by Kate Rauner
Fynn ducked inside and listened to the whomps of feet above him. They'd turned the dome into a running track, and it was about the size of the track back home on Earth. Mid-day calisthenics had turned into a race.
That was better than a brawl. At least running occupied the crowd and no one noticed him. Fynn rinsed the rest of his clothes and squeezed them as dry as he could since towels were also missing, and left them hanging.
He waited for the runners to finish a last lap and head to their barracks. He wouldn't sleep in a unit again, not alone, and he wouldn't risk getting Ben targeted by joining him. The furnace dome was where he felt the safest. Decision made and no longer dripping wet, he ambled across the dome to lunch, refusing to look intimidated.
Casper ran up, clutching his yellow bag, trembling and pale. "My barracks mates threw my things out."
That tightened the knot in Fynn's stomach. "I know you don't cause trouble. What's going on?"
Casper glanced over his shoulder. "They said... rumors. About your father."
"My father was dedicated to the colony. He gave up everything for the Kin. Tanaka called him a martyr." Fynn almost choked on that, but Casper would recognize the word. "Who says otherwise?"
"Some of my barracks mates." Casper hunched his shoulders and lowered his voice. "They talk to the adjuncts about us. I don't know why. I'm sorry, Fynn, but I'm quitting your crew. So they'll let me back in. Sorry." He swung his bag up high, apparently a sign to a couple smirking men, and headed to his barracks.
Fynn dropped an individual cake of dried algae into a bowl and covered it with hot water. Casper's barracks mates were conspicuously plunking tea balls in their cups, but there was no tea available on the counter. With a sigh, he carried his lunch to an empty seat next to Ben and Rica.
"What's with Casper?" Ben asked. When Fynn explained, he shook his head. "He needs to stand up for himself."
"Have you had trouble?" Fynn asked.
Ben shrugged and Rica stuffed a dollop of stroganoff into her mouth. There weren't many noodles left in the bottom of the food bucket so her lunch was gloppy.
Fynn preferred his algae and poked at the cake, separating the mass so water soaked through. He concentrated on the salty, savory flavor for several spoonfuls, but he had to tell his crew and upsetting them wouldn't solve the problem. He tried to sound casual. "Someone stripped all the bedding and towels from my unit."
Rica swallowed. "That doesn't make any sense. Why would anyone go after you or anyone in our crew? The colony needs the furnaces, and needs us to run them. We're Kin. Things were never like this on Earth."
"I'm going to move my stuff to the furnace dome for a while."
Rica began to protest but Ben interrupted. "That's a good idea. Let people cool off."
"Don't worry, Rica. I'll be comfortable." And less likely to get beat up in the middle of the night.
***
Fynn waited for the deep red darkness of nighttime lumen levels to blanket the dome. He loaded a bed and his personal gear into a stevedore's arms, scrounged whatever else he needed from an unused unit, and left the barracks. With so much space in the furnace dome, he hadn't bothered to move empty bins and pallets outside, which turned out to be fortunate. The stevedore tipped a bin on its side and shoved it close to the dome wall to become a sort of hard-walled tent open on one side. That left room to sit upright on the bed. Anyone could sneak up on him, but Fynn felt secure, whether it made sense or not.
So despite the midnight move, Fynn was sound asleep when his pad vibrated, rattling against the hard plastic. A message from the Herschel, from his mother.
Fynn, are you there?
I'm here, Mom. Are you okay?
Better than okay. Wonderful news. Thirty-six Kin awakened and alive. I'm bringing them down. We'll land in an hour at the furnace dome airlock.
Fynn sat up, wide-awake. The ramp at that airlock ended close to the shore. There was no approach path for a shuttle. How? he asked.
It's a backup program of some sort. Liam says, landing on the shore will trigger the bots, and they'll drag the shuttle into place. But no one's tried this before. Can you go outside and watch? Let Liam know if you see trouble?
