by George Ellis
Enter a 5-foot-tall emo kid with a knack for physics and navigational theory.
Somehow, the girl in the leather jacket who spent 99% of her time glued to her handheld cracked the problem that had stymied some of the brightest minds in the galaxy.
And now she was feeling pretty nervous about her role in the project.
“There’s more,” I told her.
After the meeting broke up, Romy stopped by my quarters again for another heart-to-heart chat. I was starting to get the vibe she’d never been close with her parents. I was a dad type in her mind. That made me feel both old and uncomfortable at the same time.
She looked at me and wanted to say something, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on,” I said.
She screwed her face into a confused grimace. “Oh, you thought I was here to ask for your help? I’m deciding if I should tell you something that might help you. But now I think if you had the information, it might influence your decisions in a way that could actually get you killed.”
“I see,” I said. I had no clue what she was trying to say.
“Forget it. You’ll find out at the right time and hopefully, it’ll save your life.”
“Hopefully?”
“Probably. Definitely probably,” she said.
“Can’t argue with that logic,” Gary said, sarcastically. “Romy, why don’t you tell me and I can determine if Denver needs to know?”
“I don’t trust the judgment of a sitcom writer, sorry.”
Damn. That was what they used to call a burn.
“I was also a sitcom star!” Gary yelled. “And you didn’t even know what a sitcom was until like three days ago!”
Romy shrugged and walked out the door, leaving me annoyed.
“She’s a weird one,” Gary said.
“Thank you, captain obvious,” I replied.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asked.
“Talk about what.”
“You’ve been pretty stressed lately, and it’s obvious why,” Gary said.
“Uh, because we’re about to try and steal the most coveted device in the verse from the dangerous ship in history? And if we fail, we die. And if we succeed, we might die anyway?”
“Right, that,” he said. “But also, your brother. It has to be a total mind-fry to find out that he’s still alive, and you’ve barely talked about it.”
I paused. It wasn’t like Gary to care about emotions and feelings.
“Maybe I’ve been busy with trying not to be killed, myself,” I told him. “And what’s gotten into you? Let’s talk about you for a minute.”
“I’m good.”
“I don’t know. I think you’re hiding something. And I’m starting to think I’ve honored my uncle’s wishes long enough.”
“What could a regular guy like me possibly be hiding?” Gary asked. “I don’t even have pockets!”
“Well it’s not a sense of humor, we know that.”
“It’s not my fault you don’t understand 21st century humor. Your Uncle E, on the other hand, knew the dealio. Dealio is a slang term we used back in the day.”
“I’ve seen Napoleon Dynamite.”
“That doesn’t make you an expert, Denver.”
“Go to bed.”
“But I don’t want to!” he whined. I looked at the camera above the door and waited. The red light finally blipped off. I sighed and laid back on my bed, staring at the ceiling of the room. On top of everything else, the last thing I needed was a problem with Gary. The Stang meant so much to my uncle, and Gary was part of it. Shutting him off would feel like cutting a piece of my uncle’s heart out of the ship. With both of my parents gone, I’d always thought of the Stang as the last member of my family because it was infused with so many memories of my uncle.
Of course, that was before I knew my brother was still around.
I flipped through the Stang’s entertainment catalog to take my mind off things for a while. It usually worked when I was facing a tough job or needed a break from the grind of lonely, long range space travel. These were different problems and worries altogether, so it was time to pull out the big guns.
Cate Blanchett’s haunting yet beautiful opening narration of the Fellowship of the Ring began, and I tried to immerse myself in the 20th century’s most epic fantasy. At last count, I had watched the full Lord of the Rings trilogy 18 times. On half of those occasions, they were back-to-back-to-back viewings of the three movies. My uncle once told me that it was called a “movie marathon.”
The tale was set in another time and place, of course, but there was something comforting about the clear delineation between good and evil. I much preferred it to the world of gray.
You were either on the side of Frodo, Sam, Gandalf and the bunch, or you were a slave to Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor, a barren wasteland filled with wretched creatures. On occasion, I’d considered space to be like Mordor; it had no soul. It was endless. Cold. Dead. One false step and it could kill you without a second thought.
One does not simply walk into space, I thought to myself.
The story revolved around the quest to destroy a sacred ring of power. If the good guys succeeded, evil would be defeated forever. If they failed, the world would fall into darkness. Again, I liked those simple outcomes.
In real life, especially in the current verse, there was no such clarity. Sometimes you did a good thing. Sometimes a bad thing. And other times, you thought you were on the side of justice, only to find out later you were working for the wrong kind of people. That’s why I liked watching movies. They were the ultimate means of escape. For a few hours, my actual troubles were miles away. All I cared about was the fate of someone else who, most of the time, was on a noble quest.
Unfortunately, all I could think about was the job at hand. Even the greatest wizard the world had ever seen couldn’t save me from that. I fell asleep thinking not of hobbits and Middle Earth, but space pirates and federation bounty hunters.
Chapter 19
“Dad won’t even know we’re gone,” Avery said. “Besides, he doesn’t really care what we do on our own time. I mean, he’d probably be proud of you for having the balls to break a rule for once in your life.”
