E-trinity
Fishers of Hope
June Day sprinted with urgency
through the halls of the Armistice. Whenever she passed a window looking out
into space, if it wasn’t already covered, she didn’t bother looking out, but
not because of her hurry; no one did anymore. She was young, but the stars
disappearing was an old story. It was a wonder that people felt the need to
pass it down; she had certainly been curious why her parents had bothered
telling her. That in days generations-gone, the blackness of space had been
filled with endless lights of prismatic color, that humanity couldn’t count all
of the things called stars and couldn’t help but reach for them. She supposed
that times like those could come again was the sort of thing that stoked the
fires of the candlers. And made divers like her necessary for the future. She
supposed that’s why people got out of her way as she hustled along.
When she thought about the
trajectory of her life, June was warmed by the nostalgia. The first time she
had ever seen a diver, the man had been on his way to die, but no one knew that
at the time. The man had departed behind the applause and adoration of the
assembled mass, the group a minority of some several thousand making the old
freighter their home. And when he hadn’t come back alive, everyone seemed to
think it was the most natural thing in the universe. June had been perplexed by
that, too, until she had grown up, and started diving herself.
Finally, she reached the hangar and
caught sight of her crew’s ship, the Pandora. Better yet, she caught sight of
Revel.
“Slow down, child, what could be so
big a hurry?” he asked as she rushed up. Revelry Dawn was just old enough to
make it ambivalent as to whether his white hair was caused by his age or his
profession. He had strong hands though, quick and steady. At his feet were
spools of rope and climbing gear.
“Em’s in trouble,” June replied,
taking a moment to slow her breathing.
Revel sighed. “I suppose the captain should be informed. Is
it drugs or gambling?” The crew had rules, those set forth as agreeable and
sensible which most divers followed, and then ones that applied to their crew
specifically, as mandated by the captain. Most had to do with safety and
timeliness, but one applied to their pilot specifically.
“We need to hurry,” June said,
entering the ship. With the engines off, the tight corridors were dark.
However, so long as they were clear, another of their crew’s specific mandates,
June was fine. Through practice, she had developed a good sense for running
through darkness safely. Hayes stepping out of her room was an unforeseen
hazard, though.
“Watch it, pup,” the woman barked.
Hayes was around Revel’s age, and was turning away from the irascibility of her
youth into the cantankerousness of middle age. June thought for a moment to
tell the woman what was going on, but a lecture would’ve denied what might have
been precious minutes.
As usual, the doorway marked
Tomorrow was closed. As the rule demanded, June knocked, albeit urgently.
“What?” the captain asked from
inside.
“Cap, Em’s in trouble,” she said,
keeping her ear close to the door.
“Specify the trouble, June,” the
captain said.
“Five point seven, Captain,” she
said. Before her sentence was finished the door was opened. Morrow Israel,
Revel claimed, was the spitting image of his father: tall with broad shoulders
and strong features. But his eyes were his mother’s: light gray discs with
specs of brown. The captain’s eyebrows were stern. Emergencies didn’t come up
often on the Armistice, and everyone knew how the captain felt about practical
jokes.
“Where is he?” he asked.
“Chroma,” she said.
Morrow shot past her a moment
later. “Dammit. Why didn’t you just call?”
“He took my com,” she yelled at his
back, hurrying to catch up. The pilot had cleverly affected the theft before
the trouble started. She might have called the authorities, but they took care
of their own. That was a rule most followed.
Upon exit, Revel was waiting. That
left either Hayes or her to watch the ship. June glanced over at the other
woman and looked right into her stare.
“Hayes,” Morrow started.
“Got it, go save your stick
jockey,” she replied. And then they were running again. June glanced back at Hayes
once before they left the hangar. The woman didn’t approve of someone with
Emerson’s history to be their pilot. Though, she didn’t approve of much of
anything. She and Revel made a strange pair. He was a candler, and not like a
pretender, the kind of people who claimed to be, who took comfort in the
illusion of belief. Revel honestly believed that a brighter time was coming.
