Date Point 10y7m2w3d AV
Byron Group Advanced Aerospace Assembly Facility, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, Earth
Allison Buehler
“Damn. She really could have been an actress, couldn’t she?”
Xiù was in her element. A touch of makeup, some sleeky stuff in her hair, lights and cameras, an interviewer and a director… While Allison and Julian sweated self-consciously under the lens’ scrutiny, Xiù summoned up depths of charm and grace that she hadn’t ever needed to show them before, and she was the very picture of composure and charm as she alternately either struck poses as the photographer found a new angle for her, or sat talking chirpily to the video camera.
The Group had insisted on taking interviews and a photoshoot in front of and around Misfit for the marketing campaign. The two older ships in the hangar had been carefully hidden by means of a drop tarp while Misfit herself had been turned slightly on the spot and her forward port thruster array was hanging from a crane near where it would eventually be mounted, giving the artful impression that assembly was still going on in the background even as the crew posed and told their stories in front of her.
“That’s what she wanted…” Allison agreed.
She watched as Xiù took the photographer’s suggestion and rested her elbow on the desk and her chin on the back of her hand in a way that put every single one of those tattered scars of hers—the ones she usually hated—right there on full display. She even managed a warm-eyed smile to offset them, and then started talking about them to the interviewer, stroking her fingers along them.
She was a good storyteller, too.
Julian had already done his shoot and interview, and done a decent job of relaxing and engaging with the camera…Or maybe the interviewer had done a good job of encouraging him to relax. The vanity pictures, on the other hand, had been torturous—Julian was one of those infuriating guys who didn’t have any real idea where he sat on the sliding scale of sexy, and thus assumed he was much lower on it than was actually the case.
Reality was much kinder. He filled out the sleeves of his t-shirts, had five-o’-clock stubble by noon, and the makeup guru and hairdresser had conspired to artfully upgrade his look from ‘clean scruffy’ to ‘bushranger sex god’. Which was great, but there wasn’t a force in all creation that could convince Julian that the words ‘sex god’ belonged anywhere near him and dragging the kind of heroic alpha-male frontier explorer shots out of him that the director wanted had taken forever.
Which had mercifully given the beauticians time to cluck and fret over the amateurish hack-job that Xiù had done on Allison’s hair before they’d settled on a solution for tidying it up.
The improved ‘do made her look kinda straight-laced and serious, but that was okay. Hopefully she’d look driven and determined, rather than bitchy.
At least they weren’t wearing suits or dresses or anything frilly like that. The shoot was deliberately about showing them in their work clothes, which meant track pants, sports t-shirts and running shoes. Indeed they hadn’t worn anything else for months, and Allison was beginning to grow nostalgic for jeans.
“What about you?” Julian asked.
She glanced at him. “Me?”
“You look like you don’t really want to be here.”
“‘Cause I don’t!” Allison agreed. “Fame wasn’t exactly part of the deal, was it?”
“Kinda was,” he said. “All right there in the fine print, if the Group want to put us in front of the cameras and reporters and send us to Mars to sell their brand, well… they own our asses for the next couple of years.”
“Thanks, baby. Real comforting.”
He shrugged. “It’s just the price we pay. Beats the pants off being stuck in Minnesota with maybe no house and no idea what to do next..”
Allison sighed and watched Xiù gesticulate as she described some event in her travels. It looked like a happy memory, whatever it was. “I know, I know,” she grumbled. “It’s just, I don’t wanna be famous, I wanna be useful!”
“Who says you can’t be both?”
“Every rich bitch whore who was famous purely for being a rich bitch whore?”
Julian laughed. “Jesus, Al! Who pissed in your cereal this morning?”
“This whole thing just stinks of exploitation, that’s all…”
“Yeah, maybe. But that’s the price we pay I guess,” he nodded, repeating himself. “We’re exploiting the Group for what we want, they’re exploiting us so they can profit off our skills.”
“And our asses.”
He considered her for a second, then sidestepped behind her and wrapped his arms round her from behind. “Feeling like a piece of meat again?”
He got it, which went a long way toward improving her sour mood. Allison twisted round enough to kiss him by way of a thank-you and then wilted as he heard the photographer capture their moment.
“Perfect!” He announced, and returned his attention to Xiù, leaving Allison feeling even more violated than before.
”Note to self, don’t kiss Xiù…” Julian muttered. Allison nodded—though their romantic arrangement was known to the EV-11 support team, they’d have to be crazy to let that one escape for the media piranhas to rip into.
Xiù stood up and shook hands with the interviewer, who waved and called “Allison?”
“You’ll be fine,” Xiù promised as she joined Julian on the sidelines. “He’s really nice!”
Allison nodded, swallowed and went to sit uncomfortably in front of the camera.
The interviewer—his name was Elliot, she remembered—gave her a reassuring smile. “Nervous?”
Fuck it. Honesty was always the best policy. Hell, it was the only one she allowed herself. “…Yeah.”
