“Ration” consisted of a cake-like composite of protein, fat, carbohydrate, and glucose injected with synthesized vitamins and recaptured minerals. The stuff was made from algae, plant tissue, and bacteria that grew in reprocessed nutrient-rich water.
From the loose teeth and thinning hair, the frail bones, the slightly sunken eyes, and occasional motor coordination troubles, malnutrition was simply a fact of life. Things might have been better if the ship’s physician and medical techs hadn’t been killed in the initial rioting.
Vartan stood in the back of what served as the infirmary. His ex-wife, Shyanne Veda—she’d gone back to her maiden name—was treating the scars on one of the little boys who’d undergone Initiation. It didn’t matter that the infirmary had some of the best lighting left in the whole of Deck Three; she still had to bend down to inspect the scabs that ran down the little boy’s arms and legs.
With a sigh, Shyanne straightened. Shot Vartan a look through weary umber-colored eyes. Like Svetlana, she was another tall, thin woman who crowded six feet. The similarities were enough to make him wonder if he cleaved to a certain type. Thinking back, most of the women in his life had been taller than him.
“’M I okay?” little Pho asked, staring up at Shyanne as if she were an oracle.
Fat chance that, the job already had been taken by the Prophets.
Shyanne gave him a nod. “You’re healing. Be careful not to tear the scabs off like you did on your leg. I want you under the UV light for a couple of hours a day. It’s the only thing we’ve got to get that infection under control.”
She helped the little boy up off the table, watched him limp stiffly out of the room. Then she glanced at Vartan. “So, Security Officer, what can I do for you?”
“They’ll be coming soon.”
She crossed her thin arms under the scarified spirals that covered her small breasts, lifted her brows. “Given the shutdown of the ship, the sudden return to normal gravity, that doesn’t take a Prophet to figure out.”
He turned, glanced to make sure the hallway remained empty. Turning back, he said, “A Supervisor has been in touch.”
“I’ve heard. But not the details. What’s it mean, Vart? Incarceration? Psychiatric confinement? Some kind of prison camp? Given the things we did . . .” She lifted a hand, turned away.
“A research base,” he told her. “Somewhere out away from the main settlements. That’s not common knowledge.”
“Then why are you sharing it with me?”
He shrugged. “You’re not like the rest. I know that. You don’t buy the Prophets and the Universe. But most of them do. It’s the only way they can cope.”
“Vart,” she told him, a distant look in her eyes, “I’m not a fool. I bought in the first time I looked down on a plate and told myself: ‘It’s eat it, or die.’ Understood that if I died, it would be cooked pieces of me on the plate. After that, the rest was easy. Well, all but the shit-sucking Initiation with the all the cutting, the screaming in pain, bleeding, and weeks of agony as the scars healed.”
She stared into the distance of memory. “The first time the Messiah came to my bed, I was creep-freaked. But I figured I could lay there while he did his thing. I let my mind go somewhere else. It wasn’t like there was anything left of me to lose.”
She cocked her head. “And now, after all this time, why the hell do you even care?”
“I’ve heard that there are a few who are planning to demand their rights under Contract as soon as the hatch is open. I don’t want you to be one of them.”
The way she looked at him, the light of her soul might have gone dark. “I told you, I’m in. So far as I’m concerned, we’re the chosen. The universe speaks to the Prophets, and the Messiah is their voice. We are the living dead. Through us, they are reborn. Pure.”
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“Because, Vart, there’s little else left to believe.”
11
The feeling was surreal. After all that Derek had been through, it had to be the way a convict felt: Like his sentence was finally over. That he’d served his time.
He looked around the small sialon room that had been his cell. The once-stately quarters—with a bed, desk, the separate toilet and shower—had been a most remarkable luxury. Almost sixteen square meters of living space. At times this had been a refuge, and at others a confinement. A place of soul-numbing fear, endless hunger, and desperate hope.
