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Fallen Frontier: Hollow Wish
Chapter 2: Space
The shuttle felt hollow.
Chia shivered in the gloom under her safety harness. During lift-off from Canterbury Starport, it had been to keep her body in place during the launch sequence. Now it was to keep her previous meal in place as zero-gravity took over.
"Ugh…oh God…ark!"
Which was a problem as someone's breakfast entered the cabin space. The few other passengers cursed. The poor sod apologised before vomiting again, though this time reaching his barf bag in time.
"Sorry guys I-"
And the barf bag was used once again.
Cold, hollow, and now, the shuttle felt dirty as well. Chia watched as the cockpit's hatch opened up and the co-pilot came drifting out, armed with a barf bag of his own. She watched as he silently scooped up the muck in a single glide, before pushing off the shuttle's glass rear to head back to his pilot's seat. In Chia's mind, his silence felt indicative of the shuttle as a whole. Because with the passenger bay able to seat up to sixty, and the number of passengers barely being a quarter of that capacity, the shuttle felt hollow. Empty. Like a tomb.
Well, if we die in space, least we won't have to worry about decomposition.
Chia smiled faintly.
Actually, there's oxygen in here. So while there was that decontaminant spray, you'll still be a space zombie if something goes wrong.
The smile faded. And as she looked at the shuttle's aft section, it didn't return.
So that's home, she thought, looking at the blue-brown sphere before her. No wonder Phoebe wants off.
Looking at the sight, partly obscured by the ionized particles from the shuttle's thrusters, Chia was reminded of a trip she took with her family to what used to be the Great Barrier Reef. It was bleached and bereft of life, but still amounted to a majestic sight for Earth's biosphere in this day and age. Looking through the glass viewport at the shuttle's edge, she was reminded of the glass bottom boat they'd used. The reef had been a graveyard. And from here, the rest of the planet seemed to be on the same path. She could see the deserts of Australia. The fires of Malaysia. The cityscapes of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. New Zealand seemed to be doing alright, but having lived there all her life, Chia knew better. And even from here, she could see the signs. The urban sprawl. The beginnings of desertification. And this was only part of the southern hemisphere. As the shuttle's distance increased, soon this entire side of the planet would be in her gaze.
Great. Spectacular.
"Nice view isn't it?"
What?
It didn't take long for Chia to find the source of the comment – a man sitting directly opposite her, roughly the same age, roughly the same height, and of mixed ethnicity (likely Arabic she thought, with maybe some Italian blood as well). Processing the comment was much harder.
"The planet," he said. "It's a nice view."
And the man's comments weren't making it any easier.
"It's considerate, really," he continued. "Allowing us to see out like this. I remember when-"
"Look," Chia interrupted. "You sound like a nice guy, but right now, I don't care."
The man laughed. "Gonna be on the moon for five years. Might have to get used to the talk."
Chia looked around the cabin desperately, hoping that there was another passenger that might be interested in sharing her burden. There didn't seem to be any such luck, as all the others were already in their own private conversations (which included a lot of barf jokes, she could tell), or had established themselves as being in no mood for small talk.
"Name's Jarillo," the man said. "Jarillo Bendis. But my friends call me Jarl."
"Well, listen, Jarillo," Chia said. "I'm sure you can have fun talking to your friends from the moon. But I'm not your friend, I'm not here to chat, and I really don't care what you have to say, alright?"
Chia turned back to the shuttle's rear. The shuttle was further out from Earth, and as Asia and Russia took shape as the planet receded into the darkness of space, she could see the conditions of the southern hemisphere were matched in the north. She knew that she was in for six hours of this sight until the shuttle turned around for its landing sequence.
"Just think, eh? Used to take three days for this trip. Now we can make it in-"
Oh God just shut up!
Chia turned away from the view, and glanced around the shuttle again. So Jarl was the perky one. She took mental notes of the angry one, the mopey one, and the queasy one. Barf-man, she decided his name was.
And I'm the poor angry loner who lost…
She closed her eyes. Nik. She could see his face. His last breaths. His begging for water. Medicine. Things that she could provide, but were useless in the end. The bug spread with rising temperatures, and had become resistant to every drug along the way.
Nik…
She looked back at the view. Some people got their ashes spread into space after death. Nik's were probably at the Wairapa by now.
God…
She closed her eyes tighter. The old bastard in the sky was probably laughing his arse off. A second Eden ruined. Maybe on the giant pool table that was the galaxy the cue stick was already being lined up at Centauri-whatever-its-name-was. Maybe it would get Phoebe too.
Phoebe…
Chia opened her eyes. Jarl's eyes met hers.
"You alright?"
"Yes."
"Oh. It's just, you're crying."
Chia blinked. It was enough to dislodge the water. She watched it float into the cabin, the droplets barely keeping cohesion.
"Y'know, I didn't get your name-"
"Name's Chia, you can't call me Chee, my brother's dead, my cousin is the only family I've got left, and I want nothing more to do with her." She closed her eyes again. "Or you, alright?"
