Nara

by M. L. Buchman

  The locator reported 32° north latitude as the probe skimmed along. The longitude was nearing the Angel-lady’s home. Ri didn’t recognize the Bermudan islands at first due to the dropped ocean level. All the water that was now tied up in the ice and clouds had left the coral reefs far above sea level.

  Great Bermuda no longer needed its many bridges to keep it connected. The entire Bermuda Rise was now a single brown and gray blotch high and dry above the crystalline blue. No palm trees waved upon the face of the world’s former capital. Only the slightest hints of her temporary home, of the Angel-lady’s unburied grave existed. The fire and the tempests had erased the governing palace as if it had never been. The temperature was only a few degrees above the freezing point of seawater.

  Sounds filled the room. Low curses. At first she looked to Rajesh, but his lips were sealed, thin dark lines squeezed so tightly that white showed all around his mouth. The pickups. She returned her attention to the monitors as the probe rode into the night of the radioactive remains of the North American continent. The greatest failure of American science had destroyed the land from the Rockies to the Appalachians. The sullen green glow of the entire Mississippi Basin was diminished beneath the darkness of the death of the world.

  Someone wailed with a soul-dead sorrow. A chill rode up Ri’s spine only to be overrun by the sound of someone retching far too close to an audio pickup. It took her several moments to isolate and silence the Ring 3 Level 4 North microphone. Her stomach, already twisted from the crazy jerking of the probe’s image, nearly spread its contents across her console. But she hadn’t eaten in hours, beyond a token at Carla’s funeral, and managed to hold it down.

  A few deep breaths calmed her stomach enough as the probe shot across the West Coast. No border cities, no phosphorescent algae in the great sea farms to mark the transition from land to sea. At first Ri feared that Olias might have tracked northwest toward Japan, but he continued due west, overflying the shattered remains of the Hawaiian supercity. Once again, the volcano surged forth, freed of its thermal conversion cap.

  The glow of the Chinese mainland still marked their final nuclear civil war. Following the coast south, the probe arrived at Hanoi Launch. Olias froze the image.

  “Hanoi Launch. Temp: ­+5°C. Wind: 350kph. O2: <1%.”

  Ri turned her head one way and then the other attempting to interpret the altered picture of the last place she’d touched Earth. The lush forest was gone. The kilometers of go-downs and squalor where she’d hid her sorrow after the deaths in Japan were swept clear as well.

  “This is the center of Hanoi Launch.” Captain Conrad’s voice filled in from somewhere in the background. “The large crater marks the fuel storage depots. The launch rails are the twisted lines heading to the lower left. The openings low in the crater are the ends of the destroyed emergency bunkers. Anyone who reached them wouldn’t have survived more than a few moments. When the Sun’s fire reached the rocket sheds, they ignited the fuels and everything within a kilometer was instantly destroyed.”

  Olias ran a brief tape of the Earth on fire once more. Ri groaned along with the rest of the ship as the fire raged again before them. Olias overlaid outlines of the continents and a rough circle marking Hanoi Launch. A great plume of fire flashed white and shot high above the surrounding cloudscape. All the energy, enough fuel to reach the stars, spent in a single instant.

  He mercifully killed the image and the viewer was once again filled with the white, cloud-cloaked Earth.

  “That is the last image we received from the probe. Moments later a 500 kilometer-per-hour gust slammed it sideways into Mount Fan-si-pan.”

  The Captain remained tall and erect, allowing the silence to stretch. As soon as the murmur rose on the pickups, she cut across it.

  “Our fuel is gone. Even if we had a craft and could survive the journey to the surface, there is nothing left on Earth for us. Our engines are gone. Our past is gone.”

  The ship began another collective groan.

  “But our future is not!” Devra Conrad was up on her toes as she leaned into the wind of hopelessness that threatened to blow them all under.

  “We are alive! By our own resourcefulness, we are alive. Mechanical and biologic systems are in place. We have air, food, and water. We have tools, and most importantly we have people. Ourselves.

