Record of a Spaceborn Few

  So what is the Fleet today? How do these people live? How do they view the GC? Why have they continued this way of life? These are the questions I will attempt to unravel in the time ahead. I, Ghuh’loloan, will likewise be a guest. As I write this, I am on my way to the Exodus Fleet, where I will be staying for eight tendays. I will be living aboard an Exodan homestead ship, interviewing Exodan citizens, and learning Exodan ways. Much was written about the state of the Exodan Fleet following first contact and leading up to GC membership, but little mainstream record has been made of them since. The assumption, I fear, is that their presence in multispecies communities means they have integrated into our varied societies and left their old ways behind. Nothing could be further from the truth. I cross the galaxy now in search of a more honest story.

  It is my hope, dear guest, that you will join me.

  Tessa

  Received message

  Encryption: 0

  Translation: 0

  From: Ashby Santoso (path: 7182-312-95)

  To: Tessa Santoso (path: 6222-198-00)

  Hey Tess,

  I don’t know if you’ve seen the feeds, but if you have, I’m okay. If you haven’t, some bad stuff went down at Hedra Ka, but again: I’m okay. The ship’s suffered a lot of damage, but we’re stable and out of immediate danger. I’ve got my hands full with repairs and my crew, so I’ll get on the sib when I can. I’ll send a note to Dad, too.

  More soon, promise. Hug the kids for me.

  Ashby

  * * *

  In the grand tradition of siblings everywhere, Tessa wanted to kill her brother.

  Not permanently kill him. Just a casual spacing to get her point across, followed by a quick resurrection and a hot cup of tea. That, she’d say, as he sat shivering on the floor, clutching his mug like he used to when he was little. That’s what you put us through every time you go off the map. We all stop breathing until you get back.

  Tessa tossed her scrib across her desk and rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. ‘Shit,’ she breathed, furious and relieved. She’d seen the feeds. Of course, they hadn’t said which civilian ship the Toremi had fired on, but Tessa had known where Ashby had been headed for the past standard, what he’d been hired to do. ‘You stupid . . .’ She exhaled, her eyes stinging. ‘He’s okay.’ She inhaled, her voice steadying. ‘He’s okay.’

  She’d gone to the cargo bay immediately after the news feed had wrapped up, despite her shift not starting for another two hours, despite her father telling her to stay home until they knew whether to relax or plan a funeral. Tessa had no stomach for how Pop had decided to deal with it: holding vigil in front of the pixel projector, watching every feed over and over until something new uploaded, smoking and muttering and tossing out anxious theories. She saw no point in sitting around waiting for news, especially when you had no idea when it would arrive. She’d addressed the fist squeezing her heart in her own way. She’d dragged Aya out of bed, given Ky a cake bite to keep him from fussing at the change in schedule, given Aya a cake bite so she wouldn’t cry unfairness, and told Pop to get on the vox if anything changed.

  You’d know if you stayed home, he’d grumbled, shoving fat pinches of redreed into his pipe. But she hadn’t budged, and he hadn’t pushed, for once. She’d patted his shoulder, and sent the kids across the way to the Parks’ – who, as Tessa had figured, had been asleep, but that’s what hexmates were for.

  Aya had pestered her for an explanation every step toward the door. Why are we up so early? Why can’t I stay here? Do I have to go to school? Why was Grandpa mad at you? Is Dad okay?

  Your dad’s fine, Tessa had said. That was the only question she’d answered directly. Every other query got a because I said so or an I’ll tell you later. There was no way to say your Uncle Ashby’s ship may have been blown up by aliens and this is my way of coping to a nine-year-old, and no way a nine-year-old would respond to that sentiment in a way that wouldn’t freak out the two-year-old as well. Let the kids have a quiet morning. The grown-ups could worry enough for everyone.

  Tessa stretched back against her desk chair, cracking the tight points between ribs and spine. She turned her head toward the wall vox. ‘224-246,’ she said. The vox chirped in acknowledgement of a home address. ‘Pop, is your scrib on?’

