Flight of the Magnus

by L S Roebuck

  Waypoint Magellan’s civilian governor, Thor Rillio, had proven himself to be an adept survivor. In the last year, he had rallied those who had not taken passage on the U.S.S. American Spirit headed to Earth, or the U.S.S. Magnus, headed in the opposite direction to put down the inevitable rebellion on the colony planet, Arara.

  “Hope is the only thing of value now,” Rillio would say time and again as the station slowly recovered. “Without hope, everything else is meaningless.”

  Magellan might as well be officially at war with Arara, 1.5 light years away. Regularly scheduled supply ships would come from Earth bringing relief, but seven light years distance from Earth meant those ships were infrequent. If the schedules were correct, the next supply ship was still two years out, having left Earth 12 years ago.

  The station could be repaired, supplies could be restocked, but so many souls were lost forever. Nearly ten percent of the station’s population perished in the initial battle, and half that many died from insufficient medical resources and various lethal system malfunctions as the people of Magellan struggled to bring their critical systems back online.

  But even in the shadow of death, new life brought hope.

  Twenty-year-old Amberly Macready held a months-old red-headed baby boy, gently in her arms. Alroy, named for his grandfather, had the distinctive round headedness that identified him as a part of the Macready clan. The new life Amberly cuddled was a star of joy in the dark space that had followed the Battle of Magellan, which ended with the arrival of the warship Magnus. The revelation during that conflict that Amberly’s own mother, Kimberly, architected the attempted destruction of Magellan still haunted Amberly.

  However, the most painful wound Amberly endured was the loss of her good friend North, who joined the crew of the Magnus, as the vessel headed to Arara to confront and subdue the broader Chasm rebellion.

  Alroy began to fuss, so Amberly rocked the baby.

  “Shhhhh. There, there. Your mother will be in a few minutes,” Amberly consoled the baby. “And not a moment too soon.”

  Amberly enjoyed babysitting her nephew while her sister Kora, a nurse, worked at the Science Quarter medicenter. However, after ten hours of changing diapers and mixing formula, she was glad she to pass off the baby to Kora. As Amberly sat on her bed, she pointed out the viewport into deep space.

  “See that star over there,” Amberly said to an oblivious Alroy. “That is Viapos. You can’t see it, but orbiting the star is Arara. Your grandmother always told me she’d take me there, but, well, she’s gone now. I’ll have to tell you that story when you are older. Much older.”

  Alroy cooed.

  Amberly thought about her mother, tossed out an airlock by a vengeful mob after Kimberly’s unsuccessful attempt to destroy Waypoint Magellan a year earlier. When she was a 13-year-old girl, Amberly practically worshipped the strong, intelligent woman of science. That year Kimberly disappeared, thought to be lost in space. Amberly was reunited six years later with her mother, who had been hiding in self-exile, waiting for the right moment to either take over or destroy Amberly’s home.

  If not for the heroics of North the Marine and the mysterious Chasm defector Dek, Kimberly would have won and 10,000 souls would have been extinguished in the vacuum of space. For a time, Amberly had thought that she could love Dek. But he was exiled on the American Spirit, headed on a decades long journey to Earth for his role in planning the attack on Magellan. In the end, Amberly wasn’t willing to give up the only home she had ever known to go with Dek.

  Dek and North were heading in the opposite directions, both now a half-light year away, and thinking about the two covered Amberly with a pronounced loneliness. She held Alroy, who had now fallen asleep, a little tighter.

  The door chimed, and the baby launched into a half-hearted effort to fuss.

  Amberly pressed open the door, expecting to see her sister Kora and her husband, Trot Wilder, returning from their work shifts. Instead, she saw the odd pair of Skip and Lydia, holding hands and smiling broadly. The two immediately realized their entrance had woken the child, and Lydia, a tall, muscular blonde with a Nordic face, blushed in embarrassment.

  “I’m so sorry, Amberly,” Lydia released Skip’s scrawny hand and moved forward to embrace her friend and colleague, awkwardly reaching around the baby Amberly held. “I had completely forgotten the reason you were over at your sister’s apartment was because you were babysitting.”

