CHAPTER 6
I hear all kinds of stories about the “Spacelift” as it got called. There wasn’t any official request or SOS that I know of. The haulers and trampers just decided that people needed help and moved to evacuate everyone who showed up. Some had access to long-duration O2 supplies, but even most of them pulled out. No one knew if there would be any resupply, or what the damage was.
I got a tx from Lee that said he was riding down insystem to a habitat around Dagda for now. I wished him luck back.
My phone told me we were queued for a jump and our number was three divs down. That was going to be well into third shift, and I’d have to stay up to coddle the stationers.
What would I do with the girl?
I expected I’d have a bunkmate, but I didn’t. It might mean I’d get one after we shuffled other refugees around. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to offer if it wasn’t necessary, and I’d wait for the crew to make the call. I didn’t want to ask the crew to do anything they didn’t have to. With this kind of crowd, they were going to be holding things together by hand until we docked.
“Juletta,” I said, as I sat her on the bunk. “I have to go help people some more. Can you stay here?”
The expression on her face said I couldn’t. She looked like a puppy about to be abandoned.
“Okay, you come with me,” I said quickly. “But you have to be quiet, and wait patiently. No fussing, okay?”
“No playing with kids?”
“Not now. Maybe later.”
“Hungry,” she said.
“Yeah, let’s find the galley.”
How much food was aboard? This was going to be a four-to-five-day trip at least, if we could transfer direct to Shetland Station. I figured that wouldn’t be likely.
Galley was forward, inboard and down one gangtube, which wasn’t easy. I finally had her sit on my shoulders and hold my head. She managed to pull hair and cover my eyes, but we got down.
One of the regular crew was in the galley. It was small. I mean, the right size for this crew, not enough for the passenger load.
“Hey, who are you?” he asked. He looked ready to order me back wherever I came from.
“Kaneshiro, Distressed Spacer. The captain put me in charge of the inboard refugees.”
He nodded and asked, “What do you need?”
“Food for the girl, then for me if you can. Can we do anything for the others?”
“Food isn’t a problem for a few days. We stock in bulk,” he said. He looked at Juletta. “Would you like a peanut butter wrap, honey?”
“Yes!” she said, very seriously. “Thank you.”
He slapped one together, rolled it up and handed it over. She grabbed it, started munching on it, and smeared some on my right leg.
“Whatever’s handy,” I said. There was no time to be picky. “I just need protein.”
He passed me a package of tuna. I ripped the top and started munching it straight.
“Thanks. Can I get a spare for later?”
“Sure.” He tossed one and a pack of Cheesy Cracks at me. He then said, “Food worries me less than recycling capacity. We’re rated for fifty inboard. We have probably double that. The towed pods are rated for a hundred. They’re probably at double that. So we’re going to have a lot of water, some solids, and exceed filter capacity.”
“Right,” I said. They’d hate to dump water or solids. Those were sellable commodities in space. If they had to, though, they would. But once the filters were exceeded, they’d have to dump, then pump all the waste into the primary tanks, which meant cleaning the entire recycler, and limiting fresh water.
We wouldn’t run out of drinking water, or shouldn’t, if they managed it well. But we would probably stink.
“I won’t tell them yet,” I said. “But I will if we get to that. I see we’re on sked for jump. I’ll go instruct them.”
“Roger. I’ll report that for you. Kaneshiro?”
“Angie,” I said.
“Travis. Second Officer and Second Engineer.”
“Pleased to meet you. Juletta, we’re going back up. Are you ready?”
“Okay,” she said, and clung to my hair.
“Ouch! Careful,” I said.
“Not yours?” Travis guessed.
“Refugee,” I explained. “I don’t know where her parents are. I’m hoping they make it through.”
He nodded. There wasn’t anything to say, really.
The kid hung on as I climbed back up, and let me carry her back. I reached the cabin, opened the hatch, and looked around.
They hadn’t trashed the place, but they weren’t very organized.
“Okay, we’re queued for jump to Caledonia,” I said. “It’s going to be a couple more divs, and the actual time marked on the console there can change rapidly. They’re probably going to shove us through as fast as the gate resets.”
