by Easton Royce
So Cooper took the task upon himself.
Potter saw Cooper Hawkes moving through the nitrogen fog toward the hatch of Section 46. He felt a rage well up inside him. Just like a Tank, he thought. This whole crisis was because of Tanks. Human engineers would have found a way to keep the reactor on-line and keep them out of this mess. But not the Tanks. Just more proof that Tanks were good for nothing. If the entire In-Vitro cargo were jettisoned out into the twin suns he couldn't have cared less.
"Hey, where do you think you're goin'?" Potter shouted.
Cooper turned to him, his Tank eyes in a cold rage. "You got a problem with me inspecting Section Forty-six?"
"Humans are the priority here, buddy," Potter ordered.
Cooper retraced his steps, slowly stalking toward Potter like an animal about to pounce.
"Oh, I forgot," Cooper hissed. "In-Vitros aren't human."
"You just do what you're told, pal," Potter said. "You got no business over there. This isn't your ship."
Cooper stood there, hating Potter with his eyes. But Potter just turned away to finish his repairs. The last thing he had time for was a Tank with attitude. But deep down, Potter had a feeling that this stupid military Tank might bring them all a tankload of trouble.
Chapter 6
In the narrow channel between the two violent suns, the crippled freighter MacArthur continued to drift blind.
On the bridge, Nathan West sweated over a radar screen filled with static. Every few seconds, the static would clear to show phantom blips that were quickly lost as the screen filled with static again.
"What's going on here?" shouted Captain Llewellyn, furious and frustrated.
Watching over Nathan's shoulder, McQueen also focused on the phantom blips each time they appeared and disappeared. They were clear indications of simple solar interference—and yet there was something about the static that seemed too regular, too precise. Something was wrong. McQueen could smell it like the scent of an enemy.
Nathan leaned away from the radar console.
"That navigator's right," he concluded. "A white-light solar flare."
McQueen shook his head. "That's what the machine says. What do you say?"
Nathan looked at the screen again. "There's no way to tell."
McQueen took a step closer. For a razor-sharp fighter pilot who had always been led by his gut, Nathan West suddenly seemed about as hazy as the radar screen he was examining.
"Trust your instincts, West," McQueen told him. "It's how you stay alive."
Nathan snapped his eyes to McQueen, not sure how to take the comment.
McQueen looked at the screen. The neck hairs around his In-Vitro navel bristled. "There's something out there. I can feel it..."
Involuntarily, Nathan's hand came up and played with the phototag that always hung around his neck.
Before them, the radar screen faded into snow again.
"I'd have better luck reading tea leaves," Nathan said.
"At least tea leaves would tell us something," McQueen snapped.
Nathan glanced at the colonel but kept toying with the phototag.
McQueen put out his hand. "Let me see that."
Reluctantly, Nathan took the phototag from around his neck and handed it to McQueen. McQueen took a good look at the picture. A beautiful girl whom he had never seen with a smiling Nathan West—something else McQueen had never seen.
"Is this the girl you went AWOL for?" McQueen asked matter-of-factly, although in fact AWOL was too mild a term for what Nathan had done. He had taken his Hammerhead to Tellus, a planet hot with Chigs, in search of some mystery girl, and he had nearly gotten himself and half the Squadron killed in the process.
"Well, Lieutenant? Is this her?" McQueen asked again.
Nathan nodded awkwardly. "Her name's Kylen, sir."
McQueen slipped the phototag in his pocket. "This is behind you," he said. "The only thing on your mind now should be that radar screen."
Nathan looked up at McQueen like a little boy who had just been punished. McQueen strode away with the precious phototag. As far as McQueen was concerned, this was not the time or place for any personal thoughts. Not by Nathan, or by Cooper—not by anyone. There was something out there, beyond the hull of the ship, and it wasn't just a solar flare. Of that he was certain.
