Warp Thrive

by Ginger Booth

  Copeland sat slumped on the bench between the scrubber trees, feet propped on his toolbox, staring off into space. Thrive echoed like a silent tomb.

  Where is my crew? Not the best question to lead with.

  “Mr. Copeland!” she called with a false smile. “Good to be home.”

  “Is it?” he murmured, and swallowed.

  Sass instructed, “Kassidy, show Aurora and your father to your quarters.” Still feeling off-balance, a fraud of a human being, the captain approached the engineer and took a seat on the bench.

  Rather than obey instructions, Kassidy started to stow all their p-suits first. Clay quietly ordered her to leave that to him and get out of the cargo hold. Sass waited this out silently until she heard the door close to berthing.

  “So, Cope,” she began in a friendly way. “Where is everybody?”

  “I think Wilder’s in his cabin,” the engineer replied. “The rest are in town. Except Eli. He’s still with the hunters.”

  “For future reference, John,” Sass murmured, “when you’re in charge of the ship, you’re also in charge of staffing. Two is a bit light.”

  “Wasn’t in charge when they left.”

  “You damned sure are now, and should have –” Sass suddenly realized that tears were streaming down his face. “What’s happening, Cope? Talk to me.”

  He mopped his face with the back of his hand. “Abel found a new product. Gut bacteria.” His face crumpled. “Personality in a pill. We each tried them. That was a mistake. But he and Jules made such a great sales pitch.”

  Sass blinked several times. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I,” he admitted. “I took the one to counter anxiety and panic attacks. You know? Hoping to make myself less uptight and angry all the time.” The tears began anew. “Jules and Abel seemed so happy, Ben decided he wanted whatever they had. Then took off to the city to get laid. For experience.”

  “Aw, hell. I’m sorry.”

  “Me too,” he whispered, and swallowed. “Sorry about – I should have – Hell if I know how to make them come back. I just –”

  Sass folded him in her arms and let him cry for a few minutes before she resumed a gentle grilling. “You’re not yourself, Cope. Neither are they, it sounds like. Where’s my biological control officer?”

  “Who? Oh, Eli. Still with the hunters.”

  She got out her comm. “Eli? Return to Thrive immediately for an emergency.”

  “Captain, it’ll take hours to get through the bio-lock. If you have an emergency –”

  “That was an order, Dr. Rasmussen. I said immediately.”

  “Yeah? Lady, I’m not one of your rego crew! Shove it!” He hung up.

  Sass flipped through her apps and selected an auto-dialer that would call and hang up on him every 7 seconds for the foreseeable future, then tucked the tablet away. “Gut bacteria, you say?”

  Cope pulled out of her arms and mopped his face again. “Yeah. To make you digest better. Except they have different versions based on personalities and guild. You know, make hunters ferocious, farmers calm, cosmos…hell if I know. Abel and Jules are kind of manic.” He didn’t add ‘Ben, too,’ but they both heard the omission.

  “I apologize profusely,” Sass offered. “If Abel and Ben were in charge, you are not to blame for this in any way. Although you still had authority to call them all back. Clearly you’re not in shape for it right now. And Cope? If you ever try that again, the farmers are relaxed and focused.”

  “But I get so scared sometimes.”

  “You mean, like when the engine room catches fire? Or when our containers explode out of the blue. When we lose half our provisions and cargo, and you have no idea how to fix it?”

  “Well, if you try like that, you can make me anxious again.”

  “Not my point, John. Sometimes you’re supposed to be afraid.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Do you think you can face Aurora?” Sass inquired gently. “She’ll know how to counteract the – whatever you took. Or know someone who does.”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  His face crumpled again. “It’s like she reads my mind!”

  Sass gave his shoulders a squeeze. “We all can, Cope. You’re an easy read.” She got out her comm again, and briefly paged through Eli’s demands that she cut the robo-calls. His last text claimed that he was in the bio-lock. She confirmed this with the sensors, and killed the punishment dialing.

  “Aurora? Please return to the cargo hold. Actually, bring Dr. Yang. And ask Kassidy to remain in berthing and look in on Wilder. Sass out.”

  As she suspected, without active prodding, her companion zoned out into a zombie state again. She asked where the gut pills were, and dispatched Clay to fetch them for her.

