Starship to Demeter (Starship Portals Book 1)

by K. D. Lovgren

  And it was dark phase, so they really were free.

  Dark phase was the best part of the trip for Kal.

  It was quiet, a respite from the busier, nosier times on each end of an interplanetary journey. People on planets always wanted information. When in dark phase, the information on the ship Ocean was self-contained, carried with them. No communications back and forth would be possible until they were out of range of the portal and in range of Demeter. They were replete.

  Those times Kal was alone on deck she was captain and adventurer, like the seafarers of old. Even if she was the pilot, not the captain.

  “We’re going to drill today.” Sasha spoke for the benefit of the whole bridge. “Since we didn’t have time before the jump, we have to get it done before they sleep again.”

  None of the passengers had participated in a safety drill yet, since they were fresh out of hypersleep.

  Noor stood. “Captain, Inger said the passengers should be through their debrief by sixteen hundred.”

  “We’ll set it for seventeen hundred, then. Noor, you’ve had less sleep than most of us, prepping the passengers. Why don’t you grab a nap before the drill.”

  Noor usually covered the bridge at night.

  “Will do,” Noor said. She glanced at Kal in private alarm. Kal knew they were all so adrenalized from the jump it would be a challenge for anybody to sleep in the near future. Kal shrugged.

  “I’ll go for a quick run, get my head clear,” Noor announced.

  “See you soon,” Kal said.

  Sasha unstrapped herself and stood, stretching her arms over her head. “Rai, please announce the drill at seventeen hundred hours. Mandatory.”

  Sasha’s hair reminded Kal of the color of the hickory nuts her aunt used to gather back home. Her even brows and hazel-brown eyes gazed at people with an unconcern that calmed the anxious and rattled the disingenuous.

  Rai acknowledged the command and it soon echoed through the ship, the captain’s words in Rai’s voice.

  In the vaulted greenhouse adjoining the park, during a break before the drill, Kal found solace in the dirt. The black and purple iris in her hands fell apart easily at the new rhizome as she shook it and insinuated her thumb in its divide. Just when she was getting in the groove, Kal heard signs of a visitor, footsteps accompanied by the tap tap of a cane. As she placed one of the bulbs in the hollow of dirt she had dug, a shadow loomed over her shoulder, cutting off the wavering light from above.

  The person proved to be the passenger Yarick. His build was slight but wiry, silvery brown hair brushed smooth from a side part. The grooves between nose and mouth showed him to be older than most of the travelers. There was a tweedy look about him, a professorial air. Noor’s little comment about him had Kal’s antennae up. Was he merely seeking refuge in the greenery, or looking for someone to talk to? Or to corner?

  “Ah, the infamous Kal Black Bear,” he said.

  Kal stood up, trowel in her hand. “Infamous? You flatter me.”

  He stepped back a couple of paces, propping his cane and balancing both hands on it. “Quick up through the ranks, talented, daring. It was unexpected for you to pilot such a mission so soon, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Kal looked over the beds of flowers and herbs, the taller shrubs and small trees dotted throughout. “Maybe. I don’t know if that makes me infamous. Infamous sounds pretty bad.” Kal made a villain face and twirled an imaginary mustache.

  “Famous then. In certain circles,” Yarick said.

  With no idea what he was getting at, Kal said nothing. She knew she was a good pilot. She settled on a neutral smile.

  “The greenhouse and park are very nice. A respite from all the carbon and titanium,” Yarick said, rotating to look.

  “Yep.” She spun the trowel, trying to remember his CV. Some AI guru with a lot of money and pull.

  “You’re First Nations.”

  It seemed he didn’t know everything. “That’s right. Sort of. I’m not Canadian.”

  “Of course. Sorry. You were specially selected, though. Many of the Indigenous were chosen for their experience, their cultural memories, their Earth tie—ironic, in that the mission forces us all to leave that mother of ours behind—and I expect Aldortok would be very happy if you decided to stay on Demeter.”

