Chaos Quarter (7 page)

“I thought they were at first. But when I was young, we stopped there once, and I saw the man. He—there was something about him that seemed…
off
. He looked normal, but something about how he moved, as if his body wasn’t his and he was just borrowing it. I was only a girl, and it made the hairs on my neck stand up,” she explained. Another tear emerged from the corner of her eye.

“I have never heard of Cordelia. Can you show it to me on a star chart?” Rex asked.

Chakrika nodded uneasily. She glanced down at the child. He had stopped suckling and now slept soundly.

“I do not like this,” Lucius put in.

“Duly noted, but it beats flying blindly into space we’ll never return from.”

He glowered and said nothing further.

”
Human” is a tricky word to define. Do we base it on DNA? Numerous human groups have tweaked their genetic codes to bring about skin colors that never evolved naturally. Different hair colors, eye colors, pupil shapes. Some have matted body hair. All take a human gene and modify it a bit for whatever reason. We can’t deny their humanity. Is being a human an internal question? One of the soul and mind? If a human adulterates their genetic code with outside DNA, but maintains human-level emotions and intelligence, do we grant them the same rights and respect a more “normal” person would have? If an ape or whale or dolphin had their intelligence advanced to the point that it equaled our own, either evolutionarily or through our intervention, would they be granted “human” status? What if a person had their mind replaced by a computer, making their body into a biological machine responding only to the commands of others? What if a human mind was placed in an artificial body, or some sort of machine? Is the word “human” still a marker of a biological species, or just a broad label encompassing all forms of sentient intelligence?

-Joseph Davidson, Excerpt from “The Essence of a Species,”
Collected Essays
, 2071

Cordelia, it turned out, was 120 light-years from Igbo. That meant two dozen jumps, with an eight-hour recharge between jumps. Given that jumping into a new system meant having to be awake to deal with the inevitable toll-seekers or pirates, those eight hours usually stretched to a full day, so Rex could be rested and alert when entering a new stretch of space.

Then there had been various delays and stopovers. They’d had to stop at a mining colony to pick up metals for trade and to buy new clothing for Chakrika. Unfortunately mining colonies were overwhelmingly male and reminded Rex of prisons. Far too many males, few if any females…they weren’t good places for young, weak, or overly pretty men to be. Miners weren’t generally known for their self-control, and when no women were available, they’d turn to the next closest thing. When women
were
available…

Lucius had been forced to escort Chakrika through the mine’s only clothing store, keeping grizzled, horny, underpaid men back. Unfortunately for Chakrika the only items of clothing in the store were utilitarian grey canvas jumpsuits. She had left the ship in skimpy clothes that showed off every curve of her figure and returned in the most drab, shape-hiding clothing imaginable. She hadn’t smiled much that day, despite escaping unscathed from hordes of lecherous men.

There had been numerous stops by local warlords demanding a fee, though Rex had only paid one of them, since only one of the warlords had firepower enough to threaten him. The others he’d either outrun or blasted. Most would flee after a single hit, deciding to raid easier prey. A few had fought it out and lost. One of those losers had been a charismatic madman who’d convinced himself and a dozen followers that he was the pagan God Hades, here to help his fellows find the hidden passage to Elysium. Rex had decided to help them out with the request. Ore haulers jerry-rigged with twenty millimeter cannons didn’t make effective warships, and after Lucius had sent one to Tartarus, both Hades and his devoted followers had fled.

They had stopped again on some world called Mausolos, picking up food, supplies for little Quintus, and more feminine clothing for Chakrika. She’d been nothing but smiles that day, no longer forced to be either shrouded in tent-canvas or practically naked. She’d looked decidedly
normal
and loved every minute of it. Rex was no shrink, but he imagined there had to be a good deal of dignity in being able to go through a day without having to make yourself a sex object. Plus, what woman didn’t love to shop?

