NOVEL SIMPLE 55. Monuments of Man
The next several days went smoothly, which everyone was grateful for, especially the acting captain. Just about the worst thing that Echo had to manage were a few crew members that needed to take a day off for varying reasons. I continued spending the first shift keeping an eye on the helm, though there wasn’t a great lot to do during the long lightspeed cruise. A few navigation hazards were avoided, and a minor change of course to avoid a naval exercise were all it took to ensure smooth sailing through the sea of stars. It wasn’t until our arrival in the Procyon system that anything changed, and even then, it wasn’t until we were preparing for the gate jump back to Centaurus.
“Alright, Geri,” said the acting captain. “Contact Gate Control. I think it’s high time we went home.” There were chuckles from the rest of the bridge crew. The last trip had definitely been longer, but they’d still been out for the better part of three weeks for this job. Time off the ship was a commodity that none of us were going to give up so easily on.
But then another voice cut through the quiet bridge, this one being much deeper than the first. “Belay that order, Mister Schneider.” A quiet chuckle followed the words as Marcus Erickson stepped onto the bridge properly. “You know,” he said with a grin. “I’ve always wanted to say that. Dad really liked that word, belay; used it whenever he could, it seemed sometimes.”
Callisto Erickson didn’t seem to be so amused though. “What’s going on Dad? Did I do something wrong?” By this time, every eye on the bridge seemed to have swiveled to lock on to the father and daughter.
“Not at all, Starlight,” was the elder’s response. “We just have one more stop to make before we go home.”
I blinked, Echo blinked, a couple others on the bridge blinked too.
My girlfriend frowned and eyed her father carefully. “You didn’t tell me anything about a third stop before home. What gives?” The girl’s tone was inquisitive but measured.
“Taking our elderly guests to visit an old friend.” Marcus looked oddly carefree about the whole thing, but there was a sparkle in his eyes that spoke to mischief. I might not have even noticed if not for having come to recognize the same sparkle in the eyes of his daughter whenever she was about to tease me. I could only assume that there was one more surprise in store for Echo from her father, as if being unexpectedly made captain hadn’t been enough.
From her spot in the captain’s chair, I watched as her pools of nebula blue focused in on the steel grey eyes of her father. “Well, I guess I can’t exactly argue here. I hope you aren’t planning on keeping the crew on station for too long, though.”
Now leaning against the aft bulkhead, the man I now called boss laughed. “Keeping the well-being of your crew in mind even in the face of your boss, a good quality for a captain. The crew will be taken care of appropriately, don’t worry. For now, just get us to the Copernicus system. We need to get to Freestar City.”
Confusion or not, the Ratatosk and her crew were nothing if not efficient in their jobs. Within minutes we were all seated and watching as we passed through the massive ring of the slipspace gate. On the other side, it turned into all hands on deck as other traffic suddenly became a major concern.
The Copernicus star system wasn’t one you might immediately expect to be heavily occupied by humans. Despite having just shy of a full dozen planets and more than a hundred natural satellites and planetoids, none of the stellar bodies had any capacity to host any sort of life. What few planets and moons possessed atmospheres at all were either gaseous by nature or were utterly uninhabitable due to massive concentrations of highly toxic elements. In fact, the rocky world nearest the star had such an amount of gaseous lead in its thermosphere that scientists were still studying it.
What the system did have, on the other hand, was the single largest trove of harvestable ore that humanity of one hundred years ago had ever discovered. Similar clusters of resources had been found out in the Fringe, but distance and lack of infrastructure had made those far-flung stars nearly untouchable until just recently. In their mad rush to expand territory, an expedition was mounted and had eventually built one of the most impressive feats of engineering since the invention of the slipspace gate network.
Without a world to terraform and having no real options for long term human occupation, those in charge decided that we would just build a home for themselves anyways. Freestar City wasn’t a collection of buildings, it had no land to call its own. It wasn’t a city at all, in fact, not in the traditional sense. No, Freestar City was instead constructed as the single largest space-born habitat for people ever conceived, a triumph of humankind’s ingenuity and intelligence.
To call the structure we soon approached massive was to almost criminally undersell the monument of humanity that it was. Many had compared it to the fantastical stations found in the science fiction novels of the twentieth century, and it was hard to argue the point. At a staggering sixty kilometers in diameter, Freestar City started as a base for all of the enormous foundries and supporting facilities needed to establish a permanent mining colony. Since then, the original structure had been expanded further and further to accommodate the ever growing population of personnel working for the mines and then further still to convert this from just mining to a fully operational outpost in every sense of the word. Military and civilian industry had started the colony, but commerce turned the already record-breaking station into an industrial powerhouse that could rival even humanity’s cradle for population and output. In modern times, the Terran Union had relocated some of the naval infrastructure to other places, but Freestar City had persevered.
Some of us had been here before, but I and most of the bridge were enthralled by the city with all of its many wonders. Enormous shipyards, vast retail sectors, ever-burning foundries, even greenhouse domes that dwarfed our ship were dispersed all around the now one hundred kilometer-wide installation. Treysana had been stunning for me to see for the first time. I was humbled looking upon Freestar City. There was work to do, though, so I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted for long. With all of the ships in the sector, helm duty was suddenly a lot more intensive.
“Captain Erickson! Incoming hail.” As we hadn’t yet contacted the city, the call was unexpected.
Amusingly, both father and daughter tried to respond to the communications officer. Having noticed his mistake, Marcus laughed lightly and allowed Callisto to do the job he’d asked of her. Once more, my girlfriend gave the order to put the call on the speakers.