They looked at me as I said, “That means you need to be ready any time in about a div, so starting now. There should be mesh over your bunk. I’m serious about one adult and one child per bunk, or two small teens. You lie back, pull the mesh down. You,” I pointed at the woman from earlier. “I’ll demonstrate. Lie back.”
She hesitated but complied, and I showed where the harness attached.
“It’s just in case of a displacement shock, but you don’t want to be slammed into anything.”
I unfastened her and helped her up, to show I wasn’t holding a grudge, even though I was.
“If we’re here long enough to shower, you get two segs. Rinse, water off, soap, rinse.”
Claire asked, “I thought water wasn’t a problem aboard ship?”
“It is at double capacity inboard and double capacity in the pods. But we should be through in a few days max.” I hoped.
They seemed a bit bothered.
“This is a rescue run,” I said. “We weren’t counting passengers, just filling space.”
I ran through the rest of the predeparture brief, adapted for stationers and with not enough resources, then excused myself to go to the male bay.
I actually got fewer arguments from them.
Naturally, when I opened the hatch, I had the attention of every man and boy over the age of ten Earth years in about five seconds.
But I was able to abbreviate the speech.
“Angie Kaneshiro. I work cargo, services and medic. The regular crew is flying this tub, I’m in charge of passengers. One person per bunk if you can. Small guys and kids double up if you need to.” I pointed to a guy about fifteen for my demo. “You, lie down and I’ll demonstrate the safety mesh . . .”
I covered signals, showed them the commo and reporting gear, explained protocols. Luckily, there were five men who’d done a tour either commercial or on a warship, and said they’d keep everyone else in line.
I took count and had them ping ID by phone, including onboard NoK. I had to put together a manifest. I’d have to do that for the females, too.
Then I dragged myself back to my bunk again.
I was getting a serious workout doing all these meters by hand, combined with the running earlier.
“Okay, Juletta, we’re going to cuddle up on the bunk, and wrap under the net like I showed them. Then we have to wait for the ship to jump to the next station, okay?”
“But . . . I need Mom and Dad,” she said again. She looked a combination of fatigued, abandoned and scared.
She had been amazingly well-behaved. I like kids a bit, but I don’t do anything with them.
“Sweetie, everyone had to leave the station because of an air leak. We’re all going to Caledonia, just a few divs away, okay? Then we should be able to find them. Or else we’ll come back here and look here, okay?”
She shrugged.
I asked, “Do you live on the station?”
“No. We live in Tani.”
They were groundsiders. I had no idea why they were at Ceileidh, unless they were already skipping out.
“Okay, well, they should be at the station we’re going to, and if not, we can go back eventually, okay? It won’t be safety, it will probably be soldiers who take us.”
“Is there a war?” she asked.
“I don’t know, sweetie. There’s been some fighting.”
She said, “I thought you didn’t like the soldiers.”
“Those aren’t our soldiers.”
“Are they bad?”
That was tough.
“No, most of them aren’t bad, but they’ve been told to take over the station, and we don’t want them to.”
“Why?”
“Because they run things differently. It works for them, but it wouldn’t work for us, and they don’t understand that.”
“Did you tell them?”
“Other people did. It’s something adults don’t understand.”
“Like when I tell Ritchie and he won’t listen?”
“Exactly like that. Who’s Ritchie?”
“My big brother.”
“Yes, it’s exactly like that. We need to rest now, okay?”
“Okay, but kids don’t rest with adults.”
Good training. Luckily, I was able to work with that.
“I understand,” I said. “So you will be in that blanket, and I’ll be in this blanket so we’re apart. You can have the fleecy one, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, looking unsure.
“Lights ten,” I said, and the illumination dimmed from daylight shift to steady low glow. “In ten segs, go to lights five.”
I wasn’t sure when we’d jump, so I set the alarm for a div, and fastened the mesh over us anyway, just in case.
I can’t drive a ship, but I can do arithmetic. There weren’t nearly enough ships to evacuate the habitat. Unless someone came along with something big, or patched that hole fast, there were going to be casualties. The emergency O2 would probably cover everyone for a week, and by then they’d be hungry, thirsty, filthy and bugnuts. After that, it would get very ugly.
