Even after two years of retreat on Earth, countless hours of meditation and work on his temper, travel still bothered Liam Grady. He watched the children run between the seats, playing tag in the aisles as stewards and a few parents tried to get them back under control.
The starliner would be arriving in the Enreega system in the next few minutes. He found himself recalling the information he had dug up on the passenger carrier. It had been in service for sixty one years, was due for retirement in nineteen and had one incident in its third year of operation involving the undercarriage. One refit had been performed and the most recent overhaul was done less than four months before. All in all, a good two hundred meter long mid range, high speed transport. He would have preferred one of the newer ones but beggars couldn't be choosers. It was either Voyage 1261-48 or a three day layover until the next connecting ship to Enreega would come along.
Some of the seats were grey, others were blue, and there were even a few brown mixed in. They were pretty comfortable, well, his was anyway, and there was enough space for his legs which was an unexpected bonus. The small screen mounted on the back of the seat in front of him kept playing silent ads for the different features available for the hyperspace journey, which was only six hours, and kept beckoning him to play back the Hart News feed. He resisted the temptation, sure he'd see what was going on as soon as he arrived on Enreega.
The passenger holding the ticket to the seat next to him, a pleasant woman much younger than himself, perhaps thirty five or forty, returned to her seat with her son in tow. He was flopping his feet on the padded deck with each step, looking as restless and bored as everyone else felt. The din of conversation in the cabin was thick, there were over five hundred passengers in that section alone, all set up in two rows of three seats along the port and starboard sides and one row of five right down the middle of the cabin.
“He's just anxious to see his father. We've been away for a week,” the brown haired woman said with a smile as she fastened her son's seat belt.
“We went to visit my Gran, she's old now,” said the boy.
“Oh? How many years is old?” Liam asked, unable to resist himself.
“She's one hundred and ten.”
“I see, how old are you?”
“I'm only five. How old are you?” The boy asked in return.
“I'm seventy three,” he offered the boy a hand. “I'm Liam, what's your name?”
“Lawrence,” the boy replied, shaking Liam's big hand.
“I'm Shelly. What brings you to Enreega?” She asked, looking Liam up and down.
He was still wearing his robes from the retreat. They were old fashioned, thick cotton blue robes tied in the middle by a red belt. “I'm taking a lead systems engineer post on the Willinton.”
“Oh, that's interesting,” Shelly said, looking a little disappointed.
Liam smiled and nodded. “You expected something else.”
“Well, in all honesty,” she looked him up and down again.
“I have just recently been to Earth on retreat but I'm not a priest. I'm doctrine neutral and studied discipline and philosophy with some mixed eastern traditions.”
“You've been to Earth?” Lawrence said, wide eyed.
“I have. It took many years and a lot of time in school, but they let me stay for a while.”
“What's it like?”
“Very beautiful. The sky there is blue, as blue as you've ever seen. There are endless green forests, big deserts with nothing but sand and tall mountains that go up so high that it gets very cold, so cold that there's snow that never melts.”
Lawrence looked to his mother then back to Liam.
“He's never seen snow or a desert before,” Shelly explained.
“Well, snow is all white, and it's made of little flakes of frozen water that get all piled up on top of each other. They pile up taller than you, and they're so light that you can jump into them and they'll just puff up all around. It has to be very cold for snow to stay for long though,” Liam explained with the aid of a few hand gestures.
Lawrence just stared, completely entranced by the mental images the large man conjured in his young, active imagination.
“You should be a teacher, he hasn't been this quiet in hours,” Shelly smiled, running her hand over her son's brown hair.
“I considered it, especially since the Axiologists gave me their endorsement, but I love to build.”
“What's an axi, an askio-” Lawrence tried to ask.
“An Axiologist is a student of ethics, morals and the different traditions humanity use to teach and enforce them. They help people understand the difference between right and wrong while showing us how to improve ourselves in a way that doesn't interfere with other people.”
“Oh,” Lawrence said, nodding and leaning forward to toy with the flat display screen in front of him. After making just a few selections on the menu there he had an animated calico cat and black Labrador dog on screen, chasing after each other through a factory.
Shelly smiled at Liam and shrugged. “He loves that show, even on a flat screen.”