  Kal tapped the trowel on her thigh, trying to make him out. She remembered him from the prep time before they left Earth, but he’d come in late. “The whole project is Indigenous and I’m a part of of it, if that’s what you mean. I won’t be staying permanently. My place is on a ship.” He wasn’t a sponsor, was he? If he was some noggin they were hauling along because he was a titan of industry, surely she would have heard.

  “Are you so sure you won’t stay?” Yarick said.

  “What do you mean?” She cocked her head slightly, eyes widened. Was he recruiting her for something?

  “I mean, you might be more valuable to them there. You could start a whole new life, in a whole new world. A world unblemished by our ugly Terran history. You could make a difference there. Be a founding mother.”

  She blinked. “Founding mothers and fathers aren’t the best example for me.”

  “Unless you left someone behind,” Yarick continued.

  Kal had done interrogations of her own, in another life. His wasn’t cutting it.

  “Family?” he said. “I have no one, family-wise. No ties that bind. But you. Your DNA must be perpetuated. Have you set an intention of surrogacy?”

  She broke out of the reverie of guessing what he wanted. “Uh….that’s an interesting question.”

  “Sorry, sorry.” He held his hand up. “If you didn’t have any close ties there, you would really be an ideal candidate. I could speak to the board, if you’d like. The captain, now, she also would be a prime candidate for settlement. I despair of appealing to her sense of duty in this matter. She seems bound to her ship. It would seem her destiny would lie here, unless…”

  She saw him notice the pricking of her ears at the mention of Sasha. Looking back at the dirt, she tried to appear uninterested, but she wanted to hear what he would say.

  He took a step forward, leaning in. “Unless she found someone here, on the ship, decided to start a new life, a new family.” His index finger tapped the side of his mouth. “Do you think she’s interested in anyone?” He chuckled. “I know there are a few interested in her. We’ll keep that between us. The perceptive few can’t help but notice.”

  “Notice what?”

  “Notice how everyone falls for the captain. It’s charming. Quite a pash they all have for her.”

  “Like who?” If he was spilling dirt, she wanted to know what was floating around among the passengers.

  “If you haven’t noticed I wouldn’t want to spread gossip,” Yarick said, the picture of virtue.

  “You mean Gunn, I suppose,” Kal said, priming the pump. She felt a little bad for throwing Gunn under the bus.

  “Gunn has great loyalty, to be sure. I don’t know if it’s a grand amour.”

  Kal traced a line of her palm with the point of the trowel, waiting. When he didn’t continue, she said, “You’ve been awake for less than twenty-four hours. How could you know all this?”

  “If you have the eyes to see, much is visible in a short time.” He tapped the side of his nose.

  Kal made a sound that resembled a snort.

  “There’s Tafari,” he said, seeming to try to keep her interest.

  “Tafari.” She would just repeat what he said. She didn’t think he’d notice.

  “Or Haven. Inger?”

  “Yourself?” Kal said. She smiled.

  He shrugged. “I’m too passive for her. Like I told someone else who asked me, I wouldn’t say no.”

  “I don’t think you’re her type.”

  “No. I suppose not. What about you?”

  When had Yarick really made all these observations? In the time before he’d been put into hypersleep, on Earth?

  Th
e mission’s compatibility advisor had used tests more than actual interaction between crew and passengers, before the mission. There hadn’t been time, since they had a very limited timespan to launch in order to meet Venus’s window. Some of the passengers had been added quite soon before departure. Yarick was one.

  “Do you like the captain?” he said.

  “Of course I like her. Pretty much everyone does.” He’d have to find some better stuff than this if he wanted to uncover crew rumors to go along with his passenger ones.

  “You and all the others,” he said.

  “Quite a number, according to you. You should bring it up with Chyron.” The mission neuropsychologist would have a few things to make of his theories, Kal thought.

  “Mmm.” He looked a little ruffled by that suggestion. “I wonder what Rai thinks. Rai, does Kal have feelings for Captain Sarno? Beyond respect and liking, I mean.”

  Kal’s arm involuntarily twitched. Her mouth opened, but before she could speak, Rai was speaking.

  “Privacy concerns prevent me from answering,” Rai said.

