by C. Gockel
He felt silly addressing such a small crew over the comm system, but he needed to be sure everyone was ready. He turned to Parker and York. “Have either of you seen Brennen around?”
They shook their heads. Alvarez said, “That means nobody’s seen him for two days.”
“Do you think he's okay?” York said.
“Oh, he's fine,” Alvarez said. “That hermit locks himself in his lab and only comes out when he runs out of food.”
“John, I have plenty of food left,” said Brennen standing in the doorway. “You, of all people, should know I'm always prepared.” The two men glared at each other. Parker and York stepped aside, pretending to do work.
Alvarez said, “We're going to be coming out of I—”
“I heard your announcement,” Brennen interrupted. “What will your orders be when we reach the probe?”
Brennen always had a way of unmanning him. Alvarez stumbled for a second. “Well...we need to monitor the cooling system when we drop out of IST, and after we establish our bearings in relation to the probe, the star, and the source of the plasma bursts I want to...”
Brennen turned and walked into the corridor. “Michael!” Alvarez shouted.
Brennen kept walking. Alvarez took off after him. Catching up with Brennen, Alvarez spun him around. “Michael, I wasn't finished.”
“I heard enough. I've got work to do.”
“Look,” Alvarez said sharply. “We don’t have to like each other. Our past doesn’t matter. What matters is that we do our jobs and—”
“What matters is that you get what you want. That's all you’ve ever cared about.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“John, you know exactly what I mean.”
“Leave Nadia out of this. That was fifteen years ago.”
“Look,” Brennen said with his arms stretched wide. “You can play king of the castle and fly your little ship. Just stay out of my way. If I'm right, what's waiting at the probe is more important than either one of us.”
Alvarez wanted to keep arguing, to right wrongs and make Brennen admit defeat. But he couldn’t ignore what he just said. “What aren't you telling me?”
“Nothing you could understand.” Brennen turned and walked away. Alvarez watched as he walked half way down the corridor, and turned into the science lab. The door slammed shut behind him.
Things hadn’t always been this way. Brennen and Alvarez met in the Parnassus Institute on Feros III, a terra-formed planet in Novos territory. Suite-mates their freshmen year, they were both on scholarships: Alvarez for Grekoball and Brennen for academics. Academics was the right word, because Brennen, a true polymath, received scholarships in multiple disciplines. He had his pick, and it was for that very reason the two were paired together as roommates; they both held undeclared majors.
The unlikely pair hit it off. The friendship survived the first two years of institute, and even after the first major romantic relationship. That's how Alvarez first met Nadia; she was Brennen’s first and—as far as Alvarez knew—last girlfriend. She, a biology major, was infatuated with Brennen’s genius. The saying three's a crowd didn't apply to them. They were inseparable until the Fight broke out.
The Fight didn't start all at once. It's hard to start a war between a state and a non-state. It wasn't until after corporate space exploration that non-state entities even had a chance to survive such a conflict. Throughout human history, odds favored the state to such a degree that there became an almost unquestionable belief in the state’s validity, even necessity. Might made right, and the state had plenty of might.
There were exceptions, times when nation states lost power: Rome, Napoleon, the Third Reich. Even the Irish maintained a thousand years of clan and tribal anarchy despite their warring neighbors, the English. And the so-called Dark Ages, often characterized by famine and social instability, was peaceful compared to the atrocities due to state sponsored genocide and war in the twentieth century. Despite all of this, the larger trend had been of increasingly centralized and expansive forms of government.
Everything changed when people began to settle space. Statists had little to do with it. To be sure, they took credit for it. Taking credit and certs was what they did best. They even faked a few moon landings long before scientists knew how to shield travelers from deadly radiation in the Van Allen belts.
But it wasn’t until the market was right, when people could make real profits, that manned space exploration took hold. When it did, an avalanche of activity, change, and ultimately great prosperity broke loose. Everyone benefited from the boon in raw materials, technology, and economic opportunities.
New categories of industry emerged faster than law-makers could update the tax code. Because spatially distant and ever-changing business ventures outpaced the government’s regulatory prowess, people began to question the Statists’ legitimacy.
Additionally, the collected tax revenue was spent entirely on earth-based infrastructure. What exactly existed in space for Statists to service? There were no roads or bridges, and the infrastructure that did exist was put there by private capital.
They couldn’t hide behind children either. Long before space settlement, primary education became a free good. Interactive modules reduced the cost of learning by rote the building blocks of knowledge—what classical educators called the grammar phase—to nearly zero. Since Statists funding wasn’t provided for off-world education, charities and religious institutions filled the gap.
Many thought that technology would someday erode the legitimacy of the Statists, but it didn’t. Technology was neutral. The part of the equation that changed was the scarcity of real-estate. On earth, increasing populations demanded land use. Some economists argued that there was a market need or value for the state, that with increased population densities there needed to be an arbiter for land-use rights. Certainly, anarchical societies historically occupied sparsely populated areas, e.g. precolonial America, tribal Africa, and the Wild West.
It was only a matter of time before space settlement removed the premium placed on land. What became scarce was people to settle space. The land-use arbiter, i.e. the Statists, was destined to become extinct.