“A moral play in the most colourful slapstick imaginable, I wish they were fashionable when I was his age,” Liam commented as he watched the cat trick the dog into running past him. The Labrador tried desperately to stop, skidding and pushing at the floor with its front paws before smacking into a sheet of sticky paper.
“Is it true that Earth may be open again soon?” She asked quietly. Other passengers were listening in, most of them had never met anyone who had been there, let alone gone themselves.
“Only to an extra five hundred per year. I was lucky to be accepted; my studies in zero emission power management and Axiology weren't enough. I had to get a recommendation from a sensei there and just getting in contact with her took over a year.”
“How is it now?”
“Much better than I expected. They were able to revitalize most of the life there, things are back in balance. It's almost all restricted, even the gardens I visited were specifically marked. They're sending seed life off world again though, so we might be seeing a bit more of the home world out in the galaxy.”
“Do you know what kind?”
“They were able to bring elephants and most tigers back along with a few species of bird. Bees are the biggest triumph. They don't have the diversity they want yet but they'll get there. It'll help long term terraforming quite a bit.”
“Bees? I read about them in school, but I thought breeding them would be easy once they had enough.”
“They still have to generate most of them, as they have been for a few hundred years. I'm no antimologist though, so I can't tell you all the details.”
“I'm a botanist on the Dawn Chaser, so you could understand I'm a little interested.”
“Ah, well, as you probably already know I wasn't allowed to bring any recordings or samples back. Even my belongings were particle scrubbed so no one could study anything that might have come back with me.”
“I know, they're so cloistered there.”
“There's a movement pushing to get out into the galaxy more, to mix with more distant humans, but I don't think we'll hear anything about it for another twenty years.”
The screens on the back of everyone's seats flashed the hyperspace emergence warning and instructions to buckle themselves in. A slight shift in the artificial gravity told Liam they had just finished decelerating.
Seconds later the blue, white and yellow distortion out the window cleared to reveal normal space. Through the porthole at Liam's side he could see the distant yellow sun. The starliner moved towards the planet Seneschal quickly, and Lawrence was silent as he watched the defence platform, a semicircular station with cannons bristling over top landing and launch bays go by.
It was safe to unbuckle and the boy was standing on his seat. Liam looked at Shelly as he picked the youngster up to sit him on his knee. Shelly nodded her approval. “My dad works on the coreward platform.” Lawrence told him quietly. “They have really big guns, but dad says no one wants to use 'em.”
“Peace should always be our goal.”
One of the massive rail cannons fired, its projectile leaving a long, bright blue trace of light behind.
“Then why do they use 'em?”
“Sometimes people let what they want get in the way of peace and we don't have a choice but to protect ourselves when they come to take what we can't afford to give.”
Shelly's hand stroked her son's back, she moved to the middle seat, closer to her son and the window.
“What do they want?” Asked the boy.
Liam was astonished at how well the young fellow understood and thought on the answer for a moment, glancing to Shelly. She didn't seem to mind the topic of conversation, but he also didn't want to give the child nightmares, especially if his father worked on a defensive platform. “I don't know what they want from your people, but usually it's a lot like two of your friends fighting over the same toy. One has it, the other wants it but doesn't want to go through the trouble of getting their own or trading fairly for it so they try to take it by fighting or stealing. It can get more complicated, but that's all it comes down to most of the time.”
Flashes of light appeared in the distance, and seconds later the jagged, squared shapes of fighting vessels became visible. Liam took a deep breath, they were decelerating out of faster than light travel very close to Seneschal. “That's an Eden Fleet!” Exclaimed a panicked passenger behind them.
“It's Eve's children! They're about to cleanse us!” Screeched someone sitting in a forward seat.
Liam looked closer, calmly examining the distant shapes. They were ships from the Eden Fleet, there was no mistaking their angular construction, their perfectly sealed, heavily armoured hulls.
Shelly took Lawrence into her lap and looked to Liam, who nodded at her. “We have to get him into the overhead baggage compartment. It's the safest place in this cabin,” he whispered.
“Is it really?”
“Yes, I spotted at least two drone carriers. We don't have much time.”
Panic was starting to make its way through the passengers and the first to notice were the children; “Mom?” Lawrence asked nervously.
