by Tom Jordan
“Descending now,” Jade said.
Tommy floated in weightless silence.
Duh, you idiot. Of course he wasn’t going to bounce around. The canopy was out and the life-support field was down. He was essentially in open space, just within the confines of the ship’s hull.
“Alright, big guy,” Jade said. “You’re up.”
“Are you talking to me, or the ship?”
“To my flight commander. You'll have eyes on the landing pad shortly.”
“Remind me to buy you some magnetic tethers, for next time you make me do this nonsense!”
“I’d put it on my wish list but the holos are down,” Jade remarked. “Don’t worry, Tommy. Slow and steady out there. We have time.”
His name again. Maybe this would all be worth it.
Tommy’s fingers groped for the button to open the access ramp. He made a connection, and a light flashed as the ramp yawned silently open. An endless vista of stars spread out beyond. He admired it for a moment before his stomach lurched with vertigo—something that always happened to him when confronted with open space, which was why he wasn’t thrilled about his current task. He held on and steadied himself, then shut his eyes until his discomfort lessened.
“Ramp open. Heading out now,” he mumbled.
“Stay cool,” Jade said.
“Yeah, cool. Sure.”
He fumbled his way along the wall, powering through the soreness and discomfort of his bruised skin and aching joints to pull himself out of the ship. He’d have to move to the very edge of the ramp to see anything.
He pushed himself around in low-g, holding on to his strap as though his life depended on it, and maneuvered himself with his other arm so that he could grip the ramp and peer over the side.
“Okay. I can see down. Nothing beneath us yet.”
“Hold tight,” Jade said. “Yaw maneuver coming up.”
The stars spun in a circle for a few seconds, which was long enough to cause Tommy’s head to swim. He fought back the burn of rising bile. The spinning sensation persisted after the ship stopped, and he had to close his eyes and concentrate on his breathing. He found that if he tucked his chin, he could see the bottom edge of the ramp. He focused on the grooved metal and breathed calmly until the dreadful sensations passed, doing his best to dismiss the thought of what it’d be like to vomit within the exo suit’s helmet.
A moment later, he spotted the curved housing of a spotlight as it passed close under the ship. Mercifully, the asteroid now filled his view as a backdrop. The ship bumped sligtly beneath him.
“Whoops,” Jade said.
“What? What was that!” Tommy’s heart fluttered. “Did the thruster die?”
“I think I hit one of those spotlights. I hope it wasn’t too expensive.”
Tommy swallowed a lump in his throat. He would probably have found it funnier, he mused, if nausea wasn’t sapping his attitude.
The textured metal expanse of the landing pad shifted into view as Jade maneuvered the ship. It was lit by a huge spotlight in the corner, which fortunately Jade hadn’t clipped on the way down. The neighboring landing pad was filled with a ship similar in size to Ghost of Jupiter, though Tommy couldn’t pay much attention to its make at the moment.
The pad’s surface slid silently by, and Tommy spotted huge, reflective white crosses indicating where each ship should set its center of mass. The crosses would normally be used by the ship’s computer for autodocking.
“I’ll set us down on the opposite corner,” Jade said. Tommy admired how she could stay so calm despite the situation. All he had to do was help visually guide the ship to its destination, yet it felt like an intimidating task, despite the fighting, evading, and crashing he’d done within the last few days. Until recently, he had been happy with his life. Research, ship upgrades, and non-combat flying suited him well. The intense parts, not so much.
“I see the marker. I’ll guide you in,” Tommy said.
“Okay. Call it out, buddy.”
“You’re about, I don’t know, thirty meters above, but you’ve got it pretty much centered.” The crosses were easy to see, bright within the spotlight beam.
“Copy,” Jade said. “I'm continuing to descend and am deploying landing skids.”
Jade inched the ship downward. Tommy gave her updates with his best guesses on the distance remaining to the landing site, and guided Jade when she needed to adjust her position sideways or front to back so that she was in alignment.
“Four or five meters to go,” he said. “Two meters directly starboard.” Ghost nudged sideways. “There. You got it dead center. Go ahead and drop it.”