  “To wish you all a Happy New Year might seem laughable at best. But I do wish us a Happier New Year that will find us prosperous and successful in our endeavors. The last message we received from Earth was simple, ‘All our hopes live on in you.’ ”

  It had come in even as the surface burned. The only clear-text portion of a massive, encrypted transmission. Once the crisis had passed, she’d attempted to crack it, but it was beyond her abilities and she’d left it to sit in storage since.

  “We don’t know who sent this message,” the Captain continued. “But I can assure you that I am still filled with hope. The Command Crew is still filled with hope and my greatest wish is that each of you find yourselves filled with hope.

  “By this time next year, I intend that we once again reach for the stars. Do I know how? No. But we will find the answer. And I therefore declare this not 2093 of the Current Era, but rather Year One of our journey.

  “Year One A.A. Ad Astra. To the Stars.

  “Captain Devra Conrad commanding. Out.”

  The command crew burst into applause as Ri cut the Captain’s microphone. Devra signaled them to silence and moved up behind Ri. The cheers of the command crew were not echoed widely through the ship. There was only scattered applause.

  Weeping, cursing, but most of it soft, little stronger than the dead waves on a dead world. There was discord, but she had trouble locating it. Her scouts flashed green from their various station in Ring One and Three. Most of R2 followed quickly, with the area around the R2 East blowout being the last to follow.

  She killed the audio everywhere except R4. There was no applause. No cheering. Several fistfights echoed into the room as pounding of flesh on flesh, but most of those died as fast as they started. By the time she had the visual pickups where the fights were happening, the combatants were being separated. Two of her scouts flashed green, another flashed yellow twice before going to green. Not good, but not awful. R4 West went dark without going to green first.

  She signaled the nearest scout to rush over and assess the situation. Most of the activity was off one side of the corridor where her pickups didn’t quite see, but the roar of many unhappy voices was clearly audible as it crested over the silence of the command center.

  Chapter 17

  1 January, 01 Ad Astra

  Bryce collapsed back against the wall and would have slid to the floor if the empty beer keg hadn’t been there to catch him.

  “All my hopes live on in you.” The Old Bastard had reached out from the grave to lay that curse one last time across him like the final blow in a public stoning. The one that leaves you conscious, but well aware that you are about to die. How many times had his parent told him that as he twisted Bryce’s life in his own image? Rammed his memories into his clone’s brain until there were times he couldn’t tell who owned his body, his parent or himself.

  Over the last six weeks since the death of the Earth, he’d slowly carved out a place in the empty corridors of Stellar One. And now the Old Man was reaching his long arm out of the grave to grasp Bryce’s psyche once more and wrestle with it like a mad dog destroying a stuffed toy. Never letting go. Never satisfied. Even being burned along with his planet had not stopped his parent, the last and most powerful dictator the Earth would ever know.

  Even from the grave, he still reached for his clone. His one great hope of living forever.

  Bryce could hear the Old Man’s memories murmuring just below conscious thought, struggling to take control of a body they knew so well. The only protection Bryce had ever found against the f
oulness that was Bryce Randall Stevens Sr. was a careful layer of blasé between himself and the world about him. When that didn’t work, he applied a salve of alcohol that, if it failed, at least made him not care. So much.

  But the Old Man was dead. That much was clear. Nothing could have survived what happened to Bermuda or Hanoi. After twenty-five years was he finally free of the bastard? After all those years of having his own memories browbeat by those implanted by his parent, had he finally found freedom?

  He reached out and held onto the edge of the plas sheet that served as a bar. The spinning of the ring rolled him up one side of the craft, upside down through space and down into the great gravity well on the down side like some mad carnival ride. He tumbled like a lost game piece rattling around inside the great spinning hoop of Ring Four. Stowaway in space. Stowaway to the stars. Trapped around a dead planet but, for the first time, free.