  “Classified, is it? Declassify it.”

  “Rai,” Kal said. “Yarick is not a crew member of this ship.”

  “Yarick Cole is a former board member of the Aldortok Consortium,” Rai said smoothly.

  Oh. “Does that give him clearance for private biologic information?” Kal said. “If it does, I’d like to know.”

  “No, Kal. Unless given permission by Captain Sarno.”

  “As I thought,” Kal said to Yarick, who maintained an irksome smile. Holy hell. This guy could go right out the airlock.

  “Captain Sarno might want to know. If I give her a tip.” He maintained an expression of bland helpfulness, but she saw the mischief in his eyes. He’d wanted some kind of rise from her and it appeared he’d gotten it.

  Yarick laughed and attempted to clap her on the back. She dropped her shoulder and feinted, so he swished at air, which made him look foolish. She chuckled herself, now. He laughed along, as if the whole exchange was a bonding moment.

  “I meant it as a friendly gesture. Apologies. Rai, disregard the following,” he said.

  “Yes, Yarick,” Rai said.

  Kal looked up at the roof of the greenhouse, as if she could see Rai.

  Yarick read her thoughts. “She can’t defy a direct order. We’re not overheard now.”

  “That’s not true. There is no such order.”

  “Captain Sarno gave me a certain latitude, so I could review systems while I’m here. Rai was my baby, once, in an earlier iteration.”

  “Your baby.” Thinking of Rai as an extension or creation of Yarick was unwelcome. Rai was a good sort.

  “Yes. She named herself, of course. Her little joke. My greatest achievement, that. An evolution of my creation, a machine who can make a joke, a play on words, the most sophisticated use of language.” He seemed to collect himself, patting at his chest pocket and clearing his throat. “I won’t say anything to Captain Sarno. I won’t ask Rai to prove anything that might be uncomfortable for you. I like you, Kal. You can trust me.”

  The way his eyebrows came together, crinkling up his forehead, his dewy eyes soft and deer-like now instead of sharp and insinuating, was such a turnabout Kal wanted to laugh again.

  The switcheroo from provocative to earnest was so abrupt, along with several other warning bells, that Kal found herself suspicious of everything he said. At the same time her mind winnowed through the implications of all his words, trying to sort the wheat from the chaff.

  Yarick seemed to be waiting for a response.

  “I will remember everything you said.” He wouldn’t get much change out of that. And it was true.

  Looking pleased with her response, he winked. “It’s mostly a joke. Harmless fun. I’ll be on my way then.”

  He turned, deftly for a fellow with a cane, and tapped his way off.

  Kal shook her head and threw her trowel down into the bed, where it stuck, point buried in the earth.

  She had twenty minutes until the drill.

  For the drill itself, Kal ran the show. “Are we all here? Where’s Noor?”

  “Not here yet,” Sasha said. “She’ll show up. Proceed.”

  Sif, an Icelandic passenger with a slight lilt to her speech, said, “Yarick isn’t here.”

  Kal looked to Inger.

  Inger craned her neck, looking around for Yarick. “He had a rough jump. I’ll query his cabin.”

  Kal thought he’d looked well enough when he’d bothered her.

  “It’s fair to say we all might feel out-of-sorts the next few days,” Kal said to the group. “Not quite yourselves. A jump is enough to scramble your insides and your outsides. Check in with Chyron, or Inger, or any of the crew you feel comfortable talking to if you feel something much beyond the worst jet lag you’ve ever had. Welcome to space-time lag.”

  That got a chuckle from the passengers, who looked varyingly nervy, ecstatic, or dazed, depending on the individual.

  “As you know, I’m Pilot Kal Black Bear, and for the newly awake, we do these drills once a week without fail, to keep everyone on their toes and able to respond to a call without having to think too much about it. There will be an unscheduled timed drill in the next few days, since we haven’t had the whole group available to do one until now, so be ready for that. We don’t anticipate any trouble. It’s been a pretty smooth flight so far. And we’re through the portal.”

  This elicited a cheer and hand slaps all round.

  Kal picked out the faces around her, matching the holo of faces she’d seen previously with the names on the manifest.

