Date Point: 4y 3m AV
HMS Myrmidon, in orbit around Cimbrean.
“Well, it’s official. The existence of this colony is now public knowledge, both on Earth and out in the greater galaxy.”
Sir Jeremy Sandy seemed remarkably well-rested considering how hectic his last few days must have been. Preparing the colony to go public, recording a press statement, finalizing the provisional draft of the opening proposals for the first Colonial Council, a formal naming ceremony for Folctha and so much more should have taken a real toll on him. Instead, the Old Man—everybody referred to him as that, respectfully—seemed composed and steady.
It was the considered opinion of Captain David Manning that the Old Man must have absolutely cast-iron discipline about his sleep schedule.
It was a skill he himself had never learned, and he was constantly suffering for it, but there was just so much to do. Assimilating the two plundered Hierarchy vessels—since renamed Caledonia and Myrmidon—into the Royal Navy was always going to have been an immense task, especially given the total lack of appropriate orbital facilities to refit them, anywhere in humanity’s controlled territory.
That hadn’t changed. While Earth’s stipend from the Dominion as a newly-Contacted race, plus the compensation settlement for the Enclosure, had been more than enough to afford a top-class shipyard, the fact was that securing such a thing from either side would have upset the delicate neutrality that was the Global Representative Assembly’s choice of policy.
Besides, there was good reason not to trust the alien tech. So much of it was unknown, so little of it operating at standards of safety or redundancy which would have satisfied even the most slapdash of human engineers. Thin single-skin hulls held together by forcefields were, presumably, at least safe enough to run a major interstellar economy or two on, but they didn’t come close to the rigorous demands of the British Armed Services.
All of which meant that such infrastructure would need to be bootstrapped on Earth, which would take months at the bare minimum.
So, the ships were effectively being refit in flight. Even having large chunks powered down, depressurised, replaced and powered up again. They were barely recognisable as being the same sleek vessels that had first arrived at Cimbrean months ago. Gone were the quantum reactor cores, spirited away to Earth for study and replaced by vast banks of supercapacitors. Gone too were the coilguns, plasma cannons and missile tubes. The outer hulls, once mirror-polished artistic marvels, had been methodically stripped off, reshaped, sanded, and slathered in matte-black RADAR-absorbent stealthing paint. That alone had taken the crew literal months of angle-grinding and wire-brushing, made all the more complicated by the fact that, helped though they were by the artificial gravity, they still had to work in spacesuits. Which meant training them first.
Caledonia’s urgent mission had pulled her away long before the refit was completed. There was still a cloud of marooned hull panels orbiting gently at her anchorage. Myrmidon was more intact—her stealthing was complete, and the first two of a total of seven Skymaster guns had now been installed, powered and connected to their magazines, as had the first of a trio of Phalanx CIWS.
Much had been kept, of course. The cloak remained, as did the single quantum core necessary to power it indefinitely. The ship’s “keel”—the thick structural spine to which the engines and hull were both anchored—had been reinforced rather than replaced. The small craft bays were untouched, though everybody wanted some kind of physical door to supplement the atmosphere retention field. The general internal layout was completely unchanged, except for having been stripped of anything remotely resembling electronics. The plumbing and electrical wiring was similarly untouched—even aliens, it seemed, couldn’t screw up the basic logistics of getting water and electricity safely throughout the ship without their leaking or meeting.
It was an immense task, only just now beginning to approach the end of Phase One. It would be another year of hard work before Myrmidon was completely renovated to the satisfaction of her captain and his superiors.
“We could have done with another week.” he told Sir Jeremy. “After that, all the weapons will be active.”
“The system shield is our first line of defence anyway. With all respect, Captain, two half-rebuilt ships won’t hold off the Great Hunt if it comes down on us.”
“True.” Manning allowed. “but I’d still feel safer with more firepower.”
“A week isn’t so very long.”
“In Civic Planning, maybe. Anyway, thanks for the update. Good luck with the Press.”
He returned to his paperwork. There was always so much to do…
Date Point: 4y 3m 1w AV
Independent Trade Station 104: “Auspice of Prosperity”
“The whole station?”
