Eclipse

by K. A. Bedford

  To tell the embarrassing truth, I felt smug. However, what I didn’t know was that the Service, despite everything I experienced at the Academy, was not nearly done with me — and I was not nearly done with it.

  Two

  Sorcha and I were due to board at 1030 hours. As we chatted I was impressed by how cool she seemed about the whole thing. I asked her about it. She said, “It’s not like we’re going to war, James. It’s just a ship. And it’s pretty routine duty, too: tooling around out in the dark, not seeing much, not doing much. Probably a lot of scrubbing decks, if I guess right.”

  “You think so?” I said, looking at her.

  “You don’t think we’ll be lucky to get out of crap job hell for the first year?”

  I hadn’t really thought about this. In my haste to escape my life, I had confined myself to imagining Service life with a certain rosy glow. When my face betrayed my embarrassment, Sorcha smiled and said, “Look, if you ask me, the real action is the post after this one, once we’ve proved ourselves as officers.” She was probably right.

  “What’s your preference?” I asked.

  “Eventually I wouldn’t mind getting into vehicle ­design, advanced propulsion concepts, stuff like that. You?”

  I laughed at the contrast between her ambition and my contentment to stick with what I was given. “I’d like to just survive!” Sorcha laughed without sounding like she was mocking me. “Actually,” I said, “I’d like maybe to be a section head one day.”

  Sorcha got wide-eyed: “That’s not very ambitious! Where’s your zeal to push the barriers?”

  “Oh, I think I left that back at my folks’ place, in a jar ­beside the bed. Damn.”

  She had the grace to laugh again.

  Ten-thirty hours came before we knew it. PortMind sent the boarding call over our headware, ordering us to present ourselves at Gate 5. Sorcha glanced at me, waggling her arched eyebrows. “You ready, James?”

  “I’ve been ready for this my whole life!” I said, grinning like the fool I was.

  She gagged. “I cannot believe you said that! Good grief!”

  “Well excuse me for being excited!”

  “Yeah, well just don’t get your pants all sticky.” She laughed again, poked me in the ribs, and strode off ahead, kit bag slung over her shoulder.

  Two big, disposable enlisted men stood at the gate, scoping the crowd, looking professional in their navy blue Security uniforms, and armed with white antipersonnel nanophage launchers. We went up to them, sent our bags through the sensor grid, and stepped through ourselves. The ID information in our headware checked out with the Security systems and the access tube hissed open, letting us through and hissing shut behind us. The two disposable sentries didn’t even glance at us. We walked up the dark, chilly access tube towards the bright halogen-lit entrance to HMS Eclipse. It was a strange feeling, walking that tube, to know that this was all that stood between you and the vacuum of space. I felt my ears adjusting to pressure differences.

  Sorcha whispered, “Would this be a bad time to jump up and down?”

  I stared at her, shocked. I said, “Are you crazy?”

  “Geez, James. I’m still a bit nervous, just like you. This is kind of a big moment.”

  We were close to the ship’s hatch where another pair of Security disposables stood waiting for us. “I thought you were all cool about this?”

  “That’s bullshit over bad coffee. This is the real thing!”

  We stepped out of the cramped access tube and aboard the ship. The Security guys here went through our kits, checked us over and verified our identities nine different ways; I hardly noticed. All I could think was, “I’m standing on board a starship, an actual bloody starship!” Not some old liner, like that ship from my childhood that I had only been a guest on for a couple of days. And not a retired training vessel that never went further than orbiting Ganymede. This was my new home. For all her mocking, I could see that Sorcha felt the same way, grinning from ear to ear. It was a strange feeling, being there; it’s hard to describe. My first impression was of light and roominess, and a faint smell of leather on the cool processed air. This chamber, with its smooth gray walls, even illumination and polydiamond pressure-doors was spacious compared to the ships I remembered from simulations. The old style of ship was built with the high cost of environment in mind: spaces were cramped, dark, and claustrophobic. It was hard to avoid the smell of your fellow crew. Historians at the Academy told us that those ships were a lot like the ­ancient submarines from Earth; constructed without the comfort of their crews in mind.

