Brothers in Exile_Sons of the Starfarers Page 4

“Of course, of course,” he said absent-mindedly. “Not that these asteroid miners are likely to give you any trouble. Most of them are just boys pretending to be men.”

  “Kinda like me, huh?” said Aaron, looking intently at Isaac with a tipsy smile. “Isn’t that right, Isaac? Isn’t that what you think of me?”

  Definitely the leash next time, Isaac thought as he glared right back.

  * * * * *

  They passed a surprising number of drunks on the way back to the Medea. According to Mathusael, two major asteroid hauls had just come in, so the station was a bit rowdier than usual. The upside was that Aaron fit right in, allowing them to get back without making too much of a scene.

  “So I went into that room,” Aaron told Mathusael, swaying a little as he walked. “And that’s when I saw her. The most gorgeous girl I think I’ve ever—”

  “That’s enough,” said Isaac. He palmed open the door to the offloading bay and ushered them in.

  The bay was fairly spacious, with a large magnetic claw hanging from the ceiling and an opening about four square meters in the floor for the loading platform. Since they were docked, the platform was raised. They’d unloaded most of their cargo already, which stood against the walls in large blue crates. A series of caged lights along the ceiling provided illumination.

  “So anyway,” said Aaron, steadying himself on the railing as they stepped down onto the loading platform. “I walked into this room, see, and I found this cryotank with the girl in it. Thought she was a ghost at first—freaked me the hell out. Isaac came running, of course, and he was just as shocked as I was.”

  “Well, not quite,” said Isaac as he activated the lift. The platform groaned as it began to descend through the freight airlock back into the cargo hold of the Medea.

  “Oh, don’t you try to deny it. He was all ‘we shouldn’t take her, we shouldn’t get involved,’ and I was all ‘what, you want to let the slavers get to her?’”

  “Too many slavers in these parts,” Mathusael muttered. He sighed and shook his head, while above them, the bay doors slowly shut. “I wish I could say Esperanzia was free of them, but the system is still too lawless.”

  “Well, we aren’t selling her,” said Isaac, “and I’ll be damned before we do.”

  Mathusael nodded in approval. “Good. I’m glad you boys still have some moral sense about you. Far too many starfarers lose sight of what’s right and wrong out there.”

  “Yeah, well, if Isaac ever tries something, he’ll know that I can see him, and if I ever try something, I know that he’ll kick me off the ship.”

  That isn’t true, Isaac wanted to say. Since Aaron was still a bit tipsy, though, there wasn’t any sense in arguing. Besides, he didn’t want to start another argument when they were with Mathusael.

  The groan of the machinery dropped in pitch, and the platform gradually came to a stop in the center of the Medea’s hold. Isaac stepped around the rails onto the crisscrossed metal grating of the floor. Aaron stepped down next, almost losing his balance but recovering quickly. Mathusael followed close behind them.

  “Here she is,” said Isaac, leading him to a small alcove in the corner. He pulled back an EVA tarp made of reflective foil that they’d used to shield her from cosmic rays and let Mathusael take a closer look.

  “Interesting,” Mathusael muttered, stroking his chin as he peered in at the girl. Isaac did as well, just to make sure that she was all right. They didn’t have access to the cargo hold from the living quarters of the ship, so this was his first time looking at her since Nova Alnilam. In the bright light of the cargo hold, the dark henna tattoos accentuated her every feminine curve. Isaac caught himself staring and quickly looked away.

  “Stars, she’s practically a goddess,” said Aaron. “And those tattoos—what do you think they mean?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” Mathusael said absentmindedly as he crouched to examine the cryotank. He ran his hand over it, fingering the crude rivets and weld joints. “Is there a control panel here somewhere?”

  “Not that we could find,” said Isaac. “What do you think?”

  “It looks pretty crude, but seems functional enough. From what I can tell, the girl is frozen in perfect stasis.”

  “How can you tell?” Aaron asked.