“Oh yes. All because they allowed a few humans to live there.”
The whispering pair spared a shifty glance in Miranda’s direction, clearly thinking they were out of earshot, and were being covert. Maybe they would have been, with any other species.
She tucked into a nutrient sphere, one of the four on her plate. The non-flavour and non-texture of the universal foodstuff was at least better than the bad taste being left in her mouth by the overheard conversation.
She ignored it, slipping into her inhale-pause-exhale-pause meditation, until one phrase slipped past her attention.
“…should throw her out the airlock.”
“Murder me? Really?”
She wouldn’t have chosen to speak. If the decision had been conscious, she would have kept silent. But her weary outrage outpaced her discipline, and the words sang on the air, loud enough to bring conversation in the entire dining hall to instant silence.
The one who had said it—a Kwmbwrw female—both shrank and bristled.
Damage done. In for an inch, in for a mile. She stood, carrying her chair with her, set it up at the two conspirators’ table, reversed and straddled. “Care to tell me how killing a fellow sophont to save your own hide is any better than what the Hunters are doing?”
The other conspirator—this one a relatively slim Locayl—cleared his throat, a gesture held in common with humans.
“My friend Gwnrwt here has lost family to the Hunters.” he rumbled, expression conciliatory. “The subject makes her-”
“Don’t apologise on my behalf, Golron.” the Kwmbwrw snapped. “I can tidy my own burrow, thank you.”
“As you say. If you’ll excuse me while I fetch a second helping then…” the Locayl stood, then addressed Miranda. “Would you like a measure of water? I understand your species need a lot of it.”
“That’s very thoughtful.” Miranda thanked him. “Yes please.”
Gwnwrt watched him go, then sneered at her. “Expecting an apology, human?”
“How would you feel if total strangers were talking about spacing you just for being a Kwmbwrw?”
“Kwmbwrw don’t endanger everybody on the station just by being here.”
“I’ve got to be somewhere.”
“Out the airlock is somewhere.”
Miranda was pleased to see that despite her Kwmbwrw antagonist’s bravado, a cool stare still made her very uncomfortable. “I don’t even know why I bothered.” she snapped, standing. “
Beings scattered as she strode out of the room, instinctively recoiling from the sight of an angry Deathworlder.
She was impressed when the Locayl—Golron—caught up with her down the corridor. His longer legs at least gave him the burst of speed to catch up with her angry stride, though it left him thoroughly out of breath.
“What do you want?” She snapped.
“My friend is…” he began, wheezing.
“A hell-bitch?”
“That…didn’t translate.”
She relaxed. He had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to catch up, the least she could do was hear him out.
“I wasn’t being kind about her.”
“I…guessed…As much. Whew.” He straightened up, still breathing heavily but clearly more in control again now.
“What do you want, Golron?”
“She thought you were staying here for some selfish reason when there’s an alternative available.”
“What alternative?”
“I thought so! You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“I was wondering why you would stay here when people like Gwnwrt must make life so hard, and when the Great Hunt is out there scouring for humans and devouring innocents on places like the Exos station, but then it occurred to me that maybe you haven’t heard.”
“Heard what, Golron?” Miranda practically burst.
“Your people have a colony now. A place where you could settle among your own kind, or maybe even go home. No more prejudice, no more…” he looked back down the corridor.
“No more hypocrisy? If I’d lost family to the Hunters, I would never suggest throwing somebody else to them.”
He sighed. “I really am sorry.”
“Don’t be. You didn’t say it.”
They stood in silence for a moment as she thought. “Did you hear this colony’s name?”
“Folctha, on the planet Cimbrean. They announced it a few [days] ago.”
“I bet the Dominion didn’t like that.”
“The planet in question is on the far side of the Celzi front line, and the Alliance have vocally supported your species’ right to self-determination.” Golron told her. “I’m sure the Dominion is very unhappy indeed.”
She laughed, although it was spoiled just a little as Golron recoiled from the flash of teeth. Nobody seemed to understand smiling. And it would be nice…
“Thank you, Golron. I think I might just go there.”
