by Nadia Afifi
The container docked in position on the Bullet train with a generous thud, followed by the clicking of its sides being locked into place. Amira had watched the Bullet depart Westport in violent bursts of speed more times than she could count. As the engine growled in anticipation, she braced for acceleration. The train gained momentum and then shot forward in a heart-lurching burst of power, thrusting Amira against the cargo boxes behind her. Outside of her dark confines, she knew the Bullet now glided several feet above water, traversing the Pacific Ocean through a vacuum tunnel.
Amira crossed her arms tightly over her chest. Years ago, when she first arrived in Westport and wandered through Union Station with bare, bloody feet, she had stared up curiously at the clear, expansive tube that ran across the station, high above the other train tracks and directly underneath its arched, ornate ceilings. A sharp scream had announced the Bullet train’s arrival, and she shrieked as a dark shape sped through the long tube, there and gone in a matter of seconds. A middle-aged man with dark skin and cropped gray hair explained to her that the train was only passing through, and her fear of the train gave way to fascination when he patiently explained the science behind the Bullet (a combination of vacuum-based maglev design and jet propulsion). The man who stopped to talk to the dirty, disheveled girl with a small backpack over her shoulder was Dr. Mercer, her first friend in Westport. Impressed by her questions that day, he had secured a placement for her as a conditional student at the Academy.
At this memory, her thoughts turned once again toward Rozene and what her first days in this dizzying, chaotic city entailed, how she ended up on Hadrian’s ship and later in Aldwych, signing her freedom away with the stroke of a pen. She ached to see Rozene again. Which Rozene would her captors be dealing with? The meek, broken woman Amira first met? Or the girl who revealed herself in her memories and in the final stages of pregnancy, sharp and defiant? Amira hoped for the latter. It might keep her alive longer, give her hope.
The Bullet slowed. Amira sensed the inertia in the train’s deceleration and felt queasy. The reclined passenger seats typically rotated on the trains to help travelers adjust to the reduction in speed, but Amira, on her knees and entombed by boxes on all sides, did not have the luxury of turning herself around, not without losing her balance and crashing sideways into packages of frozen chicken korma. Her head spun and stomach lurched as the Bullet’s brakes screeched to a halt. They were at the Parallel at last.
Aside from brief snippets of footage on the Stream, Amira had never seen the island station. Curiosity defeated caution, and she pushed the container’s inner latch to peer out. To her surprise, the door relented and a thin sliver of sunlight seeped inside.
The Pacific Ocean surrounded her, a mass of rich blue interlaced with the simmering white foam of waves breaking along the coast. On shore, teeming crowds filled the concrete pathways. Families stood excitedly in a queue for tickets or rested in sparse patches of grass. Palm trees lined the walkways, rustling agitatedly in the breeze. Eyes flashed from every direction, taking final pictures before entering the space harbor’s dead zone. Crowds gaped at something to Amira’s right, and she twisted her head to follow their gaze. She nudged the door a little further and saw it at last – the Parallel’s space elevator, a gigantic base structure from which three carbon nanotubes emerged, extending skyward until they vanished into the clouds.
Amira inched the door further open, taking in the yawning, bunker-like entrance and surrounding gardens, laced with lines of tourists. Tourists from as far as Japan, China and Russia flocked to the Pacific Parallel to travel spaceside and experience Earth from staggering heights. They wore bright clothes and applied sunscreen, as though preparing for a theme park ride, in grim contrast to the stevedores steering containers on the other side of the entrance.
Amira’s view was suddenly blocked by a large pair of bulging eyes and she shrieked, falling backward into a stack of boxes.
“Amira Valdez, right?” the voice behind the eyes said. “Pham said you needed a discreet ride up to NASH.”
Gasping for air, she managed a nod.
“I’m Terry, one of the crew,” he said, opening the door slightly wider to reveal a middle-aged man with a round, open face. “Don’t know what you’re up to, miss, and don’t care. You’re a friend of the Phams, and that’s all I need to know. Now, we don’t have a lot of time here, so here’s the deal – I’m going to seal you in, since it’s pretty cold up there. You’ve got oxygen in here, so you should be ok to breathe and all. When you get into NASH, I’ll knock on the door twice before unlocking the hatch and I won’t do that until the coast is clear. If you don’t hear the knock and it opens, try to hide.”
Amira nodded, although her options for hiding places in a loaded rectangular box were limited.
“Gotta go,” the man said, looking anxiously around him. “I’m locking you in now.” And with that, the hatch closed with a loud thud, followed by the hiss of a compressed seal.
Amira settled back, sun spots still waltzing across her closed eyes. Brace for ascent. Focus. Breathe. The silent mantras lasted until her eyes adjusted to the dark, impending panic replaced by a newer threat – the slow, gnawing anxiety of waiting for something, anything, to happen.
The din of the crowds died down and the cranes resumed work, presumably loading cargo containers into position along the space elevator. After what felt like an hour passed, the walls of her own container vibrated as the crane’s claws gripped its sides. The stevedores shouted commands and directions at one another outside, and Amira felt the container lift off the ground. It swayed back and forth slightly as it was carried away. This was it.
