Call of Courage: 7 Novels of the Galactic Frontier

by C. Gockel

  Alvarez felt exposed. He had little cover to hide behind, and everything was over-sized to accommodate the massive containers, parts, and machinery that were transported daily to and from the planet's surface.

  As the team traversed the hallway, ceiling lights flickered. Their path grew darker with each step. Alvarez reassured himself; the Fight made poor house-keepers of us all, he thought. Parts of Novos looked no better.

  They turned a corner and realized how much they had relied on docking bay lights to illuminate their way. Alvarez reached for his rifle’s light attachment and turned it on. The others followed his example.

  He looked down the hall into virtual darkness. He hesitated as he raised his light, fearful of drawing unwanted attention. The hall, he knew, would open up into a storage bay. He spotted vertically stacked shipping containers.

  To his right was a set of windowless bay doors. The momentary gladness Alvarez experienced from not having to travel further down the hall vanished and was replaced by new anxieties. What was behind these doors? He knew there was an elevator terminal, the connection point between earth and space. Almost everything and everyone got off world via an elevator. Ship propulsion was simply too impractical, inefficient, and expensive to use for transport on any world with significant gravity.

  He knew what he had to do in there: get in, set charges, and get out. The real question—the one that mattered now—was whether the terminal was unmanned as Novos had promised.

  Alvarez ordered his men to line up against the wall on both sides of the bay doors. He wished for a quick or quiet way to enter the terminal, but there wasn’t one.

  Here’s the moment of truth, Alvarez thought. He engaged the wall console, and the doors split in the middle, slowly and loudly pulling apart.

  “Go!” Alvarez shouted as he entered the room. His eyes scanned for movement, for threats, but found none. He stopped, and his men nearly ran over him. There in the center of the room, unguarded, was the space elevator terminal.

  There was a problem. The cradle—the compartment that carried people and supplies up and down the elevator—wasn’t in the station. It had to be down below, somewhere between them and Earth. Their objective was more than just blowing up the elevator terminal. They needed to plant one detonator in the station and send a second one down the cable with the cradle. The two explosions would disable the terminal and disrupt the elevator’s geo-sync stability. The station would be crippled.

  “Fisher, call up the cradle,” Alvarez commanded. “Jitters, go sweep behind those shipping containers. Make sure we’re alone.” He turned back and faced the hangar doors. “Mendez and Stewart, guard the entrance. It’s our only way out of here.”

  He walked toward the massive wall console, an array of computers, monitors, and communications hardware. Their job was simple enough, as long as they had no guests. He needed to check the rest of the station. Some of the commands he entered were executed, but others required a key code. He couldn’t access visual reports. He continued to search the accessible files trying to gather as much intel as he could.

  “It’s all clear, sir,” Jitters said, coming up to Alvarez.

  “Confirmed,” Alvarez answered, his voice rough. He maintained his focus on the console, scanning as many files as he could access.

  He recognized the sound of the atmospheric lock opening and the elevator cradle entering the station.

  “It’s up, Colonel,” Fisher said.

  Alvarez turned to see Fisher with his back to the elevator. He wore a dumb grin. Something blinked red behind Fisher. On the cradle Alvarez saw a plasma detonator.

  “Get down!” Alvarez shouted. He tackled Jitters, landing behind one of the shipping containers. He heard the nauseating hum of the detonator charge up. Then a bluish-white light permeated the room as the intense energy dispersed.

  It was a trap . The words echoed through Alvarez’s mind as he jumped to his feet. “Jitters, get up,” he said while tugging his arm. Jitters didn’t move. He couldn’t have been hit by the blast, Alvarez thought. They were behind the containers, and Alvarez was on top him. He must have been knocked unconscious.

  He peeked around the container and saw Statist troops flood the room. There were too many to count. The lack of blast fire told him that Mendez, Stewart, and Fisher were already dead. The detonator got them.

  He gritted his teeth, toggled his rifle to wide-spec, and spun around the corner. With the element of surprise, he mowed down a handful of troops. But he was hopelessly outnumbered, and the volley of return fire forced him to retreat.

