by J. S. Morin
Eternity or Bust
Mission 16 of the Black Ocean Series
J.S. Morin
Eternity or Bust
Mission 16 of: Black Ocean
Copyright © 2017 Magical Scrivener Press
A pale blue sun hung in a black, star-speckled sky. It moved visibly as the tumbling planetoid rolled through its five-year orbit. A day there lasted just over two hours, short enough that there was never a thought of adapting to its rhythms. For no natural reason, the planetoid had gravity that felt just like Earth’s and an atmosphere that cleared the lungs. The perfect mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide was also filled with the sound of guitar music.
Carl strummed the chords at half tempo—D-chord, A, G, D, A, E-minor. He tapped his foot in time with the chill beat. He was seated on a crate that had never been packed away inside the old mining headquarters a tenth of a kilometer away, which now belonged to him.
This wasn’t the asteroid belt he’d won playing poker in orbit of New Garrelon. That place had changed hands the next day as Carl ran through a series of celestial real estate transactions that divorced him completely from the events of that felt table. A man with Don Rucker’s connections might have a shot at tracking down the owner of this asteroid—and Carl had to admit, this was little more than a self-important asteroid amid a field of mined-out rocks—but no casually curious criminal would stand a chance.
He’d named it Pleasant Valley.
“Huh,” Roddy grunted as he ambled through grass just tall enough to cover his toes, making his way over to Carl’s perch. “Coulda sworn you were on playback at half speed. Don’t tell me you’re actually learning to play that thing.”
Carl stilled the ring of the nickel strings with his fretting hand. “If I sold this guitar, I could buy another island in the stars like this one. Seemed kind of disrespectful to play it without knowing how.” He bumped a datapad with his foot. Lying in the grass, screen lit, it was showing the proper playing technique. “Figured it was time I took some omni lessons. That was—”
“‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,’” Roddy finished for him. “Yeah. Believe it or not, I could tell. Dylan’s not your usual speed.”
“Got stuck in my head at the poker game. Hard thinking up bullshit poetry when your life is summed up in rock. Dylan’s more poet than songwriter. Born a century earlier, he wouldn’t have bothered with music.”
“Well, you’re improving,” Roddy said, dragging over a crate and taking a seat beside Carl. “Back in my gig days, if I’d had you show up from a replacement service when my rhythm guy was sick, I wouldn’t have kicked you out of the place.”
With a grunt of feigned gratitude, Carl resumed his fretwork and picked up the song again.
“Kinda homey,” Roddy remarked as he listened companionably. “Kid woulda had a future at this.”
Indeed, Cedric had terraformed an old mining outpost into a country estate. There was no scientific reason for atmosphere to cling to a ball of rock this small, no reason for it to have more than a token amount of gravity. And yet, it behaved like a proper planet—one with a horizon that dropped like a cliff a couple kilometers out.
“Bet Mort couldn’t have done it,” Roddy added, punctuating the statement with the popping of a beer top.
“I’ll tell him you said that come bowling night,” Amy said as she approached from the main structure. “I’ll be sure to remind you.”
Carl would hardly have recognized Amy as Scarecrow. The cocky swagger of a fighter pilot had been replaced by the awkward gait of an expectant mother who hadn’t read the fine print to know what she was signing up for. Amy was barely showing but acted like she had gained two hundred kilos in the past month. Her features had softened. She’d let the mop of braids loose and trimmed it short for easier maintenance.
Carl gathered up his guitar and let her have his seat. “How’d you sleep?”
“Better, once you got up,” she said. Carl winced. “No. I don’t mean it like that. Um, Roddy, can you give us a minute?” Amy rested a hand on her stomach.
“On this boulder?” the laaku asked, scanning the horizon in all directions. “Maybe. I’ll see what I can do.” He ambled off, snickering as he chugged his breakfast beer.
Carl stole the seat Roddy had vacated. “You OK? Say the word, we’ll get you back to that med station. Esper can drop us deep; get us there in an hour.”
Amy closed her eyes and shook her head. “It’s not about the baby. Well, maybe. Indirectly. But that’s not why.”
