Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  Simm bobbed his head. “There’s just one problem: the applications are being conducted on Skylon.”

  “Where IRP’s agents will be on the lookout for me—as both Rada Pence and Jone Viciedo.”

  “That would be the issue, yes.”

  “No problem,” she said. “Let’s go get me a third face.”

  -o0o-

  To her surprise, Simm meant to apply, too. LOTR set them up with fake IDs. They bought brand new devices and connected them to their new names. LOTR had sent them application templates designed to maximize their chances of being accepted. They customized them to fit the stories they were comfortable telling and sent them to the IRP contact on Skylon.

  Both were accepted for an interview. As soon as the Tine was ready, they took off from Jindo and made way to Skylon. Once they arrived, Rada revisited the cham, paying extra to ensure the woman’s silence. She gave herself a full day to let the minimal redness and swelling fade, then alerted the IRP recruiter she was in port.

  The recruiter replied within the hour, scheduling an appointment for the following day, a few hours after Simm’s. The next morning, Simm left the apartment a full hour ahead of his appointment. She wished him luck and he smiled tightly. Once he was gone, Rada repeated her cover story to herself until it felt seamless.

  Her appointment neared. She headed out. On the elevator up, she was conscious of every glance her way. Her paranoia proved to be just that, however, and she reached the office without incident.

  She was held in a waiting room with thirty other applicants before being called in to meet Mr. Karson, a middle-aged man with a soothing voice who rarely looked up from the four devices on his desk. During the first leg of the interview, they went over her experience, a modified version of her real-life CV.

  “Versatile. I like it.” He set down one device and picked up another. “Moving on. You haven’t been married? No children?”

  “That’s correct. I’d like to get my feet under me before committing to anything like that.”

  He typed something into his device. “Parents?”

  “My dad was a crewman. He died on the Pinta, trying to make it out of the system.” She gazed down at the table. “My mom was an addict. Whatever she could get her hands on. I never really knew her.”

  Karson frowned at his hands. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Everyone has a story. About the best you can hope is that it’s boring.”

  He chuckled. “Well, the project is expected to last several months. Perhaps as long as a year. It’s a sensitive operation. Employees will not be able to leave nor send off-site communications for the duration. If there is anyone in your life for whom that will be too long a separation, this may not be the job for you.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m all I’ve got.”

  Karson nodded and made another note. “Excluding financial reasons, why do you wish to join us on this project?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “We need to know whether you’ll be psychologically suited for such an endeavor, don’t we?”

  Rada had ginned up a lengthy financial motivation for her new persona, but hadn’t given much thought to the psychological side. She shook her head, stalling.

  “It’s kind of personal,” she said. “Working ships, spending leave with the crew, it’s easy to start down a dark path. You quit looking toward the future and start looking toward the next night you can hit the bars. This job, it won’t be like that, will it?”

  Karson scratched his chin with his thumbnail. “It won’t be a spa retreat to the coast, either.”

  “I know that. It sounds like hard work and a lot of time alone with yourself and the walls. That’s exactly what I want. I refuse to walk that dark path. It’s the same one my mom went down. At the end, there’s nothing but the void.”

  He stared at her for three seconds, then blinked, as if emerging from hypnosis. He added something to his device. “Thank you for your time. We’ll be sure to let you know.”

  Rada walked out feeling like gravity had doubled. She’d flubbed it. Shouldn’t have brought up the shit about the bars. It made her look unreliable. Undisciplined. A job like this, they would want people they could trust. Not your everyday spacer loser.

  Two days later, she got the call. She’d been hired. Simm hadn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He cocked his head. “For what? It doesn’t matter who goes. All that matters is that we have someone on site to confirm the location of the ship.”

  “Don’t tell me Toman’s finally decided to take off the gloves.”

  “He has become very angry they killed Lonnie without giving her the chance to disengage. And you don’t want to make him angry.”

  “I’d be more excited if we knew for sure the ship was actually there.”

