Aces

by Alanson, Craig

  Kaylee splashed water on her face, checked her fingernails, and paused, her hand on the door handle, taking a deep breath. Her mother was no doubt waiting outside, preparing some lame speech that Kaylee would have to listen to. No, she thought to herself. If I have to go to Valhalla, I’m doing it my way.

  She opened the door, and as her mother was about to speak, Kaylee interjected “Whew! I feel better now, I needed that. Manny knows how to push my buttons, that little creep.” She clapped her hands, and looked around the room. “Do you want me to pack this stuff?”

  Joy was surprised, having been ready for another argument. “Sure, I’ll take this out to the car. Thank you.”

  “Sure, Mom.” Kaylee said with a toss of her hair, as she knelt on the floor to load clothing into a suitcase.

  Rick got his heavy load of luggage loaded into the van, and waited while Manny dragged his sister’s biggest suitcase out the door, bumping it on every step down the front walk. Manny was doing his best, the suitcase was tough anyway, and a few scratches wouldn’t hurt.

  It was amazing how much Manny looked like pictures of his father at the same age. Same dark hair, brown eyes, an arc of freckles across his nose and under his eyes. Not so amazing really, considering that, when Manny’s DNA had been tweaked to eliminate both Rick’s family tendency for diabetes and Joy’s family tendency for heart disease, Rick and Joy had agreed to select dark hair and brown eyes also. That wasn’t anything unusual, or illegal, since both traits were in Rick’s baseline DNA. And, truthfully, Rick liked seeing a strong family resemblance in his son. Kaylee looked like Joy, Scandinavian heritage, Kaylee’s hair was just a shade darker blonde than her mother’s, and slightly curly. He glanced at himself in the van’s window, seeing the dwindling effects of the minor sunburn he had acquired by working on an archeological dig in the Libyan desert. The dig had been nothing important, and he had made no significant discoveries, barely enough to get a paper published. The dig, had, however, let him add one more line to the ‘field work experience’ writeup on the grant application form. True xenoarcheologists, those who specialized in alien ruins, got their hands dirty, they didn’t work in labs back on Earth. During Rick’s one offworld trip to the planet Sahara, in graduate school, he had been an observer only. In truth, he had been a gofer for the real archeologists, and he had spent much of his time keeping the balky life support system of their encampment going. The alien ruins on Valhalla, while less extensive than those on Avalon, or Sahara, appeared to be older, and to have been occupied longer. Rick could hardly wait to get there, explore alien ruins that no human had ever seen. That no sentient being had seen in uncounted years.

  “Here, Dad.” Manny dragged the suitcase behind the van. “Think it will fit? I don’t know what Kaylee has in here, it weighs a ton.”

  “Manny,” Rick answered as he hefted the suitcase and made room for it in the back of the van, “I don’t know what’s in here, and I don’t want to know. It’s women’s things. Probably full of shoes. Do you have all your stuff packed?”

  “Yup, Mom helped me. I’ll go get it.”

  “We’ll both get it.” Rick reached down and tousled his son’s hair. “Thanks for helping me, that suitcase was really heavy.”

  “Somebody has to help,” Manny said smugly, “we can’t all hide in the bathroom.”

  Rick saw an opening for a father-son talk. “Manny, Kaylee is upset because we’re leaving Earth, leaving everything she’s ever known. I think Valhalla will be a great adventure-“

  ”Me too, Dad!” Manny exclaimed with boyish enthusiasm.

  “-but it will take some getting used to. Including the trips out and back, we will be away from Earth almost six years. That can be tough. I don’t know how I would feel at her age, at your age. I’m glad that you want to go to Valhalla, and I need you to help me with something.”

  “What?”

  “I need you to not pick on your sister. It’s going to take her a while to get adjusted to this, and I’m depending on you to not make it worse. Deal?”

  Manny shrugged. Kaylee was a pain, two years older, she acted like she was an adult and Manny was still a baby crawling on the floor. “Okay, Dad. Unless she picks on me first.”

