by D. Brumbley
Mercury hadn’t intended to watch Logan with his wife, but they were sitting close enough that even though she hadn’t overheard the conversation, she couldn’t miss how he was holding his wife and the way they kissed each other. “We’re lucky people, aren’t we? We get to be a part of this Initiative with the people we love.”
Logan nodded, smiling sadly after Anna as she floated out to start bossing around some of the passengers to get them back in their seats. “We applied for this program for completely different reasons than the ones that actually got us to accept. World was a different place for both of us a year ago. I applied because I couldn’t stand watching her with anyone else any longer, and things had kind of taken a turn for me that left me without much reason to keep moving. I’m glad it’s a different world.” He smiled, then nodded over to Mercury. “What got you and the giant to apply?”
“We both have been working toward this our whole lives.” Mercury replied as she looked over Carl’s vitals once more time before docking. She was glad to see that both of her patients were still alive and stable, but she had no idea how extensive the damage was for either of them. “I didn’t think there were so many people out there that hated it, or that wanted to destroy something good for humankind, but I still want what I wanted when I applied. I grew up hoping to be a great doctor and to live on Jannah. I want to develop a permanent cure for CV. I want to protect Jannah from CV and to help Earth. All of that was all wrapped up into one big dream, and now Orion is a part of that too.”
“He seems like a good man. I’ve never had much use for military types before. Out in the districts, they tend to just be the reason kids leave home too early and then get killed earlier than they should have for being somewhere they shouldn’t. He at least seems like he knows what he’s doing.”
“He does.” Mercury nodded confidently and then looked over at Logan briefly. “It’ll be good to get on Station Nine where things can settle down. Everything will get sorted out. Hopefully these two will make full recoveries.” She glanced over at the vitals and then back at Logan. “I just didn’t imagine it would be like this.”
“I knew space was going to involve expanding the capacity of my imagination.” He said sadly as he looked over Johnson as well, since she was closer to him, then turned to look out the window at the Earth as they rolled to match the station, spinning slowly through the dark at a scale that made him shake his head. “Doesn’t mean I’m any better prepared for it than you are.” He floated over to check the imposter in his restraints again, then went to Mercury to make sure she was strapped in tightly for docking. He had been told to look out for her, after all, and he took that kind of job very seriously.
“Thanks.” She said politely as he tugged on the restraints over her chest to make sure that they were tight and secure. Her cheek still ached from being hit in the face, but the cold pack had helped. “You’ve helped me a lot today. I’m grateful. You’re a good person.”
“I try to be. Just like everybody else. At least most of the time.” He gave her a conflicted smile as he headed back to his own seat, strapping himself in tightly with his eyes going back and forth between the restrained redhead across from him and the passenger compartment where everyone was attempting to get settled. Over fifty people dead, shot out of the sky, another ship destroyed. He had his doubts about how hard some people were trying to be good.
Compared to the rest of the trip, the docking into Station Nine was probably the smoothest part. Mercury sighed in relief as soon as she heard the hissing of the landing gear, even though she knew that there was probably still more headache to come. Especially concerning her patients. Orion made an announcement for everyone to remain in their seats until the two injured could be taken off the shuttle, and as soon as they were locked in place and the airlocks opened, a medical team came swarming into the shuttle. Mercury barely had time to say anything before they uploaded the information they needed from her monitoring and rushed Carl and Johnson out of the shuttle. She was stunned by how quickly her patients were gone, and how little regard she was given about it. She wasn’t even out of her own restraints in time to follow the team, and then a security team came in to remove the unconscious prisoner before anyone else was allowed to do anything at all. “I…um, I hope they keep us updated.” She said to Logan, though she wondered if he would even care to continue talking to her now that they were docked and he didn’t need to work beside her any longer.
“Well, the two injured are a part of the Initiative, right? We’ll see them once they’re out of recovery. As for the other guy…I wouldn’t figure on seeing him again.” Logan had seen the look of the security detail that had come to collect the imposter, and they hadn’t seemed like they were even interested in hearing anyone’s version of what had gone down on the ground. They were interested in getting the guy out and nothing else. “Those didn’t look like the type you come back from once they decide they need you locked up.”
“They don’t, you’re right.” Mercury fully disengaged herself from her seat, but she had to grab onto Logan’s arm for a moment to orient herself correctly. “We should go find our spouses. I don’t want to give the Initiative any chance to separate me from Orion because they want to question people. Being treated like a criminal once was more than enough.”
It wasn’t difficult to find Orion and Anna, but the rest of the passengers were busy getting out through the airlock as Logan and Mercury wove their way through in mid-air. The other security officers had gone ahead to lead the way for the Earth-born passengers to get where they were supposed to be congregating, but Orion and Anna hung back with Fitch to make sure everyone got off safely and the ship was secured.
Orion hovered in the upper corner of the passenger bay, watching everyone get out, but put out a hand to pull Mercury in against him once she was close enough. “I missed you.”
Mercury instantly melted into Orion’s embrace and she kissed him with need behind every press of her lips. “I’m so glad to see that you’re alright. They rushed in and took Carl, I was hoping they might let me go with him, but they didn’t even talk to me. I’ll try to get more information once we’re settled.”
