Chaos Quarter

by Welch, David

  “You’d what?!” she demanded.

  “Wouldn’t have hired you,” he replied. “Where I come from, that’s considered…young.”

  “You consider that young for sex?” Lucius asked.

  “Perspective here, people. We don’t get out of primary education until we’re twenty-one!” Rex asserted.

  “So what you’re not saying in all this is that I look old for my age,” she replied.

  “I figured mid-twenties, forgive me,” he said with a sarcastic wave.

  Chakrika gave him a dark look and turned her attention back to the baby. Rex sighed, too many thoughts and feelings rushing through his head to be organized right now. Best to just get on with it.

  “Set a clock,” Rex ordered. “Twelve hours. Alert me if we come into contact with any other ships.”

  “Twelve hours set.”

  Rex stretched his arms and then looked at his new crew.

  “Elbow-to-elbow in a small room in our skivvies,” he grumbled. “Best way to get to know someone…”

  * * *

  “Much as I’ve enjoyed an hour of utter silence, maybe we should try to get to know each other,” Rex commented, fidgeting to stave off boredom.

  He was greeted with more silence. Lucius still sat on his bed, blinking as if trying to clear his vision. Chakrika had stretched out on the other bed, lying on her back. The baby rested on her stomach, sucking aggressively at her breast. It was too soon for him to be getting anything, but the motion soothed him. Rex didn’t have a huge amount of experience with kids, but he was smart enough to leave a happy baby be.

  “Guess I’ll go first. Hi, my name is Rex Vahl. Technically, I think I’m still a lieutenant in the Commonwealth Fleet, but it’s hard to be sure. They loaned me out to the intelligence boys, and they sent me out here.”

  “What did you do?” Lucius asked.

  “Well, I trained cadets. One cadet was the son of a really high-ranking officer, and he was an idiot. Shouldn’t have even gotten into the Fleet to begin with, but his father’s name got him advanced year after year. His idiocy caught up to him. He was flying a corvette and crashed into a space-station. Killed himself, his two crew-members, and sixteen people on the station. Since he was under my command, dear old daddy took it out on me, despite the fact that I recommended he be dismissed from service on numerous evaluations.”

  “So you’re not as equal as you proclaim,” Lucius figured.

  “Huh?”

  “An officer with power in his name? You Terrans always brag about getting by on your merits and skills,” Lucius spoke. “This high-ranking officer sounds like any hundred imperial noblemen.”

  Rex shrugged, “Nobody’s perfect. The commodore himself is a skilled warrior—destroyed three Europan capital ships during the war. He just couldn’t admit to himself that talent skips a generation.”

  “Do you not feel relief being free of his command?” Lucius asked.

  “Hell yeah, but the price of that is running around out here, wondering if I’m going to die the next time I make a jump,” Rex answered.

  Lucius thought for a moment, his stern visage twitching.

  “A sensible answer,” the Europan finally replied.

  “So do you got a story, or do I get to make one up?” Rex asked.

  “A woman I loved was killed,” he replied, his body tensing.

  “That’s it?” Rex spoke, staring inquisitively at his new gunner. “No offense to her, but you’d have a better chance finding a new love back home, twisted as that home may be.”

  “It is twisted,” said Lucius, with no equivocation in his voice. “It was the empire that killed her. The ideas I used to never question, the way I looked down on ‘lesser’ people, that type of thought brought about her death. It was not even considered a crime.”

  Chakrika turned her head, paying attention.

  “It’s bad in my nation to love somebody beneath your station,” Lucius spoke gravely.

  “Your people keep harems of peasants as concubines!” interjected Rex. “You believe all your serfs are wedded to you and must be available to your advances! Clearly they don’t consider it bad—”

  “Coupling with serfs, no. Before I met her, I had five children by my serfs, all now being raised as warriors to fight your people,” Lucius growled. “But Yvette, the one I truly loved…”

  “They found out?” Chakrika asked.

  “They found out. They killed her…and our daughter.”

  Chakrika’s arms tightened protectively around the baby.

