Chapter 8

The blue sky above them slowly shifted to a soft pink to simulate sunset. The plates in front of the officers of the Venture and the guests from Gagarin were smeared with the last dregs of sauce and crumbs of their meals. 

“It’s been quite a time meeting you all,” said Conroy, “You’ll have to give me the recipe for your matter generator things. Ha ha!” 

“I do not believe we have the capability to reproduce their technology, and even if we did the energy drain would empty our antimatter reactor immediately,” said Malex. “We also lack the storage of generic elements required for this technology.” 

Conroy patted Malex on the shoulder and said, “I didn’t really mean it, I was, like, showing admiration for their tech. Very impressive stuff, I hope mankind can get there some day.” 

“You know what?” said Carne, “Follow me. I’ve got something to show you.” 

He led Conroy and Malex down a footpath down by a pond. Plump animals with glossy fur floated on the edge of the water and watched the aliens as they followed Carne. He led the duo to a divot in the foot path that exposed a sandstone wall with a door inset inside it. The doors slid to the sides as Carne approached. 

Inside it led back into the ship, a long hall that stretched out left and right deep into the ship. The walls were high, at least six meters. Gilded fractal curved molding decorated the bottom and top ten centimeters of the wall, which otherwise were perfectly blank matte sepia. Malex looked at the wall for about two seconds and an image appeared, a diagram of the ship on that level. It told her Carne was facing toward the mover. Carne and Conroy had already taken a few steps down the hall, Malex charged after them to keep pace. 

Before too long Carne came to another door, this one much smaller than the one that opened into the city park. The chamber on the other side was about four meters by four meters. Carne vaulted inside and the two humans followed him. 

He said, “Engineering section three.” 

The ground moved underneath them. Malex felt dizzy for a second, then she recovered.

The door they had stepped through opened up into a massive chamber, too big for Malex to estimate it’s size immediately. The walls were a different color, a matte brushed metal and adorned with rounded rectangular panels. At the center of the chamber was a massive machine–itself inset in a massive void that stretched up, at least from what she could see, at least one more deck higher in the ship, and one deck lower too. The machine throbbed with a soft amber light, which trickled around the entire chamber through one meter diameter cables, ridged all around and dotted with tiny amber lights. 

Malex gasped. 

“Right,” said Carne, “That’s our antimatter reactor. It operates on roughly the same principles as your antimatter reactor, it can just handle greater throughput and with better efficiency.” 

“It’s magnificent,” said Malex. 

“It doesn’t need all those blinking lights,” said Carne, sheepishly, “But the admiralty likes it when we’re a bit, well, ostentatious. This is not what I’ve taken you to come see.” 

Carne led them through a warehouse to an office complex at the back of the engineering section. He had to unlock a couple doors with his face print. They entered a room with consoles and a rack of metal boxes. He pulled one of the metal boxes out and fished through it for a couple seconds. Finally, he produced two small metal boxes. 

“It’s not too difficult to produce the cores of generic matter,” said Carne, “Almost everything is made out of really basic stuff, anyway; hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen. And the machine will figure out any power you hook it up to. This will make any drink you can throw at it.” 

“Fortuitous that you have selected two of these devices. It will allow Conroy to serve multiple comrades at once,” said Malex. 

“I was thinking it was a gift for both of you,” said Carne. 

“I do not require such a device, but the thought is appreciated. Conroy may keep both of them.” 

“Suit yourself,” said Carne.

“Say,” said Conroy, “You look like you’re the same species as the aliens we rescued on our ship. They don’t even seem to have FTL technology, and you’re working on this fantastical machine.”

Carne groaned. He said, “I am an Exiled. We’re the same species, not the same culture. It’s kind of a long story.”

Malex said, “Well, we have come out this far into space to make contact with alien cultures and learn about them.” 

Conroy “We do probably have to get back to Gagarin at some point…but I think we got some time, you can give us the distilled version, eh?” 

“I suppose,” said Carne, “Our people have this myth. History is cyclical. We cycle through four ages: Growth, Advancement, Recriminations and then Escape. We start in the growth age where we develop our civilization. Eventually we come to an age where we develop advanced technologies. There’s a few different versions of it. Probably the reason we left our home planet in the first place is that we developed these automatic workers, machines, we made them too intelligent and they didn’t like, well, that we built them as slaves. And so we had to escape across the galaxy.” 

“I’ll be damned,” said Conroy, “That sounds like the Yuga cycle, or a mahākalpa.”

“What?” said Malex. 

Conroy said, “Earth religions. They believe in cycles of time much like this. Maybe they’re related?”

