by Max Carver
“This time of year, it's on the far side of the solar system.” Iris stared at a holographic animation of the planets, indicating the ice giant Yeti. “We'd have to reverse course, pass through Caldera's orbit, skirt a safe distance around the dwarf star...easily forty-six, forty-seven standard days. And of course, there's no spaceport or any human presence at Yeti Gate, never has been. I vote we continue onward to Valentine Gate.”
“I also vote we continue as planned, too.” Hagen raised a hand. After a moment, everyone else did, too. “Next, we should vote on a captain. Any major decisions—like our ship's course, or dealing with conflicts among ourselves—are still made by vote, but the captain commands in emergencies where there's no time for discussion.”
“You seem like the obvious pick to me,” Carol said to Hagen. “You got us out of there alive. And you need a comfortable chair with that leg.”
Eric nodded, a little reluctantly. Hagen might have been on the wrong side of the war, in his view, but at least he'd been in the war, and the Allied military seemed to have trained him well. He was the oldest, most experienced, and most combat-hardened person on the ship, accustomed to leading soldiers in wartime.
“Putting an Earthling in charge? I don't know.” Bartley scratched his red stubble, as if thinking deeply, which he probably wasn't. “Can't say I like the sound of that.”
“Actually, I'm from Phoenix,” Hagen said.
“So you grew up on a colony world and still fought for Earth? That might be worse.”
“Phoenix joined the Alliance, not the Colonial League,” Hagen said. “I fought for the people of my own world, just like we all did.” He looked at Bartley, then at Carol. The rebel marine, the Allied cavalry pilot. “Whoever we were in the past, all that matters anymore is surviving these goddamned worms.”
“I vote for Hagen, too,” Alanna said.
“Me, too,” Naomi said.
“Really?” Bartley looked at her. “The Earthling?”
“Who else are we going to put in charge?” Naomi asked him, raising an eyebrow. “You?”
“Hell, yeah,” Bartley said. “Vote for me and we'll have, uh, casual Fridays. With ice cream. Am I right, Eric?”
“I'm going to have to vote Hagen, sorry,” Eric said. “We should just keep going with what's working. And it's only for a couple weeks, then we all go home.”
“Guess I can live with it. For a couple weeks.” Bartley nodded. “And if Hagen goes nutso, we'll just mutiny.”
“You mean call for a new vote,” Alanna said.
“Whatever.” Bartley shrugged.
“Do robots get a vote?” Malvolio asked.
“No,” replied most of the people in the room.
“All right,” Hagen said. “Now that the forms of civil society have been restored, we need to spend every waking moment learning our jobs here, and learning this ship's capabilities, in case more of those worms show up. Dr. Erasmus—”
“I prefer 'Ras' for short,” the glowing digital ghost said. “Dr. Erasmus was my father. Sort of. My programmer. We have a complicated relationship, anyway.” He swigged from his champagne bottle.
“Okay...Ras. I assume you're here to serve as an interface for the ship's artificial intelligence, and not just to wander around chugging imaginary drinks.”
“I am a walking, talking frequently asked questions page,” Ras said. “Although the questions haven't been too frequent in recent years.”
“You can help with reactor maintenance? Navigation?”
“That and making coffee.”
“Weaponry? Security? Keeping watch for the enemy?”
“That and making coffee. I'm sorry. That was redundant. Redundant? There's a funny word. Re...dun....dant.” The projection of Erasmus became blocky and pixelated, and a low buzzing sound gushed from every speaker in the room. Then the image sharpened up again. “Whoa. That was weird. I may need to bug-check myself. I kind of prefer to do that in private, if you don't mind.”
“Please do bug-check yourself,” Hagen said.
“Yeah. I wonder if Dad even finished my programming. He always was a tinkerererererer—” The projection went chunky and pixelated again, then vanished abruptly.
“Well, that's not real goddamned reassuring, is it?” Bartley asked.
