Viking (7 page)

He had forgotten about the inverted plumbing. The sink still had a rubber cover and
hand holes for zero gravity; though upside down, it was usable. The shower had a
flexible head that could be swiveled to a reasonably useful angle, even if it jetted
from between the feet. But the toilet was another story—straps or not, he couldn’t
conceive of a way to satisfy the call of nature without serious logistical problems.
The room stank of urine; obviously some inventive soul had attempted a solution. Maybe
he’d make a trip down to the rent in the hold.

He knelt in front of the mirror and began to shave, thrusting his jaw and tilting
his chin to see the stubble more clearly. Feeling the buzz of the razor heads evoked
thoughts of Julie. He’d always hated this chore and had often skipped it in his single
days. But Julie preferred him clean-shaven; she said he looked much better that way. So
he’d obliged.

Now, halfway through the job, Rafa pulled the razor away from his face again. Why
bother? Nothing he did mattered to Julie anymore; why should it matter to him? He
hurled the device across the room angrily, pounded his fist on the wall, and sank into
a fetal crouch.

Minutes passed with only a faint gurgle from the sink.

Eventually he mastered the emotions and stood up again, blinking and wiping his
eyes. He peeled quickly, turned on the shower, and stood shivering as cold water jetted
onto his thighs and chest. Couldn’t a nuclear reactor even heat a few liters? It took
him thirty seconds to understand that the tap handles were reversed, and by then his
lips were blue.

Slapping his arms, he killed the water and hopped out to the bare floor. Several
centimeters of water had accumulated in the stall, and he realized with chagrin that
there was no drain in the former ceiling to let it dissipate. There were no towels
either. The walls of the shower stall contained a dozen or so nozzles for hot jetted
air, but he’d have to step back in to use them. Besides, the blow dryers were loud, and
he didn’t want to antagonize his crewmates by waking them up any earlier than MEEGO
demanded.

Instead, Rafa pulled boxers and a tee-shirt over his wet skin, then struggled
awkwardly with a zippered jumpsuit. Prison uniform all over again. He glanced at the
clock on his wrist display. He felt more alert now, but the weariness lurked
unconquered in the background. Could he say a quick prayer without falling asleep? He
paused uncertainly, listening to the rasping, throaty breathing from Fazio in the
nearest bunk down the hall.

He felt sorry for the man, sorry for all of them really. Rafa feared another blowup
when the bodybuilder woke from the tracheotomy. The harsh brutality on the crew was a
reflection of their own expectations and experiences more than anything else. They’d
come to the mission expecting viciousness and prepared to dish it out. Now they were
trapped in an environment of their own choosing. It was a bitter way to live and
die—worse than prison in some ways.

Which was why he needed the spiritual discipline of prayer. It was his one whisper
of compassion, his link to sanity in a wilderness of cruelty. It kept a tiny spark of
hope alive, helped him stay human, even if it did nothing else. He dropped to his knees
and bowed his head.

Dear Lord, thank you for keeping me alive.

He paused, wrestling with his faith. He’d been raised with a powerful conviction of
God’s goodness. He still believed, in a way. But he’d suffered so much shock and grief
in the last few months that his gratitude had withered away. Maybe, probably, he should
be acknowledging other blessings—but he just didn’t see them right now. And like he’d
read once, he could not pray a lie.

Yet he would not pray an accusation, either. Embittered communion was a surrender to
the blame that had destroyed his life already. He would not travel that road.

Again he paused, struggling for words. He twisted the wedding ring that circled his
finger.

Te ruego que cuides a Julie y a mis hijitas.

His shoulders heaved.

Help them not to hate me. Help them to be happy. And let us all be safe today.
Let us survive.

Rafa waited for more words to come, but they didn’t. He had never been adept at
communication. In fact, that had been a genuine friction with Julie. The ability to
identify and name his feelings simply wasn’t a skill he had learned from a father
steeped in latin machismo. Finally Rafa closed his prayer, rubbed the moisture from his
eyes with the palms of his hands, and swayed wearily to his feet, deliberately focusing
thoughts on the day ahead.

