Flyover Planet Ch. 16: No Present Like Time.
From assets to cargo to crew. The (sort of) fourteen-year-old captain has to decide if they can go home again.
Chapters One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen Pt. 1, Fourteen Pt. 2, Fifteen.
(Non-SF Flyover Valley starts here.)
What Forseti really wanted to do was go home. He wanted to go home so badly it hurt. To let all this float away like wisps of a nightmare do in the morning. To hurtle up the canyon toward the familiar green sky in his old mech, scattering dry purple booya leaves, pulling up just short of the Pockets field that killed tech dead, hanging dangerously in mid-air at the very edge of it with Fenny remonstrating below, Cheers whooping madly at his side; to laugh at Tian Sokol's outrageous stories, stuffing himself with Tia Mara's savory stew; hell, even school would be all right, with Tian Teacher's lessons about the world, Guns smiling happily as he ruffled her hair in passing and praised her for knowing the right number...
Guns now knew more numbers than anyone. But her eyes were like tiny screens, running streams of numbers she knew, maybe all the numbers in the world. As for Tian Teacher, Tia Mara, they were probably dead, said a cold voice inside Forseti's mind, and maybe you can never go home again.
"No," he hadn't realized he had spoken aloud but Guns asked:
"What was that, Captain?"
"Nothing. Anyone following us, Guns?"
"Negative. There is no discernible pursuit, Captain Seti, but scanning is problematic inside the Cloud, for all parties."
"Problematic, right." Any time he needed to be reminded about how much he hated the Eds, he could just glance at XieXie's pale face and green hair, listen to the alien tinkling flute that was now the voice of Gunnara of Wayside. Discernible pursuit, bejazus.
"When we are out of the Cloud, Guns, will you be able to keep the ship invisible? Like the other g-," Forseti called himself a bad name under his breath, "can you do what the geck did? The geck the pirates had here?"
"It is not possible to make this ship completely invisible to the eye," Guns said seriously, "but I can reproduce the effect and keep us nearly undetectable, and invisible to most scanners. I am doing it now. Is that satisfactory, Captain?"
"Yes, very. How long till we are out of the Cloud then, Guns?"
"Ninety minutes and counting."
Forseti thought a bit. "Tell me right a- tell me immediately if there is any blip on your scanners; and call me ten minutes before we are due to come out, ok?"
He was new to order-giving, but Guns treated all he said as an order, for some reason, even if she called him by his childhood name. Captain Seti. That was like saying "Major Benjy."
He called everyone to the bridge. That Guns would not be disturbed even if they were shouting at each other and banging pots and pans he already knew. It scared him, just as using her as a geck scared him. It was as if with every minute she spent plugged in she became less and less human, as if he was just doing the Eds' job for them. But no one else could actually fly the ship; not him, not Cheers, no one. They would learn, but not in an hour. They could use the ship's guns, all the boys having played on the sims, of course, and even XieXie probably knew her way around them, though she wasn't as fast as they were. But navigating, monitoring traffic... Even Martin and Marta, the twins who had grown up more or less at the New Ship Port, were of little use.
"You live at the 'port, you couldn't have learned to fly a flipping ship?" Cheers had grumbled, and Marta shrugged.
"Sorry; heaviest thing we ever flipped was the burgers at dad's diner."
So now they were all on the bridge, looking at Forseti expectantly. He was the Captain; he had shot Backer; he was to decide what to do next. Even Fenny was quiet, chewing her lip and glancing around.
"Are we going home?" Benjy Rotor, the youngest, asked hopefully.
"Yes," Forseti said firmly. "But not right away. We have to find out what's going on there. I don't know how long we've been away, but I guess at least a few months, so."
"If we have got those sons of beaitches on our tail and maybe the Eds too, they don't have the firepower for that back home," Cheers said grimly, true to form.
"Do you think Hubworld has replied?" XieXie asked quietly.
"What's Hubworld?" Rotor looked to Forseti then to XieXie. He was too young to remember that there was — there was rumored to be — a central planet somewhere, the one where it all started, the Eds, their Federation; they had some kind of central government there, or so the story went. There was very little about it on the Trawl, and the kids hadn't really bothered to find out more.
"Just a couple of days before the big attack, the drone bombing, that was when the grownups were talking about sending a message there. I guess they thought it could calm the Eds down a bit," Forseti said, echoing Tian Teacher unconsciously. "Guns, can we check the Trawl without drawing attention to ourselves, without giving off a signal, I mean? To find out about Wayside? And how far we are from it?"
