by Anthology
So, it seemed, was Captain Rodriguez. He called her to a meeting on the fourth day of quarantine when she had been rereading the last signals they’d received from the four other generation ships. The one that had been ahead of them, the three behind them, each separated by hundreds of days of travel. For safety, the Prelaunch thinking had been; but while the ships did not then share in the same disasters on the journey by being too close, it meant they were nearly powerless to come to another ship’s aid when communication ceased. She thought perhaps there would be something in those communiqués that would shed light on this new arrival; but if there was, she was missing it.
Captain Rodriguez asked her to join him at the airlock. She had to tear her eyes away from the faces she saw through the porthole on the door. There were three people she could see there, from the shoulders up, in white and grey uniforms. A man and a woman glanced at her when she looked in on them. The other seemed to be a man with his back to the portal, communicating with the other ship.
One of Home’s linguists, Enrique Hoffman, was with the captain. “Officer Courchene,” he said with a nod. “I’m having trouble making out what they’re saying, and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.”
She smiled. “What do you think they are saying?”
“They keep asking about fuel, I think, in addition to some other things about food and questions about us.”
“Captain, if you would be so kind as to type a message to them?” she said.
“Right.” He sent a text in Mandarin to the people in the airlock.
The man who’d been facing away from them turned as the woman alerted him to Captain Rodriguez’s message. He began addressing the P.A. link in the airlock, and his voice came through clearly on the Home side. She ignored the sound, the decibel level falling within the range she could barely hear, what most people used for a conversational tone. Instead she read the stranger’s lips through the porthole. The accent and constructions were odd, but that wasn’t the problem. Listening to his pronunciations were what seemed to be causing Hoffman trouble. The shape of the stranger’s consonants were sharper, and his distorted vowels muted, however, when you watched the words he shaped. Soraiya had been reading lips to help her carry on a conversation since before she could read, with or without her long-since recycled hearing aids.
Making out what the man on the other side was saying still wasn’t easy. “It’s like a mix of Prelaunch English and Portuguese,” she said. “He does want to fuel his ship, they’ve used up more than they expected and he wants to know…how much of, of certain elements we’ve found on They Are To Be Respected.”
“Of course,” said Captain Rodriguez. Soraiya tore her eyes from the stranger’s face and looked at the rotational captain’s. His bearing was upright, he seemed almost to vibrate in his well-worn uniform, and while his mouth was set his eyes shone. “They think we have begun to colonize the planet. Perhaps they think we are merely an outpost.”
Soraiya nodded. She hadn’t seen any words to that effect from the visitor but she felt the captain had guessed correctly.
“How long did Dr. Mak say the quarantine should last?”
“Twenty-one days,” said Hoffman. “He wanted to be able to scan for—”
“Let’s see if we can shorten that.”
Soraiya's eyes widened. “Sir, what about the risk?”
“I feel the risk to them may be greater. Their life support may depend on that fuel, and I’m not sure we have what they need on Home.”
There was more to the captain’s words than he was saying. But she realized, he also knew she was watching him.
***
When the quarantine was ended five days early the newcomers were welcomed into a celebration the likes of which had not been seen aboard Home for a generation. The eight strangers were treated to a feast of all the foods Home could muster; and their stores of rice, dried fruit, nuts, legumes, bread, chicken, pork, and precious spices, even salt, were opened. Two of them, a man with ruddy skin and short, space-black hair and a handlebar moustache, and a woman with brown-black hair, light brown skin and freckles, seemed somehow different from the other six, four men and two women. Soraiya noticed the six seemed to defer to the man and woman, and let them speak for the group more often than not. How long did these people serve as rotational captains, she wondered? If the journey from Earth had been so short, how would such behaviour become the norm? She wanted to ask Past Captain Makwa about it, but she was sitting too far away.
In the raucous gathering with a view to the observation deck, everyone sat on mats and shared plates and bowls with the newcomers, who clearly seemed at turns amused, awed, surprised, and confused, as They Are To Be Respected rose and set.
Soraiya could not hear anything against the conversation all around her; and the spikes of laughter or whoops of excitement hit right in the high-decibel, high-pitch range she heard quite well, and they seemed to erupt out of nowhere, to her; and the sound hurt.
The Earth captain had many questions for Captain Rodriguez, and Soraiya noticed him asking something about meeting in private, away from the noise. She couldn’t hear the rotational captain’s response, and only caught the nod of his head; his face was directed at the stranger’s. But a few minutes later, both stood as if to go get something to drink. But after they got to the edge of the huge room, they kept walking.
Soraiya managed to catch Past Captain Makwa's eye, receiving a big smile in return, which faded when Soraiya stood and seemed unwilling to speak. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself, it was bad enough feeling like she was missing everything said by people when she wasn’t watching them. But then she noticed two of the other visitors had left their mats, and another was carefully rising and working his way through the crowd. The remaining four, including the woman who seemed to be a co-captain, remained, laughing and trying to speak with the inhabitants of Home.
Makwa and Soraiya moved to the exit and once in the hallway, closed the door.
“You seem worried,” said Makwa.
