by Alex Scarrow
‘And use that time to think hard about whether you’re going in, or going home?’
The thinking’s been done. I’m going in.
‘Sure, I’ll give it some real thought.’
Aaron seemed to relax a little. ‘Good.’
Ellie cast a sideways glance at him; his unshaven face, now almost qualifying as a full grown beard, his fluffy blonde ponytail that poked out from beneath his faded cap, dancing as the shuttle skimmed over a pocket of dense air. Aaron Goodman – most definitely a good man – was her guardian angel. She felt her anxieties ease a little. New Haven might be a daunting place to walk into on your own, but with someone like Aaron to turn to if things got ugly, she felt she had a fighting chance of making it in there.
CHAPTER 17
The city of New Haven appeared on the horizon long after the last light of day had faded. She watched the enormous enviro-dome appear as a shimmering mirage, pulsating and undulating above a cushion of heat from the sun-baked ground into the cool night air. As the shuttle skimmed the lifeless arid desert below at three hundred miles per hour, the mirage grew quickly, and soon she was seeing with her own eyes details on the gargantuan hemisphere of the enviro-dome over New Haven that she’d never seen on the toob before. The semi-transparent material of the dome, a reinforced plexitex sheath, was crisscrossed with a mesh of fine metal support struts that looked as delicate as the silk strands of a spider’s web at this distance. She guessed, up close, each of those struts was as wide as a habi-cube and hundreds of feet long. On top of the enviro-dome, at its very apex like a tuft of hair atop a shaved head, she could see a bristling mass of antennae, pylons and dishes.
As the dome grew on the horizon from something the size of a thumbnail held out at arm’s length all the way up to the spectacle ahead of her that stretched from one side of the cockpit window to the other, she could make out the foggy silhouette of the city inside. She could see the faint outlines of tall towers clustered in the middle linked by bridges, or perhaps walkways, and a carpet of lesser towers tapering downwards either side towards an irregular metropolitan skyline. Here and there, projected against the fogged dome, her eyes picked out muted neon pulses of orange, red and purple light that seemed to clamor momentarily for attention.
The shuttle rode up a small rocky ridge in the desert and descended a shallow bank that led down into what was the planet’s only significant major geological feature; an ancient meteorite crater, fifty miles in diameter. For the first time ever, Ellie saw the base of the dome.
Where dome meets clay.
Of course she had always known the city was built in a crater, and from her perch on the outlook she’d known that on the few days the atmosphere was clear enough, she was only ever going to be lucky enough to see the very top of the dome. But for some reason, she’d actually never even seen it on the toob - a shot of the bottom of the dome.
Never.
It seemed whenever a drama or news story required an establishing shot of New Haven, the curving top of the dome was shown, or a long distance shot…but never the base of the structure. Ellie had assumed the enviro-dome descended smoothly into the clay and at some point around the base circumference a huge floodlit entrance existed with a ‘Welcome to New Haven’ sign above it.
In fact, the base of the dome was overgrown with a shanty-town of low buildings, encrustations of chaotically connected habi-cubes and small, single-tenant plastex bubble-tents.
Aaron pulled to the left, steering the shuttle clockwise around the dome, following the encrustation of the shanty town, drifting onto a southerly course as the dome and the scruffy sprawl below passed them on the right.
Darkness robbed them of most of the visible details of the haphazardly-erected conurbation and only a multitude of dim, pin-prick-lights coming from thousands of individual porthole windows, and the occasional garish holographic billboard, gave the dark proto-urban tapestry below a sense of congested life.
‘It’s like that most of the way around the dome. Refugees from Celestion, and other sorts. The people inside call that mess down there ‘the Scab’. Nice huh?’
It did actually look a little like scar tissue.
‘It’s mostly built up around the north, east, south and west entrances,’ he added. ‘Then it thins out as you move around, away from one entrance and builds up again as you approach the next.’
‘Why are these people living outside?’ she asked.