  Mathusael rose up and pointed at the glass. “The uniform color of her skin, mostly. If the tank had failed, she’d be breaking out in splotches as parts of her body warmed up more than others. Also, the inside of the glass hasn’t fogged up: that’s usually the first indication of a breach.”

  Isaac peered through the glass at the girl. She looked so peaceful, with her eyes closed and her hair flowing smoothly around her shoulders. Even though she was naked, she didn’t seem uncomfortable or self-conscious about it at all. In fact, she seemed to radiate an air of confidence that defied the fact that she was powerless and exposed. He’d missed that subtle nuance at Alnilam Station.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” said Mathusael.

  Isaac blinked. “What?”

  “This down here. See the grooves around the front of the tank?”

  Isaac and Aaron both peered where Mathusael was pointing. At the front part of the tank, near the girl’s head, a circular channel was inlaid just around the lip. Circular holes about two fingers wide were spaced at periodic intervals just on the inside of the channel. Aaron poked at one, but he couldn’t get in any further than his first finger joint.

  “Yeah,” he said. “What about ‘em?”

  “Those grooves are for transferring the subject to a mass thawing unit. This tank is built to Gaian specifications.”

  “What are you talking about? We found her in the Far Outworlds.”

  “I know,” said Mathusael. “And obviously, the tank itself wasn’t made by the Imperials; otherwise the quality of the engineering would be much better. But most of the Outworlds still uses Gaian Imperial standards, especially the older colonies. People have been coming out here in standard Gaian cryotanks for hundreds of years.”

  “So what does this mean?” Isaac asked.

  Mathusael stroked his chin. “Well, it means a couple of things. The people who froze her probably had the knowledge to build a fully autonomous cryotank, but lacked the tools or resources to build one. Instead, they took what they knew about Gaian design and built a tank that would be compatible, figuring that whoever found her would have access to more equipment than they did.”

  “What kind of equipment?” asked Aaron. “Can’t we just thaw her ourselves?”

  “The way this cryotank is designed, probably not. This is just a holding tank, to keep her in stasis until another machine can thaw her.”

  Interesting.

  “What sort of machine do we need for that?” Isaac asked.

  “A mass cryothaw device. You can find them on most Imperial military transports, as well as some of the larger civilian craft. Having a separate machine for freezing and thawing makes it more efficient to handle, say, a thousand people at a go. Here in the Outworlds, we don’t typically do that, but back in the Coreward Stars, they have much larger populations to manage.”

  “How did they freeze her, then? Do you think they had a cryothaw device on the station?”

  “I doubt it. Freezing is easy, thawing is the hard part. My guess is that they put all their energy into building a device that would freeze the girl and put her into stasis, and left the thawing to someone else.”

  “So where do we go to thaw her?” Aaron asked.

  “That’s just the thing,” said Mathusael, folding his arms. “You’ll have to find someone who has one, probably in the Coreward Stars—that, or find a Gaian battle cruiser with a friendly captain. Good luck with that.”

  Aaron’s face fell, and Isaac scrunched his eyebrows in thought. “Are you sure? We found her in the Far Outworlds—surely they wouldn’t have put her into something that we have no way of getting her out.”

  “They didn’t have much of a choice. You can’t transfer a
person in a tank like that without a very specific machine that no one in the Outworlds has.”

  “No one?” said Aaron. “Come on. I don’t believe that.”

  “The New Pleiades,” said Isaac, his heart skipping a beat. “Weren’t they originally settled by huge Gaian colony ships? I heard that some of them carried more than a thousand people, most of them frozen in cryo.”

  Mathusael shrugged. “Maybe. It’s been a few generations, but you might still find some of the equipment from those old colony missions. If you do, chances are good that it’ll still be in working condition. The Gaians generally build that stuff to last.”

  “We’ve got to do it, then,” said Aaron, practically radiating with excitement. “We’ve got to find one of those machines.”

  “If we can, that is,” said Isaac. “If we can’t, well, maybe we can find someone who—”

  “No way,” said his brother, his face suddenly grave. “We’re the ones who found her, and we’ve got to be the ones who rescue her. Do you know anybody at the New Pleiades you’d trust with this girl? Yeah, neither do I.”

