by C. Gockel
“The distress signal said forty-one, and we have enough room.” She gestured around the room. “We’re standing in an unoccupied cabin.”
“We’re wanted by the Luddeccean authorities,” James said.
“They’ll expect we will head to Libertas. Ghost even deliberately skewed our course to make it look like we’d done that when Wren rounded the observation buoy,” Noa replied.
“They found us at Adam’s Station,” James countered.
“That was a fluke! You heard what Monica’s daughter said,” Noa protested.
“But they were there.” James took a step forward. “Because they’re sending out scouts all over the solar system. Atlantia would be a logical place to look.”
“The colony was abandoned, and it’s sinking,” Noa said, waving a hand, her eyes flashing. “It’s not a logical place for us to go at all.”
“Well, at least we agree on that point,” James growled.
Noa didn’t move. The muscles beneath her too-large clothes were coiled tight, and her hands were balled into fists. It made James feel her vulnerability more acutely rather than less. She couldn’t back down; it was her fatal flaw. James took another step closer. “If we are captured, all the inhabitants of Atlantia, Adam’s Station, and Luddeccea will be at risk.”
“If we don’t save civilians, what is the point of even going on this mission?” Noa said. And in the space between their minds, he saw the grav-freight train operator he’d killed on Luddeccea and all the bodies strewn out on the tarmac at Adam’s Station.
Lowering his voice to a whisper, James said, “Don’t let their deaths be in vain, Noa … you’re risking too much.”
Noa looked away at last. She took a deep breath. “We can fly by … make sure we don’t see any Luddeccean Fleet ships in the area. If we catch sight of anything suspicious, we’ll break orbit and make a twisty path to the Kanakah Cloud.” She bit her lip, and her gaze slipped back to him. “Please, James …” She closed her eyes. “We have to try.”
He gripped his hands behind his back … His irritation sent a white flash of static behind his eyes. Opening her eyes, Noa tentatively smiled and gazed up at him almost shyly. “I’ll take your support … if not your approval. It’s all I can ask.” Through the ether, she set a bouncing ball of light. Annoyed, James averted his eyes. But he let the recreation of the Ark, the planet, and its moon appear in the space between their minds. Noa’s avatar appeared next to his, looked up at the model, and smiled brightly. “And if you ever get in some historical controversy, you will have all my support, too,” she said.
“Historical controversies?” he asked.
Noa waved a hand. “History professor kerfuffles … you know, did the people of the early 20th century eat soy-bornut cubes for breakfast or rednut cubes?”
James blinked at her. “Neither of those things even existed on Earth before colonization began.”
Winking at him, Noa gave an impish grin, and he realized she’d been taunting him. “You think I’m terribly uneducated, don’t you?” she said, confirming that analysis.
The static of irritation flared beneath his skin. “Comparing disagreements in academia to launching a rescue mission while being pursued by the Luddeccean Guard isn’t fair,” he said.
“That’s right,” Noa replied, “The kerfuffles between professor types are much more vicious.”
James looked at her sharply. All hint of teasing had left her expression. Her gaze was on the planet and the moon.
Without any hint of mirth, Noa said, “The stakes in academia are much lower.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Ark rounded the bright orange curve of S8O5, skimming the dust ring of the gas giant so tightly that it looked like a river with white petals streamed beneath them.
Chavez, acting as Noa’s co-pilot, said, “In visual range in three, two, one …”
On cue, Atlantia came into view. “People live on that snowball,” someone whispered over the ether.
S85M20, Atlantia in common parlance, was tinted blue by its nitrogen rich atmosphere and had a delicate latticework of darker blue crisscrossing its surface. It looked very much like a snowball, but that delicate latticework was actually canals cut into the frozen oceans by eruptions deep beneath the surface. Here and there were sparkling blue lakes where deep subterranean vents were especially active. The magma that caused those eruptions kept the magnetic field strong, and kept the steam that escaped the oceans from being stripped of its hydrogen by solar winds. The steam quickly returned to the surface as snow instead. But the same highly active core had made the likelihood of tsunamis greater. It wasn’t unusual for humans to live on fault lines, Noa knew. The people who’d lived on the San Andreas Fault during the 20th century came to mind. But the people who lived in those ancient Earth cities at least had a breathable atmosphere. Even if Atlantia, away from its core-heated canals and pockets of thaw, wasn’t too cold for humans to survive for more than a few minutes, the oxygen on the planet was too thin.