“Are they less than three hundred and eleven years old?” said Carne, “If not I doubt it. That’s when we reached this region of space.” 

Conroy said, “Guess not, then.” 

Carne said “Since meeting the Union they were able to track down what is probably our real home world. It was stripped almost completely clean of any kind of resources, with no evidence of where the machines we built went to. This is just me saying this, and I’m no scholar of this shit. I think what happened is my ancestors felt guilt about the whole thing and projected that onto a mythology. ‘This has all happened before and will happen again.’ So there was this belief that we were destined to find a new planet, populate it, grow decadent, then build new life and get ejected all over again.”

“If that were my destiny,” said Malex, “I would attempt to circumvent it.” 

“Yeah,” said Carne, “This was all theoretical for a long time until we reached this area of space and there was Santosia. I won’t bore you with the details but it fit the descriptions in the holy books. Which, also, I might add, match up with what was probably our real home world. Long story short, and this took place over more than a century, two movements emerged. The Tuariskeagn, who believed they had to live up to their stupid destiny and colonize the planet and the Exiled, most of us going to live with the Gilfanians and the Union.”

Conroy said, “And what of these Santosians?” 

“An afterthought,” said Carne, “They were understood to be our previous generation of workers that ejected us from our home world and had wasted the wonderful civilization they had taken from us. They were to be crushed and, eventually, replaced with something new.” 

Malex said, “Something new that would be destined to once more kick you off this planet.”

“The meal has been lovely and the conversation very stimulating,” said Kafando, “But I suppose it’s time to return to Gagarin.” 

Captain Kriss said, “If you wish. I do, however, have one more thing I’d like to show you before you leave.” 

“I’m not working for another two shifts,” said Kafando, “I guess I’ll indulge you.” 

“Excellent,” said Captain Kriss. 

She led the chairman back out into the innards of the ship. It reminded Kafando of Hotel Vulcan back on Mars. Most of the structures seemed to form wholly ornamental functions, walls lined with high columns and towering statues. What did a starship need with stained glass windows and all that brushed steel and bronze? 

Captain Kriss led him through a door. 

“Deck three,” she said. 

He barely felt the floor move, then the door slid open.

“We’re almost here,” said Captain Kriss. 

She led him down another hallway, this one where most of the unnecessary decorations were silver, until she stood in front of a large door. There were about a dozen similar doors along the hallway on both sides, leading far off into the distance, separated by about ten meters or so. 

“Kriss Program Alpha Four,” said the captain. 

The ship chimed. The door slid open. Again Kafando was stunned. It opened into a massive cave system. The ground was jagged and open. Pools of water bubbled away. The chamber on the other side of the door was much larger than should be possible, its walls reaching far past the next door. Sticky hot steam poured out of the door. 

“C’mon, don’t be shy,” said Captain Kriss. 

She stepped inside the room. Kafando followed. It was oppressively hot, hotter than anything Kafando experienced in his childhood. 

“What is this?” said Kafando. 

The door hung in space, still opening up into the Venture’s hallway. He stepped backward around it, but the door wasn’t visible from the other side.

“It’s a simulation,” said Captain Kriss, “It’s kind of all over the place. Our molecular printer builds objects you interact with, the image is projected directly into your eyes, we use every trick of perception to make it feel absolutely real.” 

Gagarin had simulators on board. They piped stimulus directly into your nervous system. They were impressive until you started to pay attention. This didn’t feel like a simulation of any kind. 

She grabbed a button at the top of her uniform and popped it open. She unclasped the next one. 

“This is one of my favorite places in the world, the Kim Igo hot springs. Back in my academy days I was here pretty much every weekend, god, it was so fun.” 

A thought flashed in Chairman Kafando’s mind. Was this going where he thought this was going? 

Captain Kriss had her uniform top off. Underneath she had on a sheer undershirt. She unbuttoned it.

“What’s going on in your mind?” she said. 

“You–you’re getting naked, to go in the hot springs, right?” 

She smiled and nodded. 

He thought for a long moment. Should he go along with this? 

“You can just tell me what you’re thinking,” said Captain Kriss.

“I wasn’t expecting this, I wasn’t preparing for this,” said Chairman Kafando. “In being a leader I’ve gone out of my way to excise certain biological desires. Like, I’m a respected hero among my people. The power dynamics, especially on a ship where I am responsible for everyone’s safety and the success of our mission, I can’t let myself even think about it.” 

