Elena Among the Stars
It was still difficult, getting used to the artificial gravity of the ship’s rotating ring. Back in the twenty-first century, fiction set in the far future always had people walking around their spacecraft as if gravity could be switched on. As with most technological advances, things didn’t progress quite as quickly in reality. One shouldn’t complain. Gravity was gravity. Besides, the constant rotation did help alleviate the gnawing sensation of being trapped in a metal can that was hurtling through the cold, radiation-riddled vacuum of space. It did. No, it did.
Felt like a mantra. Whatever worked. It had to work. Would be fine if it distracted, too, from the creeping dread of being smothered, suffocated, crushed, trapped, enclosed, and …
… something that also helped was not getting caught up in nonsensical ramblings while people were trying to have a civilized conversation at lunch. For crying out loud, she had been trained for this, hadn’t she? Yep, for the longest time, in every sense of the way, prepared and prepped and pontificated at, if that was what one wanted to call the endless seminars and lectures and psychological evaluation sessions.
“Carey?”
She noticed that the other three were watching her. Her face felt warm. From experience, she knew that it was all too visible. “Sorry.” She beamed at Dara, the one who’d last spoken to her and who was sitting to her right. “I drifted off. Don’t be mad, please.”
Dara was almost as quick to put on a sunny expression as Carey was, only hers tended to come across as wry or amused. The crooked smile of doom seemed to be a security specialist thing. She put her cutlery down, ran one long-fingered hand across her clean-shaven skull. Some people had the right heads for this. “I asked you whether you believe that the preliminary reports are accurate.”
“Fat chance.” Noah, sitting opposite Carey and next to Tani, shrugged, scratched his right hand, sniffled.
That seemed to be one of the reasons why Dara avoided sharing meals with the man. Not that she’d say it. Not that she needed to.
“The reports, if you can even call them that, are always woefully misguided, to put it euphemistically.” Noah and his German-tinted adverbs. It was cool. German didn’t do the adverb thing that much. He looked at each of the other three specialists in turn. “When have you ever arrived at a destination to start a new project and found everything to your absolute satisfaction?”
“I bring my research with me, so it doesn’t matter.” With all the mindfulness in the solar system, Tani ate another forkful of her rice.
“Unfortunately, I and my ilk do not share this privilege.” Noah scratched his neck. Poor lad seemed to have dry skin issues. Happened a lot in this kind of environment.
Dara shrugged, sipped her water. “I just need people to not be idiots.”
Noah crinkled his nose. “People are idiots more often than not.”
Carey looked around. This was the specialists’ time to eat, so there weren’t many people around. The beige metal tables were all empty except for theirs. The small, thick window to her right showed the rotating starts. What was it even like for the workers who had non-gravity shifts along the Elena’s axis? For the millionth time this week alone, she was grateful that she was not one of them.
According to her parents and teachers, the workers were glad not to be specialists or Leaders. Everyone had their hang-ups, but in the end, they were happy to be where they could contribute best. Commune Bonum and all. Made sense. Wasn’t the official philosophy for nothing. Imperium Aureum omnium, as the saying went.
The Imperials knew what they were doing, and …
… and here she was again, drifting off. “Where are the others? How can they just skip lunch? Can they just skip lunch?”
Once more unto the breach it appeared, the crooked smile of doom on Dara’s aquiline face. “They already ate and are taking care of some business.”
“Oh, come on.” Noah picked up his fork, grimaced, put it down again, and pushed his plate away. He’d lost some weight these past three weeks, hadn’t he? Could be that space didn’t agree with him. “You all must be perfectly aware that Amaya is in her cabin, knitting a sweater and dreaming about little green men.”
“They’re more likely to be little red bacteria,” Carey said, focusing on the view of the moving stars outside. So what if there wasn’t any air? It was open space. She should consider herself lucky to have been given this chance – full stop. Good grief. “Also, don’t be mean. We all have our impossible dreams.”
