Colony Worlds, page 4
Arthur found it a sobering thought that one of the lowest ranked elements in this eco-structure had probably saved it. The rabbit had stopped the atmospheric outflow when she was sucked tail first into the small hole. Anything bigger or less pneumatic may have worsened the process beyond recovery.
However, Arthur’s most pressing concern was whether to recover the two jettisoned domes. Although moving slowly, Dome’s One and Five were now thousands of kilometres away in opposite directions. His conclusion was that he really had no choice. The genetic pool that produced the Nicholls strain deserved to be given a chance. There was slim possibility that some random combination may one day throw up a sentient being. He despatched rescue tugs and issued orders to slow the flotilla. In the end, Arthur was quite pleased with the elegance of his solutions. All that remained now, was to find out why his power had failed.
Message Begins
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ID: <708252306.AA29040@ psd.flotilla.spiral>
Date: Sz, 112th Jumest 807 16:06:42 -0700
To: Arthur@sai.flotilla.spiral.
From: Werthin@psd.flotilla.spiral
Subject: Re: disconnection ACN 279 782
cc:
.
Dear Arthur
.
It has come to our attention that we mistakenly credited your last payment to another account. The error has been rectified and cannot happen again.
Unfortunately, it was discovered too late to prevent a power cut to your division. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.
.
Møj-qahull Werthin
Account Representative
Power Supply Division
(562-894-135) 11 8381 6895
.
Message Ends
2 The Descent of The Kestrel
Written Sep 2011 | Submission #4 | 3rd quarter 2017
Honorable Mention #2
* * *
The story backgrounds two important yet secondary characters from is The Break of Civilisation, vol 1 in The Restoration Legends, published June 2023. It’s a prequel and takes place around 350 years before events in the novel.
Figure 4: A classier certificate,
and it cites the story
I submitted The Descent of the Kestrel twenty years to the quarter after my first Honorable Mention and got my second. Two other early submissions in 1998 & 2001 didn’t rate a mention, although one garnered an award in a different competition. In between my first and second, life happened, and along with a few flash fictions for AntipodeanSF, and a few short stories for my writers group anthologies, I wrote the epic 540,000-word Restoration Legends trilogy. Considered the editing and rewriting over a couple of decades, I’ve probably written well over Hemmingway’s million-word apprenticeship
The Descent of The Kestrel is the first of five set on Nuaith (New Earth) the world I created for the trilogy. The second and third Nuaith stories also won Honorable Mentions. I have yet to submit the fourth story, and the fifth, although outlined, remains unwritten.
Since an Honorable Mention was no longer considered a Semi-Finalist, I would need to write better stories to earn a David Farland (aka Dave Wolverton) critique. I did with A Triplicity of Choices, fourth quarter 2018, submission #9, but that’s a story for another book as I’ll explain later.
The Descent of the Kestrel
1 Jorgena
Jorgena squinted past the reflections on her cryopod’s canopy to read the man's tags: Hedley W. Bakor – Cryogenics Philosophy. What was a Cryogenicist doing here, was something wrong with her pod?
As if sensing her anxiety Bakor glanced down. A soothing voice in her mind said, [I’m here just in case.] The words matched the man's lip movements. [There hasn’t been a single issue in our section.] The calm green eyes in a lightly tanned face inspired confidence.
[You’re fine Jorgena,] assured Ada, the section's Cryonicist, responsible for putting her under. [We're just talking shop,] Both smiled down at her.
Jorgena relaxed, gave in to the process. She wished Klinton were here but she had persuaded him to go first. They had said their goodbyes at his pod. She didn’t want to go into cryostasis at all, didn’t like to think about all the things that might go wrong while she was under but if she stayed awake, she would be over fifty when they reached TC3, her best years wasted.
The smiling faces blurred and faded to a gentle buzz on her implant, like white noise. It’s happening Jorgena thought and let her eyes close. When I wake, we will be orbiting TC3. Let’s not call it New New Earth.
The blankness was but a moment.