He laid a hand on the wall, feeling the ship’s vibrations through the hard material. “Ashanti, access please.”
“Hello, Dek,” the ship’s com said. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing. Just wanted to say thanks for keeping us alive and getting us here.”
“You are welcome. Safe travels.”
It was said with feeling, but then the AI was programmed that way. When all was said and done, the ship’s intelligence was incapable of emotion, but still smart enough to evaluate a human’s behavior and tone, then respond accordingly.
Dek took a final look at the room, thinking, Maybe I’m not so different from the Unreconciled. Maybe I was gestated within these walls just to be born as someone different.
He cracked a parting smile, lifted his two bags and gun case, and stepped out into the familiar corridor. It struck him that he, a Taglioni, was carrying his own luggage—all that remained of the two large trunks of fine clothing, special foods, entertainments, expensive jewelry, and the ornate plates, pitchers, and engraved silverware. Even his family tea service had been traded away to different members of the crew during the long years.
Beyond that he hadn’t frittered away the two shipping containers in cargo. One contained his airplane—the one he had intended to use traveling between his holdings. The other had various recreational gadgets, exercise equipment, a home VR theater, interactive furniture, sports equipment for his leisure time, and other indulgences suitable to a Taglioni.
Given what he now knew about Donovan, he was wondering what exactly the use of a squash ball might be, or the value of his self-aware drink caddy.
In his two bags were his com equipment, a couple pair of worn coveralls, a set of utilitarian tools, and a few keepsakes he couldn’t abide to part with. The gun case contained his hunting rifle, pistol, bullets, and powerpacks. He was wearing his last, best, formal wear. Shabby as it was.
Walking down the corridor for the last time, filled him with a curious remorse. Ashanti had brought them through. Carried them across thirty light-years of interstellar space from Solar System. The error that had almost killed them hadn’t been the ship’s fault. It had been in the math hidden down in the quantum qubit computers in the ship’s core. Something that someone back in Solar System had programmed into the complicated statistics that governed inverted symmetry.
When Ashanti had popped back inside the universe a half light-year away from her target, she’d still managed to get them to Capella III.
A man couldn’t help but have a fondness for a ship like that.
He took the lift down to Deck Four, made his way to the shuttle deck, and stepped into the Number Six hatch area. Passing through the decompression doors, he found Captain Galluzzi at the airlock in conversation with Michaela Hailwood.
“We the first ones here?” Derek asked. “It’s not even 15:00 hours.”
“Hardly,” Michaela told him. “The entire Marine Unit’s already aboard, buckled in. Kids included. Have been for the last fifteen minutes. And that’s after they’d been waiting nearly an hour at the airlock. You’d think they were in a hurry to get off.”
“Just waiting on you, Dek,” Galluzzi told him with a smile.
“Thought there’d be a riot to get on the first shuttle.” Derek glanced around at the empty hallway.
“Funny thing,” Galluzzi told him. “Yeah, we got some real anxious sorts who can’t wait to shuttle down. Set fo
ot on dirt again. But the closer we got, the more people began to waver. It’s like they’re suddenly unsure. It’s a bit intimidating to leave what’s comfortable, you know what I mean?”
“Guess I do.”
Galluzzi waved toward the lock. “Welcome aboard. Soon as you’re strapped in, Ensign Naftali can dog the hatch, uncouple, and see if the shuttle still works.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Michaela asked, her dark eyes thoughtful.
“Another reason a lot of us aren’t in a hurry to leave.” Galluzzi gave her a wide grin. “If you explode and burn up on reentry, we’ll know to stay aboard.”
“Cute,” Derek told him. Dropped his bags. Took Galluzzi’s hand in a hard shake. Pus and blood, the look in the man’s eyes was like that of a suffering martyr. “See you dirtside, Captain.”
“Yeah. You, too.”
Derek followed Michaela through the lock and into the main shuttle cabin.
