The Appeasement

by Grace Bridges -

Ave hurried along ring E towards the junction of the 38th degree. The sack of food balanced between her shoulder blades as she awkwardly gripped both top and bottom.

Location E-38 was close to Smith’s stomping grounds. Too close for comfort, in fact, but his group wasn’t just any old rival gang—if she could call it that at all. He had been her friend, had wanted more too soon; so she’d removed herself. Now he had Kate to be mama to the littlies under his care. Still, she was confident he would offer leniency.

She came upon the place suddenly and almost tripped over Felicia, huddled at the outer edge of the group. Ave heaved the sack from her small frame. Many hands relieved her of the weight. Hushed cries of delight followed as they found what was inside.

Ave looked over her shoulder, then down the adjoining corridors. All was still. Finally, she allowed herself to inspect the contents of the gift.

Dried bug meat found eager mouths and hidden pockets. Below that were heavy slices of lavabush bread, which not all of the youngsters had seen before, though they well knew the seeds in their shells as a rare treat. After the bread, Ave reached into the sack again and discovered cool, round shapes, smooth to the touch. Her eyes went wide. “Fruit!”

“What is it, Ave?”

“It grew on a tree. In a garden.”

There were gasps all around at the legendary words. Fruit would not grow on the planet’s arid surface. It came only from the hydroponics departments of Avenir itself, or the same setup in one of the undersea cities. This wizard Spiner must be very rich.

She withdrew a shiny globe and held it up carefully between thumb and forefinger. Possibly the greatest treasure she had ever touched. The children oohed and aahed, but none reached for it.

Just then, shadowy figures loomed up in the hallway facing Ave. She checked to her left and right, and found they were hemmed in there too. She turned to the corridor she’d arrived by. Clear so far. Ave took a step.

Smith stepped out in front of her. “Nice of you to pay us a visit, my dear. I hope your intention is for our…mutual benefit.”

The tone of his voice was all swagger and bully. Had he really hardened so much? She stared into his eyes, trying to read him. Perhaps it was a show of strength for the benefit of his groupies.

Ave held up the sack and smiled. “We bring you fruit.”

An Unexpected Gift

by Grace Bridges -

Ave rested against the wall with the little ones piled on and around her. Their slumbering breaths formed a restful haze in the dimly-lit service corridor.

A vibration in the floor brought Ave to full wakefulness. She tensed, and the children around her shifted in their sleep. They knew the drill.

Ave listened a moment more, then burst into action with a shake that roused all the babes. Within seconds they sat upright, watching her for instructions.

“E-38. Go!” The tousled heads hustled away towards the prearranged meeting spot. Ave made sure they were all out of sight before she tucked herself into the tiny niche behind a support pylon.

The footsteps grew louder. She still had to concentrate extra hard to make them out; the visitor intended stealth. Ave’s heart hammered. She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. Then, like the turn of a page in an old book, peace washed over her with the silent song of a whale from the red planet far below.

She drew herself up to full height, breathed slow and deep, and opened her eyes just in time to spot a smallish shadow pass her hiding place. An orphan from one of the gangs? She was bigger. She could take him.

Ave darted out and grabbed the impostor from behind. Pinned at both elbows, he squealed and struggled. She dragged him back to the nearest light source, a small panel of blinking diodes. “What are you doing here?”

As she roughly turned him to face her, she realised he was hugging a bulging sack. Her eyes found his face. “Gavin!”

He relaxed in her grip. “Ave. Don’t hurt me. I brought food.”

“For us?” Ave boggled at the sack.

“I know you need it. The whales told me. I can get it.”

Ave gulped. “You’re not stealing from the wizard, are you?”

“No, silly. Spiner knows.” He laughed, then peered up and down the empty hall. “So where are your kids? Isn’t this your night zone?”

Ave looked away. “Not any more.”