  ‘No,’ her father shouted back. He’d never grasped the concept that even though the vox was on the other side of the room, he didn’t have to yell like he did with the old models. ‘Why?’

  Tessa rolled her eyes. Why, asked the man who’d been looping feeds all morning. ‘Ashby wrote to us. He’s okay.’

  The vox relayed a long sigh, followed by a softly spoken ‘shit.’ He started shouting again. ‘How’s his ship?’

  ‘He said stable. He didn’t have time to write much, just that he’s okay.’

  ‘Is he still on board? Stable can change fast.’

  ‘I’m sure Ashby knows whether or not his ship’s safe.’

  ‘These Toremi weapons they’re talking about on the feeds, those things can really—’

  ‘Pop, stop watching the feeds. Okay? They don’t know what’s going on either, they’re just filling time.’

  ‘I’m just saying—’

  ‘Pop.’ Tessa pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘I have to get back to work. Go to the gardens or something, yeah? Go to Jojo’s, get some lunch.’

  ‘When are you coming home?’

  ‘I don’t know. Depends on how the day goes.’

  ‘Okay.’ He paused. ‘I love you.’

  Pop wasn’t withholding or anything, but he didn’t throw those three words around lightly. Tessa softened. ‘I love you, too.’

  The vox switched off, and she took another opportunity to clear her lungs. She stared out the workroom window, out into the cargo bay. Rows of towering shelves stretched on and on, full to the brim with wires and junk, attended by the herd of heavy-duty liftbots following assignments Tessa had punched into her terminal. There were stacks of metal, too, the pieces too big for the shelves, the pieces nobody’d had time to cut down. This was her domain, her project. It was her job to track comings and goings, to make sure everything got logged and weighed and described, to keep track of stuff the merchants and foundries weren’t ready for yet, to wrangle the unintelligent machines who shuffled goods from where they had been to where they were needed. A complicated job, but not a taxing one, and one where you could count on most days going exactly the way you’d thought they’d go when you woke up. Compared to the constant familial chaos of home, she valued that.

  When she’d first started working in cargo, way back in her twenties, Bay Eight had been a tidy place. She remembered the neatly packed bins of raw materials, the imported crates with exciting labels printed in multiple alien alphabets. Twenty years down the road, and you couldn’t find a one of those in her bay anymore. Imports and processed stock were elsewhere. Bay Eight was one of three on the Asteria dedicated to the remains of the Oxomoco. Every homestead ship was made the same: a massive central cylinder full of vital systems, a flat ring of thousands of homes anchored around it, a cluster of chunky engines at the back. The Oxomoco didn’t look like that anymore. Half of it was a ragged husk, dragged far from the Fleet’s orbit but still out there, still scaring the boots off anyone who saw it grimacing through a shuttle window. The other half was in pieces, gathered and shoved away in cargo bays like hers. So now, instead of alien crates, she dealt with a never-ending backlog of support trusses, floor panels, empty oxygen tanks. Things that had been vital. Things that had been viewed as permanent. All it had taken was one malfunctioning shuttle, one unlucky trajectory, one stretch of fatigued bulkhead. Just one combination of small things that led to the deaths of tens of thousands, and to cargo bays packed with what was left of the place that had carried them.

  Pop’s words stuck in her head. Stable can change fast.

  ‘M Santoso, you okay?’

  Tessa looked over. Kip was peeking around the doorway, his pockmarked face scrunch
ed in concern. She sighed and gave her head a light shake. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ The scrunch persisted. Explanations that worked for a nine-year-old had no chance against a sixteen-year-old. Tessa gave an acknowledging smirk and waved him in. ‘Just family stuff. Would you pour me some mek?’ She paused. ‘You can have one, too, if you want.’

  The boy raised his eyebrows. ‘My shift’s not over.’

  Tessa gave him a wry smile. ‘You’ve got two days left with me, and we both know you’re not going to apprentice here.’

  Kip smiled sheepishly as he poured two mugs of mek from the brewer in the corner. ‘Come on, M, I’m not that bad.’

