by Ryk Brown
“But they’re more than a hundred years old, every damned one of them,” Graham argued. “Some closer to two hundred.”
“Doesn’t matter. There are plenty of smaller companies that would buy them in a heartbeat. She wasn’t kidding when she said they would be losing trillions by letting them go.”
“But they’re expensive to maintain,” Hanna reminded them.
“Not trillions,” Arielle insisted.
“Good point,” Graham admitted.
“Which one?”
“All of them, actually.”
“So, what do we do?” Hanna wondered.
“We dig,” Arielle replied. “We find out where Simon Morra lives. If he’s got something he wants to say, we have to find a way to let him say it.”
“What if he lives at Stellar Express?” Hanna asked. “None of us are living in our homes.”
“That’s possible,” Arielle admitted. “And if that’s the case, we’re screwed.”
“So, we sit and wait?” Hanna asked.
“No, we try to interview some of the other carriers that are offering colonization transport deals,” Arielle said. “Who knows? We might reveal an angle in regards to Stellar Express that we’re not seeing at the moment.” She turned to Graham. “Upload what you’ve got to base and tell them to prep it for broadcast, in case we don’t get anything else.”
“It isn’t much, you know,” Graham warned.
“I know, but it’s enough to make people suspicious. If we present it in the right way, it won’t look like we’re sensationalizing it just for shock value.”
“Like the world needs more shock value right now,” Hanna commented.
* * *
“Thank you for agreeing to speak with us, Mister Radeen,” Hanna said as she and Arielle took their seats. “We really weren’t expecting to speak with the head of the company.”
“And I really wasn’t expecting a call from NCN World, especially just before leaving.”
“I apologize for the late hour, Mister Radeen,” Arielle said. “We just flew over from Seattle. We expected to leave a message with your staff.”
“Seattle? Stellar Express?”
“How did you know?”
“That bastard Cassan beat us to the punch…again.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is all off the record, right?” Mister Radeen double-checked.
“We’re not recording,” Hanna promised. “We even left our videographer at the production shuttle, per your request.”
“We will not quote you as a source, Mister Radeen,” Arielle added.
“You said Cassan ‘beat you to the punch’?” Hanna asked, “‘again’?”
“We’ve been hit a lot harder by Klaria than Stellar Express,” Mister Radeen began. “Lost more than half my staff here in the first few days. I’ve got fifteen ships in orbit, half of them only partially crewed, and none of them with runs. The bottom has literally dropped out of the interstellar freight business. We decided to throw in the towel a week ago. Somehow, Cassan got wind that we were planning on selling passage on our ships in orbit to uncolonized worlds outside the Sol sector to anyone who wanted to get away from the plague. I’m pretty sure that’s where he got the idea…from us.” Mister Radeen sighed. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“He’s stolen ideas from you before?” Hanna wondered.
“Ideas, contracts, employees… The thing is, he doesn’t need to do such things. They’ve already got the largest market share, by far. We’re not even in their league. Hell, Cassan’s got more ships in his reserve fleet than we have in our frontline fleet. You know how many ships we have in reserve? Four. And two of them aren’t even space-worthy. They’re being kept in orbit by tugs until we can afford to get them working again. It’s like a game for him, trying to crush the competition.”
“Isn’t that part of big business?” Hanna asked, unsympathetically.
“Of course, but Cassan takes pleasure in crushing others. It isn’t about profit for him. Like I said, we’re not any serious competition for him.”
“ILC is the second largest interstellar shipping company on Earth,” Arielle argued.
“Yes, but we still only do about twenty percent of the business Stellar Express does. No, Victor Cassan does what he does for reasons other than profit. Of that, I am quite sure.”
“You don’t like him, do you?”
“What was your first clue?” Mister Radeen snapped. He sighed, then shook his head as he sat. “I’m sorry. It’s been a difficult few weeks.”
“For all of us,” Hanna commented.
Mister Radeen looked at her. “You’re her… You’re the one he was talking to… The guy who created the virus.”
“Yes,” Hanna admitted. “Hardly the claim to fame that I’d hoped for.”
“Why did you decide to send all your ships out on one-way trips to uninhabited worlds?” Arielle asked, hoping to shift the direction of the conversation to more fruitful topics.
“Not all of them,” Mister Radeen corrected. “Just the ones currently in orbit. We still have twenty-six ships in transit all over the core.”
“Then why?”
“Unlike the garbage that Cassan is feeding the public, we are not doing it for humanitarian reasons. Even selling passage at discounted rates, we’ll make enough to keep the rest of the fleet operating for at least a year. I’m hoping that, by then, this nightmare will be over, and business will pick up again.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Hanna wondered.
“Then I’ll either sell off the rest of our fleet or send them off into deep space, as well, and I’ll probably be on the last one out.”
