Lights in the Deep (3 page)

But when they started picking on Irenka, I knew I had to do something.

I waited until we were at mid-point, when we got a few hours of freefall before deceleration. It was the one time during the trip when the other kids were awkward, and I felt comfortable. I’d spent the previous months onboard our station using the zero gee exercise rooms in the station’s hub, in preparation for Mama’s hoped-for assignment to the asteroids. Now I used these skills to maximum advantage.

A few black eyes and fat lips later—both theirs and mine—and the troublemakers and I reached an understanding.

When Elaine found out, she scolded me hotly of course. Adults always have to do that, so that it seems to everyone like they’re not taking sides. But when we were thrusting again and I was back to needing Elaine’s help to use the lavatory, she quietly told me she was glad I’d stuck up for my sister, and that some of the rowdier kids had stopped being so rowdy.

There was no more teasing, and the people who had been bothering Irenka didn’t say another word.

Which was good enough for me.

• • •

Jupiter was gorgeous outside our liner’s cabin windows. The huge planet had hung there for a week now, growing steadily larger while we adjusted and burned in order to drop into a rendezvous orbit with one of the Jovian stations the captain had spoken of shortly before we fled the inner system.

I’m not sure what all of us were thinking. The Jovian settlements had grown into a sort of mythic destination in our minds, and we’d all begun to place various—and later, I would think, unrealistic—expectations on the place. Irenka especially seemed fascinated with Jupiter.

I felt bad, having to keep reminding her that Mama and Papa wouldn’t be there at the door to greet us when we got off the ship. Every time I did it, Irenka got mad at me and told me she hated me because I was happy that Mama and Papa were dead, so that I could take Papa’s place and boss her around. At which point she’d take off for the little indoor playground the crew had built in the lower cargo hold, and I wouldn’t see her for an hour. Until she’d come sulking back to our couch, apologize for being mean to me, and we’d end it with a great big hug.

Irenka was up front using the lavatory when the lights in the cabin went red and the klaxon sounded over the speakers.

The captain’s voice roared, temporarily drowning the screams of the other kids.

“WE ARE UNDER ATTACK BY AN AUTOMATED DEFENSE SATELLITE! BUCKLE IN AND PREPARE FOR SEVERE GEE!”

My immediate thought was of Irenka, stuck in the bathroom. I used my arms to propel myself out of my seat, but was promptly shoved back down from behind by Elaine’s hands on my biceps.

“Do as you’re told!” Elaine yelled at me.

“But my sister!”

Elaine looked to where I stared wide at the lavatory, then nodded once and said, “You stay here, I’ll go get Irenka!”

The older woman almost ran down the aisle, her grip shoes making
rip-rip
sounds as she went. I managed to get my harness buckled around me when the gee kicked hard. We all slammed from side to side, up and down, screams and shouts and crying filling the cabin. Elaine stayed upright through all of it, and I saw her reach the lavatory door and use the special key card on her lanyard to open it. She vanished inside for a moment, then emerged with Irenka, whose eyes were searching frantically while her legs kicked in the air. Elaine was yelling, “Calm down! Calm down, honey!”

Another series of violent maneuvers battered the occupants of the cabin. I saw one girl come loose from her partially-buckled harness and crash into the ceiling. She floated limply for a moment before being catapulted over my head and out of sight, followed by a sickening
thump
.

Elaine held Irenka tight, however, and began making her way back to my couch when there was a horrific concussion that made my teeth rattle, following by groans and shrieking from beneath the floor.

My ears suddenly felt like they might pop, and for an instant I realized that the ship had been hit. Elaine and Irenka simply looked at me, their mouths forming twin oh-shapes while their hair ruffled in the rush of escaping atmosphere.

Then the orange decompression shield slipped out of its compartment on the headrest of my couch and dropped down over me like a shroud, sealing at the edges.

I screamed Irenka’s name and fought to undo the chest buckle on my harness, watching through the shield’s small window while the cabin became a nightmare of flashing red lights and debris exploding from the floor. My little sister and I were able to exchange one final look, her little mouth shrieking,
Mirek!
Then the world tilted over and I was crushed into my couch, the decompression shield flapping and billowing.