“Sure. Noah dreams of coming up with the most melodramatic sentence ever uttered by a human.” Dara winked at him.
He made a face.
Tani, having finally finished her own meal, wiped her full lips with the recyclable napkin and focused her attention on Carey. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?” This time, Carey wasn’t going to be rude and not pay attention to her fellow specialists. Just because she didn’t do it on purpose, didn’t make it any less impolite. Her parents had taught her better.
“Our multi-talented engineer just happened to stumble across a broken seal in one of the storerooms.”
“You make it sound so conspiratorial,” Dara said, amused. “It’s his job to inspect the machines at least once a day. This is expensive equipment. Imagine if he hadn’t found the broken seal.”
“I thought that was your job, Dara.” Tani wasn’t in the habit of smiling back a lot.
In fact, Carey couldn’t remember seeing her look happy even once. How long had they been working together? Almost four months? It was difficult to determine, because Tani kept to herself and her lab. One couldn’t fault her for being a professional – like Soraya had been.
Just thinking about her, about their quiet hours together studying in well-practiced harmony, made Carey’s stomach clench. She massaged the back of her neck. Why was it so hard to relax? They’d be on Mars soon. Then, she’d find out what had happened to her oldest friend. It made sense that the authorities wouldn’t reveal all the details over the comm. This was a question of respect for the dead. Soon, Carey would know, and then, she’d be able to close this chapter.
Oh, great, had she missed half the banter again? Hoping that she wouldn’t embarrass herself by throwing in a non-sequitur, she sat straight. “How does a containment seal even breach by itself?”
That certainly caught everyone’s attention.
Dara arched one of her thin, nearly black eyebrows. “Who says it was by itself?”
Tani heaved a sigh. “You security specialists and your conspiracies.”
“Not at all.” As always, Dara remained unfazed. “I was actually thinking along the lines of a botched job on Earth. Maybe the workers in question weren’t paying attention? It’s my job to ask these questions.”
“It is,” Noah said, pushed his chair back, ignored everyone’s pained expression at the metal-on-metal screech, and got to his feet. Why did tech specialists wear light blue again? Nobody even knew where the Department colors had come from anymore. He brushed some of his dark, curly hair behind his somewhat protruding ears. “And it’s my job to make sure the computers don’t stop working, which would result in a gruesome death in the depths of unforgiving space. Excuse me.”
“In space, nobody can hear your purple prose.”
Noah didn’t look back at Dara as he walked away, but he gave her the finger.
“You shouldn’t provoke him.”
Dara shrugged at Tani. “He should grow a thicker skin. Are you girls ready? Let’s get back to work.”
One more week of this, and they would be free of this sardine can.
One more week of telling herself that she was coping, and Carey would be able to enjoy Wyndham Habitat in all its glory. That would be so cool.
She and Dara headed down the oval, light-green corridor toward the specialist area.
“I can’t wait to see open skies again, daylight, a sunset.”
Carey cast Dara a glance. “Same. I would look forward to trekking the Martian countryside, but the suits are probably a whole lot worse than this rust bucket.”
“Hey, don’t insult the Empire’s finest, blazing star of the Triskelion. Something, something, gold paint.” Dara clapped a strong hand on Carey’s shoulder. “We’ll make do.”
“I know.” She didn’t, but that was okay. Better to focus on something else. Thinking about Soraya, about how they would never speak to each other again, wasn’t helpful. Goodness, Carey could feel the air getting heavier. Always felt so viscous when she thought about it, didn’t it? Air that needed to get into her lungs. Breathing. Functioning. These corridors may be painted in cheerful colors, but they were way too narrow. She told herself to quit it. Looking down at her rubber-soled shoes, she said, “What was in the container?”
“What container?” Dara nodded toward a pair of gray-clad workers who hurried past them – the first Carey had seen in over a week.
“That Rafael found unsealed. What was in that? Something valuable?”
Dara snickered again. “Depends on how you look at it: cookies.”
