Future Lost

Marcia sat with her legs crossed atop the sunny hillside, tucked under the spotty shade of an oak tree. Blades of grass poked between her bare feet as she hunched over, cradling an object in her hands. She blocked the outside world as she focused on the multi-coloured cube she held, sliding squares of antique, organic plastic in an attempt to make the colours match. After a moment of intense concentration, she rotated all the yellow squares onto one side, a personal best. Smiling, she drew her gaze away from the object in her hands and looked out at the landscape in front of her. Directly under the transparent plane kilometres above her head, she received uninterrupted sunlight that lit her world. From her position on the hill, she saw the land stretch out in front of her, its edges curving upwards and fusing to form a contiguous, inverted horizon. Though millions of years of human evolution would protest otherwise, she loved this view. She had known no different. She was born here, and save for a handful of hours of spacewalking, had spent the entirety of her 16 years within the warm safe embrace of Ludd’s Garden Habitat. Marcia looked down from the hill lengthways across the verdant, rural cylinder, studying a small blip scuttle across the landscape. She studied the blip between bouts of returning to her puzzle. It grew larger every time she looked back up, as did her frustration at her inability to complete more than a single of its six sides. The blip had resolved into a vehicle. An electric buggy driven by a man, headed toward the hill at the far end of the habitat. He had a large duffel bag on the spare seat, occasionally placing a hand on it as he took sharp turns up serpentine dirt roads. He slowed as he approached the girl on the hill and she came to greet him as he stopped.

“I thought you’d be here. I didn’t even need to check the transponder. Taking in the view before our trip?”

The girl nodded. The man spied the cube in her hand as she anxiously fiddled with it.

“Taking that with you? You know it’s priceless. It’s real plastic, primordial sea plastic. I fought a senator for that.”

“It’s my present, I’m taking it.” She said.

The man smiled, stroking his red beard. He motioned back to the passenger seat of the buggy.

“I brought your stuff Mars.”

“Thanks dad.”

He put a reassuring arm around her and they walked back to the buggy. Marcia held the cube in one hand and her shoes in the other as she took her seat. She took another look before they set off, drinking in the pastoral countryside dotted with cosy settlements alongside creeks and streams. As they drove down the hill and to the far end of the habitat, Marcia’s father also took in the view. Unlike his daughter, he was not born here. He spent his formative years on cramped starships and on dingy, decaying habitats barely able to provide air enough for the population. It took several lifetimes to secure a place here, an exclusive little jewel in the anarchy of the cosmos. The galaxy’s most luxurious tin can. As they drove, the pleasant countryside gave way to the white and grey of industry. Ringing the far end of the habitat was an enormous wall, separating the natural green and brown earth from the artifice of the habitat’s bare superstructure. It was forever patrolled by floating drones, and littered with particle beam autocannons. All to keep out any riffraff that might otherwise spoil the pleasant land. It was here they saw the first other people since they started down the hill some tens of kilometres back, manning the checkpoint.  The buggy pulled up to the checkpoint gate and came to a stop. Marcia saw that just in front of the imposing metal gate was the faint glow of a laser grid, quietly vaporising any passing dust or airborne matter. A guard walked up to them, armed.

“Identification, citizens.” He said.

“Man alive, Lukas. I’ve lived here 20 years. I’m in your wife’s sailing club.”

“Identification. I won’t ask again.”

The two in the buggy lent over and handed Lukas their papers. Though obscenely low tech compared to other habitats or space stations scattered across the galaxy, these papers were made of trees grown locally, and impossible to spoof. Fingerprints, even DNA itself could be changed, somewhere, for the right price, but the unique texture found in the pulped wood was so expensive to counterfeit, it would be cheaper to simply buy a lease to live on the habitat. Lukas studied their papers for a token moment, before looking back to the man and child he deeply knew.

“Ok Rhix, state the nature of your excursion.”

“A joyride with my daughter. I’m teaching her to fly.”

“How long will you be off habitat?”

“A few hours, maybe half a day.”

“Will you be returning with any foreign persons, plants, animals, pathogens, or malicious electronics.”

Rhix looked up at the man, impatiently gripping the steering wheel. Lukas handed them back their papers.

“Alright then, we’ll expect you later this evening. Enjoy your excursion.” He said, waving them through.

Rhix waved him back, watching in the rear view mirror as Lukas discreetly put something in his pocket.

