Trace the Stars

by Nancy Fulda

  “I still miss him.”

  Cara nodded. “I can’t imagine being without him. I’ve even started helping out in the workshop.” Cara traced a droplet down the side of her glass with a single finger. “I never thought I’d enjoy woodwork, but I do.”

  Caraline wiped away the tear. She could not imagine enjoying woodwork. The dust got everywhere and the work roughened hands so that they snagged on fine fabrics. Caraline drifted her smooth hand across the sleeve of her silk jacket.

  Cara’s hand’s twitched as if she too longed to touch the smooth sleeve.

  Caraline took a big gulp of her drink. It was best if she didn’t think too much of Ryan. He knew she existed, but did not need her. He had Cara, who had given up her career to live with him on his rural world and help in his workshop. He did not want or love Caraline the up-and-coming fashion designer.

  Caraline stared at the surface of the table, noting every dent in the surface. She wanted to talk to this other version of herself, to hear about her life, but she did not know what to say. At the time of the accident it had seemed almost a boon. She no longer had to choose between the man she loved and the career she longed for. The two of her had drawn straws.

  But she did choose. She did not get to be both. Everyone made choices, but only a very few had an annual meeting with their might-have-been self.

  “Perhaps these meetings are a bad idea,” Cara spoke Caraline’s thought aloud.

  Caraline looked up and studied Cara’s face. “They probably are,” Caraline agreed. “But could you stand not knowing?”

  Cara shook her head.

  Each woman took a drink and studied the other.

  Log Entry

  Kevin J. Anderson

  According to his brief service record, Cadet Connor Pardee was a good, if unremarkable, recruit. One of his spaceflight instructors made a notation that he possessed “a reasonable amount of potential.”

  Connor’s actions after his death, however, made him a hero lauded in all the Corps historical archives.

  In the dogfight over a sun-grazer asteroid, the Corps scout ship was woefully outnumbered. Four unmarked smuggler vessels closed in to intercept the cadet before he could transmit a signal back to base. The smuggler ships had been stripped of all insignia and equipped with three times their original complement of armaments. They opened fire. The cadet’s ship spun through a wild course, launching potshots as it tried to evade the pursuers.

  From their heat tunnels in the cracked surface, the ffrall watched with interest. In the black vacuum sky above the asteroid, the battling spacecraft were merely flashes of light, hot maneuvering rockets, and blazing energy bolts.

  The ffrall were a race of liquid energy beings, interconnected nodes of sentient power. For the last half cycle—as the asteroid soared away from the sun, cooling in the chill of space during its long, lonely year—the ffrall had observed the activities of humans. Ships streaked overhead, bright lines against the backdrop of stars. A few had landed on the asteroid and erected structures, a base from which they launched more ships. The ffrall did not understand.

  They inhabited catacomb cracks leading to the asteroid’s warm radioactive core, from which they drew energy. Each cycle, as their rocky home passed through the star’s blazing corona, the asteroid flexed and heated, charging like a battery. The ffrall would commune during the long cooling journey up to aphelion, the asteroid’s farthest and coldest point from the sun, then hibernate to hoard their reserves. The creatures would awaken only when the asteroid plunged again to a warmer part of its orbit.

  Soon they would hibernate, but before their long dreaming began, the ffrall wanted to understand these odd strangers.

  The dogfight overhead continued, the unmarked ships launching a concerted barrage against the now-damaged Corps scout. With a direct hit on its lower hull, the scout careened out of control. An electromagnetic signal burst out, which the ffrall heard through their extended senses.

  “Emergency! This is Cadet Connor Pardee. I’m in trouble. I’ve stumbled upon a nest of asteroid pirates. They’ve got me in their sights. Please, anyone in range—I need immediate assistance. I know this signal won’t reach base for days, but if there’s anybody out there, my coordinates are—”

  Another shot from the asteroid pirates knocked out his transmitter. Leaking fuel and out of control, the scout ship crashed into the rocks, rebounded in the low gravity, then tumbled before grinding to a halt. Atmosphere gushed out from hull breaches like arterial blood. The ship lay motionless, systems already cooling.

