“No such thing. Four serves two.”
The Captain scored two points before Hawthorne landed another well-placed shot to knock him off the line.
“Hell of a kill shot.”
“I was not much of a sailor, but I could hit a handball. I served on three different ships in the span of two years because of that kill shot, spending more time in makeshift courts than on any bridge.”
“Did the cruise ship have courts?”
“No, only holographic sports and direct-feed games.”
Horus asked, “Direct feed is that stuff that pumps the images into a brain implant, right?”
“If you have a powerful thinker—implant or chip--we had game machines that could make you feel like you were surfing a hundred-foot wave or flying a race rocket. Okay, two serves six.”
Hawthorne went on a roll with kill shot after kill shot, resulting in eight unanswered points before relinquishing the line.
Horus huffed, “That was nasty. Six serves--what do you have?”
“Ten, I think.”
Captain Horus slowly walked to the serve line, perhaps stalling to catch his breath.
“Have you been out in deep space recently, Commander?”
“No, but I can’t imagine it has changed.”
Horus said, “Space is no longer the exciting new frontier.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Consider that as soon as you leave Earth you are sealed in a flying tin can, and then you transfer to a ship like this or a passenger carrier. If you are lucky, you are on a corporate yacht with holographic tennis, but you are still inside a container.”
“Shouldn’t you be serving the ball?”
Horus flashed a wry smile but kept talking.
“Those ships take you to a space station or a dome where you are locked inside, and if you want to walk outside you wear a spacesuit, an even smaller container.”
Hawthorne prompted Horus: “You’ve got six; I have ten, serve the ball.”
The Captain returned to his tactic of making his older opponent run, managing four points to tie the game until Hawthorne took serve again.
As he handed over the ball, Horus told him, “Weird, nasty things are happening out here, to the point I’m starting to believe the entire human race is going insane. Last year miners working for Golden Prominence on Io went on strike and rioted, throwing two senior managers into a lava flow. When corporate security arrived they killed two hundred workers, and half were beaten to death.”
Hawthorne bounced the ball, announced, “Tied at ten,” and served an ace at Horus’ left.
“About eight months ago as we delivered food to an energy research complex on Dione, a worker threw an explosive at our drop ship. When they caught him, he said he did it because he was bored. Then again, he might have been sick. With people crammed in tight quarters, any bug that gets up from Earth goes through colonies like wildfire. Last year they ran out of body bags at the deuterium harvester floating around Saturn because of a respiratory virus.”
“That’s horrible,” said Hawthorne without an ounce of sincerity. “Eleven serves ten.”
Horus countered the serve but Hawthorne still scored thanks to another expert kill shot. Now he needed only three points to win the game, but his opponent appeared more interested in other pursuits.
“What do you think explains the rioting every day on Mars?”
Hawthorne said, “Taxes and inflation; the Martian economy is a mess.”
“No, it is because people should not live in domes. Mars was supposed to be terraformed years ago. The government lured those colonists to Mars with promises of land, jobs, and wealth. Instead, they are stuck inside breathing stale air. The suicide rate on Mars is twice the rate on Earth and the favorite method is not an overdose or a bullet to the head but opening an airlock and walking outside.”
“Can I serve now?”
Hawthorne slammed the ball and it came back across court low and fast for a quick point that put him within two of winning.
“Thirteen serves ten.”
Horus countered the next serve with a ceiling shot that drove Hawthorne back. After a short volley, the Captain regained the serve line, trailing by three points.
“Mankind is failing out here, Commander. Most people living and working in space want to return home, but they are trapped.”
“So write a letter to your congressman.”
Horus’ serve led to a volley that exhausted Hawthorne and caused him to miss an easy shot.
“I don’t take passengers often, so I knew something was up when UVI threw a big check at me to transport a corporate executive, a war hero and three specialized scientists. I doubt they need a quantitative biologist or an expert in exo-meteorology on Uranus.”
“I need a serve, Captain,” Hawthorne said between heavy breaths.
Horus obliged and sent an ace down the right side that Hawthorne should have reached, but he did not want to crash into the wall.
“I understand you cannot tell me what is going on, but it is big otherwise you would be sailing on a commercial liner or a private corporate ride, not in secret on a cargo ship.”
“Look, Captain, I don’t care. I was drafted by a press gang, subjected to contractual blackmail, and thrown on this tub—no offense—with only a hint about the big picture. Now let’s play handball, you need three points to win.”
Horus scored the twice, setting the stage for match point, which he served. Hawthorne took two lazy steps and missed, resulting in Horus winning the game, to which the Captain immediately said, “You could have had that. Looks like you gave up.”
Hawthorne wiped sweat from his brow and extended a congratulatory hand but instead of shaking, Horus held tight.
“You didn’t try, Commander, I just had to keep the volleys going and sooner or later you would give up.”
“My days of taking this seriously are over,” and he wrenched his hand free.
“Space has become nothing more than mining, harvesting, and fighting; our spirits are wearing down. The further out I travel, the more it feels like a descent into the circles of Hell.”
“Captain, I do not know why you are telling me this.”
