by Marko Kloos
“Oh, I am fine with square right now,” Tess said. She had finished her dinner, and now she was taking sips from a half-liter bottle of Rhodian ale while she listened to the conversation. “When I opened the lid and that fucker was thirty centimeters from my face, I swear it took a year off my life.”
The transit to Acheron was uneventful. At three and a half g, they passed most of the traffic on the transfer route, ore haulers and general-goods freighters chugging along at an easy and energy-saving one g, their crews bantering with Zephyr or giving them shit about wasting reactor fuel. When they finally left Rhodian space, Aden felt like the ship had finally passed through a minefield they had been navigating for days. He knew he wasn’t the only one who was relieved because the tension on board dissipated over the next day like air from a broken tank valve. By the time they got to Palladian space, they had resumed their communal dinners, Tristan had given him a few lessons on how to sharpen knives with a water stone—the only proper way, according to him—and even Maya had stuck around after meals to socialize a little with Aden and Tess down in the workshop. They had all transferred the money they owed for the operating costs, and nobody had approached Aden to take him up on his offer of paying their share. The 2,500 ags that was his share had been his biggest expense by far since he joined the crew, and he was in no danger of running out of money, so he resolved to pay the communal bar tabs on Acheron until someone pried the comtab from his hands by force.
“You’ve been here before, right?” Tristan asked him when they were on final approach for docking at Acheron’s enormous spin station. The planet was spread out behind the station and taking up most of the forward array’s field of view, ochre swirls and intermingling streams that never stopped moving.
“A few times,” Aden said. “Long before the war. I was in my early twenties. Gods, was that really twenty years ago?”
“Not much has changed down there. The war just kind of passed this place by. Their fleet yards actually had more business. The Rhodies and the fuzzheads were going through new ships like they were made for one-time use. Lots of replacement orders.”
“I wouldn’t really say the war passed us by,” Maya said from above. “Ten thousand navy spacers killed. For casualty rates, we had higher losses than anyone else. Hefty price to pay for more ship orders.”
“But you didn’t get occupied for four years,” Tristan said. “With the fuzzheads hauling off half of your output every year.”
Maya just chuckled.
“That would have been a fun sight,” she said. “Watching Gretian drop ships trying to land troops on CoCity. Hard enough to land there when you have permission.”
Aden watched the scenery while Zephyr was going through its AI-controlled docking ballet with the station, matching rotational speed and lining up with the assigned docking berth, then letting the station controller reel the ship in like a fish on a line.
“All right,” Decker said when they had latched onto the station and Tess had throttled down the reactor to standby mode. “Once we’re off the ship, the overhaul crew has her for a week. Make sure you pack everything you want to take down to the surface with you. We get one free ride down and back as part of the service contract, or it’ll cost you a thousand ags just to get back up to the station to fetch it.”
They went through the security locks at Acheron Station and met up with the liaison from Tanaka Spaceworks, a bubbly young woman who was reasonably fluent in Oceanian. She ushered them through the commercial part of the station and to a small private charter shuttle terminal, where the Tanaka people had prepared refreshments for the Zephyr crew while the shuttle was prepped and cleared for their ride down to Coriolis City.
“This was all part of the purchase price,” Captain Decker said as they were sipping drinks and watching the launch preparations from the terminal’s VIP lounge. “Full three-year overhaul package included. But if you think all these smiling people are going to give us so much as a napkin for free when we show up for the five-year overhaul, I would love to talk to you about some oceanfront property I have for sale on Hades, right near the equator.”
“Two weeks of idle time,” Tess said. “I’ll not touch a single wrench.”
“What are you going to do with all that time?” Aden asked.
“There’s a racetrack in CoCity,” she said. “It’s like a regulation track, but scaled down for karts. Whenever they don’t have any league events, you can rent twenty-kilowatt karts and flog them around the track. Ten kilometers from start to finish. They charge eighty ags per lap.”
“How much did you spend there again last time we were here?” Tristan asked.
“Look, you have your vices, I have mine. I like things that go.”
“I’ll have to try that,” Aden said. “Not that I have anything else planned.”
“Let me know when you want to check it out, and I’ll take you,” Tess said. “Two weeks on CoCity, and you have nothing planned at all? You don’t know anyone here?”
Aden thought of Torie, the girl he’d met on Cloud Dancer three months ago. He wondered if she had ever started that job with Hanzo she’d accepted, or whether the near-death experience in the life pod had realigned her priorities. But wherever she was now, she probably wouldn’t appreciate the physical reminder of that day if he showed up at her residence unit to say hello.
“Not really,” he said. “Nobody I can just drop in on.”
“You have a big fat ledger full of ags and no attachments,” Tristan said. “Coriolis City is made for people like that. Walk around for an afternoon. Check the service directories. Just go out at night and hop into whatever place looks interesting. If you’ve forgotten how to spend your leisure time, this is the place to learn that skill again.”
“Spoken like a subject-matter expert,” Decker said. “All right, they’re sending over the chipper one to come fetch us. Let’s get down there and turn our brains off for a while. After this week, I’m ready for some mindless debauchery.”