  Isaac frowned. If it turns out we can’t help her, then there’s no sense holding onto her. Saying that aloud would only bait his brother into another fight, though.

  “So there isn’t a mass cryothaw device anywhere in Esperanzia?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Mathusael. “The New Pleiades are probably your best shot.”

  “Then let’s go,” said Aaron, perking up again. “What are we waiting for?”

  I just know we’re going to get a couple light-years out of Esperanzia only for you to wish we were back.

  “First things first,” said Isaac. “We’ve got to sell our cargo and pick up a new load. Do you have any idea what sorts of goods the Pleiadians deal in?”

  Mathusael shrugged. “Beats me. I’ve never been there, but there’s plenty of other starfarers at Alahambara who have. Strike up a conversation, buy someone a drink, and I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

  “Yeah!” said Aaron. “You finish up with the ship, and I’ll go hang out in the cantina and see what I can find.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Mathusael. “I’ll go with him.” He gave Isaac a disarming wink.

  “Well, okay,” said Isaac, still a little uneasy. Giving Aaron a little time to decompress probably wasn’t a bad idea—it would be good to give him some space. Once they left port again, it would be just the two of them and the Medea. Without Mathusael there to make sure he didn’t get into trouble, though, the answer would have been a firm ‘no.’

  Promises Unforgotten

  The station was full of death. Even through the oxygen tank in his EVA suit, Isaac could still smell it. The glass faceplate wasn’t enough to shield him from the vileness of the stench, and the headlight on his helmet wasn’t bright enough to pierce the awful darkness. He coughed, but the sound was muffled, traveling no further than his suit.

  Aaron was here, somewhere in the darkness. That knowledge was as clear and sharp as a distress beacon in the midst of the starry void. His palms felt clammy and the sweat on the back of his neck was cold, but he forced himself to press onward, navigating the maze of broken machinery and empty corridors. He passed several bodies but didn’t dare look at them, knowing that if he did the ghosts trapped within them would haunt him forever. His brother was not a skeleton—his brother was alive. Somewhere. That was the hope, at least.

  “Aaron?” he called out. Though his external speakers carried the sound of his voice, it only came through as a weak feedback echo picked up by the microphone. The smallness of the sound made the derelict station feel even more vast and empty than before.

  He took another step, but his feet felt weighted down, as if he were swimming through syrup. Only through sheer force of will was he able to break through and keep moving. If he stopped, he knew he would never be able to move his legs again. He felt as if a weight were growing on his chest, pressing him down, but by exerting all his strength, he managed to put one foot in front of the other.

  “Aaron!” he called again, a tinge of desperation in his voice. “Aaron, where are you?”

  A half-opened doorway lay in front of him. It looked strangely familiar, though he couldn’t quite place it at first. Then it hit him—the cryotank.

  He stumbled around the corner and saw it, sitting in the center of the room exactly as it had before. Instead of the henna girl, though, it contained his brother.

  “Aaron!” he said, gasping for breath. “Oh, thank God! Hang on, I’ll get you out of this place. Just—”

  His feet refused to move. Try as he might, his boots might as well have been welded to the floor. A low, insidious panic set in, and darkness began to cloud his vision. The inky blackness seeped into the room from the hallway, spreading across the floor and ceiling. He turned to the cryotank, and saw to his horror that Aaron’s body was beginning to shrivel. His skin blackened and drew tight against his bones, while his eye sockets shrunk and his lips pulled back to reveal decaying yellow teeth. In just a few moments, he would be a withered corpse, just like all the others on the station.

  “Aaron!” Isaac screamed, but there was nothing he could do to delay the awful finality of death as the blackness swallowed them both.

  * * * * *

  “Isaac? Isaac, are you all right?”

  Isaac jerked awake with tears streaming down his face. His breath came short and fast, while his heart raced. He was in his bunk on the Medea, with Aaron standing over him, his face a picture of curiosity and concern. The familiarity of his bed calmed him a little, but the dream had been so vivid that he couldn’t help but shudder.