June had an ulterior motive in studying with him that she’d yet to admit. It
was hard work, though. To say that night was darkest before the dawn was one
thing, like her mother was fond of doing. Revel believed. And in that way,
strangely, Hayes was a nihilist. June had surmised that the lack of conflict
had a lot to do with Morrow. She hadn’t figured out yet what he was.
“Idle hands,” Revel quoted as they
went.
“I thought you didn’t believe in
the devil,” Morrow said.
“I don’t. But I do believe in
temptation.”
Color bars like Chroma were one of
the Armistice’s many distractions. It used to be a pleasure cruise ship, but
had been recommitted, and renamed. However with depression and dementia being
so widespread, many of the attractions had found new purpose. Secretly, even
June had tried the hallucinogen once, and it’d be a lie to say that it wasn’t a
pleasant experience. Looking at the paintings, playing with the colored sands,
watching the light shows, it was good not to have to focus on hoping all the
time.
When they arrived, the line of
people usually present was absent. Morrow slowed to the entrance and stopped.
Revel and June also surveyed the situation before entering.
At first glance, the only occupant
was their pilot, sitting in a chair near the back of the room, facing the door.
On closer inspection, the men Emerson had been gambling with could be seen
lying on the floor, unconscious. June had been wrong. Emerson wasn’t in
trouble; Emerson was trouble. Morrow stepped into the room finally.
“Dammit, Em,” the captain said. He
walked over, and Revel and June followed. A gash above the pilot’s right eye
was visible, along with some bruises. The men on the floor were much worse off.
“The end of the human race is that
it will eventually die of civilization,” Emerson wrote in the air as he talked.
“Rev,” the captain said. The older
man nodded, bending over to help their pilot out of his chair. As he rose, the
pilot looked down on one of the gamblers.
“No change of circumstance can
affect a defect of character.” When last she had seen the pilot, he had been
surrounded by larger men armed with clubs and other blunt weapons. She was
afraid he’d lose even more than his freedom. Time was the only thing any of
them had, and Em gambled with his. Everyone thought they were crazy, but Em was
the only one of them who truly was. When they turned around, they could see
that the doorway had been filled with the Armistice’s guards.
The constables were the only people
on the ship with guns, because they carried out the law. According to Revel,
crime hadn’t decreased so much as it had become less creative. The last things
people had were more than enough to kill for. There wasn’t enough time, or
enough space to go around.
“Captain,” the man in front said,
stepping forward and looking around.
“Commander,” Morrow replied.
“Grisly scene,” the commander said,
then he didn’t speak for a long moment. “I want you to know, as citizens of the
Armistice, we’re going to do our due diligence to get to the bottom of the
perpetrators of this madness,” he said.
“I appreciate that,” Morrow said.
Being a diver did have certain privileges but this was something June had never
heard of. But, she had come to the Armistice for a reason. Even other diver had
heard of Morrow Israel and the Pandora. The constables parted for them, and
they were almost through the door before the commander spoke suddenly.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” He tapped the
front of his head forgetfully. “I have a message from the governor. He wants to
see you. Now.” Morrow didn’t turn around, though.
“On my way,” the captain said.
“What do you think he wants?” Revel
asked when they were outside.
“How long has it been?” the captain
asked.
“Almost three months.”
“Well what do you think he wants?”
Morrow asked.
“I’ll take him back. Go see the
governor. And take June,” he said. Things were happening above her head.
Morrow sighed. “Let’s go,” he said,
and began moving off down the concourse. June
followed.
Morrow said nothing as they walked,
and from experience, neither did June. In the beginning, she had taken offense
at his reticence, until Revel had pointed out that such was just his way. The
candler had maintained that Morrow was in a unique situation, that even though
he was grown into a man, he was still sorting some childhood things out. Revel
never said, but she knew Morrow’s parents had both been divers, and they had
both died doing it. Sort of like that nameless man in her memory that flew off
one day and never came back. But the couple in question, Gospel and Felicity,
they had left behind a son. He was a legacy, which was completely unique among
those of the profession, so far as Revel or Hayes had heard. And they had been
around.
