by Brett Bam
Jack Mac stood suddenly and commanded their attention.
“I just think we should remember that these are strange skies and we don't know our way around or how anything works in this part of the system. We've all heard a lot of things about Earth and the Protocol. We've also heard that it's all propaganda and that this can be a dangerous place for newcomers.”
“Actually, I have something to say about that.” said Moabi. He was the chaos engineer and handled all the dangerous situations on the Ribbontail. More often than not he was the one who went EVA in emergency situations. He was responsible for the security, safety and defence of the ship and everyone on board. He had proven his willingness to kill or die to perform that function more than once. All eyes turned his way, when Moabi spoke the crew listened.
“They have a policy of zero tolerance, heavy fines and long incarcerations on this station,” he continued in his thickly accented speech. “We are not allowed weapons of any kind and we have to go through a series of scans before they'll even let us inside. Everything is monitored and recorded. The Korporatsie is welcome here, along with every other Community of Man, Jovian and Kingdom ship. The harbour is neutral territory and carries huge penalties for transgressions, so none of us have to worry about that except me, and I'm confining myself to the ship. Until we know the lay of the land I'd like you all to stick together, but if you have to separate I want you all to stay in pairs at the very least. Security is very tight here, so whatever you do, don't break the law or we’ll never get you out of the jail they’ll throw you in.”
Berea hopped up onto her chair, she was still shorter than Moabi. “Before we all run off the ship and get drunk I’d like you to remember that we have a few maintenance duties in the next day, so don’t disappear. I don’t want to end up doing the work alone... again.”
Dalys joined the conversation, “I'm only assigning everyone day leave. You sleep here in your ship’s quarters, no hotels, sorry. I want everyone to report in at least once every four hours anyway.”
There were groans.
“Now, now children, this is hardly a kind environment and we’re all strangers here. I know we need to relax and stretch our legs, but let’s get the lay of the land first, OK? I don’t want to get into any more trouble if I can help it. Listen to Moabi, and Jack Mac is in charge while I'm on holiday. Haha.”
An hour later the crew was gathered around the main airlock. They were about to disembark at Earth Harbour. A sense of anticipation was in the air. Moabi was to man the RHS during the excursion, monitoring each of the crewmember’s safety and keeping in contact with all of them.
Dalys was first in line as the airlock irised open. They were confronted by a solid mirror, all they could see were their reflections staring back at them.
“Um, Moabi, what is this?”
“Some sort of osmotic membrane, I think. The sensors cannot penetrate it. My first guess is some sort of a security or biological screen; it's definitely a safety device. It should be OK. There seems to be a slight breeze coming from it. Good air, very good, better than ours actually.”
Dalys stepped forward and appraised her reflection. She wore a one-piece, matt-black, cat-suit that covered her from neck to wrists to ankles. Over that her captain’s jacket, white, tailored, double-breasted, with a short stiff collar. Her hands were covered by grey gloves to protect her Ident tattoos and she wore her wings over her left breast, the silver, diamond-bright brooch, with a single twinkling sapphire identified her as an independent captain of a commercial charter ship. Heavy black boots reached to her knees and her data glasses twinkled light onto her face through their clear lenses. Her force field belt peeked out from under the tight hem of the jacket, there was no reason to hide it here. As a matter of fact, it might open doors which would otherwise be closed.
Cautiously, Dalys reached forward with a gloved hand and touched her reflection softly, she felt nothing, no resistance. Her hand slid through as if it was just air. She smiled and stepped forward, closing her eyes as she stepped into herself.
As she emerged on the other side, she took in her surroundings with a glance. She laughed.
“Hey guys, can you hear me?”
“Yes, we can.”
“It’s some sort of pressure curtain, come on through, you have to see this, but close your eyes just before you step through or you’ll go cross-eyed.”
