by C. Gockel
James let his avatar roll its eyes. “Oh, I’ll survive.” He sighed dramatically. “… Somehow.” There was, of course, plenty to eat, but that was in the real world. Dream Noa was eating all the dream food.
Noa’s avatar beamed at him and at the same time, her malfunctioning apps let a bolt of pure joy cross the ether, and something else. Gratitude. Her avatar began to fade away, but it smiled until the end. And then it was just James, Noa passed out against the corner of the couch, and Carl Sagan. The werfle cautiously slid down James’s arms and curled up in Noa’s lap. Noa didn’t respond, even when the werfle nuzzled her limp left hand with its missing fingers.
On impulse, James took the hand in his. His skin tone was very pale against her own. Noa had never asked him why he didn’t have his melanocytes stimulated. He’d always told people, rather defiantly, that he was a living refutation of “Violent Iceman stereotypes.” He hadn’t thought of that since he’d been with her, and he hadn’t asked her why she hadn’t altered her own pigment, either. The same sense of defiance? Or did her Luddeccean heritage insist that she keep her natural tone? His brows drew together. It could be either or both. Each person was a culture unto themselves. He’d said that once … Before everything, he’d thought it profound enough to mention in an entry into his time capsule.
His free hand trembled. There was something about that memory.
James raised a brow at Carl Sagan. “The nightmares and the sleepwalking put the tremors in perspective,” he said, to lighten his own mood. He absently squeezed Noa's hand and almost believed it.
* * *
It was too bright behind Noa’s eyelids.
She heard James whisper, “It seems to be fine this morning, Carl Sagan.” A warm weight on her stomach squirmed, squeaked, and abruptly wiggled away. Noa’s thoughts were moving slowly, like a magni-freight train just leaving a junction. When had James and Carl Sagan come to her quarters? She blinked rapidly, and instead of seeing the gray ceiling of her cabin, she saw recessed lighting, and warm orangish walls. Her eyes slid to the side and she saw wood flooring. Her breath caught, but then she recognized the place. The Ark had a cafe for showcasing all its local foodstuffs.
But … “How did I get here?” she whispered.
James was sitting on the same sofa as she was, clutching his wrist, his blonde bangs hanging over his eyes. “You were sleepwalking,” he replied.
Noa put her hands to her face. “Nebulas,” she muttered. It had happened before, around the time Timothy had died, but she hadn’t had an episode like that, even in the camps. Her body stilled … But in the camps she hadn’t been alone. She dropped her hands and found James’s blue eyes, intent on hers. Had he been sitting with her all night? She licked her lips; they were suddenly very dry. She needed to say something, but her tongue felt like cotton. She felt James reach to her across the ether and she shifted nervously against the pillows. He had to remember that Ghost might be listening, that the conversation might not be private. She answered anyway.
A ball of light shimmered between their minds. Noa blinked, and the ball bounced a few times. James, still cradling his wrist, said, “You looked like you were having dark thoughts.”
Noa laughed in relief and made the ball bounce back across the ether. He whipped back his head as though it had struck him in the cheek, and then winked at her and tossed it back. It made her warm, as though he’d blown her a kiss. Then her eyes fell to the wrist he was still cradling.
“Are you hurt?” Had she lashed out at him in her nightmare? She’d never been violent in an episode, but plenty of other vets had during a bout of PTSD sleepwalking.
The ball of white winked off. James raised an eyebrow and gazed down at his hand. “No, I’m just …” His head cocked. “Celebrating another day when my augmented parts didn’t strangle me in my sleep.”
Noa huffed at his dark humor. That had been a plot of some Luddeccean dramas when they’d left. She relit the bouncing ball of white light and tossed it back to him. In real life his jaw only shifted, but one of his avatars smiled in her mind. She wanted to reach out and touch him. She almost suggested they leave, go some place more private, even though her stomach was empty and she really needed to eat something, but the door abruptly opened with a whoosh.
Noa swung her feet off the sofa just as Gunny walked in, rumbling, “What do you mean, there’s no alcohol aboard?”