“I know exactly how you feel,” said Captain Kriss. She unzipped her pants and dropped them to the ground. She had a garment on that strongly resembled boxer briefs on underneath them. “I saw that sense of duty in you. I like it. Look, we don’t have to do anything, we’re both adults. But it does feel sublime to lay in these hot springs.” 

“You’ve convinced me,” he said. 

He slipped out of his uniform as quickly as possible. By the time he was done Kriss had slipped out of her underwear. You could see how large and strong her muscles were even through her uniform, but they were quite impressive with nothing to hide behind. Physiologically, her species really did appear outwardly identical to human beings, excepting the forehead, nose and cheek bones. She had a little shock of blue pubic hair. 

She slid into a rock formation that formed a perfect little pool. The water fizzed, at a close distance you could tell it wasn’t boiling, but some chemical reaction was happening in the water. Kafando followed her into the little pool. They both sat on a ledge facing the other. 

“Sorry if I’m a little awkward,” he said, “I never really got around much. Too much important business to do, you know?” 

“One good thing about being a starship captain,” Kriss said, “Is that I meet a lot of people who are very different from me. Obviously I have my duty and I work hard at it, but I like to cut loose and have fun from time to time. I hope you get there someday.” 

“It turns out nothing is impossible,” Kafando said. “I’ve gone on, told you my old war stories, but you haven’t really told me about yourself. Who is Captain Kriss?” 

“We’re friends now. You may call me Randia,” said Ferandia, “I was a wild child. Work hard, play hard, only the very greatest candidates are accepted into the Officer Academy. I’m not so much like you, I let a little success go to my head. It’s actually kind of a miracle that I made it through the academy. Every night I was out until 0200, drinking and causing trouble. I held it together first semester, but by second semester I stopped going to my classes.” 

“What made you change your ways?” said Kafando. 

Randia said, “So one day, I had a piloting class. The night before I kind of… never stopped drinking. I convinced the proctor I was good to fly, somehow, but I really wasn’t. I lost control of my shuttle and crashed it into a grape field two hundred kilometers away from the school. My co-pilot and I both got out of the shuttle just fine, we teleported out last second, but the ship exploded on impact, spread toxic chemicals all over the fields.”

“You have grapes on your planet?” said Kafando. 

“It’s a translator thing. You must have a fruit that’s like, little bundles of juice on vine bunches,” said Randia, “But the important thing is that I was stuck. Up to then I hadn’t really faced any consequences for my behavior, but this changed everything. I had to work to clean up the fields before the next season, work to redress the loss of an entire season’s crop. I failed every class that semester, but it changed my attitude entirely.” 

“So you started to take your studies seriously, and take your responsibilities seriously.”

“Well, you can take the girl out of the fire but you can’t take the fire out of the girl. I still like to have fun,” said Randia.

She kissed Kafando. He wasn’t ready for that but at the touch of her lips he gave in to it. He tried to remember what a woman’s tongue tasted like, a human woman. They held close together for a brief moment. He spent so much of his life in asceticism, he wanted to deny himself pleasure, but this one time he couldn’t come up with an excuse. If anything, she was the one who held more power in this situation. 

“So, tell me why you’re such a tight ass, chairman.” 

“Tom. My name is Tom,” said Kafando, “I think it was my dad that did it. He was only around when I was very young. My earliest memory, I had to be about three years old. Like I said earlier, my planet was ecologically damaged before I was born. By the time of my birth we were in the process of undoing the grievous harm our ancestors had done, but it wasn’t complete. I grew up in a huge concrete complex shielded against harsh weather. There was a cyclone one night. From my bedroom the rain was beating down on my window. The wind howled, it was so fast, two hundred kilometers an hour easily. I asked to sleep in my parents room. My mother was clearly annoyed, but my father was so gentle. He picked me up and carried me to one of the common areas in the building. From there there was this massive shielded window, I looked up and watched the entire fury of the storm. Sheets of rain poured down the side, trees uprooted and bounced off the window. The room was perfectly dry, even large impacts on the window didn’t leave a scratch. My father told me all the chemicals and materials the window was made from, and explained how it was impenetrable. I felt so safe I just… fell asleep.” 

“He sounds like he would have been an inspirational figure,” said Randia. 

Tom said, “I want him to be proud. I want my mother and sister to feel safe. I want my comrades to be safe.” 

“I think your whole world is proud of you,” said Randia, “You’re measuring yourself against an impossibly high scale. You can’t pass your memories of your father in your own mind, and you minimize your own accomplishments. You’re too modest. You won the last battle of your world’s fight for egalitarianism. You’re leading the first mission far outside your solar system.”