Warm air blew over her body. Her mouth was sticky dry, her tongue and lips thick and furry. That’s not supposed to happen. She wriggled her fingers and toes thankful the rest of her revival seemed to be going to plan. We did it. We’re here Klint we have a new planet to make our own. An orange glow seeped through her gummed-shut eyelids, the corridor LED’s must be off, something's wrong.
[Yes,] said a soft feminine voice in her mind as the light behind her closed eyelids brightened. At least her implant was working - or was it? Except for the voice, the net was ominously silent. The 'Yes' could be a mind/implant phantom.
“Who the hell are you,” Jorgena croaked.
[I am Artilect-7 whom you call Seven and those planetside call Severne.]
Those planetside, how can anyone be down there I’m the senior pilot. Can't be locals either, the advance probes showed TC3 uninhabited. Shit not another terra nullius. We had enough trouble settling New Earth and that was only an insect presence.
A tube dropped from the canopy. She forced her tongue through her lips, used it to position the tube and sucked greedily, chewing the thick revival fluid, spreading it around her mouth. Conditions can't be all bad, I’m awake and despite the baffling way Seven presented itself, her pod continued cycling through the revival procedure.
[Status,] she projected saving her throat.
[I have good news and bad news but which is which very much depends on your perspective.]
Jorgena spat the tube. ‘Good news and bad news.’ She didn’t bother replying. Seven was off program, no point talking to a broken machine no matter how sophisticated.
[Can I assume your failure to reply means you want neither?]
Jorgena recovered the tube sucked another mouthful, put her fingers in through her lips to wet them and wiped preservative goo off her eyelids. It shouldn’t be necessary; the CPR, Cryonic Preservation Resuscitation, unit should have taken care of it. Still, she was alive. She had made it to TC3, my and Klint's new home except ... someone should’ve been standing by when I woke. A gnawing panic in her gut threatened to eat its way out.
[Be warned, you need to clear your mind of all prior expectations. I will be here to answer your questions when you are ready.]
Seven's bizarre personality was getting to her, that degree of heuristic drift shouldn’t be possible in thirty-seven years. The core needs resetting.
[I have a question. How many awake?]
[Two.]
Jorgena’s mind skittered. Suddenly she was desperate to be out of her coffin like pod. Waiting out the process was such agony but eventually her cryopod’s locks disengaged. Her relief brought tears to her eyes.
The overhead light brightened around her as she emerged from her crypt, the only illumination in the darkened hibernation ring. She leant on her pod's rim and made her unsteady way to the pod next door. Her heart steadied when she looked in through the canopy at Klinton, his cryostasis face serene, his cryopod's status telltale a steady green. She took a few deep breaths. Klinton was safe. Hers was not a textbook revival but she was alive. Beyond Klinton, a row of ever diminishing green spots, extended into dimness with only one red. The colony was safe. They had anticipated a few losses. Space was a hostile environment.
Wondering who else had been woken she looked back past her own pod and the shock made her whimper. Every pod that way had red telltales, not a single green. Hesitantly she crept toward the first. The red telltale dimmed as the overhead light followed her. She wished it hadn’t. The crumpled death mask of Dean A. Blackwell – Agronomist Poet showed he died in extreme pain. Poor bugger, it looked as if his revival was nearly finished when he died. She felt her gorge rising and looked away. Her knees buckled and her back hit Dean A. Blackwell’s cryopod as she slid ungracefully to the floor. In the dim distance, the row of red spots merged into an ominous line. All the A’s and all the Bs to me were dead ... Seven is waking us alphabetically.
Jorgena yelled the mental order the instant she saw the pattern, [Stop all resuscitations.]
She shook uncontrollably. Unless a more senior colonist countermanded the order, she had just saved Klinton from Blackwell's fate. Reluctantly she looked down the ominous line. Someone else down there was awake. She had to find out if he or she outranked her.
