Moral and Orbital Decay: Mission 14 (Black Ocean)

by J. S. Morin

  She had considered going home. Her apartment was a half-hour’s walk away, but that was with the moving floors running. She didn’t even want to consider how long it would take under nothing but leg power. Too long. She didn’t want to die tired. She didn’t want to die at all. But if she had to go, drunk seemed the best way.

  Why worry away your last moments?

  Pawing around the edge of her plate to find her fork, Marcy skewered another of the mysteriously glowing shrimp and popped it into her mouth. Tilting back her head, she drained the last of the Villa Catalina and let the bottle roll away.

  # # #

  Ted McAllister had run out of popcorn. Even closing his eyes, he couldn’t escape the stroboscopic effect of the sun passing his field of vision every few seconds. He wished to death that the station’s thrusters had all failed simultaneously.

  No one was coming for him. He had no way to know whether anyone else on the station had survived whatever catastrophe had caused the thrusters to go offline.

  It had been hours.

  Shouldn’t there have been a rescue crew by now? Someone with a battery backup could have tethered his chair to an umbilical to lower him down. Weren’t these chairs supposed to lower automatically in the event of a power failure?

  Just one more faulty system on FY-77.

  If Ted survived this ordeal, he was tendering his resignation, suing Maho Saigai for dangerous working conditions, and living out his days on a Class A colony with an atmosphere completely supplied by flora.

  The thought of atmosphere made Ted start wondering how much air he had left. He tried to keep calm, but the eerie silence when there should have been a faint, ever-present rush of pumped air made his heart race and his greedy lungs suck in wasteful amounts of the stuff.

  Ted’s stomach growled.

  The popcorn had been a snack. Supervising a station move was supposed to have been a couple hours babysitting, not a life sentence. It hadn’t even been good popcorn if he had to be honest about it. It was the stuff available in the public dispensary. A factory on Ganymede churned it out and shipped it across the galaxy. For Sol-made, it was pretty low-end stuff.

  As final meals went, popcorn wasn’t the sort of thing Ted would have preferred. Something from the Dancing Cricket would have been nice. He couldn’t afford to dine there more than once or twice a year. Usually there was a woman involved.

  Ted opened his eyes. The lids twitched at the alternating light, dark, bright, dark of the planet and sun juxtaposing in his field of vision.

  “Should have called in sick…”

  # # #

  The station chief’s desk was covered in grease pen calculations. The glossy surface now resembled a university professor’s vidboard. But Shoni hadn’t been demonstrating mathematical proofs or using the desk as a visual aid for a lecture. This was the mathematics of life and death.

  “Any different this time?” Chief Fujita asked, staring over Shoni’s shoulder at the calculations. “I can’t read laaku mathematical notation.”

  Shoni suppressed a haughty scoff, as if the unfamiliar symbols were to blame for the human woman’s lack of mathematical understanding. Not one laaku in a million had the technical background to grasp the underpinnings of her calculations. Probably fewer than one in ten million humans would catch on. If there was another living creature on board this derelict station who could interpret her calculations as written, she’d eat this grease pen.

  If it weren’t for the utter fiction of many of her assumptions and the primitive measurements she’d had to rely on, Shoni could have published this desk in a scientific journal.

  “More precise, perhaps,” Shoni allowed. “But the results are consistent. We are now just five hours away from impact with the planet’s atmosphere. Bear in mind that even once all station systems are back online, there will be some time required to neutralize our uncontrolled rotation and counteract the momentum we have toward the planet. I’m not an expert at this station’s operation. How long will that take?”

  “Much of that will depend on the state of the systems we get up and running,” Chief Fujita replied. She kept her hands clasped behind her back and no fear evident in her voice. She was taking this whole disaster like a calm, rational leader, not like a human at all. “At full power and computer control, half an hour, perhaps. This isn’t a starship. We don’t have the structural support for rapid maneuvering.”

  “What if we disabled thrust overrides and risked hull breaches?” Shoni asked.

  Chief Fujita raised her eyebrow fur. “I thought you said you weren’t an expert.”