  “At the very least, you rule out a possibility.” Simm smiled. “And we move on to the next one.”

  She was called in for a physical. They removed her personal receiver from her ear and replaced it with one of their own. Assuming it was bugged, she didn’t see Simm again. Notice came. They were to set sail at five in the morning. Unable to sleep, Rada packed her things and sat in her room until the lull of the night between when the drunk spacers had gone to bed and the responsible civilians had woken up.

  The ship at the port was an inelegant square. Rada wondered if it was the one that had killed her crew. The flight took five days. Their devices were cut off from outside transmissions and she split her time between reading up on Io and making small talk with the other hires. There were more than a hundred of them and the mess hall was clamorous and packed. The officers wore red-trimmed uniforms, and though they told the new employees nothing, they enforced strict discipline on their schedules, hygiene, and behavior.

  They were invited to the mess to watch the landing. Io was a yellow globe zitted by volcanos and awash in flood plains of magma and sulfur. The instability of the surface meant there were virtually no permanent settlements. Abandoned mining and research installations speckled its face, half-buried in the angry discharge of the moon.

  The ship came to rest on a patch of paved ground. Rada lined up with the others and prepared to deliver herself to the enemy.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Your duty is simple.” From the stage, the woman stared them down, the whites of her eyes compressed between the dark wedges of her brows and the pale, puffy bags beneath her lower eyelids. “Do what you’re told. Do so efficiently and without complaint. And we’ll all get along fine.”

  Their IRP-provided devices dinged with their assignments. To Rada’s resigned amusement, she found herself assigned to the carts. The dark-browned woman barked out their schedules; they would be split into two overlapping shifts. Rada was with the later crew. While the woman went through the terms and protocols of their new home, four assistants in red suits circled among them, answering questions.

  “My name’s Sollivan.” Her orienteer was in his early thirties, a few years older than her, with a widow’s peak and round, watery eyes. “Anything I can help you with?”

  “Looks pretty standard,” Rada said. “Just glad I’m not on first shift.”

  “Tell me about it.” Sollivan smiled, eyes squeezing halfway shut. “If I can be of any help, you let me know. That’s what I’m here for.”

  She was housed with twenty other women in a prefab cabin just large enough for their bunks and trunks. They got started on the digs that same day. The excavations sprawled across a circular basin embraced by two arms of yellow-crusted rock. A conical volcano spurted to the south, hazed by the low-lying atmosphere of its plumes. A dozen buildings were already erected, connected by tunnels. Most of the new hires were brought around to familiarize themselves with the machinery. After a brief chat with Sollivan, Rada swung into a cart and started hauling away debris.

  She kept her eyes and ears open. She neither saw nor heard any hints of the alien ship. While she moved rocky rubble away from
the site, others raised new buildings, clean plastic edifices that were quickly stained by the yellow dust.

  Every morning at breakfast and night before sleep, the PA blasted the IRP’s national anthem, a bombastic fusillade of horns and strings. Other than their uniformed superiors, that was the only overt sign of IRP authority. The employees were expected to work, not to worship.

  Each day, Rada rose with the alarms, dressed, went for a breakfast of soy, prot, and a white mulch that could have been potatoes or rice or neither. She suited up and drove the cart until lunch, ate a meal identical to breakfast, and returned to the fields until dinner. After, they had a free hour in the bunk. Some passed the time watching videos on their cut-off devices, but many chewed the fat, telling stories, asking each other about their previous gigs. They were all lifers, born to do the dirty and dangerous work that was necessary to expand the fringes of the system. Nothing more and nothing less.

  Sollivan checked in with her every day or two. She smiled politely, asking him the occasional question about what they were up to with the site, but he towed the company line, answering with vague nothings.

  Five days in, with nothing to show for herself but sore muscles and a rash around her neck from spending so much time suited up, she began to despair. The plan now struck her as insane. Even if she had seen anything, she had no way to communicate that to the Hive. She had no way off Io. She was stuck until the job was over—months, as much as a year.