I didn’t sleep well.
I woke, warm and damp and itching, and thought at first I was just hot. Then I realized Juletta had wet herself. Apparently she was still toilet training, and didn’t have control at night. That was annoying. I’d have to change her outfits more often, then, as there was no way I could get absorbent pants for her; whatever they call those things they use after diapers.
She’d leaked all over my right side, from breast down below my waistband. That was bad, too. I was wearing this coverall because the other one in my bag was filthy. Damn! I’d have to get them into vac wash or water ASAP.
“Wake up, sweetie,” I said. She mumbled and rubbed her eyes and didn’t. So I worked around her. I skinned down, wiped with an alky wipe, and swapped for a clean bodybrief, which is what I wear shipside. I peeled her pants off, but I didn’t have a change for her, so I wrapped her in a towel. I laid another towel over the puddle under us and tried to get back to rest.
Then the klaxon sounded and my phone said, “All hands and passengers stand by for jump. Crew check passengers. Ten segs.”
I wiggled out past her, got feet on deckplates, and figured slacks and a tunic would work for right now. I dressed fast, checked she was still asleep, then unlatched the hatch and dragged myself back to the bays.
The men were further back by one bulkhead, so I checked them first. They were all down and ready, meshed in and talking to their kids.
The women were mostly good, including Miss Gio Pantsuit. There were a couple lagging and jawing.
“That warning means you, too. I’m the medic, so it’ll be me fixing your broken bones or dislocated knees if you slam against a bulkhead. Get secured.”
I turned and dogged the hatch before they could argue.
I just got settled when the One Seg warning sounded. I wrapped an arm over Juletta’s shoulder, and waited through the count.
I’m always tense, because it’s disorienting. I wasn’t sure how the little girl would do.
The ten-second count came along, and I tried hard not to tighten up. I took deep breaths, and tried to focus on the bulkhead.
It only hits me for a moment, but that moment is nausea, headache, stinging pain and that feeling of dizziness like when you’re rolling drunk. Then lateral G hit because space is a different orientation there. I don’t know how that works, but it’s something astrogators account for.
Juletta clutched at me and cried out, and woke up fully.
“I’m wet,” she said.
“It’s okay, sweetie. We can fix it in a bit.”
“I hurt.”
“We just shifted through space. Now we have to find a place to dock.” That was going to take a while, if every ship from Freehold side had jumped to this side, full of refugees. Then, because of the amount of rubble in the Loop (their outer Halo), the station was a good three to four days from the Jump Point.
Juletta had one change of clothes in her backpack. She had jeans and a shirt with chocolate monkeys on it. We’d have to wash her other clothes fast, but she was dressed for now. She couldn’t change by herself, but did cooperate with me. I brushed her hair out. It was straight, but fine enough to have long curls at the ends.
The all clear sounded, and I took her with me to check the passengers. A couple had puked, but everyone seemed okay.
“It may be a couple of days or more before they can even slot us,” I warned. “I don’t know how many ships came through, or how many people. Some went insystem, but most came out.” Though really either Grainne surface or Caledonia was closer to the UN, just that Caledonia had colonial sovereignty as long as the Earth didn’t decide they wanted the hassle of administrating at a distance.
I got Juletta washed off in the head, before the rush to clean up hit everyone. I soaped and rinsed her clothes and mine and dried them in the vacuum dryer. They came out cold, but dry and clean. Then I went for food.
The crew galley was steady with two to three people at a time grabbing grub. I blew a pot clean, punched a button for fresh chocolate, wiped down the table and refilled a couple of dispensers to show I was useful. They were going through pre-packs instead of trying to cook.
Some guy I didn’t recognize asked, “Do you space with the kid?”
“Refugee, not mine,” I said. “But she’s a good girl. Better than the bitches back in the pod.”
“Seems like it. I’m Astrogator Jones.” He was young but seemed comfortable with the situation. I guess if he could steer this thing, anything else was boringly mundane.
“Angie Kaneshiro, lugging along and I can help with Galley and Med.”
