The Long Forever

‘A standard-month, give or take. But so what?’ he says.

‘So there’s no rush to alter course, is there?’

He takes a deep breath, and sighs it out. ‘Guess not.’

BANG, BANG, BANG! Anuk’s getting impatient.

Muttering stuff, Murdo presses something on the panel. The blue line stops flashing. A moment later, the misty green star map fades away, leaving me blinking.

‘Happy now?’ he says to Sky.

She pockets the blaster. ‘Wasn’t so hard, was it?’

Murdo stiffens, but lets it slide. And I can breathe again as he hauls himself up and out of his pilot seat.

‘Let’s get some food then,’ he says.

‘Sounds good to me,’ I say, scrambling after him.

At the hatch he pauses to give me a sly wink. ‘And we can see what those other kids want to do, can’t we?’

He slaps a pad on the bulkhead and the hatch slides open again. Anuk is standing there, arms folded.

‘What kept you guys?’

‘Pilot stuff.’ Murdo steers her along the companionway. ‘How’s the food coming? Found any booze yet?’

I make the mistake of looking at Sky and frowning.

‘What?’ she snaps.

‘I didn’t say nothing,’ I protest.

The hot-food smell hits me again as we duck back inside the cramped crew quarters. A red-cheeked younger kid lets me have his place behind a drop-down table, and slides me a steaming bowl. The contents look like pigswill, some greasy white stuff floating in it, but I’m hungry and others are slurping it down happily enough. And it tastes better than it looks. Between mouthfuls, I ask where the skinny crewman is. Anuk tells me they stuck him back in the cage.

I’m starting on my second bowl when I think to make sure Sky’s getting fed too. She’s at the table nearest to the flight deck. Figures. Wouldn’t want Murdo to get past her and back on the controls. Can’t say she’s guzzling the mush down, but she is having a peck at it.

With everyone chatting away it’s loud in here. I look around at flushed, excited faces, eyes shining with relief and wonder. Hear a few cautious laughs too, like they’re trying them out. And why not? These kids have gone from caged and helpless to their first taste of freedom. No more looking out through bars. No Slayers cracking whips and ordering them about. They can be kids, not prisoners.

Only . . . where’s Murdo gone?

Then I see him, climbing up from the lower deck.

‘Look what I found,’ he yells, brandishing a gleaming cylinder. I’ve never seen anything so shiny.

‘What is it?’ Cam calls out.

Murdo tells us we’ll need cups or glasses. Kids dash to the tiny galley kitchen and fetch them. Meanwhile, Murdo pops the tube open and sniffs whatever’s inside.

‘Mmm, I feel better already,’ he mutters.

He pours sparkling golden fluid into a glass he’s handed. Wisps of vapour rise to dance above it. He shuffles around, splashing some into our glasses, although not as much as he had. I’m not complaining though. Just the smell of the liquor almost burns the nose off my face.

We’re all on our feet by now. I go and stand by Sky as she sniffs at her beaker, only to jerk her head back.

‘Oh crap, he’s going to make a speech,’ I whisper.

Sky groans. ‘Kill me now.’

Murdo waves and shouts to get everybody’s attention, a big grin splitting his battered face.

The kids quit their gabbling and watch him.

‘This is best drunk cold,’ he announces, ‘so I’ll keep it short. We got off to a bad start with me wearing the Slayer black, but Kyle’s told you why that was, and now that we’ve bust out you must know I’m on your side.’

He pauses, as if hoping for cheers.

Doesn’t happen though. The kids just stare.

Murdo clears his throat.

‘Look, I know you must have lots of questions. Between me, Sky and Kyle we’ll do our best to answer them. But first I think we should celebrate our escape.’

He raises his glass and glances at me, eyebrows arched.

I raise my glass. ‘To . . . having a future at last!’

‘Maybe,’ Sky mutters, so that only I hear.

Anuk catches on fast. She raises her glass, to Sky first, me next and then Murdo. ‘And to you guys for saving us!’

This gets them cheering at last.

Saved is a bit strong, I reckon, but the liquor is stronger.

Murdo knocks his glass back. I do the same. And regret it, because it’s like swallowing fire. The next few minutes are filled with watery-eyed kids spluttering and pulling disgusted faces, while laughing their heads off at each other. If the freighter crew got out now, we’d be helpless. But they don’t. And there’s enough in the flask for a second round. Mysteriously, it slips down easier this time. The burning gives way to a delicious warmth, like someone’s wrapped a soothing blanket around the inside of my head.

