by Kate Rauner
Fynn hopped to their meltwater bin, broke through the crust of ice clinging around the edges, and carried the soaked cloth back.
His pulse steadied as Fynn surveyed the crew. Most of them rubbed at cuts and bruises, whether on their faces or knuckles, but a broken nose seemed to be the worst injury.
Olsen held out his sleeve and tapped, snapping his coveralls to green. Those sitting next to him changed too, and waves of colors and patterns spread defiantly through the crew. Fynn chose khaki with purple sleeves.
Kumar pointed to Fynn. "Your turn."
Puzzled, Fynn touched his face. His fingertips came away sticky with blood. "Huh. This should have hurt enough to notice." He pressed a hand to his cheek. "Ow, it does hurt."
Mika, once again in her bright yellow coveralls, pounded a fist on her bench, almost bouncing herself off. Tears of frustration filmed her face. "What's happening to us?"
"My mother thinks that people are scared," Fynn said. "Because of stasis sickness, because of deaths, because this colony doesn't look like the paradise they were promised."
"Kin were brave on Earth." Mika wiped her face.
Olsen began to agree but sneezed blood into his compress cloth.
"We need to live like we did on Earth." Mika smiled fiercely at Rica, her barracks mate since childhood. "We women elected Rica our unit leader."
Olsen raised a hand, but Lukas swatted him quiet. "The men have unit leaders, too. We overflowed our first unit and split into two. Me and Olsen are barracks leaders."
Lukas leveled a gaze at Fynn. "We have barracks leaders. We have a Gravitron crew and a furnace crew. What we need now is an engineering cohort."
A chill numbed Fynn.
"On Earth," Mika said, "crews knew the best leaders. It wasn't hard to choose."
Fynn smiled weakly. "Come on. People used to jockey for weeks before a vote. Arguments went on long after lights-out." He'd eagerly gossiped with Drew over each candidate, and over each candidate's champions. Though cohorts seemed to serve forever. He could only recall a couple elections.
"Like Mika says, it's not hard to choose." Lukas hopped up on a bench. "I nominate Fynn as our engineering cohort. Any other nominations?"
While Lukas led the process, Rica maneuvered close to Fynn. "Congratulations."
He grabbed her elbow and a few steps took them behind a bin. His whisper grated in this throat. "This is your fault, isn't it?"
She squeezed his shoulder and whispered back. "Our cohort has to be you. You know Maliah the best."
"Crew leader - fine. But I don't want to be a cohort. It'll look like I'm challenging her."
Rica's eyes flashed. "You should challenge her."
"But she's my sister."
"She threw you off the tower. She's not your sister anymore."
Coldness settled in his core, clashing with the heat in his face to leave him dizzy. "But I'm not ready. I'm still watching videos to learn the equipment, and I'm no good with people." The cold inside solidified and his voice wavered. "I can't replace my dad."
"Your dad is gone." Rica stepped back, crossing her arms. "I'm sorry, Fynn. I know it's only been a few months. But maintenance jobs, day after day, won't keep the Mechanics together. Without a leader, things fall apart. The crews will lose heart. Is that what you want? After all our work? Is that what your father would want?"
Fynn dug a fist into his hair.
Lukas bounded around the bin. "Hey, what's going on?" His grin flattened and he stared warily at them.
Rica smiled, narrow eyed. "Nothing. Is the voting complete?"
"Yes. Fynn, you're our cohort."
She reached out to smooth his tousled hair. "Your father would be proud."
Lukas's grin returned and Fynn swore.
Chap ter 7
I n the Herschel's central core, Drew shoved both feet into the frame of his assigned stasis pod and gripped his metabolic monitor in one hand. Flat lines traced across the palm-sized screen but hopefully that would change in a minute. In his other hand, Drew gripped a rough, nubby towel.
His pod was one of twelve steel cylinders, arranged like spokes in a wheel, gleamed under portable lights. Erik clung to the level's primary control panel. As the Herschel's senior medic, he'd initiate the awakening cycle. He flipped open the cover on a prominent red switch. "Everyone ready?"