  Bryce wiped the wet bar rag across his face to clear the chill sweat and stumbled to his feet. He drew a fresh liter from the tap and knocked back a deep swallow. While one part of his mind cataloged that he’d beat back the hoppy aftertaste with this batch, the other wondered at his freedom.

  Some part of him had feared that the Old Bastard was safe aboard some spacecraft and it would only be a matter of time until he showed up aboard. But only Bryce Sr. could have sent that message, would have sent that message. And he had sent it well after no craft could have escaped the atmosphere. The Lazy Jane hadn’t managed to escape even though Hanoi Launch was on the side opposite the flare’s impact. Nothing from Bermuda, ground zero for the sun’s scorching breath had stood a chance.

  He was free. At long fucking last he was free of the Old Bastard. A laugh ripped out from deep inside him, a little hysterical that stepped-back part of him thought, but a good laugh nonetheless. It had taken the destruction of the Earth, but he truly was free. And he didn’t have a goddamn clue what to do about it.

  “Joke’s on me once again.” He focused back on the bar, suddenly aware of his shouted outburst. But it had gone unnoticed in the general roars about the bar. In place of the wreckage of Hanoi Launch a clock now counted the last seconds to midnight New Year’s Eve.

  The bar full of ag-workers waved their beer mugs and slapped each others’ backs releasing puffs of dust and dirt. Six weeks ago these had been the highest paid construction workers in all of Earth orbit. Flying high on a six-month tour. Now they worked in the agriculture bays struggling to raise the food to feed the surviving remnants of humankind.

  In moments the false joviality would dissolve into the disappointment and then the anger that always bubbled just below the surface. Hell, it was right out in the open, it just hadn’t dissolved into one of the occasional brawls that swept through his bar. He began drawing beers as fast as he could, there would be a huge demand in moments. If he could meet that, maybe the crisis would pass unbeaten.

  A young woman came sprinting along the corridor, and stumbled to a halt before the seething mass that was just looking for an excuse to let loose. Her brunette hair emphasized the lack of color in her face, white with worry or fear.

  One more cheer swelled and faded too abruptly and the crowd as one turned to the bar. The workers grabbed their liter tankards and tossed credits like a rattle of gunfire into the brass spittoon that one of his regulars had scared up from who knew where. By the time the first tide had washed back from the bar and others were able to belly up he had caught up with the bar’s thirst and was able to watch the crowd while he poured.

  His joy at finally being free was not reflected in a single face before him. They took their beer and the first half was gone before they had even turned back into the rippling mass of gray, blue, and brown shipsuits. Not a single white-suited manager, just a few greens from the jungle biome, mostly spacer orange, soiled to rust brown.

  And the one black spacer off to the side. The woman remained at the outer edge, just watching. Her pale face had regained some color, and her breathing had slowed from her mad dash to arrive at his bar. But she didn’t come forward for a beer, even now that the worst of the press had abated. Instead she raised her wrist and he saw her commlink flash from yellow to green. Then, with barely a backward glance, she was gone. Well, a non-patron was certainly no concern of his bar.

  His bar. His. Not the Old Bastard’s. No share of it belonged to Bryce Sr. He alone, Bryce Jr., had created it out of scrounged and bartered bits and pieces. Yes, his parent had kept close enough tabs to know Bryce was aboard Stellar One rather than sharing the fate of Cappy and his friends on the Lazy Jane. But he was dead and gone.

  This was Bryce’s bar.

  The tap sputtered at him and he slapped it closed. He closed the CO2 feed, wrapped the towel around the keg’s feed, and let the last of the pressure spray out its last gasp. Kicking the empty keg aside, he rolled another into place, locked it in with a sharp twist, and reopened the CO2. The first mug splattered and sprayed until the line was filled. Dumping the foam, Bryce drew a fresh brew.