The Fight first broke out in pockets. Small corporate groups who never seemed to end up earth-side stopped paying taxes. They weren’t protesting or trying to make a statement. They believed it profitable to avoid their tax burden even if they lost the small privilege of trading with earth-based companies. They could always deal with a third party. And they didn’t need earth money; they traded certs issued by larger corporations.
They miscalculated the Statists’ reaction—or over-reaction. Someone in charge thought this movement needed to be stomped out quickly. And it probably could have been, had the Statists been more precise in their retaliation. Instead they levied additional taxes on the still compliant space corporations and sent appropriation vessels—as they were called—to annex assets for the assessed amounts due.
It was a mistake. Statists took too much and from the wrong people and were met with universal resistance from merchants.
Resistance took various forms. Some ships tried to out-run appropriation vessels. Others made boarding extremely cumbersome and played dumb when tax agents tried to assess their cargo. Predictably, some ships used less imaginative means of resistance; they weaponized impact cannons, projectile tools designed for busting up asteroids.
Ships were usually without formal weaponry. When the handful of nation states unified decades before the Fight, the promise of peace swayed the majority of the populace to support it. Armies stood down, and their weapons were dismantled—most of them anyway. Replacing the old system was an unarmed global citizenry and a capable, militarized police force.
After the Fight began, there was a mad dash to arm space vessels. Fortunately, freedom fighters held two hands-down advantages over earth-based nation states: physical possession of the most cutting-edge technologies, and cheaper production cos
ts. Moving multi-ton components required little energy in space, and there were no neighbors to crowd. Turning the service craft into an effective, albeit ragtag, fleet was almost an overnight event.
Additionally, larger corps didn’t appreciate the newly levied taxes, so they sent supplies and volunteers to aid smaller merchant groups. Conflict escalation resulted in Statists targeting larger corps, which galvanized the resistance. Settlers who were neutral or even pro-government before the newly levied taxes, overwhelmingly supported the Outer-Five settlements. If they had to pick their allegiance, it would be to those who wrote their paychecks. Within months after the first merchants rebelled, almost everyone in space either joined in the Fight or materially assisted those who did.
Alvarez became involved after one of Novos Corp’s ships was attacked by Statists. He was a natural born leader. He transitioned from team captain to squad captain seamlessly.
Brennen and Nadia broke up soon after her parents were killed. They were aboard a residential orbiter that was indiscriminately targeted by Statists. Brennen refused to get involved. He calculated the risk to his person to be too great. He wanted to wait it out on the sidelines. What had initially been attractive to Nadia, Brennen’s calculating, logical mind, was ultimately the source of their discord. She realized he was all mind and no heart.
Victory was a surprise, which happens when there’s no benchmark of success. Usually unfocused guerilla fighters would find themselves stuck in a long, unresolved conflict. But once the Outer-Five corps joined the Fight, self-ordering kicked in. The Statists, because of their fixed position on earth, had a critical weakness. Its space elevators, transport stations in geosynchronous orbit, were the only way to move goods and people on or off world, and they were the major hubs of planetary defense systems. Those who controlled the space elevators controlled the world.
In terrestrial wars on earth, the state placed embargos on smaller adversaries. But embargos were meaningless in space. There’s too much room out there. Earth, however, was finite, and space elevators—there were over fifty at that time—were obvious targets. It was so obvious that without sharing strategies or battle plans, all five corporate settlements were responsible for attacking and destroying elevators. Once all of the stations were controlled by Outer-Five troops or destroyed, the Fight was over.
Surrender was simple. Deciding on terms wasn’t. The corps had personnel structure and even voting bodies, but no protocols for handling this situation. It was a total mismatch.
Ultimately, the Outer-Five sent delegates to hammer out terms. Demanded by the Outer-Five was the total dissolution of the Statist government. Replacing it were three corporate entities, pseudo-states, that traded and competed with each other. But their charters prohibited the use of coercive force, namely involuntary conscription, taxes, and seizure of private property.
After the Fight, Alvarez and Nadia continued their friendship without Brennen. The two really were different people, and they saw each other differently. Their attraction to each other seemed obvious to them after the Fight but had never really occurred to either of them before.
Alvarez tried on multiple occasions to reestablish relations with Brennen, but to no avail. He wouldn’t return calls or messages. When Alvarez did see him in person, Brennen accused him of stabbing him in the back and stealing Nadia. Brennen never forgave either one of them.
Until this mission, Alvarez hadn’t seen Brennen in over eight years. When he realized Brennen’s involvement in the expedition, he knew it would create a tense working environment. He had hoped there wouldn’t be any overt confrontations.
Now, he knew better. If Brennen hadn’t changed—and he hadn’t—this would be the first of numerous encounters. Alvarez started to regret honoring his contract. This was going to be a long trip after all.
Chapter Eleven
THE PIERCING SOUND of alarms snapped Alvarez out of his ruminations. We must be at the probe, he thought. But just coming out of IST wouldn’t cause this kind of ruckus.
He went into the helm. The alarm was even louder there. “What’s our status?” he said.
