Star Wanderers: Tales of the Far Outworlds (Omnibus V-VIII)

by Joe Vasicek

  Fortunately, Captain Elijah led them into the forward control room before she felt like too much of an idiot. Holoscreens and computer terminals lined the walls, with chairs that were bolted onto the floor. Since they were in a parking orbit around B’tum, most of the displays were empty. At the far side of the room, Corporal Sanders trained a couple of Betan girls who had joined the colony mission at the last port. Mariya hadn’t really gotten a chance to know either of them.

  “What’s this?” Noemi asked, looking curiously at all the equipment.

  “The forward control room,” Mariya explained. The captain stopped to chat with Sanders and the girls, giving them a moment. “This is where we control most of the ship’s systems. It’s empty now because we’re in orbit, but when we’re in transit, it can get pretty busy.”

  “Really? I didn’t know it took so many people to pilot a ship.”

  “Well, we don’t really pilot it from here. All that stuff happens on the bridge. We just help run all the other systems, like the reactors, the engines—it’s kind of boring, to be honest.”

  “No, that’s all right,” said Noemi. “Go on.”

  Mariya shrugged. “It’s an old ship, so it can be a little finicky. All I know is that my post is at communications, in that corner over there.” She pointed to the far corner, behind Elijah and the others.

  “Wow—it sounds like you have a lot of responsibility.”

  “Not really. Everyone is supposed to chip in and do something. I’m sure one of the officers will assign you to some post in the next couple of days—though don’t worry, they probably won’t give you anything too hard.”

  Noemi smiled and put a hand on her stomach, the look of concern clearing from her face. With the pregnancy, no doubt she’d get off easy on the more difficult chores.

  “We run a tight ship,” Captain Elijah explained to the others as he led them into the mess hall. “We have to, seeing how many people we have to support. The treatment and recycling systems alone are enough to keep ten men busy both shifts.”

  “Both shifts?” Jeremiah asked.

  “That’s right: we’re on a two twelve-hour schedule, with 92 percent of the bunks filled to capacity at any given time.”

  “What is he saying?” Noemi whispered.

  “He’s just explaining how little personal space we have on the station,” Mariya explained as they followed behind the others. “We run things in two shifts—upshift and downshift. You’ll be on the upshift crew with us, and we’ll share a five-bed bunk room.”

  “We each have our own bed?”

  “Yeah, but you have to share it with someone else on the downshift crew. Honestly, it’s a little crowded. There’s not much privacy anywhere on the ship.”

  Noemi shrugged. “That’s okay—I’m used to tight spaces.”

  That’s right, Mariya thought. You’ve been living with Jeremiah on a one-man starship for the last six months. That was probably a little different, though. If you were married to someone, why would you need time away from them for anything? Mariya could hardly wait to feel what it was like to be that close to someone—at the very least, she would never have to be afraid of being alone.

  The mess hall felt roomy, probably because it was empty. The Alphan boys from before were on cleaning duty, wiping down the tables. They glanced curiously at her, but she did her best to ignore them.

  “What’s the food like?” Noemi asked before she could follow the conversation between Jeremiah and the captain. She blinked and gave her a shrug.

  “Not bad, I guess. It’s mostly synthmeal, with beans and milk.”

  Noemi frowned. “Milk?”

  “Yeah, the quartermaster is running a milk donation program so we don’t have to rely too heavily on synthetics. Don’t worry, though—it’s all voluntary, so they won’t make you give yours up if you need it for your baby.”

  “Thank God. I’ve never been able to produce much milk. Maybe that’s something you and your mother could help me with.”

  Mariya frowned and gave her a funny look. “You’ve lactated before?”