That caught Carey at unawares. She forgot to feel breathless. “Excuse me?”
“Cookies. There won’t be energy assigned to such frivolity on Mars for quite a while, so the Office supplied us with a crate. I suppose someone on Earth found out and helped themselves to a box or two.”
After almost colliding with a tech drone that glided past them from a side-corridor, Carey furrowed her brows. “That wouldn’t be with the engineering equipment.”
“Oh, not you, too! There’s not a grand conspiracy involving the theft of cookies and an engineering specialist who isn’t who he seems to be. I looked at his bio. He checks out. Every single specialist on this mission does. Otherwise, none of us would be here. Too much is riding on this.”
“I know, I …” Carey trailed off. The air smelled of lime and alcohol, the ship was running smoothly, and they were in this together. She could be such a moron. Anything to distract herself, right? As if she needed any help with that. “Never mind me. I just want to get to Mars. This journey is fraying my nerves.”
“We all want to be there.” Dara’s voice sounded warm. It didn’t even matter if this was just part of her training. “It’s time for the latest broadcast from home. Why don’t we watch that before getting back to work?”
Again, Carey rubbed at the back of her neck. It would be nice to sleep in a bed with a thicker mattress and fluffier pillow again. “Sounds like a plan.”
***
A stocked-to-the-gills vessel like the ISS Elena took four weeks to get from Earth to Mars when the distance between the two planets was shortest. Light emergency travel would take a fortnight. These were speeds a human brain could barely comprehend. This was one of the greatest achievements of modern technology, perfecting the ion engine to a point where highest acceleration and deceleration could be achieved almost instantaneously – well, at least compared to how travel between the planets used to be like. This made everything easier, especially if something unforeseen should happen.
The thought of plunging through space for a month was not as disturbing as standing on a different planet. Rafael wasn’t the only person who got creeped out by the prospect. Like his colleagues, he gritted his teeth and pushed through the discomfort. Too bad, so sad. He’d jumped through more hoops than anyone to get picked for his mission. For the longest time, he’d kept telling himself that once he got on the Elena, the worst would be over. Yeah. Now, he had to make peace with having to look over his shoulder for the foreseeable future.
Grace had warned him a million times. It was now sinking in.
Of course the Inquisitors Office would send an informant along with the top specialists to the prestige project of the Empire.
Obedience, success, salvation. Golden rule. These notions were hammered into everyone’s heads until the words drummed along every heartbeat. The holy trinity, as he liked to call it – symbolized in that ridiculous golden Triskelion icon – even though that was disrespectful to the expression’s original use. The philosophy permeated everything, every single thing the powers that be sold to the common people. Obedience, success, salvation. They believed in happy people, happy home. So, of course they had picked someone to keep tabs on everyone else. Who, though? Not terraforming specialist Carey Farrow, who was too airheaded for this kind of work, despite her former relationship with high-ranking Inquisitor Dominic Leary – unless she was faking it, which didn’t seem likely. Not Dara Saeli, security specialist, who had no motive. That left tech guy Noah Albrecht, biologist Tani Osei, physicist Amaya Yazdan, and Captain Nikolaus Nachtnebel.
Rafael’s money was on Tani, who was the most susceptible to blackmail, what with her domestic situation. Better be careful.
She was odd.
Wow, had he been staring at the same page of his printed book for the past fifteen minutes? Must have. It was already 18:30 hours. Suppressing the urge to sigh, because that would be childish, he closed the book and ran his thumb across the embossed lettering.
Brave New World.
It had been a bit of a joke wrapped inside a pun – just the type of thing Carla would pull. How she had gotten her hands on a copy of a printed version of this book in particular was anybody’s guess, but she had a knack for achieving the nearly impossible.
He wondered how she was now, how they all were.
They were counting on him.