“I’m sure they’ll take care of him.” Orion said mostly to convince himself. “I would’ve felt better with you looking after him, but he’ll be alright. He’s a tough son of a bitch, if nothing else.” He squeezed her tighter against him as they waited for the shuttle to empty. “Are you alright? After everything on the ground?”
She nodded as she kissed him again, but then she leaned back so that he could actually see her face, since she had jumped into kissing him as soon as she could. “The prisoner hit me pretty hard when I tried to sedate him, though I’m pretty sure Logan broke the man’s leg. Or arm. It was hard to tell where the sound came from.” Her cheek was definitely turning purple.
“Ouch.” He ran his hand around the edges of the bruise, but didn’t touch it directly. “I mean, I’m glad it wasn’t anything worse, but that looks like it’s gonna sting for a while.”
Mercury nodded, but she was a little surprised that his reaction wasn’t anger like Logan’s had been, and Logan didn’t even know her. “Come on, let’s get inside. I hope they have some answers about something.”
“So you’re basically telling me you’re the one who flew us here.” Logan joked as he pulled Anna onto his back with her legs wrapped around his waist. It was easy to navigate with her attached to him that way, and he liked having her hanging on at every available opportunity. “What was the hardest part, would you say, the actual flying or the lying to your husband about it afterward?”
“I’m not lying!” She said with a laugh as she held tighter to him, mashing her breasts into his back and then kissing his neck every so often as he floated them both into the space station. “Just ask that Orion guy. He’ll tell you. I totally owned that shuttle.”
“That’s a useful skill to have.” Logan said with another laugh, but his tone grew a little more ser
ious as they gained some distance on everyone else around them. “Might come in handy sometime before we’re done with everything up here. Be good to know how to take one of those things and run with it in case there’s a need.”
“I know.” She agreed quickly, since the same thoughts had crossed her mind. “I still want to be able to get home.” Anna whispered into his ear before she nipped at his earlobe. “He says I might be able to get into the pilot training now that we’re here. It will be good knowledge to have.”
“Really? Wow, that would be pretty great for you.” Four hours in the air and she was already lining up a career for herself. Just when he thought he couldn’t admire his wife more than he already did. “Only thing I’m likely to get trained in after today is how to use a gun. Not sure I want to make a career out of that, but I guess if they need me on that kind of detail, that could come in handy someday too.”
“They’re going to need you for more than a gun.” She said as she teased the side of his neck with her teeth. It wouldn’t matter if they were dying, bleeding out, she would still want to be touching Logan, kissing him, just be near him. As it was, he randomly reached back and grabbed her backside to make sure she was still firmly in place on his back, but she knew that wasn’t the only reason. “You have so many skills. Half the stuff I know, I learned from you.”
“Let’s not talk about where you learned the other half of the stuff you know.” He teased back at her, turning his head to kiss her and having to flail a little to correct their balance as they floated down the corridor afterward. “And most of the stuff I know, I only know because I messed around with things until I broke them, then kept messing around until I got them working again. I doubt we’ll be given that kind of freedom to fuck around up here.”
Anna just shrugged, since she wasn’t sure she could agree. “Orion let me mess around with the shuttle. You know, under supervision, but still. I imagine they want us to learn how to figure things out for ourselves, right? I mean, there’s no IT support on Jannah.”
The entire dock was like something out of a hallucination for Logan, people pointed every which way, drawing their luggage with them, all in the same iron-grey Jannah Initiative flight suits. There was a woman who seemed to be pushing a pallet of supplies that Logan estimated had to weigh at least five hundred kilos, but she guided it through the air by way of a pair of thin lead ropes and the occasional kick or shove, heading down to a supply room of some kind just off the dock. It felt like watching a school of incredibly disorganized fish in a bowl, except he was one of the fish. “At least Jannah will have gravity. This is…I’m not sure I’m ever gonna get used to this.”
Anna nodded in complete agreement as she continued to hold on like a monkey on his back. “It smells weird up here, too. Everything is so clean and sterile.” She wrinkled her nose as they drifted further in the direction of the light-up arrows. As they moved, every so often, she could see their names light up above them, which was more than a little disconcerting. They were monitored everywhere they moved, but it looked like everyone was, so that they could be guided in the right direction by the station itself. “And there’s no breeze. There’s just nothing.”
It took a little creative maneuvering to get them heading in the right direction, but they eventually got one of the smaller lifts to themselves, and Logan was about to touch the button for the appropriate level written on the wall when the button lit up on its own and a sign was displayed to warn them that they were about to begin descending. For the first part of the descent, they were sitting with their backs to the ceiling, and Logan just shook his head. The day couldn’t get much weirder. “I always thought when they got up here, they would try and replicate what was down there, you know? Throw some green in somewhere, a flower box, something. But if this place is any indication, they walked away from Earth and never looked back.”
