by Hugh Howey
Pewder turned into the first room he came to and let out a loot-cry of “Spacesuits!”
Walter stuck his head in the small room, which looked like a place to change clothes. Full-body suits hung on one wall, and there was a sky hatch or something in the ceiling. He turned away while Pewder began patting down one of the suits.
Across the hallway, Walter found what he was really interested in: the ship’s hyperdrive. The unit was bigger than he would’ve thought, having only seen schematics of the main board. It looked like a boxy taxicab, and it sat close to the back wall of the small room. There was just enough walkway around the sides to circle the unit, allowing access to all the panels and hatches screwed tight over the unit’s innards. Walter approached the machine, his skin tingling at the sight of it. It was so… purposeful. So whole and complete. Nothing seemed out of place or tacked on over years and years of intermittent operation. Pipes led where they were bent to lead, as if molded for their foreseen purpose. Wires were trimmed to the proper length, routed neatly in parallel lines, and even—floods take him—labeled.
Walter reached out and ran his hands along one of the riveted panels. It felt cool to the touch. He had somehow expected it to be warm, or thrumming with contained energy. Instead, he saw it as a perfectly engineered marvel—a thing with frightful and awesome potential. A means of escape, to take him anywhere he chose.
Walter strolled around the side, looking for model and serial numbers. He found both on a silver plate screwed to the back of the unit. It had the place and year of manufacture, the requisite numbers, and all kinds of cautions and warnings.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Walter said to the plate.
Pewder stuck his head around the rear corner of the drive. “Tell you what?” he asked.
Walter waved him off. “Go check the bunk rooms, you bolthead.”
Pewder sniffed, then padded away without a word.
Walter pulled out his multi-tool and his card reader. He hoped to hyperspace he knew what he was doing. Or undoing, as it were.
••••
Over a hundred pirate ships from all the clans were gathered at the first rendezvous point when they arrived, with more of them streaking their way over from the Orbital Station and up from Palan. Each pirate clan tended to cobble together as many functioning craft as they could for the annual promotion ceremonies. The size of their fleet said much about the potential ranking of the clan and the power they would wield that year, resulting in some absolute clunkers puttering through space.
Kinda like ours, Walter thought to himself as he looked around the cockpit of their own jalopy.
“Looks like the Smiths’ve been boozing it up on the Station.”
Walter’s uncle pointed from the navigator’s seat toward a sizable fleet heading their way.
“How long before we jump out?” Walter asked the pilot impatiently; he wasn’t sure if he’d overridden the Earth coordinates properly, but he was anxious to hurry up and find out.
“They’re already queuing up for the jump,” the pilot said. He pointed to a display on the dash where each ship stood out as a bright blip. It made it easy to see how the dozens of craft had formed a straight line with more forming up at the rear.
“See? That’s the Palan system’s L1 they’re heading toward.” The pilot tapped a finger at a blank spot near the end of the line. The lead blip moved under the pad of his silvery digit. When the pilot pulled his hand away, the ship was gone.
Walter lifted his eyes and searched through the windshield, but whatever had just happened was already over and done with, obscured and pulled off with the timing and mystery of a magic trick.
“Ell what?” Pewder asked. The smaller boy tried to squeeze in past Walter, but Walter stood firm, keeping the kid out.
“A Lagrange point,” the pilot said.
“I wanna see!”
Walter ignored Pewder and leaned closer to his uncle. He wasn’t sure what the Lagrange business was all about and he didn’t care. He tapped his uncle on the shoulder. “Hey Uncle, do you think we could do our promotions right here while we wait our turn?”
His uncle laughed and shook his head. “We might have to jump out one at a time, but promotions are always done together. If we were down on Palan, I’d still be making you wait until the set time. And don’t worry about your friends beating you to Full Pirate—the others’ll wait for us.”
