by A. R. Knight
Puk made a beep, a low sarcastic noise. The little bot could hack the docking bay doors in under ten seconds,because Viola had spent days studying those locks, buying her own and dissecting them. She'd found a backdoor, and coded the keys into Puk’s library. There were times Viola wanted to leave the house without her parents knowing. This time included.
A single panel sat on the right side of the door and glowed a dull red. Puk floated within five centimeters of it. These locks sent a radio frequency out and expected a specific response, her dad and Roddy wore badges that replied with the value and the door opened. Puk did the same thing, catching the signal, running it through Viola's backdoor, and sending the necessary response to flip the light green and open the lock.
The opening showed a dim wash of yellow lights silhouetting Viola’s parent’s ship. The Gepard was a 12 meter-long needle, meant to only hold a pilot and a passenger and sprint around nearby space. Her dad took it on joyrides, jaunting up and out of the atmosphere to“remind him where we came from.” Viola had gone up in it a few times, seen the stars in their natural habitat.
“Is she ready?” Viola asked Puk, who’d zipped ahead and plugged himself into the ship’s diagnosis panel.
“All fueled up and green.” Puk replied. “Almost like we planned this.”
“I'll owe Roddy so much.” Viola said.
“What’re you giving him again?” Puk asked.
“I’ll find him some souvenir. A rock from Europa,” Viola said.
A ladder up to the cockpit was three meters, and every rung landed heavy in Viola’s chest. The Gepard could get her to Europa, barely. Its design required a large chunk of electricity to charge Gepard’s batteries. Small solar panels lined the sides of the ship, enough to keep life support running in an emergency, but not enough to get her anywhere once the main battery ran dry. Unless Viola found her bank account more flush than she’d left it an hour ago, there’d be no way to buy her way home.
Making Viola trapped. On her own on a frozen moon. Easy to argue against going. That things were safe, secure on Ganymede. But Viola could see her future if she stepped away from the ship. Could see the next hundred years of her life playing out, a boring biography. Complete the degree, take the job, work her way up and maybe, one day, run the company. Every year getting further and further away from the engineering she loved and placating it with toys like the Gepard.
And that might be OK. Might be fine. Only not now, not when there was still that voice telling her to take a chance. Viola pulled herself into the cockpit and disengaged the ladder.
When the ladder moved away from the Gepard, it ran over a pair of sensors in the floor. By doing so, the bay’s departure system registered Viola’s intent and turned on the rest of the lights. The gate, a thick block of smooth moon rock, ringed with glowing ruby dots warning her it was still shut.
Puk floated beside Viola, hovering above the passenger seat slotted behind the pilot chair. In front of Viola sat the flight stick, followed by a panel of buttons and levers controlling thrust, landing struts, and more. The Gepard had few auto-pilot features. The manual effort was part of the thrill. Viola had been here a thousand times in the family’s simulator, feeling her way through a virtual trip. Now, though, when she started preflight and saw the dashboard come up green, the thrum was real.
The Gepard chimed when the checks came back positive. Viola flipped the next switch in the sequence, the weighted click bringing her one step farther from home. A countdown scrolled till the craft was ready to launch as energy transferred from the storage batteries to the thrust. The Gepard’s design, and most of the ships out away from Earth, leveraged electricity to combat the scarcity of rocket fuel. Carbon propulsion was left to Earth, where the gravity was too intense for large ships to jet away under electric power alone.
“Puk, open the launch doors,” Viola said.
“The alarm will go off,” Puk said.
“I know,” Viola said. “They won’t react in time.”
“Sweetness. Let’s get outta here,”
The doors behind the Gepard split open, revealing the huge, billowing monstrosity of Jupiter behind them. The swirling gasses and storms of the largest planet in the solar system blanketed the sky, leaving room for little else. Tonight, Ganymede had moved to the side of Jupiter, so that most of the sky was a bright series of swirling tans and oranges, while the other third was pitch dark, the part of Jupiter catching no sunlight and blocking any view of stars beyond.
“Good omen, leaving on a half-night?” Viola asked, pulling the handle that closed the cockpit in a transparent glass barrier.