“We're going to play a game, honey. You're going to hide behind this little hatch right here, and you're not going to come out until mommy comes and gets you, okay?”
Lawrence nodded, his eyes were locked with his mothers, fear just beginning to encroach on him.
Liam had the carry on compartment hatch open and his tools out of it in seconds, moving quickly but smoothly, not looking panicked or rushed. Lawrence, who was quite small for his age, fit inside with a little room to spare and Liam put a small half oval shaped air recycler inside while Shelly gave her son a little holographic entertainment computer. “We'll see you after a few movies okay honey?” She asked as she watched Liam add a small materializer that could dispense food and water.
“If you're hungry, press this button once, and if you're thirsty, press this button, okay?” Liam instructed.
Lawrence looked and nodded. “'How many movies Mom?”
She looked to Liam then to her son. “Two or three.”
“Kay,” he glanced around at the cabin beyond his mother then back to her. “I'm scared.”
“We'll be back for you soon, be brave for mommy, okay?”
“'Kay.”
She pressed two fingers to her lips, kissed them, then pressed them to her son's. “Love you,” she said quietly.
“Love you too Mom.”
Liam checked the seals on the hatch and closed the overhead compartment. “He's safer than us. If we depressurize in here, he'll be fine. That recycler I put in there will keep the air warm, and he'll have enough food to last more than three days.”
“Thank you,” Shelly said, squeezing Liam's arm briefly.
“My daughter will fit,” said one man, gesturing to a young girl a little larger than Lawrence. “Get her in there.”
Liam knew that the compartment would become terribly cramped, the air wouldn't last half as long and it would be a massive risk. “I'm sorry, if you have any emergency equipment with you, you can put your daughter in another compartment, but this one's taken.”
“You're not serious! There's plenty of room for her!” He shouted, moving towards the overhead compartment.
Liam stopped the man from opening it, deflecting his hand and pushing him out into the aisle. “Please, find another compartment. I can give you an air recycler.”
“Just because you're from Earth you think you can make all the decisions for us?” The younger man said, taking his light blue suit jacket off. His daughter was weeping behind him, sitting in her seat watching her father.
“Here, it's a recycler, it'll give her several days worth of breathable air and keep her warm,” Liam offered.
“Let him put his daughter in!” Called a woman from behind.
“Why does he get to choose?” Questioned another.
Fortified by the crowd, the younger man stepped across the aisle again. “She has just as much right to safety.”
“Stop! He's doing everything he can,” Shelly said, stepping in the man's way.
“For your son, right? Get out of my way!” He pushed Shelly back into her seat and reached for the hatch again.
Liam took the man by the arm, spun him around and held him fast. His head was directed straight at his crying daughter. “Look, she needs you to be with her, to make good choices, not to fight for her. Take the air recycler, I'm sure other passengers will have water you can put inside with her and I even have an entertainment puck you can give her. Don't make this about you, or your pride, make it about her.”
Everyone in the cabin was staring. Liam had the man in a firm grasp but wasn't inflicting any pain. His daughter was staring at her father, tears streaming down her face, she was terrified.
Liam let the man go with a gentle nudge forward. “Go. Take care of her,” He insisted quietly.
The passenger stepped across the aisle and took his daughter into his arms. She gripped his neck tightly, burying her face against him.
When Liam offered him an air recycler and an old holographic projector the width of his palm it was turned down with a shake of his head. “I don't want anything from you.”
“Everyone, please buckle yourselves into your seats. We'll be initiating emergency docking procedures shortly,” said one of the stewards as he made his way up the aisle.
“Are you sure he'll be safe?” Asked Shelly quietly. “If there's turbulence, I mean.”
“He'll be safer than us. There's no room for him to shake around in there.”
Light from a bright flash outside was cast across all the passengers. Liam and Shelly looked through the porthole to see the starboard side of the defence platform they had just passed explode violently sending debris out in all directions. Hundreds of small ships darted away, the sun reflected off their silver hulls as they moved in a unified formation.
“They're coming for us!” Shrieked a woman somewhere ahead of them.
“Oh my God, oh my God!” One man repeated as he rocked back and forth in his seat.
