Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess (38 page)
Read Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess Online
Authors: Ray Strong
“Pass me a flex elbow,” John said to Sam Spurell, Tommy’s younger brother. Two weeks after Meriel had left for her tour, Sam furloughed on Haven with Harry and Anita. Together they relaid the drip irrigation lines that had been torn up during the defense of the farm.
Sam burst a dirt clod with his pickax, leaned over a pile of fittings, and threw one to John. “I heard they caught some smugglers dropping off illegals on Terni,” he said.
“That’s on the other side of the sea,” John said.
Sam nodded and leaned on the pickax. “They brought their own replicators and hydroponics, so the council will likely give ’em a pass.
“Nothing wrong with settlers. Did they bring any seed stock? Or embryos?”
Sam shook his head. “Dunno.”
“Waste processing?” John asked, but Sam shrugged. “You know, it’s always waste management that kills a settlement.”
“It’s another load on the ecosystem here.”
“Yeah, but it may take a thousand years before it breaks down,” John said.
Sam pointed to a brown patch of failed lawn near the house. “You gonna replant that too?” he asked.
John scowled. “Maybe. When’s your next tour?”
“Next week. Be gone two months,” Sam said and continued his task of digging a narrow trench for the irrigation lines.
“You coming back?” John asked.
Sam looked around. “You know, I think I might,” he said.
Becky and Sandy ran to John. Dumpy was close behind.
“Papa, incoming,” Becky said and handed him a link. She picked up a dirt clod and threw it at a critter skulking nearby. Sandy sat near John but watched Sam with a gentle smile.
John read the message on the link. “They cleared the
Princess
and crew of all charges, Sam,” John said.
“Damn,” Sam said. His eyes were wide. “Meriel did it. I never thought that’d happen. We’ll get our ship back.” He turned and ran back to the compound. “Hey, Harry! Annie!” he yelled.
“Wow. Merry’s gonna get her ship back,” Becky said. “You think she’ll give us a ride?”
“As soon as they fix her up,” John said. “But that’s only if you’re good, and you’re old enough.”
“Merry did her spacewalk when she was nine and jumped a ship when she was twelve,” Sandy said.
John frowned. “She told you that?”
Sandy nodded and then looked down and made patterns in the dirt with her toe. “Yeah.”
John took Sandy’s hand and smiled. “The
when
will be up to me, OK?” John asked, and Sandy smiled.
“Sandy,” John said. “What did Meriel give you when she left?”
“A book, Papa,” she said.
“Can I see it?”
“Sure,” she said and ran to get the book while John listened to the rest of the IGB news feed.
“On News of the Galaxy Tonight: Piracy is not dead, according to a special investigative report on the
Princess
. Surviving children from the
Princess
disaster have surfaced after a decade in hiding and are expected to tell their stories. Sealed court records have been opened that document the tragedy of a deadly attack—an attack that has recently been linked to a conspiracy between the UNE, BioLuna, and the Archtrope of Calliope to invade a populated colony. News of this attack was suppressed for a decade to avoid panic among independent traders.
More after this message…”
Sandy came back with the book. A slip of paper marked a dog-eared page.
“And once in an age, the arc of history bends around the wheel of one committed person…That person acts not from selfishness or the desire for fame but instead from love and commitment…He or she can live no other life and be fully human.
“As if by God’s hand, through that individual the forces of darkness are dispelled, and humanity is saved from the abyss…”
John sighed, put an arm around each of his daughters, and walked with them to the hill to watch the galaxy rise. As they watched the stars, his linked buzzed with a message.
From M. Hope:
Circuit ended.
Coming Home.
As If by God’s Hand
From
The Diary of Neuchar de Merlner
, Europa, 2112
Verse 34: Nova Conta, Section 3
Comme Si Dans les Mains de Dieu
(As If by God’s Hand)
Once in an age the forces of darkness align to bend the arc of history.
And once in an age, the arc of history bends around the wheel of one committed person who, acting from his or her own virtuous interests, changes the course of humanity: the child who raises the flag above the barricades, the mother who thrusts the picture of her murdered child before the dead eyes of the tyrant, the girl who refuses to deny her love for God even while her flesh burns at the stake—individuals who grip a shred of civilization with both hands and will not give it up.
