Levi's Rock - Chapter Four - For Talented Pilots - Part One

Chapter Four: For Talented Pilots

From a few hundred thousand kilometers distance, Earth has rings like Saturn. They turn as the Earth turns, and they scintillate in the light of the sun. There are gaps in the rings, and they are multicolored, swirling from time to time as ships dip in and out. The large space stations orbit just outside these rings, and satellites are synchronized to avoid them.
In the dark shadow of Earth, the rings almost disappear, save for a few twinkling lights. There is an elliptical quality to them, and as the eye follows them to one extremity it can faintly discern one gossamer-thin strand of the outermost ring as it flings itself toward Earth’s moon. There it meets the glimmer of a developing ring around the moon, and the evolution of the rings is illustrated.
As ships near Earth, the nature of the rings becomes clearer. What appears to be dust, debris, and rubble from a distance gains detail, takes shape, and comes into focus. The individual particles of the ring resolve themselves into tiny ships and large vessels of all types, and the grayish wash of the rings becomes a mosaic of ships of every type, style, color, and cut.
There are rings of ships parked in perfect slumber, rings of ships alive with arriving and departing passengers, clusters of connected ships docking and communicating with each other.
Between all these ships dart the nimble ships with the Pathways icons on them, shepherding and sheriff-ing the other ships into formation—creating order out of the chaos, so that from a distance the serene and surreal image of a ringed Earth is preserved, harmonious and beautiful among its cousins.
The Pathways officers are numerous and respected, but the traffic that flows into these rings—both from the planet surface and from deep space—is unpredictable. From time to time, extra help is needed.

Thirty of the pilots crowded into the Marques briefing room, where assignments were usually distributed, and the last to arrive was Hawkins. He pressed his way to the front and thumbed the viewscreen to life. He had to repeat the voice-code twice over the buzz of the pilots—they had gotten the call less than ten minutes ago, and most of them were on the wrong rotation right now, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Alright, listen up,” Hawking grumbled, as a series of images poured up on the screen. “We’ve been asked to provide thirty pilots for temporary assignment as Pathways support officers. This is not your chance to lord it over civilians and throw your weight around. You’re going to be deputized for three weeks on a rotation; at the end of your stint, you hit the drops for planetside leave, and as soon as your feet touch solid ground, your deputy status ends.
“Ten of you leave now, ten next week, and the last group two weeks from today; you’ll fly a twenty-four hour shadow patrol, and for the first week you will be eyes-only, echoing everything to your counterpart officer. Most of you are already familiar with the routine, and I expect you to fill in the rookies. Make us look good out there; there’s a bonus in it for the station, and I don’t have to tell you it won’t be going in anyone’s pocket—we still need some repairs to the auxiliary ship-lift, right Corsi?”
There was some good-natured razzing which Corsi endured with a groan.
“You’ll be flying … er,” Hawking hesitated and cleared his throat, “I’ve been told you’ll be flying impounded vehicles—now, just hold on—it’s ….” After that, it was no use trying to quiet the men down for a few minutes as the room erupted in an equal mix of cheers and jeers.
Hawking’s personal philosophy was that any pilot worth his seat-space should take to whatever ship he was given like a wild animal to a mate. If the ship was fast or powerful or looked nice, that was a bonus, but all a pilot should care about—in Hawking’s opinion—was whether it moved and how to steer it.
Unfortunately, Pathways was not guaranteeing that speed, strength, or beauty would accompany the ships to which these deputies would be assigned. The men from Marques Station who had accepted stints like these in the past knew that Pathways could not even guarantee the ships would move—or steer. This was because instead of issuing out their own ships—which were boring but plentiful—Pathways frequently insisted on using ships that had been impounded, some of them because they had been parked in the inner rings for years, disowned or discarded when the owner died.
There was a lottery-like chance of getting a nice ship, particularly if a smuggler had been caught recently, but any ship that Pathways had in impound was probably not worth much, since they usually went on auction right away. If it was worth very little—not enough to sell, but just enough to keep it from getting scrapped and parceled out to little space concerns—then it sat in the Pathways impound until needed.
The cheers among the Marques pilots being briefed was probably an even mix of pilots with Hawking’s enthusiasm for any new ship and pilots who looked forward to being paid for three weeks of turning in ship after ship that broke down on them, “forcing” them to endure the three weeks on the Pathways base station. The Pathways base station was easily three times the size of Marques, and the amenities made it a perk for officers.
The jeers among the pilots were also an even mix—on the one hand were pilots who didn’t look forward to flying hunks of space junk, and on the other hand were pilots whose own ships would languish back at Marques because Pathways was too cheap to insure them against damage or loss. Some of Hawking’s top pilots had sunk every cent they earned during their tenure at Marques into ships that were luxurious rides and impressive performers. To be forced to leave their babies behind for three weeks, followed by another few weeks of planet-side rotation, was akin to having their baby kidnapped—or in this case, hijacked—right out from under them.
Hawking waited, waited, and finally began reading out the names of the ten pilots who would be leaving first. Better that they find out about the health inspection later, he decided.

