Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
Release Date: April 5, 2022
Publisher: Daw Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Science Fiction / Mystery
On a generation ship bound for a distant star, one
engineer-in-training must discover the secrets at the heart of the
voyage in this new sci-fi novel.
It's been over a century
since three generation ships escaped an Earth dominated by artificial
intelligence in pursuit of a life on a distant planet orbiting Tau Ceti.
Now, it’s nearly Braking Day, when the ships will begin their
long-awaited descent to their new home.
Born on the lower decks of the Archimedes,
Ravi Macleod is an engineer-in-training, set to be the first of his
family to become an officer in the stratified hierarchy aboard the ship.
While on a routine inspection, Ravi sees the impossible: a young woman
floating, helmetless, out in space. And he’s the only one who can see
her.
As his visions of the girl grow more frequent, Ravi is
faced with a choice: secure his family’s place among the elite members
of Archimedes’ crew or risk it all by pursuing the mystery of the
floating girl. With the help of his cousin, Boz, and her illegally
constructed AI, Ravi must investigate the source of these strange
visions and uncovers the truth of the Archimedes’ departure from Earth before Braking Day arrives and changes everything about life as they know it.
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1.0
Midshipman
Ravi MacLeod, weightless and adrift in zero g, did what he often did.
He barfed into his sick bag. With an ease born of long practice, he
sealed it up and tossed the whole schmeer into the recycler. The little
machine gurgled gratefully, adding its vibration to the gentle thrumming
of the elevator. The car, he noticed, had finally passed the
ten-kilometer mark. Less than five to go.
The elevator
car-the only one that ran express to the engine rooms-was a blast from
the past. Seldom used as it was, it was one of the few parts of the ship
still in its original condition, right down to the bronze plate with
its early version of the ship's logo. First Crew would have been right
at home here.
He doubted First Crew would have appreciated
being cut off from the hive, though. He didn't quite know when it had
happened, but happened it had. At some point during his descent, the ebb
and flow of data through his implants had died away to nothing. The
nearest working routers would be in the docking ports, he reckoned,
several kilometers "above" him and getting farther away by the second.
His face twisted into a wry grimace. He would be offline for the
duration.
An image of Chen Lai popped into his head. In
his imagination, the engineer's stern, gray-haired visage looked both
disappointed and annoyed.
Explain to me, Middy, the engineer would demand, how you can be offline WHILE STILL ABOARD THE SHIP?
Chen
Lai would lean forward, peering relentlessly into Ravi's eyes. As the
scene played out in his head, he could picture his mumbling response all
too clearly. It shouldn't happen, sir. No matter where you are, you
should always be in range of a router.
So, Chen Lai might respond, what the hungary do you think is going on? The old man would stand there, stone-faced. Waiting.
The
routers, sir. There'd be the usual rush of blood to his face. There are
routers in the engine rooms. They're not working for some reason.
And
then Chen Lai would have nodded and sent him off to do something menial
and humiliating. Ravi grinned to himself in relief. Thank Archie the
pedantic SOB was nowhere in sight.
The grin faded as quickly as it had come.
There was something wrong with the routers.
He
hung motionless in the middle of the elevator car. His face twisted
with strain as his implants reached out to the engine rooms, feeling
blindly for any sign of the silent equipment. The sudden beginnings of a
headache stabbed at his temples.
Would he have to fix the
routers before he did anything else? The headache, unpleasant to begin
with, was intensifying rapidly. Did he even know how to fix the routers?
He threw an anxious glance through the roof of the car. What if he had
to go all the way back up without accomplishing anything? His mouth
dried up at the thought of Chen Lai's disdain, the unspoken mockery of
his well-bred classmates.
His jaw tightened with mulish determination. No way, he told himself. No sarding way. He'd space himself first.
A
series of musical chimes rang through the cabin, and Ravi, without
really thinking about it, pointed his feet at the floor. A minute or two
later he was drifting downward. The elevator, after an hour-long
journey to get there, was decelerating. A weak, ersatz gravity pulled
him to the deck, only to vanish the moment the elevator slid to a halt.
"Engine rooms," the elevator announced. The airlock lights were all green, so he went ahead and opened the hatches.
Which
was stupid. The whole module, unvisited since Archie knew when, was
still warming up. It was barely above freezing. Ravi looked around in
dismay. Every surface was covered in a thin layer of frost. White breath
billowed in front of him, drifting lazily in the direction of the
nearest filter. The air itself, stored away for far too long, tasted of
metal. Its cold fingers slid effortlessly through the thin blue fabric
of his fatigues and pressed against his skin. Ravi cursed silently. He'd
been careful to bring his toolkit. He hadn't thought to pack a sweater.
