Excelsior (20 page)

They can’t see me in the dark. They’ll think I’m log.

Caty squeezed her eyes tightly shut, willing the danger to pass. I’m a log, I’m a log, I’m a log…

The coughs came once more, and Caty didn’t hear any more screams. Maybe she’d imagined it.

The next morning, after the bell went off, news spread about the woman who’d been found dead in her tent. Caty found David in the line to board the busses, and she asked him about it. He just shrugged.

“The ones who don’t join the crews have to survive somehow. When they get hungry enough they steal. If you see them, they’ll kill you not to get caught. Someone tries to steal your food, you let them. Pretend to be asleep, look the other way.”

Caty’s eyes grew round and she nodded. “What about security?”

“What security? There are ten thousand refugees and only fifty guards. There’s only ten of them on patrol at night. That’s one for every thousand people or one for every five hundred tents.”

“There must be something we can do. What if we organize our own night watch?”

“Tried it. Not allowed.”

“What? Why not?”

“We need to keep up our strength for the searches, and the warden doesn’t want any vigilantes in his camp. Curfew has us in bed by nine and up at five.”

“Then we should leave. We don’t have to stay here, do we? They can’t force us to stay.”

“No, not yet anyway, but where would we go?”

Caty shrugged. “Somewhere, anywhere!”

David smirked. “And eat what? Drink what? Do what? Like it or not, they have us all here as willing slaves until we can find some way to fend for ourselves. Right now the only job for any of us is here, searching for survivors.”

A thought occurred to Caty. “What about the military?”

“The military?”

“Aren’t they accepting recruits still?”

“You want to trade one certain death for another? The entire fleet was destroyed. If this cease fire ends, you’ll be the first one to die. At least down here you might last for a few more years.”

Caty felt her whole body grow cold. “The entire fleet?”

David nodded. “Both sides are defenseless. Why do you think they called a cease fire? They don’t have any guns left. You go ahead and sign up. I’m not even sure they’ll know what to do with you. At this point they might strap you to a missile and get you to be the guidance system.”

Caty blinked a tear. David frowned and looked away. That was when it really hit her. Alexander was dead.

After a moment David turned back to her and opened his arms awkwardly. “Ven aqui.”

She didn’t argue. He enfolded her in a strong hug. He didn’t smell very well, but then again neither did she.

The line started moving to board the busses, and they shuffled along together. He held her, whispering reassurances and apologies. They sat down together on the bus. Caty sniffled, feeling foolish and embarrassed. Then the bus jolted into motion, and David turned to her with a haunted look. “I lost someone, too. Ella era mi todo.”

“Your wife?” Caty asked.

“My everything,” David said again, this time in English.

Caty nodded and looked out the window, watching blackened, fire-scorched trees blur by. “Alexander was mine,” she whispered.

 

Chapter 17

Max Carter sat in his quarters watching the approach to Wonderland under normal gravity. After passing through the so-called David Davorian Belts, the mission was back on track.

Max set the viewport in his room to show the view from the Lincoln’s bow cameras and then magnified and enhanced Wonderland for ease of study. A mottled blue and white ball appeared, surrounded by a profusion of stars.

Beautiful. Amazing what technology can do, he thought.

Max considered everything that lay ahead for him and the crew of the Lincoln. So far his mission was going according to plan, and the crew of the Lincoln was none the wiser. He had detected some suspicion from Commander Korbin during a routine interview before everyone had entered the G-tanks, but Korbin didn’t really have anything to go on, nor would she until he decided otherwise.

Suspicion and proof are two very different things.

Max smiled. Catch me if you can.

*

May 22nd, 2790

(The Lincoln’s Frame of Reference)

After three whole days of rest, Doctor Crespin reluctantly discharged Alexander from the infirmary so that he could watch the Lincoln’s final approach to Wonderland from his seat on the bridge.

The planet swelled before them, looking startlingly like Earth. The day side of the planet lay dead ahead with the terminator line on the far left side of the planet, making Wonderland look egg-shaped rather than spherical. The day side shone a familiar blue with white patches and swirls. Somewhere near the center of the planet, mottled reds and purples peeked out through the white.

Someone whistled.

“She’s a real exotic beauty,” Lieutenant Stone said, identifying himself as the whistler.

“Vasquez, what are sensors telling us so far?” Alexander asked.

“Land temperatures on the surface range from twenty degrees Celsius on the day side to five degrees on the night side. There’s ice at the poles and—”

“Ice?” Alexander interrupted. “Then you’ve confirmed that the blue we’re seeing is liquid water?”

“Yes, sir.”

A cheer went up from the crew. Water wasn’t all that rare, but liquid surface water was a big requirement for human habitability.

“What about those colorful smears? Are they what I think they are?” Alexander asked, pointing to the mottled red and purple areas.

“Possibly plants,” Vasquez replied.

“Damn straight!” Lieutenant Cardinal replied from gunnery.

Alexander smiled. As the mission’s botanist, Cardinal had a vested interest in finding alien plants on Wonderland.

“Could also be rock formations,” Stone replied. “If they’re plants, why aren’t they green? Don’t they need chlorophyll for photosynthesis?”

