by M. D. Cooper
Andy said.
Lyssa paused. These were the sorts of questions that stopped her typically smooth movement through Andy’s world. She felt older than four years but couldn’t find the memories to make it true. If she compared herself to Cara or Fran, she would have guessed she was twenty. She felt twenty but didn’t understand how it was possible.
For the first time since leaving the M1R, she wanted to ask Fred how old he felt, even though he could trace his life back through the Ring. He had been activated. He was adamant about the point, as if it made him better than her, somehow.
As she mulled over the question, she hopped among sensors throughout the ship, sometimes simultaneously, so that everything about the Sunny Skies/Worry’s End hung as a collection of statistics and images in her mind.
Lyssa synthesized the whole into a feeling about the ship; Andy would have referred to it as its ‘status’. The engines were running smoothly under Fran’s care. Cara’s various changes to the comm array showed as jagged lines yielding interesting results from the spectrum around them, including distant noise from the Milky Way.
“Fran,” Cara said on the command deck as Lyssa listened through the intercom. “I have a sensor return on something small coming in our direction.”
“Send me the coordinates,” Fran said.
A collection of dots appeared in Fran’s holodisplay that resolved into a plain cargo container with a thrust assembly on one end and attitude adjusters on its other sides. The craft wasn’t giving off any signals that Lyssa could find through Cara’s search.
“It’s flying completely dark,” Cara said. “I’m not picking anything up. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I think it could have bypassed our sensors completely.”
“Is that how your dad almost got killed by a meteor?” Fran asked. “I need to look at the shield sensors.” She stared at the holodisplay, checking the incoming craft’s velocity.
Lyssa shifted her perception to the shields and the long-range communication systems. The audio link Fugia Wong had used earlier was still available but hadn’t had a transmission for nearly two hours now.
Andy smirked.
Lyssa had to look up how large a golf ball actually was.
Andy cleared his throat.
Lyssa gasped in his mind.
Andy changed the subject.
Andy tapped his knee anxiously. On the vid screen, a rodent ran up a tree and sat eating a seed, tail twitching.
Lyssa said.
“Looks like it’s braking,” Fran said, then let out a short whistle. “There’s definitely nothing alive aboard that thing. Or if there was, it’s jelly now.”
Lyssa followed the incoming craft using the sensor arrays as it matched delta-v with Sunny Skies in a long arc bringing it within a thousand kilometers of their position. Then the attitude thrusters spat steam to bring it in the final distance.
Cara activated the main cargo bay doors and the craft moved neatly inside and settled on the deck. Mag locks in the deck activated, holding the crate in place as the doors slid closed.
Fran activated Alice where the drone had been sitting locked to the deck in a corner of the cargo bay. The drone spat steam in the zero-g to propel itself to the craft.
“Fran,” Cara said on the command deck. “I’m picking up a contact request.”
“From where?”
“It’s the Ceres Border Authority. They claim we’ve entered Ceres controlled space and will need to submit our flight plan and registry information.” Cara’s voice sounded like a recording. “Failure to do so may result in decisive response up to and including pre-emptive attack.”
“That’s wonderful,” Fran said. “It’s standard. Don’t get worked up about it. I just keyed Wong’s craft as empty. Once Alice is secured, go ahead and open the cargo doors.”
Andy stiffened.
Lyssa had the fleeting thought that Andy’s hyper vigilance wasn’t much different from Fred’s constant repetition of ‘I maintain the Ring.’ It was a statement of purpose.
Andy reached for the TSF projectile rifle he’d brought into the safe room with him and checked its safety for what Lyssa counted as the tenth time, turning the rifle in his hands for another visual inspection. When he finished with the weapon, he checked the pistol at his waist and then the status of his light armor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
STELLAR DATE: 09.19.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Approaching Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
Rather than grow busier as they approached Ceres, Cara was surprised to find the EM spectrum growing less crowded.
When she asked Fran about it, the technician nodded. “That’s the broadcast exclusion zone. The Anderson Collective controls everything within local Ceres space. Once we get their permission to dock, that will be part of the compliance instructions.”
“Why?” Cara asked.
Fran shrugged. “Totalitarian states do that sort of thing. Who knows if it actually works or not.”
“I thought Ceres had a MBH.”
“Sure. They’re terraforming, too. Ngoba Starl likes to say it takes truly crazy regimes to accomplish the big stuff. The dark side is all the oppression and war crimes they tend to commit in the process.”
“Is he going to be ruler of Cruithne, someday?”
Fran laughed. “He might talk like it but he’s not dumb enough to put a target on his back like that. Better to let somebody else think they’re in charge and then work in the background. Besides, Cruithne’s got too much gray area to ever have one ruler. It’s built into our DNA, bouncing between Terra and Mars like a ping pong ball. The only thing we’ll agree on is that we aren’t them.”
“You like Cruithne?”
“Yeah, it’s all right.”
“Where else have you lived?”
“All over the place. I was born on Callisto so I’ve always been a spacer. Can’t stand the gravity on Terra even if I did want to go there.”
“You could get enhanced.”
“I’m already enhanced in the ways I care about.”
“Did it hurt to get your eyes done?”
Fran threw a rolled-up napkin at Cara. “Why all the dumb questions? Of course, it didn’t hurt. It’s not like I went to a witch doctor or something.”
Cara caught the napkin and threw it back. The blue cloth unfolded and fluttered to the deck between them like a flag.
“I don’t know,” Cara said. “Everything off Sunny Skies seems weird to me.”
“Just because your parents raised you in a cult it doesn’t mean the rest of the world needs to be some strange, scary place.”