His headache was still getting worse.
A
sigh escaped from his lips in a puffy cloud. He followed it deeper into
the compartment. The room was set up for thrust, which meant he was
floating in through the ceiling. "Beneath" him, the monitors were in
sleep mode, an iced-over landscape of dark screens and drowsy orange
lights. Ravi brushed the rime off one of the chairs, strapped himself
in, and used his hands to fire up the boards. The switches burned cold
against his fingers.
The boards lit up: green mostly and a
bit of red, but nothing critical. The hive burst into life. He could
feel the press of data against his implants, the quiet hum of
information, the mindless chatter of systems. He breathed a sigh of
relief. The routers were working after all. Left alone in the dark for
maybe the best part of a decade, they'd simply turned themselves off.
Tap. Tap.
Ravi would have jumped out of his seat, but the straps held him back. He let out a nervous laugh.
Like there'd be anyone down here, he chided himself. As if.
His hands were still shaking, though. He tried to blame it on the temperature.
Creepy
noises were only to be expected, he told himself. Until a few hours
ago, the engine rooms had been deep-space cold. Sleepy, huddled
molecules, newly energized by an infusion of heat, would want to fly
farther apart. The materials made of those molecules, the switches, the
consoles, the decks-stuff-would have to expand to accommodate them.
There would be all sorts of creaking and cracking as the edges of things
stretched into new spaces and fought each other for the right to be
there.
Tap. Tap. Tappity-tap.
He ignored it. He unstrapped himself from the seat and floated free. He had work to do.
The
last time the drive had been fired was nine and a half years ago-a
minor course correction. Ravi had been a child at the time and incapable
of understanding the details. But he remembered the excitement leading
up to it, how parts of the ship had been broken down and turned through
ninety degrees, the way his mom-less brittle then, with Dad still
around-had checked and double-checked that his toys and belongings were
properly stowed. He remembered how the ship's great habitat wheels had
ceased their endless rotation, the way everything and everyone had
floated. It had been awesome. And his young-boy stomach hadn't cared one
bit. He and his friends had wriggled free of their parents' grasp and
soared through the living spaces, bouncing off the bulkheads, playing
tag on the ceilings, throwing stuff in impossible directions. Flying.
And
then, finally, the drive had stretched and yawned and woken from its
long slumber. He remembered the gentle but relentless way it flipped
everything sideways, turning walls into floors and windows into
skylights. It plucked at the whole enormous vessel like a guitar string,
making her hum and rattle along in harmony. Every step he took was
suddenly and unbelievably light. In a moment of carelessness, he would
fly high off the deck, arms flailing, but the drive would always bring
him back down, safe and sound, cradling him in soft hands. It was
magical.
It lasted for three whole weeks.
At
the end of it, with the wheels spun up again and everything returned to
normal, the ghost of those soft vibrations lived on in his imagination.
He couldn't let go of it. He needed to know how the drive worked, how
to make it work, how to keep it working. He needed to be an engineer. An
officer.
Tap. . . . Tappity, tap, tap.
Years
later, when he'd nervously confessed this ambition to his parents, his
father's reaction had been less than encouraging. "Who cracked your
motherboard?" he'd asked. "You're a MacLeod, son, not some bastarding
officer." There'd been laughter then; all bitterness, no humor. "You'll
never pass the exam. And even if you did, they'd find some other way to
sard you. Don't think for one second that that lot'll ever let someone
like you near their precious sons and daughters. A MacLeod in officer
training? Never gonna happen. They despise us. They're afraid of us. And
don't you forget it!"
"Just because you never made it doesn't mean I won't," he'd said defiantly. "All I need to do is keep out of the brig."
He'd seen the flash in his father's eyes too late. But the backhand never landed. His mother had gotten in the way.
"No harm in a kid dreaming," she'd said, her smile fragile but firm. "Let it go, eh?"
He'd
been packed off to his pod instead, where he'd lain in the dark, the
ceiling mere centimeters above his nose, tears of anger pricking at his
eyes.
And then the awful sol when they'd come for Ramesh
MacLeod in the early hours of the morning, two ShipSec officers and a
drone, escorting him away through corridors that were still night-cycle
dark. They'd not known how awful it was at the time, of course. Ramesh
MacLeod was no stranger to the brig. But this time was different. He
never came back. Only his molecules returned, recycled into biomass and
polymer and Archie knew what else.
In a unit that was
suddenly too big, Ravi salved the scars of his grief with schoolwork and
movies. Hour after hour of extra study, followed by something in black
and white from the twentieth century. Anything to delay the onset of
night-cycle and its tear-stained memory. He sat the officer's entrance
exam. Passed it by the width of a transistor.
