Guided by Starlight

by Matt Levin

  “I’ve already thought about the crew question, and I have something else in mind.”

  Isadora arched an eyebrow.

  “There used to be people who lived out there,” Nadia said. “They know the area better than we do. I want someone who’s actually lived on Calimor as my guide.”

  “No,” Russ said flatly. “We can’t bring in any potential adversaries on our operations. It’s a major security risk.”

  “I’m not going to hire Union soldiers,” Nadia said. “I’m looking for people who have spent most of their lives out here on the outer rim.”

  “If I may add something,” Vincent said, timidly raising his hand, “a Calimor native could help me program Nadia’s vessel to interface with whatever computer systems are still functioning on the planet. That could allow for the Exemplar—and by extension, the Preserver—to link up directly with any kind of computing mainframe they find,” he said.

  “On top of that,” Nadia continued, “I thought the computer selected me to oversee our settlement efforts. This is how I want to do just that. It’s important to me that the people of this system know we’re here in peace, no matter what the Union electorate thinks of us.”

  “Of course,” Isadora said. “I’m not going to micromanage any of you. If you feel that bringing in an outsider as a guide is the best course of action, then I’ll defer to your judgment. But you should take a couple of Russ’ people with you as a safety precaution.”

  “Mason and Gage,” Russ said, referring to two members of his staff among the other sixteen individuals Vincent had brought out of cryo since their last meeting.

  “And I’ll want to run a background check on your final candidates,” Russ continued, grumbling. “And what about your ship’s defenses? The Exemplar is a survey vessel. You’ll be toast if anyone takes a shot at you out in the field.”

  “I’ve assessed the ship’s capabilities,” Nadia said. “It’s light, nimble, maneuverable...that capability for evasive action makes the Exemplar safer than adding weighty defense systems would.”

  “As security adviser, I’m going to have to insist that we install some kind of defense system,” Russ said.

  “What about a missile scrambling system?” Vincent suggested. “It’s a prototype developed by the—by a company I used to work for. Probably unique to Earth. It seems that Natonese military vessels use point-defense lasers to shred incoming projectiles. The device would jam the targeting capabilities of any nearby missiles. It wouldn’t hold up against repeated fire, but it might be enough to buy you critical time. And it would add almost no weight.”

  Nadia nodded. “That’s fine.”

  In truth, she didn’t want the first ship of theirs to land on Natonese soil to be laden with laser turrets or missile silos. It’d send the wrong message, and what little safety any defense system brought would be outweighed by the symbolism of the matter.

  But she kept those thoughts to herself. She wasn’t sure the philosophical implications of what they were about to do would have as much meaning to any of the others. However, an unobtrusive missile scrambler no one would notice hardly mattered to her.

  “Well, it sounds like we have direction at last,” Isadora said with a tired smile. Nadia wondered how much their leader had slept ever since they had gotten back the news of the settlement charter vote. “We all have work to do to ensure the success of the Calimor expedition. Let’s make it happen.”

  Nadia beamed, Vincent nodded, and Russ muttered a “yes ma’am.” All three left the conference room, leaving Isadora still staring into her mug in contemplation.

  Nadia headed left, back to the turbolift that would take her down to the hangar bay and her cabin aboard the Exemplar, while Vincent and Russ headed to their own rooms on the habitation deck.

  There was an extra skip in her step the whole way back to the ship. Her ship. Welcome or not, she was in the Natonus System to stay.

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  The last time Tanner Keltin would ever see his office mate was just before noon. “Going out for a smoke break,” the other man said. Tanner gave him a curt nod.

  His office mate closed his desk with a bang, followed by the inevitable rattle of the pill bottle he kept hidden inside. Tanner’s colleague went on smoke breaks almost every day, and his desk always rattled when he closed it shut. One time, Tanner had snuck over to look for the source of the sound.

