James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 09

by Gethsemane

  “I spend a lot of time studying historical accounts from other colonies, trying to piece together a history of the latter day Commonwealth.” Sapphire Keeler paused. “And I drink.”

  “Here! Here!” Sapphire Keeler raised his glass again. “At last, something I and my evil doppelganger can agree upon!”

  Delia pulled a small data recorder from her purse. “I should be getting this down. How does a small community in space, isolated from their homeworlds, two very different cultures… how does it get along?”

  “Most of the Republickers left to sign up with Goneril Lear on Lex Keeler, ” Pegasus Keeler replied. “Since then, it’s been great.”

  “What about your friends?” Delia persisted. “Who are you friends with?” Pegasus Keeler had to think for a moment. “Well… there’s Redfire. He’s the ship’s bartender.”

  “Of course, you’d make friends with him,” Sapphire Keeler raised his glass, his fifth drink since the session began.

  Pegasus Keeler continued. “Redfire also went through the Gateway, and I have no idea where he ended up. Maybe he’s in Corvallis right now, seeing what his life would have been. But somehow I doubt it. Also, there’s Dave, he’s one of my officers. Bright kid, but his wife… yeesh. Then, there’s my Exec, Eliza Jane Change, she’s … she’s kind of weird. And there’s Toto, my pilot. He’s a strange kid. Thorough hick, but the women can’t seem to keep themselves away from him. I can’t explain that one.” Pegasus Keeler stopped. Delia waited. “And…?” Pegasus Keeler shrugged. “I guess that’s all I can think of.”

  “You’re on a ship with 6,000 people and you’ve gotten to know four of them?” Delia was shocked.

  Pegasus Keeler defended himself. “Well, I mean, I get along with everyone, and I know lots of people by name, but those are the ones I most regularly interact with.”

  “You were always so gregarious,” Delia went on. “Does commanding ship make you isolated?”

  Pegasus Keeler hadn’t thought about it. He had spent so much of his time on Pegasus surrounded by people, he hadn’t noticed how lonely he had gotten.

  Pegasus Keeler turned this over in his mind, pondering it so long the others might have grown concerned. “I just realized something,” Pegasus Keeler said finally.

  “What is that?” Delia asked.

  “I’m on Sapphire.”

  “You always were a quick-study, my love,” Delia purred at him.

  “Neg, neg… You don’t understand. I’m on Sapphire,” Pegasus Keeler protested. “I’m on Sapphire! Don’t you see?”

  “And?” Sapphire Keeler prompted.

  “There’s bars and restaurants out there that I thought I would never see again,” Commander Keeler exclaimed, standing up suddenly. “Why am I wasting my time talking to myself. Let’s go! Let’s go! Is the Esteemed Faculty Club still in operation?”

  “Of course, it is,” Sapphire Keeler assured him.

  “Then, let’s not go there. The portions are too small and they water the drinks.” Commander Keeler cast his gaze through the window.

  “Then, where would you like to go?” Delia asked.

  “North Shore Yachting Club,” Pegasus-Keeler stated firmly. “Za! If we leave now, we can get there in advance of Happy Hour.”

  “Oh, I haven’t been there in an age,” purred Delia. “Oh, let’s do, William!” Pegasus Keeler snapped his fingers. “Neg! Wait! Even better! Let’s go to Zorg Patterson’s.”

  Sapphire Keeler brightened. “Zorg Patterson’s, why didn’t I think of that?” Delia laughed. “Oh, how marvelous, I haven’t been to Zorg Patterson’s in an age and a half. Oh, let’s do.”

  Pegasus-Keeler and Sapphire-Keeler pointed to each other simultaneously and said,

  “You’re buying.”

  Chapter 10

  Gethsemane – Fort Abaddon – Quentin and Zeus took off with the first load of children from Fort Abaddon, numbering three hundred and sixty. Trajan Lear watched them depart standing beside his own ship, and wishing he was leaving with them. It was late in the afternoon, and the sky had turned a shade of greenish-brown as a frontal system had moved in.

