Deep Space Dead (3 page)

The three of them made excruciating small talk for a few minutes longer after which Sol made his excuses and left. “He needs to find himself a good woman,” said Jak, after the door had closed behind the police officer. “He’s just sore because you’ve moved on whilst he’s still stuck in the past. Well he’s got his daughter and it isn’t as if we’re going to move anywhere in a hurry once we get to Hearthstone. He’ll still get to see her. I won’t stand in his way.”

“You men and your pride,” laughed Arianna with a wry shake of her head. “Thousands of years of genetic engineering and non-stop progress and we still can’t breed it out of you.”

3

Admiral Stenna Kalp was a tall, thin woman in her mid-fifties with iron grey hair cropped closely to the sides. For many years she had laboured away diligently on the cargo and mining ships. The charge of the Tula IV was her final reward for years of good service. Now they were so close to arrival on Hearthstone the Admiral could barely contain her excitement and she turned to beam at the Council as they filed in for the morning meeting. Arianna and Jak arrived together. Sol, as usual, was there first, primly seated at his desk with his hands folded in front of him and his papers ready.

Bratten Jorg was the Chief of Engineers. She was a still attractive woman in her mid-forties with a slim figure and lush black hair swept back into a tight ponytail. Arianna rarely saw her in the library and this, she supposed, was because Bratten already knew all there was to know about her field. She was certainly one of the most respected councillors on the committee, with a knowledge stretching into many varied areas from agriculture to mechanics.

Prima Blak was the ship’s chief geologist, a short, round-faced woman in her late thirties. If Jak and his rangers had little to do on the voyage over, Prima and her team had even less to occupy them. Arianna knew her very well from the library where she spent most of her days going over research she already knew and whiling away the days until she could step up to her important role in the eventual colonisation.

Jung Penn, the chief architect and city planner, was a short and studious man of forty. He was polite and well-presented and usually kept to his own counsel. Notwithstanding he had used his time during the journey wisely in order to map out a grand design for the first city, models of which were on permanent display throughout the starship.

Banda Ure was the head of the naturalists, an enthusiastic woman of thirty who was the youngest of the councillors after Arianna. Like Prima Blak she’d had little to do throughout the voyage but kept herself busy in the arboretum experimenting with crops and methods of plant growing, a project she’d carried out in liaison with Gan Cuk, the head of agriculture.

Gan Cuk was a large bear of a man in his late thirties whose responsibility it was to keep the food coming in via the arboretum. His was widely considered the most crucial of tasks on board the ships, for the greenery was needed for the oxygen supply as well, although he bore the pressure admirably.

Dr Harman Palk was the chief medical officer and would be responsible for overall public health once they reached Hearthstone. He was a jovial man of sixty, one of the oldest colonists on the ship; a fountain of knowledge and a vocal, dedicated councillor.

Barra Herr was the councillor in overall charge of communications and the ship’s electronics. He was a bald, red faced man in his mid-forties with a prickly demeanour and a heightened sense of his own importance, and only just competent enough in his vocation to be bearable.

Baac Gorr was the councillor representing the ship’s pilots, a thin and weedy looking man of thirty-seven with a pronounced limp. Because the starship’s course was pre-set, many assumed the pilots did not have a great deal to do but in fact this was far from the case. Their duties, which involved speed control and navigation, took a great deal of skill and training and as the days towards arrival on Hearthstone drew closer Bacc Gorr and his team were becoming increasingly on edge and this was reflected by the pilot’s nervous fingers which tapped incessantly upon the table throughout the course of the meeting.

Jared Bynce was the councillor in overall charge of mining, forestry and industry, a heavy set, muscular man of forty-two. He too had little to do on the starship but made up for that by being a dedicated and vocal councillor with views on all kinds of topics, regardless of whether or not he properly understood them.

Magnuj Bol was the councillor in charge of the ship’s administration and overall day to day governance. By comparison to others his department was vast, bureaucratic and, to Arianna, incredibly boring although essential. Bol himself, a slightly overweight, grey haired man with an owl like face in his mid-fifties, seemed to have been almost genetically engineered for the role.