  It was a bottle of lithium pills, Tanner had discovered. He wasn’t the kind of person to actually act on that information, but Tanner liked knowing things that other people didn’t.

  Tanner had already returned his full attention to upgrading Veltech’s network security on his computer terminal when he heard screams coming from outside.

  It took Tanner several seconds to respond. He wasn’t used to any sound interrupting the oppressive humdrum of his Obrigan City office. Much less sudden terror. But he slowly realized that the screams were coming from the balcony behind his cubicle. Right where his office mate had gone.

  Tanner pushed himself out of his seat and headed for the balcony. It was a small, concrete slab that gave a breathtaking view of the highest levels of the city. Gleaming skyscrapers were on all sides, the nearest pedestrian platform well below. The sky was beautiful and clear, with a cool early fall breeze wafting through the air.

  And in the center of the balcony, there was a man on fire.

  Tanner’s eyes widened as he regarded his coworker’s body, fully engulfed in flames. The fire licked across his body, peeling his flesh clean off and filling the air with a rancid stench.

  Tanner watched it all with grim fascination. He had never been in a fight, much less seen anyone die. The closest he had gotten was a visit from one of the city’s police officers—“I’ve got some bad news, son. It’s about your parents.”—and even then, it had felt very distant.

  Like all responsible corporations, Veltech Colonial Supply had carried out extensive safety training for all new hires, but Tanner couldn’t recall anything about what to do when one of your coworkers set himself on fire. At least, Tanner figured it was intentional. A half-empty jug of gasoline sat next to the balcony door.

  He heard a stampede behind him. A dozen of his other colleagues had gathered, but he saw his boss push his way to the front. “Holy fucking shit,” the portly man said, surveying the scene. “Somebody grab the fire extinguisher!”

  It was too late. Tanner’s office mate slowly raised what was left of his head and locked eyes with Tanner. Burning skin still dripping from his body, he then stepped back and fell over the balcony railing. The burning corpse plummeted to the ground far below, past rows of platforms and huge corporate spires and stacked tenement housing.

  A couple of Tanner’s coworkers screamed. His boss stormed out onto the balcony, quickly inspecting the gasoline before turning to Tanner. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, grabbing Tanner’s shoulders and giving him a rough shake. “You just stood there!”

  The safety videos had, of course, talked about shock. Tanner had felt something like paralysis, watching his former colleague burn to death right in front of his eyes. But it was hard to tell if it was shock, exactly. Mostly it just felt like Tanner was a passenger in his own body.

  But he knew his boss had a temper, and it seemed like he was more than willing to take it out on Tanner right now. Luckily, his boss’ tirade was quickly interrupted. “There’s something on his computer!” a coworker from back inside shouted.

  The throng of observers gravitated over to the office Tanner and the dead man shared. Until Tanner saw the nameplate that read JAKE NUGRIM just under TANNER KELTIN, he had forgotten the dead man’s name. It wasn’t uncommon for people to come and go. Everyone knew company loyalty was antiquated.

  “What the hell?” someone muttered, staring at Jake’s computer screen. Tanner tried to push his way through the gathering crowds so he could get a view of the screen, but no one would let him through. He stood on the tips of his to
es and peeked between two taller coworkers’ shoulders.

  In his last moments, Jake had opened up a basic text file on his computer and written two sentences. The first was NATONUS FOR THE NATONESE, followed by JOIN THE NATONUS OFFSPRING.

  So many of his colleagues were murmuring between themselves that Tanner couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. “Is he talking about that refugee ship?” he finally caught.

  Tanner thought back to the settlement charter referenda from last month. He himself wasn’t big on voting—he had proudly never set foot in a polling booth in his life—but it had been all the talk around the water cooler several weeks ago.

  “Look, I sympathize with these refugees, but there are hungry people on our streets,” one of his colleagues had said during one particular conversation, his arm resting on the top of the water jug.

  “They’re just asking for a chance to settle. They’re not asking us to take care of them,” another colleague had protested.