They did as they were told, and when they opened their eyes they found themselves standing in a large area, sealed off from the rest of the station by glass walls. They could see several people moving about from one place to the other, although the station was relatively empty. There were rows of seats lining the room and a computer console dominating a central pillar. It was flickering benign icons, waiting for someone to initiate its informational services. The reception area was obviously designed to handle large crowds for short periods, a typical spaceport waiting room. They had obviously been lucky enough to be slotted into a quiet time of the day. Dalys turned and looked out one of several viewports. Large, clear, reinforced glass showed them a view of the Ribbontail at her berth. Dalys scanned a trained eye over her ship and saw it was still a little battered and a little ragged, but definitely looked space-worthy. A speaker sounded.
“Welcome Captain Xristian, this is Earth Harbour Control. We hope that you find yourself comfortable in this waiting room. An official will be along to see you shortly.”
“Thank you,” said Dalys into the air, “this will do nicely.”
Jack Mac, Berea and Curtis crowded in behind her; Dalys knew that Berea suffered a little from agoraphobia, a common enough malady in the Community of Man. Other than their periodic trips on to the hull of the ship, this was probably the largest space they'd seen in years. Dalys watched with a smile as Berea clasped Jack Mac’s arm for security, pinching the cloth of his sleeve and hanging on like a child. She covered her nervousness with endless chatter as he examined the info board. It noticed his interest and started running a graphic program designed to snare his attention further. Engrossed, he reached a finger out and tapped a hologram, while Berea kept looking over his shoulder.
Curtis sighed dramatically and sank into a seat, flicking her data glasses onto her face.
“I hope this doesn’t take too long, I don’t have the patience today.”
“They don’t look too busy, and the disembodied voice did say shortly.” said Dalys. But Curtis was already accessing the local datanet and didn’t reply.
“They do a massive amount of trade compared to some places.” stated Oscar, his glasses flashing information at him. “They quadruple the size of a cometary trading dock or a Rommel Corporation bartering station. Must be difficult being this close to a gravity well. Are we going to work a waterline Skipper?”
“Why not, it’s what we’re good at. It looks like there’s plenty of open contracts for H2O to Luna, and with Mars in conjunction there’s a fair amount of traffic. Who knows, we could even get a couple of cargo runs to the red planet, wouldn’t that be exciting?”
Jack Mac winced. “That would take some explaining.” He smiled at the thought.
The voice which had greeted them, chimed again. “Captain Xristian? The Protocol Liaison Officer is here. Please enjoy your stay.”
A wall split and panels slid apart, allowing a soft light to spill into the room. There was a silhouette which moved and then a man stepped into the room.
He stopped and stood, looking about the room. For a split second Dalys thought it was a complex animatron or android of some kind. The way he moved, looking robotically from side to side did nothing to dispel the illusion. He looked like a man of indeterminate age with white hair and eyebrows, but there was a spark missing from his eyes as if they were made of marble rather than soft tissue. Dalys wasn’t sure if he was really alive. She looked closer, a slight frown crinkling her brow. He was dressed in simple grey clothing of shirt, slacks and slippers. His hair was worn short and slicked back. There was something else wrong
with the way he looked, she realised he wore no data glasses, no memory crystals, no wearable computer at all, unless it was very small and extremely subtle. How did he interact with the web?
He looked straight at her and spoke, and the bubble burst. He was a man, alive. Flesh and blood, but with dead eyes, completely distracted.
“Good morning Captain. I trust you are refreshed. My name is Lutho Val Max. I am a Protocol Liaisons Officer for Earth Harbour.” He seemed drawn and tired and his voice was monotonous and disinterested. It sounded as if he’d said the same thing over and over a million times and was bored of it.
“Lutho Val Max, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I am Captain Dalys Xristian, and this is my crew. We are here to find work transporting goods through space and would like to apply for a visa to that effect.”
“I am here to serve you in any way I can. I will expedite your way through the necessary procedures, if you would please follow me.” He turned and walked through the portal. Dalys decided she didn’t like him. She cast a glance at the crew behind her and then followed the strange man out of the room.