“We'll figure it out,” Hagen said. “All non-flight crew, go eat and rest, check your medical situation. We need to be ready to respond to an attack, and right now we're all falling apart.”
“I can take the conn, sir,” Carol said, glancing at his bandaged leg. Blood was starting to soak through, the wound probably suffering from the rigors of takeoff. “I'm the freshest onboard. And I can spend more time with the tutorials.”
“That's probably wise. I'm sure you're all ready for a rest, so unless there are other issues to discuss, I'm heading down to sick bay. Briefly. Malvolio—”
“It would be my honor to carry you in my arms again, my Captain—”
“Bring me that wheelchair you grabbed from the hangar.”
“Ah, yes, sir.” Malvolio removed the electronic chair from where he'd secured it against it the wall. “Though I doubt this machine will convey you with as much reverence as me, sir—”
“Shut up.” Hagen heaved himself from one chair to the other, then rolled out of the room. Naomi and Bartley followed, off to pick their accommodations and sleep.
“I hope like hell there's an officer's club somewhere,” Alanna grumbled, following them out.
Eric found himself standing next to Iris, who stared at Carol's back. The helicopter pilot watched an array of animated holograms floating above and around her console. Iris had already charted the quickest course to Valentine Gate, and the ship was pretty well flying itself by now. Hopefully the navigation systems were in better shape than the AI interface.
“Can you tell her I'm going to the gatekeeper's cabin?” Iris whispered to Eric. “Then come with me if you want.”
“Why do you want me to go tell her?” Eric asked. Carol seemed tough but not particularly terrifying.
“Just please do it for me.” Iris turned and left.
Eric nodded and walked over to Carol, feeling a little confused by the odd request, but he tried to act natural.
“We're all lucky you're here.” Eric gestured at the rotating, evolving holograms all around her, full of charts, graphs, and shifting equations. “All of that just reminds me of classes I failed in high school.”
“You wouldn't feel so lucky if you knew how clueless I am at this moment,” Carol said. “This doesn't have much to do with bombarding enemy bases or ferrying soldiers in and out of battle. My only consolation is that if I crash us into some stray moonlet, we'll all be dead for real before I get a chance to die of embarrassment.”
“That's...great?” Eric said. “Anyway, thanks for driving. I'm going to go sleep like the captain suggested.” He started to walk away. “Oh, and the gatekeeper went to her cabin.”
“Did she send you to tell me that?” Carol frowned. “Why would she do that?”
“You know...gatekeepers. Always mysterious. Am I right? More drama than a drama-bot.” He turned and left her on the huge bridge crowded with glowing consoles, all alone.
Except for Malvolio.
“Would you care to hear a selection of sonnets from the English Renaissance, madam?” Malvolio asked.
“I'd like that,” Carol replied.
Eric continued on to the gatekeeper's cabin just off the bridge. It was a working area as well as a living one; gatekeepers really were known for staying withdrawn into their own world, and also very secretive about their craft.
He wasn't sure why Iris had asked him to her cabin, but he hoped her interest wasn't romantic. He had to remain loyal to Suzette; his sense of honor demanded it. But at the same time, he felt something with Iris, and wasn't sure how he would react if she moved on him. He might not be able to resist. He prayed silently as he approached her door.
What he really wanted was a hot shower
and sleep. His brain couldn't handle anything much more complex at the moment.
The cabin door slid open at his approach, making a noise like a soft whisper. The cabin within was quite large, divided into two rooms he could see. The door across the room from him stood open, revealing a private bunk with a king-sized bed in the second room.
In the first room, just in front of him, Iris sat cross-legged on cushions, her eyes closed, hands resting on her knees as though she were meditating.
Several thick cables crawled down together from the holes in the deckhead above, like a writhing bundle of snakes descending from a jungle canopy toward Iris.
Each cable terminated in a shiny metallic circle, the same shape and hue as the implants all over her head. What had she called them? A silver-palladium alloy?
