by C. Gockel
“Commander, are you alright?” Gunny asked, turning his rather large bulk impressively fast, looking ready to jump up and lend a hand. She waved him back.
“I’m nearly in engineering,” Lieutenant Manuel, her chief engineer, said over the ether as Noa slipped into the pilot chair.
“Power her down again, Ensign,” Noa said, watching the vast expanse of archaic dials and screens mounted in front of her. On a newer ship, the controls would be concealed and only used for backup if human-to-ship ethernet was disabled.
Chavez drew back on several dials in quick succession. There was another sickening squeal from the hull. The indicator lights didn’t even flicker. Noa felt her heart beating against her ribs.
“It doesn’t sound right,” the ensign said, blowing air out of her mouth and sending a wild red curl flying.
Noa addressed her engineer over the ether. “Manuel, I think we’ve got a short in the charge disperser ring behind one of the time bands.”
“I think you’re right,” Manuel replied.
“Commander,” Chavez said, “I don’t know how to power down the other bands without feedback! The controls … I can’t tell which band is frying!”
Noa’s eyes slid over the light displays in front of her. What a bloody, ancient, lizzar-excrement excuse for technology. Without being able to tell which band was shorting, or even what level of power it still had circulating through it, powering down the other bands was nearly impossible.
Her thought process was interrupted by an urgent mental dispatch from Ghost. “Fire in cabin twenty-three.”
Noa ducked her head beneath the instrument panel, looking for a dangling wire, a spark, anything to explain the malfunctioning gauges, and stifled a curse. Everything looked fine.
“I’m on that deck,” James replied over the ethernet.
“The fire extinguisher—” Ghost began. His voice piped into Noa’s mind, but he also chose to pipe it over the intercom.
“I already found it,” said James over the ethernet. “I’m in the cabin.” James piped an image of the outer wall of the cabin over the general frequency. The plastic of the wall was blackened and melting in a regular pattern.
“There’s where our charge dispersers are fried,” Manuel said. One mystery was solved, but Noa’s stomach turned to cold lead as the hull screamed again. Pulling herself back up, she strapped herself into the pilot chair, barely aware of the werfle still on her shoulders.
“Commander?” said Chavez. “How can we power down without the gauges?”
Noa hadn’t any idea, so she said the first thing that came to mind. “We do it by ear.”
“By ear?” Ghost roared in her mind and over the comm. And then his voice rose in pitch. “Next cabin over! Another fire!”
“On my way,” said James, and Noa’s stomach twisted.
To Chavez, Noa said, “Turn that comm off, I can’t hear with it on.” Internally, she turned down Ghost’s voice in her mind. Her hands hovered over the dials and she gulped.
Hastily obeying, Chavez said, “You can power down time bands by ear?” The incredulity in her tone was only slightly less thick than Ghost’s.
Gunny said some words in Arabic that sounded suspiciously like a prayer.
The hull screamed. It was now or never. Without looking at the indicators in front of her, Noa slowly slid the rectangular knobs that controlled the bands down their track until the metal screech became a groan again … and then it became a roar. She hastily, but gently, readjusted the dials until the hull was only moaning.
“Sure,” she said, not about to show her unease to Chavez or the crew, comforting herself with the knowledge that powering down by ear could theoretically be done.
The noise in the hull was rising in pitch, so she slid the rectangular knob a little further down the track. The screech was becoming a groan again, and Noa eased up. Adjusting the knobs, she said, “Don’t you remember your Luddeccean preschool teachers? Anything that can be done by machine can be done by man?” She powered down too quickly and the ship’s groan rose in volume again. She readjusted the dial, the stress on the hull becoming a low rumble.
She felt sweat drying inside her uniform, leaving her cold where Carl Sagan wasn’t keeping her warm. Again and again she repeated the cycle. She waited for the ear splitting, heart-stopping squeal of the hull that sounded too much like death, gradually moved the dials until the squeal became a groan, and readjusted them before the groan became a roar.
