Excelsior (2 page)

“I can’t believe you did this,” he said, shaking his head. More tears fell as he stared at her gift.

“It was hard to find a mechanical watch that had the date as well as the time. I thought you might like to count the days or something.”

Alexander looked up, smiling, but feeling suddenly miserable. “I didn’t think to get you anything.”

“That’s okay. Maybe you’ll find a souvenir to bring back for me from wherever you’re going.”

Alexander nodded and shut the watch. He slipped it into his pocket and leaned in for another kiss. It went on and on, but not nearly long enough.

A tap on his shoulder interrupted them. “Sir, we’re out of time…”

Alexander broke away reluctantly. “Don’t forget to message me,” he said while their fingertips were still touching, one hand slipping away from the other.

“Don’t you forget either,” Catalina sniffed.

Alexander shook his head and waved as he walked away, smiling reassuringly as he went. “Every day. I’ll be back before you know it!” he called out.

“Don’t make me wait forever!”

“I won’t.”

*

Forty minutes later, Captain Alexander de Leon sat in the front row of the climber car’s viewing gallery, watching as Earth fell away below the bubble-shaped canopy. The giant equatorial anchor at the base of the elevator had been reduced to a thumb-sized speck. All around, the ocean shone a deep, stunning blue in the morning sun. Hundreds of small gray dots floated there—cargo ships and warships alike. The Alliance wasn’t in a state of open war, but it would be foolhardy to leave their space elevator undefended. Far off in the hazy distance, he thought he saw the island of Curaçao, the Southern State closest to Anchor Station.

Alexander reached into his pocket and withdrew the pocket watch Catalina had given him. He read the engravings once more, opened the watch, stared at the photo of him and his wife, and remembered the past month he’d spent with her. The prospect of being apart for as much as a decade weighed heavy on his mind. Even immortals could get tired of waiting, and he and Caty had grown apart as it was. Bi-annual leave wasn’t nearly enough to keep a marriage alive. Staying together had always been the plan, but his primary goal had been to save her, and he’d already done that.

Life in the Southern States was a death sentence. Alexander remembered learning about it in school. In the South people were born naturally and they died naturally. Mother nature at its best. The circle of death. They were the so-called degenerates or natural-born humans. Whereas up North, medical science had found ways around old age and dying. People were genetically engineered from birth to live forever and never to age. Geners all looked and acted just as perfect as their parents could make them, but all of that engineering came at a price, and that kind of money… you were either born with it or you weren’t. Most people down South weren’t, so they stayed down there and they died down there. Alexander’s family was no different. His parents struggled just to pay rent and put food on the table, let alone pay for over a hundred thousand sols of implants and genetic treatments for their son to become immortal.

Fortunately, there was another way. The war with the Confederacy meant that the Alliance needed soldiers, and the wealthy members of its population were all already immortal, so they would never willingly risk their lives in war. The poor, however, could be easily persuaded. One five-year term of service would save a life. Two terms would save two lives. Alexander had served his two already, saving both his wife and himself.

At the time, joining the navy had seemed like an easy way to get out of the South and escape the human condition. But he and Catalina hadn’t counted on the navy choosing him for Operation Alice.

From what he’d been allowed to know of it, Operation Alice was a mission to another planet, code-named Wonderland. Mission planners believed it could be another Earth. Alexander didn’t know where it was, or how the Alliance proposed traveling there when manned missions had yet to make it beyond the solar system. Maybe the Alliance had finally developed a working FTL drive? Either way, the mission would keep him away from Earth for an indefinite period of time, so he’d been sent down to the surface to say goodbye to his loved ones.

Alexander sighed and reclined his chair. He felt restless and heart-sore, but despite the former condition, he was also intensely curious about the mission. He had a feeling he was going to lose a lot of sleep guessing about it before he learned anything new. It was a two-day trip from Anchor Station to Orbital One, the Alliance’s counter-weighting space station at the top end of the elevator.

As the climber car continued racing up, Alexander came to eye level with a thin golden crust of cirrus clouds. They gleamed bright on the horizon, slowly baking to a crisp in the heat of the rising equatorial sun. Then, all of a few minutes later, Alexander was staring at a deep indigo sky with a multitude of stars pricking through.

He was leaving terra firma behind, and this time, he was going to be gone a lot longer than six months. Alexander blew out another sigh. He had the war to thank for it. People erroneously thought that if they could just get away from Earth, then they could leave its problems behind, too. Operation Alice was just the latest initiative in a race to colonize the stars. There were already colonies on the Moon, Mars, Titan, and Europa, but that wasn’t good enough. The panacea would be to find another planet like Earth, and according to the mission planners, Wonderland was it.

Alexander shook his head. It was ridiculous that space exploration and extraterrestrial colonization had been fueled by the threat of self-extinction, but at the same time, it made a sick kind of sense. The human race had always been its own worst enemy.

There came a sharp intake of air, followed by a young woman’s voice: “Captain de Leon!”

Alexander turned to see a woman come skidding to a stop in front of him, blocking his view. She stood at attention and saluted. The single silver bar she wore marked her as a lieutenant junior grade, while the glowing white stripe below it indicated she was a member of the bridge crew of a starship. A junior lieutenant made bridge crew? Alexander wondered, looking her up and down carefully. The woman was not ugly by any means, and not all natural-borns were, but something about the lieutenant set him off. Her eyes were a rare shade of blue; her hair looked like liquid gold, not one strand out of place; her complexion was too perfect, and her bosom—Alexander stopped his analysis there.

It was rare to find a gener in the navy—or in any other branch of the service, for that matter—but not impossible; he’d met a few of them warming seats in OCS. They had their own government incentives, financial ones to match the cost of what the navy offered to natural-borns. Maybe this lieutenant had been born a gener child, but then her family had run out of money and she’d signed up to save someone else. A baby, perhaps…?

