Interplanetary Thrive

by Ginger Booth

  “Good to know.”

  “So, Eli?” he asked.

  Eli Rasmussen, the botanist, was twice her age. At least he was an urb like her, so they understood each other. One of those things they understood was that he wasn’t in the market. And Copeland might actually have the edge on attentiveness. Eli preferred plants, really.

  “Anyone ever seen Eli flirt with a woman?” she asked.

  No.

  “And then there’s Ben,” Clay reiterated. “Unless Wilder and Cortez split.”

  “They’re stuck like glue so far,” Copeland murmured. He and Ben shared a supposedly 4-man bunkroom, with a walk-through 8-man bath to Wilder and Cortez’s cabin. He should know.

  Funny, though, the engineer didn’t rise to the suggestion of pressing his roomie on Kassidy. He took a long thoughtful sip of water instead, his expression studiously closed. Kassidy’s gaydar rated Copeland around 2 out of 10. Ben? Could be a 5, could be damned near anything. Kassidy bet the kid was still a virgin outside virtual reality.

  Hm, this was starting to pique her curiosity about Ben. She might inquire and see what happened.

  But she should try celibacy first, she decided. For at least a week or two.

  Copeland checked the time and stuffed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth. He flashed his fingers and left – 3 more minutes for break.

  “Maybe hands off Ben,” Clay murmured.

  “Well, that’s just not fair,” Kassidy returned. But for now, they both scuttled to finish up. They needed to hit the head before their next shift among the stars.

  Hauling freight. Kassidy dolefully considered her nails and brought her clippers along into the cargo hold. This trip will be rich in experience. I can feel my empathy for my working class audience burgeoning by the minute. Her fingers looked childish and stubby with square nails.

  Copeland rapped her on the noggin and pointed to her nail clippings on the deck. “Pick that up. Not Jules’ job to clean up after you.”

  7

  “Pierre!” Sass greeted the pirate warmly, preening for the camera. Ben shot her a dubious glance from the gunner’s seat beside her.

  “Mon cher!” Pierre Lavelle returned in kind. “I feared you were avoiding me. But surely our romantic time together was not merely an act?”

  “Not entirely,” Sass purred. “But here we are again. You’re about to begin a new life on Mahina. I trust you’ll behave while I’m away.”

  “Of course! How not?” He leaned into the pickup. “I am reformed, dear Sass. You’ve convinced me. The best revenge is living well. Though I will not personally live on Mahina. I am a mere bus driver. Perhaps I flatter myself to aspire to envoy between our peoples.”

  Sass smirked. “Behave on Mahina, Pierre. I’ve told them all about you.”

  “How delightfully flattering!”

  “It isn’t too late to choose an abandoned mine, instead of the black market in Schuyler,” she warned.

  “We are curious,” Pierre replied. “Walking on the surface, under the wild sky with no pressure suits. Open air markets. Such a strange opportunity. I am entranced.”

  How truly bizarre, Sass reflected. Not a single Sagamore remained who remembered strolling outdoors into fresh air to breathe. They were all dome-raised. “Well, raise a glass to me at sunset.”

  He frowned. “Sunset?” On Sagamore, sunset marked noon on the 15th of the month. Living underground, no one cared.

  “You’ll see.” Flirting accomplished, she turned to business. “What I called you about. The deals are struck. The cargo is loading. Set all the angles aside, please. We won’t turn back now. What am I up against on Denali? Did you leave anything out?”

  He waved a hand. “I told you the truth. I never went to the surface. Our captain, he did not dare the gravity well. My Gossamer, she is an old lady, and we didn’t have the fuel. Your engineer is clever.”

  “He is,” Sass agreed. “Anything? Who to talk to?”

  “The volcano city, Denali Prime, is like Sagamore Landing, or your Mahina Actual. But not like. The terraformers and settlers, they did not maintain separate societies. As each new dome was settled, original colonists moved in with the new refugees to guide them. But each dome city is separate. Very wide variety. The captain had difficulty talking to anyone in charge.”

  After a pause for reflection, he added, “Oh, and that one thing. We had a deal to go back. Not this time, but last time the planets aligned. I don’t honor our late captain’s deals. But some of what I gave you to take there, he agreed to bring.”