  “Sure, but that’s how this kind of stuff always starts,” the first one had responded.

  “Can I just get some water,” Tanner had mumbled, trying to push between the two of them.

  Tanner felt a heavy hand clasp down on his shoulder, bringing him back to the present. He spun around to see his boss, an apologetic look on his portly face. “Look, I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier. How about we talk in my office?”

  Tanner didn’t particularly enjoy feeling claustrophobic in his own cubicle. The offer was a welcome relief.

  He followed his boss past rows of offices just as grey and lifeless as his own. Colonial supply was a brutal business. Demand had dried up ever since the war with the Horde in the outer rim, while competition between different firms was as fierce as ever. Tanner was lucky he had survived various rounds of layoffs. But even still, Veltech had to downsize to a less accommodating office space.

  The present building only came with bare necessities, which excluded even paint for the walls. Tanner didn’t mind the grey slab, but he was privy to plenty of grumblings from his colleagues.

  And the lack of windows didn’t help with their frustration either. Insulated walls were cheaper, the boss had explained: they could save on heating costs in the winter months and cooling costs in the summer. But for a bunch of employees who sat in what felt like a prison for long hours, and for whom the only respite was a small cramped balcony that Jake had now used as a venue for some suicidal political statement, things felt pretty bleak. Still, a job was a job. That’s what kept Tanner from complaining.

  It was harder to keep his tongue when he stepped into the boss’ office, which smelled faintly like smoke and—he couldn’t help but notice—had a large window pane in place of a wall behind his desk with a beautiful view of several skyscrapers and a public green space on one of the platforms below.

  He stomached it all for Rebecca. Ever since the death of their parents six years ago, when Rebecca was still eight, Tanner had taken it upon himself to make sure that she would have a life worth living. If that meant working at a job he only barely tolerated on his best days, with people he hardly got along with, for a boss who clearly didn’t give a shit, so be it.

  “Sit down, son,” the man said, gesturing to a chair on the other side of his desk. Tanner complied. “I’m sorry for snapping earlier. It’s not every day one of our employees sets himself on fire on the clock. I may have...overreacted.”

  “It’s okay,” Tanner muttered.

  “I was going to ask—I mean, it’s okay if you don’t know—did Jake ever show any signs of, you know…?”

  “We didn’t talk very much,” Tanner shrugged. No need to tell the boss about Jake’s pills, Tanner figured. The boss was just going through the motions. He didn’t really care about Jake. “Honestly, he always came off kinda cheery to me. But he hasn’t been here that long.” Tanner tried to remember when Jake had first started at Veltech. Four months ago? Or was it five? They all blended together.

  “Are you holding up okay?” Tanner’s boss asked, leaning forward.

  “Like I said, I barely knew the guy.”

  “We do have counseling services available…”

  “Really, I’m fine. I should get back to work.”

  His boss furrowed his eyebrows and studied Tanner’s face for several seconds. “I want you to take the rest of the afternoon off. I think the IT department can handle a half-day absence from you. It’ll be paid, don’t worry. Seeing something like what happened to Jake would do a number on anyone.”

  Normally, Tanner might have protested. Honestly, he felt fine, and he wasn’t sure why everyone was acting so freaked out. It made sense when he turned emotionally numb for months after his parents’ death. But his coworker was basically a stranger. People died all the time.

  “We all knew the guy,” Tanner said, only somewhat sure that was true. Would someone who worked on the other side of the office have even known Jake? Especially with employee turnover so high...

  His boss leaned forward and clasped his hands over his mustache. “It’s okay to be hurt by this. We’re all taking it hard.”

  “I...okay,” Tanner finally gave in. He realized protesting a paid half-day off was inherently stupid, even if he didn’t feel particularly distressed by his colleague’s death. Better not to look a gift horse in the mouth, yada yada yada.

  “Well, take as much time as you need. If you can’t make it tomorrow, just let me know. We’ll figure something out.”