“It’s probably the best thing for everyone.” he agreed. “I’m sorry we weren’t clear with you earlier. We just gossiped rather than actually talking with you.”
“Well, you came through in the end. You and I are fine. Gwnwrt can still go fuck herself though.”
“That seems…”
“Anatomically impossible, I know.” she finished the all-too-familiar objection wearily.
She definitely needed to be back among her own kind.
Fortunately, she had just enough saved up. It would be a one-way trip, but the important part was, she could afford it.
Date Point 4y 4m 3w AV
Ceres Base, Sol
Drew Cavendish
“No! NO!!” Drew elbowed his way between the new miners and singled out the culprit. “You do not just check your own seal and trust it. You check your friend’s, and get him to check yours, and then you both get a third opinion!”
He leaned in and tapped the newcomer’s faceplate to punctuate his next sentence, pleased to see that they had gone pale inside their hardsuit. “The alternative (tap) is that you die (tap). Come on, this is the most basic stuff, you already went over this down on Earth!”
“Sorry, boss.” the offender mumbled.
“Don’t give me ‘sorry’.” he growled, grabbing the helmet and yanking. It popped right off. “If you had tried to go out there, we’d have had to blow the emergency repressure on the airlock, and that costs seven thousand pounds and a couple of burst eardrums. Get. Your seal. Checked.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Right. Get that helmet back on.”
He watched as the newbie did so, and as his team members checked and double-checked the seal, to everyone’s apparent satisfaction.
“Right. Time to head out there. Now remember, outside the modules the surface gravity is only point-two-seven M slash S. That’s point zero-two-nine Gs. So until we’re clear of any overhead structures, we are going to shuffle, keeping our feet on the floor. Walking normally will bounce you into the air like a bloody ball. If you jump, you aren’t coming back down again for minutes. Your SAFER pack is for emergencies only. Is everyone clear?”
There was a general muttering of “yes boss”. He didn’t bother to ask them to sound off—this wasn’t the military—but he made eye contact with every single one to make sure they weren’t just agreeing by rote.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
There was, he knew, a lot of work still to do. It took time for people to intuitively recognise the difference between weight and mass. It took even longer for them to finally understand that working in a vacuum and under microgravity was actually harder work than down on Earth. Only two—and these two he knew were going to turn out to be excellent members of the team—had started their hardsuit careers by spending time wearing the suit and customising it with tape and padding and a little swatch of velcro inside the helmet and a stylus or piece of wire on one of their fingers. The others would be pinched and blistered by the time they came back indoors in a few hours’ time, distracted and maddened by the inevitable itches, and frustrated by the thick gloves’ inability to handle delicate work.
He caught a glimpse of the artwork that one of the two customizers had done on the side of his helmet. It was actually a sticky decal, a classic trashy pin-up of a rock chick with tattoos holding up a prominent full house. The scrollwork underneath read “Aces and Kings”.
Trashy and cliched though the decal was, it was a sensible idea for immediate identification, and Drew decided he would get one of his own as soon as possible.
The airlock cycled, and the newbies took their first steps into vacuum.
In his heart of hearts, Drew couldn’t have been happier.
Date Point: 4y 4m 3w AV
Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Earth.
Gabriel Arés
Adam and Ava had school. Neither felt up to it, but Gabriel had put his foot down. They still needed an education, and they needed a return to something resembling normalcy for the sake of their mental health.
Phoenix had heard the death of San Diego. The shockwave had faded to the point of only cracking a few windows and setting off some car alarms by the time it washed over central Arizona, but it had still been loud—nobody in the city had failed to notice it, with even Phoenix’s deaf residents feeling the noise deep inside their chests.
It was tough for Gabriel, too. He didn’t know anybody in this city, pretty much all of his friends and living relatives had lived in San Diego. Aside from a few distant cousins in Guadalajara and the handful of SDPD officers who had, like him, been out of town on the day their city was killed, there was nobody left.
Phoenix, he suspected, was just temporary. But he had no idea where would come next. And after moving all their stuff in and getting the kids off to school, he was finding himself sitting around watching movies and resisting the urge to drink. That way, he knew, led self-destruction.