“I’m no one special,” Tom said, “I also kinda stopped the last desperate attempt to snuff out the proletarian movement on Mars. But really it was the union leaders who were the real heroes, not me.” 

A smile spread across Randia’s face. “No. You’re not fucking modest, that’s a game you play. You really do think you’re a big damn hero, but you think it’s the big damn hero’s role to be heroically modest.” 

“Maybe a little.”

Tom pressed his lips to Randia’s lips once more, and pressed her against the hard stone wall of the simulation.

Randia slid her hands down his body and grabbed him by the hips. Her fingers dug in, too strong, she pulled him even tighter against her body. Her hands were so powerful, even if he wanted he could never resist. The sensation was strangely exhilarating.

“Unfortunately for you,” said Randia, “you’re about to discover that as heroic as you think you are, there are some space heroes who are simply stronger, more daring and braver than you.” 

“What do you mean you can’t get me a damn drink?” said Lucy. 

Doctor Lawrence said, “Drummond, you’re in a regenerator. You can’t go around damaging your own organs, that’ll just make the process of repairing your bones take longer.” 

“We’ve got like two first contacts happening right now. We need to celebrate. These weird little alien dudes need to get hammered, it’s only right!” 

“You got booze on this ship? Sign me up!” said Grainne. 

“Please don’t involve the aliens in your behavior comrade Drummond,” said Doctor Lawrence.

“Oh yeah, keep us cooped up in a tiny little cell and don’t give us anything to occupy ourselves in the time you have us trapped,” said Maedoc. 

“We haven’t even locked the door once,” said Doctor Lawrence, “We gave you like, tons of games, toys to occupy yourselves. You’ve gone on like a half dozen walks through the ship, even when we couldn’t understand a word you spoke.” 

“You had that little weaselly guy following us around,” said Grainne. “You’re trying to intimidate us.” 

“Whatever,” groaned Doctor Lawrence. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a hand held device. It clicked. “Lawrence to logistics. Can you bring a bottle of frixel to Medical ASAP.” 

The aliens stood in a group and touched their forefinger and pinky to each other.

A voice called out, “Is there some emergency and you need to sterilize equipment?”

“No, our guests just want to get drunk,” saw Lawrence. She was near complete physical collapse.

“Oh,” said the voice, “Uh, we’ll get you a bottle and some mixers in a few. It’ll take a minute because Conroy hasn’t come back from, hold on.” The voice stopped for a moment, then finally returned. “I guess Conroy is going to be down there soon with a new toy.”

“You guys are gonna love Conroy,” said Lucy, “He’s an animal. And he knows like everything about distilling beverages. He’s the most important member of the crew.”

“That’s something, at least,” said Tadgan, “You weirdos won’t even let us smoke.” 

Doctor Lawrence said, “We don’t have any of the leaves you smoke here. I’m not having this conversation right now.” She walked out the door. 

The aliens all laughed. 

“You guys are so different from the space freighters we have back in Sol. They’re all serious and isolated, maybe even grim and a little scary. You guys are so much fun,” said Lucy. 

“Nobody wants to go to space,” said Grainne, “My grandparents got to Kwegaigh and once they landed they never set foot on a spaceship again. They’re all afraid that we’ll be stuck out there. That means for any kind of space duty we make crazy money, four trips there and back and you retire. And you don’t even really work that hard. Sleep for three years, work for a few weeks, sleep for three more years. And we don’t really need discipline.” 

“I just want enough to buy a little cabin on the north island chain. There’s this dead volcano that everyone is sleeping on,” said Tadgan. 

“That’s cute and all, but for me I just want to get the Folthe away from the Santosians. Filthy bastards. My sister lives in a settlement next to them. They’re animals.” 

Lucy’s face pinched tight. 

“What are Santosians?” she said. 

“The animals that forced our ancestors off Kwegaigh twenty thousand years ago,” said Maedoc, “And, when we returned home they didn’t even have the respect to admit they did it. We got help to get ourselves resettled, and then they’re all bent out of shape that we were taking back the land they stole from us.”

“So you mean the bad kind of animals. Twenty thousand years is a really long time. My planet didn’t even have civilization that long ago,” said Lucy.

This turn in the conversation got heavy quick. Lucy wasn’t sure what she should say. The aliens were having a strong emotional reaction, but she wanted to get deeper down into this problem and it didn’t seem like they were going to be objective enough to actually give accurate information.

“Yeah, in that time they’ve got a lot worse,” said Maedoc.