‘Good, huh?’ I say to Sky.

‘Beats the gut-rot we had in the Deeps,’ she admits.

I slip my arm around her. ‘It’ll all be okay. We’ll work things out with Murdo and go find Tarn.’

She looks at me, her eyes solemn. ‘Think so?’

But now we’re swamped by kids firing rapid-fire questions. Gemini? Ident rebels? When did you guys meet? Do you know my brother/sister? We do our best to answer them in a way that makes sense. But the question we get asked more than any other is ‘What now?’

And there’s only so many times we can duck it.

Cam, his broad face flushed from the drink, holds his hand up for quiet and eventually gets it. ‘Busting out’s all well and good, but what happens next?’

‘Tell them, Sky,’ Murdo says. He leans back and folds his arms. Not sneering exactly, more like he’s amused. ‘It’s only fair.’

‘Fine,’ Sky says. Maybe without realising, her hand seeks out the teardrop tattoo inked under her left eye. ‘Kyle and me, we’re here to go looking for my sister. Tarn was shipped off-world about a year ago. We figure she’s been sold as a slave, like you lot would have been.’

Silence greets this. Some dismayed looks too.

‘How do you plan to find her?’ Murdo asks, all innocent.

I worry Sky will reach for her blaster again, but she just scowls defiantly. ‘They were taking us to the Enshi system, probably to the same place they took Tarn. I say we still go there. Murdo can put us down near the main settlement. Then Kyle and me will take a scout around.’

I swallow hard, and hope she doesn’t notice.

‘What about us?’ Anuk asks.

‘Without me and Kyle, you’d all still be stuck in that cage, on your way to be slaves,’ Sky snaps. ‘Or worse.’

A fair point, but I wouldn’t have said it.

And she’s not done yet. ‘I figure you owe us.’

Cam and Anuk swap looks, neither of them happy. Other kids mutter. Nobody likes to be reminded of a debt.

‘What Sky means is we’d welcome your help,’ I say.

Murdo chuckles. Sky glares daggers at him, but he’s not bothered. He waits until everyone’s looking at him, then spreads his arms wide.

‘So now you know what Sky wants to do,’ he says. ‘But what do you want to do? The way I see it, we should all get a say in what our next move is. It seems only fair.’

Sky’s scowl darkens, but what can she say?

The kids look confused, some anxious even. And it’s not hard to see why. Their whole lives will have been about doing what they’re told, without question.

‘We . . . get to choose?’ one kid says, uncertainly.

Murdo holds his hands out to them, like our old preacher used to back in Freshwater. ‘Course you do. That’s how things work when you’re free. You’ve got rights.’

They stare at him, transfixed.

‘Sky wants to chase after her sister,’ he goes on. ‘And that’s fine by me. If I can help her, I will. But a landing on Enshi Four is fierce risky. No way am I signing up for that. Neither should you guys, if you want to live.’

Sky looks like she’ll explode. Not for the first time I wish she didn’t have that blaster.

‘What’s so risky about it?’ I say, quickly.

‘Everything! Sneaking a landing on a world isn’t like sticking a windjammer down in a field. Whoever sent this freighter to Wrath, they’ll be big-time operators. They won’t take kindly to us grabbing their ship, so why would we go running back to them? It’s plain mad.’

‘We make sure we don’t run into them,’ Sky growls.

‘Best way to do that is to steer clear of Enshi Four!’ Murdo snaps back. He winces, clearly still hurting, and looks at the nublood kids. ‘Look, I’ll be straight with you –’

‘You don’t know how!’ Sky says.

‘Don’t I?’ His gaze never leaves the kids. ‘Listen, I stowed away on this crate to get back off-world, and because chances like this don’t come along twice in one lifetime. And it worked out. Take a look around. Here we are in control of a star freighter, with me to fly it wherever we want, a cargo bay full of the richest mineral in the galaxy and a ready-made crew in you guys. I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.

‘You should too. Think about it: you guys have gone from nailed-on doomed to being able to do whatever you want! Why the frag would you risk that?’

I roll my eyes. ‘You’ve got a better idea, huh?’

‘Damn right I do. We’ve got a month before we’re due at Enshi. A month before we’ll be missed and anybody will come looking for us. I say we use that time to flog our darkblende cargo. Even if we only get half what it’s worth on the dark market, that’s still a fraggin’ fortune. We could trade up to a better ship, one nobody’s looking for. Set up as a legit free-trader, smuggle bootleg stuff on the side. It’s that kind of money, with plenty to go around.’

