by Joseph Rhea
The thought of his father’s words made him shake his head again to dislodge the memories. The past was gone, no longer of any importance or usefulness to him. All that mattered now was finishing this one job. Then he could go back, pay a few past-due bills, and maybe even sleep with both eyes closed again, without fear of ending up in another dark alley with no way out—at least for a while.
“I must admit that you have a rather nice ship, Mr. Stone,” Nia said, startling him. She was standing right beside him. “I’ve never been on a bridge like this, and I can see why your former captain loved it so much.”
“Do you need anything from me?” he asked, feeling his anxiety level jump.
“I don’t think so. We’re on course, and Ash tells me the ETA to our pick-up coordinates is just under twenty hours.”
“Then I’ll be in my quarters,” he said as he turned and headed back down the stairs, relieved to be off the bridge. She said something back, but a loud noise down in the galley drowned her out. When he reached the B-deck, he saw the engineer, Raines, picking up a large pot from the floor and placing it on the counter.
“I hope you don’t mind,” the older man said. “I didn’t know how stocked your galley was, so I brought along a few things of my own.”
Jake scowled at the sight of the primitive-looking pots on the counter. “This isn’t a garbage hauler. We have two working food processors.” He pointed to the cylindrical devices on both sides of the galley.
Raines smiled and caressed the pot he was holding as if it were his child. “I prefer to cook things myself when I can.”
“Nia said you were an engineer.”
“Like most of us, I can do more than one job,” Raines replied. Jake just shook his head and continued down to the C-deck. “Breakfast at oh six hundred,” Raines called to the empty space behind him.
As Jake reached the bottom step, he saw the Range brothers coming out of the diver’s room to his right. “Find everything okay?” he asked.
“Why isn’t your hyperbaric chamber attached to your dive locker?” the older of the two brothers asked.
Jake rubbed his forehead. “It’s on the starboard side, connected to med bay.”
“That’s unacceptable,” said the younger one.
Jake sighed and continued aft. “I didn’t design the damn ship.”
“Since you don’t have a medic on board, you need to show us how to operate it,” the older one replied.
Jake ignored them as he passed through the rear door and entered the deck crew area. When the door slid shut behind him, he breathed a sigh of relief. He was still slightly drunk, his face and body ached, and he was just plain exhausted. All he could think about was a few hours of uninterrupted sleep in his quarters. Maybe afterward, he would feel like talking to these annoying people. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t.
From the central doorway, his room was around the corner to his left and then last room on the left. He was about to go in when he noticed the “active” light on the recreation room control panel on the far wall. “Drown it,” he cursed as he turned and entered the airlock door opposite from his room.
When the air finished cycling, he opened the rec room’s inner door, and there she was, standing in a jungle clearing, staring up at the huge waterfall she had helped design. Her back was to him, as it always was, and her long blonde hair was wet from the spray. She was wearing the kind of small, barely-there black swimsuit that she never would have worn in real life.
He had been running the simulation a few weeks earlier, adding the bikini and a few other details, when the ship’s batteries had finally given out. The utility fog that made her move had lost power, leaving both her and the waterfall frozen in time. Now that the power was back on, she was alive once again.
Stacy looked so real that he wanted to run over and touch her, caress her warm skin, and let her tell him that everything was okay, the way she used to. Instead, he yelled, “Program off.” And the whole scene broke apart and began swirling around him in a semi-transparent mist. He looked away from her while this was happening, as he always did, preserving the illusion that she was real. He waited until the utility-fog particles finished unlinking themselves and returned to the storage units in the corners of the now-plain-white and empty room.
When the all-clear chime sounded, he exited through the lockout and went to his room, then collapsed facedown on his bunk. The events of the day, coupled with the discussions of his former captain, topped off with seeing a recreation of his dead girlfriend, suddenly caught up with him, and he fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter 03
Jake woke in a panic, his heart pounding. He sat up in bed and tried to calm his breathing and slow his heart rate. He looked around his room and noticed that it was substantially smaller than he remembered, and for a moment, he wondered if the ship was sinking and maybe the walls were about to implode from the outside pressure. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. When he opened them, the room looked more or less normal again. “You’re a mess!” he said to the empty room.
Six months had passed since the accident, and he was still having the same nightmare every night—Stacy’s beautiful face looking up at him as she fell into an infinite darkness. It was all he remembered from that horrible night. The doctor who examined him afterward called it a “repressed memory,” and maybe that was a good thing. That was why he programmed the rec room simulation of her to face away from him. Deep down, he knew that if he ever looked directly into her eyes, it would somehow force all of those lost memories to come flooding back. That was something he was sure he wouldn’t survive.
He grabbed his towel from the desk chair, smelled it, then dropped it on the floor and found a cleaner one in a drawer. He stripped off his dirty and somewhat-bloody clothing and headed out of his room and down the short hallway to the head. Halfway there, he remembered that he wasn’t alone on the ship and quickly wrapped the towel around his waist. He sealed and locked the head door and, after relieving himself, raised the toilet back into the wall and turned on the shower.