Ghost of Jupiter continued its steady descent. From his perspective, Tommy could see the ship’s port side. The wing-shaped sections of the hull contained most of the electronics and machinery, accessible by utility crawls, leaving the central area for cargo, cockpit, storage, and crew space. He could see the bright emissions from the upward-facing thrusters as they pushed the ship down, and then the illumination on the landing pad from the downward-facing thrusters, which fired to balance the downthrust and facilitate their slow descent. Out of Tommy’s sight, the flight compensator would be firing the other forward, backward, and lateral thrusters to keep the ship centered.
“About three meters,” he said.
“Copy,” Jade said, her voice clipped.
The ship touched down with a sudden, forceful impact. Tommy was washed over with a wave of panic as he lurched upward from the deck. Losing his grip, he was yanked and spun as the force of the impact fought against the cargo strap securing him to the ship, and he flailed his arms, reaching for any purchase that could stabilize him.
Stars, the asteroid’s rocky surface, and the metal of the ship spun behind the helmet’s faceplate. He floated out of control, bumped into the ramp and exterior hull, and envisioned the strap slicing apart on the edge of the ramp opening.
“I need help!” he yelled out in panic.
“What’s wrong?”
“I lost my grip! I can’t get the strap!” The surface of the ramp rushed up and smacked his faceplate, rattling his jaw.
“I’m coming!” she said. “Hold tight!”
Tommy caught glimpses of the platform while he whipped around in a brain-jarring spiral. A seam of light appeared—the landing platform, and the ship with it, had begun sinking into the asteroid. Tommy’s mind filled with visions of getting crushed by the mechanisms moving the platform, or the cargo strap getting sheared by the elevator’s internals as he floated into space.
He also saw the interior of the ship as he rotated helplessly, and caught a glimpse of Jade flying down the corridor toward him like some kind of superhero.
Tommy thudded down onto the deck, landing on his bad leg. He lay stably on the floor, no longer floating.
“Ah!” he yelled. Jade laughed in his earpiece. “What! What’s so funny?”
Jade somehow landed on her feet and walked toward him. She hooked her forearms under his armpits and tugged him back into the central corridor. He landed on his back atop her. Outside the access ramp, machinery and rock whizzed upward as the platform descended farther into the asteroid.
Artificial gravity. There must be a gravitomagnetic emitter below, with its gravity affecting the interior of the asteroid and not reaching its surface, and therefore just kicking in.
“Sorry,” Jade said, her laughter dying down and transitioning into coughs. She looked into his eyes through their faceplates. “Ow. You just looked so funny dangling half out of the ship and flailing around upside down like that, waving your arms everywhere. I thought you were hurt or something!”
“I am hurt!” he answered. “And not just emotionally!”
“I’m sorry!” she said in between fits of laughter and coughs, bent over and grabbing her sides. “Ugh, that hurts. That stupid, smoky planet.” Oddly, the smoke inhalation from Balenos A seemed to have hit Jade harder than it had him. Or else Henning’s ministrations had
helped Tommy recover more quickly.
“Looks like we’ve got an ATREF coming up,” Jade said, referring to an Atmospheric Retention Field, which kept breathable air from leaking out into space. She nodded her chin toward the shaft beneath them. Tommy leaned and peered over the edge as the lift dropped them through a blue haze, like a sheet of laser light. He watched the azure energy field highlight Jade’s body from toe to head as it passed up and over them. They both took a step back as air buffeted them and rushed to fill Ghost.
I guess we can take off our helmets and fire the holos back up,” Tommy said.
Jade looked at the wrist computer strapped to her forearm and she nodded. “All set.”
Jade unsealed and lifted her helmet up and over her head, and Tommy followed her lead. He noticed a metallic taste to the air—a likely result of air-processing equipment within the asteroid—as well as a damp quality.
