Under Strange Suns (12 page)

“You’re a fencer?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I fenced, let’s leave it at that.”

“Up for a bout sometime? The gym gets a bit dull after a while. VR goggles and tactile feedback gloves feel too much like playing a game. Let’s go all Three Musketeers in the corridor.”

“Wait, you fence? Carson, you left something off your resume.”

“Well, Captain, here’s the thing. Guys in Special Forces tend to be competitive. The captain of my team, Captain Merit, and an old friend of his, another A-Team captain by the name of Kuttner, were especially so. Captain Merit required each of us to train in a different archaic killing technique. Then we’d have VR bouts against Captain Kuttner’s team whenever both teams had VR access. Full bore: helmets with 360 degrees high-def, 3-D VR and surround sound, haptic feedback gloves and vests. The works. I studied the Italian School, so I’m not really familiar with saber. But I was a sparring partner for the other guys. Master Sergeant Summers was our saber man. He usually practiced against Hearse, but occasionally I stood in. So, I’m game if you are.”

Captain of her own ship, easy on the eyes, and a fencer
, Aidan thought.
And your boss, don’t forget. Your boss
.

“Sure, let’s shake up the routine,” Vance said. Her smile reached her eyes. She was definitely up for a bout. “I’ll ask Foster to fabricate a selection for us: saber, foil, epee. And Italian school. I want to learn. What is it? What do we need?”

“According to Captain Merit, the Italian school is sword and dagger. So ask Foster for a couple of sabers with really short blades, say no more than a foot long.”

Doctor Roberts insisted upon watching the first bout, held three days later. Foster had printed masks and padded vests and had machined flexible blades to which he’d affixed flat, plastic buttons. Doctor Roberts remained skeptical, until she’d seen a demonstration, witnessing the blade bow against face mask, and watching the vest absorb a blow. Then she grew bored as the first bout consisted more of conversation and slow-motion practice than Errol Flynn swashbuckling.

Aidan enjoyed every moment of it. In a way it reminded him of his days in Special Forces before switching to the Military Police. Before DC most of his deployments had consisted of training foreign troops and cross-training within his own team. Teaching sword-and-dagger technique to Vance while trying to learn the saber triggered old, comfortable memories.

A week later they were stamping back and forth, the entire habitation module corridor serving as a non-regulation piste. The novelty of the spectacle had worn off for the other crew members so they did not have to worry about spectators. Aidan felt good, his hair beneath the mask plastered down with sweat, his muscles warm and limber, joints loose, his mind completely occupied, thinking two, three moves ahead. They were fighting with sabers today and Aidan thought he might actually win more bouts than he lost this time. Finally. Vance was good, a natural, her reflexes sharp and her instincts uncanny.

Her ponytail flipped out behind her masked head like a counter weight as she darted in with a cut at his head. Aidan was already in motion, committed to an attack of his own. They closed, too near for the blows to strike as intended. Aidan’s free hand shot up, catching her wrist before the bell guard of her saber could whack him in the side of the head. Vance twisted slightly, slipping Aidan’s thrust. Momentum carried them corps-a-corps, the mesh of the masks pressing together. Aidan retained his grip on her wrist as much to maintain his own balance as hers. He could smell her perspiration, feel the thudding of her pulse. Through the fractured vantage of the masks’ tiny overlapping wire apertures he could see her expression, lips parted, eyes wide.

Then he saw her smile. “Fencing, not wrestling, Aidan,” Brooklynn Vance said, and shoved him away, following it up with lunge that caught him dead in the sternum.

Aidan stepped back and swept his saber up in a salute. “That touch is gonna leave a mark, Captain,” he said.

Captain Vance peeled off her mask. “When we’re fencing, just call me Vance,” she said.

“Magnanimous in victory? Okay, one more bout, Vance?”

“No,” she answered. “I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.”

“Okay, Captain. Let me know when you need to use me as a punching bag again.”