With the ship’s batteries fully charged for the first time in weeks, the water was piping hot, and it felt incredible. When he was sure that his skin was about to blister from the heat, he turned off the water and let the fans dry him. Then he pulled the sink down and grabbed his tooth scrub, but the face he saw staring back at him in the recessed mirror startled him. The bruising on his face was surprisingly minor, but the biggest shock was just how worn down he looked. His usually close-cropped, brown hair hung in his eyes and he had a three-day growth of beard. “You look like hell for twenty-five,” he said as he grabbed his diver’s knife from the cabinet and began to scrape the stubble off his face.
When he finished, he remembered to cover himself before walking back to his room to put on clean clothes. His stomach gurgled loudly when he pulled on a clean shirt, which reminded him that the engineer-cook had told him that breakfast was going to be at 06:00. He glanced at the clock on the wall, but it said 21:30, which didn’t make any sense. It couldn’t still be evening; he felt far too rested.
He touched the screen above his desk, and it came to life, showing the ship’s status as well as the date and time. The date looked wrong, and he was just about to question his own sanity when there was a knock at his door. He finished dressing and then slid the door open to find Vee standing there. She had a polite smile on her face but she looked nervous.
“Nia asked me to wake you, or more precisely, to see if you were still alive.”
“What’s up?” he asked. She looked even better than she had the last time he’d seen her, but still, she was off limits.
“We’re almost there. Nia said you might like to know.” She tried to peek around him, but he remembered the clothing all over the floor and moved his body in front of her.
“Almost there? Your flight plan said you were heading someplace that was twenty hours away.”
“Wow, have you really been asleep all this time? To
be honest, we all thought you were just hiding out in there, although Ash bet us that you had died in your sleep.”
Well, that explained his hunger and the lack of serious bruising on his face. “I’m sorry he lost his bet. How soon till we dock?”
She looked away for a split second. That told him she had been instructed to keep something from him. “We won’t exactly be docking, but we’ll be in visual range in about thirty minutes.” She started to walk away, but then stopped and narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that blood on your neck?”
Damn knife, he cursed to himself. “It’s nothing,” he said aloud as he tried to wipe it off. She shrugged and then headed back down the hallway. After she disappeared around the corner, he stood there for a few seconds, trying to align his brain to the fact that twenty hours had passed while he’d slept. Then his stomach rumbled again, and he decided it was time to make it stop.
When he climbed the stairs to B-deck, the two brothers he had met earlier were just getting up from the table in the dining area on his left. “Good evening, Captain,” they said in unison. “Sorry for being so abrupt yesterday,” the older one said. “We were hired for this job just a few hours before leaving, and—”
“I’m not the captain,” Jake interrupted as he turned to his right and grabbed a plate and utensils from the galley counter. “Your boss is acting captain for the duration of this trip. I’m just along for the ride.” He loaded up his plate with something that looked like stew from a large pot on the warmer, and then walked past the two men to sit at the table. He didn’t look up when they headed back down the stairs without another word.
He was just about to start eating when he saw someone with short dark hair sitting on the bridge stairwell that separated the dining area from the galley. It was the young acoustics girl, Jessie, and she was staring right at him. When he looked down at his food, she said, “You’re sort of a freak, aren’t you?”
He stared at his food for a moment and then answered honestly. “Maybe a little.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “You’ll fit right in with us.”
When he glanced back at the stairwell, she was gone. He looked down at his bowl and was about to take a bite when he noticed the smell—subtle hints of sage and rosemary, smells of his childhood that he had almost forgotten. He took a cautious first bite and was almost overwhelmed by the flavor. Months of living on protein paste and veggie crackers had almost made him forget what real food tasted like. He downed the rest of the bowl and went back for seconds.
“Nothing like a good workout to make you feel young again,” Raines said as he rose from the C-deck stairwell. He had a towel draped over his shoulders, his hair was wet, and he was holding what looked like a cold pack from med bay over one eye. When he removed it to grab a plate, Jake saw that he had a black eye.
“Hope the other guy looks worse,” he said. It was a saying his father used. Something about the old man triggered those memories.
Raines laughed. “Well, since the ‘other guy’ was a sixth-degree black belt in a long-forgotten form of martial arts, I would bet a dozen credits that he looks far better.”
He guessed it was Juno, or maybe even Ash, but then he thought of the “long-forgotten” part of that sentence and realized it had to be a rec room simulation. “You know, you can adjust the parameters so that you don’t get hurt in there.”
Raines put the cold pack on the counter. “That wouldn’t be much of a challenge, would it?” He glanced over at Jake and then asked, “Like something to drink with that?”
He nodded as he swallowed another bite of food. Raines poured something from a silver canteen into a mug and handed it to him. The mug was warm, and Jake was about to say that he preferred something cold when he looked inside and saw the brown, slightly oily liquid. “Is this what I think it is?” he asked.