“It needs to be more than resource exploitation, corporate profits, and war. I don’t know what you are up to, but if there is a chance to change things then you must, or eventually all our so-called progress will collapse back on itself.”
10. Wren
Wren swung his legs out from beneath the heavy wool blanket and off the cot. A chilled jolt went through his bones when his bare feet touched the cold metal floor. He then tiptoed two steps to the shelf next to the sink and grabbed a yellow pullover shirt that did not match his gray shorts.
Before he slipped on the shirt, he glanced at the mirror, looking at the Union Jack tattooed on his right shoulder.
Movement caught his eye: Ellen’s leg slipped out from the covers but she still slept.
Her leg was not slender and she had him by fifteen years, but that did not matter to Wren; this was a relationship of convenience and nothing more.
The sex was okay but, then again, he did not have a long track record for comparison. He spent too much of his time foraging alone in the ruins of England. Relationships were rare and his disposition chased off what few opportunities arose.
So yes, sex was nice but he enjoyed their tryst mainly because Kost was a polite listener. She sat through his stories of growing up in England, of learning soccer from his father, trips to the countryside, and visiting relatives in Wales.
His eyes fixed on the Union Jack painted on his skin.
In a rare moment of clarity, he wondered if that symbol really meant soccer, countryside getaways, and family gatherings, or were those memories only dreams constructed from stories. The Cut had chased him from England at the age of thirteen, nearly seventeen years ago. Did he truly remember his home? Was his love for all he had lost genuine, or justification for anger?
He found his eyes in the reflection and he fell into a trance, like staring into an infinite row of reflections, a mirror within a mirror.
What would I have if not my anger?
Even his parents had given up the fight for their native country, accepting the hospitality of North America, a better place than the ghettos of Europe. Their son, however, kept sifting through the ashes for pieces of himself in his homeland’s graveyard.
What had he found in all that time? Frustration, resentment, and rage.
A series of chimes preceded an announcement from Captain Horus, thankfully breaking his trance; Leo Wren did not like mirrors.
“We will arrive at Titan in thirty minutes.”
He pulled on the shirt and exited the cabin, slamming the door behind and probably waking Kost. At first he did not care, but by the time he reached the canteen at the center of the ship he felt guilty, and that was unusual for Leo Wren.
The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee spoke of breakfast time but if that had not been enough, the sight of Commander Hawthorne sleeping in a chair with his legs on the table did the trick. Hawthorne liked to drink in the evening--as defined by the clock--and he did not always return to his bunk. Finding him asleep in the canteen was as sure a sign of morning in space as a rooster crowing on Earth.
A crewman from engineering also sat at the table, eating a pile of powdered eggs. He was a plump, bearded man who wore a greasy ball cap and spoke in grunts. However, their looming arrival at Titan must have put the pudgy man in a good mood. He raised his mug and said, “Made coffee this morning. Not the instant shit; real beans.”
Wren wondered how the engineer had hid beans for the past week, but he nonetheless accepted the offer and filled his mug.
Yes, the aroma suggested a delicious blend, but not until he tasted it did Wren understand how good coffee could be. He did not even consider adding imitation cream or sweetener to the drink.
The engineer waited for a compliment on his brew, but Wren only nodded before continuing forward.
He passed cabin doors lining either side of the corridor before finding his path blocked. Reagan Fisk stood in the passage dressed in loose fitting clothes with his arms stretched out, his eyes closed, and one leg in the air.
Wren stopped, sipped coffee, and fought an urge to grin. The displaced Englishman hid his amusement when the young corporate executive opened his eyes and said, “You’re right, it works. I can feel it, right in this spot.”
Wren remained silent, fearing he might laugh and spill coffee.
Reagan Fisk once again raised his leg and at the same time said, “I never knew about this. Just like you said, the panels are pulling me down, but I can feel the current from the drive flowing over me, like it wants to carry me to the rear of the ship.”
“That’s…that’s fucking awesome.”
“Are you going to try?”
“Um, no, I was just doing it in my quarters. I’m on my way to the bridge.”
“Say, we should get a bunch of us and do it down in the canteen, side by side,” Fisk said.
“Maybe later. Hey, Hawthorne is in there giving it a try, but he is sitting down instead of standing up. You might want to show him the right way.”
“Hell yeah, thanks!”
Fisk took his bubbling enthusiasm to the canteen. Wren nearly spit coffee as his suppressed chuckle reached the surface. The idea of feeling a gravity flow during deceleration aboard a diametric drive ship was the spacefaring equivalent of a snipe hunt.
Behind him, from down the corridor in the canteen, he heard Hawthorne shout an obscenity.
When he arrived at the bridge, Wren found the pilot at his post, Horus working navigation, and a guy with an olive complexion at the station controlling communications and flight operations. However, he had come to the bridge to appreciate the view from the forward window, not visit with the crew.
The Virgil decelerated as their destination neared, but despite what he told Fisk, that did not create a gravity flow a person could sense by closing his eyes and balancing on one leg. It did mean they were now close enough to see Saturn from the bridge.