Sky’s lip twitches. ‘And I should forget about Tarn?’

Murdo sighs heavily, like he’s offended.

‘Did I say that? No. I just figure we should get ourselves sorted first, and then we can all do what we like. With your share, you could buy yourself passage to Enshi. That way nobody would see you coming. You’d have creds to loosen tongues and get answers. You could pay some of these kids to come with you as backup, if they were up for that.’

I’m liking this better with every word he says. Sky must see this on my face, because I get glared at big time. But being glared at is better than being dead.

‘Maybe Murdo’s right,’ I say.

The nublood kids watch us, their tough faces not giving much away. I wish I could say the same about Sky.

‘Every second we waste,’ she spits through her scowl, ‘something awful could be happening to Tarn.’

Murdo throws his hands up. ‘You don’t know that. And I’ll tell you something else, Sky, your sister won’t be on Enshi Four. Not a chance. She’ll have been sold and shipped out soon after she got there. She could be anywhere in the sector by now. You’ve seen the stars – that’s a whole lot of anywhere. If you want to find her, your best chance is to ask the guys I’ll be trying to sell the darkblende to. If anybody can help you track her down, it’ll be them.’

Sky goes to snarl back at him, but starts coughing.

‘Okay, Murdo, we hear you,’ I say. ‘But would this freighter have any med supplies?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Sky croaks.

Murdo hesitates. ‘Bound to. Somewhere.’

‘Can you find them?’ I say, crossly.

‘Sure. Soon as we sort out what we’re doing. We need to elect a captain and a quartermaster, so we might as well get that done too while we’re all gathered together.’

He explains this is how crews on free-traders have organised themselves since the days of sail back on Earth in the Long Ago. Everyone gets a say in big decisions, like where to go and what to do. The captain leads when there isn’t time for discussion, like in a battle. The quartermaster has the same day-to-day authority as the captain, but looks after the crew’s interests. He or she keeps order and settles any disputes. Captain and quartermaster get two shares of any profits, the rest of the crew get one. Either can be voted out at any time if the crew is unhappy.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Sky says, when Murdo’s done rattling through all this. ‘You figure on being captain.’

He grins at her, then around at the nublood kids.

‘Sure. I’ll be throwing my name into the hat. Don’t forget, I’m the only one who can fly this freighter. And only I have the contacts to sell the darkblende to!’

The nublood kids huddle and swap whispers.

Sky shoots a disgusted look at me. But what can I do?

‘Okay,’ Murdo says. ‘If you want me as your captain, stick your hand in the air to be counted.’

Pretty much all the kids hoist their hands. I’m tempted, but don’t. Sky just sneers and folds her arms.

Murdo grins and treats us to a stiff little bow.

‘Thank you. A sound choice, if you don’t mind me saying so. Now then, who shall we have as our quartermaster?’

I worry eyes might slide my way. They don’t. Cam calls out that he’ll do it. But Anuk gets shoved forward to stand against him, and collects way more hands. She looks as pleased about this as if she’s been shot. Cam looks gutted. There’s loads of good-humoured shouting, so it takes Murdo a while to get them to listen to him again. Beside me, I feel Sky stiffen.

‘One last thing to decide before we go back to celebrating,’ he yells. ‘I say we look up my old contacts, flog the darkblende and get ourselves settled. Sky says we risk our necks to hunt for her sister. What do you guys say?’

‘That’s not fair,’ I protest.

Murdo ignores this. ‘Who’s with me?’

Hands are slower going up this time, but up they go until he grunts with satisfaction. It’s a big win for him.

‘Anybody for Sky?’

Anuk sticks her hand up. So do two others. I raise mine too, but only so that Sky sees.

Her lip wrinkles. Bleak-faced, she stomps off down to the lower deck and the sleeping quarters. Truth is, I’m glad the vote went the way it did. But I hate seeing her raging.

I take a deep breath and go to follow her.

Anuk stops me. ‘Maybe you should leave her be.’

‘There’s no maybe about it,’ I say.

Halfway down the steps I hear her cursing, as well as loud smashes and bangs. Murdo winks. I continue on down.

‘Hey, Sky,’ I call. ‘It’s only me, Kyle.’

