Compete (7 page)

At this point I know that all the shuttle bays look perfectly alike. No distinguishing features except a small rainbow square logo and number on the walls at the entrance—which I note, now that I know what to look for. Atlantean numerals resemble ancient Egyptian or even Sumerian etchings, and they are basically comprised of short adjacent lines—one line for “number one,” two lines for “two,” and so on, until you get to “five” which is four lines bisected by a fifth. This shuttle bay is designated with three short lines.

The shuttles are parked in perfect rows on both sides of the platform tube, with sections of larger freight transport shuttles interspersed with smaller personal flyers—the kind that I first saw explode in the skies over Pennsylvania, in that awful sabotage incident two months ago.

There are not many people about, compared to that first day when we arrived in the ships among the crowds of the Qualified. Except for the endless rows of stationary shuttles, the platforms and bays are mostly empty. I see a handful of Atlantean officers and other workers, and right near the entrance a small cubicle desk area where an official of some kind sits. Next to him a small group of about twenty teens with luggage stand around waiting. I bet they are all transfers to other ships too.

The desk officer looks up at me, and it occurs to me he must be a shuttle traffic controller.

“Hi, I am supposed to report here,” I say awkwardly. “I am being transferred to Imperial Command Ship Two.”

“Name?”

“Gwen Lark.”

The officer scans my token ID to confirm. “Wait here with the others,” he says. Then he picks up a communication device and talks in Atlantean to someone.

I nod and switch my heavy bags from one hand to the other.

Half an hour passes. Then, from the distance comes a sudden fierce churning gust of air generated by an approaching wind tunnel, followed by a shuttle. It is one of the smaller personal flyers, moving so fast it appears to be a shooting projectile. But it hovers to an immediate and impossible stop, then shifts sideways onto the platform closest to our side to occupy the first empty slot about fifty feet away.

A few minutes later, a familiar tall Atlantean with super-black skin and short golden hair approaches from the direction of the shuttle. It’s Keruvat Ruo, one of my Combat Instructors from Pennsylvania.

Wow, am I glad to see him!

“Instructor Ruo!” I exclaim with surprise and an easy smile.

“Look who’s here. . . . Gwen Lark, glad to see you Qualified.” Keruvat’s deep booming voice sounds rich and welcome. He smiles at me briefly—and for the first time his smile is without restraint—then he nods to the desk dispatch officer.

Seeing him, the officer stands up from his seat immediately and salutes Keruvat in the Atlantean mode—head inclined slightly, left hand raised, with fingers and thumb forming an angle, palm touching forehead, and thumb touching lips. “My apologies, Pilot Ruo, I did not realize you would be flying this shuttle yourself—”

“CP’s orders,” Keruvat tells the officer in English, the default language the Atlanteans have been using with us, then glances around at the waiting teens. “So, everyone ready to go? Who else have we got here for ICS-2? The CP—that is, the Command Pilot—sent me to get all of you who are transferring to our ship. I think we’ve got only three people, am I right? Or is it four?”

“That’s correct, four transferring from AS-1109 to ICS-2,” the dispatch officer says to Keruvat with crisp efficiency, checking a screen display. And then he turns to the other teens who are waiting. “In addition to Gwen Lark—Jennica Tulls, Lars Hansen, and Alla Vetrova—your Pilot is here. Follow him.”

I watch as three figures detach from the group of teens.

The boy, Lars Hansen, is a tall pale Scandinavian, close to six foot-four (and about the same height as Keruvat Ruo), with faded shoulder-length flax-blond hair that looks almost Atlantean, tied in a ponytail. He’s got a green token ID and armband, a haughty, tight-lipped expression, and he seems to be older, probably very close to the upper cutoff age for Qualification.

The two girls are very different from each other. I am assuming Alla Vetrova is Russian, or at least Slavic, and if so, she is likely the slim redhead with a blue armband, very short pixie-cut hair, and a reserved, chilly expression. She is slightly shorter than me, but more muscular and toned—which, all things considered, is not that difficult to be, since pretty much everyone who’s Qualified is in better physical shape than I am.