And now,
despite the disdain of his betters and the disbelief of his family, he
was well on his way. One more semester till graduation. He grabbed his
toolkit.
Tap. . . . Tap, tap, tap.
The drive
had been checked and triple-checked, of course. But Chen Lai was a past
master at finding trainee-level grunt work for every possible
system-including the ship's main engines. According to Chen Lai, this
particular job, the inspection of a tertiary coolant mechanism, was so
simple, it required little more than a moron in a hurry.
"Which is why," he'd said drily, "I chose you. Try not to break stuff."
Ravi
unlocked the hatch to the next compartment. It swung open with a tired
creak. Orphaned pieces of ice floated away from the broken seal.
After
a moment's hesitation, he drifted through, his skin prickling with
irrational goosebumps. Unlike the chamber he was leaving, most of the
engine rooms had only standard shielding. If the drive were to suddenly
burn, the radiation in there would fry him like an egg.
No danger of that, he reminded himself firmly. Braking Day was weeks away. Weeks.
He
shook the feeling off and accessed the hive instead. A bunch of
schematics flooded into his mind's eye. He cross-checked the data with
his real ones. Sure enough, tucked away in one corner, was a small
access plate. The label read ISV-1 archimedes, followed by a string of
numbers and the curvy, old-style version of the ship's logo. The numbers
matched the schematics, so Ravi opened it up. The cover came away to
reveal the insides of a dark, spiraling duct. A shot of sub-zero air
puffed against his face.
Tap.
He really
wished his head didn't hurt so much. It was hard to concentrate, and
what he was about to do required thought and a bunch of coding. He
closed his eyes to make things easier.
With his eyes shut,
he could see only one thing: the back of his own knee in infrared. It
glowed hot yellow against a cold, blue background. A drone's-eye view.
This particular drone was staring at him from the inside of his toolkit.
Having
linked himself to the drone, the rest of it was easy. He fired up the
machine's tiny thrusters and let it fly into the ductwork. The drone
dropped through a series of specially designed gates and into the
coolant system proper. Then it went to work, scanning every which way to
Homeworld and piping the results into Ravi's head.
Hands
tucked into armpits, Ravi floated easily in the middle of the
compartment and let the drone's readouts wash over him. Numbers and
schematics coated the inside of his eyelids. Everything was green.
Everything matched the remote diagnostics. The system, if it were ever
needed, would do its job. The drone, inspection complete, headed for
home.
Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, CLANG!
There
were no straps to save him this time. Ravi jumped out of his skin. His
body spun through the air like a wayward top. The compartment rang like a
bell.
Tap, tap, CLANG!
Ravi's breath was coming in short, cloudy gasps. Beads of sweat prickled his forehead.
This
wasn't creaking caused by heat. Something was banging against the hull.
Right outside the compartment. Ravi held his breath.
Not
something, he realized suddenly. Someone. There was nothing random about
the noise outside. This wasn't a collision with some broken-off piece
of ice or other accidental debris. There was cadence to it. Rhythm. The
deliberate act of an intelligent mind. Someone was banging on the
bulkhead. In deep space.
Aliens!
The word smashed its way into his head, an unwelcome guest. The spit disappeared from his mouth.
Then
he laughed, sudden and hollow. Aliens were for kids. Stories for the
pitch black. Halloween. This whatever-it-was was a trick. A stupid trick
to scare him witless. Ansimov, probably, or maybe even Boz. He had to
admire the trouble they'd taken. And the nerve. Fifteen kilometers-on
the outside. They must have hitched a ride on the elevator running gear.
Tap, tap, tappity-tap, tap.
The sound was drifting away now, toward the next compartment. In which, so said the schematics, there was an airlock.
Ravi's
lips twitched, animated by vengeful mischief. He was meant to think
that aliens were banging on the airlock door. Maybe even sound the alarm
and make a complete fool of himself. And then Ansimov or whoever it was
would burst in and live-broadcast his stupidity all over the ship.
But not if the airlock was actually, like, locked.
Ravi's
smile grew wider. With the elevator going nowhere and standard tanks,
there was no way Ansimov had enough air to freestyle fifteen klicks to
safety. He'd have to beg Ravi to let him in. And when Ravi spread his
hands and said the lock was jammed, Ansimov would be the one panicking.
Punker punked.
There was a small tightening in Ravi's right eye as he turned on the video camera. Technically, he was abusing the privacy laws. Only medics and engineers had a recording function, and it was for work use only. But Ansimov was similarly equipped, so . . .
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