Titan's sky was a creamy butterscotch when Fynn stepped out. A smudge halfway to the zenith glowed a brighter beige. That must be the Sun, and the narrow wash of yellow overhead was Saturn reflecting sunlight. He didn't bother to keep track of where Titan was in its sixteen-day orbit around Saturn. Haze and hydrocarbon clouds were more important to the brightness than where Titan was in its month. Between sunlight during the colony's day and Saturn-shine through its night, the surface was always suspended in orange twilight.
A shuttle rose over the low inland hills, approached slowly, pivoted, and settled to the ground, kicking up an auburn cloud of vaporized hydrocarbons.
Both decabots crept to the edge of the ramp and crouched by lowering their central columns to rest on the ground.
The nacelle under the shuttle hinged open, studded wheels lowered, and it lumbered over the ice. "Is that you, Fynn? This is Evan. I'm on a suit channel."
"I hear you," Fynn said. "You're tilting toward the lake." The shuttle was crossing the slope of the shore.
"I've got yellow warning lights in here," Evan said. "Watch the wingtip for me."
"That stubby little wing isn't gonna hit the ground until you roll over."
The bots scrambled forward, one on each side at the shuttle's rear airlock, and gripped the wheels.
"Evan, are they gonna lift your tail? Your nose is already slanting downhill. You're sliding."
"Whoa!"
"The bots have stopped," Fynn said. "Did you make them do that?"
"No, but when my lights went red, they must have picked up a signal. Now what? I can't control the bots."
Someone has got to hack into these bots' programming, Fynn thought. But what could they do now?
"Evan, can you push yourself away from the lake by a few meters?"
The shuttle's manipulator arms unfolded from the fuselage above the wings, one on each side. They reached out and spread fingers against the ground. "Heave ho."
Shuttle wheels spun, kicking out ice sand, and the decabots lifted. Slowly the craft moved upslope and the bots sidled until the rear of the shuttle sat on the end of the ramp. Fynn jumped inside to prepare the airlock for docking while Evan crawled the shuttle into position and backed the rear hatch frame into the dock's receiving lip. From inside, Fynn heard the clamps clunk closed.
Medics led the way as Kin shuffled in, groggy, dazed, and half-blind in the dim red nightlight, each clutching a yellow bag of personal gear. A few shied away when a vacuum-cleaning bot rolled close.
Greta came last and offered Fynn a quick hug. "Can't talk now. As soon as we get these Kin seated in the mess hall, I'm going to announce their arrival over the open colony channel. That'll ensure a busy night of reunions, so hopefully no one will ask too many questions."
"The adjuncts won't be distracted."
"I won't be easy to interrogate. A few of our new arrivals must go straight to the clinic. We re-inflated two collapsed lungs right out of the pods, and there are three cases of pneumonia to be treated. All from the same pod level." She shook her head. "I thought I'd found a way to ensure successful awakenings, but there's still something wrong."
She left Fynn and Evan standing in the airlock. As cheerful as ever, Evan thumped Fynn's shoulder. "Good call on bracing the shuttle. Now the bots have learned exactly how to manage it."
"Now everyone knows you can use this airlock," Fynn said. "What are you going to do next time?"
"There's plenty of time to sort things out. My crew's scared about zero-g today, but they'll calm down over time. And - oh, Fynn." His smile disappeared. "Yash's death is a terrible loss. I'm real sorry." He reached for Fynn's shoulder again, but delivered a stiff pat this time. "We're all gonna miss him."
Everyone was sorry Yash was dead, but that didn't change anything. Fynn didn't kn
ow what to say and tried to nod but his head was heavy, so he looked down and cleared his throat.
"I brought you someone to cheer you up," Evan said.
Drew bounced out of the shuttle and swung his arms wide. "Ta da."
They slammed into each other in a hug, spinning until they struck a wall and bounced apart.
"I can't stay," Drew said. "But I had to say hello."
"Why not stay? Evan too. For an hour or so."
Drew smile froze. "Really, I can't."
"Mom says everyone will be too busy greeting the newcomers to notice much else."
Drew's jaws tightened. "Sorry."
Fynn hurried to say okay and deliver another bear hug.
"I'm sorry, too," Evan said. "But we don't want the shuttle docked any longer than necessary, just in case the adjuncts head this way."
