The Oceans between Stars

by Kevin Emerson

  Liam tried to put the urge out of his mind. They needed to hurry. After all, they weren’t even supposed to be here right now. They should still have been asleep, due to wake up in just over three months at Delphi, where the Starliner Scorpius and his older sister, Mina, and best friend, Shawn, would be waiting. At their last refueling stop, they’d made what should have been their final course correction, but instead of coming out of stasis within sight of Delphi, they had been awakened by JEFF here, in the middle of nowhere, and he’d informed them that they’d drifted off course for the second time on the journey. The first time had cost them a day on their arrival time, and now this extra stop was costing them another. The Scorpius would be moored at Delphi for five days, during which time the crew would refuel and attend to any repairs, and the passengers would take a break from stasis for exercise, socialization, and wellness checkups. The cruiser was now due to arrive on day four. Any more delays, and they might miss the starliner altogether.

  It was funny to even be referring to days anymore, since it was pretty much just night all the time out here, but Liam and Phoebe and the rest of humanity still lived by an Earth-standard twenty-four-hour clock. Up until recently, Liam had measured his life in Martian days, which were forty minutes longer than Earth’s, but like so many things about Mars, that clock had been discarded the moment they’d departed, in favor of what was considered humanity’s true chronological cycle. Liam had kept the Mars calendar on his link, though. It would have been the red planet’s version of September, right now, when the sun, large as it had been, would angle lower in the sky, and the dust storms of the long summer would finally calm. But thinking about that only made Liam homesick. Worse, actually, because home no longer even existed. Erased from the universe, almost as if his memories were just dreams.

  He tapped the thrusters to speed up and promptly nicked another boulder, but he didn’t slow down. Would a ship carrying one hundred million humans wait around for two teens and their parents? It hadn’t last time. Of course, back at Saturn, the Scorpius had been in danger. Even though Liam and Phoebe had the final Phase Two data—results from their parents’ very last terraforming trials, which would make colonizing Aaru-5 possible—and even though they had their parents on board—the scientists who knew best how to interpret that data—that still might not be enough reason to keep a wary starliner from running toward Danos as soon as it could, trying to stay ahead of whatever threat was surely still lurking behind them.

  Liam could relate: each time they stopped to refuel, he found himself eyeing the dark around them. Who was after them? Barro had been the name of the one they’d met. Were they pirates? But they hadn’t just been trying to commandeer their ship. They’d also, he assumed, been the ones who blew up Saturn Station. Did that make them terrorists? But they’d also wanted the Phase Two data. Mercenaries? Working for whom?

  Liam remembered what Barro had said: It cannot change what the humans have done. It cannot undo Phase One. There were three phases to humanity’s plan to colonize Aaru-5. Liam knew a lot about Phase Two, the terraforming science that his parents has spent his entire life working on, and Phase Three was what they were doing right now: traveling to Aaru. But Phase One . . . he barely knew anything about it. How had they described it in school? Gathering advanced data about Aaru and preparing the planet. He’d asked JEFF about Phase One, but JEFF didn’t have any more information because, as Liam already knew, the project was classified. The only people around who knew more about it—his parents—literally couldn’t talk about it at the moment. And besides, he’d already asked them back on Mars, and they hadn’t had much to say.

  But whatever Phase One was, there was something else about what Barro had said that troubled Liam even more: the humans. He’d said that like he wasn’t a human himself. Could that be possible?

  Even though they’d been traveling for nearly ten years, they’d been awake for only five days of it, and so it seemed like barely a week had passed since the events on Mars. Liam had woken up that last morning worried about leaving his apartment and the only way of life he’d ever known, only to find out that there were not one, or two, but now possibly even three different races of aliens in the universe, most if not all of whom seemed determined to wipe out humanity. And as far as Liam knew, he and Phoebe were the only humans who had any idea about any of it. Once they finally caught up with the Scorpius, he could show colonial command the watch in order to explain about the dead alien. He also had a small orange crystal in his pocket, about the size of a golf ball, that contained data about the supernovas that the Drove had caused. And everyone had already seen what Barro and his people had done at Saturn.

  And yet telling colonial, even catching up, all assumed that the Scorpius was still okay. Liam had no idea what else might have happened in the years since they’d left Saturn. Had the Scorpius been attacked again? What about any of the other starliners?

  The Cosmic Cruiser’s long-range communications had been damaged on Mars, so the only way that Liam and Phoebe could communicate with the Scorpius was by using the tiny pendant hanging around Liam’s neck: a radio beacon. Mina wore its twin. They sent each other messages using an ancient twentieth-century language called tap code. That was how Liam had let Mina and the Scorpius know that they’d salvaged a faster engine and would be able to catch them. But there had been no communication since. Mina would still be in stasis on the starliner, not due to wake up until arrival at Delphi. Yet Liam had pressed the green glass top of the pendant each time he’d woken up anyway, hoping it might blink back.

