Things that go bang in the night: Part 1 (A novelette)

I wrote this piece in 2022 but have recently renovated it. It was a precursor story to a long novella that I wrote several years earlier; I originally intended it to be a short story but it ended up blowing out length-wise, so novelette it is :-) This is Part 1; Part 2 will be published later this week.

This novelette is set in the same vague-ish universe as my short story The Desolation of Vesta (published here last week), but occurs some time in the future from it.

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I’ll tell you the thing I never get used to, no matter how much time I spend on-ship or on-station: it’s the lack of weather.

Ship and station grav in the Belt is set to Mars-standard; the temperature kept at a warm (well, warm for a Martian like me) 22 celsius.

My bones do not ache or fragment, in this pressure, in this air. My bones do not, but my skin misses the touch of morning light, the needling of cold rain, the brush of crystalline snow on my earlobes.

Mars seasons aren’t like those of Earth. One of the early chroniclers, a woman with a wry voice called Andie something or other, described us as having autumn, winter, deep-winter, and early-spring, but there is change, there is difference, there is motility between days.

Here, in space, in our engineered envelopes, there is never change. Change, indeed, would be very bad: the words the temperature control seems to be – are usually rapidly followed by ohshitohshitohshit

then, silence.

I know this, yes; but I miss Mars, on board this Belt station. I miss her stump-trees and her clear, pure, air; her stucco-tiled citadels and her vast, prickly savannahs. I miss sun on my back and mud on my shoes.

Yes, I do.

 ----------------------------------

The ping is insistent, itching at the back of my cortex like an excited house elf. Irritated, I slap at it, opening the channel.

                - sorry disturb needed here [pictogram] –

I sigh. Ping with the non-Minded is always an exercise in gap-filling.

                - can you state the nature of the emergency mister faraday –

I feel the consternation flowing unchecked through the open channel.  Faraday, I’m willing to bet, doesn’t have a word approximating what he wants to tell me in his Neolithic (in Mind terms) vocabulary.

                - the … thing … it  … thing … blow up [?] –

My reply is sharper than it needs to be, but I am a scientist, alright. Born of a long line of Minder-Kinetics and Responders – nary a Healer among us, empathy levels on the modest end, to say the least.

                - what exploded, Faraday? picture if the word is not there –

I’m already throwing on clothes as I ping, ignoring the sour-sweat waft from the three-day coveralls. (After all, 22 degrees is warm, for the Mars-born; uncomfortably, red-facedly so, when we exert).

-          [pictogram of a slick gray animal on a rock]

-          mister tala needed we don’t … do not … how –

Wait, now. Something smells off here. Something isn’t hanging together. I wish, not for the first time, that ping tech was better than it is, or that everyone was mutant, and the hivemind a reality.

I reach out my farsense towards the drydock, where Faraday is rostered on tonight. Something is awry, that much is clear; but a blown seal is, if not an everyday occurrence, also not a cause for panic.

Faraday is a competent dock specialist; I don’t know him well, but he isn’t overly given to panic. As I’m walking, I access the ping again.

-          gemina drydock yousee -

Its mindvoice is, as always, cool as ice in gin.

-          tala isee yousee open –

Obediently, I unstopper the plug that prevents me being drowned in inchoate sense impressions
and let it in.

As always, when plugging in to a StationMind, it is a rush.

-          isee paintbright isee starnight isee leakair isee fireonshipside isee screaminsilentdark isee reddock isee shiftdock isee falling isee breakbreak –

StationMinds, like all the complex AIs, are exquisite communicators. Like us, they’re built for it. We by chance and the random effect of irradiated genomes, they by design and careful eng over a fistful of years.

Gemina, who is remote, frequently sad, and a frustrated poet, is my best friend on this station, or, possibly, anywhere. Perhaps it’s because, with Gemina, I don’t have to work so very hard: just to understand, just to be understood.

The pictures it has given me are chaotic and extraordinary. I’m close enough now that I could ‘port,
but I don’t want to waste kin-energy. I have a feeling I’m going to need it all to prevent catastrophe, and my legs are station-strong; they can bear me there in fast time.

I’m getting closer now and I can hear the faint cries coming through the regulated station air; that there is general alarums seems apparent.

I ping again.

