A12 Who Can Own the Stars?

by Mackey Chandler

  “Yes, it doesn’t sound like it would be productive to discuss it with them,” Heather agreed.

  Nathan took a deep breath.

  “I have a favor to ask.” He stopped right there, waiting to see how she’d react.

  “We will entertain your petition,” Heather said. Her whole manner and tone of voice changed when she went into Sovereign Mode and spoke in Plural Majestatis.

  Nathan definitely saw the change. His mouth dropped open a little and his eyes widened.

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be safe on Earth. I have the funds and ability to get to Home where I’d be much safer. I’m just painfully aware that you dislike Martians, with just cause. I may still be forever tagged a Martian in your thinking even if I can never go back. I’m aware of how closely Central and Home are bound to each other. If I go to Home, and do not do anything detrimental to Central or your people, may I live there quietly? Will you, if not exactly approve of me, let me be and not have me expelled?”

  “We did see you as a despicable little weasel when you were spoks for the previous Mars regime. You did do Us a good turn warning Us it might not be safe to land on Mars again. We shall count that to your account in the positive. It is not yet clear to Us that you have reformed from associating with the previous murderous leaders. We are guilty of doing business with them and perhaps adding to their legitimacy Ourselves. We doubt this new bunch are any better, but at least you did not grovel and attempt to ingratiate yourself with them. We will not interfere with your life on Home. This is not an official and supported asylum, but if you integrate and flourish on Home, We will allow that in a couple of years you may visit or do business at Central. Do you accept My judgment?”

  “I am most grateful for your judgment and accept it fully.”

  “Then you damn well better get off the Mud Ball,” Heather said in her normal voice. “They may not miss blowing up your silly butt the next time.”

  * * *

  “Earth Control, This is the armed merchant Dionysus’ Chariot out of Central, Jeffery Singh commanding. We are transversing your control volume for a partial orbit and dropping below your control volume for a Hawaiian Islands landing. Transmitting our path data now and you may advise us if we interfere with other traffic. We will contact Honolulu direct on approach.”

  “Dionysus’ Chariot, you must get clearance from North America for any Hawaiian Island landing. Your orbital elements are clear. Contact Kansas City for final hand off to descend and contact Honolulu,” Earth Control instructed.

  “Kansas City? My goodness, what happened to Houston Control? Oh, that’s right, the same as Honolulu. It may be Winnipeg running it next visit. Not going to happen, Earth Control. We’re done talking to people who shoot at us. That’s why we asked for your advice and not clearance. Also why we are coming in from the west, to be much harder to shoot at from North America. Thank you for your concern. Singh out.”

  “I was having second thoughts,” April said, “but I’d hate to have missed that.”

  “That was at least partially your bad influence,” Jeff said.

  “Oh good. Thank you.”

  They finished their partial orbit in silence. That was fine with Jeff.

  “Honolulu Control, this is Dionysus’ Chariot, out of Central, Jeff Singh, 899-17-1179, commanding, April Lewis second seat. We are on approach three thousand kilometers west of you, descending through fifty-eight thousand meters. We are requesting vertical clearance to your south apron per prearrangement with your Minister of Business.”

  “Aloha, Dionysus’ Chariot. You are cleared for vertical descent under ten kilometers to 21.31474 north minus 157.94001 west. Minimizing your transonic approach is appreciated. Your visual is a standard SpaceX circle with the number 4. Traffic from the civil aviation side will be held briefly. Switch to 120.90 on approach and squawk 3201. There is a sixteen kilometer per hour breeze from the east-north-east in paradise, with scattered cumulus at sixteen hundred meters and visibility to twenty kilometers with a slight haze. Do you want any services alerted?”

  “Honolulu Control, we will be met by a civilian vehicle and expect delivery of water by tank truck. We will damage your apron due to our exhaust, not loading. Please advise management to bill us for repair with the landing fees and parking fees.”

  “Security is advised you will have vehicles and officials to clear as well as the tanker. I’ll e-mail an advisory to billing on the pavement situation.”

