Confluence 2: Remanence

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  The obstruction jounced around, barely trackable by the cameras. It seemed to be hanging on by a thread but still hadn’t broken free.

  There was a tight, painful feeling high in the center of her chest, just below her throat. This wasn’t any safer than a traditional launch. She’d gambled on this route and it hadn’t paid off.

  She should probably abort.

  But she didn’t. She repeated the ludicrous maneuver, screaming down the cable and surging back up even faster than before.

  She shifted in her seat after the shuttle came to its abrupt stop. The harness was painful and chafing now. As the cameras refocused she held her breath. The snagged object swung off the cable and drifted free to tumble to the surface of Atielle.

  The cabin erupted into cheers despite the fact that the shuttle was still ricocheting in nauseatingly erratic movements. Tinor took a lot of praise for the suggestion.

  Ron looked at Jane and grinned. “Nerves of steel, QD. Nerves of steel.”

  “It’s not over yet,” Jane replied. Her mouth was dry. The cable was dangerously unstable now. She had just taken a huge risk. Maybe she’d acted rashly. If the cable snapped now, it would recoil so fast that she feared she might not be able to break free of it before they were dashed against the surface of Atielle.

  33

  Jane inched the craft up Atielle’s Ladder.

  She couldn’t risk anything faster than a snail’s pace because of the movement on the cable. Brai was tracking the location of the counterweight of the ladder and the high orbital station just beneath it, where he would dock and pick them up. It had moved a great deal from its original location.

  Brai was a heavy presence in her mind. Keeping tabs on the trajectories of both the atmospheric debris and the path of the cable was far more complex now than it had been before. He was tightly controlled, cold, and all business, but also, beneath all of that, so…wounded. They were going to have a long talk when she was safely aboard the Speroancora.

  Most of her human passengers had a greenish cast to their faces, while the atellans swayed and jerked drowsily without resistance in their seats. She thought they seemed to be faring better than the humans, but no one was comfortable. It made Jane think of a primitive, jerky roller coaster in three dimensions. It wasn’t pleasant.

  But they were approaching the low orbital station, which would mark the point at which they would pass the worst of the debris hurtling through the mesosphere. And that station should have stabilizing systems in place. They didn’t seem to be functioning at the moment though, and she wasn’t getting a reply from the station’s computer when she pinged it. She hoped that was just proximity, but as they drew closer she became doubtful.

  This had been a fool’s errand. Why was she being so stubborn?

  Hours went by. The movement subsided by degrees, but it hardly seemed to matter. Jane felt like her brain had been scrambled. She began to seriously worry for their well-being.

  Pledor suddenly let out a low, dramatic groan—the first audible complaint she’d heard from her passengers. “Oh, great Cunabula! We’ve been conscripted by Zang Hoi…”

  Ryliuk’s baritone rang out, strong and true, not a trace of discomfort in the sound of it. “Not a one of us was conscripted, Pledor.”

  Ajaya cleared her throat. “Who—” she asked, and then they swung around and she waited for the craft to stabilize, “—is Zang Hoi?”

  Schlewan addressed Pledor. “Can you not achieve torpor?”

  Jane’s eyes widened. There had been a distinct slight in Schlewan’s tone.

  “I can,” he replied defensively. “It is difficult to maintain with each…conflicting sensation.”

  Jane’s hands tightened on the control wheel.

  “Torpor?” Ajaya asked. The craft dipped and bobbed.

  Jane looked over her shoulder to see Schlewan reaching for the sectilian medical kit protruding from the wall of the shuttle. She rummaged through it noisily, clamping her hands over the contents each time the shuttle shifted, then came out with a microinjector. “I will chemically induce hibernation, then.”

  “No. That’s uncalled for!” Pledor gasped.

  “I believe it is medically necessary,” Schlewan declared. Then she injected him, and Pledor went limp. “Anyone else?” Her voice rang out defiantly into the silence of the ship.

