by Ginger Booth
“Yeah, buddy, just run that program. Tell me when it’s live.”
Ben frowned. How did he –? Oh, yeah. With slow-motion precision, he pressed the go soft-key, and it…yeah. “It’s running.”
He panned the display. Rego hell. He was entering Denali orbit. The trip meter, started at takeoff, read over 13 hours. That couldn’t be right. A bad takeoff from Denali took seven hours, max. Do I even have enough fuel to…?
“Good job, baby,” Cope crooned. “Just relax now. Sit back and close your eyes. You’re coming in dangerously dry. You can’t afford any maneuvers. Do you understand, Ben?”
“No. I really don’t.” He enunciated slowly, with perfect clarity and conviction.
“That’s OK, honey. Just don’t override the nav computer. The fleet will match orbit with you, and warp you through to Pono. Then Sass will come and land Hopeful on Mahina for you.”
“Should I get him out of the pilot seat?” Tarana asked.
“No, leave him there just in case.” That was Sass’s voice. “Fantastic job, Cope.”
“I want to get over there now.” Cope. “No. I need to run the warp, don’t I.”
“Yeah, I’m on a transport.” Abel. Ben couldn’t puzzle out why he said that.
“You’ll do fine, Cope,” Sass purred. “Abel will talk you through. And I’ll take good care of Ben on the other side.”
Oh, yeah. Abel and Cope were the only ones besides Ben who could operate the warp gateway. And they flew all six transports back to Mahina this trip, plus the PO-3’s and tender, so Abel needed to fly a transport. And Ben’s engineer husband wasn’t much of a pilot.
His eyes popped open. “I need to get to Merchant and warp us.” His hands gripped his arm-rests in terror.
“No, I’ll do that for you, buddy,” Cope’s voice promised. “You just rest.”
The next thing Ben knew, Sass arrived to take his seat. The familiar comforting tiger-striped vastness of the gas giant Pono filled his viewscreen. And Tarana applied a hypodermic to his neck.
When he came to again, he lay in his bed at home in Schuyler, Cope gentling his hair.
He had no idea how Hopeful Thrive managed to escape Denali. He begged Cope to tell him how many he lost. A few always died, especially on that final transport full to bursting. He worried about that crying baby.
Cope refused to answer the question.
2
Abel Greer strode out his ramp. His was the second of three waves landing at Schuyler spaceport. He’d piloted the 800 passengers on Bold Thrive to Pono’s rings, then swapped with Judge to fly his own PO-3 Friendship Thrive as asteroid intervention, herding two transports to land here safely.
What a circus.
He spent the entire brutal summer on Denali, running the evacuation on that end. His image of the Mahina end came from Kassidy Yang’s rosy propaganda, lauding happy Mahinans welcoming grateful immigrants. His eyes narrowed on the reality, utter chaos in the billowing dust off the regolith, dyed curry gold by sunlight slanting into the hours-long sunset of Dusk.
Might have been nice if his idiot twins came to welcome him home. No, that was unjust, he allowed. Now he’d landed, his wife Jules, head housekeeper of the fleet, reached the midpoint of her own hell-run. The team was exhausted from Ben’s breakdown adding a nerve-wracking extra seven hours to an already brutally long day. But now Jules had to herd 800 passengers off Bold Thrive, many of whom couldn’t walk under their own power, and into decontamination. Then the transport needed cleaning, a grisly job.
He knew all that, in the abstract. But this was the first time he saw it and smelled it in person. And those open arms of welcome looked to be in perilously short supply.
Several hundred lost Denali stumbled around the spaceport, having escaped the horrific conditions inside some transport or another – four of six transports had arrived so far. The last of them, plus Sass’s Thrive One, would land in a couple hours. Her partner Clay needed to escort the empty fuel tender Stalwart Thrive to mothball at Mahina Orbital, and transfer its crew. Then he’d land with the two least-crowded transports, a mere 1100 travel-worn newcomers.
And park them where? Abel suddenly wondered. Lost immigrants meandered across the remaining hard-top. “Sass, got a second?” he asked over comms.
“No,” Sass breathed in exhaustion. “What do you need?”
“What’s the system here? All these people. Where is Clay supposed to land?”