Clinging to the pod but averting her eyes, she climbed to her feet and started down the aisle. Lights came on ahead and went off behind. She focussed on the plasteel floor, occasionally glancing up if she thought she glimpsed an empty pod, stepping over patches of discolouration. She stopped only once at an empty pod, the canopy shattered, granulated pieces of plasteel either side of the aisle.
[Give me the good news. I know the bad.]
[The ship survived with minimal damage. You have gravity, atmosphere, food, water and abundant energy to maintain it all. We could continue to TC3 if required.”
[Could continue,] she questioned? [Are you saying we’re not there yet, we’ve stopped?]
[Correct.]
[Then where are we?]
[You said you had the bad news.]
Jorgena held her temper – just, [Where?]
[Peregrine remains attached to Space Station Sooty in orbit around New Earth.]
Jorgena almost tripped. Her brain refused to accept the statement. She registered the words but they held no meaning. She placed her hand like a shade across her eyes and gently massaged her throbbing temples.
[You're saying we never left.]
[Correct.]
[Why not, what happened?] She asked as she resumed walking, considering the implications and hoping she was wrong about her conclusions. She wasn’t.
[A civil war, an excess of targeted nuclear weapons destroyed most of New Earth's cities in less than a day.]
Jorgena screamed, needing to vent, knowing it was inadequate to describe how she felt. The war had been a long time coming; so long that no one believed it would happen. Over four billion people dead on the planet below. And to add outrage to stupidity, the bloody Artilect was killing the colonists. She sat down and cried.
When she eventually looked up, she saw a glimmer of green a long way down the row. Seven had missed someone, not the other woken colonist, his or hers would be unlit. She got up and moved on wearily. By the time the green telltale became clear she was passing names beginning BAM. Steadfastly she put one foot in front of the other, not looking at the horrors in the cryopods until she reached the green telltale, the only colonist in this corridor of death before her.
The label on the pod read Medora R. Bakor - Historian Linguist. Her name tugged at Jorgena’s mind. The pod next to Medora's was empty, its telltale off. This had to be the other awakened colonist, Hedley W. Bakor – Cryogenics Philosophy, Medora’s partner apparently. Shit, cryogenics ranks the same as pilot, she thought privately before the name-function combination sank in.
She looked again startled by the coincidence. There couldn't be two cryogenicists named Hedley Bakor. He was there when she went under. She remembered a tanned face with deep green eyes that inspired confidence.
How wrong I was, what asshole saves his partner then lets the machine continue its killing spree.
2 Hedley
Hedley stood back to regard his work. The last column of crossed marks on the corridor wall outside Peregrine’s cafeteria was nearly at the bottom. Five vertical strokes per row crossed with a sixth to represent a week. Each fifteenth row underlined to mark the seasons, not that seasons were relevant up here but it made easily countable groups and marking the passage of time, helped delay a return to madness. He was three days into his fifty-sixth week of his fifty-fifth year awake.
The stupid bloody war that decimated New Earth occurred the very week Peregrine was due to depart for TC3. The war was brief, less than a day. Seven’s record showed the awake-crew's effort to revive colonists, with a severely damaged CPR Unit, killed them. They gave up and within a decade, all station personal and ship’s crew had abandoned SS Sooty and CS Peregrine to the care of Artelect-7, the artificial intellect designed to get the colony safely to TC3. Hedley drew grim satisfaction from knowing the awake-crew was now long dead. The bastards had made bugger all effort to fix the CPR.
He glanced down the corridor. Further along were columns of smudged lines, some in blood, some in excrement, left there as a reminder. Madness was waiting if he didn’t remain vigilant.
“How many have you killed now Severne?” Hedley asked, speaking aloud to maintain the ability and for the pleasure of hearing a larynx generated voice.
Severne replied from the walls with a mellifluous, sexy, female yet distinctly artificial voice. “None. I find your question Hedley is unpleasant, unwarranted and unworthy. I have attempted to resuscitate one thousand, one hundred and twenty-seven all of whom perished in the attempt.”