“Well, you’re welcome to just go ahead and tell me if there’s any question you don’t want to answer, okay?”
Allison nodded. Xiù was right—Elliot was pleasant, but she’d still have given her eye-teeth not to have to deal with this. “…Thanks.”
“Okay!” Elliot started the recording. “So, that was cute with you and Julian over there just then. How long have you two been together?”
“Uh, that’s… more personal than I’m happy answering right now. Sorry.”
Elliot nodded equanimously. “That’s okay. We’ll keep it professional then.”
“Thanks.”
“So you’re Misfit’s flight engineer. From what the others told me, none of you came to this with existing qualifications and you’ve had to learn the job very quickly. How are you finding it?”
Not wanting to be terse and rude, Allison decided to give him a decent answer this time. “It’s been tough,” she admitted, “but rewarding. We’ve got great teachers, fantastic training tools… Learning all my duties hasn’t ever felt like cramming, it’s felt more like doing something I love.”
“And what are your duties?”
“As flight engineer? Maintain, clean and repair the ship and all its systems, uh… monitor power flow and make sure that we’re getting the best use out of our energy reserves, and provide technical support for both the pilot and the field researcher. I’m also responsible for their safety, and I’m our medic.”
“Sounds like you wear a lot of hats.”
“That kinda suits me, really. Jack of all trades, master of none but better than a master of only one, right?”
Elliot paused the recording. “Do you mind if I get a little more personal?” he asked.
To her surprise, Allison found she was feeling more relaxed now. Elliot was an excellent listener.
“A little, sure,” she offered. Elliot nodded and resumed recording.
“So did you want to be an astronaut growing up?” he asked.
The unambitious reality was that Allison had not, in fact, wanted to be anything in particular when she was young. She was trying to think of a positive way to say that when it struck her that the reality, if she just opened up a little, would do nicely.
The reasoning that flashed through her head as she considered her reply went that she was, if anything, being kind of ungrateful. Childhood lack of ambition be damned, she had ambition in spades now and in fairness to it the Group was helping her achieve that ambition.
Julian was right—they had signed up for this, and if she hadn’t seen this specific interview coming then that wasn’t Elliot’s fault nor anybody else’s but hers. And if opening up to a camera was the price tag on her ambition, well…
She took the plunge.
“…That’s the thing,” she said. “I had no idea what I wanted to do. I mean, I don’t even know if ’Astronaut’ is the right word for us. I don’t think of myself as an astronaut…”
“What do you think of yourself as?”
“I…don’t know. I think of myself as Allison, I guess.”
“Just Allison?”
“…Yeah.”
“You’re about to go into space, become one of the first people to walk on Mars, and then fly around the galaxy in a spaceship. Don’t you think that makes you an astronaut?” Elliot asked.
Allison made a complicated gesture that was part shrug, part confused head-shake. “I guess, but I’ve just never thought of it that way. You know, being an astronaut, it’s like… that’s the kind of big special thing you aspire to be when you’re a kid. That’s a goal you work towards. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
“Really?”
“Yeah!” Allison shrugged again. “I dunno. I don’t… there’s nothing special about me. I’ve just been given an opportunity and I’ve tried to make the best of it.”
“So anyb ody could do what you do?” Elliot asked.
“…Yeah. I guess so.”
“Okay.” Elliot paused the camera again. “So, can I ask you about your relationship with Julian again?”
Allison sighed. “Why is it important?”
He sat back. “I guess it’s not,” he conceded. “But he talked about you a lot, and it’d be strange not to balance that with your perspective, if we wind up using that angle.”
Allison sighed again. “…Turn the camera on.” Elliot did so. “…that’s a weirdly tough question,” she said, answering the very first question he’d asked. “‘Cause we actually spent about five years in an escape pod with a stasis field. So, yeah, for us it’s been about a year…” She allowed herself a smile. “It’s been a pretty good year.”
“You won’t have much privacy on the ship, with Xiù there as well. Does that make it difficult to carry on a relationship?”
“No comment.”
“That’s fair… The others told me about the escape pod. Xiù said you saved her life, in fact.”
A little thrown by the sudden change in direction, Allison wasn’t quite sure whether to shrug, shake her head or nod. She settled for a complicated medley of all three. “I’m not sure if I did or didn’t, it was all so fast and… we only barely got out of it. At least one of our friends didn’t, maybe none of them did.”
“So it’s dangerous out there?” Elliot asked.
“…Yeah.” Allison nodded.
“So why go out there? What is it that drives Allison Buehler to leave Earth and go back out and put yourself in harm’s way?”
“Ah.” Allison nodded. “That’s a big’n…uh…”
She sat back and drafted her reply as best she could. “I, uh… I don’t think people are really meant for cities and sofas and reality TV or whatever,” she said. “I think there’s something in our soul that longs to… to…” Her hands fluttered irritably as she tried to come up with words that didn’t sound slightly damning, then gave up. “…To be challenged!” she finished. “And you’re never really challenged unless you’re in harm’s way. Maybe it’s just me and I’m an adrenaline junkie, but… I dunno. How many people you know gripe about their job because it’s the same thing day in day out?”