  Lydia turned her attention to the red-headed child, and gently put her finger on his nose. “Oh, you are so cute. When you grow up, I bet you are going to be a lady killer.”

  “Great,” said Skip, half sarcastically. “Now I have to compete with a newborn baby for your affections.”

  Lydia rolled her eyes and addressed Amberly, “That’s my charming man.” The pair stepped into the semi-rare two-bedroom apartment and the exterior access port slid closed.

  “Are you coming to Rick’s tonight?” Skip said, his sour expression melting into a smile as he considered the baby. “I promised Skylar Trigs I would do everything in my power to get you to come hang out with us tonight.” Rick’s was a cafe bar that was a favorite of Amberly’s for its live jazz music and its creative assortment of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks – although with the current shortages plaguing Magellan, the booze was a little rough. Since she rarely drank, this specific luxury loss didn’t bother Amberly. The set-up with Skylar did.

  “Skylar Trigs?” Amberly whined. “Really? Skylar? He’s your boss, right?”

  “I think he’s pretty handsome,” Lydia said. “And charming. He’ll be governor someday. He certainly has the ambition – and the smarts for it.”

  “Technically Skylar’s not my boss anymore, not since I enlisted,” Skip reminded Amberly. After the battle of Magellan, in a rare bout of patriotism, Skip joined the Marines. He still monitored interstellar transmissions at the communications center, just for the military instead of the civilian government. “And he is my friend. The one thing I learned from North is that you have to be loyal to your friends.”

  Lydia poked her boyfriend.

  “Ouch!” reacted Skip, then he looked at the suddenly crestfallen Amberly, her head bowed, red bangs hanging over her eyes, and said nearly inaudibly, “Oh.”

  Nearly a year of time and space had passed since North had left to find war on the Magnus, but the wound Amberly had received from her once-protector still felt fresh. North had not forgiven Amberly for her unintentional role in helping Chasm to nearly destroy Magellan. Many of the Marines North commanded died in the battle Amberly’s actions enabled.

  Amberly knew it was foolish to think about North like she did. But she thought about his broad shoulders, his dark brown hair, his kind brown eyes. Her longing for the selfless Marine, now executive officer and second-in-command aboard the most powerful warship ever built, had no logical end. He was gone to fight the Chasm rebellion and most likely she would never see him again.

  “No word from the Magnus?” Amberly asked Skip.

  “I’m sorry Amberly,” Skip said. “I miss North, too. I mean, he was my best friend. He was really my only friend until Lydia came around on me.”

  “Yep, you owe me one,” Lydia teased, sliding her strong hands around Skips torso into a cozy embrace. “Amberly, don’t you worry about North. He’s a survivor.”

  Amberly knew that according to plan, Magnus should be arriving at Waypoint Cortes, just a half-light year from Magellan, any day now. For security reasons, Magnus had been running radio silent for some time now. Because of the transmission lag that accompanies distances measured in light years, the last message Magnus sent was received three months ago.

  She knew the Magnus would break radio silence once it reached Waypoint Cortes. But if they reached Cortes this day, any message would take half a year to get back to the Waypoint Magellan.

  North might as well be 100 or 1000 light years away, Amberly thought woefully. If he survived, returning to Magellan would take yea
rs, and North made it clear at Amberly’s trial what he felt. She was acquitted of treason, but North believed she was a manipulative turncoat, just like her mother. North would never have her now.

  Her brain knew she needed to get over North, but her heart held on tightly to the memory of the Marine. Today, her head won.

  “Okay, Skip,” Amberly smiled softly, pushing her hair out of her face. “I’ll go hang out with you and Lydia.”

  Alroy let out a soft whimper, and fidgeted in Amberly’s arms.

  “Well, as soon as my sister gets back,” she said, soothing the baby. “How did you know I was here anyway?”

  “We went by your place first, and we just asked Verne,” Lydia said, referring the Amberly’s virtual intelligence construct.

  “I have got to adjust his privacy setting,” Amberly sighed. Amberly sat down on the in-wall bench.

