Ragnarok: Colonization, intrigue and betrayal.

by Andrew Claymore

  “I was unsure,” Frank said quietly, “about the differences in our beliefs...”

  “You seemed pretty sure just now,” she said softly.

  He nodded. “I am.”

  “Good!” She grinned. “Then it’s not really necessary for you to become a Methodist just for me, is it?”

  “A Methodist?” Frank gasped at the coffee he’d just spilled on his lap.

  She put a hand over her mouth but there was no hiding how amused she was. “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah,” he said, then remembered the kiss. “Better than alright,” he gave her a smile. Wait, what did she mean by Methodist? “You said Methodist…”

  “German missionaries,” she said. “Back in the early nineteenth century.” She cocked her head to the side. “I would have thought Mr. Kawle would have told you that. The two of you seem to be getting on quite well.”

  “No,” said Frank, confused. “He just said off-limits…”

  She sighed, shaking her head in wry amusement. “He’s a little old-fashioned, like a few of the ladies on this ship as well. He was probably trying to warn you against bad luck.”

  “Bad luck?”

  “My husband died, you see. Someone needs to be blamed.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be his luck?”

  “Well, the evidence is starting to pile up,” she said dryly, gesturing at his wet leg.

  “Hmm, you could be right,” he said with mock seriousness. “If that’s the price I have to pay for kissing you, let’s go put on a pot of coffee!”

  Her startled laugh drew looks from around the cargo hold but she didn’t notice. She leaned in again.

  Frank kissed her, safe in the knowledge that his mug was already empty. Then he realized where his choices had been leading him, ever since he’d invested heavily in his greenhouses.

  The kiss ended and he pulled back, just enough to look into her eyes.

  “What?” she asked but her eyes shifted right, glancing at Vikram and Terry who were still absorbed in their hybrid game. She met his gaze again.

  “We make orbit in less than a week…” she said.

  He took a deep breath. “And we’ll need to pick out our plots, build houses, get crops in the ground…”

  “It accelerates things, doesn’t it?”

  He nodded, smiling. “I’m not complaining.”

  Summer Job

  The Mouse, In path

  “Get up, lazybones!” Adelina pounded on the door. “They’re not paying you to lie in bed till lunchtime every day!”

  “Yes, they are.” Gabriella groaned. This is exactly what they brought me for, whether they realize it or not. She sat up and stretched. “They’re paying me to be a teenager. We’re moody, night-owl late-sleepers.”

  She called up a holo control and opened her door, letting her mom into her room. “You should probably do some complaining about what a pain in the ass I am. Maybe in the cafeteria.”

  Adelina hopped on the bed and sat next to her daughter. “Looks like you got the same view, huh?”

  “I know, right?” Gabriella rolled her eyes. “I mean, what are the chances?”

  They both sat there in companionable silence for a while, looking out at the swirling colors of path-space.

  “How are you feeling about all this so far?” Adelina asked her. “This is a lot of change to take in all at once.”

  “It is,” Gabriella admitted, “but it’s also pretty cool. I mean, finding out you live in, essentially, a science fiction story is pretty wild. Two days ago we were planning on taking a big trip up to Oregon. Now we’re on our way to watch a new colony get started on an alien world.”

  She leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder, putting an arm around her back. “What about you? Must be a shock to find out your little sister’s got the fate of the species on her shoulders.”

  Adelina snorted. “Better her than me! You know, when we were kids, we used to play superhero. Your aunt was usually the one in the cape beating the crap out of your uncles. Nobody was surprised to hear she got into Officer Cadet School.”

  “Yeah, but that’s still not the same as this,” Gabriella said. “In the Navy, she could still be a teenager, act like a rebel.”

  “A teenager, huh?”

  “Yeah. Somebody more senior had authority over her. She might have gone out to drop bombs on a target or shoot down some bad guy but she had commanding officers telling her to do it. Now, she’s it… Judge, jury and trigger hand. Gotta be stressful.”

  She tossed the covers off her legs and gave her mom a peck on the cheek, grinning at the thoughtful look on her face. “She could use her big sister’s support, I think. Now more than ever.”

  She scrambled off the bed. “That’s just my teenager’s take on the strains of absolute power. I’m gonna take a shower and then stroll around the ship for a while.”

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Gabriella looked up. The voice belonged to one of her aunt’s genetically engineered super-soldiers. He had a tray in his hands and a question, asked in Imperial Standard, that she still hadn’t answered. Great… How long have I been sitting here staring at him?

  He was kind of cute, for one of the most feared killers in the Milky Way. “Um, sure,” she said, trying sound casual. She saw the disappointment on his face. What the hells? Oh, shit! I basically said I mind… “I mean, sure, go ahead and have a seat,” she corrected hastily.

  “What’s that thing?” he asked, setting his tray down and taking the seat opposite her.

  “It’s my e-reader.” She turned it so he could see the text on her screen. It stores about a thousand books.”

  “Books?” He looked at the device with a frown. “What are books?”

  “You know, a story in printed form?” She frowned at him. Don’t these guys have stories? “You guys have entertainment, right?”