Raines nodded, and Jake took a cautious sip. The bitter flavor brought him back to his childhood. His father used to drink coffee and would sometimes let Jake pour it for him. Occasionally, he would sneak a sip. That was just before the embargo on all non-essential food crops. He looked over at Raines, who was sitting on the far end of the table, drying his hair. “You know this stuff’s been illegal for most of my life.”
Raines put the towel back around his neck. “So are half the herbs in your dinner. Locating banned food sources is one of my specialties.”
“Who would even risk growing these things anymore?” he asked after taking another sip.
Raines looked at him coldly. “Someone has to grow it for the Council members.”
Jake froze. Eating a few banned substances was one thing, but implying that the colony leaders were actively breaking their own laws was a punishable offense. He stood up, dropped his plate and still half-full cup into the recycler, and then headed up to the bridge without another word.
Chapter 04
Jake reached the top step before he realized what he was doing. He froze there, waiting for another anxiety attack to overwhelm him, but it didn’t occur. Maybe facing his fear of the bridge the previous night had made it possible for him to function like a normal person that day. Whatever the reason, he was relieved no one else had noticed.
Most of the bridge stations were occupied. Juno was at the bow command station and Vee and Ash were right behind her at helm and navigation. Jessie sat at the rear-facing acoustics console to his right. Raines’s engineering console to his left was empty. Nia was standing where Captain Coal often did, just forward of the central chart table. From there, she could see all bridge stations and direct, or just observe, all operations.
Jake looked down at the dark-gray sphere being displayed on the chart table. At first glance, it looked like every other border outpost, but then he noticed the scale was all wrong. It was actually a much larger structure—nearly as large as some of the minor city domes—and whereas most outposts had numerous dock openings along the lower hemisphere, this one had a single opening on the side facing them. This was not the place listed on Nia’s flight plan.
“Where the hell are we?” he asked.
Ash glanced at his dash and called back, “Two eight five, mark nine five zero.”
Location within the two-thousand-kilometer-wide, circular boundary of Civica was given in terms of bearing and range from the center, which was Capitol City. Therefore, they were two hundred eighty degrees and nine hundred and fifty kilometers from home, which put them near the northwestern border. He did a quick calculation in his head and then looked up at Nia. “We’re on the other side of the Rift!”
The Rift was a fourteen-hundred-kilometer-long, deep gash in the sea floor that split the far western side of the colony in half. It had incredibly strong and unpredictable downward currents that prevented all but the strongest and fastest ships from crossing. It was also where he had lost his girlfriend six months back.
“We crossed the Rift at its northernmost point,” Ash continued. “Of course, we had to go bubbly to make it here in twenty hours, so we used a bit more of your air than expected, but we’re still nominal on reserves.”
“Going bubbly” was a nickname for supercavitation travel, where you pumped air out of a few million small holes on the hull, which reduced friction and allowed the ship to slide through water like a bullet through air. Even a cargo slug like the Wave could double its normal top speed this way. Jake walked forward and stood right beside Nia. “I honestly don’t care what your reasons are for lying on your flight plan,” he whispered, “but you should have told me you were planning a crossing.”
“I didn’t want to wake you,” Nia said. Before Jake could think of a reply, she turned toward the first mate and said, “Take us inside, AJ.”
“Copy that,” Juno replied. “Tell me what you see, Jessie.”
Jake glanced back at Jessie sitting in the acoustics console. She had her headphones on, and her eyes were closed. She seemed to be concentrating hard.
“I’m getting a straight tunnel, about four hundred and fifty meters de
ep, then a narrow ninety-degree shaft running straight up.” She paused as she adjusted something on her console. “I’m trying to bounce a signal off the inside and see what’s up there, but I think it’s clear and wide enough for this ship.” She tweaked another control. “Also, I see no other vessels in the area. At least nothing metallic or moving, so I think we’re alone.”
She’s good, Jake thought. The acoustics tech that Coal had used couldn’t have gotten any of that information from this distance, and he’d been a ten-year veteran.
“That’s what we want,” Juno said. “Let’s do this, Vee.”
They slowed as they approached the opening, and he saw Vee’s hands sliding over her console, adjusting the two main thrusters and moving the two battery sleds down in D-deck forward and back to alter their pitch, as though she had spent her entire career on the Wave.
They entered the opening slowly, and when the usual navigation markers didn’t appear, Ash switched on the Wave’s exterior lights.
“Looks like no one’s home,” Raines said from behind him. Jake glanced back and saw him standing next to his engineering station, a large steaming cup in his hand.
They reached what looked like the end of the tunnel, and Vee reversed the thrusters, bringing the Wave to a complete stop. “Straight up from here?” she asked.
“Looks like a maze up there,” Jessie said from the back. “I’m seeing at least six sharp turns, plus a number of dead ends. I’ll know more once we get inside.”
“All right, just guide me through, Jessie,” Vee said, “One turn at a time.”
Jessie called out distances and maneuvers while Vee piloted the Wave through the underwater maze. In some places, there appeared to be less than a meter clearance on all sides, but somehow, they made it through undamaged.
