by L S Roebuck
“This is Nora,” the woman said slowly. She lost strength in her arm and dropped the gun to the floor. Sparks reached forward and grabbed Nora as the woman tumbled out of the chair and onto the floor, coughing. She tried to sit up, but didn’t have the strength, so she smiled wryly. The woman spoke weakly. “So good to see you, Sparks.”
“Ryder? Is that you? are you still with –”
Sparks heard North’s footsteps approaching and cut herself off.
“North. Two survivors in here,” Sparks called over her shoulder.
North burst into the room. “Advika says that man is in a coma,” he said, then looked at Ryder and Sparks, holding Nora.
North leaned over to help Ryder off the floor, and the feeling of human contact, strong arms lifting her off the ground, sent a wave of endorphins through her body. North sat her back in the chair, and she looked into his eyes.
“You have lovely brown eyes. Do you have something to eat?” Ryder asked as she passed out.
CHAPTER THREE
Sparks was conflicted.
She paced quickly down the corridor toward the Magnus sick bay. She didn’t know if she should give up Ryder as Chasm, or keep her old comrade’s secret. If Sparks didn’t let the captain or North know about Ryder’s past, and the truth came out later that she knew, she could lose her clemency. That forgiveness saved her from a traitor’s execution. Ryder had something on Sparks — she could out herself and reveal that Sparks knew all along. But that would run a huge risk for Ryder as well. Captain Obadiah certainly would have the legal authority, if he knew Ryder’s role as an intelligence officer for the enemy, to toss her out an airlock.
Even though Magnus was a vastly larger ship than the American Spirit, the hallways were much smaller, tighter and constricted. Magnus was not designed for comfort. It was designed for war. Piles of ammunition, reserve batteries, escort fighter wings and a combat training center all took up the space that would have otherwise been allocated for creature comforts on a civilian ship. Sparks had only spent a few weeks on Waypoint Magellan before Chasm’s thwarted attempt to destroy that critical link between Earth and Arara, but she had already grown accustom to the much larger and open spaces found in the five-kilometer-long space city. Here, she felt cramped.
Arriving at sickbay, Sparks conferred with the nurse on duty and slipped into a large suite at the end of the medical corridor. Two beds were divided by a mess of medical gear, various fluid bag and IV tubes connected to the two patients. The comatose man she and North had discovered on the Ironman seemed to be resting peacefully. He didn’t look so ghastly now that he had been pumped full of nutritious fluids and who knows what other pharmaceuticals. The orderlies had shaved and bathed him as well, so he smelled better. He lay uncovered in a loose-fitting blue jumpsuit, with pant legs that ended mid-calf. Sparks thought his legs were muscular, especially considering the little amount of exercise and nutrition he must have as the derelict Ironman floated through space.
The man was tall, perhaps close to two meters, though it was hard for Sparks to tell since he wasn’t standing. She didn’t find him traditionally attractive, but she thought he had a kind, peaceful face. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought perhaps the man had a familial similarity to the dead woman they found in Ironman’s cargo hold.
In the second bed, Ryder suddenly opened her eyes and sat up.
“So, I wondered how long it would be before you showed up,” Ryder said. “I’m glad it wasn’t long. Is this room … secure?”
Sparks ignored the question and tilted her head towards the sleeping man. “Who is he?”
“Some Cortes civilian named Arvin,” Ryder said. “He and his sister were,” Ryder chose her words carefully “… escaping Cortes. Instead of becoming space debris, I hitched a ride at the last minute.”
“So, Scorched Earth then?”
“Secure?” Ryder asked again.
“As far I know,” Sparks shrugged.
Ryder, the ranking intelligence officer for the Chasm rebellion on Cortes, was always paranoid about being spied on. Back on the waypoint, she had an arsenal of anti-spy measures that could ferret out clandestine monitoring devices. But she had to leave those behind. She didn’t know if she could trust Sparks, so she would have to probe a little to get more information.
“What about Magellan? What happened?”
“We failed. We failed to capture Magellan, and then we failed to destroy it.”