Panic gripped many of the passengers as the cloud of small, three meter long oval silver drones darted and swerved towards the starliner. Other passengers sat quietly praying, gripping the hand of a loved one while the rest simply watched.
“Why are they attacking us? We don't have any weapons,” asked Shelly, she was more reasonable, but still barely hiding her fear.
“Eden machines believe humanity is the destroyer of the natural order and kill them wherever they're found,” Liam whispered. “This isn't normal, they should not be out this far.” He continued. Suppressing his fear was not his way. He had acknowledged that it was something he was feeling before they had hidden Lawrence. After acknowledging it he behaved calmly, taking regular breaths and relaxing as much as possible. All his senses were focused on the situation at hand and finding any way to improve their position in it. As the drones came within firing range, he could think of no way to accomplish that.
Light emitted from the hundreds of small ships and the starliner shook violently, tossing anyone who wasn't strapped in around the cabin freely. Their helpless bodies were flung into other passengers, against the deck and into the bulkheads. Bones cracked. One was killed instantly as she went headlong into the ceiling, breaking her neck. The inertial dampeners on the vessel weren't tuned for combat.
A sudden rush of air told Liam that part of the ship had decompressed. Seconds later the lights went out and the air was still again. Emergency backups came on, bathing the cabin in a pale, dim light. He looked out of his porthole and took a deep breath. He couldn't see any drones but that didn't mean much, they could have been coming around for another pass.
Shelly's hand gripped his.
“Breathe deeply, slowly. The only thing we can change right now is how we endure. Stay calm so we're ready to act when it's time,” he advised quietly.
She took in a deep, shaky breath. Shelly couldn't help but laugh at herself as she exhaled, her breath came out interrupted by her nervous tremors. “A few more years and I might have that down.”
The next few minutes passed very slowly, the sounds in the cabin were agonizing. Crying, whimpering, and whispers filled the compartment. Liam watched through the porthole, sparing a calm glance towards Shelly who was being as patient as she was able. Her eyes were wide, sweat adorned her forehead and upper lip.
He looked back and caught sight of what he was hoping for most, signs that the ships were leaving. A small flash in the distance could have been interpreted as just that. He concentrated on making out the smallest detail, he could just barely see the drone carriers in the distance. They were just glittering silver shapes reflecting the yellow light of the distant sun. Then they were gone. He blinked and looked closer just in case his eyes were playing tricks on him. “They've left,” he whispered.
“They're gone?”
“They are. Those drones belong to the carriers that appeared before this started. If they've left that means the drones are gone as well.”
“Now what do we do?” Shouted a voice from behind him. It was the same woman who had been panicking at the slightest sound or creak all along.
Liam was finding it a little difficult to remain calm and kind towards the impatient, panicky passengers and was thankful for his training. “Now we survive,” he said firmly. “Can anyone see any of those drones?” He asked in general.
The passengers in the cabin looked out their portholes and returned a general negative, except for one who wouldn't stop repeating; “they're coming back, they're coming back to finish us. They're coming back-”
Before anyone could start general panic or chaos could get a grip on the long, darkened cabin, Liam picked up his tool kit and looked to Shelly. “You can let Lawrence out, I think the worst is over.”
She stood up and started opening the overhead compartment. “What are you going to do?”
“I'm going to find out what's happened to us. Then I'll find a way to start broadcasting our status on an emergency channel.” He waited to see that Lawrence was all right. The little fellow was a bundle of nerves and practically leapt into his mother's arms but was unharmed.
Liam walked down the aisle towards the front, where he could see a steward's alcove.
A stewardess stopped him; “Where are you going sir?”
“I'm going to patch into the ship systems and see what our situation is.”
“Please return to your seat.”
“Do you have the emergency beacon up and running?” He asked in a low whisper.
“That's none of your concern sir,” she said to him automatically.
He sighed and tilted her chin so she was looking straight into his eyes. “I'm a systems engineer with two doctorates. Now tell me, do you have emergency communications?”
She looked back at him, stunned. “No sir, we don't,” came her whispered reply. All the passengers nearby were staring at them. “We haven't been able to contact the bridge,” the stewardess whispered.
Liam lifted his tool kit, a hard shelled case half a meter long, and smiled. “Show me to your terminal.”
