Moral and Orbital Decay Page 10

  “Well, get Cedric out of here and don’t take your eyes off him. As soon as we get everyone to the ship and get it working—assuming someone hasn’t already—we’re off this orbiting merry-go-round.”

  “What about you?” Cedric asked.

  Carl sighed. “I’m gonna see if I can drag this poor bastard back to the ship. Hopefully, Archie was enough of a wizard that this didn’t do him in for good.”

  “I wish I could help you,” a tiny voice squeaked from the front pocket of Esper’s sweatshirt.

  “Maybe I could just—” Esper began, but Cedric laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t compound my error.”

  Right about then, Carl was willing to risk Esper just levitating the damn robot the whole way to the Mobius. But this was the worst Carl had seen magic screw with tech. Well, Ithaca was technically worse, but that was a purposeful thing, enforced by mystical obelisks or some bullshit. Cedric had gone and pitched the laws of science into a plasma recycler. Who could even tell how bad the damage had been and what might set it off anew.

  “Get outta here,” Carl ordered. “I’ve got this.”

  The two wizards wished him well and headed off for the ship. By the guards’ estimate, it was only about half a kilometer to their hangar.

  Picking up an ankle in each hand, Carl shuffled along, pulling Archie behind him like a rickshaw. “Where to, pal? Mobius, you say? That’ll be twelve hundred terras, half up front. And no, I don’t take Convocation credit.”

  # # #

  Shoni was winded by the time she reached the top of the stairs. It wasn’t fair to ask her to climb eight stories up emergency access shafts when the steps weren’t built for laaku accommodation. The human-friendly spacing between treads had been murder on her back and her cardiovascular system.

  “Who’s this?” a human woman asked when the guard—whose name was Samar—led Shoni out of the access shafts and into the station proper once more.

  “This here is Dr. Shoni of Ikuzu, Miss Saunders,” Samar replied respectfully. “Chief said she wanted an astrophysicist if we came across one.”

  “Stellar cartographer, specifically,” Shoni added.

  “Seriously?” Miss Saunders asked, raising her eyebrow fur. It was hard to tell by lamplight, but she appeared pale and thin to nearly the point of gaunt. “We had a stellar cartographer on board.”

  “Yep,” Samar replied.

  “Come right this way.”

  Shoni shrugged and followed Miss Saunders into the adjoining office. The human woman had to turn to fit through, but Shoni merely angled her shoulders to avoid soiling her shirt on the disreputable-looking door.

  “Ma’am, we have someone here claiming to be a stellar cartographer,” Miss Saunders reported to another human woman, this one wearing a business suit of human styling.

  “This isn’t the time for joking,” the station chief said icily.

  Shoni marched across the space between the outer office and the chief’s desk. “I am Dr. Shoni of Ikuzu. I can only infer from the views I’ve seen through the station’s exterior windows and overhead at the moment that your need of my professional assistance isn’t trivial. Please skip the incredulity and give me as much detail as you can.”

  “Details?” Chief Fujita scoffed. She slapped a hand down on her desk with a meaty thwack. “Every system is off line. My station is tumbling in orbit. Karafuto IV has three moons, and we could be on a collision course with any of them. I have no computers to tell me where we’re heading. I need someone to find out how long we’ve got before one of those moons crosses our path.”

  Chief Fujita’s office had an observation deck, a luxury on most occasions. Now it was Shoni’s best vantage point to view the surrounding planetary system. The station chief followed Shoni up.

  “What can you tell?” Chief Fujita asked after allowing Shoni a moment of quiet observation.

  “Well, without a computer, and with the station’s angular velocity, it’s hard to say. I will venture that it does not appear that the orbits of the three moons will be a problem for us.”

  “How can you be certain without a computer?” Chief Fujita asked, trying to follow Shoni’s skyward gaze but having obvious struggles with vertigo.

  Shoni sighed and climbed back down the steep, human-sized steps to the main level of the office. “Of course, I’ll need something low-tech to make hand calculations, as well as anything you can scrounge up. You are correct, of course. Without running detailed computer simulations, there is an uncomfortable margin of error involved here. Hopefully, once I can at least manage some better measurements than visual estimation and run those numbers through hand-scribbled equations, I can reduce that to an actionable degree of accuracy.”