My brother tucked his curly brown hair under a black cap. He was 18 and looked a few years older than that, thanks to the thin mustache he sported. I was only 15 and had exactly zero whiskers on my face. Next to him I probably looked all of 12.
I rose from my cot and felt the cold steel of the ship’s deck under my feet.
“Might want to put on shoes first, Denny,” he said.
I hated being called Denny. Which is why he called me that. I was pretty sure my brother liked me, but I was damn sure he liked annoying me. He tossed me a spare cap and told me I would look older if I wore it. I put it on and he cocked his head to the side and studied my face.
“Nope, never mind. You still look like a girl. But hey, maybe they’ll think you’re cute and let you in because of it.”
* * *
Aside from the Earth, Mars was the only inhabited planet in the solar system. Earth’s moon had a few dozen colonies on it, but it wasn’t technically a planet.
The first colony on Mars, dubbed New Chicago, had been founded a hundred years earlier. It eventually grew from a few pods to the planet’s capital city. During that transformation, buildings were erected, underground subway tunnels were excavated, and people did what they do: made more people. Those new people, born on Martian soil, felt no emotional connection to Earth. To them, Mars wasn’t a colony, or just another extension of Earth. It was their home planet. Earth was a dot on the horizon to them.
I was born on Earth, but had spent the majority of my life in space, and I felt the same way as Martians. What did I owe that blue marble?
Still, as much as I admired the idea of Mars and the audacity of forming an entire society there, my first impression of the planet was th
at it could use a new coat of paint. The structures at least. They were all gray. Viewed from the Sheffield as our ship had broken atmo earlier that day, the surface of Mars was covered with a series of gray bubbles, all connected with thin corridors. I knew there were also subways underneath the planet’s surface, but that just made it seem worse, like Martians had been forced to live like rats.
Vinit Padma, perhaps the most famous Martian in history, and the planet’s first president, once said Mars should not be judged by the eyes, but by the human spirit itself. Meaning sure, the place wasn’t pretty, but it was damn impressive it even existed at all. The Republic of Mars was a triumph of human ingenuity and, in Padma’s mind, was man’s crowning achievement to date.
That may have been true in the theoretical sense, but the first corridor I stepped in smelled like whiskey and death. Maybe the guy should have said not to judge it with your nose, either.
This wasn’t exactly what I’d expected of the best bar on Mars, but I guess my idea of “best” was different from my brother’s. He had been talking about the Red Desert since we first heard our dad’s ship would be making the trip to Mars a few months earlier. I’d only joined the crew a few months before that, so I was still just a babe in the woods (whatever that meant), according to my brother.
The Red Desert was the oldest bar on the red planet, as the faded and crusty sign on the metal edifice proclaimed. It had been around nearly 70 years, and it seemed like nothing had been updated in that time. The walls were partially corroded and the windows that looked out onto the main corridor of downtown New Chicago were caked yellow. The sign said there was a max capacity of 50 people, which I found surprising given how small the building was. It couldn’t have been more than 20 feet wide.
Avery smiled at me as he opened the heavy black door to the establishment. If the outside of the place smelled bad, the inside wasn’t much of an improvement. There was so much vape smoke, it was like walking into a dirty cloud. I got a contact buzz before I made it to the bar.
The guy behind the long counter was in his late 50’s. His nose was a deep purple color and what was left of his hair was stark white with age. He grimaced as he saw us sit in two stools opposite him. Well, he mostly grimaced at me.
“Hey Joe,” my brother said with a casual nod. “What’s poppin’?”
The guy, whose name was apparently Joe, turned his gaze to my brother. He didn’t know him. Then he turned his purple nose back at me.
“How old are you? 12?” he asked.
“Old enough,” Avery responded, before I had the chance. Then he used his handheld to transfer a few credits. Joe saw this and thought about it.
“Still too young. The Mars Police show up in here, see this little pissant, and they could shut me down,” he said. It was obviously a lie. The Mars Police didn’t care about bars and licenses. But it was his place and he was squeezing for more credits. My brother shook his head.
“That’s enough,” he said. “We want two rum and sodas. You can either serve us or I’ll give an even better story to the Mars Police about the weapons smuggling business you run on the side.”
Joe’s face went red and I thought he was going to grab Avery with one of his huge hands and crush his skull, but instead he turned to make our drinks. Avery smiled at me.
“You gotta know how to talk to people, Denny,” he said. He then explained that dad had once delivered some weapons to Joe back in the day, so he knew the guy was dealing on the side. Avery called it having “leverage” on someone.
I just nodded as if I understood. While I was excited to be out in New Chicago with my big brother, I didn’t want any trouble. Avery said dad wouldn’t care, but I’d begged to be on his crew for years and now that I was, I didn’t want to do anything that might get me kicked back to living with mom.
“What do you think?” Avery asked after Joe handed us our drinks in metal cups.
“Smells worse than the lukewarm beer we have on the ship,” I said. “And I haven’t even tried it yet.”