This Ryder already knew. While they were floating in hopelessness toward Magellan, she received the desperate transmission sent from Raven One, also known as Kimberly Macready, perhaps the greatest mind in the Chasm ranks. Of course, the message had been traveling at light speed for three months before she decoded it. It warned of the unexpected arrival of Magnus, the warship designed for one purpose, to put down the Chasm rebellion. And now, here she was, on the ship that could end the grand plan to create a perfect society – with no greed, no hate, no gods – only the state and the common good. If I could corrupt this ship, or even destroy it, I could save Chasm, she thought. But is Sparks my ally?
Ryder did not feel the need to reveal that she received the warning from Macready.
“How could you fail? You had Raven One!”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Sparks said regretfully. “It was the weakness of men. Joti, Järvinen.”
“I rather liked that old man,” Ryder thought of the former captain of the American Spirit. She had spent considerable time with him when the deep space ship had been in port at Cortes, though they were not romantically involved. “He didn’t seem like a weak man.”
“Heh. I find all men are weak,” Sparks smirked. “He killed himself after he was captured in a failed offensive to take the command center of Magellan.”
“What about this North, is he weak? He doesn’t look weak,” Ryder said, with just a hint of lust rolling off of her lips.
Sparks tensed slightly, and the highly attuned Ryder noted the shift in her friend’s temperament. “Oh, is North your mark?”
Sparks realized she had a reaction of defensive jealousy over North. She didn’t love North. She didn’t believe love was real. North really was someone she was using and planned on using. He was sinfully attractive. Their budding friendship took the sting off of her cavernous loneliness, and she believed she could manipulate him to help her achieve her ends — whenever she figured out what her ends were.
Sparks reasoned there was no use lying to Ryder; Sparks trained with her on Arara. The spymaster would see right through any lie. Ryder may have had the upper hand psychologically, but Sparks was the better warrior. Letting Ryder know here and now the consequences of crossing her was best.
“There is no fooling you,” Sparks said. “North is my mark. Don’t interfere.”
“Really,” Ryder seemed amused, “or what?”
“Dear sister, I think you know what I am capable of,” Sparks said. And Ryder did. Sparks had just enough crazy that she would kill, and was well trained in that art.
Ryder decided to change the subject to another man.
“What happened to Dek?”
“Dek turned on Chasm … on us … because of her, because of Amberly,” Sparks said. “Raven One had a daughter. She’s quite amazing actually. Something the Chairman didn’t count on, I think. Or North. The roots of tradition are strong. But, by the looks of it, you carried out her wishes. You followed the Chairman’s Scorched Earth protocol?”
“It was glorious,” Ryder said. “To see the Cortes rip itself into pieces. And it was horrific. Random pieces of bodies floating in space.”
“And what about Falcon One? What about Franco? Did he go down with the ship?” Sparks asked, picturing the charming Franco in her mind’s eye.
“Well, he was already dead when the antimatter core went boom,” Ryder said. “I had to kill him myself. He was jelly in the end. When we received the Scorched Earth orders, Franco balked. He thought we should keep Cortes for Chasm and defy the will of the
Chairman. Igland was there to make sure the will of the Chairman was followed, and siding with a Hawk is always the right play.”
“So, the Hawks are real then. Wow. I thought the program was just a ruse. Igland was one? But you didn’t sacrifice yourself for Arara? You tried to escape,” Sparks pieced together. “Why?”
“A baby. The last throws of maternal instinct not bred out of my DNA, perhaps?” surmised Ryder. “I found a brother and sister, attempting to escape with just minutes before Cortes went critical. They had a baby — was not related to either of them, orphaned in the battle to control Cortes. I knew we were all dead anyway – there was really no hope of rescue for us with nearly a half lightyear to Magellan. It was just luck that we ran into Magnus. Maybe. In the end, I suppose I wanted to save the baby.”
“You saving a baby?” Sparks said. “Hmmm.”
