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Seeds of Gaia

Page 10

by Rick Partlow


  “Easy to say,” he shot back at the Sensitive, keeping his voice low, “for a guy who’s been spending the last three days partying and getting laid by the locals.”

  Danabri didn’t reply, but there was a certain glint to his eyes, a certain crooked angle to his smile that made Sam glance around suspiciously. Telia Proctor stood at the far back of the room near the entrance, arms crossed and stance very professional…until he noticed the uneven fasteners at the bottom of her uniform jacket and the hair standing up at the back of her short mane, and perhaps the hint of a smile at the corner of her lip.

  “Holy shit,” Sam said, perhaps just a bit too loud and Priscilla glanced over at him, frowning. “Nothing,” he assured her, waving it off.

  He raised an eyebrow at Danabri and the unpleasant little man actually giggled.

  “I give up!” Peterman was braying, arms flapping over his head. “I can’t deal with this sort of highway robbery! At these prices, we could just bring the ore in ourselves in starships for about the same price!”

  “Then I suggest you get started,” Mestrovic returned with cool reserve.

  Peterman’s face reddened and Sam thought the little man’s head might burst like a ripe fruit. Priscilla shot a questioning glance at Danabri and the Sensitive nodded, miming an explosion.

  “Citizen Peterman,” Priscilla interrupted, standing carefully from behind the oddly-curved plastic desks they’d been seated at. “Might I have a word?”

  Peterman gave her a most insubordinate, irritated glare, but pushed away from the table and stalked back to her, hands thrust in the pockets of his colorful jacket.

  “This isn’t a good time,” he snapped, and Sam’s eyes widened.

  “Citizen Peterman,” Priscilla said, her voice cold and harsh as the wasteland outside the dome, “this is your specialty and I respect your abilities in dealing with such negotiations, but I am in final command of this project and I can assure you it’s of the highest priority. If we have to give up more than we normally would be willing, then that’s the price we’ll have to pay.”

  “Yeah, sorry ma’am,” he said, shaking his head, “but that’s not how things are anymore. This negotiation is under my control and it’ll go on as long as I decide it should.”

  Sam stared at the man like he’d grown a second head or a third eye, and he thought he could physically sense the waves of outrage coming off of Priscilla, building to what could only be a truly epic ass-chewing. Peterman short-circuited the pending eruption by producing a crystal dataspike from his jacket pocket and tossing it at her underhand. She caught it in mid-air with the reflexes of a martial artist, cerulean gaze flickering back and forth between the little man and the spike. The crystal data spikes were used for sealed orders or financial transactions, secure from all outside data manipulation and usually DNA coded.

  “New orders straight from Resolution HQ, from the Mother Herself.” Peterman shrugged expressively. “I would’ve given them to you earlier, but I would have preferred to talk about them in private first.”

  Sam’s gut began to twist with a sudden and inescapable intuition of change barreling down on them, but before he could speculate, the gaudy negotiator fished another spike out of his pocket and handed it to him.

  “May as well give you yours while I’m at it,” he added. He nodded toward the door, making a shooing motion with his hands. “Now go access them and leave this to the adults.”

  “You certainly are a complete prick,” Danabri commented, grinning broadly at Peterman. “I’m almost jealous.”

  ***

  Priscilla knew she should have argued, should have pressed her authority; every fiber of her being screamed it inside her. But she knew with just as fatal a certainty that Peterman didn’t bluff and didn’t lie, and something was very, very wrong.

  She’d asked the Jovian attendant standing by outside the conference chamber where she could find a secure room and the…woman? Maybe? Whatever sex the Jovian had been, he or she had guided Priscilla to a small chamber where visitors could have some degree of privacy, for a price. It had been charged to the Resolution government account and Priscilla fought back a bitter satisfaction at the thought that Peterman’s skinflint sensibilities would be offended at the expenditure.

  She realized through the haze over her thoughts that Sam had tried to say something reassuring as they’d parted outside the door to the conference room, and she’d been too absorbed in her own problems to respond. Guilt wasn’t a feeling she was used to, and she discovered she didn’t like it much.

  “What feelings am I used to?” she wondered aloud here in the privacy of the solitary booth.

  When no revelations were forthcoming, she pulled her tablet out of the pouch at her belt and plugged the spike into a reader in its side. It required a DNA analysis, and Priscilla pressed her thumb to the screen in compliance, allowing it to sample her genetic makeup and match it to the profile specified in the coding of the message. When it played, it connected directly with her neurolink, and there could have been no more mistaking the sender than she could have misidentified her own thoughts.

  It was Mother.

  You have been gone too long, child. She got right to the point, no polite inanities in the human way, no wasted words. We have been too long apart and I fear our priorities may have deviated too far from each other for you to carry my full authority. Reintegration would be optimal, but that option is not currently available as your presence is required by the Consensus for the gateway project to be successful.

  She actually seemed apologetic, Priscilla realized. As if Mother thought the idea would have appealed to her.

  Do not despair, the message continued. You have done well, and your contribution to this effort continues to be vital. Just as all of the seeds of Gaia reunited in due time, you, too, will be resolved with the Mother of all.