He was lost in a black mood when his phone rang, the default wooden-ish staccato notes taking a few seconds to percolate through Bruce Willis fleeing the cops in a flying taxi.
“Hello?”
“Hello there, is this detective Gabriel Arés?” The voice had a British accent.
“Sí. Retired.”
“Sir, my name is Sean Howard, I work for the Cimbrean colonial administration. Your name was forwarded to me by a Mr. Jenkins at the Scotch Creek research facility?”
“Jenkins? Yes, I know him. What’s he doing forwarding my name to you?”
“With the colony having gone public and opened its doors to potential settlers, we’re beginning to establish our civilian law enforcement. You came highly recommended.”
“Me?” Gabriel shifted uncomfortably as his abused spine twinged at him. “Why? I’m not exactly fighting fit any more.”
“We still need a chief of police. Somebody to handle policy, set up our police service, and to take an investigative role if—God forbid—we need it. You won’t be expected to go chasing anywhere.”
“So it’s a desk job, then?”
“A highly-paid and senior one in the colonial administration, complete with accomodation for you and any dependents.”
“I’ve got two teenagers under my care.”
“We have a school, sir. We’re trying to attract families, we take education seriously.”
“And why would I want to leave Earth?”
“That’s for you to decide, sir. But we intend to build a good life out of here. A fresh start, the model for humanity’s future. I can’t tell you whether or not you’re interested in being involved in that.”
Gabriel thought about it. After a few moments of silence, Howard spoke. “It’s a big decision, you’re under no pressure detective, but with your qualifications and background we’d love to have you. I’ll let you think about it.”
“Thank you.”
Howard hung up.
Gabriel was still thinking about it when the kids got home.
Date Point: 4y 6m AV
Folctha, Cimbrean
Ava Rios
”-na take ¡cojeme!”
Adam’s hands jerked up in alarm as the world around them blinked. One instant, it was the dull concrete and steel interior of a hangar somewhere in Canada, and the next…well, a palace. Or at least the glass and steel structure on the lawn of a palace that housed Folctha’s end of the Jump Array.
The architecture was a lot strange, but elegant—all curves and loops and domes, looking more like something that had been gently coaxed out of the landscape rather than built atop it.
She giggled at his alarm, and it surprised even her—ever since her parents had died in the San Diego blast, mirth had been hard to find, but it sprang back suddenly, watching her boyfriend jump out of his skin at the sudden change.
“Language.” she teased. He blushed, noticing that others in the colonist group were grinning at him, although most were also clearly recovering from their own surprise.
She smiled at his back as he scowled and hoisted the bags that contained all his and Gabriel’s worldly possessions. Gabriel protested that he could carry his own load, but Adam knew better—the older Arés, a handsome and grey-haired mirror-image of his son, was too stubborn to admit that his injury still impeded him—long hours in the gym had gone a long way toward restoring his fitness, but the bullet had done permanent harm that would never quite go away.
Ava wheeled her own bag behind her, taking in the sights as they emerged through a short tunnel, passing through a gossamer orange curtain of light that tingled her skin and made her teeth feel strange.
The air beyond was cool. Cold, even. Not the biting chill she’d felt during their few days at Scotch Creek, that invaded her clothing and pinched at her skin, but the cold of a crisp spring morning, though it looked like full daytime. The air tasted…sweet, almost. There was only a tang of wood smoke on it, which if anything only enhanced the certainty that this was a place that humanity had yet to leave any kind of a permanent footprint on.
The sun was strange, too. It was…more orange, slightly. A little larger. It made the place look warm, even while the air felt chilly.
There was a smattering of cheers and applause from a small crowd that had gathered to greet the new arrivals. A silver-haired man in a suit was shaking hands and offering warm welcomes.
They’d been prepared for the cold, of course. Cimbrean’s immigration policy included funding to buy some rugged clothes suitable for the colony. Out of their own pockets, she and Adam had paid for some customization, with the result that their jackets bore matching patches on the sleeve—skyscrapers and a phoenix, and the legend “De las Cenizas”.
Avoiding the governor who was warmly shaking Gabriel’s hand and welcoming him to Folctha, she looked around.
