Coyote

by Allen Steele

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Secondary engines pressurized, ignition systems armed.” From her station, Dana keeps up a steady drone as she moves down the checklist. Lee absently gnaws at a knuckle as he watches her people flip switches, enter commands into their keyboards. “Main engine reactor on standby…navigation interface, checked and ready…”

  “You’re sure you’re ready to do this?” Tom Shapiro has returned to the command deck without Lee noticing; he rests his hand on the captain’s shoulder. “Another ten minutes…”

  “Another ten minutes, and they may find a way to stop us.” Lee shakes his head. “We get out now, and they can’t do anything. We’ll complete flight procedures once we’re under way.” He looks up at Shapiro. “Agreed?”

  The first officer hesitates, slowly lets out his breath. “Yes, sir. Understood.”

  “Are the passengers strapped down?” Shapiro nods reluctantly, and Lee points to the vacant seat at the main console. “Okay, take the helm. You’ll have to fly until we’ve had a talk with Ms. Ullman.”

  Shapiro doesn’t immediately obey his order; instead he lingers by the command chair, gazing through the windows at the dry dock surrounding them. Lee looks up at him; for a moment neither man says anything. Shapiro waits for an answer to his unspoken question, when he doesn’t receive one, he lets out his breath, then moves to the helm, straps himself in, punches commands into his keyboard. “Main nav systems on-line,” he murmurs. “Primary AI interface, green for go…”

  Now Lee’s all alone. Voices in his headset ask questions; he answers yes or no, never once removing his gaze from the status board above the console. The last few minutes drift by. He rests his right elbow on the armrest, feels Alabama tremble beneath him: eighty thousand tons of metal, plastic, ceramic alloy, and flesh, waiting to be fired into the cosmos.

  “Captain?” Gillis’s voice is hesitant. “President Conroy online. He wants to speak with you.”

  Lee feels eyes upon him. Everyone waits for him to say something. A final denouncement? A curse upon the Republic? Perhaps haughty laughter from a trusted senior officer who has stolen the crowning achievement of a corrupt government and transformed it into an expression of freedom?

  “Switch off the comlink, Mr. Gillis.” Lee unfastens his seat belt, pushes himself over to the main console. “We’re ready for launch.”

  Then he grasps the silver key, twists it the rest of the way to the right. A green light flares above it. “Disengage mooring lines,” he says. “Fire main thrusters.”

  7.5.70 / T-0.00.00

  Pyros silently ignite along the Alabama’s hull as the mooring cables are jettisoned, then the four maneuvering engines blaze to life, and the starship slowly begins to move forward.

  Ponderously, like a leviathan awakening within its grotto deep beneath the sea, the enormous vessel glides through the dry dock, the red strobes of its running lights casting shadows along the trusswork of Highgate’s central bay.

  A service pod unlucky enough to be flying past Alabama at that moment turns on its axis, its RCRs flaring as it maneuvers wildly to avoid collision with the gaping maw of the ramscoop. Breath caught in his throat, the pilot watches through the cockpit as the five-hundred-foot length of the starship passes above him.

  Within the EVA compartment, soldiers clutch the ceiling rails with both hands, their feet dangling in midair as they yell obscenities. A rifle skitters across a bulkhead, slams against the floor. Colonel Reese loses his grip, falls to the deck; there’s a sharp pain in his left ankle as it twists; he ignores it as he tries to crawl toward the nearest suit locker. Yet he knows it’s a futile effort; even if he were able to put on a suit and get to the airlock, Alabama is under thrust. Any attempt to escape the ship now would most certainly be fatal. Like it or not, he’s going where it’s going…

  On Deck C4A, Jorge Montero lies prone on his bunk; weight descends upon him, pushing his body flat against the narrow mat. Within the cramped confines of the crew compartment, he can hear people cheering, laughing, sobbing with relief. Turning his head, he glances across the narrow aisle. Rita meets his gaze, then looks away. She’s frightened: not of this, but of what lies before them.

  “Goodbye, Earth!” From the bunk above him, Carlos yells against the dull creak of the bulkheads, the distant hollow thrum of the engines. “Goodbye, URA! We are history!”

