by Sean Danker
“Are you sure you didn’t kill them?” Deilani asked.
“Yes,” I said. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m just thinking about the thing you caught. We didn’t see it, but we heard it. What if you had something like that in your suit? Would you panic?” She looked back at me. “Could explain what happened to them.”
“You couldn’t have something like that in an EV.”
“But the men in the airlock were wearing tech suits; plenty of room in there for a stowaway,” she pointed out.
I shuddered. She was right. “I don’t even want to think about that.” It was a nightmarish idea. I looked down and focused on walking.
“What do you have to worry about? You’re wearing an EV.”
“It could still get in the helmet.”
“Can we talk about something else?” Nils asked.
We walked on. It was endless. Sometimes we waded through the mist; sometimes we felt as though we were swimming through it. Sometimes there was no mist at all, and we were just walking on the vaguely reflective black surface. It was all the same. Hills were always gentle, and valleys never went too deep, except for the occasional crevice, but these were never substantial. We could usually jump across.
Conversation eventually trailed off, and we walked in silence.
Things took a turn for the grim every time one of us had to switch out an O2 cartridge. We left the spent ones behind, a trail leading back to the crawler that we would never use again.
I could sense the trainees’ spirits darkening with every passing kilometer.
Things came to a head when we reached a crack in the ground that wasn’t so easily jumped.
Nils stood at the edge, looking down into the dark. “What if we just got it over with? What if we just dropped them all in here?” he asked.
“What?” I didn’t understand what he was saying.
“Drop them in, eject the ones we’ve got. It’d be over fast.”
“Why not just jump in and see what’s down there?” I asked, spreading my arms.
He turned to me. “You really want to just walk this out?”
“What have we got to lose?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “Do you have a better way you could be spending your time right now? I’ve got places to be, Ensign. If you want to stay, give them your cartridges first.” I got a start and made the jump, barely.
Deilani ran past Nils and jumped as well. Salmagard made it look easy.
The three of us looked back at Nils over the gap. Shaking his head, he backed up a few steps, then jumped, but either he miscalculated, or his heart wasn’t in it. Deilani and I were there, though. We caught him by the arms and hauled him up.
“Everybody’s told a story but you,” he gasped as we lifted him to his feet.
“Is that what it’s going to take for you to stop talking?” I started to walk again, telling myself not to be bothered by the delay. “Let me think of one.” I sighed. I wasn’t really in the mood. The detox wasn’t making me any cheerier. I didn’t know what was worse: the withdrawal, or not being able to get out of this EV suit.
“Don’t make it up,” Deilani said.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Tell us a spy story,” Nils said.
“Do I seem like a spy?”
“Not at all,” he admitted.
“What do I seem like?” I asked Nils.
“I don’t know. Sometimes you’re like this rich Ganraen. Sometimes it’s like you know what you’re doing.” He shrugged. “I’m not worrying about it anymore.”
“I wouldn’t expect a spy to be such a pretty boy, but I don’t know much about spies,” Deilani said. “You’re the first one I’ve met.”
I felt myself bristle, and decided this wasn’t the time for it. “I don’t know any spy stories. But I do remember something from when I was a kid.”
“In Ganrae?” Deilani asked.
“Never mind where it was. When I was away from home, sort of unsupervised for maybe the first time ever, I met a girl.”
“Oh dear,” Deilani said.
“Don’t interrupt. This girl and I got along. That was kind of new to me; it had never happened before. I really liked her. But like I said, I was away from home. And I had to go back.” I ignored their exaggerated noises of sympathy and cleared my throat to shut them up. “But we stayed in touch, sort of as good friends. She liked me. A lot. And I knew it—and I was glad—but I didn’t want to change the status quo, so I just played it like I didn’t know.”
“That’s terrible,” Deilani said.
“Will you let me finish?”
“I don’t like this story,” Nils said.
“You make your bed and you sleep in it, Nils.”
“Fine.”
“Thank you. I lost track of her. I don’t know how; I don’t remember. Maybe I started taking her for granted. Knowing me, that was probably it. Anyway, I found out that later on she’d taken some wrong turns and ended up in a less than desirable spot. I told myself for a long time that it made me miserable because I thought that if she’d been with me, she might not have made some of those decisions. Of course that wasn’t true; I was really miserable because she was with someone else, and it killed me to think about it. I was really young when all that happened. Like twelve. I mean, I was twelve when I lost track of her. I was older when I found out the rest.”
A pause.
“That’s the story?” Deilani said, incredulous.
“That’s it,” I said.
“That’s terrible. That’s the most depressing thing I ever heard,” Nils said, disgusted. “Why would you tell such a downer?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I replied. “In retrospect—logical, grown-up retrospect—she and I weren’t remotely suited to each other, so at least in a way, it’s just as well that we were never together.”
“That isn’t very romantic,” Deilani noted.