She nodded and turned, running to the front.
“I'm going to get our communications working and we'll have help here as soon as possible. Please stay calm and cooperate with the staff,” Liam called out to everyone loudly before taking long strides after her.
He rolled the sleeve of his robe up as he arrived at the systems alcove and plugged his personal engineering system into it. The holographic interface appeared above his wrist and he turned it so he could see the ship's general status.
“How are we?” Asked the stewardess.
He checked a few more details and shook his head. “We'll be fine, only I'll have to access the communications systems directly. The command deck is gone.”
“Gone?” She asked, wide eyed. “What about the command crew? Everyone else up there.”
Liam looked her straight in the eye. “If they wear vacsuits built into their uniforms like you do, they could be okay but there's no way in knowing how much time they have left.”
“But if the communications routing system and main systems have been destroyed-” she didn't finish the thought.
He could see her spirits falling and gently put a hand on her shoulder. “All we can do is make sure everyone knows we need help and take care of whoever we can. The communications pylon is still there. A quick trip out the airlock and I'll be able to hook directly in and tell everyone that there are at least five hundred people here who need help,” he said in a reassuring tone.
She sighed and nodded. “You're right. We have emergency vacsuits.”
Liam let his robe fall open to reveal his own dark grey containment suit. “I never travel without one,” His voice was quiet, calm, positive. He made it easy to believe everything was going to be fine.
The look of relief on her face was unforgettable, and she collected his robe and belt with a smile as he took them off and handed them over.
He brought up his headpiece, which had been affixed behind his neck like a hood, sealed it and opened the inner airlock door.
“Now he has the right idea! We should find a way off!” Shouted one man who could see into the alcove.
“I'm going outside to send a distress signal using the array. I can't access it from here,” Liam said, turning the amplification on his vacsuit up high so everyone could hear. There was still some residual arguing and conversation about escape craft, but as the steward staff explained, the compartment they were in was cut off from any large emergency vessels.
He proceeded into the airlock and closed the inner door behind himself, leaving the steward staff to take care of the passengers. When the the pressure was safely released and the outer door signalled a good seal he opened it.
The memory of his first space walk was something that was never far from the surface when he took his first steps towards the void. He was in his second year of structural engineering and needed only a few seconds to look around before realizing he was prone to space sickness, a nauseating reaction to vertigo. The systems in his vacsuit did a fantastic job of suctioning away his erupting vomit, but it didn't hide his problem.
It took him over five years to get over the issue on his own, and he had to admit, looking out into open space still made him a little queasy, especially if he let his thoughts drift. He attached a line from his suit to an eye hook beside the airlock and began moving along the fuselage, keeping a brisk drift towards the tail section.
The three meter high communications pylon hadn't been damaged by the attack. As he moved around the hull towards it the primary rear engine came into view. The Eden drones had destroyed it utterly. Beyond that he could see the drifting wreckage of the defence station. Once several kilometres long, it had been reduced to shards of hull plating and chunks of drifting inner decks. He hoped that Laurence hadn't lost a father that day but didn't dwell on the thought.
He used the line brake on his belt, slowing the rate at which the safety line spooled out to reduce his speed right before coming into contact with the communication tower with a little bump. Liam opened the access panel on the side of the rounded pylon and patched his engineering computer into it.
It only took him a few moments before he found a standard distress signal in his wrist computer's memory and added; minimum five hundred, up to three thousand in need of rescue. Sun Veil Starliner 1261-48 destined for Seneschal. No contact with command deck, no attitude control, engines damaged beyond on site repair.
With a sigh Liam looked out into space, not searching for anything in particular. The signal would repeat as long as he was directly tied in, so he could either leave his engineering computer connected to the communications system and go back to the ship, or he could stay.
Just as he decided to stay in the quiet of space for a while and wait, a flash erupted in his line of sight. The object that had just appeared began to move closer, firing the engines that had been turned forward, decelerating quickly.
Fewer than ten seconds passed before the massive carrier settled into a parallel trajectory along side the passenger liner, matching its speed. Liam recognized it immediately, having seen one of them from the outside in orbit around Earth. This one was marked the Triton and he couldn't help but chuckle. “They followed me all the way out here? I must have made a bigger impression than I thought.”