Kitra, p.4
Kitra, page 4
“Is this live?” I asked, thrilled.
“Yes,” Fareedh said. “While we’re on the ground, we’re hooked into the satellite web. In space, the ship’s sayar goes off live observations or the latest data.”
“Is it…” my pulse became strong in my temples again, “is the ship ready to fly?” I had a wild urge to punch the engine sequence and blow right through the hangar walls.
He chuckled. “Hardly. The new ship’s sayar was installed last week, and it’s online, obviously, but it’s still not hooked into all functions.” He ran his hand through his hair, but it stayed a mess. A cute mess, I decided.
“I’ve actually had to set everything up myself,” he said. “It’s an old ship. I had to set up a virtual sayar to run the original software just to get the ship to turn on. It’s kind of a kluge, an old system running in the new ship's sayar.”
“So we’re running software from the old ship's sayar? That’s almost a century old!” I turned to look at him.
“Underneath a modern operating system, yes,” Fareedh admitted. “It’s usable, though. Once I patch the connections. Plus, the old stuff came with a nice set of automatic navigation sequences.”
I fiddled idly with the virtual buttons under my left hand, flipping through information screens in silence for a bit. Then, “You’ve done a great job.”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “I aim to please…” he said smoothly.
I gave his hand a soft slap. He just leaned back in his chair and eyed me speculatively.
“What?” I asked.
“You were just so eager to go,” he said. “I like that. And I promise I’ll have ol’ ‘what’s-its-name’ ready in no time.”
“It’s just as well,” I said. “I still haven’t come up with anything better than ‘what’s-its-name’.”
He gave me a wry smile. “We can’t go off on an adventure without the ship having a name. It’s bad luck.”
“I know, I know,” I said, waving my hand as if to swat away a fly. Then I paused in mid-wave. Of course. I should have thought of it sooner. ‘Adventure’.
“That’s it!” I cried.
Fareedh raised his eyebrows in query.
“Majera,” I said brightly, using my parents’ native tongue.
He blinked and was silent a moment. Then he quirked his lip and nodded. “Right. Seikkailu, Aventur,” he said, translating Majera first into Finnish, then French, the language we normally spoke in.. “But why Turkish?” he asked.
“To honor my Mom.”
He nodded, satisfied. “I like it.”
“Me too!” I enthused, rubbing my palms together. “Just think how cool it’ll be to say, ‘This is Adventure calling…’ In fact, I think I’m going to say that a lot.”
Fareedh broke into a genuine smile, and he nodded encouragement.
I couldn’t help smiling back. I felt a lot better. Picking a name finally put everything into place, made it real. And seeing Fareedh’s grin, it was clear that under the flirting and the cool calculation, there was real enthusiasm. He was hooked. Between that and Peter happily working with his gear, well, now I knew we were all in it together. A real crew.
In one week, we’d be going on an adventure.
Going on the Adventure.
Chapter 4
Ninth of Wind, 308 P.S.V. (Launch Day)
“Three. Two. One. Liftoff!” My voice rang high with emotion as I punched the controls.
With a deafening roar, huge streams of fire erupted from Majera’s engines, their acceleration slamming me into my seat with twice my normal weight. Flames streaked past the Window, the gees increasing until I felt the full force of seven gravities crushing the air out of me. My vision blurred until I could hardly see the Window, or Pinky seated next to me. Faster and faster we went, the rickety hull threatening to shake itself to pieces. There was the violent snap as external booster rockets fell away, then a jerk as our main engines turned off, and we floated weightless in orbit.
At least, that’s how it had always been in the historical romances I read.
The launch was nothing like that. These days, ships don’t launch—they levitate. I think we’ve lost something.
Watching the ground drift away through the Majera’s Window, I recalled all the times I’d flown in my glider, that feeling my stomach got when I climbed or dove or turned. That little clench in my diaphragm and the spinning in my inner ear that connected me to my machine and what it was doing. The gentle pressure on my back when I sped up, the thrill as I careened around in a tight bank. Acceleration.