  Jorge grins. The kid’s right. They’ve become history…

  Wendy Gunther feels the ship move beneath her. Throughout the deck, she hears voices raised in terror; no one seems to know what’s going on, only that everyone was suddenly ordered to strap in for what was called an “emergency launch.” Her locker rattles, flies open; her duffel bag pitches out onto the floor. She stares up at the empty bunk above her. Where is her father…?

  Eyes half-shut, arms and legs relaxed, Captain Lee lets his body collapse against the soft membranes of his chair. All around him, he hears the low voices of the command crew as they murmur to one another; the quiet tapping of fingers against keyboards, the subdued chitter and occasional electronic beep of instruments. Studying the status board, he sees that all is well: Alabama is behaving just as it should, its complex systems all working within their parameters.

  Everyone’s going about their work with quiet stoicism, just as they were trained. Dana looks around at him, meets his eye; she gives him a smile, a silent thumbs-up. He returns the gesture, then shifts his gaze to the windows.

  Highgate can no longer be seen. It’s already many miles distant, falling away behind him. In a couple of minutes he’ll give the order for main engine ignition, the beginning of the three-month boost phase, which will gradually accelerate the Alabama to cruise velocity. Long before then everyone aboard will be in hibernation; virtually immortal, they’ll sleep for the next two and a quarter centuries, and when they awaken…

  No. Now’s not the time for this. 47 Ursae Majoris can wait a little while longer.

  Lee watches as the silver-blue curvature of the Earth gracefully drifts past the command deck windows. No one says anything; the bridge team falls silent as they look upon their home world for the last time. For a moment, there is only the silence of the stars.

  Peace. Liberty. Freedom.

  Part Two

  THE DAYS BETWEEN

  Three months after leaving Earth, the URSS Alabama had just achieved cruise velocity when the accident occurred: Leslie Gillis woke up.

  He regained consciousness slowly, as if emerging from a long and dreamless sleep. His body, naked and hairless, floated within the blue-green gelatin filling the interior of his biostasis cell, an oxygen mask covering the lower part of his face and thin plastic tubes inserted in his arms. As his vision cleared, Gillis saw that the cell had been lowered to a horizontal position and that its fiberglass lid had folded open. The lighting within the hibernation deck was subdued, yet he had to open and close his eyes several times.

  His first lucid thought was: Thank God, I made it.

  His body felt weak, his limbs stiff. Just as he had been cautioned to do during flight training, he carefully moved only a little at a time. As Gillis gently flexed his arms and legs, he vaguely wondered why no one had come to his aid. Perhaps Dr. Okada was busy helping the others emerge from biostasis. Yet he could hear nothing save for a sublime electrical hum—no voices, no movement.

  His next thought was: Something’s wrong.

  Back aching, his arms feeling as if they were about to dislocate from his shoulders, Gillis grasped the sides of the cell and tried to sit up. For a minute or so he struggled against the phlegmatic embrace of the suspension fluid; there was a wet sucking sound as he prized his body upward, then the tubes went taut before he remembered that he had to take them out. Clenching his teeth, Gillis pinched off the tubes between thumb and forefinger and, one by one, carefully removed them from his arms. The oxygen mask came off last; the air was frigid, and it stung his throat and lungs, and he coughed in agonized spasms as, with the last ounce of his strengt
h, he clambered out of the tank. His legs couldn’t hold him, and he collapsed upon the cold floor of the deck.

  Gillis didn’t know how long he lay curled in a fetal position, his hands tucked into his groin. He never really lost consciousness, yet for a long while his mind lingered somewhere between awareness and sleep, his unfocused eyes gazing at the burnished metal plates of the floor. After a while the cold penetrated his dulled senses; the suspension fluid was freezing against his bare skin, and he dully realized that if he lay there much longer he would soon lapse into hypothermia.