“The plan,” Revel had explained,
“was for them to retire, pay even for Morrow’s life. I was there for the dive
Gospel and Felicity made after they found out she was pregnant. They went to
the governor of the cruiser, and they asked for nine whole months.” The candler
had recounted the tale, and freely admitted his terror. A fourth member,
Thelonius, had sacrificed himself to save the rest of them. That was where
Morrow had gotten his name. Then a decade later, on a mission half as long, and
a third as dangerous, they had lost their lives. Hayes, Revel, and another
crewman named Hap had been the only survivors. Morrow had been old enough to
understand that his parents had died, and how, but not why. June had solemnly
absorbed the details, but later she had cried like she was a child again. Yet
that was the bargain. Dive work was the only work in the universe a person
could retire from.
Under normal circumstances, it was
difficult to see the governor. The man in charge was responsible for everything
on the Armistice, including resource distribution and trade schedules and
flight plans. But five minutes after setting foot on the concourse leading to
his offices, Morrow and June were standing in front of the man’s desk. He had a
huge window in his office, and he hadn’t bothered to cover it with a painting
or even a simple curtain.
“Israel,” the governor said,
stepping forward hastily. He shook hands like he was in a hurry, too. He was
short, shorter even than June, and he was bald with no plan to hide it.
“Some of your men found me, told me
you wanted to have words,” the captain said. Morrow made no move to sit.
“Yes, yes, well, you might have
noticed that I haven’t called on you in quite some time.”
“Sure,” the captain replied.
“And I want you to know, it isn’t
because I’ve been looking at a new crew. Not at all. You do good work, and not
just for us here on the Armistice. It’s important for you to know that.” Morrow
glanced down at June. “But I had to be sure. And now I,” and the governor
paused. He pulled an item from his pocket. Beams of light from corners of the
room projected and focused, bringing an image into view, hanging in the air.
The image was of a world, spinning lazily. “Now, we’re out of time.”
“What am I looking at?” Morrow
asked.
“Attalanta,” the governor replied.
He walked through the projection, making the world twist and constrict. He
showed Morrow the remote and pointed to a symbol at the bottom. June leaned in
to see. “That stands for Atlantis. It’s the corporation that designed this
projection system, and the ship around it, and so many other things. A hundred
years ago, they were pioneering communications. I’ll spare you the details, but
this was the home world for their headquarters. It would have all the archived
data from their entire company’s innovations.” A hundred years previous, or
thereabouts, was when everything went dark. Dark and cold. Ships like the
Armistice were designed to tour the space between worlds, but planet-side
systems used sunlight as part of their climate conditioning methods. The cold
snapped across unsuspecting worlds in minutes, and most of the population died
in hours. The lights had gone out in every respect.
“Stored how?” Morrow asked. “And stored
where?”
“Within a data bank,” the governor
said.
“Where?” the captain asked again.
“In a sub-basement,” came the quiet
reply. Morrow turned and began walking towards the door. June followed him. Any
place still intact was only just so; when whatever happened that made the stars
go out, it also threw everything around, like someone shaking a bag full of
rocks. Things smacked into each other, causing catastrophic structural damage,
which made crawling beneath the surface of any world the quickest way to get
dead there was.
“Please, just hear me out.”
“Not interested.”
“You don’t understand. They had a
demonstration on their centennial.”
“Don’t care.”
“They beamed Xenabytes of
information from Earth, hundreds of them. All of that information, thought
lost.”
“You have a good day, governor.”
“I offer eternity!” The door to the
office swished open but Morrow did not step through. June, stopped a hair
short, could hear the captain breathing; she could hear him thinking. “Liberty
for you and your crew, for the rest of your lives. That’s my offer, Israel.”
The door swished shut in the captain’s face, but neither did he turn. June
suspected she knew what the others would say. At least, she knew what her
opinion was. They endangered themselves with every dive. So one dive for the
rest of their lives made sense. Perfect, crazy sense. Slowly, the captain
turned.
“Eternity.”
“Yes.”
“For some data,” Morrow said.
“For the data,” and the governor
pressed another button. “This building here,” and a little yellow dot glowed
brightly on the surface of the planet. “Is where you’ll need to go. The files
are stored in a sub-basement beneath it.” The image zoomed in on the blinking
dot, which turned out to be a titanic structure. It looked like a space
station, but set into the ground. June had seen their like before, but never
upright. Like everyone else she knew or had ever heard of, she was born on a
ship hurtling through black space. The
governor used his hands to form the corners of a rectangular shape. “They used
data plates, fed into the computer. They shouldn’t be too heavy. Simply remove them
and bring them back.”