• • •

When I came to, I was numb to the core. My ears hurt a lot and my nose had bled all over the front of my shirt. I didn’t care. For the longest time I just sat and kept my eyes closed tight, re-watching the image of my little sister noiselessly screaming my name.

Eventually I felt the rumbling of a terrible cry struggle up in my chest. Once it broke the surface, I howled for many minutes, snot and tears and blood caking my face and hands. By the time I went silent I was so spent physically and emotionally, I could only muster a few last sniffles, and then I was back to simply feeling nothing much at all.

Hours passed. I didn’t move until my bowels complained, and I used the small LCD in the armrest of the couch to read the emergency instructions. The decompression shield had snapped taut as a balloon, affording me some elbow room. So I unlatched myself from the harness and, per direction, pulled the seat cushion up to reveal the orifice for an emergency zero-gee toilet, which I used. Then I simply sat and stared out the shield’s window, watching the blackness of space and the stars beyond roll slowly past.

I figured I’d been blown free of the wreck during the decompression, or the couch was designed to eject in an emergency. It didn’t matter, really. Irenka had died five meters from me, and all I’d been able to do was watch.

I’d failed Irenka. And I’d failed Papa, who’d told me to take care of her.

I wished very much that I could cease to exist.

Another cry rumbled, but I didn’t have anything left for it.

I fell back asleep.

• • •

I came awake with a start.

The decompression shield was slowly deflating around me.

I hurried punched at the LCD on the armrest, wondering why the system hadn’t sounded an emergency alarm, only to find the decompression shield lifting back up into the headrest on its motors.

I flinched for an instant, expecting the vacuum of space, but instead found the illuminated, metal-ribbed interior of…another ship?

There were no people present in the high-ceilinged, rectangular space. It dwarfed the passenger cabin of the ship Irenka and I had originally escaped on.

Irenka.
A wave of sudden depression washed over me and I brought my useless knees to my chest, burying my face. The repeating images of her frantic death began to replay across my mind, and I slowly beat my forehead on my kneecaps, unable to make the horror stop. Would it be like this forever? Always seeing Irenka, dying a million deaths, with me unable to help her?

There was a clanking sound from across the large compartment, and I snapped my head up. I saw a circular hatch swing open.

My heart began to beat rapidly in my chest. I stayed put on the couch, watching a small figure in white, flowing, pajama-like clothes float through and attach to the deck with grip shoes.

To my surprise, it was an old woman.

Her skin was wrinkled and coal-black, and her eyes were wide with dark irises.

She looked at me, unblinking. Then she quickly walked
rip-rip-rip
across the deck.

“Boy’s a mess, Howard,” the old woman said, but not to me. Her speech was American English, but heavily accented in a way I’d never heard except on television. When she drew near I noticed the tiny device in her ear—a headset. I just looked at her while she knelt down slowly near the coach and examined my face, the dried blood on my shirt, and the way my balled fists gently trembled while I hugged them over my knees.

“You got a name, son?”

“Miroslaw,” I said, the dried mucus and blood in my nostrils making it sound as if I had a bad cold.

“That’s…Russian?”

“Polish”

“Well you can thank the Lord that your little lifeboat here crossed our path, Miroslaw from Poland. The killsats didn’t leave much left when they hit Jupiter. Howard and I kept the observatory dark until the killsats moved on. Then we did a slingshot burn, and now we’re away.”

“What does that mean?”

“Everything has gone on automatic. The military doesn’t exist anymore, but their machines do. To the killsats,
everyone
has become a target. So Howard and I decided it would be best to cut loose and go.”

“Where?”

“The Kuiper Belt, boy. Only place left. We’re going to find the Outbound.”

Outbound.
There had been stories about them in school: privately-funded deep space missions that had been sent to determine if the space beyond Neptune provided fertile ground for colonization. None of them had ever sent back any data, once they passed the orbit of Pluto. Common sense said the Outbound had perished.

But had they really?

As long as Irenka’s death was foremost in my mind, the Outbound didn’t matter to me. I kept hugging my knees, and stared past the old woman, looking at nothing.

