by Ginger Booth
No, the only thing that would make a real dent on their fuel problem was avoiding Denali’s deep gravity well. Or buying more fuel. Which, no doubt, they stored on the surface, inside the gravity well.
So intent was he on his work that he failed to notice the beeping alarm for the next burn until his wife hollered at him to shut that thing off. Sass, he noted sadly, hadn’t stirred.
The burn attended to, he headed back to the office. He hailed Denali Prime, the habitat they’d negotiated with before launch. He hadn’t pestered them along the way, though he’d let them know at turnover, when they began decelerating for their planet. He figured business negotiations would go smoother with their imminent arrival, and minus the pesky time lags.
No response. He double-checked his local clock converter app. But no, it was mid-afternoon in Denali’s sole north pole time zone. It seemed a reasonable time to talk to someone.
He interrupted the call and tried again, upping the gain. Though there was nothing but empty space, and a whole lot of it, between Thrive and Denali Prime. Their day off?
“Thrive, this is Waterfalls, come in.”
“Waterfalls, thank you for responding! This is Abel Greer, first mate of the Thrive. I was trying to reach Denali Prime. To whom am I speaking?” The connection was audio only. Denali had a repeater on Los Angeles, one of their three puny moons. But apparently its video bandwidth died some years ago. Possibly decades.
“This is Estrella, secretary to the commune. I regret to inform you that Denali Prime is no more. Over.”
“Greetings, Estrella.” Abel had no idea what to make of ‘secretary to the commune.’ “I don’t understand. Denali Prime…what?”
“Denali Prime was a glorious dome, ringed by the most magnificent of the polar volcanoes,” Estrella waxed lyrical. “Her people were visionary and kind. They are sorely missed and held forever in our hearts.”
“Are you saying they’re dead?”
Estrella clarified, “The volcanoes erupted 5 weeks ago. Denali Prime was buried in the pyroclastic flow.”
“I see.” He didn’t. “Um, who might I speak to now on the planet? About fueling, landing, trade. A shuttle to meet us in orbit?”
A long pause. “Denali Prime was the ideal communicator for those things… May we speak again tomorrow on these topics? The same time? I shall confer.”
“Yes, certainly,” Abel agreed. “I look forward to speaking with you again, Estrella.”
He cut the comm and paused for a moment to offer a prayer for the souls of an entire city, wiped out by a tragic natural disaster.
Then he sighed and considered his other options. He could send a video to Lavelle. But he got the impression Lavelle never went to the surface, never communicated with anyone. He’d recommended Denali Prime as the most trustworthy of the lot.
Huh. Perhaps tomorrow he could ask Estrella to put him in touch with Michael Yang, Kassidy’s father. Because he had no other business contacts on this planet they were approaching.
And unlike the rings of Pono, there wasn’t a blessed thing worth having in Denali’s neighborhood in space. And Denali Prime was the planet’s closest thing to a spaceport.
Sass settled down with her lunch on the floor beside Clay’s bed. She’d run into Abel on her way back to the cabin.
She ought to take a watch today. And Abel looked desperately eager to see her. But she’d begged off with, “I can’t think right now.”
Literal truth, she feared.
The first mate was sweet. He told her not to worry about anything. He and Ben would probably work 12-hour shifts to cover for her. She should feel guilty. There was a ton of work left to recover from the accident.
But there was also plenty of time to do it.
Clay still wasn’t breathing. She’d peeled him out of his pressure suit by now. Cleaned him and hid the horrible parts under a sheet. The sheet still bore a red toga stripe, but who cared. It wasn’t blood.
She’d hung an IV, trying to offer him fluids. Foolish. He had no heartbeat, no blood circulation, and probably not much blood left, either. Though she fancied his arm’s color looked better near the spot where she inserted the needle. Nanites were awake and on the job in there.
But they wouldn’t do him any good if there was no central controller left to orchestrate them, to analyze what was wrong and start fabricating the right tiny machines for the job. If he was…brain dead.