  Trajan Lear began to walk back toward the camp. A young girl met him halfway with a wide-necked bottle of something bittersweet and cold. He thanked her for it and drank the liquid. On the way back to the camp, the girl told him her name was Minerva, and she had been evacuated to the camp six years previously.

  They sat together on a bench alongside the fort’s parade ground, watching dust blow up into the muddy sky. “It looks like it might storm,” Minerva said.

  Far in the distance were brilliant flashes of heat lightning. “I hope it will hold off until we can get another flight into the air,” Trajan said. Aves Neville and Jethro were inbound, with more to follow.

  The woman Miranda emerged from one of the buildings with a young boy in tow. “Did you like the tea?” she asked.

  “It’s good. I’ve never tasted anything like it,” Trajan Lear admitted.

  “If there’s time, I’ll try and save some of the teaberry plants we brew it from,” Miranda continued. She settled onto the bench, looking tired.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “For pointing a gun at you.”

  “I’ve been through worse,” Lear told her. He pointed at the boy. “When I was about his age, I was kidnapped, zapped by an electromagnetic rail charge, almost drowned, and broke two ribs falling on an Aves… all on the same day.” Miranda said nothing, so Trajan Lear said, “At least, you no longer believe us to be slave traders.”

  “I don’t know what you are,” she answered back at him in what was almost a snarl.

  “But if you had any idea what we’ve been through, you wouldn’t be nearly so snarky.”

  “It had to be harsh,” Trajan Lear said.

  She grunted but made no reply. He had obviously pissed her off.

  A hot wind moved across the ground, kicking up dust devils.

  “They could have put us anywhere,” Miranda complained. “They managed to find the most desolate hellhole on the whole planet.”

  Trajan set down his bottle of tea. “It reminds me of another planet I’ve been on. It was called Yronwode.”

  Miranda answered in a kind of hostile mutter. “Yronwode? You mean, the prison planet.”

  Trajan nodded. “You’ve heard of it?”

  Miranda leaned forward in her chair. “Stories… there isn’t a lot to do out here, so I’d read the children stories. They say no one ever escapes. But if you came from there, I guess that legend is just a legend.”

  “It wasn’t easy getting off,” Trajan replied.

  “That’s what he said,” Miranda answered with deadpan. “Sorry, I’ve spent my whole life around the young. They enjoy that sort of humor.” Trajan Lear didn’t get it. He looked toward the rough stone and timber buildings that made up the campsite. They looked much more than fifteen years old, but in this environment, it was hard to be sure. “Was this place built just to house the children who couldn’t go through the Gateway?”

  Miranda shook her head. “Originally, Fort Abaddon was a military outpost. A thousand troops were garrisoned here, to keep Loro and Nineveh from fighting each other, and protecting the smaller settlements from bandits.”

  “That sounds violent,” Trajan said.

  Miranda shrugged. “Didn’t your planet have some wild, barely civilized back-country.” Trajan shook his head. “Nay, on my planet, those who were unwilling to live by the rules were cast outside the atmospheric domes. Those didn’t suffocate died of exposure in the first dry ice storm. My grandfather told me stories of extraction workers who had adapted to underground life in the mines and become monstrous creatures living underground, occasionally dragging disobedient children into the bowels of the planet. I think he was unserious”

  “Probably,” Miranda agreed. Trajan Lear found something in her mannerisms, a sense of her control that felt curiously familiar.

  “You’ve been watching over these children all by yo
urself?” Lear asked.

  “There are a few more adults, there used to be many more. They were going to sacrifice themselves in order to care for the children.” She picked up a couple of rocks, and moved one past the other. “Two years ago, Rogue slingshot around our sun and crossed our orbital path. It passed Gethsemane at a distance of 56,000 kilometers. The sight of that killer planet in the sky and the quakes that came with it…” She paused. “It scared the hell out of a lot of people. Thirty days later, it was just me and a few others left. It made it real for those who stayed behind, and they finally realized they were going to die, going to be smashed apart… they retreated to the Gateway.”

  Trajan was numbed by this. “And you’ve been going through life all these years knowing that was your fate?”

  She didn’t say anything to that. “You don’t have to wait out here,” she said. “Why don’t you come and meet some more of the children.”