To her relief, she immediately spotted that a second group had formed off on the sidelines—Folctha’s junior citizens, some of whom waved at her when they saw her notice them. She tapped Adam on the arm to get his attention, pointed them out, and together they broke away from the group to meet their new peers.
It was quite the mix. Most were obviously English—there was just something about how they stood, did their hair, what they wore that screamed it, even before they spoke—and quite the age range, too. She and Adam were probably toward the older end of the spectrum—the youngest was clearly only about nine years old.
There wasn’t a lot of makeup being worn, she noticed, becoming suddenly and absurdly conscious of her own, subtle though it was. In the last couple of years, makeup had started to become more of a male thing in schools too—the boys had turned out to be just as vain as the girls once the makeup companies had broken a generations-old prejudice and started marketing foundation at the adolescent male market. It had been met with ridicule and even outrage among some parents, but had caught on.
It was slightly strange to realise that now, the only other person wearing any makeup at all in this little group was her boyfriend.
There were introductions, some stereotypically British apologies about being “terrible at names” and apologising in advance for getting them wrong…really, it was just like going to a new school, though as far as she could tell it was refreshingly free of drama.
“So, what are you guys going to be doing?” she asked.
“It’s all apprenticeships right now.” one of the girls—Gwen—told her. “But the colony’s not really settled yet, it’s only a couple of months old. I was thinking I’d go for nursing, maybe doctor, but it depends on what we need.”
“Botany.” Kieron said, firmly.
“I’m already doing it. I’m the colony’s only journalist!” That part had been obvious. Sara—at the absolute most, only fourteen years old—was wearing a big dSLR camera and a tablet computer in a satchel on her hip and had been taking notes and pictures throughout. “What about you?” She asked of Adam. She had that popped-hip, interested look that Ava knew well, so she nestled up to him and took his arm, just to make sure both of them were clearly off-limits. Some of the guys had been looking at her with interest too.
If he noticed the attention, Adam gave no sign of it. “Law enforcement.” he said. “It’s what I was planning on doing back on Earth.”
“Oh, wait, your dad’s our new police chief, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“What about you, Ava?”
“Like, uh, Gwen said, I guess it depends on what we need. I mean, the plans I had don’t really…I mean, like, who needs a theatrical makeup artist here?”
“Go for it anyway.” Big Jack shrugged. “Can you do hair?”
“Uh, yeah. A bit.”
“There you go then.”
“I don’t know, I never saw myself as a stylist.” Ava protested. “I like the girly stuff, but not, like, enough to do it for a living.”
“Well, if nothing else, it’s something to do until you find somebody to apprentice under, and you could earn some money.” Sara said. She spoke in a hummingbird blur, so fast that it was sometimes hard to tell where one word end and the next began, and was constantly being told to slow down by the others. “I mean I know my mum would love to get her hair done and her nails and some of the men have really ewww beards now so maybe you could learn to shave too, you could make a lot of money just helping people stay…”
“Hey, no pressure.” Adam interrupted her, hugging Ava round her waist. “We don’t need to rush in, we don’t even know where we’re sleeping yet.”
“Oh, your house is all built and ready!” That was Little Jack, the youngest kid in the group who’d so far remained silent and let the bigger kids gossip. He turned to Sara, whose identical brown hair suggested they were siblings. “Can I show them? Please?”
Sara laughed indulgently. “Oh kaaay” she mock-relented. “I’ll come with you. See you tonight, guys!”
They walked away, Little Jack running forward and then occasionally stopping to grouse about how slow they were being.
“Were you told where you’re staying?” she asked.
“We were told there’d be a house. Dad was pretty spare on the details.” Adam admitted.
“Not just any house, you two are getting your own!” Sara said. “You’re so lucky, I have to stay with Mum and Dad and Jack.”
“Our own place? Like, just us? I figured we’d be staying with Gabriel…” Ava glanced back down the road to where Arés senior was still meet-and-greeting with, presumably, the colony’s most important people. He’d sunk gratefully onto a camp stool while he talked.