Shane and Wang climbed into the cramped gun turret. It was an isolated place—its own tiny world within the giant freighter. The two seats faced one another. Each rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, giving them a full circle of fire coverage. At least, they were supposed to. Wang's chair barely moved at all.
Shane pulled the weapon grips down in front of her, like a periscope. She pivoted the controls in her hands. The laser-pulse cannons were primitive, but they were nothing she couldn't handle.
"Geez," exclaimed Wang. "I haven't seen anything like this since I was in the arcade as a kid."
"Hope you were good," Shane said.
Wang smiled. "Local champion."
"Bridge, this is fire control," Shane radioed. "Request permission for weapons check."
McQueen radioed back, giving them permission. They flipped the switches until the fire status light turned green and began the standard four-second blasts.
POOM-POOM-POOM! The turret rocked as the pulses of light blasted out of the laser cannons. Shane smiled as she felt the recoil.
"Bet they didn't have that back at the arcade," she said.
In about an hour, Damphousse and the engine crew had things under control—in a manner of speaking.
"How long till we get the reactor back on-line?" McQueen radioed from the bridge.
Damphousse checked the control panel. The red warning lights were beginning to clear as the temperature of the core dropped. But she knew that didn't mean much. These old reactors were very unpredictable.
"Maybe today," she answered, "maybe never."
The fact was, when a reactor scrammed this bad, it might not ever get back on-line. They were just lucky there hadn't been a radiation leak.
Still, they had four and a half kilotons of energy left in the containment vessel. They could still fire up the engines—if only for a few seconds.
"Core temp's down to eight hundred," Ashby shouted.
"Let's go back on-line with the reactor," Sorrell said, sitting his large frame in front of the engineer's console.
Damphousse checked the numbers on her computer screen. Everything was still borderline.
Ashby nervously rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. "We still don't know what caused the coolant temp to spike. It could happen again."
Damphousse turned to him with a smirk. "The worst thing that could happen is we could all blow up, Mr. Ashby."
Ashby turned to her, crossing his arms. "Oh, is that all?" he asked snidely. "Then I don't see a problem."
"The coolant density is seven hundred twenty-two kilograms over M cubed," said Damphousse calmly. "I say we go for it."
Ashby raised an eyebrow, clearly impressed.
Sorrell just grinned. "Let's do it, gang," he said.
Damphousse turned to her computer screen. "Raise rod one."
Ashby crossed over to the reactor. He slowly turned two knobs. The sound coming from the great nuclear beast deepened, resonating through the room.
"Rod one up," he said.
Damphousse took a deep breath. "Raise rod two."
Ashby went to another set of knobs and turned them. The reactor sound changed again. But they didn't blow up.
"Rod two up," Ashby announced. He turned to Damphousse. "You know your stuff."
They kept their eyes fixed on the controls for ten minutes before daring to make an official report to the bridge.
"Ceramic fuel temp twelve hundred and holding," Damphousse said over the radio. "The reactor's on-line."
"Well done," came Captain Llewellyn's relieved voice. "I'll need full power as soon as possible."
Sorrell blotted the sweat from his forehead and looked down at Dampho
usse. He was an imposing six-five, but when he grinned, he looked like a big teddy bear.
"How come you got detailed to the back of the bus?" he asked.
"Four years at Cal Tech," Damphousse answered, "and I interned for two summers at San Onofre." Ashby swiveled in his chair and laughed, "San Onofre? What kind of lunatic interns at a nuclear power plant?"
"My father was chief engineer."
Ashby smiled. "Well, I guess that explains it."
Damphousse crossed her arms. "Explains what?"
Ashby looked to Sorrell and then back to Damphousse. "A lot of people won't work with Tanks," he said.
To Damphousse it was like a slap in the face. "Let me tell you something, Mr. Ashby," she said. "I'll work with anybody who wants to work. Being flesh-born doesn't mean I'm better than you."
Sorrell turned from the knobs he was adjusting. "A lot of people don't feel that way."