Leaning on 6T9, Eliza, Noa’s thrice centenarian great-great aunt, entered the cafe. “It’s not even noon!” Eliza protested.
Following close behind, Gunny protested, “Well … I mean … for later!”
From across the room, Noa heard 6T9’s voice as though far off. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight …” And then there was a swish as the door opened again and Oliver, Manuel’s son, toddled in, the engineer right behind him. “Good morning, Commander,” said Manuel.
“Everyone,” Eliza declared, “6T9 is a fantastic cook. We still have some fresh dairy in the cafe. He’ll cook it right up!”
“Nine, ten … a werfle!” 6T9 said.
The door whooshed again, and three of the four engineering students stepped around Manuel.
“Sounds great,” said Manuel, “But before anything I need coffee.” The engineer’s eyes fell on Noa, widened, and then he nodded. “Commander,” he said. His eyes went to James and he put a hand on Oliver’s shoulder, maybe a little too tightly, as though the child were an anchor. To James he almost bowed. “James,” he said, in the same tone you’d say, “Thank you.”
Oblivious to the weightiness of the moment, Oliver pointed at 6T9 and shouted, “Shixty on space shit!”
Manuel’s face reddened, James’s eyebrows shot up, and Noa put a hand to her mouth to hide a grin.
“That is very inappropriate language,” 6T9 responded. “And I am busy counting. One, two, three … four. The werfle has a rat!” 6T9 cried.
Manuel swooped down and picked up Oliver.
Noa twisted and saw Carl Sagan darting under a chair, leaving a smear of red on the floor. “Let him eat it,” said Eliza. “Don’t want to discourage the critter from catching those filthy things.”
There was a sound that sounded suspiciously like the snap of a bone.
A collective “Ewww …” and laughter rose around the room, and for a moment Noa forgot they were parked on a hunk of asteroid. Everything felt normal … happy even. But then a blast over the ship’s klaxons halted all conversation in the cafe.
Noa’s eyes went upward, Gunny’s hand went to his hip, although he wasn’t carrying a firearm, and James leaned forward as though he were about to bolt from his seat.
“Commander,” Ensign Chavez said across the ether. “We have incoming.”
Noa sprang from the sofa. Over the ether, she called out across the general channel to all her crew, “Anything on the distress channels?”
There were several radio channels reserved for emergencies. It was an old-fashioned technology, but it was immune to viruses.
“Nothing,” Chavez said.
Striding toward the door, Noa reached out to her computing specialist. “Ghost—”
“All the emergency frequencies are open, Commander,” Ghost said. “And I’ve checked the external sensors. They’re not signaling us with a flashlight in Morse Code. If we’re not hearing them, it’s because they’re not talking.”
Noa hissed, “Lizzar dung,” and Ghost said, “I would echo that assessment.” Noa winced. She'd thought aloud again. Once in an Earth orbital period was excusable, but more than that ... children and mad scientists thought aloud, not Fleet Commanders. Was it a lingering consequence of having her port jammed with a polyfiber screw?
“Transmit your visual,” Noa commanded Chavez as she headed to the door. “To all of us—Gunny! Manuel!”
Chavez’s view played in Noa’s visual cortex. What she saw wasn’t the Guard, but it made every hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Hovering in the mentalscape was a small ship, ovoid in shape, abou
t as tall and as wide as Noa and twice as long as she was tall. It had two narrow time bands that she estimated couldn’t propel the ship faster than a tenth C. The vessel was also distinguished by eight robotic arms, and two tiny glass windows at the front that looked for all the world like eyes.
“Goddamn ticks!” roared Gunny, over the ethernet and in real life. He’d served in the Six System War, too.
“Armory now!” Noa ordered without looking back.
Oliver wailed, letting Noa know Manuel wasn’t far behind her, and Gunny’s heavy footsteps were impossible to miss. Noa felt the heat of anger rising in her chest, and her hands clenched at her side.
Ghost’s voice tickled over the ether. “Are they part of a mercenary outfit … or alone?” Even when Ghost was only thinking, she could see his lip trembling.