The other girl who must be Jennica Tulls is very tall, very dark skinned, African American or possibly from one of the African nations, though with her name I am not entirely sure. She has a red armband and token.

So, looks like I am the only yellow.

We start walking after Pilot Ruo and approach the shuttle. Up-close, the vehicle is not actually parked on the floor as I assumed, but is still hovering a few feet above. I end up being last in line to the retractable stairs, as the other three teens arrogantly get ahead of me—or at least it feels that way, as they all give me blank or hostile glances and probably decide I am inconsequential, even though I seem to know our Pilot.

So many sharp, disturbing memories come as I climb this staircase into the hatch opening . . . images of that burning shuttle at the RQC-3 in Pennsylvania, as I climbed this exact same kind of stairs to rescue the injured Command Pilot Aeson Kass—no,
Kassiopei
. . . .

I blink the memories away and enter the shuttle.

It looks just as I expected it to be, a rounded single chamber, the same central arrangement of six chairs in a rotating suspension harness and a seventh command chair with a hovering control panel, which Keruvat Ruo takes.

“Everyone here understands Earth English? Yes? No? There is a dubbing translator if you need it,” he tells us as soon as he sits down, and sings a brief keying sequence in his deep voice, beginning to engage the bumpy touch-surface of the control panel, which in turn activates the hair-fine lines along the hull walls to come awake with golden light. “Move quickly, everyone. First, put away your bags in the wall storage over there. Then, sit down and buckle in. We take off on my count in about a minute.”

We hurry to do as we’re told, and grab seats, soft and resilient. The harnesses come snaking around us from every direction at the push of a single button in the center, as soon as we connect the two main harness belt sections in our lap. In seconds I am “trapped” in a harness spider web.

“All right, now give me your names and designations. Let’s see how well you remember your assignments. Let’s start with you—” And Keruvat points at the redhead girl in the seat next to him.

She seems to grow even more stiff than she already is and sits up straight. Her voice is precise and loud, with a strong accent. “Cadet Alla Vetrova, assigned to Blue Quadrant, Network Systems, Cadet Deck Two.”

“And you report to?”

The girl pauses. She then says, “I report to you, Pilot Keruvat Ruo.”

“Good.” Keruvat nods at her, and engages something else in the control panel, so that the walls of the shuttle begin to hum with a strange fine vibration that is different in pitch from the larger transport shuttles I’ve actually flown on.

“And what about you?” Keruvat glances to his other side at the boy.

“I am Cadet Lars Hansen, assigned to Green Quadrant, Brake and Shields, Cadet Deck Three. My commanding officer is Pilot Erita Qwas.” The older boy’s voice is deep and soft, and definitely arrogant.

Hey
, it occurs to me,
Erita Qwas happens to be another Instructor from my Pennsylvania RQC, and she’s also on this ship to which I am being assigned. Coincidence?

“And you?” Keruvat nods to the other girl who sits next to Lars Hansen. And then he does something else to the controls, so that suddenly a large portion of the rounded hull wall directly facing us seems to slide apart. A large circular window of some kind of transparent, slightly tinted material is revealed in a semi-circle before us. Through it we can see the brightly lit shuttle bay outside and a portion of the platform beyond which the flying channel tube stretches off into the distance.

We all gasp, because none of us have been inside an Atlantean shuttle that has actual observation widows. Well, looks like these smaller shuttles have a real outside view!

I think back to when I was inside the burning shuttle with Aeson Kassiopei, but I don’t recall seeing any windows then—possibly some kind of safety protocol engaged during the crash landing, and caused the hull panels over the viewport to close up?

The girl whom Keruvat addresses, is momentarily distracted enough by the unexpected appearance of the window to stutter at first. Then she gathers herself and says with a light unidentifiable accent, “I am Jennica Tulls, Civilian. I am assigned to Red Quadrant, Residential Deck One. And—I don’t think I report to anyone.”