The ship was tracking the orbit of Adam’s Asteroid Belt just below the ecliptic plane of the system, and as the ship decelerated, the asteroids that had been a blur began to have shape and form. Their solidity began to give Noa hope that this just might work. Her confidence grew so much, she mentally checked the ether for the status of her crew members … and found James was gone. Noa felt an unfamiliar bite of panic, a sort of existential dread, a weight pulling her down … In her mind’s eye, she could imagine James burned, or suffocated. An explosion with a hull breach could suck him into space, or if the metal skeleton of the ship twisted inward …
“Fire in Cabin 22 out for now. I’m moving back to Cabin 23.” James’s voice over the ether cut through her dark imaginings. The light of his location flickered on in her mind.
Manuel spoke across the shared channel. “We lost you for a moment there, James.”
Not sounding concerned at all, James said, “Maybe the heat damaged the ether hub in that location?”
Manuel fell into a conversation with Ghost about improving the newly-minted local ethernet’s resiliency … Noa focused on the hull’s sounds of distress, but she left the channels to her crew open. She managed to bring the screech in the hull down to a low whisper.
“It’s working!” said Chavez.
One of the engineering student’s voices cracked over the ethernet. “The commander done good!”
The groan of the hull rose in pitch, but with movements becoming practiced, Noa managed to turn a groaning of the hull into a low moan. Noa felt her body begin to relax. She almost smiled, imagining what a story this would be when they made it back to the Fleet. Powering down time bands by ear, of all the brilliantly idiotic ideas she’d ever had ...
James’s light went out again, and the almost smile died before it was born. She felt a lump in her throat, an emptiness in her gut, and she was suddenly cold again. His light flashed on again. She turned off James’s light and hissed, angry at herself for the panic. “Slime of a bucket of blue-green algae.”
“Commander, is everything alright?” Chavez said at the same instant Carl Sagan gave a startled squeak.
… Which was the moment she realized she’d spoken aloud.
* * *
Unwrapping Carl Sagan from her neck, Noa sat at the bottom of the circular stairwell at the center of the bridge. Giving him a pat, she said, “Go find me some rats, Carl Sagan.” Giving a squeak, the werfle darted off. A moment later, he slipped down an air vent Noa hadn’t realized existed until his furry tail vanished between the grating bars.
Noa’s eyes burned with too little sleep. It had been ten hours since she’d been in her cabin with James. She had manned the helm almost the entire time with only a little help from Manuel, sending Chavez down to rest. Now the ensign was back on the bridge, refreshed after a long nap, this time manning the cannons with one of the engineering students. Noa tried not to think of how much sleep she’d missed … but at that non-command, her fried brain sent a signal to her chronometer apps, and they piped back that she’d had less than two hours in the past twenty-four, and only six hours in the past forty-eight. She restrained a groan, feeling her stimulants wearing off. The lift rose at the center of the stairwell, its walls slid away, and Manuel, Ghost, and James emerged and stepped off. Noa motioned for them to have a seat. Manuel and Ghost, her chief computing officer, sat down on the steps in front of her. James sat behind her, slightly to one side.
“So can we repair the time band and the charge dispersers that blew du
ring the short?” she asked Manuel.
“Yes, they can be repaired,” said Manuel.
“They can,” Ghost asserted; he’d been drafted into engineering for this crisis. He had a knack for it, apparently, and they were short-staffed.
Relief unwound inside her. Things didn’t seem so dark as they had just moments before. Smiling, she rubbed her eyes and heard James shift behind her. Hours ago he’d told her, “There are too many coincidences, Noa. We both know the same dead language; I found you in the snow using a frequency that should be secure; I knew your name, your age … your rank.” What he hadn’t commented on was that he was the spitting image of Timothy, her deceased husband. Maybe his not knowing that one coincidence was what made her not care how he was tied up in the Archangel Project. They both were, but neither of them knew how. She thought of the way his emotions had flooded the hard-link and filled her mind with blinding white. That … had been extraordinary, and strange, but in a good way. For a moment, Noa was in that blinding white again.
