The Pennell Predicament: An Edenix Cycle Story

by S. Rodger Bock

  Two

  If someone calls me “precocious” one more time, I’m going to scream, Amelia thought an hour later. Youth did not equate to stupidity. Likewise, intelligent youth did not mean the common moniker with all of its connotations such as perky and cute were apropos to Amelia Pennell. She left the meeting where the men and women had actually laughed at her when she explained her grandfather was unavailable, and she was therefore representing Pennell Starlines. It wasn’t even the sort of polite mirthful jocularity that came from responding to a short joke or a particularly poignant pun. No, this was just rude. Simply put, they didn’t have any respect for her whatsoever.

  Oh, they recognized she had a grasp on the facts of the situation. They conceded that she was cogent of the assumptions and key points involved. They just dismissed her due to her insufficient lifespan. Her hair was blooming a nice brick red now, she saw, catching a glimpse of herself in the physical mirror her grandfather had picked up from some rummage sale on a planet in this quadrant of the Expanse. Amelia ignored the furnishings as she stepped into the elevator and told it where she wanted to go.

  The box dropped softly down into the bulk of the spire where Jamison had decided to construct his home. She never really understood why he’d picked the steepest, highest mountain in the galaxy to build a home. There were plenty of people living on one of the ships in orbit. Why strike out on his own and put this here, of all places? She didn’t understand his decision. Living alone with him let her get to know him like no one else ever had. She understood his quirks and peculiar behaviors. She was well acquainted with his habits, and, of course, she’d heard all his tales of youth over and over until she could recite them back to him. Those accounts were both comforting and annoying to her.

  However, as many words as typically tumbled past his loose lips, it felt as if he was holding something back from her. As the door opened and she smelled the damp air she wondered if he was telling her the whole truth.

  Amelia stepped out of the boxy elevator and into the chilly tubular corridor. She walked down the crumbling stone surface as her contacts automatically shifted to night vision. Amelia turned several 90 degree bends before working her way down a spiral staircase in the dark. If not for her artificially adjusted eyesight, she would not have been able to navigate the turns.

  The oddest thing about being down here was the complete lack of modern electronics and devices that helped them all live everyday life. It was actually quiet here…normally, anyway.

  At present, she heard thumping coming from the opposite side of a thick metal door. She rapped on the center and waited. She counted her cycles of breathing for lack of anything better to do. Minutes later, she heard the thumping finally drop in volume considerably.

  The door creaked from lack of sufficient lubricant, and light sprayed from beyond the seal.

  “Why didn’t you knock?” her grandfather asked, holding the door open for her to come inside.

  “I’ll do that next time,” she told him, knowing it would be pointless to suggest to him that she actually had done that very thing. Slipping inside, she frowned at the twenty-sixth century musical cover of the ancient Etta James song that was pounding away on the integrated, but isolated sound system.

  “…my lonely days are over…” the lyrics belted out without consideration for the music she was listening to in her own head. She switched to external noise cancelling with a bit of annoyance. The tech could block the sound, but not the vibrations she felt through the floor. Amelia moved to the mirror and began opening the routines in her wardrobe software. Selecting something bright and cheery to replace the black business smock she was wearing, she picked it out from among the favorite designs that scrolled past her, suspended in midair like everything else she saw. Amelia swept the words and other outfit styles aside and watched her adaptive clothing change colors and shape until bold stripes of teal and tangerine slashed across her dainty form. Satisfied, she selected the floating words her contacts put on the mirror and changed her hairstyling from a long pulled back pony tail to something spiky with bangs. Her hair moved into position, shortened where needed and lengthened elsewhere. Her nose ring lit up and flashed yellow with her pulse.

  Happy that her garments and hair were now the way she wanted them, Amelia turned and saw her grandfather just staring at her from the leather cushioned chair. He had a bottle of something strong in his hands.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, concerned and uncomfortable.

  “Staring at you,” he admitted without apology.

  “I can see that. What I meant was why are you staring,” she corrected herself, flustered.

  “Then you should have asked the question correctly. Now, I guess you’ll never know,” he said, tipping the bottle back.

  “You are incorrigible!” she snapped.

  Jamison smiled at her. “What did you say to them?”

  “Watch the recording,” she said dismissively, while her ample agitation still sloshed among her words.

  His expression soured, and he nursed the bottle again. “Sometimes I tire of tech. I just want to hear it straight from you,” he said.

  “I told them I hadn’t seen you for days,” she said. “I told the board and the lawyers that we wouldn’t be able to even discuss a settlement with the families until we got in touch with you, and that you were off on another trip somewhere and hadn’t told me where you went.”

  “So you lied for me,” he said.

  “I exaggerated for the company,” Amelia said smugly.

  “Don’t mince your words,” he chided. Then he frowned and sighed. “It doesn’t matter. You were born to make tough decisions, Amelia. I am proud of you. More than you’ll ever know,” he said, as his voice softened a smidge. “There is something you need to know. Your electronics need to be switched off.”