  Rick sighed. This could be a long trip. As they walked up the steps, Joy came out, suitcase in each hand. Manny rushed forward to take one from her, she swung the lighter one out for him to grab. Rick raised an eyebrow, Joy answered him. “Kaylee’s fine, she’s packing the rest of her things.”

  “Good. And Manny and I had a talk, right, Tiger?”

  “I guess so.” Manny said reluctantly, trying to commit to as little as he could get away with.

  Somehow, they got everything into the van. The children were inside, seat belts buckled, listening to music or playing video games, on their best behavior for the moment. Rick looked at all the junk crammed inside the rear of the van, as he reached for the hatch to close it. “That’s it. I hope we don’t exceed our weight limit for the shuttle.” He closed the hatch.

  “Honey, relax. All this doesn’t weigh much, I checked.” Joy responded.

  “You ready?” Rick caressed her upper arm.

  “I suppose. Yes. Yes, I’m ready.” Their house had already been sold, Joy’s parents were coming over in a few days to make sure the moving and cleaning crews had done their jobs, and to hand over the keys to the new owners. The last of their furniture, including the beds, was going into storage. Joy had been tempted to sell everything, but knew that would signal to both sets of grandparents that the Sanchez family did not intend to ever return to Earth. The monthly cost for the storage place in the Nevada desert was well worth the money, if it kept peace in the family a while longer.

  Joy blinked a sudden tear out of her eye. “I’m going to miss this place.” It wasn’t much, a cramped, uninspiring three bedroom house, attached on one side to another house. Still, it had been home, and they owned it. Theirs. Rick had repainted it, and added a small porch on the front. Joy had added flowerboxes under the windows, and landscaped the small front yard. “Our first home, as a family.”

  “Me too.” Rick said softly. He pulled his wife close and kissed her. “Do you know how lucky I am, to have found a woman who shares my dreams?”

  “We are both lucky that we share the same dreams. I want this as much as you do. Remember, I’m an exobiologist. As in, biology on places other than Earth.” Joy, like Rick, had some minor offworld field experience in her profession, she had made a trip to Avalon while in grad school. She realized now, while standing in the driveway of their house in L.A., that trip to Avalon had made her decide she was moving off Earth at some point. It had been in the back of her mind all these years, now it was really happening. Rick shared her desire to be a pioneer, and Manny thought of Valhalla as way cool, in part because it was one place none of his friends or classmates had been to yet. Kaylee? Kaylee would adjust. She had adjusted to the move from Chicago, where Joy and Rick had met while finishing their graduate work.

  Rick glanced at his watch. “We need to get going, or we really will be late.”

  “Honey, we have plenty of time.”

  “Not late for the shuttle, late to meet your parents. And mine.” Both sets of grandparents were going to be at the spaceport to have lunch and see them off.

  They got into the van, Rick programmed in their destination, and they were halfway down the driveway, when he slammed on the brakes. “Damn! I almost forgot Professor Radke’s package.” He flung the van’s door open, and ran into the house, returning less than a minute later with a black metal box the size of a toaster, which he sat on his wife’s lap.

  “Honey, what is this? I’ve never seen it before.” She asked skeptically.

  “It’s been in the attic, over our bedroom closet. I really don’t know what it is, probably some sort of alien artifact. When Radke heard last month that I was going to Valhalla, he got all excited, and said he wanted me to deliver this to some woman named Chaudry on Valhalla. He didn’t s
ay why, but I got the impression he wanted this Chaudry’s opinion or something.”

  “Isn’t that odd? Why didn’t he just transmit a holo image? The message would get there in a couple weeks.”

  Rick shrugged and backed the van out into the street. “You know Radke, he’s an odd duck. And he’s sure not going to confide in me.” Professor Radke was one of the leaders in the small world of xenoarcheology, with an ego to match.

  Joy held the box up, and ran her finger along the seal. “Honey, this is weird. I’m not comfortable taking this box with us, if we don’t know what’s in it. Why the mystery?”

