Manifest Destiny

by Allen Ivers

  When the glass cracked.

  Chapter 2

  Murcielago

  This was always his favorite part. Leo Taggart pushed the big red button -- hard to not love a big red button -- and he listened for the happy hush of evacuating air. It was the distinct and happy sigh of release, pressure and strain granted sweet relaxation.

  He pulled himself over to a small window, just in time to catch the trash, refuse, and waste flutter off into the black on invisible currents of his own creation. A satisfying sound for a job well done.

  This toilet now flushes.

  The Murcielago trans-solar spacecraft was a spindly thing, long and skeletal. Its modular design allowed it to come packaged with everything from living space to prefab structures for the surface of Mars.

  The only connective tissue was small duct spaces along the length, allowing engineers like Leo to travel from section to section. Passengers were supposed to remain in their cabins, but in practicality, most had the run of the ship. It would be cruel to lock someone in a ten-by-twelve foot box for months at a time.

  Let’s make it a larger box, at least. A coffin is no place to live.

  This would be the Murcielago’s third and final trip of the year to the Red Planet, before it would shore up for some dry dock. The time was starting to show in the ship’s little quirks, as everyday things started to break. And when everyday things break, folks wig out. What to do when the toilet doesn’t flush and the lights go out?

  Fix it, but if that is too daunting for the frazzled masses, they call the handyman.

  Leo tossed his wrench back into his disorganized mess of a bag, not even watching as it tumbled weightless and lazy, disappearing with a soft bang into a mass of steel tools. He shot the panel back in place with the practiced efficiency of a magic trick. He plucked each screw from the air above him, each hanging in space like as though on wires, contained by the empty arms of a desk chair.

  He had to be careful not to consider his own inverted orientation, for the comfort of his stomach. The whole room -- a dormitory complete with furniture – may have been upended to Leo’s eyes, but Leo had work to do somewhere in the wall. He kept focused on that. If he were to see anything else that might indicate his suspension, his inner ear would rise up in revolt.

  He heard somewhere that vertigo was caused by your brain believing it was poisoned. If the inner ear and eyes were not in sync, something toxic must have been ingested. Quick, void yourself in the most spectacular way possible! There might be an audience that could appreciate the vigor or the volume of it.

  So instead, Leo focused on the task at hand. He had no interest in seeing his breakfast again. That disgusting muesli paste was an unwelcome addition the first time around. Lord knows how it would reintroduce itself.

  Janitorial service was simple work but Leo preferred the straightforward problems. Repairing a toilet was more direct than the spacewalk he had to do last week. And for all the nausea it caused him, he did like playing in zero gravity.

  It was quiet at these times, with no chattering of idle gossip or the dull hum of lives being lived at about 70% effort. He made certain his jet black pony tail never got in the way, tied back high and tight.

  It was peaceful, manageable, and a reminder of simpler times. Here, all he had to do was turn screws, like a bizarre kind of meditation invented by a German man named ‘Holz’ who loves cars more than people.

  Leo eyed the floating trash out the plate glass window as it tumbled in space, a demented ballet produced by some Icelandic genius that nobody understands, but everyone pretends they do – elitist pricks. The only rhyme present that made any sense was to the creator. It was beautiful. Pops would’ve killed for this.

  He withered, with that little agony kind of exhale that takes a bit of his soul with it each time it leaks out of his chest. It had been nearly ten years. And two years ago, Leo had promised himself he’d gotten over it, gotten closure. Still, he found himself recalling semi-furious chats with the old man over a bucket of popcorn on the couch.

  Too much salt, too little butter.

  Pops had sworn he’d be on the first team out to the Red Planet -- too much baggage he was ready to stop carrying.

  He could’ve had a fresh start, a real chance to build something where no one had ever built anything before.

  The radio stitched on his shoulder crackled to life: “That’s a positive decompression. Job well done, Janitor.”

  “I live to serve, Taxi.” Leo quipped at the air, not afraid to smile at his returned jab.