“Don’t you have loans on some of those ships?” Arielle wondered.
“Do you know how much it costs to build an interstellar, FTL cargo ship?” Mister Radeen asked. “I have loans on all my ships. Selling passage on the ships in orbit will not only finance operations for our other ships for a year, but it will pay off the notes on those ships.”
“And the other ones?” Arielle asked. “If you do end up sending them off into deep space, as well, by that time, there may not be enough people with the money to pay for passage.”
“If that’s the case, then there probably won’t be any banks left to care that I’m defaulting on the rest of my ship loans,” Mister Radeen replied.
Hanna exchanged glances with Arielle.
“I know,” Mister Radeen said, noticing their shared expressions. “I know it sounds bad, but it’s a different world now, and it’s changing every day…for the worse. One must be creative to survive.”
* * *
The drive back to the production shuttle was a quiet one. Hanna stared out the window at the unlit cityscape most of the way back. Many cities had ceased providing electrical power for their streets, to save in operating costs. In some places, citizens had decided to light up their own neighborhoods by jacking the streetlights into their own power plants. Although, if the crisis continued much further, that practice would soon cease, as well.
“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Arielle said as the automated vehicle made its way through the dark streets. “Something wrong?”
“Radeen just sort of got to me, I guess,” Hanna admitted.
“What do you mean?”
Hanna sighed. “He just paints a rather bleak picture of our future.”
“More bleak than half the world’s population dying?” Arielle asked.
Hanna suddenly felt guilty.
“I know what you’re thinking, Hanna.”
“You do, huh?”
“You’re thinking that you should be more concerned with the deaths of billions than with how their deaths will affect your life,” Arie
lle told her. “You feel guilty.”
Hanna turned to look at her, surprised. “How did you know?”
“I’ve been feeling the same way,” Arielle admitted. “It’s only natural.”
Hanna looked away again. “There’s more to it than that, I’m afraid.”
“What do you mean?”
“I feel guilty because I don’t feel for all the people who have died, at least, not the way everyone thinks I’m supposed to.”
“I’m not following you.”
Hanna looked at Arielle again. “Everyone is traumatized by what’s happening, some to the point of becoming nonfunctional. Yet, here I am, running around playing reporter. To them, their entire world is falling apart. To us, it’s the biggest news story of all time. But it’s our world that’s falling apart, as well, isn’t it? I mean, how much longer can we do this? How much longer is Brent going to have the resources to send us out in the field? How much longer will he be able to keep the lights on at NCN World? A few years? A few months? A few weeks? What happens after that? Where do we go? What do we do?”
“We do whatever it takes,” Arielle stated rather plainly.
“Whatever it takes?”
“Whatever it takes to survive,” Arielle clarified. “Just like we’ve always done.”
“You say that like nothing’s changed,” Hanna said.
“It hasn’t, and it has,” Arielle insisted.
Hanna looked confused.
“Yes, Radeen is right. Things are changing drastically. They’re changing every day, and usually for the worse.”
“Then why are we doing this?” Hanna asked. “Why don’t we do like everyone else? Grab what we can, build a wall up around us, and prepare to survive.”
“Trust me, Hanna, eventually we will,” Arielle insisted. “We won’t have a choice.”
“Then you agree with Radeen?” Hanna realized. “You think the world is coming to an end.”
“The world as we knew it, yes,” Arielle agreed. “But there will still be a world. There will still be people, and those of us who survive will find a way.”
“How can you be so sure?” Hanna wondered.
Arielle thought for a moment. “Honestly, I cannot be sure. But what else can I believe? If I believe the world is coming to an end, then what reason do I have to get up every morning? What reason do I have for going out with you to find and report the news? My mother always said, ‘when something bad happens, you can either cry about it, or you can do something about it’. I choose to do something, just as you do.”
“I don’t know that I’m actively making a choice,” Hanna admitted. “I’m just doing what I’ve always done…more out of habit than choice.”
Arielle touched Hanna’s shoulder. “You’re wrong, Hanna. The act of going about your normal business is making a choice. The more people do exactly that—going about their normal business—the better chance we all have of surviving. You and I are news people. That’s why we don’t feel the same grief as others. If we did, we wouldn’t be able to do our jobs. And right now, people need us to do our jobs. They need to know exactly what is going on. Not only the bad, but the good, as well. They need to see that not everyone is like Radeen. Not everyone has given up hope.”
Hanna smiled. “You sound like Brent.”
Arielle laughed. “Yeah, I’m paraphrasing a lot of that from him, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”
“Thanks,” Hanna said.
“For what?”
“For keeping me pointed in the right direction…as usual.”
“You see, you’re not as coldhearted and uncaring as you think,” Arielle told her. “If you were, you wouldn’t need me to do so.”