* * *

Brooklynn Vance cycled through the personnel files on the screen in her quarters. The crew had all looked good in two-dimensions–resumes and letters of recommendation. Brooklynn was pleased to find they all appeared equally as good in action shipboard. Of course there had not yet been any real action. Competence during routine flight didn’t tell her much. How would they hold up in the event of things going pear-shaped?

She swiped closed Sam McAvoy’s file. He, at least, she was certain of. She knew his weak spot. She skimmed through Doctor Roberts’ file again, looking for something she might have missed the first dozen times. Brooklynn had a good feeling about Doctor Roberts. A bit tightly wound, but conscientious.

Foster had impressed her with his extra effort and willingness to please. Though that willingness to please seemed most willing when the task took him far from the rest of the crew. Shyness was fine. Neurosis could be a problem. She would need to keep an eye on him. Consult with Doctor Roberts if Foster grew even more withdrawn.

Brooklynn noted a reminder in Foster’s file, then flipped through to Thorson. Keeping a tight leash on the man became increasingly difficult. He second-guessed every decision she made, usually employing a passive-aggressive deference that skirted direct insubordination. But he was qualified and good at his job. She didn’t want to antagonize him, just keep him in line. A ship needed one captain only. Two wasn’t redundancy, it was danger.

She swiped over to Aidan Carson. That clinch in the saber bout. What had that been? Brooklynn had a pretty good idea what that had been, accidental or not, and what it was wasn’t a good idea. Not now. She couldn’t afford that kind of distraction.

But at least Carson seemed stable. Affable, but with that edge of detachment a security officer required. And at least she knew he could handle himself in a sword fight. She closed his file and moved on to review the next.

* * *

Five weeks later, Brooklynn Vance cut the Y-Drive. The
Yuschenkov
dropped back to sub-light speed, returning to the light cone, and killing momentum as they neared the navigational coordinates chosen for the course correction. The crew, with the exception of the captain and the engineers, gathered in the galley. The talk was hushed, nervous. Trays of food sat forgotten or were only picked at.

Vance remained in the command center. The engineers rode the coffin down the
Yuschenkov’s
spine to the Y-Drive where they would perform a series of diagnostics.

“I think it is truly sinking in,” Matamoros said. She shared a table with Aidan, Sam McAvoy, and Doctor Roberts. “I mean, I knew the risk, but I didn’t actually understand it. I get it now.”

Sam gestured to the plastic bottle of purple liquid on the table next to his tray of soy protein loaf and reconstituted mashed potatoes. “Fancy a snort?” he asked her. “Help settle your nerves.”

Aidan imagined she eyed the bottle rather dubiously.

“Go on,” Sam said. “One of my better shipboard fermentations, and with all modesty I’m a pretty fair hand at the art. Prune based; I’ve noticed the absence of prunes from galley stores tends to go unremarked.”

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Matamoros said. As far as Aidan was concerned, she spoke for the rest of the crew as well. “I want to face the news with a clear head.”

Aidan wasn’t so sure he felt the same. If McAvoy had presented a more palatable option, he’d probably have taken a drink or two. It was as Sophia Matamoros had said: it was one thing to contemplate a Y-Drive failure while safely on Earth, but it was another to sit in the depths of space waiting for the engineers to report yea or nay.

“Twenty-plus light-years from Earth,” said Doctor Roberts. “At least a dozen from the nearest human-inhabited world and who knows how many light-years from the nearest habitable planet. You’ve got a right to a case of the jitters, Sophia. If the Y-Drive has failed, this ship will be our grave.”

It wasn’t a pleasant thought. The fusion engines, even operating at maximum thrust for a hundred years, couldn’t bring the ship anywhere near any known planet. They’d drift in ever growing desperation as the food supplies gave out. Starvation, madness. Perhaps a few opportunities for a security officer to see legitimate duty before the inevitable deaths.

“Grave? Not at all,” said McAvoy, pouring himself a second glass. “Indeed, what we’d need to do is pair off, perpetuate the species.” He leaned toward Doctor Roberts, patted her hand. “We’ll establish a generation ship, create a brand new society. When our descendants reach other human civilization, our names will become legend.”

