Alastair (Ghosts of Ophidian Book 2)

by Scott McElhaney

  “Seriously, Theo, I wouldn’t listen to any of those guys out there. We’ve been making their numbers look bad for the past four months and they’ll look for any reason to discourage you,” Phil said, patting him on the shoulder, “I’ve been piloting these gatherers for three years now and I’ve never had a partner as good and motivated as you.”

  “But I don’t want to do this for a living, Phil,” Theo said as he approached his locker, “I want some kind of job where I can meet the people who buy our water.”

  Theo placed his helmet in his locker, then proceeded to slip out of his heavy spacesuit.

  “Because of your brother’s message,” Phil said, “Listen, there aren’t many positions out there where you can work the piers. Beyond that of becoming commander of the Oort Station, the only job that brings you closer to the ships is Off-loader. Even then, much of your job is done away from any of the crew of those ships.”

  “Then I want to work at one of the pubs near the docking piers,” Theo said, tugging the clunky boots off and stuffing them into his locker.

  “Uh, the Oort Station isn’t the ‘happening place to be’ anymore. Your brother was right about that one. No one comes here to hang out anymore,” Phil said, opening his own locker and placing his helmet on the shelf.

  Theo sighed, buttoning up his shirt and turning to Phil. The albino pilot who also served as his mentor was looking much older than he should at twenty-five. Theo blamed it on Phil’s newest undertaking in gaining the respect of his fellow ice monkeys. This particular challenge came in the form of a scraggly and patchy white beard. His partner’s efforts to look older were actually just making him look more like a slummer from the lower levels.

  “Theophilus,” a familiar shout erupted from beyond the row of lockers.

  “In here, sir,” Theo replied, quickly slipping into his shoes.

  The commander of the 2MGs rounded the corner and stopped abruptly at the end of the locker row. Theo couldn’t tell if Commander Ivey was mad about something or if he was just impatient about Theo not closing his locker fast enough.

  “What’s this, Theophilus?” the commander asked, holding up a sheet of paper.

  Theo started toward the commander, but he was halted by the booming words “Stop right there, Theo. I want you to tell me what this is from where you’re standing right now.”

  He gaped at the commander in confusion, then looked down at the sheet of yellow paper in his hand. He doubted for a moment that anyone could read the paper from twenty feet away.

  “Theo?” the commander prodded.

  “What’s this about?” he asked, stalling as long as possible while he attempted to focus in on the squiggly handwriting.

  “What’s this about? It’s about this week’s dash-cam reports,” he said, nodding to Phil, “Would you like to read what this paper says for Theo.”

  Phil sighed as his shoulders sagged in resignation. He’d already questioned Theo multiple times on his inability to identify things at a distance.

  “It says ‘I’m really sorry to be losing a good gatherer today’,” Phil said, “Commander, Theo’s never made a single mistake out there. I’ve been-”

  “It’s not up for discussion.”

  Three

  Level fourteen was one of the more densely populated levels in the station. It was common slang throughout the station to refer to levels fourteen and fifteen as the “lifer levels” seeing as most of the families living on those levels are descendants of some of the original staff. Most of the people who lived on the lifer levels never had a choice whether they wanted to live on the station or not. They were simply the results of a torrid love affair, prostitution, or the intentional children of traditional marriage.

  The lifer families grew on purpose or on accident but whatever the reason, those people chose to live together. Walls on the lifer levels were knocked out to connect the nearby apartments, making larger and larger family homes inside the station. Level fourteen initially had two storage facilities. Those were emptied and the supplies brought to the new facilities built on level twenty-six before being converted into more housing. There was once a shopping mall located on level fifteen. When level twenty-six was being built and the storage facilities found their ways there, the mall was relocated as well. As expected, the mall on fifteen was converted into more housing.

  There was still plenty of housing available on levels six, seven, ten, and twenty-one, but the lifers preferred to stick together even if it meant sacrificing a certain level of comfort.

  Theo made his way down corridor three, stepping over two children who were playing an odd board game with quite a few dragon pieces. One of the kids muttered an angry comment when Theo’s pant leg toppled one of the taller dragons. He had to navigate around three overflowing trashcans, a football, and a random unidentified box before he made it to the door marked “15”.

  He opened the door and shut it quickly behind him. For some reason, he’d always felt safer when he was at home. He theorized once that it probably had to do with his mother’s insistence on cleanliness and order. Unlike the chaotic world outside of his apartment door, his home was tidy and organized. He leaned back against the door and breathed out a sigh of relief.

  “Was today really that bad?” his mother asked from the sofa.

  He hadn’t seen her seated there a moment ago, but now he realized she was reading some report on her video pad. She didn’t look up and instead continued to scroll through the daily trade reports that always seemed to fascinate her.

  “What kind of goodies did we get today?” Theo asked.

  “Looks like a good day overall. We’ve got thirty cases of UV halogen bulbs, projected to keep the greenhouses running with fake sunshine for another ten years. Let’s see… four tons of wheat flour, a half-ton of apples, the MRI medical scanner we’ve needed for over a year now, a ton of cooking oil, a half-ton of salt, a quarter-ton of paprika, a quarter-ton of cinnamon, two tons of coffee, two tons of sugar, four new VR arcade units, twelve new movies, and three tons of milk,” she said, “Oh, and the usual stuff that secretly makes it past the inspectors.”