“Oh, he’s up on Palace Rise.” Sara said, pointing toward the half-rebuilt palace. “All the admin people live up there. You’re down here on Delaney Row, near the school.”
“Delaney Row?” Ava asked.
“You’ve got street names already?” Adam followed up.
“Yeah!” Sara said. “Jen Delaney was the first governor here. She handed it over to Sir Jerry and left. I heard the soldiers talking about her, they all think she’s really badass and they say she can shoot a gun really accurately and she told them all off one time because they saw her naked and were staring but she didn’t care, so they voted to name one of the housing zones after her.”
“Voted where?” Adam asked her.
“The Thing.”
“Like…council, senate?”
“No, the Thing. It’s an old word, I think Norse? You know, Vikings? It’s like, the whole town getting together to talk and vote. Sir Jerry says it’s the best kind of democracy for right now because we’re still so small.”
Sara clearly had an enthusiasm for sharing knowledge that was the hallmark of a born journalist, coupled to the motor mouth of a born irritant. “One of the sessions, we voted on what to call everything. So we’ve got Palace Rise, Delaney Row, Crash Avenue, Camp Uplift—that’s the army, you’ll like them, they’re really tidy…uh, cool— we’ve not got names right down to streets yet because there’s not really any streets and…oh, we’re here.”
Adam and Ava’s house turned out to be tiny. In fact, it could have fit comfortably inside a large room. Inside, though, it turned out to be pure efficient space. It had everything—The living room doubled as a kitchen, complete with cooker, dishwasher and washer/dryer (though these both had signs on them warning that they weren’t yet working), a folding-out dining table that recessed cleverly into the floor when not in use, and a fridge. The bed was up a short, extremely steep flight of stairs that doubled as storage, and below it were the bathroom, complete with a shower and bath, and even a spare room. The whole thing couldn’t have been more than twenty feet long, and even included a porch.
“They’ve still not got the town water set up yet,” Sara continued “but there’s, like, a collector on the roof for rainwater, that should keep you going until that happens. Dad says it’s really clean because Cimbrean is a class Four world, so apparently you can drink right out of the stream if you want, but he said it’s still not a great idea to do that just in case, so the collector purifies the rainwater, and you’ve got a little water heater. It’s really cool, it only rains at night here, you get to listen to rain on the roof every night. It’s amazing.”
She paused for breath, then seemed to recall the principle of letting other people get a word in sideways. “What do you think?”
Ava just looked at Adam, who was gazing around with one of only a few genuine smiles she had seen on him in months. “I think…wow. I think wow.” He said. Ava nodded, pleased that he was so pleased.
Sara just beamed, then seemed to remember something. “Oh, yeah, I made you a welcome gift!”
She produced an ovoid disc of sanded wood—though Ava guess that the wood in question was nothing that might be found on Earth. Before applying a coat of varnish, somebody had carefully pyrographed a single word onto it.
“EDEN.”
“It’s…a house name sign. You know? With your names, I thought…do you like it?”
“I like it.” Ava told her. Adam nodded beside her.
“I helped!” Jack exclaimed.
“No you didn’t, you watched!” Sara protested. “I did all the work.”
“Nuh-uh, Dad did all the work, you just wrote on it, and I helped because I fetched the sandpaper for him!”
“It’s wonderful.” Ava assured them both. “I’ll hang it up after we’re done unpacking.”
“Oh okay. I should get back up to the palace and take pictures and see who’s arrived so I can put it in the newsletter anyway.” Sara beamed. “See you tonight?”
“What’s happening tonight?”
“We’re having a big cookout like we always do when new people come. Just follow your nose, you can’t miss it!”
“Okay. We’ll see you there.” Adam promised.
The little house became noticeably quieter the second the brother and sister were gone. Ava sank onto the couch with a sigh, finding it extremely comfortable considering how small it was. “Wow. What does she run on?” she grumbled.
Adam just chuckled, still poking around. “Our own place! I KNEW Dad was keeping a secret!”
“I know…hey.” Ava stood up, took his hand, turned him towards her and kissed him. “I’m kinda scared.” she admitted.
“Of what?”