  No one said a word. The power dynamics among the sectilians were shifting. This had been Schlewan’s way of reminding Pledor that he was no longer in charge, and she seemed to relish it.

  Jane felt Brai chuckle softly in her mind. His tone was contemptuous though—not amused. She went cold inside. His reaction surprised and disconcerted her. Perhaps he was not the person she believed him to be. Was there a dark side to Brai that she hadn’t witnessed before?

  Schlewan turned to Ajaya. “Torpor is a physiological state that can be self-induced. It is something like sleep or a kind of mental and physical dormancy. It conserves energy and resources. We use it to get through times of famine or other difficulties. You do not have a similar state?”

  Ajaya replied, “No. We can meditate. I believe that’s the closest we may come under our own power to what you describe. It does not have the same effect.”

  Schlewan replaced the microinjector and closed the protruding drawer. “I see. I see. I see. Without consulting the ship’s medical library I can’t know if this drug would affect you adversely. Better for you to endure this temporary discomfort than to take the risk.”

  “I concur,” Ajaya said.

  “Are all of you meditating, then?” Schlewan asked.

  “Fuck no,” Alan said.

  “Meditation is normally attempted under calm, quiet conditions. I am finding it helpful to try,” Ajaya answered noncommittally, clearly hedging around the cultural snafu Pledor had just found himself in. “Distraction would work better for humans, I believe. Can you tell us about Zang Hoi?”

  Tinor spoke up. “I will. Zang Hoi is a mythological figure from very early sectilian literature. In some stories she is the first atellan to survive landing on Sectilia in a tiny pod. In other tales she is purported to be the first alien to arrive from a world beyond this star system. She was said to be captivating to look upon, though she is described many different ways in various legends and sometimes as a shapeshifter. She was always depicted as a trickster who sneered at our then-primitive technologies and lured unsuspecting sectilians into various precarious circumstances during which they often lost their lives.”

  “Not exactly a flattering comparison, then,” Alan said dryly.

  The atellans were silent. Jane sensed through Ryliuk that they were embarrassed by Pledor’s outburst and that a few of them were more than marginally worried he was right. No one spoke for a long time.

  They reached the doughnut-shaped low orbital station a couple of hours later, and it was immediately obvious why it wasn’t functional and why its computers hadn’t answered her queries. Something had torn a hole right through one side of it. Nevertheless, because of its mass, it was a quieter place to rest for a short time and regroup. Jane docked with the station but didn’t open the doors of the shuttle.

  She was exhausted and needed a break. She turned off the consoles and closed her eyes to try to get some sleep before deciding how to proceed.

  She dozed fitfully and dreamt of clinging to the deck of her parents’ boat on a stormy sea off the coast of Australia, sobbing after her father had been caught in the reef. This was a familiar nightmare. Often she dreamt that she dove over the side to attempt to rescue him, but in her panic she always forgot to put the diving equipment back on. In this version of the dream she was disoriented, swimming blindly with storm-surging waters tossing her around, lungs burning until they felt like they were going to burst.

  She woke with a gasp. She could hear Alan and Ron conferencing about the mechanics of the shuttle and Ajaya passing around more motion-sickness medication as well as water and food cubes.

  “Good. You’re a
wake,” Alan said brusquely. “Put this on.” He handed her one of the shuttle’s emergency-decompression masks and an air cartridge.

  The mask was a form-fitting mask that went over the head and neck, creating a seal that could suit nearly any anatomical configuration. Small cartridges could be attached to the chin area in the front to provide air. They’d tested them on themselves before they left the Speroancora. They worked equally well on humans as they did on the various body types of the Sectilius. She stared at it dumbly, still groggy. “What’s going on?”

  He sighed heavily, his hand going to the back of his neck. “The way I see it we’ve got two choices and both of them involve all of us wearing these masks.”

