. He was just finishing his shift on the bridge and would soon be heading toward his bunk. However, their daily crew meeting took place just before Captain Soren went to the bridge for the beginning of her shift, so breakfast it was. This didn’t bother Katy much, since she ran on the same shift as the captain.

  Katy dug into the eggs and strips of synthetic bacon. After her last mission to Pau Pau, it was nice to eat something she could pronounce. Sitting on her left, Neela raised her eyebrows and nodded toward the captain.

  A hint of a smirk crossed Katy’s lips as she picked up a puffy yellow bite of goodness.

  Neela rolled her eyes and leaned over, whispering, “If you don’t fool her, you’re going to owe me money.”

  Katy glanced toward the door. Todd had just finished serving and shut it.

  Katy took a deep breath and hid her smile. She waited a beat, enjoying her food. When the time seemed right, she announced casually to the still gathering room, “So I went to teach my meditation class and walked in on, or rather, floated in on, Vi and Todd making out in zero G.”

  Jones started choking on his coffee. Soren shook her head and rubbed her forehead.

  Freddi stopped eating, fork halfway to her mouth. “No shit?”

  Katy snorted, and then had to cover her mouth so that she didn’t spew food all over the room. Looking at Neela, she said, “Told you.” She then shook her head, and everyone relaxed. Soren chuckled, and Jones was finally able to swallow the mouthful of coffee he had been in the midst of sipping. The room rumbled with a general sense of laughter.

  Neela frowned, trying to cover her own amusement. She stroked her datapad, transferring the necessary credits to Katy. Mumbling, Katy heard her say in Hindi, “Kutte ke tatte.”

  Hearing Neela curse in Hindi got Katy laughing again.

  Freddi seemed to have enjoyed the joke most of all, laughing loudly, though by the stunned look on her face, Katy guessed that she had been fully taken in.

  Still covering her half-full mouth, Katy continued, “Well, it would only make sense, don’t you think? I mean, if you watch Vi, she’s been circling that guy ever since I got on board. Neela said that none of you would believe me.”

  Smiling, Soren rolled her eyes and said to the ceiling, “I let this woman come back on board my ship time and time again for the last two and a half years, and the first thing she does when she comes back this time is try to give me a heart attack!”

  Now everyone laughed again, including Katy and Neela.

  Katy responded sarcastically. “No, the first thing I did was take a shower and then sleep. Giving you a heart attack is further down the list.”

  Freddi piped up. “You know, I think you’re right. They would certainly make a cute couple. I bet we could engineer it.”

  This produced another small round of chuckles.

  Soren sat up straighter. She was still laughing, but there was a tone of finality in her voice. She glanced at Katy before she said, “No, they wouldn’t. Besides, I forbid it! No one will be engineering any kind of tryst or romance among my crew! We’ve recently lost someone to that kind of thing, and I won’t have another.”

  Katy shook her head, smiling. “That was two years ago, and you didn’t lose Alia; she calls you for advice almost every month.”

  Soren raised an eyebrow. “Fair, but it’s not the same, and I don’t want any more of it here.”

  Katy chuckled again. “You can’t outlaw sex. It finds a way. You might as well try outlawing the void, or telling a planet to orbit backward.”

  Now warm, Soren looked sideways at Katy and said in mock outrage. “I have banished the void from my ship, and I will keep my own little bubble of ignorance and bliss when it comes to sex on my boat.” Smiling, she continued, “Now, before Katy gets any more cute ideas to derail us, I’d like to begin. Neela, despite your encouragement of this little scheme to upset my digestion, why don’t you go first this morning, since yesterday was such a big day for your team.”

  The small brown-skinned woman sat up straight and smoothed out her expression, although the smile still remained in her eyes. “We sold the anti-aging retrovirus.”

  Katy could see that the news was a surprise to everyone. She lifted her head. “To whom?” she asked.

  It was a known secret in the Unity that the upper echelons of management had been using improved anti-aging treatments for years, if not decades. CEO Randal didn’t look a day older than when Katy first saw him twenty years prior, and some of the board of directors
were now living far beyond the 130-year life expectancy. Duncan McAlister was rumored to be over 180, and not only was he still living, he was still an active member of the board.

  That retrovirus, along with the means to make more, had come as payment from a government research facility located in the wet jungles of Corinthia. A couple of months ago, Katy had taken a short-term job at the research facility ostensibly to help them with a project, but she had also heard through the grapevine that the facility was selling medicines out the back door. Katy figured there might be a way for the Clarion to help them expand their market for these contraband goods, so she arranged to be transferred to the facility as one of its doctors. It turned out that Katy was able to provide a better contribution to the facility than any medical expertise. They needed a significantly stronger protection fence from some of the gargantuan predators roaming outside the facility’s boundary line. The Clarion provided them with armored vehicles and a new fence. In thanks, Katy was given the plans for the anti-aging virus.

  Neela smiled a little and tipped her head. “I know a couple of actors. One of them was willing to pay for the chance at fifty more years of screen time.”

  Katy wasn’t exactly happy with that. The researchers were insistent that the information get disseminated to everyone if possible. Selling it to an actor wasn’t exactly what the researchers had in mind.

  She was just going to say something when Neela took a small disk out of her pocket. “I also made a copy for us. We can sell it again. My figuring is that if we can’t find a buyer who will make it available to everyone, then maybe we can sell it over and over to...”

  A knock at the door interrupted their discussion. Soren straightened her uniform. “Come in.”

  Susan, the sensor officer, stepped in the door, her face pasty. “I’m sorry for interrupting, sir, but Michel just received a text-based message from Maximus.”