“We’ve reached our destination,” Thomson, the navigator, said. “The computer says there’s an engine malfunction.” Alvarez looked at Parker who was working at his console.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Parker said without looking up. Terra York, who was beside Parker, turned and left.
“Where’s she going?” Alvarez said.
“Colonel, we need to shut down immediately,” Parker said.
Alvarez motioned to Jitters. “Pull it.” Jitters complied. The siren fell silent, the lights darkened, and the consoles went blank. A dim red glow, the emergency lights, emanated from the floor. They were enough to help someone escape during a crash landing but not enough for much more.
Above the helm’s doorway the alarm light continued to blink, detached from its siren. Alvarez felt like the ship was underwater. “Apparently, the main computer still thinks we have a problem,” he said to no one.
Everything except minimal life-support systems was offline including consoles, engines, and communications. He asked Thomson, “How close are we to the star?”
“Sir, we landed at our target coordinates, so we should be in the same orbit as the probe.”
The word should always made Alvarez feel uneasy. At least they hadn’t crashed into the star. “Parker, report,” he said.
Parker gripped his console. “Sir, the engines are blown.”
“We’re stranded?”
“No, interstellar travel is still possible. I’m talking about our thrusters. We won’t be able to maneuver when we’re not in IST.”
Alvarez bit his lip. He didn’t understand how interstellar travel was even possible, let alone the actual mechanics of engine design.
“That’s not our only concern,” Parker continued. “York is on her way to disengage the energy-transfer coupling from the main reactor. If she doesn’t do it within about three minutes, it will overload and blow the reactor. Then we really are stuck,” he paused, “or worse.”
Alvarez clenched his fist trying not to appear shocked. He kept his panic locked down. He learned long ago that the most important thing in a crisis was to keep yourself together. It didn’t matter how you felt. There was no way to feel calm. You had to act calm. What you did was more important than what you felt. Focus on doing the next right thing. He swallowed the lump in his throat and said, “What’s the cause for the malfunction?”
“It’s just a new design. I knew something like this could happen. We took the Constance out too soon, before the customary six weeks of extensive testing. I don’t know why McKinley was so dead set on using the Constance.”
“At least he allowed you to bring extra parts,” Alvarez said.
Parker eased up a bit. “Yeah. We’ve got enough parts to rebuild the ship twice over...” He stiffened. “If there’s time.”
Thomson interrupted, “Colonel Alvarez, look.”
Out the main bay window Alvarez saw a small shuttle appear. “What’s he doing?” Alvarez said. He grabbed the communication console, hit the transmitter, and said, “Brennen, report. Brennen.”
Jitters said, “S-s-sir, it’s no use. Communications are down.”
“If we get through this alive, I’m going to…” Alvarez controlled himself. He couldn’t lose it in front of the crew. He turned to Parker. “Do you need to assist York?”
“There’s little I could do. Where she’s going, there’s barely enough room for one person. Her size and skill means she can do it faster than I could.”
The crew was silent. A faint hum, first sounding like ringing in the ears, grew louder and higher pitched. “Jitters,” Alvarez said. “Go check on the grunts and report back.”
“You got it, Colonel.”
Everyone else at the helm waited by their consoles. The hum continued to rise in pitch but grabbed new, lower frequencies that combined into a nauseating oscillation.
Al
varez watched Brennen’s shuttle. No doubt, Alvarez shared the thoughts of everyone else on board: was the combustion chamber going to blow? Would they be stranded or die? But Alvarez’s overriding thought was unique; if they blew up, Brennen would get away with acting like a spoiled child. No, if they blew up, he would get away with murder, because he took their only shuttle, their only mode of escape from the ticking time bomb inside the Constance.
Brennen’s shuttle moved at the same rapid speed as before, but now, because of the distance, it appeared to drift like debris in an asteroid belt. Not far beyond the shuttle, Alvarez saw a small glimmer. It must be the probe, he thought.
The crew grew restless. A bead of sweat, blood red from the track lights, dripped from Thomson’s brow. Parker paced the dark room with one hand covering his face, the other on his hip. The two technicians sat holding their heads in their hands. Alvarez felt a blender in his guts as the high frequency hum grew inaudible.
Suddenly, a rapid metallic clang pulsed for a couple seconds and then nothing. Alvarez looked at Parker who exhaled an unmistakable sigh of relief. The crew cheered.
Jitters returned to the helm. Sitting down at his console, he said, “The men are fine, sir. Except for a couple stationed in the cargo bay, everyone was in their barracks. They were a little confused by the lights going out, but I got them settled down.” Alvarez wondered what substances that had entailed.
Terra York returned to the helm. She reported to Alvarez, “We’re in the clear, sir. Now it’s time to start making repairs.”
“Is it safe to turn on the systems?” he asked Parker.
“I think it should be fine now, but we’re not going to have sub-IST maneuverability until repairs are made. York disengaged the power coupling, which isn’t hard to replace. But I’m guessing we’ll need to swap out some major components. I won’t know for sure until we run a full diagnostic and manually inspect the combustion chamber and its contiguous components.”
Alvarez looked at Jitters and gave him the nod. Within moments the lights, communications, and computers were back online.