  ‘You’re not,’ Tessa said. ‘You could be decent at managing inventory if you put in the practice. You’ve got the kind of logicky brain you need for sorting stuff. But we both know this isn’t for you.’ She accepted the mug with a nod, trying to brush away the lingering mental image of kicking Ashby in the shins. ‘But that’s the point of job trials, yeah? You’ve gotta find a good fit, and you won’t know what you like and what you don’t until you give everything a try. You worked hard for me, and you didn’t slack off.’ Much, she thought.

  Kip sat down, a lanky assemblage of too-long limbs and patchy stubble. The kid would be handsome in a year or two, but puberty wasn’t going to let him get there without a fight. ‘What was your first trial?’ he asked.

  ‘Fish farms with my dad,’ Tessa said. ‘I lasted three whole days.’

  ‘Did you not like killing them, or what?’

  ‘No, that part was fine. It was more that Pop and I were gonna kill each other.’ She took a sip of mek and did not think about Ashby. ‘Have you thought about trying the food farms?’

  ‘I did bugs,’ Kip said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I didn’t like killing them.’

  This surprised her not a bit. ‘But you eat ’em, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, with the same goofy smile. ‘I’m just good letting somebody else . . . y’know. Do that.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Tessa said. Inwardly, she found that mindset silly. If you were okay with eating something, you had to be okay with it being dead. But Kip was a nice kid, and she wasn’t about to make him feel bad for having a soft heart. ‘Any idea what you want to try next?’

  ‘I dunno. Not really.’

  ‘You’ve got plenty of time. And besides, there’s tons more for you to try. Always something to do in the Fleet, yeah?’

  Kip’s mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I guess.’

  Tessa took in the kid’s face. She knew that look – that restless, empty-handed look. She’d seen it on her baby brother’s face, just a standard or so before he packed his bags and tearfully promised them all he wouldn’t disappear. He’d made good on that. They got letters and sib calls regularly. He visited when he could. He sent them more credits than any of them knew how to thank him for. But there was a room in the Santoso home that was used for storage now. There were a lot of rooms like it in the Fleet. Empty rooms had been a luxury once, Pop often said. Nowadays . . . nowadays folks could spread out more, take longer showers, hear their voices echo a little louder in the public walkways. She looked at Kip, drinking his mek, probably bored out of his mind. She wondered if his room would end up empty, too.

  Isabel

  Isabel had worked in the Asteria’s Archives for forty-four years, but she never tired of days like this. These days were some of the best, and she’d prepared in kind. The assembly hall was most often used for lectures and workshops and so on, but today, it had been transformed. She and the other archivists had hauled out the decorations they’d long ago made for such occasions: hanging sunbursts made of scrap metal, bright streamers of recycled cloth. A long table stood waiting to the side, ready to receive home-cooked food and drink. Another table held new seedlings brought in from one of the nurseries, available for those present to bring home to their neighbourhood gardens. Floating globulbs hovered around the room’s upper edges, radiating yellows, greens, and blues. Life colours. Growth colours. At the front of the room, by the big screen that projected the view of the starry black beyond the bulkhead, there was a podium. It was covered with streamers and fully-grown plants and, at the top, held Isabel’s scrib. This was the most important piece of all.

  The person being honoured there would not remember any of it, but the others present would, and they would relay the story one day. That, in a nutshell, was what Isabel’s profession was for. Making sure everybody was a link in a chain. Making sure they remembered.

  Guests began to arrive, festively dressed, carrying containers dewy with steam and fragrant with spice, syrup, toasted dough. Isabel would not need dinner after this. One of the finer perks of her job.

  A boy pleaded with a man to let him have just one of whatever they’d brought to the shared table. The man told the boy to be patient. The lack of patience in his own voice indicated that this was not the first time this conversation had been had that day. Isabel smiled. She’d been in both their shoes.

  Two musicians set up near the podium. Isabel knew them both, and greeted them warmly. She remembered when they’d been kids begging at the table, too. The same was true for many of the people entering the room, except for the ones she’d shared a childhood with so long ago. There weren’t many faces here she didn’t know.