He led them along a wide corridor obviously designed to impress upon visitors that they were entering a grand place which demanded respect. The passageway was a wide, high, long expanse. Holographic images shifted and changed down its entire length, covering the walls on either side. There was an island running down the centre of the corridor and this was filled with wonders and miracles from the world below. They stopped and stared in amazement at an oak tree encased in glass and covered in false sunlight from a lighting gantry above its leaves and branches. It cast dappled shadows onto the floor as they walked by. It was the first example of an earth tree any of them had ever seen. There was a place on Io that had a forest grown there by locals, and it supposedly had gigantic trees which could grow to magnificent and convoluted proportions in the low gravity, but Dalys had never had the opportunity to walk there. Another glass cage was filled with water that thronged with all manner of colourful fish and some weird underwater plants. A holographic display beneath the glass said it was coral, an ancient extinct marine animal species that used to grow in Old Earth's tropical oceans, resurrected through the Protocol’s genetic programmes. The stuff looked like flowering stone, it was beautiful and teased her sense of nostalgia, making her miss something she had never had.
Dalys had studied the histories in school, the Cataclysm and ruin of Earth, the rise of the Protocol, the Chamber Cities, The Dispersal, and the first colonies on the Moon, Mars and in the Belt. Mankind, or what was left of it, had done well for itself. It built, grew, and prospered and eventually adapted as they always had, and always would. There were now generations upon generations of people who had been born in space, living their lives having never set foot anywhere near a gravity well. And yet, this remarkable and strange display from mankind’s past gave the cataclysm a relevant poignancy the school books had failed to impart. Dalys felt that huge loss deeply, as all people did.
There was still a small human presence on Earth, but they were isolationist to the extreme. The rest of the Community of Man never heard from them or their culture. The machines were all that they ever encountered. Lutho Val Max was the first earthman any of the crew had seen. Dalys noticed he never even glanced at any of the passing miracles trapped in time, she couldn’t imagine becoming so bored of such wonders.
Without warning they emerged through a doorway into full daylight. At first the crew was a little dazzled and lifted their hands in a synchronous gesture to protect their eyes from the glare.
Dalys had never been unprotected in sunlight in her entire life. Nowhere in the Community of Man did anyone venture underneath the sun’s deadly glare without shielding, pressure suits and the proper training. She flipped her data glasses over her eyes and darkened them, polarising and filtering the light
“Please, don’t be concerned. The light will not harm you.”
As her eyes adjusted to the harsh brightness of the natural light, she could look at the scene before her.
It was her first view of Harbour Valley and the city it contained. It was breathtaking. Solid rock towered up all around the horizon, webbed with imbedded minerals in longitudinal threads. The rocks framed the city on all sides and fell steeply towards the centre, where a large city was nestled in the palm of the depression. It had no dome, no protection from the vacuum and the radiation, yet it bustled with life. None of the crew had ever seen such a thing before. Every environment they knew was buried inside the rock, or folded away under a dome, or under the ground or inside the icy crust of a moon. Every city and town and village and settlement in the Community of Man dealt with a harsh and savage environment in a wide variety of murderous temperatures. There was no opportunity to enjoy the scenery. Death was always near, on the other side of a bulkhead or an airlock. They had looked upon many wondrous things in their travels; they were undoubtedly jaded travellers used to the spectacular, but this sight made every single one of them stop and stare.
The city was only one of many marvellous things in the vista. Beyond the city and its lights, beyond the roads streaming with vehicles, beyond the range of jagged peaks which framed the horizon, beyond the glowing thread of the magnetic elevator, beyond it all, powerful and dominating; Mother Earth covered the sky.