  “Thank you, switching to approach,” Jeff said.

  “They seemed friendly enough,” April said.

  “I know. I could get used to that.”

  * * *

  Jeff looked at April with obvious dismay. She returned his gaze with exaggerated cheerfulness. Diana’s little battery powered car wasn’t what she’d been expecting either. Nick was a government official and Diana was rich. They expected something much bigger and more comfortable. Spacers were used to tight spaces, but Diana had her purchases for dinner filling the space behind the rear seat. It was so tight they had to hold their overnight bags in their laps.

  The roads were visibly a victim of reduced trade since the revolution. The little car was near capacity with four people and a couple of bags of groceries. Whenever they hit a pothole or crack in the pavement the suspension bottomed out and jolted them repeatedly through the barely padded rear seat.

  On the plus side, Nick had arranged with his government contacts for a light armored vehicle with four soldiers to be posted beside the Dionysus’ Chariot.

  The climb to the top of the ridge where Diana and April’s homes perched on the end next to each other was painfully slow. The last couple hundred meters were so slow April wondered if they’d have to get out and push. Diana, seeing their discomfort, reassured them.

  “Don’t pay any attention to that warning light in the dash. They always set it to make you charge up way early. There’s another day of charge left in it for on the flat. I won’t even give it a full charge at the house. I’ll just set the timer for forty minutes. It’ll charge itself back up the rest of the way from regenerative braking going back downhill.”

  Diana went straight in the garage at her own home, but April insisted on going to her house first. She wanted to drop off her bag and show the place to Jeff. They went through the house, Jeff meeting Diana’s Newfoundland Ele’ele for the first time. He made points by being unafraid of him and talking to him like a toddler. They went out the back to jump the wall, Ele’ele trotting beside his newfound friend. Nick accompanied her and Diana said she had to prep dinner anyway, just not to delay too long or she’d feed it to the pigs. Jeff didn’t understand that was a colloquialism and not literal, providing some more amusement. Ele’ele seemed disappointed when they excluded him at the door. It wasn’t easy, he tried to squeeze through with them.

  Nick seemed worried and April didn’t understand why. It was soon clear he was worried that the few decorative touches he’d added might offend her. She thought he had pretty good taste and told him so. Spacer-bare was a habit to keep from having loose objects that could fly around. The habit persisted when there was no longer a need. It wasn’t like he’d knocked down walls and made permanent changes. A table and vase could be put away somewhere if she didn’t want to look at them.

  “Do you want to sleep up or down tonight?” Nick asked.

  “You have bunk beds?” Jeff asked with a straight face, provoking more laughter.

  “Come on, we’ll show you,” April invited. “It wasn’t finished when I left last time, so I want to see it myself.”

  They took an elevator down, got off at an intermediate level, and walked across a short hall with a right-angle bend in it and took a second elevator deeper. There was a spacious bedroom with an abbreviated bath that had only a shower not a tub, a tiny kitchenette that would have been a luxury on Home, and a fully equipped com desk.

  “The jog in the elevators and crook in the transfer tunnel are designed to attenuate any blast from above. The
transfer level will collapse easily on purpose,” April said.

  “This is nicer than my two-bedroom apartment back home, but how do you get back out if you need to?” Jeff asked. “Do you have to wait to be dug out?”

  “There’s pipe behind the wall mirror in the bedroom if you get sealed in. It goes downhill and ends in a chamber just below the surface in the nature preserve. That’s trespassing and illegal, but tough. You have to fold down a panel to expose dirt and there are some short spades. You have to dig a hole to get out. Is there equipment stocked there, like was planned?” April asked Nick.

  “Yes, there is some food and water so you can delay exiting a couple of days if you need to. There are camo jumpsuits and rain gear, as well as machetes to deal with exiting the forest.”

  “And to answer your question, we’ll sleep down here. I’m still a little nervous being on Earth again. It was such a bad experience last time.”