  “I don’t think it’s a mystery. Radke didn’t tell me what it is, and I didn’t ask.” Radke’s support had been critical to Rick getting a grant to dig in the ruins on Valhalla; Rick wasn’t going to irritate his sponsor by asking questions. Most young exoarcheologists would be thrilled to have the famous professor Radke ask them for a favor! “I assume it’s an alien artifact of some kind; Radke’s most recent work was on Ellios, so it’s probably something from there.”

  “Okaaaaay-“

  Which, Rick knew, meant it was definitely not OK with Joy. “Uh, then, uh, how about when we get to Vandenberg, I can turn it over to the transport company, they’ll be responsible for it. That shouldn’t cost much.”

  Joy considered for a moment, then set the box down next to her feet. “All right. I’m not happy about this, but it’s too late now.”

  Rick took the opportunity to back the van out of the driveway, before his wife could change her mind. “This is it, kids, wave goodbye to the old house!”

  CHAPTER 2

  The asteroid field was a dangerous place, cluttered with spinning rocks, rocks which were all swirling around the star in slightly different orbits. The big rocks affected the orbits of the other rocks, rocks collided and went flying off in new, unpredictable directions, often to collide with another rock. It was a bad neighborhood.

  Into the outskirts of the neighborhood, moving cautiously, came a new object, a small ship. The ship had dropped out of hyperspace far away from the asteroid field, and fallen silent, waiting. Waiting, and listening for other ships, specifically, listening for Navy patrol ships. When the ship’s crew was certain their little ship was alone, the ship moved in toward the asteroids, looking for an area that was relatively stable. Twice, it backed off rapidly when radar indicated rocks would come uncomfortably close. On the third try, it moved in close, and remained. On its side, a cargo bay door slid open, a square of light standing out in the darkness. A pair of figures wearing environmental suits could be seen inside, working with a bulky object, moving quickly, efficiently. They attached something to the bulky object, carried it to the doorway, and launched it away with a gentle push.

  The door then closed, the ship backed away slowly, using only thrusters, leaving the object hanging in space, spinning ever so slowly against the background of stars and floating rocks. At a signal from the ship, a light activated aboard the thing attached to the bulky object. The thing puffed twice, and stopped the object’s spin. The thing was a remote-controlled thruster unit, the bulky object it attached to was a hyperwave antenna with built-in powerpack. The thruster unit then went into sleep mode, it would awake only if its radar detected a rock approaching, if that happened, the thruster would move the antenna assembly out of the way.

  The antenna was also sleeping, its timer ticking down to when it would come to life, and send a single brief message. After completing its useful life, the antenna would instruct the thruster to find a nearby rock, and smash the antenna into it as hard as it could.

  Satisfied, the crew turned their small ship around and fired its main engines, leaving the asteroid field behind as rapidly as possible. It would be several hours before space around the ship was clear enough for a hyperspace Jump, and they were on a tight schedule, a very tight schedule. The mission had been thrown together on short notice. Putting all the pieces together, including acquiring the ship, had been a mad scramble for the people aboard. There was still much work to do, and lightyears to travel, before their plan could be put into action.

  Transport starship Atlas Challenger

  The parents' plan worked, for a while. What Rick and Joy most wanted out of the long voyage was for Kaylee and Manny to avoid being bored, and driving themselves, and their parents, crazy. The spaceplane ride up from Earth, the massive freighter starship boosting out of Earth orbit and jumping into hyperspace, and the trip to their first stop at the planet Avalon, were all new and interesting enough that the children were not bored at all. It helped that there were two things aboard the ship which occupied much of the children's time and attention. The first was other young people; the passenger cabins, on the way to Avalon, were full. Mostly families, with children, of which more than a dozen were roughly the same age as the Sanchez children. Kaylee noted, to her father's dismay, that there were several cute boys aboard the ship.

  The second thing which kept the children occupied, and also was a good place to meet cute boys, was the Beach. The Beach was a large swimming pool, located just aft of the passenger cabins, which contained part of the ship’s water supply, used for drinking, bathing, and reaction mass for the normal-space engines. The ship’s designers had enhanced the water tank into an inviting environment that passengers and crew enjoyed. There was a beach area, with real sand and fake palm trees, a bright blue holographic sky overhead, a gentle slope down into the water, and waves pumped out at the far end of the water tank. After a while, you could almost forget it was all fake.