“I heard. Main thing’s to keep those habitots in line. Is that going?”
“Yeah, they’re mostly under control.”
He nodded around a sandwich. “Good. We’re glad to help them, and we do appreciate your help. It lets us deal with this bucket of scrap.”
“I’ve crewed in older and worse.”
“Oh, it’s not a bad ship at all. But they all have quirks.”
“Yup.”
I fed Juletta a bowl of chicken stew that was surprisingly tasty. I wanted to find the recipe. It was savory, rich and filling. She sat at the table and slurped. She spilled a little, but not much, and watched us talk as she ate.
It was four more days of boredom and periodic checks before we docked. The kids in transit were increasingly frustrated and got cabin fever. I let Juletta play with a couple while I sat and watched from the bulkhead and listened to Renmin and Pass Ghoul on my phone. I didn’t want to talk to any of those women. We had nothing in common and never would. I got them onto a shift to feed themselves, made sure the kids got fed and the adults didn’t take too much. It was work. The crew set the showers to do a thirty-second soak, a seg pause, and a seg rinse. The air got strong even with that, because we were way past capacity.
The good news from Ceileidh was that an emergency seal from the inside slowed the loss enough they could build a larger plate to reduce it to a leak rather than a blast. They’d even managed to seal off the zoo and save the animals. There were still hundreds of casualties in the area around the rupture, but that was better than thousands or more.
Then we docked, sort of, on a tether with a long gangtube set up by military engineers. We were five hundred meters out, and I was glad I hadn’t seen the docking from outside, assembled by tug and cable.
I let everyone pull through the tube ahead of me. It took them a long time, being unfamiliar with emgee. Two of the crew went ahead and stationed themselves.
After they were all queued, I checked both pods, and scrolled through as their phones logged them off-board. A couple had theirs turned off, but I was able to get them from memory.
Astrogator Jones was on duty at the lock. He had his own small daughter with him. I wondered. A lot of ships are family businesses, and I could guess why they wouldn’t risk their kids running around the refugees.
“Hi!” I said to her. To him, I said, “Sir, that’s everyone as far as I can tell. You’re clear.”
“Thanks, Spacer,” he said officially. “We can’t pay for Distressed passage, and we’re short fuel and op cost for this anyway. If we could we would, but . . .” He paused and I nodded. Then he said, “We appreciate it, Angie. You took a lot of the load off. Safe space to you, and good luck with Juletta’s family.”
“Thank you. And same.” I reached into the tube. “Hang on, Juletta, it’s time for that ride.”
I hate long tubes, but I went hand over hand and built up a good clip.
Juletta went, “Wheeeeee!” and seemed to enjoy it a lot.
Then I ran up against the rear of the habitots. That term so often fits them. I slowed to a crawl as they figured out how to get out of the tube and into the station. The tube swayed and shifted and felt entirely unsafe, even though I knew it was. An entire ship can move and I’m fine. This was a shifting deck. The floor is supposed to be solid.
Once in-station we had to go up from the cargo level to the docking level proper, then through another field lock, and finally into the dock itself.
Which had about a million people in it.
“Hold my hand and don’t let go,” I told her. She could get lost here and never find anyone, including me. I took a few moments to unpack her leash.
There were station crew around with floating banners that said, “LOCATOR.”
I found the nearest, then looked for one further away. I hoisted Juletta up under my arm, with my bag swinging around me, and pushed through the crowd, never letting up, and moving forward inch by inch.
Once I reached that one, I had to wait for several others to finish asking about their families. The crowd was a loud, shouting, crying mess, and there was no line.
But he saw Juletta, and that she didn’t look much like me—she was pretty much Anglo all through.
“Name?”
“Juletta. She’s not good with her last name.”
Juletta said, “Pkason.” I was surprised. I didn’t know she knew it at all. I guess she was being private and safe, even with me.
“There’s a Parkerson,” he said.
“Yes!” she said.
“That way, third alcove.” He pointed along the pax terminal.