  Ajaya eased between them, gripping the seat backs as the shuttle bobbed, then settled into the vacant copilot’s seat. “You might let her come fully awake before you start in, Alan. Try some manners. They’re good for you.” Ajaya handed her a water pouch and some food cubes.

  Jane took them gratefully. She watched Alan in her peripheral vision. He was fidgeting. He was the kind of person who needed to always keep busy. This trip was probably driving him batty. She sipped from the pouch then turned to him fully, keeping her expression carefully neutral. She nibbled on the corner of a cube, knowing she needed to eat, but afraid to put too much in her stomach. “Tell me.”

  “At this point we either have to fix this station or the shuttle.”

  He wanted to do a spacewalk. That was so dangerous. Her heart started to pound. She turned the shuttle’s external lights on the station and gazed at it. Twisted, jagged metal and green plastic marred the opening of a gaping wound. The tightness in her chest squeezed harder. She turned back to him.

  Before she could say anything, he went on, “Yeah. It looks bad. But Jaross and Ron and I have been going over scans of the thing. It’s not as bad as it looks. Most of the tech was spared.” He reached between the seats and pulled up a hologram on the dash. It showed the station as a line diagram. He tapped another button, superimposing a transparent image which displayed the damage over the schematic. Then he pointed to one of the two holes. “See here? The only vital thing missing is the main power conduit. If I patch it, we’ve got power to the stabilizing system.”

  Jane’s eyes narrowed as she focused on the area his finger was pointing to.

  “This is probably the simpler of the two to fix. All we really need there is essentially an extension cord. The shuttle will be a whole lot easier to work on if we do this first.”

  Jane made eye contact with Ajaya and Ron, though she already knew through Brai that they both concurred with this assessment. EVAs were dangerous, but they were trained for them—even in conditions as harsh as this. She should trust that.

  According to Brai, the cable could take weeks to settle down on its own. They were out of options. She’d chosen this path because she thought it would be safer, and now that the engine was compromised, she guessed it had been. After all, that could have happened midflight. But continuing on without stabilizing the cable and fixing the engine would be madness. They had to do something. She frowned. “This is a one-person job, or two?”

  “One. I can have the station up and running in thirty minutes.” Alan leaned into the copilot seat as the shuttle and station bucked. He was close enough to kiss. She didn’t back away a single millimeter. She gazed into his eyes deeply, trying to tell him everything…everything…

  The moment passed. The craft settled into a momentary lull and he backed away, turning his head and sniffing. Waiting for her reply.

  She twisted to look at Ron. “Suit up.”

  Ron nodded and began to make his way to the back where the skintight pressure suits were stored.

  Alan punched the copilot seat. Ajaya flinched but said nothing. Jane didn’t have to explain herself to anyone. Ron was the electrical engineer and was more qualified. Alan wasn’t the one making the decisions, and he needed to remember that. It wasn’t personal.

  34

  Jane remained tense while Ron worked.

  They had no clear view of him inside the station since they were docked below it. However, he’d agreed to let them hover on his outermost mental layers, able to see, hear, and feel without intruding on his thoughts.

  Brai was jacked much deeper into Ron’s thoughts. He was running computer simulations of the cable and station’s motion in order to predict each movement before it happened so that Ron wouldn’t have any surprises while he worked. It would keep him safer and make the work go more smoothly.

  Alan stood braced near the door, head bowed as he concentrated on Ron’s every movement and observation, tensed to take action at a moment’s notice. The decompression mask sat on top of his head like a stocking cap, ready to slip over his face in seconds.

  They’d all donned safety masks and pressure suits while Jane depressurized the cabin, quickly let Ron out, then repressurized again. The sectilian suits were tight against the skin, exerting pressure mechanically instead of being filled with air pressure the way the puffy orange NASA suits had. The extremely stretchy suits were designed to protect against moisture loss in vacuum as well as minimize exposure to cosmic radiation. They felt a lot like a wet suit, and were quite a step up from the suits they had worn when they had begun their exploration of the Target.

