22: Hope

If it’s your first time here, check out the Table of Contents. You’ll probably want to start with the Prologue.

The Charon exits FTL near Horizon Station. The giant space station orbits a small rocky planet with no atmosphere, pockmarked by meteor impacts. Elena has never been here before, so she takes in the sight. Nothing as spectacular as a ring structure, the station is a couple of orders of magnitude smaller and, she guesses, proportionally less expensive to build. Still, any huge human-and-machine construction floating in space puts things into perspective.

She ponders how small she is, how small they all are, as she watches the steady spin of Horizon’s cylindrical sections. The station reminds her of a kebab, several rotating segments skewered by its main axis. The airspace around the station is busy, but busy like a regular port, nothing close to the madness around the Gateway Ring or Forge. As far as she can tell, there are no military ships around either. Just various odd-looking transports.

She is on the bridge with the rest of the crew, able to get there on her own two feet now, with minimal pain. Rynn and Kaela are seated at their consoles, everyone else is standing.

As soon as they’re out of FTL, Kaela embeds to get news updates. They’ve been out of the loop while outside causal spacetime. Meanwhile, Rynn searches for a docking vector.

“That’s strange,” he says.

“What’s up?” Jaxon grips the back of the pilot’s chair.

“No beacon. The docks are open, and I see ships negotiating flight paths with each other, but there’s no port guidebeam.”

“Are they having a systems issue?” He looks from Rynn to Kaela.

The digital specialist’s eyes are moving left and right at a fast speed, she seems to be sifting through a huge amount of information.

“One moment,” she says.

Elena has a bad feeling about this. She wishes they could’ve gone straight to Nova Prime, be done with the whole thing.

“Wow!”

They’re all looking at her but Kaela is still embedded, fully focused on the digital.

“One moment.” She raises a finger.

They wait.

“OK. Ghost, the guidebeam has been offline for weeks. Docks are open but you have to go in manual. Just talk to the other ships, make sure they don’t run into you.”

That’s strange. Elena has only basic pilot training, very rusty by this point, but she knows manual pretty much never happens. Elite pilots drill this for dogfights, breaches, and the like. But no sane port lets ships dock manually. It’s way too error-prone and dangerous.

“Guess we go manual,” Rynn says, unfazed. “Buckle up, folks!” He says this half-jokingly, but Elena sits down, straps in. So do Jaxon and Terek.

“Wow!” repeats Kaela, keeps digesting data feeds.

“What’s the news?” asks Jaxon.

She raises her finger again—wait.

Rynn is good. He navigates the port, negotiates a safe vector with the other ships, docks with no incident, no less smooth than an automated entry.

As soon as the ship connects with the dock, Kaela speaks up: “Folks, check this out.” She projects a digest report in the digital. They all embed to read it. Elena can’t. Her graft is busted, so she can’t get online. Kaela looks back from her chair, realizes her limitation.

“Sorry, Elena. Got a bunch of crazy news. Can’t make heads or tails of them.”

She’s curious now.

Kaela continues, giving her the low bandwidth summary: “Military ships are amassing at the ring and Nova Prime, coming back rimward from Eureka Base. That’s in all the stories. Then there’s different explanations for it. Some say it’s because Taurans are headed towards the core of the sector. Others say it’s a rescue operation for the millions on the ring—Ingram is using the military to finally pick them up from there, translate them out. Others say Ingram is planning to enact martial law on Nova Prime. There’s more ...”

Crazy indeed. She can’t make heads or tails of this either. When she translated in, all military ships were headed coreward. What could this mean? She wishes she had a reliable brief update. Alas.

“Should we go for a walk?” asks Jaxon once they are safely moored. After so many days spent aboard, they’re all eager for a change of scenery.

He turns towards Elena. “How are you feeling? Can you stroll for a bit?”

“I think so,” she says.

They all disembark together. The docks are located at one end of the station’s central axes, a short distance from the nearest rotating segment. The docks are crowded, noisy. They notice several armed individuals patrolling around.

“Security?” Elena asks.

“Might be some private outfit. There was no security last time we were here a few months back.”

“The place looks busy,” she comments.

“Lively black market going on.” Jaxon grins.

They’ll go shopping soon. For now, they leave the ships behind and enter the station proper. The two private security guards posted at the entrance nod as they pass through the gate.

The space opens up as they make their way along the segment’s inner surface, moving away from the main axis that keeps everything together. The segment is large, with a high ceiling from their perspective, constant rotation simulating gravity at what should be a comfy near-Earth-like one G. Except it isn’t. The speed doesn’t seem to be constant. The massive structure slows down periodically, giving them a floating feeling, before picking back up again.

The volume is large but crowded, very crowded. Not as cramped as Forge, but the density of people reminds Elena of the ring. The street-campers there. Here, people are sitting around the segment’s passageways, the equivalent of roads for this outside-in environment. But the people look worse here, they’re gaunt. Most seem ragged and malnourished. The artificial lighting doesn’t help, makes their complexion look paler. Like zombies, she thinks.

She can’t get online, but is curious, so she asks Kaela, “How many people are here now?”

Kaela pulls up the data right away. “About a million.” She pauses for a moment. “That’s about ten times more than the station can support.”

They walk for a bit, without a precise destination, disappointed by what the station has to offer. After a short time, Elena starts feeling out of breath. Initially she thinks it’s due to her injuries, but quickly realizes the others are feeling it too. They’re all gasping, break their walk to take short pauses.

