Worlds Apart 02 Edenworld Read online

  “Missed a spot,” said a voice, startling him.

  He turned around to see Eliza Jane Change, the ship’s chief navigator, standing behind him. He had not heard her enter. “How long have you been here?”

  “A few seconds. We’ve just cleared the outer orbital margin.”

  “Any signs of life yet?”

  “Sensor readings are still inconclusive.”

  Matthew took off his protective goggles, revealing an unremarkably handsome face. Matthew was shorter than Eliza, with a build that filled out his FlightCore uniform pleasingly enough. Eliza Jane had a hard and willowy body, exotic eyes, and a mane of glossy black hair she wore bunched into a loose ponytail. As she moved next to him, and he felt that familiar but always surprising tingle in his belly that her proximity never failed to inspire. “Are you ready to launch?”

  “I won’t be going for a while,” he answered. “Command selected the first three landing teams, and we’re not included.”

  “Are you disappointed?” Eliza Jane Change asked.

  “Nay,” Mattherw lied, backed up by a lifetime of Republicker civility and propriety. “I flew the first mission to Meridian. Now it is someone else’s turn. Prudence and I are scheduled to fly Excursion 49.”

  “I suppose the important thing is just the opportunity to visit the planet.”

  Nay, it wasn’t, Matthew thought to himself, but he did not let it show. “I heard you were nominated to lead an Excursion Team, but you refused.”

  Eliza Jane shrugged. “As I told you before. I don’t much care for planets.” Eliza Jane had been born to the Mining Guild and had spent almost every moment of her childhood and adult life in spaceships. Matthew chewed his lower lip for a second, then forced himself to say the speech he had been rehearsing in his head for some days. “Eliza, my sister is getting married in three weeks time. I’d like it very much if you would be my guest at her wedding.”

  Eliza Jane nodded, like it was some duty assignment. “Of course.”

  Matthew had not expected her to agree, but he also had not really expected her to decline. In truth, bringing himself to ask her had been so difficult, he had never gotten to the point of considering what kind of answer to expect, and found when she did answer him, he had not heard her answer at all. “Excuse me?”

  “I said, of course, I would be happy to go with you. Are you participating in the ceremony?”

  “Nay, this ceremony is strictly civil. We had the religious ceremony on Homeguard Outpost 204 before departure,” he explained. He felt somewhat relieved at that. He had not wanted Eliza Jane to think he was inviting her to a wedding in order to put ideas into her head, even though that was exactly what he was hoping would happen.

  “I don’t understand, two ceremonies?”

  “It was the only way for our dad and Magnus’s parents to attend. Republic law requires a one-year waiting period before you can get married legally after declaring your intentions, and we launched before the year was up. So, Kayliegh and Magnus had an unofficial religious ceremony for the families, and the official ceremony will take place on the ship.”

  Eliza Jane rolled her eyes. These groundlings and their rules. “Will Eddie be invited?”

  “Uh...”

  She frowned. Eddie Roebuck was the third vertex of their odd little combo. Matthew still had not figured out if Eddie was a rival for Eliza’s affections, or if Eliza even had any affections for either of them to claim. Since departing Meridian, he had spent a large part of his off-duty time with the two of them. Eddie and Eliza seemed to have no interest in personal relationships with anyone on the ship other than each other, while Matthew kept at least a tenuous connection to the other pilots in his Wing, and mutual friends he shared with his sister Kayliegh.

  “I’ll have to ask Kayliegh,” Matthew finally answered. “It’s a family event, it’s up to her, really.”

  She looked at him with that odd half-scowl that he could never quite read. Annoyance?

  Anger? or just incomprehension.

  “There won’t be any ale,” he added.

  “So, Eddie wouldn’t enjoy himself.”

  “Probably not.”

  She nodded, apparently satisfied. “I agree. We’ll go then. I was just about to have a meal. Are you almost finished here?”

  “Almost.” He took off his goggles and gloves and stowed them in a locker on the ship’s maintenance dock.