Fynn didn't want an awkward silence to grow. "Let me help you unload the food buckets."
Evan squared his shoulders. "About that. We're keeping this batch of buckets on the Herschel."
Fynn blinked, not sure he'd heard right. "There's a bucket stowed with each pod, scheduled to come down when the Kin awakens."
"We talked about it, the whole crew. We think your greenhouse is doing such a good job, it's better to keep the dehydrated stuff onboard until the space station is spinning."
"Don't worry," Drew said. "If the domes run short, someone will work things out."
No one had much to say after that. Drew and Evan returned to the shuttle and Fynn secured the airlock. He stayed at the window to watch the bots guide the shuttle away. It was great to see Drew, but the breach between the Herschel and the domes was wider than ever. The crew was becoming another faction. Fynn twisted a hand through his hair. He certainly wasn't the one to heal the rift.
His sleeve activated with Greta's message, announcing the newcomers. Fynn shifted his weight, feeling the solid gray floor under one foot and then the other. With a stomp, he decided hiding was the wrong answer tonight. He was Kin and had as much right to celebrate an awakening as anyone, so he headed to the mess hall.
***
The village dome's lights were turned to daytime, and the mess hall was warm and alive. There were ninety Kin in the dome now. Almost a quarter of the colonists were on Titan's surface, with the rest remaining in stasis.
Colors rippled through the crowd. The newly arrived Kin wore coveralls in various shades, and their friends from the barracks abandoned Tanaka's standard blue. Sobs broke out when awakened people learned the colony had suffered deaths. Some wept for the eight Kin from the Cohort level, some for Tanaka, and some, Fynn felt sure, for Yash.
At times Fynn felt almost normal, as if Yash would call for a status report at any minute. Then reality crashed down. He searched for his mother's graceful movements in the crowd, and next for Maliah, but didn't find them. For the moment, he was alone.
Maliah came around a tower corner with a tub of tea in one arm and sugar in the other. While she didn't notice him, Fynn's pain eased as he watched his sister greet the newcomers, sometimes with a hug or a laugh, and sometimes with sympathy. That was the sister he'd known on Earth. He tapped his sleeve to turn his coveralls purple and stepped to the edge of the throng, close to where Maliah would finish her walk along the tables.
She fixed a level gaze on him. "I didn't know Liam was sending Kin down in the middle of the night."
She waited for a response, but Fynn crooked his mouth into half a smile and shrugged.
The reunion went on for an hour before Maliah hopped onto the kitchen counter and the adjuncts, who'd been wandering through the mess hall, stood on the floor at her side, arms folded over their chests, watching the group with appraising eyes. She pulled a pad halfway from a pocket, tapped it, and looked up.
Fynn coveralls, everyone's coveralls, snapped to blue, and he jumped. Around one arm was a band of orange as wide as his hand, lined with Indus Valley symbols. A sort of tree with limbs drooping from its top and something like a fish walking on its tail. The mysterious signs of the Kin's ancestors. It was quite a trick to control the pigment-coated polymers so precisely.
The sudden change silenced everyone. The new arrivals, still groggy, looked puzzled, but around them Kin tensed. Some fidgeted at the new armband and others stared fixedly at the floor.
Fynn's sister stood on the countertop where their father had once welcomed them to Titan. Her face was as golden as topaz. She looked leaner and older.
"Doctor Tanaka may lie on Titan's surface, but our allegiance is strong. His legacy ensures our greatness." She swept her arms dramatically wide and tilted her head upwards. "We stand beneath Tanaka as this moon stands beneath Saturn, always facing him. We are titans serving eternity, striding into our Golden Age."
Maliah lowered her gaze to the Kin, her eyes on fire. "Despite Tanaka's genius, mongrel contamination touched the Herschel. That is what led to the deaths of our Cohorts. Touched Tanaka himself, taking him from us. We must purge treachery from our ranks. Tanaka requires sacrifice. He requires discipline."
Fynn glanced at the tables. Hs sister's words were inspirational. Swollen eyes glowed back at Maliah. Backs once slumped against chairs straightened. She hadn't mentioned Yash, but there could be reasons for that. Maybe she didn't want to show grief to the crowd.