‘They’re all waiting to be let in,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Beats me why. There’s so much room on this planet, but everyone who arrives here wants to pack themselves into New Haven. It’s crazy.’
An approach-vector graphic appeared on his nav-display and Aaron looked up out of the window to scan the dark ground ahead of them. Ellie followed his gaze.
‘We’re approaching the South Entrance. It’s dead ahead. That’s where the port is.’
She could see in the distance, beyond the dark carpet of shanty-homes below them, a large expanse of smooth ground bathed in pools of brilliant white light. As she watched a steady convoy of surface-to-orbit shuttles were descending vertically from the sky above, like a wagon train from Heaven, down to one particular location on the ground. She leant forward in her seat to look up into the sky above. She traced the receding procession of shuttles upwards into the deep purple of the night sky, and there she soon spotted the dark profile of a giant interstellar freighter. The front of the enormous ship glistened, its smooth carbo-steel hull reflecting the last rays of the sun in its high-orbit position above New Haven, just beyond the atmosphere of the planet.
‘It takes nearly a week sometimes to unload those huge things,’ said Aaron, seeing where she was looking. ‘It’ll hold that geo-stationary orbit, slowly rotating with the planet to maintain its spot directly above the port.’
‘Wow,’ Ellie muttered. ‘How many shuttles do you think are emptying that big ship?’
‘Probably a hundred or so, it depends how much there is to shift, and how much of a hurry they’re in.’
As they drew closer, Ellie could see one or two other low-level vessels, like Lisa, converging across the crater basin from other directions towards the port.
‘It’s busy,’ she said.
‘Not really, this looks like pretty light traffic. I reckon we’ll get to check in quite quickly.’
As the port drew closer, Ellie could see the layout and structure more clearly. The main landing field was a giant rectangle several miles on each side, sub-divided like a checkerboard into hundreds of numbered landing pads. She noticed the landing pads had various colors, pads of the same color being grouped together in blocks.
‘Do those different colors mean anything?’ she asked.
‘Red pads are land and refuel only, blue pads, land and unload. Green is short term stay. Black is long term stay,’ he answered automatically. ‘Getting a black pad is often impossible, or at the very least, a real bitch of a job.’
‘We’re getting one?’
‘Green. That’s twelve hours pad-time only. Enough time for me to get some sleep, collect up my next payload and stock up on supplies again.’ He looked across at Ellie. ‘I guess I’m going to need to get some more Solar Nuggatz, I noticed you finished my second box.’
Ellie shrunk guiltily. ‘Sorry.’
Aaron grinned, ‘don’t worry about it. I’m still after the other Plasma Rangers. Maybe this time I’ll get lucky.’
‘Or you’ll end up with two more Tracs to add to your collection.’
Aaron eased the speed of his shuttle down as they drew closer and Ellie returned her gaze to the floodlit spectacle ahead.
‘Any second now we should come under the control of the PGS.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Port Guidance System, it’s their automated traffic control system.’
As he spoke the navigation screen displayed a linking chain icon, it flashed in the corner of the screen. Ellie knew what that was; an everyday icon, as familiar as
a toob channel logo, or any brand of breakfast cereal. It was the AI handshake, one piece of software politely introducing itself to another.
The PGS queried Lisa’s onboard computer for remote-control readiness. The exchange of data was instantaneous and the handshake icon was replaced with a menu:
Landing Request:
[Red] : [3 mins waiting]
[Blue] : [vacant zones]
[Green] : [vacant zones]
[Black] : [2 days waiting]
Aaron nodded and selected Green. ‘Good, we can go right on in.’
Almost immediately the shuttle accelerated slightly, the pitch of the engines rising and the nose of the craft began to pull up sharply.
Ellie yelped with surprise.
‘Relax, that’s just PGS kicking in,’ said Aaron, settling back into his seat to enjoy the complex ballet of the vessels around them.
They rose steeply over the landing field, moving swiftly past other shuttles of varying sizes until the Lisa was over the allocated landing pad several hundred feet below. Then with little warning the shuttle began a rapid, vertical descent towards it.