“Why what?” Carl asked, struggling to stay afloat in the conversation.
“Do you want to get married? You know… do this whole thing right. I mean, not right right since we got things out of order. But traditional. Shotgun wedding, minus the shotguns.”
Carl shrugged. “Sure.”
“On Earth.”
Carl’s brain blinked. His eyes followed suit. “Clear the barrel on that one and fire it again? Did you say Earth?”
She smiled. “Yeah. You know, the Earth-like minus the ‘like.’”
Carl ran a hand through his hair. He wondered offhandedly how long it would be before having kids cost him his locks. Chuck still had a full mane, but that was less heredity than cheap cosmo. “Lemme get this straight. You want to get married.”
“Yes.”
“Great. I’m on board that shuttle. But you want to do it on Earth.”
“If by ‘do it’ you mean the ceremony and not just the wedding night, then yes.”
Carl rubbed his eyes with his fingers and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Earth. The one at the heart of the Sol system. The one with hair-trigger security. The one that’s home to Earth Interstellar and ARGO High Command? The one where the warrants for our arrest get approved? The one with the Convocation headquartered on it? That Earth?”
“Consider it a wedding present to me,” Amy said with a smile. “I mean, I’m marrying the galaxy’s top outlaw. I ought to get a little show of his prowess.” Then her face grew solemn. “Plus, my mom lives there, and she’s not fit to travel.”
Carl swallowed, then nodded. “Sure, babe. I don’t know how yet, but I’ll make it happen.”
# # #
Roddy sauntered into the old mining base with a whistled song on his lips. He had been the one to install the pedestrian entrance to a place built without a second thought to the asteroid ever having an atmosphere. Formerly, the auto-slid doors had belonged to a livestock freighter, but that only added to the charm. His open-air tune echoed off the bare steel corridors once he got inside.
It took him a moment’s pause to realize it was the same one Carl had been playing. That crazy old bastard was finally actually learning to play guitar right. In all the years Roddy had known him, Carl had never more than strummed away like a teenage wannabe rock star in his parents’ storage silo.
There had been times when Roddy had wanted to play but felt guilty showing the guy up. Carl had a sensitive disposition about a few things, and music was one of them. In his head, Carl probably heard the same distorted fuzz that came out of his rock heroes’ amps. But it was the notes that were fuzz, not the electronic distortion. If Carl were going to start taking his music seriously, maybe Roddy could drag out his old 12-string without getting into a pissing match.
When the door to his quarters slid open, he was confronted not with a peaceful hideaway and makeshift music studio. No, what he found was the best girl he’d ever known, with a scowl fit to cut through a bulkhead.
“Hey, slick-hair, what’s with the scanner?” Roddy asked cheerfully. But he knew from the fact that the device was aimed at Shoni and not some interesting technical probl
em that this was going to be one of those conversations.
“I think it’s time we discussed our unsuccessful attempts at conception,” Shoni said, turning the hand scanner and holding it out as if Roddy were supposed to be able to glean anything useful from a cursory glance.
If he played this right, maybe there would be time to break this wayward satellite out of its orbit without crashing it. “Hey now. I wouldn’t call them unsuccessful.” He sidled up and ran a finger down the fur of Shoni’s exposed neckline.
Shoni’s eyes shut halfway before she shook herself back into her ire. “Stop that. I could purchase a rather affordable implant that could stimulate my periaqueductal gray directly. I believe that the byproduct of sexual gratification is distracting from our goal of embryogenesis. I’ve been considering consulting a reproductive geneticist.”
Roddy blew out a breath that puffed his cheeks. “Well, when you put it that way…” There was something about the cellular genetics of the whole business that made sex seem pretty complicated. It wasn’t. Not that he was an expert at xenobiology or even had that wide a net cast over his own species’ practices. But he’d never seemed to have any trouble on the gratification end of things, and Shoni didn’t seem like the type to coddle a guy’s feelings. Humans had issues, but their dogged persistence saw them through it. “Maybe we just oughta… try more?”
