The Orpheus Plot

by Christopher Swiedler

  “Oh, shut up,” Elena said tiredly, pushing him to keep going.

  Embarrassed, Lucas shoved his uniform into the nearest bag and headed over to the doorway. Willem raced down the ladderway toward Aaron and Katya and gleefully began explaining what he’d seen. Katya’s shrill giggle echoed through the lower decks as they disappeared into the hangar.

  “Don’t pay any attention to them,” Elena said.

  Lucas nodded. How many times was someone going to have to tell him that? “Is suit training about to start?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Rahul said mournfully. “I already feel sick to my stomach, and we’re not even outside yet.”

  “Well, if you puke on your uniform, I can help you out,” Lucas said, smiling half-heartedly. “I’m kind of an expert.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Rahul said.

  “Cadets!” Maria snapped, sticking her head out of the hatchway that led to the hangar. “We’re waiting.”

  Lucas followed Elena and Rahul down the ladder, but Maria shook her head. “Not you.”

  “It was on the schedule you gave me,” Lucas protested.

  “You were scratched off,” Maria said, shrugging. “Captain’s orders.”

  She ushered Elena and Rahul down into the hangar. Lucas watched dejectedly as the first-year cadets assembled down on the hangar deck. Why was he being excluded? Suit training was his chance to demonstrate that he actually knew something.

  “Hey,” Tali said, coming down the ladderway behind him. “Shouldn’t you be down there with the others?”

  “Apparently not,” Lucas said. He jerked the hatch upward, and it closed with a loud clang that reverberated through the lower decks.

  She frowned. “Did they tell you why?”

  “Well, I pretty much flunked every other class today,” Lucas said, clenching his jaw. “So I’m guessing Sanchez decided she made a mistake and is trying to cut her losses.”

  “It was that bad?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That bad.”

  Tali paused. “I’m sorry, Lucas.”

  “Why? You’re getting what you wanted, right? I’m leaving.”

  To his surprise, his sister didn’t launch into one of her I-told-you-so lectures. Instead she squeezed his arm. “Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe they’re not going to send you away.”

  “And what if I’m not wrong?”

  Tali thought for a moment. “Then I guess you should make the most of the time you’ve got left. Follow me.”

  She opened the hatch and headed inside. He paused for a moment, and then shrugged and followed her through.

  After the tight confines of the rest of the ship, the hangar seemed enormous. The ladderway emerged from the hatch in the ceiling and ran straight down through an opening in the floor, which Lucas guessed led to the engine room. The main hangar doors had been rolled back, and the faint shimmer of an airfield stretched across the opening. The first-year cadets were clustered in a small group near the hangar doors, listening to a lecture from one of the junior officers. Toward the back of the room, a pair of medium-sized patrol ships were lashed to the deck. The engine assembly on one of the patrollers had been pulled out, and two officers were clearly in the middle of a major overhaul.

  Lucas stopped on the ladderway. He recognized one of the officers—a tall woman with silvery-white hair. “That’s the engineer from Ceres,” he whispered to Tali.

  “Come on,” Tali said, pulling him forward. “She doesn’t know it was you who flew that ship.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I haven’t been expelled,” Tali said impatiently. “Now are you coming, or not?”

  Reluctantly he followed her down to the two ships, ignoring the curious looks from his fellow cadets. “Chief Moskowitz?” Tali said. “I’d like to introduce you to one of our new cadets. This is Lucas Adebayo.”

  Unable to decide whether it would be better to look Moskowitz in the eye or avoid her completely, Lucas managed the worst of both, shifting his gaze back and forth between her and Tali.

  “Welcome to the Orpheus,” Moskowitz said, giving him a polite nod.

  The man next to Moskowitz stuck out his hand. “I’m Randall Clarke. You’re our new Belter cadet?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lucas said, shaking his hand.