Now, there was none of that. There was no sensation of movement at all, in fact. And yet, the view through the Window made it clear that we were moving, the ship’s anti-gravity thrusters shooting us upward at a steady rate. I angled the view downward and watched the spaceport dwindle to a gray asterisk, to a dot, to an indistinguishable point inside the sprawling capital. Soon after, the city was gone, too. The bright sun turned the nearby sea into a lake of fire. The river was a shimmering silver ribbon.
The sky gently changed colors, from pale blue to navy to indigo to black. In just ten minutes, we were clear out of the atmosphere, two hundred kilometers up. I could see the curve of the horizon and the stretches of silver, brown, and green that made up Vatan’s surface. It was a pretty view and yet, I felt detached. There was no sense of vertigo or that tingling in my fingers I still sometimes got when looking down from a height. There was hardly any sound. Just the quiet hiss of the air blowers and the breathing of five beings. Despite everything, I found myself a little disappointed. We might as well have been watching a recorded holo of a liftoff rather than making one.
Wait a minute. I reached out to turn off the cabin lights and dim the displays, plunging us into almost complete darkness. I expanded the Window to cover most of our field of view. My heart skipped a beat.
In the dark, the view was brilliantly beautiful.
Thousands of stars, constant and as bright as anything. They crowded together tightly, far too many to count. I felt like I could read by their light, that’s how brilliantly they shone. Vatan’s nearer moon was a dazzling, featureless ball, just above the curve of the planet. Behind it, a glowing arch soared from the planet’s surface into the heavens: Vatan’s rings.
My tongue was dry, and I realized my mouth was open. I closed it and swallowed.
I swiveled my chair completely around. Peter, Marta, and Fareedh were ghosts in the low light. Sitting in low-slung temporary couches, Peter’s and Marta’s behind mine, and Fareedh’s behind Pinky’s, they had access to their own panels along the side of the Bridge. The small room was crowded, but at least it fit all of us.
I cleared my throat and pointed a thumb over my shoulder. “Some view, huh?”
Peter nodded, his eyes wide. “Uh huh.”
I kicked his shoe lightly. “Too late to turn back now, hmm?” I teased. Then I added, “Thanks again for making the party.”
“Well, all of my stuff is here,” he answered. But his grin glinted in the starlight.
I turned back to the Window, and tried to find the destination I wanted, but it was lost among the bright stars. “Pinky,” I said. “Where’s Four?”
A moment later, one of the brightest of the “stars” got a green circle around it and a curved blue line arced out from the bottom of the Window to meet the circle. It was obviously a planet, now that it was pointed out. It had a yellowish tinge and was big enough to just barely show as a disk instead of a point. A small gas giant, 40 million kilometers away, officially named Bilye. Everyone just called it Four.
I brought the lights up and shrank the Window a bit. Now I could only see the brightest stars. I took a deep breath, finally feeling the excitement the moment deserved.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s have the first status report of the trip. How are we looking?”
“The power plant is running at expected levels,” I heard Peter say. “The engines are warm and ready for action. Hydrogen fuel tanks are full up.”
Marta’s voice chimed in. “No leaks in the hull, and the environmental systems are online. Air reserves are at maximum. Water reserves are at maximum.”
“Pinky’s at maximum,” my friend wheezed. I looked at him, and sure enough, he had made himself too big and round for his chair, which was literally struggling to accommodate him. Pinky: King of visual puns.
“You know,” I chided. “It’d help if you stuck to one shape.”
Pinky shrugged three arms. “Where’s the fun in that?”
I glanced over at The Tree. All of the active systems were tinted a healthy green. The symbols for things we didn’t have, the weapons bay and the multi-use pod, were a dull brown.
“Ship’s sayar is online and all functions are, um, functioning,” Fareedh said. “The link to the old system is working fine, as is the modern interface on top of it.”
He’d done a great job. All of the displays used familiar fonts and setups. It was hard to believe that underneath the patches, the Majera’s software was decades old.