After putting the book down on the nook above his bunk, he got to his feet, stretched his limbs, listened to his cracking joints. Was he getting too old for this kind of thing? He had been the best option – the single option. Absent-minded, he ran the tip of his index finger across the almost invisible scar on the outside of his left thumb. How his people back on Earth had managed to change the information on the ID chip so well that it fooled the Inquisitors Office, was a mystery to him.
Back in the day, Carla and Gianni – and hadn’t they been a certified trio infernalis? – had introduced Rafael to wonder hacker Grace, Shanta’s friend, who’d seemed overconfident but had turned out to be the real deal. Yes, she could change his identity. No, she couldn’t change it back. Yes, it would hold up to scrutiny … if he didn’t mess things up.
He didn’t plan to.
Which made the stunt he pulled in storage all the stupider. But what was he supposed to do? Pretend he hadn’t seen the seal breach? The problem was: This kind of detail went unnoticed by those who weren’t security specialists. What if he drew too much attention to himself?
Easily distracted Carey Farrow had given him some side-eye at breakfast, which may or may not be related to the incident. Surely hadn’t been because he was so pretty. The whole incident had been minor, and he hadn’t even thought about it before calling Dara, but Carey had noticed. The next morning, she had looked at him as if there were something off. Nobody else had, though that didn’t mean much.
In the tiny bathroom, he washed his face and looked himself in the polished metal mirror. Nothing had happened yet. So far, he hadn’t been found out. Best to tread lightly from now on. Too much was riding on this whole enterprise. Too much had already been lost. He thought of Carla and what they had done to her – the Inquisitors and the Justice Office, who, according to themselves, had acted with lenience and compassion.
Awesome, that. Just awesome.
Rafael could still see her shrugging before his mind’s eye, could still hear her voice in his head:
I didn’t want kids, anyway. I’m making someone else happy. They’ve got something to look forward to, now, that I never even wanted.
This was sick.
Obedience, success, salvation. The Triskelion, golden banner of a shining civilization. All hail humanity, saviors of the universe. Yeah.
Having been trained for the unexpected, he didn’t flinch as the intercom crackled.
Specialist Arena, please report to the terraforming lab.
Sure thing, boss. His work did overlap with Carey’s quite a bit, but still. He needed to watch himself. After taking a deep breath, he marched out of his cabin and headed outside.
It was a tiny thing, the lab, not meant for great discoveries but to keep the specialists occupied during the journey. They analyzed samples, data, and ran simulations. At least they were being productive.
Carey Farrow and Amaya Yazdan were there, frowning at a display of numbers on the milky computer screen. When they saw him enter the room, the former beckoned to him.
“Take a look at this.”
Standing between the two women, he squinted at the screen. “I don’t … oh. Oh, dang it. That right there?” He pointed at the runaway numbers. “Either the chlorofluorocarbon emitter is calibrated incorrectly, or there’s a bug in the simulator.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Have you talked to Noah?”
Amaya managed to make her soft features harden. Her tan face flushed darker. “He says he’s got a headache and will look into it tomorrow.”
“So, we figured, we’d rule out a mechanical problem, first.” Not all engineering work was connected to the terraforming project, but whatever overlap there was, Carey was the one in charge of it.
Rafael had zero issues with that. Still, it would be better to minimize contact with her, given the suspicious glances she’d shot him this morning. To be fair, maybe he’d misinterpreted the signs. He needed to watch his reactions. Paranoia was the first step on the path downhill. He tugged on his dark-blue uniform jacket. “I’m going to check the emitter.” Was he paranoid? His brain wasn’t screaming sabotage at the news of a possibly malfunctioning chlorofluorocarbon emitter. The Inquisitors Office might have recruited someone to root out dissention – not that they would mess up their own mission.
One could not put anything past those people.
Carey touched his elbow. “It can wait until after dinner.”
“No, no. It’ll take me less than an hour. Let me get back to you.”
“Want me to come along?”
Amaya frowned. “At least half of us need to be in the mess hall at 19:00 hours. Noah will skip dinner, and Tani will be held up until later.”
It happened all on its own, really, when Carey and Rafael exchanged a long-suffering what-can-you-do look.