Hawking, Ecksel, and Spencer had a brief meeting after the first group was dismissed to pack for the transfer. Hawking cut straight to the point.
“You will not be in any of the groups assigned to Pathways rotation,” he said bluntly.
Spencer shrugged. “We didn’t need a meeting for this. It’s your call who goes and who stays. I’m not the only one staying.”
Ecksel looked back and forth between Hawking and Spencer, but he addressed Spencer. “You’re not bothered by this decision at all? You do have more experience than a lot of these guys, even if it wasn’t here at Marques. Do you think you would do a better job than some of these guys?”
“Even if I did, I wouldn’t say so—not right now, not like this. Besides, any idiot can park ships in the space lanes. It’s a fair bit safer than their usual job.”
Hawking nodded. “I’m glad you feel that way. But I’ll be honest with you: it’s not your attitude I’m worried about. You’ve made some close friends in the last few weeks. If anybody asks you how you feel about being excluded from this nice, cushy assignment—well ….”
“I would say I’d rather be here anyway; it’s bound to be a lot quieter, and I can get some work done on DaSilva’s ship—unless you’ve got something else for me to work on?”
Hawking shook his head. “Excuse us,” he said, gesturing to Ecksel, and a moment later Spencer was vanishing through the door.
“And how is he physically?” Hawking inquired after a moment’s pause.
Ecksel waved a hand absently. “He’s fine. He comes out of those states as shaky as a leaf, and his body chemistry goes nuts for a while, but after a few days it’s like nothing happened, except—well, except for the dreams, which are more intense for a while—and the amnesia. Mind you,” he held up a hand, “he’s only had three since he arrived, and one of those arrested prematurely, but I’m going on the information from his file as well. This guy Schill—the medic on C’bathos—took some good notes on him.” Ecksel’s face clouded over. “Too bad he won’t be talking anymore.”

Whether because they were both too busy or because neither wanted to admit it, both Ecksel and Hawking arrived at the conclusion, over the course of the next few days, that it had been a mistake not sending Spencer with the rest of the pilots.
There were complaints about Spencer’s nightmares—complaints that were familiar, but hadn’t been heard in over a month. With the first batch of pilots gone, many of the men were accommodated simply by switching their sleep rotations, but it left Spencer’s shifts sparse, meaning the men on his rotation worked harder and accomplished less. The irritable, cabin-sick pilots who hadn’t been chosen for Pathways duty had been awarded station repairs and inventory tasks; the ones on Spencer’s schedule were crankier and more overworked, and Hawking could tell it wouldn’t be long before there was a fight.
He headed one off the day before the second crew left for orbital patrol. Passing through the mess hall on a shortcut to the crew quarters, he overheard a conversation that was reaching the pitch just below venomous, when neither party is sure whether the other guy is joking. An old instinct kicked in, and Hawking paused as though he had forgotten something. He was holding a tablet, and he clicked through page after page of data, not really seeing it as he concentrated on eavesdropping.
The men were ganging up on Spencer, interrogating him in deliberately controlled tones, implying what might happen to him if he couldn’t get his nightmares under control—and offering friendly suggestions of how he might do that.
Spencer’s low, steady tone made his replies impossible to make out from this distance, but after one murmured rejoinder several of the men lurched toward him—kept in check only by the hisses and muted gesticulations of the ones whose job it was to keep their eye on Hawking.
Spencer eventually got up and walked out between the other men without a scratch, and Hawking continued on his way smoothly—but he knew it would be a mistake to stop like that again in the future, transparently signaling to the men that Spencer was somehow under his protection. He resolved to let Spencer fight his own battles from then on.