-          faraday where r u –

I feel the startlejump as my mindsense overrides his implant’s disengaged status; normally I’d go through the motions of an apology, but not tonight.

-          at 7 door –

Door 7 is on the lower end of the vast drydock, where the many mining ships that roam the Belt come to be bandaged and tickled back into operability.

At any given time, here on Belt Station 203-Beta, we have up to 200 ships in hospital, their crews killing the weeks or months kicking their heels in our bars and techbubbles. We are the biggest repair outfit in the MidBelt; to get bigger, you’d need to go to the planetismal-side facility on Hygiea and none of the captains want to do that, if they can help it.

The Guild of Moons operates Hygiea, and everyone knows what that means.

203-Beta is an indie shop, like most of the station outfits in the Belt – built in situ by an optimistic consortium from Mars Prima and Apac region from Earth, the ribbon cut the year I was born. 32 years ago now, which is old, old, old for a Belt station; for its AI Mind; for a sharp-spiked macrokinetic stuck 1 AU from home.

The ping in my head is shocking. This is not a figure of speech; it’s like being smacked in the head with an electrofisher.

-          rik rik rik –

-          callie where where u r –

-          my gdamship where think baka –

-          drydock? [pictogram worryconcern]

-          its fknonfire WHERE –

I burst through Door 7 like the natural disaster I’ve often been compared to; all dragonfangs and plosives in the smoke-acrid air.

-          FARADAY –

but then he is by my side and shouting words into my ear.

It’s hard to hear above the horrific screeching sound of stressed metal trying to part company from its moorings but I know it’s still more efficient that working with his babybabble mindtalk.

He’s saying, Mister Tala, Mister Tala, there was an explosion of some kind, we don’t know what caused it, on one of the ships, right near the Bowery exit

Things are on fire, I can’t tell exactly what, and Mister Tala, the Bowery is not looking good –

Time to work. I shut down the ping, cap my receptors, and fling out my farsense to the farthest corner of the drydock, where the Bowery openspace exist lies. And I touch –

hotmetal compositestress atomsgroan atomspart pullingout pullingoff grategratescream

I immediately fling a mind-grip around the Bowery gate, holding it steady, insinuating my mindtouch into the roiling gaps between the alloys, riven deep by heat.

Faraday, evac everyone, right now, I yell, and he raises his hand palm-up as he says

I did, Mister, I tried, I did, but some of the captains –

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

-          gemina amp me yes –

-          yes tala you are amplitude youspeak –

My MindVoice is a bullroar of (hopefully) terrifying proportions.

-          GET OUT OF THIS DRYDOCK RIGHTNOW IWILL HAVE YR LICENSES IF YOU NOTOUT THREEBREATHS -

My concentration is on the Bowery gate and the other kinesis I’m using to suppress the sickish ghoul-green flames, but I’m dimly aware of movement around me; a trickle-flow of people edging out through the aft doors.

If I was remotely empathic, no doubt I’d be occupied with their frustration and resentment and anxiety, no doubt, for their precious ships. There are times when it is a positive blessing to be as emotionally mind-torporous as the Mind-Nots, even if my Healer friends wince and sigh over it.

-          callie whereu –

-          [angryface] out in holdbay w others –

-          good. stay –

-          my shipship hellaburning –

-          i stop –

Now that the Bowery gate is stabilised, I slacken my chokehold on it and cast my sense around feeling out the ships nearest by the damage point.

There is the Ancient of Days; she’s a nickel and iridium mining girl, big in the belly, short in the stern. She’s in hospital for a life support upgrade, but that scar of burn on her gate-side curve does not bode well for a quick recovery. No active flames there though, so I push on to the Amal; she’s a lighter, nimbler bird designed to thread the needle through the showers and pick up knocked-loose platinum. Her size has been an advantage, here; the fire seems to have caught only her delicate front bow leaving a lace tattoo that is nothing but surface-deep.

Then – ahhhh, yes. The Ashling Gray.

Tough iron-mining grunt ship – built like the workhorse she is. This ship has hauled metal from the Belt for the past 15 years, month in, month out; this ship, and her captain, have also hauled out at least a dozen wrecked boats saving crews from months-long slow deaths marooned in the Belt. This ship brought me from my home in Mars Prima, here to Station 203-Beta five years ago and change, now.