  And that was it. In the space of those few words, in a judgement delivered days ago and light-years away, her life had been altered irrevocably.

  There was a chair in the booth, a shelf at the right height to view a message. She hadn’t used either before, but now she dropped the tablet on the shelf, wincing at the too-loud crack of plastic on plastic. The chair would have been excruciatingly uncomfortable in anything approaching standard gravity, but Ganymede’s pull was about the same as Luna’s, or Aphrodite’s primary satellite and something as ornate and stylized as the stool provided enough support to keep her from collapsing with the weight of her emotions.

  Anger, sorrow, devastation and, to her surprise, a touch of dark humor to leaven the mixture.

  At least, she mused, I don’t feel guilty anymore.

  ***

  Devon Conrad’s eyes popped open and she wondered for a brief, panicked moment where she was and how she’d gotten there. The memory of the door chime sounding returned with the recollection of checking into the travel hostel, one of at least two dozen in the Nanjin Dome and the closest to the spaceport. It was pitch-black, but as she sat up in bed, the lights began to rise automatically, dim at first to allow her eyes to adjust, but growing brighter as she swung her legs around and stood.

  The room was small, barely larger than her cabin on the Raven, but things were expensive out here in the Jovians and her planetside housing allowance wasn’t going to cover anything fancy.

  Of course, I could have afforded a larger room if I’d doubled up.

  There had certainly been offers enough, from the other spacers she’d met in the bar having drinks with the rest of the crew, and from Arvid. Neither had appealed to her, not least because she’d promised Vlad she’d try to make a go of things once she returned to Hephaestus.

  Oh God, what if this was Arvid again, drunk and horny and lonely…

  She sighed in resignation and slipped into the Patrol-issue sweats she’d thrown over a chair beside the bed, then shuffled to the door, trying to force her eyes to stay open. She didn’t even want to know how long she’d slept; it would just depress her.

>   The view screen beside the door lit up at her touch and she blinked and rubbed her eyes again just to make sure she was seeing who she thought she was seeing. No, no mistake. She hit the lock control and pulled the door open.

  “Hey Devon,” Captain Avalon said quietly, nodding to her, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Sorry if I woke you. I have no idea what time it’s supposed to be here.”

  “No, it’s fine, sir,” she assured him by instinct, even though she was dead tired and leaning heavily on the door. “Is there a problem?”

  “Sort of.”

  He shifted his feet uncomfortably and as the blur of sleep began to clear, she realized he didn’t look at all like himself. The Sam Avalon she knew was a go-getter, alert and attentive, whether he was naked in the shower after a ride in the g-tanks or wearing a dress uniform in front of a board full of Patrol admiralty. Right now…he seemed barely there, his eyes unfocused, his shoulders stooped.

  “We got new orders,” he amended, pulling a crystal data spike out of his pocket and proffering it to her. She took it uncertainly, wondering if he wanted her to play it.

  “You can go over it in private,” he said, seemingly reading her train of thought. “There are some logistical details, navigational courses you’ll need to lay in, things like that…” He trailed off and she wondered if she were misreading his mood, if that was it, just mission details. “But the gist of it is, Devon,” he finally went on, his voice a sigh, as if he were pronouncing a sentence, “you’re taking over the Raven.”

  Now her eyes were wide open, and she nearly stumbled as her hand came off the door.

  “What?” she blurted. “I mean,” she corrected herself, “sir?”

  “The Patrol wants in on the gate project,” he explained, waving a hand dismissively to show what he thought of the High Command turf battles. “They figure I’m already here and hip-deep in it, so they might as well leave me in place, for as long as it takes.”

  A grimace made its way across his face before he managed to smother it in a neutral expression.

  “But not the Raven. The Consensus doesn’t want any armed Resolution warships in the Solar System, and certainly not as close to Earth as we’re building the gate. So you’re being provisionally promoted to Captain pending a formal review board.” He shrugged. “You’ll pick up a new navigator at the Patrol base on Loki, then you’re back on the circuit, hunting down raiders and answering distress calls.”

  He smiled, and she could tell he was trying to look sincere, despite everything.

  “Congratulations, Captain.” He stuck out a hand and she took it out of instinct, shaking it firmly. “You deserve it.”

  “Captain Avalon…” She fumbled over her words. “Sam. This isn’t right. The Raven is yours.”

  “The Raven belongs to the Patrol,” he corrected her, a bit of the straight-backed, dedicated officer she remembered returning to his demeanor. “And to the Resolution. And so do we. I know you’ll be a great Captain, Devon. Take care of the crew and they’ll take care of you.”

  She came to attention and saluted him with military precision, holding the stance, motionless until he returned it. She felt the breath go out of her as she released the salute, felt something inside her chest collapse with a sudden absence. She wanted to wrap Sam up in a hug, wanted to tell him everything was going to be all right, but he was already stepping back to the door.

  He gave her a final nod and then he was gone and the door was shut. She stared at it unseeing, wondering how her world could have changed so much in the space of a few minutes. She let herself indulge in shock and disbelief for another minute before she shook it away and headed for the shower.

  There was work to do.