Spacejunkman

by Grace Bridges -

The little ship sighed around Mike as he adjusted his orbit slightly. The junknet billowed behind him and he felt a slight resistance as it collected a metal something that might once have been a piece of a ship. He flipped dials to haul the item into the small cargo hold at the back—but he’d have to wait until he got back to Avenir before he could inspect it. Might as well take another run at the junk-belt then.

Once known as Trail Boss, he’d wrangled cowboys on the ore trail from Sheba. But it was a hard, thankless task, and he’d lost one too many colleagues—and family members—to the violent physics they’d harnessed to herd the rocks across the expanse. Most younger than himself, too. You had to be good to get to his age in that business. Finally he’d seen sense and gotten out of it at the first chance, though space still called to him. He was a junkman now, collecting scrap metal from low planetary orbit.

Often he pondered how it came to be there—defunct satellites? Collisions? Pirate attacks? And—he sighed heavily—ore accidents, when the fragile gravity wells failed and pieces of rock flew everywhere. He made sure to stay safely away from the cowboy convoys now.

He turned the ship again and the Whale Star came level with his cockpit, bathing Eclectia and some nearby asteroids in a golden-white light. Perhaps someday he’d go down, put his feet on the dirt, but for now he was content to remain a spacer.

Ale O’Clock

by Grace Bridges -

Eleon McManus loped through the lush open area of Zirconia’s sector B3. The curved window to his right formed a sky beyond, which glimmered with occasional schools of fish in the murk.

Passing a fruit tree, he longed to snag an orange. But these plants passed down from Earth were too rare, and he didn’t want the Enforcers to chuck him in the slammer, not when he had some time off tomorrow.

He slipped through the last of this sector’s forest and reached the stairs to the residential pods that overlooked it. After climbing up to the third level, he swung onto the walkway that rattled with his steps. He paused a moment, then raised his hand to a buzzer.

Half a minute later, the door unsealed with a whoosh and Gryphon Sylt looked out. “Mac! Sight for sore eyes. Come in!”

Eleon passed through the thick rubber-rimmed frame into his friend’s abode. “How’s life, Sylt?” He peered at the other man’s haggard face. “What’s going on?”

Gryphon shrugged, a wild, flailing maneuvre. “System’s down again. All the history’s inaccessible. And I have no apprentice to help write down what’s in my head.”

“Can’t the system be fixed?”

“It’s not graded as essential. There’s not enough spare manpower from the IT department.”

Eleon didn’t know what to respond, so he wandered to Gryphon’s kitchenette and poured two lavabush ales from the plastic barrel in the coolstore.

Gryphon sighed. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe it doesn’t matter, as long as we survive.”

Eleon pushed a glass into his hand. “We’ll lose our identity if we don’t remember where we came from.”

“Oh, I’m writing down what I can, never fear. It’s not a lost cause. Only almost.”

“Well then.” Eleon lifted his drink and the two clinked together. He took a sip and grimaced at the slightly bitter taste. “Here’s to happy writing!”

The Window

by Grace Bridges -

Ave crept along a Level 14 service corridor, and hoped she wouldn’t meet a cyborg. Unregistered persons were not allowed in service areas, and she didn’t like being chased any more than the chip-controlled humans liked chasing her.

Ave came alone, slipping away from the small children who liked to cling to her, so she could move quietly above all else. Perhaps this time, too, she would reach her goal, a curiously-built gangway that led nowhere except to a true anomaly—a window.

It was the only place Ave had ever looked Outside. She’d pestered the wizards to tell her what was out there. Now she could recognise the various objects visible depending on the station’s spin: Eclectia, sometimes close and ominous, or distantly seething; Sheba and Quatermain, with their shifting seas of molten rock; the great Whale Star, and its distant Twin.

She reached the final junction and looked left and right—no one was about—so she scooted across into the niche, only to scramble to a halt before a towering man-shaped silhouette. Gulp.

“I won’t hurt you,” said the giant.

Ave calmed her breathing and moved around to the left so the light from Outside fell on him. “Who are you?”