“For data,” Morrow repeated.
“For knowledge, captain,” the
governor corrected. “With all the lost data, we can make things we trade for
now, repair ships thought derelict, or even build new ones. We can stop
guessing at why all this happened. Wouldn’t you want to know, if you could?” It
was an urgent enough appeal.
Morrow Israel said nothing, nor did
he move an inch. “And you’re telling me now because,” he said.
“The window is closing.” Another
gesture from the governor caused the image to zoom out again. “A moon is
coming.” The projection shrank until the moon striking the planet looked more
like two stones smashing together. Neither was round afterwards. “We’ve got
less than two days,” the governor said. Casually, the captain turned around
again, and this time when the door opened, he did step through. “Didn’t you
hear me? Two days!” the governor said with June rushing after Morrow.
“Then you’ll have my answer before
tomorrow won’t you?” the captain replied. He never turned back around.
Later, the captain put it on the
table for the crew to decide, and he laid it out just like the governor said:
half a day to decide to commit to the dive to end all dives.
“I say yes,” Revel spoke up first.
“I’m in, too.” June was right
behind.
Hayes made a dismissive noise with
her mouth. “Why the hell not,” she said a moment later.
“It is not length of life, but
depth of life,” Emerson agreed. All eyes turned to Morrow.
“It’s underground,” he mentioned
again.
“Which will mean rope and climbing
gear,” Revel said.
“And cave-ins,” Hayes added.
“Into a high-security facility,”
the captain repeated himself.
“It’s been over a century with no
power,” Revel countered.
“And we can’t map it before hand,
either,” Hayes said. June had to be told about the building metrics of some
facilities that repelled the tech of their mapping tools, which let them scan
through certain materials.
“For a chance to make better the
lives of not only ourselves, but everyone else who is, and might be,” Revel
said.
June kept her face straight, but she
was in awe, in a way that she never was whenever her mother spoke of belief.
“If you could know why all this
happened, would you want to?” Morrow asked Revel the governor’s question.
The older man smiled. “You forget
that I already do,” was his reply.
Hayes farted. But she had nothing
else to say. And that decided it.
June Day smiled widely.
Within the hour, the governor had
the answer he wanted, and the rest of his information concerning the facility
was downloaded to the Pandora’s computers. The governor had been scrounging up
information for years, and from everywhere he could find. It turned out that
the Armistice had been heading in the last known location of Attalanta for
decades. The man was thorough, which made him easier to work for. He had a
brief recording of a man in a long white jacket talking proudly about the
company’s achievement, gesturing at a tall bank of storage cubes with blinking
lights on the front. They watched the recording several times and committed the
size and shape of the thing to memory.
As Emerson began ramping up the
systems, June and Revel did a walk-around of the ship, checking for any
malfunctioning or damaged parts. She caught sight of a small boy watching from
the mouth of the hangar. The child waved. June waved back. She and Revel tested
their coms: they informed the pilot that there was nothing wrong that they
could see, and he in turn told them all systems were level. They embarked.
In the front glass, their view of
the hangar was pushed sideways by an all-consuming blackness. As they left the
Armistice, space looked like a mouth swallowing the ship whole.
“You sure he isn’t on anything?” Hayes
asked, sitting in her seat with her legs crossed.
“He’s fine,” Morrow said.
“I can hear you,” the pilot
replied, but didn’t turn his head.
“Good, then fly the damn ship,” the
captain said.
Emerson didn’t take his hands off
the wheel, nor did he rebut.
Out in the black, what the ship saw
was very different than what they could spy with naked eyes. Attalanta was a
smaller world, only slightly larger than a moon. At the behest of its pilot,
the Pandora began her approach. Once, Emerson had described to June how
re-entry worked. She was new and he wanted it known how difficult his job was.
Diver pilots had a stigma for being glorified getaway drivers.
“In skating over thin ice, our
safety is our speed,” the pilot had said.