  If Theo wanted to do the math, he could easily figure out how much water was traded for those supplies his mother listed. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how much the bulbs or the MRI machine weighed. Everything at the Oort Station was traded by the ton. It didn’t matter if it was liquid, solid, or gas. The Oort Station regularly sent off a list of their needs to all three planets. The standing rule was that if a ship delivered any of these supplies, they would receive a trade of 4500 tons of water for every five tons of supplies. It was a very fair trade considering that the ships certainly needed water and the Oort Station was saving them from having to launch 4500 tons of water into space. Instead, they only needed to launch five tons of whatever supplies the Oort Station requested.

  The number “4500” wasn’t chosen randomly. This was the Earthly weight of water inside a single filled tank. The ships would need to purchase water in units of 4500 tons. Forty-five hundred tons of water added up to about 1.1 million gallons. Theo did the math on his own one day when he learned that a gallon of water weighed about eight pounds. While it sounded like a lot of water, many ships were built to hold at least two tanks while the majority had space for four or more.

  Before that day the new MRI machine arrived, Theo felt like he was an important part of the station’s economy. He had been responsible for twenty tons of ice everyday, effectively helping to pay for the flour, the coffee, and the UV bulbs. Today however, Theo was nothing more than a consumer. Theo would eventually find himself living in the slums of the lower levels, chewing sheol weed and watching the demons dance around him. Consumers were known as the lowest form of life on the station.

  “What’s the matter?” his mother asked, glancing up from her video pad.

  “I lost my job. I’ve needed corrective surgery for a while now but I knew if I told anyone, I’d lose my job,” he said, tears suddenly threatenin
g to invade his eyes, “I was good at my job, Mom.”

  She rose from the sofa and rushed over to him, taking him into her arms, as he could hide the hurt no longer. She knew he looked forward to bragging about his tonnage every evening, even though she rarely listened. He was one of the few who looked forward to contributing to the survival of their closed environment.

  “I know they won’t accept you even after corrective surgery, but we’ll get you that surgery anyway. I guess I should have known something was up when you dragged the entertainment panel closer to the sofa,” she said, patting him gently on the back “I’m pretty sure I can probably get you in at Water Purification. It gets hot in there with all the steamers, but it’s worth it at the end of the day when you read the daily trade reports. The galaxy needs people like you and me, Theo.”

  “Yeah, like it needed Dad and Alastair?” he muttered, stepping out of her embrace.

  “Your father died a hero, Theo,” she said, “I’m sure he would have preferred it any other way, but he had no choice.”

  He shook his head, hoping his mother wouldn’t repeat the story yet again. He’d heard it enough times from enough people that now the story was permanently chiseled into his brain. His father indeed had his name engraved on the wall in the Hero Corridor near the Communication Center. The thing that bothered Theo the most was the fact that his father shouldn’t have died at all. The asteroid that was headed for the Oort Station had been accidentally knocked off its regular course two days prior by a group of ice gatherers. None of that was known at the time, but a later investigation showed that three 2MGs found a chunk of ice that was almost a dwarf planet in itself. The estimated weight was along the lines of 1500 tons of solid ice.

  The gatherers got permission to fire a BE3 Boring Explosive into the chunk since it was located at a distance of over one AU from the Oort Station – the minimum distance required for any ice-breaking explosives. Every 2MG is equipped with BE3s, but these are never permitted without prior authorization. Theo was not permitted the luxury of being able to place the blame on any single person for the death of his father.

  The Boring Explosive, equipped with a heated drill bit at its tip, tunneled its way almost twenty yards into the 1500-ton planetoid before it exploded, sending chunks outward in all directions. The three 2MGs gathered up a total of sixty-seven tons of ice that evening – something even worthy of competing with Phil and Theo. Unfortunately, a six-ton chunk of that ice slammed into the side of a speeding four-ton asteroid that should have never crossed the radar screens of the Oort Station. That asteroid would now be on a direct course with the Oort Station and it would be closing at a speed of almost fifteen miles per second.

  His father was on duty when the asteroid was discovered on the radar screen. It was not only headed toward the station, it was headed toward the most vulnerable portion of the station – the observatory. The station had, and still has, no way of moving or changing its location. That speeding asteroid could literally cut the station in half, killing everyone aboard. All the active 2MGs were called to action, but only two of the four on duty at the time were in any position to do anything. His father was the pilot and he had a fifteen-year old gatherer working the arms. With a three-ton chunk of ice already in its claws, it was the fifteen-year old kid who drew the arms back up and held the chunk of ice in front of them. Theo’s father plotted four possible courses of action into his piloting computer. The investigation would learn all this later, but suffice to say, his father was searching for any possible way to stop the asteroid and survive to return home later.

