by Kelly Curtis
The room went deadly silent.
After a painfully long silence Master Harlow laughed, “Oh my dear, you wouldn’t believe such a thing would you? Terra Nova believers are nothing more than fantastical dreamers. They’ve no true support. It’s all just rumors created by the JC to keep everyone on their toes. If they truly had enough support for a coup it would be happening, mark my words.”
“You’ve seen nothing more suspicious than usual on the station lately then?”
“Nothing except there are no avocados.”
“We’ve brought you avocados,” supplied Christopher.
The Master smiled.
“Three cases,” added Christopher.
“And some Balvenie scotch,” added Afia.
“I can’t be bought,” the Master replied with false regret.
“No one is trying to buy you, good Master Harlow,” Alma said gently. “These are gifts from one person to another as a form of greeting and for the hope of a long friendship.”
“What kind of friendship are we referring to, Captain?”
Alma didn’t like the look in his eyes but she still forced a smile, “A good friendship.”
“A healthy friendship?”
Alma wanted to throw up at the thought. When people said ‘healthy’ it often referred to sex. “Unfortunately, I’m in the process of applying for permission for procreation with my partner. Perhaps in the future,” she trailed off.
Alma knew both Afia and Christopher would be shocked by her response, but she didn’t break eye contact with Harlow though. She just hoped he didn’t notice their face expressions. If he did, hopefully he would dismiss their ignorance as a choice as Alma was a leader who didn’t share her personal life with her crew. She smiled. “Now, please tell me about Terra Nova. This is my first mission and I need to come back with something or else you might never see me again. They might give my command to someone else who they deem more capable.”
Harlow was already imagining this little captain in his bed. The touch of her young and soft skin. “Your boyfriend must be a lucky man indeed, but after the procreation process, you’ll be free again and we wouldn’t want you to miss out on any opportunities. So I’ll tell you the little I know. There have been rumors, more than rumors of Terra Nova gaining support, you’re right. I’ve had to shut down some meetings in bars, someone was actually printing their demands on paper and handing them out if you can believe it?”
“Printed paper? And people believed the printed word?” asked Christopher.
Harlow nodded, “It’s a different world up here. The humans up here interact in the galaxy. They use technology daily and think all of this nonsense of tech flu has been made up by the government to keep people under the JC’s strict control.”
“Well, anyone born outside the twelve would say that,” replied Afia. “It doesn’t make any sense for the JC to ban something that would make our lives easier if it wasn’t detrimental to our health and our planet.”
“Praise to nature,” Master Harlow toasted and raised his wine glass and everyone followed suit.
“Do you still have one of these pieces of paper with the Terra Nova propaganda on it?” Alma asked sweetly.
“No, I had them all burned and the people responsible sent to a MAC on Enceladus as a warning. None of us want to see Terra Nova succeed. Humans are doing just fine without any personal technology.”
“And you are doing extremely well,” Christopher commented.
“Yes, I’ve been lucky. You know, I was born into a Detroit Recycling Guild family, but when I was ten years old I joined the Titan Mining Guild and now look at me, I’m the Station Master.”
“What an interesting journey you’ve had,” remarked Alma trying to be pleasant. “I’m sure you’ve seen more than your share of pirates and smugglers too.”
“I have. That’s why I’m so good at being Station Master. I’ve seen it all,” he boasted.
“Tell me then, what else do you know about Terra Nova? Any big plans you think? Or just these people with their papers?”
Master Harlow took Alma’s hand that was closest to him and informally, turned it over and traced letters over her outstretched palm. The letters were, D-A-N-T-E. All the while saying, “I’m afraid your generous gifts might be wasted on me. I don’t know anything else about Terra Nova, aside from what I’ve already told you about the propaganda papers. I sincerely hope you do keep your command Captain, even though, I’ve been of little help to you.”
Alma and Christopher had a drink in her favorite bar on Titan Station after dinner with Master Harlow. The bar was a replica of one that supposedly used to exist on Earth called ‘Laffite’s’. Alma liked the bar because it was the only place she had ever been that was true to how she imagined Earth used to be, before the Great Leap Backwards; dark, dirty and filled with people, who may or may not be nice to you, as no one out here counted SCs.
“What did he write on your hand?” Christopher asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it here,” she said quietly.
“Will you tell me about your procreation application? Or was that a lie?”
“It wasn’t a lie. Scott wants to do it.”
“When did this happen?”
“He mentioned it last week with my parents. It was so awkward. No, actually my mother mentioned it first, but now it’s on his mind and he wants to do it.”
Christopher shook his head, “You’re not seriously considering it are you? You’d be out of work for a while.”
“I know,” Alma said defensively. “But I think sometimes, that this is all there is and maybe I should just do it and get it over with. Then, at least, I can say I did something good for humanity.” Parents of healthy children were rewarded with SCs and if their children became stellar star citizens the parents were rewarded again with more SCs. Needless to say, Alma’s parents received very few SCs for her contributions in the JC.
Christopher gave her a small clap, “Absolutely Alma. I’ve never seen such a willful display of settling for someone or something in all my life.”