  Trajan Lear apologized. “I don’t like children.”

  Miranda looked at the boy and the girl, who seemed slightly amused at the comment.

  “Really? Why not?”

  Trajan Lear bristled. “I just don’t understand the appeal. They annoy me. They’re cruel and they waste time.”

  “I could say the same about most of the adults I’ve known.” Miranda cracked a crooked smile. It was slight, but it was definitely there if one looked hard enough.

  Trajan Lear tried to shrug it off, but the stares of the two children burned at him like low-powered lasers. “I think they also remind me of myself too much. When I was a child, I was … spoiled, petulant. My mother was hardly ever around to raise me, and when she did, she tried to control me totally. My father… I don’t think my father even much noticed I was around. I didn’t want to leave Republic, but… lord, if I had stayed behind I don’t know if I ever would have grown up.”

  The young boy, who seemed to be about ten, with a slight build, longish dirty blond hair, and an upturned nose, kept staring at Trajan Lear. “Can I help you?” Trajan Lear asked finally.

  “Look,” the boy pointed behind him. Trajan Lear turned.

  A turbulent wave of dust and dirt was heading their way. Lightning flashed within it.

  “Turbinado!” Miranda cried out, she jumped up and raced toward the largest of the buildings.

  Trajan Lear turned toward the approaching cyclone. It was perhaps six kilometers wide, still a ways off, but it was clearly growing in intensity and bearing down right on them. He pulled open his sleeve and touched some controls on his gauntlet. Phoenix rose and shot off into the sky ahead of the storm.

  He ran toward the building, where Miranda was pulling on a cable attached to a noisy, raucous alarm driven by compressed air.

  “Your ship?” Miranda asked.

  “Self-protection mode,” Trajan Lear answered. “She’ll find somewhere safe to stay until the stormfront passes.” He activated the COM Link. “Trajan Lear to Aves Neville and Jethro. We have an extreme weather condition on the ground at Fort Abaddon.

  Recommend you divert to alternate site.”

  The cyclone was closing on them, and the wind was picking up, sending stinging dust into their eyes. Miranda led Trajan Lear and the children to a utility shed at the base of one of the power-generating windmills.

  “Stay inside until the turbinado passes, and stay away from the windows,” she ordered.

  “Where are you going?” Trajan Lear asked.

  “I have to make sure the others made it to the storm shelters. You will be safer here.” Then, she left. Trajan Lear secured the door with a bolt and hunkered down to weather out the storm. He saw that she had left the kids with him. And there were several more who had taken shelter under the windmill. So, however long the storm would last, this was going to be awkward.

  There was a loud crash as the first wave of dirt slammed against the side of the shed.

  New Gethsemane – Port Gethsemane – Anaconda Rook looked out from the tent-pod that she had designated her command post, and congratulated herself on her choice of a ground command base. The docking area in Port Gethsemane could easily accommodate ten Aves at a time. Shelters were being deployed for medical inspections of the children.

  Cargo pallets were being unloaded from the Aves with clothing, food, and medical supplies. There were over a hundred Pegasus crew working the site.

  Three groups of children were being processed, being fed, inspected, and given an

  “84-hour pack” of basics to get them through their first three days on Pegasus. The sedated ones were laid out on pads that could be loaded like stretchers. Two Aves, Xena and Kate II had been designated as Medical shuttles, and could evacuate fifty of the heavily sedated wild children – which the landing teams had dubbed ‘the Ferals’ – at a time.

  So far, a total of 993 children had been evacuated to Pegasus, another 110 were en route in Aves Fannie, and 3,573 were awaiting evacuation on the ground from fourteen different locations on the planet’s surface, including the 1,700 or so remaining with Trajan Lear at Fort Abaddon.

  “The teams are finding them faster than we can airlift them,” Specialist Fangboner reported to Taurus Rook. He activated a holographic map. “There’s still a lot of cities and towns we haven’t explored yet.”

  Rook hit her COM Link. “Lt. Commander Alkema, this is Lt. Rook on the surface.

  What’s the status of the sensor recalibration.”

