False Horizons

by CJ Birch

  I’ve been on the medication for half a day. He said it will take a while to see changes, but I’m worried what kind of changes. This is me, this is who I’ve always been, and I’m afraid whatever he has me on will fundamentally change me and maybe not for the better.

  Hearing a loud screech behind me, I turn to see Hartley manually pumping the bridge door open. He locks the door in the open position, and we stare at each other from across the bridge. He’s outlined by the green emergency lights lining the hall. I feel like he’s caught me sneaking pudding from the mess after hours.

  “Why’d you turn the emergency lights off?” He stomps onto the bridge. I like the guy, but sometimes Hartley is too much Hartley for my liking. He’s loud, arrogant, and obnoxious, not to mention the slowest eater I’ve ever encountered. Not that eating slow impugns someone’s character, but it grates on my nerves to watch him slow-chew through his tofuloaf.

  I shrug.

  He slaps me on the side of my head. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “I’m not.” I sink lower in the command chair. “I’m regrouping and coming up with a killer plan to get us moving again.”

  Hartley sucks on his lips, staring out at the expanse of stars before us. I hope he’s about to say he has an idea. But he shrugs and walks toward the observation port. “The main computer is gone.”

  “I know. I saw.” I bite the cuticle of my thumb, debating if I want to ask my next question. I’ve never been one to shy away from bad news, but the longer I hold off from knowing, the longer the panic will take to dock. I sigh and ask. It’s better to know. “How long do we have until we run out of emergency systems?”

  Hartley rests his forehead against the thick metallic glass. “Depends on a lot of variables. Each system uses a different amount of power, and on top of that, each system is taxed different. For instance—”

  “Hartley?”

  “Yeah?” He turns, a slump in his shoulders not normally there. And I know if I could see him better, I’d spot stress lines along his forehead.

  “Give me the worst-case scenario. I want to have a solution in place before that happens.”

  He doesn’t hesitate. “Two days.”

  Shit.

  “What if we send out a team to unfurl the sails manually? Can we pull in more energy, buy us some time?”

  “The energy-conversion system isn’t essential. Even if we could get the sails open, we can’t convert that energy to power our systems.”

  “What about rigging something from the escape pods? They’re built to be self-contained.”

  He shakes his head. “Ash, that’s like trying to squeeze a soccer ball through a gray-water pipe.”

  “Women do it every day. It’s called giving birth.”

  He rolls his eyes. “We’d blow the converter in two seconds.”

  I bolt out of the command chair. There has to be something. “Work with me, Hartley. I’m bouncing ideas back and forth, only you keep dropping the pass.”

  “All right. We should take the escape pods and land on the planet.”

  I’m shaking my head before he even finishes. “No. We’re not abandoning the Persephone. We’d have no way of getting back up here. We’d be stranding the crew on the planet for the rest of their lives.”

  He laughs. It sounds strange in the silence and dark of the bridge, like it came from somewhere else—another time when things weren’t so shitty. “That was the whole idea of this mission. To find a planet and settle there.”

  “Not as a last resort. We’d have nothing. You were on the planet. We are so not prepared to live the hunter-gatherer life.” I do a brief tally in my head of the number of times I almost died on the planet in a few days. I’m close to double digits. “That’s a suicide mission.”

  “Our ship is sinking. If we don’t abandon it, we’ll go down with it. And we wouldn’t have nothing. We can take systems with us to convert solar power to energy. We have brains and each other. We’ll survive.”

  “Not all of us.” It’s a sobering thought, but true. Inevitably, as we learn how to live in a totally different environment than any of us are used to, casualties will occur. That’s what happens when you take a group of people, most of whom have never even been on a planet, and drop them into a foreign world.

  “No. Not all of us. But most of us would survive. We’d find a place as far away as possible from the avians and start a new life,” Hartley says.

  “And the avians? Are our lives more important than theirs? You know what will happen. We’ll force them into extinction. Jordan didn’t want this.”

  “The captain’s not here. You are. It’s your decision.”

  It may be my decision, but what would Jordan do in this situation? She wouldn’t let the crew die. And then I have an idea. “Is it possible to put the ship into hibernation? We could take supplies with us to build a new quantum computer and rig the escape pods to get us back to the ship.”

  “That could take years.”

  Jordan doesn’t have years. But maybe I could rig an escape pod to navigate and go in search of her myself. Before I have a chance to expand this plan, the ship lists.

  I seize the armrest of the command chair and hang on as we tilt, and keep tilting until we’re almost standing on the ceiling. Hartley slides along the wall and hits the navigation console with a dull thud.

  “What the hell was that?” I ask.

  “We lost stabilizers.”

  “You said two days was worst-case scenario until we started losing backup emergency systems.”

  “I also said we couldn’t know for sure. The stabilizers must have needed more energy than the others. These systems are not meant to be used at the same time.”

  “I also want to send out an emergency probe to alert the Posterus of our location and situation.”

  Hartley bites his lip.

  “We have the ability to do that, don’t we?”

  He shakes his head. “We can drop a probe, but we don’t have the power to program it to do what we want.”

  “Aren’t they under their own power?”

