Orion Lost

by Alastair Chisholm

  “No – but good thinking! No. People thought it could, but mind-state is just too complex. The ship can’t read your state, or change it. It can only store it and transfer it back. It’s weird, but it works, and we’ve never had a failed Jump.”

  They’d gone on to talk about Eos Five, their new home, and what would have to be left behind, and the habitat they would live in, and Beth never gave the Jump another thought.

  Now it was time. The children would Sleep first, then non-essential crew, then the rest. They would Jump, and then they would be Woken in reverse order – essential crew, non-essential, and finally the children.

  So Beth and the others now stood in a cargo container filled with sleep pods, ready to climb in. Each child had an adult with them; Beth was with her mum. Beth thought the other children looked a little nervous, except for Lauryn, who had to be physically restrained from tapping at her pod’s control panel.

  Ship’s hologram floated at the front of the room, and on its signal they climbed up and into their pods. They were comfortable; each one had a foam mattress and a pillow.

  Beth’s mum looked in over the top. “OK?”

  “Sure.”

  Ship said, “The Jump will take less than zero point zero five seconds to complete; however, your Wake-up will be delayed while the crew ensure everything is safe. When you Wake you may experience some disorientation; this is normal and will pass.

  “When you are ready, please let your carer know.”

  Beth looked up at her mum and gave the thumbs-up. A few seconds later, the sides of the pod slid up, then across, then completely over her…

  …and Beth McKay was gone.

  It was pitch black. All the lights were out. There had never been light. There was no memory of light. There was nothing.

  Then … something. A thought? An idea that there had been something before; an awareness of something now. A feeling. Thump … thump … thump…

  It was something familiar, it was something, it was … a heartbeat.

  The thing in the darkness listened to the sound of this heartbeat for a long time. Then it thought: I am alive. The black was now a red glow, although there was still nothing to see. And there was a thin soft sound that went in … out … in…

  Breathing. I am alive. There is somebody I was.

  “Beth?”

  That was new. A sound, but from outside, not part of her.

  A word floated up from within: Mum.

  And suddenly Beth McKay remembered who she was, and where and why and when and what she was doing. She was lying in this sleep pod and they’d put her into Sleep, but now she was waking up and Mum was waiting for her, the red glow was light filtering through her closed eyelids. She was awake.

  She opened her eyes. It stayed dark.

  She opened her eyes again, but nothing happened. She had sleep dust gumming them shut, she thought. She tried to lift her hand to rub it away, but couldn’t move.

  She couldn’t move.

  She tried again, and again. Nothing happened. She started to panic. She felt/heard her heartbeat speeding up, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, and her breathing increase, but nothing else.

  “I’m trapped!” she shouted, but made no sound. “I can’t move! Help! Mum! Help me!”

  Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump—

  “Beth? Beth, if you can hear me, relax.” Mum’s voice poured down on to her like cool water, soft and gentle. “You might be finding it hard to move. That’s OK, it’s OK. Relax. Listen to my voice.

  “You’re in the pod and we’ve completed the Jump. Your memories have returned, but you’re finding it hard to reconnect with your nervous system. Your mind will figure it out. Take your time.”

  Thump-thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump, thump, thump … thump … thump…

  Gradually she calmed. She realised she could feel something on her arm, stroking her. The nerves on her skin were sending signals and her mind was picking them up. She concentrated on that, thought about the short, pale hairs on her arm, relaxed…

  …and opened her eyes.

  Her mum looked down at her, smiling. After a long time, Beth managed to smile back.

  5

  School

  With the Orion officially launched, and the first Jump completed, life settled into its new normality. For the children, that meant school.

  Aboard Orion, school was a collection of cargo units converted into small classrooms, with desks and fold-up screens. Beth’s class had only six pupils – Beth, Mikkel and Lauryn sitting on one side, and on the other, Vihaan, Arnold and another girl Beth hadn’t seen before.