Walter watched another blip wink off the screen on the dash. He thought about the young and hopeful Palans on each ship, them and their uncles and fathers having similar conversations. The thought created some new sensation in his stomach, something similar to the dread of the floods. It only seemed to register, though, when he was thinking on how many Palans were out there in all those ships, how they would soon find themselves rounded up by Earth’s orbital defense. Walter nearly laughed out loud when he thought about how it would look. The Humans are gonna think Palan is invading them!
“Why do we jump out to the moon for the promotions?” Pewder asked, interrupting Walter’s thoughts. The younger boy’s pestering hands were all over Walter’s ribs, trying to find room on one side or the other in order to see. Walter shifted as needed to keep him away from the prime spot he had claimed just behind the ship’s controls.
“It’s the same reason we used to sail out over the seas to do it, back when I was your age,” Walter’s uncle said. “Part of the ceremony, sure, is welcoming a new group of youth into the clans, but what you boys don’t see is how much jockeying takes place among us elders.”
The heavy Palan shifted around in his seat and looked back at the two boys. “When I was promoted, I remember thinking the entire ocean revolved around me, that this was my day—Pewder, are you back there?”
“Walter’s blocking me.”
“Son, let the boy see.”
Walter gave him a two inch vertical shaft of visibility.
“You see, the trip out over the water proved much more about the clan’s health than the new members they were about to induct. Hell, it was ten times harder sailing the stormy seas after a flood than it is cobbling a ship together and hiring a pilot.”
He turned to the pilot. “No offense,” he said.
The pilot shrugged.
“What did it prove about us that we had to do our own ceremony on Palan all these years?”
His uncle turned in his seat and gazed out at the stars beyond the canopy.
“It wasn’t fun for me, I’ll tell you. But hell, I’ve been against the move to space from the beginning.” He held up his hands and looked at his great, meaty palms. “As soon as we stopped sailing, the clans started getting soft.” He sighed. “Then again, I suppose one of my ancestors would’ve been angry that my old ship had hydraulic steering and synthetic sails, like I was some kind of wimp compared to him. Time moves like the floods, boys. You either lift your feet and drift along on the surface, or you drown trying to stay in one place.”
“So there’s really no way we can do the promotions before we jump out?” Walter was dying to at least be a Full Pirate in Earth prison, if that was his fate. He’d be sure to rub that in Dalton’s face—through the bars if he had to.
“You’ve waited an entire year for this, Walter,” his uncle said. “What in hyperspace is another hour gonna do?”
Walter cringed at the thought.
If only I knew, he thought to himself.
••••
As befitting the status of their clan, the lone Hommul ship was the last to arrive at Palan’s primary Lagrange point. A very light smattering of commercial traffic stood nearby, patiently awaiting an end to Palan’s annual swarm around the safe jump point so they could resume their normal business.
Walter had completely forgotten about the non-pirate ships that might be passing through their system. He had never considered the possibility that other craft might get caught up in his web and be sent off to Earth with the clans. He shrugged. Unintended consequences were just a part of lif
e.
He was thinking this and looking out at the distant collection of waiting ships when their newly purchased GN-290 winked through hyperspace. The commercial ships disappeared and the stars beyond jittered to new positions. Off to one side of the canopy, the furthest moon of Palan popped into being silently and sat motionless, its bluish surface dotted with craters and streaked with ejecta.
“What in the—?”
The pilot’s confusion was drowned out by Pewder’s thrill of partially seeing the jump take place. He screamed in Walter’s ear, and Walter’s uncle added to the commotion, clapping his hands together as if his risky purchase had somehow fully redeemed itself with a safe and successful jump.
Walter’s heart pounded with relief. The override of the override had returned things to normal. He had unscrewed himself. The tension in his body slid out like jelly through his arms, which tingled at the sight of all that empty blackness ahead.
The pilot was not having the same reaction to their being alone. He cursed and fiddled with his instruments. Moments later, Walter’s uncle finally noticed that something was missing.
“Where is everyone?” he asked. He looked down at the display that had been full of green blips. The pilot adjusted some knobs.
“Where are they?” he asked the pilot.