“Noa,” James said.
Her name spoken over the ether made her start. Noa’s eyes bolted open, and she dropped her hands and sat up straight. Oh, Lord, had she just about fallen asleep, sitting in a staff meeting? She’d heard of it happening when stims wore off—heard of surgeons passing out in operating theaters, too. The shock gave her a brief burst of focus, and she realized that Manuel and Ghost were both frowning.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked, trying to play off the depth of her exhaustion and resisting the urge to lean against James for support.
Wiping his own face, Manuel said, “We’re fortunate that the Ark was designed for deep space travel and has a very well-equipped shop in case something like this happened. We can fix the time band and the charge dispersers connected to it.”
Nostrils flaring, Ghost spat out, “But it will take up to two months.”
Noa sucked in a breath with a hiss. That had been her timetable for getting to the Kanakah Cloud and summoning the Fleet through the hidden time gate. Two months was turning into four months. How many people had died in the “re-education camp” in the days since she’d been there? She willed the bile rising in her throat to stay down.
“We have no choice,” Noa said, pulling herself to her feet. She felt heavier than normal, but internal apps told her that the gravity aboard the ship had not changed. Trying not to appear tired, she snapped her hands behind her back. “We’ll need to send you out in suits to disengage the band from the hull.”
Standing, Manuel nodded, his non-regulation hair flopping in front of his eyes. The lieutenant had been retired when she’d brought him into this mess. Not brought him, she reminded herself; he’d volunteered to save the life of his little boy—and he’d lost his wife in the process. She took in the dark circles under his eyes; he needed sleep as much as she did. Her eyes traveled to Ghost. He didn’t look much better than Manuel.
“We’re sitting ducks out here,” Ghost grumbled.
Noa looked up. Her gaze traveled through the dome above, made of a centis-thick non-reflective, nearly indestructible glass-like compound. Outside, Noa could see the deep black shadows of the asteroids, the bright gray and brown where sunlight fell upon their craggy surfaces, and the far-off velvet of stars and vacuum. The asteroid belt in this system was much denser than the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Noa had charted a course as close to it as she could, for the protection the asteroids gave them from Luddeccean sensors. Another route would have been shorter, but now she was glad she’d erred on the side of caution.
“We’ll begin preparations after a sleep cycle,” Noa said.
Ghost’s mouth opened, but before he could protest, Noa said, “No one is space walking without sleep.”
“The longer we stay here, the more likely we’ll be sighted!” Ghost protested.
“Baka!” Noa roared, fortunately only over the ethernet connection James had opened between them. It was the Japanese word for “fool.” Ghost’s eyes flickered in her direction … was he listening in, or was it just coincidence? He’d set up the ship’s ether, and he probably could read transmitted thoughts if he wanted, though it would be vulgar to eavesdrop. Noa smiled grimly, remembering the dismembered sex ‘bots he’d had in Luddeccea. She shook her head. The man’s face didn’t show any expression at her outburst; even if he was listening, he probably didn’t understand Japanese.
“We need him,” James answered back in the same language.
He was right—they needed Ghost for the Ark’s ancient systems. Smiling as sincerely as she could, Noa said, “Ghost, you and Manuel … You’re too valuable to lose, Ghost.” She hoped repeating his name twice in a sentence would suffice in making him feel special. It was all she could manage in her current state of sleep deprivation and annoyance.
Ghost’s shoulders softened, but he scowled when he said, “Yes, Commander.”
It was as much as she expected. Giving a curt nod, she said, “Dismissed.”
As the engineer and the programmer headed to the lift, James stepped to her side. “Do you need me?” he asked.
Yes, she wanted to say. But he smelled like smoke and fire retardant, and now that she had him up close, she could see soot on his face and clothing. Shorts and fires had kept him on the lower deck for hours. She blinked and reached across the ethernet. “Are you alright?”