  At the front of the classroom stood a very large, smiling woman. She had dark skin, pink hair and a dress covered in a floral pattern so bright you could probably still see it from Earth.

  “Good morning, children!” she trilled. She had a soft accent, like a bird, and she bobbed as she talked. “I am Ms Cordoso, and I will be your teacher this year.” She beamed at them and Beth found it impossible not to smile back. The rest of the class were the same, except Vihaan; he sat straight in his chair with a polite, waiting expression. A word popped into Beth’s head: aloof. That’s what he was being. Arnold, seeing him like that, stopped smiling and tried to copy his expression.

  “I will be looking after you for group lessons and shared time, and you will use your monitors for your own subjects,” Ms Cordoso said cheerfully. “If you have any questions, just ask.

  “Now – let us introduce ourselves. My name is Gabriella Isadora Cordoso, and I come from a small town south of Fortaleza, which is in Brazil. I was born there, I lived most of my life there, and now –” she laughed – “I am in space! I am a teacher and a botanist, and … I can juggle.” She looked round the class. “Who’s next?”

  There was an awkward pause. Eventually the girl Beth didn’t recognise stood up.

  “Hello,” she said. “I am Lucille. I am from Toulouse, that is in France. I have two little brothers; they are very annoying. I am happy to be here. I, ah … I like to make cakes … merci.”

  She sat down.

  “Excellent!” Ms Cordoso clapped. “Well done, Lucille. Who’s next?”

  “I’m Arnold Sanchez Junior,” said Arnold. “I’m from Milwaukee. That’s in America. My mom’s a marine. I’m doing Security Systems. I can do fifty press-ups. That’s, like, a lot of press-ups.”

  “I am Mikkel,” said Mikkel. “I like logic puzzles. I have a rat.” He shrugged. “And a brother.”

  “I am Vihaan Joshi. I am the son of Captain Joshi.”

  “I’m Lauryn but you should call me Limit cos that’s my proper name, and I’m a programmer and so’s my dad and my mum’s a systems engineer which is like a programmer for hardware, and our rooms are just down the corridor from here, and I can find them all the time because I wrote this app here, see, this is it here, and these dots are us and when we get to Eos Five I want to work on the environmental-control software, which is awesome—”

  “Um. I’m Beth. My dad runs the farm; my mum’s a lieutenant. I, um…”

  I what? she wondered. I’m scared about leaving Earth? I’m excited about moving to a new world? I miss my old friends? What is there about me?

  Caught in the headlights of the watching class, she said the first true thing that popped into her head:

  “I’ve wanted to command a starship since I was five years old.”

  Vihaan snorted and Arnold smirked, but Ms Cordoso just smiled and said, “Thank you, Beth,” and Beth sat down in relief.

  Ms Cordoso split them into small groups and went through their timetables and setup. The desks folded out into learning stations, with screens that ran individual lessons. Mikkel and Lauryn were far better than Beth at the Maths and Physics modules, and Lauryn skipped straight over the Programming Introduction to some complex page of code and started typing. But Beth did well at Ship Systems – she seemed to have absorbed more than she thought. And she was looking forward to the afternoon, when
Ms Cordoso had told them they would be starting their Command classes.

  They broke for lunch and sat in the canteen. The lights had changed to a warm yellow, like the sun on a bright day, and at one end a group of kids played football on a temporary pitch. Beth and Mikkel ate and chatted about the classes, while Lauryn stared at her screen and tapped at it in bursts. Occasionally she blurted out random noises – “Hah!”, “Eh?”, “No-no-no-no” or “Argh!”

  Mikkel said, “After the Jump, I stabbed myself in the lip.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “I was eating dinner. When I tried to lift the food my hand moved the wrong way.” He pointed to a tiny dark scar on his lip. “Ship cauterised it to stop the bleeding.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  Beth said, “The whole thing was weird to me. I felt paralysed.”

  “That is common,” he said. “I felt it too.”