“Why would they want to leave Earth behind for all of this?” Anna questioned softly, since nothing about the place appealed to her except that it was the only way for them to eventually get to Jannah. “You would think they would have put a little more effort into saving Earth all those centuries ago if this was the only alternative.” When the lift slowed down, Anna could tell that there was a little more gravity pulling them away from the ceiling so that they were closer to hovering over what she considered was the floor, but it was still hard to determine floor from ceiling. “It’s much better than this.”
The gravity wasn’t quite enough to make it easy to walk, but it was enough to make it possible to bounce with long strides across the floor in the direction the lights were indicating. “There’s certainly more to it. This just seems…dead.” There were others in the corridors with them, all heading the same direction, but the place was still mostly deserted. Logan wasn’t sure if that was for their benefit or if there was some kind of population shortage in space as there was on Earth.
Anna didn’t recognize anyone as they bounced through the corridor, and she didn’t like the fact that most expressions weren’t happy or hopeful, but full of worry and concern. Clearly they weren’t the only shuttle that had experienced some difficulty getting up into space. “God, it feels like we’re going to a funeral.”
All Logan could do was agree as they looked around at all the grim faces, but within a few moments, there was much more to see. The corridor ended in a large set of double-doors, on the other side of which was a meeting-room that was…strangely beautiful. From the doors, the floor fell away in broad tiers into a wide amphitheater, with a wide stage at the far end of it. The wall behind the stage was completely clear, as if they had stepped out to a room that was actually exposed to space, even though Logan knew there had to be glass there. The Earth was visible beyond it, but they were spinning steadily, and the part of the world they were looking down on changed with every passing moment. The ceiling of the chamber was patterned in subtle colors, like metal worked in a fire at different temperatures, bringing out patterns and rifts in the structure above their heads. There were thousands of chairs already set up through the vast space, individually bolted into designated spaces, and hundreds of people already settling in for whatever came next. “Looks like this is the place.” He looked down at himself and shook his head, squeezing her hand tightly. “If this is a funeral, then I forgot to get dressed for it. And I’m pretty sure I left all my handkerchiefs at home.”
“The only person I would mourn here would be you. And I’m not letting you go, so if you’re dying, you’re taking me with you.” Anna gripped his hand even tighter as they moved to find some seats, and it was only as they moved slowly through the empty seats that they happened to see a few people that they recognized from their own ship. Not friends, really, but people they knew from Earth, at least. It was some kind of kinship, right? It was clear who was from Earth and who wasn’t, not only because of the way people fumbled around or didn’t, but also how awkward people behaved in their uniforms, or how haggard they looked based on a rough ride or a simple ride from one from one station to the next. Clearly both sides, Earthlings and Orbitals, were wary of each other.
Logan noticed people at the same time Anna did, and after squeezing her hand, they took a tentative jump over a few rows of seats to land near some of the other passengers who were still looking around at the place half in wonder and half in trepidation. “Aiko, right? Tanaka?” He said to the tiny woman in the next row. “Sorry, I saw your name when we were coming around with the meds. You two kind of stuck out.” He tried to give the woman and her brother a smile, and reached out to shake their hands once they were planted, a few more people from their shuttle gathering near them in small groups. “Logan Bickford. Didn’t get a chance to introduce myself earlier.”
Aiko gave him a small smile as she shook his hand. Her hand was easily enveloped by his, but that seemed to be the case with a lot of the men she had met that day. She felt like she was surrounded by a half-giant race. Maybe they made a mistake in accepting her in the first place. “Nice
to meet you.” She shook Anna’s hand after and was grateful that at least Anna didn’t look like a giant. Just an average-sized woman. Aiko looked over at her brother and then sighed as she looked away and around the room before she spoke to Logan. “You were watching over the injured guards, right? Were they okay? Was anyone else hurt?”
“They were stable the last I saw them. And no, nobody else got hurt, thank god.” He shook Kazuo’s hand afterward and then sat down awkwardly, since it felt like he was barely being held to the seat. Every little move he made to get comfortable set him bouncing in the air. “Not on our ship, anyway. There were other ships that have had…problems. I’m sure they’ll talk about it here in a minute. They have to.”
Aiko’s expression was hard to read as she considered what he just told her, and then she looked back toward the staging area where she assumed the leaders of the Initiative would speak to them when everyone had arrived. “I’m not sure we’ll get the whole story.”
“I’m sure we won’t.” Logan said darkly, but just sighed and put an arm around Anna to hold her tight against him while they waited.
Some people were having an easier time moving in the low gravity than others, but Gordon wasn’t one of those who seemed bothered by it. He walked/bounced next to Jessie as they headed into the seats, scanning the crowd for everyone he knew he would know. “So this is what the beginning of the end looks like.” He said with a half-dreamy kind of smile on his face as he looked around the room. “Nicer place than I would have thought.”
“The beginning of the end? Don’t you sound positive and upbeat.” Jessie mumbled as they went to find seats. The kisses they had shared were something that she wanted to repeat, but she knew in less than an hour she would watch her name pop up on some kind of screen or announcement that would match her picture with someone else. Someone she wasn’t really interested in kissing, not like her sudden interest in Gordon. “It’s nice enough.”