She swallowed, tears leaking from her eyes again. She forced herself to eat another bite, then pushed it away.
“I didn’t want to love you, Clay,” she complained. “There you were all handsome and smart and…better than me. I wanted someone who thought I was hot stuff. Maybe even important and special. And pretty.
“That really pisses me off about you. You know? That you’re so much better looking than I am. It’s not fair. When you were born, the angels got together and showered dump trucks worth of gifts on you. I got nothing. But at least I was a little bit pretty. But no! You’re prettier than me, too!”
Was this one of the stages of grief? To vent her spleen at the dearly departed?
“And another thing. My leadership style isn’t awful. I mean, granted, yours is better. But people know I care about them! Whatever needs to be done, I’ll do it beside them! They appreciate that. OK, maybe they’d prefer it if my decisions were a little… But they’re good enough! I got us this far, didn’t I?”
And how far exactly was this far? Lost in space? She should really check their fuel levels and their course for Denali. Not leave that to Abel and poor little Ben, or God forbid, Copeland.
The engineer would never forgive himself if he missed Nico’s third birthday party.
Her attention couldn’t stick to that, though. It drifted back to their most excellent post-Roman-baths massage-a-thon. And his gifted fingers playing piano while they all sang. The time he talked her down when she was completely paralyzed with remorse after waltzing them straight into capture by the Sagamore pirates. That day on vacation when they counted every species they could find in Mahina Actual.
“You loved animals so,” she breathed. “I almost bought us goats and chickens for this trip, did you know that? Just for you. But everyone would have loved them. I wish I gave you goats.”
The covers stirred above her.
Sass rocketed to her knees. She grabbed his wrist to check his pulse. Had she imagined it? No, his lips moved. She leaned over, tenderly brushed his hair back from his temple. “Clay?” She leaned her ear to his mouth.
“Rosario?”
“Rosario?” she demanded. “Hunter’s mother? Did you just ask for one of your ex-wives?”
“Joke.” He might have said ‘choke.’
“Not funny!” she yelled, tears streaming down her cheeks. She punched his thigh. The harpoon tether hadn’t cut open his thigh when it poured his life out to the uncaring stars.
He licked his lips. “Sass. Water? Don’t cry.”
She couldn’t have answered why she sobbed so uncontrollably now. He was alive. Nothing could kill him, or her. Not even being sliced open in vacuum, in the absolute cold of outer space.
His fingers moved the slightest bit under her hand, where she still gripped his wrist. “Love you.”
“I love you, too.” She never wanted to. She really didn’t. But he’d talked her into it anyway. Damn him.
“Water?”
24
Within the hour, Sass pulled herself together and down to the med bay. Wilder sat head down on his arms on the arch of the auto-doc, but he roused when she opened the door.
He took in her appearance and froze in dismay. “I’m so sorry for your loss, captain.”
Sass hastily got a good look at herself in the burnished steel cabinets. Eyes and nose red, and face puffy. She scowled. “Clay is fine. He’s conscious now, and on the mend.”
Wilder looked more perturbed than reassured by this news of the dead coming back to life. But Clay had performed this miracle before. The serg
eant’s gaze flicked back to his girlfriend, and he stroked the machine, jaw rigid.
Sass couldn’t blame him for resenting Clay’s ability to heal, or her own. Rather than ask him, she checked the auto-doc report for herself. Good Lord. The machine estimated another 12 days before treatment would complete. She paged through the treatment history and saw how bad off the poor woman was when it started. Kassidy and Eli performed heroic interventions, and somehow the machine had been refilled in the middle of the night. Her throat closed up, and her eyes threatened to brim over again. She was so proud of this crew. A whole ship of heroes.
She pulled a rolling stool to sit across from Wilder. She cleared her throat a couple times. “How are you holding up?”
He gazed morosely at his girlfriend’s face. “I…”
Voice still husky, she shared, “I can relate. I’ve spent hours today kicking myself for not being as good to Clay as I could have been. Crying, ranting, making promises to God and an unconscious lover. Worse, turns out he was conscious and he heard me.”