  She was probably fine. Shawn, all of them. Fast asleep. The Scorpius and the other starliners had defenses: military escorts, shields, robotic fighter drones, even an arsenal of nuclear warheads. But how could he be sure? Other than these brief refueling stops, Liam had been in stasis, too. Long stretches of nothing. If something had gone wrong on the Scorpius and Mina had woken up and tried to contact him, he wouldn’t even have gotten the message. The beacon would have just been blinking in the dark. So many things might have happened, and yet there was only the deep black and silence of space. Until Delphi. They were almost there. . . .

  Except not! Once again they’d drifted off course, and into an area that had not been mapped for potential refueling spots, since no one should have needed to at this point. They’d been lucky to find these comet fragments.

  JEFF didn’t know what was causing the course problems, though he had caught this latest one before it got too bad. He blamed the outdated computers on the Cosmic Cruiser, and the fact that the ship hadn’t been built for such long journeys. Parts were corroding, calculations overwhelming the system, processors that were designed to be rebooted and updated far more often starting to fail. JEFF likely needed updating, too. But for now all they could do was refuel as quickly as possible and get back on course.

  “Our target should be right above you,” JEFF reported.

  Liam checked the topside sensor, then twisted to look out the top of the canopy. “I see it.”

  “Can you get to it?”

  “Yup,” said Liam, but just then, another boulder nicked the starboard side of the drone, pushing him slightly off course. He tapped the thrusters and realigned himself, then edged through the maze of rocks toward his target. Another glanced off him; a scree of pebbles pinged off the canopy.

  “Careful,” said Phoebe. “Don’t pull a Hans Buckle and let that grav-ball slip through your gloves.”

  “Very funny.” Buckle was Liam’s favorite player on his favorite team, the Haishang Dust Devils. He wore his lucky jersey beneath his suit right now. Phoebe had gotten it for him before they’d left Mars, even though she was a die-hard Meridian Canyon Bombers fan. Teams that no longer existed, from a planet that no longer existed. The stadiums with their pillow tops, the stands with their harnesses for when the gravity was turned off, the hum of the grav-balls: all of it gone now. There was supposed to be a draft for a new league on Aaru-5, but that was literally over a century away.
A lot of things had to go right between now and then, when so far they’d been going horribly wrong.

  Liam edged the skim drone closer to the target boulder. “All right, I’m going to grab it.”

  His fingers danced from one set of thrusters to the other, stopping the skim drone and rotating it until its underside faced the rock. He inched closer, then opened the large claw on the bottom of the craft. His seat vibrated as the claw extended—

  CLANG! A smaller rock caromed off the back of the ship, knocking Liam sideways and offline. He cursed to himself and started realigning the craft. As he did, a light caught his attention.

  The dial on his alien watch had started blinking blue. This blinking was never a good sign.

  “Liam,” said JEFF, “I don’t want to rush you, but there’s a particularly dense arrangement of objects drifting toward you from your eleven o’clock.”

  “I figured.” Out of the corner of his eye, Liam saw a cluster of boulders tumbling around and over one another, making a cloud of dust like a schoolyard brawl. Some of the dust was ice, and it glittered like diamonds. Another beautiful sight out here, unlike anything he’d ever seen, but that also might kill him.

  Liam flexed his fingers and gritted his teeth. The little thrusters on the top, bottom, and sides of the skim drone fired in white bursts until he had the claw back in position.

  The watch blinked faster.

  “It would be ideal if you could be out of the vicinity in ten seconds.”

  “Good to know, JEFF!”

  The claw’s metal fingers crunched into the sides of the boulder. Liam glanced one more time at the watch. Should he turn the dial and see what was going to happen? But the claw skidded for a moment, losing its grip, and Liam had to correct his angle.

  “Liam, move,” said Phoebe.

  “Five seconds to impact,” said JEFF.

  The craft vibrated and rattled as the claw sank into the metallic surface of their target. He needed to have a firm hold—

  A dim shadow passed overhead. Liam saw the gang of enormous craggy boulders nearly on top of him.

  “Leaving now!” He burned the primary thruster on the bottom of the craft. It shook and lurched, and then shot back out of the way, the claw holding on. “Got it—”

  But one of the boulders slammed into his cargo, sending it and the skim drone spiraling. The outside world spun. Flashes of other rocks, the blur of the distant cruiser lights, around again and again. He slammed into a smaller rock, then a larger one. There was a sharp cracking sound. Was that the canopy? Liam could barely tell, and his stomach was in his throat, but it seemed like he was spinning counterclockwise, and so he fired the port-side thrusters. The spin slowed, and slowed more, the labyrinth of comet fragments coming back into focus.

  A yellow light began to flash on the controls. His battery had dropped to critical. How was that possible? He’d only been out here twenty minutes.

  Another light flashed on a schematic of the craft, a section of the underside blinking red.

  “Liam,” said JEFF, “I think your battery compartment has been damaged, and I am detecting a chemical leak.”

  “Yeah,” Liam said heavily. As he watched, the last three bars of battery power drained away, and the skim drone cycled down to dark.

  3

  DISTANCE TO DELPHI: 282.7 BILLION KM

  TIME TO ARRIVAL: 93 DAYS, 12.5 HOURS

  The cabin became silent. Two boulders collided nearby, spraying the skim drone with dust but making no sound in the vacuum of space.