“I’m a machine, I don’t do omens,” Puk said.
“You’re no fun.”
“Am I helping you run away in a space ship? I believe I am. Is that fun? I believe so,” Puk shot back.
The engines beeped that they were ready to go. Viola triggered the hover jets and, two seconds later, the Gepard floated free. Ready for an escape. Viola reached for the flight stick to turn the ship around when she noticed someone walk into the bay.
“Roddy?” Viola asked as the young mechanic stepped into the bay, waving at her.
“You know, I don’t hear that alarm,” Puk said.
“He must have turned it off,” Viola muttered. “Dad’s going to kill him.”
“Better be one heckuva souvenir you get him.”
“It will be.”
The Gepard rumbled to life.Viola eased the ship out of the launch bay and then angled it upwards into the Ganymede sky. A request for a destination came up from Ganymede’s flight control, buzzing in over the Gepard’s comm unit.
Last chance to take this bad boy back, land it, crawl into bed and wake up to another nice breakfast, another day spent crunching math problems and watching movies. Viola looked up through the cockpit, at the glorious mass of Jupiter, and punched in Europa, Eden Prime.
“Roger that, Gepard. You’re clear to launch. Safe travels,” Flight control said.
“Let’s hope so,” Viola replied, and shot the ship up to the stars.
3
The Day Job
“You want to see a miracle? Just look out the window,” Castor, Eden Prime’s trumpeter-in-chief, said to the assembled crowd of big shots, buzzwords, and bullet points.
Davin followed their glances, out the covering dome of the cruise skiff and towards the swirling white storm that followed Eden Prime’s terramorpher as it sifted Europa’s surface and turned it into something usable. Despite the base's name, Europa sure as hell wasn't a paradise.
First a series of bubble cities, then an atmosphere to heat the ball of ice to a more livable temp. The bright pillar of light lancing to the surface near Eden Prime was an indicator of those efforts; a large solar mirror orbiting the moon and reflecting concentrated photons to the surface. Most of Eden Prime’s power came from that thing, even if it meant never having a true night.
Davin let his hand drift up to the gun hanging over his shoulder, thick with two stacked barrels. Melody had enough kick in her to blow her way through any of these suits if they made a move. Not that Davin was planning to fire it, not while Eden’s checks were clearing.
A pair of sidearms hung off Davin’s belt, both set to a nerve-numbing level more suitable for people who didn’t enjoy death in their new development headlines. The armament drew glances, but those eyes were more comforted than nervous. Davin was their paid protection.
Davin nodded across the skiff to Cadge, a ball of bearded muscle and partner on this joyride. Once a week Eden Prime paid them to ‘escort’ these show-offs around the terramorpher. A way for the settlement to sell property on Europa to prospective buyers, build up publicity, and bore the Wild Nines to death. But easy money was still money, and Davin figured catching the coin till it stopped raining was the right move.
“You know what’s the best about this guy?” Called a burbling voice from the back of the crowd, like its owner had been working up the courage to talk and now was bul
l-rushing ahead.
Davin located the source, a tall, lanky man who sported the refined suit-and-tie look of the rest of the crowd… at first glance. The man moved into a litany of grievances, how Eden Prime was a scam, that they were being played, that Castor didn’t want the colony to succeed at all.
Cadge made his way parallel to Davin, and the rough-and-tumble rogue beat Davin to the heckler. The rest of the crowd watched with an interest so mild that Davin felt his stomach curl. The accusations sounded crazy, yeah, but these people weren’t phased in the least. Some leaned in as Cadge wrestled the man back from the group, eyes hunting, hoping for a fight.
“At least struggle, I could use some entertainment,” Cadge said. Davin pulled the pair of stun cuffs they all carried on these assignments and slapped them on the heckler’s wrists. The cuffs blocked the nerves from communicating with the brain, making it real hard to try and slip out.
“They’re hurting me!” The heckler cried. “That’s the kind of service you get with Eden!”
“Shut it,” Davin said. “You say one more word, you'll wake up in a cell with one hell of a headache.”
