Chapter Text
Rhett could feel his feet floating around slightly inside the mag-boots. He’d complained about it to Decimus on multiple occasions, and been told it’s all in his head, or that he should stuff the boots with socks, or just stop being such a bitch. In his head or not, it was unsettling. A reminder that he was currently without gravity. That he was somewhere he fundamentally did not belong.
He looked down where the boots were magnetically locked onto the hull plating and tried to remind himself that just because he was on the underside of the ship, did not mean he was upside down. It’s all a matter of perspective.
“Think you can go any slower there, Rhett? I thought with those long legs of yours, you would get there in half the time,” Decimus spoke mockingly into his earpiece.
“Oh, fuck off,” Rhett returned jovially. “Captain,” he added respectfully. “You know as well as I do, these boots only go one speed. Fucking slow.”
The boots would only uncouple from the hull one at a time and had a span of 5 seconds after each step where neither boot would release from the deck. A high-pitched tone would sound in his ear each time he could take another step. It made the 25-yard trek from the starboard hatch to the stern arduous to say the least, and Rhett was having a tough time finding the rhythm.
He had left Mars four months ago for a new life as an engineer aboard the Gravitas, a freighter bound for the asteroid belt. He had drunkenly told some friends before he left that life on Mars was too confining. The stars were calling to him.
Well, four months in space had shown him that life aboard a mining vessel was no less claustrophobic than the domes of Mars had been. It was so much worse! If the stars were saying anything to him, it was that he was going to die. Probably sooner rather than later.
Out here among the inky black abyss of space, he felt it so keenly. The subtle, suffocating press of death all around him. Caressing his skin from just outside the suit. Staring in at him through the small porthole he faced when he slept. Or tried to sleep these days. Ever present, never far from his mind.
Decimus monitored his progress from his post on the bridge, eying Rhett’s vital signs on one of the many displays in front of him. “You alright out there, burroda?” he asked, his deep voice rich with the rolling ‘r’s of the Calcian working class. “Your heart rate is manic. Take some breaths, yaya?”
“I’m fine,” Rhett answered testily, but did as instructed and took some deep breaths while he waited for his left boot to unlock. “Nearly there,” he said, his eyes on the forward railgun.
“Martians,” Decimus chided. His tone was light, but Rhett could hear the concern in his voice. “More suited to playing in the dirt than dancing among the stars.”
“I’m not a Martian,” Rhett fired back. “I’ll have you know, I’m 100% Earth-born.”
“Is that a fact? Well shit! All this time and I had no idea I had a genuine Earthman on my ship. Don’t get many of those out here,” he said, sounding infinitely impressed.
“Yeah, well there’s not many of us left,” Rhett allowed, reaching the gun mount, and examining the wreckage. A large hunk of iron had nailed the gun like it was aiming for it in a debris field near Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in the belt. “Armature is completely smashed. Barrel got knocked clean off. We can print a new one, but you’re going to want a steel one soon.”
“Add it to the list,” the captain said with a sigh into his ear.
“I’m going to get the control panel off and see if there are any rounds we can salvage. Any left inside will float off into space without the barrel to hold them in, and those things are expensive,” Rhett said.
“Be careful,” Dez cautioned in his ear. “If the rounds were damaged, they could explode when you remove that panel.”
It was good advice, and Rhett was cautious as he knelt down and removed the outer cover. Everything looked fine. “Clean,” he reported in a relieved tone. “No hydraulic fluid leaking, no debris.”
He deftly unfastened the locks to the inner panel and carefully pulled upwards by the handhold, turning his face away and bracing himself with one arm wrapping around the base of the gun mount, just in case.
There was a loud pop as one of the rounds inside ignited. It wasn’t a large explosion, and Rhett was unshaken by the small shockwave. The mag boots held. His right arm remained clutching the gun mount.
“You alright, Rhett?” the captain asked urgently.
“Yeah, fine,” Rhett replied and then, “Shit! Not fine,” as he registered a pain and spreading warmth in his left arm and a loud hissing sound reached his ears. A piece of shrapnel from the exploding ammunition had punctured his suit. He quickly grabbed a patch from his belt and slapped it to his forearm, screaming in pain as he realized the metal shard was lodged in his arm.
A loud, long stream of expletives poured from his lips. He felt the patch take hold and the hissing stopped, but he began to panic as his lungs struggled to draw breath.