He spread his hands as if it pained him, and Ave caught sight of the power mop leaning against the wall behind him.

She drew in a sharp gasp. “You’re franked!”

“I am a servant.” He turned his face to her. In the Whale’s light reflecting from the ring section, she could see the battle in his eyes as with all cyborgs—he hated his programming. But this one was different. He hadn’t chased her off, for starters. That small rebellion alone would be earning him a splitting headache right now.

Ave wrinkled her brow. “How...?”

“My wife.” He forced the words out, wincing, defying the silence stricture. “Also a servant. Must...must care for her.”

Ave nodded. “You must love her very much to be so strong. What’s her name?”

“Enya.” A light came into his eyes as he gazed out the window, and it wasn’t just from the Whale Star. “My Enya.”

Lullaby

by Grace Bridges -

“Sing us a song, Ave!” The clutch of four-year-olds stared at her with demanding eyes, clustering around their ringleader, a tiny girl with blue eyes and golden hair wrapped in a ragged, patched spider-wool blanket.

Ave adjusted her position sitting against the wall, and forced a grin. “What song do you want to hear?”

Felicia frowned, considering. “The one about Avenir, please.” The other little ones nodded.

Ave smiled, for real this time. They always picked that one. She began to hum, and the children hunkered down in their bedrolls. Finally she sang it out, her voice breaking at “Be strong, Avenir Eclectia.”

The words of the song echoed oddly from the conduits of the service corridor. Eyes drooped closed, faces grew slack, breathing grew calm. Ave sang the song through twice more, letting it comfort the inner ache that threatened to burst forth and overcome her just as ruthlessly as a sudden vacuum leak. She must be parent to these children and the rest, even though she had no family herself, knew nothing of parenting. Be strong…it was her only answer, even when she had no more strength.

What must it be like to have a father? A mother? Longing rushed up from a secret place within her, and her face crumpled suddenly. After a lengthy moment, she sighed and flicked a tear from her eye. It was no use wishing for what could not be.

“Don’t cry, Ave.” Felicia’s small hand found its way into hers, and she snuggled against Ave’s shoulder.

Ave kissed the top of the golden head and closed her eyes in thankfulness.

Maddie's Pub

by Grace Bridges -

Hinges creaked. Maddie glanced up in time to see a bedraggled huntsman drag himself inside. He kicked the door to ensure the rubber seal took properly.

Good. She didn’t want more wind-borne ash in here than was absolutely necessary. Only the newbies to Eclectia’s harsh land would leave any door or window open. She’d trained her regulars well.

Maddie turned back to the open fire, fueled by scrubby brush—the only stuff that grew here. She poked at the meat stew in the cauldron, and its pungent aroma released into the room. She frowned. If only she had a potato to put in it—that would make a dish fit for a wizard. But no wizard had ever set foot in her establishment, and potatoes only grew in the underwater gardens—out of reach for any grit-breather unless he was filthy rich, but the rich folks didn’t live here. Here, they had to make do with the bitter leaves and seeds of the lavabush—both for bread and ale—and the third-grade meat plentiful in a hunting village.

She ladled stew into a bowl and made her way between the tables to plunk it before the hunter. “Here you go, Jax. Good hunting today?” He stared blankly at the food for a moment, then nodded with the weariness of one who had shot a giant beetle and hauled it back to town. Maddie knew that look very well. She gave him a friendly whack on the back, waited till he let a small smile slip out, then headed back to her kitchen across the room.

The earth rumbled and the building shook, its flexible mortar and light pulpblock walls absorbing the shocks. Maddie clutched at the counter to prevent herself from falling. Her guests looked up from their meals. The quake settled and the murmur of conversation started up again.

Maddie bowed her head for a moment before going to pour a lavabush ale for Jax. She thought she might need one, too.

A Matter of Hunger

by Grace Bridges -

Smith loitered in a dim corner of the Level 18 marketplace and chewed on his last lavabush seed. There’d be no more until another freighter docked—and then only if he was in the right place to catch any that dropped during transfer.