“So it’s the variety that draws you back?”
“Variety, adventure… I think the big thing was I could always see what I was achieving. When it was just me I did a fair day’s work, I saw the results and I got a fair day’s pay. When we started rolling around trying to find abductees and bring them home, I could see I was making a difference in their lives and…That’s important.”
“Even if people get killed?”
Allison stared thoughtfully at the tabletop for a moment, then looked him in the eye. “…Yeah. Even then.”
Elliot gestured with the end of his pen to indicate Julian and Xiù. “…Even them?”
“Safety’s an illusion,” Allison told him. “There’s no such thing. You could be hit by a drunk driver on the way home tonight, or maybe have a stroke and then where are you? They won’t be safe no matter where we go, but at least we can choose to go somewhere interesting and do something valuable together.”
Elliot turned off the camera and whatever spell he’d been weaving evaporated, leaving Allison to realize that she’d just opened up completely without even noticing it.
“Okay!” he beamed, “Whaddya say we get the other two in for the group chat?”
She nodded, still trying to figure out when exactly her guard had dropped. “Uh…sure!”
At Elliot’s beckoning, Julian and Xiù brought their seats over and sat down on either side of her. She took Julian’s hand under the table.
“So, this bit’s just gonna be…if you guys just talk. I’ll throw the odd question in there and you guys just take the conversation wherever it goes, okay?”
“Seems easy enough!” Xiù chirped. Julian squeezed Allison’s hand and then nodded.
“Well, okay!” Elliot turned the camera on again. “So.. what do you guys hope to find out there?”
Date Point 10y7m2w4d AV
Uncharted Class 12 deathworld, Near 3Kpc Arm
Vemik Sky-thinker
”A Singer, a Dancer, and a walking storm….”
Vemet swatted his son on the arm. “Be here and now,” he ordered.
“…Sorry.”
Vemet looked ahead into the canopy. His brother’s son Yerak, Vemik’s cousin, was stalking through the branches of an especially huge Ketta tree that the People used as a landmark and waypoint. It afforded an excellent view of the forested valley east of their village, all the better to see the Werne moving through the valley, or watch out for the People from the village to the east. Usually the two tribes avoided one another, but there was spilled blood between them, and they had not traded daughters in several seasons.
Yerak’s bright orange hair crest bobbed and flitted as he swarmed from branch to branch. The fur was good luck, and the mark of People—beasts couldn’t see it. In such a way, People could sneak up on beasts and always know where their brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins and sons were.
Of course, a good hunter still had to make little noise, stay downwind of the beasts, and taste the air, but Vemik sometimes mused that hunting would be so much more difficult without their orange crests.
Vemet had affectionately teased his son from a young age about such “sky thoughts” as he called them—musings not tied to the daily needs of the Tribe, but roaming free and soaring high where they only rarely alighted on matters that the Tribe could use, such as his bird-spear thrower. It had surprised nobody when, after Vemik’s coming of age when he was no longer known only as the child of his parents, he had taken the adult name “Sky-thinker” to identify himself.
The most vexing sky thought of all was the puzzle of his vision. When the Singer had asked him what he saw, he had replied ’A singer, a Dancer and a walking storm’.
The Singer had called it a “pure” vision, one not rooted in the here and now but roaming far from home in distant places and times. She had offered no thoughts on what it might mean. That, apparently, was for Vemik to discern if he ever could.
Worrying at the cryptic triplet tended to distract him at inappropriate moments.
Up ahead, Yerak twitched his tail, beckoning them forward. Vemik and Vemet joined him in short order, pouncing, running and brachiating to his side. As the youngest, Vemik took the slightly undignified position of clinging upside-down to the bole of the tree by his climbing claws, with his tail looped around an upper branch.
“They’re not here,” Yerak reported.
“That’s not right.” Vemet raised his head and his tongue lashed out, tasting for Werne on the wind. “They always come to the valley on hot days… is that smoke?”
“I taste it too.”
Vemik copied his father and cousin. “Not… smoke…” he decided, and sampled the strange scent again. “It doesn’t taste exactly right.”
“What else could it be, boy?” Vemet asked.
“I don’t know… I suppose it could be smoke, but whatever is burning isn’t wood…”
“How can something that’s not wood burn?” Yerak asked, scornfully.
“Meat and fat burn. Bone and horn burn. So do feathers, and moss, and-”
“Yes, yes,” Vemet interrupted. “But this doesn’t taste like any of those.”
“So it’s something new. Something we didn’t know could burn.”
Yerak shook himself. “Get your thoughts out of the sky, cousin,” he advised. “If the Werne aren’t in the valley, where are they? And what do we bring home?”
“We could always catch root birds…”
“Like children? Have some pride.”
“Better than nothing.”
“I’d rather hunt a Yshek!”