  “How long will it take?” Miss Saunders asked nervously.

  Chief Fujita whirled on the woman. “What are you still doing here, Kendra? Start gathering anything that can be written on, written with, or used to make close-range celestial observations.”

  Miss Saunders stiffened. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Shoni shook her head as the chief’s assistant departed. “I’ve got to get me one of those. I haven’t had grad students in over a decade.”

  “If there was anything you were holding back in front of her, speak now,” Chief Fujita stated coldly.

  Shoni fixed the human with a puzzled look. Why would she hold back the very scientific observations she had been summoned to make? “I didn’t hold anything back.”

  “Without calculations, why would you presume to state that the moons won’t be an issue, then?” Chief Fujita demanded.

  Shoni drew herself up as tall as her laaku stature would allow. “Admittedly, this is only based on preliminary estimates and organic observation, but we will hit the atmosphere long before any of the moons will cross our path.”

  # # #

  “Oh my God!”

  Those were Amy’s first words to them as Esper and Cedric squeezed through the partially opened door to the hangar where the Mobius docked. Out in the travel ways, the overhead glass let in light from both the planet and sun. In the enclosed hangar, there was neither.

  Esper rushed forward to hug Amy but drew up short. She put a hand out in front of her toward the ship’s pilot. “Hold on.” Reaching into her pocket, Esper withdrew Rai Kub and set him down on the cargo ramp.

  Amy screamed.

  Rai Kub ducked, covering his ears.

  Esper cringed. “Easy. It’s just Rai Kub.”

  “That’s not Rai Kub,” Amy protested, pointing down at the normally huge security officer of the Mobius. “That’s like 1 percent of a Rai Kub.”

  “I was turned small,” Rai Kub explained.

  “Oh,” Amy said with incredulous sarcasm. “Is that all? Well, I’m sorry for not expecting to find someone pulling the largest sentient creature I’ve ever flown from her pocket.”

  For some reason, the mention of size flashed an image of Kubu in Esper’s mind. He hadn’t been quite as large as Rai Kub, but the comparison was apt. By now, of course, Kubu was probably much larger.

  “We’ll fix him up as soon as things get back to normal,” Esper explained. “For now, we’re hoping science decides it’s safe to come out of hiding soon.”

  “What happened out there, anyway? Where’s Carl? Where’s the rest of the crew?” Amy asked rapid fire without a pause for Esper to get a word in edgewise.

  “I am no longer being hunted at present,” Cedric explained.

  “Oh,” Amy said.

  Esper stood up from her spot by Rai Kub. Now that the stuunji seemed safe from the panic he’d inadvertently caused, Esper felt it was safe to take the hug Amy had been offering. “It’s going to be all right. Carl’s out there bringing Archie back. We found him lying inert in one of the food courts. Someone had hidden him away.”

  “I should go and—”

  “Stay,” Esper said. “He’s fine out there. Station people are rounding up mechanics. If they find you, you might get rounded up fo
r free labor.”

  “They’ve already come and gone,” Amy explained. “They took Shoni when they found out she’s a stellar cartographer. Not sure why, though.”

  “Probably because the station is spinning like a festival singer,” a tiny Rai Kub shouted up helpfully. “We could be heading for anything.”

  Amy shot an accusing look at Cedric. “What did you do to this place? We came here to give you a ride, not lay waste to a corporate mining outfit.”

  “Take it easy on him,” Esper encouraged softly.

  “No. She’s correct,” Cedric said. “I’m a hazard. Esper will need to remain close by to harden the universe against my fits of magical mayhem.”

  Amy leaned close to Esper. “Is he safe to have on board?”

  “I’ll make sure he is,” Esper assured her. She raised her voice. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”

  “Most of the ship’s dark,” Amy reported. “Half the ship’s phosphorescents aren’t even working right, so watch your step in the common room. And don’t open the fridge.”

  Esper scowled, noting the pile of Snakki Bar wrappers on the cargo ramp. “Why not?”