They approached the facility from
the opposite side of the planet, skimming along almost parallel to the planet’s
surface. They traveled a thousand miles laterally to sink a few thousand feet
vertically.
They glided over the facility,
spotlights and three-dimensional optics revealing the dimensions and textures
of the terrain below. Morrow sat forward in his chair, instructing. They’d
survey the situation, and if it looked impassable, they’d ditch. The Pandora’s
lights illuminated the caved-in facility, a far cry from the upstanding
structure June had seen in the governor’s office. The very top was sticking up
at an angle, like it had fallen over, but the lower levels looked impacts like
they had collapsed under some immense weight.
“So how many tons of rock would you
say that is?” Hayes asked.
“Spiral out,” Morrow ordered, and
slowly, they made an expanding, circular route until they found huge chunks of
rock sticking up out of the ground, creating sloped pits in the terrain.
Anticipating the next order, Emerson tipped the Pandora’s nose down, trying to
adjust the angle from which the instruments could read.
But the pilot shook his head. It
was the next to the last moment when ditching was a likelihood. Morrow thought
carefully and quietly. Then he gave the order to suit up.
One room of the ship was dedicated
to the storage and protection of the most valuable equipment in the crew’s
arsenal. There were breech keys and explosives and geo-mappers and pry-kits,
but more valuable than them all were the suits that made diving possible at
all. A long time ago, someone had had the idea to go harvesting through the
darkness for supplies. Suits had already been made to for space walks, but they
were bulky, and not nearly durable enough. So, people contrived better ones.
Before syncing, they all looked like they were wearing a larger person’s clothes,
but with the twist of an actuator, the suits became snug. After gathering the
rest of the basic equipment, everyone had their own personal additions.
Morrow’s was his father’s multi-tool, a handheld device that had a variety of
uses that the captain used for everything from opening locks to propping open
doors. Hayes liked to carry extra rope. June had drawing chalk from when she
was a child, a gift from her father; it was a keepsake that turned out to be
useful. Revel’s was a cylindrical canister that bent fingers could just
narrowly encircle. She’d never seen one used, but he called it starlight. The
candler carried it close to his heart, in a pocket attachment magnetized to his
suit.
With a last word from Emerson, who
had picked his landing spot, they exited through an airlock. For speed, they
all went out at the same time, bunched tightly. Predictably, Revel put his arms
around all of them.
“I love you all,” he said.
“Permission to leave him here,” Hayes
said.
Morrow said nothing. When the other
side of the lock opened, slicing cold reached out and coated their suits in
ice. The suits needed to be made more durable because a rip or a tear would
mean instant death. Morrow lead them over to the hole in the ground, following
the nether end of his helmet light. He knelt, and everyone looked over his
shoulder, down into the pit. He pointed a wrist, and a metric on his arm told
him how far it was down. He stood and looked towards the facility.
“I’ll wager the lower levels are
wider than the upper ones,” he said.
“Agreed.”
“Hayes, anchor,” Morrow said.
Quickly, she began un-spooling her rope while Revel secured climbing screws
into the ground. In minutes, Morrow was walking down the wall, his secondary
light source pointed down. He went alone. And when he reached the bottom, he
knelt again, pointing with his wrist.
“Good
news?” Hayes asked.
“Three
hundred meters,” the captain said.
His voice was clear and sharp
through the coms. June sidestepped so she had a clear view of the complex and
pointed her geo-mapper.
“Call it
three-fifty,” she said.
“Good. It’s
clear. Going to have to crawl, though.”
“Oh, joy.” Hayes
stayed as anchor and June and Revel went down second, and then third. The older
woman descended last, confidently but not quickly. At the bottom, they all saw
what Morrow meant. Without complaint, Hayes dropped to her stomach and scurried
through the narrow space right after the captain, followed by June and then
Revel. The crawling was extremely slow going, requiring them to occasionally
push themselves up and walk-crawl forward, or drop completely flat and drag
themselves forward with their arms. The path had to be cleared of anything that
could potentially tear at their suits, and the ceiling had to be carefully observed
lest some foreign snag hook them in place. June concentrated on her breathing
and the bottoms of Hayes’ boots. She’d heard stories of people who discovered
their dislike of confined spaces in the middle of a dive.
