Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (15 page)

“Mmm-hmm.
Does this have anything to do with why you wanted to visit the chapel?”

Eyes
darting toward Park, Yuki said, “Let’s just say recent events have made me
reexamine my beliefs.”

Park
looked like the proverbial canary-eating cat. The coffee was almost empty, so
the nurse made more—her primary duty of late.

When
Yvette passed through to sick bay, Lou shouted, “My boy, Stu, might be born in
orbit around the first inhabited world we discovered.” Lying in his control
harness, Lou tapped a few midair icons no one else could see.

At least he’s focusing more on the baby and work now.
Yvette said, “I’ll go check on the boy in question.
If you want, Sojiro offered to make a 3-D model of the ultrasound.”

“Nah,
I’ll wait and hold the real thing,” Lou decided. “You can post the pictures,
though, to make everyone else jealous.”

Zeiss
announced over ship channels, “I’m resetting the dominoes to flight
configuration in ten minutes, eliminating the elevator. Anyone who doesn’t want
to spend the next six hours in the saucer needs to disembark now.”

“Closing
solar shutters in sequence,” Lou said. “They should have just enough light to
walk home. Be underground for this one, boys and girls, it’s going to be a
scorcher.”

The central Snowflake
interface had six radial spokes, one dedicated to each planner. Yuki nestled in
her control harness with all the inputs turned off. Only the blind man in the
couch next to hers had sufficient dampers to gaze into the heart of the twin
suns and not be harmed. The other crew members were already strapped into cots
or chairs. Before they transitioned to normal space, Lou’s last words over the
radio were, “Assume the position, and no chatter.”

Almost
immediately after entering the Oblivion system, Lou’s high-gravity turns
triggered alarms and the walls opened into emergency acceleration couches.
Earthenware jars clinked together in the dining hall. Someone cursed when a
loose computer pad smacked them in the face. Lou snapped, “Quiet!” Everyone
could hear the frenzied edge of desperation in his voice.

After
five minutes, the pilot said, “You should be able to move around the ship with
care. Be ready to grab something solid for the next hour, just in case. Yuki,
keep fleshing out our picture of the system while I finish steering us out of
this hell. Damn, these tides are strong.”

Yuki
obeyed, using gravity sensors only, not visuals. On the overhead display
bubble, glowing, blue lines outlined their projected path through the
gravitational tides in the area. To most people, the result resembled a weather
map, but the pilots in the room sucked in a breath.

Red
blurted, “You just ran class five rapids, Lou. Great job.”

“B4
rotates the planet in a clockwise direction, and the moon has a bit more mass
than Earth,” Yuki recited. “The fifth moon rotates the opposite way,
complicating our approach.”

“I’ll
do the fine adjustments later,” Red soothed. “Steady as she goes.”

Her
job done for the moment, Yuki climbed out of her control bed and saw Lou’s
clenched knuckles. When Park flew, he liked classical music, like a surgeon in
an operating theater. Everyone had different mechanisms to cope with stress. To
be helpful, she asked, “Do you want some music to stay alert?”

“No.
The only time I listen to music is to set the mood or cover the sounds of
something else,” Lou said suggestively.

Over
ship channels, Mercy asked, “Would it help if I read to you for a while?” Even
drugged to the gills, she could feel her husband’s distress.

“I
can never get enough of you, babe,” he replied.

Red
agreed, “I think we’d all appreciate a little distraction.”

The
pregnant woman read from a popular book about a magic school over the
loudspeaker to help morale. It felt as if they were camped by a roaring fire in
the Hollow. Zeiss fixed the Olympus version of hot cocoa and passed around
bulbs of the caffeinated beverage. After three hours of entertaining, Mercy had
to sleep, but they were through the worst.

When
Lou crawled out of the harness, dripping sweat, Park had to catch him.

Yvette
rushed to check him over objectively. “His pulse and respiration are normal—for
someone who has just run a marathon. Get him fluids, and make him sit till he
calms down.”

The
wrung-out pilot said, “I can sit by Mercy.”

“You’ll
only frighten her if you go in looking like this. Tell him, Red.”

However,
Red was already under her control hood. “Park, I don’t think I’m going to make
four hours fighting this beast. Be ready to switch with me in two. Opening the
lens to minimum aperture. Yuki, yell me what else I need to adjust for.”