"No, Captain, that is not possible at this time," Guns kept her eyes on the screens in front of her. "There is an information repository in our memory, however. A sort of encyclopedia. Most entries are slightly out of date, by a year or two—"
"Oh, that won't help us with news from home then," XieXie said, disappointed, as Guns continued smoothly, apparently reading from the encyclopedia:
"Entry: Wayside, formerly an illegal settlement of insurgents and religious extremists on the Incommunicado Status planet of—"
"The what now?!"
"Incommunicado status, Captain. It means that there is no communication with —"
"I understand what the word means," Forseti immediately felt guilty for snapping at Guns who couldn't even get that he was mad. Everyone was staring, shock written in every face. It took an effort but he, he was the captain now, right? He pulled himself together, took a deep breath.
"Guns. Since when is our planet incommunicado? Since when is Wayside formerly a settlement?"
"Oh, since five years ago, Captain Seti," Guns tilted her head, birdlike. "There is no further information there, except a warning note. It says "Do not approach, only Eds welcome." Would you like to know anything else?"
"Wait, five years? Five Wayside cycles?" XieXie said incredulously.
"Guns?"
"It is closer to six Wayside cycles, Captain," Guns fluted unconcernedly, as if she was not aware that she was speaking about her home.
"We have been away for six years?" Fenny whispered, staring at them. Her voice rose. "But why haven't we grown? Why haven't we grown up?!"
"Fenny!" XieXie's voice was really sharp. Fenny gave her a dirty look but at least she did not start crying.
"Right," Forseti said. He could not feel his lips. His whole face felt numb. So did his mind. Images kept flitting in his mind's eye, Tia Mara in her kitchen, his little cousins, the burning fields.
"Let's figure this out," he said, keeping his voice calm. "Guns, what cycle is it on Wayside?"
"Two-four-seven, Captain Seti."
They had been looking forward to celebrating the new cycle, two hundred and forty-two, a pretty number, Tia Mara had said. Tia Mara, who was turning eighty at the same time...
"So that's what that... that Raglan meant," XieXie whispered, her face in her hands. "I thought it was just... it was just..."
"Our baby brother... he was ten," Marta sounded as stunned as Forseti felt. She was clutching her brother's hand. He looked like he had been sandbagged. "He is fifteen now? He is older than us! How..."
Forseti turned away from them, to the viewing screens. Age had been an abstract idea to him before. There were kids, there were grownups, that was it. He had always known vaguely that someday he would be a grownup too. He would be bigger, stronger. He would have a better gun, maybe a new one even, not a hand-me-down; most importantly, he could grow a beard and whiskers, that would be something! He could drink whisky and smoke and enjoy it (he had tried Tian Sokol's baccy and Tia Mara's moonshine, of course; both had made him and Cheers and Linder heartily sick). And now... What now?
Now you have to cope, Seti, Tia Mara's voice told him. Be a man, boyo.
"All right," Forseti said, turning to face them. Some still looked stunned; Cheers was defiant, Fenny on the verge of tears.
"There is nothing we can do about any of this now," Forseti said reluctantly. "I know it's like..."
"It's like we ran away from the jinko Eds but they are still inside us," Cheers said fiercely, arms crossed, knuckles white around his skinny elbows.
"Yes. But we did run away from them," Forseti said. "So we keep running until —"
"Until they catch us!" Fenny said tearfully.
"Don't interrupt the captain, Fenella," XieXie's voice was cold.
"And don't speak for him either, XieXie," Forseti mustered up a crooked grin. XieXie gave a reluctant twitch of her lips in return but it was better than nothing. He took in his little crew with a glance and squared his shoulders.
"If we give up right now, if we stop, we are sitting ducks. If the free traders pick us up first, you know how they will treat us and they will sell us to labs or worse," Forseti went on. "If the Eds get us, well, it's more of the same. They've already stolen almost six years from us. I don't think it was because they wanted to give us a better future or whatever claptrap it was they kept spouting whenever we were awake. So we got nothing to lose by not giving up, right?"
There was a little silence. The twins glanced at each other, and Martin spoke:
"So what do you want us to do instead, Captain?" it was the first time he'd called Forseti that. Everyone was looking at him except Fenny, whose face was half-sulky, half-resentful. Why, Forseti did not know, but he had no time to find out.
"Help me run the ship," he replied promptly. "We are a crew, and apparently we are also all of age, even young Rotor here," that got some smiles too. "We need to find out everything about us, what happened to us. Guns will help us to figure out when it is safe to use some kind of signals, to use the Trawl." He looked at Martin and Marta:
"Know anything about comms? We only used portables and — anyway, never used the Trawl off-planet."
"Me either but I've been on a few ships," Martin said, and Marta added, "he is good with fiddly tech, dad always says so."