Damphousse shrugged. "Then I guess I'm not a lot of people."
Chapter 7
"I'm getting something!"
The radar cut a moving orange radius around the circular screen. A blip appeared at eleven o'clock on the circle. And this time the blip didn't vanish right away.
"Hey! I'm definitely getting something!" Nathan repeated.
"Range and bearing?" asked McQueen as he made his way over to the console.
"It's an energy pulse, Colonel," said Nathan. "I can't get an exact reading."
They both watched the line of the radar as it cut around the circle again. The pulse was gone. Nathan shook his head. "But... it was just there!"
"Tell me what you saw," McQueen demanded.
"I don't know," Nathan said. "A solar spike," he guessed.
That wasn't good enough for McQueen. It wasn't even close. "I need to know what's out there, West," he barked. "Figure it out."
***
When the major damage in the cargo hold was finally under control, Cooper decided to risk checking the lonely corridors of Section 46 again.
The fire door opened before him with a rush of air as the pressure equalized. He stepped in cautiously and closed it behind him. It slammed with a heavy clatter of steel.
Around him were the round windows of dozens of cargo containers. He slowly strode forward, hearing only the clicking echo of his own footsteps. He tried to make sense of what he was feeling. It was not an easy task for Cooper Hawkes.
This place around him was both inviting and terrifying at the same time. It was as if he were walking through a nursery—a place full of life and promise and potential. So many lives around him just waiting to be lived.
Yet, at the same time, there was an overwhelming sense of oppression and hopelessness—as if he were walking through a morgue. Cooper sat down, leaning his back against one of the doors. He rested his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes.
What am I even doing here? he asked himself. I should have headed straight back to the bridge—gotten a fresh set of orders from McQueen.
That's what he should have done. But even as he thought it, he couldn't will himself to go. He couldn't make his feet move him out of this strange, forbidden place.
It could be me in there, he thought to himself. Instead of being born six years ago, he could just as easily have been packed aboard this ship, and hauled off to work in some terrible mine at the far edge of the galaxy. It could have been him floating there—helpless and unborn—while some other stupid Tank sat outside the door.
He tried to think back to the days before he was born. In-Vitros were always told that they wouldn't remember their time in the tanks.
But eighteen years is a long time.
When he pushed deep into his mind, there were plenty of things he could remember. He could still feel the tug of the umbilical cord on the nape of his neck. He could still taste the thick amnio-synth fluid that had surrounded him. He could even hear the never-ending lesson programs that were pumped into the tanks twenty-four hours a day. They were "born" with their minds already wired for language—and already brainwashed for labor. Calm... untroubled... unchanging...
Although he was ashamed to admit it, there were times he almost resented being pulled out of the tank.
The sound of rustling paper jerked Cooper from his thoughts. Keats was standing right in front of him. Cooper hadn't heard the hatch to Section 46 open. He wondered how long Keats had been there, watching him.
Keats unrolled some sheets of paper he had spindled in his hand. "In-Vitro cargo manifest," he said, holding them out to Cooper.
As Cooper reached to take them, he could feel his own hand shaking. Maybe he was just cold from leaning up against the door of the cargo container. Maybe it was something else.
Cooper handled the pages as if they were fragile bits of gold foil. What they were were lists of numbers, organized in groups of ten.
"We have twelve cargo containers in Section 46. Each contains twenty In-Vitros," Keats explained. "The number on the left is the date of conception. The middle number is the gene pool. And this is the batch number on the right." He pointed into the margin. "That's the place of conception. You do know the abbreviations for each of the In-Vitro conception facilities, don't you?"
Cooper nodded, then looked over the three pages of computer printouts. "Thanks," he said, suddenly at a loss for words.
"I've been looking ten years, Cooper. I know what you're feeling."
Cooper glanced at Keats but had to look away.