“Do it,” Cadge said to the heckler, whose eyes were flipping between the two of them. “It’s been too long since I’ve punched somebody.”
Cadge’s manic look quieted the man, and the heckler fell into a sulk.Castor drew back the attention with a cracked joke about how there were still crazies way out here.The crowd turned back to the word-smith with a chuckle and sips of their drinks.
“A bunch of softies,” Cadge grumbled, keeping one hand on the heckler’s shoulder. “Bet not one of them could throw a decent punch.”
Cadge’s voice was on the grittier side of a meat grinder. It flowed through thrice-broken jaws, out of lungs that’d played sport with most of the deadlier drugs this side of the asteroid belt, and carried with it the dead age of experience. Davin could listen to Cadge curse for days without being bored.
“You’re complaining about that?” Davin replied.
“I’m worried my edge is gonna get soft,” Cadge sighed. “It’s been days, Davin. Days since I’ve knocked a man’s teeth out and hauled his drunk self to the cell. I went to the range this morning, barely knew how to fire my gun.”
After another fly-by, the skiff,a transparent bubble strapped to slow engines, docked back at Eden Prime. From the air, the city was a steel snake stretching through flowing shades of ice. The terramorpher grew a line out from the city, marking its path with patches of light green tundra moss, waiting for a stronger atmosphere. Used to be that process took decades. Europa, though, was the pioneer of the grand new machine.
Going by Castor’s pitch, the terramorpher would have Europa warmed up and breathable within a few years. Invest in the city of Eden Prime, Castor said, and you’d be setting yourself up for quick returns.
As if you could call Eden Prime a city. The few thousand engineers and their support staff formed the backbone. The nigh-endless stream of crazies that thought a chance at a new planet meant the opportunity to strike it rich sprung out from that spine like random limbs searching for purpose. Most wouldn’t find one until the atmosphere solidified, but getting in early on a new colony had the chance of a big payoff, if you didn’t die of explosive decompression first.
The suits followed Castor off of the ship, a few thumbing messages into the comms buckled onto their wrists. The bay they’d docked at was covered with gleaming renditions of the glory coming to Europa. Tall, winding towers overlooking paradise. Melted frozen seas pushing against newly-made beaches. Green parks with children playing. All that soil coming from broken asteroid rock infused with nutrients by the terramorpher.
Davin was about to suggest a stopover at one of the few bars on Eden Prime. Get the standard home-brewed disaster they made from lab-grown hops way out here. Given the scarcity of customers, at least it was cheap. Then Davin’s wrist vibrated.
“Yeah?” Davin answered the comm, a flexible black and white device that wrapped around his left forearm.
“Hey,” Phyla’s voice came over bright and clean.“You done out there? There’s a message you should see. Important.”
The Nines’ primary pilot looked through the comm’s small screen at Davin, her face set in that stock grimace Phyla used whenever there was something real to talk about. Soft lines pulling in strands of blazing hair, mingling with a spread of freckles earned in a surprise meeting with a solar flare. That lesson bled out into everything Phyla did. Maximize the planning, the preparation, and people don’t get fried.
“Mind telling me,then?”
“People could be listening.”
“You’re being paranoid.”
“Do you know me?” Phyla replied. “Just get here, fast.”
“I can handle locking her up,” Cadge said, referring to the skiff. “Get outta here.”
Davin nodded and took off at a fast walk. Running, the Eden contract stated, was one thing that could incite panic. Don't do it. Part of ensuring a calm environment while they tore apart a moon. The Nine's office was right near the skiff launch bay, but Davin didn’t bother checking in there. Phyla hadn’t placed the call on one of the official comms. It’d come from their ship.
4
The Wild Nines
The Whiskey Jumper had bay three all to itself, a requirement of the Wild Nines' contract. A big box with engines at the aft and a bulge at the bow, left for a cockpit, Davin's ship was a cargo hauler tweaked over the years to be anything but. Four landing struts descended from the large central pod, along with a loading ramp.