  As she exited the hangar, it occurred to him that every time he posed a question to Eliza –

  inviting her to a wedding – which should have given him some idea of where he stood with her, she always managed to put him back at Square one. He was no closer to knowing where he stood with her than he had been when the conversation began. He wondered if and when and how this was ever going to work itself out.

  Eddie Roebucks Quarters – Deck 15, Section 60:R40

  The alarm went off in Technician Third Class Eddie Roebuck’s quarters at precisely 1400

  hours. For once, he was already awake. Today was the day. The Day!

  A few nights earlier — as he had lay in bed in his small quarters (Technician Third Class being the lowest rank in the ship’s heirarchy) munching a bag of something crunchy and salty and drinking the cheapest ale the ship had to offer, and wondering what else he would need in order to be happy — an idea had germinated. There was just one thing more he needed and this small existence, would be enough to satisfy him for the next hundred years or so of his life.

  He drew himself out of his bunk and, in his tight quarters, could reach to his clothing storage unit without taking a step. The doors slid apart displaying his three sets of work clothes and his slightly larger collection of off-duty clothes. All completely clean through the action of the built-in cleaners, and devoid of any of the scents that might recall a night spent on the recreation decks or a good spicy meal in the food court. He had disabled it at one point, but his friends had complained.

  Friends, he thought, pulling on his brown technician’s overalls. I have a few friends, I have a place to sleep, I have enough to eat. He had never thought, until a few nights ago, about how this ship had taken care of his needs in a way no one had since his mother had gestated him, and asked almost as little and return.

  He pulled on his boots. He was actually going to be early for his duty-shift. (1500-2200

  hours, with an hour break.) What a surprise that would be to the Senior Technician. He saw that today he was assigned to the aeration pods, which served as filters to the ship’s atmospheric regulators. (A new name was being sought for those, by the way, since the aliens who had ruled Meridian and killed five of Pegasus’s crew called themselves Regulators.) It would involve himself and another technician and a pair of automechs — small robots of great versatility — and a lot of standing around while the machines did the actual work. Normally, it was not a duty he would be looking forward to, but today was going to be different. He was going to report straight to the Technical Bay and secure the one thing that several nights of reflection had told him was the only thing standing between him and the contentment that had eluded ever since he signed onto this voyage. (A complete mistake, and the last time he would ever do anything just to impress a woman.) He grabbed a warm can of something containing caffeine and pulled on his jacket. He slipped outside into a corridor filled with warm afternoon light and scented with breezes from the spice orchards in the adjacent Botany Bay. There was a transport waiting at the end of his walk and it was empty. He stepped on board and asked for Technical Bay Four. Eddie BackBay Roebuck had grown up on the streets of New Halifax, a gritty industrial city in the tropical region of Sapphire’s Carpentaria continent. His father was a loser and his mother he had never really known. The Family Welfare Situation, bless their hearts, had done their best to raise him, but he readily admitted that he didn’t provide the best material. He wasn’t terribly intelligent, definitely not athletic and had not cared to improve himself in either respect. He had known other kids who had come f
rom a background like his or worse and had gone onto university or to some form of productive labor, but until his longshot selection to the Odyssey Project, his ambitions had not extended beyond an occasional job at the Aerospace Docks.

  Yet, here he was. Something like a hundred light years from home, flying among the stars in a ship even he had to admit was amazing, millions back on the home planet would have eagerly changed places with him, and, he grinned, he was still young. When Pegasus traveled through hyperspace, it left normal time behind. He’d still be in his prime when those people he used to think of as friends back home were long in their graves... unless, of course, the ship blew up or encountered a nest of Brain-Eating Space Spiders.

  He shuddered at the thought. All the more reason to take advantage of every day he had left, and all the more reason to eliminate the one true obstacle to his happiness. He exited the transport and walked the length of the maintenance corridor to Technical Bay Four.

  “Roebuck,” Growled Technician First Class Cisco, his crew chief. “You’re...” he looked at his chronometer in disbelief? “Early.”

