Out
A series about Mars
by Daniel
E. Machado
Chapter
22
"When's Mommy coming home?" Roselene asks,
already disappointed with the answer. With a resigned sigh Fred once
again looks up from his handtablet. It's the third time in the last fifteen
minuets she’s interrupted him.
"I told you, Sweety, eighteen-thirty.
Right there." Fred taps at the ever-present chronometer on the compartment's
display panel.
"I’m bored!" Roselene shoulders sag
sadly against her sleep-net, despite having no gravity to sag against.
Pulling his mind out of his tablet's display Fred looks up at the sad faced
little girl hanging just over his head in a double-anchored sleep-net.
The girl's tiny arms drift lifelessly out of the webbing, hanging to either
side of a spinning, almost perfect, scale model of an icetroid mine command
station that she's constructed out of her ant farm, globs of vacuum breach
putty, and some of those short red sippy-straws from the mess. The inert
breach putty is easily malleable and hardens like steel when exposed to
vacuum. They’d had to find some extra for the cabin's emergency kit after
Roselene got her hands on the cabin's original package. Noting the tiny
spinning station's less than one-millimeter wobble Fred takes a quick glance
around at Blade's padded two-by-three-by-four meter cabin. Compared to
his shift regulated locker anchor this cabin seems the height of opulent
luxury. If it weren’t for the reprieve this cabin gives him Fred feels
reasonable certain he'd be in forced restraint by now. Still, Fred understands
the little girl’s bored claustrophobia.
"Tell you what, Sweety." Fred tells
her as he thumbs off his handtablet and slips it down into a thigh-pouch.
A toe-tap nudges him across the cabin toward the hatch. "Have you finished
your studies?"
"Uh huh." The girl nods. Since leaving
the Flying Jib Fred has continued to participate as Roselene's parent
in the pod's learning center. The completion of school work has become
the determining factor for doing almost anything fun.
"Let me see." Fred takes a look at
the lesson work completed, smiling as he returns the girl's tablet.
"You are bored. You’re three
full lesson plans ahead."
"I finished most of it this morning.
I only stopped ‘cause if I finished them all then I wouldn’t have anything
else to do later."
"Well, I can probably think of something."
Fred’s words sound solemn and Roselene braces herself for the worse.
"Like what?" The girl asks.
"Like, we’ll just have to over go
to the rec-room and play some VR. Maybe this time we can even find the
Precursors’ Stealth Planet." The little girl's confused surprise quickly
brightens, but then just as suddenly falls serious, as if she were about
to confess some dreadful wrong.
"I think I already know how." She
barely whispers.
"How to what?" Fred asks suddenly
intrigued.
"How to find the Stealth Planet."
"Oh really. And, how’s that?"
"Tommy's big brother got this post
yesterday from one of his friends back on Earth and it said that if you
set all your long-range scanners to a special frequency you can find traces
of broken gamma particles shattered by the planet’s stealth shield. He
said it was over somewhere near sector forty-two-A-six."
"Forty-two-A-six? Do tell." Smiling
Fred reaches into a small panel locker for Roselene’s holo-lenses. He keeps
his own in a leg pouch. In space holo-lenses are known to have survival
value. "Did you get a copy of the posting?"
"Uh huh." The little girl nods.
"Good girl." Fred smiles as he tightens
the velcro straps on his traction slippers. "Bring your tablet. Did the
friend say what was down on the Precursors' planet?"
"Uh uh." Roselene's shaking
head floats blonde tendrils out around her quite serious young face.
"Then we’d better hurry. We’ve an
entire mystery planet to explore before supper."
Undoging and opening the cabin's small
round hatch Fred watches Roselene quickly fight her way out of the tangled
sleep-net, the miniature space station sent wobbling askew against the
wall pads.
"First one to the rec-room gets to
pilot." Pulling himself out into the passage-ring Fred slips a toe up under
an anchor strap and turns to wait for Roselene. Race or no race, guardianship
duties come first.
Detecting a headstart opportunity
Roselene launches herself through the cabin's hatch, flying out into the
passage-ring on a near perfect trajectory to ricochet off the center section.
The girl had been fairly adept at zero-g acrobatics before leaving the
Flying
Jib, and several weeks of complete weightlessness have sharpened the
child's natural skills onto a prodigious talent.
"You little brat." Fumbling
the hatch shut Fred secures the manual locks. By the time he looks back
up up he finds Roselene nearly at the center section and ready to kick
off toward the far wall and the recroom's main hatch. Fred’s best chance
lay in shooting hard straight across, but the passage-ring is slowly growing
crowded with the drifting bodies of a shift rotation. Digging both grip-soled
slippers into the wall pad's slightly arched upturn Fred takes several
quick steps down the wall before kicking himself out hard into the ring.
It isn’t until he is out into the passage-ring and wondering what to do
next that Fred notices a corp-mates drifting across in front of him. Reaching
into a jumper pouch for a hangout Fred holds the device to his hip and
positions his body for a change of vector.