  Somehow his mind ignored his immediate concern and puzzled over how he had gotten there. It was an ambush, he decided. It was a carefully crafted snare. And he was caught in it. Whatever intel Novos had intercepted was bad. He had been set up. Now, it was only a matter of time before he was dead or captured.

  What was the difference? Statists don’t take prisoners of war. He wasn’t a soldier in their eyes, because he didn’t fight for a nation state. He was less than human to them, he thought. Why was he waiting? Maybe he could take out two or three more before they got him. If he did nothing, it would only be a matter of time before one of those goons tossed a detonator his way.

  That was it, he thought. There was an idea, the only glimmer of hope. There was a way to finish the mission. To live, to survive, was an impossibility. But there was a chance he could finish the job and take those jack-booted thugs out with him.

  “I’m coming out!” he shouted. “I surrender!”

  The blast fire ceased. He heard one of the troops yell, “He’s giving up. Cease fire.”

  He knew what he had to do, but his legs wouldn’t move. He heard the same voice again. “Come out with your weapon above your head.”

  Maybe they do take prisoners, he thought. Probably they would torture him—Statists called it interrogation—in order to extract information. Then they would kill him. That’s what he counted on, anyway.

  He slowly stepped forward. His heart pounded in his throat, and his knees threatened to give out from under him. He heard the same voice again. “Put your weapon down and get on the ground!”

  Alvarez heard the command, but it sounded distant. It was as if he was underwater listening to poolside shouts. He couldn’t bring himself to look up, to face his accusers. Instead he stared at the elevator terminal. The discharged detonator, blackened but otherwise intact, sat on the cradle. The plasma burst was devastating to organic tissue, but metallic structures were immune. He moved slowly toward it. His foot hit something. He looked down to see part of Fisher’s torso. The blast had blown him into pieces.

  The shouts continued. “On the ground! Move any closer and you’re dead!”

  Alvarez stopped. His weapon was high above his head. To his right was the elevator terminal. He could see underneath the cradle, fifteen feet down to the closed atmospheric lock. He got down on his knees slowly, his rifle still above his head. Like an act of worship, he lowered it to the floor.

  “He’s got a detonator!” shouted a different soldier.

  Alvarez held a live explosive device in his right hand, previously hidden behind his rifle stock. With the primer initiated, the device would activate three seconds after it left his palm. There was no turning back now.

  He had made two correct guesses: the troops would let him surrender, and they wouldn’t fire when he revealed the detonator. Their abhorrence for him and his kind was only surpassed by their desire to live. Alvarez promised himself that he wouldn’t make the same mistake they had.

  “Disengage your detonator, or we’ll shoot!” screamed the first man.

  An empty threat, Alvarez thought. If they were going to shoot him, they would have done so already.

  The Statists troops, without receiving the command to do so, slowly backed away toward the entrance. Alvarez glanced at the elevator beside him. One toss down the shaft, and the terminal would be disabled. But if the explosion didn’t kill him, the Statists would.

 
; The soldiers’ shouts became an unintelligible clamor. Some stomped their feet, while others made broad gestures with their hands and weapons. Alvarez sat, crouched on the floor. His upper body levitated inches above the ground, still in worship-pose. His hand, gripping the grenade, shook as he mustered courage. His next move would be his last. This is it , he thought.

  Suddenly, blast fire ripped up the air beside Alvarez’s head, and two of the troops fell dead. Jitters was awake. Wasting no time, Alvarez tossed his grenade into the center of the mob and dove over the rim of the elevator pit. He heard the explosion right as he landed, shattering his ankle on the atmospheric lock.

  “Wake up. John, wake up,” said a gentle voice.

  Alvarez squinted. The room was dark except for light coming through cracks in the window blinds. His eyes now focused, Alvarez saw Nadia, his wife, leaning over him.

  “You’re having a nightmare,” she whispered, stroking his arm.

  “That was no dream,” he said slowly. “That really happened.”

  “The explosion?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. “That was fifteen years ago,” she pronounced sympathetically.