  Beth shook her head. By the time she could sit up, Mikkel had already been talking to one of his dads, moving his legs. Vihaan had been climbing out by himself – stiffly, but successfully. Lauryn had already climbed out and was asking Ship a dozen questions.

  “It took me forever,” Beth said. “They had to lift me out of the pod. I couldn’t do anything. I was trapped; I— I couldn’t do anything.” She felt her heart pounding just thinking about it, prickles running down her arms. “It was…” Horrible. Terrifying. Awful. “It was pretty rough, I guess.” She looked at Mikkel. “Didn’t it freak you out?”

  He shrugged. “It was strange. But the adults said it would happen. I knew it would be fine in the end.”

  “Huh. Lauryn, what about you?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Waking up, after the Jump. How come you were bouncing about so quickly?”

  Lauryn looked up, although her hands still typed, apparently by themselves.

  “Oh. Well, we’re all just computer systems, right? We rebooted and I just had to figure out how to restart everything. It was pretty cool, wasn’t it?” Looking down at the screen again, she stabbed at something, stared for a second and then shouted “Hah!”

  Beth smiled. “Lauryn, what are you doing?”

  “Ship comms protocol,” she said, still staring at the display.

  “Oh, sure,” said Beth. “Ship comms protocol.” She winked at Mikkel.

  “I’ve cracked the encryption,” said Lauryn. She looked at their blank faces. “You know? Ship comms protocol. Like – all the stuff Ship sees, going back to the central processor?”

  “OK…”

  “Right, so, the data’s encrypted, obviously, but the encryption is poor, dude, it’s like weeks out of date, and I knew there was this zero-day hack for ship operating systems and I tried it and I figured out the packet structure and—”

  “Stop!” Beth laughed. “I swear, Lauryn, your head must be like a swarm of bees. What does all that mean?”

  Lauryn grinned. “Here – listen!” She clicked a button and a voice came from her screen:

  “—pass me the wrench? Ta. Reckon this is the last relay, once it’s in place—”

  Lauryn clicked again.

  “—so tired this morning. We were up all night with the twins; they both had nightmares and wouldn’t settle down—”

  And again.

  “—to me! To me, Roddy! Pass the ball! Pass the – argh! Why didn’t you pass, knucklehead?”

  Beth stared across at the football game, where two boys were arguing.

  “Wait,” she said slowly. “Are these real? Are these, like … bugs?”

  “No! No. Well, yes. I mean, you know there’s cameras all over the ship, right? Everywhere?” Lauryn looked at them expectantly. “Well, there are. Like, everywhere. Pretty much everything you say and do. And this is the audio feed. Pretty cool, eh?”

  She clicked the button again.

  “—no, I’m sorry. It’s just I was in a bad mood. I promise it’s OK—”

  Beth shook her head. “I don’t think you should be doing this,” she said. “This is… Are they really listening to everything we say?”

  “Yup.”

  “Lauryn Hopper, explain your activity.”

  They looked up into the face of Ship’s avatar.

  “Oh!” said Lauryn. “Er … nothing! Nothing, just, you know, goofing around…” She touched the screen and the voices stopped.

  “Lauryn, we have discussed this. You are not authorised to interface with Ship systems.”

  “I wasn’t interfacing! I was just, you know, testing the security—”

  “Please refrain from further unauthorised access, or you will be restricted from all computer use. Do you understand?”

  Lauryn’s face paled, and she nodded.

  Ship said, “Thank you,” and faded away.

  Mikkel, Lauryn and Beth looked at each other.

  “You are in trouble, Lauryn,” said Mikkel in an appalled voice, and they laughed.

  Lauryn shrugged. Once she’d solved the problem it was boring anyway.

  They had a new teacher in the afternoon, one very different from Ms Cordoso.

  She was tall and thin; too thin, as if she’d lost weight recently in a hurry. Her clothes – a white shirt and black trousers – hung loose about her. She was in her sixties maybe, with grey hair cropped very short, and her face looked weather-beaten and harsh. There was a patch of artificial skin on one cheek, and she walked with a slight limp.