The ethernet erupted. An indicator for Ghost’s channel flashed at the periphery of her visual cortex, and Ghost’s thought burst into her mind. “Once again, Commander, I am going to state my objections to this plan!”
“Noted,” Noa responded, dipping her chin, eyes on the moon. Wren’s channel began to ping, too. Noa ground her teeth. She didn’t want to answer it, but she’d need Wren in the months ahead. She opened his channel. Wren’s voice crackled across the ether. “What the ….” a long litany of curses followed. One of her emotion-filtering apps flashed red, indicating that Wren was “extremely agitated.” Noa huffed at the understatement. Maybe that app needed to be recalibrated?
“… what in the name of a god-cursed red dwarf are you doing?” Wren finished at last.
“Change of plans,” Noa said. “If you’re uncomfortable with my command, you are welcome to stay on the surface of Atlantia once we land.”
Another litany of swearing followed.
“You’re right, it’s dangerous, so help us survive. I know you’re good in tight situations,” Noa ground out before turning him off.
“Ghost, do you have any indication that the Luddeccean Fleet might be nearby?” Noa asked across the main frequency.
It was James who answered. “The Luddeccean Fleet wasn’t anywhere near Adam’s Station when we landed.” James had gone to Ghost’s computing lab for the landing. It had more monitors than any other area on the ship except the bridge; and in computing he wouldn't be leaning over Chavez’s and Noa’s shoulders for a better view of the monitors. Noa was counting on his eidetic memory to record all the channels they swept over as they made their landing.
“I agree with Professor,” Ghost snipped. “But in answer to your question, there is a lot of chatter across normal radio frequencies, as well as some piggybacking on Atlantia’s still functional ether, but nothing to indicate a Luddeccean vessel.”
James added, “I’m watching the monitors and I haven’t seen anything that looks like lightbeams, either.”
“Which doesn’t mean they’re not using them out of our line of sight,” Ghost commented.
Noa’s hands tightened on the steering bars of the Ark’s controls. With Morse Code, or some other simple binary code, it would be possible for even primitive computers to pass information via lightbeam.
“Commander,” Ghost said, “reconsider.” A red light flashed in the periphery of her vision, and a notification that Ghost was also “extremely agitated.”
“We’ll keep our heads about us,” Noa said. She closed her eyes briefly, thinking of the distress signal, and the men, women, and children slowly suffocating on recycled air that became less and less oxygenated with each hour, as they sank into Atlantia’s chill waters. But into the ether she said, “One sign of trouble and we’ll resume our course to the Kanakah Cloud.” She exhaled. Even if that would mean leaving civilians to slowly die … and nightmares in her head for nebulas knew how long. “Promise,” she added, not sure if sh
e was speaking to Ghost or herself.
Chapter Fifteen
“Do you see anything?” Ghost asked James. A nearly 360 degree view of the Ark’s surroundings played on screens encircling the small space. Right now, they showed the dark blue water of the opening in the ice that the Ark was floating in and the sky. James focused on the sky.
“No,” he said. No telltale blink of a lightbeam. Nor did he “hear” anything incriminating over the ether. He watched a tiny speck of black leave the atmosphere. Its ether was wild with jubilant cries and someone saying, “Food for months and enough augment parts to buy us citizenship on Libertas!”
Ghost shook his head. “We still shouldn’t be here.” James’s eyes slid to the man. He was eyeing a monitor with the same tiny retreating ship James had just been eavesdropping on. Was Ghost listening to their ether as well? James glanced down at a CPU usage read-out. There was nothing to indicate that the Ark’s ancient system had taken on the awesome task of decrypting ethernet channels. His jaw shifted, and he felt a cold prickle along his skin. Was Ghost like him? His left hand trembled … he didn’t feel like that was true.