“What would you do if you were me?”
“For starters, I’d leave Scott. You’re clearly wasting his time and yours.”
Alma rolled her eyes.
But Christopher was not deterred, “He’s great on paper, but you don’t love him. It was lust for a couple months and now nothing. You’re only with him because you think he camouflages who you really are.”
“Oh really, who am I really then if I’m not myself?”
“You know what I mean. You’re Military Guild through and through, and that’s not a popular thing to be. But you like wanting to fit in with the rest of them. You like trying to please your parents. Scott ticks those boxes. And I’m sure, your parents approve of him whole heartedly.”
“I do fit in. We both do. Stop trying to always separate us out. We’re all human and there is a place for us all on Earth,” she was quoting the dogma she had learned as a girl. Alma always pacified herself with those sentiments when she had the feeling that she didn’t fit into JC society. She was never comfortable with the way that Christopher accepted their outsider status in JC society so openly and easily.
“On Earth yes, you’re human, but in the JC?”
“Stop it. I don’t want to talk about this,” Alma said quietly. All she wanted to do was relax for a minute before she had to seriously think about Terra Nova and the Dante.
“I’m just going to say this last thing about applying for procreation. Don’t do it. It’ll only be a burden to you.”
Christopher’s words cut her more than he could possibly know. Her mother had abandoned her at three years old and had told Alma later, when she was very tired, that motherhood had been just too much of a ‘burden’ for her. “How can you say that? Maybe, I do really want a child?”
He looked at her with disbelief, “People who really want children don’t say, ‘maybe’.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his at
tention to detail and the smile let him know, he was right. Although, it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to have children. She still hadn’t decided. Then, she changed the subject, “How are things with Betsy, the farm girl?”
Christopher laughed, “First of all, she’s not a farm girl. Second, things are going well, I think.”
“What guild is she in then if it’s not potatoes or milk?”
“Drama.”
“An actress?”
“No, a set designer.”
“Oh, that’s interesting.”
“It is,” replied Christopher overly enthusiastically.
“And she still got over the fact your parents are traditionalists?”
“Well,” Christopher said and then looked at the dirty wall with some alien graffiti on it.
“What happened?”
“She wanted to meet my family to judge for herself how traditional they were.”
“And?”
“It took a lot of convincing to get her to see me again.”
Alma only felt sorry for Christopher, “I don’t understand why your parents continue with this charade. It makes life for you and your siblings difficult.”
“They believe in it, Alma,” they had discussed this so many times, but Alma never understood why his parents believed in religion and he was over trying to explain it to her.
Alma thought his parents should think about moving to the Ethereal with everyone else who refused to give up religion, but she could never say that to Christopher. It was too harsh, even though, he must know she and everyone else thought it, “I’ll never understand. How can someone believe in something that’s not there? That there is no proof of ever being there?”
“We’ve been over this hundreds of times, I cannot explain spirituality to you. It’s something you must feel.”
“Do you feel it yet, Christopher?”
“You know, I don’t,” Christopher lied. He felt he was always walking this bridge in society between the spiritual and the secular.
Alma took the last sip of her drink, “Good. Now, all I feel like is going to bed. Come on, let’s go.”
The next morning, Alma walked into the Indy’s small conference room, with a round table and white chairs. All her senior officers, except Rupert, were waiting to discuss what they had learned about Terra Nova yesterday on Titan. She began the meeting by telling them of their meeting with the Station Master and letting them listen to the recording over dinner.
Eito was the first to reply, “If another captain were to have said this to me while writing on my hand, I’d understand it as ‘wait for the Dante to come to Titan Station’.”
“What nonsense,” Christopher commented. “Why not just say ‘Wait for the Dante’ out loud? It’s no secret we are looking for them.”
Eito shrugged his shoulders, unbothered by Christopher’s remark, “But none of you said that out loud. The Captain asked about Terra Nova. Afia, go back.”
Afia went back in the audio recording and they listened again. Eito was right, they never mentioned the Dante in conjunction with Terra Nova.
Rupert walked in late and sat down, “Are we talking about the ship Dante or the author?”
They all looked at him and Alma asked, “Is there a book?”
“Yes, it’s a series of poems actually, very old and has to do with an ancient religion. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“What’s it about?” asked Alma, just to be sure to check every box.
“It’s about man’s moral confusion and then facing God,” answered Christopher.
Everyone sighed and made sounds of annoyance at Christopher talking about an ancient human religion.
“I don’t think this has anything to do with the author or the Ethereal,” Alma said. “This has to do with our mission, Terra Nova and the ship Dante. The name is only a name with no deeper meaning. These are pirates after all. Now, where were we?”
“The Dante was in and out of Titan quite a few times last year. Maybe the Station Master does actually mean ‘wait and they will return’,” Rupert suggested.
“Bring up the files on the screen,” Alma said and Rupert brought up his findings on a 3D screen between them all on the table. He highlighted the Dante’s docking history in orange.