"Ok, so you are our communications officer. Guns," this was the tricky bit. "This is Martin, you know him."
Guns did not turn her head. Forseti frowned. How to make her see the boy?
"Guns, look here."
She turned.
"This is Martin," Forseti wanted to add "you spent several days locked in a cell with him," but there was no point.
"Martin," Guns said, eyes shimmering with series of numbers floating up and down in tidy columns. Martin looked a little unnerved.
"Please see Martin and hear him," Forseti said, feeling stupid.
"Always?" Guns asked. That was weird. Forseti thought furiously.
"Only when he is, um, within physical seeing and hearing distance," he said. "Can you teach him to use communications?"
"Oh yes, Captain Seti. I see you, Martin."
Martin gave Forseti a speaking look, gave his sister's hand a squeeze before letting go, and said, "I see you too, Guns," before seating himself into a chair beside her.
"Right. Cheers. You are in charge of ammo, rifles, and you will — we both will figure out the shooting from here," Forseti jerked his head at the console. It looked a lot like the space fight sim that was all the rage last cycle and he and Cheers both knew their way around that. Let's hope it's the same, he thought fervently.
"Guns, when you need to rest—"
"Oh I don't need to rest," Guns said absently. "Not for a long, long time." XieXie closed her eyes for a moment and bit her lip.
"Right," Forseti said, his voice tight. "Fine, we will figure it out. Now, that leaves—"
"Food, cleaning and maintenance," Marta said briskly. "We can all take turns. I doubt their galley is harder to deal with than our daddy's kitchen, and we've been in and out of there since we were four."
"Ok then," Forseti felt like smiling a little for the first time since they entered the Cloud. "You are, what's the word..."
"Quartermaster," Marta said confidently, "that's what they are called."
"Isn't that only if you are in the army?" Forseti said doubtfully. Marta gave him a hard look.
"Well, we are fighting, aren't we?"
"What about me, Seti, I mean Captain? I want to do something too! I'm not a child!"
"No kids on this ship anymore, Rotor, remember?" Forseti said, forcing a smile. "You are going to be a deck cadet. It will be hard but I think you can handle it," Rotor beamed and nodded. "You will start with Marta because she is going to need a pair of smart eyes and strong hands."
Marta nodded; Forseti remembered she had a younger brother too.
"Don't ask me to do anything now, Forseti, please," Fenny said, tears in her voice. "This is so—"
"I am not asking you to do anything. I am telling you to go to the galley and help Marta. Clean it up," Forseti bit off "with your tears." That felt mean, but no one else had complained, only Fenny. He forced himself to soften his voice. "If you feel sick, really sick, then go to our cabin and get some rest. But I think you will feel better if you are not alone and doing something useful. And we need every pair of hands, Fenny. This is like harvest-time or... or a big party."
"More like a house on fire," Cheers muttered.
Fenny sniffed, but she stepped closer to Marta and Rotor.
Forseti looked over his crew. They seemed to be waiting for something. What did the captain say in that old vid... Oh yes.
"To your stations, people, and look alive!"
They filed out quickly, with Forseti last, leaving Martin and Guns at the controls, talking quietly.
XieXie was waiting for him outside, leaning against the cool metal wall that was scored and pockmarked in many places. By the looks of it, not all of Captain Raglan's trips were peaceful. At least there should be no deadly brawls on the inside, Forseti thought.
"Did you forget about me, Captain?" It was not clear if XieXie was offended or just joking.
"How could I?" Forseti answered simply and she flushed a little.
"Then I suppose you left the best for last," she said dryly. Forseti nodded.
"Actually, I did. You spent a lot of time with that drunk of a doctor. Can you get into his files?"
"On us? Of course. I still have the pad too. Guns said it was clean."
"Find out everything," Forseti said. "Everything. This is more important than — than cooking." She smiled a little.
"And even cleaning? Got it."
"What's up with Fenny?" Forseti asked. "She is acting like... like we are in the cell again. I mean, no one else is having hissy fits."
"Oh Seti. Hissy fits," XieXie gave a little choke of laughter. "I don't know. I guess she is kind of sensitive. You know, she's always been a bit hard to get along with, and after this Backer thing... Let her alone for a bit, ok? I will find a way to talk to her."
XieXie paused and said reluctantly, lowering her voice:
"Seti, about Guns..."
She broke off and shook her head with a sigh.
"Never mind. I'm sorry. We don't have a choice, do we?"
"Not yet. We will all learn, to navigate, to — but it will take time."
XieXie smiled a little sadly and touched his shoulder for a moment.
"Good thing we have all the time in the world, right?"
Either that, or we don't have any, Forseti thought as she watched her walk away.