§
Amelia came out of the shuttle and walked calmly over to the supply shed. She brought out two backpacks and two pair of hiking boots. She was half finished packing before Claire came out of the smoke house.
Amelia gave her an affirmative nod, tossed Claire’s boots in her direction and continued packing. Claire took the boots over to the picnic table and changed out of her shoes. Five minutes later they were away from the clearing, following an obscure trail leading east.
Amelia’s weekly uplink to Delta Station had brought news. The station’s tracking had identified several recent traverses through the Labyrinth, one of which had to have been Danny. Both craft had been identified as of human design. Both had docked at Delta Station.
And then Amelia located an encoded message recently left in the logs. It had been Danny. He noted his arrival at the station, as well as that of Uncle Marcus a few days earlier. They acknowledged reading the brief message left behind by the sisters.
A second message, more cryptic than the first, appeared to contain coordinates. If correct, the location was two days hike to the east; practically in the neighborhood.
They travelled till almost dusk, when they reached a semi-permanent campsite of theirs. It was now partially overgrown, as they hadn’t come this way in almost a year. They cleared away the encroaching brush, cleaned up the fire pit and finished setting up camp.
Sitting before the small campfire after dinner, Claire brought up what they had both been thinking about since calculating the coordinates they have been given.
“If they knew we were here, they wouldn’t have landed two days away. They would have landed in the next clearing.”
“Danny did say he was seeking family,” said Amelia.
“He left that message before he entered the Labyrinth,” said Claire. “They don’t even know we’re on the planet.”
“I expect that’s true,” said Amelia. “But they hope we’re here. After all, Danny directed us here.”
Danny had actually only directed them as far as Delta Station, but they assumed he had wanted them to choose Old Earth over attempting to navigate out of the Labyrinth and going somewhere else, possibly home. He just couldn’t openly tell them to go planet-side.
But the coordinates they had decrypted were only two days march from them. An entire planet, and Danny lands only two days away?
That’s what was really bugging Claire. Forty miles away had to be more than a coincidence, but it wasn’t about his sisters. It wasn’t about them.
What would bring them to those coordinates, and how had Claire and Amelia ended up planting roots so near?
Was it the spaceship graveyard? The graveyard had served them well as a nice hiding place for their little shuttle. Might it also serve as a marker of some kind? For what?
Claire sat quietly then, watching the flames of their little fire, looking deeply into the glowing coals beneath.
So there was something else nearby.
§
The sisters broke camp the next morning well before dawn, the world around them just light enough to travel by. An hour after sunrise they were following what had at one time been a major highway, was now little more than a wide, smooth band of yellow grass stretching out nearly to the horizon. They occasionally came across large, metal panels lying on the ground, the paint on the fallen road signs having long since faded away.
Late afternoon… they approached the outer perimeter of the remnants of a small county airport. The hangars, service buildings and tower were gone, leaving only the open expanse, a few piles of rotted wood and bent sheet metal. There was a shuttle not much larger than their own parked midway along the vestiges of what had once been the concrete airstrip. There were several figures moving about near the shuttle, and several others rummaging about one of the piles of wood and metal a hundred yards from the shuttle.
Claire and Amelia watched from the shadows of the treeline.
“What do you think?” asked Amelia. From this distance, the figures looked human.
“It must be them,” said Claire. “Who else would it be?”
Amelia spoke quite matter-of-factly: “Then why are we still hiding here in the trees?”
Claire studied the scene a few moments more, finally let out a loud sigh and straightened.
“Right. Let’s go.”
They stepped out of the trees and started across the grassy field bordering the long-abandoned airfield. They were nearly halfway to the shuttle before two of the figures stepped away and started toward them.
Danny looked to be well into his fifties, Uncle Marcus a few years younger.
“Aren’t you a welcome sight,” said Danny, still six or seven paces away.