  Most meals, she did her best to mingle with the others to absorb any gossip. This flew fast and furious, but none of it seemed relevant: guesses that the IRP was looking to plant a new colony, or that they had discovered a new isotope and were racing to monopolize it and begin to repay their debts. Rada soon tired of these hopeless guesses, taking whatever seat was available. More and more frequently, she ate alone at the edges of the mess.

  One breakfast, a dark-haired woman plunked down beside her, tray slapping the table. The woman forked up a mouthful of pan-fried prot.

  “Ready for another day?” she said, muffled by her unswallowed food.

  Rada set her spoon into her white mush. “At least we’re well fed.”

  “Don’t lose hope.” She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked away the gravy. “And don’t worry, we can talk freely.”

  “I never feared the IRP would restrict our natural-born rights.”

  The woman smirked. “You’re cautious. I like that. Sorry it took me so long to get here. Was a real bitch finagling a second hire.”

  Rada forced herself not to look over. “You’re with..?”

  “A loyal drone of the king bee. Here’s the score. I can jam their transmitters. As long as we’re close, all they’ll hear is us jabbering about nothing. Our relationship is simple. You see something, you bring it to me, I send it home.”

  “I haven’t seen a damn thing. Are we sure we’re in the right place?”

  “If we were sure, we wouldn’t be here.” The woman shoveled another forkload of prot strips into her mouth. “My name’s Ferri.”

  “Holly,” Rada said.

  “Well, don’t get too chummy. Nothing to draw the eye. Meanwhile, keep yours open, yeah?”

  Ferri stood, ate a final giant bite, and wandered off with her tray. Rada stayed to finish her meal. Relief washed through her veins. She had a way to reach the Hive after all. Now all she needed was anything to tell them.

  The first week drew to a close. She drove the cart back to the garage, swabbed off the dust and grit from its tires and undercarriage, and passed through the airlock into the habitation. Her device pinged. It was from Sollivan. He wanted to see her at once.

  She froze, rereading the message. Had Ferri been wrong about the jamming? Had IRP heard their conversation? For that matter, did Ferri truly work for the Hive, or was she an IRP agent looking to ferret Rada out? Rada tried to remember the exact details of their conversation, but couldn’t conjure up the woman’s words.

  She trudged down the hallway. The floor was a dull gray streaked with vivid yellow dust. Sollivan rated highly enough to warrant his own quarters: office in front, living area behind it. She knocked on the door. From the other side, he said something she assumed was permission to come in.

  She stepped into a tight foyer. The door to his office was open. He sat behind his workstation, a tidy desk with two devices, a nameplate, and an analog notepad.

  “You wanted to see me?” Rada said.

  Sollivan rose from his seat and smiled. “Good to see you, Holly. How’s the job treating you? Everything smooth?”

  “Buttery.” She glanced at a chair but didn’t sit. “No complaints.”

  “Where did you work prior to this, Holly?”

  “A mining rig. Independent operation. Bounced around a lot. Why?”

  He grinned. “Because they’re fools for letting you go. You’re doing a hell of a job out there.”

  The corners of her mouth twitched up. “It’s just driving a cart around. Making sure it doesn’t get into any trouble.”

  “They often do, though. And your metrics are off the charts. If everyone we had was as efficient as you, we’d be done in half the time.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Call me Sollivan.”

  Four more days endured with no visits from Ferri or revelations in the field. Rada hauled out debris, cleaned the carts, gossiped. But even the wildest speculations didn’t suggest they were prepping the basin to house an alien spaceship. Whenever Sollivan saw her at mess, he waved. She smiled and waved back.

  Another morning came. She drove the cart to one of the excavations and got out to help oversee the workers load it with brown rock and yellow dirt. The drive to the dump was uneventful, but when she got back to the site, a man with red stripes on his suit was striding out from the airlock waving his hands at the dig.