  The four unmarked smuggler vessels circled slowly. One swooped low to confirm the kill. After conferring for a few moments on a coded channel, the raiders sped back to their base on the far side of the asteroid.

  Oozing out of their cracks and glowing with internal energy, the ffrall went to investigate.

  Cadet Connor Pardee’s log entry:

  The Academy is everything I thought it would be, as hard and as joyful, as challenging and as rewarding. The training is relentless, and the instructional classes are harder than anything I ever crammed for in civilian university. No matter how much you read ahead of time, no matter how much you exercise and mentally prepare yourself, you just plain can’t be ready for this.

  I was talking with one of my fellow cadets, Daniel Jones, and he nailed it. He said, “I never knew how much I could sweat before the sun came up. I never knew how hard I could run in the pouring rain. I never knew how much sleep I could go without. I never knew how much I weighed until I carried my weight in a pack on my back. I never knew how much I could miss everyone until they were so far away. I never knew what my limits were until I looked behind me and watched them disappear in the distance.”

  The food is terrible, but after a hard day nothing could taste more delicious. The beds are uncomfortable, but I’ve never slept so well in my life.

  The people here are the same mix you’d encounter on the outside. Sure, some I like better than others, but there’s a difference: Here, even if I don’t see eye-to-eye with someone, even if I actively dislike one of my fellow cadets, each of us knows we can depend upon the other with our lives. Really. Comrades in arms, and all that. It’s a tangible thing.

  We do speed-timed suitup exercises, explosive decompression drills, and simulated combat runs modeled after actual splats from the First Pacification Wars. I’ve nailed flight tests on seven different models of spacecraft, and I’m cramming how to repair every one of them. The Corps won’t let you fly a ship solo until you know every circuit, every cog and linkage, every rivet on every hull plate. It’s a lot to remember.

  Funny how you start to realize obvious things. I’ve never loved my mom and my sister more. I look forward to their transmissions as much as any kid ever anticipated a Christmas morning. Even when they don’t say much of anything at all, the sound of their voices and the expressions on their faces warms my heart. “How are you? I am fine” never sounded so good.

  Last week my mother shipped a package of home-baked cookies—my favorite, butterscotch oatmeal. Even with military subsidies, sending the package probably cost her a month’s rent. I shared them with my buddies, and we licked every last crumb from the wrapping.

  I know my father would be proud of me. Maybe he’s watching up there from somewhere between the stars. He talked about the Academy ever since I was eight years old, and he counted on me entering the Space Corps, just like him. He had the good fortune of serving during the Long Peace. Never once saw combat, not even a police action to quell a minor revolt on an unruly colony planet. When telling stories, he called the timing “bad luck,” but I think Mom was relieved. He died at the age of forty-nine in a stupid loading-bay accident. The power source on a gravlifter failed, and a cargo pallet of terraforming dozers dumped onto the workers below. Because he’d been killed in the line of service, my father received a posthumous medal, and Mom got an extended pension.

  Times are a lot rougher now. Since the defense corps is spread so
thin, asteroid pirates, smugglers, and other unsavories have become more than a nuisance. They hit civilian cargo ships, passenger liners, even colony transports full of wide-eyed settlers. Pirates blast holes through the hull, decompress the whole ship and let their victims suck vacuum. Then they go aboard, ransack the hold, even pick the pockets of the floating corpses. Not very nice people.

  Once I graduate, I’ll keep those scumbags in line. If I nail my next set of trial runs, I’ll get my scout pilot cert, and I might even grab command of my own ship.

  Then those asteroid pirates better watch their butts!

  With small discharges of electricity, the ffrall crept across the uneven ground, envelopes of crackling static moving of their own volition. The ffrall surrounded the crashed ship and studied its exterior by flowing over the conductive metal hull plates. They tasted the shape of the craft, found where the hull had been broken open, where the engines had been burned.

