“The plan, Drogan, is to play the Dragons’ game as long as we need. I sense in your tone that you may have forgotten what’s keeping them from discovering Earth. What’s keeping them from eradicating humans and taking it all for themselves? That would be the life support system run by me,” Machaeus’ hissed. Drogan slammed his hands against his stony bed. In this rare moment he could channel the fury beneath the lies, the border between his forms faded. The blades of his talons scraped halfway out of his cuticles.
“And you must be forgetting why those support systems are still functioning. Why the Dragons still think they need you. That’d be me. My mock Crusades to find more Chrysum. I can’t even think about Earth too hard, or they’ll know. So I want to know what our plan is to stop them from pushing too far? From finding everything I left to…” Drogan trailed off. His talons retracted. Between the mission to Saturn, the return flight, and dealing with Krystis, his fire was burning low. There were hardly coals left.
“You’re tired, Drogan. I’ll overlook your tone and attribute it to fatigue. Get some rest, and if you feel the urge to discuss this again, remember that I gave you this chance. Tell you what. Why don’t you stay as you are tonight? You probably don’t remember when the last time you slept as a human was,” said Machaeus.
“But Krystis…” Drogan groaned. He chewed his lip until a bead of blood popped loose. Then his mouth relaxed. He had to relax. An outburst too strong would awaken Krystis, even on the other side of Fierghlass.
“I’ll wake you if anyone is coming your way,” Machaeus assured him. The last thing Drogan heard before he finally drifted off was, “Don’t forget who your allies are. You don’t have many left.”
Chapter Eight: Deep Blue
“So… why are we stopping on Neptune again?” said Dawn, between long broom sweeps. Cosmic dust from debris, incinerated on collision with the Arcadia’s shields - another detail of long distance space travel she hadn’t counted on. In the big top hat of deck duties, though, Dawn was grateful she drew one that afforded her a view of the stars. Much as seeing Mars had shaken her days ago, standing out in the SkyLine was at least better than watching her cabin ceiling.
“I thought you were a WCC Admiral? Skip a few academy classes?” prodded Wagner. He knelt to scrub the creases between the boards of the Arcadia’s deck while Dawn swept the dust. Of the outlets she’d picked up at Miller’s suggestion, sparring tongues with Wagner was one of her favorites. He was originally from China, as Dawn originally guessed, and one of the few men on the crew who didn’t eye Dawn every time she sauntered past. It was a perfectly friendly, upfront arrangement - neither had the equipment the other was interested in.
“I know that the only way to the outerworlds is to shoot to Neptune first, because of the acceleration factor, Wagner,” Dawn frowned. She leaned on her broomstick to shove a puff of dust his way.
“I think the way Miller put it to me, when he was training me, was that ‘unfathomable things would happen to us, if we slowed down fast enough to stop anywhere closer than Neptune’. With his dramatic flair and all,” said Wagner. Behind them, a monumental aquamarine orb grew in the blackness.
“What I mean is, why don’t we just refuel and head for Saturn?” Dawn rephrased.
“You’d rather spend more time inside your best friend here?” Wagner laughed, tapping the Arcadia’s deck with his shoe. “Of all people on this crew, I figured you’d be the most stir crazy.”
“What, Alice?” Dawn scowled, “We haven’t spoken, which is fine by me. We stay out of one another’s hair, and I could wander the Arcadia all day.” Wagner snorted.
“You’re in her hair right now,” he teased. Dawn shook her head and shoved another broomful of dust Wagner’s way. He stomped at her, though he knew he deserved it. “But anyway, that’s why we’re staying on Neptune overnight. To chase away the cabin-crazies. You’re clearly suffering.”
“You want more dust?” Dawn threatened, her broom drawn up to shove. She never got the chance to strike. A voice rumbled up through their shoes and silenced her.
“We are now entering Neptune’s conditioning zone. Everyone report to the interior of the ship,” Alice announced. Dawn grimaced. But the only thing she wanted less than to follow an order from Alice was to find out first-hand what happens to a human body, unprotected, on the surface of Neptune. She headed down below deck.
However fascinating Howard found the SkyLine, he was grateful for the reason to leave the Arcadia for a while. Not sharing the Captain and Dawn’s love of physical expression, his room was strewn with disassembled logic puzzles. Broken chain links upon dislodged peg sculptures lay amongst a few holographic jigsawed murals. Now Howard had a different sort of puzzle to solve. It waited for him down exactly where he knew he shouldn’t go, where the WCC had tasked him to go. The slush and ice that was the surface of Neptune.
