Against Impassable Barriers

1 Scout Shannon hugged her dog Shadow tight as she slowly drifted back down to the floor of the spaceship cabin. Shadow was napping, but Scout stared fixedly out the narrow band of viewscreens Liam had configured, which provided a 360-degree view of everything around the ship for her and her companions. She felt like they were all trapped together in a glass droplet, unable to escape, only able to gaze out at the alien world that stood just out of reach, frozen in time. Their spaceship sat in the center of a vast lunar plain like an immense reddish-black mirror sparsely dusted over with a layer of what looked like ash. Scout could see it clearly through the screen in the floor of the spaceship as she settled down onto it. It was almost close enough to touch, that ash. It looked like a fine grit, like one puff of air would send it scattering away in a rapidly dispersing cloud. Alas, she could not touch it. And no puff of air would ever disturb it. But that was far from the most maddening thing about life on the moon. Scout pushed away from the floor, floating back up to the cabin ceiling. She put a hand over her head to gently stop her momentum, clinging to the ceiling with her fingertips for the barest of moments before letting go to slowly sink back down to the floor. It passed the time. But it was only a hair more interesting than lying in her hammock. And the time passed so very slowly. The red-black mirror of the lava bed the ship rested on stretched for kilometers, nearly to the horizon on all sides. But the moon was so small that the horizon was much closer than the one Scout was used to back home. She could just make out the jagged outlines of toothlike mountains in the distance, but only when the planet shone brightly behind them. Otherwise, they faded into the black of the sky beyond. No, it wasn’t as immense as her home back on Amatheon with its endless fields of red-gold grain, but still, she longed to walk across it. She didn’t care what was on the other side; she just wanted to start walking and keep walking and never ever stop. As much as she longed for that, she knew her dogs needed it even more. “Oh, Gert,” Scout’s friend Emilie said, her voice muffled by a hand over her mouth. “Not again.” “I’ve got her,” Scout said, releasing Shadow to drift on his own and propelling herself across the cabin to where Emilie was buckled into the pilot’s seat, running yet another pilot training program. Gert, who was quite smitten with Emilie, had been napping in the space around her feet, but apparently she had woken up to answer nature’s call. Liam had helped Scout fabricate diapers for both dogs, but they were ill fitting, and the smallest gap let the contents escape into the air of the cabin. Gaps that happened every time the dogs scratched. And Gert scratched a lot. In this case it was urine, but that was almost worse than the other option. It quickly became a fine mist that coated everything. “Just move out of the way and let the systems handle it,” Liam said without looking up from his tablet. The words came out in an earnest, helpful tone as if he hadn’t been saying them over and over since they had landed. “Sorry,” Scout said, helping Emilie unbuckle from the seat and move to the back of the cabin. “Can’t be helped,” Emilie said, but she still sounded annoyed. The systems had already detected the contaminant, and the filtration system was whirring to life, sucking the yellow droplets out of the air. The systems could indeed handle the physical matter handily enough, but the smell? That always lingered. And accumulated. Scout pulled Gert into her arms and carried her to the back of the cabin to change the diaper, Gert licking her face as if in desperate apology, although no one ever got mad. It was the one thing that made this whole experience of waiting to be rescued tolerable: everyone she was sharing it with was kind and nearly infinitely patient. The lingering scent of dog urine was just as strong in the back of the cabin, but here it was joined with a muskier smell. Geeta’s perspiration. While Scout had her dogs and Emilie had her training program to keep her occupied, Liam had a harder time finding anything in his spaceship to help Geeta keep her mind off her sister. They were all always thinking of Seeta, stowed in a closet-like space in the floor, suspended in a medical stasis field that kept her at some undefined point between life and death. They were all worried. But Geeta couldn’t focus her mind on anything but her grief, frustration, and guilt over not being able to save her sister in time. In the end, Liam had found a way for her to focus her body instead. He had attached tension bands to slots in the cabin floor and showed her how to use them to perform basic calisthenics, allowing her to keep her body strong despite the microgravity. She had taken to it with an almost obsessive zeal, working herself to collapse, then waking and starting the cycle over again. The others did a few exercises too at Liam’s insistence, but it was Geeta who kept at it, pausing only to wipe the accumulation of sweat off her skin that couldn’t drip away effectively enough in the microgravity. She was at it even now, pulling again and again at the band, the muscles in her arms and back rippling under the sheen of sweat, her face set in a look of grim determination. As if she thought if she rowed hard enough, she could somehow get the ship they were waiting for to arrive just a bit faster. Scout sealed the diaper as tightly as she could, then let Gert go. Gert launched herself at Shadow, tackling him briefly before he ricocheted away from her. The dogs were forming some sense of how to propel themselves around the space inside the cabin, but Gert hadn’t yet worked out a way to get a proper wrestle in with Shadow. “I’m making . . . tea,” Emilie said. She always left that hesitation there before she said the word “tea.” It was as close as any of them got to complaining. But then the tea Liam had in his stores was meant to last forever, which as far as Scout could tell meant that it always tasted like it had been stored too long, the leaves little more than