  “The beer is making a shrill, whining sound.”

  Esper tried not to shoot Cedric a disapproving scowl but failed. “Anything else we need to worry about?”

  “Crashing into moons?” Rai Kub suggested. “This planet we circle has moons. They were quite large if you could catch sight of them as we spin.”

  “Everything’s looking large to you right now,” Amy snarked.

  “Sooner we get you stationed somewhere safe, the better,” Esper told Cedric, finally getting him to follow her into the ship.

  Esper felt her way to the stairs, dodging crates and discarded engine parts. Most of it was stuff that had been kicking around the hold for months, so Esper knew what to expect. She took Cedric by the hand, arm, and shoulder by turns to maneuver him through the obstacle course.

  Following him up the stairs, Esper tried not to stare at Cedric’s backside. From three steps below him, however, it was hard not to.

  “I can see you, you know,” Mort snarled. Despite the murky lighting, Mort appeared as if light by those special lights holo-recording people use to chase away shadows without glare. “You need to keep that boy’s magic under control until you get him someplace nice and safe, with breathable air fresh from a tree and not a box in the wall. Focus.”

  Focus. Esper could do that.

  Cedric stopped at the common room door. Esper squeezed past, possibly not taking the widest route around the handsome young wizard. After tripping on an overturned chair and blundering into the glass wall separating the kitchen from the rest of the common room, Esper gave up and collapsed onto the couch, dragging Cedric down beside her.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “We wait,” Esper replied. “Sooner or later, we’ll either get science back, in which case once everyone gets here, we leave. Or this space station smashes against a moon and we’re dead before we know it.”

  “That wasn’t comforting.”

  “You didn’t ask to be comforted,” Esper replied. “You asked what came next. I’ve spent a lot of my short life hiding from uncomfortable truths. I’m finding it’s better, if not easier, to confront them head on.”

  In the dark, all she could see was Mort, incongruously lit by her imagination. Her last comment was addressed squarely at him.

  “Good a time as any to tell him,” Mort said. “No one else around. Nothing going on. Plus, we’re liable to all be going down the Lucifer-chute any moment, thanks to this techno-Titanic.”

  “So quiet,” Cedric remarked. “I wonder if this is how our ancient ancestors felt, cowering in their caves from a winter storm. All they could do was huddle for warmth and hope that the storm would pass before it buried the cave entrance too deeply to dig out.”

  “Can you say something to this maudlin offspring of mine, please?” Mort demanded, pacing the common room. “This isn’t a fitting way for a man to meet his end.”

  “Ever thought about how you’d die?” Esper asked. Why pander to Mort’s wishes when the man beside her was flesh and blood, and she knew far less about him.

  Cedric gave a mirthless snort. “When I was a boy, the thought never crossed my mind. I was the hero of every imagined story. I was the pirate captain, the king, the mighty heir to Merlin slaying dragons. But sometime while I was at university, I started having nightmares about it.”

  “What kind of nightmares?” Esper asked. She’d known enough men in her life to know that cracking the shell on one was rare. This unguarded moment couldn’t be allowed to pass by.

  “That my father came back,” Cedric replied. She could hear the bitterness in his voice and hoped that Mort could hear it just as clearly. “It was right after I’d declared for the Order of Gaia. Father came to my lecture hall and called me out in front of all the prospective terramancers of my year. I was a disgrace, shunning the Order of Prometheus. Which was bollocks, and I knew that when I was awake. The Order of Gaia was the Brown family legacy. It was Father who was the disgrace, not me. But that didn’t stop me from waking up screaming three nights or more a week after he burned me alive.”

  Mort came over and crouched at Cedric’s knee. “Ceddie. I never knew. I never would have hurt you.”

  Esper’s eyes misted over. She heard the stuffiness in her voice when she next spoke. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I gave you the book. I was only trying to help Mort. None of this would have happened if not for me.”

  “I need you, Esper,” Cedric said. “I don’t know how, but you’ve resisted. You’re still in control. I need to learn how to master the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts before I kill again. Next time it could be someone I care for. Possibly Carl or Amy, maybe one of the laaku. Even… you.”