“Unknown,” Noa said. “Chavez, hail them, let them know we’re here and we’re armed.” To Gunny she said, “I haven’t heard of any guerilla outfits in Luddeccean space—have you?”
She could hear the frown in his voice when he said, “No, Commander.”
“They’re out of the trajectory of our cannon,” Bo supplied over the ether.
“But they’re not friendly,” Gunny added, stepping to the back. Manuel followed. Before Noa could touch the control panel, James stepped into the sliding door’s frame and met Noa’s gaze with narrowed eyes. Daring her to order him away, she realized. Manuel released a breath. Gunny shifted on his feet. James didn’t move, or even blink.
A new cold swept through Noa. She almost ordered him away, but focusing on the lift controls, she growled, “Get in.” She jammed her finger at the button she’d pushed just a heartbeat before. He needed to be here—the tick could have up to eight crew aboard—they needed every steady, able hand they had. Noa’s thoughts flashed to drooling Oliver, shy Kara, the hapless engineering students, frail Eliza, and even 6T9. She closed her eyes. She shouldn’t worry about Sixty. He didn’t care if he lived or died. The ‘bot should be here instead of James, but 6T9 was as sharp as a used wad of stim gum, and probably less useful in a fight—stim gum could at least stick to your enemies’ boots.
“They’re coming closer,” Chavez added over the ether. “Carefully like … slow.”
Noa looked to the ceiling, feeling as though the lift was moving slowly, even though her apps told her it wasn’t.
“Looking for a place to attach,” said Manual.
“What are ticks?” said James.
It was such an obvious question, that there was a brief mental silence. Manuel whistled. “You are a civilian, Professor.”
Noa looked sharply at the engineer; he was staring at James. It struck her that she wasn’t the only one who sometimes tripped over James’s professor status. His academic profession ran headlong into his impressive skills in combat.
The elevator stopped. Striding over to the locker that served as an armory, she said, “Ticks are small shuttles designed for asteroid mining.”
“Sounds harmless enough,” said James.
“They’re the slime of blue-green algae,” Noa hissed, Manuel’s face went red, and Gunny spat.
James’s eyes shifted between Gunny, the lieutenant, and herself. “... but obviously there is something I’m missing.”
Gunny growled, pulled a rifle out of the locker, and then put it back, scowling. “Blasted ticks can be outfitted pretty rough—small cannons—and they can go almost anywhere and hide. They’ve got tubing adherers on them, on account that they are often used to scavenge and need to be able to dock with about anything. They always have laser cutters, so they can dock with anything.” The sergeant pulled a stunner out of the cabinet instead of the rifle.
“They’re going to cut a hole in our hull?” James said, reaching for a rifle.
Noa narrowed her eyes. “Not if I can help it.”
“Use a stunner, not a phaser weapon,” Gunny said to James. “We don’t want to blow a hole ourselves.”
“Chavez … still no response?” Noa asked over the ethernet.
“No response,” the ensign responded.
“Commander,” Ghost’s voice cut across the shared channel. “They’re not close enough to the ship to share our ethernet yet—but they will be soon. I’m still new to the Ark’s very antiquated systems … even a small computer like one on a tick might be able to pick this ship’s brain. We need a cipher. May I suggest we all download the Trials and Tribulations of Jonathan Primp? It’s part of the onboard library and dense enough.” There was a touch of acid humor in the man’s thoughts. Jonathan Primp was one of the original founders of the Luddeccean movement—his autobiography would be long enough to have a fair selection of vocabulary. “Good choice, Ghost. Download, gentlemen,” Noa said, doing the same.
“Cipher?” said James.
“Circling, but getting very close, Commander!” Chavez said, projecting the location of the tick.
Manuel blinked a few times. “Downloaded.” To James he said, “We use an app that matches our thoughts to the words in the text, and then codes those words to number sequences based on their location. Then we transmit the number sequences across the ether.”
“Close enough to be in ethernet range! Switch to cipher, now!” Ghost said.
“Starting at the copyright or first chapter?” James asked aloud.
“You don’t have the app,” Manuel said over Gunny and Noa’s heads. “Just pay attention to verbal commands.”
