Scuttle

Nothing makes time drag out like watching a clock. Psionics were a bit suboptimal in that regard. It was a little too easy watch the seconds go by.

If that clock is counting down for a bomb to go off under you, minutes stretch into hours.

We had the fewest responsibilities, so Nora and I were actually the first ones to the ship.

The Coalition kept a small fleet of ships ready to launch at a moment’s notice. Normally they were reserved for scramble evacuation in case of an attack on the base. Key personnel and equipment could be launched into the void too quickly for any landing troops to catch.

“[They don’t just shoot them down?]” Nora asked.

“[There’s apparently some labyrinthian treaties and laws in place to limit the amount of ship-to-ship combat,]” I said. “[Weapons-enabled spacecraft are seen a bit like bioweapons or nukes are on earth.]”

“[How much is ‘a bit’?]” Nora asked.

“[Mmm…I guess not too much?]” I said. “[Maybe they’re not quite like nukes, but non-nuclear naval strikes. Weaponized spacecraft get used, but not often, and when they are? Things are deadly serious.]”

“[Is this serious enough to qualify?]” Nora asked.

“[…I hope not. But that’s why we do safety briefings.]”

I materialized a rough blueprint of the rocket’s layout, provided by Shinshay.

“[Ship controls are at the top of the rocket with a redundant station one deck below us, here, by the galley. Big things to remember is that there are only two entrances to rockets like these: toward the bottom of the rocket with the cargo airlocks, and just beneath the bridge at the top.]”

“[Two exits,]” she nodded. “[What about escape pods?]” she asked.

“[Sorta limited, sorta not]” I said. “[This rocket is pretty small, so it’s not equipped with pods that actually launch away. But every deck above life support is modular. They can be sealed and split off from the rest of the ship. Automatically does a distress call if that happens too.]”

“[The engine is at the bottom though. Doesn’t that have all our power?]”

“[There are emergency backups,]” I supplied. “[But yes, the separated sections are more or less just drifting in space.]”

“[And we’re fine here? We don’t have to strap in or anything?]”

“[Launch should be grav assisted, so we’re not going to pull that many g’s, but I’d still lie down.]”

Crew deck on this rocket had twelve berths distributed across three cabins. It was a very different craft than the sardine can I’d ridden to Archo in.

“[Alright, run it down again,]” I said.

She did.

“[What do we do in case of a catastrophic structural failure?]”

She told me.

“[What emergency scenarios make spacesuits mandatory?]”

She told me.

Nora and I drilled the safety lists for the launch while the time ticked away. But even with less than half-an-hour left on the clock, it felt like we ran out of things to say. The anticipation was thick in the air, for launching off in a rocket, for what we might find.

For it all.

We were lying in the berths on the crew deck when nerves got the better of us. Nora’s fist slammed into the wall.

“[I need to distract myself,]” she said breathlessly. “[I’m going to explode otherwise.]”

“[Uhh…okay? Anything I can do to help?]”

“[You mind if ask your advice on something maybe uncomfortably personal?]”

“[Sure,]” I said. “[Uncomfortable for me, or uncomfortable for you?]”

“[Maybe both? It’s dating related.]”

Hmm. Okay. I could be cool about this.

“[I might not be the best person to ask,]” I warned. “[For multiple reasons. I’m not exactly romantically experienced.]”

“[And I should ask the aliens for dating advice?]”

“[Touché. But they’re busy getting ready to launch a rocket anyway. I guess you are stuck with me. I assume this is related to another abductee, though?]”

“[Yeah. Forcing myself to talk about it feels like the kind of thing to get my mind off flying in a rocket.]”

“[Your topic can certainly accomplish that. Dating is complicated enough back on Earth,]” I said. “[I can’t imagine camping with the Vorak would simplify anything.]”

“[No kidding,]” she snorted. “[There’s…agh…]”

She trailed off, hesitant.

“[Spit it out, or I’m going to start rattling off the rocket’s specs,]” I said.

“[Okay, okay, I told you before about talking with the other girls on my ship right? I learned a lot from them, got a lot of perspective. And with one girl in particular…]”

“[Sparks?]” I suggested.

“[Sure…but…well, I like her. A lot. Pretty sure she likes me too.]”

“[So what’s the problem?]” I asked. “[You don’t know if it’s cool for the boss to date one of the coworkers?]”

“[No. Well, actually yes—a little bit—but that’s not the thing I need advice about,]” she said. “[I’m uncomfortable with our age difference, and I don’t trust my judgement enough to know how much I should be.]”

