Year of the Child

by R L Dean

  "Corporal Jacobson just called me, confused. He says you want him to stop the Governor's courier from leaving, but he doesn't know how ..."

  Compton cursed again, walking hurriedly through the lobby. The car, was it out back, or was it in the garage?

  "I don't care what he does! That courier can not leave!"

  29 - Shultz

  "I thought you were sending us to Paris," Susan was saying. She, Desmond, and Armand were standing in front of his desk. Jung was at the windows, his back to them. "Now we're going to Ganymede, for an archeological dig? There can't be archeology on Ganymede, and even if there could be, none of us are archeologists."

  Jung shifted, looking to Shultz. "You might as well tell them."

  Shultz let out a heavy sigh. This was only going to make Susan more recalcitrant, and the other two would follow her lead. He had hoped to pitch it to them as a scientific discovery with few details— since he didn't actually know what Reinhardt had found— and Susan had somehow attached the word archeology to his vague explanation and so here they were.

  "What?" Susan asked, irritated. "Tell us what?"

  "It's not an archeological dig," Shultz, replied reluctantly. "Apex Mining has found something in one of the craters. Something they don't think is ... from Earth."

  Susan blinked.

  "Aliens?" Desmond asked. His whole face lit up. "I knew it! We found aliens, or did they find us? Do you have pictures?"

  Shultz rubbed his forehead. "No, no pictures, but we have this," he said, then from his desk he picked up printouts of the reports that Reinhardt had attached to her message. Susan all but snatched them from his hand, frowning.

  "It's a ..." he started, but Susan finished for him, eyes clued to the pages. "Spectroscopic analysis ... concentrated on a crater floor."

  Desmond and Armand gathered around her. Armand hadn't said a word, just stood the whole time with his brows furrowed. His expression didn't change as he looked at the pages of numbers and symbols.

  "What does it mean?" Desmond asked.

  Susan hmmed low, absorbed in the report. "It means there's a super-high concentration of titanium in the center of that crater. Naturally occurring ..." Her voice trailed off for a moment then, "Armand, what do you think this is ..."

  Armand leaned in closer, following her finger. "Detritus in the ice ... it looks like some bonding elements or byproducts. Which would mean ..."

  "Refinement," Susan said.

  "Aliens!" Desmond yelled, smiling.

  Susan snorted and looked up at Shultz. "Gov, what is this?"

  He shrugged. "A structure of some kind, a ship maybe. Whatever it is, it's old."

  "How old?" She asked.

  "According to Apex's CEO, it's been in the ice for over two-thousand years. And before you start asking any more questions, that's all I have. If you want to know more you'll have to go look at it yourselves."

  Desmond clapped his hands together. "Let's go!"

  Shultz called his driver up to help with their luggage and to take them to the tram station. Jung had an off duty officer from burrow PD meet them, and twenty minutes later, as the three scientists were riding the tram in ever climbing circles upward to the airfield, Shultz took the opportunity to sift through the endless bureaucracy associated with public office.

  "Hardin wants to re-zone part of her district from residential to commercial," he said.

  Jung didn't respond, instead he pulled his handcomm from his pants pocket, looked at it, then went to the couch and sat down. Shultz called Patty and asked her to bring in some coffee, and as soon as she set the tray on the table and left, Jung said, "Modi will try to stop them."

  Still looking at his desk files, he replied, "With any luck they'll be there and gone before Modi does whatever it is that he's going to do."

  "I just find it strange that we haven't heard from him or Saddler."

  "They don't have a legal leg to stand on," Shultz said, then shifting the conversation, "Can we ... are we able to fulfill our end of the bargain with Reinhardt?"

  Jung sipped his coffee then said, "The privateers? To an extent, yes. The ones I've been able to contact have agreed to either stop or slow down. More haulers will make it in-system, but as I've said before, they're not as disciplined as the FMN cells we've been used to dealing with here on the ground, they like what they're doing too much to stop for long."