  She glanced down to the foot of the bed. Alvarez’s arms still reached for his ankle, his body writhing in phantom pain. Then he relaxed his downward reach and self-consciously eased back into a prone position.

  “John, I’m sorry,” she said before looking away. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, and Alvarez thought she was running out of ways to console him.

  Her eyes drifted about the room, then widened when she saw the time. She sat upright, clutched Alvarez’s arm, and said, “You’re going to be late for work.

  Chapter Two

  ALVAREZ WAS A BEAR. His body, still asleep, refused to obey his mind. He swung his legs out of bed. They were heavy, unstable. His mental fly-wheel was no different. Part of his consciousness kept clicking over, drifting back into dream-land.

  What propelled him forward, the essential catalyst evoked by this and other similar situations, was anger. Anger for oversleeping. Anger because there was no one else to blame. Anger because he still hadn’t learned his lesson.

  Why didn’t the alarm wake me?, Alvarez thought. He glared incredulously at the time-stamp on the wall console and tried to recall events from last night. They had fallen asleep watching vid-feeds. He must have forgotten to set the alarm. Why was it when he stretched out a little, indulged in a bit of fun, he seemed to always pay a dear price? A new injection of guilt fueled his anger.

  There was no point in thinking about it now. The moment called for action. He grabbed a shirt and pair of pants and tried dressing as he moved from the bedroom. He threw on the shirt quickly, but the pants were another story. Still struggling with his bad leg, he banged into the hallway wall and a picture frame crashed to the floor. He left it, afraid to look and see which one he’d ruined.

  At the kitchenette, a mug of coffee waited for him. He grabbed it, thankful that at least something was on time, even if he wasn’t.

  He rang the bell at the front door and heard the quiet hum of the service elevator running up to his apartment. Even after dreamless nights, the residential elevator always reminded him of his mission with Jitters.

  This one central shaft was connected to all parts of the orbiter. Like a jack-in-the-box, the elevator made a loud clang that startled Alvarez. Then a much softer bell rang as the apartment and elevator doors, now synchronized, opened.

  Alvarez stepped in and felt the air temperature drop. It wasn’t frigid, but his skin told him he was no longer in his cozy apartment. The air smelled stale, slightly metallic.

  Unlike the crude cradle on space elevators, ones in residential orbiters were rather sophisticated. Their inner compartment had a flat floor on which to stand, but the walls and ceiling were spherical. The inner unit was self-righting and glided against an exterior shell, which was bound to the shaft and followed faithfully on its tracks. Passengers maintained their orientation, despite relative changes in angle or pitch.

  Alvarez spoke his destination, “Transit station.” The elevator rushed down the chute. He hoped he was the only passenger along the way.

  There was an elbow-shaped curve near the end of the shaft. Without slowing, the elevator made the sharp turn with ease. Alvarez’s only indication of the turn was the slight sense of weightlessness he experienced as the computer lagged in recalculating the elevator’s artificial gravity. The AG system under the floor had to adjust to the track’s new trajectory.

  The low-pitched hum became softer as the elevator slowed to a stop. The bell rang, the door opened, and Alvarez stepped out onto a platform where a handful of people stood.

  The transit station resembled a large garage or tech bay. It lacked the furnishings and aesthetics that the rest of his orbiter possessed. Its utilitarian look was yet another reminder that Alvarez was on his way to the grindstone.

  Above the transit pad, numerous vid-feeds played on wall consoles. Sensors detected eye contact and with little interference to bystanders, projected focused sound toward the interested viewer. As he glanced at each screen, he heard the program’s volume elevate.

  “Congratulations to Amanda and Terrance Day who are expecting their first bundle of joy…” a local feed.

  “Taking time to plan your death isn’t most people’s idea of fun…” an advert feed.

  “Got more certs than time? Or maybe you have more time than certs. You need little of either with First Novos Fellowship…” a religious feed.

  “You gotta lotta nerve coming back here, Snake Eyes. I thought you were in prison…” an action feed.