  The tall, long-limbed man with a blue-black sheen to his skin must be Tafari, the historian and city planner. The one who’d fainted, she noted. He looked a little gray, but stood with his hands in his pockets and a game look on his face.

  One woman wore a silken purple headwrap, close-fitted to her head. Her face was wide, with an imperial air. Short and broad of stature, this must be Ogechi, from Ghana, a novelist and N-Go champion, one of the artists and storytellers of the group. She had professed an interest in playing N-Go with Rai while aboard, as some sort of sociological experiment.

  As the group continued to exchange quick words of greeting and expressions of relief and jubilation over completing the jump, Kal realized Sif, the woman who had spoken earlier, was standing close to her.

  “We both have three letters in our names,” Sif said. “We’re alike.” Her pleasure in this seemed genuine.

  With a smile, though Sif was technically interrupting the drill, Kal said, “My full name is Kaliska.”

  Sif said, “Never mind then,” and turned away, snubbing Kal as if Kal deserved it.

  Kal’s eyes widened and she caught Gunn watching her. Gunn was also an Icelander. Kal didn’t know if she and Sif were friends, but Gunn’s expression was critical, whether of Kal or Sif, Kal couldn’t tell. Kal tried not to be intimidated by Gunn, but it wasn’t easy. Gunn could bench press any two of the other travelers here and probably whistle a tune at the same time.

  Kal brought her thoughts back to what she was doing. The self-congratulation over the successful jump was winding down, and the group was attentive again.

  “Now,” Kal said, “will you all please take your places in your assigned pods. You’re split into two this time, not all in pod one like the jump. Get back into your exosuits…I know, I know. It’s part of the drill. Be warned, next time will be a practice emergency timed drill and at a much faster pace. Get better at it. Last one in will be a rotten egg. You don’t want to find out what that means.”

  The six passengers present split into two of the four pods, three in each. The other two pods were redundancy only.

  Kal, Sasha, and Inger stood outside the pods, looking up and down the corridor. Inger shook her head; no answer from Yarick’s cabin.

  “Rai,” Sasha said, “Locate Mission Specialist Noor Sultana and passenger Yarick Cole. Tell them the drill
is waiting.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  3

  Dyads

  Noor tried to sleep, but it didn’t come. Knowing she had to wake for the drill soon didn’t help. Resigned, she took a shower and set off to check on some of her experiments while she waited for the excitement of the portal to wind down. It could take time to get over the space-time lag, in any case.

  There would be time enough to check her experiments in zero G and get to the drill on time.

  When Noor entered cargo airlock seven, she traveled between the atmospheric gravity of the ship and the zero gravity of space.

  The procedure between doors was tedious. When Noor was in the airlock, she had to wear one of the light suits. Thinner, more comfortable, and maneuverable than the exosuits, they were nonetheless difficult to put on. They fit closely over the skin, requiring her to strip down to her skivvies to don one. A small pile of Noor’s clothes could be found outside the hatch when she was inside.

  While she was in the airlock she floated in zero G, her oxygen supplied by the suit, which had a self-contained helmet like the larger suits, with a second visor that could be raised or lowered, depending on whether someone was in zero G or not, exposed to bright light or not.

  The lack of atmosphere was a vacuum. If a suit were compromised, exposure to the vacuum was not a disaster, as long as the person got back to oxygen or atmosphere soon enough. It wasn’t a desirable experience, but accidents happened on occasion.

  Noor divested herself of her clothes, wriggled into the light suit, attached her helmet, released the hatch door, slithered through the stretchy skin that divided the hatch and the airlock, sealed the hatch door, and depressurized the airlock, to get it back to a vacuum.

  Once the vacuum was re-established, she opened the experiment chamber and went about her usual routine of checking the instruments and data. It was nauseating to flip from pulling regular Gs to the zero G space. She always had to fight the urge to vomit. Once the worst of that passed, she sometimes floated around for a while, looking out the window in the cargo door, doing somersaults, and throwing some 360 yoga moves such as she could usually only do in the physio.