  “Of course. Don’t you remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Noemi. “Your family left home before the famine got really bad.” She sighed, a look of sadness coming over her face. “When the last hydroponics module failed, we had to resort to mandatory milk donation. Only women who were already breastfeeding were required to enroll, but everyone who was healthy was encouraged to volunteer. It was the only way to stretch the food stores long enough until we could get the hydroponics modules going again. But even then …”

  Her voice trailed off. Mariya put a hand on her arm—she’d left with her family before the famine had gotten especially bad, but she remembered what it had been like just before that. Gray synthmeal sludge, with tasteless powdered food stores and only an occasional piece of dried fruit. Synthetics could only go so far without natural foods to supplement them. Human milk was a lot easier to obtain than hydroponic fruits and vegetables, but without any other supplements, it could only go so far—especially if the women who donated were living almost exclusively on synthetics themselves.

  “Wow,” said Mariya. “I had no idea.”

  Noemi shrugged. “It worked well enough for a few months, but it couldn’t go on forever. If we had gotten aid soon enough from the neighboring stars, perhaps it would have saved us.”

  “What was it like? Was it painful?”

  Mariya regretted the question almost as soon as she uttered it, but Noemi took it graciously enough. “A little,” she admitted, “but it wasn’t unbearable. I only stopped because the doctors said I wasn’t producing enough to justify it.”

  What if the same thing happens at Zarmina? What if our hydroponics modules fail, and we have to wait for someone from the outside to save us?

  What if that help never comes?

  Mariya took a deep breath and did her best to swallow her fears. “Well, let’s pray that nothing like that ever happens to us.”

  “Yes,” Noemi whispered as she made the sign of the cross.

  Captain Elijah led them out of the mess hall to the crew quarters toward the rear of the ship. The Alphan boys stared at them as they passed, making Mariya tense. The one who’d approached her before made as if to call after her, but evidently thought better of it and returned to his work.

  “This is our medical bay,” said Elijah as he ushered them into the main clinic. “It’s not exactly state of the art, but it’s stocked with just about everything you might need—and what we don’t have, we can fabricate or synthesize easily enough on our own.”

  Jeremiah and Noemi both seemed to take special interest in this place. They spent several moments glancing around the cozy but well-kept office. The walls and floor here were spotlessly white, the cabinets all neat and orderly. The examining table was carefully folded up against the wall, next to the displays that monitored the room’s temperature, humidity, and sterility.

  “Good upshift, Captain,” said Doctor Andreson as he stepped into the main room from his office. “How may I be of service?”

  Mariya liked the doctor. He was a thin, sharp-featured man, with jet black hair much like her own and a smile that had a peculiar way of curling up at the edges. He was one of those people who was always calm and kept everything in its place. She’d only seen him a couple of times for psychiatric evaluations, but every time she’d come in, he’d immediately set her at ease.

  “That’s Doctor Andreson,” Mariya explained for Noemi. “He’s a good man—you’ll like him.”

  Noemi nodded and smiled at Jeremiah to show that she understood. As the men talked among themselves, she turned to Mariya.

  “Can he speak Deltan?”

  “No, sorry.” You’ll still need me. “But don’t worry, he’s a very experienced doctor—in fact, that’s what he’s explaining right now. He’s delivered lots of babies before, so I’m sure he’ll take care of you.”

  �
��So am I, but Jeremiah might not be so sure. He’s been worried about me ever since Beta Oriana.”

  Mariya nodded. From the look of intense concern on Jeremiah’s face and the gist of his conversation with the doctor, she gathered as much.

  All the more reason that they need me.

  They walked back out into the corridor, heading toward the gymnasium and dream center. Each room was about half the size of the mess hall, though the gym took up two levels instead of one. It was usually so packed that Mariya tried to avoid it. This time was no exception.

  A sweaty group of boys were playing a game of rocketball in the gymnasium. They hollered and shouted as they bounded off the walls and ceiling, grating on Mariya’s ears. A couple of them were kind of cute, but not enough to make her take notice. Besides, she already knew she didn’t want anything to do with the upshift boys.

  “What’s this?”

  “The gym,” she said. “This is where we come for exercise—well, one of the places anyway. That’s what the captain’s explaining. I usually just go on the treadmills above the dream center.”

  “… does it have to be strenuous?” Jeremiah was asking Captain Elijah, apparently about the exercise rule. “I mean, what if Noemi’s pregnancy makes it difficult?”