“I’m Tabitha,” the old woman said, sticking out her hand.

“Thank you for finding me,” I said, weakly shaking it.

“You don’t seem too happy about it, Miroslaw.”

“Mirek. My sister called me Mirek. She’s…she’s….”

I couldn’t say it, but it didn’t seem like I needed to. Tabitha just put a gnarled old finger to my lips.

“Hush child. You’ve survived the Devil’s Day. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

I let her grab my arm and pull me up off the couch. Using the grip shoes, she towed me back to the hatch she’d used to enter the large bay.

She noticed that my legs trailed behind me, and I used only my arms to maneuver through the hatch on its hand rails.

“Can’t walk?” Tabitha asked.

I nodded. She immediately flipped me over to check for injury, but I pushed her hands away. “Not hurt. Paralyzed. Since I was born.”

“Mercy,” Tabitha breathed. “Well Mirek, we’ll just have to do the best we can, you and I.”

“What about Howard?” I said.

“He’s my husband. You’ll meet him soon enough.”

• • •

Howard and Tabitha Marshall were originally from Virginia. Assigned to one of Jupiter’s six original Humason-series mobile space telescope platforms, they’d served as technicians when they were young, and moved up to take over their observatory when older.

We talked while Tabitha helped pull my shirt off and began washing my face.

“NASA told us the telescope was too old, and ought to be decommissioned, but Howard and I liked it out here so much, where we could be close to God’s quiet grandeur. When the astronomers and other staff packed up and left, we stayed. In protest, at first. But eventually NASA gave up and let us keep working. We sent data back right up until the war.”

Howard, I’d learned, had actually died a few years earlier, but they’d recorded him into the computer, and now he ran the observatory as its brain. I’d heard of that being done for some of the very long deep space missions, using volunteer pilots who’d grown too old or sick to fly. It was an experimental thing, and lots of people back on Earth still hadn’t been too sure about. Talking to Howard was a little like talking to an imaginary friend, since he seemed to exist everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

The observatory itself was a sprawling complex built into the side of a tiny piece of ore-rich rock that had been blasted off one of Jupiter’s trailing Trojan asteroids. When the hunter-killer satellites from the inner system had reached and attacked the Jovian settlements, Howard had turned off every piece of active equipment he could, going “dark” in the hope that he and Tabitha wouldn’t be detected.

Pure chance had sent my couch spinning across their path, and when Howard’s passive sensors picked up my vital signs, Tabitha demanded that I be brought aboard, in spite of the risk.

I didn’t know what to say, so I mostly kept quiet and let Tabitha—Tab, she insisted—do most of the talking.

She literally flowed with stories and spunk and an irrepressible good cheer, such that I almost forgot the depression that had sunk its teeth into my heart since Irenka had died. But the dual loss of my sister and my parents remained like a toothache—always there, and always painful.

We got me bathed, and dressed in an oversized smock similar to the one Tab wore, and then she took me on a tour of the facility. Most of the compartments were sealed and cold, since the observatory’s automation did most of the upkeep and Tab herself only needed a few rooms in which to work and live. She moved like a fish in water when she maneuvered in zero gee, and she showed me the spin room where she spent at least a couple of hours every day, doing exercise and letting her body experience centripetal gravity so that her muscles and bones didn’t wither away.

“I know you can’t use your legs, Mirek,” Tab said, “but we’ll find out a routine for you. Meanwhile, we can open one of the other compartments and get you a room set up. You’re going to be our guest for a while, I think.”

I stopped.

“What if I don’t want to?” I said.

Tab looked at me with a raised eyebrow, her steel-gray, close-cropped hair poking out in a mass of springy ringlets.

“Boy, you think you got any choice at this point?”

“Papa used to tell me there are always choices.”

Tab opened her mouth to argue, then stopped and looked at me carefully.

“Fair enough, child. The Lord gave free will, and it’s not mine to take away. We could put you into one of the observatory’s dories. You could take your chances on your own.”

I stared at my host. Staying here wouldn’t make the pain to go away, that was for sure. But then, I wasn’t certain anything would.