The long, serpentine cables attached to her skull, one after the other, until she looked like Medusa crossed with Rapunzel. The other ends of the cables, Eric knew, attached to the special equipment that gatekeepers used to communicate with the wormhole gates. That was about the extent of his knowledge on the subject, though.
Iris opened her eyes and looked up at him. The doorway whispered its way shut behind him.
“So...everything okay?” Eric pointed his thumb back over his shoulder. “I was about to head to my new room, too. As soon as I pick one.”
“Eric, can I trust you?” Her large, dark eyes seemed to drink him in.
“Uh, sure. Is this about the relic? Because you can definitely have it...” He brought it out, taking care to avoid skin contact.
“Find somewhere safe to keep it,” she said. “I can't touch it, remember? Bad feedback.” She gestured to her cranial implants. “But it likes you.”
“Likes me?”
“It didn't bother you too much, anyway. You must be the bearer of the relic. And you must stay at my side.”
“Okay. Until we get somewhere safe, right? And we all go home? That's a couple of weeks. No problem.”
“It may not be that simple.” Her eyes shifted to the door, as though verifying it was closed. “Those two, Frank Hagen and Carol Foster, are Allied military.”
“They were. Now they work for Alanna.”
“If the Ptolemaics—the Allied gatekeepers—hear about this relic, they will come for it. And they will stop at nothing to take it away from us.”
“How would they even know—”
“They have eyes and ears everywhere. And hands. I need you to be wary of Hagen and Carol in particular. Don't trust them, keep your distance.”
“All right.” Eric wasn't sure what to make of what she was saying, but he supposed it was easy enough not to trust people who'd fought for the Alliance. Hating Earth and the Alliance was practically instinctive for a Gideon boy. “You don't think this current situation goes beyond the war, though? The Allies and Colonials have the armistice now—”
“You and I can see the alien threat is bigger than Allies and Colonials, but I wouldn't count on everyone else seeing it that way. Can I trust you, Eric? Can I count on you?” She reached up and squeezed his hand.
He felt a confused stir of feelings at her touch—the desire to protect her, but underneath that, maybe, the desire to do more.
He released her hand and put those feelings aside as best he could. He was exhausted, sleep-deprived, and he needed to think about protecting himself from mistakes he could end up regretting.
“Yes,” he said. “I'm with you.”
“Thank you.” A smile spread across her face. “Now let me work. We'll talk more soon.”
Eric left, then descended a narrow ladder well to check out the crew quarters.
The ship had large bunk rooms for miners, meant to house eight to twelve workers, and smaller, more comfortable cabins for flight crew officers, typically with four bunks for junior officers, complete privacy for the highest ranks.
With only seven people aboard, they could each nab an officer-level cabin. Any of them would be luxurious, far more space than he'd had in his crowded fourth-class bunk room on the freighter to Caldera.
He picked a room for himself, thinking he would leave his things there and go have a shower. Then he realized he had no things except the filthy clothes on his back and a few bloodstained, water-damaged items in his pockets. A pocket screen, some cash, a key to his obliterated apartment back in Canyon City. Where all his things were.
He managed to head to the showers and hose himself off. Then he returned and flopped down on his bunk, where he fell into the deepest sleep of his life.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
No answer ever came from Valentine Station.
Eric awoke to find the mood on the bridge somber. Hagen had tried to hail the distant spaceport a few times more, then decided radio silence might be best until they heard something back. Nobody disagreed. Nobody spoke much. Zero response from the spaceport seemed to indicate that the worms had gotten there already and wiped the place out.
Nobody wanted to say this aloud.
They had no choice but to continue onward toward the gate. Caldera was the only habitable world in the system. Traveling to any other star system was impossible, far out of the question. Their long-dead bodies would arrive many centuries later, if at all, a skeleton crew drifting on a ghost ship.
More hours passed without a response from Valentine Station. The bridge was silent except for Bartley's occasional exclamations from his weapons modules, as he blew up hostile Allied ships, or was blown up by them: “Suck on that, you mud-licking moss-humper!” or “Reload! I'll get you bastards this time!”