A half-seen something flies towards my head. Sky’s blaster. I have to use all my speed to dodge. It clatters to the deck. I snatch it up and pocket it.

I guess I should be glad she only threw it . . .

6

DIVERSIONS

‘Party’s over,’ Murdo growls. ‘Let’s get down to business.’

Rich, coming from a guy who’s only just got up from snoring his drunk head off. Meanwhile, Anuk has had the rest of us hard at it for hours, cleaning and tidying. Our cramped quarters are way more liveable now.

‘What d’you want us to do?’ I ask.

Red-eyed and clearly suffering from a head-banging hangover, Murdo flinches. ‘No need to shout, is there? We should have to space those bodies, and then I’ll alter course.’

This last bit he says with a glare at Sky. She meets it, eyes narrowed, face like stone.

It’s cool in the hold, but the stench of death is already nasty. Inside the cage we find more bodies than we’d expected. One of the two beaten-up crewmen is stiff and gone to the long forever. His gobby mate shouts threats at us until Cam sets his killstick to stun and shuts him up.

Skinny guy wisely keeps his mouth shut.

Murdo has him show us where the airlock is, in a small compartment beneath the hold. After he’s done taking Murdo through the lock’s controls, I sling the guy back inside the cage. Then three of us wrestle the pilot’s body down. He hasn’t got lighter by being dead and we’re blowing hard by the time we’ve shoved him into the airlock. Murdo taps at a grubby screen beside the inner airlock door. It closes, sucks inwards and seals.

Above us, a red light starts strobing.

‘Warning, illegal override,’ a machine-voice chants.

‘Yeah, we know!’ Murdo slaps the screen again.

The warning chokes off. He mutters something over his shoulder to us about opening outer doors with pressure still inside, so the body will be blown out.

As he does, I feel the slightest of thumps.

We take turns gawping through the clear-view panel set into the inner airlock door. Beyond the open outer door, the pilot’s body tumbles slowly away from us against a backdrop of stars. I’d heard stories that if you ended up in space without a pressure suit it would be messy. But he doesn’t explode and his blood doesn’t boil out of him.

I can’t decide if I’m relieved or disappointed.

The two dead kids, Mav and Kaya, we leave until last. Somebody’s gone to the trouble of wrapping them up in canvas tarpaulins, a sort of makeshift burial shroud.

‘Anybody want to say a few words?’ I ask.

At first all I get is eyes flicking uneasily away from me, but then Cam surprises me.

‘They died fighting . . . so we could be free,’ he says.

Anuk repeats it. Next thing, they’re all at it. I glance at Sky, expecting her lip to curl. Not a bit of it: her eyes are shiny and she chants it as loud as anyone.

Two more soft thumps and the red light quits flashing.

‘Least they didn’t die in a cage,’ she says to me.

We clamber back into the hold and start making our way back to the crew compartment, while the machines that allow us to breathe start scrubbing away the stench of death.

‘Hey, not so fast,’ Murdo says, sticking his head up from the floor hatch. ‘Bring the prisoners.’

‘You’re not serious?’ I say.

Sky rolls her eyes. ‘They’re slavers. Serves them right.’

‘No! Please don’t!’ skinny guy whines.

Murdo laughs, real ugly, and tells us there’s an escape craft down below with four empty stasis pods. ‘Stick ’em in there and it’ll save us watching and feeding them.’

When we look dumb, he curses and grudgingly explains what stasis pods are. Seems they work by slowing your body down into a sort of super-hibernation. Deep-space escape craft have them so occupants can survive until they’re found, which can take years. Whatever. I’m just relieved he’s not going to space the prisoners in cold blood.

Sky mutters we should leave them in the cage to be zapped. But Murdo’s captain and gets his way.

Curious to see the escape craft, I help carry the man Cam stunned. Skinny guy doesn’t look thrilled, but climbs down himself and keeps his gob shut.

It’s accessed through a second airlock. Disappointingly, the inside is a small compartment, with two recesses in the walls either side, one pod above the other. Murdo and Cam wrestle the unconscious guy into the upper left. When they’re done, they step out to make room and I shove skinny guy ahead of me into the cramped interior.

‘Upper right,’ Murdo orders.

Skinny guy hesitates, shaking. A shove from me gets him moving though. He clambers up and rolls into it.

Murdo hits a switch. ‘Sweet dreams.’