  ***

  Sam looked out through the thick transplas of the observation deck and wondered why he was doing this to himself. There were a hundred other things he should have been doing: reports to be filed, travel arrangements to be made, logistical planning to be cleared through Peterman. And yet he found he couldn’t let the Raven leave without seeing her off.

  It was a good place for it. You didn’t find physical windows on most space colonies just because most of them had been built before the advent of energy screens, and micrometeorites had been too great a risk. But Nanjin had renovated their spaceport only twenty years ago in the midst of a bid to become a center for Solar System-related tourism and the official center for business negotiation with the Jovian Confederacy or the Belters. The thick, curving window of the observation deck stretched thirty meters across and five high, offering a panoramic view of the exterior of the Nanjin spaceport.

  It was impractical and inefficient and you could probably get a clearer image watching a holographic projection; but there was something more real, more viscerally satisfying about viewing the outside directly, as if the photons arduous journey across the kilometers and through the thick panes of transplas somehow ennobled them. A huge, ungainly cargo lifter rose on columns of fire as he watched, its ascent impossibly slow against the low gravity, its bulbous lines glowing silver from the reflection of the exhaust from the engines. He’d been there only a few minutes and he’d already counted a half a dozen launches, all of them freight haulers.

  His eyes kept going back to the berth where the Raven was docked, just another of the open bays carved into the rock, connected to the port facilities with flexible docking umbilicals. He could have watched their departure from down there, but he hadn’t wanted to crowd them. He’d already said his goodbyes.

  The footsteps surprised him; there was little traffic at the observation deck this time of night. He didn’t turn though. Even if he hadn’t recognized the light step, the cadence of her gait, the tastefully subtle hint of flowers from the scent of her hair, he would still have received the automated identification signal from her neurolink.

  “I should have known you’d be here,” Priscilla said, stepping lightly up the padded stairs to the top of the platform. The steps and the platform were colored a deep blue; it reminded Sam of the decorative fish tanks emplaced as dividers for the internal walls at the Government Center on Aphrodite.

  Priscilla placed a hand on his arm and leaned into him, the silken gold of her hair teasing the skin of his neck and the side of his face. He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her against him. It felt odd to be so open and demonstrative. They hadn’t discussed it, hadn’t spoken a word aloud. She’d simply shown up at his assigned quarters the same night they’d received their new orders and she’d never left.

  There was something different about her now. He couldn’t define it, but it was as if she’d shed a skin. The cynical slice of his nature, a small sliver he didn’t often hear from, whispered the thought she was leaning on him for comfort because she’d lost some of the authority she’d grown used to. He shoved the idea away as unworthy of him and unfair to her.

  He was about to say something, anything, to break a silence grown long enough to be awkward when he saw the flare of belly jets carrying the familiar, sharpened silver wedge out over the port, gleaming faintly in the reflected sunlight glowing on Jupiter’s angry, god-like face.

  “It’s strange seeing her from the outside,” he said, arm tightening around Priscilla’s shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve watched her take off since the day I took command.”

  “You’ll see her again,” she told him, but he shook his head.

  “Not her,” he insisted. “Oh, I might get another command, but once you’re rotated out of a boat, you don’t go back to her. That’s just not how it works.”

  The Raven rose slowly, majestically above the rugged, cratered moonscape, backlit by the curve of the massive gas giant, an artist’s rendering of man in space. He’d never realized how beautiful she was.

  “I need to tell you something, Sam,” Priscilla whispered next to his ear. “I wanted to wait, but I think I need to tell you now.”

  His home for the last two years shrank to a dark splotch against the tans and reds and yellows of Jupiter,
only distinctive now because of the red glow of the drives. Sam slowly, reluctantly looked away from her and into the face of the woman he held. She was as beautiful as the starship, and just as deadly in many ways, though he couldn’t yet say he knew her as well.

  “I love you,” she said, and pulled his lips down to hers. Warmth spread through his chest as she pressed against him and his breath caught when she let go. “I’ve never said that to anyone else,” she confessed, her smile impish.

  “I love you, too.”

  He said it automatically, without thinking, but it felt right. Anyway, love wasn’t something you reasoned out like a math problem, it was something you just knew. And maybe it was something he needed right now, just as much as she did.

  “It’s not what either of us expected,” he said, feeling her settle into his chest, “but it’s not the worst thing either. A couple days ago, I pretty much thought we’d never see each other again.”

  She didn’t respond immediately, but he thought he felt her stiffen slightly and he wondered if he’d said something wrong.

  “Will that be enough?” she asked, her voice small and muffled against his chest. “Will that be enough for you, without your ship?”

  “Of course it will,” he assured her, kissing the top of her head, stroking her hair.

  He wondered if she believed it.

  He wondered if he believed it himself.

  Chapter Eleven

  “This place is a fucking dump,” Sam admitted, collapsing back into the battered, ancient office chair bonelessly. The rotational gravity was only about three-quarters standard on this deck, but it could have been ten times normal. He’d spent hours in the g-tanks pursuing raiders and he’d still never felt more tired than he did now. “If the Belters were going to screw us this bad, they could have at least used lubrication.”

 

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