“We were in the neighborhood,” said Claire. Literally…
The four exchanged hugs and tearful welcomes. They talked over each other as each tried to get a word in about cryptic messages and empty planets and years in cryo and gray hair.
They grew unexpectedly silent, looked at one another with broad, inane smiles. They suddenly reached out and hugged each other all over again.
Once they managed to pull apart yet again, Claire asked how they had found them here.
Danny shook his head. “We weren’t sure you were here at all. I tried to be optimistic, but…”
One of the people who had been digging into the massive pile of debris approached the reunion.
“Sorry to disturb you, Colonel,” he said, turning then to Marcus. “Marcus. The way is clear.”
“Thanks, Jack,” said Marcus. “We’re right behind you.”
The group followed Jack, continuing their conversation as they walked.
Danny had hoped that Claire and Amelia had chosen to come to Old Earth, and that they would choose to settle in the spaceship graveyard, use it as cover. But he could never let on the importance of this location. The Takiree had to believe that whatever the original importance of Old Earth, that it had been abandoned, as the evidence provided suggested.
Claire smirked. “You mean in the same way you led us here and then abandoned us?”
“It worked, eh?”
Claire smirked again, but she had to give him that. It had worked.
Amelia agreed. But…
“What is it that’s so important?” she asked.
“Shall we see?” asked Marcus. They reached the pile of rubble. Much of it had been pulled aside, exposing a large metal door. Those who had cleared the way now stepped aside. Marcus reached down and slid aside an iron bar, then pulled the door open.
It exposed an access shaft four feet across leading down into the dark. Cool air rose up from deep below.
The last time Marcus had been here, two centuries earlier, they had used a freight elevator a hundred yards away. That had been sealed off, leaving only this shaft to get back inside.
“I’m afraid it’s all ladder for the trip down,” he said. “And dark. We won’t have power until we get below.”
Marcus started down.
Danny gave his sisters a grin and a wink, then climbed onto the ladder. Claire followed, and then Amelia. The others remained topside, starting back to the shuttle once Amelia began her descent. There were other tasks above ground yet to be completed.
The opening above Amelia grew smaller and dim, until finally it was little more than a speck of light, the shaft an all-consuming black. The only sounds were those of hands and feet on the ladder rungs and the breathing of the four climbers.
More than a minute later Amelia heard a different sound drifting up from below; the faint hum of support systems.
She stepped from the ladder just as Marcus pulled down a lever, bringing a diffused glow to the cavern.
Amelia had expected a cavern, but had thought it would be more, would be something larger. This cavern was smaller than she expected. It was fifty feet wide, no more than two hundred feet deep. It was forty feet from floor to ceiling, and the platform they were standing on was about twenty feet above the floor.
On the floor were eight rows of cryo canisters, starting directly below them and running to the far end. Amelia estimated about a hundred and sixty sleepers in all.
Danny looked thoughtfully out across the rows of cryo tubes.
“Those first weeks, first months really, we didn’t know what was happening. We stayed with the transport cruiser at first, did what we could to protect those in cryo. Many sections of the ship had been damaged; entire compartments destroyed, like the one you two had been in.”
But when it became clear what was going on, they knew they had to get as many as they could to safety. But just bringing them out of cryo wasn’t going to be enough. They knew they had to protect them for the time after… to rebuild.
“The future would need people like your parents,” said Marcus.
Their mother had been a ranking member of the Council of Governors. Their father was a planetary scientist with extensive experience in all the disciplines. Both parents would be desperately needed once the conflict was over, however it ended.
And so Danny joined the fight against the Takiree while Marcus set about to create doomsday vaults like this one. Dozens just like this, containing the seeds of humanity, scattered about on dozens of worlds…
Dozens of tiny human colonies to rise from the ashes should things go really bad; insurance that the human race wouldn’t go extinct.
The four grew silent. For a few moments there was only the faint hum of the support systems caring for the sleepers.