When I needed to hide and be no more, she gave me unsentimental refuge, made a space for me in her blocky alloyed guts, and showed me a sky with room for me in it.

And now. Now the Ashling Gray is burning.

I throw down a suppressant layer and straightaway the fire fights me, squirming in my mindgrip like a birth-slick pup. That this is ground zero for the fire is beyond any doubt. There is some sort of accelerant at play, and I can’t immediately tell what. I’d give anything in the moment for another Kinetic. Gemina, omnipresent as she is, cannot sense, outside of her sensorsand the Mind-Nots are of no use here, not until the fire is dead.

Think, Erika. This tricksy dancer is bile-green, the colour of tree-moss and dart-frogs, jewel-bright and witchlike. What makes a fire burn green, and resist?

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Holy Moly. Literally.

-          gemina pump drydock oxout carbout hydrout heliumout –

-          tala evac –

-          yesyes igoigo udo –

My eyes are redder than a Martian sunrise as I stalk into the holding bay. The whole bay is crowded with captains and engs, waiting to hear about their ships, but the look on my face must be enough to warn them to wait. Gemina’s mindvoice is like a silk string in my mind as it says:

-          pumpout allout –

I push my farsense through the closed door, sweating more with the effort. The fire is almost out; starved of fuel, it is hanging on, stubborn, but it won’t be long now.

I open my sense-eye painfully and scope out the Ashling Gray. It doesn’t look good. That jagged hole, there, through four layers of spaceskin - that’s probably where the blast came from. I don’t have any doubt it’s an explosive, although what kind, I still can’t tell. A job for the techs, later.

All I know is that any fire hot enough to melt molybdenum and turn flames green can’t be natural, or an accident.

The blast pattern looks like it’s pushed outwards, which means something ominous. I withdraw my sense-eye and come back to my body, shaking a little with the stress. I do not look fragile, and indeed, I am not, but farsensing through physical barriers hurts. Every time it hurts, and in every tiniest nerve filament; the body, as usual, locked in ferocious sympathy with the mind.

Callie comes alongside me and says, “Rik? My boat?”

She could ping me, of course; unlike many Mind-Nots, she is proficient with the communicator, long practice in deep space has made sure of that. I can see that she wants the audio confirmation, though. Mind-Nots live entirely in the material world; ping is not their first language and when stressors pummel them, they search for comfort in sound, for truth in voice and eyes and the angles of bodies.

I put my hand on Callie’s shoulder; she’s so much shorter than me that the arm extension required pops a joint in my elbow. Having my grandmother’s height and then some has many advantages, but it does render you a giant among the Belt-born, the fairy children of med stations and shipboard labouring, born light to live light, gestated in the wildlands.

“It doesn’t look good, Captain,” I say, quietly, keeping my voice even. Callie is not liable to melt down, here, in front of these her peers and rivals – but I know, none better, how captains feel about their ships.

“There’s a hole torn in her – where the incident began, as I can tell. Probably about …”  I reach for a verbal analogy and pull up short.

-          [pictogram size monkey puzzle tree] usee –

-          oh fknhell isee isee shes borked –

-          wait wait clear soon lookbetter looklonger –

-          why fire –

I pull out of the ping and stare into Callie’s asymmetrical eyes,  one wide and lavender, one a deep brown, half-hidden in a deep epicanthal fold.

“You don’t know?” I say, and the incredulity in my voice carries; several other captains and engs turn to watch us, their own eyes compressing. Risk to one is risk to all, station-bound with a ship that isn’t spaceworthy.

Callie shakes her head, the higher right shoulder edging up with the increased tension in her.

“All I know is suddenly all the external alarms were screaming at me, and I could smell that foul smoke. I was in the mess, looked out the port, saw the fire. Saw it was on my ship.” She squeezes her lips together, as if tasting something bitter. Hmmmmm.

“You didn’t hear anything? Like a bang, or an –“

“You think it was a bomb?” she says, her eyes suddenly flaring into glittering life.  “Someone did this to me?”

I prevaricate. “Well, hard to say yet…”

Energy is sparking off her so hard that she could probably power the lights in this holding bay all by herself.