The idea of his genes getting it on without him present gave Roddy a crawling feeling up his spine. It made him less a person and more a data crystal. The little fellas ought to get a proper send off and whatnot. Dropping them off at a lab seemed like starting the bad parenting early.
Shoni crossed her arms. “I might be willing to redouble our efforts if not for the looming doom over our heads at every hour. But considering the circumstances, the sooner we get the cellular division underway, the less chance that one of us isn’t around to provide the chromosomes.”
Holding up his hands and looking around their room, Roddy gaped at her. “We’ve never been safer.”
“Safe?” Shoni asked, voice raising an octave. “We’re outlaws hiding on an asteroid. The air we’re breathing has been conjured from the nether regions of magic’s trousers, and we’re a wizard’s sneeze from tumbling off this floating rock into the uncaring cosmos.”
Roddy stomped his foot. “Gravity’s fine. Same as any ship.”
“Which are fully enclosed.”
“That why you don’t go outside much?”
“I don’t trust the solar radiation, even if the scanners say it’s safe. Magic is subject to change at a whim.”
Roddy wiped a hand over his face. “OK. So stay indoors. But the outlaw thing… I mean, we’re barely outlaws anymore. I think we buried the hatchet with those pirates, after all. We’re on a net loss rate for enemies.”
Shoni frowned and didn’t budge.
“Carl’s about to be a dad. We’re flush with cash—by our standards, at least. When was the last time anyone even talked about pulling a job?”
Shoni’s glare deepened.
“Give it another month,” Roddy said, patting the air with his upper hands. “We don’t manage to mash some genes together by then, you can go ahead and see a pro. Wait. That didn’t come out right. I meant that—”
“Hey, everyone,” Carl’s voice blared over the old mining station’s intercom. Roddy really should have disabled it station-wide. “I’ve got a new job for us and an announcement to make. Both qualify as doozies.”
Shoni’s eyes didn’t falter, but they were joined by a smug grin that said, “I told you so” clearer than any words could have.
# # #
Carl clapped his hands sharply to draw everyone’s attention. The mining outpost’s cafeteria had been designed for a crew of eight, and they had crammed ten people into it. The overhead lighting was all new—residential grade instead of deep space industrial—and the chairs had been purchased from a custom shop on the omni that Yomin had found. But that kind of homey touch couldn’t make the space any larger.
“Thanks for squeezing in here, everyone. Sorry for the tight quarters,” Carl called out over the buzz of voices.
“We could have done this outside if the cartographer wasn’t agoraphobic,” Archie grumbled.
“Says the one who can’t believe in magic anymore,” Shoni shot back. “You should be on my side, wondering why we don’t all drift off.”
“The gravity is fine,” Cedric said through gritted teeth.
“Calm down, everybody,” Carl said loudly enough to drown out the sniping. “I just wanted you all to be tied for first to know that Amy has asked for my hand in marriage, and I’ve said yes.”
A halfhearted cheer went up. The gradient of enthusiasm peaked at Esper, who forced her way through the crowd to crush Amy in a squealing hug. It dipped at the frosty, eyebrow-raised glare of Keesha Bell, the unwitting refugee who’d been critical in the past of Carl’s life choices. But the sentiment cratered at Shoni’s feet, where pent-up jealousy bored into Roddy like mining lasers.
“Well, don’t that beat all,” Roddy said, doing his best to ignore his girlfriend’s reaction. It’s not like it was his fault Carl was getting married. The fact that he’d beaten the laaku to the punch was due to Amy’s initiative, not Carl’s. So it wasn’t like he could blame his captain. “Congratulations, Peach-fuzz.”
“I can officiate, I think,” Esper said. “I mean, I may not be official enough for general purposes, but—”
“We’re doing official,” Amy said before Esper’s offer could float to far down the river. “Carl’s agreed to figure out a way for us to get married on Earth.”
A pall fell over the room. Carl knew that pall. It was an echo of the one that had fallen across his own thoughts like a burial shroud.