  “The ‘sir’ isn’t necessary,” he said. “Technically I’m an adjunct adviser, which is a long-winded way of saying I’m just a teacher here. You’re a miner, is that right? I’ve done a few stints on Vesta and Ceres.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Iron and nickel?”

  Lucas nodded. “And uranium, when we could find it.”

  “That’s honest work,” Randall said.

  Lucas felt a surge of pride. At least here was someone who didn’t see a miner from the Belt as either a freak or a threat. He felt sure that Randall and his father would get along very well.

  “Ma’am, you might be interested to hear that Cadet Adebayo has some experience working on smaller ships,” Tali said.

  “Now that’s good to hear,” Moskowitz said. She paused and frowned. “Have we met before? Something about you looks familiar.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t believe so,” Lucas said, trying not to sound nervous. With curiosity that was only partly feigned, he bent down and inspected the engine assembly. “Looks like you’ve got a leak in the pressure lines?”

  “What makes you say that?” Moskowitz asked.

  “Well, you’re taking apart the manifold. That’s what my dad starts with any time he thinks there’s a pressure leak.”

  Randall chuckled. “Logical.”

  “I’ve never worked on anything with redundant fuel pumps, though,” Lucas said, running his fingers along one of the lines.

  “That’s standard Navy design,” Moskowitz said, nodding.

  Lucas squinted into the guts of the engine. “Stupid that you don’t back it up with high-pressure valves, though. I’d bet that’s why you get these leaks.”

  There was a moment of silence. “That’s also standard Navy design,” Moskowitz said.

  Something in her voice made Lucas straighten up. Belatedly, he realized that what he’d said was probably extremely rude. Was he really going to mess everything up with these officers too? “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Moskowitz chuckled. “Yes, you did. But don’t worry about it. I spend half my time fixing leaks and the rest complaining about those valves.”

  “If you need another pair of hands, maybe Lucas could help you out,” Tali said.

  “Sure,” Lucas said. “I’d love to work on an engine like this.”

  “I wish my own cadets were that enthusiastic,” Moskowitz said wryly. “Somehow they always seem to disappear when work like this comes up. If you’ve got the time—”

  She was interrupted by a call over the intercom. “Cadet Adebayo to Captain Sanchez’s quarters. Repeat, Cadet Adebayo to Captain Sanchez’s quarters.”

  Lucas’s heart sank. This was it—the call he’d been half expecting all afternoon. Apparently he wasn’t even going to make it through an entire day before being sent home.

  “Sounds like you don’t,” Moskowitz said, sighing. “Next time, maybe.”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said hoarsely. If he was right about why the captain was summoning him, then there wasn’t going to be a next time. He looked around the hangar at the patrol ships, the disassembled engine, the racks of suits on the wall. He could spend weeks in here and still not learn everything he wanted to learn—and this was only one little part of the ship.

  “You’d better get going,” Randall said. “Not good to keep a captain waiting.”

  “Remember that we’ve got a section meeting at nineteen hundred hours tonight,” Tali added.

  It was a good touch, Lucas thought, pretending that he would actually still be a cadet here by tonight. He nodded glumly and pushed off toward the ladderway. As he headed up toward the front of the ship, he passed a group of older cadets from ga
mma section going to the hangar. They moved aside almost without looking at him. It was probably out of politeness, but it made him feel as if he was untouchable, like a drop of oil drifting through a current of water.

  He wanted to punch himself for being so stupid and clueless. Why couldn’t someone back on Ceres have taught him about logarithms? Was this really how it was all going to end? As he floated through the rec room toward the upper decks, he tried as hard as he could to keep his face neutral. If he really was getting bounced out, then this might be the last time anyone saw him, and he didn’t want anyone to remember him as a teary-eyed brat.

  He hurried up the Broadway ladder and stopped at Sanchez’s cabin on deck two. The bridge, just above him, was close enough to touch. The hatchway was open, and he could see the big transplastic canopy and a vast swath of the Milky Way. A junior officer sat at the pilot’s console, her fingers brushing idly against the screen. Lucas’s anger rose. He belonged in there. He belonged on this ship. How did no one else understand that? He rapped his knuckles on Sanchez’s door.