“Easy, Rhett. Easy,” Decimus said into his earpiece, his voice intentionally calm. “You still have plenty of oxygen. The levels are good. You didn’t lose much. It’s just going to take a minute to stabilize. Breathe, Rhett. You’re alright.”
“Fuck!!” Rhett screamed in rage once he got his breath back.
“That’s the way,” the captain said. “You tell the Old Man he doesn’t get to take you today. Now turn around and get back to the hatch as fast as you can.”
“Raaaaah!!” Rhett bellowed wordlessly, giving up on the gun and making his way laboriously back down the hull one excruciatingly slow step at a time.
“Yes, Gigasa!” Dez called in encouragement. “I love it! Born so close to the sun, you got that Earth fire in you. You’re doing damn good, Rhett. Get your ass back inside now and we’ll drink to it. The boys are waiting at the hatch for you. You’re almost there.”
Gritting his teeth, Rhett continued to advance towards the hatch as Decimus sang some sort of Calcian battle song in his ear. “Fucking space!” he yelled. “Fucking black empty hole of nothing! Fucking. Fuck!”
He hauled himself through the hatch, slamming and sealing the door. He crumpled to the floor in relief as the artificial gravity kicked in and he felt hands pulling at his helmet. The two Kamaran missionaries that had been traveling with them since they left Calcia two weeks ago began removing the pieces of his suit. Oxygen starved, weak from blood loss, and scared out of his mind, the young men in their blood-colored cowled robes seemed like grim angels coming to drag him down to Hell, or wherever it is that Kamarans believe the unworthy end up. Rhett was immensely relieved as everything went black, and he lost consciousness.
*****
Link awoke curled in a ball under every blanket he owned. The freeze had ended hours ago, and after laying there shivering for what seemed like ages, he had finally managed a little sleep. He had survived again, and that was good, good news. He smiled to himself and began the torturous process of straightening his limbs.
He usually took someone from the bar home with him on freeze nights, just because sharing body heat with another person really did make a huge difference. Failing that, he often crashed with someone from group, but for some reason, he just didn’t feel very social last night. Decided he could brave the cold on his own for once.
He chuckled at the stupidity of that decision. A whole night of violent shivering had made all his joints swollen and achy, and his muscles were screaming at him. He stretched a bit, experimentally, and gasped at how bad his neck and shoulders hurt. Even his damn knuckles complained as he cautiously opened and closed his hands, flexing his fingers. He patiently breathed through the pain and promised himself that next time he would push himself a little harder to find some company.
He pulled the blankets from his face. The LED walls and ceiling of his little cubby-hole of an apartment greeted him with the tranquil scene of a beautiful Earth sunrise in a meadow of wildflowers and the sounds of birdsong.
He got out of bed and went over to the cold-storage unit and pulled out a bag of saline. He hung it from an IV pole, pulled off the layers of shirts and sweaters he had worn through the night, and attached the tube to the port just below his right clavicle. He wheeled the pole around with him back and forth across his little living space, hoping moving around a bit would loosen up his sore muscles.
He retrieved a clear, plastic bag filled with 15 different color-coded syringes. All the meds and supplements he would need for the first half of his day. He began injecting them one by one into the port on his chest. He saved the light blue one for last. Potassium. Burns like a motherfucker.
When the final plunger was depressed, Link gasped and broke out in a cold sweat as the potassium snaked its way into his bloodstream. Deep breaths, Link. Deep breaths.
By the time the feeling of acid in his veins subsided, he was ready to start his day. He gathered up the syringes, put them back into the clear plastic bag, and chucked the lot down the recycle chute. He detached the saline and pulled on a light gray V-neck sweater that was soft and comfortable from frequent wear. It seemed like the sort of morning for little comforts.
On his wall, sweet spring breezes blew lightly, rippling the petals of a fully blossoming cherry tree. He let himself daydream for a moment that it was real. That when he walked out of his apartment, he would be greeted by flowers, birds, springtime, and warmth. Not the dull gray corridors of Ganymede Station.
He pressed a button on the band on his left wrist and a holographic display of file folders sprang to life in front of him. He tapped the folder labeled “Phoenix” that contained messages from his support group at the clinic. They liked to check in with each other. Especially after freeze nights.
Marcus: Still alive.
Caliban: About froze my balls off but the Old Man knows better than to knock at my door. Cazza Ferrite!
Avacyn: me and cass r alive c u all ltr
Philo: Not doing well. Collapsed vein. Need a stint. Lots of pain. Would love some company if anybody is near Phoenix.
Marcus: @philo On my way, buddy.