"Davy!" With a quick glance down at
Roselene’s progress Fred shifts his weight, then uses his handjet to retro
himself toward Crewman Lister. "I need an emergency vector change and delta-v
boost toward rec-room one. Monkey Girl got loose again."
The man in a black and yellow-shouldered
AeroDynamic jumper identical to Fred’s looks across the passage-ring at
tiny Roselene as she bounces like a ricocheted arrow off the core wall
and out through the floating crowd. Quickly calculating Fred's approach
the man suddenly smiles wide. Using the utility retros on his tool belt
the man twists his body around to take better advantage of Fred’s incoming
mass.
"Pull through!" Dave shouts. "Right
hand links to left. Up, over, and down!" As if preparing to hurl some great
mass Lister extends his right hand down toward his ankle, watching Fred
as they both drift toward rendezvous.
"Copy!" Extending his left hand out
Fred aims his fingertips at Dave's fast approaching palm. "Ready, two,
one, and…" The hours of practicing this maneuver in order to certify zero-g
had been extremely tedious. This time it's fun. Firing his belt's utility
retros Lister grabs precisely at Fred’s wrist to transfer some of his inertia
into Fred's flight. Lister's shoulders and arm twist hard as he redirects
his corp-mate's mass down-passage toward the rec-room. Pivoting away Lister
tumbles off far from his intended destination.
"Thanks, Davy. I owe you."
"Bet your ass, you do." The man’s
voice warbles off through oddly repeating dopplers. Feeling suddenly happy,
Dave turns his full attention toward correcting his wild spin. Truth to
tell, he’d been feeling a bit bored himself, and the spontaneous recovery
exercise had come as a welcome surprise.
Redirected and reoriented, Fred pulls
both feet around toward the fast approaching wall. Below him a slowly floating
Roselene drifts toward the same point.
"That’s not fair! You cheated!" Roselene's
arms locked tight across her chest make the girl look like some perfectly
petulant angle.
"Save your moral indignation for sometime
when you wait for me to close the hatch." As he reaches the wall Fred slips
both feet up under anchor straps. Roselene drifts in from only an arm’s-length
away.
"Beside, I’m really the Trogship Captain.
Just ask Jix."
"Oh, what does that silly child know?"
Roselene assumes her Princess role. "She’s always in the way. I’m glad
we locked her up."
"True, true. She did try to cheat
us." Tucking Roselene up under one arm Fred carries the girl in through
the busy rec-room's double-wide hatch. "But you’ve got to admit, she does
comes in handy every once in a while."
It seems that everyone not actively
on duty is here, the various padded chambers and shaped netting within
the quilt covered vault all alive with every manner of sport and exercise
adaptable to zero-g. The rec-room always seems cold at first, so Roselene
hugs in closer to Fred. But it always warms up once she gets inside the
pods.
"Are you sure they’ll have any pods
open?" Clinging tightly to him for warmth Roselene glides with Fred past
several brightly lit and strong smelling mirrored chambers alive with all
variety of whirring machines and sweaty bodies. Across the vault lay a
small array of VR pods embedded into one of the chamber's outer walls.
The broad stretch of curved wall lay blistered with shiny black plastic
hatches.
"Uh huh, I'm sure." Fred nods. "I
reserved three pods this morning. Thought your mom might need a bit of
unwinding after work."
"Really? Mommy’s really coming?"
"I’m not sure, Sweety. And, I don’t
think this would be a very good day to interrupting her. But, I did time
posted her tablet for after shift."
His left palm down on the main VR
terminal the fingers of Fred’s right hand activates two-thirds of his reservation.
As he lifts his hand from the smooth hand shaped onyx a pair of the long
black blisters open out from the nearby wall. Roselene launches herself
off Fred’s chest and has herself strapped down into the nearest pod in
less than an instant. No matter how often Fred sees it, he still finds
it hard to believe just how quickly a light massed child can move in zero-g.
The girl looks odd in her adult-size VR harness, her arms and legs encumbered
by a back and seat specifically designed to allow the occupant's limbs
unrestricted movement.
From a small locker just beside the
pod's door Fred takes out a set of gravity simulation boots: strap-on pads
that repel up off the pod's magnetic array. A zero-g VR pod can’t really
simulate gravity, but it’s surprising at just how few feedback signals
the mind needs to create a functional simulation. From his pocket Fred
takes out two thin velcro elastics to help secure the oversize pads to
Roselene’s tiny feet. The girl tries hard to sit still, but Fred can feel
her tiny slippered soles twitch with anticipation.
"Here. Now the other one."
After double checking the child's
nearly perfect strap-in job, Fred hands Roselene her lens case. Fingers
poised with practiced perfection the little girl wets her fingertip with
a small bubble of saline squeezed from the tiny bottle attached to her
lens case. A finger dab at her lens case, a finger dab at her eye, and
with a blink Roselene’s right eye turns to grayish cloud. A similar hand
motion clouds her left.
"Can you see the Waiting Room?" Fred
asks.
"Almost." The girl nods. "It’s still
just fuzzy, but I can almost see."
