Moral and Orbital Decay Read online

  Shoni marched past the guards and resumed calling out for Roddy. She wished there were a station map functioning so she could identify the likely locations for his repair work. But one thing she did know, thanks to his constant complaints about how magic had disrupted the Mobius over the years, was that the main reactor would be last on his list of places to work on.

  # # #

  Yomin slid a computer core into the processing array. It snugged into place comfortably but gave no indication that power was connected. That wasn’t surprising since she was working by the light of a glow rod thanks to the station being entirely powerless.

  When the extent of the catastrophe had sunk in, Yomin had premonitions of suffocating. Then someone had brightened her day by pointing out that she’d freeze to death first. Still, by all accounts, those were peaceful ways to die. Not that Yomin had any degree of willingness to pass beyond the realm of chocolate and electronics, but if that’s where she was heading, the lack of major suffering along the way was the tiniest of comforts.

  Then news had come that they were going to burn up in the atmosphere. Boiling alive sounded pretty horrific.

  As Yomin pulled the next core in the array and swapped it with another from her pile of spares, she wiped tears from her eyes. How could she be grieving for Archie when she was going to follow him in a matter of a few short hours? He’d gone quickly. There hadn’t been the dread and fear of seeing doom coming and being helpless to stop it. He’d been talking one second, gone the next.

  Yomin pulled the data crystals out of the core she’d removed and tucked them in a pocket. As best she could tell, this was the station’s archival computing center. Other techs had been pressed into service at other computer stations. She was alone.

  Stealing the data crystals was a small act of rebellion against her fate. The only possible benefit would come if the station was saved. The data they contained might be useless, but it also might contain corporate secrets with some monetary value on certain secondary markets. It was a long shot to ever pay off, but so long as Yomin was stealing the crystals, she was thinking like an outlaw. She was thinking like someone who had a future with tomorrow’s date included.

  The data crystals felt wet to the touch but solid. It was a bizarre sensation. She blamed it on the magic that had pervaded the station from top to bottom. It was evidence that things weren’t heading for normal at any sort of promising rate. Wet or not, they rattled in her pocket and reminded her that she had plans for tomorrow.

  Yomin sniffed, remembering that those plans had included Archie.

  # # #

  Esper couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so exhausted of body and spirit at once. It felt peaceful, reaching the far side of denial and abstinence with a curious lack of guilt. She lay with her head pillowed on Cedric’s chest, rising and falling with each breath, hearing his heartbeat in the lull between snores.

  A thin layer of sweat cooled between the two wizards, binding them loosely together in a sticky embrace. It discouraged Esper from shifting positions. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to ruin this moment. She didn’t want to risk that Cedric didn’t feel the same sense of relief.

  Esper wanted to wake Cedric. She wanted to climb atop him and arouse him anew. She wanted that moment of bliss back before it faded. She wanted the helpless feeling of being trapped on a dying space station to fade into the helpless joy of experiencing the pinnacle of human connection as a woman, not as a headstrong and rebellious teen as she had been when she’d last committed carnal sin.

  In the end, however, the beating heart beneath her ear lulled an exhausted wizard into the warm—slightly tacky—embrace of slumber.

  # # #

  Esper awoke again immediately. Her mind was trained not to fall into the haphazard kaleidoscope of imagery that most people experienced in dreams. The kitchen table of her cottage in Esperville was as familiar a sight as anyplace in the real world. She entered the realm of her own mind, greeted by the refreshing scent of a hot cup of mint tea.

  Taking a sip, she wondered if it might be safe waking up just a little to drag Cedric in here with her. She ruled the thought out immediately. He’d know at once that Esper had more than merely read the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts. She’d been living in her own mind far too long for Esperville to look like a lark or a shoddy bit of trial and error.

  “What in the blazes are you doing here?” Mort demanded, bursting through the door of her cottage.