  The zone the station resided in was the equivalent of Low Earth Orbit back home. As a layperson, Jane had been dimly aware that LEO was where the International Space Station resided, and since she had frequently seen astronauts in her online newsfeeds broadcasting from ISS drifting around, she would have assumed there was no gravity at that distance from Earth. She hadn’t understood how the space station was constantly accelerating down in its orbit over the curved edge of the Earth, neutralizing the effective perceived gravity for the occupants. That was free fall, not true microgravity.

  When she trained with NASA she’d gotten a crash course in physics, and the command-and-control engram set she’d received from Brai had deepened her understanding of these concepts. So she wasn’t surprised that even when they had docked at the low orbital station, the sensation of gravity felt pretty much the same as it had on the surface of Atielle, though less than they’d been experiencing under acceleration.

  Except when the entire cable dipped. On the downswing they were weightless for a moment as they fell back toward Atielle. As they swung back up there was a slight increase in the sensation of gravity. It played havoc on her stomach.

  And she wasn’t the only one. As Ron worked, he referred to the low orbital station as Vomit Station without a trace of humor. He kept a running commentary going as he worked. His patience and caution were remarkable. He didn’t rush a thing. He was acutely attuned to Brai’s predictions of the station’s movements, carefully tucking everything he was working with away and retreating to a position of safety every time the station was about to move dramatically.

  Once he accomplished the necessary connection, the station came to life, true to Alan’s promise. Ron carefully made his way back to the shuttle along his safety line, everyone donned masks while Jane cycled decompression-recompression, and then Jane was able to access the station controls from the dashboard and bring the stabilizing countermeasures online. They took effect very quickly. They soon reached a point where the inertial dampeners compensated for the remaining motion and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  Jane sank back into the pilot’s seat and closed her eyes. She couldn’t relax, wouldn’t be able to relax, until they were safely back aboard the Speroancora, but this moment was sweet. She could breathe a little easier now, but only a little.

  She felt Ajaya brush past her and someone else quickly filled the copilot seat. Jane expected it to be Ron. She opened her eyes, planning to praise him for a job well done, but it was Alan who sat there. He stared at her, his eyebrows nearly reaching his hairline and his jaw bulging.

  She tried not to frown. She knew what he wanted to do.

  And she was going to have to let h
im do it.

  He took a deep breath, and she was sure he was about to launch into his version of a convincing tirade about why he had to go out there and find out what was wrong with the engine.

  She held up a hand to forestall him. “Yes. With caveats.”

  He blew out the breath like a deflating balloon and looked surprised, then wary. “What caveats?” he snarled, his blue eyes angrily boring into her.

  She wanted to ask him why he hated her so much now. She wanted to beg him to just listen to reason. But she knew that he was a volatile individual and that for some people the line between love and hate could be incredibly thin. And he had so little experience with love, it seemed. She longed to put a hand on his face to soothe him, to scrape her thumb over his unruly beard and…

  She snapped out of the moment of reverie and he was still staring at her, hard. This wasn’t the time for these thoughts or even these conversations. That would come later, she hoped.

  “You have to take all the same safety measures Ron took. A safety line—”

  “Of course!” he growled and rolled his eyes.

  “And connect with Brai,” she said.

  His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened. “Oh, you’re on a first-name basis now, are you?” He shook his head. “Fine. I’m ready to go.”

  35

  It was a fucking dream come true.

  A spacewalk, man. Finally, a spacewalk.

  Alan would have preferred that it be in microgravity. That would have been loads more fun, but he’d take it—because it was a spacewalk.

  Since he’d been a little kid, he’d wanted to put on one of those puffy white suits and bounce and drift in space, doing important repairs on spacecraft.

  Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, Yuri Gagarin, and Alan Shepard had been his childhood heroes. He’d pored over every book he could find about them at the library and hidden them from his mother so she couldn’t return them, deaf to her pleas about the late fees he racked up until she gave up and paid the library to replace them.