"Sure," Jarl said. "But, if you need someone to talk to…"
Chia looked around the cabin. Barf-man was already on his third gag bag.
"Yeah," she said eventually. "Talk would be nice."
"So you were offered a chance to go to Alpha Centauri."
"Yes."
"And you refused."
"Yes."
"Well, that was…um…"
"Yes?"
"Stupid."
Chia glanced at Jarl. "Did I ask for your opinion?"
"No, but you asked for talk."
"Yeah?" she asked. "So why are you here then?"
Jarl shrugged. And Chia felt like kicking herself.
Why's he here? Probably the same reason the rest of us are here. To work, to get paid, and hopefully not get killed.
The passengers walked down the corridor that joined the shuttle hanger to the complex proper. She watched as one of the aspiring miners stumbled, muttering something about gravity as he got up. Indeed, as she walked, she could feel the effects of the moon's lower gravity already. She felt lighter. Physically at least. But psychologically…
I'm here. I could have gone to a different star system and I'm here on this dirt ball.
The group came to a stop at the corridor's end, a door before them. Barf-man struggled to keep whatever remained in his stomach within his body.
Better than being frozen and sent off to colonize some hellhole.
One of the guards started typing on a keypad by the door.
And five years of this is better?
The door opened.
After those years I'll be set up for life.
The group started walking in.
And what life is there left to live? No family. One less friend once Phoebe leaves.
Chia walked through the door. She saw a lecture theatre.
And Phoebe's technically family too.
The door closed, she took a chair, and stopped thinking. Nik was dead, Phoebe was 384,000km away, and in six months' time she'd start getting even further than that. There was no reason to think about her, she told herself. Not when a company suit was standing behind a podium, waiting for orientation to start. And for Barf-man to stop coughing.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
No-one answered.
"Good. Because lots of things are going to go wrong for all of you over your time here and I don't need to act space sickness to the list."
Chia found herself sitting up straighter and staring at the lecturer. Tall, gangly, extremely pale, he reminded her of one of the Greys of ancient science fiction. An alien intelligence that was beyond humanity.
"Indeed," he continued, "living on a satellite with only a fifth of Earth's gravity presents all kinds of issues. Your bones will become more brittle. Your fat content will increase. Your vitamin d content will go down. And that's provided you live long enough to even worry about any of that."
Chia glanced at Jarl. She didn't know why, but for a moment, despite her earlier attempts, she was reminded of Nik. Her parents. People long dead that she'd never see again. It was just…a desire to see someone she actually knew.
"So let's get this straight," the man said, pressing something on the podium, causing a projection screen to descend from the ceiling. "You're here to work. And to work, you need to survive. And to survive, you need to pay attention."
An image appeared on the screen, showing a rotating moon and the insignia of Artemis Mining appeared – a big AM with an arrow going through both letters. One of many corporations that operated on the moon, Chia recalled. She'd seen from the shuttle's descent the huge man-made craters that had appeared on the lunar surface, overshadowing anything natural bolides had created. It then faded to show a table of contents, almost all of which seemed to pertain to safety and operations.
"For those of you who didn't read the brochure when you signed up, here's the intro blurb," the man said. "For the first month, you work for free. We teach you, you learn, you decide if this is your thing or not. Saves time, saves money, saves lives. You…yes?"
One of the passenger's hands had gone up. "Save lives?" Chia heard him say. "Um…I'd heard about the casualty rate, but-"
"I'm not at liberty to say," the man said. "But our last death occurred a week ago. Heart attack. Bozo decided that exercise wasn't for him and paid the price for it."
Chia found herself sliding down into her seat. She wanted to hide. To go back to a simpler time when she didn't have to worry about all the ways she might die. Or the non-terrestrial ways at least.
"So," the man continued, changing the image to a layout of the base. "Let's get the basics out of the way. I'm Chup Burlan, your employer, your supervisor, whatever. And this, kiddies," he smirked, "is hell."
Chia wanted to doubt that. But she saw the glint in his eyes. The look that said that he wasn't kidding.
Only five years, she told herself. Five years…
She glanced at Jarl again. His eyes were fixed on the screen. It was displaying images and text, but she wasn't watching. Burlan was talking, but she wasn't listening. She-
Nik…
"So, the important thing is to-"
Phoebe…I wanted to do this. Succeed on my own terms.
"Ma'am?"
God, I-
"Is there a problem miss?"
Chia looked up. Burlan was staring at her. So was everyone else in the room.
"Is something wrong?" he asked again, his voice low.
"I…
I'm alone. My brother's dead. My cousin and friend is going to leave for a different planet. I might die here, and even if I don't, all the money in the world isn't going to make Earth worth living on. It's wrong. All wrong. It-
"Ma'am!"
"No," Chia lied, feeling as hollow as she had on the shuttle, as her dreams were revealed to be hollow as well. "Nothing's wrong."