  “I’ll be fine,” he muttered, wiping the moisture from his eyes. His undershirt was soaked with sweat, and he felt in desperate need of a shower.

  “Did you have a nightmare?” Aaron asked.

  Isaac groaned and slipped his feet over the edge of the bunk, sitting up. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “What was it like? What happened?”

  “It—it’s hard to remember,” he lied. “But you were in it, I know that.”

  “Really? What did I do?”

  You died.

  “Nothing much. How are the energy reserves coming? Are we ready to jump yet?”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Aaron. “Last I checked, they were at eighty-five percent.”

  “Have you set the coordinates?”

  “Not yet. I’ll get on that right away.”

  “Please do.”

  As Aaron ducked through the doorway to the cockpit, Isaac yawned and rose groggily to his feet. The Medea’s cabin looked much as it had when he’d gone to sleep: A small pile of dirty clothes sat on the couch in the lounge nook of the cabin, with an unfinished game of damka on the lounge table. The holographic tabletop still displayed the red and black hex board, even though a bowl of half-eaten synthmeal sat in the center of it. Isaac sighed and picked up Aaron’s dirty dishes. His brother could be such a slob sometimes. The clothes would have to wait for the next wash cycle, which probably wouldn’t be for another two or three dayshifts. Honestly, how hard was it to find a wall compartment to stow them in?

  How can you be so petty? he thought, a wave of guilt hitting him as he remembered the dream. Even if it wasn’t real, the emotions it had evoked certainly were. Besides, this far out into space, the line between reality and imagination grew fuzzy. They still had a full two weeks to go before they arrived at the next port.

  He found the compartment for his own clothes and opened it, rummaging through until he found a clean undershirt and set of boxers. Clothes in hand, he went to the bathroom at the back of the cabin and palmed the door open. Space inside was tight, even with all the zero-gee hoses on the toilet coiled up and retracted. Still, with quick, practiced movements, he undressed and stepped into the cylindrical shower unit.

  As the water washed over his skin from the multi-directional wall jets, he thought back to his dream and the possible meaning behind it.r />
  Aaron was never supposed to have joined him. As the oldest son, tradition required only Isaac to leave on his father’s starship and seek his destiny across the Outworlds. He’d spent his whole life preparing for that, knowing that when the time came to leave, he would be on his own. Most star wanderers never returned to the world of their birth, and he didn’t expect to be an exception.

  He also hadn’t expected the famine at Megiddo Station to drive his whole family away before he’d had a chance to leave.

  Only a couple of months after they’d fled to Oriana Station as refugees, his father had taken him aside. “You ready to take the Medea, son?”

  Isaac’s heart had leaped at the question. “I’m ready, Dad,” he had answered, trying not to sound too eager.

  The last few months had been a nightmarish mess, trying to get everyone in the family from Delta Oriana to the Alpha Oriana system. It hadn’t been easy. In the end, they’d had to sell almost everything they owned just to get passage. Thankfully, they’d all made it, but now they were forced to live in a cramped, below-decks apartment on a station where most of them didn’t speak the language. There was so little room, they had to sleep crammed together on old, flat mattresses that did little to soften the hardness of the metal floor.

  His father had nodded, staring off at the wall. “Your mother doesn’t want me to let you to go,” he’d said softly, so that the others in the kitchen and family room couldn’t hear.

  “Can she stop me?”

  “No, but she’s definitely going to try. Here, let’s take this outside.”

  He followed his father out the narrow apartment hallway to the front door, where they exchanged their slippers for shoes. His father moved quickly, glancing over his shoulder—no doubt making sure that his mother didn’t see them go. It pained Isaac to see his parents being so deceptive with each other, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. Better to go along quietly than to spark another argument.

  They stepped outside, the door hissing shut behind them. The windowless corridor extended in both directions, though it turned before the curvature of the station became apparent. The walls and lights were drab, all the doors exactly the same.