He peered along the row of meatmongers, noting which had shelled their wares already and which merely laid out the sections of beetle carapace with the meat still inside. He preferred the ready-to-cook variety, because it was quicker to “dispose of,” and there would be no evidence except in their stomachs.

A rumble within reminded him to be quick about his task or he’d lose the opportunity. He gave the signal agreed for today—three sharp raps on the nearest support strut. At the metallic clangs, two dozen ragged children emerged from the shadows, roughly grouped in two gangs who proceeded to charge at each other with full-throated yelling and blood-curdling screams.

The merchants, fearing the worst, ducked for cover and ran into the outer passage. The crowd of shoppers rolled back in waves with cries and screams. Smith darted along the tables as he unrolled his antigrav sack. Slab after slab of the best beetle steak slid into its dark maw.

He paused only once to look up at the staged fight—the kids actually enjoyed this, he could tell, and grinned at their exaggerated anger and fake punches.

Smith stuffed one more massive steak into the bag and pulled it along in the air behind him to a little-used service corridor. He tapped a strut to signal dispersal of the battle, then slipped inside a hatchway with the treasure clutched tight.

Tonight, the children would eat.

The Last Historian

by Grace Bridges -

In the Year 179 A.F. on this thirteenth Day of the month of Celeste.

Gryphon Silt wielded the unfamiliar writing utensil and scratched his malformed letters. Once again the archive computers were down, and no resources could be allocated to fix them. So he began all over. It had happened before, he’d learned from his mentors—the older historians that trained the younger in their days. But now he was the only one, with no student allocated.

Files pertaining to the founding of our proud Colony have been discovered to be corrupted, and so we have taken it upon ourselves to assemble what precious little information remains in the memories of those who had read it most recently.

Our distant foreparents were sent out from the earth in a large ship called the Avenir. Now you may wonder at that, for she orbits the skies of Eclectia still. But she has been modified to serve as an orbiting station, and seen many enlargements since.

Gryphon peered up at the murky water on the other side of the ceiling. The sun would rise soon on a summer day, not that it made any difference to him. In here the constant temperature created a stable, safe environment. He had taken a seawalk once, but once was enough.

Contact has always been maintained between the water people and the Avenir itself. When we had lived in the seas for a short while, we began to send reports of the creatures of the deep which we had the opportunity to encounter and study. Some reports claimed the beasts were telepathic, and sentient, and that some were benevolent and others aggressive. While this has never been scientifically proven, it has lodged in Eclectia’s folklore and is even considered true by some of the more eccentric scientists on the Avenir.

Now that more generations have come and gone, there is a certain segregation between Avenir’s people and the planetsiders. Down below are the miners and hunters, living on the land wherever it stays still long enough. Below them again are the sea-dwellers, who continue to investigate their environment as they build ever more efficient survival tools. Life in the underwater cities is surely almost as luxurious as on the Avenir.

Those who must stay on the land to mine its treasures have little contact with the Avenir, from necessity. They retrieve the ore that generates power for the Avenir and the underwater cities as well as their own settlements. It must be said that these are rough types who consider themselves the only true colonists of Eclectia.

The historian stared at the page. Was this all there was left? He dredged his memory for any flake of remembrance, any piece of what had gone before.

A shadow passed over the room. Gryphon squinted upwards and thought he recognised Mac’s sub coming in. He threw down the pen—a drink with his friend might just help to jog his brain.

Tsunami

by Grace Bridges -

Eleon McManus hauled on the ascent lever and threw his vehicle into reverse at the same time, then leapt to the comms unit on the other side of his cockpit and hit the emergency relay together with the tsunami warning button. If he felt the tremors out here in the sea, there could be danger for the land and settlement.

Alerts sent, he returned to steer his submersible. He had been moments away from committing to the docking maneuver when the sea had begun to shudder. Now at a safe distance, he throttled back from the reversing movement and waited to hear back from the harbourmaster.