Philo: @marcus thx
Regulus: fuck this shit
Regulus: sorry everybody im fine just tired of this
Marcus: @regulus Hang in there, Reg. We all feel it the morning after a freeze. Come see me and Philo and we can talk if you want.
Regulus: @marcus already at work but thx
Link looked at the check-ins with a weak smile. Poor Philo! He’s had such awful luck lately. Sounds like everybody had a rough night. Leeza hadn’t checked in yet. That was unusual. She worked in hydroponics and was usually at work before anybody else was awake. He added a message to the chain.
Link: Doing alright. Anybody heard from Feleeza?
Marcus: @link No. I called her earlier since she is usually the first to check in, but no answer. Anybody know where she was headed last night?
Link: @marcus Left Belvedere’s with a young Kamaran guy a few hours before closing. I’ll see if I can track her down.
Marcus: @link Thanks Link. Keep us posted.
Link dug through his contacts and tapped on “Leeza”. A chime played while the call tried to connect. Link was getting good and worried when the display came to life and the holographic image of the Kamaran from the bar sprang up in front of him. He was wearing the same blue cowled robe from last night. He looked panicked.
“Hello?” the young man said. His frightened eyes were wild, and he was fighting back tears.
“Hi. I’m a friend of Feleeza’s. Remember me? The bartender from last night?” Link asked.
“Oh, thank Kamara!” he exclaimed. “She’s breathing, but she won’t wake up.”
He turned the camera from her wristband and pointed it at the unconscious form of his friend. Link looked over her gaunt features, looking for signs of hypoxemia, but thankfully her lips were not blue. That was a good sign.
“Ok,” Link said calmly, taking charge. “Do you have a name, kid, or did you already offer it as a sacrifice to Kamara or whatever?”
“I have a name,” he replied anxiously. “I’m Zeb.”
“Hey, Zeb. I’m Link. Everything is going to be alright. I need you to look in her purse, or whatever she had on her and look for a small yellow bag with a red label that looks like a syringe.”
Zeb put Feleeza’s wrist down and Link heard rustling around in the background. He returned a moment later holding a small zipper pouch. “Got it!”
“Good. Open it up and pull out everything she has,” Link instructed.
Zeb reached into the bag and pulled out 3 color-coded vials, green, yellow, and light blue.
“That’s all she has?” Link said in amazement. He shook his head. “Ok. Where do you live, Zeb?”
“H deck. Y162. Over by the hydroponics bay. Can you come get her?” he asked anxiously.
Link winced at the sentiment, but certainly understood the guy’s reluctance to be involved. “I know right where it is. Go ahead and give her the green and yellow vials. Have you ever put an injection in someone’s port before?”
Link continued to talk calmly to him while grabbing his own fully stocked yellow emergency pouch, a bag of saline, and unfolding the wheelchair from his closet. He was out the door in less than a minute and headed towards hydroponics.
“You need me to like put it in her?” Zeb asked, horrified.
“The sooner she gets the green one especially, the better it’s going to be for her. Just pull the collar of her shirt down over her right shoulder.”
“Alright,” he answered nervously. He laid Feleeza’s wrist down and the camera was now pointing at a gray LED ceiling.
“There’s two holes in the port. A big one and a little one. You’re going to put the tapered end of the syringe into the small hole and push until it clicks. Then just slowly push the plunger on the syringe all the way in. Can you do that, Zeb?” He was pushing the wheelchair down the gray corridor, his aching body cooperating well enough with the adrenaline and worry rushing through his system.
“Uh.. Yeah. Ok. I think so… Alright. I did it,” he said in a relieved tone.
“Good job, Zeb. Go ahead and give her the yellow one too, and I’ll be at your place in a few minutes,” Link said, quickening his pace.
He was limping slightly by the time he got to the little corridor near the hydroponics bay. When he knocked on the door, Zeb practically tripped over himself in his rush to shovel Feleeza into the wheelchair and push them both back out the door.
“Nothing personal,” he said shyly at his door. “It’s not like you’re bad people or anything. It’s just… I just don’t want any trouble.”
Link reached out and squeezed his shoulder sympathetically. “You saved a life today,” he said solemnly. It was true. If Feleeza had spent last night alone, she almost surely would have been a goner. The implications of that made him shudder. “She’s not going to want anything from you. Freeze nights are hard on us. She was just trying to find someplace warm to sleep and some company.”
Zeb nodded sadly; a guilty expression locked in his features.