Last of all was Col Gayze, a thin, dark haired man with an upright bearing who served as the councillor representing the entertainment wing. He was an actor by profession whose embarkation on the starship had been somewhat forced by his affair with the wife of a high ranking Confederation civil servant. Condescending and arrogant in his demeanour he was by far the least popular of all the councillors although unfortunately also one of the most vocal.

“We’re on course to arrive exactly when we should and with a good surplus of fuel with which to convert into the power station,” said Kalp with satisfaction after the pleasantries had been exchanged and the meeting itself got underway.

“I’ve calculated we’ll have enough in the tank for three years,” put in Bratten Jorg. “Once we get close the temptation is always to speed up so we might get there quicker but I’d advise against that. It’s always handy to have a backup supply of power even if you’re not using it. You have to be prepared for anything on these new planets, especially when they’ve barely been set foot on it before.”

Arianna looked up at this statement, wondering whether the engineer was really as ignorant as she seemed, but her face gave nothing away and none of the other councillors spoke up to correct her mistake.

“Extra fuel is indeed a good idea,” said Jung Penn. “The power plant I have in mind is a complex one, being comprised of both wind and solar energy, and will take time to build. We’ll certainly need a steady supply of fuel to power the city and mines in the meantime.”

“And I’d like to get mining straight away,” said Jared Bynce. “I know the Confederation likes to give colonies twenty years to harvest a stockpile before they come to take any of the resources for themselves but from what the explorer pods have sent back about Hearthstone conditions are so abundant I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to start running a surplus within half that time.”

“We don’t need to go brown nosing to the Confederation just yet,” said Barra Herr in his customary haughty tone. “The more resources we dig up in the first few years the better the colony will fare. The Confederation is hardly short of ore and mining materials.”

The talk turned quickly to matters Arianna found mundane and uninteresting and she stopped listening for the most part. Besides, she had something else on her mind and now they were so close to reaching Hearthstone she intended to address the Admiral after the meeting and get the matter of the Suki II off her chest once and for all.

The council meeting lasted two hours. Some of the councillors drifted away before this time, busy with preparations for the landing date but Arianna had no such luck. She lingered behind after the Admiral had dismissed them. Kalp spent some time studying her holoscreen before noticing her. “And how are you, Arianna?” She asked pleasantly. “Ambra is well, I trust? And looking forward to the big day?”

“Completely out of control with excitement,” replied Arianna.

The Admiral laughed. “As are we all,” she said enthusiastically. “I never had any children of my own, Arianna, as I’m sure I must have told you, but I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying the enthusiasm of our young people as our day of reckoning draws closer.” Suddenly her tone became serious. “And how are you and Sol these days?” She asked perceptively. “I noticed you didn’t make a great deal of eye contact at the meeting.”

“Officer Hanns and I enjoy a perfectly cordial relationship,” replied Arianna awkwardly. “We talk all the time because of Arianna and there are rarely any arguments these days. In fact I think we get on better now than when we were together.”

“When you were together there wasn’t the tension there is now,” said Kalp. “There is tension between the three of you. I can see it and I can sense it. We all can.”

“I daresay these tensions will iron out when we reach Hearthstone and we all have more space to call our own,” replied Arianna, regretting ever having stayed behind.

The Admiral got up and went to stand at the window, looking out at the stars beyond. “Once upon a time the Confederation tried to eliminate the very notion of love and monogamy,” said Kalp. “They attempted re-education programmes, encouraged a culture of free love and sex without consequences, even outlawed marriage. Some even went so far as to call for people to be genetically modified so that they were incapable of such emotions. It failed of course as it was always bound to do. No matter how far we come, what we discover and what knowledge we possess I don’t think we’ll ever quite be able to leave behind the primitive notions of lust, jealousy and heartache that singular love encompasses. Once upon a time culturists imagined we would make robots more intelligent than ourselves, and that we would imbue these robots with human emotions so that they took us over, wiped out and enslaved us completely. It was all nonsense of course. Robots and computers are built to be clinical and calculating. We would never dream of building something containing such a flaw as an emotion. As a species we are riddled with flaws; flaws so bad that if they were reflected on to the design of a starship they would cause the thing to crash straight away. And yet somehow we have known nothing except unbroken success.”