Ellie felt her stomach float unpleasantly as they dropped, and a gurgle of fear and nausea escaped her throat. She gripped both armrests of her seat and screwed up her eyes as they seemed to plummet towards an inevitably explosive impact with the ground. She heard a deep throaty chuckle coming from Aaron. The sensation was short-lived, and seconds later the rate of drop tailed off quickly as they approached the green pad. Descending the last twenty feet, there was no sense of motion whatsoever, and they touched down with an almost indiscernible bump.
A moment later, the pad on which they had landed began to slowly lower down into the ground, revealing a small hanger
‘Honey, I’m ho-ome,’ sang Aaron with little enthusiasm.
‘That’s it then? We’ve landed?’ asked Ellie hopefully.
‘Yup.’
She opened her eyes and released her grip on both of the armrests. ‘Oh my God,’ she sighed, ‘that drop was really horrible.’
CHAPTER 18
Ellie didn’t sleep at all that night. Neither did Aaron. Getting hold of the freight he was due to take to the planet’s 2nd city, Harvest City, and ensuring it was loaded aboard the shuttle had taken much longer than he’d anticipated. He watched the time anxiously as the night slipped away, waiting for a team of loaders to get round to hauling his cargo in. Then as dawn approached, with only a few hours left before he had to vacate the pad, he hurried to the Port’s one supply shop and hastily bought enough coffee and protein-paste for the FoodSmart to keep him going for the three week trip.
He arrived back at the shuttle with only ten minutes left before the PGS was due to handshake his shuttle’s computer. If he missed that, he’d incur a hefty fine that would double with every few minutes. The roof to the sub-surface hangar slid back revealing the pale cream morning sky above, and slowly the green pad on which Lisa was parked began to rise upwards.
Ellie was up, her meager bag of possessions packed and ready to go.
‘Did you manage to get any sleep then?’ he asked as he squeezed past her to get to the cockpit to boot up the computer and start warming up the shuttle’s engines.
‘No, not really,’ she replied.
‘So…you spent last night doing some thinking then, eh?’
Ellie had been awake all night. Not thinking about whether she was heading in - that was already a done deal. But nervously conjuring images of what it was going to be like inside the dome. Even if she hadn’t been trembling with a mixture of excitement and sheer terror, the noise of the cargo being loaded into the hold and that of two engineers cursing loudly whilst they stripped down the engine of a shuttle next door, would have kept her from sleeping. She had spent the entire night whilst Aaron was out shopping and chasing up the loading team, pacing the length of the shuttle and mustering her courage to remain steadfast and not stray from her decision to head inside today.
‘So what’s it going to be? Am I taking you home this morning?’ he asked hopefully.
‘I’m going in.’
Aaron shrugged. ‘Okay. If I can’t change your mind, then let me give you some advice girl,’ he said as he punched the engines on and they whirred to life. ‘You go in today, and you give yourself a clear goal and a deadline.’
‘A what?’
‘A goal! Maybe it’s, I dunno…to earn a certain amount of creds, or to do something like, to get a certain kind of job. You understand? Get yourself a fregging goal and make that your focus. Then make sure you set a deadline, maybe it’s a few weeks, months, years, whatever. You hit the goal, then great, set yourself another one!’
He’s talking like we’re never going to see each other again.
‘But if you fail, you get out of there Ellie, you damn well go home. Don’t let this place knock you down and suck the life out of you and turn you into another one of those hopeless zombies in there.’
She recalled Sean’s words at the Traders Show.
Someday, not only will you outgrow New Haven, you’ll make it off-world too.
Now there was her goal.
‘Stay away from the Service District. That’s the rough part of town. There’s all sorts there, off-worlders, rogues, bad types. They’ll see you Ellie, and they’ll think it’s Christmas time. Do you understand? And don’t trust anyone, least of all the Law Marshals. They’re all crooked, dishonest, bought. If you get ripped, don’t expect anyone to help you out, so just don’t get ripped okay? Don’t trust anyone. Now…’
She felt tears beginning to well up in her eyes.