“[How wide of a gap are we talking?]” I asked hesitantly.

“I’m nineteen, she’s…I hope sixteen. Maybe still fifteen. I never worked up the nerve to ask. She was sophomore in high school, and I’m a freshman in college.]”

“[Three-and-a-half to four years? I…think…that’s in bounds.]”

“[What a stunning vote of confidence,]” she drawled. “[Because whenever I think about it, I worry it would be creepy.]”

“[You said your parents were fundamentalists, right?]” I asked.

She nodded.

“[I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’ve heard the ‘gay people are groomers’ line before,]” I said.

“[Tons…]” she nodded. “[Safe to imagine you have too?]”

“[Yeah, but even I always thought it was a dumb argument,]” I said. “[Credit should always go where it’s due and straight people are just as capable of being monsters.]”

“[Hah. Well…I’m having a hard time shaking the idea,]” she said.

“[Alright, think of it this way, back on Earth, why would someone not want a nineteen-year-old dating a fifteen-year-old? Nobody would blink at a twenty-year-old dating a twenty-four-year-old.]”

“[Obvious,]” Nora said. “[It’s the kind of decision that could ruin the fifteen-year-old’s life. Bad boyfriend convinces a girl to dropout, or distracts her from school, gets her drinking, partying. You know, anything that gets suburban moms ready to cry ‘bad influence’.]”

“[Yeah, but apply the same logic to alien abductees instead of kids regularly attending high school,]” I said. “[The fifteen-year-old’s life is already ruined. You can’t really ruin this girl’s college prospects, you can’t get her into drugs, you can’t get her to cut classes, you can’t…et cetera.]”

“[Huh.]”

“[If you went for it, would be respectful and caring?]”

“[…Yeah.]”

“[Then go for it,]” I said. “[…Was the rocket really what brought this up?]”

“[Partly,]” she said. “[Sitting on a rocket about to shoot us toward what is almost certainly a trap got me thinking about regrets I have. Past and…possibly upcoming. My brain’s a mess thinking about getting to know something about my campers…How are you keeping your hopes from getting up?]”

“[…Experience,]” I said. “[When I first escaped the Vorak, I had this moment where I realized the reach they had to have, since they were spacefaring. It was just…absolutely crushing. I’ve never felt so hopeless in my life, and I can’t imagine ever getting to that low point again. No matter what comes after, it can’t be as hopeless as that time.]”

“[That sounds like the opposite…]” Nora said, “[like how you keep your hopes up.] ”

“[Maybe I need to keep mine up, and you have to keep yours down to be reasonable. Maybe that makes me a pessimist,]” I said, “[but if there’s one thing I’ve come to understand before you got here, it’s that people are capable of learning a lot more than anyone expects. Impatient people can learn to slow down, downers can learn to see the bright side, and even idiots can learn how to learn.]”

“[That’s nice and inspirational,]” she said, “[but you wouldn’t happen to have anything a little more immediately applicable, would you?]”

“[Think about something else,]” I smiled. “[Personally, I think I’ve gotten pretty good at distracting myself from big problems with small ones.]”

“[What do you think I was doing bringing up my love life?]” she muttered. “[What about you, Casanova? You said you had a girlfriend back home.]”

“[It wasn’t exactly a longtime thing,]” I said. “[I asked her to homecoming six weeks ahead of time.]”

“[Wow. Real go-getter,]” Nora chuckled.

“[Shut up, I didn’t know the rules. Nobody does.]”

“[You just fake it ‘til you make it, don’t you?]”

“[Oh, you have no idea…]” I agreed.

To be honest, I was glad Nora was so nervous. It felt like I was in good company. My own heart rate hadn’t settled ever since the raid on the fish factory. Had it really just been three days ago, that we’d been completely lost on these drones?

Things were moving fast.

“Launch in five minutes,” Serral’s voice came over the intercom.

Nora and I signaled our readiness. So did Dyn, Shinshay, a handful of our bodyguards. We were bringing anyone we could get a hold of who might be even remotely helpful on what we might find on this orbital platform.

Nai didn’t signal her readiness until she actually boarded the ship—the last one out of us all. She joined us in the crew cabin, tossing a backpack toward each of us and carrying one for herself.

“Say I’m the best,” she ordered.

“You’re the best?” I hazarded.

“But why?” Nora asked, inspecting the pack.

“Never go on a spaceflight without some supplies,” Nai explained. “They’ve got food, water, epi pens just in case, sat radios also just in case. It’s good to be prepared for just in cases.”