  “Za, I am reinventing myself, as of today. Whole new Eddie Roebuck.”

  Cisco, an older man, a Republicker, with salt and pepper hair and a jowly face regarded him cautiously. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Absolutely,” Roebuck told him.

  “No more showing up late?”

  “I’ll never be late again.”

  “No more hourly hour-long break?”

  “Neg.”

  “No more disappearing to the brewery deck when the effluent processors back-up.”

  Eddie shuddered. “Never happen again, boss.”

  “No more sending MicroCams into the women’s locker rooms in the recreation decks.”

  Eddie felt a twinge. There were some things he would miss. “Neg, sir. I’m through with all of it.”

  “Really, Roebuck?” Cisco growled.

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “No reason not to believe me. I am just never going to show up late, goof off, leave early, do a half-assed job, or program the automechs to give you a wedgie ever again.”

  “So, it was you.”

  “Za, but that’s all in the past. None of it, I swear, none of it, will ever happen again.”

  “Oh, why not?”

  “Because,” Eddie smiled his most dangerous smile. “I quit.”

  Planetology and Telemetry Laboratory – Deck 64, Section 87:10

  The four probes swarmed over the largest moon of the fourth planet, two taking equatorial orbits, to taking polar orbits, circling the worldlet every forty-nine minutes. They aimed arrays of instruments at its surface; atmospheric sensors sniffed to determine the amount and concentrations of oxygen, nitrogen, argon, and methane; spectrometers looked for temperature variations from stratosphere to surface and from pole to equator; topographical mapping arrays picked out oceans, islands, continents, mountains, rivers, and plains; tiny eyes squinted hard to pick out surface details,

  The data was linked back to Pegasus by directed neutrino pulse, and fed into the ship’s primary Planetary Survey Laboratory. There were four large screens on the walls of this laboratory, and a sphere in the center, two meters in diameter and silvery. As the probes picked out details of the moon’s surface, slices of the sphere were filled in with holographic depictions of the actual view.

  Gradually, resolution filled in from one kilometer, to one-hundred meters, to one meter, and the Planetology Team began to pick out the interesting details: roadways, fields, buildings, cities.

  They had found what they were looking for.

  Chapter Two

  10 223 Equuleus II – 2, Orbital Space

  Pegasus’s skilled helmsman swung her around three different moons before orbital alignment was achieved over the planet that might have been Eden (or one of the many colonies called Eden).

  A lone Aves launched from the rear of the ship. It descended to within 100 kilometers of the moon’s surface, and dropped several dozen “floater” probes to drift across the face of the world, like milkweed, to sniff the atmosphere for dangerous microbes and allergens, to analyze wind currents and weather patterns, and to scout inobtrusively for potential landing zones. They relayed their data to Geological Survey and the Primary Planetology Laboratory. A team of specialists excitedly analyzed the new data, preparing reports for the landing teams. In the Secondary and Tertiary Labs, less senior personnel carefully analyzed and catalogued the data from probes scouting the other planets and uninhabited moons of the system. Their devotion to task was more sedate, and more noble in its own way. At one time, all of these worlds had been named and mapped by human explorers. Their task was to rebuild this knowledge. Although it was a less glamorous occupation than mapping the colony itself, it was no less important to the overall endeavor.

  Taiga Briefing Room – Deck 91, Section 85:A00

  The first Landing Team briefing was held in the Taiga Conference Room. Ninety-six officers and crew arranged themselves in the comfortable chairs surrounding a holographic sphere, whose cloudy sky appeared the color of dark, berry-flavored ale. Captain Keeler was there, as was Redfire, and all those who had been selected for the contact and exploration missions planned for the surface.