  Only one course would ensure the station’s survival and due to the extreme speed of the incoming asteroid, he only had about sixty seconds to make a decision. He gunned the engines and turned to a heading of 064 degrees. His speed increased at the expected rate until all the safety alarms began chiming. The investigation would later show that his father’s last action was to turn off those annoying alarms. Perhaps he wanted a moment of silence before his death.

  His father’s 2MG and the large chunk of ice it was carrying would slam into the side of the asteroid at a speed of only two miles per second, but their momentum as well as the resulting explosion would send the asteroid so far off course that it would miss the station by nearly a half mile. His father would get all the credit, but thanks to his mother’s insistence, his teenage partner would also share that credit and also be hailed as a hero. She showed that when he raised the arms with the ice they were carrying, it proved that he not only agreed with the mission, it might have actually been the kid who suggested their course of action. She wasn’t trying to steal the fame away from her husband, but instead, she was trying to do what her husband would have wanted. He would have insisted that his partner share the credit.

  That was the story Theo didn’t want to hear again even though it had just played itself through his traitorous synapses yet again.

  “I know, Mom, but sometimes it just seems so unfair. It seems so unfair to me that I’m a victim of this world that you and Dad placed me in. What if Alastair and I had been born on Earth like everyone else? What if we breathed natural air and swam in oceans that had actual waves? What if we lived in a world where we felt the wind in our hair? What if we had the chance to choose for ourselves if we wanted to go into outer space?”

  She turned and headed toward the kitchenette where she would begin her evening ritual. She took a pan out of the cupboard and then started digging through the refrigerator.

  “Do you realize what people on Earth have to go through just to even qualify to go into space? I won’t even mention money required,” she said, “Up here, we have ships that are coming and ships that are going. We have-”

  “You should check the numbers, Mom. We’ve got more ships coming from Earth than we have returning,” he interrupted, following her into the kitchenette.

  He wasn’t sure if that was really true, of course, but it certainly seemed that way. He’d never checked the numbers himself.

  “That’s the same garbage Alastair started to say before he disappeared. Are you going to leave me too?” she asked, slamming a tub of salted butter onto the counter.

  “Those ships are going off into the unknown and they’re not coming back, Mom. Not only that, they aren’t sharing anything with us,” he said, again making assumptions by what he’d heard around the station, “So, what are we making tonight?”

  She brought out a bag of frozen corn and a tray of breaded chicken strips. He knew in that moment that she had probably left work early and stopped by the chicken farm on the way home. It was always a treat when she brought home a fresh chicken and now that he was unemployed, he started to wonder when he’d see another meal of his mother’s juicy chicken strips.

  “You didn’t answer me, Theo. Are you leaving me?” she asked.

  He groaned and then leaned against the counter with his arms crossed. She opened the tub of butter and scooped out an unhealthy size dollop to drop into the pan.

  “Mom, you’re all I’ve got in this world. Until you find me a nice girl who doesn’t chew sheol weed, has a nice smile, likes to play in the arcade, and has a huge set of enormous, impossibly large-”

  She slapped him playfully on the cheek and pushed his gesturing hands away from his chest. She then spun him around and pushed him into the hallway.

  “I don’t want to hear your hormones speaking, Theo. Dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes, so if you want to change out of your work clothes and take a shower, now would be the time,” she said.

  Four

  Theo’s first day as a useless consumer would be spent investigating the theory he’d presented to his mother the previous night. He wasn’t actually sure about the statistics regarding the departing Earth ships, but his preliminary findings suggested he was correct. The Oort Station hid nothing from its residents, so he figured a day in the Data Storage Facility could prove quite educational for him.

  He arrived right around the time that Phil wou
ld most likely be suiting up with his new partner. He felt bad for his friend being that the long list of potential gatherers was mostly made up immature kids who just wanted to earn a few more credits to spend at the arcade. A credit was worth thirty minutes of arcade time and a single shift of gathering was worth four credits. The ignorant kids would then spend two hours after their shift in the arcade while the responsible ones would bring home four credits toward groceries or clothes. After a week of work, the responsible kid would have supplied food for his whole family and probably discover a little left over for a night at the theater with his girl or an evening with his friends at the arcade. The point was, fun existed for both the responsible and the immature, but more often than not, it was the “immature” title that applied to be ice monkeys.

  The DSF or “History” as the residents called it, was a dreary room of four computer terminals attached to a giant fan-cooled machine that everyone assumed was the mastermind of the Oort Archives. Absolutely everything, including Theo’s squinting on his dash-cam, was stored in the archives. The single overhead light offered little to dispel the shadows or add any amount of charm to the small room.

  Theo would be the only one interested in the Data Storage Facility at this early time of the morning. He sat down at one of the terminals and hit the button to power up the remote system. It took only a few seconds before he had an inquiry screen available in front of him. He called up all the records of ships that had loaded up with at least two tanks of water within the last decade but had later never shown up again at any known ports.

  It pulled up fifteen entries, one of which was confirmed dead in the Tau Ceti System. That particular ship succumbed to an unexplained engineering explosion that ultimately destroyed the ship and killed all of its 1146 passengers and crew. That left fourteen ships that offered no explanation for their non-existence.