  “Few systems run at full capability due to safety concerns,” Shoni replied. She painstakingly began drawing out another series of calculations for the chief’s benefit. Though the math was simplified, forcing herself to convert to human notation was arduous. “You see? If we can get even 10 percent more thruster output, if your thirty-minute estimate for full computer control is accurate, we could make the same maneuver in just twenty-three minutes.”

  Chief Fujita paced. “I hope to God that we’re not cutting this to within seven minutes of destruction.”

  “I would have hoped to keep it to greater than five hours,” Shoni said with a sigh. “But we live in the galaxy we have, not the one we’d build from scratch.” Shoni cleared her throat. “If you don’t mind… the calculations aren’t changing, and I’m not especially useful at fixing mechanical systems. Would you mind if I went to see my friends now? I… appreciate your company, but…”

  “I understand,” Chief Fujita said quietly. “Go.”

  Shoni gave a nod and hastened to exit the station chief’s office. If she was going to meet her end, it wasn’t going to be with a human woman she’d just met. There was only one person she needed to see, and she didn’t even know where he was.

  Just as she cleared the outer office and reached the emergency stairs, Shoni heard Chief Fujita’s voice rise. “Kendra, can you come in here?” There was something plaintive in that call. Perhaps the station chief knew who she wanted to spend her final hours with as well.

  # # #

  Carl had come back with Archie, and Esper and Cedric retired to her quarters. Sharing the darkness and solitude of the slumbering vessel had been eerie but intimate. Sharing that same darkness in the company of a robot’s dead shell crossed the line into macabre.

  Several of Mort’s old belongings cast faint glows when active or merely allowed out of their little boxes and cases. The small bedchamber was lit with the eldritch equivalent of candlelight.

  “Is there enough air?” Cedric asked, eyeing the closed door. He tugged at his collar. “It’s a little… warm in here.”

  Esper dug in her footlocker and found a necklace of glass beads.

  “Never thought that thing would come in handy,” Mort muttered at the sight of the charm.

  “This can make air,” Esper explained. “It came from Earth. I think I can fool it into thinking it’s being worn without actually having to wear it.”

  “What’s wrong with wearing it?” Cedric asked.

  Esper muttered a mild charm, thinking that if such a minuscule magic tipped the station over the edge, they were goners already. She wrinkled her nose as the necklace activated, then hung it from a hook in her closet. “It smells like wet buffalo and dung.”

  Cedric chuckled. “The lesser evil, I suppose.”

  Esper sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled Cedric close. “Life is filled with suboptimal choices. Sometimes knowing which is the best of your bad options is the key to wisdom, if not happiness.”

  Cedric’s arms were surprisingly strong for a wizard. She supposed it was working outdoors, even if the work itself wasn’t manual labor.

  Esper pushed herself gently away so as not to seem as if she were shunning him. With deliberate slowness, she reached down and pulled her sweatshirt up over her head. “You were right though. It’s still warm in here.” She leaned back in and curled against him.

  Thoug
h the thin fabric of her undershirt was damp with sweat, Cedric didn’t shy from wrapping her in his arms again. “I’ll stand in judgment for this. I mean… not this but rather this whole affair.”

  “A man who can feel guilt is not beyond redemption,” Esper murmured. “One who feels the pain of his actions has only to choose whether to seek it or to take the downhill slope.” She nuzzled against Cedric’s neck. His scent was manly—and preferable to the growing aroma of African safari.

  Mort cleared his throat. “Not that I mind you offering Ceddie a shoulder to cry on, but this is taking things a wee bit far.”

  Esper ignored him.

  “Is this the church’s teachings?” Cedric asked, squirming just a little.

  “Not mine,” Esper admitted. “It’s a tesud idea that comes from the single commandment God gave them: in all actions, seek to lessen suffering. They don’t neglect the suffering of self, either.”

  “You’re young to be so wise,” Cedric noted. “When did you ever find the time?”