  “It isn’t North America now,” Nick reminded her.

  April refrained from telling him it was still Earth out of politeness.

  Back at Diana’s, April waved away a fourth helping of pork loin and grilled pineapple. She had to leave room for dessert after all. Nick was dismayed at her capacity.

  Nick told them about the adventures of being a third-tier public official, the limitations of what he could do, and why Business wasn’t a second-tier office as Jeff expected it should be.

  Diana went off and returned with a Hawaiian coin for Jeff. She waved off his offer of a solar in trade. Jeff was quick to turn it over to see what was on the obverse. It was hibiscus lei with two of the flowers artistically depicted in the middle.

  Diana finally brought out dessert about the time April was giving up hope and thinking maybe she should have taken another plate of pork. It was chocolate pie or likiko’i bars. After her quarter of a pie washed down with local Kona, April regretted not taking a smaller piece. She only had room for two of the bars.

  After everybody seemed full and talked out, Jeff asked April and Nick. “Are you ready to call it a night, and go back to April’s house? We have to be at the field at 0900 so they can load us,”

  “When I’m in residence, I mostly stay in the studio on the uphill side, not down in the main house,” Nick informed him. “But if you need me, I’m staying here tonight.”

  “Ah, OK. I doubt we will need anything,” Jeff said, cluing up.

  “Figure 0700 for breakfast,” Diana said. “I wouldn’t expect April to make the long drive down empty first thing in the morning.”

  “I packed it in pretty good too,” Jeff objected.

  “I was fairly sure you liked it OK, but you only get an honorable mention,” Diana said.

  Chapter 17

  April restrained herself in the morning. You don’t want to be too full flying, or in her case sitting the weapons board and prepared to back up Jeff.

  Riding down the hill, Diana pointed out the bar showing their charge state in the instruments. “See it’s at 100% now? It doesn’t usually hit that until near the bottom. Having four people in the car makes it charge faster.”

  Jeff was impressed by how pleasantly the gate guards treated Nick while still being thorough in checking his identity. There was a stout drop bar at the gate and a double fence on each side. Diana went off on a tangent explaining how that was the origins of the expression turnpike, but it filled the void while the guards checked them out. Jeff would have preferred some serious retractable bollards, but it was a big perimeter to protect and you could just breach it elsewhere if you made this point too strong. There was at least a big concrete wedge protecting the guardhouse, and the guards had long guns. The width of the magazines said they were of a serious caliber too.

  There was a box of an armored car backed up to the ship already, not the low-slung Army of Hawaii vehicle, but a bronze Brinks truck with two guards in much snappier uniforms chatting with the troops. Diana pulled in between the bigger vehicles, nose to the ship. There was another Brinks truck parked a little away. For some reason, they had the load split into two trucks. Jeff didn’t realize how limited their load capacity was.

  “Can we come up and see your ship?” Nick asked. “I’ve never seen the control room of one except in a video.”

  “Neither have I, even though I’ve been up a couple of times,” Diana told Nick.

  “Take them up, April,” Jeff said. “I have to show the Brinks guys how to run the crane for sure, and that they understand how the cases have to be distributed and strapped down, It’ll take them a while to load. I’ll join you in a few minutes. But I want to strap in the command chair, boards hot, listening to the field, all set to lift as soon as we are loaded.”

  April took Jeff’s bag to stow. “Follow me up. We used to have a hanging ladder but the last refit we put retractable rungs with a better tread surface and they don’t move around.”

  “There’s no rails or safety lines?” Nick asked. He looked uncertain.

  “Are you afraid of heights?” April asked. “I can get a safety line from a locker and toss it down to you if you know how to rig it. It’s a pain needing to unclip and reattach it over and over. In lower gravity, we just climb a line hand over hand and don’t bother with steps.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Nick promised. His face said otherwise, but April saw it would be humiliating to make a fuss about it now.

  “There are sometimes two seats latched into this space when we carrying passengers,” April said, showing them the recesses on the deck.