  “Their propulsion, yes. But not their function. The main computer has to program that.”

  My heart sinks. Why didn’t we do that before we jettisoned the main computer? “Okay. Go see if you can bring the stabilizers back online. I’ll prepare us for evacuation to the planet. We need to take everything we’ll need to survive, plus equipment to make it back here and get the Persephone up and running again.”

  Hartley nods and scrambles along the ceiling, holding on to different stations, to get off the bridge.

  It’s only a matter of minutes before he reports back to me. It wasn’t the emergency stabilizers. Sure, they went offline. That’s what caused us to list. That’s why we’re still adrift, alternating between upside down and leaning to port. But they were only a side effect.

  We missed a bomb.

  Sarka planted a bomb in the waste-management system. You don’t realize how important that system is until it’s spewing gray water through vacuum tubes. It’s also got a fail-safe that opens vents to divert that water off the ship because too much water is dangerous on a ship. That’s why we listed. We didn’t have enough power for the ship’s stabilizers to compensate for all that extra strain as the water rushed through the corridors, pooling against the port-side bulkheads.

  I hope to God Jordan never sees her ship like this. I’ve turned it into a foul, useless heap of junk.

  Right now, we need to prepare for evacuation. I expected the crew to be upset, to demand we do everything we could to save the Persephone and go after Jordan, but most have realized what I refuse to admit. We have to think about saving ourselves. We’re in no position to rescue Jordan. I don’t want to believe that, so I’m making my own preparations. I’m going after her myself. The crew will be fine on their own. In fact, they’ll be better off without me to fuck everything up.

  As I’m stocking my escape pod, I feel someone hovering behind me. I assum
e it’s Hartley, but when I turn around, I find Quinn Yakovich leaning against the wall watching me. Her leg is still in a heavy-duty brace from when she broke it on the planet.

  “Going a little overboard on that one, aren’t you?” She points to several large bins strapped to the cargo hooks in back of the pod. They’re filled with a bunch of tins of tofuloaf—the food the crew felt wasn’t worth bringing—and backup oxygen and a small generator to keep the pod going.

  “You’ve been on the planet. What would you consider overboard?” Things have been frosty with Yakovich since we left her behind to die on the planet. That’s how I feel about it. Jordan would say we had no choice. The avians captured us and left her with a broken leg and no way to defend herself in a harsh jungle. She apparently wasn’t worth the effort. I can understand how she feels. She should be pissed.

  Sarka found her and brought her back on board. That should endear the man to me a little. But it doesn’t. Not even a little. He only did it because he thought she’d be on his side. But she turned on him, so now I’m left wondering where her loyalties lay.

  “Listen, Quinn. About what happened—”

  She waves my words away with her hand. “I know you guys would’ve taken me if you could. I’m not an idiot. I don’t blame you for leaving me.” She scrubs at her shaved head. “I’m sure as shit happy I didn’t end up dead in a humid fucking jungle, but I know it wasn’t your fault if I had.”

  I nod but don’t say anything. We’ve lost too many people in the past month, so I should be numb to it by now. But if anything, those losses make me appreciate how fragile everything really is. And also how crazy we are to be doing this. Anything can happen. One tiny mistake and all of us could die. Humans have been testing the boundaries of space for hundreds of years. The casualties are high. Since humans first started exploring space in the mid-twentieth century, thousands have died. In the first hundred, not many, even though it seems more dangerous, but that was only because the science was young. But as we started colonizing the moon and building stations around other planets and their satellites, the casualties grew. Since we’ve migrated to the Belt, the numbers have become unacceptable.

  “Do you need help?” She points to the rest of the bins I’m trying to stuff into the tiny escape pod. “I’m assuming you’re going after the captain.”

  I freeze. Have I been that obvious? Do other crew members know?

  “If I was in your place, I’d be doing the same thing. It’s not really the Persephone without the captain here.” She pauses for a second. “That is, if we ever make it back.”

  “We’ll make it back. We have to.”

  “How will you know? You’ll be floating dead somewhere in space in this piece of shit.” She points to my escape pod.

  “You just said this is exactly what you’d do.”

  “I didn’t say it was the smart thing. But the fact is, we’ll be on the planet, and you’ll be out there somewhere. What if you do find her? Is she still alive? The escape pod she left in has already run out of air by now.”

  I’ve been trying desperately not to think about that probability.

  “But of course one of the many, many ships in this system must have picked her up.”

  “Are you trying to talk me out of going?”

  “Of course not. I think it’s great. I mean, it’s not like they create contingency plans for things like that. The crew will be fine without you. I’m sure Hartley will have no problem keeping everyone in line.”

  “I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to make me doubt this plan.”

  She holds up her hands and backs away. “Not at all. Knowing you, you’ve thought this through and made up your mind. I wouldn’t dream of changing it.” She turns to leave and even makes it a few feet before she stops. “Although I thought you’d like to know that Hartley put Vasa in charge of packing our communications gear.”

  “What?” Vasa has been confined to his cabin since we discovered that he was behind the last attack on me. Why would Hartley trust him with something so important?

  “Just thought you should know,” she says and walks away.

  Goddamn it.