“You and I get to ride on the command deck,” Michaela told him as he handed over his luggage. “Benefits of status.”
He let Tech Third Class Raptu stow his bags and followed Michaela through the hatch into the command deck. He got the right-hand seat in the row of three behind Naftali and copilot Windman’s command chairs. Begay, the old, familiar, pensive “don’t disturb me” look on his face, was in the left seat. The Advisor might have been meditating given the lines of concentration.
Derek buckled in. Aware of Michaela’s curious appraisal as she snapped her harness tight.
“What?”
“Just thinking. About all we’ve been through. You and me. All of us.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Ten years in that bucket of air is a long time, Micky.” He called her his old affectionate name from one of the two periods when they’d been lovers. “I haven’t a clue about what awaits us down-planet. Whatever it is, if you need me, let me know.”
She glanced away. “It’s not like there’re many secrets left after all this.” A beat. “I’m sorry for the way I . . . Well, I could have been more diplomatic that last time.”
“I just wish that things would have worked out better between you and Turner.”
“All right, people,” Naftali’s voice carried from the command chair. “Let’s go see a new world.”
Thumps could be felt through the deck. Servos whined and hydraulics moaned.
“Hatch is sealed and secure.” Raptu’s voice announced through the com.
“Begin undocking sequence.” Windman’s voice couldn’t mask the excitement.
A bigger thump shivered the shuttle. “Locking latches free.”
Looking through the right-side window, Derek watched the shuttle rise, clear Ashanti’s hull, and Capella’s bright light spilled through the transparency. As they rose, Derek got a good look at the ship. Could see the occasional pits in the sialon hull, and then they were above it.
Ashanti seemed to glow in Capella’s light, radiant. Part of the ship’s hull lay in shadow. And behind it the wash of the Milky Way—in a billion stars—gave it a special sort of beauty.
Then the shuttle changed attitude, banked, and the stars—masked by a pattern of black nebulae—took the ship’s place.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Michaela whispered. “It’s really over. We’ve made it. There were times when I almost gave up.”
Derek chewed his lips, the surreal sensation increasing as acceleration pushed him into the seat. As it did, they passed Freelander where it hung in orbit. Unlike Ashanti, the big ship’s hull was dark behind the terminator line. Dek had read the reports, seen the images of the temple of human bones in the cafeteria.
There, but for the grace of God, go I.
The ghost ship seemed to hold his gaze as it cried out to his sense of tragedy and horror. People had committed mass murder, died of old age, gone mad. Now, studying the dark vessel, something wasn’t right. The light, it didn’t reflect. The sensation was like looking at one of those 50% mirrors that passed half the photons. Which was clap-trapping crazy, of course.
But something about the derelict sent a shiver up his bones.
As if Freelander took the trials and tribulations that Ashanti endured and magnified the horror tenfold.
With a sense of relief, he felt the first turbulence of atmosphere, watched the reddish haze trace its way across the wings and past his window. A faint roaring filled the cabin, the shuttle bouncing down out of the sky.
They shot over the terminator, looking down on an eerily dark planet. He could barely make out the continents, the seas, and islands.
Dark.
How odd after Earth, Moon, and Mars, all of which were stitched with patterns of light while in their nighttime phases.
As they shot into the sunlight, dropping down, Derek picked out the signature outline of the giant meteor impact crater. The sight of it reminded him of a bite taken out of the continent. Knew it marked the location of the human settlements on Capella III.
G-force threw him into his seat as the shuttle banked out over the ocean, leaving him a view of a sky that seemed to have a deeper blue than Earth’s.
The shuttle’s nose lifted. The roar grew louder. The ground seemed to rise, as if to smack them. Only to have the shuttle flatten out, almost skimming over the blue waters. Patches of white cloud flashed past the window.
They were over land now, a reddish soil dotted with what looked like trees. And nowhere, to Derek’s amazement, could even a speck of civilization be seen.