  “You guys want something to drink?” Amberly motioned to the food prep area on the wall opposite the main door. “I’m sure Kora and Trot won’t mind.”

  “Too early for me,” Skip said.

  The door slid open and Kora and her police officer husband stepped in.

  “I guess we found the party,” Trot said, stepping forward and reaching for his son. His sister-in-law handed Alroy over and stood up to give her sister an embrace.

  “Hey, sis,” Kora said.

  “We’re going out to Rick’s tonight,” Lydia said to Kora. “You want to come and get some drinks?”

  Kora lifted her baby son slightly, and shrugged. Alroy grabbed at his mother’s long raven-black hair and pulled. “Sorry Lydia, I don’t think Alroy is up for it.”

  “Well, I can watch him if you want to go, sweetheart,” Trot said reaching for the baby. “We can have a guys’ night in and watch old war vids.”

  “I couldn’t do that to you, honey,” Kory protested. “You just got off work, too.”

  “You must come, Kora,” Lydia smiled mischievously. “Amberly is coming.”

  “Reeeeally,” Kora looked squarely at her sister. “Well, that’s some good news.”

  “Yeah, I am trying to set her up with Skylar,” Skip interjected.

  “Shhhhh!” Lydia chastised her boyfriend. “Amberly is going to change her mind.”

  “Skylar Trigs. Easy on the eyes. Great prospects,” Kora winked at her sister. “I approve.”

  Amberly blushed a little, absentmindedly pulling on a twirled red lock. A year ago, this sort of attention would have made her uncomfortable and even angry. But through the Battle of Magellan and the hard months following, these friends proved that they cared deeply for Amberly. This teasing was born of friendship, so Amberly tolerated it.

  “Will you be my wingman?” Amberly mock pleaded to her sister, showing pathetic wide eyes with a few extra blinks.

  “Go ahead, sweetheart. I’m totally fine with Alroy… at least for one night,” Trot again encouraged his wife.

  “Okay, I’m in,” Kora said, walking across the two-meter-wide living area into one of the bedrooms. “Just give me a minute to get changed and freshen up.”

  Skip smiled and grabbed Lydia’s hand. Trot sat down on an in-wall bench and fished an infopad out of a bench pocket with the arm that wasn’t holding Alroy. Kora called over her shoulder as the door to her room slid closed.

  “It will be just like old times, before Chasm,” Kora said, her voice muffled through the wall.

  No, not just like old times, Amberly thought sadly. North is gone. We’ll never have old times again.

  The four friends – Amberly, her older sister Kora, her co-worker Lydia and Lydia’s boyfriend, Skip, hopped on the Tube after a decent walk from Kora’s apartment. The apartment, a desired two-bedroom flat with station-exterior windows, belonged to the Macready family when Amberly was growing up. As a girl, she shared a room with Kora and her parents used the other. When Alroy and Kimberly Macready allegedly disappeared into space, the girls had the space to themselves.

  The Tube was a pneumatically-powered mass transit that completed a circuit through all four quadrants of the five-kilometer long Waypoint Magellan: Church, President, State and Science. Each quadrant represented an institution that the forbearers of Project Waypoint, those who engineered the series of 17 interstellar rest stops between Earth and Arara, believed were foundational to civilization. Amberly remembered the reasons from her elementary schooling: Church was a nod to the moral codes organized religion gave mankind; President referred to the great leaders who brought humanity together in some of history’s darkest times; State was named to acknowledge the pluralistic organization of society that was protected by government; and Science recognized how applied knowledge improved the human condition.

  Tube cars held up to six people on two facing benches. Amberly sat next to her sister and across from Lydia, who was leaning into Skip. Visually, Lydia and Skip were an odd pairing. Lydia was tall and muscular and formidable. She kept her blondish hair short, and preferred to wear practical khaki jumpsuits. Skip was thin and a half-dozen centimeters shorter than his girlfriend. Before the Battle of Magellan, Amberly thought Skip quite disagreeable, and avoided him when possible. Because both she and Skip were good friends with North, she saw more of Skip than she would have liked.