"Good. I’m going to close the hatch
now. I’ll stay right here outside until your system checks out; okay?"
"Oh, Cousin Fred. I’m not some little
baby, you know. I don’t get afraid of being locked in."
"All the same." Fred tells her. "I’ll
stay out here until your systems check; okay?"
"Okay." With both of her blue eyes
clouded gray Roselene’s darkness dilated pupils collect the familiar virtual
light down onto the girl's waiting retina as the VR pod's slowly closing
hatch encloses her in an array of heat and motion detectors that reflect
her every movement and expression, every shiver and jerk, every breath
and exhalation.
Finally seeing herself standing in
the VR waiting room, Roselene looks down to examine her new body: the body
of a grown woman in her early twenties. A thick dark braid of hair hangs
down over her shoulder to fall across the bulging breast-plates of a body
armor that somehow blends Roman centurion with a minimalist EVA suit. The
woman’s long muscled arms hang free, her strong graceful fingers ball into
a fist, then relax. Roselene lifts her foot giving it an experimental stamp
against the floor. Her extended knee snaps out without resistance.
"You’ll have to over-ride the floor
defaults again, Cousin Fred." The girl's transformed image tells the mirrored
wall. In the mirror's reflection a black-and-white checked floor extending
out several meters behind her before disappearing into a vaguely indiscernible
brightness.
"Coming up." Fred’s voice replies
from the mirror. After several seconds Roselene feels her gravity pads
pressing up against her feet. "How’s that?"
"Better, thanks." There's no real
pressure of gravity, only a resistance on the soles of her feet that let
her extended legs know where the floor should be, invaluable tactile feedback
when climbing through dark caves or darting into deadly back alleys.
"I’ll see you inside. Now, don’t forget
to do your warm-ups." The mirror tells her.
Looking down once more at her virtual
body Roselene then examines herself in the mirror. Muscled arms and strong
fingered hands slowly begin to move as the child goes through her calibration
warm-ups. Slowly at first, moving through several t’ai chi positions, Roselene
soon begins squatting her virtual body through a quick series of fighting
thrusts before springing backwards into a triple flip to land crouched
and ready to fight. Fred has set the feedback controls so high that it
takes Roselene little more than the toss of her head combined with a twisting
wrist and ankle to flip her virtual body into acrobatics. Still the girl
finds the maneuvers just as exciting as if they were real. Standing tall
and erect out of her fighting crouch, Roselene -- a.k.a. the Princess Warrior
Xaniila -- extends her right hand out palm up.
"Weapon!" She shouts. Nothing happens.
"Weapon!" Still nothing.
"Cousin Fred!" Roselene whines his
name out in a sing-song lilt achievable only by small girls, her adult
persona standing with fists cocked on hips, looking every bit the child
she truly is.
"Hey, set your retros to stand-by,
little girl. This'll only take a few more seconds."
"Can I at least play with a weapon
and some targets?"
"Okay, here."
Discovering a standard Trog blaster
in her hand Roselene looks around the waiting room to find several floating
balls of light randomly appearing and then disappearing.
"Give me another sixty seconds and
I'll put you inside."
Roselene nods at the mirror, already
distracted by the colored targets flashing in and out of existence all
around her. The pastel balls of lightening tinkle as they move, many shattering
into glittered bursts as the Princess perfects her deadly aim. Mid-shot
the Warrior Princess Xaniila finds herself standing empty handed on the
bridge of the Trogship destroyer Death Horse.
The towering panoramic display surrounding
the command deck shows Xaniila the two long black forward sweep wings she
knows to be a pair of the most powerful plasma cannon in the known Galaxy.
Beyond the deadly cannon an ocean of stars glide past in creeping progression.
To either side of her the Princess looks around at the busy blinking tactical
and engineering displays all blended into the fluid lines of some strange
alien utilitarianism. Everything looks metalicly organic. Then suddenly
at the center of the command deck stands a hulking humanoid, his forehead
sloped and hind-skull bulging, his jaw wide and under-slung. Dark wiry
hair covers the monster's body and limbs. Jagged scars streak large portions
of his leathery hide. The Trogship Captain’s uniform consists mostly of
pocketed leather pants and a wide leather bandoleer, both crammed to bulging
with every form of weapon and dirty trick the vile creature has managed
to scrounge in the past several hundred hours of game play. A double-barreled
reverse-polarity quark disrupter hangs from its hip-pivot holster. At over
two meters tall and one-hundred-and-fifty kilos in mass, the Trogship Captain
sometimes scares even seasoned players like Roselene. Captain Nihilist
turns his massive head, taking in the Princess Warrior Xaniila with one
dark evil browed eye.
"Trogship Captain Nihilist at your
service, Princess." The monster tells her in Fred’s voice. "I hear you’re
agents have discovered a special scanner frequency. One that will take
us to treasure. Shall we make a fresh pax? Share the find?"
"First, I want a five-percent finders
fee, and on the gross." The tiny girl’s voice says from the tall brooding
princess warrior.
"Done." The hulking Trogship Captain
grins back with Fred’s smile.