Link wheeled Feleeza into her office in the hydroponics bay, hoping the familiar surroundings would be comforting to her when he gave her a rude awakening here in a minute. He pricked her finger with the BNL tester and saw that she was low on absolutely everything. Add to that, she hadn’t bothered to set up a bio alert to let anyone else know she was in trouble.
Link sighed heavily. You can’t force people to take care of themselves. He gave her the other injections that she had carelessly left out of her supplies, hooked up a saline bag, and attached it to the wheelchair. Finally, he gave her a wakeup call of potassium.
He knelt in front of her and held her hands as she squirmed and gasped. Her eyes flew open in alarm, and she opened her mouth in wordless agony.
“Take some deep breaths, Leeza. You’re gonna be alright. I’m here,” he said sweetly, reaching up and pushing her dark, wavy hair out of her face.
After a minute or so her breathing became less labored. Link pulled over a nearby office chair and sat across from her, taking her hands again.
“Link? What happened?” she said groggily, looking around and noticing her surroundings for the first time.
“You haven’t been taking good enough care of yourself, dulciaci,” he answered. “Had a little trouble waking up today.”
“Oh, shit! That poor guy!” she said, mortified. She brought embarrassed hands to her face and started to sob.
Link grabbed her gently by the shoulder, pulled her towards him, and wrapped his arms around her as she sagged to his chest and cried noisily into his shoulder. He held her for a while, whispering soothingly into her hair until she pulled herself together.
“Ok. We’re going to take you to the clinic and get you checked out,” Link began.
“Link, can you just take me back to my place? Please? Everything hurts, and I just want to go home,” she pleaded.
“Nothing doing, girl. Something like this happens, you see a doctor. Them’s the rules, right? You would do the same thing if it were me,” he replied sensibly.
“Yaya, yaya. Alright. Fuck! I hate that potassium! I never take it. It hurts too much,” she whined.
“Uh huh,” Link said knowingly as he got up and started wheeling her out of the bay and towards the clinic.
“So, no big lecture about personal responsibility and malnutrition?” she asked skeptically.
“Don’t have to,” Link answered with a smile. “Philo already has a room at Phoenix this fine morning. Just going to wheel you in there with him and Marcus and let nature take its course.”
“Ugh! Not Marcus!” Feleeza moaned. Marcus was notoriously fond of lecturing. “You know, you and Marcus should really hook up. You’re always taking care of everybody else. Maybe someone needs to be good to you for once, and Marcus does have a good heart. If you don’t mind him being all up in your business all the time.”
Link chuckled. “Saint Marcus is far too virtuous for the likes of me. I like a bit of danger in a man, to my own great detriment.”
“Well, I mean how virtuous can he be? He’s one of us.” She attempted to toss it off lightly, but her voice broke towards the end.
Link stopped pushing her, leaned down from behind, and hugged her. She reached up and held his arms, leaning back into the embrace. “You’re a good person, Leeza,” he said gently into her ear. “Your mistakes don’t define you, and whether you have one day left or a million, you get to decide who you are and what you want your life to be.”
She sniffled in reply and nodded her head. Link straightened up as much as the tiny hallway allowed, his vertebrae yelling in protest, and continued to wheel her to the clinic.
*****
Decimus had finished laser suturing the 3-inch gash on Rhett’s arm, and they were halfway through a bottle of emerald-colored spirits from Callisto that Decimus referred to as saguaro. Apparently, it was derived from a sort of cactus they had been able to grow on the station there. The demand for it quickly made Callisto the most popular and prosperous of any of the small ports and science stations that littered Jupiter’s Galilean Moons.
There was something similar on Mars, but Rhett thought this was better. Had a metallic aftertaste that was weird, but his shoulders were relaxed for the first time in months, and he was feeling very little pain.
“Dez, what was that song you were singing when I was crawling my way back up the hull?” he asked. It had a haunting quality to it, and Rhett had been trying his best to remember it since he woke.
“Cazza Ferrite,” the captain said fondly. “Everything you need to know about Calcians can be summed up in that.”
He reached over and grabbed Rhett roughly by the back of the neck, stared fiercely into his eyes, and repeated in a low, menacing growl, “Cazza Ferrite.” Once he had intoned that, he released Rhett and slapped him good naturedly on the cheek a few times before picking up the bottle and taking another gulp.