  Shultz grunted and flipped through another report. "You think they're going to be a long term problem?"

  "Yes, but a more immediate concern is that I still haven't been able to contact the fuel depot that we lost communications with."

  Shultz opened his mouth to ask if Jung thought it could still be an equipment malfunction, but a notification flashed on his desk. It was the courier pilot.

  "All aboard, Frank?" Shultz asked, tapping the notice.

  "No sir, we have a problem," Frank's voice was hurried. "There's a UNSEC Sergeant ... Jenkins ... here, she's forcing Tami and her techs to do a complete diagnostics of our systems ..."

  "What!" Shultz yelled, standing.

  Frank went on, "Yes sir, and someone's locked down the access tube hatch to the hanger. I can see the science team through the window, but they can't get through the tube."

  Shultz yelled again. "What does Compton think he's doing! Frank, sit tight, I'll find out what's going on.

  As soon as he disconnected, a notice from Patty lit up. He ignored it, and started to call Compton, then he heard the man's voice, shouting outside his office. Jung stood, frowning, and Shultz nodded to him, then spreading his arms wide on his desk. Before Jung could tap the control pad Compton, he assumed, started beating on it.

  As the door opened the Lieutenant Colonel started to walk in, but had to wait a moment as Jung stepped out of the way. Jung had never been a military man, but he was solid, a few centimeters taller than Compton, and younger. Shultz was mildly surprised to see the man was by himself. Compton's people had stopped his state courier, and now he was here in person— where were the MPs?

  "Colonel what is the meaning of this!" Shultz shouted. "Why have you stopped my courier?"

  "I know you're sending a science team to Ganymede," Compton said, without preamble, and it hung in the air for a moment. It would have been pointless to ask how he knew. Strictly speaking, the Lieutenant Colonel was a by-the-book man. If he were able to monitor Shultz's office communications he would not have done so without orders from a superior officer, and he wouldn't have acted on any information out of hand.

  "Yes, I am," Shultz agreed. "I fail to see that as an explanation for your actions."

  "I'm sending a security escort with you," Compton told him. "And an official observer."

  Shultz recognized something in the way he said it, it was as though the Lieutenant Colonel worded his statement that way on purpose— then he understood. Compton's orders were issued a certain way to him because of the political situation. Well, Shultz understood politics.

  "You don't have the authority to do that," Shultz told him. "I don't know what game you're playing, but get your people out of my hanger and let the science team board."

  "My orders are from General Hague, and he's not playing," Compton told him.

  "I don't care if your orders came from the Secretary-General himself, the answer is the same." Then in a more conversational tone he added, "The courier doesn't have the room for a security detail."

  Compton had given him the opening, and time was king here, so he took it.

  The Lieutenant Colonel's eyebrows arched and he visibly relaxed, deflated almost. "The General suggested that what your team is going to investigate may be dangerous, whatever it might be. I have to insist that an observer be sent with them."

  Shultz inhaled and nodded. "Alright, Colonel, I think we can accommodate one of your personnel. But, we'll need to set some ground rules. I don't want them interfering with my team."

  "I understand, Governor," Compton replied, serious. "I believe an observer's job is to ob
serve."

  Fifteen minutes later Compton left his office, and Shultz turned to Jung. "You have to go with them, Bill. We can't have a UNSEC soldier bullying our people or hanging over their shoulders. Mars needs whatever Reinhardt is offering."

  Jung nodded, then left.

  Shultz called Frank and explained what was happening, then he sat down in his chair and stared into the center of the room. Where is this all going?

  30 - Misaki

  "Look, I mean, the haulers are refusing to leave so we have to go to the Moon anyway, if we want to get paid. So just come with us."

  Lying in her rack Misaki watched the expression on Mat's dark face soften on her handcomm screen. She liked this part of the message.

  I ... I ah. You're beautiful, and I think I ... well ... just, just come with us. It might be weeks or ...