  She complied, and her colors went from amber to a default gray as she sat down close to him on an ornate sunflower yellow ottoman. She could tell he was serious about something. Could this be what he has been holding back?

  “When your mother was your age, an opportunity came about—one I’ve never told you about. Some people needed a ship and were moving some precious cargo. They offered a lot of money to move their things. The company was in such a tough spot at the time, we were probably closer to ruin than at any other point—highly leveraged. We’d already missed two cycles of employee pay, and we needed the cash flow very desperately. I consented to the lease of the ship. It was the same ship that just crashed,” he said.

  “But what was so wrong with someone wanting to lease a ship? That happens every day in every starline company,” she asked, riveted to the stool by his story.

  “That’s true. At the time, I had no idea what they would be using the ship for. They made a close pass by the city of Chattanooga…” he started.

  “Chattanooga! Grandpa,” her eyes darted as she worked out the math. Her mother was about forty years older than she was. That made the event about that long ago. Her lips went slack as she saw the cringing, shrinking man who was her grandfather slowly shriveled from the revelation she was now working out. “The ship came near and sent a concentrated data burst into multiple non-essential systems, which hours later propagated into an active virus which took control of the ship’s S-space emulsification generator,” she recited from memory. “The engine overheated and shut down, but spiked the power on the rest of the ship—rendering the entire city of Chattanooga without power for life support. When the Kyoto and Lethbridge arrived to assist with the rescue, all two million residents of Chattanooga were found dead. The city was sealed and sent on a course into the nearest star for ultimate burial.”

  Amelia’s mouth went dry, and she swallowed painfully. She sagged where she sat. “Grandpa, that was the single biggest terrorist attack in the history of humanity!”

  “I didn’t know what they wanted the ship for. I would have preferred they had just bought the thing or tried ramming it into the city,” he said
with dismay.

  “Like they did when they attacked the Cairo,” she mused. “So it was the Brotherhood?” Amelia looked at him, and he nodded while still staring at the floor.

  “I recovered the ship, but they had erased the registry while they had been using it. At the time, all I knew was the registry had been erased. It wasn’t until years later that I figured out that it was my ship they had borrowed to commit their crime. I re-registered the ship using the duplicate codes of another model with the same configuration,” Jamison admitted.

  “You double dipped the ship? No registration means you didn’t have to pay fees for operation. You must have made a killing on that little trick,” she said with a mix of revulsion and respect.

  “And on several other pairs of ships that are still operating the same way. It’s the reason Pennell Starlines has stayed in business all these years, operating on the fringe of the Expanse where revenue is impossible to come by. But now…” he trailed off and tapped into the elixir in his bottle once more.

  “The ship, the one you leased to the Brotherhood, is the same ship the colonists used to get to their new world?” Amelia gasped.

  “Yes,” he told her. “The crash is something I can’t explain. That ship was running perfectly when they purchased it from me. I just wanted to dump the ship. Revenues are finally up, and I was hoping to cut back on the duplicates before I ended up passing the company on.” Jamison sat up then and looked her in the eye. His normally green eyes were spiked with red all around. He looked gaunt and exhausted. “The government will find out the registration is still in use, even though the ship that crashed was licensed with the same codes. They will trace it back and likely link the ship to the one used in the attack on the Chattanooga. They will come after the company and try to seize our assets. We are going to lose the whole company. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Amelia asked, the weight of the situation still heavy on her shoulders.

  “Unless you can figure out a way to save the company,” he said pointedly.

  The words were massive. It was as if someone eased two bags full of sand onto each of her shoulders in just a few seconds. She’d never felt such a heavy burden.

  Pounding on the door startled the girl and caused her to jump up half a meter before landing on her feet.

  “Open up Pennell! We know you are in there!” a thickly accented but muffled male voice came through the heavy door.

  “The government?” she asked with fright, her hands going cold and clammy and her eyes wide.

  He shook his head negatively. Standing, he put his arm around her shoulder. “Switch on again. Go over there behind the bookcase. Don’t turn back. Just go, Pipsqueak!” he whispered emphatically to her and squeezed her tightly in his arms. “Remember, I love you. Code 17. Go!”

  He spun her and shoved her toward the books stacked against the wall. As her tech reactivated, her hair flashed through a kaleidoscope of colors as she rushed toward the books. Her gut and chest flooded with raw feelings of all kinds as her mind took her to the oddest place.

  * * *

  “Grandpa, why do you have paper books? No one has those old things,” I ask.

  He just shrugs, “I prefer the old things, Pipsqueak.”

  “Grandpa! I hate that name,” I say.

  “When you are the grandparent, you can make the rules. For now, I get to call you what I want,” he says to me and smiles.

  I can’t help but to grin back at him and shake my head.