No, he decided. Northerners had implants to prevent pregnancy, and giving birth to degenerates was illegal in the Northern States. She must have had other reasons for joining the service.

“Something on your mind, Lieutenant?” Alexander asked, frowning up at her.

“Sir, Junior Lieutenant McAdams, reporting for duty, sir!”

Alexander’s frown deepened. “You’re assigned to the W.A.S. Lincoln?”

“Yes, sir!”

“I know my entire crew from White Deck to Blue, and I don’t recognize you.”

“I’m a recent transfer, sir. I have my orders if you’d like to see them.”

“Please.”

The young woman held out her arm. Her sleeve rode up, revealing her comm band. She used her other hand to activate the holo display and then navigated by touching holographic buttons and making gestures. Once she found the right document, she made a circle in the air with her finger, and the display rotated to face him. He scanned her orders. Everything checked out. McAdams was to replace Lieutenant Ramirez as the Lincoln’s chief engineer.

Alexander’s eyebrows floated up as he read that. “You’re a junior lieutenant. According to fleet regulations, a ship’s chief engineer must be at least a full lieutenant.”

“Admiral Flores waived the requirement for me, sir.”

“And what happened to Lieutenant Ramirez?”

McAdams gave him a dumb look.

“My previous chief. He was supposed to be aboard this climber. Where is he?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Never mind. I assume you’ve been through the training for this mission and that you’ve been adequately briefed?”

“Yes, sir. I was one of the reserves.”

“And you’ve served on a Hunter-class destroyer before?”

McAdams shook her head. “Not on active duty, sir, but the reserves were all trained on one, and I’ve been studying the operational manuals.”

Alexander grunted. “It’ll have to do, I suppose. Carry on, Lieutenant. I’ll see you on deck.”

“Aye-aye, sir.” McAdams saluted once more and went on her way.

Alexander went back to watching the view from the climber. Earth could now be seen curving away below him, the upper edge of the atmosphere glowing a bright blue against the black of space. The sun peered over the horizon at him, dazzling his eyes and making him see spots when he looked away. Then his stomach grumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. He unbuckled and rose stiff-legged from his chair.

It was time to get to the mess hall, and while he was at it, to check the Lincoln’s roster. His crew was like family; he hoped he hadn’t lost anyone else. Ramirez had left the mission without so much as a goodbye. Maybe he’d thought it would be too painful to see them off, but that still left the question of why he wasn’t on the mission. Assignments weren’t optional, so it had to be something serious. Alexander hoped it wasn’t because Ramirez had gone AWOL, but if he had, maybe he could escape a court-martial for a while by hiding out in the South.

Suerte hermano, Alexander thought, and while he was at it—Good luck to the rest of us, too.

*

As it happened Ramirez wasn’t the only one who’d left the mission. Almost a third of Alexander’s crew had been detached from the W.A.S. Lincoln with little or no notice, and the reserves had been called up instead.

Now Alexander’s heart was sore for more reasons than he could count. He didn’t understand it. Why hadn’t he been told? Why had no one come to say goodbye? He resolved to ask Admiral Flores about the changes to his crew.

No sooner did Alexander arrive on Orbital One than he received orders via his communicator to report to Admiral Flores in the auxiliary briefing room on Deck Nine. He walked there, once again enjoying the effects of gravity.

The station’s gravity was artificially generated by its rotation around the Earth and its location above GEO (Geostationary Earth Orbit), such that “down” was actually facing outer space and “up” was facing Earth.

Alexander reached the auxiliary briefing room, and a pair of petty officers guarding the entrance scanned him with wands before he reached the doors. Neither of them moved to open the doors for him. Instead, one of them turned aside and said, “Call Admiral Flores.” His earpiece recognized the command, activated his communicator, and placed the call. When the call went through, the petty officer announced to the admiral that Captain de Leon was waiting outside the briefing room for her.

Moments later, the doors swished open to reveal Admiral Flores herself. Her white admiral’s uniform contrasted sharply with her ebony skin. Alexander stood at attention and saluted. Flores returned the salute.

“At ease, Captain,” she said, stepping aside so he could enter the room.

Once inside, the admiral shut the doors with a gesture and locked them with another. From there she turned and strode down the aisle to the speaker’s podium. Alexander followed, and noted with a growing frown that they were the only ones in the room.

“I must be early,” he said.

“Actually, you’re late,” Flores replied.

That gave him pause. “Where are the others, then?” They reached the speaker’s podium, and the admiral stepped up while he sat down in the front row.

“What others?” Flores asked, turning back to face him.

“I’m not sure I understand, ma’am…” Alexander replied slowly. “How many people know about this mission?”

“Five hundred, give or take.”

Alexander’s eyes widened. “Then why am I the only one being briefed?”

“They already know everything they need to. They’re with mission control on Lewis Station.”

“Lewis Station? I’ve never heard of it.”

Admiral Flores’ cheeks dimpled with rare amusement. “Nor should you have. Operation Alice is highly classified. If you were to breach operational security, even accidentally, you would be looking at a dishonorable discharge and a firing squad. In order to spare everyone that unpleasantness, we’ve told you as little as possible up till now.”

Alexander’s pulse began jumping in his temples. “I see.”

“No, you don’t, but you will.”

Flores walked up to the far wall and began making gestures. A series of holo displays glowed to life, showing star maps and flight plans.

Flores pointed to the first hologram, a flight plan, and began to explain: the Lincoln was to detach from Orbital One and fly straight to Venus, where it would get a gravity assist and fly on toward the Alliance colony on Titan.