  The children sat up instinctively when she walked in. Vihaan, Beth noticed, was straight as iron in his chair, face alert and serious.

  “I am Major Greyling,” the woman said. Her voice was scratched and rough. “You may call me Major, or Ms Greyling, or Ma’am, if you prefer. I am here to teach you Command.”

  Beth grinned. The woman ignored her.

  “This course is about the role of command within a starship, the techniques of effective command, and the proper behaviour of those in and under command. You will learn how to organise, train and manage a team in order to effectively achieve your goals, and the command protocols you will be expected to follow.”

  She examined each of them in turn. “Let us begin. Who can tell me the fundamental principle of the command chain?”

  Nobody spoke, though Vihaan gave a small smile. The major scanned the class. “Ms McKay?”

  Beth started. “Um … to protect the ship?”

  The major gazed at her for a long two seconds, then without turning away she asked, “Mr Joshi?”

  Vihaan spoke with confidence. “Ma’am, the fundamental principle of the command chain is the concept of unity of command.”

  “Indeed. And what is that concept?”

  “Unity of command states that a subordinate within a command chain has one and only one superior officer.”

  “Correct, Mr Joshi.” Major Greyling gave a pale smile. “Ms McKay, your answer was heart-warming. To protect the ship… Heart-warming and irrelevant. What would happen were the ship to be destroyed and we were all in life pods – do you think the command chain should simply stop? Or on away missions? Hmm?”

  “Um … no.”

  “No.”

  She turned to the screen behind her. As she did so, Vihaan smirked and Beth’s face blazed red.

  “The command chain,” said the major, writing, “is one of the most important principles of military structure. It is very simple. It states that everyone in the command chain has one person they report to. You report to your lieutenant. She reports to her captain. He reports to his major, she reports to her general, all the way up the chain.

  “You have one job, and that is to do what you are told by that person. You are not there to make decisions. You are not there to think. You are there to do what you have been told, and only what you’ve been told, by your superior.

  “It is not democratic. It is not fair. It is not even particularly efficient. So why does it matter? Anyone?”

  The room was silent. Arnold was frowning as if wondering whe
ther he’d walked into the wrong class.

  The major sighed. “Mr Joshi, tell them.”

  Vihaan somehow sat up even taller. “Ma’am, the command chain is critical in emergencies where the situation is confused and fluid. Each subordinate knows their own area of responsibility and who to report to for further orders.”

  Major Greyling nodded. “Exactly. The command chain means that whatever else is happening, you know what you have to do. You do not have to think about it; you simply follow your orders. So, Ms McKay, should a critical situation arise, you will not be responsible for resolving the emergency. You only have to do what your commanding officer –” she waved her hand casually towards Vihaan – “orders you to.”

  She turned back to the screen again and wrote FUNDAMENTALS OF COMMAND across the top.

  “Open your monitors. I have prepared study material. For the next few days we will concentrate on basic command principles. Later, we will move on to more advanced concepts. Proceed.”

  For the next hour they worked through the exercises. The material was tailored to each of them already – from the conversations Vihaan was having with the major, he was clearly on a more advanced module. Beth sneaked a look at later chapters. Clausewitz’s Principles of War, she read. The Prince by Machiavelli. World Order Systems in the Twenty-second Century. Plato’s Republic. She sighed.

  At the end of the afternoon the major let them go, informing them cheerfully that she had assigned them homework and expected it back tomorrow. Vihaan strode out with his back still straight and his arms swinging. Arnold followed him, grinning back at Beth as he left.

  “Protect the ship!” he muttered dramatically, and Beth felt the blood hot in her cheeks again.

  She was last to leave. As she did, Major Greyling stopped her. “Ms McKay?”

  Beth turned.

  “Your answer was wrong,” the major said. “But not so wrong as you might think.

  “The command chain is more important than the ship, but it is not more important than the crew. The crew are the reason it is there in the first place. Sometimes those who understand the mechanics of command do not always understand why it matters.”