She cracked a smile, tucked a wayward curl of her strawberry blond hair behind her left ear. That was something that worked in her favor, the fact that she beamed at the drop of a hat and that it never seemed forced. “Okay, Amaya. I’ll join you for dinner. I hadn’t considered the implications. Sorry.” She focused on him again. “Is that all right with you?”
“Not a problem. I’ll get this sorted out in no time.” He nodded curtly, didn’t wait for any further feedback, and marched off. If only he could contact Carla at home. No can do, though. Out here, it was him against the whole universe.
***
What Rafael liked about his pretend job was the calm and quiet. As a trained security specialist, he was used to standing around, waiting, paying attention to his surroundings. Many disliked that part of the profession. He never had. This, though? As someone who had always wanted to be an engineer, he’d lucked out. Who had the opportunity to follow a career they had not been selected for? Who managed to land the job of jobs? He was the envy of many engineers.
The storage area for his machines was more than that: During the month-long journey, the most essential components had their diagnostics systems hooked up to the terraforming lab’s computer mainframe. They couldn’t afford malfunctions once they installed these babies inside Wyndham.
As he ran his test of the two-square-meter apparatus, he lost track of time. This was the life: being in a quiet room, by himself, working with a machine that could help create an Earth-like biome. If this thing worked inside the station, they could start expanding the creation of a breathable atmosphere in larger domed areas. As focused as he was, he still heard the door to the corridor opening and steps approaching.
It was Carey, of course. “You missed your dinner slot, mate, as we all knew you would, so I came to pick you up before Amaya starts panicking.”
“Sorry.” He wiped some sweat off his brow with the back of his free hand, switched the control panel off, and stood up. “Lost track of time.”
“It happens, but I don’t want to get chewed out by Niko, should Amaya tell him we’re not conforming.”
“Yeah, yeah.” All done. His irritable answer aside, he knew she was right. Hadn’t he told himself to be more careful, to draw less attention? This was stupid.
She chinned toward the light-purple display on the machine’s interface panel. “So, is the emitter kaput?”
He straightened, stashed the diagnostic tool in his belt, crossed his arms, glanced up at her. This was one tall woman. “It’s working fine. The connection is malfunctioning, not the signal. The readings are wrong. The numbers it’s putting out are correct.”
“Glad to hear it. I’ll put Noah on it as soon as his headache’s gone … tomorrow, I hope.” She pulled the cuffs of her sleeves over her bony hands, shuffled her feet, squinted down at her shoes.
He refrained from patting her shoulder. “Great. So, can I still get fed?” As if on cue, his stomach grumbled. It made the corners of his mouth twitch. “This is an emergency.”
She returned the expression with warmth. “We can’t have that. Come on. Let’s skedaddle.”
“Safe in the knowledge that our expensive machinery shall not combust for no good reason.”
“You’ve been hanging around Noah too much. Has he used that excuse for his headaches yet?” Reddish spots appeared on her pale, freckled face. “I’m so sorry. That was evil. I have no idea why I would ever say such an ugly thing.”
This time, he did clap a hand on her shoulder. “I won’t tell anyone. Come on. I’m hungry and don’t want to get written up as a bad, schedule-ignoring boy.”
“Sure. Yeah.” She spun around like an awkward robot and led the way. If she had suspected his eye for security breaches before, that seemed to be out of her mind now.
He was safe. His mission was still on.
***
In five days, the Imperial Starship Elena would reach the orbit of Mars, their new home. Carey still had difficulty believing that she was about to work on an exoplanet, that she was part of making the most advanced station prototype a working habitat for future generations. If this thing worked out, it would outpace the terraforming efforts on Venus. At the Colonization and Terraforming Office back in Johannesburg, the specialists had a bet going: Which planet would be colonized first, Venus or Mars?