Using the pilots and recently awakened crewmates as dedicated attendants at each pod left the three medics free to respond if any Kin showed distress. They held injectors ready.
Failure at this job could kill someone, and Drew's fingers tingled. He closed his eyes to drive the dizziness away. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. He willed a peaceful feeling to spread thorough his body. That was easy in zero-g, even with his toes wedged into the pod frame.
It was strange that someone prone to panic was assigned to the reanimation team, but the medics were close by, and he'd done this before. Deep breaths.
Erik flipped the switch. Pumps whirred and opalescent liquid flowed from the pods to body bags strapped below. Clamps released, seals hissed, and one side of each pod rotated open. Drew slapped his monitor onto the cold, alabaster chest inside, ignoring an expanding spray of wobbly droplets.
Nothing would happen for a moment. Not until the woman took a breath. Drew wiggled the breathing mask against her face and pushed gently on the medical gauntlet covering one forearm, relieved to find them both snug. Not that anyone could save her if the connections had slipped. The sleeper would have died long ago. But Doctor Lund still hoped to explain why some Kin died in stasis and wanted as much data as possible.
The woman inhaled with a gasp, sucking in aerosols to awaken her while the gauntlet pumped injectable meds. Lines jumped on the monitor. She shuddered.
An alarm pinged somewhere among the pods, but Drew's sleeper was exiting stasis normally. He rubbed her face hard enough to raise a flush on her cold skin and then moved to her belly. The woman was naked, but nothing about the moment was sensual. Drew's shoulders were already sore, and his legs burned from bracing his body, but he had to keep up tactile stimulation until she roused. He rubbed the cloth vigorously along her side, into her armpit, and then repeated the sequence.
The woman's eyes opened.
Drew pulled back from the pod. He would have collapsed if that was possible in zero-g, so instead he floated to relax his muscles. It would be several minutes before she could speak, but he started his spiel as soon as she focused on him. "Welcome to Titan. The Herschel's parked above our colony. As soon as you feel up to it, I'll send you forward to a shuttle."
Goose flesh raised on the woman's body, a positive sign that her nervous system was responding, but her eyes widened with confusion and fear. Drew removed the breathing mask leaving a deep furrow in her face that would take days to disappear completely.
Stasis was weird. It was nothing like normal sleep. The woman hadn't truly slept or dreamed in over two years, so he expected her disorientation. "You're safe," Drew said. "You're with Kin. It's normal to feel awful, like you've got the worst flu ever."
The monitor on her chest pinged, but heart palpitations were common. She gasped again and its screen flashed yellow.
Drew pushed against the pod to maneuver out of the way as a medic pulled close. Drew watched until the medic gave him a nod. She'd be okay. He heaved a sigh. She wasn't the only one who'd stopped breathing for a moment.
The team helped the twelve awakened Kin into coveralls and pressed their personal bags into their arms. With medics towing the groggiest individuals, the group headed forward.
Drew kicked off to the control console to retrieve a bag of cleaning supplies. Tyra's slender form swung in next to him, snagging the cleaning bag to halt her flight, and she balanced against his back. "It should be my turn to clean the pods. So how come you always volunteer?"
"I'm not supposed to be on the station until the biology labs are up and running, so I'm almost a stowaway. I want to look useful, so you pilots don't throw me overboard."
Her laugh was delightful.
Drew pulled a memory cube from his top pocket and snapped it into a slot on the control panel.
Tyra leaned over his shoulder, close enough to warm Drew all over. "Orpheus backs-up data from every pod. You don't have to make another copy."
"Call me paranoid."
"I know what you're up to. You want something to trade with Earth, don't you? It's hopeless. No one there is listening for us."
A chill drove the warmth from Drew's body. "You're still trying to contact Earth, aren't you?"
"Sure. Well, I left Orpheus running a search program. Transmitting a ping each day and listening. But it's a shout in the dark."
As a shuttle pilot, Tyra was part of the secret team who'd hijacked the Herschel. The pirates, Drew called them. He'd been away at university when Kin invited him on that bogus spaceport tour. He could work up some righteous indignation over being kidnapped if he thought about it for long, but he didn't blame Tyra.