  Liam shivered as the temperature plummeted inside the craft. He picked up the large helmet of his space suit from the seat beside him and fastened it into place. His breaths echoed inside it as he twisted around, looking for the Cosmic Cruiser. There it was, out beyond the curtain of rocks, a few hundred meters away. “So, wanna come pick me up?”

  “We will have to wait until you drift to a more advantageous spot,” said JEFF. “I’m afraid I can’t risk flying into your current position. Our borrowed engine is particularly delicate.”

  “How long is that going to take?”

  “I’m modeling the movements of the comet fragments now. . . . Based on these calculations, we should be able to reach you safely in three hours.”

  “Hours? What if two of these things decide to make me a sandwich filling before then?”

  JEFF didn’t answer immediately.

  The watch was still blinking.

  “How about debris pulses?” Liam asked.

  “It would be far too dangerous to fire them into your vicinity. I simply cannot predict the potential chain reaction.”

  “JEFF, we don’t have hours to spare!”

  “Acknowledged. I will try to come up with another solution—”

  “What if we push?” asked Phoebe.

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  “Show me how?” Liam twisted to look at the cruiser before the rotation of the skim drone caused it to slip from his view. He didn’t see Phoebe. Her tether hung there, snaking about without her.

  “Phoebe, your connection must be loose,” said JEFF. “I am no longer reading your suit vitals.”

  “Not loose,” said Phoebe, breathing hard. “One sec, Liam. Uh!”

  “Are you okay?” Liam asked.

  “Fine, just . . .” She exhaled hard. “There we go.”

  “That is extremely dangerous.”

  “Phoebe? What are you doing?”

  “Ah. This is nice.”

  The cruiser rotated back into view, but Liam couldn’t locate Phoebe.

  “Where are you?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Seconds ticked by. Liam turned this way and that, trying to keep an eye on the cruiser—something slammed against the canopy. Phoebe slid across the top of the drone and tumbled over the side, grabbing for the gold towing handles along the edge of the craft.

  “What are you doing?” Liam shouted.

  She just managed to snag a handle with two fingers of her thick white glove and dangled briefly off the side of the craft, her legs flailing in space. She smiled, breathing hard. “I’m here to rescue you, dummy.” She held up an object in her other hand. It was shaped sort of like a silver turtle shell and had two straps: a booster pack. She wore one just like it. “Now get out and help me push—whoa!” She ducked as a meter-wide fragment drifted by, scraping her shoulder.

  “Please be careful, Phoebe,” said JEFF. “Any tear in your suit or loss of life support functions will expose you to the vacuum of space, which, in the best-case scenario, will be lethal after approximately sixty seconds.”

  “Why do you have to spoil all the fun, JEFF?”

  “It is my duty to keep you alive. If exposed to the vacuum, it is vital that you exhale so that your lungs do not burst. Also, you must close your eyes—”

  “All right, enough already! Jeez.” Phoebe turned to Liam. “Ready?”

  Liam looked back at the cruiser. “You flew over here without your tether?”

  “Tether wouldn’t reach. And actually I wanted to save fuel, so I just kicked off the side of the cruiser. Felt like a superhero! Flying through space.”

  “How did you not get hit by the rocks?”

  Phoebe smiled in that familiar way. “Saw a gap,” she said. “Went for it.”

  “You got lucky.”

  Phoebe rolled her eyes. “So? Luck counts. Now come on.”

  Liam surveyed the sea of boulders. He checked the watch; the blinking had slowed, but it hadn’t stopped. Again he felt that urge to turn the dial, especially before climbing out into rock-strewn space. . . .

  Phoebe rapped on the canopy. “Hello?”

  “Okay, I’m coming.” Liam reached beneath the rim of the canopy and pulled two emergency latches. There was a hiss as the air sucked out of the cockpit, but it was quickly squashed to silence. His suit hummed to full power to compensate as a light sheen of frost instantly sparkled over the controls. He unbuckled a
nd floated up, then pressed the canopy closed again. Once he was outside, he gripped a tow handle tightly; if he lost hold of the skim drone, he’d float off among the rocks with no way to get back.

  “Here,” said Phoebe, handing him the booster pack.

  Liam hooked the front of his heavy boot under a tow handle and slipped the pack over his shoulders, yanking the straps tight and fastening the waistband. He pulled the thrust controller off one of the straps. It had a series of buttons that wirelessly controlled the pack’s different directional rockets.

  “Get beside me.” Phoebe had moved herself to the front starboard side of the craft. Liam joined her. They each held on to two handles, Liam’s hand over Phoebe’s on the one that they shared.

  Beyond the comet fragment being held by the skim drone’s claw, there was nothing but utter blackness, and it was still strange to tell yourself that no, you weren’t going to fall into it, and yet it went on forever in all directions, made the mere idea of directions almost pointless. It was still a disorienting sensation when you’d spent your entire life in the gentle embrace of gravity, where concepts like up and down seemed like certainties.

  Liam found himself taking short, quick breaths, his heart racing, a tight, cramped feeling he’d had more and more, like: How could there be so much space? The farther they traveled, the bigger it felt. Maybe it would be better on the starliner; he’d heard that the artificial gravity helped you feel more like yourself.