A standard day went by, and no response from Valentine Station. Eric slept fitfully in his bunk, his dreams full of nightmares, of Reamer, Prentice, and Bowler Junior getting ripped apart by monsters. Then Iris and the others around him. Sometimes he made it back to the ranch in Gideon, only to find the herd and the horses slaughtered, his family dead, worms infesting the homestead.
He made himself eat, taking no pleasure even from the sweet canned peaches and butterscotch pudding. Sometimes he ate with others in the cafeteria, and they talked about anything except the horrors they'd seen and the high probability of death waiting ahead. They even asked Malvolio to perform his monologues, songs, and one-man shows. His performances were generally overwrought and his jokes corny, drawing groans from his small audience. The drama-bot had proved extremely useful in battle, but seemed to resent any compliments on that basis. As an entertainer, though, he was middling at best.
Besides Iris, everyone dressed in red miners' coveralls, which were in plentiful supply on the ship. Eric had been ready to burn his blood-stained old clothes, but Iris had sealed them in plastic instead, along with her own, in hopes of preserving some worm DNA for biologists to study.
Two standard days passed, and no word from Valentine Station. They waited and watched for any sign of attack. Eric occasionally scouted ahead with a drone, mostly just for practice. There was nothing to see, just endless black emptiness.
During breaks from his drone and weapons tutorials, Eric began wandering the empty areas of the massive ship. There was a cafeteria and entertainment area for the mine workers, with a handful of basic games like ping-pong and billiards, all of it bolted down to the floor. A fitness center offered some resistance and running machines crammed into a narrow, dim space.
The bulk of the working space was crowded with heavy machinery, everything needed for the entire refining process, from rock crushing to pouring and cooling purified ore into ingots for transport and sale. A secondary suite of machinery and tools was on hand to keep the refinery and ship in good repair.
It was an interesting area to explore, and a great spot for Eric to get away from everyone and have some peace and quiet.
Eric was alone on a catwalk in the refinery, looking down into a row of empty, spotless leaching beds below, where precious metals would be chemically purified when the ship was in operation. He was thinking about going home, seeing his family, seeing Suzette. He was hardly re
turning the conquering hero with a sack full of gold, but maybe that was never his part in life. Maybe he was the weak one, like his family already believed, the one meant for mediocrity, for staying home and tending the farm while his older brothers went on to glory.
Because Eric's part in this war was already over. He'd been rejected by the Colonial military. If the aliens came, it would be his brothers who led the resistance while Eric stayed home snapping peas in a rocking chair on the porch with his grandmother.
“It seemed like a good idea, didn't it?” a voice asked right beside him, out of nowhere. Eric nearly leaped over the railing in surprise.
Ras slowly materialized beside him, standing a few centimeters away in an exact imitation of Eric—hands on the rail, leaning down to look at the floor below. A digital cigarette burned in a long golden holder between Ras's fingers, giving off fading, odorless smoke.
“Don't do that,” Eric said. “Popping up like that.”
“Just think about it,” Ras continued as if he hadn't noticed Eric's discomfort. “We process all the raw materials on-site. We leave behind the useless slag, and all the toxic chemical waste, way out there in deep space where it can't touch any living planet. The bean-counters loved the maximized efficiency of it, too.”
“So it was all about creating pollution-free mining?” Eric asked.
The apparition grinned. “It was mostly about the challenge of building the biggest saws and crushers that had ever been installed on a spacecraft. It was about seeing how big they could go, like many things of that era...the biggest ship, the biggest skyscraper, the biggest orbital base...they called it the Big Times for a reason. They wanted to make the biggest of everything. They ended up making the biggest war of all time, too.”
“Asteroid mining seems like a whole other set of problems compared to underground,” Eric said.
“Fewer problems, in some cases. Certainly gravity is less of a troublesome issue. Mining a planetary surface is only useful on a place like Caldera, where the volcanic activity churns up abnormally large quantities of heavy metals. Out there, an asteroid-cutter like this simply grabs the entire rock.”