  The room filled, and at last, two people entered, carrying a tiny third. This was Isabel’s cue. She walked to the podium, stepping with practised care in her formal robes. The hum of voices started to fade. She met eyes with one of the musicians and nodded. The musicians nodded to her, then to each other. One and two and . . . she saw them mouth. A sheet drum and a long flute leapt into merry action. The final voices disappeared, and the gathered bodies parted to allow the trio to make their way to Isabel.

  The young couple stood before her, smiling, proud, perhaps a little shy. Their infant daughter wriggled in the woman’s arms, more interested in the glint of her mother’s necklace than anything else.

  Isabel raised her head to the room as the song reached its end. Faces looked back at her, smiling, waiting. Everyone there knew exactly what would come next. She’d said the words hundreds of times. Thousands, maybe. Every archivist knew how to say them, and every Exodan knew their sound by heart. But still, they needed to be said.

  Isabel’s body was old – a fact it constantly reminded her of – but her voice remained strong and clear. ‘We destroyed our world,’ she said, ‘and left it for the skies. Our numbers were few. Our species had scattered. We were the last to leave. We left the ground behind. We left the oceans. We left the air. We watched these things grow small. We watched them shrink into a point of light. As we watched, we understood. We understood what we were. We understood what we had lost. We understood what we would need to do to survive. We abandoned more than our ancestors’ world. We abandoned our short sight. We abandoned our bloody ways. We made ourselves anew.’ She spread her hands, encompassing the gathered. Mouths in the crowd silently mirrored her words. ‘We are the Exodus Fleet. We are those that wandered, that wander still. We are the homesteaders that shelter our families. We are the miners and foragers in the open. We are the ships that ferry between. We are the explorers who carry our names. We are the parents who lead the way. We are the children who continue on.’ She picked up her scrib and addressed the couple. ‘What is her name?’

  ‘Robin,’ the man said.

  ‘And what name does your home carry?’

  ‘Garcia,’ said the woman.

  ‘Robin Garcia,’ Isabel spoke to the scrib. The scrib chirped in response, and retrieved the citizen registry file she had created that morning. A blue square appeared on screen. Isabel gestured for the mother to step forward. The baby frowned as they manoeuvred one of her bare feet onto the square, pressing tiny toes and heel against it. The scrib chirped again, indicating that a new file had been added to the mighty towers of data nodes that stood vigil a deck below. Isabel read
the record to the room. ‘Robin Garcia,’ she said. ‘Born aboard the Asteria. Forty Solar days of age as of GC standard day 158/307. She is now, and always, a member of our Fleet. By our laws, she is assured shelter and passage here. If we have food, she will eat. If we have air, she will breathe. If we have fuel, she will fly. She is daughter to all grown, sister to all still growing. We will care for her, protect her, guide her. We welcome you, Robin, to the decks of the Asteria, and to the journey we take together.’ She cupped the baby’s head with her palm, weathered skin cradling new. She spoke the final words now, and the room spoke with her. ‘From the ground, we stand. From our ships, we live. By the stars, we hope.’

  Sawyer

  He stood at the railing outside the dockside bioscans, luggage in hand, breathing in the recycled air. It was different than the air he knew, for sure. It wasn’t what he’d call good air, not like what you’d get around a forest or a field. There was a slight metallic edge to it, and though the walkways were lined with healthy planters exhaling oxygen back his way, something about each breath just felt artificial. There was no wind here, no rain. The air moved because Humans told it to, and maybe in that, it had lost something along the way.

  But Sawyer smiled. Different was what he was after, and everything he’d encountered in the twenty minutes since coming aboard was as different as could be. What struck him was the practicality of the architecture, the intense economy. On Mushtullo, people embellished. There were mouldings on the tops of walls. Roofs twisted and fences spiralled. Even the ships were filigreed. Not here. Nothing in the foundation of this vessel had been wasted on sentiment.