Translucent panels swish downwards to close off the two occupied pods. A dazzling blue light fills them. I smell that sharp stink you get when electrics short out. And jump back as skinny guy’s hand, fingers spread wide, slams the inside of his panel. The blue light fades away, but the hand stays planted. Frozen.

That does not look like fun.

‘Let’s go,’ Murdo says, already shuffling his way out.

Back in the hold, we crowbar open all the wooden crates that were loaded aboard on Wrath. Nestled inside each is a small unmarked metal chest. I worry darkblende’s not stamped on them, or its tech name – promethium. Murdo says I’m a gom for thinking it would be. Screens on the chests list the weight of their contents. Twelve crates, with five hundred kilos in each.

Whatever it’s worth, Murdo bloodshot eyes go greedy.

Minutes later, with the crates hammered closed again, he’s back in the pilot’s seat with as many of us as can squeeze inside the flight deck watching him. Sky’s not here. She stayed in the crew compartment, busy sulking.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask him.

‘Shanglo.’

‘What’s there?’

‘An old contact. Deep pockets. Doesn’t ask questions.’

As his fingers tap and slide on the control screen, Murdo tells us Shanglo is the moon of a planet orbiting a half-dead sun. At max drive speed it’ll take seven standard-days to get there. Our curved blue course line shifts inside the glowing star map to point at a closer bit of space. The map zooms in and a new destination star pulses red. Looming over it, as if about to pounce, is what looks like an orange dust storm shot through with wisps of yellow and green.

‘What the hell’s that?’ Cam asks.

‘Some kind of nebula. Dust and gas, that’s all.’

With a flourish, he stabs at his screen. I feel the lurching sensation as the freighter’s drive kicks in. The stars in front of us seem to smear themselves towards us. But the flight deck’s shielded, so that’s as bad as it gets. Until the view ahead snaps to a sudden dark nothingness, like a cleverbox screen that’s been powered down.

Nobody whimpers exactly, but I hear shocked curses.

‘Hey, where’d the stars go?’ I say, startled.

Murdo slumps back in his seat with a satisfied sigh. ‘Relax. They’re still out there. We just can’t see them through the dee-emm, now that we’re shifting.’

Dee-emm. Shifting. I’ve already passed on the little I know to the other kids. Like how suns are so far apart even light takes years to travel between them. How our dee-emm drive ‘shifts’ us into something called dark-matter space so we can go faster. Murdo calls it a sneaky short cut, a clever way of going behind the back of regular space.

‘I see weird stuff out there,’ a boy called Taka calls out.

Me too. Mostly it’s darkness so deep it feels as if it’s sucking my eyeballs out of my head. But there’s something else. Oily and slippery, it oozes around the edges of my seeing. Look straight at it though and there’s nothing.

‘What the heck is that?’ I ask Murdo.

He glances around. ‘Spacers call it “seeing the spooks”. It’s to do with the way the dee-emm drive operates. And why we leave the flight-deck lights switched up when we’re shifting, so we can’t see outside. Spend too much time watching them, you end up going crazy. Some say –’

He hesitates, then flicks the lights back on.

‘Tell us,’ I say, catching his eye.

He grimaces. ‘They say spooks are alien life forms. Monster space fish who swim around in dark matter.’

‘What do you say?’

‘I say we’ve plenty to worry about already,’ he growls.

Life aboard our star freighter takes getting used to. The crew compartment would’ve been cramped for five, and there are thirteen of us. But the hardest thing is there’s no day and night, which makes it tough to sleep.

Murdo’s feeling better though, and loving life.

He says we have to wean ourselves off Wrath-time and onto the standard-time spacers use. Standard-hours are about the same length, but there are only twenty-four in a standard-day! We all moan like hell, feeling cheated, but he just laughs at us. Says standard-months have more standard-days in them, so what’s it matter anyway?

Well it turns out it does matter!

He re-calculated our ages in standard-time. I’d been looking forward to turning seventeen in two Wrath-months; now I’ll have to wait six more standard-months.

The only person more fed up than me is Sky. She was seventeen, now she’s back to being sixteen!

With bog all to do, we count the days down to Shanglo. I teach the others stupid games I played as a kid. They teach me some of theirs. By far their favourite thing is to get me or Sky or Murdo to tell them stories about our adventures. They never tire of listening. But three standard-days out of Wrath we hit our first snag. Anuk put Stitch in charge of the food because he’d done cooking duties back in her camp. Now she drags him in front of Murdo, a face on her like thunder.