  Eclipse and her six sister ships had been a revelation in ship design. I could stand up straight with room to spare above my head and the artificial-G felt almost natural, ­approaching liner-grade. There was only a momentary sense of disorientation as we got used to the transition from the station’s field to the ship’s field. The air was almost completely free from the smell of processing.

  The two Security men escorted Sorcha and me forward along the core to the five personnel decks, which occupied the ­forward third of the ship; the balance consisted of the power plant, engineering section, ship systems hardware, weaponry support, and environment processors. Around us the air seemed to vibrate with the suppressed potential of the power plant.

  We were left waiting in an area they called the Hole. It was just another small compartment, well lit, with a couple of fixed display sheets on the walls, and with more black non-skid deck plating. On our way here, we had passed a few other officers. I tried to remember that only Spacecraft Command Officers required salutes, not SSOs like Sorcha and me. I got it right most of the time, with little embarrassment. Mostly, I was astounded at the idea of people passing side by side in a passageway. All the brass fittings I saw sparkled; the black deck and gray walls were spotless; the gold buttons on the other officers’ crisp, white uniforms shone. All this cleanliness, I thought, feeling smugger than ever, was a sign of a fine, well-run ship.

  Sorcha pointed out to me later that it could also be a sign of madness.

  Eclipse’s executive officer, Ron Ferguson, met us in the Hole. He was a stout, hard-looking bastard who looked like he could read your mind, find out if you were up to something, and punish you thoroughly before you even had time to blink. His sleeve insignia indicated he was a Spacecraft Command Officer Level 6 — definitely someone to salute. We stood at rigid attention, staring somewhere past the opposite bulkhead and a display panel showing an assortment of documents pertaining to standing orders. He downloaded our papers from our headware to his clipboard.

  “What have we got here with you lot, then? Hmm. Spacecraft Services Officer Level 1, Riley, S. That would be you, Miss?” Ferguson looked at her like he was particularly unimpressed.

  Sorcha shouted, “Yes, sir!”

  Ferguson narrowed his eyes and nodded a little. “Very good,” he said, suggesting he thought otherwise. He checked his clipboard again, glancing at me. “And that means you, you sorry-looking wretch, must be SSO1 Dunne, J. Is that right, mister?”

  “Yes, sir!” I shouted. My own ears rang as my voice ­resounded in the small compartment.

  Ferguson looked at me in a way I didn’t like, saying, “I’m really not quite deaf yet, boy.” He wiggled a ­finger in his ears for a comic effect that was wasted on me — I hated being called “boy.” He was daring us to laugh. We didn’t.

  “Welcome, Miss Riley and Mr. Dunne, to Her Majesty’s Starship Eclipse. During the time you spend aboard this fair vessel, you will find that we do things a little ­differently from what you were taught at the Academy. Do either of you ­geniuses know why that might be?”

  Sorcha took a shot at it, shouting her answer at the ­opposite wall, “The rigors of actual spaceflight place ­unpredictable stresses on human beings that can never ­accurately be simulated. Moreover, life aboar
d a starship is by definition unpredictable, sir!”

  Ferguson, his pencil moustache twitching beneath his narrow nose, scowled at Sorcha, taking his time about his response. He said, “Quite correct, SSO1 Riley, the ­Academy does its best to introduce the cadet to a wide range of ­situations and circumstances and tries to teach its cloth-eared students skills for improvising their way to successful outcomes without killing too many of their shipmates. Guided by regulations, of course. But you’re only at the Academy for four short years. Now then. SSO1 Dunne?”

  “Sir!”

  “Better, Dunne, better. Can you tell me what the greatest hazard to the crew of a starship exploring the unknown might be?”

  Relief! I knew this one. “Boredom, sir!”

