Eclipse

by K. A. Bedford

  Rudyard fixed himself a coffee, Martian French vanilla, no milk, three sugars. He directed me to take a seat in the small visitor chair, which I did, allowing the chair to fold itself over my legs, and wondered what to do or say next. The whole encounter so far seemed odd, like the bad dress rehearsal preceding a play’s successful opening night.

  Rudyard was nothing like I expected. When I had first received word that I was getting Eclipse as my assignment, I started hearing from all kinds of people around the ­Academy who knew the man and warned me about his idiosyncrasies and black moods. When I knocked on Rudyard’s door that morning, I half expected to have my head bitten off for disturbing him. Instead he was ­ob­viously going out of his way to put me at ease, in his own way.

  Rudyard parked himself in his Lutio, sipped his ­coffee, looked thoughtful a moment. “Hmm, it’s getting better, I think.”

  “I still prefer the real thing, if you’ll excuse my saying so, sir.”

  He laughed out loud. “If you’ll excuse my saying so? Mr. Dunne, this meeting is entirely informal. You’re here so I can get to know you a little, and you can get to know me. You don’t have to suck up to me quite so much, or be so damned deferential. Save that for when you’re on the helm team. And,” he flashed a sly smile, “as it happens, I prefer real coffee myself, but I keep my store of the good stuff for special occasions.”

  Disconcerted, I nodded. “Sounds very wise, sir. How long have you been captain of Eclipse?” Which was me trying again to make conversation; I knew very well how long Rudyard had been Eclipse’s captain.

  He flashed that smile from the class photograph, all teeth. “Sometimes, you know, if feels like I’ve been running this damn boat all my life.” There was a brief flash of fatigue and thoughtfulness there, as he stared over my shoulder. “But there are other times when I wake up and suddenly it hits me, I’m the captain of HMS Eclipse!” He allowed himself a small laugh at this, fidgeting.

  There was a long moment of silence while he sipped at his coffee. I couldn’t think anything that I wanted to ask him; I ­already knew about his background, about the ship and her systems. “Captain Rudyard,” I opened, “as you know I’ve been appointed to helm operations. But as an SSO1 I know I won’t be doing a great deal of actual helm work.”

  He looked grateful for a conversation topic. “Right. Yes, you’re quite right, Mr. Dunne. To be placed on the ­rotation for primary helm, you need to be SSO3. There have been some young officers who’ve dazzled the hell out of all of us and got on the team at 2, of course, but they are the ­exception.” Another flash of the big smile. “During the time you’re working your way up from being a 1, you will function as an observer attached to the helm operations team, in one of the three shift slots, and also work on completing a bridging program of sim work to bring your skills up to what we need.”

  “That’s perfectly fine with me, sir. I’m prepared to work hard, but I’m curious to know what my actual duties will be.” I knew I sounded like a prat talking like this. Something about this whole encounter with the captain felt strange and unsettling, but I couldn’t place what it was, and I had the ­impression the captain wanted it over, too. Nonetheless, he leaned back in his chair, which flowed and adjusted to his posture, and gently worked his lower back. He said, ­“Observer to the helm team. Hmm.” I knew his headware would be feeding his buffers. “Ah, yes. How did you do at the Academy in hypertube mechanics?” He was referring of course, to the class of natural, but strangely multidimensional wormholes, noted for the way their entrance and exit points drifted through space.

  I wanted to wince — this had been one of my shakier subjects. “I did quite well, sir.”

  “I believe a lot of your time will be occupied in adapting the theory and practice you learned at the Academy to the real world of starship navigation, which means learning the tricks of how helm ops personnel really track the motion of tube entry points and some of the more creative ways to … er … surf the curves inside the tubes. You’ll love it.”

  “Surf the curves, sir?”

  Rudyard let his coffee cup sit a moment while he made an expansive gesture. “We don’t always have time to do ­everything absolutely according to textbook procedures, son. Sometimes we have to fly this ship by feel. That’s something you’ll have to learn.”