“Oh, hell. Um, Ben took care of that.”
“Want to flip a coin?” Abel prompted sarcastically.
“Great and minor gremlins, Abel. I had no idea how much crap Ben coordinated each time we flew into Mahina. Tarana’s going mental. Me too. The spaceport’s telling us we need to man the decontamination showers ourselves. We brought in 800 more people than usual, and there’s no housing for them. The hospitals are full. Schuyler City just demanded we take off again and grab icebergs, or they can’t provide water to the ships. We’re low on fuel. And Kassidy claims she can’t quash the story about Ben’s nervous breakdown. She demands immediate access to Ben to spin his side –”
Abel interrupted. “You can’t let her do that. He’s not here, is he?”
“No, of course not! I sent Cope and Ben home on a shuttle. I tried to get Cope to bring him to a hospital. But Cope wanted to wait for the drugs to wear off, and then talk to him first.”
Abel sided with Cope on that score, emphatically. But no need to argue the point with Sass. “So who runs the Spaceways ground game on this end?”
“Ben.”
“And the fuel and water and…”
“Ben.”
Abel pinched the bridge of his nose. “Probably aided by the president, Cope.”
“I can’t drag him away from Ben now.”
“Sunset. Drinks. My ramp or yours?”
“I –” Sass hesitated, then conceded, “A drink would be good.”
“See you in a couple minutes. My place.”
While he waited, Abel first dispatched one of his crewmen to set out picnic chairs, ice wand, and a bucket of beers. Then he reached out to the crews of several other ships to go find some orange cones or something, and start chasing immigrants out of the remaining landing pads. Mercifully, the weekday heat was abating. And in any case, Schuyler was way cooler than Waterfalls. The Denali could simply sit down and await…water. He reached Darren Markley, their top engineer on site at the moment, and asked him to figure out how to give these people a drink. That would help lure Denali out of the ship landing zone, and prevent them from wandering off into the city before decontamination. And why wouldn’t they? No one ever built a fence around the spaceport.
That attended to, Abel sat in a newly erected lawn chair, and cracked open a beer. That first gulp tasted great. He sighed, and spotted Sass’s bright blond hair headed his way. I have time for one more comm call.
“Kassidy, Abel. We need a welcoming committee at the spaceport.”
She countered, “How long did you think I could keep that up? Four months, Abel. You’re old news, and worse. The settler on the street is starting to resent all these newcomers. Denali manners suck. They’re stronger, think they’re smarter than us, and there’s so damned many of them. And oh, good job, you brought in a bumper crop, and no water for them to drink. Ben snags an iceberg.”
“I caught that part,” Abel agreed. “But I know this beautiful, brilliant lady who can perform public relations miracles. What was her name…”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. I told Sass. I need to play the sympathy card with Ben. Our home-town hero, the boy from Poldark, fallen –”
“He’s asleep, Kassidy. Drugged to the gills. You want to interview Cope? He’ll bite your head off.”
Kassidy snorted amusement. “No. Fun to picture, though, Cope’s remarks to his homeworld. ‘You lazy stretch morons!’ Probably wouldn’t help. But you cheered me up. Hey, isn’t he president of Spaceways?”
“Probably wouldn’t help,” Abel reinfo
rced. “The guy’s mind is on his husband, Kassidy. Cut him a break.”
Sass arrived and collapsed to a striped chair, with an oof and a sigh. She reached limply toward the beer bucket. Her hand fell a half meter short. Abel tossed a bottle to her, and put the conversation with Kassidy on speaker.
Sass laughed and sprayed the beer foam at the spaceport dust. A hard-top surface lurked beneath all that dust, really. The ground crew even ran sweepers across the expanse once a week, or so they claimed. But aside from being preternaturally flat, the spaceport masqueraded as just another expanse of bare moon regolith.
Abel concluded, “I have every confidence in your creativity, Kassidy. Hey, are you here filming? Drinks are on me. Ramp, Friendship Thrive. Sass just arrived. Come join us.”
He disconnected, and noted that orange cones were now popping out across the dust scape. Slightly fewer dazed Denali stood where a giant transport was soon to descend to crush them like a bug. Good enough for now.
No it wasn’t. He took another swig of beer, and pursed his lips.