  “Well, of course,” he replied instantly, “but it’s in holo form or direct retinal projection for long story formats. You know, you choose which character’s point of view and you then see what they see or you can choose the producer’s cut, seeing from the perspectives that tell the best story.”

  “That sounds cool! I’d like to try that sometime.” She said before her brain had a chance to overthink it. Smooth move, idiot. Now it sounds like I’m fishing for a date. Stop staring at his face! He’s gonna think you’re a weirdo.

  “I can give you a few recommendations,” he offered. “But this reader, you use it for stories, like a noble?”

  “A noble?” Are the commoners illiterate here?

  “Yeah, I mean, we all know how to read but we just use it for work, for interfaces and such. It’s only the nobles who develop the speed needed to read for pleasure.” He had a slightly guarded look now. “I’m sorry, I forgot…”

  “Forgot what?”

  “That I’m talking to a noble.” He bowed his head.

  “Wait, are you bowing?”

  “I haven’t greeted you properly, as befits a noble of the republic…”

  “How does a republic even have nobles? And knock it off with the courtly manners!” She had her arms crossed over her belly. “Just call me Gabriella.”

  “Yes, my… Yes, Gabriella.”

  He almost called me my Gabriella, she thought. A girl could get used to that… Oh gods! How long have I been staring at his pecs? She looked away, making sure the entire room wasn’t watching her embarrassing performance.

  “So, Gabriella,” the young man said, putting a slight emphasis on her name, “what is it that you’re reading? The nobles I spoke of tend to read epic prose.”

  “No doubt so they can drop little quotes in conversation to prove how accomplished they are,” she said archly, pleased to see he wasn’t shocked at her irreverence.

  “This is just a bit of mildly amusing historical fiction.” She waved the reader. “It’s set about five hundred years ago. Lot’s of damsels in distress, besieged castles…”

  He frowned, looking at
the reader. “I don’t know this word… besieged.”

  She set the reader down. “Okay, imagine this is the castle but it has a high wall of stone all the way around it.”

  “Isn’t that a waste of labor?” He wrinkled his nose at her in a way that reminded her that she was still feeling a little awkward. “It would be easy to insert troops with a shuttle or even…”

  “This is five hundred years ago,” she cut him off. “Nobody was flying back then. If you showed up in a shuttle they’d think you were a witch and burn you at the stake...”

  She stopped talking. Yep. Now he thinks we’re all a bunch of ignorant savages, sitting around in caves and hunting with pointy sticks…

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said. “I forgot about that. Our people on Irth went from first flight to quantum circuits in less than two centuries.” He leaned forward. “You know the old kingdom took about fifteen times as long?”

  “Really?”

  “Hells yeah! You wild Humans hit ass!” He frowned. “Did I translate that Irth-phrase correctly? Hit ass?”

  “Kick,” she corrected. “It’s ‘kick ass’.” Don’t think about his ass. She knew her face was starting to turn red. “I didn’t even realize you’d said it in Imperial, just now.”

  “Ah, no doubt the specific word-choice can make a difference. Now, you were explaining a… besieged?”

  “Besieged is the thingmod. The thing would be ‘siege’, am I using the right Imperial grammatical terms?”

  He nodded. “I think so. You seem to be making sense.”

  She put her hands around his side of the reader. “Imagine my hands are the wall…”

  “Oh! Wait a moment,” he said. He brought up a holo menu and pulled out a file that he dropped on the desk. A three dimensional model of a fortified town now sat above the e-reader.

  “You mean like this?”

  “Really?” She tilted her head back so she could look down her nose at him, just a little. “You were asking why a town would have a wall and you have this on file?”

  “Well,” he gestured helplessly at the town. “This is just… I mean it’s for…”

  Oh my gods! Is he turning red now? I’d say something to help but he’s just so cute when he stammers…

  The pods did such a good job of teaching that she didn’t even realize her inner dialogue was currently using Imperial Standard.

  “This is a colony town,” he finally managed. “The walls aren’t for open military conflict; they’re just for keeping out wild creatures or whatever bandits might show up.”

  “Fine, whatever.” She pointed to the town. “Both the attackers and the defenders in this story would have been limited mostly to edged weapons, swords, lances, arrows…”

  “Wow!” he breathed, looking down at the wall. “So the wall would have... archers, yes?”

  She nodded. “And they would make it a living hell for enemies to get close to the wall with ladders, though that was one of the ways to get a quick victory. If that fails, they have to settle in and build siege equipment – stuff that can hurl large stones at the wall to make a hole.”

  “If they had no flight capability,” he began slowly. “Why not just surround the town and wait? Wouldn’t the defenders run out of food?”

  “They would,” she confirmed. “And sometimes they did that but it’s costly. The longer an army sat still back then, the more men died from disease.”

  “Why?”

  “There was very little understanding about… sanitation,” she said. “Back then,” she added quickly.

  “Amazing,” he said, finally taking a bite. “To think that our people came so far in just a few generations.” He pointed a piece of blue fruit at the holographic town. “I suppose the new colonists will feel at home having a wall.”

  “Is this the new town?” she asked excitedly. “The capital of our new colony?”