Meanwhile, his ascent had continued and now the head of the sub broke the surface and a thousand droplets ran down the curved window. Eleon peered out at the harbour buildings, now too far away to make out any movement. He reached out and touched a control, and engines whined as the sub spun to face the open sea. If a wave was coming, he should face it for the greatest safety.

“Mac?” crackled from the speaker. “Reckon we felt that same time you did. All personnel now sealed inside our building, and they’re closing the watergate now.”

Eleon let out the breath he’d been holding. It might be an everyday occurrence in the life of every person on Eclectia, and a freight driver in particular, but he had long ago decided humans weren’t built to take the stresses of a violent seismic planet like this. But it’s not like they could up and leave—even its breathable air was a miracle in the unimaginable expanses of hostile, lifeless space. He was lucky to have secure quarters in the undersea city of Zirconia, built to withstand the greatest quakes.

He flicked a switch to take a little more water into the ballast tanks. On the outward journey still, he had no cargo for stabilisation. By now the rock valley leading to the settlement of miners and hunters would be sealed to a height of a hundred metres, the huge metal doors sliding out of their slots carved in the cliffs on each side.

His friends in Adagio would be okay. Eleon faced the oncoming wave and asked the whales to keep him safe.

Morning

by Grace Bridges

Tennant gained the rim of the lava sea with a final crunch of his boots and paused for breath. He never tired of this moment, giving colour to his otherwise dreary life: moving from the sealed habitat on the broken planet’s regularly curved surface, to this, literally the end of the world, where the sphere had cracked into craggy, uneven halves.

He turned his face straight up and beheld the other major remnant of the cataclysm, a huge sky of lava that threatened to fall on his head. Swathes of rubble danced around it and in the gap between Sheba’s halves.

He blew out a breath, fogging his faceplate, and returned his gaze to the task ahead, fighting vertigo. Tennant glanced at his partner, then stepped forward from the volcanic grit into the maze of scaffolding at the edge of the abyss.
Iridium ore: the “batteries” of Avenir, partly present in the crust of the more habitable planet Eclectia that now loomed beyond the incredibly distant horizon ahead.

They attached their harnesses and turned to back down the first ladder. The Avenir station glinted there in the bright light of Ceti 94, and off to the right he spied the lesser glow of its distant twin star before the rock blocked his view.

They reached the tunnel entrance and unhooked themselves in turn. Tennant allowed himself one last, long look over the wild and ever-shifting sea of lava still miles beneath them, before he spun and entered the mine to begin another long shift.

Cool, Smooth Metal

by Grace Bridges


Cool, smooth metal met Ave’s fingers as she slid down the wall to sit in the corner. No one would bother her here in this obscure corridor—not for a while, at least. She concentrated, and felt the distant, almost intangible vibrating of the station. Its comfort calmed her, and she hummed to herself, head down, hair shutting out the world and thoughts of Smith. A good kid, but they were both too young—only fourteen Foundings.* And the children—the beggars, the poorest of all beings, who didn’t even have a claim to parents—they looked up to her. She must do right, and not be distracted by an obsession for love, as heady as it was. The time was not yet come.

Ave recognised the tune she hummed, and smiled a little: her name-song, and that of the colony. “Arise, Avenir Eclectia; be strong, Avenir Eclectia. Stand firm, Avenir Eclectia; live on, Avenir Eclectia.” A rousing anthem that gave her the tingles. Her first carer had given her the name of the entire colony: Avenir, though she went by Ave. She placed her hands on the floor, felt her connection to the huge space habitat and the presence of the planet below, and hoped she hadn’t hurt Smith beyond repair. He’d understand, someday. Wouldn’t he?

The beings on the planet called to her and she rested in their mental embrace, sensing only the living station through the cool, smooth metal.


——
Click here for the Eleon song she is humming!
 *A Founding being every 15 months, her age is close to  17.5 Earth years.