The flight down to Coriolis City was so smooth that it felt like they were in a gentle simulator ride, and the lack of portholes and viewscreens in the shuttle’s luxurious cabin only contributed to the effect. When Aden asked about the absence of visuals, Maya told him that it was standard procedure to leave the external views deactivated because too many off-worlders found the daytime descent into the planetary atmosphere terrifying instead of interesting.
Aden had seen the main atrium at the Coriolis City spaceport before, but the effect was still every bit as stunning as it had been the first time he had walked up the ramp from the arrivals area, many years and two lifetimes ago. He thought of the kid he had been back then, still thoroughly wet behind the ears, convinced by upbringing and privilege that everything was laid out for him to seize as he wanted. He had almost nothing in common with the version of him that had looked at the bustling city on the other side of the massive panoramic viewport twenty years ago.
“All right,” Decker said when they were all standing in the middle of the atrium. “Drinks tomorrow evening at the usual place. Someone flick Aden the location, please. You know the drill until then.”
“There’s a drill?” Aden asked.
“When we have a week or more somewhere, we spend the first twenty-four hours by ourselves,” Tess explained. “Can be more if you want it to be. Can’t be less. No hanging out, no Mnemosyne messages, no vidcoms. We are stacked in close quarters on the ship for weeks and months. The twenty-four–zero rule is so we get some scheduled time off from each other.”
“And to have a window where you can do all the weird shit you don’t want everyone else to know about,” Tristan added with a craggy smile. “All right, I am off for my scheduled weird shit. See you all tomorrow evening.”
He winked at Aden and walked off without further ceremony.
Maya nodded at them and followed suit, pointedly walking in a different direction than Tristan had. Then Decker and Henry went off in their own trajectories as we
ll and disappeared in the crowd.
“I sent you the location of the bar for tomorrow night,” Tess said. “Try to find your own fun in the meantime. Just don’t get killed. And if you get detained, make sure it’s a low-bond offense, or we won’t be able to get you out. See you tomorrow.”
Then Aden was alone in the middle of the vast expanse of the spaceport atrium, entirely on his own for the first time since he had stepped into the shuttle off Adrasteia with Decker and Henry three months ago to start his job on Zephyr.
After weeks of shipboard life, he didn’t feel ready to throw himself into the bustle of the city beyond without some acclimatization first, so he walked over into the atrium mercantile, where dozens of shops offered travel supplies and tourist mementos. He browsed the goods with no intention of buying, just to get used to having strangers around him again. Then he bought a snack and a drink from a food stand and sat down to eat and give his brain a little bit more time to adjust.
The last time I was here, I was Solveig’s age, he thought. Maybe even younger. He had to think about her precise age—she was born in 900, so she had turned twenty-three in May.
The thought of his sister brought a smile to his face. They had only exchanged brief messages since their Mnemosyne meeting, to keep the electronic intercept opportunities for Ragnar’s corporate security division at a minimum. It had been almost a month since their last quick exchange.
I have two weeks off, he thought. Two weeks in the same location, and the place is littered with Mnemosyne nodes.
Aden got out his comtab and looked at the translucent slab in his hand for a moment without calling up a screen. Then he decided that the opportunity merited the risk. With that much advance notice, maybe his sister could find the time to meet in the Mnemosyne again.
He brought up a message screen.
Hey, shorty. Having stationary downtime for the next two weeks. Can we meet in the Syne?
He sent the note off into the Mnemosyne, where quantum entanglement would ensure that his query would reach his sister’s clandestine comtab before he’d have the time to put the device back into his pocket, the ninety million kilometers between their devices bridged in an instant because the data bits had no mass.
When he got up and walked back into the middle of the atrium, the sky had taken on a vivid orange hue that was streaked with red, yellow, and white. The slight change in backdrop made the cityscape outside look even more dramatic, as if the orange had increased the contrast of the geometric lines against the chaos of the swirling clouds. There was something undeniably energetic and triumphant about the place, a constant memorial to the resilience and ingenuity of humans, who could find a way to thrive even when it meant spending lifetimes suspended between the heavens and the ground.
If you’ve forgotten how to spend your leisure time, this is the place to learn that skill again, Tristan had told him.
Aden shouldered his travel bag and walked toward the exit. He had forgotten how to have fun, but now he had time to kill and a bank ledger full of gratuitous spending money, and he suspected that those were the only ingredients he needed to put the truth of Tristan’s statement to the test.
CHAPTER 16
DUNSTAN
Minotaur was on the prowl.
They were deep in Rhodian space, on a ballistic trajectory well beyond any of the current transfer lanes after a brisk acceleration burn. Dunstan didn’t know who would be waiting for the delivery of the nuclear warhead at the rendezvous coordinates, but he suspected they would find themselves unpleasantly surprised at the nature of the courier vehicle.
“Eleven minutes to turnaround burn,” Bosworth said from his station.
“Anything at all on passive, Mayler?”
“Negative,” the tactical officer said. “If they’re out there, they’ve got their lights off and their reactor on standby.”
“If they’re smart,” Dunstan said. “Once we turn around and light the drive, they’ll see us coming from a long way out. Let’s do our best to look like a fast courier and not like a warship. We won’t be able to see through our drive plume, but neither will they.”