Amelia turned then and looked expectantly at Marcus. Marcus sensed the focus, looked side-glance at his niece and then nodded out to the floor.
“First row. Canisters four and five.”
§
Amelia was sitting at her computer station on the command deck in Delta Station. She was working second shift, monitoring the Labyrinth defense systems. A four-ship squadron had been traversing the Labyrinth for almost three weeks and was now approaching the station.
She continued to monitor, though Control had the job of actually guiding them in.
Claire was in one of those ships, returning from patrol.
There had been no sign of the Takiree within the Labyrinth perimeter for some time, but there were still a number of enemy cruisers in this sector, and more beyond. Humans crossed swords with them from time to time, but the weakened Takiree were more concerned with the Jaung these days. Trying to conscript another race to do their dirty work hadn’t gone so well the last time and they weren’t all that eager to attempt it again.
Amelia finished her shift about half an hour after Claire docked and cleared security. She met her coming out of the locker room.
“Hey, Sis,” said Claire. They continued down the hall. “Wanna head over to the rec room? I just have to stop by my quarters.”
“Shouldn’t you be getting some rest?”
“I got plenty of rest trudging through the Labyrinth. I need some activity.”
They turned into the main passageway and approached the quarters sector.
“Sure,” said Amelia. “I’ll just keep you company.”
They turned down a side passage and stopped outside Claire’s quarters. Claire pressed her palm on the reader and the door slid aside. Amelia followed Claire into the room.
Claire disappeared through a side door, Amelia walked over to the porthole. Old Earth was visible, a large blue, green and white ball set against the black of space several hundred thousand miles distant.
“Are you ready for our trip planet-side?” she called out. “We’re leaving tomorrow, you know.”
“No problem; plenty of time,” said Claire from the other room. “Ten minutes to pack, and I’m set.”
The colony of a hundred and sixty had grown considerably. Hundreds of immigrants had arrived over the past year. Several thousand more were en route.
Claire and Amelia had been there at the beginning, when the sleepers were awakened; had been there to welcome their parents, to guide them through those first confusing days. They had stayed then to help their parents establish the community.
But there had also been a demand for personnel on the reawakened Delta Station and the Labyrinth defense network, a demand for skills that Claire and Amelia possessed.
Claire came back into the room and stood beside her sister. She was dressed for a martial arts workout, something she had picked up since moving back to Delta Station.
She looked out at the view.
“It’ll be nice seeing Mom and Dad,” she said. “Two weeks seems a bit much, though.”
“Planet-side isn’t so bad,” said Amelia, to herself as much as to Claire. And family is important.
“Uh, huh,” sighed Claire, rather half-heartedly. “Any word from Danny?”
“They can’t make it.”
“Hmm. Too bad.”
Danny and Marcus were helping coordinate the establishment of the fledgling federation of colonies. Old Earth had been made the headquarters for the federation, but there was as yet very little in the way of a coalition. For now it was a title only.
Claire and Amelia’s mother was to be the first head of Council, once there was one.
The upcoming visit had nothing to do with any of that.
This was strictly family.
“It wouldn’t take much, you know…” said Claire.
“What’s that?”
“To make her spaceworthy.”
It took a moment. Amelia smiled wistfully.
Their little shuttle was still in the graveyard. Bringing it back to life would take a lot of work, and considerable refitting. And it would need a new power core.
Still. It was just waiting there, right where they left it…
Claire let out another long sigh.
“I miss it,” she said softly. Out there…
“I know,” said Amelia.
Claire stared coolly at Old Earth. She gave her sister a slight nudge. “We could just head the other way.”
“Yeah,” Amelia mumbled under her breath. That would be nice…
“So?”
“No… No, we couldn’t.” Duties, responsibilities…
Claire and Amelia stared out through the porthole, into space, into the black that lay beyond the planet in the distance.
“You sure?” asked Claire.
~ end
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Sisters in Space: The Complete Series Page 13