Spencer slapped on the door a few times, then cranked Ecksel’s door open.
“Come to cheer me up?” Ecksel quipped, sweeping a hand across his desk to clear the screen. He looked up, revealing dark circles under his eyes.
“Nothing I have to tell you will cheer you up—and it won’t help you sleep either,” Spencer added.
Ecksel snorted. “I don’t have trouble sleeping, I just have trouble finding time to sleep—I sometimes switch my sleep rotation if I have a lot of work to do, but then I end up pulling three or four shifts in a row. It’s probably not the sleep at all, you know.”
Spencer nodded. “Oh, I know: my doctors have always told me I needed ‘creative free-time’ more than I needed extra sleep, especially after an episode.”
“Yes. I’ve noticed you drawing on your tablet. I’d like to see what you draw if you don’t mind—not in a medical context, but purely out of curiosity.”
“Sure. So, should I come back? Are you going to take a nap?”
“If you leave, I’ll just work on something else; I’m too busy to stop right now. It’s probably better if we have a session. At least I’ll work a different part of my poor, addled brain.”
Spencer laughed and settled in on the couch.

I was ten years old when Kiyos was torn apart. Kiyos wasn’t destroyed from above by spaceships with bright green lasers; it was broken up from underneath by careless miners and bad math.
It took me ten years to say that. For ten years I couldn’t bring myself to believe that it could be the fault of the miners, because that would put at least part of the blame squarely on the shoulders of my father. He was my hero, and he was a great man, but he was also a miner trying to feed a family, and maybe the fact that the mines were tapped out—or that the contracts were depreciating and falling through—maybe something drove him to make a bad decision, to take a risk that cost so many people their lives.
I think about the day that it happened less and less as the years pass, but when I do … I still review the events of the day with a morbid fascination. I can’t help going over and over the sights, the sensations, the horrible realization that the whole world was coming apart. It was weeks later, at my aunt’s home on Serpeset, that I finally got the whole story, the meaning behind the madness. I rebelled against the truth with a vengeance, and for years afterward I told everyone that there was a conspiracy—a plot to destroy the mining colony—and that my father must have been at the center of it.
It was too perfect not to believe: my father must have known what was happening, and he died trying to stop it.
Maybe it was C’bathos that convinced me that accidents happen. Maybe it was just time to stop deluding myself. I’m sure that the horrors I have seen since Kiyos have made me consider the evil in everyone I meet. I never know who will betray me.

“Does that make it difficult to make friends?”
“It doesn’t make it any easier.”

I owe my life to my father’s foresight. He had our home built miles from the town, on a high, sheer cliff overlooking the crater—our lives revolved around that crater and everyone in it. I went to school with those kids, I greeted everyone in town almost every day, there was no one on the whole damn rock that I didn’t know personally—and I was only ten years old. Right up until the day I left—forever—I hoped I would live the rest of my life on Kiyos.
Of course, that sounds ridiculous now: for one thing, the whole rock was only so big, not even a planet by scientific standards, and the mining would have been halted in a few years, contract or not. You can only dig so far before you come out the other side—or, as we found out, before the structural integrity of the rock is compromised.
It was just bad math, that’s all. Maybe somebody knew they were pushing too hard, and maybe nobody knew; the point is moot now, because the cookie crumbled.

“You seem intent on trivializing what happened,” Ecksel interjected.
“What do you mean?”
“Several times since our sessions began, you’ve referred to this event—the destruction of Kiyos, your first home—with colloquialisms and quaint terms, almost as though you are diminishing the importance of the event.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Doc; I was devastated when it happened. It’s just that it’s been so long, and so much has happened since then … it seems like Kiyos was just the beginning. Wait till you hear about Serpeset.”
“Okay.”