  Misaki smiled and paused the playback. She had been a mere few meters away, standing on Butte's crowded concourse, just another miner or hauler in coveralls, watching him speak into his handcomm— making this very message. The cacophony of voices and vids playing from screens had been too loud for her to hear every word he said, but she remembered his profile ... his jaw moving as he spoke.

  You're beautiful. The way he said it ... it locked her knees and made her heart race. Then he had turned and saw her looking at him.

  Mat loved her.

  "I'm broken in so many ways," she whispered and touched Mat's face on the screen lightly with one finger.

  After a moment she found some irony in the fact that she still watched the message, when the man himself was no further than twenty meters in any direction— though, face to face, he was too shy to repeat the words that had keep her sane for weeks after he left her at Osaka dome. And considering what she had done, keeping her sanity was difficult. It had been a struggle, now made more relatable by Mat's tragic mistake in destroying the refinery at the pirate depot. He was right, there would have been innocents among the men and women killed when the fire from the blowback swept through the depot's levels, scorching everything and incinerating the terminal. Evil men were not the only ones that died.

  In her case the tragedy had not been an accident, and the death toll was still being tallied. But she understood what Mat was going through, and she knew his nightmares about killing the pilot on the tug, and destroying the freighter were gone now. Replaced with the grander act of turning the depot into an inferno. Just as the horribleness of the pirate tug was a faded memory for her, replaced with pictures she saw in newsfeeds of Harmony's blown dome and the debris of life scattered around it, lying in the Moon's gray dust.

  She closed the message and called Mat, when he answered it was from inside a vac-suit helmet.

  "Hey," he said, smiling at her. He looked tired, but she didn't think it was from a bender. For a while it seemed as though he was competing against Yuri, but since their talk he had slowed down considerably.

  "You are on the hull?" She asked.

  "About to be," he answered, his eyes shifting to something beyond the camera. The lighting changed and she realized he was in an airlock. "Just going to go take a look at the canisters."

  Haydon had checked them a few hours ago and Mat would know that ... it was just his way.

  "Alright, I'll come out with you."

  He looked directly at the camera. "Uh, okay. Sure. You want me to wait?"

  "No, I'll catch up."

  He nodded. "Okay,"

  She ended the call and pulled herself from the rack's webbing.

  Even at the Sadie's current altitude Jupiter's gravity could be felt, and Misaki walked to the galley without activating her magboots. Inside she found Haydon and Yuri at the table eating and watching a newsfeed.

  "Hey chief," Haydon said as she stepped through the hatchway. "What'd you think?" He nodded to the screen. The camera was on a handsome man standing outside an office building. He was wearing an Apex logo on one lapel of his expensive suit.

  "Susan, I can assure you that nothing out of this world has been found on Ganymede. That's just a rumor started on the public networks ... we all know there's no such thing as aliens."

  The reporter, Susan, Misaki presumed, pushed into the camera frame, her expression serious.

  "How do you explain UNSEC's sudden interest in Apex?"

  "I really can't say, other than it has nothing to do with little green men ... thank you, that's all for now."

  The man, still smiling, held up his hands, then turned and entered the building. A dozen other newscasters rushed after him.

  "There you have it," Susan said, turning to look directly into the camera. "Apex's own Charles Rathbone denies rumors that Apex has found extraterrestrials on Ganymede."

  Instead of answering Haydon she went to the cooler and pulled out a water.

  "There was a no-fly zone south of the base," Yuri said, you could hear the speculation in his voice. "Maybe they did find something."

  Haydon snorted. "Oh come on."

  Misaki took a sip of her water, then left.

  In Engineering she pulled a vac-suit on and began checking the seals. Mat was out on the hull, probably wondering why she wanted to join him. You went outside to work, or to see the stars in a way that you couldn't on a screen. The work he was doing was perfunctory— exercise— and the Sadie was sunk into the outer layers of Jupiter's atmosphere, there was nothing to see. And, of course, this wasn't her habit. She didn't follow him around.

  Maybe she should start.