“You made these a while ago,” I said, noticing the dates on the rations.

“Yes I did,” Nai grinned. “Weeks ago. Just had to run back home and grab them.”

“Hence why you’re the best,” I followed.

“You two ready?” Nai asked.

“Told Serral we were, didn’t we?” I said gesturing to myself. The rocket could launch this second, and Nora and I would be lying safely in our cabin berths.

“…Why are you lying down?” she asked.

“Uh…the rocket launch?”

“This is High Harbor, not Ramshackle,” Nai said. “We’ve got gravity assistance. Besides, this moon doesn’t have very strong pull in the first place.”

“Yeah, but we’re still going to be pulling a few Gs getting off the ground, right?”

“Not so much. We’ll feel about the same gravity that you in the gym every morning.”

“Really?”

“Without the gravity assistance, our thrust would put us under just under two Gs. With the fields, we’ll actually feel something near normal Farnata gravity…” she trailed off, noticing Nora wasn’t paying attention. “You good, Nora?”

“…Yeah. Sorry. There’s just a lot on my mind.”

“Go easy on her,” I said. “This is her first time launching on a rocket.”

“Isn’t it her third?” Nai asked.

“How do you figure?”

“Once getting abducted, once flying off Archo, and now today.”

“Getting abducted doesn’t count,” I said, “because it was nothing like this except the direction we were moving.”

“And I wasn’t conscious for that second one,” Nora added. “So it sure feels like my first time.”

“Well don’t let Caleb give you too much trouble,” Nai said. “He’s only got two up on you.”

“Two? Getting from Yawhere to Archo is one, what’s the second?” Nora asked.

“The day before you woke up, I took a flight to chat with some of the Red Sails. Saw your guy, Halax. It didn’t go great. They said that I, or psionics, are ruining Beacons somehow.”

“Well, they didn’t say psionics,” Nai said. “But they know Caleb created something mental and weird. They’re just flailing in lieu of having proper information.”

“Mmm,” Nora nodded.

“Final warnings,” Serral said from the intercoms. The hum of the engine beneath us grew louder.

“You’re sure we don’t need to be strapped in?” I said.

“If something goes wrong with the rocket,” Nai said, “we’re not even going to fall. The grav assist is external to the rocket, it’s a thing on the ground that basically lifts us away. The only real safety rule is don’t be on the ladders. See, watch.”

Soundproofing was a huge deal I hadn’t appreciated the other times I’d flown in a rocket. Flying from Yawhere, there just hadn’t been much, and flying from Archo I’d been preoccupied. But with little else to focus on besides where we were going, I had the opportunity this launch to notice how quiet it was.

My body pressed down on itself, the fractional gravity of Lakandt gave way to inertia as everything weighed itself down.

But Nai was right. I didn’t feel like my skeleton was going to collapse in on itself, or that my skin was pulling down on my face. It just felt like normal gravity had been restored.

Nai didn’t even sit down for the launch, dividing herself between talking to Nora and I and psionically coordinating with Serral up on the bridge.

“Okay, Serral and Shinshay are doing what they can to scan this platform before we get there. Based on what they find, there will be a briefing in four hours,” Nai said.

·····

Our rocket was flying with a crew of twelve, not including Nora and me. Serral, Dyn, Shinshay, familiar faces made up most of them with the exception of two Casti who were attached to the rocket.

Weith and one of those Casti were the only ones absent from Serral’s briefing, having stayed up on the bridge deck.

“We’re within two hours of our target,” Serral said, gesturing to Nai. She materialized a large diagram, psionically shared with her by Shinshay. “Look familiar?”

Some the soldiers apparently did recognize it.

The station was vaguely mushroom shaped, with a wide section sitting atop a longer narrow one.

“It’s a heavily modified Batten-model orbital platform,” Serral explained. “Standard layout looks unaltered though. Shinshay?”

“Er…yes. The layout of the station will be identical to anyone familiar with the Batten-model, but virtually everything else I could tell from here is modified. The power assembly especially. We can’t identify a reactor from here, so we can’t even sure the platform has power right now.”

I raised my hand.

“For those of un familiar with a ‘Batten-model’…?”

“It’s one of the oldest orbital facility designs out there,” Serral said. “The jump from computerized satellites to habitable platforms was an awkward one for everyone. But the Vorak did it first, in large part with these Batten-model platforms. They’re remembered for being space inefficient and an extreme variety of redundancies in their architecture.”

“There’s a lot of safety features,” Nai said. “The big ones are the jettison partitions. See the top part?”