  The captain made a face and waved his hand dismissively. “If the doctor advises it, I’m sure we can make an exception in your case. I may run a tight ship, but I don’t expect you to act like robots.”

  “Besides,” Mariya interjected, “walks during a pregnancy are healthy and good, and not a problem unless she’s bedridden by doctor’s orders.”

  Rebuffed, Jeremiah fell silent. Captain Elijah led them back out to the hallway, while Mariya wondered if she shouldn’t have said anything.

  The dream center was just across the hall, a low-ceilinged room full of computer cores wired to the various monitors and reclining chairs. Most of the chairs were occupied, though the users were all unconscious—much quieter than the gym. In fact, the loudest sound was the hum of the ship-wide ventilation system.

  “That’s a lot of simulator cores,” Noemi mused aloud. “How many people can this place serve at once?”

  Mariya shrugged. “I don’t know—maybe half of each shift? We can set up mattresses on the floor if we need to.”

  As the captain explained things to the men, Noemi peered at the nearest core. “Akhalitech—I’ve never heard of that manufacturer. What are the specs?”

  “The specs?”

  “Yeah—memory, bandwidth, processing speed. How many devices do they have slaved to this thing? It looks like they’ve got twelve monitors hooked up to this server, though there are enough ports on the rack for sixteen.”

  “Hold on,” said Mariya. She turned to the captain and held up her hand to catch his attention. Jeremiah already had a questioning look on his face.

  “She wants to know the model and specifications of the simulators,” Mariya explained in Gaian.

  The captain frowned. “To be honest, I don’t exactly know. We installed most of them at the Tajjur system, but that was almost twenty standard years ago. If you’d like, I can get you in touch with the officer on duty.”

  “What was that?”

  Mariya’s head spun as she switched once again from Gaian back to Deltan. This translation stuff was going to be a lot harder than she’d thought.

  “He says he doesn’t know, though he can ask someone who does. They picked them up twenty years ago at a star called Tajjur or something.”

  Noemi’s eyes lit up. “The Tajjur system—of course! I should have recognized it from the jack design. Do they support all standard neural augmentations, though? And what about the free memory—is there enough to rewrite the world in creative mode?”

  “Rewrite what?”

  “The dream world, of course. Is there enough free memory to support a massive real-time rewrite of the simulation, or do we have to overclock the servers first?”

  Mariya’s head spun even faster, but the others were looking at her expectantly. She couldn’t afford to falter—not with Jeremiah watching.

  “She wants to know what sort of neural augmentations the simulators support,” Mariya said, pausing to breathe, “and whether there’s enough free memory to support large-scale rewriting of the simulations.” I don’t know what that means exactly, but that’s how it translates.

  “The answer to the last one is no,” said the captain. “With over two hundred crew and passengers, we just don’t have enough capacity to justify that. However, our simulators support every major sub-neural OS, so if you have the drivers, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “You need?” Noemi asked in Gaian, catching Mariya by surprise. “I mean, can you ask them if they need another programmer? That’s certainly a chore I could do.”

  You speak Gaian?

  “She, uh, wants to know if you need another programmer,” Mariya said, casting a sideways glance at Noemi. If she and Jeremiah could already speak with each other well enough that they didn’t need her help as much, that was going to make things tough.

  Elijah shrugged. “I don’t see why not. As long as the doctor clears it, I’m sure we can work something out.”

  Two couches down, Mariya’s mother Salome stirred as the lights on her helmet-like monitor switched from green to red. Jakob went over to help her take it off and sit up. The others gathered around them, Mariya bringing up the rear.

  It’s okay, she told herself. Dad’s going to talk with Jeremiah right after we’re through here. Even if Noemi’s Gaian was good enough that they didn’t always need her help, her father was bound to find some other way to persuade Jeremiah to marry her. His years of star wandering had made him a shrewd negotiator.