Amira sat back on her heels and pressed her hands against the boxes on each side of her, steadying herself for the climb. The knot in her stomach tightened further with each second of stillness.
Amira knew this much – the container box had been fixed to one of the elevator’s climbers, each fastened to one of the three nanotubes connecting the Parallel to NASH. The harbor moved in complete synchronization with the Earth’s rotation so that it was stationary relative to the Parallel. The nanotubes were attached to a counterweight at the base of the station, where claw-like machines maneuvered cargo and passenger pods inside their respective holding areas.
Amira drummed her fingers against the side of the boxes, letting the steady rhythm fill her ears.
And then it started. A whistle sounded and Amira’s knees burrowed painfully into the container floor as it rose skyward. It accelerated with each passing second, rattling and shaking while the climber grated against the nanotube. Amira gritted her teeth at the wail of metal against metal. The screeching filled her ears until they suddenly and painfully popped, leaving a dull hum behind.
When the ascending container reached maximum speed, Amira’s stomach flipped and she pressed her forehead to the floor to salvage the breakfast her body fought to expel. Every bone in her body weighed her down, heavy as lead. She shivered, fighting back waves of dizziness. She tried to push her forehead back off the floor, but it was too heavy to move. Paralyzed under the weight of the acceleration, she curled helplessly on the floor, fighting for each breath.
Then, in a single moment, the container’s driving acceleration stopped as it entered low Earth orbit and Amira became weightless, floating among the cargo. Small beads of sweat drifted away from her clammy forehead, forming tiny crystal globes in front of her. Slowly, her heart rate came down. She exhaled, her head light and airy as she adjusted to the abrupt change in speed and gravity. For the first time, she was in space.
The crushing weight of gravity and anxiety gone, Amira laughed. She laughed again, louder this time, her voice echoing along the container. Stretching her arms wide, she arched her back and turned in slow, backward flips amid the floating boxes. Her hair spread in every direction. Space, at last. A compound girl’s dream in the desert, now realized. Her mission, the dangers lu
rking in every shadow, the violent men she was terrified to face and the threat of mobilizing compounds…all of it faded in the face of her elation. In that moment, nothing else mattered.
The container continued to glide along the elevator, albeit in a more benign fashion, as it passed through the lower and medium Earth orbits toward NASH.
Amira sensed movement in a different direction. Careful to avoid the suspended boxes, she slowly turned upright again, adjusting to the sensation of zero gravity.
Just as she righted herself, they hit something solid and gravity returned. Amira and the neighboring cargo collided with the floor. She activated her Eye, shining a light into the now disheveled container. Rubbing her elbows delicately, she stood up and climbed on a nearby box to listen through the hatch door. Muffled conversations and laughter suggested that she had reached the holding bay, where workers unloaded cargo onto NASH or redirected it to the research stations. She folded her arms anxiously, feeling the first sense of claustrophobia now that the end was near, and waited for the knock.
Minutes later, she jumped at a sharp rapping on the lid. The latch turned. The coast was clear.
Amira pushed the top open. Mr. Pham gave her a quick salute before rounding the corner. The crew traveled up the elevator in their own passenger pod, D’Arcy had informed her, but still took turns ascending in the elevator to avoid health issues. NASH proposed using robots to man the elevators in their stead, a proposal repeatedly vetoed by the union.
She stood in the middle of an expansive room with high ceilings, inundated with row after row of cargo boxes and containers. It had the greenish, sterile lighting and chalky floors of a typical warehouse, albeit one with windows displaying the void of space outside. Warning signs plastered the double doors on the far end of the room. Probably the airlock.
A hand gripped her arm. She spun around to face Hadrian.
“Keep your voice down, love,” he said. “You’re supposed to be contraband, remember?”
“You scared me.” She rubbed her arm and once again marveled at his chameleon-like ability to change his face, literally and figuratively. The NASH badge gleamed against his blue jacket. Several small cuts decorated his freshly shaved face, and his eyes shone with alertness.
“Listen carefully, love, because I don’t have loads of time,” he said, peering around the corner of the container before he continued. “They’ve shut down the shipments and prisoner transports to the Carthage.”
“What?”
“Nothing goes in, nothing goes out. The station ignored our requests to board, so NASH countered with a lockdown of their own. You won’t be able to hitch a ride with me, I’m afraid.”
“But how do I get there?” Amira asked anxiously.
“You’ll have to figure that out, you and Lee. This should help.”
He pulled out a white coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. Amira fingered the badge fastened to the lapel, bearing her face.
“For access inside the Carthage,” Hadrian said. “It only works in the Carthage, though, so you’ll have to be a little stealthy until you can get yourself there.”
A device in Hadrian’s shirt pocket flashed and he scowled as he read a message on its screen.
“I’ve got to run,” he said in a low voice. “This could go many ways. It’s been on the news for a while that the Carthage hasn’t been playing nice with NASH. Refusing inspections, ignoring directives. Your instincts were right – something is happening there. The suits in NASH command will try to do nothing, as usual. I’ll fight to board and see what Parrish is hiding. I don’t know which side will win out, but you know as well as I do that helping our Rozene is not NASH’s priority. If you want to get there first, you’re on your own for now.”