“I have no idea,” the pilot said. He pulled up another screen and turned to Walter’s uncle, his posture and voice suddenly defensive. “These are the coordinates you gave me. This is where we’re supposed to be.”
“What kind of trick is this?” Walter’s uncle shook his fist at the vacuum beyond the carboglass, like a sailor cursing the sea.
Walter, meanwhile, was overjoyed. He took in a breath, realizing he had been holding it for what felt an eternity. To him, the empty space outside the ship stood as perfect verification of his accomplishment. It was the ultimate programming rush: He had hacked an entire fleet! He had written a program—sent out via Bell Phone—and it had infected every ship in a star system. Anything with a GN hyperdrive board had received his commands and they had all obeyed him.
He imagined those hundreds of ships in Earth’s orbit right then, clan leaders scratching their heads while they were surrounded by the Human Navy. And that’s when a new fact hit him: the only ship to not show up would be the obvious culprit. Oh how delicious that they would know it had been Hommul who—!
“What did you do?”
Walter’s uncle was out of his seat with a speed that belied his bulk. He came across the controls between the seats and seized Walter by the neck, pushing him against the bulkhead. Pewder screamed and stumbled out of the cockpit, his arms windmilling for balance. Walter got out half a hiss of alarm before his windpipe was squeezed too tight to breathe.
“What in hyperspace have you done?” his uncle demanded. He leaned close and sniffed Walter’s cheek, taking in the reek of his excitement and guilt.
The scrutiny just made Walter ooze more of both.
“I didn’t—” Walter tried to croak.
“Tell me!” his uncle roared. He throttled Walter, lifting the boy’s feet off the decking.
“I can’t breathe,” he squeaked.
The pilot twisted in his seat and reached for the two of them. “Hey, there’s no way the boy could’ve—”
“Stay out of this!” the Senior Pirate thundered. He shook a finger back toward the pilot, allowing Walter to gasp for a breath.
“It was an accident,” Walter whispered.
His uncle’s eyes flared. Disbelieving hands loosened their grip. “Tell me,” he said softly.
Walter looked beseechingly to the pilot, but the other man sat rapt in his seat, his eyes searching Walter for an impossible explanation. Walter, still pinned to the bulkhead, looked the other way to see Pewder standing in the doorway of the cockpit, rubbing one elbow he must’ve bruised in his fall to the decking. His uncle seemed to sniff the collapse of Walter’s resistance. The hands clenched around his neck relaxed further until they were simply draped on his shoulders. Walter looked to the leader of his clan, his mother’s brother, his sometime stand-in of a father, a man he used to know simply as Karl, and he saw in his terrified and shock-glazed eyes the forgotten fragility of the old man. There was a stunned horror there that Walter couldn’t match up with his own fear of his uncle. He couldn’t conceive of the possibility that he, little Walter, had engendered that fear.
“I just wanted to rid us of their ships,” Walter breathed.
He searched the three faces turned his way.
“I didn’t think we’d be up here.” He widened his eyes for his uncle. “I didn’t know we were getting a ship!”
His uncle’s large hands left Walter’s shoulders and moved to the sides of his head, like he had suddenly been seized by a headache.
“I thought you didn’t want ships,” Walter told him, the excuses beginning to gather like the floods. “This way none of us would have them. We’d be equal.” A new reason popped into his head, and Walter added it to his premeditated list: “You said Terran banks owned them. All I did was send them back.”
“To Earth?” the pilot asked.
Walter nodded.
“From here? With one jump?”
More nodding. The pilot slumped down in his seat.
Walter’s uncle turned and sniffed the air. The stench of fear from the pilot hit Walter a moment later.
“What is it?” the Senior Pirate asked.
“We’ll never hear from them again,” he said. The pilot looked back over his shoulder at Walter, an odd mix of fear and shock on his face as well. “You can’t jump like that,” he said. “People who try are never heard from ever again.” The Palan pilot waved toward one of the screens on the dash. “There’s procedures you have to follow. There’s way too much stuff between here and Earth.”