“What do you think, Pinky? Can you get us to Four with Fareedh’s kluge?” I gave Fareedh a smile over my shoulder so he knew I was only teasing him. Unfazed, he blew me a kiss. I rolled my eyes, but I had to turn to hide a blush.
Pinky ran three thick fingers across his control panel. A moment later, he said breezily, “Course laid in.” He looked at me and added, “At one standard gee of acceleration, I can have us there in 1.48 standard days. That’d be…0.69 Vatan days. At two gees, we can be there in…1.05 standard days.” Pinky was showing off, not using a sayar to do his math.
“With full tanks, I don’t see why we wouldn’t do two gees,” I said. “Peter?”
“Yeah. That’s a safe thrust for a long stretch,” he said.
“You got it, boss.” Pinky manipulated his panel, and Majera’s engines came to life. I felt, more than heard, the faint thrum from the engines. I turned the Window’s focus back to Vatan so we could watch it go. The reflections off the ice covering a third of the planet made it glitter. After a few minutes, Vatan was just a soccerball sized sphere painted in turquoise and white.
“It’s kind of…I don’t know.” Marta said, breaking the silence. “Somehow, I’d thought taking off for our first journey would be more dramatic.” I had to smile. Now she was feeling the same way I had.
“If you like,” Pinky said, “I could make the trip more exciting.” He played with the anti-gravity controls before I could stop him, and I felt the floor lurch like we were being pitched on a rolling sea. Marta whooped with surprise. I gripped my chair as we careened right and left. It was a good thing we had seat harnesses.
“What are you doing?” Peter yelped.
“He’s making the experience more cinematic,” Fareedh said calmly. “Let me help.” He started making loud whooshing sounds in time with the ship’s rocking.
“You’re not helping, guys,” I said through gritted teeth. “Stop messing with my baby.”
Pinky stopped clowning around, which was good because I was about to wallop him on his…well, I was about to wallop him. The floor ceased its rolling.
Marta pulled herself gently from her couch and smoothed her yellow dress; not the most practical thing for shipboard life, I noted, but it did look pretty on her. It was a lot classier than the casuals the rest of us were in, though I liked Fareedh’s rainbow T-shirt.
“Tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t we celebrate our liftoff away from the controls.” She glared at Pinky, who averted his eyespots, pretending shame.
I turned to watch as Vatan slowly shrank in the view. Part of me was reluctant to leave the bridge just half an hour into the flight. On the other hand, there wasn’t all that much to do until turnover, the halfway point at which we’d flip the ship around and run our engine in the opposite direction, slowing down until we reached our target. Even that could be done automatically. Once the course was laid in, flying through space was easy. The excitement would happen at the destinations. Any fun we had in-flight, we’d have to provide for ourselves. We might as well start now.
“That is a good idea,” I said at last. “Let’s try out the new wardroom.” I turned to urge everyone out of the control room only to find that everyone had already left, even Pinky.
I unclipped my belt, feeling a little down. Maybe space travel was going to be more dull than I thought. I couldn’t even keep my crew on the bridge for half an hour. I got up and went through the double doors.
The loud “SURPRISE!” as I walked into the wardroom almost startled me out of my skin.
Somehow, in the time I’d spent alone on the bridge, the others had not only managed to get into the room, but to decorate it with banners, balloons, and streamers. No, they must have set this up earlier, before they’d taken their stations. There was even a blue cake on top of the big table’s center, flames dancing at the end of a bunch of candles. The cake was shaped like…I don’t remember what they’re called. Some kind of sea mammal with flippers and smooth skin. It had giant, lopsided eyes and a goofy smile drawn in dark icing.
“You guys,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t turn my back on you for a second.”
“This is a big deal,” Marta said with a cheerful smile. “It calls for a real celebration. So I baked a real cake.”
“Yes,” Pinky said, stiffening and narrowing so that he was as tall as he could get, his head almost level with mine. He made a fair imitation of a throat-clearing cough and gestured dramatically at the pastry with all three hands. “This is our Seal of Approval,” he said solemnly.