  “What are you doing?” His voice crackled over their comms. “Stop everything. You’re going too deep!”

  One of the workers climbed a few steps up the rampart toward the officer. She said, “That’s not what it says on the schema. Does it?”

  “Have you even looked at it?” He stalked up in front of her, displaying orders on his device. “You see? You’re already past specifications.”

  “Okay, so we’ll fill it back in. Tamp it down real tight.”

  “If it were that simple, do you think I’d be screaming at you? Look around, numbnuts. See those volcanos? Io is one big hotspot. So long as you stick to the specs, we’re fine. But we can’t give the magma the slightest temptation to bubble up.” He turned in a circle, gazing across the masked faces of the workers. “You hear me? Before you dig, check the schema, check it again, then check it again. One more screwup like this, and the responsible parties will be fired.”

  He stared across the crowd, turned, and headed back to the airlock.

  “You heard him,” the woman muttered. “Let’s get this back up to specs.”

  With no more debris to be hauled for the next few hours, Rada was allowed inside. She changed out of her suit and headed to the cafeteria. Between shifts, it was all but dead. She sipped artificial coffee that didn’t even pretend to be the real thing and wondered if she should put in for a transfer. Try to grab a promotion. Driving carts wasn’t showing her anything. It made no sense to stick with it.

  Shoes whispered up behind her. She turned, smiled up at Sollivan.

  “Are you guys trying to get us burned alive?” he said.

  Rada laughed. “You heard that?”

  “Loria came in here so hot I thought he had stepped in a flow.” Sollivan sat at the end of the bench, straddling it. “Glad to see you made it out alive.”

  “Plausible deniability. I was out running carts.”

  “Do you enjoy that? Driving rubble?”

  “Pays the bills. Something wrong with it?”

  He pushed up his lower lip, shaking his head. “Not at all. Seems like you could handle more, though. If you want, once the job wraps up, you come see me.�
�

  “Hell,” Rada said. “Why not now?”

  “Let’s not rock the boat. Okay? Build your track record and we’ll go from there.”

  He got up. Rada sipped her “coffee.” Frustrating to have an opportunity to shake things up get waved under her nose and then snatched away an instant later. Yet a part of her was flattered to hear he thought she should be doing more.

  She got back to work. That evening, Rada returned to the mess for dinner. She’d barely dug in when Ferri sat down beside her.

  “How’s it going?” Ferri said. “Fruitless, I trust?”

  “If I had anything, you’d have it, too.”

  “No need to snap at me. I’m just doing my job.” She reached over Rada’s tray and speared a strip of spicy prot. “Why don’t you get with him?”

  “Who?”

  “The bossman. Sollivan. He’s like a little dog around you.”

  Rada frowned at her tray. “Are you ordering me to sleep with him?”

  “I’m not ordering you to do anything,” Ferri said. “I’m asking you to decide how much you’re willing to do to get justice for your friends.”

  -o0o-

  Rada spent hours that night thinking up ways to ask Sollivan out. In the end, all her plotting was for nothing: he asked her the next day at lunch.

  Their first “date” consisted of him coming with her for a ride-along to get a better idea of conditions in the field. The gravity on Io was low and whenever the cart bounced free of the ground he grabbed tight to the straps. After each landing, he chuckled and shook out his gloved hands.

  “That was more … exciting than I envisioned,” he said as she brought the cart home for the day. “Want to come by my office for dinner? Talk shop? I’d like to pick your brain about a few things.”

  In the garage, she hurriedly washed up and joined him in his office. While they talked about the pros and cons of human involvement in tasks that could be handled by automated systems, they were served dinner. After the server left, Sollivan got a bottle from the drawer in his desk and raised his eyebrows. Rada smiled sadly and shook her head.

  “Really?” he said. “I thought all miners drank like fish. Which makes sense, because if there’s one thing that would stress out a fish, it’s hanging out on rocks all day.” He poured himself a glass. “Anyway, they thought about going full automation here. There was a lot of debate.”