The lift’s motion slowed, and the shaft walls opened into a large hangar. It was less utilitarian-looking than most. Lines of neon color wandered the hangar walls in the spots that weren’t covered by floating advertisements. Some of the holographic displays showed off exciting shots of factory-fresh starships flying across the skies of exotic planets. Others showed the latest labor and mining robots, pictures of hotels within Keillor, and even some dancing women.
“Wow,” Tommy breathed, leaning on Jade for support. Despite his lurching stomach and bodily aches, he couldn’t help being impressed with this cavernous docking bay and its visual feast. It was large enough that Jade would be able to comfortably fly Ghost of Jupiter in circles inside it. Tommy saw a few other ships around the bay, some with cables connecting them to machinery resting nearby. One appeared to be in a state of heavy disassembly, evidently in the middle of some kind of maintenance. There were also a few groups of pilots talking and walking to or from their ships, and some hangar staff performing ship inspections or pushing racks of maintenance robots across the floor space.
The floor was in sight, and they were moving slowly closer.
“Looks like we didn’t die! Nicely done, Captain!” Tommy said. He held up a hand for a high five. In one motion, Jade slapped his hand up high, and they both circled their hands around for a low five.
“We did it!” A big smile lit up her face.
Tommy heaved a sigh. “I love not dying choking for air. It’s my favorite thing.”
“I hope that’s the last time we have to do something that intense,” Jade said. “Oh, I should tell the guys. Hey Marco, Henning? We’ve made it in. How are you doing?”
“Good work, Saito. I’m in Bay C,” Marco replied over the group's channel. “It looks like Freeborn is getting put here as well. Meet us here when you can.”
“Understood.”
The ship elevator reached the deck moments later, where the lift locked into position. Hydraulic cylinders and lift machinery for the surrounding pads extended skyward, disappearing into other shafts in the ceiling. After a moment of stillness, their pad again rumbled to life and slid sideways, where hidden mechanisms in the floor deposited Ghost and placed another pad—this one bearing a stout-looking hauler—over the lift and raised it out of sight.
“Landed,” Henning said in their earpieces.
Marco joined in. “Here in Bay C?”
“Yeah, mate. Bay Charlie Two, Pad Twenty-Eight.”
“Saito and Tommy, I have a med tech coming your way. Get patched up and get here ASAP,” Marco said.
Tommy exhaled and felt tension drain away from his tired muscles.
“Ready to get paid?” Jade asked.
He opened his eyes to see Jade smiling at him, awaiting an answer. Damn, she was beautiful. “Yeah. I’m more excited about a doctor at the moment.” He glanced sideways. “And french fries.”
“Mmm. Good call.”
“And then we’ll get paid,” he said, holding up his first for her to bump. She returned the gesture. They took in the advertisements and the dock lights playing off of the hulls of dozens of ships. A spray of sparks shot up from a welder out of sight behind one. She gave his shoulder a squeeze.
Chapter 19
Jade grabbed her shore-leave bag from her cabin, which had fortunately remained sealed while the ship decompressed. Tommy had nothing with him—neither gear, clothing, nor food—so Jade gave him her wrist computer to use. Jade stuffed Mosso into her bag, feeling uncomfortable leaving him behind in the busted ship. Tommy handled the registration and added his biometrics to the dock authority’s magnetic-lock system. A robot representative answered all of their questions, and they were satisfied the ship would be secured and monitored.
The medical tech Marco called—and her robotic assistant—gave Tommy and Jade a thorough check. She treated them both with pleasant, cherry-flavored sprays that soothed their raw throats and would cure any lung damage from inhaling Balenos A’s poisonous atmosphere. Jade showed her bruises to the diagnostic bot, feeling uncomfortable as it appraised her bare torso with its unblinking optic sensors, and was given more capsules rather than the ointment or spray she expected. Tommy’s leg was scanned in depth, and the med tech gave him an oral dose of osteo-nanos to supplement the ones Henning had supplied. He asked the robot for directions to the closest place he could get french fries, and was given directions to a fast-food spot near the dock as well as a suggestion to rest. The bill for the medical services had already been covered by Marco.