Dalys found herself staring up at the continent of Africa bathed in full daylight, framed by ocean. The daytime face of Earth poured ambient light into the Harbour which was almost as bright as a noon day sun. Storms swirled across the southern hemisphere of the giant continent, birthed from the monstrous cloud of the Worldstorm ravaging the Northern Hemisphere. As she watched, Dalys saw the eye of the storm swirling, smearing its wrath across the landscape so far away, smothering the ground beneath it with dirty rain. The sheer terrifying scale of the Worldstorm was staggering. To Dalys the sight was overwhelming, so she stood for what seemed to be a long timeless moment enraptured by the filthy beauty of the crippled planet. Her sense of perspective was warped by this strange structure in space, this harbour to the planet above, she could not shake the feeling that she should be falling toward the Earth. She found herself fiercely intimidated by all the open space above her and the fierce light, she felt small and insignificant. She wondered for a moment how Berea was handling it, and a quick glance showed her cowering behind Jack Mac.
When Dalys finally managed to wrench her attention from the spectacle above, she found the scenery below just as astonishing. The city was a smorgasbord of technology. Its towering skyscrapers were a mass of metallic confusion, tall and reaching and clustered and glittering with lights. Every ten seconds a bright crackle of energy speared into the sky from the centre of the buildings. They were elevators, moving up and down the magnetic field between the harbour and Earth, sparkling along the magnetic umbilical. Traffic swarmed. At every point in the sky around them ran lanes of traffic, bleeding through the air like smudged rainbows. Their speed was terrific and they flew in all directions.
The flying car was a dirty red colour with long tinted windows and a booster pack bristling beneath its belly. It hovered silently above a landing lawn, its rotors spinning in their brackets while they trooped toward it. There was a slight hesitation as Lutho moved toward the driver’s side. Dalys intercepted him at the door to the drivers capsule. He never made eye contact as he spoke, merely averted his eyes.
"Captain, you are not permitted to manoeuvre a transport on Earth Harbour without proper training and certification. I must drive. It is part of my function and besides, you do not have the ability."
Dalys glanced at the flowing storm in the sky and suppressed her objections. The crew clambered aboard after her and carefully strapped themselves in. Oscar looked to Jack Mac for a second, but when he saw the older man looking calm and relaxed he strapped in without qualm. The car rose smoothly into the air, and Lutho slowed and hovered dangerously close to a surging torrent of traffic. Dalys noticed with alarm that there were no external sensors on the veh
icle, no displays on the dashboard. This maniac was going to fly blind into the raging mess.
The car blinked into the lane with a tremendous surge of speed that pressed them hard into their seats with a force Dalys had only ever felt in space. The traffic was suddenly static in the air about them, while the ground rushed by at blurring speed. The transport next to them whooshed from the lane and disappeared from the flow at almost a right angle, beginning a descent to the city below. A split second after its departure, another one zoomed into its place settling into the torrent flawlessly. If Dalys had blinked she would have missed the exchange. As she watched they became completely surrounded by vehicles of all sizes and shapes. They were on a major thoroughfare of some sort. The thrilling fear of the ride faded to a small rush once Dalys saw that Lutho flew in perfect concert with those around him. It was a startling accomplishment; she hadn't even registered the gap in the traffic until they were already in it.
“How are you doing this Lutho Val Max? How are you flying this machine without information on displays?”
“Ah, my apologies, I understand this must be alarming to you. I have a complex network of bioelectric circuitry, an internal computer, if you’ll forgive the crude term, grafted onto my medulla oblongata, which connects me directly to the Protocol. I receive a large amount of information and direction from it.”
Dalys felt a little thrill. Tech grafted onto his brainstem! This was very illegal. Most societies across the solar system regarded it as an abhorrent, even Mars. The placement of the technology could theoretically circumvent a person’s free will and subjugate them, either through threat of induced pain or direct subversion of the thought process. It normally meant the death penalty anywhere in the Community to install such circuitry. Apparently, that wasn’t the case on Earth Harbour. What about the rest of the population? Were all humans here subject to this personal invasion?