Noa’s heart lifted. James didn’t have a cipher app—more reason for him to stay back and cover them. Noa turned to Gunny, pretending not to notice James’s jaw ticking side to side and his brow furrowing. She spoke aloud as her app digested the new cipher material. “I expect they’ll try to drill into an airlock.”
Gunny grimaced. “If they want to keep the ship in one piece.”
In the periphery of her vision, she saw James’s lips part, as though he were about to speak, but Chavez’s thoughts filtered through the ether as only numbers. Noa fed them into her app, and it neatly translated the numbers into the ensign’s voice. “Commander, I think they’re going to attach to Airlock 5.”
Noa took a breath and answered through the cipher. “Seal the inner door and open the outer door of that airlock, Chavez, soon as their plastitube adherer is down.”
“Commander?”
Noa’s mind whirred, working so fast her mouth could barely keep up as she prowled to the lift. “Do it, Chavez … but turn off all the lights inside the airlock.” She turned to Gunny and spoke over the cipher. “What sort of equipment will they have, Gunny?”
There was a barely discernable delay in Gunny’s reply as he strung his words together through the app. “Stunner rifles if they’re scavengers, plasma or projectiles if they’re mercs.” Gunny frowned as they stepped into the lift. “They’ll have night vision goggles on if they’re not augmented—the guys work half the time in the dark.”
Noa was a pilot; her experience in ground combat was limited. “How fast do they adjust to sudden brightness changes?” she asked. “Are the commercial things slow to adjust like the ones we trained with in Basic?”
“They rarely have the latest gear … so yeah,” Gunny drawled.
Noa jammed her hand into the lift controls and opened the door. “Manuel, go get me your biggest, brightest spotlight from engineering—if it’s got an autoswitch, all the better.”
Manuel didn’t ask questions, just nodded, and bolted out the door. Just before the doors slid closed, she saw him slipping into the hatch to the ladder that accessed all decks.
“Chavez?” Noa said, resuming the lift’s path to the deck of Airlock 5.
“They’re descending their tube now, Commander.”
Hitting the elevator halt button, she whispered. “Silence, they may be able to hear us from here on out.” She switched to the cipher and ether. “We’ll put the light in the hallway just outside the airlock. It will buy us a few seconds.”
“Only a few,” Gunny replied. “It will st
ill be close. I wish we had more men, or another surprise, or—”
Noa’s cipher picked up a string of numbers … her eyes widened. They were from James, and her cipher app translated them neatly into his voice. “I have an idea for a surprise.”
Gunny’s eyebrows shot up. “You sure you’re not Fleet?”
Over the cipher he replied, “I used a similar program to reference obscure words in ancient texts. Simple enough to modify on the fly.” His eyes stayed level on Noa’s.
“Spill the idea,” Gunny said.
Noa forced her body to stay ramrod straight and her eyes not to look away. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like his idea at all.
* * *
James’s back was pressed against the ceiling, his hands and feet braced against the walls of the narrow hallway just outside Airlock 5. All the hallway lights were off. The door to the airlock in the direction of his feet was still closed; he could barely hear the crew members of the tick on the other side.
He raised his head, as much as he could, and looked up the hall to the lift. Noa had a spotlight just inside. For the moment, the spotlight was off. The lift’s lights were on and, as usual, he had difficulty with the differences in brightness, but he could make out Noa’s silhouette, shimmering, as though he was looking at her through waves of heat.
“You’re alright, James?” Gunny asked, his words encrypted in the ether.
James’s muscles were straining, he had a barely perceptible shudder in his left arm, he couldn’t see well, and he couldn’t hear his enemies well enough to even judge how many there were. Instead of saying that, he said, “This heathen is fine,” using the religious language of the selected cipher, trying to make Noa laugh.
He got a soft huff from Gunny, but Noa’s silhouette gave him an incremental nod. She had argued against James’s plan, saying that it would put him in the line of fire. She’d relented when Gunny had pointed out that it was imperative that none of the invaders got back to their tick and, anyway, since they were only using stunners, James wouldn’t be seriously hurt … at least not by the Ark team.