  Alkema came back. “We had to start over. I was calibrating the sensors to an intense scan from 1,000 kilometers of altitude. Now, the ship’s at 35,000 kilometers. There’s no way we’re going to get effective resolution from this high.” Taurus Rook bit her lip. “How low does the ship need to be?”

  “Ideally, 1,000 kilometers, but I can work with up to 3,000, maybe 5,000.” She worked it though in her head. Bringing Pegasus lower meant more work for the Aves. They might find more survivors, but they would have less ability to evacuate them.

  And there was already a huge backlog on the ground now.

  “Can you use probes?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Alkema replied. “But to spot life signs, the sensor augments are going to be like shining a laser onto the surface. We’ll only be able to scan a radius of maybe 100 kilometers of surface area at a time.”

  There was a long communications pause.

  “Lieutenant Taurus Rook, are you there?” Alkema asked.

  “Give me a moment I’m trying to think through this.” She paused and thought through this.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said finally. “We’re going to load up all the Aves we have on the ground and get those kids to the ship. I know it’s more than they can handle, but time is a factor. I want 20 fresh Aves launched at the same time the ships leave the ground, they will approach the planet but hold in lower orbit. After the Aves with the kids on board have all docked, take Pegasus down to 1,000 kilometers. Concentrate your spotlight on cities and settlements we haven’t explored yet. Whenever you find pockets of survivors, an Aves will break orbit and proceed immediately to that location.”

  “Understood,” Alkema replied.

  “Remain at the lower altitude for no longer than six hours, at that time, the next flight of Aves should be loaded up and ready to go.”

  “One of the Aves should be directed to the Gateway Complex to retrieve Commander Keeler,” Alkema added. “He is due to return from the ‘Afterlife’ sometime today.”

  “Designate an Aves for that task, Taurus Rook out.” Taurus Rook cut off the COM Link, and looked again toward the children on the dock. Some of them were playing, throwing a ball around, or drawing on the ground with their Crayola-wands.

  Fangboner spoke up. “We’re bound to miss some people.”

  “We can’t think about that,” Taurus Rook answered, knowing it couldn’t be helped.

  “We’ll save who we can. Let me look over some of those mission reports.” Mission Report – Silo Town

  The plains that lay between Geths
emane’s Great Hurk and Minor Hurk river systems contained the planet’s most fertile croplands. Though they had been left to seed as the planet’s population abandoned them, they still provided a reliable food source. As such, many families had been drawn here to escape the Authority. Many hundreds of their children remained behind.

  Silo Town had been a good-sized settlement, where, at one time, grain had been loaded onto trains that took it to the cities or the river, where it could be loaded on barges bound for other cities farther away.

  “I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with ‘Q,’” said Warfighter Specialist Gatlin.

  “Quattro-triticale,” answered Warfighter Lieutenant Tango, for that was the crop that surrounded them for thousands upon thousands of hectares.

  Warfighter Lieutenant Tango was charged with leading this hunt. The terrain was difficult because the crops had grown out of control, and the children hid among them.

  The crops were late in the growing season, and tall. Walking among them reminded him of hunts he had taken with his father in southern Arcadia. Most of the Arcadian province was lush, and the northern reaches were notable for their rainforests and the eccentricities of its inhabitants. But southern Arcadia was much like Graceland… temperate cropland and home to hunters and farmers.

  Tango led a team of four warfighters through a field. The soil was soft and their boots sank in deep in places. It was hot, the air was moist, and insects flew at his men from their nests in the topsoil.

  Warfighter Gatlin swatted at one of the flies. “There’s at least one life form I want miss when this planet goes tits up.”

  Tango grunted in response. His tactical Spex said there were humans nearby, but they were hiding in the brush, and moving away from where his team was.

  Suddenly, a very human shape began closing on their team, rapidly, in a hard run. They all saw it and snapped to readiness. “Hold…weapons at low stun,” Tango reminded them.

  They saw the tops of the plants rattling as the form came closer to them. A moment later, a boy burst through the rows. He was rail thin, maybe thirteen years old, with straw-colored hair, and dressed in rags. He ran right into Lieutenant Tango as though not seeing him, then bounced back sprawling into the dirt.