Hunting a Yshek was the very definition of taking an unwise risk. While Yshek meat was delicious and there was lots of it, the danger involved in getting it was even greater than the risks of hunting Werne.
At least… they had been.
“…Why not?” Vemik asked. “With my bird-spear-thrower we wouldn’t even have to leave the trees.”
Vemet trilled his amusement at the face Yerak pulled. “Nothing in the world can stop him from thinking sky thoughts, nephew. But he’s right, I want to see what that thing can do. He did kill the biggest bull Werne with it.”
“Fine. Maybe we can use what the Yshek does to you to scare the children away from sky-thinking.” Yerak grumbled.
“Or maybe we can use what I do to the Yshek to encourage them,” Vemik retorted cheekily. “Either way, it will be a good story.”
He swung out along the branch before Yerak could reply and prepared the bird-spear-thrower. Several fat root birds were scratching around below, ignoring or oblivious to the People in the tree above them. He prepared a bird-spear, licked its feathers to smooth them, and took aim.
The punctured squawk one of the root birds made as he skewered it almost made Vemet fall off the branch from mirth. Vemik barely noticed—he was watching with interest as the root birds took no notice at all.
“Well, boy. Fine bait you have there,” Vemet said. Vemik hushed him. Experimentally, he drew another bird-spear and skewered another root bird. Again, the rest failed to react.
In quick succession, he shot every bird-spear he had, saving one for the Yshek. Impaled root birds littered the ground, and still the surviving stupid beasts didn’t have the good sense to run. They twitched and looked around at every thump, but they seemed to lack the intelligence to notice that some of their fellows were dead.
“…Well,” Vemet remarked, “If we do return to the village with root birds, we’ll be carrying more than any child could kill.”
“It’s an effective toy, I’ll grant that,” Yerak admitted. “But is it a Yshek-killer?”
“There’s only one way to find out.” Vemik returned the thrower to his back and swarmed down the tree. The moment the root birds saw him, they scattered, sprinting away much faster than a Person could run. He plucked one of the transfixed creatures off its bird-spear and tied it to his belt, noting with satisfaction that the spear had survived as well. He recovered as many of the rest of his spears as were still usable, and joined Vemet and Yerak in tying the remaining birds to a high branch for later collection.
Together, they picked their way down the valley, using the ways and paths generations of their grandfathers had marked and improved. Vemet’s great uncle had personally carved the claw-holds in the stone cliff that allowed them to reach the river much faster than if they had gone the older, longer route.
Ysheks were easy enough to find. They liked it where the river was shallow enough for Werne, Toles and Meru beasts to cross, and where the water was perpetually muddy.
You never actually saw a Yshek when it was on the hunt of course. They could stay below the water from dawn to nightfall, and the most hint that even a watchful Person might get of their presence was a ripple near a shadow, where the beast’s nostrils and eyes touched the surface.
Fortunately, they were highly territorial. A good stretch of river like this would have supported dozens, if they could only co-operate and live together like People did. But, beasts didn’t sky-think.
They paused in the treetops not far from the river bank.
“So…?” Vemet hinted.
Vemik handed him the dead root bird and prepared his bird-spear-thrower. “You have a good arm, father. Put it…” he notched a spear and took aim. “…there, by that rock.”
Vemet’s tail lashed as he calculated the distance, then he pulled his arm back and tossed the bird onto the muddy beach by the water’s edge.
The water rippled. Vemik drew the string, gritting his teeth in anticipation…
A hill of jaw and muscle burst out of the water with astonishing speed and violence, and snatched up the bird. It was as long as three People from tail-tip to teeth, and it tipped its head back to toss the bird back down the length of its mouth and swallow its meal whole.
Vemik released the string. At exactly the wrong moment, something…. strange… flashed in front of him and the spear struck that instead, bouncing off in two broken pieces to land at angles in the mud. The Yshek snarled, whipped around and wriggled back down the muddy bank into the water. The waves it made rushed away towards the far bank, and the last contemptuous flick of its tail was just the extra insult Vemik needed to know that a truly legendary prize had escaped him.
The three of them stared at the thing he had accidentally shot instead. It had reeled in the air but seemed otherwise unharmed, and it hummed and whined to itself as it danced around their tree, aiming a single large black eye at them.
“…What is it?” Yarek asked at last. “Some kind of bird?”
“It doesn’t have wings!” Vemet said. “How does it fly without wings?”
“And what is it made of?” Vemik added. Whatever it was, it was grey like a raincloud and the peculiar ’TANG!’ sound it had made as his bird-spear struck it was unlike anything he had ever heard.
“It isn’t meat…” Yarek replied, stating the obvious. “it isn’t bone, or wood, or…”
The object apparently grew bored with them and vanished skywards. They saw it curve away towards the south, following the line of the river. When Vemik raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, he thought he could detect, very faintly and distantly, a smudge of smoke on the horizon.