“That is the truth. Doesn’t make it hurt any less—it’s just a thing. But it’s not a depressing story—it’s relevant. It’s about having things to live for.”
“How do you get that from that story?” Nils demanded.
“Because there’s no one to blame but me. I have to better myself and move on; I have to get past it, and I can’t do that if I’m dead. I have to put her to rest.”
“Is she dead?”
“No. You know what I mean.”
“I thought you meant you could die here with no hard feelings, because that would put it to bed for you,” Nils said.
“No, that would be cowardly. Hardly befitting an imperial admiral,” I added.
“You do carry yourself like an admiral sometimes,” Deilani admitted. “But we all know better.”
“You seem awfully sure of that. You all have stuff you want to do, right? Don’t tell me they teach you to give up at your academies.”
“You’d know if you’d ever been through one,” Deilani pointed out.
I groaned.
* * *
Space sparkled above. The black planet didn’t sparkle back. The light of the suns grew slightly brighter, bathing us in a green light that shone on our white EV suits as we walked.
We passed chasms that might have gone to the core of the planet, and spires larger than space stations.
The time came.
I ejected my spent O2 cartridge and snapped in my last full one. I paused and looked back at the trainees. “Last one.”
“I’m already on mine,” Deilani said. Nils was putting his in as we spoke. A look at Salmagard told me she had already done the same.
Then this was it.
We started to walk again.
“Ensign,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I’ll bite. How far have we come?”
“We’re th
ere. I mean we’re here,” he said.
“What?”
“We are. We should be well inside their perimeter. We should have seen probes. They should have picked us up on their scanners. We should be able to see the colony, and they should have come out to get us long ago.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Deilani asked.
I knew the answer.
There was, of course, nothing here.
“Have we passed the reception point?” I asked.
“No, but we’re close.”
“You’re sure?”
“There are a lot of things I’m not good at, Admiral. But I know math.” The ensign just sounded tired.
“You do. I’m sorry.”
He was right. There should have been a visible perimeter, and lights. There were none.
It was small consolation that if there had been a colony, my plan would’ve gotten us to it. We had come a very long way.
“There’s nothing here,” Nils said. “How long are you going to keep going?”
“Until I run out of air, I guess,” I said without looking back.
Deilani collapsed first. Her breathing had been getting increasingly ragged. I looked back and saw her white form sprawled on the black stone. I jogged back and turned her over. I pulled the cartridge from her neckpiece and took a deep breath.
“What are you doing?” Nils shouted, grabbing my shoulder.
I locked my cartridge to Deilani’s and equalized it, halving what I had left. I plugged her back in, then myself. She started to breathe after only two pumps to her chest.
She couldn’t walk, so I picked her up.
“Looks like you two have to put the chairs on the tables and turn off the lights,” I told Nils and Salmagard.
They didn’t say anything to that.
“Either of you have any theist beliefs? Any spiritualism?” I asked, trying to keep the strain out of my voice. Deilani was as tall I was, and I wasn’t even close to being at full strength. And full strength for me wasn’t anything to brag about.
“No,” Nils replied.
“Judeo-Christian,” Salmagard said quietly.
“You want to rethink that, Ensign?” We were approaching the edge of a cliff.
“I already am. What about you?”
“I try not to worry about the afterlife. I have enough problems in this one. And I know exactly where I’m going.”
“Where?”
“Down there.”
I had stopped. Nils and Salmagard caught up, also halting. We were at the edge of the most breathtaking chasm yet.
At the bottom was the colony.
13
THE Ganraen colony ship was twice the size of an imperial destroyer, and twice as heavy. It had met the same fate as our freighter; of course it had.
The ship was the shape of a shallow dome, and substantially larger than Tremma’s freighter. The hull of the colony was dull gray and rusty brown in typical, unattractive Ganraen style. There were viewports and bay doors, landing pads and vehicle launch exits with steeply sloping ramps leading up to the surface.
The planet had tried to swallow all of it. This was why we hadn’t seen the lights, though we could see them now.
There were temporary structures on the surface, and vehicles. Work lights and power cells—everything that we should have passed on the way. It was all down there, a hundred meters below us.
Yet there weren’t enough lights. The plastic survey tents were all dark, and they didn’t look sealed. None of the vehicles was moving, and only the ship’s visibility lights were glowing.
It looked as if the colonists were on emergency power, but that was still enough. We didn’t need a luxury resort; we just needed life support.
I had fallen in with the trainees’ way of thinking. Once I put in that last cartridge, I was just running down the clock. That had just changed. My calm resignation turned to something like panic. I resisted the urge to look at my O2 readout. We had to get down there, and it wasn’t going to be easy—especially not with Deilani.
“By the Founder,” she breathed. I set her down, and she leaned on me. “It’s really here.”
“Can you climb?” That was a long way down.