  “Don’t call me ‘Taxi.’” Piotr was being rather particular about being the only one allowed to give people demeaning nicknames, apparently.

  Leo grabbed his bag and pushed off and back to the ladder behind him, “You prefer Chauffeur, or just Driver? I know! Cabbie!”

  “I hate you, Leo.”

  “That’s just how you express your love,” Leo snarked, as he heaved himself up out of the cell block and back to what accounted for civilization out here.

  Inside the spine of the Murci, Leo was able to pull himself along without much bother. He passed rotating sections, where centrifugal force could simulate gravity for the occupants below. Ball bearings were spun using electromagnets to create the inertia, and far enough out from the center it had a pretty respectable simulation of gravity.

  Imperfect, as it was not actually pulling objects to the floor so much as riding on top of it, but it was the best that money could buy. No need to use the power on empty sections, like what Leo had been working on moments ago.

  Individual blocks were broken up with small pressure doors, little more than hatches, so that each section could seal off in the event of fire or breach. We’d learned from the Titanic, though it took three hundred years.

  Each section was connected to the spine via ducts and long ladders. Practiced hands could use the light centrifugal force to squeak down those rails, just a kid on a slide, down to the cargo bays, passenger bunks, or prefab structures at each junction.

  Or, like Kieran Pharaoh, one might fight that light ‘gravity’ to come hurtling out of a channel right next to Leo, broad shoulders popping Leo into the opposite wall.

  “Oop! Sorry, Tag!” Kieran chimed, a little more dismissive than Leo liked.

  It was all fun and games to this giant, and Leo was just another wrench monkey getting in the way of his recreation. It wasn’t out of mockery or hatred, but a simple lack of sincerity. There was no time for self-reflection that couldn’t be spent on additional fun.

  If Leo was the plumber, Kieran was the little rascal plugging up the pipes.

  Little. The guy was six feet tall hunched over. He meant well, but was all too aggravating to those trying to actually do a job.

  “What will you do for exercise on the Red when you can’t hip-check me anymore?” Leo snorted at the man twice his size.

  Kieran missed the jab, too go-lucky to notice or care. Maybe when you’re that big and chiseled, things roll right off your broad shoulders and wavy blonde hair like wisps of spring breeze, “Guess I’ll get a good pair of running shoes, start doing laps?”

  “Tell ya what, maybe do that now in your cabin? At the treadmill?” Leo’s pointed suggestion might be enough to slip into that thick skull.

  “Nah!” Kieran waved that suggestion away before it even got to his ears with one big meaty gorilla hand. One of his fingers might just be the width of Leo’s spindly wrists, “Need the change of scenery. Keeps the mind sharp!”

  Leo’s head bobbed up and down, “Sharp, yeah.”

  “They start you on your course yet?”

  Kieran just didn’t know when to stop, did he? Sure, let’s just query someone on their medical history in the hallway.

  Not like it was really that personal, everyone eventually picked up their Talcyon regimen -- the lack of magnetosphere protections on Mars meant a significantly increased risk of cancer. Purely by accident, the hull of the Murci protected its passengers, but once arriving
down to the Red, people had to be on their meds, and it wasn’t something that could be started whenever. The pills had aggressive reactions to the liver and thyroid on first run, so patients had to be eased in.

  It was generally a hellish first week spent almost entirely in the med-bay -- hence the stupidity of Kieran’s question. If Leo had started his meds, he’d more than likely be bed-ridden.

  Leo shook his head, his lips zippered shut to avoid screaming at the gentle giant. Kieran smiled big, something he likely would have done regardless of the response, “They start me tomorrow. Said I can’t go running around no more.”

  “Whatever will you do?” Leo felt the bite in his own words.

  Kieran just shrugged, blissfully unaware, “Doc says she’s got some books. I’ll let you know if any are good!”

  They were medical journals, but words on a page. He supposed they technically fit the definition of ‘book.’ Try hard enough, and he might even be able to force a narrative out of the amalgamation of chemical compounds and the drug-induced haze.