“You can’t blame him,” Sass attempted. “The evacuation has been grueling for all of us. Maximum effort to save maximum lives. Ben took on too much. He didn’t have time to develop a ground game here, and run the fleet, and find fuel and supplies, and fly his own missions.”
“Not him I’m blaming,” Abel countered. “What exactly is a fleet captain supposed to do? Fly ships, ensure personnel are competent, train captains, coordinate schedules.”
“Can’t fly without fuel,” Sass pointed out. “Our burn rate is stunning. Denali’s gravity well is voracious, and so’s the warp. I’m surprised there’s any fuel left in the Aloha system.”
Abel checked that point on his comm. “Not sure there is.”
“Yet he kept buying it,” Sass countered. “Somehow.”
Abel checked the company finances next, and winced at the magnitude of their credit extension. “I had no idea. But no. It’s Cope I want to strangle.”
“Cope?”
“The President of Thrive Spaceways. John Copeland. Yes, Cope. Who let his husband work himself into a nervous breakdown instead of carrying his weight. If he’s kicking himself at Ben’s bedside, good! He deserves it! Sass, we nearly lost Ben, Hopeful Thrive, and a thousand Denali souls today.”
“You think I don’t know that!? I was there, Abel, just like you!”
He raised a placating hand. “Not my point. It’s a rego miracle we managed to save all of them. And you’re to thank for that.”
“And you,” Sass assured him. “And Cope, too. We did fantastic work today. It’s a miracle we saved Hopeful.”
“Yeah.” He licked his lip, and pointed at the dazed herd still drifting where Clay needed to park Thrive One. “I think it’s time to shut this party down. The evacuation.”
Sass took a long pull on her beer. “This is your first time on the Schuyler end, Abel. It’s always a circus. And we carried four and a half thousand this time, the most ever. It’ll take a little longer than usual to process them all through.” Her jaw skewed sideways, though.
“It’s going to be a disaster today,” Abel differed. “Extra hours in processing on the spaceport, equals higher death rates. Plus a public relations nightmare over Ben’s near-fatal breakdown. Schuyler city services are a complete no-show. And from what Kassidy’s telling me, we’re losing the public will to accept more immigrants.”
Sass dropped her head and toyed with her beer label. “We’re only halfway there. Forty thousand Denali left to go?”
“I’m aware of that,” Abel replied, voice controlled to a growl. “I ran the Denali end. Remember?”
“And you did an awesome job,” Sass agreed faintly.
“It’s autumn in Waterfalls,” Abel reminded her. “They can hang on through the winter. And all these immigrants need to eat. I say we shut down the evacuation for a while, give everyone a long rest. Let the Denali plant their winter harvest. While we solve the Mahina ground game. Now, are you up for icebergs today? Or me?”
“Well, one of us needs to deal with this.” Sass’s limp wave encompassed the dusty spaceport. “On second thought, we’re not doing much good here, are we?”
“We’re having a beer,” Abel pointed out. “I’m exhausted. You’re exhausted. It’s sunset. Close enough.” It was still an hour shy of the official happy hour. But a good businessman lubricated a tough discussion no matter the day or hour. “Have you spoken to Hunter Burke?”
Clay’s son was their usual fallback on negotiations with the Mahina government, such as it was. Mahina starved its public authorities for tax income, and the assorted petty fiefdoms that resulted rarely cooperated with each other. But the world sure needed them now. Like the creche mess all over again.
“Hunter isn’t returning my calls,” Sass admitted. “But I thought, you’re the business guy. You’d arrive and get this show ship-shape. Right?”
“Wrong,” Abel told her. “Business, yes. Sass, ain’t nothing business about this crazy operation. Not a cent of profit to be found. We can’t even…” He glanced guiltily over his shoulder, and lowered his voice. “We can’t make payroll. And our people deserve beer money!”
“I’ll pitch in –”
“You’ve paid. I’ve paid. It ends now. Sass, you know me. I got no use for big government. But this operation is crying out for rego public funding and bureaucracy. We can’t just dump sick refugees on the regolith and call them ‘saved.’ Social services need to step up. Yeah, the Denali evacuation is now officially on hold. Thrive Spaceways is on vacation. Until we get our act together.”