  “Sleeping,” Esper replied evenly. It felt nice to speak to the wizard without worrying who might overhear. “And, unless I miss my guess, at some point in the next few weeks, this place will wink out of existence. I think I might go horseback riding.”

  “What?” Mort bellowed. He stormed back and forth in Esper’s tiny kitchen. “How can you sit there? You’re the worst apprentice the galaxy’s ever seen! First, you don’t supervise an unhinged wizard on the brink of losing control of his powers. Now, you don’t even try to remedy the problem you allowed in the first place? What sort of wizard are you?”

  “The kind not making things worse than they already are,” Esper replied. “I don’t know any spell that’s going to whisk us away from whatever this planet is named. I can’t magic the tech back on—I tried, and the universe looked at me like I was speaking pig Latin. My hope is that the station comes to its senses in time. Anything I do to try to help is just going to make things worse. I’m keeping Cedric out of trouble, and that’s my contribution.”

  Esper raised an eyebrow, challenging Mort to say anything. He’d studiously avoided the events that had led to him fleeing back to the safe confines of her mind. Had she finally discovered an activity that would get him to stop surveilling her life from behind her eyes?

  Mort threw up his hands. “Being a wizard means never running out of options. It means that no matter how bleak things get, you’ve always got the next crazier thing to try. If you let me, I can get us out of this mess in a jiffy.”

  Esper slammed her teacup down on its saucer. “No. I’m done turning my life over to you. I’m not your puppet. I’m not your slave. I’m not your anything but jailer. I used to think you were my friend, but since I rescued you from the pit of hell against my better judgment, you’ve gone out of your way to prove otherwise.”

  “But, I—”

  Esper swept a hand in Mort’s direction. “Begone!”

  Mort vanished, shunted back to Mortania where he would remain for as long as Esper stayed in Esperville. Possibly forever. It wasn’t the way she’d intended things to end between them, but neither would she spend her final moments of life being badgered by the old wizard.

  Looking out her window, Esper stared at the forest grove where she’d hidden away the portal that connected her realm to Mort’s. She drew the curtain and took another sip of her tea. Even in a reality of her own making, her hand was shaking.

  “If only I could exert the same power over him while awake,” she muttered into her teacup.

  # # #

  Roddy had the housing pulled off the hand-dryer in the first washroom he’d come across. In the pale green light of his phosphorescent glow rod, it looked sinister. The blades of the blower had a vicious angle. There was a coating of rust that didn’t strike him as particularly sanitary. Still, it was the simplest device he could find that was offline.

  “C’mon, baby,” he said, giving the blower a twist with a screwdriver as he depressed the activating button. “You can do this.” He spun and pressed, spun and pressed. Button clicked. Bladed spun. Blades stopped. On the tenth try, the device whirred to life.

  “Hah!” Roddy cheered. “Still got it!”

  Seconds later, the dryer slowed to a halt. That was fine. The machine was working; it just lacked power. He’s gotten it running on its own stored capacitive charge, which had just run out.

  In his head, Roddy ran some calculations. Next in his food chain of technological advancement was probably the auto-flusher. If he could turn this washroo
m into an outpost of scientific example, he could use it to coax some of the more important systems back online. But it had taken him half an hour to get to this place and another twenty minutes or so to get a damned hand dryer working.

  The number of intermediary systems he’d have to bring online before even thinking about restarting the station’s main reactor meant that he was going to run out of time.

  “Sorry, space station,” Roddy said as he packed up the tool kit he’d been assigned. “I tried. But I’ve got a starship that might need me more than you do.”

  By the same logic as he’d used on the hand dryer, Roddy still had time to potentially get the Mobius back into working order. All the systems were packed close together, limiting his travel time. Everything had been through this restart and recovery sequence more times than he cared to count. It would be remedial science, not the laborious tutoring he’d just given the dryer.

  Roddy could either spend the time he had available on a hopeless effort to save everyone or take his last solid shot at saving everyone he cared about.

  It wasn’t even a choice.