And through the fidelity of that individual, the complex interrelationships carefully constructed by the powerful to order society to fit their personal ideologies and selfish interests collapse under the weight of justice and moral right.
The light of their virtues burn throughout history, despite the fog of interpretation. When this light is observed, it needs no explanation. It is remembered though demagogues, and armies strive to erase it from our hearts. Volumes are written to describe these single acts of faithfulness, and volumes are never enough. It is proof that humans are more than animals and that God lives in each of us.
That person acts not from selfishness or the desire for fame but instead from love and commitment. “Hero” is a label bestowed by those of us who benefit from their virtues, not a crown they reach for. For that person, there is no other way. He or she can live no other life and be fully human.
As if by God’s hand, through that individual the forces of darkness are dispelled, and humanity is saved from the abyss.
I assign to you the mission to be that person every day of your life in small ways with every breath you take and someday you too may be the wheel around which history bends.
I assign this to you because civilization and freedom are not inevitable. Sometimes that person does not appear, and the forces of darkness consume everything, and civilization is lost for centuries.
In Memorium: Remarks on the Anniversary of the Destruction of Brazil
[Introduction deleted.]
Throughout history, humans have lived on the edge of extinction, on the razor’s edge between starvation and annihilation at the whim of the unforgiving hand of nature and subject to the universe’s existential lack of concern. We humans challenged the strong hand of nature that once constrained our species, and we won. But we risk destruction by our own hand through overpopulation. In the last hundred years, the strong hand of man acting through the United Nations of Earth has intervened to stop humanity’s destruction of itself and our planet. As human beings who care for all Earth’s creatures, this strong hand was necessary; we could do nothing else. We conquered the threats from Gaia and in so doing became her protector.
The sacrifice of personal liberty, the limitations of technological innovation, the strict regulation of how and where we live were all necessary to achieve this victory over ourselves, necessary and painful but for the common good.
But every act of good has unforeseen consequences. As we found when Asteroid G-44 destroyed Brazil and the coastlines of the Atlantic, our one home on Earth leaves our species vulnerable to even more severe threats from nature. To meet those threats, humans have seeded the stars.
Outposts of humanity cling to life in the stars, but only human life. Even the richest habitats cannot support self-sustaining ecosystems with diverse species. And our human experiment is still young. It is still not clear whether these outposts can survive without roots planted firmly in the soil of Earth, the single planet that supports human life. I implore us to change that.
Earth is our home, but our future is out there. We must expand the quantity and diversity of Earth life on the colonies and stations to protect it from the whims of nature. We must affix anchors on other worlds and build ecosystems around them that will support Earth life. We must make the stars our home. Humanity must rise to that challenge or suffer annihilation.
Join me, and let us populate the stars!
The authors have done their best to use vocabulary common to Earthers in the event that unredacted editions of this work will be smuggled past the UNE censors. However, some distinctions common to merchant spacers may be unfamiliar and we thus offer this brief glossary.
A very densely populated structure or hyperstructure. Popularized by twentieth-century visionary Paolo Soleri, who coined the term.
Astronomical Unit. One AU is the distance from the Earth to Sol, or about 149-million kilometers. The speed of light is about 0.3 million kilometers per second, so it takes an electromagnetic (EM) signal about eight minutes to travel one AU. That’s a huge distance!
Physicists have not figured out how to send radio and other electromagnetic (EM) signals faster than the speed of light (FTL), so FTL ships consistently outrun their messages. Since information is often more valuable than mass, ships carry messages and news-storage systems that synchronize with beacons near stations. Ships resynch on-board memory with these beacons every time they leave a station, and enter a new system. Each ship that downloads to a beacon receives some revenue.
Mark IX Cила Грузчик, or Power Loader designed on a Russian colony near Bernard’s Star. They are nicknamed “Cruisers” because in English, the name sounds like “silly cruischick.” Cargo handlers sometimes refer to themselves as Cruisers, but the term is considered an insult if used by anyone else, especially when referring to a woman.
Electromagnetic waves, like radio, TV, light, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma, and X-rays, which travel at the speed of light.