  The door slid open and Sanchez waved him in. Her cabin was the same size as the alpha-section bunkroom, though it felt much larger. There were framed paintings on the wall and actual, real-life books on a small wooden shelf. Lucas was astonished—the books alone must have weighed more than all the personal possessions he’d ever owned, combined.

  “Good to see you, Lucas,” she said. “So—how do you feel about the school, after your first day of classes?”

  Was that a genuine question, or one of those times when an adult asked you something but didn’t want to hear the actual answer? He came up with a few polite responses—It was fine, I enjoyed it a lot, I’m excited to be here—and threw them all away. If he wasn’t going to be sticking around here for very long, there wasn’t any reason to hide the truth.

  “Honestly, I think it was all pretty stupid,” he said. “I believe that if I were given a fair shot, I could do well here. But Commander Novak wants me to know logarithms and Lieutenant-Commander Hofstra thinks I ought to already know the theoretical parts of navigation, and as far as Lieutenant-Commander Palmer is concerned, I’m completely useless. Mr. Clarke is the only person who seems to like me, and he’s not even an officer.”

  Sanchez cocked her head to one side and looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read. Lucas knew he should probably stop, but his anger was still boiling over and the words tumbled out anyway.

  “I mean, why did you bring me here if you’re just going to send me away after one day? I didn’t even get to go to suit training. What sort of officers are you training for? People who can actually fly ships, or people who can sit in classrooms reciting stupid facts and theory that nobody needs to know?”

  “I see,” Sanchez said, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together contemplatively. “Apparently there are a few misconceptions that we ought to clear up.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Cadet Adebayo,” she interrupted. “Your argument, if I understand correctly, is that you’re capable of learning and following orders. I suggest that you demonstrate that fact by shutting up and listening. Ideally before that temper of yours digs you even deeper into the remarkably deep hole you’ve just gotten yourself into.”

  Even though she had hardly raised her voice more than a fraction of a decibel, her words seemed to physically reverberate around the room. Lucas closed his mouth with an audible click.

  “First, despite what you seem to think, my staff was quite happy with your first day here. Novak has reported that your math background is weak but that your aptitude was a very pleasant surprise. Hofstra has already made it very clear to me that his only frustration is with whoever put you into a beginning orbital mechanics course when you already know more than most of his third-year students. He’s positively ecstatic at the idea of teaching theory to a cadet who already knows the practical side of navigation. And not thirty seconds before you arrived, I received a request from Chief Engineer Moskowitz to have you assigned to her cadet repair team so that she can have, quote, ‘Someone who actually cares about what they’re doing.’ She clearly agreed with my decision that there are much better uses for your time than making you sit through basic suit training.”

  A pleasant surprise? Ecstatic? Novak and Hofstra had made it seem as if he’d failed completely. He desperately wanted to ask for more information, but instead he kept his mouth shut and waited for her to continue.

  Sanchez watched him for a moment, and then she nodded. “It gives me some hope to see that you’re capable of staying quiet when necessary. Let me ask you a question: after today, do you think you belong at this school?”

  What was she asking, exactly? Whether he fit in with the other students? Or whether he thought he was competent to be here? Or just whether he even wanted to be here after how everything had gone so far?

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, hoping he sounded more convincing than he felt. “I think I do.”

  “I told you before you arrived that this school will be challenging,” she said, a little more gently. “You will need to adapt. But in the same way, your presence here will be a challenge for the Navy. Which means we will need to adapt to you.”

  Lucas tried to picture someone like Ensign Mendoza or Lieutenant-Commander Palmer adapting to him. “Somehow that doesn’t seem very likely.”