  Aurora and Dr. Yang arrived, and she filled them in on why the Thrive had turned into a ghost ship in her absence. And Clay returned with a box of drugs.

  If Aurora had ever looked alarmed in her life, she didn’t show it. “You took this one?” she asked Cope matter-of-factly, holding out a vial. He confirmed, and she excused herself to call Dr. Tyler for anti-measures.

  Dr. Yang continued to peruse the bottles. Sass looked at one – Farmer’s Joy – but didn’t have enough biology to know what she was reading in the fine print. “Bacteria in a pill?” she inquired. “And not bakkra?”

  “Not bakkra,” he confirmed. “But not the Mahina suite of gut bacteria, either. Judging from the names, there’s at least one strain per bottle gene-crafted here on Denali. That’s this bit.”

  He pointed to L.bacillus x Denali FJ on her bottle. She shrugged.

  “Lactobacillus is in every human gut,” he elaborated, “your basic friendly bacteria. Everyone has it from infancy to help digest milk. Children born in vitro don’t automatically catch it from their mothers. On Mahina, we prime the gut with a feeding tube at birth. We maintain the microbiome with monthly doses.” He paused. “Well, urbs do. I’m not sure how settlers get continuing doses. They should. But here, apparently they’ve created new strains of the species to elicit specific moods.”

  “They’re big on emotional control here,” Sass agreed. “Do you know how to kill it?”

  Yang shrugged. “A high enough dose of oral antibiotics ought to kill everything in your digestive tract. But then you’d need to restore the gut ecology afterwards with something.” He waved at their available menu of ‘something.’

  “You’re a doctor –”

  He raised a hand to stop her. “No. I have the degree. But I’m an engineer. Whoever made this knows far more about it than I do.” He slotted his bottle back into the box with a snick of finality. “My guess? These bacteria are too strong for us. The pill strains are designed to fight for supremacy over bakkra, and win. Your man didn’t have any bakkra to fight. So they’re out of control.”

  “But you could dose him –”

  “I don’t carry oral antibiotics in my luggage. I doubt you do, either. Mahina medicine doesn’t rely on them, precisely because they wipe out our gut bacteria. Back on Earth, we were surrounded by human bacteria to recolonize. In space, none of that comes naturally.”

  “Oh.”

  Aurora returned from her quiet consultation across the cargo bay. “Dr. Tyler agreed to locate our people in town and figure out how to treat them.” She eyed Copeland sympathetically. “We could send Cope and Wilder into the city. But she says taking another suite will supplant whatever he took before. They knock out whatever dysfunctional mood bacteria were in place.”

  She rifled through the bottles, then spotted what she wanted in Sass’s hand. “Farmer’s Joy. That’s what I’d recommend for Cope.” She decanted a pill and held it out toward him.

  Copeland looked like he’d rather put a Denali pink slug in his mouth.

  “Was this Dr. Tyler’s advice?” Sass prompted.

  Aurora shrugged. “She advised he take this until she finds a better solution. We’ve both been trying to get
Copeland to take this pill since the day we met him. He’s tense and cranky. This counteracts that tendency, yet leaves it easy for him to focus with a clear mind. Cope, the formula you took was for acute panic attacks, not stress. It left you dopey. Unable to, um, cope. That’s not you. This pill is you, happier and more relaxed.”

  The engineer glowered at the pill. Sass plucked it from Aurora’s hand and held it to his lips. He slowly switched his glower to her hand, then her eyes, which Sass met with steely compassion. He grudgingly opened his mouth and swallowed the thing.

  “How long?” Sass asked Aurora.

  “He should feel better by tomorrow,” Aurora promised. “If you’d like, Cope, I’d be happy to stay with you and –”

  He recoiled. Sass patted Aurora’s arm. “A very kind offer. But Clay and I will keep an eye on him. Thank you both. You’re free to go. Dr. Yang, I’d appreciate it if you don’t break anything while our engineer is feeling unwell.”

  As they left, she sank to a seat beside him again, and shot him an impish smile. “Wanna see a warp lens? And our shiny new third generation star drive? Bet you can’t wait!”