  “What was the deal for going back?” Sass asked.

  “To retrieve this Michael Yang. But I don’t like him. The satellites we sold Abel. This and that. The payment was not enough to tempt me. The captain came back from the surface purple and green.” Pierre’s face twisted in disgust. “The biota, living things everywhere, even on their skin. Blech.”

  Sass laughed, then reconsidered. “How did he get rid of the…purple and green?”

  “I don’t know if this is possible. We killed him first. Then opened the cabin to vacuum.”

  “Ah.”

  “Be careful about getting the bakkra on your nice Thrive.”

  “Bakkra?”

  “Like bacteria, only different. Denali microbes. The locals, they cultivate the stuff on their skin. In patterns and flourishes.” He shuddered. “Disgusting. Anyway, Denali Prime is easier to talk to than the other habitats. More than that, I cannot say. I wasn’t the one making the deals. Or they would have been profitable.”

  “I’m sure.” Sass favored him with a warm smile again. “Wish me luck.”

  “Always, dear lady. Come back safe.” The pirate blew her a corny kiss.

  She clicked off the video screen, lips curled in a secret smile. Pierre was a good time. She’d carefully held off on this conversation until Clay was off the ship.

  “Bacteria? On their skin?” Ben reminded her. “And getting this stuff all over the Thrive?”

  “It’s a concern,” Sass allowed.

  “I’m going to tell Copeland on you,” Ben vowed. “Warn him we’ll need anti-bakkra treatments.”

  Sass mock-scowled at him. “So long as you don’t tell Clay on me.”

  The gunner laughed.

  Sass tuned her side of the display to show Mahina and Pono from a back camera. The striated gas giant dangled huge and lovely as ever in its tutu of glittering diamonds. From this distance, Mahina looked like a dead moon, no signs of life visible on its pocked grey face, its bright spots shining from more reflective stone or recent craters. A pang of incipient homesickness struck her.

  For all its faults, Mahina had been home for over 60 years. The youth beside her had never known another world, save a few unpleasant hours on Sagamore. “Shall we toast Mahina sunset while we’re gone, Ben?”

  “Try and stop us,” Ben agreed with a grin.

  A few moments later, Copeland reported in over the damage control channel. “That’s it, cap. Cargo loaded. We’re heading in.”

  Abel chimed in, “I’ll be on the bridge in 5.”

  “All right, gentlemen,” Sass replied. “Ben? Let’s prep for departure.”

  “Aye, sar.”

  The crew gathered in the galley to watch departure on the big screen, the cargo loaders still with the top halves of their pressure suits dangling from their belts. Their ever-vigilant hostess Jules Greer made sure everyone had a cold beer or glass of water. She tuned the big screen display to encompass Gossamer, the moon Mahina, and glorious Pono with all its rings.

  Nothing happened at first. Sass, Abel, and Ben were still getting their act together in the tiny bridge.

  “Should we all be wearing pressure suits?” Jules asked in concern.

  Copeland shook his head minutely, eyes glued to the monitor.

  Clay expanded on that for him. “We’re not going to damage control stations today. We just left our suits on from cargo handling. There aren’t any rocks out here to dodge. Should be crystal cl
ear sailing all the way to Denali.”

  Eli added, “We’ll be going so fast that only the computer could react in time, anyway.” Kassidy jabbed her elbow into him for worrying their youngest member.

  Sass’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “All hands. Please tune in to watch departure. Acceleration to commence in 10, 9, 8…” Even though the gunner wasn’t shooting today, she honored Pono-local protocol: enough with the countdown.

  The guard Cortez practically held her breath, letting it out with a sigh as the Sagamore skyship Gossamer, so like their own, began to visibly shrink. “The pirates aren’t leaving?”

  “Past their bedtime,” Eli theorized. “They’ll run the rings to Mahina tomorrow, I bet.”

  Jules squeezed in beside Copeland and nudged his arm. He shot her a wan smile and put the arm around her shoulders. “They’ll take good care of your boy,” she encouraged him. “My babies, too.”

  “Better than I could,” he muttered back, and took a swig of his beer.