  “All right. I really think I’ll be fine.” Tanner pushed himself up and headed to the door. “See you tomorrow,” he said as he left.

  . . .

  The biggest problem with getting a half-day off was that Tanner had no idea what to do with all his time. He fixed himself half a peanut butter sandwich and plopped down on the couch to watch the holo-vision.

  He and Rebecca couldn’t afford to stay in their parents’ house after the crash. The bank had quickly repossessed everything, and all Tanner could afford on his starting salary at Veltech was a small 400-foot studio apartment, rented from the company’s housing affiliate, and nestled in the middle of Obrigan City’s high rise. He and his sister shared a bunk unit. It wasn’t much, but it was all he could do.

  The holo-vision played a news report on his colleague’s suicide. It surprised him that the event had attracted so much media attention. Using suicide to make a political statement wasn’t unheard of, Tanner knew, but he also supposed it wasn’t every day that someone self-immolated in the city.

  Per the news report, investigators had seized his coworker’s belongings in an effort to determine the motive behind his suicide. Now, they were all saying it was political.

  Tanner’s coworker had, apparently, written a lengthy manifesto regarding the arrival of the refugees from Earth. The authorities had found copies both on his computer and in his apartment. Although the news report wouldn’t go into the contents of the manifesto, morbid curiosity gripped Tanner, and a quick search on his wrist terminal yielded the document in almost no time.

  He scanned through the contents briefly. It was littered with all the common errors he expected—misspellings, bad punctuation, run-on sentences, the like—but slowly he got the gist of why his office mate had ended his life. His argument boiled down to the settlement charter vote. The spirit of the vote, his former colleague claimed, was that the Natonese people didn’t want the refugees anywhere in the system.

  But leaked satellite images had shown a refugee vessel on an approach vector toward the planet Calimor. Technically, Calimor was outside of Union jurisdiction, so they couldn’t expressly prohibit the refugees from settling there. But, Tanner’s coworker explained indignantly, the refugees were trying to work around the clear intent of the settlement charter vote in a kind of cynical ploy.

  Tanner had a hard time getting worked up about it all. But he could at least see where the guy was coming from. He turned his attention back to the news feed, where he was surprised to hear an anchor claiming it was mos
t likely a lone wolf situation. Investigators hadn’t uncovered any evidence that Tanner’s coworker was working in concert with anyone else.

  Well that was bullshit.

  Tanner distinctly recalled a message on the dead man’s computer talking about some organization called the Natonus Offspring, or whatever. Was the media flat out lying? Or had his colleague just been making stuff up?

  Tanner did another search on his wrist terminal. It took a few tries, but he finally found a netsite hosted by an organization that called itself the Natonus Offspring. Their homepage was mostly just videos.

  He noticed the time. Rebecca was probably finishing her classes for the day and starting netball practice. Normally she’d take public transit home, but he figured that he might as well pick her up directly since he had the afternoon off. Seeing her face light up in surprise when she saw him was one of the little things that kept him going.

  But until then, with nothing else to do, he figured he might as well give one of those Offspring videos a watch. After all, Tanner liked knowing things that other people didn’t. What could be the harm?

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  Initial Descent. Ever since the Exemplar’s computer had informed Nadia that they would breach Calimor’s atmosphere within the hour, the heart palpitations hadn’t stopped. She found herself pacing around the ship’s globular cockpit, unable to concentrate. Even trying to review all the information she had packed into her head about the planet during the one-week flight from the Preserver was futile.

  A pair of eyes peeked out from the hallway perpendicular to the cockpit. “Are we finally here?” a man’s voice asked. Boyd Makrum: the only candidate Nadia had submitted for a potential crew member that had passed Russ’ extensive background check. He had been born on Calimor before the mass exodus. And despite a seemingly lucrative career in architecture back in the system’s capital, he confessed in his application that he had been dying to return to his native planet.