“Have the Vikings come to raid my humble establishment, again?” The unknown voice carried an awful lot of familiarity for a random call, so I figured that the senior captain at least knew who this was.
Marcus proved me right with his laugh. “Come now, Josè, you can hardly call our last visit a raid when we paid for the merchandise we took.” I wasn’t really sure why, but the name pinged familiar in my head.
The viewscreen flickered and the image of an older-looking man appeared, seeming to glance around the bridge. “And where is your old man, Marcus? Did he not come by after all?”
Pushing off from the bulkhead, Marcus walked up to and then leaned onto the back of the chair his daughter currently occupied. “Dad is here, he’s just spending time with another old friend while waiting for us to get here. Both of them are eager to see you, I’m sure.”
The old man, apparently named Josè, gave a raspy chuckle. “Oh good, the eternal grease monkey is here too!” Whoever this was, he seemed an odd sort. Between his voice that sounded like he’d once been an avid acid gargler, and the fact that there was more than one tooth missing from his grin, Josè was obviously not the average spacer. After a pause to sip at some drink, he continued. “Well, I suppose you’ll be needing a parking spot? I’ll call the kids up in the control tower and have them get you one close by.”
True to his word, when we contacted local control to announce our approach, the woman informed us that special instructions had been given for us. Vectors were provided and I began the final approach to the small moon-sized city. It felt almost unnatural to be flying a ship as big as the Ratatosk between buildings and the countless other ships and shuttles that flitted about. After several minutes of somewhat harrowing maneuvers through the busy spaceport, we came up to a grouping of very obviously ex-military hangars that literally hung beneath the central structure of the city.
Once clear of obstacles, docking procedures began. Even still, though, I had to keep my hands actively working the helm to keep us in place. In addition to the sheer size and population of the oversized space station, bits of thermal radiation and solar winds from the nearby star required consistent adjustments with thrusters to hold ourselves in place in relation to the gantry that was extending to meet us.
It was right about that time that I noticed the real scope of the facility we’d arrived at. All around us, the relatively empty area we’d parked in had begun to change and transform until an entire series of partial walls and metal arms had gently taken hold of our vessel. Evidently, our specially designated docking area was, in fact, an old repair dock. Judging by the size of the armatures I could see on the navigational sensors, it was a big one too, likely capable of handling large warships. With the dock structure partially encasing the Ratatosk, the need to hold ourselves in place was very suddenly no longer present and I was able to relax.
“Easy, Adresta,” said Marcus. “You did good. The docks will hold us in place now.” He reached around his daughter to press a button on the captain’s console. “Attention all crew, secure from stations.” Echo gave him a protesting side-eye, but Marcus just smiled at her and stood back up.
“Would the Misses Erickson and Matson join me, please? We have a meeting to attend.” That damned twinkle still lit up Marcus’s eyes even as he began to turn towards the door. Echo and I shared a questioning look before shrugging and standing to follow her father and her mother who had stood up as well. Further suspicion filled my mind with his last words as I was reminded of what Beverly Yates had said to me. The Erickson adults had planned all of this, of that I was becoming more sure by the second.
By the time we reached the port forward docking ring, Rachel, Mikaela, and Conrad Erickson were all waiting for us in the company of Jay Blackburn. The two mothers were whispering to each other, but the older men were chatting about Josè and some trouble the three of them had once caused apparently. I couldn’t catch enough of the conversation to figure exactly what they did, but apparently it had been something significant right around the time they’d left military service.
With all of us present, the hatch finally opened and allowed us to cross the gantry as a group. The inside of the tunnel was lit by old fashioned round portholes that let in light from outside. The view was impressive, looking out at the ventral side of the city. Other buildings and massive arrays jutted out at regular intervals and small shuttles buzzed around hauling ore and processed materials between foundries and distribution centers in a frenzied dance orchestrated by the traffic controllers. The discerning eye could pick out newer and older sections of the infrastructure, but it was all melded together in a surprisingly seamless way.
The other side of the gantry opened up to welcome us and the same old man from the call sat in a mobility chair held aloft by a series of micro repulsor lifts. It was significantly nicer than the model I had used, but this one looked to be a more permanent solution than mine had ever been intended for.
“Conrad! Jay! You two handsome devils!” It was sweet watching the three old men come together to exchange greetings. It was very obvious that time had not dulled their friendship as they grasped forearms and pulled together to give manly hugs. The rest of us might have been left to stand around waiting if not for Jay motioning back to Echo and I.
“There will be plenty of time to catch up later. I think you have business with the Ericksons to attend first, Josè.” The man who might have been my father firmly patted at the chair-bound gentleman’s shoulder. “I do hope that everything is ready?”
Josè grunted. “Close enough to it. Another week maybe for the big girl and a few more days on tiny. That Victoria lady had a few more things she wanted to add and that delayed us significantly.”
“Just do the best you can,” replied Jay. “She knows what she is talking about.”
“Whatever, as long as I get paid,” grumped the strange man. His face brightened as he reached into a pocket to pull out a cigar and then lit it with a lighter that must have been even older than him. A smoke cloud soon billowed from the man and his eyes turned to the rest of us. “Well, what are you waiting for? Don’t you want to go see it?”
Echo’s parents smiled knowingly and turned to look at their daughter, seemingly waiting for her to answer for all of us.
“See what, exactly?” Her question was simple, but her tone carried a suspicion that I shared.
Josè looked back at her confused and then allowed his gaze to shift to me before it was overcome by understanding. “Well, your ship of course!”