  He jumped from screen to screen and finally stared at the least obnoxious vid-feed he could find, the one with the arrival timer. The next transit would arrive in less than thirty seconds. He hated being late, and he hated not being able to do anything about it. He had to just stand there and wait.

  On either side of the transit pad were massive bay doors that served as both airlocks and access ports. Alvarez heard the hiss of atmosphere flooding into the access port to his left. The bay door opened and the transit shuttle, already grounded, rolled forward via gears in the station’s floor.

  “Here’s our soup,” said one of Alvarez’s neighbors. He recognized the man but couldn’t remember his name. The transit was shaped like a giant soup can turned on its side, which was how it earned its nickname. The only defect in the metaphor was in the transit’s flattened landing surface.

  The shuttle doors opened, and Alvarez and the passengers entered. There was a woman and her son already onboard. He recognized their faces too. Alvarez's son Adam had a play-date with them a few weeks ago. They lived on Tatum, the orbiter before Nakasaw on the relay loop. Alvarez grimaced a smile in their direction. He was too tired for small talk. As the passengers took their seats, the transit exited through the airlock.

  Alvarez looked out his window, trying to spot his apartment as they passed by. The orbiter was a blur, the transit moving too quickly for him to focus on individual windows. But as they moved further away, the larger structure revealed its shape.

  Each orbiter was unique, but they all followed the same L-shape design: an upper rotating tower adjoined to a stationary lower base. The bottom structure formed a wide rim that always faced the nearest star. This rim contained all locales that required continuous light: the transit station, social halls, a pseudo-park, and the primary solar array.

  All space architecture was designed with light in mind. Solar arrays were the primary source of power for most permanent structures. Only vessels that routinely moved out of orbit still used nuclear reactors.

  People wanted light for more than just power. They needed it to help regulate their circadian clocks, to help their minds and bodies know when to wake up and go to bed. Artificial light played a part, but there was always a premium placed on real starlight. It wasn’t until people settled in space that they realized the true extent of their dependence on light.

/>   Unlike Novos station, Alvarez’s orbiter wasn’t built for maximum solar aspect. It was designed to utilize both light and darkness. People were still terrestrial creatures, after all—best suited for life on a revolving planet.

  The cylindrical upper section of Nakasaw orbiter was a residential tower. It rotated on a twenty-four-hour cycle, a crude but effective way to simulate earth's turning. Some orbiters were stretched to thirty-hour cycles or longer. Even in space, there weren’t enough hours in the day.

  In the Nakasaw orbiter, each unit received twelve equal hours of light and darkness. It was an eternal equinox. Residents didn’t share floors with neighbors that were horizontally adjacent to them. Instead, neighbors shared the same vertical row. They experienced the same starlight at the same time, the same mornings, and the same nights. The light-experience of adjacent residents was offset by one hour.

  People set their day by which vertical floor they lived in. As if scattered on opposite sides of a planet, people on different floors were effectively in different time zones. Consequently, there were no official workdays, no real night-shift, and perhaps most importantly, no rush-hour traffic. Instead there was a steady flow of people coming and going at every hour. Businesses utilized workers around the clock which added to production. The same machines, laboratories, hangar bays, etc. were used continuously instead of sitting idle while a primary work force slept at night.

  Alvarez's coffee wasn’t working. He kept nodding off. His mind floated off onto different tangents. He thought about his move to the Nakasaw orbiter. It was farther away from Novos than their previous orbiter. But the longer commute allowed for a better quality of life. He didn't have to be gone for weeks or months on missions. He came home each night to his family. But everything comes at a price. The price Alvarez paid, besides his commute, was moving to a cheap orbiter and working a perfunctory desk job.

  Those orbiters last on the transit relay were the cheapest places to live because of the premium placed on short commutes. Nakasaw was one of the longest commutes to Novos, sometimes running more than twenty minutes. Perhaps more than material wealth, time was the most sought after commodity. But time and certs weren’t the only considerations in choosing an orbiter. Some shared aesthetic values, and some were oriented around religious or philosophical beliefs.