  As she stepped into the airlock and waited for it to depressurize she wondered what would be so wrong with being with Mat ... allow herself to fall in love with the man that saved her.

  Everything would be wrong, a voice whispered. This ship can't be your home forever.

  In a way, the Sadie was a hiding place for her— a refuge. Somewhere she could escape the crushing reality of what she had done ... put it away in the back of her mind for a little while. At some point that reality would catch up to her. She would have to pay for her sins.

  You're a selfish creature, the voice told her. You shouldn't be here. Go pay for your sins now.

  But ... couldn't she have just one little measure of happiness? Just a little, before her life came to an end?

  "What am I doing?" She asked herself as the airlock cycled.

  When she opened the hatch Jupiter's haze of hydrogen and helium, and mix of gases blew into the airlock, surrounding her like some mist from an Earth horror movie. Turning her helmet light on she checked the leader and saw Mat's safety line stretched back down the hull, disappearing in the mist. She took another line and attached it to her suit and stepped out onto the hull.

  Flipping the commlink on she said, "Mat, I'm coming out now. Where are you?"

  His face appeared on her HUD, his eyes were narrowed, he was looking at something. "Canister two, clamp four. I'll wait here."

  Misaki looked around, a habit to get her bearings, but the mist was so thick that there was nothing to see below, and above was only a pale blinking light attached to the thruster assembly. She turned forward, then to starboard. It was impossible to see beyond a few meters, but, like Mat, she knew every centimeter of the Sadie. She had spent more time on the hull than her own quarters inside the ship.

  As she trekked toward canister two water droplets began forming on the face of her helmet. By the time she reached the aft turret, positioned down the center where canister three once rested, she had to stop and wipe the water away with a rag from a pocket on her leg. When she made it over the ship's curve she saw Mat's helmet light. He was down on one knee looking at a boxy man-sized clamp holding the giant, dark form of canister two in place. She began to feel a vibration in the soles of her boots ... the buzzard collectors. They were attached to the end of each canister, sucking in the mist, programmed to look for argon.

  Her light must have attracted his attention, because his own light turned in her direction, reflecting in the mist.

  "You made it," he said across the comm and stoo
d.

  "Yes ..." she said, stopping in front of him. That was all she could think to say.

  The moment stretched out but Misaki's mind had turned blank. She had decided to ask him something— an impetuous question, a rash of impulse led her here that she wasn't used to— but it wouldn't come out of her mouth. They were standing on the hull of the ship, in the mist, staring at one another through their faceplates and the images on their HUDs. He had a slight smile on his face, and his eyebrows began to crease.

  "Is something wrong?" He asked.

  She swallowed. "No."

  He blinked, then his odd smile suddenly grew to show his teeth. "Come on, you have to see this."

  Mat led her aft, toward the thruster assembly. There was a narrow catwalk between canister two and the thruster housing and he took her through it, the canister suspended a few meters over their heads. When they reached the other side Misaki inhaled sharply. In the distance, Jupiter's air glowed. Soft and pale it blanketed thousands of kilometers on the starboard side of the ship.

  "Watch, you have to give it a minute," Mat said. But even as he spoke the words it happened.

  Glowing blue lines began to appear, flashing through the mist. They throbbed and faded, then shot across the endless sky of white and gray. Jupiter's auroras brought back memories of twirling light-stick batons with her friends in high school. God, that was so long ago.

  "Mat," she started, taking his gloved hand in hers. "Tell me I'm beautiful."

  He laughed, then squeezed her hand and with the reflection of the aurora on his faceplate he said, "You are beautiful."

  31 - Alexandria

  "He's investigating a miner?" Alexandria asked, she could hear her own voice, angry and hollow inside her suit helmet. She was standing in what they had dubbed as the Maintenance Cabin of the alien wreck— the cabin where the crevice led to. A light-plant had been set in the middle of the cabin and the bulkheads glared. Two vac-suited Vanguard officers were rolling a carry-all with what looked like a frost covered computer terminal on it out of the corridor and into the cabin.