Electromagnetic pulse. A strong EM wave that essentially zaps all nearby electronics.
Earth Time. A useful baseline for coordination in time. Loosely based on Earth Standard Time and the convenient assumption that there is one single time for everything in the universe, which is useful in all astrophysical calculations and has nothing whatsoever to do with the timekeeping devices on each ship or mass. An exact correlation is very difficult over light-years because everything of interest moves at fractions of the speed of light. Navigation computers only have a useful approximation.
Floor typically refers to the horizontal platform under your feet on a colony, moon, or planet with a stable gravity. Deck refers to the similar structure of a vessel. However, stationers think of their stations as stable and permanent and use floor. Spacers often refer to the deck on a station, which identifies them to stationers.
Voluntary organization of Earth farmers first organized in the United States in the nineteenth century. Earth agriculture became socialized by 2040 under UN regulations and land productivity has declined ever since.
A large mass that distorts space-time like a bowling ball on a trampoline.
Interstellar Sports Association.
In common language these can be stated as (1) all positions are relative (there are no fixed reference points, only conventions); (2) everything is moving all the time; and (3) you can only know for sure where things were, not where they are. (0) Law 0 was included later to keep the math honest. Law 0: the arrow of time is unidirectional.
Archaic technology from early twenty-first century where an array of low-power lasers separated adjoining rooms with a translucent curtain of light. It replaced the modestly priced hanging beads found more commonly in environments with steady gravity. Light curtains were also less likely to become a choking hazard if gravity shifted or was lost.
On ships, the kitchen is called the galley, and the dining area is called the mess.
Navigator, rating-4. This designation refers to the skill level of a navigator as assessed by an independent agency. In this case, John’s post is chief warrant officer of navigation. A nav-5 rating would qualify him to be posted to pilot and senior navigator for the Tiger, but Jerri currently held that post. The post is different from rank, such as captain, commander, pilot, chief warrant officer, petty officer, or seaman. Rank and post are also different from skill level.
Officer On Deck. The OOD is the ship’s officer in charge of the bridge during a shift and serves as the direct representative of the captain
Sometimes just known as sphere. When you jump, there is uncertainty in time and space about where you will end up due to your lack of certainty of the positions and masses of everything along your path. This uncertainty is shown by drawing a sphere around a calculated destination. The second law of nav says, “Everything is moving all the time,” so it is difficult to calculate precisely where you will end up, unless you know every mass and where it’s all going. That’s impossible to do without infinite compute resources. So there is always an uncertainty of where you’ll end up, and that uncertainty can be shown as a sphere. It’s actually more like a sphere with a hollow center because there is absolutely no chance that you will hit what you aimed at. The sphere grows exponentially with distance, so shorter jumps have smaller spheres.
Warm-suit—emergency gear for an air leak. Warm-suits have a carbon mesh and an inflatable clear hood to allow the wearer to survive in a vacuum for a few hours. It has a built-in rebreather and temperature control. It will not last more than a few hours in a hard vacuum and is no protection against weapons.
Ten stages of a spacers’ party
(1) uncomfortably shy and distant; (2) polite or coy; (3) friendly and engaging conversation; (4) double entendre, puns, and sexual innuendo; (5) loud and bawdy; (6) out of control, partial undress, drinking with your worst enemy; (7) looking for trouble; (8) finding trouble, confrontation/altercation; for large parties, rioting; (9) nursing wounds; and (10) Soberall(TM), sleep, or rehab.
Tranquilizers, called “tranq,” are needed to overcome the long periods of disorientation during jumps. Tranq-boost is a stronger tranq that suppresses the imagination and memories, which can overwhelm during jumps.
United Nations of Earth. Intergovernmental organization of 804 nations, states, planets, colonies, and moons within the Sol star system dominated by planet Earth.
When an FTL object comes into your view, you have no sense of it before it physically arrives because it’s moving faster than the photons or EM radiation that would tell you that it’s coming. When the FTL object arrives, it appears along with its EM, and it looks like a weak flash or a wink.
Executive officer or first officer. This officer is next in command to the captain.
***
(end Home: Interstellar)