  “How the heck do you get up there?” Nick asked, looking at the acceleration couches projecting from a now vertical surface “Do a chin-up on the head-rest and pull yourselves over the edge?”

  April laughed. “No silly, watch.” She pulled a handle at the bottom of a line of plates running up the now vertical deck. Two rails pivoted out at the bottom and the flat plates rotated into place becoming stair treads, locking in place with a clunk.

  April was explaining the difference between each station and how either could handle all the functions if you needed to pilot it solo. Jeff came in and they saw how easily he climbed the stairs, grabbed a convenient take-hold they hadn’t even noticed, and swung into his seat.

  “Could I sit in the other seat and you get a picture of me looking back over my shoulder?”

  “Sure, just don’t touch anything on the board,” April told Nick.

  Then of course Diana had to do the same thing.

  “I’m bringing up both boards live now,” Jeff said after Diana climbed down. “I already set the basic routines to climb out and jump before we ever left. Be aware you don’t want to mention priority commands such as L-I-F-T or J-U-M-P, because as a matter of safety they will actuate from any voice. April’s board is a bit worse actually. You never want to say F-I-R-E as the computer may connect that to something you said as a command. That could have unfortunate results such as shooting missiles or calling down orbital weapons. That starts as of now.”

  “Now I’m scared to say anything,” Nick admitted.

  “I often feel the same dealing with Artificial Stupids,” April admitted.

  “Commander Singh,” the Brinks guard called on the hold intercom. “We have finished loading your cargo and it is secure. Do you want to come down and inspect it?”

  “Nah, just double check you didn’t leave anything in the armored car when you go down,” Jeff joked. “I will go down and check all the strapping and placement in a bit. Do you have a physical manifest to sign?”

  “Your verbal release is sufficient,” the man said.

  “You have that then. It’s not like I can weigh it and run assays right now anyway. If anything is off spec, I’ll take it up with the buyers latter. Thanks for your service,” Jeff said.

  “My pleasure. Good day to you,” he signed off.

  “Ship, activate ground ops frequency. Lieutenant, you can take off with your crew if you want now that we are all loaded,” Jeff said. “Thanks for watching my ship.”
r />   “Roger that. We don’t get much easier duty,” the fellow said.

  “And thank you for your care and hospitality,” Jeff said looking over his shoulder at Dianna and Nick.

  “Security alert,” the radio still on ground ops said. “We have a large truck approaching the Civil Aviation gate at high speed.”

  “April to your board,” Jeff said. “It’s hot. Get us a camera view to that side.”

  “Truck has driven through the gate post and taken fire. It appears to be armored up and that hasn’t slowed it. We need medical to the CA gate as quickly as possible.”

  “Maybe we need to get out of here,” Diana said.

  “Not to your car. You don’t want to be out there. I see it coming down the Civil Aviation runway already. Lie down on the back bulkhead,” April ordered.

  Diana did as instructed, but Nick just sat, tilting his head up to see the screens with them.

  “Honolulu Departure… Oh crap, no time. April, laser that sucker, hard.” The big box truck was to the end of the runway already and aimed straight at them. If anything he was accelerating.

  “Designated. Firing,” April said.

  The truck vanished in a white-hot ball of flame that threw smoking chunks of debris in every direction.

  “Hatch close!” April remembered before the shock wave got to them.

  A giant hand slapped the ship and rolled Nick on his side.

  “Tip point!” Jeff said as the ship leaned past the point of recovery, headed to impact on the pavement. A shrill alarm was saying the same thing.

  There was nothing else left to do… “Jump,” Jeff said.

  Nick and Diana came floating off the back bulkhead.

  “What happened? It’s dark outside,” Nick asked looking past Jeff and April out the forward viewports. Then he realized he wasn’t sitting on the bulkhead anymore and snapped his head around to look at it. That was a mistake. He pulled his shirt up over his face and vomited into it. He pulled it off over his head, trying to hold it wadded closed, and then had to use it again.