dust. Still, it was better than nothing. “Anyone want any?” Emilie offered. “Sure,” Geeta said through gritted teeth, redoubling her efforts with the tension band. Liam looked up from his tablet, but before he could answer, they all heard the soft warning trill from the midrange scanners. “Display,” Liam said, and the ship’s computer dimmed the lights, projecting a hologram of the moon in the center of the cabin. “There,” Emilie said, seeing the dot of movement in the far corner of the space. “Just passing by?” Scout guessed. She was speaking in a whisper, just as Emilie and even Liam had, although there was no way for anyone outside the ship to hear them. Then another dot appeared next to the first, and then a third. They were flying in a triangular formation, but not towards the moon. “Transponders?” Liam asked. So far, the few ships that had passed close enough to the moon for the ship to detect them had been flying without transponders. Smugglers who had sneaked past the barricade, Liam had assured them. Not friends, but not actively searching for them either. “Yes,” the computer answered. “A security patrol from the colony ship Tajaki 47.” “Looking for us?” Liam wondered aloud. The computer knew he wasn’t really asking, since there was no way for it to know if that was true, and it remained silent. “They aren’t heading this way,” Scout said. “With all the smuggler ships we’ve watched go by in the past few days, I’m not sure what is more surprising: not seeing a patrol before now or suddenly seeing one today,” Emilie said. “It could be something else,” Geeta said. She had stopped exercising when the hologram appeared and was studying it intently. “They aren’t heading towards us, or in the same direction as the smuggler ships. It looks like they’re heading for the barricade itself.” “Escort, maybe?” Liam said. “Can the long-range sensors detect anything?” Scout asked. “Only the barricade itself, which is unchanged,” the ship’s computer answered her. It still creeped Scout out when it did that. Liam had introduced them all to his computer as if it were a person, and he encouraged them to interact with it as the first step to adjusting to life in galactic central with all its modern technology. Geeta and Emilie took it all in stride. Only Scout lay awake at night, somehow viscerally aware that the computer was listening to her breathe just in case she should ask it a question. “Where is the flagship now?” Geeta asked. The hologram contracted, the moving dots winking out of view as the glittering array of the barricade came into view all around them. Liam had told them it was invisible to the naked eye out in the black of space, but the ship displayed it as an intricate web of light forming a sphere around Amatheon and its moon. Passing through that web would alert the ships that guarded the barricade, including the massive flagship that roamed the barricade’s interior with no set pattern. “There,” Emilie said, once again the first one to find the subtle gleam of light that marked the ship’s position against the brighter web. “I don’t think they are heading towards it at all.” “No,” Liam agreed. “But where are they heading?” “Your friends?” Scout asked, scarcely daring to hope that their long wait might be nearly over. “If they were close enough for the systems at Amatheon Orbiter 1 to detect, they would have called by now,” Liam said. “Maybe they’re in trouble,” Scout said. “Maybe they need help.” “Should we go?” Emilie asked. Her voice was still pitched low, but the corners of her mouth were starting to curl up in that maniacal grin she had. “Nothing is being detected,” Geeta said. “No motion, no transponders. We would likely just be revealing our position for nothing.” “Geeta is right,” Liam said. “We’re safer where we are.” “Maybe you should message them again,” Scout said. “Messages are dangerous,” Liam said. “Once you broadcast it, anyone can intercept it.” Scout nodded glumly. She knew he was right but still felt like it was probably worth the risk. She would feel better knowing exactly where his friends were and how much longer they would have to wait. “I’ll send a short one,” Liam said. “Once these ships are gone. When the coast is clear.” “This situation can’t go on forever,” Geeta said, wiping the sweat from her face with a thick towel. “The barricade isn’t supposed to be up forever.” “But it’s been there for years,” Emilie said. “It feels like it will be there forever.” “It won’t come down until the courts have settled the matter of who is the rightful owner of the planetary system,” Liam said. “But the courts are so far away,” Geeta said. “How will we know when they are done?” “You’ll know because you’ll be there,” Liam promised her. “You’ll be right in that court at galactic central when the tribunal makes its ruling.” “But how can we know they haven’t decided already?” Geeta persisted. “These matters drag on for decades,” Liam said. “Both sides of the Tajaki trade dynasty have access to the best lawyers in the galaxy. With all their machinations, legal moves, and countermoves, this could go on for years to come.” “We’re going to be waiting to testify for years?” Scout asked. “No. As soon as you arrive, my friends can start filing motions of their own. That changes things.” “Are your friends in the same league as the Tajaki lawyers?” Geeta asked. “No,” Liam admitted. “But it won’t matter. Both sides of the Tajaki dynasty have equal claim on the planet. That’s why neither side can get the upper hand. But you all have a different claim. You’re not claiming ownership; you’re claiming sovereignty. One way or another, that will be faster to resolve.” “So nothing changes until we get there,” Geeta said. “But we’re still stuck here, waiting,” Emilie said. “Not for much longer,” Liam said. “We’ll be on our way soon, I promise.” Then the hologram of the moon and its surroundings winked off without anyone giving the computer a command. Where the moon had once stood, there was now a woman standing in the middle of their ship’s cabin, arms folded as she looked sternly down at Liam. “I would advise against making such promises, Marshal. You won’t be around to see them through.”