Decimus was tall for a Calcian, which made him about 5 foot 2 or 3 perhaps. He was built very much like the Gravitas, like a tank. His arms were bulging with muscle not because he especially wanted them that way, but because he had worked like the devil his whole life moving ore in the mines on Calcia. He had closely cropped dark hair, eyes that were nearly black, like most of the Calcians Rhett had met, and a nose that had definitely been broken a few times. His olive skin was mottled all over with shallow burn scars from being around smelting furnaces and uridia forges. Rhett suspected he was the toughest man he had ever met. He was also kind and generous, if a bit intense. But Calcians, man, they’re an intense people. He launched into the song in a deep bass.
Sum tibi nothus bastardo,
Letum en cubili tuo,
Eu men. Cazza Ferrite!
“Cazza Ferrite,” Rhett repeated meditatively. He knew only a few words and phrases in Calcian since they mostly all spoke English. “What does it mean?”
Decimus thought deeply about it for a moment and said, “When that bastard, Letum, comes for you in your bed. Punch him in the dick!”
Rhett threw his head back and laughed long and hard. “What?! Isn’t Letum like the god of death or something? That’s the most badass thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Yaya. Letum. The Old Man. There are lots more verses. When he comes for you in the forge. When he comes for you in battle. When he comes for you in the ash. Anyway, if he shows up, punch him in the dick! Then you will be Calcian,” he said, walloping Rhett hard on the shoulder. “Tallest Calcian ever!” he added, falling into a fit of drunken laughter.
“So, to be Calcian, I just have to take any problem I encounter and punch it in the dick?” Rhett said, chortling.
“You must,” Decimus confirmed with a grin. “You know, Rhett, people from the Inner Planets come out here all the time only to turn around and run back to the red domes because they can’t take the blackness of the asteroid belt. Good people walk out of airlocks because they can’t handle the fear, the uncertainty, your own mortality staring you in the face every day. I don’t want to see that happen to you.”
Rhett dropped his eyes to the table and nodded.
“We’ll be back at Calcia in a few days,” Decimus said. “I’d like to stay 4 or 5 days this time. Maybe a week. I miss my children, and I’m betting my sister could use a break from them. You always stay so close to the ship when we are in port, but you should get out and explore the station, see the sights. Come stay in my home if you like. My kids would love to meet a giant.”
“That sounds great, actually. I’ve never seen the Carved Forest or the Sulfur Baths,” Rhett said.
“You just need to see how fucking beautiful life out here is. It’s raw. It’s intentional. It’s fucking poetry, Rhett, I swear,” Decimus said confidently. “You are the dream of your ancestors, Gigasa. You’re soaring through the heavens in a goddamn spaceship! Dig your claws into life, and if anything tries to pry your fingers away…”
“Cazza Ferrite,” Rhett completed with a grin, doing his best to roll the r’s properly.
Decimus busted out a laugh like a cannon blast and gave Rhett a solid punch on the chest. “That’s right, mi burroda. That’s right.”
*****
So, what happened to our home?
The Yellowstone Supervolcano erupted on April 27th, 2386. The resulting seismic activity from the explosion triggered the shifting of the San Juan de Fuca plate in the Pacific Ocean, igniting the Ring of Fire, and essentially causing the west coast of North America to fall into the sea. Within 5 years, between the actual deaths caused by the disaster, the plummeting global temperatures from the massive amounts of ash and gas in the atmosphere, and resulting worldwide famine, over 9 billion people were gone.
Luckily, at the time of the explosion there was already a colony of approximately 10,000 people living on the moon and about half that many on Mars. The remnants of mankind banded together, and every effort was made to get as many people underground or off-world as possible. When there was no one left to prevent it, all nuclear power plants melted down, poisoning all life in the oceans, and making the planet nearly entirely uninhabitable.
There are still a few military bases deep within the Himalayan Mountains. Rumors abound of societies of people living underground in various parts of the globe, but it is all unsubstantiated. Communication between Earth and the moon is difficult. In 2702, a giant cyclone named Aegir appeared in the Pacific Ocean and grew until it covered approximately 1/3 of the planet. It has slowly roved the Earth for the last 23 years having stronger seasons and weaker seasons, but never dissipating entirely. Very little plant life remains.
From the moon, it still looks beautiful. Blue and covered with clouds. Even Aegir is breathtaking in a howling death god of the sea sort of way. So close, but for now, out of reach to mankind. We stand on the Moon with our faces pressed to the window. Tears roll down over the perfect world that may be forever lost to us. Waiting for the storm to end, wondering if anything will be left.
A priceless gem.
A vast unmarked grave.