Was it still raining? He turned away from the crew quarters and climbed the
roundabout path that led back to the equipment hold. Although he was uneasy about the
weird floating monster he’d encountered, he was curious enough—and uncomfortable enough
from a brimming bladder—to risk a quick peek outside.

A flux of cool, moist air filled Rafa’s lungs as he rounded the corner and stepped
through the tortured metal of the hatchway they’d battled a few hours before. The
lights were out. Water dripped from obscure shadows, creating unnaturally loud echoes
in the chamber. Starlight streamed through the rent in the hull that had admitted all
the mud and moisture; it spilled across the puddles on the metallic deck plates and
created stark, angular silhouettes where it struck the motionless machinery.

He breathed deeply, sampling the scents of the alien atmosphere. Ozone, tinged with
the hints of greenery and flowers. Smelled like a park or a garden after a storm on
Earth. Smelled alive. Splashing through the ankle-deep pools of water in the corner, he
approached the gaping tear in the hull to look outside.

The rain had stopped. Overhead, clouds were beginning to disperse, leaving behind
patches of indigo studded with stars. Rafa had never seen so many stars, even far out
at sea. This planet was in a dense local cluster; the night sky sparkled and
shimmered with diamond dust in a hundred hues. A few degrees above the horizon hung a
point of blue fire, easily outshining the rest of the night sky.

That would be Erisa Alpha, Rafa was sure—the whitish giant around which their own
smaller, orange sun orbited. More empty space separated them from the distant jewel
than separated Pluto from Sol, yet Rafa saw that it cast shadows across the night
landscape.

The arresting beauty of the far-off sun was complemented by Erisa Beta II’s rings,
which knifed in an incandescent arc from horizon to horizon. They’d mentioned the rings
in their training, but a casual footnote scarcely did them justice.

Most planetary rings developed from matter that failed to coalesce as the main mass
of a planet came together under the tug of gravity. Typically such rings circled the
equator, rotating in the same direction as the surface that had once been nearly
contiguous. These rings, on the other hand, had formed far out of the equatorial plane,
when a wandering moonlet strayed within the planet’s Roche limit and was torn apart by
unbalanced tidal forces. The unusual orientation meant that from the surface the rings
appeared to rise and set, morphing continually in curvature and width as the view for
the observer changed from oblique to edge-on and back again.

Rafa had a breathtaking three-quarters view. Backlit by a sun just below the
horizon, the rings glowed in graduated pastel bands of lavender, yellow, rust, and
copper green. For several minutes he stood silently in the darkness, oblivious to the
morning chill and the distant sounds of the wakening crew.

* * *

Back in the commons, the floor was littered with ration wrappers and spittle.
Whemper and the kid with the nose ring were bantering lewd remarks for the benefit of
the women. When Rafa told them to knock it off Whemper snarled. “Wishing you had a
piece of the action, preacher man? You ain’t so holy just because you go out and pray
for the rest of us.”

There was a general snicker.

Rafa sank onto a discarded crate and closed his eyes. “I wasn’t praying for you,” he
muttered in disgust.

“Good! I don’t need some holier-than-thou hypocrite pleading my case!”

Rafa opened his eyes and leaned forward again, becoming genuinely annoyed. “What is
your problem, Whemper? Can’t you control that verbal diarrhea?”

Whemper opened his mouth to make a sarcastic comeback, but broke into a spasm of
coughing instead. When he was finally done he added another rosy circle of spittle to
the floor and staggered over to the enclosure where Rafa had slept.

“Funny you should mention the runs,” he said, gesturing to a thin strip of tape
clinging to the bulkhead. “I had a bit of a problem a few minutes ago. TP was running
low. Good thing I spotted that old picture by your bunk.”

This provoked a general sneer which immediately hushed as Rafa lunged across the
room.

“Give it back,” Rafa hissed, cracking Whemper’s head against the unforgiving metal.
“Now.” The dog-eared photo was of Julie and the twins—one he’d carried in his wallet
before the trial. It was the only piece of home he had left.

Whemper’s eyes ranged over Rafa’s shoulder to Heward, who had unholstered his pistol
in warning. Rafa saw the flicker and guessed at its meaning, but did not let up the
crushing pressure on Whemper’s shoulders.