  As I set my manifest down on a container to go look for Hartley and kick some sense into that thick head, the ship shudders. This isn’t like before. It’s much more subtle, like passing through a tunnel on one of the maglevs back home. But then another shudder, much more serious than the last, stops me from going for Hartley. Instead I’m heading in the opposite direction, looking for a porthole.

  I climb down two decks to the running track. The three-hundred-and-sixty-window span will give me the best view. I stop frozen at the doorway. Instead of stars and a green and blue planet with purple haze, I see darkness. At first, I think everything’s vanished, like Jordan and Sarka. But as I run to the window, patterns and lights come into focus. I see windows and decks, and if I crane my neck up, I spy two green fluid arms connected to us.

  We’re inside another ship.

  Chapter Four

  Jordan

  I could kill Sarka. He’s strolling through the pasture, chatting up our captor as if we’re on a tour of a friend’s new crop field.

  “And how much yield do you get from one field?”

  The cow man, who introduced himself to Sarka as Tup, ambles behind us. He may be a powerhouse, but those legs don’t allow him to go very fast. “Don’t know,” he says. “I’m not one of the agriculturalists. All I know is that when I sit down in the mess there’s always a nice big bowl of chowder like my mom used to make. They feed us, we protect them. That’s how it’s always been.” He hikes a thumb at me. “Your missus here might get assigned to the cafeteria. She might be able to tell you then. If you’re still interested.”

  “Is everyone in this goddamn galaxy sexist?” I say. Sarka turns and grins.

  Tup laughs. “That was a joke. I doubt they’d waste you in the kitchen, which is lucky. We got about fifty thousand mouths to feed. That’s not an easy job.”

  “So you boys are prepping for war?” Sarka winks at me as he says “boys.”

  Tup stops and scratches the side of his head with his blaster. “Just exactly how far away do you guys come from? The Varbaja have been at war for hundreds of years. For as long as any of our elders can remember.” In this light his eyes look massive, two big black holes positioned under bushy caterpillar eyebrows. He looks us over a little more carefully. “Where are you from?”

  “We come from a place called Earth. It’s in a galaxy far away.” Sarka chuckles to himself.

  “You may be from Earth. But I grew up on the Belt,” I say.

  He bulks up like I’ve spit in his face. It’s not easy to do with your hands bound behind your back, but he manages to make himself imposing all the same. “You grew up on the station orbiting Earth. Same thing.”

  “It is not the same thing. I grew up breathing artificial air, a prisoner looking at something I could never have.”

  “Oh, spare me the theatrics. You had a wonderful childhood.”

  I step back like he’s slapped me.

  Tup waves the blaster in between us like a white flag of surrender. “I’m sensing some unresolved issues here. And as nice as it would be to sit around and talk about our feelings…” The way he says it makes me think that’s the last thing he thinks would be nice. “I don’t give a hoo-ha’s ass what your issues are.” He flicks his blaster in the direction he wants us to walk. “Keep moving. Believe me, you’ll have all the time in the world to hash through your childhood traumas as we make it through intake. The whole thing takes a few days, and it involves a lot of sitting around doing nothing.”

  I step forward, distancing myself as much as possible from Sarka. I can’t tell if he’s trying to get a rise out of me or he truly believes my childhood was something to reminisce about. I spent the first twelve years of my life a prisoner of the Burrs. Sarka’s pirates raided Union ships for cargo and weapons and sometimes people. My mom was one of those people, a
nd I doubt she thought my childhood was as idyllic as Sarka believes.

  We come to a field at the far end of the colossal farming structure, where several crew are waiting by a large control panel, presumably to turn the lights back off when we leave. A few of them look like Tup—short and stocky, cow-like. But a few are much smaller, thin and bluish gray. They remind me of smaller versions of the avians we encountered on the planet. Only these creatures are not as sharp as the avians. They have noses instead of hard facial structures that resemble beaks.

  After what feels like more than an hour, we come to the end of the farming. I look back and can’t see the other side, only crops and pastures with small herds of animals that resemble nothing even my imagination could come up with.

  In one of the pens we pass, a group of hairy red balls of fur bound over a small incline and head toward a large structure with troughs of water lines along the outside.

  In another field, small dog creatures lie about soaking up heat from a set of panels hanging from the rafters.

  And I thought the Posterus was an achievement. It took thousands of our greatest minds, even more workers, and over twenty years to complete, and it doesn’t even come close to this place. I have a feeling this is only the beginning.

  Tup grabs my arm and shoves me through a door. I have to duck. I’m getting the impression we’re a lot taller than the other species on this ship. It’s so large I’m starting to doubt it’s a ship, although he doesn’t think this system has any planets, so it can’t be a planet. An asteroid? But then they’d be at the mercy of the asteroid’s trajectory.

  “Is this a ship? Where are we?”

  “This,” he pats the wall of the lift we’ve stuffed ourselves into, “is the Avokaado. The greatest warship of all time. We can deploy twenty thousand fighters in under a minute on this beauty.”

  “Avocado?” Sarka smirks. “Let me guess, Pineapple was taken?” He keeps his head at an angle so it doesn’t bang into the ceiling of the lift.