I know what you're feeling, Keats had said. How could he know what Cooper was feeling if Cooper didn't know himself? The very thought of Tanks talking about feelings would have made humans laugh out loud. The flesh-borns still didn't believe In-Vitros could feel anything. After all, feelings were supposed to have been spliced out of their genes.
"Have you ever found a match?" Cooper asked Keats.
Keats shook his head sadly. "Nope," he said, but then he grinned. "Not yet, anyway. You wonder what it would be like to have family?"
Cooper felt himself choking up, the way Tanks aren't supposed to be able to do. "Only all the time," he said.
"So... if you don't mind my asking... what are you?" asked Keats.
The question caught Cooper off guard. Every Tank knew his own conception log—but it was something you didn't ask. It was personal, deeply private.
But part of him was pleased that Keats had inquired.
"March 6, 2040," Cooper recited. "Gene pool 16-A, batch alpha-3439, Philadelphia facility."
Keats accepted it with a nod. "Brooklyn facility," he said of himself, "not that it really matters."
Keats started to walk away but turned back. "I know that somewhere in this galaxy, there's someone whose DNA reads 18-CGTAGCCGAT. They have black hair and hazel eyes. I know what my family looks like," Keats said. "I just don't know how to fiud them."
He winked at Cooper. "Enjoy the read," he said as lie quietly strolled off.
Hands still shaking, Cooper sat back down. Leaning against the cold bulkhead of the cargo container, he began to scan through the list of 240 numbers. Suddenly it occurred to Cooper that this cavern around him, silent except for the low rumble of the distant engine, was neither a nursery nor a morgue.
It was a womb.
"How can you care so much about someone whom you've never even seen?"
"Hand me a reverse torque wrench," said Wang, no longer listening to Shane's ramblings.
"Look, the way I see it," Shane continued, "a human being's nothing more than a highly evolved animal."
"Tell it to Einstein," said Wang. He busied himself, trying to increase the pan of his weapon. It was supposed to give him a 180-degree sweep. It was barely giving him 90.
Shane leaned away from her weapon, toward Wang.
"We're attracted to people," she persisted, "because of the way they look, the way they smell, how they feel to the touch."
"So what's your point?" Wang asked. He leaned back in the uncomfortable chair of the laser-pulse cannon turret.
"Simply
that it's impossible to fall in love with someone you met on the SpaceNet!" Shane concluded.
"Don't you believe in a soul?" asked Wang. "Don't you believe in spiritual connection?"
Shane grabbed the handles of her weapon and moved them back and forth. "I believe in what you can reach out and touch," she said.
"Then reach out and touch that torque wrench, morph-head."
Shane sighed. She shook her head and handed him the torque wrench.
"You know," said Wang thoughtfully, "people find each other in the craziest of ways. But the important thing is that they find each other." He shrugged. "Sometimes you just gotta do whatever it takes..."
First Mate Potter stormed down the length of the cargo access corridor. That pain-in-the-neck Marine Tank, Cooper Hawkes, had disappeared after their damage control assignment. But Potter had a pretty good idea where he might be. The way Potter saw it, Tanks were pitifully predictable. With each step he took, he felt his anger toward Hawkes intensify.
Sure enough the hatch to Section 46 was ajar.
Potter silently stepped in. He could hear footsteps at the far end. He followed the sound until he could see Hawkes.
Hawkes was glancing down at some papers. He walked slowly at first, but then picked up the pace. He scanned to the left and right, looking at the cargo containers around him.
Number nine... number ten... number eleven... and finally, number twelve. Cooper stopped for a moment, looking down at the paper in his hand. He took a deep breath and looked up at the foggy window.
Cooper stood before the door for a minute, motionless. Then he rubbed his fist against the window, clearing away the mist. Slowly, he reached down to the lever that would crank open the door. He was so absorbed in what he was doing that he didn't see Potter until it was too late. Potter grabbed him and spun him around—smashing his back into the hard door.