The door slid open and Conroy, Malex and Orlando entered, Conroy and Malex holding a small box and a few nestled glasses. Malex seemed strangely flushed, her cheeks were bright red and her movement more unsteady than normal. 

“Lucy, good to see you,” said Conroy, and he set his box down on the table and his stack of cups beside it. “The aliens on the big magic ship gave us a gift. This machine can like, 3D print any beverage you can think of. It can’t do an antimatter milkshake or something like that, ha ha! Regular drinks, though.”

“Gimme a ginger beer, I guess,” said Lucy, “Non-alcoholic. I don’t wanna stretch out my time in this stupid regenerator more than absolutely necessary.” 

“It can make anything?” said Grainne, “You got it from those Union assholes right? They’ll send us aid packages of raw materials, but they won’t give us access to tech like this.” 

“We got it from engineers on their space ship, the Starship Venture,” said Malex, and she was sloshed. Lucy had never seen her this drunk before.

“I’ve had a look through the recipe selection,” said Orlando, “It has over three thousand recipes from your culture and Santosia.”

“Kwegaigh. The planet is called Kwegaigh,” said Maedoc.  

“Very sorry,” said Orlando, “But without your aid it’s very difficult to understand the subtleties of your culture, even with a universal translator.” 

“Tinebreath, northern continental, single malt,” said Maedoc, and he held up one of the cups under the box. A squirt of brown liquid filled the cup about halfway up. Maedoc poured it into his mouth and considered it. “I’ll be entombed alive, it really does taste correct. Good smokey wood character, hint of peat, just the right burn.”

“Thamador Sunset,” said Tadgan. The machine poured out a drink that, upon hitting the glass, transitioned carefully between pink and purple and even had a little red glob at the bottom that looked like a star lowering over the horizon. “Incredible,” he said, after a taste. 

“Goath Fluid,” said Grainne and the machine poured out a slightly green syrupy liquid. He smelled it and grimaced.

In the end, Randia didn’t taste or smell or feel any different than a human woman. Still, he was more spent than he had ever been before, more of his strength sapped. No human woman had ever left him feeling quite like this.

Randia laid sprawled out across the back of the hot spring, her pose open and confident. Kafando sat turned up at her side, his head resting on her shoulder. The warm water bubbled midway up Randia’s chest, and up to Tom’s shoulders thereabouts. 

“So,” said Randia, “What are you doing next?”

“Not sure,” said Tom, “We have to discuss that. We only just decided to check out the Tuariskeagn stasis ship, then, well, everything happened all at once. What do we do with the people we rescued? Probably we’ll take them to their home planet. After that, who knows?” 

Randia said, “Right, you people decide what to do along democratic lines. I’m fascinated that can work on a scale as large as a starship.” 

“I find it fascinating that with your high technology and your defeat of scarcity you still utilize hierarchy so often,” said Tom.

“To be fair, outside the Cosmic Navy it’s not really that common in the USP,” said Randia, “The people who join the navy tend to be malcontents, people who aren’t happy just sitting on a beach and drinking space daiquiris all day long. I think there’s probably something wrong with us, all of us willing to endanger ourselves for the benefit of everyone else, but I need that danger, I need the risk, and I need the service. We are all, in our way, dissidents of utopia.”

Tom said, “People on Earth can’t spend all day sipping daiquiris on the beach all day long, but yeah, most people on Earth are content to work their twenty-four hours and fill the rest of their time with art, sports, academics, or family. I think I probably would have been just fine living in obscurity, at least until the Battle of The Citadel. That really changed everything for me, beyond the obvious. After that I couldn’t just have a quiet career out of view, whether I liked it or not. That’s why I signed up for Gagarin.”

They kissed again. 

“And speaking of,” said Kafando, “I really do have to get back to my ship. What is the Venture doing after this?” 

“Well, I wish we could escort you to Santosia and deliver your guests,” said Captain Kriss, “Unfortunately, we have to pick up some dignitaries and deliver them to a diplomatic conference. After that we’ll be returning to the core systems. You know, the Union has set up an array of alcubierre geometry highways across our space. Not many ships in the fleet can travel as fast as the Venture, and even fewer civilian ships. Basically these multiply the velocity you travel. The nearest entry point is about a lightyear and a half away from here, just outside the Santosia system.”

Kafando climbed out of the hot spring and wiped himself off. 

“Computer, dry off Tom, please,” said Captain Kriss. 

The water clinging to his body vanished in an instant. 

“Don’t be a stranger,” said Captain Kriss, “After your current business is concluded perhaps you can come to the core worlds and we can see each other again. I’d like that. I think I will remain here until it’s time to resume my duties.”