Howard rolled his head back to pass the time in the surprisingly slow lift ride down to the planet. He of all people could appreciate, though, just how difficult it was to transport a person from the acclimation station outside Neptune’s atmosphere to the terradomes on its surface. He imagined whatever was happening around him so gradually he couldn’t feel it required a slow elevator. Howard stared down the shimmering column below him. His mouth twitched at unfolding sights. The ice giant, furthest planet colonized by humans, was everything he’d been told and more. Brutal. Intimidating. Beautiful. Sunlight glittered across the slush growing up at him. The closer the lift came to the planet, the further the glaring blue stretched. In minutes, it was all Howard could see. Slush, and the sparse buildings connected by steel-framed walkways became everything.
The translucent elevator doors slid apart. Despite the heavy fur coat on his shoulders, Howard shivered back from the freezing wind that twisted inside. He couldn’t let himself hesitate, or he might take the lift right back up to the Arcadia. Howard slipped through the doors before they could close. The whole of humanity’s reach across the ice giant was visible from the acclimation lift. A spiderweb of metal piers connected the buildings. They jutted up from the crystalline slush in shapes of shiny corrugated tin, wrought iron blocks, and steel sheets. Windows glared in the light of the distant sun. Glass, metal, and Chrysum were all Howard could see. The miles of Neptune’s surface that belonged to man were sheer industry. Everything beyond was a wild expanse of water in its many forms.
Howard tapped his shoes to the edge of Neptune’s steel-planked main strip. He gazed down over a sturdy railing, into the blue. A few feet below the pier, the lightest graze of water trickled between slush crystals, enough to keep the colony from going thirsty thanks to shallow mills. It bounced back a slate color on the surface. Beneath that was an icy crust of royal azure, far deeper than anything naturally occurring on Earth. Beneath that, drilling had yet to reveal. Humans had little interest in finding out, anyway. What mattered to them, they’d discovered in the slush layer. It was more than half composed of Chrysum. From the edge of steel piers, Howard watched a dredger work on it.
The machine wasn’t unlike a very wide canoe. It cast the illusion of floating atop the slush, though Howard knew it wasn’t the case. He knew that it was suspended on long steel legs that reached all the way to the ice so deep beneath. He knew that it wasn’t sailing along, but rolling on treads down at the bottom. Howard even knew, through his studies of interest, about the collection cylinder rolling slush through a filter and pumping fusion mineral to the surface. Thousands of miles of untapped resources, Howard pondered while he watched the bearded man, also called a dredger, steer his machine around the slushy sea. Mars hadn’t started so different, with its deep red caverns. There will be a hundred colonies here in a few years. Howard would have put money on it.
“You lose your tour guide, buddy?” a voice scratched the second after Howard’s shoulder bounced off the man he hadn’t noticed. Suddenly he was surrounded by people and buildings. He had been so enthralled with the natural splendor of the place, he forgot about the human aspect. Howard had drifted all the way to the center of the colony. He’d missed the Welcome to Solstice sign.
“Sorry,” Howard breathed, when he remembered he had lungs to use. By the time he got it out, the man was gone. Howard shrugged it off and rummaged through his pocket for his director. He pulled the device free to find it already active. It blinked his destination to life on a virtual blueprint of the colony.
Howard followed the director around corners and down alleys. He traced its signal across iron bridges and through crowds of malnourished roughnecks. When finally he found the blinking dot in person, Howard’s forehead wrinkled. He hadn’t counted on a giant sign for Wellsworth Labs, but he certainly didn’t expect the double doors under a bar sign. Inside Nereid’s Slushpit, Howard squeezed between scarred men and women twice his size to call the barkeeper. “Excuse me.”
“Come to dirty your smock?”
“Actually,” Howard pulled the director up to the bar, “I’m looking for an assignment, from the WCC.”
“You fixing to see the underside of the slush?” the barkeeper leaned in to murmur. “Anyone in here sees that piece of hardware, they’ll swipe it and sink you in cement shoes. Be more discreet, would you?”
“So-so-sorry,” Howard shoved the director back in
his pocket. A few wandering eyes lingered on his back, though it was more at his cleanliness. No one had seen his expensive navigation tool. The barkeeper checked either side of him to make sure no one was eavesdropping. They were too preoccupied with the stink of alcohol in their chilled glasses.
“The place you’re looking for is downstairs. There’s a hidden staircase in the kitchen behind the bar. Look for a hole in a blue tile behind the stove. Use it to lift the hatch,” the barkeeper told him, “Do me a favor. Walk out the front door and go through the back. Can’t have my customers seeing you disappear into the kitchen and not come out.”