Memorial

DATE: Year 308-B, Sol 423

LOCATION: Aboard The Marley (Main Cargo Hold)

The memorial was held in the dark to save power.

Two thousand five hundred souls stood in the belly of The Marley. When they boarded the ship hundreds of shifts ago they thought Himalaya Market was taking them to Earth, the final promise of the Zionists. Instead he was dead and they were going to Venus.

The air recyclers hummed a low, straining drone, a system pushing its limits.

Phoenix stood on the upper gantry overlooking the main cargo bay, his hydraulic arm hanging heavy at his side. He played with his prayer beads. It was a Sunday by the seven-day church cycle, but just a normal Sevenday in the eight-day week of the Martian calendar. It was a coincidence for the memorial. The two coincided every seven Martian weeks, about six times in a Martian year, which was actually just a Martian cycle, A for spring and summer or B for the fall and winter. A full Martain year consisted of a Year A and Year B, with the Sol count continuing between the two. Phoenix suggested a reading from the church calendar, which was on the fourth Sunday of Lent, but the Zionists, despite claiming a religion based on the planet Earth, did not follow any of the scriptures of the old world, only phraseology and naming conventions.

Below, in the center of the bay, a single spotlight illuminated a makeshift altar: an empty flight chair, draped in a white sheet.

-He was the Spark, an elder said, his voice amplified by the ship’s creaking PA system. The old man held a vial of clear water and poured the smallest drop onto the deck.

Waste of perfectly good water, Phoenix thought to himself. He hated this stuff. The strange pastiche of nature religion and mythologizing Earth history didn’t seem much different from the new Martian religions, cargo cults around technology almost nobody understood anymore.

-We remember the Halo, the elder continued. -We remember the trap.

Phoenix closed his eyes. He didn't need a recap; he was there. It was only two days ago, drifting in the shadow of a dead warship, watching Himalaya Market climb into a rusted escape pod. He remembered the plan, to use the black box drive to scream a ghost signal, draw the fire, and clear the path. He still didn’t understand the black box drive. Had it been destroyed?

-He drew the fire of the railguns onto himself. And in his passing, he awoke the Sleeping King of the debris field.

That’s another way to put it, Phoenix thought. He looked down at the crowd. No way they understood the science. Their boy, the miracle worker. What a disaster.

-Now we drift, the elder continued. Phoenix had met this elder yesterday, a good ten years younger than Phoenix, who at forty was probably one of the oldest humans out in space. Pristines could even live to fifty. But there were no real elders left among humans, and it showed in the stupid decisions.

Phoenix tried not to listen but he heard his name—Lyons. He had started using it when he took control of the fleet. It was the given name of the parents in New Paris that adopted him as an infant. He took the name Phoenix the third time he’d seen Jimmy Lyons show up on a death informational bulletin.

Two and a half thousand faces turned upward. They looked at Phoenix. He looked back at them and forced a smile, lifting his one human-looking hand in a greeting.

They didn’t see a mercenary who was going to sell them out to spend one more year dying in space. They saw the man who flew The Mighty Sparrow through a wall of shrapnel and saved them.

-Market’s successor, the elder said.

-Don’t say that, Phoenix yelled down, and took a few steps back from the rail. He felt a tug on his pant leg.

Bit was standing there. The kid was still wearing his yellow drone helmet, the visor sporting a new scratch from the escape. He was holding the hand of the massive HA-1 android they had dragged out of the derelict. The robot was folded awkwardly in the narrow corridor, its sensor strip glowing a soft blue.

Bit pointed to the empty chair below. Then he pointed to Phoenix.

-No, Phoenix whispered to the kid. Definitely not. I’m going to get the fleet to Venus. Whatever they all thought they were going to do settling Earth, the sky cities in Venus have at least as many resources.

Tens of thousands of squatters did live in the two Venus sky cities whose atmospheric controls hadn’t been rendered inoperative since the first pre-Rip failure, its nature lost to history. Sky City 3 might as well have always been that way, tilted on a cloud with half its dome and most of its surface missing, but it happened slowly. More sky cities stopped working after the Rip, the most spectacular of them in the invasion by the fever dream known as the Empire of the Sun in the early 100s, counting the about year-long cycles since the Rip.

The colonists on the Marley fleet could make it, and that’s what they were. Colonists. Zealots and fanatics and daydreamers, sure. Phoenix didn’t think they’d last more than a couple of days on Earth before the planet killed them. Everyone knew it had been inhospitable since the Rip. Everyone but these Zionists who insisted the Earth was something special and so of course would be welcome back. But maybe even the universe didn’t want us, Phoenix thought.

In any case, they thought they could till the Earth, they ought to be equipped to till some o the remaining habitable ground on the sky cities of Venus, and Phoenix was going to get through the inventory to find out.

Phoenix looked back at the crowd. The chanting had started. It was a low, rhythmic thrumming of feet against the deck plates. It sounded like an engine revving.

Phoenix checked his pad.

FUEL: 12% (Critical) FOOD: 14 Days at Current Ration DISTANCE TO VENUS: 28 Days

The math didn't work. The memorial was a nice sentiment, but they weren't going to pray their way to Venus. They’d starve halfway there.

The elder said something rousing and the crowd cheered. Some kind of ceremony. The elder had really asked Phoenix if he could start a fire in the cargo bay. Of course he said no.

Phoenix turned away. He needed to check the water recyclers. He needed to calibrate the engines. He needed to figure out how to stretch the food. The stuff meant for the surface of the Earth couldn’t be pilfered now, to get to Venus only to have nothing to start with there.

He looked at the Happy Android robot and at Bit. He needed to program Hap as a co-pilot. He couldn’t do it alone all the way to Venus, not with the Marley fleet behind him. And he had to figure out what to do with Bit. The kid refused to stay behind on the Marley.

Phoenix sighed heavily.

-Come on, Hap, Phoenix said to the robot. Come on, Bit. Show’s over. Time to get to work.