  “So you saw the light and treated a serf as an actual person,” Rex proclaimed.

  “The woman he loved is dead! And the mother of his son just died! How can you be so cold?!” Chakrika demanded.

  Silence. Lucius and Rex stared at each other.

  “He has his reasons,” Lucius spoke. “Your aunt?”

  “My aunt. On Antioch. Your people killed my uncle, a reprisal killing for guerilla activity,” Rex said, turning to Chakrika. “See his grandfathers had a policy of murdering one hundred of our people every time one of theirs was killed. My aunt was taken as a concubine. The man who should have fathered my cousin was killed. Instead, some Europan lord too full of himself to know basic morality spent two years raping my aunt.”

  “She kept the child?” Lucius asked.

  “Wasn’t the child’s fault that his father was a rapist,” Rex replied.

  Lucius nodded, asking, “Yet you still have hired me.”

  “I know,” Rex grumbled. “I wasn’t lying. I need a gunner, and you fit.”

  “I do not believe as my people do. Quintus was conceived consensually,” Lucius replied.

  “Quintus?” Chakrika said, stroking the boy’s back. “I guess you’re Quintus from now on.”

  “You have a thing for loving women you’re not allowed to,” Rex noticed.

  “You think there is a choice to whom we love?” Lucius replied.

  “I’m not sure people love at all,” Chakrika spoke. The statement drew the men from their stare-down.

  “What do you mean by that?” asked Lucius.

  “Nothing,” she replied.

  “No, go on. Tell us about where you come from,” Rex prodded.

  “No,” came the reply with an air of finality. A tear escaped from her eye, and then she choked out, “Your peoples are at war?”

  “Sort of,” Rex replied. “”Fifty years ago his people—”

  “Former people,” Lucius corrected.

  “His former people invaded several of our worlds.”

  “We had claimed those worlds several decades prior,” Lucius noted.

  “So had we, and we actually bothered to terraform and colonize them,” Rex replied forcefully, then turned back to Chakrika. “It was a surprise attack. They invaded, killed millions, and traded our women amongst themselves like currency. Took us eight years to take the worlds back and drive them out.”

  “Then you invaded Thrace, a world we colonized,” Lucius pointed out.

  “And liberated millions of serfs! They and their children remain free to this day. You think I’m going to apologize for that, you’re damn crazy.”

  Lucius shifted on the bed, saying, “It doesn’t matter. I’m a traitor and you’re stuck in the universe’s bugger-hole.”

  “Hey!” Chakrika said. “Bug…Bugger-what? What does that mean? It didn’t sound good!”

  “It wasn’t,” Rex replied.

  “Let us proceed to the point of this line of inquiry. You’re probing my loyalties. I assure you, I bear no allegiance to the empire. I would gladly kill them all for what they did to Yvette and my daughter. You have hired me for a job, I intend to do it. Beyond that, my only concern is Quintus.”

  They stared at each other for another tense moment.

  “Well,” Rex said with a nod, “You’ve done well so far. Auto-targeting would’ve wasted twice as much ammo taking down those fighters. Damn computers just can’t read their enemies.”

&nb
sp; Lucius nodded warily at Rex’s roundabout words of acceptance.

  * * *

  The computer projected movies from its memory into the sick bay. They were a welcome distraction from the burning sensation coursing through them. The films, both comedies, had drawn rapt stares from Chakrika. She, apparently, had never seen anything like them. Half the jokes she didn’t get, but she stared anyway. The people, the places, they all seemed to astonish her. Watching her show such curiosity made Rex kick up his respect of her a bit more. Whatever rough life she’d been through and steadfastly refused to reveal, hadn’t broken her completely.

  Lucius had watched the movies with a contemplative stare, as if examining the culture portrayed in the film with academic curiosity. He reminded Rex of an aloof anthropology teacher he’d once had back at the academy.

  “Oh! Hey!” Chakrika said near the end of the second film. She looked down to find Quintus nursing frantically.

  “That feels odd. How do I know when he’s done?” she said, shifting to a sitting position. Lucius smiled at the sight.