Soraiya nodded. “I think the visitors want something from They Are to Be Respected.”
“Fuel, eh? I don’t know what their ship runs on but I hear they were asking for our data from the molecular scanners.”
“Do any of our dropships still work?” A practice drill was one thing, but Soraiya had never thought about whether it would actually be possible to use one of the vehicles.
Makwa sucked her teeth. “One, for sure. When I was younger my dad worked on the modifications they made, before we got here. There might be a couple, but a lot of them had parts he’d said we needed to add thrusters to maintain orbit.”
“I think we should take a look.”
“Should I call someone?” Soraiya knew that meant alerting Home’s authorities. But then Captain Rodriguez would receive the feed as well. And she didn’t want to look foolish. Doubt gnawed at her.
Makwa put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go for a walk, eh? Just see.”
Soraiya nodded.
Together they followed the labyrinthine hallways that lined the outer shell of Home, leading to the dropship bays. Only one had not been abandoned and repurposed for farming. And as soon as they got there, they found the door locked.
Soraiya tried her passcode; her clearance as current command crew was high enough to override.
As the door slid open, two of the strangers noticed them and leapt at them. Soraiya pushed Makwa back and blocked the entrance. They seized her and dragged her through. The door closed and Past Captain Makwa was left outside. Soraiya knew she had clearance to open the door as well; but she hoped her friend would instead sound the alarm and bring help.
The man and woman who gripped her arms roughly didn’t give her time to worry about that, instead hauling her through to the hangar, where she beheld a terrible sight. Captain Rodriguez lay splayed on the floor, eyes staring at some unseen corner of the room. Unfamiliar packs of equipment with the same logo as the Earth people’s
uniforms lay nearby.
“What did you do?” she shouted, pulling against her captors.
The leader of the others put his hands up in a placating gesture—though the expression on his face was hard—and gestured to Captain Rodriguez as he spoke. She couldn’t fathom some of the words and expressions he used, but one of them seemed to mean “asleep for a time.”
Soraiya was about to retort when the shipwide klaxon blared. She winced at the sudden noise and strained to cover her ears. The two strangers pulled her to the open hatch of the dropship. The captain raised a circular device that glowed violet at its periphery and shouted above the sound of the alarm, indicating Captain Rodriguez again. What would his crew do to the inhabitants of Home, she wondered? Surely Makwa had gotten word to the rest of the crew in time?
The captain signalled to the two holding her and they dragged her aboard the dropship in its launch blister. A fourth person was already at its helm, trying to understand the ancient controls. The captain tapped at the insignia on Soraiya's uniform and then at the pilot’s seat. She set her jaw. They all trained on the ship’s system, once every 365 days. So while the old writing and displays seemed odd, she knew the routine and they were reasonably sure the ship would still work.
She shook her head.
The captain nodded curtly to one of her captors, who released her arm roughly and disappeared out of the craft. A moment later he returned, dragging Captain Rodriguez’s body. The crewman put his hand on the helpless man’s throat and squeezed, then looked to his captain. The Earth captain turned back to Soraiya and stared at her.
What had Rodriguez hoped to do? Show off the dropship? Take them to the surface, against everything they had practised since arriving—take nothing, send only drones to the planet, leave as much untouched as possible? So they had meant to continue for at least a generation, until they began to understand more about They Are To Be Respected. But some burned with curiosity to go down themselves. Soraiya felt that same wild hope flare up as she struggled to decide what to do, how to save the captain without compromising what Home was here to do.
There was no other way. “All right!” she shouted, tugging herself to the pilot’s seat but keeping her eyes on the captain’s face. After a long few seconds, he looked to his crewman and gave an order; the man released Captain Rodriguez’s throat.
He gave a order to one of his companions and the man wrote a message in Mandarin on his communicator and showed it to her: We need elements from the planet to make—and here there was a new character Soraiya had never seen—for fuel. Is this ship in proper working order? If it has been sabotaged, you will be held responsible. The threat was clear.
She replied via the communicator: The dropship is in perfect working order.
The captain nodded curtly. Two of his crew went to retrieve the equipment they had brought to the hangar.
Soraiya felt her ears burn as she sat, for the first time in her life taking control of the dropship knowing it was not a drill—the first person on Home, ever, to do so—and her heart thumped deep in her chest. She was really doing it. She was going down to the planet. She prayed this was the right thing to do. It was reckless. But they would kill Captain Rodriguez if she didn’t. But she was so, so curious. But they didn’t know enough, yet, about the planet.
She clasped the seat harness with shaking hands. “Secure crew!” she shouted, as per routine, and flicked the dropship’s systems to life.
Normally a Home crew oversaw the opening of the launch blister doors, but that could be done remotely from the dropship under emergency protocols. She knew the contingencies.
She pulled a headset on as the captain and the others strapped themselves in. She delayed opening the exterior doors, her hand hovering above the controls and watching the Earth captain, until he secured Captain Rodriguez as well. Then she engaged, ignoring the amplified chatter in her headset from the Earth woman who had elected to be copilot. The outer doors slid open, as they had with every routine practice. Soraiya felt the same thrill she always did, that there was nothing but the emptiness of space beyond. She shook her head and instead of miming the movements over the controls, she placed her hands on the grips and set the dropship free. Out they tumbled, gently spiralling away from Home, the gravity falling away rom their bodies.