It wasn’t a terrible shove to get through, through, but gods, my arm was tired from carrying an eighteen-kilo kid, even in reduced G. I made it to that alcove, and there were actually gaps between clumps of people. That was as organized as it was, though. I joined the milling about, listening to shouts as people were reunited.
Then suddenly—
“DAAADDY!” Juletta screamed, yanked loose and ran across the bay, dodging and shoving past legs. I followed as best I could, bumping people with my pack.
A man stopped and turned, stunned. The woman next to him came around to see what was going on. As soon as she was visible, Juletta yelled, “MOOOOM!” and quickened her pace to a sprint across a small clearing. I was running to keep up, trying not to batter through people.
They both looked thoroughly in shock, and he dropped to his knees. Juletta launched herself from three meters back, and landed like a cat, all four limbs wrapped around his neck and torso. “DAD! I’M GLAD TO SEE YOU!” she shouted.
Her mother threw herself around the side, and there was a veritable river of tears. “Oh, I love you, little girl!” he said. Her mother couldn’t speak. I just stood back for now. This was going to be awkward.
“Lovey too!” she said, a bit calmer. They stayed like that for a long time, and I didn’t interfere. I actually looked around to see if I could sneak out, but I wasn’t sure if I needed to sign anything.
As they regained a tad of composure, she noticed something that had obviously changed. “Baby’s walking,” she said.
“Yes, he is,” her father said, still very cautious. He was looking at me, trying to gauge how I fit in.
“Hi, Ritchie,” she said to a boy who was a year or two older. He kept wrinkling his brow at her and then at me. He wasn’t sure about this whole thing.
Then she threw her arms around him, too.
I was about to make introductions when she came running over and said, “Come here!” She snatched my hand, turned and began stomping back toward them, dragging me.
I let her lead me, and she said, “Anzhee.” Then she held my arm out toward her parents and said, “Mom’s name, Ruth. Dad’s name, Mawhk.”
“Hello,” I said.
Ruth said, “Thank you. Angie?”
“Yes, lady. Angie Kaneshiro.”
“How did you . . . ?”
“I was passing by the school when pressure failed.”
Mark asked, “But why so late?”
“I had to take a detour. The crowd was bad, so I went straight for an empty ship, not the nearest.” I really didn’t want to tell them I’d been passlegging. “I got here as quick as we could.”
Mark said, “Please, come eat with us.”
“Uh, okay.”
Money didn’t seem to be a problem for them. We went to a place I’d walked past and never had the creds to go in. Even now, there wasn’t a huge line. We got seated, and served fast.
Juletta babbled, and they sat on either side, hugging her constantly, while the big brother sat next to me, right across from her. I just paid attention to my deep fried chicken, which was really good stuff. Juletta munched french fries and bacon sticks.
They had much neater table manners than I did, too. But they didn’t mention it.
“Can we offer you a reward?” Ruth asked.
I could always use money, but, “Uh, you can offer, but I didn’t do it for a reward, and I had to evacuate, too. I’d have taken others if I could.”
“What do you do for work?” Mark asked.
“I’m contract on cargo ships.” I finished my chicken and washed down the rest of my limeade.
“On contract now?”
“Not after that, but as soon as I can find one I should be.” I wasn’t sure that was true at all.
“At least take a token,” he said. “You saved our little girl.” They all grinned at each other again. She really was a cute thing.
“Sure,” I agreed. “And thank you. Though I would do it again either way.”
He slid his hand across the table with five one-hundred-mark notes. Not as good as Credits, but they’d last me a couple of weeks if I was frugal.
“Thank you very much,” I said.
“I don’t know how things will play out back home, but here’s my card in case we can meet again. Our address is global and portable.”
I looked at it. He was some sort of investment adviser.
“Okay. I’ll ping if I can. It would be neat to see the little weasel again,” I said. Hell, I’d been grinning, too. I’d done a good thing.
I slipped off my stool, walked around, and bowed to both. Then I gave Juletta a big hug. She was warm and cuddly still.
“Good luck, little girl. You be good.”
“I will! See you soon, Anzhee!”
Yeah, I wasn’t going to explain how that was unlikely. She should have fond memories.
I shouldered my bag and walked away. I wanted to look back, but didn’t.