  “He’ll know,” Rex replied.

  “We have no nappies for him,” Lucius pointed out.

  Rex cocked his head in confusion.

  “Diapers,” Lucius spoke. “If he’s eating he will be doing other things shortly.”

  “I think I have some towels in here,” Rex spoke, “They’ll have to do until we reach a planet.”

  “May I ask when that will occur? What exactly do you do besides ‘explore’?”

  “Next habitable place we find, we’ll stop. I’m moving coreward. We’ll pick up some metals at the next legit-looking asteroid we find; they always sell well on planets.”

  “Any particular reason for moving toward the Core?” asked Lucius.

  “I’ve been ordered to figure out what’s going on in the space beyond the Achaean Confederacy, on the far side of the quarter. Figure I should make some money on the—”

  Chakrika gasped, and Lucius shot to his feet. Rex paused, confused by the terrified looks they gave him.

  “—way.”

  “Then drop me at the next world. I will not risk myself or my son by going there!” Lucius exclaimed.

  “Look, we’ve heard the rumors in the Commonwealth—”

  “They are not rumors. No person has returned alive from that space. Whatever lives there allows no escape,” Lucius pressed on.

  Rex sighed.

  “Then I’ll start looking for a new gunner,” he spoke.

  “You will not find one,” Lucius countered. “Nobody in the whole of the Quarter, or even in Achaea or Crimea or Valhalla, will go into that space. You are wasting your time.”

  “Well I don’t get to go home until I get something,” Rex answered.

  “Then resign yourself to a career as a trader. You will never get home—”

  “There is a way,” Chakrika spoke.

  The argument stopped dead.

  “What? What do you mean?” Rex asked.

  “You don’t have to actually go there to get information,” she replied. A very scared expression crossed her face. Her arm actually shook as it held Quintus.

  “Then where do I have to go?” Rex probed.

  “I grew up on Maratha. There was a world nearby called Cordelia. On it there was this man and this woman who followed him around. He seemed to speak about that region of space. All he ever said was to stay away, that you’ll die if you go there, but he was always right. We’d hear stories about people who talked to him, ignored him, traveled to that space and never returned.”

  “Are you sure of this? This wasn’t just stories and rumors?” Rex inquired.

  “I thought they were at first. But when I was young, we stopped there once, and I saw the man. He—there was something about him that seemed…off. He looked normal, but something about how he moved, as if his body wasn’t his and he was just borrowing it. I was only a girl, and it made the hairs on my neck stand up,” she explained. Another tear emerged from the corner of her eye.

  “I have never heard of Cordelia. Can you show it to me on a star chart?” Rex asked.

  Chakrika nodded uneasily. She glanced down at the child. He had stopped suckling and now slept soundly.

  “I do not like this,” Lucius put in.

  “Duly noted, but it beats flying blindly into space we’ll never return from.”

  He glowered and said nothing further.

  ”Human” is a tricky word to define. Do we base it on DNA? Numerous human groups have tweaked their genetic codes to bring about skin colors that never evolved naturally. Different hair colors, eye colors, pupil shapes. Some have matted body hair. All take a human gene and modify it a bit for whatever reason. We can’t deny their humanity. Is being a human an internal question? One of the soul and mind? If a human adulterates their genetic code with outside DNA, but maintains human-level emotions and intelligence, do we grant them the same rights and respect a more “normal” person would have? If an ape or whale or dolphin had their intelligence advanced to the point that it equaled our own, either evolutionarily or through our intervention, would they be granted “human” status? What if a person had their mind replaced by a computer, making their body into a biological machine responding only to the commands of others? What if a human mind was placed in an artificial body, or some sort of machine? Is the word “human” still a marker of a biological species, or just a broad label encompassing all forms of sentient intelligence?