“And then we flip around and light up the neighborhood with the active array, and oops.”
“Let’s hope the surprise will just be on their side, Mayler. I’ve had my fill of oops moments for a while.”
Dunstan looked at the plot, which was empty except for the icon representing Minotaur. The frigate was pretending to be a smuggling ship. Sending out recon drones or scanning the space ahead with active sensors would give them away and send their quarry running. Once they turned the ship and fired up their drive to slow down, they’d be blind to anything ahead until the deceleration burn was complete. The element of surprise would work both ways, but he was hedging a bet that Minotaur would be able to handle whatever popped up on their active sensors in front of them once they pointed their bow at the target coordinates again. No smuggling crew in their right minds would engage in a fight with a warship of their size, and Dunstan had stacked the cards to make sure running away wouldn’t be an option for their quarry either. But if there was one unchanging constant in this business, it was that no engagement ever went as planned.
“Give me a system status on the weapons.”
“Green across the board, sir,” Lieutenant Mayler replied. “All four rail-gun mounts are warmed up and ready to be energized. Magazines are at one hundred percent. Point defense is on standby.”
We’re as ready as we’re going to be, Dunstan decided. He glanced at the plot again and took a slow breath.
“XO, sound action stations,” he said.
“Sound action stations, aye,” Lieutenant Bosworth replied. He tapped the comms panel, and the all-ship announcement system blared the alert klaxon.
“Action stations, action stations. All hands to action stations. Set damage control condition Zulu throughout the ship.”
Every crew member on Minotaur spent the next few minutes securing vacsuits, connecting life support umbilicals, and assuming their assigned battle stations. All over the ship, airtight compartment doors sealed bulkheads to prepare for possible damage. Dunstan had heard the action stations klaxon so many times in his life that the sound would never fail to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He went through his own preparations automatically, his hands performing tasks they had done a thousand times before, tightening restraints and twisting connectors onto receptacles in his gravity couch. There was an odd comfort in the routine, even though it meant they were about to take the ship into danger. It gave his hands something to do and his mind the feeling that he was in control.
“All stations report ready for action, sir,” Bosworth said.
“Very well. Midshipman Boyer, commence turnaround and deceleration burn.”
“Turn for deceleration burn, aye,” Boyer confirmed. This was her first deployment cruise, but after three months of patrol that had included two combat encounters, she had lost all her initial timidity and nervousness. Minotaur and her current crew had seen more action than any other fleet unit since the end of the war.
Except for Danae, Dunstan reminded himself. Whoever had waylaid and destroyed the unlucky light cruiser could very well be waiting for Minotaur at the end of this deceleration burn. But this ship was ready for a fight.
Still, as Dunstan looked around the battle-ready AIC, he couldn’t shake the unwelcome memory of the bodies drifting among the wreckage of Danae, a ship that had been ten years newer than his frigate and twice as powerful.
“We are down to maneuvering speed,” Boyer announced at the end of their deceleration burn. “Cutting the main drive in thirty seconds.”
“Steady as she goes,” Dunstan said. “Tactical, go active on the forward array as soon as we come out of the turn. Let’s take a good close look at the neighborhood.”
Minotaur had run her plasma drive at full throttle to slow down from her ballistic coasting velocity as quickly as possible. The physics of a drive plu
me at maximum thrust meant that they had been flying blind for the last hour and a half because the sensors could not see through the noise and thermal bloom. In thirty seconds, they’d be able to open their eyes again and see what was ahead. As much as Dunstan wanted to get his hands on the people who were trying to take delivery of a weapon of mass destruction, part of him was hoping they’d find nothing but empty space in front of them.
“Standing by for active sensor sweep,” Mayler said.
Minotaur’s main drive throttled back to its idle setting. Dunstan felt only a slight moment of discomfort as the gravmag generator at the bow of the ship spun down at the same time to keep the gravity on the ship at one standard g.
“Commencing turnaround,” Boyer said.
Dunstan watched the tactical display rotate as Boyer used Minotaur’s thrusters to spin the ship around its lateral axis.
“Turnaround complete. Coasting at one point five kilometers per second.”
“Energizing main sensor array,” Mayler said. The tactical display changed color to indicate the active radiation they were emitting to scan the space ahead. They had just done the space warfare equivalent of walking backward into a dark basement, turning around, and switching on a very bright flashlight. If any shooting was going to start, it would happen in the next few moments.
Five seconds passed, then ten. The tactical display remained unchanged, with only Minotaur sitting in the center of the three-dimensional holographic orb. Then a lone gray icon appeared on the display, accompanied by a notification alert sound.
“Contact,” Mayler called out. “Bearing 299 by 11, distance eight hundred kilometers, designate Sultan-1. Moving at twenty meters per second.”
“Just hanging out and waiting for their delivery,” Dunstan said. “And right within ten thousand klicks of the coordinates the courier crew gave us.”
“No transponder signal, and their drive is cold, sir.”
“They’re running dirty. Because of course they are. Open comms and give me a link.” Dunstan picked up his comms set.