She gestured to the ‘cap’ of the mushroom. It wasn’t circular though, but rather a very rounded triangle.

“Six compartments can be ejected from the platform, each one big enough for a few dozen people or supplies. They originally kept costly computers and machinery in the jettison sections in case of disaster. The contents would be recovered afterward.”

“What does that matter today?” I asked.

“Because this is just a diagram,” Nai said, dissolving the sheet of cardstock.

“This is a picture we got of the station a few minutes ago,” Serral shared.

“…Did someone take a bite out of it?” I asked.

Almost a third of the top section was conspicuously missing. The picture wasn’t detailed enough to show if the edges were rough or not. I couldn’t tell if the missing chunk was from damage or not.

“Impossible to say for sure,” Serral said. “But it seems highly likely this platform launched some of its jettison sections.”

“We can’t tell how long ago this might have happened either,” Shinshay said. “This platform’s orbit is so low to the gas giant, it’s not on any of the Coalition or the colony’s formal registries.”

“That same orbit leaves us about two hours to move inside the station,” Serral said. “If we can reactivate the platforms boosters, then we can get more time. If not, the whole platform will begin burning up on reentry a little while after.”

“The jettison sections,” Nora asked, her interest piqued, “how far can they go?”

“Depends on how extensive the modifications are,” Shinshay said. “In the original Batten-models they weren’t capable of thrust, but in some of the later variants, the jettison sections were like small craft on their own. The missing section here could have flown all the way to Harrogate, or it could have just limped to the nearest moon.”

“If we can find the platforms control hardware, we can see if our target has left us any logs or records to give us a hint,” Serral said. “To that end, let’s discuss our approach.”

“Nai will be going board first, alone,” he said. "The internal airlocks tend to be less secure than exterior ones, so she can enter through the missing jettison section. From there, Nai, you’re to cascade as much as you can from a safe position and scout what resistance might be there. Caleb, Nora, given the fact that the platform is going to obliterated soon, it seems likely we’ll find no personnel.”

“You think we might find weaponized drones,” I followed.

“How much can you speculate on robotic weaponry?” Serral asked.

“At a guess? Turrets,” I said. “Stationary guns connected to heat sensors, or on swivels. If we really want to jump off the deep end, it could be possible they have some kind of mechanized foot soldier? Sky’s the limit here. There’s no way to be certain before we’re there.”

“Or worse,” Nora said, “and we find nothing at all.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Serral said. “In the meantime, let’s be ready. Who’s got questions?”

·····

By the time we drew close enough for Nai to cross over, our picture of the station improved. Dull grey and yellow paint clung to the metal. No debris was floating nearby, and we couldn’t find any visible damage to the station hull.

That virtually guaranteed the section had been jettisoned according to normal.

More complicated was the radio silence. Our nameless rocket was keeping its distance in case the platform was rigged to blow, but if that were the case, then one would expect the automated radio features to be left intact. They would signal which airlocks our rocket could dock with, practically inviting us in.

So if there were no transmissions inviting us in…did that mean there probably wasn’t a bomb?

The boarding method of Nai’s choice was…sketchy.

Namely, she didn’t have one. Nai had decided it would be simplest for her to exit our ship in a voidsuit, and simply float the intervening five miles to the platform. Once she scouted it out, we might move the ship closer.

But still.

Leaping through five miles of emptiness sounded like a death sentence.

She made it look easy though.

Little bursts of created air helped adjust her course, and she could give herself thrust by materializing a simple container and creating air within it. As soon as the gas existed, it would propel her forward according to how she pointed the nozzle.

She flew five miles in four minutes, manually.

Nai sent us.

Serral chided.

she replied.

Serral instructed.

Nai said.

Nai replied.

Nai reported.

I warned.

Nai said.

I told her.

She sent me a signal burst that my psionics recognized and automatically reverse engineered it back into the image Nai had captured with her own eyes.

I materialized a piece of paper emblazoned with the image.

The room she’d found had small rows of workstations and sections of floor carved away to allow computers to connect to platform infrastructure. It was a control room, only every piece of hardware looked like it had been stripped away.

Snapped mounts and broken wires littered the walls, like where monitors would have been ripped away. An empty set of server racks rested against the back wall. Every wall socket and conduit access panel was left unconnected to anything.

“” Serral said.

Nai asked.

Nai said, worry creeping into her voice.

I asked.

Nai said.

I said.

Serral said,

Nai said.

Serral warned.

Nai reassured us.

We could only wait for Nai. I cursed not being able to utilize the superconnector over this distance. I would have loved to at least be tied in to her cascade.