“Well,” he declared, unconsciously mimicking one of his father’s mannerisms. “…At least we still have a story to tell when we get home.”
Date Point 10y7m3w AV
HMS Valiant, Orbiting Planet Earth, Sol
Lt. Col. Claude Nadeau
“Good afternoon, sir”
Claude had always thought of himself as a scientist first and an officer second but he was still an officer, which meant that while he’d never got used to being shown automatic deference, he’d at least learned to accept it as part of the job. The bigger part of which by far had been managing the research teams under him, passing their findings up the chain to Bartlett, and through him to the world.
Now, he was standing on the deck of one of the fruits of those labors, and seeing the SOR (who were after all one of the great down-chain successes of his career) turn to acknowledge his presence with a mass that shook the metal under their feet, even though they were moving softly. They were accompanied by twice as many technicians and support staff. As privately awkward as shows of military etiquette made him, on this occasion Nadeau allowed himself a tinge of pride—the whole SOR wouldn’t even exist if not for his own reverse-engineering efforts and original research.
HMS Valiant had been roped into serving as the SOR’s temporary transport and staging post, a role for which it was not well-suited. While HMS Caledonia had originally been a spacious alien ship with plenty of elbow room and lots of places to stash stuff, Valiant seemed as compact and crowded as a submarine. Fitting the SOR, their suits, their equipment, Nadeau’s researchers, their equipment and all the supplies they anticipated needing in the near future onto it was clearly going to be a challenge: Men and women were working shoulder-to-shoulder passing things around, finding places for them, stacking them, and somehow managing to not ever be fully in each other’s way.
Nadeau acknowledged the lead with a nod and a cheery “afternoon!” and the pandemonium he’d briefly interrupted resumed as four huge men who could only be the SOR Operators squeezed past him into the shuttle and put their prodigious strength to work at offloading the equipment it was carrying as an efficient human chain. Nadeau got out of their way and joined the only two other officers in the cramped little space, both of whom straightened slightly and nodded respectfully. “Good afternoon, Sir.”
Memory, memory… Powell was a major, that one was easy, and the man alongside him was a… Lieutenant-Commander. Rank was drilled in so deep as to be all but instinctive of course, but Claude had always been slightly paranoid about forgetting, and he double-checked himself every time.
“Good afternoon, and welcome aboard.” The navy officer shook his hand. The patch on his chest gave his surname as ’Dunn’. “Captain Nolan’s busy with getting us underway, but we’ll have a meeting in the wardroom at fourteen-hundred, Zulu.”
“Thanks,” Claude replied, shaking Major Powell’s hand. The SOR’s CO had an intimidating grip. His own timepiece was set to Pacific time, but for any self-respecting physicist simply adding eight hours was trivial. He’d adjust it properly later.
One of the SOR operators—the one who looked like a young Toshiro Mifune with the thick waist of a dedicated strongman—squeezed respectfully past him with a heavy-looking box of supplies under each arm as if they were nothing. “Running out of room here, sirs,” he reported. “Rebar suggested we could stack the food boxes out of the way somewhere, seeing as we’re not gonna need ‘em until last…”
“The galley should have room,” Dunn observed. “If Chef Lawler complains, tell him to take it up with the XO.”
“Yes sir.”
“Bloody hell fire…” Powell muttered as he leaned aside to make way for the incoming supplies. “No offence, Dunn, but all this palaver makes me miss Caledonia right now.”
“That makes two of us,” Dunn replied with a smile and an amused tone in his voice. “Finding room for nine gorillas and their gear is McDaniel’s specialty, not mine. And she’s got a nice big ship to do it with, too.”
“Be glad we left the big ones at home,” Powell replied.
“You mean these aren’t the big ones?” Nadeau asked, astonished. The one who’d just been indicated as ‘Rebar’ had just heaved an even heavier-looking box of scientific equipment neatly into a stack in the corner of the flight deck alongside its fellows with as much apparent effort as if he was handling a six pack of frosty beer.
He was overheard, and every SOR man in the bay, Operator and Tech alike, covered their grins and stifled their chuckles. Even the stone-faced Powell had an amused glimmer in his eye. “We’ve got bigger,” he said.
“Left Beef best beef!” somebody chirped.
“Right Beef superior slab!” somebody else replied. Some kind of unit in-joke, presumably.
“Arright, no need to stroke their egos when they’re not even bloody here,” Powell lifted his voice slightly, and the work was redoubled with a chuckle.
Nadeau’s research team “Excuse me”-ed and “Sorry”-ed their way through the busy bedlam of the flight deck, tailing after an able seaman who was presumably leading them to wherever they were being stored for the duration of this mission. They did a commendable job of humping their gear without comment too, considering that not a one of them was used to moving anything heavier than a tablet computer in their usual work.
“Aye, our three heavyweights stand out a mite bit,” Powell explained. “Truth be told, we’re already set to stick out like a pig at Crufts, but such is life.”