Hanna sat for a moment, watching the dimly lit buildings go by. “How do you keep pointed in the right direction?” she finally asked.
“I only know one direction,” Arielle replied. “Forward.”
* * *
“Oh, I’m deploying now,” Graham decided as their open-top vehicle rolled across the tarmac.
Ahead of them in the distance, on the other side of the Cape Town spaceport, were four massive cargo haulers; the kind designed to move enormous amounts of cargo from the surface to ships waiting in orbit. By themselves, they were not uncommon sights at any spaceport. What was unusual was the amount of activity around them. There were people everywhere, coming and going in vehicles and on foot. Cargo trucks were delivering equipment and supplies to the cargo haulers. Were it not for a bevy of well-armed, rather scary-looking men guarding the area, it likely would have been far more chaotic. As it was, there was an incredible amount of tension on the faces of everyone.
“What is going on here?” Hanna wondered.
“My guess is those ships are delivering these people to a ship in orbit,” Graham said as he opened up his case. “This is a slapped-together, get it done quick and dirty evacuation.” He pressed a button on his control pad, and eight orbs leapt from his case, flying into the air and spreading out in all directions as they rolled toward the activity.
“Those are SA pods,” Arielle said, pointing at a fully loaded flatbed truck as it drove past them. “Dozens of them.”
“More than dozens,” Hanna corrected, pointing at several more similarly loaded trucks following the first. “Looks like hundreds to me.”
Gunshots rang out in the distance.
“What the hell,” Hanna declared, she and Arielle both ducking instinctively.
Graham just smiled as he worked his orb controls, expertly deploying the floating cameras to capture the action in full-immersion video. “Put these on,” he instructed, handing a pair of VR glasses to Hanna.
Hanna took the glasses from him, still staying crouched down in the vehicle as they continued toward the activity, albeit more slowly.
“What is going on?” Arielle asked the driver.
“It has been like this since yesterday,” the driver explained. “Ever since the Orophin announced she would be taking on passengers and supplies for a colonization mission.”
“I don’t understand,” Arielle said. “Lots of ships have announced colonization missions all over the world. None of them are like this.”
“Cape Town has been hit hard by the plague,” the driver explained. “There are no more police, and the military is barely able to protect its own bases at this point. The city is even worse.”
“Oh, my God,” Hanna exclaimed after activating her glasses. She found herself with a birds-eye view from one of the orbs as it flew high above the scene. There were people everywhere, all of them waving green cards of some sort, trying to get past the fence line that surrounded the four cargo haulers. Everywhere she looked along the fence line, people were being pushed back by armed guards, sometimes rather forcefully.
“How are they selecting colonists?” Arielle asked, taking a second pair of VR glasses from Graham.
“If you have a green card, and they like the way you look, they let you in,” the driver explained. “Even better if you know a trade they need. Oh, and if you are a pretty girl, you will definitely get a pod.”
“What are the green cards?” Hanna asked.
“A green card means you’ve been tested, and you don’t have the Klaria virus.”
“They’re not selling tickets?” Arielle asked.
“Oh, the guards will take your money if you offer it,” the driver insisted. “But from what I hear, money is no guarantee that you’ll get to the Orophin. I have seen many bodies taken away, some of them looked to have money, if you get my meaning.”
“Why are they all in such a hurry?” Arielle wondered as she donned her pair of VR glasses.
“The Orophin is not making orbit,” the driver explained. “She is going to pass by Earth on her way to do a slingshot maneu
ver around the sun to accelerate. Her first loading is going on now. There will be another as she passes by on her way out.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Hanna said. “Loading in transit?”
“I have a friend whose father is a helmsman on a cargo ship. He said it is because they are trying to save propellant.”
“They can’t just enter orbit and refuel?” Arielle asked.
“The Orophin is owned by the Denner family. All but two of them have died because of Klaria. Only one daughter and a grandson remain. They were the first to board the Orophin, along with the families of her crew. Now, they are accepting anyone who can bring either skills, equipment, supplies, or money to purchase such things.”
“This is crazy,” Hanna declared as she watched. “Is anyone coordinating this?”
“You can’t just throw a bunch of stuff on a spaceship and head out, right?” Arielle insisted.
“These things require planning, don’t they?” Hanna added.
“I heard they hired someone to ensure that the first group had everything they needed to survive when they get there,” the driver explained, “if they get there.”
“This doesn’t look that coordinated to me,” Hanna insisted. “It looks like barely contained chaos, if you ask me.”
“I don’t know if their so-called expert is still coordinating all of this,” the driver admitted. “What I heard is that they are just trying to add people and gear to increase their chances of success. One of the workers here tried to get in, but he didn’t have anything on the list of needed supplies and equipment to buy his way on board. He swears he’s going to go and steal what he needs to get a pod for himself and his girlfriend, and then come back.”