His eyes fell heavy on her lips, but then returned to hers. Looking away, he shifted on his feet. “I’m hungry,” he said aloud.
“So you’re normal for you,” she chided. “We’re lucky that this ship is stocked with enough rations for a trip to Time Gate 7.” The Ark had been kept stocked and operational because the Republic required every colony to have a certain number of evacuation vessels prepared for emergencies. Noa was beginning to suspect that the Luddeccean Authority had a loose definition of “operational,” but there were stores enough for a seven lightyear trip to the next inhabited system.
James put a hand to his chest and looked heavenward. “Hopefully, it will be enough.” His tone was completely serious, but he sighed dramatically and dropped his gaze back to her, raising an eyebrow.
At the cannon, Chavez snorted.
Shaking her head, Noa grinned. Walking with him to the lift, she called back, “Chavez, you have the bridge. Bo—”
The engineering student bounced around in his seat. Noa remembered that of the four students from his shop, Bo had been the one who wanted to join the Fleet. At the moment he looked like an overeager puppy. “Yes, Commander?” he asked.
“Help keep Chavez awake.”
His shoulders fell.
“And let me know if you see anything out there.”
“Yes, Sir!” he said, more happily.
“Yes, Sir,” said Chavez, with more restraint.
Noa stepped onto the lift platform, James beside her. Moments later the lift slid down the tube and the sides and ceiling slid above them like a flower in reverse bloom. Her eyes slipped to James … his gaze was already on her … but then flicked up to a camera. They weren’t alone here, and without a hard-link, even their thoughts in the ether might not be private.
Noa was so tired, James appeared to shimmer, like she was looking at him through waves of heat. “Go eat,” Noa said when the lift stopped and the door opened.
“Go sleep, Commander,” James said, and she realized she hadn’t moved. Feeling the burn behind her eyes again, she looked down the lonely hall. The ship had been home to children once, and the walls were decorated with their drawings. She didn’t want to look at those cheerful etchings or travel down that long hallway; she wanted to collapse right where she was.
“Commander?”
“I know where to find you,” she said—or maybe thought. Stepping into the hallway, she tried to walk in as straight a line as possible to her door. “Right,” she muttered, nonsensically at the sound of the lift door closing behind her. It gave her an odd feeling of emptiness in her chest, but a few minutes later, the sight
of her bed was like finding an oasis after days in the desert.
She shuffled forward and belly flopped onto the mattress. Rolling up the covers around her, she smiled and slipped into sleep.
A familiar voice whispered, “So much better than the camp.”
* * *
Blinking, Noa rolled over and saw her friend Ashley from the re-education camp, lying on her side beside her. Ashley’s pale skin was flushed and healthy, her hair had grown back, and it was even redder than Noa imagined it would be.
“I told you we’d make it,” Noa said, remembering Ashley crying the day they’d left; Ashley had been too afraid to leave. Noa’s brows drew together. Something was wrong with that memory, but Noa couldn’t place what it was. She noticed an arm around Ashley’s waist—it was heavy and masculine. Noa scowled. Before she could ask, a man’s head poked above Ashley’s shoulder. It was Lieutenant Engineer Brian Song—he’d been in Noa’s first crew in the System Six’s Asteroid War—before she’d been holed up in medical for severe burns. Song and her whole first crew had been blown into oblivion while Noa was on med leave.
“You always make it, Commander,” Brian said. He smiled gently … compassionately.
And Noa was back in the camp … she’d never escaped at all.
* * *
James’s vision tunneled as he tripped down the hall, chilled by a too-cold shower he’d taken moments before. Smelling food, he turned on his heels and saw a sign painted on a pair of sliding doors. His vision was swimming from hunger, but he was able to read the elegant script: Dove’s Cafe ~ Serving the finest in Luddeccean teas, coffees, and produce.