Arianna shuffled awkwardly in her seat, not quite sure how to respond. The Admiral turned around, sensing her discomfort. “But you did not come here to discuss your personal life, did you Arianna? You’re here to talk about the Suki II and the failure of the last expedition?”

Arianna gaped at the Admiral, temporarily unable to speak.

Kalp smiled. “I have had an alert put on the file,” she told her. “Every time the chip is removed I get to know about it. Do you know in all the time we have been travelling you are the only one who has withdrawn it? Such an interest you have in the distant past, Arianna, although I am not sure it is a healthy one, worrying yourself unnecessarily over such things.”

“Aren’t you in the least bit curious as to what happened to them?” Asked Arianna.

Kalp smiled. “Tell me Arianna,” she said gently. “Does your love of history encompass knowledge of the tales of the old Earth?”

“Why of course,” replied Arianna, not quite sure what the Admiral was getting at.

“Then perhaps you will have heard of shipwrecks,” said Kalp. “When primitive humans constructed boats made of wood and set sail for distant continents which seemed to them as far away as the nebulae from Jupiter. Sometimes those ships didn’t make it, sometimes they sank and no trace of them remained. There was nothing sinister about this, nothing mysterious. The sailors on those ships simply drowned, they perished because their crafts were not good enough, because circumstances were against them. Five thousand years ago the Suki II set out for Hearthfire in what to us would be a very primitive craft, using extremely primitive methods. They arrived and sent back some messages but then something went wrong. Perhaps their nuclear fuel rods imploded and caused a catastrophe which wiped them all out; those things were always pretty volatile and it wouldn’t have been the first instance of them doing so. Perhaps the arboretum failed before they could sustain themselves and they starved. Perhaps they landed too close to an active volcano and were wiped out that way. All of these things we are now, in this new epoch, able to counter. I have been trained not to make such mistakes, and a mistake is what it was that wiped out the Suki II. Do not worry yourself unnecessarily, Arianna, not when we have so much still to do.”

“With respect Ma’am that doesn’t answer my question,” said Arianna. “As the librarian I need to know the full facts in case something unexpected happens and we need to act accordingly. People come to me for advice, Ma’am, for knowledge. I can’t give it to them unless you put me in the picture.”

The Admiral smiled again. “Of course,” she said quietly. “And in answer to your question the Confederation did indeed consider the fate of the Suki II. In fact I was given orders that we are to look out for signs of wreckage and when we find it we are to conduct a full investigation as to what happened to it. But do you know who has commissioned this order, Arianna? The culture department. The report is required for historical purposes only for it is widely believed any lessons the Suki II may have taught us have already long been learned.”

Arianna left the council chambers feeling deeply dissatisfied, although at the same time she couldn’t help feeling that perhaps the Admiral was right. No answers as to the fate of the Suki II were going to be unearthed, not after so many years. Right now everybody was looking towards the future, and Arianna knew she must do the same. Everybody was busy. Everybody was going about their business with a new urgency, everybody glancing hopefully out of the window in the hope of catching sight of their new home. Arianna should have been excited too, if not for herself than for her daughter who was soon to experience a real world for the first time. But leaving aside the unease over her historical research Arianna had other worries as well. She knew a confrontation with Sol was coming. At the moment the police officer was forcing himself to be polite, was swallowing every indignity she and Jak were inadvertently heaping upon his head and trying to remain absorbed in his work, but she knew it would not last. She remembered how he had begged her not to leave, how Ambra had held on to him and wept and refused to let go; even at eighteen months she had known, the pain of parental separation on a young child. Arianna felt guilty every time she thought about it.