“Your reasoning is as flawed as your courting skills, Lothario,” the doctor said. “One, at least, of the three females on board is ever-so-slightly beyond childbearing years. And even were she not, what makes you think you would be in the running? This is, of course, ignoring the fact that even on short-rations we don’t carry more than a two-year supply of food.”

“Why, we’ll grow it,” McAvoy said. “Find a likely asteroid, powder it for soil, add compost. I’m sure we can establish a greenhouse aboard --”

“Please stop,” said Matamoros. “It isn’t funny. I don’t want to die out here in the middle of nowhere. It isn’t what I signed on for.”

“Why did you sign on?” Aidan asked. Matamoros was beginning to show signs of incipient panic. Beneath her dark hair, cut in a page boy well above the shoulder, her skin was paling. Her pupils rendered her irises mere mahogany-colored rings. Aidan wanted to focus her attention on something else. And it wouldn’t hurt to focus the others’ attention on something else. Not to mention his own. And in any case, he was curious.

“Me? It was my only chance to get into space.” Matamoros picked up an apple slice, looked at it, then set it back on the tray. “It’s all I ever wanted. But I didn’t think I would ever be able to.” She picked up the apple slice again, this time nibbling a bite. “So, life story time, right? Okay.

“My father was an electrician. Self-trained. He ran a repair business out of our home in Tunja. It’s a little city north of Bogota you’ve never heard of. But there was business for my father. Appliances, clocks, televisions. He had a gift. And I inherited at least some of it. My first memories were of helping him fix something. I don’t remember what; I just remember a circuit board and a soldering gun.

“When he died, I continued the business. There was no one else to do it. My brothers had other interests and occupations. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to go to school, learn a trade that would get me into space. But my mother did not want to move in with any of my brothers and so I stayed, mostly to take care of her. When she died, there was nothing to keep me there. The family sold the house, and I took my share of the money and moved to Bogota. I studied computers.

“I carried my diploma to Kourou, in French Guiana. I didn’t have the money for a flight, so I mostly took buses. Wasn’t the most pleasant trip, not so safe either. But I made it. I was so excited to be near a real spaceport. I was so sure I would be hired right away, probably be in space by the end of the week.

“By the end of the month I was waiting tables in a bar. At least I got to serve drinks to real spacemen, right? Within two months I was also fixing the bar’s cash register and upgrading the electrical system. And that’s when Michael Thorson found me, up on a ladder over the door to the beer cooler, rewiring the bar’s sound system.”

Aidan shifted in his seat. He didn’t like the turn the story had just taken. Thorson was at the next table over drinking coffee, seemingly indifferent to the presence of Quentin Burge who sat drumming his fingers on the tabletop, an endless tattoo of nervous percussion. The possibility that Sophia was about to reveal a positive side to the First Officer was irksome. It was much simpler to just despise the man.

“Michael was third officer on a cruise liner,” Matamoros said. “We started talking. He offered to put a word in for me with the company. They turned me down–no experience, a degree from a school they’d never heard of. But he didn’t forget me. He suggested me to the Captain when she was assembling the crew.

“So that’s why I signed on. And I’m half-wishing I hadn’t.”

“Don’t blame me, little sister,” Thorson said, not quite as removed from the galley talk as Aidan had assumed. “We all knew the risks.”

There was the warm, personable Michael Thorson that Aidan knew. “Let me have a pull off that bottle, Sam” Aidan said, wanting to celebrate.

“Way to enforce the rules, Sheriff,” Thorson said.

“Far as I know, Vance Aerospace has no policy prohibiting it.” Aidan took a swallow of the rather vile smelling liquid McAvoy had poured into his cup. His face twisted. “Though, maybe it should. Damn, Sam, I thought you said this was one of your better efforts.”

The geologist sniffed. “You, sir, are no connoisseur.”

The arrival of Young Park and Gordon Foster brought an end to conversation and brought back all the tension they’d been striving to obviate. Gordon shuffled in, head down, making for the coffee pot.

Park touched a panel by the hatch. “Are you listening in, Captain?” he asked.