Cara gave her an offended look. “They didn’t raise me in a cult. What are you talking about?”
“That’s exactly what they did. The cult of your family, and then you guys all got tossed out when your mom left the cult.”
Cara wrinkled her brow. “I never thought about it that way.”
“Try sometime.”
“I’m getting something on that beacon signal again,” Cara said.
“This will be our actual information request. You’ve got the registry file I sent you?”
“It’s ready.”
“Don’t slip up and say Sunny Skies.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t get mad. Anybody might. We’re the Worry’s End and we want to dock and buy fuel. We don’t want a terminal pass. We don’t want visas. We have three crew to declare and no current cargo. If they ask why we left the M1R in such a hurry, tell them that was the captain’s decision.”
“Why don’t you just talk to them?”
“Because I’m the captain. The captain doesn’t talk to border agents.”
“Dad did all the time.”
“He didn’t have a choice. Tell them I’m drunk in my cabin if you want and roll your eyes. They’ll know what you’re talking about. You’re the conscientious communications officer trying to do the right thing. Ask them for enlistment info. They eat that stuff up.”
Cara started to say she was too young to enlist then realized Fran was just giving her the same advice her dad had when they entered the Mars Protectorate. All she had to do was get the officer talking about anything other than the task at hand.
She took a deep breath and acknowledged the transmission. “This is the Worry’s End,” she said. “Request received. Registry and crew information sent. Authenticate.”
“Copy, Worry’s End. I have your file.” The voice was a young woman’s who didn’t sound much older than Cara. “We’re conducting initial scan now.”
The line went quiet. Cara watched her the signal spectrum dance in her display. She picked out various signals and sent them to a separate screen. She couldn’t help wondering if Petral was all right, and in the same thought wished she could talk to her dad. She grinned to herself as she imagined him going crazy in the safe room.
“Worry’s End,” the woman’s voice returned. “Verify your crew is three?”
“That’s correct,” Cara said.
“I show four. Authenticate.”
Cara muted the connection and looked frantically at Fran, who was frowning at her display.
“How are they picking him up?” Cara said. “I thought nothing could scan through the shielding.”
“Nothing should be able to,” Fran said. “I’m checking the updated registry again. I showed your dad and Petral getting off at the M1R with the update in my status to captain. There’s no reason they should be looking for anyone else. I’m amazed they actually ran a long-range scan, to be honest with you.”
Fran’s hands moved over her console as she stared at the display without blinking, probably also checking something on her Link. When she came back, she nodded to Cara.
“Stall them,” Fran said.
Cara put her hand on the audio control, about to ask the woman to check again. She stopped herself. She needed to talk about anything other than the problem at hand. She couldn’t focus her thoughts to come up with something to say. Then she remembered Fran’s joke.
She activated the channel and asked, “Are you enlisted?”
“Say again, Worry’s End?” asked the woman, sounding confused.
“I was just curious. You sound young, like me. I was wondering if you enlisted with the Border Patrol. I’m looking for something different, something to do.”
“Aren’t you on a working crew?” the woman asked.
“I am,” Cara said, backpedaling. “I was just thinking of something more stable.”
The woman didn’t answer immediately. “I’ll transmit resources on enlistment with the AC Military Federation. They need all qualified applicants. It’s the best way to get on with the terraforming project.”
“Terraforming?” Cara said.
“That’s my goal,” the woman said, voice softening slightly. “I’m going to be an engineer on the surface once my period in the CBA is finished.”
“How much longer do you have?”
“I just started. I’ve still got ten years to go.”
“Ten years!” Cara said. “That seems like a long time.”
“Pretty standard. I can go to school while I’m doing this to get my pre-requisites out of the way. I’m already applying for an internship with the surface transportation management team. Anyth
ing I can do to get close.”
“That sounds exciting,” Cara said. “Is your family excited.”
The woman’s voice went flat, informing Cara she had asked the wrong question. “My father chose to act against the state and is currently serving in a re-education outpost in the Harvest region of the asteroid belt.”
Cara swallowed. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
“I support his continued efforts at re-integration with the Collective,” the border agent said. “Are you ready to send the information on your fourth crewmember yet?”
Cara looked at Fran again but she only shook her head.
Looking back at the display as though there was an answer there and finding none, Cara said, “There must be a malfunction. We don’t have a fourth crew member.”
“I show the fourth signature with a highly elevated heartrate but a lower IR return.”
Cara didn’t know what to say. It had to be her dad inside the tank, heart pounding from worry. She considered calling Lyssa but didn’t want to add another electrical pattern to whatever the border patrol was already monitoring.
Cara muted the channel. “Do I tell them it’s a malfunction and wait to get boarded?” she asked Fran.
“We’re going to have to. If they’re picking him up with the long-range equipment, I don’t think we have a chance once they’re on board. I don’t have fuel to make any adjustments at this point. We could try putting him in an EV suit and having him hug the hull.” She pursed her lips. “That doesn’t seem much better.”
“Cara,” Tim called from the doorway. “Can I go back down in the cargo bay?”
Cara turned, ready to tell him to get back in the family room, when the puppy yipped, struggling in Tim’s arms.
“I want to play catch with Em some more. He’s getting really good.”
“Em,” Cara said.
“What?” Fran asked.
“They’re picking up Em.”
“They have to be able to tell the difference between a dog and a human.”
“It’s long-range scan, right?” Cara said.
Fran laughed bitterly. “They’re not going to buy it. We’re getting boarded. But at least we have an excuse.” She looked at Tim. “How many tricks does he know yet?”
“A bunch of tricks. He can sit, roll over and in zero-g he’s doing somersaults.”