  He waggled his head, still chewing. “It’s an option but they’re probably going to choose an arcology. It’s more secure and easier to upscale over the years as the colony grows.

  “Did you design this?”

  He swallowed. “No, this is procedurally generated based on the number of inhabitants and type of colony. This is the standard imperial colony town for an early community of farmers.”

  “Oh, that is very cool!” She leaned in to look down on the buildings. “I do a lot of modeling on my computer back home. I’d love to learn more about how this works. Maybe we could give this town a little Earth flair…”

  She sat back, shoulders lowering a bit. “Sorry. Just getting carried away. I’m sure the whole thing is just stuck together from pre-fab components anyway.”

  “What?” He shook his head. “No. The town is built out of locally-harvested material by a swarm of nanites. They follow the pattern we give them. If you can change the look of the place…”

  “You could actually build it that way?” she asked, practically falling off the front of her seat.

  “Of course,” he said. “It’s no more difficult than the standard model and this would make it more… Human!”

  She was so excited that she’d managed to forget how cute the guy was. Until now, she thought, her eyes drifting down to his shoulders. Those damn under-armor suits don’t leave much to the imagination…

  She realized she was staring again. She looked up, face red, to meet his gaze.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  Dang it! she thought in English. Couldn’t he just be the cute older dude that I hung out with and enjoyed a little unacknowledged tension with? Now I have to admit I’m just a teenager. “I’m seventeen,” she muttered, looking down.

  She was a couple weeks shy of eighteen but steadfastly refused to add that. She felt it sounded a little too desperate to look older.

  “That explains it,” he mused.

  “Explains what?” she asked, humiliated.

  “How you come up with such interesting ideas,” he said. “How you can easily read this,” he gestured at her tablet with a mild frown, “histrionic friction?”

  She almost giggled. There was a fair bit more ‘friction’ in those novels than her mom realized.

  “You’re so much older.”

  She nodded morosely. Wait, what? She let her eyes bore into him now. “I’m seventeen,” she reminded him.

  But he just nodded, as if that was all the proof he needed for his own point.

  She pursed her lips for a half second. “How old are you?”

  “I’m six,” he told her.

  She held up a finger. “I’m gonna need a second to absorb that.” She looked around the room with new eyes. I’m probably the oldest person in the whole damn room. Well… She spotted her mother walking in. …Second oldest.

  Don’t come over here, she thought. She watched her veer toward the serving line. “You have to admit it’s weird,” she said, looking back at him. “You look like you’re in your twenties but I’m actually three times your age.”

  “Yes, but we’re created with implanted knowledge,” he said. “We wake up for the first time with a lot of context that we have to sort through.”

  “You have context but how much of a role is played by societal boundaries?” she asked. Look who’s been paying attention in social studies! She closed her eyes for a second, not needing to look in order to know who’d just sat next to her.

  “My lady,” the young man bowed his head.

  “A perfect example of societal boundaries,” Gabriella said. “My mother sees me talking to a male of the species and she can’t resist a protective display.”

  “I can’t sit with my daughter while I eat?” Adelina asked, sounding mildly offended, one of her best performances, really.

  “Neither of us have eaten since yesterday afternoon,” Gabriella said, looking down at her mother’s hastily chosen piece of fruit and a mug of black coffee. Her mom never took her coffee black.

  “My mother,” Gabriella explained, turning back to her companion, “is
entirely responsible for me. I’m not yet a legal adult in our homestate…”

  “Or on this ship,” Adelina insisted.

  “Isn’t that up to republic law?” she asked her mother.

  “Nope. I looked it up. The laws of the republic are intended as a stopgap in cases where local laws don’t cover something. As far as something like…”

  “Age of consent?” Gabriella asked innocently.

  Adelina glared at her child. “Okay, sure. Age of consent. You’re covered by California law.”

  “Age of consent?” the man asked.

  “It’s the age you need to reach before you can legally consent to sexual intercourse,” Gabriella answered, amazing herself with her sudden boldness. I’m the wise old woman here, right?

  “Otherwise, you face legal penalties,” Adelina added, a little more forcefully than she probably intended. “And the parent as well, if she murders the bastard who took advantage of her child…”

  His eyes grew wide at the threat radiating from the mother. The entire room had gone silent. Gabriella looked around at the sea of faces, all aimed at her table.

  “We should speak up a little,” she said, setting the example with her own voice. “The laws on age of consent are there to protect children from being abused. You wouldn’t have given this any thought because you’ve all been physically adult from the first time you opened your eyes.

  “To give you an example, if I were to defy my mother and pursue a… physical relationship with…” She leaned over. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name?”

  “Hack,” he offered, darting a nervous look at Adelina.

  That’s his name? And he works with nanite code? “Hack here, would be guilty of a misdemeanor, probably.”

  “Depending on his age,” Adelina protested, “he could be…”

  “Hang on,” Gabriella cut her off, “I’m getting to that.” She waved as Luna walked in. “As I was saying, Hack would be looking at some time in lockup for committing a misdemeanor.”

  Luna’s eyebrows betrayed her interest at this comment. She adjusted her trajectory to end at her relatives’ table instead of at the chow-line.