“They’re pirates, of course they’re always here to trade,” explained Eito. “But it looks like we just missed them. I know it’s a long shot, but did they say where they were going in Titan’s records?”
Rupert checked and then chuckled, “They wrote ‘Tartarus’.” When no one else laughed he explained, "A pit in the underworld for condemned souls.” When they all still gave him blank faces he asked, “Am I the only one who reads ancient literature around here? What are you all doing in your spare time?”
“I knew it but I didn’t think it was funny,” replied Afia.
“Me too,” said Galen. “And I doubt this means anything. They’re pirates. They’re hardly ever serious.” He left out, ‘Because if they were, they’d realize how sad their lives really were.’
“No sense of humor at all, none of you,” Rupert admonished.
“Our mission is to destroy the Dante,” Alma said, getting everyone’s attention again so that she could end this meeting as it had only become a waste of time. “The Station Master has linked the Dante to Terra Nova. But, I don’t think we’ll find any more information here and I don’t think they’ll be back any time soon. We’ll have to leave and patrol this end of the solar system and continue searching the main trade routes back and forth between Io, Titan and Enceladus. Dismissed.”
Chapter 5
May 7th 2635, JC Starship Indy, Solar System between Saturn and Jupiter
The Indy was patrolling the main trade routes around Saturn when a relatively small cargo ship showed up as something completely different on their new enhanced sensors.
Alma nodded to Selma, “Ask them to produce an ID code.”
“Aye, Captain,” Selma replied. “Captain, the ID code they’re giving me is registered to the Explorer.”
“That’s not the Explorer,” Eito declared.
“I agree,” said Christopher. “But why would they say they were? The Explorer is a somewhat dodgy cargo vessel. Or was I reading your friend wrong, Eito?”
Eito nodded, “You’re doing Johnathan justice by saying, ‘somewhat dodgy’. But this makes no sense.”
“Could there be two ship ID’s with the same name?” Jason, their young navigator asked.
“No,” replied Selma, “This is the same ID as the one at Titan Station last week.”
Alma looked at Christopher and he shrugged. She looked at one of her small computer screens that gave a readout of the other ship and its capabilities. Often the ships they came across had no IDs or fake ones and projected false readouts of what their ships really looked like or their capabilities. However, if the cargo ships were not carrying any serious contraband, it was not worth their time to stop them. But, Alma did not feel right about this particular ship. “Tell them we know that is a fake ID and ask them who they really are,” Alma said.
Christopher gave Alma a puzzled look, “We’re going to waste our time on this ship? They’ve very little on board.” He pointed to the screen, “And only minimal weapons. And if they had any cargo it’s not showing up here.”
“They could have people or animals onboard,” Afia supplied. “They’re masking their life signs and who knows what else.”
“But then, they’re going the wrong way if they’re trafficking people,” Christopher pointed out as they were headed towards Earth or Mars, “and I’ve never known humans to keep aliens as pets.”
“I think this is the Dante, but we need to be able to prove it,” Alma said firmly. The bridge became quiet for a moment, their mission was, of course, to destroy the Dante, but it didn’t sit well with any of them. Not so much the killing of pirates, but the destruction of a ship they could use for their own advantage.
“I expect the Dante to be much more i
mpressive than this,” Christopher said, while looking at the readouts on his nearest computer screen again.
“If we compiled all of the myths surrounding the Dante, it would be the largest and most fearsome ship in the galaxy,” commented Alma. “No, I’ve a feeling we have found who we are looking for. Johnathan had Unification jump drive and who knows what else he was able to get from the Unification. And we know from the Dante’s file that they also, most likely, have Unification technology. It’s rare to have that. And the readouts they are broadcasting are coming from some sophisticated technology, had we not traded for new sensors, we wouldn’t be able to see them for what they really are. And then they’ve the Explorer’s code.”
“The solar system is very small, indeed,” Eito frowned.
“Would you say the crew of the Explorer and the Dante know each other?” Alma asked to reaffirm her conclusion.
“Of course, you stay out here for more than a year, and you don’t die, you begin to know every other free range ship and crew, whether they are legal or not. None of the stations or colonies are large enough to disappear in.”
“Captain, they’re insisting they’re the Explorer,” Selma said across the bridge.
“Eito, bring us up alongside them for docking. Selma, tell ‘the Explorer’,” she said the name to indicate she did not think this was their name at all, “to prepare to be boarded as a routine check for contraband.”
Selma nodded.
“Afia, bring up the schematics of the Explorer, this Explorer, and the schematics of the Dante.”
“Aye, Captain,” and within seconds Alma had them on her computer screen next to her chair. “Can you show me what they would have looked like without our new sensors? Different?”
“Like night and day,” replied Afia. “And maybe they could have even passed for the real Explorer.”
Alma looked at the next comparison Afia sent over and nodded her head. “Thank you, Afia. Christopher, assemble Squad A. I’m not discounting that this could be just a practice run and these people are just really stupid pirates, but let’s be ready for anything, because they very well could be the Dante, and if so, you all know, they’re armed and dangerous, and we’ve our orders.”