  “You’re asking whether I tried time extension,” Esper replied. She kissed the exposed skin between Cedric’s beard and his collarbone. “I have. I’m twenty-five, but I’ve lived three lifetimes.”

  She felt Cedric swallow. “There’s… a way for two people to join in their dreams.”

  “I know.”

  “We could—”

  Esper pulled Cedric down and covered his mouth in a kiss. There was no diversion, no ulterior motive this time. When she finally released Cedric to let him catch his breath, she managed the first words. “If these are destined to be our last moments, I don’t want to spend them in a fantasy world. What have we got left to fear?”

  “Angry wizards who can see you despoiling a good, wholesome boy!” Mort shouted.

  Esper ignored him. This wasn’t about Mort.

  “I’ve got some rip-roaring ideas about how magic can save this iron tomb when science fails to wake up,” Mort persisted.

  Esper slid her hands under Cedric’s shirt and worked the garment over his head. She lay back and was pleased to find he had the sense to do the same for her.

  Breath came quick. Despite wearing less clothing by the moment, the room only seemed to grow warmer. Esper’s briefly held concerns that Cedric might not have known what to do with a woman were put to rest quickly. His bookish and gentlemanly manner melted away once the obstacles of propriety and mutual interest were cleared aside.

  Mort spluttered helplessly in the corner but soon vanished.

  Time vanished.

  The space station vanished.

  The scent of wildebeest vanished.

  All that remained were two wizards admitting to something that had seemed obvious from their first encounter.

  Esper had sworn to keep Cedric close and stop him from performing any magic. As she drifted into helpless ecstasy, Esper could only hope that Cedric was too distracted to try anything else.

  # # #

  Roddy had a Maho Saigai tool kit, same as everyone else on the emergency crew. It was a ragtag lot, to say the least. Of their eight-mechanic platoon, only two actually worked on the station. Two others were mechanics on a grocery freighter, then there was a woman who owned and operated her own courier service where she did everything from flying to bookkeeping, an ex-navy ordinance handler who’d retired into a life of fixing up hover-cruisers, and a kid barely out of college who claimed to be a whiz with engines.

  Then there was Roddy. He was the only laaku.

  “All right,” Henshaw bellowed. His voice rang in the discordant silence of the station’s main reactor chamber. He was the station’s lead mechanic. If nothing else, Roddy had at least gotten assigned to the A team. “Our fuel supply has crystallized. We need to warm up the fuel rods, get them back to their natural state, and force a restart of the power systems. I’m looking for ideas on how to generate enough heat with all our other systems down, too.”

  “How about we fixture a rod up in one of the lathes in the parts shop?” the ex-navy guy suggested. “Kill the gearbox, wrap the main shaft with chains, spin it up manually. We can use friction to warm the rod.”

  Roddy could only hope that there was enough respiratory protection on the stations to filter out the particulate that method would kick into the air.

  “Not a bad idea,” Henshaw allowed. “Take the laaku with you. He ought to be able to see inside the guts of a lathe better than one of us.”

  Roddy raised a hand. “Actually, I’ve got a lot of experience restarting wizard-fouled systems. Kicking the main reactor into reboot’s not gonna happen with so many minor systems down.”

  “The rest of the systems are down because the main reactor’s offline,” one of the grocery-freighter mechanics objected.

  “Agreed,” Henshaw stated. “Once we get main power up and running, the thruster team and the air recycler team will have it a ton easier. Hard to make repairs without power for diagnostics.”

  “But that’s not how it works with magic,” Roddy protested. “It’s not the reactors or the systems that’s broken here; it’s the laws of physics they run on. There’s probably some damage too since nothing got shut down properly, but that’s secondary. We need to coax science back into believing in itself again.”

  Roddy couldn’t believe that he was standing here explaining how magic worked to a bunch of mechanics. Judas must have felt much the same at the Last Supper, except Roddy wasn’t getting a meal out of this betrayal.

  Henshaw was already shaking his head. “We can’t get this station running on hocus pocus. I’m not playing psychologist to a bunch of machinery. I’ve taken apart just about every piece of equipment on this whole station, and let me assure you that none of it had a will of its own. It will go back together, and it will work once we get everything repaired. You just head down and help warm up fuel rods.”