  “I’m scared to go outside,” he confided in a whisper. “Bakkra creep me out.”

  She nodded and pulled his head onto her shoulder for safekeeping. This wasn’t quite the homecoming she imagined. But at least her new-found robot identity was irrelevant. She was human enough for this. “Clay, would you mind checking on Wilder for me?”

  “He took Hunter’s Joy,” the engineer warned.

  “Yeah, I should probably handle him,” Clay agreed, the sole member of the crew to beat Wilder in a fight more than once. He brought the bacterial pharmacopeia along.

  21

  Ben carefully nursed his water bottle and watched the frolicking festivities. The Spring Festival lured a fair-sized crowd out of the cosmo domes, several hundred out here risking their careful bakkra paint jobs, sweating under the few hours of sunlight. The hunters were out in force, brilliant reds and yellows and creepy black to cavort in loincloths and try to pick up cosmos. An aggie cafeteria abutted the rocky outcrop, and the farmers were clearly partying in there as well, though of course none came outside.

  The view took his breath away, though Ben kept well back from the cliff edge. Now that he could see it in natural light – well, through dark sunglasses to protect his eyes – Denali was glorious from a distance. Up the ravine, magnificent waterfalls fell in steps down orange rock faces tinted with green, red, and purple slime. A dozen arcs of persistent rainbows threaded through the river spray. The forest beyond glowed almost Earth-green. The closeup funky colors sort of merged into brown and black shadow.

  Of course they settled here. Of course they named it Waterfalls.

  He counted himself lucky to make it out of Dr. Tyler’s clutches in time for the festival. Her minions collared him after she tested out her foul experimental remedies on the Greers, which Ben considered poetic justice. He only had to endure the winning poison, a ‘mild purgative’ that leashed him to the bathroom for 24 hours straight.

  Correction, 20 hours straight. The Denali switched clocks for spring, synchronizing themselves with their star despite their own circadian rhythm for the next couple months. The dratted locals used Fahrenheit for temperature, too.

  This mild spring day, Aloha so low on the horizon as to spend half its four hour arc looking like a sunset, brought the temperature under the sun to 105 degrees F. Ben was too hot to figure out how many Celsius that was. Too many, went without saying.

  Banquet tables overflowed with sweet potatoes and a killer punch made from tropical fruits and yam vodka. Spring was time for a harvest thanksgiving festival. Ben didn’t dare touch any of it. Tyler had been strident about the need for sunscreen and a liter of water per hour minimum to stand in the sun.

  He decided he’d taken enough pictures of the pretty waterfalls, and turned to look for some shade. Unsurprisingly, the narrow verge under the trees was packed solid with humanity. But Cope walked toward him. Ben’s stomach flip-flopped.

  “Thirty minutes,” Cope called to him, halting 4 meters away. “Need time for bio-lock. Don’t be late.” He turned and looked for the next Thrive crew member to remind.

  “Cope, wait a minute!” Ben called back, and scurried toward him. He hadn’t seen Cope in days. His text messages went unanswered. Unlike himself, who looked hag-ridden according to the lavatory mirror, his partner appeared relaxed and affable. Well, perhaps not happy to see me.

  Cope turned back, but kept his eyes on the waterfalls rather than meeting Ben’s. “Busy.” He strode away.

  “Sucks to be you tonight,” Wilder confided, coming to join Ben from his right. His eyes bore dark circles, but his personality seemed authentically Wilder. Wanker.

  “Thirty minutes to bio-lock,” Ben returned his greeting.

  “Yeah, Abel caught me,” Wilder agreed. “Hey, got a sec? I heard from Zan, who had it from Kaz, that the Selectmen are calling Sass and Clay robots!”

  “That’s bent,” Ben acknowledged. “Did anyone on this gossip chain tell Sass?”

  “I’m submitting it up the management chain. You do it. You seen Cortez?”

  “She avoiding you like Cope’s avoiding me?”

  “Opposite cause, but yes.” The sergeant bestowed an eye-flick of censure on the young officer. “I wanted to talk it out before the meeting.”

  A hunter dancer swirled by, bearing necklaces of enormous flowers hooped on her bare arms, as well as the one partly obscuring her bare target-patterned breasts. She paused to ring a lei on each of their necks, and kissed them thoroughly with her black lips. Taken aback, Ben noted that her tongue was blackened as well.