  Esper drew him close, and Cedric wept on her shoulder.

  “Good Lord, boy,” Mort scolded, drawing himself to his feet. “Pull yourself together. Universe is watching. It’s a slippery slope down to Irrelevantsville. You’ve got to grab this business by the cojones and keep punching until the universe won’t dare look crossways at you.”

  Esper glared at Mort over Cedric’s shoulder, then closed her eyes and just held the one member of the Brown family who was still flesh and blood.

  # # #

  Dembe Maroun sat in his glass-walled prison cell of a lift car and watched Karafuto IV pass by over and over. Without the auto-darkening feature of the station’s exterior windows functioning, the glare from the system’s star stung his eyes. Still, shielding the glare with a hand was better than staring at the dead lift-control console.

  Clanging from above drew Dembe’s attention to the roof of the lift car. As the noises drew closer, he stood and waited. When booted feet thumped against the roof of the car, he knew that help had arrived.

  The emergency hatch in the lift car’s roof popped open. “Hey, need a hand in there?”

  “Thanks, just enjoying the scenery,” Dembe called up to Yonson. “Nah, forget that exhaust; I want outta this thing.”

  Yonson extended a hand down and pulled Dembe up. There was grunting and manly noises aplenty as each struggled in a minor show of who was putting more effort into the rescue. Dembe figured as long as he gave a good showing, he didn’t mind if Yonson held this one over his head a while.

  Some things were more important than pride. Getting the hell off that lift was one of them.

  Of course, there was still the matter of climbing up to a level with a working door, but Yonson had to have thought of that before coming down after him.

  “What’s up with the power failures?” Dembe asked. “Someone finally put the main reactor out of its misery.”

  “Don’t joke about that,” Yonson warned him gravely. “Hits a little too close to home. Some people are saying we had wizards on board. One of them fucked us all good. Everything’s down. My wrist chono, sitting beside the washroom sink in my apartment mind you, got wiped clean.”


  “What’s the repair estimate?” Dembe asked as he climbed, following Yonson up the shaft.

  “Repair? We’ve got crews working on it, but the real question is the crash estimate. Chief’s got some stellar cartographer working with her, figured out we got about six-and-a-half hours until this thing clips the atmosphere. After that, we turn into a meteorite.”

  “How long we got left of that six and a half?” Dembe asked, a sick feeling rising in his stomach, completely unrelated to the station’s dizzying spin.

  Yonson stopped, craning his neck to look down into Dembe’s eyes. “Now what did I just tell you about my chrono?” He resumed his climb, muttering about damn fool questions.

  # # #

  Marcy Dakota sat on the floor of the kitchen, eating glowing, floating shrimp because no one else seemed brave enough to try them. They didn’t light the kitchen enough to see by, anyway, and they tasted fine. The texture was exactly what she could have expected from lukewarm shrimp. The only real surprised was that as she swallowed, they fought back just a bit, trying to rise back up her throat.

  She washed them down with wine.

  Whenever the power came back, the Dancing Cricket was going to find itself running low on alcohol. Once rumors had spread of the station’s impending demise unless repairs came quick and widespread, patron and staff alike raided the restaurant’s stores.

  Bert, the new waiter, stumbled over by light of a pocket glow-rod and sat beside her. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Marcy replied.

  “You, uh…”

  “Not interested,” Marcy replied. It wasn’t as if he was the first to suggest pairing off before the station crashed. How anyone could get in the mood with doom creeping up behind them was beyond her.

  Without another word, Bert scurried off to find someone more gullible, desperate, or lonely than her.

  Marcy continued to drink straight from a bottle of Villa Catalina 2549. It was a good year. It deserved a rare fillet of Martian Angus to pair with. But, like Marcy, it was going to meet its end without a partner.

  She had considered going home. Her apartment was a half-hour’s walk away, but that was with the moving floors running. She didn’t even want to consider how long it would take under nothing but leg power. Too long. She didn’t want to die tired. She didn’t want to die at all. But if she had to go, drunk seemed the best way.