  The ffrall oozed through gaping holes to the interior. The crashed ship was interlaced with circuits, power conduits, and a diagnostic sensor array. The energy creatures easily followed these pathways, sniffing information, gleaning residual power traces.

  All of the ship’s primary circuitry was gathered into a single computer center in the smashed cockpit. Once the ffrall realized that the memory records were a form of communication, they began investigating further. They consumed and downloaded the information. Seeking clues and cross-references, they began to digest the log entries, conferring amongst themselves and comparing their insights. Gradually they incorporated enough knowledge to understand this ship, its alliances and enemies—and its pilot.

  The ffrall discovered that the spacesuited form, with its smashed faceplate and a jagged chunk of shrapnel punched through the body core, was a cadet named Connor Pardee.

  Cadet Connor Pardee’s log entry:

  The day I was accepted into the Academy was the happiest day of my life. And then it got better. I aced every class in basic training, and I’m totally ready to be deployed as a rep for the Corps. A genuine space cadet.

  Most cadets consider the course on ethics and galactic law to be the dullest part of the curriculum. As fully empowered reps of the Unified Civilizations of Earth, we have to know the nuances of the various articles of independence, the code of unification, and interstellar commercial treaties.

  They say new cadets are the most vigorous enforcers. Is that something to complain about? I intend to be one of them. As soldiers grow older, they let more slide, give a little more leeway, but I hope I can stick to the truth. It’s a slippery slope -- once you make a minor exception and let somebody overstep the bounds, the next time it gets easier.

  Before the Pacification Wars, we all saw the price of lawlessness. Fanatics everywhere. The chaos got so bad that all the colonies, even with their fundamentally opposed religious and governmental philosophies, found common ground and came together under the banner of the Corps. My father instilled that pride in me, the reverence for law and order.

  Smugglers and asteroid pirates are the scum of space, the dregs of any society. They twirl and dodge and sidestep with technicalities, as if the law were some sort of old-fashioned dance. And they leave way too many bodies and drifting ghost ships in their wake.

  I don’t intend to let them get away with it. Not me.

  When I finally got my cert as a scout pilot, I landed an assignment to patrol the outer asteroid fields. And my own ship, my beautiful scout ship. I could go on and on citing her engine specs, fuel capacity, cargo and passenger load, max accel, firepower, docking requirements, air reserves, even the full food menu programmed into the dietary synthesizer. But that would be just repeating rote statistics (and it would make my personal log unspeakably boring). Having learned them all for my final exam, the stats are forever burned into my memory.

  Right now my ship has nothing more than a call sign, XFE0017, a designation that nobody’s brain can wrap around. By tradition, cadets don’t christen their ships with a real name until after they’ve flown their first mission. I’ve already got my name picked out, and I’ll take great pride in stenciling it on as soon as I land after my first patrol.

  “Mongoose”—my father’s call sign, the one he never got to use.

  From the information in the scout ship’s database, the ffrall gleaned knowledge of the vessel, absorbed how the engines functioned and how the weaponry worked. The energy creatures spread throughout the crashed ship, suffusing the systems and manipulating the atoms of the metal alloy hull and the polymer molecules in the circuitry.

  With the care of artists working on an extravagant new project, the ffrall began to reassemble the ship back to its optimal state. The creatures had every instruction manual and every repair blueprint they could possibly need.

  When they investigated closely, the figure inside the spacesuit displayed no life energy whatsoever. Its bodily functions had ceased, and cellular chemistry had begun to break down. The only residue was a bit of thermal energy, body heat, trapped within the suit but leaking out into the cold vacuum through the shattered faceplate and the massive chest wound.

  Now that they understood and shared the ship’s log entries, the ffrall knew the identity of the cadet, his life, and intricate details of his biology from the library database. After evolving, communing, and hibernating alone for so many cycles, they were intrigued to learn the passions and the scope of these humans.