Wilder managed a strangled chuckle at that one.
“It’s not your fault she got hurt, Wilder. You know that.”
His face crumpled. “Do I? Could I have treated her better? So she’d take care of herself? Sometimes she’s like a bottomless pit. Doesn’t respect herself at all.” He snorted. “Like with the pirates. Her first theory? Pick a captor to shack up with so she’s not raped, because it’s her choice. I don’t get her. I get exhausted trying to feed her self-esteem. But you’ve got to earn your own self-respect. You know?”
Sass nodded sadly. “Cope tells me the same about her. Hard to make up for decades of people who told her she was never good enough. He tries to set it up so she can succeed, in small stages, a win every day. And he asks her to rate her own performance. Makes sure she gives herself credit for all she did right.”
“Decades,” Wilder echoed. “She’s a dozen years older than me. And I outrank her. Or did. Guess I don’t have rank anymore.”
Sass wondered if Cortez had lied to him about her age, or if he was really nearing 40. Best to change the subject.
“I still call you sergeant. You earned that. You are the mission holder of guard and security. When Cortez is doing that, she reports to you. We just happen to be alone in space now. That changes in a month.”
He nodded. She noted sadly that it was their age difference that got to him, not the ranks. “Most of my lovers have been younger than me. By more than that. Physically, we all look the same age.”
“But inside we don’t.”
“No,” she breathed. “You have confidence based on success and promotion. She doesn’t have that. Clay and I have much the same problem. He’s better than me. Hacks me off. I want to please him. But I resent him at the same time.”
He nodded along to this. He took a deep breath, and blew it out slowly. “Thanks.”
“You don’t need to stay with her forever, you know,” Sass offered. “And if you need help to break up with her, just ask. We can make that happen, and take care of her.”
He shook his head minutely. “I don’t want to hurt her. I want to make it work. But if me loving her, makes her feel bad about herself – then I don’t know how to fix it. More of a physical guy.”
Sass snorted and squeezed his hand. “Just be yourself. We’re all rooting for Cortez. If we keep that up long enough, we’ll get through to her. I have faith.”
“Thanks, cap.”
Sass rose and completed her errand in the med bay, to fetch some drugs to help Clay feel better faster. After she dropped those off, she steeled herself to head for the office and Abel to face the music.
What he had to tell her about their status did not brighten her day.
“Cope, Ben, thanks for coming.” Sass welcomed them into the cramped office with a warm smile. Abel beamed, too, a fine acting job. She was pleasantly surprised.
Ben nodded, erect, his feet planted apart and hands clasped behind his back, his theory of what an upstanding officer should look like. Cope just swung a hip onto the corner of the desk. He glanced over the tabletop for clues, but found nothing but the echoed view from the bridge displayed there. Both crewmen wore dark circles under their eyes, the uniform of the day. Abel had long since declared today rest-only.
“What’s up, cap?” they asked. “Abel?” Cope added.
“We wanted to acknowledge the phenomenal job you’ve both done during the crisis,” Sass began. “The other owners and I have decided to offer you a promotion, of sorts. Your cut of the profits from this voyage is hereby increased to 2.5%. Each.” She rose and offered her hand to shake, Ben first.
That was a whopping increase from their original cut of 1%. The other crew members, Jules included, only rated half a percent. As passenger instead of crew, Eli received no profit share at all, though Sass imagined she’d kick some research funding his way when they parted.
Ben grinned ear to ear and pumped her hand with enthusiasm. Cope was more restrained as he clasped Abel’s offered hand. “Interesting,” he murmured, as he sized up Abel’s face.
Abel quickly ducked away to shake with Ben, diagonally across the table. Sass and Cope took their turn afterward.
Sass settled back into her seat. “As I said, this is to recognize the enormous role you play. If this voyage is profitable, we have you to thank for it.”
Ben flushed with pride. Copeland returned to appraising Abel. “Huh.”