  Mahina began to shrink, maybe a third smaller already than when acceleration began. The rubble-rich rings coalesced into a shining ribbon. Pono appeared unchanged. Only day to day, not minute by minute, would that enormous orb seem to fall behind them.

  Wilder’s face was a cipher. He and Cortez were exiled from Mahina years ago. Returning to the moon under ship arrest, their families and ex-friends not even trying to contact them, was hard. On the whole, he felt more relief than sadness as the whole Pono subsystem fell behind them. He asked, “Was it like this when you left Earth, Clay?”

  His fellow soldier Cortez kicked him lightly in the ankle. “Sass told us,” she reminded her lover. “She didn’t see it. No view outside the ship for years. Some days she didn’t believe they were really on a starship, that it was all a trick, she said. Until she saw Pono the first time.”

  “That’s right,” Clay agreed. “Sass wasn’t there. But I saw it.” The pang came back to him afresh, the gut-wrenching sensation of seeing Earth and the Moon fall away behind him for what was certainly the last and only time. The blue orb, wrapped in cottony clouds, still looked so pretty from space.

  He cleared his throat of the lump risen in it. “The Ganymedes invited us to the bridge to watch. Just the lead marshals, on behalf of the settlers. I didn’t tell my team, Sass and the rest. I didn’t have very good control over my people yet. Thought it would hurt more than help. But yeah. I saw Earth fall away.” He sighed deeply.

  “Marshal,” Wilder echoed coolly. “The Gannies came up with that?

  Clay nodded gratefully. “Yeah. Whole pompous speech that went with it. I already knew by then not to repeat what the Gannies said. Always needed translation to avoid causing a riot.”

  Wilder snorted appreciation. “Well, so long and screw you, Mahina. Jules, I’m headed for the showers before we start making supper. Big dinner tonight, OK? I could eat a cow.”

  “Same here,” Cortez hastily agreed. “I think I pulled a muscle on that last load. Unless you need me for something, boss man?”

  With Sass and Abel occupied, the engineer and steward supervised the rest of the crew. Copeland shook his head. “Not much to do. Five months to do it in.”

  The two guards they’d picked up at Mahina Orbital drifted aft to their cabin.

  Kassidy asserted, “Well, I for one, am eager to see Denali! To Pono!” She raised her beer. “We’ll be back!”

  Jules and Copeland gave each other a squeeze and drank to that. “We’ll be back,” they murmured.

  “And you’ll see,” Jules added. “We’ll make Mahina better yet for our kids. Just like we done already.”

  Copeland was last to leave, watching until he could no longer make out the little moon where he left his son.

  “Hey, Cope, you still up?” Ben abandoned his attempt to slip into their cabin silently. His room-mate was propped half-sitting on his top bunk, reading. “Figured you’d be out hours ago.”

  “Should be,” Copeland allowed. “Waited up to hear how it went.”

  Ben worked late in the bridge with Sass and Abel, doing their first series of burns, accelerating up to speed to reach Denali. There would be many more burns, he imagined. And hopefully just as many turns in the bridge for Ben. “I didn’t fire a single shot.”

  “Good to hear. Bathroom’s empty.”

  Ben nodded. Lately their bath-roomies had taken up screwing in the showers. Both he and Copeland had interrupted Wilder and Cortez at it in the past few weeks. But he was in no rush to brush his teeth, still wired by the excitement of leaving Pono. He tossed a few things on his bottom bunk, then propped his forearms on Cope’s mattress by his feet. They used to enjoy these long chats in the bathroom, perched on the counter. Ben suspected this had something to do with the neighbors’ aggressive turf-grab.

  “Say, Cope… I think Kassidy made a pass at me.”

  “Yeah?”

  Ben couldn’t interpret his stone expression. Cope planted his eyes on his tablet.

  “You think she means anything by it?” Ben pressed. “Or just teasing me?”

  “That’s not either-or,” Copeland observed in studied neutrality. “Usually both.” His eyes flicked up to Ben’s face, then firmly back to his tablet.

  “You mean it might really be an offer?”

  “You could say yes and find out.” His tone suggested otherwise.

  “You don’t like the idea,” Ben observed.

  Cope sighed and finally met Ben’s gaze. “She’s not serious, Ben. Are you two friends?”