“Dad, why did you give Luka all that money?” She asked, also catching him in the mirror.

“It wasn’t money, it was rights to the house when our time here runs out. He wants the land more than any money.”

“You didn’t say why though.”

“Oh. Well sweetheart, I bribed him. To tell the system we’re back after a few hours. We’re going to be out longer than regulated.”

Marcia lent back in her chair, looking forward and clutching her duffel bag. She knew she wanted to go on the trip, but the reality of it had only now set in. It formed a knot in her stomach. They pulled up in an unused area of the loading docks. Unlike the tranquillity on the inside of the gate, the docks of Ludd’s Garden were crawling with activity and people, with hoards of merchants coming and going with their goods. The gravity was weaker here, as the circular form of the habitat tapered inwards into a cone. Both Rhix and Marcia felt light under their feet as they dodged through crowds of sellers, most still clad in their spacesuits. The smell in the air was familiar to Rhix, a heady mix of perfumes, produce, and the unmistakable smell of ozone coming off ionised spacesuits. The space between opposite parts of the ground had shrunk to only a hundred meters or so, making Marcia lightheaded as she watched men and women go about their business above her. Rhix guided her over to a nearby shuttle bay through an oblong port inset at an angle into the ground. Going through the port took them to a single ship airlock, housing one of the habitat’s shuttles. The shuttle was a metal box, with seats up top, and a tiny airlock taking up the bottom third, fluted with a lattice of trusses ornamented with rocket nozzles and control surfaces. The front side of the shuttle had a single entry hatch that doubled as a docking port. Rhix made his way over in the low gravity ahead of Marcia, unlocking the shuttle and climbing inside. It was an awkward fit, the shuttle barely having the depth enough to accommodate a man lying down. Still, Rhix moved from the entrance to the shuttle almost vertically upwards into the copilot seat. Marcia, unused to the slightness of gravity, took slightly longer to make her way to the front hatch of the shuttle. As she entered, she moved toward her expected seat only for it to be occupied.

“I wasn’t lying. You’re in the pilot’s seat today Mars.” Rhix said, looking down at his daughter's pouting face in the crawlspace between the seats.

Marcia pulled herself up into the empty pilot seat, getting herself comfortable and familiarising herself with the control console. Dominating her view were the myriad of switches and buttons used to get the shuttle up and into space, with several screens ready to stream information from the rudimentary flight computer. What autopilot the shuttle had was likely a worse flyer than Marcia, and so she stared ahead, through the tiny glass slit giving a redundant optical view of the outside.

“The answer isn’t in the shuttle bay wall. Now, what’s the first thing to do?” Rhix asked.

Marcia remembered the talks with her father. She lent forward and pressed a large red button, starting the power unit. She began feeding the fuel to the engines and activated the screens, already displaying relevant flight data. Smiling, she lent over to the radio to request the bay be depressurised, before being gently corrected by her father.

“All good, but don’t forget to close the door.” He said, pointing at the open entry hatch below their feet.

Marcia blushed, her face a mess of rosy freckles.

“Sorry dad.”

She sheepishly rose her hand above her head to flip the switches closing both inner and outer airlock doors. As they came to a close, Marcia felt the air instantly become stuffy, and the blue oxygen meter sprung to life in her console. After a moment, the feminine chime of autopilot emitted from the console speakers.

“Welcome aboard commander. All systems nominal.”

“That’s you, that is.” Rhix said.

The shuttle bay was vented of air, and the wall in front of them became an open door. The sound of it sliding open was felt in Marcia’s teeth as the vibrations travelled through whatever medium available. Marcia flipped the RCS on, nudging the shuttle off the ground, before throttling up and launching out the habitat and into the deep space around it. The acceleration was light, but the only force to be felt deep in the pit of Marica’s stomach.

“What’s out target?” Marcia asked, realising now she didn’t fully know their destination.

“For now, key in the centre of gravity for the debris field. Just remember the retro’s on this aren’t so powerful, and velocity can sneak up on you out here.”

Marcia keyed in the target, some hundred thousand kilometres retrograde of Ludd’s orbit. The screen showed her she was facing the opposite way, and so Marcia gracelessly rotated the shuttle about itself, the habitat now in view. Though Rhix had lifetimes of experience in awkward changes in velocity, it made Marcia instantly nauseous. Her face had gone from red to green within a span of minutes. Rhix laughed and patted her shoulder.

“We were all green once love. Focus on Ludd, take us lengthways across her.”