“When you found us, I hadn’t eaten for weeks. I was saving the last foodstuff for Nora. I thought I was going to die anyway, so I tried to figure out what was the common good for that moment. It was Nora.”
The two women sat in silence for a moment, both emotionally overwhelmed at the impossible turn of events. Ryder broke the silence.
“How is it that you haven’t been shown an airlock, Sparks?”
A light went on in Sparks’ head. “You knew. You knew we failed at Magellan. That’s why you headed away from Arara and not towards it. If Chasm found you, they would probably figure you for a coward unless you were able to lie your way out.”
“Of course, I could lie my way out, Sparks,” Ryder said, stepping off her bed, speaking forcefully and feeling defensive. “I’m a professional liar. But the chances of us being found before we starved was almost nil, no matter if we headed toward Marquette or Magellan. The fact that you found us almost makes me believe in fate. But you didn’t answer my question. A Chasm officer in a failed mission of high treason: Why are you not only alive, but free?”
“My new sister, Amberly Macready saved me. She saved Dek, too.”
Captain Obadiah had convened a meeting of his senior officers. Wing Commander Okapi Nyota was an unusually tall, dark woman with strong facial features and a buzz cut. She carried herself in a powerfully feminine way, and she almost always wore an athletic cut jumpsuit, which easily fit under her flight suit. XO North, who held the rank of commander, had the primary duty to keep the Marine assault force of nearly 200 trained and ready. As the executive officer of the Magnus, he was second in command to the captain and was also tasked with heading up the intelligence operation of chasm.
Lt. Commander Cho, short and sharp, was North’s right-hand man, tasked with doing the grunt work of intelligence, and was considered a senior officer. Cho also ran the junior officer training program. Lt. Commander Alicia Blight was the Magnus’ chief operations officer. The pale woman was a fake redhead and ran all the support areas — the medical bay, laundry, janitorial, commissary, entertainment, clerical, housing — that made life on the Magnus’ long journey bearable. Chief Petty Officer Bollard was the chief engineer, responsible for the maintenance of Magnus’ antimatter core, propulsion and deceleration engines, life support, corvettes and runabouts. Bollard seemed to have personally tapped into nearly unlimited energy of the antimatter core — he was perpetually fidgeting, tapping and swaying. His energy wasn’t nervous, just excessive. He looked over at Rhodes and flashed a brilliant white smile framed by his bouncing dreadlocks.
Ensign Rhodes was hardly a senior officer, but she was often invited to senior meetings to perform clerical duties or fetch faux coffee.
“To come all this way and be too late. Seventeen years. Dammit,” Obadiah slammed his fist on the textured aluminum alloy table bolted to a floor of the same material. The captain stood at the table’s head. North leaned against corner wall of the windowless meeting room. Rhodes was seated to the right of the captain, and Bollard to the left.
Bollard reached over and put his hand on Obadiah’s shoulder. “Boss, we saved Magellan. That’s gotta count for something?”
Cho tweaked the magnetic resonance screen, replaying external video surveillance recovered from the Ironman’s flight recorder. The images of the remains of Cortes, suspended in cold, weightless space, was haunting. Two bodies, a man and a woman, locked forever in a frozen embrace floated toward the Ironman’s camera. Rhodes failed to stifle her tears.
“Not too late, I think, to kill all those Chasm traitors,” Nyota said through clenched teeth. “But do they know we are coming? Did they get Macready’s message?”
“Macready was committed to the mission. Almost certainly,” North said. “But it doesn’t matter. How can they stop the Magnus? We can bombard the surface of Arara from space. We can deflect and evade well enough. And even if they were to get a shot on us, the Magnus can take a hit. We’re rated to take a nuclear blast and walk away.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it thought,” Engineer Bollard jumped in.
“Do you think they’ve already destroyed Waypoint Marquette, too?” Blight asked, nervously pulling on her hair. Two waypoints? That would create a gap of a full light year between Arara and the closest waypoint.”
“That was the point,” North reminded. “They want to physically separate themselves from Earth.”