“Adam, come on. We’re sixteen. I mean come on, we’re still kids! But everybody’s treating us like we’re not, even your dad. I don’t know if I want to be treated like an adult yet.”
“I guess…” He agreed. “It’s like…our first date was, what, less than a year ago? Ten months.”
“Yeah. And that scares me because now…like, here we are. Living together, on our own, starting a new life. Like we’re…um.” She trailed off, not quite willing to say the word that hung on the end of that sentence.
“Like we’re…Yeah.” He agreed.
“Yeah…”
She rested her head against his chest, and it made his voice sound bassy and warm as he rubbed her hair and confessed “I’m scared too.”
It made her feel a lot better.
Date Point: 4y 6m AV
Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works, Nevada Desert
Rylee Jackson
It felt like a very personal kind of heresy, but the second she saw her new sled, Rylee fell in love all over again.
She heard her own enthusiasm without really registering that she was saying it. “Oh. My. God. Look at this thing!”
It was definitely the child of the TS-101. The lines were very similar, but…sleeker. Finer. Sharper, somehow. The GAU-8/S housing was smoother and flusher with the hull, the barrel itself seeming an organic part of the vehicle rather than the chunky load it had been on Pandora. The prominent, tumorous ESFALS blisters were now mere subte swellings in the belly. The kinetic thrusters had been moved and sunk into the hull, finally getting rid of an obsolete concession to air intake. The cockpit was longer, lower, built for two.
She was like Pandora after a makeover, with her war paint on. Meaner, leaner and keener. Even in the hangar, even with a tarp still draped over her, she looked like the empress of the sky.
“Thought you’d like her.” The chief engineer said, grinning. She could have kissed him then and there. But there was an important question to ask first.
“When do I get to fly her?”
“Come on, you don’t think we’d tease you like that, do you?” he asked. “She’s ready now.”
“Oh!” Rylee beamed at him “I love you.”
“Ahh, I bet you say that to all the guys who give you a multi-million dollar aerospace vehicle.”
Rylee giggled at that. “You got me. But okay, what’s she called?”
“Officially? She’s the Lockheed-Martin EF slash A three-thirty-six TS mark two. But we’re open to suggestions on a fancy name to go with that…”
Rylee reached up and touched her new beloved’s hull for the first time. It was warm to the touch, and after the events of only a few months ago, she could think of only one appropriate name.
“Firebird.”
Date Point: 4y 6m 1w AV
Ceres Base, Sol
Drew Cavendish
“…Criticized the President’s handling of the aftermath of the San Diego blast as the USA officially slipped into recession this week with the economy recording its second successive quarter of decline. The Dow Jones and FTSE 100 index fell sharply in response to the news, fuelling worldwide fears that the aftermath of San Diego’s destruction will be a worldwide financial crisis, though China’s SSE Index closed trading up three-…“
“Hey, I was bloody watching that!” Drew M complained. It was uncharacteristic of Cavendish to just march into the office and shut off the news feed.
Then again, it was uncharacteristic of him to be unwashed and still wearing his hardsuit’s underlayer around the office.
“Yes, well, we have a serious problem.”
Drew M snapped immediately into business mode—his boots swung down from the desk and he blurred through a series of keyboard shortcuts, summoning the serious incident forms. “What happened?”
“Nothing, exactly. But it was this close to being a dead miner.” Cavendish dropped something on the desk.
“What’s this?”
“Hardsuit heat regulation field emitter. It’s an essential component of the life support system. Supposed to keep you-”
“I know what it does, mate.”
“Aye, sorry.”
“This one broken?”
“Malfunctioning. It was drawing in heat constantly. If Aces wasn’t super careful, He’d have gone out that airlock and slowly heated up and heated up until the hyperthermia got him.”
“Aces?”
“Kessler. I call them all by their helmet decals these days. Bless ‘im, he’s a careful one, he runs a full diagnostic before we head out, every time. That’s why he caught it. Anybody else…”
“I’ll write it up.” Drew M promised.
“Yeah, well. Don’t put this next bit in the report, mate.”
Cavendish shut the door. “Between you and me, I suspect foul play.”
“Holy dooley, Drew. You sure?”