Ghost abruptly bolted out of his seat and went to the farthest point in the tiny room. “I can’t find anything,” Ghost mumbled. “You’re not connected to the ethernet. They shouldn’t fear encoding their secret missions onto you!”
James sat up with a start. “Ghost?”
The little man spun around, his eyes wide, his lower lip trembling.
James's mind replayed Ghost's words moments before, and his apps indicated that they were uttered too softly to have been heard by normal human hearing. He'd just “thought aloud.” The question was to whom? James’s remembered Ghost's cries over the ether on Adam's Station. “They can't get me.” Ghost was terrified of being caught by the Guard; he wasn't the enemy. Not now.
“You seem … agitated,” James said, to not give away that he'd heard Ghost's words moments ago. He'd find out who Ghost was talking too, or what, but now wasn't the time.
“Of course I'm agitated!” Ghost sputtered. “The Commander is going to get us killed!”
Ghost sat down heavily at another console. “And I don't like sharing my private workspace.”
James felt a spark of insight in his mind … Ghost didn't like giving himself away. James didn't respond, just moved over to another computer screen. Half of this screen showed the water of the sea they floated in. The other half showed the city they were approaching. Atlantia Prime, the single city on Atlantia’s surface, was packed with buildings that nearly touched its biodome. Once the city had rested on a thick sheet of ice—a sort of inverse snow globe—but then an earthquake had cracked the ice beneath it. As the ice split, the city had fallen into an icy new sea. The following tidal wave had cracked the already stressed structure. The breach was wide at the base, but thinner at the rooftop level. The Ark was too large to fly in; so they were floating in. His eyes shifted from the sky to the water.
“Are there fish?” James asked curiously. He didn’t see any.
Ghost responded, “I’ve heard there is some sea-life.”
Before he could inquire more, the door to the computer room swooshed open. Noa stood in the frame. She hadn’t contacted him in the ether. There was a tenseness in her jaw and shoulders.
“Who is at the helm?” cried Ghost.
“Chavez,” Noa said, stepping in, her hands locked behind her back. “Her father was a small freighter boat captain on Luddeccea’s North Sea. The woman’s more qualified to ride waves than I am.” Her eyes went to James and she nodded. “I need you and your eidetic memory topside.”
“Take him!” Ghost grumbled.
James was already heading to the door. “What do you need my memory for?”
Noa's shoulders fell a fraction. “There has been a lot of new construction in the biodome. A substantial number of buildings and skywalks aren’t on the map. I need to record all of them as we float in. I’ll have my memory app on, but I can only record what I see, and I don’t want to miss anything. If we have to leave in a hurry, a side street, or boulevard I might overlook could mean life or death.”
“Understood,” said James, barely refraining from mentioning again how bad an idea this was.
Spinning on her heels, she said, “We’ve got environ suits in the airlock.” Everything about her carriage and demeanor still radiated tension, but he couldn’t think of anything witty to lift the mood.
A few minutes later, they were packed in a narrow airlock with Gunny and Wren. They all wore drab gray environ suits. The suits were fairly light, except for the helmets with their oxygen filtration masks. The masks could be set to filter oxygen from the nitrogen-laden air of Atlantia, or they could refilter exhaled air, splitting carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon. The suits had a quilted appearance; one part of a suit could be damaged and sealed at a seam without requiring a trip back in the airlock. They also had basic heating and cooling controls. Almost unconsciously, James turned up his heating unit to maximum.
Over the main channel, Noa said, “Manuel, could you switch off the gravity in here … slowly.”
“On it, Commander,” he said.
James’s eyes went heavenward, and then he realized that “heavenward” was not skyward. The Ark’s gravity was on, so it felt like the nose of the vessel was “up.” The ship could be operated on its side—but it took time to convert the spaces, and the galley, retrofitted to be a cafe, could not be converted at all. It had been decided to leave the grav on. But the crew going topside would need to reorient themselves to the planet’s natural pull.
“Don’t throw up,” Wren said.
Gunny grunted and put his fingers over his face. “I always close my eyes.”