“Yes.” She wasn’t as sure as she sounded, but we had to try. I grabbed her wrist and ran a line to her, connecting us. She didn’t protest. That was all I could do; I’d be lucky to make this climb myself, so I couldn’t carry her.
“Nothing to say here, guys—go.”
We started down, not even knowing if it was a feasible climb.
I went first, with Deilani just above me. I would be the safety net, and Deilani wouldn’t risk taking Salmagard or Nils down with her if she made a mistake.
The gravity was light, but not so light that a fall from this distance was survivable.
The silent world of our helmet coms, broken only when one of us breathed particularly loudly, had been our universe since we left the Avenger. It was just me and my withdrawal. I wished I’d asked Deilani exactly what she had given me. My limbs had started to feel like lead.
Time had stretched and twisted as we walked. I hadn’t kept track. It had been hours, but I didn’t know how many. Walking had seemed unbearably slow, but climbing was even slower.
There had been a time when humans on Earth climbed rocks just like this. Like the fabled drive in the countryside, it had been a form of recreation. I smiled behind my face mask. Those people had some peculiar ideas about what was fun.
Salmagard was light, but not light enough. We were halfway down when she chose a foothold that immediately gave. The rock crumbled, striking Nils, who slipped as well. Salmagard caught herself, but Nils fell free with a cry, knocking Deilani loose even as he secured himself. I reached out and grabbed, catching her neckpiece, but the weight and the sudden jerk were too much for my remaining handhold, which broke away. For a moment I was in free fall.
Nils’ glove closed around my wrist. He couldn’t have held us both, but it bought me the time I needed to shift Deilani and jam my arm into a crevice.
It wasn’t the same elbow that I’d bashed on the landing strut, at least. The bruises I would have after this would not be flattering.
We were all still there. Somehow.
It took precious minutes to get Deilani back to climbing, and now she was below me for better or worse.
It took a long time. No one spoke.
Deilani finally detached her line from mine and dropped the final few meters to land on the rubble, falling to her hands and knees. I touched down next.
We’d done it. We’d done it with minutes to spare, too. If Nils hadn’t believed in a power higher than the Empress before, he did now. Together, we made for the nearest airlock.
The colonists were in for a shock. We all waved at the camera mounted over the blast shield.
“Open channels,” I said.
“We’re on it,” Nils told me.
“Then we should’ve heard something, shouldn’t we?” Deilani’s voice was weak, but high.
“Yeah.” Nils started to fidget.
“Something’s wrong.” I didn’t understand. Why wouldn’t they open up? And where was everybody? This wasn’t a planet where everyone would be strolling about, but there still should’ve been some movement.
“We don’t have all day for them to notice us,” Deilani pointed out, still sounding feeble.
That was true. Especially for Deilani and myself, as we were on half rations.
“They’re obviously conserving power. They could’ve disabled their security if they’re having reactor issues,” Nils suggested. “Could explain it. I mean—why watch the surface of a planet like this? They’re not exactly expecting visitors. Maybe sensors are so bad here that they just don’t bother.”
That was a good point.
&
nbsp; “Then what do we do? Knock?” Deilani asked.
“You guys are too polite.” I walked up to the emergency access, smashed the safety shield with my elbow, and jerked down the lever. I got ready to get into character, mentally rehearsing my story. I put on my smile, and adjusted my posture. I worked my jaw, ready to slip into the right voice.
The blast shield lifted, and the outer airlock opened.
“They’re not going to like us for this,” Nils fretted as we jogged up the ramp and into the blinking red light of the small personnel airlock.
We all froze. The inner door of the airlock was jammed halfway open, and horribly mangled. There were some dark smears on the bulkhead, and peculiar burns. Against all odds, the colonists had found a way to surprise me. I stared.
“What in the Empire,” Deilani said.
I didn’t say anything. I just slipped through the doors and into the ship. The outer doors closed behind us. Nils reached for his helmet control, and I caught his wrist. “There’s no atmosphere in here.”
He blinked at me through his faceplate. Then he groaned. Nils was the last person to make such a mistake; it just showed how frayed we were. We were exhausted and dehydrated.
“Then we’re still dead,” he sighed.
“The hell we are,” I said. “Emergency power’s on. We just have to get this place to autoseal and restart life support.”
“The whole ship can’t be depressurized,” Deilani cut in. “That’s ridiculous.”
“This corridor’s an artery. If there’s no air here, there’s none on this deck. We have to get to engineering, or find the colonists.”
I didn’t wonder why the outer door was intact and the inner one wasn’t. I didn’t care why life support was down, or why no one had picked us up on sensors, why no one seemed to be bothered by us breaking into their ship. I wanted air. Everything else could wait.
“You saw the size of this ship,” Nils said. “How much have you got left?”
“A few minutes.”
“We have to move.”
“I know. Think fast.”
“What?”
“Ensign! We’re on a ship. Life support’s down, but there’s still air. We just have to find it. Deilani and I need it now.”