<…Well, you’re right, I am going to throw a fit. Why in sanity would we send them?>

Nai said.

She told us.

My heart froze, and my gaze locked onto Nora. We were both wide eyed in shock.

“” Serral grimaced. “”

she replied.

“” Serral hissed. “”

“” I said.

Serral ordered Weith to take the rocket closer to the station—carefully.

But even with small maneuvering thrust, the rocket was mostly at rest. So we had to get our voidsuits on while floating in zero G, which took precious minutes. But there was no rushing this. One mistake and Nora and I might die falling into a gas giant below us.

“[This is a terrible idea, right?]” Nora asked nervously outside the airlock. We were both prepared as best we could be wearing the same pressurized voidsuits that we had been when we first met. The bullet holes in hers had been repaired.

Nora had even grabbed the bug-out bags Nai had assembled for us.

“[A terrible risk,]” I corrected her. “[It’s only a terrible idea if it doesn’t pay off…]”

“[Have you ever been on a spacewalk before?]” she asked.

“[Nope.]”

“[Oh joy.]”

Nai retraced her steps out of the station and flew back to our rocket. She opened the airlock, beckoning Nora and I inside.

“”

“” I said.

“” Nora agreed.

“” she said.

Exotic charges pulled me downward, while Nora achieved the same result with small black tendrils tying her boots to the airlock floor.

Nai pulled the lever and the air lock opened without the thunderous rush of air I’d been expecting.

Right. Air barriers.

The rocket—or at least the airlock exit—was surrounded by a membrane of pressurized air.

Nai carefully stepped out of the airlock, floating up to a metal cable that she’d attached to the rocket hull. It ran almost half a mile, the other end attached to the station.

“” she ordered, showing us how to clip onto the cable.

Even simple carabiners to hold us in place made me feel much better. If not for the cable to hold onto, the surrounding emptiness would have been psychologically crushing.

If I shut my eyes while we moved along the cable, I could almost imagine that there was the gymnasium floor just beneath us.

But there wasn’t a floor. In one direction was a mass of gravitationally bound gas that its pressure would crush me long before I touched anything. And in the other direction was a cold, empty infinite field of nothing.

The wonderous vista of stars wasn’t enough to distract me from just how much danger I was being kept from. By one cable.

Still, Nai’s experience won out.

She kept her eyes on us the whole time, leading the way across the cable to the orbital platform. We adhered to its surface as well and followed Nai toward the jettisoned section.

It was a deathtrap, sure to kill anyone onboard in just an hour or two.

And yet I breathed a sigh of relief as the airlock closed behind us and we were admitted to the station.

“” I asked.

“” Nai said, materializing a spontaneously lighting match to prove it. “”

That was why it was just the two of us. If Nai was correct, and there were no threats onboard, then the extra people would only require more time in the event we needed to evacuate.

“” I asked, testing my weight in the station’s artificial gravity.

“” Nai led.

We moved through the dim hallways of the platform. Only every third light in the ceiling was illuminated, giving the station a sense of being run down. Nai had left some of the doors open when she’d checked them. We saw inside as we walked; anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor was gone.

True to her assessment, no guns popped out of the walls. No robot drones appeared to ambush us.

This was a ghost town, except for the room Nai led us too.

We’d entered at one ‘corner’ of the rounded triangular top section of the station—the missing jettisoned corner in particular. What Nai had found rested only a few feet from the doors to one of the remaining, un jettisoned corners.

When I stepped into the room in question, I was squeezing my hands into fists so tight, there was probably blood on the inside of my suit’s gloves.

And there it was.

One room had been spared scavenging. A large computer display still hung on the far wall with a spherical camera mounted on the wall next to it. Two other cameras were positioned on the walls adjacent to the door.

They were powered, slowly tracking us as we moved into the room.

“[So?]” I asked, in English.

In the same language as Nai had seen the first time, the massive computer display lit up a message.

[Hello] it read. [This. Meeting. Is. Like. Your. Library. Books.]

The text it displayed was erratic, different sizes, one word thrown up a millisecond after another disappeared. No wonder Nai hadn’t been able to relay what she saw reliably.

In English no less. There was only one reason any aliens knew English. And I was pretty sure this thing wasn’t Tasser or Halax.

“[What is that supposed to mean?]” I asked.

“[Overdue,]” Nora said. “[This meeting is long overdue.]”

“[Oh they have no idea…]” I growled. “[So who the hell are you?]”

The screen lit up again, this time the words lingering longer and larger.

I. Am. ENVY