  “Give it some time.” She looked at him curiously for a moment, and Lucas had the same under-the-microscope feeling he’d had the first time they’d met. “I understand you want to be a pilot. Is that right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I imagine you’d be quite a good pilot,” she said, drumming her fingers on her desk. “In fact, I imagine you’re already quite a good pilot, and it’s not our habit to try to teach cadets things they already know. But more than that, I think you might be selling yourself short.”

  “Flying is all I’ve ever wanted to do,” Lucas said, a little confused.

  “Perhaps that’s only because you’ve never been given the opportunity to do something more,” Sanchez said. “You have remarkable self-confidence and intuition. I think you could make an excellent captain.”

  This was something Lucas had never really considered. Belter ships were usually too small to dedicate precious life-support capacity to a person whose only job was to give orders.

  “To be clear, you have a lot to learn,” Sanchez went on. “Like anything else, leadership is a hard skill to master. You’ll meet with me regularly, in addition to your usual classes. It will take some effort, but I trust that you’ll be able to keep up with your academics.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled, not at all sure that this was true. From his point of view, the last thing he needed was another class on top of everything else.

  “In fact,” Sanchez said, “now would be a good time for you to learn your first lesson. Which is that in the Navy, accusing your captain of unfair treatment will at best get you thrown out of their cabin, and at worst will get you thrown off of the ship. Possibly without a suit. Is that clear?”

  He flinched. Her voice was casual, but from the look in her eye, she wasn’t entirely kidding. “Yes, ma’am. I’m, uh, sorry about that.”

  “One of the nicer things about the Navy is that personal apologies to a commanding officer are rarely necessary.” Sanchez looked thoughtful for a moment. “However, this might be an exception. Apology accepted.”

  6

  WHEN LUCAS GOT back to his cabin, Elena and Rahul were watching a news broadcast on the wall screen. He was about to launch into an explanation of how his first day hadn’t gone quite as badly as he’d thought when he read the text scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Hijacking of passenger liner leaves at least two dead. Six Belter miners believed to be in standoff with ship security. A shaky handheld video playing on a loop showed a panicked crowd being herded into a large dining room by a man and a woman holding mining lasers.

  He stared at the screen in shock. “Is
that real?” he asked.

  “No,” Rahul said irritably. “We’re watching a fake news broadcast.”

  “It’s all over the nets,” Elena said. “Nobody knows how it happened. Apparently they almost made it to the bridge.”

  “I can’t believe—” Lucas said, and then stopped. “I mean, I don’t understand—”

  “Believe it,” Rahul said. “They put out a manifesto and everything. Some crap about tariffs and the ‘hegemony of the oppressor planets.’”

  “Maybe we should stop watching now?” Elena said. “They’re just showing the same information over and over. If anything changes, someone will let us know.”

  She reached out toward the wall screen, but Rahul grabbed her arm. “Leave it on.”

  Elena pursed her lips. “He’s pretty sure his parents are on that liner,” she explained to Lucas.

  “What?” Lucas asked. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, she’s serious,” Rahul snapped. “They flew out with me so they could take a vacation on Mars. Now they’re on their way back. Or they were, until this happened.”

  “Are they okay?”

  “Most of the passengers are safe,” Elena said. “But some are still hostages.”

  “And they’re not saying who,” Rahul added bitterly.

  Lucas watched Rahul for a moment, his heart aching. Maybe Tali would know what to say in a situation like this. She was good with people. His own main talent seemed to be putting his foot in his mouth.

  But maybe there really just wasn’t anything to say. Maybe Rahul just needed to know his friends were with him. He settled down on the floor next to Rahul and Elena and watched the broadcast. It was the last thing he wanted to do right now, but if it helped Rahul a little, then it was worth it.

  Elena was right—the news feed wasn’t much more than an endless loop of repeated information and analysis by people back on Earth who clearly didn’t know the first thing about the Belt. As he watched, one thought kept running through his head: who would possibly do something like this? He’d heard his share of complaints from miners about tariffs and Earther jurisdiction. But attacking a passenger ship and taking hostages? It was insane. What did they think it was going to accomplish?