  “Of course, sir,” I said, feeling more than a little ­nervous. How not-by-the-book did things get on this ship? I wondered.

  “Anything else, Mr. Dunne?” Obviously a cue that the captain was finished with me.

  There was one more thing I wanted to ask. “What should I do if I see another officer breaking regs, sir?”

  He looked surprised. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “You catch somebody breaking regs on my ship, you report that officer either to Mr. Ferguson or directly to me. There is no room on this ship for such individuals. And captains on ships like this one have more discretion to deal with offenders than you’ve had hot dinners, son.” He was smiling as he said it, but there was an edge in his voice that hadn’t been there before, a suggestion of something nasty. I figured it was just captain’s prerogative talking — his ship, his way.

  But I did wonder what to do about Ferguson’s request to see Sorcha that evening.

  Rudyard, satisfied that he had explained to me how things worked on board his ship, dismissed me and ­ordered me to report to the leader of the helm operations team, SCO5 Janning, the ship’s third in command. My ship layout info ­indicated Mr. Janning was working in his quarters at this very moment.

  I sent him a note through ShipMind that I was on my way, and set off, hurrying through the corridors. When I found him, he was seated on his bunk, but his eyes were glazed, staring into the distance, mumbling things I couldn’t make out. He was ‘in the cloud’ — his headware linked into ShipMind along with other senior bridge staff spread through the five crew decks. Knowing he wouldn’t hear me if I called out, I pinged him over ShipMind and he opened his eyes in surprise. “Ah, Mr. Dunne, I ­presume! You found me. We’ll make a helm officer out of you yet!” Janning was small but solid, with cropped auburn hair, brown eyes, a look of wry amusement. “You caught me in a remarkably tedious flight plan con­ference.”

  We shook hands; he wasn’t out to break my hand like the captain and his smile looked genuine. Already I liked him. “Using the cloud, sir?”

  Janning looked surprised that I knew about it. “Still trying to get the hang of using the bloody thing. We’ve only had the cloud interface installed for three months, amazing technology, all that data flashing around in your head. Kind of unsettling, like when you think people are talking about you behind your back. Suppose I’ll get used to it, though.” He added.

  I glanced around his hardly-decorated quarters, “I keep looking for buttons to push and screens to read,” I admitted, smiling a little nervously. He had a display page stuck to the wall above his tautly-made bed showing images of people I assumed were family: chunky, smiling folks crowded around a small table in a pub, gesturing with pint glasses of beer.

  Janning laughed. “Takes a bit of getting used to, I must say. Still, we’re slowly getting the bugs out.”

  “Slowly?”

  “No system’s perfect. On the other hand, it does ­improve response and data interpretation times when sensor feeds are piped straight into your brain for action, instead of the old days when you had to read everything off a display, ­report it to someone higher than you, who then had to act on it. It’s also strange not having an actual bridge.” He shook his head.

  “And it really does work the way the engineers said it would?”

  “Oh yes. Listen, have you had your headware upgrade shots yet?”

  I nodded. “Took care of it last week, to allow for the ­neuroid growth and immune response time, sir.”

  “Good lad. You should be just about ready to plug into our train
ing system. You’d be surprised at the number of newbie’s we get who forget all about these things.” Shaking his head. “Bloody morons!”

  I had heard about the plans for this interface technology while at the Academy, and ten years earlier I remember my father talking about the basic theoretical principles. Last I heard the Service was still testing it, and there were rumors of protest from the manufacturers and contractors who ­supplied all the display technologies for the older ships. I mentioned this to Janning. He said, “That’s all true. For a long while the idea of the cloud interface was in the toilet ­because lobbyists for the old system paid the Service ­procurement people lots of money to keep using the old ­displays and what-have-you. But a test bed vessel with a scratch-built version of this system got out there and proved conclusively that we were better off — and safer — this way than with the old way.”

  “The Turing, wasn’t it, sir?”

  He glanced at me, eyebrow cocked. “You know about that?”