“It’s a shame your suits are so heavy…” Nadeau mused. “I think we’ve cracked cloaking devices at long last, but you’re a bit too… unsubtle for them to be much use.”
Powell’s eyebrow crept upwards by a half-inch. “Aye? I reckon we can be more subtle than you’d think. But, we’ll make do.”
“So when are we getting cloaking devices, then?” Dunn asked.
“Give me a few years to refine a version that can run for more than a few minutes on your energy reserves, and I’ll get back to you,” Nadeau told him. “Though of course, if this goes to plan…”
“…we might have access to Kwmbwrw versions in a few days,” Dunn finished, nodding.
“Sirs?” Rebar interrupted gently. “Looks like we’re loaded and stowed.”
“Arright. Bloody fine work, too.” Powell announced. Nadeau had to agree. Everything was stacked neatly, lashed down securely, organized methodically and arranged sensibly so that the limited budget of space they had in the flight bay was being used to economical perfection. There was even plenty of room for people to move around and work.
The praise went down well, though. Powell, it seemed, was a commander who handed it out sparingly for maximum impact. There was a round of high-fives and smiles.
Dunn checked the timepiece on the wall, then tapped out a short log entry his tablet with a satisfied nod. “…Wardroom, gentlemen?”
Powell nodded. “Aye. Vandenberg! Ruckley! Briefing here in one hour, and I want suit diagnostics ready by then,” he said. “The rest of you go get settled in.”
There was an affirmative rustle of voices and a bustle of bodies.
“After you,” Nadeau gestured for Dunn to lead the way.
Powell cracked his knuckles.
“Aye,” he said, “let’s make this happen.”
Date Point 10y7m3w AV
The Box, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, Earth
Drew Cavendish
Technically, Drew was wealthy enough nowadays to employ people to do the tech demos for him. After all, the contract providing EV-MASS to the SOR, flight suits to the Firebird pilots and vacuum worksuits to Hephaestus between them meant that C&M Spacesuit Systems had been a major rising force even before they’d floated the company.
Running the place and raking in a huge bonus seemed to be enough to satisfy Drew Martin, but Cavendish was a different beast: he was an engineer and a tinkerer at heart, a Maker of Things, and proud of his creations.
Besides. He’d met some amazing people showing these things off to prospective buyers. The SOR, Rylee Jackson, and now the team who’d be the first humans to walk on Mars. Even if he did delegate, he’d have done this one personally anyway.
Adapting three Firebird flight suits into Martian excursion suits had been trivial. Most of the same requirements were already there—atmospheric seal, thermal control in the extremities, moderate armouring…
Really, the only thing he’d needed to change in any significant way had been dust-proofing it, which was easily achieved by slightly redesigning the seals and giving the outer layer material the same omniphobic nanoscale coating that had solved the sterility problem for the SOR’s Protector gloves. Under an electron microscope, every square micron of the suits’ surfaces looked disarmingly like the skin of a carp.
In testing, they’d thrown everything at it: Simulated lunar regolith, simulated Martian dust, printer toner, good old-fashioned Terran sand and mud… it had all slid right off.
After that, all it had taken was an appropriate helmet. The one off his mining suits with its wide peripheral vision had done nicely, and seeing as they were going to be operating in an atmosphere—even a suffocating and unbreathable one—there was no need for the gold nanoparticle glare coating. Those bubble visors were nice and transparent, just perfect for the video cameras.
He’d spent most of the trip to Nebraska congratulating himself on his foresight and wisdom in making his designs standardized enough to tolerate a little mixing-and-matching.
They were white, of course. He’d layered on retroreflective strips in high-vis yellow-green that should stand out against the ruddy dust of the red planet. Weight-bearing reinforcement had been included on the basis that even though Martian gravity was a third that of Earth, there was no such thing as too much mobility assistance and in any case the suits were perfectly suitable for use on other planets where the gravity might be higher.
LED spotlights on the helmet, floodlights on the shoulders and a final torch on the wrist plus emergency flares, a radio powerful enough to call Earth all by itself if it had to and, most importantly of all, ankle support.
The crew themselves were a pleasant surprise. They didn’t look or behave like scientists—Drew knew scientists, he worked with dozens of them—but for the life of him, he couldn’t quite tell what they did behave like, even though there was something familiar about the way they held themselves. He got polite handshakes from Buehler and Etsicitty, and a bubbling welcome from Chang, who cooed over the suits with such enthusiasm that it completely melted the other two’s nervous politeness.
“I mean, it’s… it’s obviously functional, but this thing could be right out of the movies!” she gushed.
Drew chuckled. “Guilty,” he agreed. “I like to make my suits look pretty wherever I can.”
“You’re a real craftsman,” Julian was examining his helmet admiringly.
“I still hold the human record for spacewalk time,” Drew revealed. “The hardsuits we had in the early days when we were excavating the Hephaestus shipyards were bloody horrible, and the difference between a good suit and a bad one is all down to the little details. Your wrist lamp for example.”