  Kieran waved both hands goodbye to Leo, like a little kid off to his first day of school, before pulling himself down the spine of the ship. Leo made a mental note to double-check the aft door seals, lest Kieran slam one shut a bit too hard.

  His radio crackled again, “Hey Leo, we got a note for you. Earth directive.”

  Leo pursed his bright full lips at that news, immediately regretting it as the chapped skin tugged and stung, “Can you read it off?”

  “They ripped it to your password.”

  Leo pulled himself along, speeding up just slightly. The equivalent of a jog, putting some urgency into the motion, “I’m coming right up.”

  Earth wasn’t known to pass-lock messages of no importance, let alone to individual passengers. And yeah, he was official crew and all, but he was also ‘Janitor.’ What could they possibly want to tell him?

  This would get around the ship, and soon everyone and their gossipy mother would be wondering aloud somewhere in his ear shot about the content. There wasn’t a lot to do on a three month space trip in a tin can, and eventually folks miss their television and dramas and other frenzied amusements. Only natural to seek it out wherever there might be something juicy.

  He was in a special kind of club now. Goody.

  Leo pulled himself up into the ‘Command Deck.’ It was roomy compared to the ducts -- in the passenger compartments, there was enough room to stretch your legs -- but the spear-tip of the Murcielago was so short end-to-end that it couldn’t accommodate a man laying down.

  What little space was available was dominated by three large uncomfortable chairs made to fit space suits, but not … well, people. And nobody piloted in a suit, not for three months anyway. That practice fell by the wayside in favor of comfort real quick. Instead, everything was just a little too big for general use.

  This wasn’t a Command Deck; it was a jock rocket for the starting point guard of the Los Angeles Clippers.

  He used to have season tickets. Now, Leo was on his way to another planet.

  The consoles were bulky and redundant, something he appreciated, as a third of them were bugged or unreliable at any given time. Space travel was a dangerous business and the kinks hadn’t quite been worked out yet.

  Hell, the minor time travel getting away from Earth’s gravity was enough to blow the average man’s mind. Leo was probably a day younger than anyone on Earth, just from this one trip. How fast and how far would he have to go to be immortal?

  Of course, he would age normally – he would just outlive the grandchildren of everyone he’d ever known back on Earth. That would be a helluva thing. Go out to see the universe and simultaneously shake up Earth like a spherical Etch-A-Sketch. Reboot the entire experience.

  Leo picked his way forward, the zero G allowing him to finger tap his way through the air, gentle thrusts to the front where Piotr Duchovney sat. He was propped in his seat, a soldier falling asleep at his post. After six beers. In a wet Georgia summer.

  He read from a well-worn fashion magazine, enjoying the view of a muscular oiled man in a banana hammock. His feet rested up on the console, with just his waist pinned into his seat with a simple lap belt.

  Piotr casually scanned the several screens in front of him, between page turns. His small frame, square and stocky, still made it look like a child sitting in his father’s office chair, the obnoxious high back not helping any with that visual. His slate black hair was shaved high and tight; there was no regulation requiring this, but he was prematurely balding, even though he was still well below forty. He had to keep up appearances somehow, and making it look on purpose was a decent enough cover.

  He claimed to like the look, for what it was worth.

  Piotr tapped a particular console, where a single sentence flickered across the screen in that badgering manner that your mother used to use. Piotr smirks without looking up, “Twenty says it’s porn.”

  Leo pulled himself over to the console, “Take your gambling problem down to the Lido deck, would ya?”

  “Eh, my money’s no good down there, you know that!” Cruise ship humor aside, Piotr really did need to get out of that chair once in a while. It’s not as though he was doing anything of importance, and nothing that happened was going to require actual reaction time.

  Maybe he enjoyed the privacy, or the mystique of the captain at the helm, but Piotr was too much of a wise-ass to ever let on.