“I don’t think there’s enough oxygen here,” she says.

“I think you’re right,” Terek agrees.

“Life support can’t keep up with the overpopulation,” Kaela says. Elena is not sure whether she pulled this information from the digital or just made an educated guess, but it sounds very much true to her.

There’s nothing to do here. What used to be bars and stores are now empty, dilapidated spaces. Broken windows, dark displays, people squatting inside. Graffiti adorns the walls. “They are among us,” “Guess what’s for dinner?”, “Hope!”, and an assortment of other indecipherable scribbles.

As they walk by, they get strange looks. Elena is really not up for another scuffle.

“We should get out of here. Fast.”

“Wasn’t like this last time we visited,” says Rynn. He keeps turning left and right, scanning for potential threats.

“I think we had enough exercise,” calls Jaxon.

They all agree. They need to get back to the docks, restock on perishables, find a new transponder, and get out of here. Elena needs a new graft and a prosthetic, which Jaxon assures her they’ll surely find on the black market.

“Have you seen how busy the port is? That’s all buyers and sellers.”

She also needs some clothes. Her backpack is still on Forge, all her tacticals in it. She can access her credits once she can get online. She needs to borrow some from the crew for a new graft before she can do that. But it won’t be an issue, they know she’s good for it.

As they turn around to go back, a ragged man with long, slick, black hair steps up in front of them.

“Hope!” he tells them. “Find Hope!”

He walks backwards, staying in their path as they try to make their way around him.

“What hope?” asks Jaxon.

“The ark, stranger! You’re new here, aren’t you? There’s no escape but the ark!”

He stays in front of them for a few more steps, moves aside. Shouts after them one last time, “Find Hope!”

They keep moving, back through flickering yellow lights and rotational glitches.

“That was weird,” says Kaela.

People are milling about, watch them silently as they walk by, keep to themselves. Elena is unnerved, suspects the others are too, but nobody else addresses them. She wonders if people are staring because of her mangled face and missing hand, or just because the rest of the Charon crew looks fresh and healthy in contrast to the denizens of Horizon.

There’s nothing left on the station, no attractions besides the booming black market. No shops, no bars, no nothing. Everything was closed long ago, repurposed for makeshift lodging. Most automated systems seem to still be online, but some of them are down and nobody seems to care. The port’s guidebeam is offline. Hallway displays are dark. Life support doesn’t seem to operate at full capacity or simply can’t bear the load. Section spin is erratic. But, most disturbingly, people seem resigned to their fate.

“Got way worse since the last time we were here,” Jaxon says, echoing Rynn’s remark.

“It’s horrible,” adds Kaela.

Back on the ship, they let Kaela find what they need in the digital.

“Black market is all on the docks now,” she says. “It’s between ships. People on the station have nothing, can’t afford anything. Aren’t even allowed on the docks.”

“Aren’t allowed?” Terek asks. “By whose authority?”

“Smugglers. There’s some militia now, organized by some of the ships doing business here. To keep them away.”

“Why?”

Kaela digs up station logs, news stories, archived network chatter. She runs algorithms to filter and summarize.

“They tried to commandeer ships. Several times. To get out of here. Ended in a bloodbath every single time.”

“So they’re just ... stuck here?”

“Looks like it.”

Elena tries to imagine what that feels like. How hard were these people beaten to just accept their fate? Stuck on the failing station, with the possibility of escape on one of the ships just a few steps away. She is a fighter. What would she do in their shoes? Would she just keep going, until someone would kill her? Could she be beaten down enough times to give up, stop trying? She looks, with her one good eye, at the stump of her right hand. Still going, she thinks. More or less. What would motivate her? Survival? Food? As soon as she considers this, her thoughts halt abruptly.

“Wait a minute,” she says out loud, to no one in particular. “Something doesn’t add up. How do the people aboard the station survive? What do they eat?”

“Good question,” says Kaela. “Let’s see.” She embeds.

“Are food shipments coming in?” asks Elena. “If the docks have been taken over by smugglers with private security?”

“Not as far as I can tell.” Kaela pauses as she digs deeper into the digital. “Oh.” Her eyes go wide. “Oh.”

“What?”

“Hope. The ark, you know? It’s the name of the ark.”

“Yeah, that weird guy kept going on about it.”

“I heard of the ark project,” chimes in Jaxon. “Told you about it on the way here.”

“You said it’s impossible to build with the station’s resources,” adds Elena.

“Indeed.”

“Well,” says Kaela, “they’re allegedly building it in Segment 7 of the station. Far away from the docks.”

“What does that have to do with food shipments?” Elena asks, confused.

“The recyclers are in Segment 7,” Kaela continues, eyes wide. “People sign up for the ark, go there, don’t come back.”

“You don’t think …” Elena can’t believe it.

Kaela nods, slowly. Elena’s skin is crawling.

“Is that how they’re surviving? Recycling people?”

Kaela keeps nodding.

“Maybe,” says Terek, “they do have an ark. They put people in cryo there, waiting for departure?”

Kaela shakes her head.

“Are you sure?” Terek insists.

Please don’t be sure, Elena thinks.

“I’m sure,” says Kaela. “I’m in the station’s network. Video feeds. There’s … there’s no ark. Please excuse me.” She leaves the bridge, disappears into the cargo hold.

“We need to get out of here,” says Jaxon.

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