  One of the individual ffrall remained by the motionless body of the cadet. Because the spacesuit was insulated, the creature could not penetrate it electrically. Forming itself into a liquefied, shapeless mass, the blob of crackling energy poured through the crack in the faceplate, oozing into the gap and into the tissues of Cadet Connor Pardee.

  This was another vital part of the learning process.

  Cadet Connor Pardee’s final log entry:

  I’m not complaining, but this is really boring. Like watching sealant dry.

  I couldn’t wait until I got my assignment and flew away from the base in my scout ship. I had checked and triple-checked all the systems, by the book and then some. Even though one of the other cadets razzed me for being a mother hen, I wanted everything to go right for my first mission.

  But now that I’ve been on patrol for four days, in and out of the asteroid belt two systems away from the main Corps base, I never thought it would be so . . . well, dull. After the first few hours, the asteroids all start to look the same. Space junk, planetary leftovers.

  I’m amusing myself by imagining that one looks like a potato, another like a fish, one like a beehive. They’re all pock-marked with craters, ridged from melting and reforming. They tumble along in random orbits, nudging each other, jockeying for position around the sun. I haven’t found any excitement yet, but I’ll keep patrolling.

  The asteroid I’m currently scanning is a sun-grazer in an elliptical orbit, cooling off now that it’s heading back out from the star. The most interesting thing so far is a set of anomalous energy readings. At first I was excited, thinking it might be a secret outpost of asteroid pirates, who are known to have major activity in this system. But the readings are off-scope, out of parameters. Wouldn’t be the first time the Corps textbooks were missing a key appendix or two. The readings look almost like life signs, but this scout isn’t equipped with scientific sensors to get the data we’d need.

  I’ll log it, and maybe somebody will come out to investigate. (Although these days the constant threat of pirates has put a crimp in most scientific work. A research base would just be too vulnerable to raiders, and the Corps doesn’t have enough extra personnel to send troops for security.) Nevertheless, this is intriguing enough that I’m going to do a full mapping of this asteroid, cruise over the craters just in case somebody might be hiding down there.

  Wait—something’s wrong with the comm systems. I’m being jammed. What the hell?

  I see domes, reactors, life-support shacks—and ships. Asteroid pirates, a full-blown base! Damn
, I’m still being jammed! Uh-oh, they’ve spotted me. Marauder ships are launching, four of them. Even this sweet little scout can’t outrun four souped-up raider ships. I’ll try evasive action. I’ve got weapons, and I’m not going to go down without a fight.

  They’re shooting at me. That was close! I’ve got to get out of here and concentrate on my flying and fighting.

  Log entry, signing off. When this is all over, I’ll have one of those great stories, just like my Dad always wanted to tell.

  When the ffrall completed their repairs to the scout ship and sacrificed some of their power to reenergize the mechanical systems, the crashed vessel lifted gently.

  The single ffrall that had infused the cadet’s dead biological body repaired the crack in the faceplate and sealed the grievous injury where shrapnel had punctured the chest. Even after rectifying the physical damage, the ffrall could not bring back Cadet Pardee; however, it could animate the form inside the suit so that it was able to operate the scout ship’s controls—and complete the mission.

  The energy creatures had learned everything about the young man, his sense of honor, and his allegiance to the Corps. They had scoured all the details of galactic law. Now, the ffrall knew what they must do. The creatures would take it upon themselves to finish the cadet’s obligations before they went into their hibernation state. Perhaps by the next cycle, when the asteroid heated up again, the ffrall might emerge as emissaries and contact the humans in the Corps.

  Discharging themselves through the hull, the other ffrall left the ship, returning to their energy sockets where they would soak up the ebbing heat of the asteroid’s core. Only the one ffrall remained inside the suited form.

  The repaired scout ship set off to where Cadet Pardee had discovered the pirate base. From here, the smugglers would launch their raids on helpless civilian ships passing through the isolated system. The ffrall had long been aware of the strange settlement on the far side of their asteroid, but had avoided any contact.