IT’S HARD TO get back to sleep under the best of circumstances after that creepy-ass out on the hull dream. With Eight crammed into the bed next to me, wriggling around and mumbling in his sleep, it’s impossible. After a half hour or so of trying, I give up and slip out of bed, grab my tablet from my desk, and head down to the caf to do some reading. The corridors are deserted this early except for the occasional Security goon, and I’ve got the place to myself when I get there. I pick a table in the corner opposite the entrance. On the off chance that someone else wanders in while I’m down here, I’d rather they just left me alone.
My stomach starts rumbling as soon as I sit down. Apparently it knows this is where we go to eat. I’d love to oblige it, but my ration card is zeroed out, and it won’t reset until 08:00, which is still a couple of hours away. Downside? I may digest my own liver by then. Upside? I’ve got plenty of time now to learn a bunch of stuff I don’t actually want to know about some colony that crashed and burned in an interesting way somewhere, without being interrupted.
I’m not in the middle of anything right now, so I spend a few minutes browsing through the archives. Nothing’s really grabbing me, though, and eventually, out of curiosity, I pull up a file on New Hope. I haven’t dug into that particular story since I started my doom-and-gloom tour of the history of the Diaspora—mostly because, like everyone who’s lived on Midgard for the past thirty years, I already have a general idea of what happened there.
New Hope failed about twenty-five years after their initial beachhead was established, mostly because of a short, brutal civil war fought between the remaining original colonists and the first wave of the New Hope–born that wrecked most of the infrastructure they still needed in order to survive on a semi-hostile planet. A group of refugees, all from the younger cohort, managed to boost up to the original colony ship that brought them there, which was, like ours here on Niflheim, mostly still in orbit around the planet. They stripped it down to the bare minimum needed to sustain them for a five-year hop—no embryos, no terraforming gear, no Agricultural Section—nothing but life support, a cycler, and a bare minimum of feedstock, basically. They even cut away most of the remaining living space.
When they were done, the ship massed less than ten percent of what the Drakkar did when it boosted out. Between the residual fuel that had been left in the ship’s tanks, and the antimatter they managed to scavenge from the colony’s wrecked power plant, they had just enough juice to limp across the gap to Midgard, where they were welcomed with slightly less than open arms.
As I start reading, it slowly dawns on me that the details the article is filling in give the story a significantly different valance than the one I’d picked up in school. They’d glossed over the reasons for the war, and I’d always assumed it was over the kind of stuff that civil wars are usually over—race, religion, resources, political philosophy, blah blah blah. According to this piece, though, the stated casus belli was the question of whether a native corvid-like avian species was sentient, and therefore deserving of protection and respect, or delicious, and therefore deserving of a spicy dry rub and an hour on the grill.
I guess I can see why that wouldn’t get a lot of mention. If a colony can go down over something like that, we’re all only one step from the corpse hole. I’m not sure what lesson to take from the story, though … except maybe that once things start to spiral, it can be really hard to pull them back.
I’m counting down the last ten minutes until I can show the scanner my ocular and draw a mug of cycler paste with equal parts anticipation and disgust when I get a ping from HR. It’s my duty cycle for the day. They’re seconding me out to Security. I need to be at Lock Two by 08:30, suited up and armed for perimeter patrol.
This sounds like a job for Eight.
I’m just about to tell him this when he pings me instead.
<Mickey8>:Hey Seven. You on your way to the lock?
<Mickey8>:Actually, I kind of thought you might take duty today. You know, considering I almost got eaten while you were napping yesterday.
<Mickey8>:I mean, I would, but …
<Mickey8>:Come on, Eight. You owe me.
<Mickey8>:Disagree, friend. If you’ll recall, I’m the one who magnanimously did not shove you face-first down the corpse hole after I won our death match of rock-paper-scissors fair and square. Seems to me that you’re the one with a debt to repay. Also, I haven’t had time to get breakfast yet. You get this one. I’ll pick up whatever they assign us to tomorrow.
I’m composing my response, which is definitely going to begin with, Look, asshole, when a second window pops open.
<CChen0197>:Hi Mickey. Saw you were on our roster this morning. They’ve got me on perimeter too. Want to partner? I feel like we made a pretty good team yesterday, right?
I’m trying to decide how to answer that when Eight comes back again.
<Mickey8>:Well, that decides it, huh? I have no idea what shenanigans you and Chen got up to yesterday. Five minutes of talking to me and we’d be outed, right? Right. So, I’m going back to sleep now, okay? Let me know how it goes.
He closes the window. I think about reopening it, and also about storming up there and dragging him out of bed and down to the lock by his ankles, but …
But the truth is, he’s right.
<CChen0197>:You there?
<Mickey8>:Hi Cat. Yeah, I’m here. Just getting some breakfast before heading over. I’ll see you in twenty.
* * *
“SO,” CAT SAYS. “No to the armor, yes to the accelerator, right?”
I look up from strapping on my snowshoes, shake my head, and go back to my laces.
“I’m not telling you what to do, Cat. Dugan was right yesterday. You guys have a different incentive structure than I do.”
“Incentive structure?” Cat says. “You mean like the incentive to not get pulled to shreds by those things out there?”
“Yeah,” I say. “That one.”
I stand, shuffle away from the bench I’d been sitting on, and stomp my feet to make sure the shoes are secure. Cat’s geared up the same way I am, with three layers of white camo thermals, snowshoes, and a rebreather pushed up to her forehead. Our weapons are still racked, but she’s right about those too. Particularly after yesterday, I’m definitely carrying an accelerator.
“I don’t think I buy that,” she says. “I saw you yesterday. You didn’t want to get pulled down any more than the rest of us did. I know you’re supposed to be immortal, but you don’t act like you believe it.”
I give her a long look, then shrug and shuffle over to the weapons rack. “Have you ever shoved your hand into a shredder?”
She laughs. “What? No.”
I pull an accelerator down from the wall, verify that it’s powered, and check the load. “Why not? It wouldn’t kill you, and the prosthetic they’d give you would be stronger than your real hand. A few hours in Medical and you’d be better than new.”
“Oh,” she says. “I see where you’re going with this.”