  Wilder quipped, “She just added 10 minutes in bio-lock for us. Don’t forget to tell Sass.” He pointed in her direction as he set off the opposite way.

  Ben sighed and set off to find her. This wasn’t as difficult as he first imagined, because the crowd avoided the off-world aliens speaking with the Selectmen. He sidled up and whispered in her ear. “Need a private word, cap. Now.”

  She excused herself from the dignitaries, while Clay and Aurora smoothly filled her place. Unlike Ben, they got to enjoy the high-proof fruit punch. Sass’s cup even had a spike of strange berries and yellow ring chunks. Ben loved those.

  Once they were successfully out of earshot, he passed on Wilder’s warning about this foolish ‘robot’ label. “Not that it matters what they think,” he added.

  “Aurora,” Sass murmured. “And Dr. Tyler.”

  “What about them?”

  She shot him a sad smile. “Nothing. Thanks for telling me. I’ll see you at the meeting.” She drew a finger along her lip. “You might allow extra time.”

  “Those flower sellers are aggressive.”

  With no place better to go for 15 minutes, he drifted in her wake toward the Selectmen, keeping a respectful distance.

  “Sass,” Clay turned to welcome her back. “Aden was telling me he thinks it’s time to scout out Denali Prime. The sun is up. The lava is cooling.”

  Aden nodded, “It’s best to go before it gets hot. The days grow longer very quickly.” He took a thoughtful sip of his fruit cocktail. “Tell me, will you use the starship you brought from Neptune?”

  Sass replied, “For the initial aerial survey, yes. Then we hoped to return in ground vehicles if possible. We don’t want to cont– get bakkra inside the ship.”

  “Contaminate,” Selectman Gorey supplied the word she began and attempted to abort. Gorey was the hunter Selectman, taking this rare chance to meet with his counterparts in person.

  “I’m sorry, we do think in those terms,” Sass allowed. “There are sensitive electronics in the ship that we don’t understand well, and can’t replace. We would hate to endanger any of them.”

  “For you,” Gorey asserted. “While –”

  “Enough,” Aden cut him off, expression pleasant and unflappable. “Please excuse my colleague, captain. We were speaking of
an aerial survey. But I do hope you will take Zan and Kaz along, as well as your own excellent Sergeant Wilder and Dr. Rasmussen. Just in case you do put down. That could be dangerous.” He smiled.

  She smiled back. “Of course. And how urgent do we think this is?”

  Gorey started to respond, but Aden edged in first. “You should leave within the week. Days, would be preferable. It will start to get quite warm for you.” The bastard wasn’t even sweating.

  “I see,” Sass acknowledged.

  “I’m not sure I do,” Clay inserted. “We had hoped to take a little time studying the Nanomage before taking it into the field.”

  “Studying? Or stripping?” Gorey accused.

  “Your hostility is intriguing,” Clay observed. “I thought we’d become the best of friends.”

  “Gorey, your glass is empty,” Aden noted. “Fetch me a fresh one as well, would you?” His expression was pleasant, but his eyes locked on Gorey’s like laser weapons. If he wore red bakkra, Ben imagined they’d be flaring. Gorey’s certainly were. But the hunter stepped back with ill grace and set on his errand.

  Aden turned back to Clay and remarked mildly, “Neptune expressed some concern about their starship. That you left before they gave you permission to relocate it. They also mentioned something intriguing about you not being human?” He took a delicate sip of his drink, and slid a chunk of orange fruit off its stick with his teeth.

  The oily dude’s face actually registered surprise when Aurora spoke up. “I meant to ask about that. My apologies, Selectman. I’ll correct that oversight now.” She searched the crowd and beckoned Dr. Tyler to join them. “The thing is, I was there, and I don’t buy this argument.”

  Aden pursed his lips. “Perhaps we should speak of this another time, Aurora.”

  “No need, Dr. Tyler is right here.”

  Ben grinned. He was delighted to see Aurora annoying a Denali as much as she annoyed him. That she irritated the contained and unflappable Aden brightened his miserable day. Until he remembered Copeland, and his heart sank again.