Happy
to be needed, Yuki climbed back into her harness. She relayed revised
statistics on planetary sizes and paths, plus a number of lesser bodies in the
system, correcting some earlier assumptions they made about the Oblivion
system. She placed all the new data into their modeling program, and Red
adjusted their heading accordingly.

By
the time Park had his shift, Yuki’s official duties were done, but she stuck
around to perform minor flight attendant duties for her lover. She anchored a
nightstand to the lacework struts between control beds and strapped his
computer pad to the side of his couch. Park wasn’t expected to change the
ship’s heading, but he had to be within reach of the control hood in case an
emergency came up. She played chess with him on the tiny, magnetic board he had
brought from Earth on the shuttle.

While
they played, Yuki brooded about Mercy’s unseen robot monitor. There would no
longer be snow flurries to highlight them in the growing warmth of the habitat.
When she met with Yvette, she would need to scan the area for the signs of
Heisenberg-adapted cloaks. Hopefully, there would be no Magi eavesdroppers in
the barn, and she could converse with Yvette in privacy.
If I find evidence
of a listener, then what?
The monitors didn’t appear very big. The heavy,
blending armor and some sort of hover system had to take up most of their
volume. What remained was probably a small, vulnerable agricultural robot.
Surely,
that’s why the Magi confiscated our weapons.

If
it was the same thick, ceramic material that lined the landing bay, Yuki’s
punch dagger might not penetrate the armor. As a skilled technician, she could
rig some sort of emergency weapon out of the parts in the computer lab, but
first she would need to be able to see the target. Sojiro’s airbrush paint
would make the perfect revealer. In her head, she designed a deployment system
that would spray a fine mist along a wide arc. With the thaw brought on by dual
suns, Sojiro would be able to resume painting in the barn, and she could
volunteer to carry the equipment down tomorrow.

For
a defensive weapon, Yuki decided on a Taser because the thought of explosives
made her ill. She could still smell the burning flesh and taste the tang of
blood from her own accident. Focusing on the magnetic chess pieces, she
envisioned one of the spare magnetic clamps from Risa’s workbench. That should
anchor well to a robot. Steel fishing line was popular with the men and easily
borrowed. Then she would only need to design a capacitor to store and discharge
enough power for one jolt. If no ghost presented itself, she could put every
piece of equipment back undamaged. No one would be the wiser.

While
she was distracted, Zeiss had camped out, watching their game. When she
conceded, the commander announced, “I think Yuki would be better suited to Go.
It may feel less limiting. She seems to be excited by reversals and sudden thrusts.”

Park
made his trademarked ‘hmm’ face at the unintended innuendo, causing Yuki to
burst out laughing.

As
the men put the chessboard away, Yuki carried the drink bulbs to the dining
hall for cleaning. On the way by, she discovered that the sick-bay light was
out. A check confirmed that Mercy was already in stasis, and Lou was on his
second beer.

Back
in her own room, she attacked Park out of a profound sense of gratitude for
what she still possessed. At first he protested that he was too tired and others
might overhear. Then he deferred, saying, “Do you really think a beautiful
woman like you would have given me a second glance outside this mission?”

That
became a personal challenge. First she put back her hair with the birthday
ribbon. Arranging her borrowed swath of fabric like a mini-skirt and slipping
off her uniform pants, she said, “Pretend I’m Jessica, a bartender at a strip
club, and you’re my college astronomy teacher. Your subject is very
hard
.”

“I
don’t fail anyone if they truly put forth effort.”

“Oh,
I came to class every day and sat in the front row. I smiled at you a lot.” She
demonstrated her eager coed pose atop the low dresser.

Eyes
roving over her, Park gulped. “I don’t date students.”

“No.
I got a D minus, but I passed. When we meet at the campus grocery store that
summer, I let you know I’m
very
grateful. You could stop by when I’m
working, and I’ll give you a freebie.”

He
wasn’t so tired anymore, but even in fantasies, he was shy. He couldn’t go to
the club during operating hours. Her dorm room wouldn’t look right for a
teacher. She had to ask for help carrying bags of supplies and a ride to the
bar where she worked. Eventually, she seduced him by having him repeatedly opt
for the polite and socially acceptable thing. In the fantasy, the bouncer came
into the club, trapping them in the women’s room together. They could do
anything they wanted in the room as long as the bouncer didn’t hear. She had
several other scenarios in mind for Jessica after she had lowered Park’s
inhibitions.