It took her longer than during the drills to snap the manouevring thrusters to life. She doublechecked all the systems. Yes, Past Captain Makwa was right. There had been some changes, even to this ship. She breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps this was the only right thing, or perhaps the best of bad choices she could make.
The Earth copilot had given up asking her questions through the headset. Soraiya saw a message from the woman flash on her screen in Mandarin. Can you land this and get us back to our ship.
Soraiya glanced at the copilot, whose cheeks were flat and glistened with nervous sweat. What was she afraid of? Her captain? Death? Or was it something they’d left behind on Earth? Soraiya replied, The ship is in perfect working order.
The descent was unlike anything she had ever experienced. The copilot was an able assistant, given she was still trying to adapt to the archaic interfaces and controls, but since there was no time to type out their communication with each other she and Soraiya were essentially acting alone. The vibrating roar of atmosphere against the armoured hull felt like an interminable grind of stone on stone, as if They Are To Be Respected meant to crush them for their intrusion. Soraiya whispered a brief prayer. Do what you must. I will protect you.
She could not spare a look away from her console to see whether Captain Rodriguez was all right, but she hoped he was. She hoped the rest of the inhabitants of Home were, as well.
The harder part, of course, was landing.
The purple-pink of the landscape, the white froth of clouds, and deep blue of the oceans rushed up to greet them frighteningly fast, and Soraiya deployed the chutes at the appropriate altitude, noting the prevailing wind at this part of the southern hemisphere matched what their satellites and scanners had indicated. As their speed decreased and the atmosphere pushed them around, she panicked. The air was so thick; it wasn’t like manouevring an exovehicle around Home at all. Keep calm, she told herself even as her knuckles whitened and the sweat on her palms made her grip on the controls slip. Your people did not survive generations in space for you to die like this.
The impossibly high branches of pink and red trees reached up as if to grab them. The copilot yelled something through the headset until Soraiya tore it off. “Let me do this!” she shouted back. The dropship yawed as Soraiya guided what was left in the thrusters toward an opening in the forest, a deep purple swath of grass or moss. She hoped it was soft.
THUNK the craft landed with an impact that threw them against the webbing of their harnesses.
Then it was quiet.
Soraiya blinked and unbuckled herself. The Earth captain was already free of his harness and barred the way out. He barked something at her; the way her ears were ringing from the concussion of their landing, she read his lips instead. Something about suits. Protection. She shook her head. “It’s fine. We already know we can breathe down here.” With difficulty, according to their estimates and rigorous simulations.
He pulled out the circular weapon as his crew unbuckled themselves and stood. Captain Rodriguez remained in his seat but he blinked and raised his head. He grimaced as if suffering a migraine. “What—”
The Earth captain spat out another order, gesturing for Soraiya to open the door and holding his weapon ready. Trembling, she nodded. Part of her—a large part—wished he would kill her with it, so it would not be she who defiled They Are To Be Respected. But that was an evasion. She had brought them down here. She could have deliberately scuttled the dropship by fumbling the atmo entry, burned them all up before getting anywhere near the surface. Part of her hungered to step outside, and see it, breathe it, drink it in. She revelled in the pull of real gravity—they had recalibrated the rotation aboard H
ome upon arrival, to match what a person would feel on They Are To Be Respected, so that the younger generations would grow up ready when they decided to make planetfall. As it was, Soraiya's joints gave her some grief. But she would take the first steps on the planet. It was more than she had ever dared dream. It felt wrong. But thrilling.
The Earth captain spoke sharply again, to her and then to his companions. They picked up packs of equipment they had brought with them.
Soraiya stepped into the small airlock and secured it. Then she opened the outer door.
The warm wind sworled in around her, playing with her hair. It was unlike the blasting air currents in the long hallways and curved corridors aboard Home; it was so random and fresh and wild. She hesitated for a moment. I am still aboard the dropship, she thought. That was both an excuse to stay and an impetus to leave. She stepped out and down onto the surface.
The red vegetation was a dizzying variety of tall red and purple stalks, with leaflike petals adoring the tops, the breeze whistling through them at a high enough pitch Soraiya heard it well. What other sounds are there here? she wondered, aching for the first time in thousands of days for her hearing aids.
She began to sneeze at something in the air, even as she marvelled at the touch of sunlight on her face. The Earth captain and his crew marched out of the dropship. Captain Rodriguez stumbled down the ramp after them. They began unpacking equipment and their captain directed them to different points of the clearing. As they took readings and called to each other on what they found, Soraiya helped Captain Rodriguez stay on his feet.
“They, they said they needed to fuel their craft to return to Earth. I said we didn’t have any of what they asked for not already tied to life support.” He blinked and sneezed as well. “Of course, there is plenty on They Are To Be Respected.”
They left much unspoken about his motives. Soraiya's stomach was still in knots over what they had done, what they were doing right now, the sight of the Earth people already plotting and marking and measuring.