  “Actually,” the ex-navy man spoke up. “Can I get someone besides the laaku? Not sure he’s the right man for the job.”

  Henshaw scowled but began to nod. He pointed to the courier woman. “Yeah. You, go with him and work on refitting the parts shop’s lathe.”

  Just when Roddy thought he might get assigned to something that might actually help, Henshaw dug into one of the specialized bags of tools and handed Roddy a wire brush. “Laaku, you get into the injection ports and scrub ‘em clean. I want everything sliding smooth and easy when those fuel rods are ready to go.”

  Roddy took the brush and looked at it like a corn dog with hair coming through the breading. “You gotta be shitting me.”

  “Too big a man to clean out an injection port?” Henshaw challenged.

  There were chuckles from the other mechanics as they dispersed to their assigned tasks.

  “Naw,” Roddy said. No point arguing with the idiot. “I can hack it. Gotten starships back up and running from more wizard mishaps than the rest of you lords and ladies combined, but I’m a team player.”

  Roddy just wasn’t playing on Team YF-77.

  The instant he was alone with the injection ports, Roddy bolted.

  Finding his way through the darkened station was half intuition, half guesswork, and half blind luck. Henshaw didn’t need clean injection ports, and crystallized fuel rods would sort themselves out in time. What this floating factory needed was a little boost of confidence.

  “Mort,” Roddy muttered. “If you’re looking up at this mess, I hope you’re getting a good I-told-you-so. I wouldn’t know a tenth what I do about working tech around magic if it wasn’t for you.”

  There was little glory in nursing a piece of technology back into working order after a run-in with magic, but there was certainly a degree of satisfaction with reclaiming a lost bit of science back from the jaws of superstition.

  Roddy set out to find the most primitive of P-tech systems that had gone offline. He was looking for a washroom.

  # # #

  Shoni wandered the promenade of the space station, shielding her eyes from directly viewing the catast
rophe of celestial lighting that plagued the glassed public areas. She imagined that she could feel the dilation and contraction of her pupils despite knowing that there were no nerve endings to perceive such a physiological response.

  “Rodek?” she called out. “Has anyone seen a missing laaku?”

  The station felt deserted, though she knew from Chief Fujita that the population was in lockdown, hiding in their quarters or pressed into repair service. Roddy most certainly would have been among those recruited—assuming he hadn’t weaseled out of helping the station repair crews.

  A patrol of station security guards rounded the arc of the station, headed her way. “Excuse me? Have any of you seen a laaku? Two centimeters taller than me. Tawny fur. Prominent brow ridge. Answers to Roddy.”

  “This area is restricted to emergency personnel,” one of the guards barked. “Return to your ship.” Somehow he seemed to have puzzled out that Shoni wasn’t one of the locals.

  “I’m looking for someone, and I shall return to my ship once I’ve located him,” Shoni replied. “He’s likely been assigned to a repair crew, but I have no status on repair team locations. I’m resorting to social engineering now since high-volume linguistics aren’t producing results.”

  “Listen, ma’am. This station’s heading sub-orbital. Last thing we need is civilians messing with the repair crews.”

  Shoni clenched her jaw. “Yes. I know the station is on an atmospheric course. Chief Fujita conscripted my services to make the calculation that told me just how much time I have left before my life ends and I never see my Roddy again. Despite the fact that there are four of you and I lead an admittedly sedentary lifestyle, certain anatomical advantages of my species mean that I can almost certainly outrun you. If you like, you can spend a portion of your remaining time in the temporal dimension chasing me until I lose you in a crawlspace or section of ductwork too small for you to follow, or you can find a more spiritually and socially rewarding manner in which to spend your final moments. Go pray to whatever gods may listen. Spend time with your families. If you have notions that your continued patrol of these vacant corridors will impact the fate of this facility, disabuse yourselves of them immediately and consider what you ought to be doing with the final three hours or so you have remaining. I know I am.”