****

The
control-room crowd thinned out by the time Yuki snuck into the control room for
duty near noon on Tuesday.

Still
on from the early shift, Sojiro said, “Sure,
now
she’s quiet.”

“Who
the hell is Jessica?” asked Red on the way back from the lunchroom.

Yuki
adjusted her hair and pretended Park hadn’t shouted during the role-playing.
“Sometimes Woo Jin talks in his sleep.”

“I
heard you weren’t
letting
him sleep,” Sojiro muttered. “This is the
first time he ever skipped our workout. The poor man was completely dehydrated
as well as exhausted.”

Yuki
had the decency to blush. Feeling particularly mellow, she ignored the
good-natured jibes and gathered detailed information about the first planet in
the system. “With the hell we experienced getting into this system, we should
name this place Inferno.”

“Technically,
Gehenna is the actual burning place,” Sojiro argued. “And every hell I’ve read
about has been easy to get into.”

Red
said, “Planet A should begin with the letter A.”

“We’ll
run out of A words before we get home,” Sojiro complained.

Lou
was still in his pajamas in the break room. He was having trouble adapting to
life without Mercy again, but he surprised everyone by contributing. “The entry
hall to hell is called Acheron in Dante’s
Inferno
. Each orbit would be a
different ring of hell. The outer planet could be the frozen lake of Treachery, but that would make the place we’re going the ring where they bury
suicides.”

“Not
a good omen. How do you know all this stuff?” asked Sojiro.

“He
started as a philosophy major to get a maximum of wine, women, and song,” Yuki
explained. “He probably tutored quite a few young ladies.”

“Eventually,
we have to name a planet after Quan,” Red said, reminding them of the first
astronaut to be killed by an Icarus field. His only request for this sacrifice
had been to have his name immortalized. Unfortunately, the incident was still
classified.

Yuki
shook her head. “I don’t think he’d want this rock. Besides, it has a
needle-shaped moon the size of Phobos. What would we name that? Quan didn’t
have any family.”

“We
need a theme. Show us the image of B4, where we’re doing the test,” Red
ordered.

With
a few waves of her hands, both real and artificial, Yuki brought up all
available telescope images at extreme range. “It’s not even round. The
gravitational pull from the parent planet has distorted it like an egg. The
surface is a maze of stress cracks and canals.”

“That’s
it—a maze to test us. We can call the moon Labyrinth,” Lou announced. “That
would make the big gas planet Daedalus. What would we call the other moons? He
only had two kids. I forget their names.”

By
then, Sojiro had pulled up a reference on his computer pad. “Icarus and Iapix.
He also had a nephew apprentice with him by the name of Perdix or Calos, and
one he killed by the name of Talus.”

“The
one he murdered could be the one that orbits him the wrong way,” Yuki joked.

“I
suppose you could say the labyrinth was one of his children, too. That takes
care of this planet,” said Red. “We can call the planet that gets us into the
labyrinth with her needle Ariadne. What do we name the outer planet?”

“Minos?”

“Wasn’t
King Minos one of the judges of the dead in the underworld?” Sojiro asked after
a few more keystrokes.

“You
can’t swing a dead cat without hitting some kind of bad omen in mythology,” Lou
complained. “What about Theseus, the little planet with the nexus that leads us
out?”

“I
like it,” agreed Red. “We’ll send it out for a vote.”

“I
was thinking Knossos Nexus, but this is better,” Sojiro said, composing the
e-mail.

“It’ll
be hours before the latest scans of Ariadne are completed.” Yuki raised her
prosthetic and said, “If you guys don’t need me, I think I’m going to fine-tune
the settings on this thing down in the lab.” She’d decided that the Magi could
see anything that happened in the saucer, in the open, or inside the caves of
the Counterweight Mountain. She needed a man-made shelter to exclude the Magi.
“I might borrow your airbrush to give the pads more of a flesh tone. I can take
the paints to the barn when I’m done.”

Sojiro
nodded. “Sure. I’d appreciate that. I can stretch my shift a few hours till
Park wakes up.”

“Tell
him I’ll be back to eat dinner with him. I’ll take my wristwatch to make sure I
won’t be late.” She tapped the readout on the back of her mechanical arm. The
prosthetic was becoming second nature to her already.