Rhodes used the back of her hand to wipe a tear off her right cheek, then the left. “Would we have just let them leave if they asked? Why did 10,000 people have to die?”
“I promise you, not everyone on Arara wants to sever ties with the mother planet,” North said. “My dad, for one. I’d find it hard to believe that many people want a … chasm.”
“History is full of elite minorities imposing their will on common majorities,” Cho explained, with a professorial voice, as if giving a lecture. “We knew of Chasm’s plan three decades ago because some faithful patriots on Arara sent us a message 40 years ago. These were not people who were compromised. We believe those who tipped us off were silenced, but we have no reason to believe that Chasm knew that Earth knew of their plans.”
“If Chasm knew Magnus was coming, Kimberly Macready would have been … ready,” Sparks, who had previously entered the room unobserved, offered. The word “ready” sounded slightly off in her mouth, as if she was trying to cipher out a pun. Cho jumped out of his seat and spun around, surprised at Sparks sudden presence.
“Some spy you are,” Sparks scoffed.
“I’m not a spy,” Cho protested. “I’m an intelligence officer.”
“Well, on that point you did have me fooled. Good job,” Sparks retorted.
Cho smiled, then frowned. “Wait. What?”
The captain ignored the exchange and began to quiz Sparks, who he previously dispatched to sick bay to see what information she could find out. Sparks was a little crazy, but she was detail-focused and methodical, qualities the captain appreciated immensely. “What is the status of our guests? Did you learn anything?”
“Why is that traitor allowed here?” Blight questioned the captain. “I don’t like ex-Chasm operatives being present at need-to-know meetings.”
“And I don’t like officers overstepping their area of authority,” the captain shot back. “North is tasked with our intelligence operations, and it is his call to clear Sparks for service. As it is, North made the right move earning Sparks’ trust, considering the amount of Chasm insights she has provided. We’ve been litigating that choice for more than eight months, and I’ve decided to support North’s judgment on Sparks. Period. I’m tired of my authority being challenged.”
“Just because you are captain doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question your judgment,” Blight argued back. “Sparks’ actions led to the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of innocents. She wasn’t acquitted. Her sentence was commuted. There’s a difference. She should be locked up on the brig of the American Spirit heading back to Earth.”
“You are talking like I am not in the room here,” Sparks said, deadpan. “But you are right. I should be jailed, or frozen body floating in sp
ace. But I received, what do you call it North, um… grace. I received grace from Amberly.”
The mention of Amberly made Blight even more angry. “Amberly Macready? Amberly Macready? The daughter of the mastermind of Magellan’s destruction? Really? That girl has no honor. She’s just as bad as her mother and just as responsible for the deaths of so many. She should have been shown the airlock with her mother.”
North stood, suddenly, angrily and took a step from the corner towards the chair where Blight was sitting, pointing a finger toward her face. “How dare you impugn the integrity of Amberly Macready? You need to learn when to shut your mouth.”
“You … you … hypocrite,” Blight fired back, standing up. “At her trial, as a member of the military tribunal, you voted for her death. What is the matter with you North?”
“Careful, Blight,” the tenor of North’s voice indicating he was working to stay calm.
But Blight did not relent. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder. How can I trust you’ll have my back when we go into battle against Chasm? Your feelings oscillate like some emotional teenage girl.”
“First you question Amberly’s integrity, now mine!” North burned with anger. He knew that his rising emotions would make Blight believe her thesis was correct, that he was emotionally compromised and unbalanced. “You know nothing of the pain I’ve been through because of Chasm. The friends of my mine who are dead at the hands of those murderers. You know nothing of the sacrifice —”
“Sacrifice? Sacrifice!?” Blight was now face to face with North. She was about 10 centimeters shorter than North, but the way she was projecting strength made her seem just as tall. “I have given up the best years of my life for this service. Spent nearly 18 years trapped on this tin can, on this suicide mission, leaving the people I love behind on Earth, probably never to see them again. When I send them a message to say I love you, I know it will be 10 years before they’ll even read it. They may as well be dead. For all intents and purposes, I’ve lost them.”