  # # #

  Amy found Carl in the cockpit after waking from a brief nap. He was sitting with his feet up, staring out the forward windows into a darkened hangar.

  “Hey,” she said, coming up behind him and running her hands down his shirt.

  “You OK?” Carl asked. He twisted to look up at her.

  Something in those eyes, shadowed in the faint glow of the emergency phosphorescents, triggered a desperate need in the depths of Amy’s soul. She bent and kissed him.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Carl said afterward.

  “I’m invoking the end-of-the-world sex clause,” Amy stated, voice wavering.

  “Pass.”

  Amy blinked. Given a choice between sex and getting a blaster wound treated, Carl would have picked sex nine times out of ten. “What?”

  “World’s not ending,” Carl replied deadpan. He laced his fingers behind his head. “And I’m not just talking about that worthless ball of rock we’re aimed at. Gut tells me this is all gonna work out. Mobius is one tough bastard. Even if this whole station crashes and burns, I’m laying odds we’ll pull through.” He lifted a heel and tapped it on the console. “This baby’s bound to snap back to its senses any minute.”

  “So… you’re not worried at all?” Amy asked.

  “We’ve got time. We’ve got options—with wizards around, there are always options. Worried? Maybe. I’m not a damn fool. But I’m not that worried.”

  Amy took a deep breath and felt the tension ease from her shoulders. Carl was right. They weren’t doomed. If YF-77 was headed for the planet with no way to avert atmospheric contact, she should be getting precognitive flashes. Unless the same magic had overwhelmed her sense of the inevitable.

  “You’re sure?” Amy asked. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

  “Nah,” Carl said with a smirk. “But if you’re looking to feel better, I’m up for that. Just don’t hang a sign on our door that says ‘Do Not Disturb—End of World Sex In Progress.’”

  In that moment, Amy couldn’t be certain whether Carl had just twisted her back around to her original proposition just to make her feel better in the process. After all, at the end of the conversation, nothing else would have changed. But if Carl weren’t really that confident that they would get control of the ship back in time, did she really want to know?

  Amy hauled Carl out of the pilot’s chair and towed him to their quarters by the front of his shirt.

  No, she didn’t want to know.

  # # #

  Carl stalked out into the darkened common room like a king surveying his castle. He felt invigorated and had a refreshed perspective on their situation.

  “Hey, can I get everybody in here?” he called out.

  A tiny voice squeaked up from the couch. “I’m right here. Please don’t let anyone sit on me.”

  There was a delay from Esper’s quarters. Carl gave the two lovebirds time to rouse themselves from whatever tangle they’d gotten into.

  Archie sat on the couch, Carl knew, because if the robot had the power to get up and move around, he surely would have heard him by now. Barring that, Archie would have remained right where Carl had left him.

  Amy crept out of their quarters, tucking in her shirt. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”

  Carl gave her a knowing smirk that it was probably too dark to make out properly, but she’d have filled in the blanks from her imagination, he knew.

  “I’ve got some ideas,” he whispered.

  Amy’s eyeroll was audible in her voice. “Great, now I’m worried again.”

  Esper’s door opened. She emerged carrying a candle whose flame burned with unearthly blue fire. It wasn’t much, but it acted as a beacon in the darkened common room. Cedric followed her out, and Carl gave him a sly thumbs up.

  “What’s going on?” Esper asked.

  “I’ve had an epiphany,” Carl said, holding up his hands.

  “You need to be baptized?” Esper asked dryly.

  Carl snorted. “Not exactly. But I think tech’s maybe had its chance to come back on its own. Time to take matters into our own hands. I lost track of time a little, but we’ve got to be running low by now.”

  “Roddy’s not back,” Esper pointed out. “If you want the Mobius fixed first, we’ll need him.”

  Carl strode over and flicked the necklace Esper wore. Glass beads wafted an agrarian-world stink into the common room, but that was a fair trade for breathable air. “We’ve got magic life support. We can drag the cargo ramp closed on manual. I say we magic the hangar doors open and vent ourselves off this barge.”