Three
hundred meters later, with everyone’s breathing crowding the coms, they
stopped, having reached their destination.
“I don’t
suppose there’s a welcome mat,” Hayes said.
“Just a
wall,” the captain replied, pausing. “And it’s confirmed: the mapper isn’t
breaking through.”
Hayes’ feet
shuffled about in June’s vision, annoyed. It was something to focus on, but not
moving gave everything a desperate finality. June’s elbow scraped against the
ceiling. Revel’s hand on her boot calmed her.
“Blast it
is. Breecher should do,” Morrow said.
Revel moved first, slowly and
carefully, but stayed close enough to help guide June and she in turn to help
guide Hayes as they all moved backwards for safety. Up ahead, Morrow was
removing the long cylinder each of them carried on their backs. The breech key
had a pump action slider, which primed a violent pulse that, at close ranges,
could blow through stone and metal. Supposedly, it could be used safely up to
five primings, but none of them had ever gone past three.
“We’re
set,” Hayes reported, after which Morrow began counting down. After the captain
got to one, there was an explosion up ahead followed by dust and debris
sweeping over all of them. June couldn’t see but reached out hurriedly for Hayes’
boot in case something happened. With her other hand, she pushed against the
floor of the tight space to make sure she wasn’t moving. “Captain?” Hayes
asked. “Iz,” she said after a moment with greater urgency.
“Clear,”
the captain said finally. “This building is messing with my com. Em?”
“Present,”
the pilot said.
“We might
go silent here in a few minutes. How’s the window?”
“Eighteen
hours until impact,” Emerson replied.
“Alright,
give me a mark for nine,” Morrow said. They all put hands to wrists. “Mark,”
and the timer was set. June crawled after Hayes who began moving again.
Sure
enough, when they went through the hole, there was static from Emerson’s part
of communications. Everyone checked their gear, then rechecked. Looking around,
they seemed to have burst through into a long-stretching corridor. Their helmet
lights flashed off into the darkness. Morrow gestured with a wrist, as did they
all. They counted out measurements and distances.
“Thoughts,
Rev?” the captain asked.
The older man flashed his light one
way, and then the other. “This way,” he said confidently, and began walking
off.
Morrow followed without question,
with June and Hayes directly behind. They moved with knees bent, one hand out
touching the wall they had entered through. The crunch of ice was different
than masonry crumbling, and they all listened close.
At the
sound of the first, enormous groan, they all froze in place. It was above their
heads, a deep dirge passing through the complex. They turned their lights to
follow it, and occasionally a bit of dust interrupted the light rays.
“Braces are
failing,” Hayes whispered to no one.
“It must
have been much warmer in here before,” Revel said.
“Yeah,
let’s move it along,” the captain nudged Revel in the shoulder gently. At each room,
they inspected the space quickly, marking it for damage and potential hazards.
At every turn, they put markers on their mappers, and June left a symbol in
chalk. They worked cautiously, always with one eye on the timer. Eventually,
after hours of such, they had a feel for the place, how the designers intended
for it to be used. Their ancestors had built expansively and grandly. It wasn’t
wasteful for a hallway to stretch on seemingly forever, or for a room to only
contain one thing, resulting with a glut of extra volume. They followed routes
such as these if they were looking for general supplies. But they were looking
for something specific this time, so they’d have to seek out the central
section, the place the sub basement was constructed for. They ran their suits
cold to conserve energy, but June was feeling sweat on her forehead.
Staring
down an elevator shaft, the second groan came crashing down on them from above,
augmented by the hollow backbone of the complex.
“Well, if
we’re on three,” the captain said, looking at the large number painted onto the
wall, then glancing at the display on his wrist, “and it’s ten meters down,
seems like we need to go down,” he reasoned. Revel agreed, and Hayes had no
objections. Without enough rope, they had to use the dangling cables in the
middle of the shaft. Hayes went first, reaching out and inspecting the coiled
material in her gloved hands. She swung out into the middle of the shaft and
hung there for a moment, waiting for disaster. When it didn’t come, she slid
down.