‘…there’s no easy money in there. If someone promises you easy money, run. Seriously. It means you’re being asked to do something illegal, or worse, some sick son-of-a-bitch wants to do something illegal to you. It’s a frontier town in there, a lot of men, and not as many women. Most men in there want….well, I guess I don’t need to spell that out to you, but you need to be very careful okay? Be careful who you get close to, but make sure you find a good friend, another girl maybe. The city can make you so scared you never want to leave your cube. It helps if you got someone to be scared with.’
Ellie nodded. She could feel her bottom lip beginning to tremble and a single tear rolled down her cheek.
‘You need money inside, you gotta have money. You have none, then, you’re finished. You need money for food, water, air and someplace to sleep….and none of that’s cheap. Crap, I should know. So you’ve got to find some work, pretty quickly.’
Aaron turned towards Ellie to find her crying. ‘What’s up?’
She shook her head, ‘nothing.’
‘It doesn’t look like nothing to me.’
‘I guess I’m a little bit scared,’ she managed to murmur between muted sobs. ‘You make it sound like it’s a…a really dangerous place.’
‘Hell-o-o-o Ellie! Welcome to the real world, girl. For someone like you, this is a dangerous place!’
She turned to look out of the cockpit window. The first shards of morning sunlight were creeping over the rocky rim of the crater and bathed the port with a warm crimson hue. Long shadows from the parked vessels, big and small, stretched across the two miles of tarmac towards the glowing dome wall and the clutter of buildings around the southern entrance.
‘It’s not too late to go back home,’ he offered once more.
One of the display screens flashed a five-minute departure warning.
‘I’ve got to go pretty soon, otherwise the Port Authority is going to start hitting me with a fine. Listen, Ellie, I’m not sure you’re ready for this.’
‘But I can’t go back!’ she cried, her voice quivering painfully.
Aaron looked awkwardly at the screen. Time was ticking away and there were a dozen things he needed to be doing in order to be ready for the PGS to take control of the shuttle.
She wiped the tears from her face and took a deep, steadying breath. ‘I have to go in.’
Aaron nodded
solemnly. ‘Well then, you mind the things I’ve told you Ellie, and you make sure the first thing you do when you get inside is contact your family and tell them you’re okay. Right?’
She nodded.
‘And when I come back in three weeks, we’ll meet up and you can tell me how you’re doing. Deal?’
‘Deal,’ she replied quickly. ‘Where, though?’
Aaron took a moment to consider that. ‘There’s a Slap n’ Grill just beside the south entrance, inside the dome, ‘Dionysius’. I’ll see you there for breakfast, three weeks from today, okay?’
‘Okay.’
Ellie smiled weakly before finally throwing herself forward and wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders. ‘Thank you for everything,’ she whispered into his chest.
Aaron held her awkwardly for a moment, one huge hand all but enveloping her narrow back.
He pushed her gently away after a moment. ‘You better get going,’ he said, ‘I’ve got stuff to do.’
She reached down for her bag and squeezed out between the two seats in the cockpit making her way back through the cabin, now more cramped than she’d ever seen it with new boxes of supplies littering the walkway. She reached the bulkhead to the hold and opened it. She turned back to wave at him, but he was already too busy prepping for launch to notice.
‘Bye,’ she mumbled, wondering, for some reason, if she’d ever actually see him again. She slid her O2 mask over her face and climbed through into the hold, weaving her way through pallets of boxes to the open hatchway. She descended the ramp and walked out into the cool morning, briskly crossing the green-painted landing pad towards a set of steps leading down into the ground and a subterranean walkway to the port building.
At the top of the stairs, Ellie turned to watch the shuttle take off.
The ramp folded up into Lisa’s hold and closed heavily with a loud industrial clang. A moment later she saw the vertical thrusters fire up, blowing a gust of hot air, grit and dust into her face. Towards the front of the shuttle she thought she caught a glimpse of Aaron through the mirrored glass - some movement, anyway.