  “Jeremiah and Noemi are here, honey,” Jakob said, speaking in Deltan. “They arrived less than an hour ago. We’ve been giving them a tour of the ship.”

  Salome stretched and nodded. “Well, that’s good to know. When did they arrive?”

  “Less than an hour ago.”

  “Hi Mom,” said Mariya. She stepped forward and gave her mother a warm hug. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine thanks. Is this Jeremiah?”

  Jeremiah stepped forward and shook her hand, bowing a little. “Hello, Mrs. Varvavli. It’s good to see you again.”

  Salome smiled but said nothing, probably because she didn’t speak Gaian. At the same time, though, her eyes drifted meaningfully to Mariya. So this is the man you want, they said with a sly twinkle. Good choice.

  Noemi stepped forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Hello, Oma Salome.”

  “Noemi!” said Salome, throwing her arms around her. “How are you, how are you? By the holy stars of Earth, it has been too long since we last saw you—too long indeed!”

  And this is his first wife, her eyes said again. This is the other woman. It lasted barely an instant, but to Mariya the meaning was as clear and as sharp as a gamma ray burst.

  * * * * *

  Noemi followed Mariya and Salome through the narrow doorway into the bunk room. It seemed a little cozy for five people, but it was certainly no worse than the Ariadne, and besides, they already knew each other well enough that it wouldn’t be a problem. The sight of the narrow beds did remind her of how exhausted she felt, though. With their arrival at B’tum and the tour of the Hope of Oriana, it had been a long and eventful dayshift indeed.

  “So how do you like the Hope of Oriana?” asked Mariya.

  “It’s nice,” she said, stepping aside to let Jeremahra set her duffel bag of clothes on the off-white tile floor. “I like it.”

  “It’s not too crowded for you, then?”

  Salome shot her a glance over her shoulder as she pulled off the sheets from the top bunk’s previous occupants. She was such a hardy woman, her arms strong and tough from years of hard work. Noemi would probably be like that too someday. The thought made her smile.

  “No, it’s fine,” she said, glancing at Jeremahra. “It reminds me a lot of hom
e, actually—before things got too bad.”

  “I hear you, dear. Living space on Megiddo Station always was rather tight.”

  “I don’t remember it ever being like this,” said Mariya. “Still, it’s not too bad—you get used to it after a while.”

  She picked up the duffel bag and stuffed it into the locker on the far side of the room, beneath the fifth bunk. Salome pulled the curtains aside for the bunks on the left and began pulling off the sheets from those as well. Without a word, Noemi pitched in to help.

  “Jerem-ahra and I are going to unload the Ariadne,” said Jakob from the doorway. “Will everything here be all right?”

  “Of course,” said Salome. “We’ll be fine, girls, won’t we?”

  Mariya and Noemi nodded. Jeremahra seemed a little puzzled, but he followed Jakob out into the busy corridor.

  “Here,” said Mariya, palming the door shut. “Sure is noisy out there. It always gets busy between shifts, but otherwise it’s usually not that bad.”

  “Everyone has somewhere to be, then?”

  “Sure—they’ve got to keep us all busy somehow. The long voyages can really wear on you if you don’t have anything to do. But you probably know all about that already.”

  Noemi shrugged. “I guess. It’s different, though, when it’s just you and the man you love.”

  “You and Jerem-ahra are really close, then?”

  “Of course,” she said, patting the bulge in her belly with a smile. “How do you think I got this?”

  The others laughed with her. As they returned to their work, however, a strange silence fell over them, as if some unspoken tension hung thick in the air. Mariya glanced nervously at her mother, making Noemi wonder if it was something between the two of them. But instead of speaking with Mariya, Salome turned to her.

  “About Jerem-ahra,” she said. “He’s a good man, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Noemi, slowing down a little as she folded the last of the clothes. “Why?”

  “God knows there aren’t many good men where we’re going—the Far Outworlds, I mean.” Salome pulled the bed-sheet tight and tucked it expertly beneath the thin foam mattress. “Not many Deltans out there either. At Zarmina, we’ll be the only ones.”