“You mean, the one that looks like Phabian and is populated with thirty billion apes?” Roddy asked. “The one with security so bright green it shines backward in time?”
“The one in the system with half Earth Navy’s firepower?” Yomin asked.
“The one that’s home to the Convocation?” Cedric chimed in.
Carl raised a finger. “I pointed that one out already. Amy’s mom is planet-bound.”
Roddy snorted. “Cheaper and safer to find a med-assist shuttle to bring her somewhere neutral at least. Family’s great and all—not mine, of course, but the general concept. Don’t get me wrong. But this just seems a little… much for a wedding.”
“It’s my only one,” Amy countered with an edge of steel in her voice. It was a not-so subtle reminder that while Roddy had been to three previous weddings of Carl’s, Amy had never been married before.
Carl forced a big smile. “And it’s going to be on Earth.”
Whether we like it or not.
# # #
Halfway across the galaxy, on a moon few people even knew existed, a different relationship was coming unraveled with far greater privacy. Tania Rucker strode in from the jungle caked in sweat, dusted with grime, and shedding layers of protective clothing to allow the air recirculators of the temporary habitat to begin cooling her skin.
Enzio was there waiting.
The dashing, square-jawed sculpture of a wizard slouched in his plastisteel chair and glowered. “You rang?” he asked in a gravelly grunt that emanated from his belly.
He’d changed of late and not for the better. Things had been so free and easy on Carousel and before that. But Tanny wasn’t willing to let them rot on the vines of this jungle hell. “Processing plant is going fine. They can get by without me for an afternoon. I was thinking maybe I can shower and we can head to the falls the scouting team came across yesterday.”
“Why would we want to do that?” Enzio asked. He fluttered a hand in the general direction of the door. “Bugs and creatures. Nothing but heat and damp. It’s like bathing in melted ice cream.”
“Hence the shower,” Tanny pointed out. “We’ll take an enclosed hover-cruiser. The mist from the falls should—”
“Pass,”
Enzio cut her off with an upraised hand.
Before New Garrelon, he’d known his place. Enzio had worked for her father for years. The toothsoap advert smile, the easy laugh, the gentle jesting—all that charm had carried over to Tanny’s tenure when he’d come along to Carousel. Now, in the span of a few short weeks, the man who could have sold gloves to the ssentuadi would barely look her in the eye.
“What’s gotten into you?” Tanny demanded. She’d tried everything she could think of. Not only had he seemingly lost any interest in sharing her bed, he was barely engaging in conversation anymore. “Ever since that fucking poker game, it’s like someone flipped a switch in you.”
“You were out of line,” Enzio said. “Getting called away from the table like a misbehaving child… how was I supposed to take it?”
This wasn’t a talk she expected to need. “I may not be Don, but I’m still boss around here. You might be able to light me up, but that doesn’t mean you’re—”
Enzio’s fist slammed down on the arm of his plastisteel chair. “I’m a wizard, goddammit! Don owns half the galaxy. He’s earned every bit of respect the galaxy shows him. But I’m a force of mystic power, and that power relies on maintaining a standing. Getting scolded by the boss’s daughter—my magic hasn’t been the same since.”
Tanny set her jaw. “I’m not the boss’s daughter. Here, I’m the boss.”
Crossing his arms, Enzio smirked. “You’re only here because your ex bamboozled us.”
God. Where did wizards dig up these verbal relics? Was there a class at their colleges that taught archaic lingo? “Carl came out with nothing but some half mined-out rocks.”
Enzio harrumphed. “He had nothing to start with. Bear in mind we’re only here because the older Ramsey didn’t want trouble with your father. We’re squatters here. Muscle, same as Carousel. We didn’t win anything. We got our chips stuffed in our pockets. Had us make change: two tens for a five, and he asked us to borrow the five.”
Misdirection. She’d been around wizards long enough to pick up on it. All those years flying with Mort, she’d heard a verbal twist or two in her time. “That’s not it. You’re not even looking at me the same way. This isn’t about respect. I don’t even catch you looking at my ass when you think I don’t notice.”