  “And why, might I ask,” he went on, pacing back and forth before us, his boots clumping on the plates, “is boredom such a great problem for a starship crew?”

  I felt myself growing nervous answering, “Space is boring, sir!”

  Our new executive officer arched a steely eyebrow at me. “Very good, Dunne. You win the prize for logic. Starship life is boring because space is boring. Sadly, you are quite right. Much of our work on this ship is concerned with maintenance, gathering information, having meetings to discuss our information, and suchlike. There are no diverting aliens to entertain us. The last time something exciting happened on this ship was twelve years ago. Can either of you tell me what that event was?”

  Sorcha said, “Eclipse scientists discovered what could be the ruins of an alien civilization on Madrigal, sir! ­Controversy still raging, sir!”

  “You know your history, Riley. That is most gratifying.”

  “Thank you very much, sir!”

  Ferguson went back to pacing. “Captain Rudyard likes things quiet and peaceful, children. Is that understood? He doesn’t want any controversy, any great kerfuffles whatsoever. Is that clear?”

  We both shouted, “Yes, sir!”

  “Excellent. We don’t like people who rock the boat on Eclipse. We like things to remain on a nice, even keel. We take this quite seriously. Do you doubt this, Mr. Dunne?”

  Why’d he pick on me? I tried not to let my flash of panic show. “Absolutely not, sir! No rocking the boat, sir!”

  “In that case,” Ferguson said, glaring at me and then ­giving Sorcha a leer I’m sure she could have done without, “we’ll all get on very well. Eclipse is a happy ship, ­children.”

  “Yes, sir!” we said. I was getting hoarse.

  Ferguson touched a few panels on his display. Instantly my headware let me know it had received fresh mail from Ferguson. He said, “I’ve just sent you both all the documentation you need to orient yourselves, your cabin ­assignments, work rosters, emergency procedures, lifeboat access routes, standing orders, ship layout, and so forth. Any questions?”

  “No, sir!”

  He said, “Correct answer. Dismissed — report to your ­department heads in ten minutes.” I had a moment to realize that my department head was Captain Rudyard himself.

  Ferguson left us in the Hole, strolling away, and whistling something off-key.

  “That,” I said, “was different.” I bent down to pick up my kit. Sorcha was staring off.

  “He sent me a private message while he was talking to you,” she said, not looking at me. “Can you believe it?”

  “What’d he say?”

  Now she looked at me, her luminous dark eyes full of anger. “He wants me to come to his quarters tonight, 2330 hours.”

  I didn’t know what to say. We had just been told not to make any kind of fuss. “What are you going to do?”

  “Well I’m damn well not going, am I?” she hissed, glancing about.

  “Are you sure that’s wise?”

  She looked at me as if I was much more stupid than she realized. “You do understand what he’s after, don’t you?”

  I wasn’t a total newbie — I realized Ferguson was ­interested in more than a friendly avuncular chat with Sorcha. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to get his back up so early in your time here? I mean, we’re stuck here for three years.”

  She scowled, “So you’re saying I should let him shag me stupid just for the sake of crew harmony?”

  “Well, no, obviously…”

  “Because I had enough of this crap at the Academy. I thought shipboard life would be a little more grown-up.”

  I didn’t want to talk about my own run-ins with ­seniors with a taste for male flesh. “Well you better go and have it out with him. It’s unprofessional behavior, propositioning a member of the crew like that.”

  Sorcha stood there, staring at the floor. “Damn, I thought all that crap was over.”

  I said nothing.

  She said, “Look, here’s what he said. I’ll show you the note.” She flashed the note across to me. It said, “Miss Riley, please report to my cabin at 2330. I would like to discuss your future career. Ferguson.”

  “Your future career?” I asked, thinking about it, also thinking that a note like that was quite innocuous. “Maybe he’s for real.”

  “Did you see the way he looked at me? Did you?”

  I remembered Ferguson’s leer. I rubbed at my chin. “I don’t know what to suggest.”

  “Thanks so much for your help,” she said.