  Kaylee and Manny quickly found companions for non-schooltime activities. Their favorite activity was hanging out at the Beach, every chance they could. That compartment was kept warmer than the rest of the ship, a fact which caused considerable dispute between Kaylee and her parents. The boring one-piece bathing suit Rick wanted his daughter to wear at the Beach was totally unacceptable, unless her parents wanted her to be a complete social outcast. It was a little girl’s bathing suit, didn’t they understand that she was a teenager now? The bikini she wanted to wear was unacceptable to Rick, which only confirmed to his daughter that he was so old, and so out of touch, that he couldn’t possibly have ever been her age. Rick was shocked to see that his daughter even owned such a bikini, he remembered what seemed like a very short time ago when she was so self-conscious, that she always wrapped herself in a robe, or a towel, at the beaches in California. A compromise was reached. Joy and Kaylee picked out an alternate two-piece bathing suit from the ship’s limited stores, a swimsuit that was pretty enough for daughter to wear, and contained enough material for father to grudgingly agree to.

  The Beach provided Kaylee with an education, an experience she didn’t enjoy. Kaylee had assumed, that, being from Earth, from California, from Los Angeles, she was automatically lightyears more cool and sophisticated that the others, who were all offworld hicks on their way to an offworld planet. She was wrong. Out in the colony worlds, Earth was viewed as a source of boring government regulations and taxes, certainly not the source of anything remotely cool. In fact, Earth was considered somewhat of a cultural backwater. Kaylee was confronted with this fact when she realized that the popular singing and video stars she knew of in L.A. were mostly unknown to the others, whereas she’d heard of most of the stars the offworlders were talking about. To her shock, Kaylee realized that, to the others, she was the unsophisticated hick. One girl, whom Kaylee had thought of as a potential friend, but who quickly turned out to be snooty, and a rival for the attentions of the cuter boys, told Kaylee one day, in a condescending tone “Oh, Kaylee, dear, everybody knows that Earth is lame.”

  Kaylee, miserable, started to avoid the Beach after that.

  At Avalon, since the ship was going to be in orbit there for eight days, the Sanchez parents dipped into their savings, and splurged on a six day excursion to the surface. It was a whirlwind tour which left Rick and Joy exhausted. Sister and brother thoroughly enjoyed themselves. After Avalon, where mos
t passengers had left the ship, all the other children were gone. The only other passengers were an elderly couple, headed for retirement on Oceania, the ship’s second stop.

  “But why? Why can’t we go? We won’t cause any trouble, I swear!” Manny protested, for the umpteenth time.

  “Manny-“ His father started to say, before Captain Schroeder interrupted.

  Schroeder was gruff, no-nonsense, had been in command of the Atlas Challenger for nine years now, and the only thing he disliked more than passengers, was children passengers. He liked order, and discipline, and for things to be predictable and dependable. Universal Transport Corporation trusted him with their giant, expensive space freighter because he embodied those characteristics himself; and children were the opposite. With his short black hair, steely light-blue eyes and goatee, he looked stern and uncompromising, and his outer appearance was a true picture of the man inside, at least, the part of himself he let the world see. “No passengers on the shuttle. Our insurance doesn’t allow it.” He said, in a tone which implied the matter was closed.

  Rick quickly added “Manny, the ship’s shuttle isn’t even going to the surface. It’s just going across to the space station over there. Local spaceplanes bring the cargo up and down from there. We’re only stopping here for a day, at the most. Right, Captain Schroeder?”

  “Quite so. Now, you will excuse me, I have much work to do.” The captain strode off down the corridor.

  “I don’t like him.” Manny said with a frown. “He’s mean.”

  Rick shook his head. “No, Captain Schroeder is simply very, very busy. He is responsible for this whole ship, and all the cargo, and all the people. Starships are expensive, Manny, the people who own this ship would be unhappy if anything went wrong. They trust Captain Schroeder to make sure nothing bad happens. And to keep us on schedule.”