  Gillis rolled over on his back, forced himself to sit up. Aquamarine fluid drooled down his body, formed a shallow pool around his hips; he hugged his shoulders, rubbing his chilled flesh. Once again, he wondered why no one was paying any attention to him. Yes, he was only the communications officer, yet there were others further up the command hierarchy who should have been revived by now. Kuniko Okada was the last person he had seen before the somatic drugs entered his system; as chief physician, she also would have been the last crew member to enter biostasis and the first to emerge. She would have then brought up—Gillis sought to remember specific details—the chief engineer, Dana Monroe, who would have ascertained that Alabama’s major systems were operational. If the ship was in nominal condition, Captain Lee would have been revived next, shortly followed by First Officer Shapiro, Executive Officer Tinsley, Senior Navigator Ullman, then Gillis himself. Yes, that was the correct procedure.

  So where is everyone else?

  First things first. He was wet and naked, and the ship’s internal temperature had been lowered to fifty degrees. He had to find some clothes. His teeth chattering, Gillis staggered to his feet, then lurched across the deck to a nearby locker. Opening it, he found a stack of clean white towels and folded robes. As he wiped the moist gel from his body, he recalled his embarrassment when his turn had come for Kuniko to prepare him for hibernation. It was bad enough to have his body shaved, yet when her electric razor had descended to his pubic area he found himself becoming involuntarily aroused by her gentle touch. Amused by his reaction, she had smiled at him in a motherly way. Just relax, she said. Think about something else…

  He turned, and for the first time saw that the rest of the biostasis cells were still upright within their niches. Thirteen white fiberglass coffins, each resting at a forty-five-degree angle within the bulkhead walls of Deck C2A. Electrophoretic displays on their lids emitted a warm amber glow, showing the status of the crew members contained within. Here was the Alabama’s command team, just as he had last seen them: Lee, Shapiro, Tinsley, Okada, Monroe, Ullman…

  Everyone was still asleep. Everyone except him.

  Gillis hastily pulled on a robe, then strode across the deck to the nearest window. Its outer shutter was closed, yet when he pressed the button that moved it upward, all he saw were distant stars against black space. Of course, he might not be able to see 47 Ursae Majoris from this particular porthole. He needed to get to the command center, check the navigation instruments.

  As he turned from the window, something caught his eye: the readout on the nearest biostasis cell. Trembling with unease as much as cold, Gillis moved closer to examine it. The screen identified the sleeper within as CORTEZ, RAYMOND B.—Ray Cortez, the life-support chief—and all his life signs seemed normal as far as he could tell, yet that wasn’t what attracted his attention. On the upper left side was a time code:

  E/: 7.8.70 / 22:10:01 GMT

  July 8, 2070. That was the date everyone had entered hibernation, three days after the Alabama had made its unscheduled departure from Highgate. On the upper right side of the screen, though, was another time code:

  P/: 10.3.70 / 00.21.23 GMT

  October 3, 2070. Today’s date and time.

  The Alabama had been in flight for only three months. Three months of a voyage across forty-six light-years which, at 20 percent of light-speed, would take 230 years to complete.

  For several long minutes, Gillis stared at the readout, unwilling to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Then he turned and walked across the compartment to the manhole. His bare feet slapping against the cool metal rungs, he climbed down the ladder to the next deck of the hibernation module.

  Fourteen more biostasis cells, all within their niches. None were open.

  Fighting panic, Gillis scrambled farther down the ladder to Deck C2C. Again, fourteen closed cells.

  Still clutching at some intangible shred of hope, Gillis quickly visited Deck C2D, then scurried back up the ladder and entered the short tunnel leading to the Alabama’s second hibernation module. By the time he reached Deck C1D, he had checked every biostasis cell belonging to the starship’s 103 remaining passengers, yet he hadn’t found one that was open.

  He sagged against a bulkhead, and for a long time he could do nothing except tremble with fear.

  He was alone.

  After a while, Gillis pulled himself together. All right, something had obviously gone wrong. The computers controlling the biostasis systems had made a critical error and had prematurely awakened him from hibernation. Okay, then; all he had to do was put himself back into the loop.