  Specialist Kayliegh Driver, Matthew Driver’s twin sister, dark brown hair in curls brushed back, showing a trim, attractive figure beneath her perfectly neat Science Core uniform, stood before a projection of the moon. “This is Eden, our next destination. Our probes have confirmed the existence of human settlements on the surface, although we have been unable to make contact from orbit. Initial assessments suggest that the inhabitants do not have the capability of communicating at our level of technology. Therefore, we will be using the Level II Surface Contact Protocol”

  “Whatever that is,” Keeler, seated in the first row, muttered to himself. Driver touched a countrol pad and the sphere representing Eden shrunk to the size of a fist and swung into orbit around a much larger orange, red, and yellow sphere. “Eden, as you are well aware, is a moon of a larger planet. We don’t know the name of it. Eden is a small world, we estimate native gravity to be only 37% of our own. Eden’s gravitational field is strong enough to pull hydrocarbons and other gases from the upper atmosphere of the larger planet. The action of solar radiation on these chemicals creates a kind of brown haze in the upper atmosphere. From the ground, the sky appears to be a kind of amber color.

  “Eden’s orbit with the larger planet is syNchronized with its rotational period, the same side of Eden always faces the planet, and the other side always faces away. Eden takes eighteen Sapphirean days to orbit its planet. If you were living on the side furthest from the planet, you would be in sunlight when you were between the planet and the sun, and in darkness when the planet was between you in the sun. You would have a 252-hour day and a 252 hour night.

  “As you might imagine, this leads to fairly severe ranges in temperature on the nightside of Eden. At the equator, the temperature will rise to in excess of 60 degrees standard at high noon and fall to -20 after midnight. These extremes in temperature variations also result in extreme weather conditions. Correspondingly, less than four per cent of Eden’s people live on the Nightside.

  “If you lived on the nearer side, the sun would rise and, three days later, it would begin to be eclipsed by the planet. It would remain eclipsed for three days. Then, it would emerge from behind the planet, and set three days later. Through the night, the eclipse cycle would reverse, although Eden’s shadow would never fully blot out the image of the planet in the sky, which itself is so bright as to keep the planet in a kind of early twilight.”

  Captain Keeler found himself imagining Pegasus orbitting Eden, Eden orbitting its gas giant, the gas giant orbiting the sun; ellipses upon elipses, waltzing through the cosmos, Eden facing her partner for all eternity.

  Eden grew back to size and replaced the image of the larger planet.

  “Atmosphere at the surface is
within tolerable ranges for temperature, pressure, and composition. We have detected thousands of small human habitations... villages from 100 to about 10,000 people inside, widely dispersed across the planet.”

  Redfire spoke up. “How many people do we suspect live on Eden at this point?”

  Driver blinked at him, as though she had been getting to that and resented the interruption in the flow of her lecture. “We can not know with precision, but based on current data our estimates would indicate a population between 150 and 220 millions.”

  “How are they organized?” Redfire asked.

  Driver referred to the detailed ground maps displayed on the four screens at the front of the room. “There’s no evidence of any infrastructure to support a planetary government. Geographically, most of the dayside... the side of Eden facing the planet ... consists of very large islands separated by shallow seas. We haven’t been able to determine whether each of these is a governmental unit, or if they are divided into multiple jurisdictions.

  “Electromagnetic signature readings from the planet suggest relatively low levels of power generation. We are probably looking at a level of technology with electric lights, perhaps some low-level cybernetics, direct wire communication. There is too much ionic charge in the upper atmosphere to permit communication by carrier wave, so communications gear will be set to neutrino pulse transmission mode.”

  “That will make it difficult to track our landing parties from space,” someone from the Technical Core observed.

  Driver nodded. “Based on our lessons learned at Meridian, we have revised the landing protocol. We decided against sending down any landing parties before Pegasus made orbit. We will not send one ship to make first contact. We will dispatch three landing parties in teams of two Aves to different landing zones on the planet. Team Alpha will be under Captain Keeler and will take the Aves Zilla and Yorick to one of the planet’s primary population centers, here on this small continent in the northern hemisphere. They will ascertain the planet’s social and governmental structure and attempt to make contact with whatever leadership exists.