  -Joseph Davidson, Excerpt from “The Essence of a Species,” Collected Essays, 2071

  Cordelia, Qahiran Confederacy, Chaos Quarter

  Standard Date 12/03/2506

  Cordelia, it turned out, was 120 light-years from Igbo. That meant two dozen jumps, with an eight-hour recharge between jumps. Given that jumping into a new system meant having to be awake to deal with the inevitable toll-seekers or pirates, those eight hours usually stretched to a full day, so Rex could be rested and alert when entering a new stretch of space.

  Then there had been various delays and stopovers. They’d had to stop at a mining colony to pick up metals for trade and to buy new clothing for Chakrika. Unfortunately mining colonies were overwhelmingly male and reminded Rex of prisons. Far too many males, few if any females…they weren’t good places for young, weak, or overly pretty men to be. Miners weren’t generally known for their self-control, and when no women were available, they’d turn to the next closest thing. When women were available…

  Lucius had been forced to escort Chakrika through the mine’s only clothing store, keeping grizzled, horny, underpaid men back. Unfortunately for Chakrika the only items of clothing in the store were utilitarian grey canvas jumpsuits. She had left the ship in skimpy clothes that showed off every curve of her figure and returned in the most drab, shape-hiding clothing imaginable. She hadn’t smiled much that day, despite escaping unscathed from hordes of lecherous men.

  There had been numerous stops by local warlords demanding a fee, though Rex had only paid one of them, since only one of the warlords had firepower enough to threaten him. The others he’d either outrun or blasted. Most would flee after a single hit, deciding to raid easier prey. A few had fought it out and lost. One of those losers had been a charismatic madman who’d convinced himself and a dozen followers that he was the pagan God Hades, here to help his fellows find the hidden passage to Elysium. Rex had decided to help them out with the request. Ore haulers jerry-rigged with twenty millimeter cannons didn’t make effective warships, and after Lucius had sent one to Tartarus, both Hades and his devoted followers had fled.

  They had stopped again on some world called Mausolos, picking up food, supplies for little Quintus, and more feminine clothing for Chakrika. She’d been nothing but smiles that day, no longer forced to be either shrouded in tent-canvas or practically naked. She’d looked decidedly normal and loved every minute of it. Rex was no shrink, but he imagined there had to be a good deal of dignity in being able to go through a day without having to ma
ke yourself a sex object. Plus, what woman didn’t love to shop?

  After that they’d begun the tedious process of jumping, system to system, usually six light-years at a time. Both of his crew members had settled into their new role. Chakrika cooked, quite well considering she was using dehydrated vegetables, canned foods, and various artificially-flavored pre-packaged proteins. She’d somehow made a soup out of dried noodles and cinnamon-flavored protein chunks that had been a welcome surprise.

  Lucius had quickly accommodated himself with the ship’s systems, and in their various scrapes had taken down two fighters. His face had remained as blank as ever. The only time the man showed any emotion was when he held his child. Thanks to Chakrika’s chiding, he could now hold the little one without sending Quintus into crying fits. Rex didn’t tell Chakrika that sometimes Lucius smiled, however slightly, at her when her back was turned or she wasn’t looking. Didn’t take a man in his fifties to see where Lucius’s heart was going.

  The only other time Rex had seen so much as a grin had been when he revealed that Long Haul had a light pulse cannon. The exile had fired it repeatedly that day, not needing to worry about ammunition. Pulse cannons worked by accelerating small amounts of particles to incredible speed and launching them at an enemy. The kinetic energy of those fast-moving particles blasted holes in a hull as well as any cannon shell. Since each shot was literally a blast of particles too small to see, it would take decades of continuous fire to exhaust Long Haul’s stores.

  When it had first come time to use the weapon, Lucius hadn’t held back. One of his two kills had been a fighter stupid enough to fly in front of Long Haul. Lucius had fired a full salvo from the forward guns, hitting the ship not only with the pulse cannon but with rounds from the ship’s five forward-facing thirty millimeter rail-guns. The poor pirate inside the ship was reduced to hundreds of floating pieces spiraling through space, much like his ship. Rex had felt a moment of pity for the man, victim of such glorious overkill. But then he remembered that the bastard had been trying to kill him, and he nodded appreciatively at Lucius’s thorough work.