Davin walked up that ramp, into a the main cargo bay, two stories high and just as wide. A built-in stair to the right of the ramp led up to the cockpit, while other circular doors and stairs led to the left, right, and rear pods. The inside of the ship was… colorful. A standing invitation to make an artistic mark on the inside over the years had covered the walls with paintings ranging from little more than graffiti signatures to rendered landscapes like the red valleys of Mars.
Every time Davin walked in here, history struck him like a hammer. He paused a second to look over the memories from crews long gone. One always caught his eye. A black outline of the Whiskey Jumper, lines bleeding everywhere on the metal walls, hovering against a blue and white ball. A cursory glance might assume the planet to be Neptune, but Davin knew it was Earth. Earth as drawn by the Jumper’s first captain as he flew the ship into space on its maiden journey. The ship had never been back.
“So what’s the emergency?” Davin asked as he climbed into the cockpit.
Phyla leaned back in the copilot’s chair, decked out in lounge clothes that said leaving the ship today was optional. Her face was glued to the console. Three monitors stuck to each other, the console was a stream of data. With touches and swipes of fingers, the displays could switch as needed. Phyla had the left one set to the comm display, tracking incoming and outgoing messages, the most recent recording front and center for Davin to play.
“Two high-profile visitors. Personal escort. Your favorite kind of job,” Phyla said, sucking on a jolt stick.
Davin reached for the stick, Phyla handed it to him. Chemical cocktails wrapped around a sugary twig. Tasted dry and scratchy, but gave one helluva kick. Like eating a spasm.
“Where are they now?” Davin said after a few twitches.
“Landing. Going through the usual harassment,” Phyla said.
Eden, the company behind Eden Prime, was hyper-vigilant about taxing any incoming cargo. Grabbing every spare coin they could. Eden Prime boarded and assessed every incoming ship, assigning a value to it. That value determined what level of attention people like Castor and his boss, Eden Prime’s overall manager, Marl, paid to the vessel.
“Cadge is going to blow it,” Davin said, sitting in the co-pilot’s chair. “Just lose his mind one of these days and split someone in that crowd, or maybe Castor, open. Worst thing is that I’m starting to hope he does it.”
“Feel like Eden w
ould frown on that,” Phyla asked, taking the jolt stick back.
“There are always more contracts,” Davin said.“So why’d you have me come here? Escorts aren’t a secret.”
“They don’t want Marl to know they’re coming. Or anyone else on the base.”
“Interesting. How are they getting around the search?”
Phyla rolled her eyes, a slow motion where Davin could track the pupil as it made its journey from one side of the blue eye to the other. She’d started doing that when they were kids, decades ago. Learned it from her father, Phyla mentioned once, saying it was a warning she was going to be sassy.
“You think I had a nice chat with them? They beamed the ask straight to us. Short-range, hard to intercept. All it said was to meet them and keep it quiet.”
“Any idea who they are?”
“The ship is small. Eden-branded. Like, mothership Eden, not Prime.”
“Parents wondering what their kid is up to?” Davin said.
“Maybe,” Phyla replied. “Either way, for this much coin, does it matter?”
Phyla pulled up the message. At the end of the single sentence was a price. A good price.
“It does not,” Davin said. “How much time do we have?”
The pilot flipped the console back to Eden Prime’s air traffic. Pointed to an entry.
“Bay seven, scheduled to land in an hour,” Phyla said.
That gave Davin enough time to shower off the Eden uniform and put on more comfortable clothes, a jacket with plenty of pockets, pants with plenty more. Boots flexible enough for running, strong enough to keep his feet from getting shot off. One glance at himself in the cabin's mirror, and off.
On the way out of the Whiskey Jumper, Davin grabbed Mox from the man’s room. The crew cabins were tight affairs: a twin bed with a desk, complete with single-screen console. A locker built into the wall for clothes. Davin looked in and suppressed a flinch. Mox wasn’t wearing a shirt, which meant the black metal frame of his exoskeleton was on full display. Like a spider attached to his back, the exoskeleton latched into Mox’s limbs, a series of flexible joints and electric motors. Mox himself leaned over the shelf, browsing through something on the console.