Sass blinked dolefully at the scene. “Does it really look that bad to you? Like we’ve done such a lousy job on this end? There really were cheering crowds, Abel. At first.”
“Yep. And then it got hard. Always does.” He took another swig. “I’ll grab the icebergs. Jules isn’t free for another 48 hours or so anyway. Is she.”
“No,” Sass agreed. “I’ll grab some ice, too. Once Clay lands. I don’t even know where to put it.”
“Because Ben managed all that. Personally. On behalf of an entire world.” She shot him a glower, but Abel held up a peaceable hand. “I’m kicking myself, Sass, not him. I thought Cope solved this by hiring Tarana to help Ben. Bet Cope thought so, too! Problem is, Ben’s too damned good at what he does. We didn’t realize how much was on his plate.” He pinched thumb and forefinger together. “So we came this close to losing him. With a thousand innocent bystanders. And a ship. That’s unacceptable.”
“Do you have authority to shut down the evacuation?”
“Temporary hold. Yes. I can do that. And I have. Understood, captain?”
She considered for a moment, fatigue slowing her mental gears. “Agreed. We could use a break.”
“I’ll inform Cope,” Abel assured her. “And Denali. And the Mahina authorities if I can collar one to notify. I’m not asking, I’m telling. Ah, here’s our official mouthpiece now.” He pointed out Kassidy’s long black curls, bouncing toward them at a trot. “She’ll make it sound good. God knows how. But she always does.”
3
Official sunset happy hour was long gone when chief engineer Remi Roy reached a bar in Saggytown. He hated the derogatory nickname for the Sagamore expatriate district in Schuyler. But it offered a touch of home.
Remi had overcome his agoraphobia by now, that terror of the dome-bred when crossing the vast open spaces of the city’s spaceport and plazas. Though somehow he never adjusted to the colors of Mahina. Just after sunset, the city glowed an unnerving olive, as heat beat up in waves from the pavement and ruffled the tiger stripes on the immense half-Pono dominating the sky.
He swung into his favorite joint, the only one that catered to his class of Saggy. Sort of. His adoptive caste anyway – like the pirate Pierre Lavelle, Remi was born an aristocrat. Which wasn’t nearly as impressive as it sounded. His elder brother inherited the family dome, and then lost it. As a younger son, the engineer never ha
d prospects beyond a good education and a genteel descent into the middle class.
He’d blown even that chance by joining the revolution. So he joined the middle class on Hell’s Bells instead of Sagamore. Then he pared a decade off his personal timeline to accompany Sass Collier to Sanctuary. By now he didn’t fit anywhere.
But hey, at least they spoke his native tongue here. He ordered a beer and begged the bartender to converse with him for a few minutes, remind him what French sounded like. Laughing, the keep welcomed him home to Sagamore in exile. He claimed the rice and tilapia were delicious today, and the news a clown show. Was Remi in that mess with Thrive Spaceways?
He hadn’t thought to catch the news. He brought his beer to an open table behind the clutch of people gazing at a wall-sized display. A news reporter lady, not their friendly Kassidy Yang, stood in the middle of the spaceport.
“Over forty-five hundred more Denali refugees arrived today. Where is Thrive Spaceways? Where are the authorities? Who’s taking responsibility for this? The Schuyler reservoir is so low, the power authority warns of brownouts by Monday –”
Remi blinked. No, that made sense. He kept forgetting this city used its reservoir as a battery for renewable power. All 3.5 sunny days, plus the erratic contribution of windmills, they pumped water to the high reservoir. Then they poured it over generator turbines to power the city over the 3.5 ‘day’ night. The first two days of that were weekend, Saturday and Glow. But the factories wanted power again by Monday.
“– Captain Ben Acosta had a sudden nervous breakdown in the middle of takeoff from Denali. His ship carried a thousand immigrants. And no copilot.” The woman skewered the audience with an accusing look.
“Imbecile!” cried a man in front of Remi.
“Watch it,” Remi growled in French. “She doesn’t say what an incredible job we did, saving those people! You think it’s easy? Ben had just squirted out between two hurricanes, ten thousand meters above an ocean, halfway up, no way to land, no way to make orbit, blacking out. We were heroes, the ones who talked him through and saved that ship!”