Saturn was not a colorful planet, but it inspired awe nonetheless. The massive sphere could swallow seven-hundred Earths and while the rings were the most distinguishing characteristic, they were only part of this king’s court. Sixty natural satellites orbited the monster, making it nearly a solar system unto itself.
From his vantage point aboard the Virgil, Wren saw the entire planet, although that was steadily changing as they moved into Saturn’s shadow on approach to Titan, the behemoth’s largest moon.
As a scientist, he knew facts about Saturn, such as wind speeds could reach eleven hundred miles per hour. He knew that a layer of metallic hydrogen twenty times the size of Earth surrounded a rocky core at the middle of the gas giant. He knew that Saturn’s magnetic field was a thousand times more powerful than the one protecting Wren’s home world.
But as he gazed out the window, that incredible planet did something few things did to Leo Wren: arouse his imagination. Saturn’s giant size and beautiful rings made it an icon of space travel, a symbol of the universe’s mysteries.
He fought back, however, forcing himself to question the value of deep space missions when his homeland on Earth remained a dead wasteland.
As they neared, that big sphere grew until it filled the window. At that point, the swirling gases of the ringed planet replaced the stars as the backdrop to his view and the moons of Saturn moved to the foreground with one in particular swelling as the Virgil drew close.
This was Titan, the second largest moon in the entire solar system and an important human outpost.
Titan offered a feast for the eyes, starting with an orange tint produced by its dense atmosphere, but that was just the beginning.
He intruded on the pilot’s work and accessed the ship’s visual scanners to see through the nitrogen-rich organic smog and scan Titan’s surface. With the equipment, Wren could make out the vast plain named Shangri-la, a black void cutting across the moon’s surface. He also saw the tall peaks of Sotra Patera, a cryo-volcano spewing ammonium and water.
Annoyed at the interruption, the pilot grunted and then switched off the scanner.
Wren shrugged and swallowed another mouthful of drink. The coffee was rich and silky smooth, reminding him of a fine chocolate. He wondered how an engineer on a dirty cargo ship brewed the best coffee he ever tasted.
However, as Titan grew in the window, Wren found something even more curious than the origin of great coffee. He pointed over the pilot’s shoulder and asked, “What are those?”
Of course, the annoyed old man piloting the Virgil felt no duty to respond, but Captain Horus joined Wren at the window and provided the answer.
“The one on the left is an American Montana class battleship.”
Wren nodded toward another large dot hovering above Titan but on the other side of the moon, nearly over the horizon.
Horus told him, “That, I know, is the Russian battleship Fyodor Ushakov. It has been there a long time. At least the Americans rotate in a new ship once in a while.”
To Wren’s eyes, the massive machines resembled gunfighters facing off in a frontier town, ready to draw.
A flash from the surface bounced across the atmosphere like a bolt of lightning, illuminating the orange clouds from beneath. Seconds later, something with a contrail nearly reached orbit before plummeting back into the colorful soup enveloping the moon.
“Was that a fucking missile? They fighting a war down there? Wait, no they aren’t, or those battleships would be shooting, too.”
“You would think so but they just hang there, watching each other.”
The Virgil steered toward the American share of the sky and the battleship came into focus. The ship was gigantic because Americans always think bigger equals better. Wren thought the shape resembled a thick broadsword. Ridges—probably gun ports--lined what he saw as the blade and spheres belong
ing to the diametric drive bulged from the undercarriage. The rear third resembled a hilt and while a structure on the top suggested a bridge, he knew military vessels built their control centers deep inside, surrounded by bulkheads.
Another flash in the sky, then a second missile flew in the opposite direction.
“Something is fucked up down there.”
Horus told him, “You’ll find that fucked up is just another day on Titan.” He noticed his passenger’s mug. “My engineer knows how to make coffee, doesn’t he?”
Wren considered for a moment and then answered, “I’ve had better.”
11. Titan
The Virgil hovered above Titan in the shadow of the USNA Battleship. It remained there for hours waiting for clearance.
When permission finally came, two bulkheads in the freighter’s belly swung open and down lowered the Virgil’s heavy drop ship. The craft resembled one-part 1990s American space shuttle and another part cargo helicopter with an open space between the nose cone and the engine baffles filled only by a pair of guide rails.
Next, the cargo bays circling the Virgil’s aft rotated until the desired one aligned with the heavy lifter. The boxcar-like container then slid onto the lifter’s guide rails locking into position, ready for transport to the surface.
Below on Titan, flashes, fireballs, and missiles crisscrossed the murky atmosphere. While the entire moon did not appear affected, there was enough happening to give the place the feel of a war zone.
After their flight plan received permission from ground control, the heavy lifter dropped free of its berth, falling to Titan in a nose up position and disappearing into the nitrogen-rich orange soup encompassing the moon. The ship then performed a series of s-turns to dissipate speed, an easier task in gravity only one-third that of Earth.
While the thick atmosphere limited visibility, the passengers managed to glimpse a variety of topography, including windswept dunes and pools filled with various frozen liquids all illuminated by sunlight that, at its strongest, barely rivaled twilight on Earth.
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