Someone started the chant, rapping the table in time. "Kin, Kin, Kin."
Maliah joined them, leading their voices louder, until she raised her fist straight overhead. "Tanaka!" she shouted.
To applause and cheers, his sister drifted down to the floor. Those closest reached out, touching her and receiving smiles and pats in return as she moved toward the tower.
Heat surged through Fynn from his chest to his face. He couldn't stand seeing her lead cheers for Tanaka. It was only because she didn't know the truth.
He bounded to the stairs and caught her half way up. "Maliah, you can't be serious."
Her amber eyes were cold. "What do you mean?"
"Contamination. Treachery. That's crazy talk. Tanaka risked our lives on a stasis technology never approved for human beings. Our father..."
She cut him off. "Our father was responsible for technology on the ship. He failed Tanaka. Betrayed him."
Fynn couldn't stand it any longer. He'd promised Greta to keep the video a secret, but she couldn't mean to keep it a secret from Maliah.
"You need to know something. Something painful. Tanaka killed our father, and I can prove it." Fynn yanked out his flat pad, opened the video, and held it before Maliah's eyes.
She didn't raise a hand to accept the pad. "What's this?"
"I use a camera to record furnace readings. That's the console on the right. But watch behind. See? Here comes Tanaka and the adjuncts. You recognize them, don't you?"
Maliah's eyes opened wide and she couldn't turn away. Fynn knew the video by heart. Yash walked into the camera's view. She saw them force Yash to the floor. Saw Tanaka leave and Magnus swing the club. Yash collapse. She watched the adjuncts pile a smashed fan on his body.
Maliah slapped the pad away and her voice was edged with rage. "Tanaka's a great man."
It was Fynn's turn to stare wide-eyed. "How can you say that? He killed our father."
"Because our father fought Tanaka's vision of paradise. There's no place on Earth remote enough for us. No place where we could be free from the hordes grasping at us. Controlling and manipulating us. Only Titan can be our paradise."
"He murdered our father!"
Maliah swallowed hard and collapsed on the stairs. She hid her head in her hands. "Kin... We..."
Fynn prepared to comfort her. Tanaka's crime was hard for Maliah to accept. Fynn would tell her not to blame herself. Hug her close. They'd find their mother so they could mourn together.
She leaped up, clutching the rail to avoid shooting off the stairs. "I didn't follow a maniac across the solar system." Her voice regained its fierceness. "I didn't leave Earth, give up everything, for a lie. Titan will be our paradis
e and I'll crush anyone who interferes."
Fynn gasped. He couldn't be hearing her right. "Dad wasn't interfering. He..."
"It's Dad's own fault, what happened. And you. You were away, living with mongrels for years. Always daddy's little boy. Why so much trouble with the furnaces? Where's your loyalty?"
Fynn recoiled as if she'd struck him, retreated a step down the stairs. "You're my sister. You know me. How can you..."
"Then prove yourself, little brother. I love you. I want you to be one of us." She spun around and leaped to the top landing.
Fynn held the railing to keep from falling. This couldn't be happening. Maliah couldn't be crazy.
Dazed, he turned to descend and found a half dozen Kin staring up at him. Friend or enemy, it was impossible to tell from their guarded expressions. They hurried away and were out of sight by the time he reached the bottom step, but he couldn't bother wondering about them.
Mom was right. He should have kept the video a secret. Relations with Maliah were worse now. She couldn't mean what she said. She'd never abandon their father for Tanaka. Once she recovered from the shock, she'd be her normal self.
Fynn needed to talk to Greta.
Chapter 24
G reta approached the one occupied bed at the clinic. This was the worst case of stasis aftereffects. Other Kin from the current awakenings and the original Advance Team were recovering with lingering numbness, insomnia, and a few headaches. Cases of pneumonia would be manageable and only required routine meds.
One of the medics stayed at the remaining patient's side whenever possible and sat hunched in a bedside chair now. He was friends with her, the coma victim from the previous awakening.