I belong here.
The planet might have been a magnet, drawing him. A thrill, like a vibration in his bones, had him staring down at the terrain flashing below. The feeling was . . . mystical!
And then they were down, the shuttle dropping on its landing struts. Dust blew out to curl before a wall of stacked shipping containers.
Dust?
“Welcome to Donovan,” Naftali called. “If you’d keep your seats until we spool down, we’ll have you off as soon as possible.”
Derek could hear whistles and cheers coming from the main cabin.
It’s real. I’m actually here.
He could feel the gravity. Stronger than on the ship.
As he stepped back into the main cabin, it was to see people in tears. They were hugging each other, crying, smiling. These were mostly the Maritime Unit people and their families. But a few of the crew had managed to snag some of the open seats.
Raptu got the all clear. The crafty tech opened the hatch, lowered the stairs, and raced to the bottom, ostensibly to offer people assistance, thereby getting to claim that he’d been the first from Ashanti to set foot on Cap III.
A decade ago, Derek might have had the guy’s head. Now he just chuckled as he grabbed up his bags and took the stairs to the ground. At the first contact, the electric thrill in his bones intensified. Could have been his body turning into a tuning fork.
I am home. This is my place.
With the seared clay under his feet, he took a moment to get his bearings. Stacked cargo containers blocked the view in every direction except toward the town. But the scent! Perfumed, a sort of cardamom and sage with a trace of cinnamon. For a moment, he closed his eyes, filled his lungs. Pure bliss.
Benj and Michaela clumped down the stairs, and both sighed in unison as they stepped onto the ground.
As Derek turned his attention in the direction of town, the first thing that struck him was the fence. Fully fifty feet tall, composed of cobbled-together sections of woven, welded, and chain-link wire, it looked like something from a maximum-security prison.
Behind it he could see weathered duraplast domes, peaked roofs that looked somehow medieval, and a collection of people who crowded against the fence. They were calling, waving, obviously happy at the shuttle’s arrival.
From a gate came four people who . . .
Derek
stared, wondered what he was seeing. Escapees from the circus? A sort of freak show? The notion of old-time pirates came to mind. They were dressed in gaudy, wide-brimmed hats and shimmering, rainbow-hued leather boots, vests, and cloaks. Each wore a shirt of some light fabric embroidered in colorful patterns. Okay, maybe Gypsy clown pirates.
It took him a moment, but Derek picked out the Supervisor, tall, raven-haired, with her scars. Hard to believe this was the same stately beauty he’d coveted in Transluna. The one who had once perched on Miko’s arm like an exotic ornament. She walked forward with a swinging stride and stood out only because she wore a black business suit beneath the dancing colors of her prism-colored cloak. Disconcerting was the holstered pistol upon which she rested her right hand.
She picked him out immediately, recognition flashing. And then distaste and barely masked loathing turned to puzzlement as she noticed he was carrying his bags and gun case. Good. Let her stew on that.
Shig Mosadek was the short one with the unruly hair, brown face, and amiable grin. Beside him strode a tall silver-blonde woman with piercing green eyes. She might have been in her fifties, or with the right med, even older. She had a curious, almost mocking smile on her lips.
And finally, the fourth woman was mesmerizing. Thirtyish, maybe five foot six, with long blue-black hair and angular cheekbones unlike anything Derek had ever seen. Then he fixed on her inhuman, almost alien-black eyes. She walked with the same innate grace and flow as a hunting panther. The military-grade rifle slung on her shoulder, the big knife and the use-worn pistol on her pouch-filled belt, added to her look of deadly competence.
Supervisor Aguila stepped ahead, offering her hand as she said, “Advisor/Observer Begay, I’m Supervisor Kalico Aguila of Corporate Mine. To my left is Shig Mosadek, Yvette Dushane, and Security First Talina Perez of Port Authority. Welcome to Donovan.”
Unreconciled Page 8