“If I was sure, I wouldn’t be telling you to keep it dark. But we ran a full check on these things last night. It happened exactly when we were least likely to catch it, and exactly when it was least likely to happen, too.”
“That’d be right.”
“Yeah, well. As team lead I’m making a decision here—full check, every day.”
“That’ll shave an hour off our work time every shift. That adds up, mate—you’ll put the whole project behind schedule.” Drew M protested. His heart wasn’t really into it, though. When it came down to it, they both knew that deadlines were less important than lives.
“As opposed to a man dying out there because of an equipment failure we could have caught that morning? Not on my watch, Drew.”
“Nah, yeah. You go ahead and get that done, I’ll fill in the report. But we’ll keep the sabotage idea on the down-low and keep an eye out for now, right?”
“And hope I’m wrong, yes.”
Drew was in a thoughtful mood as he returned to the hardsuit maintenance workshop. His helmet was lying exactly where he’d left it, uncharacteristically untidy atop the workbench. He’d relented and agreed to a pinup for his helmet decal after they had swept through the team, driven by Jenny O’neill’s decision to have a shirtless and otter-muscled samurai adoring hers. Cavendish’s own was still relatively tasteful—the girl was seen from behind looking back over her shoulder, wearing a blaze orange boiler suit and a welding mask to match the torch on her other shoulder. The only real concessions to titillation were the way the boiler suit clung to her figure just a little too well, a hint of sideboob, and the obligatory pout.
Strong colours and a shape that was easily identified at a distance were the order of the day—the pinups had become a critical part of recognising one another in the strange lighting conditions of an asteroid’s surface. While each of the pinups was certainly nice to look at up close, being able to glance at the side of a team member’s head and see O’neill’s splash of purple Hakama, or Kessler’s strong black and white, was a godsend for immediate identification. Even the experimental RFID system wasn’t so useful, except at longer distances.
“What’s the verdict?” He asked. He’d left the team to run diagnostics on their gear in response to Kessler’s near-miss.
Chitsenga shook her head. Her helmet decal was of a dreadlocked guitar player. “All clean.” she reported.
“Good. Take ten, then we’re going to suit up and get back out there. May as well get a half day in.” They all nodded and filed out to freshen up, grab a bite, take a toilet break or whatever else they did to prepare for hours out in the pit, and pretty soon he was left alone with Kessler, who was still fastidiously calibrating the faulty emitter’s replacement.
“Did you check the footage?” Kessler asked him.
“Not yet.”
Kessler just grunted and jerked a thumb towards the workshop’s only computer. Drew shrugged, passing off the gesture—brusque even by Kessler’s terse standards—as the product of stress and a near-miss with death, and opened the security camera footage.
He wasn’t remotely surprised when, two hours before the start of shift, eight minutes of footage turned out to be corrupted.
Date Point: 4y 6m AV
Office of the Director of the CIA, Washington DC, USA, Earth
“He was as good as his word, actually. I think our chaps impressed upon him that if we were inclined to bring him back in for another little chat, there would be little he could do to stop us.”
“Yeah, well I met your man Powell. That man could scare the red off the devil.”
“He’s an asset like that, yes.”
“This is pretty grim news, Michael.” the Boss told his opposite number. “If even one of those implants we imported is compromised that way…”
“I was under the impression we reverse-engineered the lot, and that every single one in use anywhere on Earth or beyond was built and installed by our own people.”
“Yeah, but from what the guys up at Scotch Creek told my people up there, the problem with that is that alien tech is still a ways ahead of our own, so we’re not so much reverse-engineering as copy-pasting in a lot of cases.”
”…I see. You don’t have one, do you?”
“Cancelled that appointment the second you sent me the dossier. You?”
“Call me old-fashioned, but I was always rather squeamish about brain surgery.”
“Way I hear it, it’s more like getting your ears pierced. One solid thunk, bada-bing bada-boom, you understand Swahili now.”
“Is that supposed to be an encouraging thought?”
The Boss grunted down the phone. “Heck if I know, Michael. We’d better chase this up over here. Give my best to your wife and kids.”
“And mine to yours. Good luck.”