Angling the shuttle to cut across the outer shell of the habitat, Marcia once again engaged the throttle. She took the shuttle a few kilometres up and over the habitat. She had never seen it this way, a black spinning cylinder, dotted with solar panels and surrounded by mirrors. Beneath the shuttle were the faint silhouettes of trading freighters of all shapes and sizes, shoaling around the far end of the habitat housing the docks, not unlike the ancient sea creatures that now made up her puzzle cube. She caught sight of a transparent panel of shell, the same she had been under not two hours ago. Looking in she could see the vibrant greens, blues and golds of Ludd’s Garden, framed by the harsh border of its outer shell. The habitat was less a jewel and more a geode, a shining gem hidden inside a featureless rock. It took little time for the shuttle to clear the length of the habitat, and they were again in open space, travelling opposite to the orbital path Ludd took around their distant golden sun. They had a long way to go, and so Marcia went back to her cube while keeping one eye on a display screen, counting down the distance between them and their target. Rhix closed his eyes, mulling over the plan in his head. His days of leisure and comfort were over, and the days of work had returned. The only work he knew. Here too was his daughter, taking those first steps into that life with him. Still, as the first work back from his two decade sabbatical, it wasn’t bad. He knew the crew at least. Rhix began to drift off in the knowledge this would be the last time he would truly sleep with any comfort. He was sharply brought back by the sound of the proximity alarm and Marcia shaking him into consciousness. They had reached the outer edge of the debris field, and though Marcia had turned on the magnetic field deflector, chunks of assorted rock were zipping around the shuttle at ranges close enough to be seen by eye.

“I turned the shield on, but I don’t know, it feels like we’re going too fast.” Marcia said, her hands firmly on the throttle and joystick.

“Its a bit zippy, I told you velocity sneaks up on you. Nothing to worry about. The shield will manage the small rocks, and the big ones are nice and slow. It’s the midsized ones to watch out for.” Rhix replied, giving her a squeeze of her arm.

Marcia darted her eyes between the view in front of her and the proximity screen, carefully drawing the shuttle deeper into the field of loose rock. Once, as Rhix had been drunkenly told by Lukas at a dinner party, the debris was the home world of a wealthy senator, and a major hub for the wormhole network that spanned the galaxy back in the days of empire. Now it was rubble, occasionally scooped up by trawlers when material was needed for habitat repair. Rhix had neglected to tell Lukas that he had once met the senator many years ago and light years away, and a great deal of the man’s possessions adorned Rhix’s home, including Marcia’s cube. Now Ludd was the hub, of sorts. A rich node of local trade and economic activity, even in the absence of empire, and wormholes, proving that some things never really change. Likewise, Rhix, at his core, was unchanged. He was a pirate once, and will be a pirate again. He felt a ping in his personal transponder, coming up on their current heading. He lent forward and squinted through the pane of thick glass, knowing there would be nothing on the display screens Marcia had up. Unsurprisingly, it was mostly dark, save for the light sporadically bouncing off particularly shiny specs of debris. Suddenly, the outline of something began to resolve in his eyes. Nestled within the dark rock around them was a bright conical object with a blunt nose, standing with squat legs on a thick disc of metal and ablative material. It had changed somewhat since Rhix last laid eyes on it, perhaps a bit more bleached from cosmic radiation, but it was them, their ride. A starship, vastly dwarfing their own dinky shuttle, and indeed most of the trade ships coming and going to the habitat. It was a large, and particularly mean, Hunter Battleship. As the shuttle drifted closer to it’s rounded outer hull, the size differential became more apparent. Marcia gasped, she had never seen such a ship before.

“Is this your ship?” she asked.

“This garish thing? Oh no. It’s a friend’s. Now, take us along the path of those orange lights. There’s no computer assisted docking, so use the camera like I showed you.”

Marcia anxiously took the shuttle into the embrace of the battleship. Coming into a divot on the hull, she brushed up against a circular port in the hope the magnetic contacts would mate. Her hands perspired beady globes of sweat that clung awkwardly to her fingers in the microgravity as she gently nudged the joystick back, forward, and upwards, until a thump ran through the body of the shuttle. The autopilot chimed an authoritative ‘contact’ and Marcia exhaled. At once, a hum could be felt vibrating its way through the hull of the shuttle, the sounds of the battleship conducting directly through the metal. The two awkwardly got up and made their way to the airlock.