James didn’t close his eyes. He’d only read and seen grav reorientations on holovids. He wanted to experience it, all of it, even motion sickness. He glanced at Noa. She didn’t close her eyes either, but her gaze was focused on the “wall” that was about to become the floor.
There was a soft sigh beneath James’s feet and he felt like the ship was rolling over. Noa held out a foot, like she was about to take a step, and James did likewise. A moment later, he felt the foot inextricably drawn to the “wall” and stepped down a little unsteadily. Gunny hopped to the wall a lot more gracefully than James thought possible with his eyes closed. Wren did the same, but he looked green.
“The grav under the dome must be activated,” Noa said, scowling at the floor. “I’m getting a reading of 8.5 meters per second.”
“Yep,” said Gunny, giving a little bounce.
On a whim, James did likewise.
“Don’t hit your head,” Gunny chuckled.
James blinked. His internal apps had accommodated the new gravity quite well and he hadn’t come close to hitting the ceiling—low that it was.
“You have enough sproinginess already,” the sergeant said with a grin. He was teasing, James realized, good naturedly, and James wanted so badly to smile even though he didn't find it funny. “I’ve already re-calibrated the springs in my toes,” James said, in a lame attempt to match his wit.
Gunny actually guffawed at the not particularly funny joke.
The sound of a metal door scraping on old hinges made James look toward Noa. She was standing beneath a utility cubby that in ship’s gravity would be above the door but now was beside it. The narrowness of the airlock suddenly made sense. Standing on the former “wall,” Noa was still able to reach the utility cabinet with her hands above her head. She opened it, and a light, plexiflame staircase unfolded.
Gunny grunted and lifted a small “surface-to-air plasma cannon” they’d stolen from the tick. It was light enough to haul over one’s shoulder, but had considerably more power than a normal phaser rifle. Wren hefted his own cannon; Noa and James were outfitted with phaser rifles. James’s eyes went suspiciously to Wren, and he felt Noa reach out to his mind and answer his unspoken question. “We can’t totally trust him. But we can trust him to
want to get out of here. And he’s the only person with advanced weapons experience who isn’t needed on the ship right now.”
By some prearrangement, Gunny went up the steps first. The outside door whooshed. For a moment the sergeant scanned outside from the stairwell, but then his voice broke through the ether. “All is clear,” and he climbed up onto the deck.
Noa followed in his wake, and James followed her, with Wren bringing up the rear.
“Don’t ever say I don’t take you places,” Noa said. Her voice was crystal clear in James’s mind. The scene around them was not. Mist was billowing up from the street turned canal they now floated on, and wrapped around them as they stepped out onto the deck.
“You have to admit, it’s pretty,” Noa said through the ether. Her helmeted head was looking about, methodically canting upward, then down, turning a degree, and repeating the motion, scanning again in a motion that was nearly robotic.
The scene was more than pretty, and for a moment, James forgot what he was supposed to be doing on the deck. Above them, the shell of the biodome that had wrapped around the Atlantian city was cracked and missing pieces. The cracks were sparkling in the dim light of the noonday sun. The gas giant S8O5 hung in the ultramarine blue sky. Even the blue of Atlantia’s atmosphere barely dulled the planet's brilliant orange glow, and the planet's ice rings sparkled around it. James couldn’t help shuffling through the hazy memories of before the accident and the crystal-sharp memories since, to compare it to all such celestial scenes. It was an impressive sight; if he’d still been recording memories for his time capsule, he would have been sure to add it. He could see why the Atlantians had tried to have it declared one of the seven natural wonders of the galaxy.
Remembering his purpose, he brought his gaze down to the city. On either side of them, spires from the abandoned colony rose up. Limited horizontally, the colony had grown vertically. The height of the spires rose with the height of the dome. In the distance, three particularly large spires rose above the water at the dome's apex: the main hospital, the main government offices, and the chamber of commerce. The scene reminded James of sailing through the sunken buildings of Old Los Angeles on Earth, but Old Los Angeles didn’t have walkways arching between its towers, like an intricate, sparkling, spider web. The slightly lighter gravity made him feel lighter, made the Ark float impossibly high, and made the situation that much more surreal.