“Clear,”
she said through the com.
“Age before
beauty,” Morrow said to Revel.
“Too kind,”
the older man said, swinging onto the cable and down. When he was about
halfway, something snapped high above their heads. Morrow instantly focused his
helmet light up.
“Move Rev!”
he yelled. Curious, June looked up, too, and it was only the captain snatching
her backwards that prevented the lift from decapitating her. Standing a meter
from the open doorway, she and Morrow watched cracks begin to develop in the
floor and walls following the crashing impact. “Rev,” Morrow said.
“We’re
fine,” Hayes said through the com. “But he used up the rest of his extra lives
for that one.” She sounded a little worried, and Revel was grunting and
breathing heavily.
“Okay,
we’ll be down in,” Morrow began.
“No,” Revel
interrupted him. “We’re already down here,” and he paused to inhale sharply.
“We’ll get the data, my boy. Just,” and again, “just check the exit.” The
captain’s face was emotionless.
“Check,” he
said after a moment, and began walking back the way they had come. June put an
arm up, but didn’t impede him with it, then followed. Hayes reminded them of a
room that they had seen previously, where the floor was tilted downward,
forming a ramp on the one beneath it, but Morrow was already there, inspecting
it again. As a secondary exit, it served their purposes. “Your go,” he said to
June.
She went flat against the floor and
inched backwards off the ledge, then let herself hang by the arms, then dangle
by the fingers. She inspected the landing beneath her then let go. Looking
around, the room seemed to be identical in size and purpose, except with all
the contents of the one above it lying about in chaotic piles.
“Clear,”
June said.
Morrow landed evenly and inspected
the closed door to the room. The captain waited while June removed her breecher
and primed it. After the blast, Morrow stepped past her and examined the
hallway beyond, then moved forward. Together, they traced a path that Hayes and
Revel were taking directly below them. It was slow, and there was no sound
except for Revel’s haggard breathing. At each turn, Morrow marked on his mapper
and June used her chalk. They blasted through double doors into a room with a
metal floor sectioned off with deliberate squares.
“We’re
here,” Hayes said.
The captain stomped with his foot. “Can
you reach the ceiling?” he asked.
“Maybe,
why?”
“I don’t
know if we can blast through just from our side.”
“The floor
is reinforced,” June offered.
Revel inhaled sharply again.
“Okay. I’ll
rig something up. Stand by.” Hayes said.
Morrow went to work on the floor
with his father’s multi-tool. June helped map out the dimensions of the shape
charge they would use. It need only be about as big around as a person, to
maximize the efficacy of the explosives. Almost as rare as Revel’s starlight,
the stuff was highly functional in sub zero environments, which meant it was
decently useful in the conditions they worked in. They guesstimated at the
general placement. Hayes announced that she was drawing a box with an X in the
center.
“Same
here,” Morrow lied. What he drew, Revel’s breathing in their ears, was a circle
with the symbol of the candlers in the middle: it could be mistaken for a lower
case I, but was actually a candle with a diamond-shaped flame. “Done,” he said.
“Done,”
Hayes called.
“You call
it,” Morrow said, standing next to June around the corner from their doorway.
“Alright, I
got the data plates,” Hayes said.
“Plural?”
Morrow asked. “How many?”
Hayes began the countdown rather
than answer. The hole was smaller than they would’ve liked, but it did blow
clear through. The silence that followed was quickly filled by the third moan.
Something above their floors rumbled and crashed. Morrow slid to the hole and
stared down.
“Time to
go,” he said. And stopped. Revel was sitting against the doorway of the room
below, with his legs extended. One boot was mangled, like it had been crushed
and twisted. June looked over Morrow’s shoulder, down at the fallen candler.
Hayes was standing near the man over a pile of data plates at her feet. They
looked heavy and in the double digits. And the sounds above their heads weren’t
stopping.
“I can rig
up a way to,” Hayes began, but Morrow interrupted her.
He pitched himself forward, rolling
into the hole and down. He landed easily, inspecting the situation. “You go up
first,” he said, snatching at the rigging the woman already had set up.
“But,”
“Move.