  A few keystrokes reminded the computer that Leo was there, its screen lighting up with dull grey and green. It prompted for his password, a single offensive flashing dash, like it was impatiently thumping a foot on the floor or rolling fingernails on a tabletop.

  Leo entered a string of characters like he was playing a short Bach concerto. Hearing the typing start and not stop for several seconds, Piotr looked up from his viewing pleasure, raising an eyebrow at Leo.

  With a smirk, Leo confirmed the entry:

  DEADMENTELLMANYTALESIFYOUACTUALLYASKTHEM

  Piotr blinked at Leo a few times, before: “Was your passkey a bit outta’ Moby fuckin’ Dick?”

  The screen flickered, a white ribbon dragged across the screen for a fraction of a second before a very stern face appeared. If Leo had to guess, this was the ESA Mission Director, but Leo never learned his name. Never cared.

  The world’s most sinister substitute teacher adjusted his Coke bottle glasses, before beginning: “36 hours ago, we lost radio contact with Manifest-1 on the Martian surface.”

  Leo glanced over at Piotr. There were several redundancies in the colony framework designed to prevent this kind of a disaster. Suppose they were due for a proper fiasco, since in over a year, they’d never had a complete blackout.

  “Satellite imagery indicates a dust storm swept the area before they went radio silent. May have caused damage to the primary and secondary arrays. For obvious reasons, we need these operational ASAP.”

  There was something he wasn’t saying. Hesitancy in his voice, a slight quiver.

  He coughed before continuing: “When you arrive, connect Manifest with the Murci, and get the ground teams whatever they need to switch the lights on.”

  That white ribbon of static cut across again, before the screen faded out.

  Piotr dropped his magazine, propping himself up to the edge of his seat, “Explains the pass-lock. Don’t want word getting out.”

  “No chance of that.” Leo leered at the jittery pilot. “I’m going to scrape something together for an uplink so I can chat from the ground.”

  “Locklear’s piglets probably have a rig already. Borrow theirs?”

  Leo rolled his eyes, “Please don’t call them that.” Leo pushed himself off, floating toward the back of the cabin.

  “You’re going to leave me all alone up here?” Piotr looked after Leo, like a wistful roommate saying goodbye at the end of the semester. Drama queen.

  Leo dropped into the hatch, ground hog head peeping out, “Yes, I am. Because you’re a big boy
who shouldn’t be afraid of the dark anymore.”

  “I touch myself using your socks.”

  “Just tell Locklear I’m coming down!”

  Kyle Locklear thought the food was fine. But his team sure as hell wouldn’t stop grumbling. The fine milky paste of -- he hoped -- oatmeal was hardly the worst thing he’d been force fed on a posting.

  One particularly zealous family had made alligator chili and donated it to the barracks; the choice was eat it or offend them. They’d overcooked the ‘gator. It was like chewing leather someone wore for a year before disposing of it in the pot.

  This stuff -- grainy and slimy though it be -- at least went down your throat without a fight. Though Locklear wasn’t certain that it wasn’t, in actuality, a real banana slug.

  His boisterous squad was being ferried out to Manifest-1 to ensure a bit of civility. Some petty crimes were being reported, and there wasn’t any kind of security presence. The sponsoring companies couldn’t negotiate with the US Army due to a new law, so they turned to the private sector for some volunteers to be Mars Cops.

  Hell, Locklear jumped at the chance half because of the name. Mars Cop. Helluva thing for a resume.

  Kyle Locklear, Mars Cop.

  Locklear had never served with a shield before, and his background in the Military Police didn’t translate directly. While some of his men and one woman had been uniform cops, or with Special Weapons and Tactics, he himself had never ‘protected’ or ‘served.’

  The biggest problem he’d had to deal with was a murder on base in Berlin. The girlfriend did it. Had a confession out of her before the press even knew a thing had happened.

  This should be quiet by comparison, downright pleasant. Colonists weren’t rowdy drunks with lethal hand-to-hand combat training, and it's hard to hide stolen goods when the average schmuck can’t go outside without half a dozen alarms going off.