  The robe he had found wasn’t very warm, so he made his way through the circular passageway connecting the ship’s seven ring modules until he entered C4, one of two modules that would serve as crew quarters once the Alabama reached 47 Ursae Majoris. He tried not to look at the rows of empty bunks as he searched for the locker where he had stowed his personal belongings. His blue jumpsuit was where he had left it three months earlier, hanging next to the isolation garment he had worn when he left Gingrich Space Center to board the shuttle up to Highgate; on a shelf above it, next to his high-top sneakers, was the small cardboard box containing the precious few mementos he had been permitted to take with him. Gillis deliberately ignored the box as he pulled on his jumpsuit; he’d look at the stuff inside once he reached his final destination, and that wouldn’t be for another 230 years…226 years shiptime, if you considered the time-dilation factor.

  The command center, located on Deck H4 within the ship’s cylindrical hub, was cold and dark. The lights had been turned down, and the rectangular windows along its circular hull were shuttered; only the soft glow emitted by a few control panels pierced the gloom. Gillis took a moment to switch on the ceiling lights; spotting the environmental control station, he briefly considered adjusting the thermostat to make things a bit warmer, then decided against it. He had been trained as a communications specialist; his technical understanding of the rest of the Alabama’s major systems was cursory at best, and he was reluctant to make any changes that might influence the ship’s operating condition. Besides, he wasn’t staying there for very long; once he returned to biostasis, the cold wouldn’t make much difference to him.

  All the same, it was his duty to check the ship’s status, so he walked over to the nav table, pulled away the plastic cover protecting its keypad, and punched up a display of the Alabama’s present position. A bright shaft of light appeared above the table, and within it appeared a tiny holographic model of the ship. It floated in midair at the end of a long, curved string that led outward from the center of the three-dimensional halo representing the orbits of the major planets of the solar system. Moving at constant 1-g thrust, the Alabama was already beyond the orbit of Neptune; the ship was passing the canted orbit of Pluto, and in a few weeks it would cross the heliopause, escaping the last weak remnants of the Sun’s gravitational pull as it headed into interstellar space.

  The Alabama had now traveled farther from Earth than any previous manned spacecraft; only a few probes had ever ventured as far. Gillis found himself smiling at the thought. He was now the only living person—the only conscious living person, at least—to have voyaged so far from Earth. A feat almost worth waking up for…although, all things considered, he would have preferred to sleep through it.

  He moved to the engineering station, uncovered its console, and pulled up a schematic display of the ma
in engine. The deuterium/helium-3 reserves that had been loaded aboard the Alabama’s spherical main fuel tank before launch had been largely consumed during the ninety-day boost phase, but now that the ship had reached cruise speed the magnetic field projected by its Bussard ramscoop was drawing ionized interstellar hydrogen and helium from a four-thousand-kilometer radius in front of the ship, feeding the fusion reactor at its stern and thus maintaining a constant .2c velocity. Microsecond pulsations of the same magnetic field enabled it simultaneously to perform as a shield, deflecting away the interstellar dust which, at relativistic velocities, would have soon shredded the Alabama’s hull. Gillis’s knowledge of the ship’s propulsion systems was limited, yet his brief examination showed him that they were operating at 90 percent efficiency.

  Something tapped softly against the floor behind him.

  Startled by the unexpected sound, Gillis turned around, peered into the semidarkness. For a few moments he saw nothing, then a small shape emerged from behind the nav table: one of the spiderlike autonomous maintenance robots that constantly prowled the Alabama, inspecting its compartments and making minor repairs. This one had apparently been attracted to Gillis’s presence within the command deck; its eyestalks briefly flicked in his direction, then the ’bot scuttled away.

  Well. So much the better. The ’bot was no more intelligent than a mouse, but it reported everything that it observed to the ship’s AI. Now that the ship was aware that one of its passengers was awake, the time had come for Gillis to take care of his little problem.

  Gillis crossed the deck to his customary post at the communications station. Sitting down in his chair, he pulled away the plastic cover; a few deft taps on the keyboard, and his console glowed to life once more. Seeing the familiar screens and readouts made him feel a little more secure; here, at least, he knew what he was doing. He typed in the commands that opened an interface to Alabama’s DNA-based artificial intelligence.