  A roar sounded around an arm wrestling competition somewhere in the middle of the floor. Another table he’d have to fix in the morning, it would be in pieces soon enough. Bryce held the plas mug so that the light of the corridor shone through it, a dark amber flash, like the sparkle from a single, faceted diamond revealed the clarity of the batch. No sediment swirled through the liquid. He rolled a long swallow around his tongue, a solid feel without the clingy thickness of a porter. He swallowed.

  The aftertaste. Now that was a bit elusive. The aftertaste was clear, as clear and clean as the beer itself. It wasn’t the fruit that he’d expected from the rotten bananas he added late in the batch though that was there.

  The aftertaste was like a breath of fresh air. It was the taste of a future laid out clean before him. Damn he was good. It would have been nice to have someone to share it with, but he only knew one person who would really appreciate it. And Perry was gone along with his restaurant in the South Pacific.

  Bryce filled a few orders as the crowd settled back into its usual rowdy, drinking self. As if they hadn’t just seen the Earth ripped forever out of their grasp. As if he hadn’t just gained his freedom to run his own bar.

  There it was again.

  His bar.

  About time he named the place.

  # # #

  Ri released her teams and shut down the security console. There was nothing else to do for now. The command crew milled about a bit seeking some purpose, but it was well after midnight. Now that the parties were all dying down, there was nothing much to do.

  A cool breeze washed across her back and the murmurs in the room slowly faded away as if they’d all been swept out to sea in those still moments before the storm struck. She turned to follow the others’ gazes.

  Chief Johnson Merkar filled the entry hatch. His immaculate orange shipsuit emphasized his role as head of all the spacers trapped aboard. The two flunkies on either side, one male, one female, looked more like over-muscled attack tanks than humans. He surveyed the scene until his steel-gray eyes lit upon the Captain and he moved forward with the rolling gait of someone now spending too much time sitting on his backside.

  His two sidekicks stationed themselves like broad-chested statues at either side of the door.

  Ri had the nasty feeling that even if anyone were to brave the passage, they would not be allowed to depart.

  “Ah, Captain Conrad. A fine speech. A fine one.” He shook her hand and then, without releasing it, surveyed the room again before returning his attention to her.

  Ri recognized the look and could feel the anger, and shame, burning against her cheeks. The man was so arrogant that he dared dismiss the Captain as lightly as he had done to her this morning.

  “That Ad Astra bit was a nice touch as well.” His gaze fixed on the chair the Captain had vacated to greet him rather than upon the woman who stood before him.

&nbs
p; “Thank you, Chief Merkar. I’m glad you were pleased. It seemed to have been well received, especially considering the sad news I was required to reveal.”

  “Ah, yes.” His gaze was fully back on the Captain. “That is what I wished to discuss with you. Now that our future is firmly locked aboard this craft, we need to decide how it might best be, shall I say, managed.”

  Ri had placed the security teams in the wrong places. She should have placed them here, instead of spreading them loosely through the ship and then releasing them. If she restarted the console, how many could she still reach? And what could they do, even if they were here? Volunteers from the biomes and maintenance crews who she worked with directly. No trained personnel. And brute force wouldn’t help this situation anyway.

  Captain Conrad recovered her hand from Merkar’s great paw.

  “Yes, I agree that discussion needs to take place, but this is neither the place nor the time. Tomorrow there will be a meeting of all department heads and section leaders. We shall hear all voices at that time.”

  “I think there are only two voices we need consider.”

  “You are wrong, Chief Merkar. Good night, and Happy New Year. Sub-Captain Olias, you have the watch.” The Captain turned on her heel and made a point of exiting between the two orange gorillas rather than her private lift.

  Olias rolled from the chair beside her and squared off in front of the seething Merkar. “Is there some way I may assist you, Chief?”

  Merkar glared at him, but where Merkar was a big, once-strong man, Olias was a mass of muscle that stood lightly on his toes in a fighter’s poise. His slight smile twisted his scarred face into snarl. Even Merkar, though a hand taller than the Sub-Captain, could see that Olias was dangerous in the extreme. Ri had sparred with the great Commander Levan, and Olias was still someone she would not have wished to challenge.