Tags
Clay, Clay among the Stars, Clay Gilbert, colonies in space, Kalkar, Natasha, Rachel, Science Fiction, space, Tasmania, Vera Santos, Vilya, Yvette
6.
The complaints were many, and a surprising number came from Beta Wing. Rojette did not feel like they were ready; Jana Bluehorse suspected someone was out to punish them; Li Zan just shook her head and looked concerned. Gamma Wing was up in arms.
“They’re punishing you?” said Tremblay. “They are punishing us!”
“I don’t get it,” said Timmis Green. “What did we do wrong?”
“I think they’re just messing with us,” said Rachel. “Trying to get in our heads.”
“Well, they’re succeeding,” said Vera Santos. She gave Clay a reproachful look.
“They’re not making us wait for our anchor freighters before we explore, are they?” asked Clay, who felt like he ought to ask something.
“No, no,” said Commander Bouvier. “No, in fact, your wings are going to have at least twenty-one days in the system before anyone else gets there. Then Gamma Wing and the anchor freighters will roll in, and maybe a week later, the colony ships.”
Clay missed the next few complaints, pushing down a wave of fear. Three weeks in a system with no known life forms. No known water, no known air. No known food. No known repair shops.
Just a lot of empty space, a couple of stars, a few planets, a lot of dust, some radiation. The whole thing didn’t seem like a great idea all of a sudden.
But he looked around, and if he didn’t look at Timmis, if he didn’t look at Vera: if he looked at his own wing, Rachel, Natasha, Su Park, if he looked at Vilya and Bluehorse and Gil Rojette and the calm, competent, conservative Li Zan—not so great in a firefight but then they were officially not expecting a firefight—he felt a lot better.
The commanders concluded the complaint session by promising to take the subject up with the brass. It was a half-hearted gesture at best, and satisfied no one, not even those making it. But Rachel and Natasha and Clay were smirking again. No matter what happened, no matter what the brass might yet decide, no matter what awaited them at 55 Cancri, forty light years from human civilization, they knew they were going on ahead.
So the training went on. Alpha Wing spent a week training intensively with Captain Kalkar and Navigator Irah Chontz and the armored freighter Tasmania. Kalkar was all right most of the time, when he wasn’t miffed about something, and Irah, which was what everyone called her, was a sweetie on the comm. Tasmania’s pilots, Ram Vindu and Emily Gray, were precise and competent. In case of disaster, the fighters, er, SCEPs, could take refuge in the Tasmania’s bay; Alpha Wing’s pilots had four little bed spaces and a common living space there, cramped but comfy. None of them intended to make any use of these accommodations.
The wings also took further opportunities to zip about the system, pushing their little craft hard enough to make a wide swing about Jupiter and get back in sixteen hours—well, more like fifteen, since they went fast enough to time dilate slightly. Maxing out at 18% of the speed of light, it was the fastest any of them had ever gone, except for Park and Vilya. It felt weird, in that it didn’t feel at all weird, though at their maximum speed, the waves of light from ahead and behind were already significantly distorted, mashing the starry scenery in ways Clay couldn’t begin to understand. Of course when they were closing on Jupiter, rounding it at a safe distance and accelerating away, they weren’t going more than a percent or two of light speed; the king of the planets stood roundly before them in all his regal glory.
The first day of March 2334 dawned, in the sense that the clocks flipped from 2334:02:28:2359 to 2334:03:01:0000. The pilots were having one last dance party, just the twelve of them in the disused observation lounge, and the mood was significantly darker than usual. Bluehorse wanted to fight someone, and had to be taken off and put to bed under threat of being traded out for one of Gamma Wing; everyone was drinking, and smoking, more than had been the accepted standard. There was a lot of messy dancing, and some rambling conversations, and other near fights, and Tremblay and Rojette were sitting together holding hands and whispering. Clay was dancing with Natasha and Rachel together, and Vera Santos happened along to watch them.
“Bathroom break,” said Rachel. “Oh, you read my mind,” said Natasha.
“My dance then,” said Vera. So she and Clay danced, to something old: presently he figured out it was the same old song about shelter being only a shot away. They danced, not well but with feeling, not happily but with their eyes locked together. Vera’s eyes: brown but looking black as night in this light. Her mouth, her tiny mouth, as far from smiling as could be. Presently they stopped. They were far around the lounge from the others, who were paying no attention: Timmis had dozed off in his chair, Li Zan was filling a pipe and handing it to Bouvier, and Park and Vilya, quite drunk, were still scrawling notes on a napkin.
“Clay,” said Vera. He turned and looked at her. He had no idea what he could safely say, so he waited for her to have the next word. “This sucks,” was what she said.
“I know it does,” he replied.
“Clay,” she said, “I don’t suppose you’ve thought of all the things that might happen.” He smiled slightly. “Of course you have,” she said. “We’ve all thought through all the possibilities.”
“Yeah,” said Clay. “There’s a lot.”
“Damn it, Clay. I should be going with you.” She looked back at the others. Rachel and Natasha were standing in the far doorway, holding themselves in place, laughing about something. “Clay,” she said, “I know you’re in good hands. God damn it! I’m sorry.”
“Vera.”
“Damn it, Clay,” said Vera. “Three stinking months. Damn it.” She hooked him with those eyes again. She reached a hand to his cheek, prickly with a thin stubble. Then their faces were coming closer, closer. Their lips met. They kissed. They kissed, they kissed. She sighed. He sighed. They kissed some more, their bodies meeting through their vac suits. He kissed her neck, and she sighed, and she kissed behind and around his ear and he sighed. Their lips met again like long lost friends. Finally just their lips parted and Vera said, “You’ll be careful.”
“Of course I will,” he said. “You won’t forget me.”
“How could I.”
It was only seven hours later that Rachel and Natasha got to meet Marie and Yvette. They made small talk of the sort only possible to people who have never met, who are about to do something momentous, and who will never meet again.
And at 1200 hours, Clay Gilbert was smiling across the space station’s bay at Vera Santos, then exchanging looks with Rachel and Natasha and Su Park, and then they were climbing into their pods, and then Alpha Wing and Beta Wing were falling out of the space station, engaging thrust and beginning acceleration away from Earth, and it would be a long, long time before Clay would be back.