  “We’ll still be heading for the planet,” Amy pointed out.

  Carl raised a finger. “Aha! Mort always said it was dangerous dropping to astral on the move, but we’d hardly be moving, and it still sounds less dangerous than staying on board a station that’s heading planetside. We hang out in the astral, breathing cattle-scented air freshener until Roddy gets the ship back up and running.”

  He looked around for support. Amy looked like she was on board. Archie didn’t object. Rai Kub’s action-figure-sized features were too small to get a read on him.

  “No,” Esper said. “Using that much magic would make the station’s plight even worse. We’d be holding them underwater to avoid drowning. I won’t do it.”

  Carl pointed two index fingers Cedric’s way. “Well, Ceddie-boy, time to step into the ring and put on your dad’s gloves. You owe us one for getting us into this mess. Time to pay the piper. Astral drop duty falls to you.”

  The look of guilt that etched itself on Cedric’s features was a sure sign that Carl had hooked him with that line. But before the weight of that burden could squeeze a ‘yes’ out of him, Esper stepped between Carl and Cedric.

  “I refuse to let him,” Esper said. “While there’s still hope for the people of this station, I’m not letting us sacrifice them so we can survive.”

  Carl seethed through flared nostrils. “This isn’t the time for moral mathematics. The needs of the ‘us’ outweigh the survival of the ‘them.’ Cedric here just needs to man up, accept that he did something horrible, and make it right some other day. For now, if you won’t get us safely into astral, Cedric’s gonna have to.

  “No.”

  “I would also not like to abandon everyone,” Rai Kub squeaked.

  There were times when Carl found adversaries that wouldn’t yield to logic, cajoling, lying, or threats. Usually those sort of problems got sorted out with a blaster or by sicking Mort on them. But Carl discovered for once that there was nothing he could do here. If Esper and Cedric stuck firmly together, he couldn’t make either one of them do a damn thing.

  He reached into his pockets and felt a terra coin. Was he really desperate enough to offer Esper a coin flip’s chance?

  # # #

  Carl pulled out a five-terra c
oin and held it up.

  Esper looked at the thing in disbelief. Could Carl seriously be thinking of offering her a double-or-nothing chance on a matter this grave?

  “Heads you help us,” Carl said, turning the coin to show both sides. “Tails we hang around and do what we can for the station.”

  Mort stood at Esper’s side, shaking his head. “There are times I wonder what’s wrong with that boy.”

  Reaching out and snatching the coin from Carl’s hand, Esper threw it into the dim recessed of the common room. It pinged and clattered, then rolled to a wobbly stop.

  “So, when faced with zero chance of getting your way, you offer me fifty-fifty odds of acting against my conscience?” Esper accused. “Which one of us taught elementary school mathematics?”

  Carl scowled. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Forget Carl,” Mort advised.

  Esper was with him that far.

  “Time for some real magic,” Mort continued.

  That was where the dead wizard lost her.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Esper told everyone. “I need to compose myself.”

  Without waiting for Cedric to pursue, she closed herself inside her quarters.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Science takes time,” Mort reasoned. “You let it give the old college try, but this rusty flying bathtub won’t pull itself together before it’s too late.”

  “We are not consigning every living person on this station to their deaths,” Esper said, struggling to keep from raising her voice when the wizard made no pretense of lowering his own. “End of story.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Mort said, leaning against her door and crossing his arms. “Grand feats of magic are what keep the peasants in awe of us. Save this station and every man, woman, and child aboard will remember you to their dying day as a savior.”

  Esper offered an incredulous glare. There was nothing her magic could do that would affect a station this size.

  “What?” Mort asked haughtily. “Crisis of confidence? I’ve got two plans, either of which would save this little flying ark until the storm seas of errant magic calm, and science can put its dinghies on the water once again.”