“Assuming alien plants derive energy from photosynthesis in the first place, they don’t need to absorb the same wavelengths as plants on Earth,” Cardinal replied. “The surface of Earth gets mostly green light, but that’s the color that our plants reflect away from them. Evolution doesn’t always yield the most efficient design. I’ll bet you a month’s wages those colorful regions are plants.”

“You’re on,” Stone replied.

Alexander smiled. “As long as we’re betting, I’ll bet that the atmosphere is breathable, and that we’ll find plants and animals.”

“Well, if we do find animals, the first thing I’m going to do is slap one of them on a grill and see if it tastes like chicken,” Stone said.

Laughter rippled across the bridge. Alexander joined in, but Korbin shot him a dark look, and he wiped the smile off his face.

“Our first encounter with alien life and you want to cook it?” she demanded.

“Why not?” Stone replied.

“All right, you do that, and when you die from some alien parasite, we’ll just chalk it up to karma being a bitch.”

Alexander cleared his throat. “He was joking, Korbin.”

She sent him a thin smile. “Who says I wasn’t?”

Alexander snorted. “Davorian, how long till we enter orbit?”

“Ten to fifteen minutes, sir, depending whether it’s a high or low orbit.”

“Make it a low one so we can do our first pass around the planet in less time.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

“Vasquez, start scanning for the best place to land our shuttles.”

“Already on it, Captain.”

“Good.”

Alexander settled back against his couch to watch as Wonderland grew steadily larger on the MHD. It was a beautiful planet—mottled red and purple landmass, bright turquoise oceans, familiar white swirls of cloud. It looked startlingly like home, except for the odd colors and the greater percentage of surface water.

Once the Lincoln established a low orbit, Davorian killed thrust to the engines, and let Wonderland’s gravity do all the work. Without active thrust, the sensation of gravity disappeared, replaced by the zero-G free-fall of orbit.

It took a little over ninety minutes to orbit the planet once. During that time, Vasquez identified the primary landmass as the one they’d seen on their approach. There were also a number of islands, but everyone agreed that they’d learn more by setting down on the planet’s Pangaea-like super continent.

“Time to go pack our things, everyone,” Alexander said. “We’re all going down to the surface together—except for Davorian and Hayes.”

“Except for me, sir?” Davorian sounded crestfallen.

“We’re not going to see Wonderland?” Hayes added, putting in his own objection.

“Davorian, your specialty is astrophysics and astronomy, so you’re better off staying up here to see if you can find some indication of where we are in relation to Earth and the rest of the universe. And Hayes—we need someone manning the comms in case Earth tries to contact us. But besides that, we need at least two qualified bridge crew to take shifts up here on the bridge. Davorian, you have seniority, so I’m leaving you in charge.”

“Yes, sir,” Davorian said.

“We’ll be in touch. As for the rest of you, let’s go.” Buckles clattered as everyone unfastened their harnesses. Alexander lingered an extra moment to send Davorian a private comms. “Keep an eye on Hayes.”

There was a brief pause, and then Davorian replied, “What should I be looking for?”

“Acts of sabotage. When you leave him alone on bridge, I don’t want him manning anything besides the comms. Zero access to everything else. Make sure you shut down all of the ship’s stations and keep them locked whenever you’re not there. If there’s some kind of emergency while you’re away from the conn, all he needs to do is wake you up, and you can deal with it. Worst case, you give him your lock codes, and he can react while he’s waiting for you to get there, but that’s only in case of a dire emergency.”

“That’s… somewhat unconventional. What excuse am I going to give Hayes for locking him out?”

“We have one act of sabotage that’s still unaccounted for—the bad engine code. Until we know for sure who’s responsible, you’re the only one I can trust.”

“What makes you so sure you can trust me?”

“Because you were the one who stopped that bad code from leaving us derelict in space. If you were the one who inserted that code in the first place, you could have just let it execute and then covered your tracks after the fact.”

“Good point.”

“Keep an eye on things up here, and keep me posted.”

“Aye, Captain. Any chance I’m going to get to see Wonderland?”

“No promises, but I may be able to trade places with you at some point.”

Davorian sighed. “I guess that will have to do.”

“It will.”

“Captain, are you coming?”

Alexander turned to see Korbin floating free of her acceleration couch and angling herself to push off from the seat so she could float toward the elevators without the need to fire the maneuvering jets in the soles of her boots.

Switching from comms to external speakers, Alexander said, “I’ll be right there. Hold the elevator for me.”

“Aye-aye,” she said, and pushed off from her couch.

Alexander commed the rest of the crew on an open channel to let them know who would be joining the landing party, and who would not. Besides the bridge crew, he ordered Max Carter, Doctor Crespin, two of his nurses, and five of the ship’s seven surviving Rapier pilots to meet them in the shuttle bay. That done, he unbuckled his own seat restraints and maneuvered himself to push off from his seat.

Once he made it to the elevator, navigating the rest of the ship was easier. The bridge deck was one of the few places where the ceiling was high enough and the walls far enough apart that he could end up stranded, floating in mid-air too far from the nearest handrail to physically guide himself through the ship.

But even with handrails in easy reach, navigating the ship in zero-G was a slow, awkward business. Getting into his quarters took five minutes, which was five minutes longer than it should have taken, and packing his things took forever. Pulling things out of his locker resulted in them flying all around the room, and he spent a long time just catching up with his underwear.