  “Yes, sir. I try to keep up with what’s happening.”

  “How much do you know about the cloud, then?”

  “Only that reaction times and task performance ­improved by an average of twenty-five to thirty percent in non-combat situations, and by as much as forty percent in combat and emergency situations. Uh, sir.” I suppressed a smile.

  “Mr. Dunne, I’m fairly impressed. Your service record says your father is an academic, working in the systems theory field.”

  “I first heard about the Turing test bed vessel from Dad, sir.”

  “Very good. I might just be able to work with you, I think.”

  “I hope so, sir.”

  “Do you have an interest in interstellar politics, son?”

  I winced a little. “Somewhat, sir. Enough to know things are looking bad all over.”

  “Worse than bad, Mr. Dunne.” He looked grim.

  I ventured a comment, “Rumors at the Academy say we’ll be at war with the Asiatics within a year.”

  “And what do you think?” Janning asked, surprised, watching me carefully.

  “I am aware, sir, that the number and duration of the planetary brush wars around human space are on the ­increase, that people seem more desperate. Crazy, even. All that talk about the end of things, I suppose.”

  “And?”

  Frowning, I tried to formulate an informed opinion on the spot. “I know that population is pressing against the limits of currently available real estate, that exploration budgets are ­being cut back, and that habitat ­construction is down on ­previous five-year periods.”

  Janning smiled then laughed kindly. “And to think you only thought you’d have to plot courses and read maps, right, Mr. Dunne?”

  I allowed myself a nervous smile. “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll get no apologies from me. Before you are a helm operator, you are also a Service officer. You must be good at everything, despite having no time to attain said skills. It’s a real bitch, if you ask me, having to be a soldier, a diplomat, and an explorer. There’s still a whole bunch of things I have no clue about at all.” He grinned, to put me at ease as much as possible.

  “Time has always been a problem for me, sir.”

  He nodded. “Since when has time never been a problem for anyone? Eh?” He shook his head, wearing a rueful grin.

  Something else was on my mind, since we were talking about these things. “Sir, what would we do if the Unity did approach the Community about our treaty ­obligations? If they were under threat, that is.” I was thinking about news reports speculating that Unity Europa, the powerful metastate with strong nationalist tendencies and fragmented, distorted memories of Earth’s Europe, was contemplating a move into territory claimed but not occupied by the Asiatic Cooperative Metasphere. The popular wisdom held that it would be cheaper to take over someone else’s land and remove the current owners than to build habitats or terraform marginal worlds. The Unity was very keen to maintain its European bloodlines, no matter the cost. And if the Unity did encounter trouble with the immense power of the Asiatics, the dominant superpower of human space, they would almost certainly seek our help, as stipulated in a mutual assistance treaty dating back twenty years, when things had been very different, and planetary real estate more abundant.

  “Well,” he said, “I imagine we’d have to go and help the mad froggy bastards!” He laughed. I was surprised that he referred to the Unity as froggy bastards — I thought such terms had been banished. He went on, “Anyway, if we were in trouble, we’d expect the Unity to come and help us, right?”

  I nodded but said, “I can’t honestly see them doing much to help us, if it came down to it, sir. If you’ll pardon my saying so.”

  “Why do you think that, son?” He looked amused.

  I could feel sweat beading around my neck. “I just thought, well, that the Community’s too small, too ­unimportant, only one system. And the Unity, they’re known for not wanting to endanger their military ­resources if they can possibly avoid it. I mean—”

  Janning put a hand up. “Okay, okay, that’s enough. I quite agree. I’m quite sure one of these fine days we’re going to get swallowed up by the bloody Asiatics, and the Unity’s going to stand on the sidelines wringing their hands, formally objecting in the strongest possible terms, but otherwise doing squat to help us, too much risk to their bloodlines. Blah, blah, blah. Bastards!

  “Although,” he added, “what they’d do with us, I don’t bloody know.”