  “I just don’t think he should be allowed to proposition you, or put you in a compromising position.”

  “Like I said, thanks.” She leaned against the wall, chewing her lip. “The bastard!”

  “What about this?” I said, suddenly seized by an idea.

  “What about what?”

  I explained my idea. She looked at me, skeptically. “That won’t work.”

  “It might work, though — it’s better than doing ­nothing.”

  Sorcha still looked dubious, and she twisted her mouth around. Looking at me, she said, “Dunne, if this doesn’t work…”

  “How could it not work?” I asked, smiling.

  Three

  Captain Rudyard didn’t look like a man losing his mind. He was around average height for a Service officer, wiry, with a gaunt face and sad-looking blue eyes, dark hair ­receding at the temples that was worn long enough to need brushing back. I always thought that he looked like he had just ­received word of the death of a loved one.

  He answered his office door himself when I knocked, which surprised me. I was used to the Academy custom of having disposable servants as personal assistants to handle such matters. “Mr. Dunne, I presume?” the captain asked, smiling — it wasn’t a good look for him. I held out my hand, suffering his crushing handshake in return, and tried to squeeze back just as hard. One thing I’ve noticed about men who like bonecrusher handshakes: they measure a person’s worth by the strength of the squeeze. The captain was ­evidently satisfied with my attempt to break his hand, and he stepped back and welcomed me into his office.

  Another surprise: there was room for as many as three people in the room; captains on the old ships never used to get such generous space allotments. I stood a moment in the center of the Service-gray room, gawking about, feeling ­almost agoraphobic after my experiences in sims and ­re­plicas on training missions. Looking around, I saw that ­Captain Rudyard was a man who didn’t like distractions. He had a simple oak desk jammed into a corner, which looked like real, finished dark timber, and a comfortable Lutio smartchair, an expensive item indeed, probably his only ­indulgence. He also had a low, standard-issue cot set against the opposite wall, perhaps for those times when he didn’t feel like going back to his quarters. On the wall behind Rudyard’s desk he had a small image in a frame: his own graduating class, four ­hundred young men and women in sparkling white, standing in the leafy Contemplation Garden at the Academy, in the early days of the Home System Community, when it still g
enuinely represented all the people who lived in the system.

  There was also, I noted with a certain pride, the ­requisite image of Her Majesty Queen Helen, Head of the ­Service, the only monarch to exist in virtuum, where she reigned, perfect, beautiful, and serene, an inspiration to everyone in the Home System Community. As a virtual, virtuous monarch, she was programmed to exhibit all the glorious qualities of royalty from across human history, and ­exhibit none of the foibles and embarrassments that had driven carbon-based royalty into disrepute. Queen Helen had started as a virtuum hack in the old days, before the HSC, probably some student’s exercise in character design. Accounts differed over who created her and how she got loose into the Home System infosphere, but suddenly she began to appear everywhere, and people ­responded to her quiet majesty, serene beauty, and ­wisdom. Over time, she had become a unifying leader who could be all things to all people. Her coronation ceremony was held at an am­bitious virtuum recreation of St Paul’s ­Cathedral and had been experienced by hundreds of millions of people across human space. Historians were ­beginning to mark that day, forty-three years ago, as the birth of the Community.

  The captain managed a smile as he saw me admiring his pictures. “Please, son, feel free to have a look. I’m in the third row … no, wait, I’m in the fourth row, nineteenth from the right.” Rudyard stepped across to his graduation image and pointed out which tiny white figure was him, thirty years ago. I noticed he had had more hair in those days, and even then the same bland unconvincing smile.

  “Must have been something being a young officer in those days, sir,” I said, trying to make conversation.

  “The Service today is different, the dark is further out, but here at the sharp end, well — some things don’t change. Can I get you some coffee or tea?” He had a small personal fab set up next to his desk, fixed to the wall. I stared for a moment, astounded at such luxury.

  “Uh, thank you but no, sir. Kind of you to offer.”