She claimed that the swindled consortium would fall apart once the Herschel left Earth. That they were probably fighting among themselves, trying to recover a fraction of the money they'd lost. They wouldn't be listening for the colony, and certainly wouldn't foot the bill for comms, but they weren't Drew's only hope. Orpheus knew the locations of every probe in the solar system, and with luck, Saturn's orbit would tow Titan into position to piggyback on someone else's signal.
"How long before we might hear anything?" Drew popped the memory cube loose and slid it deep into a pocket. The lab that developed this tetchy stasis process would pay for the results he copied. He was sure of that. And he had more to barter. The ghosts in the methane lake. Imagine how many universities would want access to the videos stored on his cube.
Tyra shrugged. "The whole idea seems pointless. It takes Saturn thirty years to orbit the sun once, and we don't cross any other mission's comm path, not even approximately, for five years. Our best chance is someone listening for Martian colonies. If Mars and Earth line up with Saturn just right, maybe someone will pick us up. But we won't care by then. All the Kin will be awakened in a month, so no one on Earth can help us improve stasis survival rates. Sure, it would be fun to download some new entertainments, but why do you care so much?"
Drew bit his lip. He should quit asking so often, because the pirates were crazy-dedicated to a Titan colony. What would Tyra think if she knew communications was only a first step in his plan? He buried the thought deep inside. He hadn't told anyone, not even his best friend Fynn, that someday he'd return home. Somehow.
***
Drew pulled a pouch from the Herschel's gurgling coffee maker and slid it into a small box with the other drinks he'd brewed. He pushed off toward the wide, round opening in the ceiling.
Or was it a deck? Overhead? Whatever the right ship-word was for the top of a compartment. He caught the opening's lip to orient himself before popping into the shuttle dock and paused to look straight down... aft... through an identical round opening in the floor to the tank farm. He didn't feel like he was falling anymore, and the table and chairs bolted to the deck no longer seemed ready to tumble into the hole. He'd gotten good at zero-g.
With a tap of his fingertips, Drew rose through the center of the shuttle dock. With its high ceiling... overhead... oh, who cares... the dock was a large open area, half the diameter of crew quarters thanks to deep airlocks between the bulkheads and the ship's outer hull. Hatches to the four shuttles were evenly spaced every ninety degrees, and consoles barely protruded from the walls. The four pilots were side-by-side at a group of monitors.
"Hey, guys. Coffee break."
Liam was easy to spot, since he managed to slouch while floating. Drew aimed for a rung at the big man's side and pulled out a pouch. "Strong and black, Commander."
A smile spread across Liam's broad face. "Drop the commander. Just one of the pilots today, and happier." He lifted a wide, clear straw along the pouch's side, and dark liquid crept to the tip. With one finger hooked under a handhold, he flipped himself upside down, making room for Drew to continue with barista duties.
"Evan, double cream."
Evan's smile lifted his chubby cheeks, crinkling the corners of his eyes. He pulled a sip into his mouth, slurped in some air, and swallowed.
Tyra, hovering next to him, made a disapproving frown.
"Aeration," Evan said. "I can almost smell the coffee properly this way." He lifted the pouch toward Drew in a zero-g toast. "Thank you. I stayed onboard just for this, and left Orpheus to handle my shuttle."
Evan tilted himself perpendicular to the screens using a toe under the console's frame.
"Tyra, light and sweet." A goofy smile lifted Drew's sandy mustache high enough to tickle his nose. Her sparkling blue eyes did that to him. She pushed away from the console, leaving the way clear to the last pilot.
"Kana. Green tea."
"Drat."
Drew stopped himself against a rung, and her pouch bounced from the box. "My mistake. Did you want coffee?"
"Sorry." She snagged the pouch with a slender, tawny hand. "The tea is perfect and your timing is perfect. Orpheus is transferring fuel from Evan's Hera to the other shuttles."
Liam waved a hand. "Might as well go to quarters. All shuttles functioning without a single hiccup. Orpheus doesn't need us at the moment."