Gemina’s mindvoice is deprecating as she says, on a broad channel accessible to all the captains:

-          drydock venting completed. station atmo restored. fire extinguished –

-          no ships beyond drydock bay 5 have suffered damage -

There is a palpable softening of faces in front of me, but relief is quickly replaced with impatience. Virgo Li, the captain of the refuel / resupply barge Alice-Ann, says laconically, “We clear to go back in now, Stationmaster? Want to see it for ourselves, yes?” Virgo is one of the more reasonable of the captains, so I know that if he’s itchy, others, less amenable, won’t be far behind.

He scratches his chin as he waits for my answer, worrying at the stubble there. I’ve never understood why Belters keep their hair – perfect permanent removal is so easy, so routine, for those of us from the planet and moon worlds. You don’t often see a non-Belter with head hair in these times, never mind hair on limbs or faces.

The Belters seem to see it as a marker of some kind, though, and I guess indeed it is. Short, black-haired Virgo, with his barrel legs and thick strong hairy arms, could never be mistaken for an Earthling or a Lunae or even a Martian, although some of us do still wear some growth on our heads. I, myself, have a short pelt of russet curls on my large round head. The sophisticates of Earth and Luna would think me ridiculous;  but here, in the Belt, I slide easily into the rainbowed sea.

I incline my head slightly towards Li. “Permit me, first, to erect a barrier? I’ll be happy to open the drydock once I’m comfortable that we have containment.”

Li nods gravely, his movements contained, precise; his slightly uplifted eyebrow reflects his recognition both of my right, and the courtesy I have paid him in the stylised request.

Speaking to Belters is not as simple as it seems. Earthlings and Lunae, not to mention  the residents of the Golden Hundred, think Belters are simple-minded, more often than not; they parody them as crudities, grunts, throwbacks. On Mars, we live closer to the Belt. We straddle two worlds, nearly breaking ourselves in two to keep a foot in both.

I have always known the Belters are neither simple, nor crude, but it was not until I came here, to be StationMaster Kinetic Grade A at 203-Beta, that I began to appreciate the density of my ignorance.

Customs in the Belt have moved quickly, in the half-century since the first stations were built here and the first ships drifted, like cottonblossom seeds in the empty sky, away from port at Mars Prima, to spend themselves in the expanse.

Babies have been born, have grown, and now crew ships of their own.

Li, who’s a half-decade older than me, is one such; the firstborn of a prolific family of refuel shippers, he’s lived his whole life here in the Belt, mostly on-ship, with intervals of station life for repair, recreation, rest.

I asked him, once, if he’d ever consider a move to Mars. (I didn’t bother to ask about the cities on Phobos and Demos. Those are Guild strongholds, and Belters are not welcome in the Guild. Only their hauls are.) He’d been drinking beer at the time, and had pondered the question, regarding the foam in his tankard speculatively.

“Mars is indeed beautiful,” he’d said at last. “I have visited several times, you know. The grasslands around Mars Prima are particularly fine. I enjoyed the animals, too,” he’d added unexpectedly.  Most Belters are at least mildly phobic of animal life; not surprising, given their lack of exposure, and their sharp awareness of their lack of immunity to vector-spread disease.

“Oh yes,” I’d said, stirring my own drink with my forefinger. “I am from Prima, you know. It is very lovely. And there are many opportunities –“

His eyes were amused as he inclined his head towards me. “For me, you think?”

“Well … more so than in the Guild, certainly. Mars is still a free planet…”

“Yes.” He’d taken a long swallow of his beer. “Mars stands at the crossroads between free will and destiny, does it not? It is a beautiful world. Perhaps, one day, I will retire there.”

The sarcasm was so delicate it would’ve been missed, most certainly, by an Earthling, let alone a Golden. A Guilder would’ve heard it as unconscionable cheek, but then, that’s how Guilders hear everything. Guilders believe they own the sky and everything under it, and don’t like to be reminded that their moons are only paved with gold because others pay in sweat (often enough, in tears, in blood, also).

Reminding them that Belters rarely live long enough to reach old age and its twilight comforts would be considered rude; to a Belter, whose formal courtesy is unparalleled, it is simply fact.

So I turn my back on this not-simple crowd and edge back through the holding bay door farsense at the ready, despite the rising tide of fatigue.