I clamped my lips, refusing to dignify the pun with a response. Not a laugh. Not a groan. Nothing. I caught a glimpse of the crooked grin on that stupid cake’s face, the candle on its head slowly leaning from the flame’s heat. It fell over. Smoke rose from the seal’s nose. A snort flew past my lips, and then I was shaking in a laugh I couldn’t stop.
Marta pointed an accusing finger at Pinky. “It was his idea.”
“No it wasn’t,” Fareedh said proudly. “It was mine. Pinky just insisted on saying it.” I shook my head slowly in disbelief, still laughing. Lord. Two Pinkys would drive Peter crazy.
I recovered, and Pinky offered me a translucent knife. “Care to do the honors?”
“Yes,” I said. “But hold on one second. There’s something missing.” I squeezed past him to get to my door. The light went on as I walked into my room. It was still a mess. I hadn’t set up anything but the bed, and all of my stuff was in boxes. I rummaged through them. Clothes. Hangers. Toiletries.
Pinky called out, “Hurry up! The candles are all melting.”
“Coming!” I yelled. I carefully moved piles of stuff until I found the box I had been searching for, and then took the whole container without bothering to unpack its contents.
Fareedh and the others were already seated by the time I returned. I put the box on the table and tapped the release. The sides folded away revealing a set of six coffee cups, delicately painted and lacquered.
“Oh, they’re beautiful!” Marta said.
“Yeah. My mom’s,” I explained. “I thought they’d be good luck. And you can’t have sweets without coffee.”
The cake was in danger of third-degree burns at this point. I bent over the table and blew out the candles. Then I took the knife Pinky had offered me and began careful surgery on the poor animal, although it’s hard to cut equal slices when your cake isn’t properly square. Marta and Fareedh chose pieces of the mid-section for their plates. Peter took both hindfins. I pushed the poor dissected creature’s head onto my own plate, laughing evilly as I did. Pinky just expanded his hand, enfolding one of the seal’s shoulders. It slowly disappeared into Pinky’s porous skin.
The carafe heated as I grabbed it from the galley counter. By the time I poured the coffee, it was steaming. Taking a seat, I tucked into my piece of cake. It was amazing, carrot spice cake with dried purples. I chewed contentedly, admiring our little meeting room with its sky blue ceiling and grass-colored floor. There was real green, too, since Marta had set up containers at the room’s corners, and they all had big broadleaf plants spilling out of them. Seeing them, I breathed deeply. The air seemed fresher than in the Bridge, though it might have just been my imagination.
“So, what’s the plan, Kitra?” Peter set down his plate. He’d already finished. “Why’d you pick Four for the first stop?”
I swallowed my current bite and shrugged. “It seemed as good a spot as any. I’m open to other ideas.” I dug in my pocket for my sayar. Tapping the device, I projected a map of the two stars in our system: Vatan’s golden sun, Yeni Izmir, and its distant little red companion, Tuncay. There were six circles around the first, two around the second—planetary orbits.
“What have we got for options, Pinky?” Peter asked.
“Well…” The alien spread out a hand and started counting on his fingers. “Four’s got a couple of moons we could visit. I think there’s a big botanical garden on one of them.” He looked over at Marta, but she didn’t seem interested. “There’s Lananina,” he said, gesturing toward the fifth planet. “That’s fun if you like ice sculptures. Some rocks in the asteroid belt might be worth visiting, especially if the Games are on. Three’s got those luxury Ring Hotels.”
“Which we can’t afford,” Fareedh noted.
“Right. Let’s see…” He was out of fingers, so he grew a new one. “We could do a trip out to Garrison Station around Six, just to say we did. If the Navy’d let us land.”
Marta looked doubtful. “None of those sound like exotic, exciting places. Isn’t it kind of a waste of a starship not to, you know, go to another star?” She took a small bite of cake, swallowed, and added, “I wanted to get a Sennetian.”