The 2.5% share might sound low. But Clay and Abel only rated 10% apiece. Really only 5% for Abel, since his wife owned half of whatever he owned. It wouldn’t do to offer the crew too much in comparison to him, when his entire net worth was sunk into this ship.
Sass mentally winced at herself for thinking the word ‘sunk.’ She cleared her throat. “And of course if the voyage is profitable enough, I’ll kick in further bonuses from my share.”
Ben was pleased, anyway. Abel showed signs of stress under Copeland’s regard. Time to move on.
“As you know, we are approaching Denali at last.” She touched its glowing pinprick of light on the desktop. “There is a snag.”
“Snag,” Copeland echoed.
“We find ourselves in a bit of a bind,” Sass allowed. “We do not have enough fuel at this juncture to land on Denali, and then return to Mahina.” She glanced at their faces. No surprise there. So Ben and Cope had already run the numbers. She’d expected as much. The owners couldn’t hide much from those two.
Sass continued doggedly, “However, our plan is to land on Denali. This is necessary to complete the aims of our mission. Retrieve Dr. Yang and return his nanite expertise to the job of healing settlers on Mahina.” She held up her index finger to count Yang as priority one, then added her middle finger. “Deliver our trade goods to Denali. And secure highly profitable cargo for the return trip. And several replacement containers.” She smiled at Copeland.
He didn’t smile back. “Snag?”
She added finger the third. “And of course, fuel and provisions. To the extent suitable provisions are available.” She quit holding up fingers.
Copeland turned hard eyes on Abel, since Sass failed to answer his question.
“Due to an accident, completely unforeseen,” Abel continued, “there is no sky drive fuel available on Denali. None. Which is an amazing commercial opportunity –”
Copeland spoke right over him, at steadily increasing volume. “We’re not going into that gravity well without the fuel to climb back out. How could they be out of fuel? How could you bring us here if they have no fuel? Why didn’t you tell me this on Mahina?”
Sass raised a hand for peace. “Act of God, Cope. Denali Prime had the fuel depot, and their last two skyships.”
“Had?”
“Denali Prime was ringed with volcanoes, their original landing city. The volcanoes blew. The city was wiped out. Apparently Denali doesn’t use sky drives as much as we do. They have other power sources.”
“Solar is more effecti
ve in season, for instance,” Abel offered. “We’re going to need your expertise big-time, Cope. Trying to figure out what’s worth bringing back to Pono. Learning all of their technologies.”
Cope gaped at him, still trying to process this setback.
“What I’d like you to do,” Sass ventured, “both of you, is to plan out what needs to happen between now and landing –”
“No,” Cope replied. “We’re not landing there. We’re turning around and –”
“Mr. Copeland!” Sass barked at him. “As captain, my decision is final. I am willing to discuss it with you in detail. But!” She employed the index finger again to head off his rebuttal. “I want you to do your homework first. And calm down. We’ll talk in a few days and refine our plans.”
The engineer slammed the side of the desk, where it wouldn’t break, so he wouldn’t have to fix it. He rose to storm out.
“Wait!” Sass demanded, and turned to Ben. “Mr. Acosta, will you excuse us, please? We have another matter we need to discuss with Cope. And Ben? Don’t share this with the rest of the crew. These matters stay in this office. We will inform everyone once we have a sound plan.” She attempted a disarming smile. “This messy part is the planning process. Your glimpse into the inner workings of the management team.”
With that bad news, Ben’s face lost its last whisker of puppy-like trust. He hung an arm over Copeland’s shoulders in a half-hug. “We’ll talk.”
“We will,” his room-mate growled back.
After a long pause for the door to close and Ben to walk away, Sass steepled her fingers on the desk. “On another topic, Cope. I need to show you a brief clip of a video transmission between Ben and his father the other night. I apologize for the timing.”
Copeland stood behind her to view this on the desk, with a split screen of Ben on one side and Dr. Acosta on the other. Sass limited playback to the part regarding Copeland.