That through-the-door punch has really taken a toll. Inside the vast drydock, it smells like nothing at all; Gemina’s vent has been thorough, and this is all brand new air. I can see the scorchmarks on the leading edge of the Bowery Gate from here, even though it’s way and yonder on the other side of the dock. I gauge my own energy levels. Yes, enough.

-          gemina ampme selflift please –

(Manners are important. AIs are people too, in my somewhat controversial view).

-          readyamp readylift –

-          I holdu I holdsafe I –

Some of Gemina’s daily poetry is unbearably apt. I focus my kin-energy and –

liftmuscle liftblood liftfatcells liftfinehair lifteyestosee liftearstohear liftsoultobe

ifloat ifly iam demattered iam lightness iam airborne

and I’m standing plumb in front of the Ashling Gray with her weeping, gaping wound.

First thing, most essential: Secure the space. We don’t know what happened here, and we need to;  we probably never will if I let it get trampled. I carefully etch a kin-line around the ship, leaving a fat buffer for safety’s sake.

Humming slightly with the effort, I begin to build the barrier. It needs to be strong enough to ward off the most curious and obstreperous but something Gemina’s systems can sustain without me being here, or even conscious. I doubt I can stay awake until the investigation is complete.

I mutter on in mental sotto voce to Gemina as I work. It’s hard to fully represent how I commune with my AI or my fellow Minders; words are the least important part of it, and those that are used are sharp staccato, like little pearls of hard rice, falling into the bowl.

Words were such a breakthrough once; we crawled out of the ocean, climbed a tree and opened our mouths and suddenly, sentience, like an unexpected storm falling joyous and devastating on the green Earth.

Now, for us, for we who are created by chance or design to live outside our skins – words are only a rough cipher sketched in the air, a tremble of sound,  hiding as much as they tell. Perhaps they always did.

-          gemina canhold canretain –

-          yesyes ihaveit ihaveitsafe –

I relinquish my mental grip on the barrier slowly, observing with satisfaction its spongy, impervious twang as I poke at it with my thumb. Gemina has the pattern now; her electronic mind is as capable of sustaining it as my organic one, although constructing it would not have been within her scope.

Sometimes I am tempted to think that Minders and AIs are the future, that the Mind-Nots are a different people altogether; but I remind myself that that kind of thinking is full of risk: the risks of uncharity, of hubris, and yes, of bigotry. I remember history. I won’t repeat it.

I open a wide channel in the ping and say:

-          captains you are now cleared to re-enter drydock –

-          please observe the barriers around dock 5 and make no attempt to penetrate them –

-          the Bowery exit will be unavailable until further notice while safety checks are performed –

-          any ships ready to exit may use the Oryx or Star A gates in lieu of the Bowery –

-          please consult with Drydock Supervisor Faraday to confirm an available exit slot –

A thin stream of them starts wending in as I open a collab ping to Faraday and Gemina.

-          gemina has the con mr faraday –

-          you have drydock lockout control [pictogram of access code] –

-          try to contain any sudden rush away; most of these ships aren’t ready –

Faraday’s mind-voice is firm, if basic. He’s a good technician, especially good in logistical crises. (Perhaps less so in explosive ones).

-          heard mr tala I … un … [pictogram suggesting kneeling to a crown] –

Then Gemina’s silken tones:

-          I have the con, mr tala. Mr Faraday, I will assist you to schedule drydock exits –

That’s sorted. I know I can rely on them to work it out between them. I open another ping, this time to Callie.

-          we need to talk –

-          meet me in my office –

She replies not with words, but with a punched image that is a composite of reds and purples, an abstract painting of anger / confusion / concern  and something else, that I can’t immediately identify. There’s something just a little off about Callie’s reactions here, and getting to the bottom of it won’t be easy.

Stalking through the corridors, I keep my farsense open. I’m no empath – I was never going to be a Healer, or even a Responder – but any Minder can smell extreme hinkiness when it’s bubbling up if you’re awake to it. It’s more, in my case, that I can sense the distress of the inanimate. I hear the outrage of twisting metal, feel the decoupling of alloys like a little curl of flame in my cortex.

When people do things, they affect the worlds around them.

Always. Always.

We have never trodden lightly on the soil or the sky.

TBC...