Julian checked his suit’s wrists, then glanced at Xiù’s and Allison’s suits and saw the difference. “Hey, nice! How’d you know I’m left-handed?”
“You can thank your corporate overlords for that one,” Drew joked.
“Aww, they really do care!”
Allison snorted. She was the most standoffish, but not actually rude—just quiet and thoughtful. She pushed her helmet down until it was seated snugly and looked around.
“Good peripheral vision,” she said approvingly.
“It’s a mining helmet. You’ve got to be well aware of safety hazards. Good fit?” Drew asked.
“Kinda glad I got my hair cut now…”
“Oh. Oh dear…” They turned and watched with interest as Xiù tried, and failed, to find a way to put her helmet on that wasn’t fatally compromised by all her long black hair. She gave Drew an embarrassed smile once she’d finally got it on, a feat only made possible by letting her hair down, which of course was still no use for the suit.
“Hmm.” Drew examined the problem. No short-cuts here: The helmet was just not shaped properly to accommodate that much hair. “Well. Two options. You either cut it short-” he saw immediately that this was not the popular option “-or else I take the helmet away, alter it and bill the Group a hundred thousand dollars or so for the work.”
“Modify the helmet,” Allison said immediately, with a feral grin. This generated a silent laugh from Julian, and a smiling eye-roll from Xiù, who managed to work the helmet off again after an undignified minute which left a lot of that problematic hair bunched and tangled up around her ears.
She smoothed it down and combed it out as best she could with her fingers then began the laborious process of gathering, twisting, coiling, pinning and tying it back into place. “Sorry… I don’t want to be selfish, but I’ve been growing it since I was little…”
Drew chuckled. “I was taking the piss about the price tag. These are all going to need some modifying. You’d better try them on properly.”
“Oh, right!”
“Knock on the door when you’re ready for me.”
“Wait, how much are we supposed to wear under this thing?” Julian asked.
“There’s appropriate seamless underwear in the vacuum packs,” Drew told him, pointing to one.
He let himself out and loitered in the room outside for about ten minutes before a knock on the door finally summoned him back into the room.
Suited up, the three looked the part and then some. Xiù was holding her helmet on her hip, but Allison and Julian had donned theirs. Drew checked the seals and found them good. “Well this is a nice change. You can follow instructions!”
“They seemed like kinda important instructions,” Allison observed drily.
“Oh, they are. And you’d be amazed how many professional asteroid miners don’t listen their first time. Okay! Any concerns? Pinching or rubbing anywhere? Especially in the feet, armpit or inner thigh. Allison?”
She stamped her feet and walked experimentally round the room. “Nothing wrong with my feet. This feels pretty good, actually. Inner thigh’s kinda tight but I wouldn’t call it pinching…” she swung her arms. “Nothing wrong with the arms.”
“Alright. Just move around some more, try some exercises. Julian?”
“Bit tight in the shoulders…” he rolled his arms, his hips, touched his toes and then stretched for the ceiling. “…But otherwise fine.”
Drew nodded, pleased. “Good. The shoulders are an easy fix. Xiù?”
“Umm… it’s good, mostly. A bit… snug…”
“That’s deliberate.”
“I mean… very snug.”
Drew chuckled. Honestly, the sportswear she’d been wearing before was more form-hugging, but of course the suit’s gentle positive pressure—a far cry from the crushing force of an EV-MASS but still plenty enough to counter even hard vacuum—would make it feel really quite revealing.
“I promise, it just feels snug,” he said. “From out here, you’re well protected. Any pinching or tightness?” he asked.
Xiù twisted this way and that, put the helmet down and tested the suit’s flexibility by kicking over backwards into a handstand splits then tucked, rolled and bounced to her feet.
“Maybe just a little too tight in the armpit here…” she pointed it out. Drew took a note.
“Show-off,” Allison accused fondly.
“No, she’s got the right idea,” Drew replied. “Unimpeded flexibility, that’s what we’re looking for.”
The two of them looked at one another, then shrugged and put their own suits through their paces. Doing so turned up that all three were a little too tight in the armpit, and that Allison’s was definitely pinching her inside leg.
“Okay!” Drew finished marking the problem areas. “So, let’s talk functionality.”
They gathered in an attentive rough semicircle around him. Good listeners, these three—a bloody rare and valuable thing in Drew’s experience.
“First things first—this is an exoplanet excursion suit, not a spacesuit,” he told them. “Yes, it’ll keep you pressurized even in a vacuum, but the temperature regulation’s all wrong. You try and wear this thing in vacuum and you’ll quickly overheat and die.”
Julian raised his hand. “Over-heat?”
“Space isn’t cold, lad—Space is a vacuum, and vacuum’s the best bloody insulator there is. Mars on the other hand is colder than a penguin’s ballbag.”
Julian and Allison snickered, and Xiù brought up her hand to cover a giggle.
“So,” Drew continued, “the suit’s designed to keep you warm in temperatures that’d stop a Russian. Problem is that even if you turn the heaters off, if you try and wear this thing in space your own body temperature will cook you in a few minutes. So, what is this suit not?”