After that they’d begun the tedious process of jumping, system to system, usually six light-years at a time. Both of his crew members had settled into their new role. Chakrika cooked, quite well considering she was using dehydrated vegetables, canned foods, and various artificially-flavored pre-packaged proteins. She’d somehow made a soup out of dried noodles and cinnamon-flavored protein chunks that had been a welcome surprise.

Lucius had quickly accommodated himself with the ship’s systems, and in their various scrapes had taken down two fighters. His face had remained as blank as ever. The only time the man showed any emotion was when he held his child. Thanks to Chakrika’s chiding, he could now hold the little one without sending Quintus into crying fits. Rex didn’t tell Chakrika that sometimes Lucius smiled, however slightly, at her when her back was turned or she wasn’t looking. Didn’t take a man in his fifties to see where Lucius’s heart was going.

The only other time Rex had seen so much as a grin had been when he revealed that
Long Haul
had a light pulse cannon. The exile had fired it repeatedly that day, not needing to worry about ammunition. Pulse cannons worked by accelerating small amounts of particles to incredible speed and launching them at an enemy. The kinetic energy of those fast-moving particles blasted holes in a hull as well as any cannon shell. Since each shot was literally a blast of particles too small to see, it would take decades of continuous fire to exhaust
Long Haul
’s stores.

When it had first come time to use the weapon, Lucius hadn’t held back. One of his two kills had been a fighter stupid enough to fly in front of
Long Haul
. Lucius had fired a full salvo from the forward guns, hitting the ship not only with the pulse cannon but with rounds from the ship’s five forward-facing thirty millimeter rail-guns. The poor pirate inside the ship was reduced to hundreds of floating pieces spiraling through space, much like his ship. Rex had felt a moment of pity for the man, victim of such glorious overkill. But then he remembered that the bastard had been trying to kill him, and he nodded appreciatively at Lucius’s thorough work.

Now, with all that and a dozen nights interrupted by Quintus’s crying behind them, they jumped into the Qahira System, home of the living world Cordelia. The jump, as always, ended pretty much the moment it began. One second they were in some unknown, unsettled system with a red star, dead rocks and a gas giant; the next he was staring at a distant yellow sun. Beyond depleted jump drive readings and a slight fuzzy feeling in his shoulders, there was no evidence that anything had even happened.

“We’re here,” Lucius spoke.

“Looks like. Computer, collect every piece of information you can. Correlate with what we’ve been told about Cordelia and the Qahira system,” Rex ordered.

“
Observations indicate six rocky worlds within two hundred million miles of the sun. At least three gas giants in farther reaches.”

“Good. Which worlds are likely within the habitable zone?”

“
The third and fourth
.”

“Set course for the third, .04C,” he ordered.

“
Nine hours until arrival
.”

He glanced over at the radar sphere. The hologram floated lazily before his seat, empty and quiet. A lovely sight.

“Go see your kid,” Rex said with a wave. “And send Chaki up, need to show her a few things.”

“She hates that name, you know,” Lucius spoke.

Rex shot him a half-smiled, “Does she? Or do you?”

Lucius glowered and left the bridge. Rex continued to chuckle.

“Ah, young lust…”

Two minutes passed before the young woman appeared, dressed in form-fitting slacks and a sleeveless blouse. She also had a confident respectability about her now; the new, more concealing clothing offered protection. He found it strange, given how assertive she’d been while nude.

“Lucius says you need to see me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, getting up from the pilot’s station. “Sit.”

He gestured at the chair; she hesitated.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You want to get paid more, and I need somebody who can fly this bucket if I get knocked in the head. So you get to learn to fly,” he replied.

Her face froze in shock, fear etching lines around her eyes.

“This-this is
crazy
. I-I’ve never flown anything! I’ve never even driven a car!”

“Well after this a car will seem simple. Don’t worry, we have plenty of time to learn. Sit,” he said with an air of finality.

She reluctantly sat in the seat, but kept her hands tucked against her sides.

“Computer, on my voice command, return the ship to our current course.”

“What?!” Chakrika said, buzzing with anxiety.

“Relax. We’re hours away from contact with another ship; we’ve got space and time. We’ll start with the basic layout.”