“That’s correct,” Keruvat says to her. “As a Civilian you are not going to have a direct commanding officer. But you will have officers on your deck who will explain things to you when you get there.”

And then he turns to me, as I sit on the other side, next to Alla Vetrova. “And finally, Gwen Lark, what is your assignment?”

“Instructor Ruo—I mean, Pilot Ruo,” I begin. “It’s a little complicated.”

“Oh, really?” Keruvat makes a noise that resembles a snort, and turns back to his controls. “What else is new? Is there anything ever
not
complicated when it comes to you, Lark? So, then—is it Civilian or Cadet Lark?”

I blush and mutter, “Neither. I told the captain of this ship that I choose to be a Citizen of Atlantis.”

Keruvat is not looking at me, as he is occupied with the controls. But immediately his brows rise and he stops doing whatever he’s doing and turns to me. “What? No—don’t tell me. You continue to be a troublemaker. The captain must have been relieved to transfer you. Well then, let the CP handle you from now on. What is your assignment?”

“Yellow Quadrant, Navigation and Guidance, Command Deck Four. And my commanding officer is Command Pilot Aeson Kassiopei himself.”

Keruvat makes another short sound. If I didn’t see the twinkle in his eyes, I might start getting worried. “Deck Four? Hah! Does Oalla know you’re coming?”

“You mean—Instructor Oalla Keigeri? She’s on this ship too?”

“Yes, Pilot Oalla Keigeri, she’s in charge of Cadet Deck Four,” Keruvat corrects me, preoccupied with the console before him. He then places his large hand on the controls and sings a short sequence of notes in a deep resonant voice, which makes the control panel light up with strange rainbow color lights underneath the oddly shapeless orichalcum surface. At the same time a series of holographic color light “grids” start popping up, floating in the air above the console, which he quickly manipulates. Immediately the humming sound in the hull rises to a higher octave, responding to Keruvat’s actions.

And then Pilot Ruo pauses suddenly and again glances at me. “Wait—did you say
Command
Deck Four or Cadet Deck Four?”

“Command Deck. . . .”

Keruvat continues staring. “No. That can’t be right. Are you sure, Lark?”

I blink. “I—I think so, yes.”

“That’s very unusual.” He shakes his head at me. “Command Deck means you will be living in Officers Quarters.”

My lips part.

The other three teens in the shuttle who have been listening to us talk, are all staring hard at me.

In that moment our shuttle lurches slightly, then levitates sideways off the platform to enter the flying channel tube.

Pilot Ruo sings another brief sequence then swipes his fingers against the console.

The shuttle shoots forward like an arrow. At the same time we are gripped by g-forces and pressed deep into our seats.

The launch tunnel blurs around us from the incredible speed at which we fly.

Chapter Four

I
n less than five seconds we burst out of the shuttle bay tunnel, past some kind of shimmering curtain of plasma energy, into the black vacuum of space.

The g-forces dissipate, and suddenly we are floating, smooth and deceptively motionless. Outside the observation window we see the universe and distant specks of stars . . . and all around us, an incredible perfect array of grand ark-ships lined up in a long pattern that resembles a star trail.

The Atlantean ships appear to be fixed in perfect stillness relative to each other. But as we look closer we realize that they are all
moving
—
we
are moving—at such incredible speeds, that the rest of the space around us is gently blurring. Again, that strange optical illusion of tails or extended oval distortions can be seen in all the dots of brightness that are distant stars, galaxies, and other cosmic objects emitting light.

“
Ah! Gospodi pomilui. . . .”
A gasp comes from one of the teens in the shuttle, Alla Vetrova—an exhalation of pure wonder, followed by something in Russian. The others are just staring. My own jaw falls slack in amazement at the sight.

Our shuttle “hangs” in the same strange suspended illusion of no-motion. And then it turns, rotating so that we see the great disk shape of the ark-ship we just exited begin to fill the left half of the window.