He raised his hands like a conductor and the three of them obediently chorused “A spacesuit!”
“Strewth, you’re quick studies. This is nice!” Drew had borrowed a few Australianisms off his business partner over the years. “Okay. After atmosphere and temperature, the suit’s third function is protection. You’re wearing armour, chaps. It has a Type Two NIJ rating, if any of you know what that is…?”
Allison raised her hand and nodded.
“Good. It’s also stab-proof, just in case some pre-contact alien native decides to shove a spear through you…Though he might decide you’re a god, so watch out for that.”
This raised another chuckle.
“The rest of it’s pretty straightforward. Your load-carrying equipment’s my own take on MOLLE, optimized for low-gravity environments. You’ve got lots of high-vis, plenty of lights, and even if you have those lights on 24⁄7 the batteries should go a month before they need charging. Air supply is six hours, and you’ve got an emergency forcefield that you activate by grabbing… you see those red strips on your thighs, chest and upper arms? Rip off any two of those. Putting them back on is a pain in the arse, but it might just save your life, so don’t hesitate. Use it in case of suit breach, if you’re caught in an avalanche or cave-in, if you fall and break your leg… and it glows so you can be found easily.”
“How long’s it last?” Julian asked.
“From a full charge? Ten hours or so.”
“So our air would run out first,” Allison observed.
“Yup,” Drew gave her an apologetic half-smile. “Air’s a lot harder to store than energy nowadays.” He indicated a port on the suit’s flank, below her ribs. “Fortunately, that yellow one lets you connect to an external air supply. The red one is power supply.”
“And the green one?” she asked, touching the one on her other side.
“That’s an injection port for medical aid.”
Drew stood back. “Any questions, requests, observations…?”
“I’m still amazed I can do a handstand in this thing,” Xiù enthused. “But um… oh! Does the helmet have a translator in it?”
“Never hurts to be prepared. I’ll add one,” Drew promised.
Julian indicated his belt. “Mind adding a loop or two? You never know when a tomahawk could come in handy.”
“And a holster,” Allison added.
“Loaded for space bear it is…” Drew added the requests. They knew their jobs best, after all. “I didn’t know you chaps would be going armed…”
“It’s a dangerous galaxy,” Allison said with a shrug, and that was when the way they held themselves finally clicked for Drew.
Late in his career as a diving welder, about a year before Hephaestus had hired him, Drew had been called to the case of a shaft mine that had suffered a catastrophic collapse and flooding. Everyone had at first written off the miners for dead, until seismophones being used to map the damage from the surface started picking up a steady knockknockknock, knock…knock…knock, knockknockknock from somewhere past the flooded area.
While a rescue shaft was drilled down to the pocket of survivors. Drew had pulled three seventy-two hours shifts in a row alongside three other men, fighting to pump out the water faster than it could seep into the survivors’ haven and drown them.
In the end nine men had been delivered to the surface all slathered in soaking cold muddy slurry, but alive.
Some weeks later, they and their families had thrown a big barbecue party to thank the rescuers. The way the Misfit crew held themselves reminded him of the way those nine men had behaved at that party. Rather than cowing or terrorizing them, their brush with oblivion had left them quietly and unconsciously happy for every second, and they had shrugged off not only the mortal peril they had just endured, but also the dangers of returning to the same job with the exact same matter-of-fact ease that Allison had just shown.
Survivors. That’s what they were, and suddenly it made sense why they listened so attentively, and why the Byron Group was sending them out there. These three held doctorates from the school of hard knocks.
Their smartwatches went off simultaneously, marking the end of the session they’d put aside for his visit.
“Guess that’s time,” Drew said. “You three had better get out of those so I can take them away and alter them.”
Allison shook his hand. She’d warmed considerably during the short meeting. “Thanks. I was kinda nervous about the suit,”
“You’ve not seen it in action yet,” Drew replied.
“You’re obviously the kinda man who takes pride in his work though,” Julian replied, removing his helmet and scrubbing at the thick mess of black hair that he’d just about managed to squeeze into it. “That’s reassuring. Sometimes the Group can, uh…. They like to play things kinda fast and loose sometimes.”
“Truth,” Drew agreed, thinking of the methodical and cautious approach that had averted multiple disasters at Hephaestus. The Byron Group had been oddly silent about the fates of five of their exploration ships—in fact they’d been strangely quiet about the whole EV program. The loud and enthusiastic media campaign surrounding Misfit had to be at least in part a smokescreen to obfuscate their earlier errors.
As he stepped out of the room to let them get changed, he made a mental note to put it to Hephaestus that matching the Group’s survey initiatives might be a good idea, and that there was a team here who might potentially be headhunted. They were being upbeat, but there was clearly some disgruntlement here, which was… odd…for a team like this on such a prestigious and high-profile mission.
Oh well. They had a couple of years to prepare.