He pointed to the computer panel before her. On the left was a control lever, a single protruding stick eight inches high with two buttons on the top. On the right was a similar lever, though it had no buttons. Between the two was a screen, with touch-screen controls should the computer’s voice abilities fail.

“That’s your emergency screen. Shows you all the data you need if the main one goes down,” he spoke.

“Main one?” Chakrika asked.

“In front of you,” he pointed.

She glanced up at the wall-spanning viewscreen.

“That’s not a window?” she asked.

“No. Windows make good targets to anyone who wants to shoot you. That’s an image from a camera on the front of the ship. See all those numbers on the left?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“One on the bottom is speed; next one up is radiation levels. Don’t use that one much, but it’s one of those things that when you need it, you
really
need it. Next up is reactor performance,” he informed.

“It’s only at eighty-two percent,” she pointed out.

“No reason to run her hot right now. Puts a lot of wear on it when you do,” he explained. “Above that the computer likes to flash information regarding our surroundings: planets and asteroids and star types and all that.”

“OK,” she said uneasily.

“See the green line in the middle of the screen, heading slightly to the left of this system’s sun?”

“I see it,” she replied.

“That’s our course. If the ship stays on that, we’ll end up where we want to go.”

“This is a lot to remember,” she spoke.

“You pick it up quick enough; don’t worry if you don’t get it all right now. See that lever next to the backup screen?”

She placed her hand on it, but didn’t push it in any way.

“Vertical and lateral controls, very important in landing. Push forward, we go up; pull back, we go down. Push left, we lurch left; push right, we lurch right—all relative to the course we’re travelling. Try it.”

Her fingers closed gingerly around the lever. She pushed forward. The view screen shifted as the ship rose directly upward like a helicopter of old. Chakrika pulled the throttle back to its neutral position, ending the rise. On the viewscreen the green line adjusted, the computer recalculating the course due to their slight movement.

“Simple enough,” Rex spoke. “OK, take your hand off the vertical control. Best to do this one limb at a time until you’re ready. Take your left hand and grasp the lever on the left side of the console.”

She grabbed it, keeping her hands away from the two buttons on the top.

“What you are now holding is attitude control. You push left, the ship spins left, staying on a horizontal plain. You push right, it goes right; push forward, it spins up; pull back, it spins down—again, all relative to our current course and position. There’s really no up and down or left and right out here.”

“There isn’t?” she asked.

He shook his head, saying, “Gotta be on a planet with gravity. Out here there’s only orbital elliptical plains and stars.
Long Haul
’s gravity drive pulls us toward the floor no matter how we maneuver the ship, so no matter what we do, it’ll seem like we’re upright.”

“I don’t understand. What’s an elliptical plain?” she asked.

“We’ll worry about that stuff later. Rotate the ship,” Rex ordered.

She pulled the lever to the left. It required more force than she expected, but eventually it moved. Again the viewscreen shifted, the stars blurring as the vessel spun.

“Wait, if we’re spinning won’t the engines push us in another direction?”

“Engines are off,” Rex said.

“What? How are we—”

“No air in space, no friction. Unless we use the engines to change direction, we’ll continue on this course, at this speed, infinitely. No use wasting fuel coasting into a system,” he informed her.

“Oh,” she spoke, trying to take in what she just heard. “Don’t you have to use the engines then to spin us?”

“The maneuvering jets, yeah. They’ll push us a little off course and slow us down a bit, but nothing to worry about. By the way, we’ve gone around twice,” he pointed out.

She instinctively withdrew her hand from the control lever. It snapped back to center, telling the computer to stop the spin.

“Return us to course,” Rex spoke. The computer righted the ship. “Whenever you need to know which way you’re facing, look at the sphere.”

He pointed. The holographic sphere floated to the right of the command station. Chakrika did a double take and then looked closely. At the center of the sphere, a small image of the ship sat, facing forward.

“Next step, feel around with your right foot. You’ll find two pedals under the console,” Rex continued.