  The battle changed Skip. He didn’t take himself so seriously anymore. He had been an ideologically rigid progressive, cheerless to a fault. In many ways, the opposite of his friend North. Perhaps the trauma of war made Skip understand what was truly valuable, Amberly thought, as she observed him offering affection to Lydia. We are all changed. Nothing is the same.

  Well, her sister Kora’s personality and character hadn’t changed much, Amberly considered. She just made some drastic decisions, which actually was consistent with Kora’s past behavior. Kora married Trot Wilder just a month after the Battle of Magellan, and Amberly didn’t approve. She had no qualms with the character or worthiness of Trot, but rather she thought the attachment was much too fast, and probably just Kora’s need to manufacture some emotional security in the wake of so much sudden loss.

  More importantly, Amberly’s deeply held position that marriage was just a tool of social oppression still held sway in her heart and mind, even though she saw she absorbed that value from her traitorous mother. Maybe Mom went about things the wrong way, Amberly thought, and clearly, she took things way out of proportion. But was she, at the base level, wrong in her thinking?

  Amberly had moved into her own place, a small studio flat, not far from the Magellan hangar and the science labs. As she watched her sister gab with her friend, Amberly realized how much she had naturally grown apart from Kora. Immediately following the battle, the sisters were closer than they had ever been. They had just gone through so much trauma and loss together, and all they had left was each other. But then Kora married Trot, and soon after she became pregnant with baby Alroy. They were still close, but Amberly was painfully realizing that while Kora was her only family, Kora had a new family of her own that came before her little sister.

  In the months following Kora’s wedding, Amberly threw herself into her work at the Science Corps. She singlehandedly repaired and restarted the critical stellar radiation laboratory. The information from the stellar lab, which tracked all sorts of dangerous space radiation, was especially critical with Magellan in a state of disrepair, much of its cosmic shielding compromised. The seven billion zettabyte database of Milky Way radiation sources provided critical information for Magellan’s short-range thrusters to maneuver around approaching solar flares and other disruptive or even lethal burst of radiation. She found she had a knack for organization and leadership, as well, helping to fill a talent vacuum created from the battle. As the Tube car quietly zipped along on a current of air, Lydia and Kora gabbed about the latest juicy gossip. Amberly wasn’t paying attention to their conversation, but noted that she and her sister were wearing the same dresses they donned the day she met Dek, and the Chasm conspiracy started to unfold. She wore a black sleeveless number, and Ko
ra had on her beautiful self-illuminated red dress. She was headed to Rick’s back on that fateful day, also.

  Rick’s was the most popular bar on Waypoint Magellan. The watering hole and café was themed after the famous 20th century vid, Casablanca. On the walls, magnetic resonance screens showed images of the Moroccan desert, faux-neon fedora outlines, and ancient propeller-driven Earth aircraft.

  The idea of flying wasn’t entirely foreign to Amberly, even though she was born and had lived her whole life on Magellan. She had been out in space several times, both in the two-man corvettes and the larger runabouts, sometimes called Valkyrie. She imagined that navigating those ships in three-dimensional space was similar to flying an aircraft planetside on Earth or Arara. She had studied the principles of lift as a part of the engineering courses required for her to join the Science Corps, but atmospheric flight was abstract to her. Unlike children growing up on Earth, in her youth Amberly never looked up at a bird with envy.

  Amberly swirled her faux-tea, and stared alternately at the image of the ancient passenger plane and the hat. She imagined North, in civilian clothes, wearing a black fedora. She thought about when he piloted the Clare De Lune, one of Magellan’s public corvettes, to take her on a romantic retreat to the Shard Caves on a Spencer Belt asteroid. She conflated the images in her mind, and imagined North piloting the airplane.

  “So, have you been enjoying your promotion? Finding the new job challenging?” Skylar Twigs asked Amberly. The redhead snapped out of her daydream.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “Skylar wants to know what’s it like being the Science Corps research director now,” Skip repeated. He picked up his glass and took a swig of his beer. After the brew had cleared his throat, he shook his head a few times in rapid succession. The beer, completely synthesized from raw molecular materials, had no organic origin and tasted, Skip imagined, like piss. “I miss the old ale. Curses on Chasm.”