Now,” the captain ordered. The older woman said nothing else, but moved with
dispatch, first arranging a bundle for the plates. June waited for the bundle
while she eavesdropped.
“Is this
the part where you save me, Iz?” Revel asked. The captain was crouched over the
older man, inspecting his leg. Morrow didn’t say anything for a moment. June
took hold of a voluminous stack of data plates bound with rope.
“No, you
lazy bastard. I’m just here to help you up, now rise,” he said, putting a hand
out. Revel grabbed onto it and lifted himself onto his good leg.
“I’m sorry
I had to be the one to tell you they had been lost,” the man said. “We drew
straws, you know, Hayes, me, and Happy. I was fine to do it, but we had to draw
straws. It was the righteous thing, Hap said.” June sent the rope back down,
then she heard the ceiling crack above her.
“Guys,” she
said, unsurprised that her voice was uneven.
Morrow snatched the rope from
Hayes’ hands and threw it to Revel.
“Harness
yourself with that,” he said, and put his hands flat against his thigh,
gesturing at the older woman. “Come on, granny.”
Hayes snarled, running at him, and
shoved herself off of his pushing hands. June bent down and grabbed the woman’s
forearms and yanked. Revel was tying and knotting as Hayes lifted herself out
of the hole. June pitched backwards, onto her back, watching the cracks above
their heads pour thick streams of dust into their light. Morrow grunted into
the com, and June sat up, looking down into the hole. He had knocked over one
of the servers. Their captain stood on top of the machine with bent knees, then
exploded upward, just narrowly catching the lip with one hand. Angrily, he
pulled himself up, and then rolled out of the way.
“Last
chance to leave me,” Revel said, limping into view. Hayes reached a hand out to
receive the thrown rope.
“You don’t
get out that easy,” she said. June grabbed some of the rope too, as did Morrow.
They all tugged. Somewhere in the midst of the frenzy and pulling, the ceiling
caved in. June was on her back, a weight on top of her. She feared it might be
something else until it rolled itself off.
“June
here,” she started the chain.
“Hayes,”
the older woman said as she helped the young woman to her feet. Dust obscured
everything.
“Morrow,”
the captain said, walking out of the cloud, with a body thrown over his
shoulder.
“Revel” the
older man said, tired.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Hayes
suggested.
Morrow, silent and exhausted, spun
slowly, kicking things out of his way. A stone rolled sideways to reveal a data
plate. The cave in had created a bowl out of the facility, the braces bearing
the most weight failing first. Carefully, Hayes and June extracted what they
could.
Getting out proved to be just as
slow and arduous as getting in. They had to stop at points and retrace their
steps or let Morrow and Revel rest. Eventually, they made it top side again,
and by the time they got back into the airlock, they had transgressed their
nine-hour time limit by another three. Emerson hit the jets and they skimmed out
of Attalanta’s atmosphere.
“Full crew
with cargo on board,” Emerson announced to the bridge as they approached the
opening hangar doors. The pilot closed the channel, and turned in his chair,
this time removing his hands from the controls as he looked into their tired
faces.
“Peace has its victories, too, but it takes brave men and
women to win them,” he said. Revel
used the last of his strength to lift a data plate more fully into his lap,
then he wiped gently at the filth and grime. He smiled at whatever he saw
underneath.
“It is
better to light a candle then to curse the darkness,” he agreed.
They disembarked, bruised and
weary. Revel was on crutches, bound for the infirmary. Morrow had a case for
the data plates they recovered to prevent any more damage coming to them. There
were four in all, almost half the ones Hayes had pulled from the computer. He
walked slowly beside his friend. From the door of the Pandora, June could see
some people that had gathered. June made sure that the little boy from before
saw that she had come back.
As the
story went, the plates were good enough, satisfying the governor’s wildest
dreams. Some of the data was spotty because of the damage, but it would still
take more time then anyone had to even muddle through everything that was on
them. Anyone but the crew of the Pandora. They had forever.
And long
before that, the tiny ship was shooting through space again. June had been
ambivalent at first, until she figured out the answer to the riddle of what
Morrow Israel was, if not a candler, and not a pretender, and not a nihilist.
The man named Tomorrow was a diver.
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