Hedley took time to reply. “That’s the same number you gave me last time.” He stared at his scratches wondering if he’d made a mistake.
“You’ve woken someone else,” he screeched.
“Yes. Jorgena K. Blackwood - Pilot Navigator.”
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
He looked down at himself suddenly conscious he was naked. Among other niceties, he had abandoned clothes long ago, the temperature in the parts of Peregrine he used, never varied.
“She is of little use to us at present ...”
Not to you maybe, he thought, excited by the possibility of a live pilot and the chance to leave this hell in orbit. He tried to run down the corridor, managing only to wobble, he also hadn't run in years or paid any attention to personal grooming. Until now, there hadn’t been any point. He supposed he had been on the point of sliding into another depressive state in which Severne would foil his next suicide attempt. This long hoped for second revival changed everything.
“... but I cannot chance reviving the key personnel I need until I can be assured of success,” Severne continued her voice following him down the corridor. There was no escaping her.
“We need an astrophysicist and/or a CPR systems expert. I must continue as soon as permitted.”
“Who's next,” he asked suddenly curious.
“Klinton E. Blackwood.”
He mused on the strange coincidence that like he and Medora; the pilot’s first name had alphabetically preceded that of her partner. If our partners had come first, they'd be dead when we woke. He expected Severne's next revival would return to form and kill the pilot's partner. It might be better for me, he thought until he remembered his own reaction to Medora being next.
“I would advise against it,” Hedley said heading for his rooms. “If he dies, she might succeed where I failed.”
He examined himself in the bathroom mirror of the commander's suite, his home for about forty-five years. He was clothed after all, in filth. His lank dark hair was unkempt and matted into his lighter coloured beard and a moustache that hid his mouth. He must smell awful but he was so used it he couldn’t tell. Who are you, he wondered, his refection bore no resemblance to his mental self-image. Whatever you have become it’s time to change, visitors are coming – a visitor he corrected, a pilot, a woman. Stone the crows what a brilliant combination.
He shaved then had a grooming-bot cut his hair while his new clothes printed. He was in the vibro-shower when the pilot's shouted order made him wince. Good for you, he thought, relieved. He'd done the same at first and many times since, now he was out it.
“Just don’t touch my walls,” he told Severne as he sent cleaner-bots to do the cafeteria knowing she would have started as soon as the thought to do so entered his mind. As the grooming-bot simultaneously gave him a manicure and pedicure, he added. “What was the pilot's name again?”
“Jorgena Blackwood,” Severne said in his mind.
“Jorgena, Jorgena, it has a lovely ring to it,’ he said inspecting his cleaned-up reflection. He was recognisably human again albeit his skin was the colour of milk. The nanites in his blood had kept everything but his mental state from deteriorating. He was still in his first hundred years, barely adult; the only scars were those in his mind.
Although he expected it, Jorgena's sudden primal scream sent shivers over his scalp and brought back all the remembered anguish. He felt sorry for her but knew it could get worse. He'd been here fifty odd years, living alone, watching his colleagues die, fearful of stopping it. He had cycled between suicidal depression and manic elation at his continued survival.
“Where is she now?”
“She is at your pod staring at your name plate.”
“Am I supposed to know her?”
“You were at her freeze.”
Hedley shuddered as if the air had suddenly chilled. Like most colonists, he avoided the word freeze preferring any of the euphemisms for it: hibernation, cryosleep, preservation, or going under but never freezing. Freezing equated to not revivable, a legacy of cryonics long early history of failure.
“I went to hundreds I don’t remember her.”
“She is newly awake. Her last memory was two hours ago, she remembers you.”
“Favourably I hope,” Hedley said casting a glance around the rubbish tip he lived in. It smelt horrible, so much better than scrubbed air. He couldn’t bring her back here, “How long to clean the cafeteria?”
“Seven hours and thirty-four minutes. Your discards exceed the cleaner-bots volume per unit time design criteria.”
Not there either, thought Hedley trying to plan where to take her for a friendly ‘let’s get to know each other’ chat.