The CTO had been working on neutralizing the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus for centuries. What worked in Venus’s favor was the planet’s gravity. Unlike Mars, once the planet’s atmosphere became breathable and the temperatures bearable, there would be no need for habitats with artificial gravity. However, if Wyndham paid off, then colonization could start before the atmosphere was changed – not widespread colonization, no, but experimental. These things took time. They’d started creating an artificial magnetic field to shield Mars from radiation and solar winds, though the completion of that would take at least twenty more years. Until then, solar shades placed at the Lagrangian Point L1 between the planet and the sun would do the job. The same went for Venus.
All in all, Carey’s money was on Mars – had to be, anyway. Even with calculated setbacks, there was no reason to believe that this enterprise would fail. The Empire believed in the project, so who was she to disagree?
This was a golden age, and they all had the privilege to be alive right now.
As she took a quick shower to get ready for the night – and the cramped bath alcove was not exactly comfortable for someone of her height – she tried not to think about all the things weighing on her mind. There was Soraya’s death and how the explanation for that made zero sense. There was the issue with Noah, with whom space travel wasn’t agreeing. Everyone was starting to get worried about him except for their captain, which wasn’t great for morale. If Noah was starting to be affected by this journey, who was going to help him? It wasn’t as if they had a psychologist on board. The one person with any sort of training in that area was Niko, and Niko didn’t seem to give much of a damn. To be honest, it was a bit of a mystery how he had even got this job.
What else could she find to clutter her mind even further?
Ah, yes.
There was Dominic Jason Leary, Inquisitor, set up to become the next High Inquisitor. According to him, he was destined for great things. No, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t according to him. It was according to his boss, High Inquisitor Caleb Dane, that odd, odd man.
Before her mind’s eye, Dominic’s message kept replaying. She told herself to stop wasting mental energy on this. As she dried off and got into her standard issue jammies, she had to admit that even millions of kilometers of distance weren’t enough. She still couldn’t shake her ex.
That was mean. After all, the whole deal boiled down to a single core issue: Dominic loved her. She didn’t love him back. Yes, he’d been there throughout the course of her sickness. Yes, he hadn’t cared a lick about the physical changes she’d gone through. But was that reason enough to stay, even though he was as stifling as the walls of this ship?
Speaking of which …
… this was silly.
She stayed in her pajamas, slipped into her shoes, and headed toward the mess hall. There wouldn’t be anything to eat, but tea and water were always available.
I have great news, Carey.
Before her mind’s eye, she could see his pale, eager face, his neat ruddy hair, the shimmer of excitement in his pale-blue eyes.
The High Inquisitor has promoted me to his assistant. That means I’m set to become his successor once he marries the Heiress…and he’s sure that he will. Isn’t that great?
Great for them, sure. She nodded toward a few workers, wondering whether they noticed that her hair was an untended wet mop. In her experience, nobody cared. If the radical mastectomy didn’t attract anyone’s attention, then neither would puffy post-shower hair.
That means I would be in a position to get both of us permission.
Permission. Permission to procreate. Oh, dear. Dominic still didn’t get it, did he? Not that he wasn’t smart enough. He didn’t want to hear it. That had been one of the bigger issues, even back in the salad days when she had still felt the desire to be close to him.
She reached the mess, found Dara standing by one of the small windows, cradling a steaming mug.
Dara, competent security specialist that she was, heard Carey approaching and cast her a quick look over her shoulder. “Not tired yet?”
“Tired but restless.” Carey crossed over to the tea dispenser and got her own mug before joining her colleague. It was quiet but for the low drone of the engine. All around them, nothingness. How strange.
“Me, too. I swear, I’ll be kissing the floor once we’re inside Wyndham. All this cramped space …” She trailed off, crinkled her nose. “Not for me.”
“A sentiment I echo.” Carey sipped her tea. Nice, this. Relaxing. She was almost a planet away from Dominic and his delusions. No need to fret. No need to confront him. Comforting. “Can’t wait for this to be over.”
“It will be soon.” Dara drew in a deep breath. “It will.”