With that, he dipped in a shallow bow and walked away.
Amira cursed under her breath, alone in a room full of stagnant cargo. It was time to test the most crucial part of her plan.
She blinked sharply and activated her Eye. As she focused her thoughts on her targeted contact, a message appeared in small blue text across the corner of her right eye.
Lee. Are you there?
After a brief pause, a reply appeared below her text.
Affirmative. Swtch 2 speaking mode if u can, itz easier.
She smiled but changed the chat mode on the conversation to ‘speak and listen’.
“Lee?” she whispered.
“Good, I can hear you,” Lee’s voice replied.
It was unlike anything she had experienced – his voice was loud and clear, though he was over a thousand miles away, and seemed to be coming from inside, rather than outside, her ear.
“This is amazing!” she said, struggling to keep her voice soft. “Better than a Two-Way communicator. Does the Eye send the spoken text directly to the other person’s auditory cortex? It must have to hit the primary at least.”
“No idea,” Lee replied, impatience edging into his typically neutral monotone. “Where are you now?”
“Is she ok?” D’Arcy’s voice joined in the background.
“Completed the hike on time.” They had agreed to keep their communication as cryptic and vague as could be managed, in case their Eyes were intercepted.
“Ok,” he said. “Have you found passage to the old city yet?”
“Change of plans,” she said, walking briskly down a row of red containers. “The trail is blocked and – oh, hell, I don’t know how to say it – all cargo transport to the Carthage has been shut down. I can’t get in that way.”
“Let’s see.” Lee’s voice remained calm. “I’m pulling up a floor plan of NASH to see where you need to go next, then.”
“You got through their servers?” Amira asked eagerly. The coded speech had failed within the span of a few sentences, but at least one part of the plan succeeded.
“Hadrian may have given me a password or two. Got past the initial firewall, but there’s an extra encrypted set of files I don’t have. It’s ok, though, because what I got is pretty good – floor plans, a map of personnel locations, station docking traffic, the important stuff. The bad news is, since you can’t go on the cargo ships, we’ll have to get to the restricted area’s docking bay. Looks like you’ll have to cross the entire station.”
“Terrific,” Amira said, her heart pounding. “Lead the way.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Ghost Harbor
The main hall of NASH’s public zone teemed with bodies moving in every direction, leaving Amira lost and disoriented. The entrance to the Space Travel Museum and Planetarium glinted across the hall, next to the gift shop. Neon signs circled the station’s upper level. A long food court offered everything from synthetic hamburgers to Caribbean-fusion sushi. Despite her rush to cross the walkway, she couldn’t resist pausing at the enormous model of the first planned Titan colony (Coming in 2275!) in the center of the floor. A statue of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who led Edmund Hillary up Everest, towered over the main hall, a tribute erected by the powerful Tibetan Sherpa’s Guild, who managed all space tourism on the facility.
An enormous window spanned nearly an entire wall of the main hall, revealing the ‘spacewalking zone’, where tourists could don sleek silver space suits and, after a minimal orientation under the direction of a Space Sherpa, venture out into nearby space. Within the giant netting that surrounded the harbor, hundreds of suited figures floated and glided through space, some taking pictures with older handheld cameras in place of their disabled Eyes.
In the throes of the crowd, Amira did her best to appear inconspicuous as she navigated the lower floor with Lee’s commands in her ear.
“It’s hard to pinpoint you with all these people,” Lee said tensely. “Get up to the walkway along the window.”
Amira walked briskly up the stairs. The happy tourists in their space suits reminded her of children in a cordoned beach, exce
pt the ocean was airless and unimaginably cold and punctuated with glimmering light that separated stars and worlds. She paused to lean over the walkway rail.
And there it was – Earth, glowing and suspended below them. The home planet appeared deceptively peaceful from a distance, a luminescent swirl of cloud and sea and dirt. It was surreal and beautiful in every sense. No outsider passing by would ever imagine the chaos raging below the veil of clouds; the machinery and burning factories, the plagues and natural disasters, the wars and terrible carnage that raged for thousands of years and the lives that played out across its vast surface. Amira understood now why so many paid small fortunes to visit NASH. From a great distance, one could see the world without its borders and blemishes, a small, floating rock teeming with life, death and the infinite potential between.
“Amira, are you still there? You need to get across the room to the second level.”
Amira tore herself from the window.
“Lee, how am I going to get to the Carthage if everything is blocked off?”
“It’s going to be tricky but I have an idea,” he said over the clicking sound of furious typing. “First thing is to get out of crazy town here and get to the restricted area for scientists and NASH personnel. Since you have full station access, M. William Young, you should be able to get past without too much trouble.”
Amira admired his confidence but refused to share it. The knot in her stomach tightened further as she reached the end of the walkway and ascended the stairs. The side pathway ahead of her was marked with the ominous yellow sign – Authorized personnel only. Trespassers will be prosecuted according to the International Code of Space-Orbital Regulations.
“Lee, we have a problem,” she whispered when she reached the top of the stairs.
“What is it?”