  Ben shrugged, a little offended. “We get along fine. I get along with everybody in the ship. Well, maybe not Abel so much. I enjoy teasing him too much, you know?”

  “Not what I’m talking about. Do you share confidences, seek each other out? Spend time talking over your day?”

  “No, I do that with you,” Ben quipped. He grinned and placed a hand over his heart. “My domestic partner.”

  That was their legal status – Copeland’s idea. Ben was Nico’s new legal co-parent. And Ben’s dad the dentist bemusedly but cheerfully embraced his new role as step-granddaddy.

  Cope flicked his pocket tablet onto its shelf, his equivalent of a bedside table. “I’m beat. Moving tonnes of crap wears you out, no matter what gravity. We’re really on our way, huh? A year and a half.” He shifted down the mattress so his head fit inside the tube steel bed frame. He chucked the pillow onto his shelf. He preferred sleeping flat on his back.

  Something was bothering him. Ben was sure he knew what. “Dad will keep an eye on Nico for you. And Atlas. And we know everybody at the creche now.”

  They ought to. He and Copeland had been in and out of that creche nearly every day. They’d pick up Nico in the stroller and go nosing all over Mahina Actual, unless they had work to do. As settlers, normally they didn’t have the right to enter the city. For the engineer, it was a major coup to get free run of the place so he could study its subsystems, light years ahead of the equipment in the settler world. Even if they were too busy working during the day, Copeland still sprang Nico for the evening.

  “They’re good people, Cope. And maybe with the Saggy satellite, we’ll even be able to video conference with Nico. For a while anyway.”

  “That’d be cool,” Copeland allowed, closing his eyes. “Yeah, I’m really grateful for your dad, Ben. You and he have been awesome. Like Nico and I have a real family to fall back on. Kid might be better off if I never came back.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t think that. And Cope, that won’t end when we get back. You and Nico will still be family. Just try to escape Dr. Acosta and Son. Can’t be done! Bwa-ha-ha!”

  That earned a smirk out of the engineer. He reached down and Ben caught his hand. “Thanks, Ben. G’night.”

  “Night, man. Think I should run all the showers in retaliation?”

  “No.”

  “No, me neither. What do you really think of Kassidy?”

  “Really? I think exes are a stone cold bitch, and this ship is s
mall. It’s a long trip. Pace yourself. Have her for dessert on the way back if you’re still curious.”

  Ben considered that. “Wait a year? I’m pretty sure she’ll think I don’t like her.”

  Copeland chuckled at last, a low belly rumble. “I’m tired, Ben. Loaded tonnes of crap today. After a few hours of sheer terror crossing the rings. Go away.”

  8

  “Jules? Copeland? You’re ready?” Sass murmured, as an all-hands lunch wound down the next day.

  Jules nodded eagerly, nearly bouncing in her seat. Copeland’s nod was guardedly amused.

  Sass rang her water glass with a fork, and rose. “We’re on our way to Denali!” She paused to let the applause die back. “Today, aside from watch schedules, we’re taking a well-earned breather. Abel, Cope, I imagine we owe you comp days into next year already.” They grinned in response.

  “But we will not laze around on this trip, people! Not because we couldn’t. There isn’t that much we need to accomplish in the next 5 months. But idle hands are the devil’s playground. Therefore there will be structure to our days.”

  Reserved boos greeted this announcement. “Yeah, you say that now, people. But Clay and I have shared a long space voyage before. And the navy and traders had centuries of experience before that on the seas and caravans traveling Earth. Work and structure keep a crew happy and healthy.

  “First, the watch-standers. Abel, Ben, and I will resume our regular schedule from the rings, two 4-hour shifts a day apiece. But we don’t need to sit in the bridge. Just be awake and alert, ready to drop everything and run. Let’s do watch changes in the bridge and check the logs, compare notes, schedule burns.”

  “Aye, sar,” Ben and Abel acknowledged.

  “But we won’t go 5 months without a day off. No! On weekends, Eli, Clay, and Copeland – you’ll cover for us, taking one 4-hour shift each on Saturday and Glow. Ben gets Saturday off, yes starting at midnight –”

  “Yay!” Ben called with enthusiasm, and drummed the table.