Drew swung his gaze around the dock, following Liam's expansive gesture even though there was nothing much to see. The ship's artificial intelligence was distributed throughout the Herschel, its servers installed between the inner and outer hulls with each element encased in a block of plastic that had shielded it from cosmic radiation during the journey to Titan. The ship orbited within Saturn's magnetic field now. Not quite as well protected as the domes under a blanket of Titan's atmosphere, but good enough, even for a worrywart like Drew.
Orpheus could perform thousands of calculations per second to make delicate adjustments with each shuttle's manipulators as it welded ring segments to spokes. It could probably reconfigure the ship into a space station without any human intervention. Even if human judgment was needed, the pilots could monitor as easily from crew quarters as from the dock.
Drew had pointed that out once to Tyra. With a prettily crooked smile, she said they preferred to be up here, as if that was obvious.
Kana left her tea floating so she could slap the console with one hand and keep a grip with the other. "Who thought this was a good idea? To have one shuttle bring up a load of fuel to share among all four? I never have full tanks."
Drew frowned at the screens, each showing the station ring from a different shuttle's cameras. "Why not send them all down together? Or maybe pull off the main engine fuel tanks and carry those back and forth?"
Kana sighed and retrieved her tea. "It wouldn't go any faster. Fuel production on the surface is the limiting factor. If only the decapods were operational."
"I miss our robotics cohort," Liam said. "Lost a friend and lost software for the bots."
Tyra's pale face flushed. "I thought I'd find his files. Orpheus has a complete copy of the domes' cybernet, and they should be there. I even looked in the space station directories. Nothing."
"Secrecy was important," Liam said. "So no one from Earth could hack our systems. Maybe he planned to write the decapods' code when he got here." He drifted headfirst for the opening to crew quarters. "Might as well finish viewing my entertainment. Anyone want to swap a movie?" The pirates had known they were headed to Titan and brought lots of personal files with them.
Tyra had expected to find the missing files, so Drew hadn't fussed over them before, but now he had an idea. "Hey, Liam."
The commander executed a graceful somersault at the lip of the opening to face him.
"Did anyone search the cohorts' gear bags?"
"Those are standardized bags. Same things packed for all Kin."
"I found the clothes I wore from Earth to the spaceport in mine."
"Yeah, sure, stuff you ha
d with you. But nothing for the colony. Strictly forbidden to stow anything official in personal bags. Robotic programming's as official as you get."
Drew wrinkled his nose. "Your faith is touching."
With a tap on the lip, Liam drifted downward. On his way, he shook his head. "Cohorts you're talking about. Secrecy was their rule."
To think, he called them pirates. More like good little bureaucrats. Drew folded his arms across his chest, sending himself into a slow-motion spin, but his pulse quickened in a good way for a change. Cohorts had been in charge of the mission, and people in charge felt entitled. He was certain now.
Drew rocketed to the opening, snagged the lip, and shot down through quarters without a glance at the medics lounging there. He slowed through the tank farm, zigging and zagging along pipe chases to reach the Herschel's main core. He passed stasis pods that once contained the Advance Team before reaching the cohort level. Eight pods had malfunctioned, and sure enough, eight yellow gear bags hung on the frames, unclaimed.
Drew yanked out his flat pad, checked the passenger manifest, and swam to the robotics cohort's empty pod. The bag contained a flat pad and the usual assortment of personal supplies. He slid a hand between two rolled pairs of slick, Ever-Clean coveralls and pulled out a slender box, longer than his hand but only a finger-width deep. Inside the clear plastic sat a row of thumbnail-sized memory cubes.
Bingo. Drew stuffed it back inside and closed the bag.
The cohorts might have stowed more useful information. He moved from pod to pod, unclipping the bags and looping the straps over his arms.
In crew quarters, the large screen displayed four windows, each running the view from a Village dome camera, but there wasn't much to see. The latest batch of awakened Kin would be sleeping in their units by now, probably surrounded by anxious barracks mates. A few groups sat in the mess hall hunkered over flat pads.
He maneuvered to the table where Liam was scrolling through files, fake-sitting with his feet hooked into the chair's support. With extra momentum from eight gear bags, Drew barely caught himself on the table's edge to avoid slamming into the commander.