“So how long before they come back?” his uncle asked.
“Aren’t you listening?” The pilot waved his arms. “They’re not ever coming back. They’re dead.”
“What the floods?” Pewder mumbled to himself.
“I thought you’d like this,” Walter begged of his uncle. The pilot’s words weren’t registering with him at all. He couldn’t think of the possibility that thousands might be dead when he was still facing the possibility of being in trouble.
“I thought I’d be promoted to Full Pirate and Hommul wouldn’t be at the very bottom of the clans. But now look!” He waved toward the empty space beyond the windshield. “We’ll be at the top!” Walter exulted.
Walter’s uncle looked out toward Palan’s most distant moon. He seemed to chew on the consequences of Walter’s actions, on this new power vacuum as real and great as the void of space. He looked to the pilot with a frown, then to Walter, then Pewder. His face grew suddenly serious.
“By the might I have vested in me,” he chanted, “by my wiles and my guiles, by the authority of a clan all mine, I now bestow the privilege of Full Pirate to you, Pewder Hommul.”
Walter watched Pewder positively glow from the hasty but proper proceedings. It wasn’t with all the pomp and circumstance the boys had imagined it, but the occasion was no less momentous. Their lives, everything they did and said around Palan, it was all about to change. They were moving from boys to men, and it didn’t matter to Walter how exactly that had to take place—
“You.” His uncle turned to face him. “You can wait another year. You’re grounded.”
“What—?”
His uncle stepped back and reached into the folds of his jacket.
“How can you ground me?”
A pistol came out. Walter immediately recognized it as the one he’d found on the Simmons guy.
“Wait,” Walter said, raising his hands. “Uncle, please, think on what you’re about to—”
His uncle’s arm came up, the gun pointing out. He swiveled to the side and with a concussive roar made mighty by the confines of the cockpit, he shot a bullet, point blank, into the side of the pilot’s face.
&nb
sp; Blood and bone scattered, adhering to the dash and windshield in a wide cone of gore. The smell of burnt powder stung Walter’s nose, the ringing in his ears cutting off the first of what his uncle said next.
“—so that nobody ever knows what you did.” His uncle turned to Pewder. The gun did as well. “Is that understood?”
Pewder’s head nodded so hard, Walter imagined it could pop right off.
“Okay. Now.” The Senior Pirate of the Great Hommul Clan, highest and mightiest of them all, turned to survey the mess Walter had made. “The first job for you, Junior Pirate, is to clean this man’s blood off my spaceship.” He looked back and forth between the two boys, waving the smoking gun at the ship’s controls as he did so. “After that, I might need you to tell me how much you remember of what this man was doing with all these gizmos and knobs to get us out here.”
38 · Near Palan’s Furthest Moon
By the time Walter had the dash clean—filling two large garbage bags with nasty wads of paper towel in the process—the three Palans had argued enough over the ship’s controls to realize they had no idea how to get themselves home. Pewder and Walter took turns pointing out that their uncle could just as easily have shot the man after they’d landed back on Palan. Their Uncle Karl didn’t want to hear any of it. And during the argument, Walter was dismayed to see how quickly Pewder had begun talking down to him.
“You missed a bit of skull there, Junior Pirate.”
Walter grabbed the offending piece, imagining it a gold coin to keep the kill scents out of the air. The next year would certainly be the longest of his short life, he realized.
With the dash clean, the crew of three began to deduce the functioning of simpler systems. The changing room turned out to be an airlock. Once they dragged the pilot’s body inside, Walter took great pleasure in figuring out the hallway controls and opening the outer hatch. The vacuum sucked hungrily at the body, the arms and legs whacking limply at the jamb as it was yanked out into space along with a misty fog of crystalized air.
One of the only other devices to succumb to their combined wit—the hyperdrive being something not even Walter could summon the courage to fiddle with—was the radio. It soon transmitted a load of lies and the honest promise of future reward to any pilot willing to come fetch a poor, stranded crew in distress.