Jade did her best to be respectful and patient during the subsequent customs check-in. It was longer than she would have preferred, due to the unusual landing they’d performed, but she and Tommy passed the questioning and registration and received dermal tracking patches—standard procedure for all Keillor visitors, they were told. Fortunately, there were no questions about the spotlight Jade had clipped with Ghost and knocked from its mount.
Jade and Tommy rushed to Henning’s location, making their way through fast-food shops that crowded as near to the hangar as they could get. Tommy was able to access his bank accounts through the wrist computer. He picked out a family portion of hand-cut fries with spicy ketchup, two servings of some indulgent-looking fruit-cobbler dessert, and bags of dried fruit. He also packed a variety of prepared foods into a backpack and haggled for a deal. Jade opted for a noodle stir-fry with tofu and snow peas. They ate as they weaved through a busy crowd of people dressed like pilots, workers, security officers, and professionals, as well as an oddly large number of worker robots. Tommy dropped a few fries into her container, and she shared a chopstick-load of her own dish.
Jade noticed a curious trend on Keillor, starting right at the first metallic corridor. People dressed as though they were trying to compete with the ever-present advertisements and flashy displays filling the asteroid’s passages. Nearly all the women had dyed their hair in bright, non-natural colors. Many wore glasses with color-tinted lenses, or lighted accessories such as hair ties, scarves, shoelaces, or earrings. An industrial mining city with tech markets was the last place she would’ve expected to see such a garish trend, but it seemed to have taken hold of everyone but the business-minded crowd with their sharp suits and crisp lines. Even then, some of the more smartly dressed women still made a bold display with hair in bright orange, purple, or pink. Jade mentioned it to Tommy, who observed that perhaps it was their way of making life inside a giant rock more exciting.
Tommy accessed a map overlay on the wrist computer, which showed the interior of Keillor as a network of cubic spaces, the remnants of extraction sites left by earlier mining operations. Shafts, walkways, elevators, and escalators connected the geometric cavities, which had been converted into public spaces where the Keillor inhabitants now lived and worked.
Jade and Tommy stood on an escalator, descending into a sprawling complex of rock walls, transparent walkways, metal support struts, and tightly clustered prefab buildings. The roof high overhead was obscured by some kind of haze tinted with neon colors drifting up from the bustle below. Tommy told Jade this was Vimar City,
the main—and largest—of the areas within Keillor.
The lights, fashions, and atmosphere of the sprawling city made a heady mix. More floating holographic advertisements hovered above, competing for attention against the bustling crowds of people milling below.
As she and tommy descended the escalator into the city, Jade clutched her shore-leave bag close, not wishing to lose her clothing and possessions to a pickpocket in this unfamiliar place. Tommy helped navigate, and Jade walked with him as he limped across the bustling avenues. Small transport vehicles occasionally glided overhead, but most of the traffic was residents and visitors on foot. Their destination was farther along one of the outer walls, and to Jade’s relief, they were able to avoid the inner avenues of the city.
Jade looked around the sprawling cavern, taking in the bustle and omnipresent advertisements. Occupied with slurping her noodles, she bumped into a bipedal worker robot, which regarded her with its single optic sensor.
“Excuse me,” she said, feeling foolish for not paying attention. The robot turned and walked away, unbothered.
“Now I feel like an idiot, apologizing to a robot,” Jade said.
“You gotta be nice to robots,” Tommy said. “AI safeguards can fail, you know.”
“Yeah, but that’s, like, astronomically rare, isn’t it?”
“Still, it’s important to be a nice person. Even to robots.” Tommy nodded, as though agreeing with his own words.
Smooth steps descended into an escalator tunnel. The rocky walls of the asteroid could be seen behind the glass framing the circular shaft. Occasional sparkling chunks of minerals embedded in the rock—lit by the soft and pleasant tunnel lights—provided many points of interest during the descent.
Jade was humbled to see the inner rock of this asteroid, which had floated around space for an unfathomable amount of time. It was one of the countless wonders of the galaxy that enriched her life as a pilot, though that appreciation was dampened by her worries about the status of the crate and the potential enemies who could try to reclaim it.