  I was thinking about my mother, on New Jerusalem, a world, like most occupied worlds of human space, not part of any metastate. New Jerusalem did have loose ­diplomatic ties to the Unity, however. What would they do if war broke out across human space? What about all the microstates out there? The Polynesians, say, or the Inuits, or, for that matter, the Americans, each of whose enclaves claimed to be the “True” or “Real America”. And what would my people, the scattered Australians, with strong blood ties both to Europe and the Asiatics, do?

  More troubling still was the question of the many space- going cults, the largest of which were states unto themselves. The cults lived in vast hiveships; the cultists themselves belonged to a type of post-humanity who called themselves the Qua. They described themselves in their anti-ortho mindwar propaganda, as humans beyond ­human. They liked to say that ordinary people — a heavily contested term, to say the least — who would normally consider themselves ­orthodox were de facto Qua already, the way they relied on headware and other modifications. They reckoned there was no longer such thing as a true ortho. Not when kids can be born with headware seeds coded into their DNA.

  Meanwhile, across human space, diplomats were trying to sort out which people were part of which overall state, and who controlled what, considering that even within single cities you could find people claiming ­citizenship in different states or metastates, never mind the complex populations of whole countries and whole worlds. Who belonged to what? It was maddeningly complex, and frequently led to small-scale warfare. And the more these brush wars in human space threatened to boil over into interstellar conflagrations, the more everyone wanted to know where the real boundaries were, assuming such boundaries could be enforceable, and would be proof against collateral damage. It would have been an exercise in madness, to try and work out the fine-print on those treaties.

  “I’m inclined to think it’ll all sort itself out, though, and we’ll go back to being just plain ‘human space’ again, all of humanity in it together.” I said at last.

  Janning nodded, listening to me, and concealed his amusement at my naiveté. He said, “You really think that? Ah, Mr. Dunne,” He shook his head. “We’ll never go back to those days. Not now, not with everyone waiting for Kestrel’s other shoe to drop. These are strange times.”

  I knew about Kestrel. The facts: about forty years ago, a planet-sized,
extremely dense Herrington Object, ­composed of heavy exotic matter, was on collision course with the planet Kestrel. Moments before the impact, and in front of more media than had ever been assembled anywhere, the Object disappeared into hyperspace. What had happened had never been adequately explained.

  Not long after that, the Kestrel System’s Orbital Habitat blew up, fusion cores destroyed, a situation which was also never fully explained. The less reputable media pushed colorful speculations salted with crazy rumors of godlike entities walking across the higher dimensions, and hinting broadly about a conspiracy among the major metastates to keep the truth about Kestrel a secret.

  My dad always said the universe wasn’t like this ­before Kestrel. I first heard about the Event when I was a kid, ­reading novels and seeing vids about Kestrel, and there were these crusading journalists who were trying to get the truth out, and how powerful forces would try to kill them. But the “truth” they depicted always seemed kind of lame and stupid.

  Then one day Dad happened to mention that Kestrel was a real incident, a real place. That got me interested, and over the years I kept coming back to accounts of the Event. Even as a teenager, when I could immerse myself in recordings of the Event’s media coverage, and I could watch the Object dwindle out of this universe, I still could not say what had happened. It was beyond scary. It was easy to see why so many people thought it was a ­genuine intervention from God — but which God, and why Kestrel, a drab, resource-rich and obscure planet, and not Earth, way back?

  There were at least as many questions about Earth’s death as there were about Kestrel’s survival. The primary question about Earth, of course, was simply, “What ­happened?” Followed immediately by, “Why all the ­secrecy?” All that was known these days, nearly 150 years after the fact, was that one day for no readily apparent reason the Earth was destroyed. It was simply gone, leaving very little rubble or wreckage, and certainly no ­survivors. There was no warning that anyone knew of. There had been official inquiries and countless half-baked conspiracy theories. No one could agree on anything. All humanity knew was that the off-Earth offices of the United Nations, in one of their last meaningful acts, had embargoed any and all information, data and records, sealing them from public scrutiny indefinitely.