My brother laughed, genuinely amused. He gave me a hard time about a lot of things, but he did seem to like my sense of humor.
“I was talking about New Chicago, not the damn drink,” he said.
I told him I was underwhelmed. And it was true. I’d heard a lot of tales about the capital of Mars, many of them from my brother. Some people claimed it was the baddest city in the verse outside of Earth. To me, it seemed depressing. I’d never been to Earth, so I couldn’t make that comparison, but I’d always preferred stations to planetary cities. The cities always felt more manufactured with their domes and corridors and recycled oxygen. Something about being on a planet but not being able to breathe the air was just wrong. On a station, it made sense. And because stations were in constant motion, the air recyclers worked better. The planet recyclers just never quite did the trick for me.
“Last time I take you anywhere fun,” he said.
“Point me to the fun,” I replied.
Avery nodded and got a dangerous gleam in his eye. I knew it well. Every time it happened, I regretted it. Avery knocked on the bar, loudly, forcing Joe to come over.
“Hit that bar again and I’ll use one of those illegal weapons you somehow know about,” he warned. Avery put up his hands in a move of mock surrender.
“I was just sitting here with my brother, who turns 18 today,” he lied. “And he was complaining that he wasn’t having a good time.”
“If he’s a day over 14, I wouldn’t believe it.”
Avery laughed, trying to warm Joe up to him. It wasn’t working. Still, he transferred a bunch of credits to the bar. “I’d like him to remember this birthday, if you know what I mean.”
Joe looked from my brother to me, and back again. He sighed and rolled his eyes.
* * *
She was at least 45. While my brother wanted to show me a good time, he apparently didn’t have the credits to find someone even remotely close to my age. Or maybe it was just how things worked on Mars; all the companions were older.
The sex didn’t last long.
The woman made a passing remark about it being my birthday, then got down to business. She pushed me back onto the musty cot and undressed me. Her hands were warm but her eyes were cold. She had long hair that was dyed brown and purple, and she wore what seemed to be a lot of makeup. An abundance of perfume made the whole room smell like lilac and vanilla. Despite my nerves, she had me ready to go in no time, and then a couple minutes later, it was over. We never kissed or spoke during the time she was on top of me — it was a purely mechanical affair. She had rocked her hips gently at first, then sped up as she sensed I was close. Her eyes remained distant and focused somewhere else, and the smile she provided felt like what it was – a perfunctory part of the service. There was no joy in it, that was for sure.
It wasn’t at all how I pictured my first time going. I at least thought I’d know the girl. And her being paid never even dawned on me as a possibility. When she was finished, the woman simply pulled her tight orange shirt back over her head, gave me a playful tap on the leg and left me alone in the room to pull my pants back up.
I laid there for a few minutes, my body satisfied. It had felt weird, wrong and good all at the same time. I wondered if it would always feel that way. No, I decided. It wasn’t normal. I grew upset with my brother and wondered if he secretly wanted to ruin the moment for me. Yet another way of giving his younger brother a hard time.
When I walked back downstairs to the main bar area, Avery was joking loudly with someone in a grey shirt. He was a Silver Star captain. My brother caught sight of me, grinned slyly, and waved me over. Even though I knew the sex was bought and paid for, I felt strangely confident as I approached the bar. Avery introduced me to the Silver Star guy, Lucas. “This is my baby bro. Well, he was my baby bro. Now he’s a man.”
I nodded, unsure of what to say. It was weird enough having Avery tell a random stranger I had just lost my virginity, but I also thought we
didn’t get along with Silver Star people, so I wasn’t sure why they were hanging out together in the first place.
“Popped your cherry, huh?” Lucas said, his foul breath full of alcohol and rotted teeth. He smiled so wide I could see the dark spots where his back teeth should have been. “I lost mine when I was 10.”
“Well Denny has always been a late bloomer,” Avery said. “Denny, go hit the bathroom and wash up. I need a minute to talk with Lucas here.”
As I followed my brother’s advice, I looked over my shoulder and saw him and Lucas talking under their breath so nobody else could hear them. I felt a knot form in the pit of my stomach. Dad had always told us that Silver Star was the enemy. They were our chief rival and the guy in charge, Jack Largent, had some kind of personal vendetta against my father.
An hour later, we were sneaking back onto the ship as everyone slept. We made it unnoticed all the way to our shared quarters. Once inside, we slid the door closed and flipped on the light.
“Hey boys,” my dad said. He was laying on my brother’s bunk with his hands behind his head. “Pro tip. Next time you sneak off the ship when we’re docked, turn off your handhelds. It’s a little thing called a tracking beacon.”
I looked at my brother, pissed. He wasn’t worried, but he didn’t have as much at stake as I did. He shrugged.
“Good to know, Rick,” Avery said, playing it off as if he wasn’t worried we were caught. Like everyone else on the crew (besides me), Avery called my dad by his first name. Formal titles like captain were rarely used on the Sheffield.
My dad hopped up off the bunk and cracked Avery on the side of the head. I flinched and waited for my turn, but it never came. Avery’s eyes were red as he fought back the tears, not wanting to give our old man the satisfaction.