“You’re just as lousy as the rest of us,” Whemper snarled. “No viking’s lily white.
Neither is your lady.”

“Where’s the picture, you scumbag?” Without warning Rafa kneed the other man in the
groin, lifting him clean off the ground. Whemper crumbled in a heap, retching. Rafa
grabbed a fistful of hair and raised his right hand to strike.

A click rang loudly in the silence. The muzzle of Heward’s pistol was resting behind
Rafa’s right ear, and his thumb had just released the safety.

“That’s enough, Orosco.”

For a split second, the trio stood frozen. Then there was a blur of movement as Rafa
flicked his upraised hand back, seized the barrel of the gun, rolled forward on his
right leg and swept his left around in a vicious circle. A bolt of plasma raked wildly
across the ceiling and Heward went down on his back. He was on his feet again in a
flash, but now Rafa held the gun.

“Don’t ever threaten me like that again,” Rafa said softly.

Heward’s voice was bitter. “You’re dead, Orosco. Dead.”

Actually not
, broke in a crisp female voice over their implants.
This
is Dr. Edvardsen. Commander Heward, capital punishment is not an acceptable
disciplinary strategy on this crew. Do you understand?

Heward glowered and remained silent.

I said, do you understand?

A flash of pain convulsed Heward’s face, and he staggered. “Yes,” he gasped.

That’s good. Now, Mr. Orosco, drop the weapon so we can get on with our staff
meeting.

Rafa turned on the safety and tossed the pistol to the floor. Heward glowered at him
sullenly.

Mr. Whemper, where’s the picture? Don’t make me replay your viking feed to track
it down.

Whemper said nothing, but Compton kicked at a magazine in the corner. “He cut out
her face and pasted it on the centerfold. Threw the rest in the incinerator.”

I see. Well, maybe Mr. Heward can employ his creativity to dream up some
appropriate punishment. In the meantime, I’ve used up enough of my time being a
babysitter. Don’t make me use neural prods.

The vikings made no response.

* * *

The staff meeting, once begun, was over in surprisingly short time. They were in the
discovery phase of the mission; the immediate goal was to gather information that would
help earthside MEEGO strategists determine how best to spend their energy and resources
in the days and weeks ahead.

Dr. Edvardsen played back a clip from Rafa and Abbott’s encounter for the group with
a stern caution to be on the lookout. The visuals evoked scattered oaths from the crew,
but Edvardsen continued talking steadily, reviewing viking/control pairings and
encouraging everyone to be dutiful data collectors. Then she dismissed them.

Rafa, still nauseous about the loss of his family picture, roused himself enough to
answer one obvious but unaddressed question.

“Dr. Edvardsen?”

Yes?
She sounded impatient.

“What are we going to do about burying the vikings who were killed in the
landing?”

That hasn’t been taken care of already?

Heward spoke up. “We bagged the bodies and put them in cold storage. But no, we
haven’t buried them.”

Well, unfortunately we don’t have any time now. We’re short-handed, and we need
those of you who are healthy to pull extra shifts as it is. Will they keep?

“What do you mean, ‘Will they keep?’” Rafa was unable to keep the disgust out of his
voice. “You want us to just leave them in deep freeze like yesterday’s leftovers?”

Yes, Mr. Orosco. That’s exactly what I want. How nicely you put it.
Edvardsen’s voice was icy.

Rafa could tell he was treading on unwelcome ground, not only with earthside, but
with Heward, who glared at him ominously. But he’d already begun burning bridges, and
he was unwilling to leave things this way.

“They deserve a proper burial. It’s the least we can do for them.”

I don’t need a lecture in ethics, Mr. Orosco. Your viking contracts provide no
guarantee about a viewing at the neighborhood mortuary. If you want to weep and wail at
a graveside, do it on your own time. It will make no difference to the corpses. Those
bodies are nothing more than rotting cells at this point, anyway. Bury them now or a
year from now—it’s all the same.

Rafa shook his head in disgust. “Whatever you say.”

Exactly.

Bezovnik pressed deeply into the yielding leather of his seat and glowered at
the blank screen.