MILO

“So, Dr. Birgitta, I have a proposition for you,” Milo said.

Birgitta grabbed the gauntlet and pushed it over his hand. “A proposition? Alright, speak your mind.”

“You probably know Beth the best, since you spent all that time with her on the Au-delà. This suit you are designing for me, it has made you the unofficial powered people tool maker,” Milo said, smiling. “I was thinking. Beth lacks range with her power. What if you designed a weapon for her? I am trying to get her into a better mood. We can’t have her sulking in the room forever. For her health and the coming battles.”

Birgitta tightened the gauntlet, he noticed the metallic pattern weaved into the palm. “Shoot a bolt of lightning, will you please? I like your proposition. I have also thought about ways to help her state of mind. She has been very busy reading through my research and I have tried to push the limits forward. I think it helps her.”

Milo stood up and turned away from the scientist. Hook in place, the sweetness flooded and he raised the palm forward. The lightning bolt thundered out from his palm and through the gauntlet, through the metallic weaving and struck at the bulkhead wall. His hand felt warm and something smelled burnt. The gauntlet! He unstrapped it with frantic fingers and threw the smoldering thing away.

“Yeah, we have a bit to go still,” Milo said. “But the weaving gave the electricity an easy way out through the material.”

“We just need the surrounding material to be less conductive and less able to build warmth.” Birgitta put out the fire with an extinguisher. “A good test, nonetheless. Thank you for taking the time. I could have tried faking the test with a conduit and clever wiring, but it would not have been the same and I don’t really know how warm or high voltage you generate. Your power is vastly different from Beth’s strength. Miss Williams can help me solve the problem, her knowledge in material science is excellent. This suit is taking longer to design than I anticipated, I will have to put time on it later, the Captain will be disappointed if I don’t help with the ambush.”

“Think about Beth’s weapon. We can discuss it later, I will go and see her now. Try to cheer her up,” Milo said.

“Thank you,” Dr. Birgitta said. “And good luck, lightning-in-a-bottle.”

“Lightning-in-a-bottle?” Milo asked.

Dr. Birgitta smiled. “You thought that Captain Samuels is the only one onboard that is allowed to create nicknames? Oh no. Milo-Jonathan Marshall-Shepherd, you are lightning-in-a-bottle.”

Milo laughed. “I guess you are right.”

“I often am. Pinch me if I am wrong, so I can wake up from that awful nightmare,” Dr. Birgitta said.

“Will do, mam,” Milo said, saluting the researcher.

“I am not that old!” Dr. Birgitta said, but Milo was already well down the corridor.

-

Maybe he should have gotten her a treat? Did Beth like chocolate? Milo noted it for his next visit.

Beth sat still in her quarters with a hand terminal held before her. She must be reading about Birgitta’s research. Good, it should give her other things to think about. Milo entered the room and pulled up a chair for himself. The chair was great for rocking with. Back and forth, he liked testing the limits of its balance.

“So, sis, how are you today?” Milo asked. “I still find it weird to call you sister. It has not sunk in yet.”

Beth remained silent, her attention directed solely to the hand terminal.

“I remember very little about my real parents and about you. I must have been an infant when we were separated. Would you like to tell me anything about them? I would like to get to know my real family,” Milo said.

Beth’s left eyebrow twitched. Foreboding. She was upset, he recognised the tell. He should change the subject before she bashed his skull in.

“Alright, I won’t poke there. I am sorry,” Milo said. “Depending how you calculate age, I have become the bigger brother. Objectively, you are still older, but since you spent thirty years in a hibernation pod my subjective age has caught up. A philosophical question. Would you like to be called big sister or little sister?”

Beth remained silent, but had there been a twitch of the side of her lips? A small smile, maybe? He leaned back and rocked the chair again. Some personal comedy on his expense might jerk her into a full smile. “Even though I have slimmed down considerably, I am still the fat one. So, in size you are still the little one. Conclusion: you are the little sister.”

Did she chuckle? He was not sure, but instead of pushing his luck too far he changed the subject. This grind required baby steps.

“Me and Birgitta talked about the powers the other day. We speculate that the different deposits are triggered by provoking their functions or usage. Like how the blood deposit is triggered by being stronger and trying to be stronger. Because in my case, the blood is triggered when I have pulled energy from an external source and have gained another level of capacity. Only then am I able to pierce it. Do you get what I am trying to say? Of course you do, you are the clever sibling,” Milo said.

Beth looked up from behind the hand terminal. The black rings around her eyes gave her a weary look. He was pretty sure that it was more than looks. When fighting inner demons like she did, it took a toll on you. He has been there himself.

“That is actually quite interesting. I wonder how that will transmit to other powers? Like mine,” Beth said. “I know what you are trying to do, what you are trying to achieve. It will not work.”

Milo sighed, but hid it from her. “Like I said, you are the clever sibling. Don’t worry about it. I will not force you out from this room or do anything you are not comfortable doing. But talking with me, that at least you can do. Please? Please.”

Beth put away the hand terminal and grabbed the room’s second chair. “Then we will talk.”

Yes! Step one. He had gotten through to her. It was a small step forward, but it was still a progression.

“The third deposit I have discovered shows itself when I try to move as fast as I can, while I am already fueling with blood,” Milo said. “This lets me believe that if I try to move even faster, provoking the function of the deposit, I will be able to tear into it.”

“I see in your eyes how much you marvel at the idea. But you need to understand the risks. These powers, we don’t know the limits of them or how the other deposits will be applied. What if you blow up when tearing into this one? Or what if you blow up the ship? We cannot know before we try. I just want you to step forward carefully,” Beth said. “But with that behind us, the science that supports the powers are cool. They are somehow anchored in reality. Meaning, the rules that construct them are logical and based in the real world.”

Milo chuckled. “You sound like a mother trying to keep her son from jumping into the deep end of the pool before he has learned to swim. I need to jump.”

“Well, if you calculate my age a certain way I might be almost fifty years old,” Beth said.

“You made a joke!” Milo said, almost rocking the chair too far back, he saved the balance just right before tipping over. “I know that you are feeling better, but you don’t have to say anything. I see it. It is alright. I have another thing to tell you. A spoiler of sorts, but I cannot keep my mouth shut. Birgitta and I have decided to fashion you a weapon. Your power lacks one thing: range. With this one simple trick all that hassle will be solved.”

“My fists are my weapons and they have proved themselves competent,” Beth said. “I leap faster and longer distances than any man before me. I don’t need a weapon.”

“You won’t say that when we present it to you, I promise you,” Milo said, his hand terminal chirped, Sam wanted him elsewhere. “Look at the time, I need to get going. Thank you for the conversation.”

“Stay safe.” Beth nodded.

-

“Just grab it!” Sam yelled and launched another battery in Milo’s general direction.

His fingers grasped onto the rectangular shaped metal box and they didn’t slip. He hugged the weighty thing on his chest.

“Why does it have to be so heavy?” Milo asked, panting from the exercise.

He turned the battery around in his hands. A pick me up would be nice. He found the sweetness easily and the passive attribute kicked in. The world slowed down around him, his mind darted across the battery’s circuits and containment field. It’s fuel cell vibrated. His body drank greedily on the electric energy. Nostrils cleared, mind accelerated, muscles felt refreshed and his motivation invigorated. The moment came to an end, the blood deposit sat distinct in his mind, but he didn’t tear into it. He let the sweetness slowly retreat and the added capacity leaked out.

Milo let out a sigh.

“I am not telling Claire that you drained another one of her batteries,” Sam said. “You have been draining external sources more and more lately. I wonder if this draining has the same affect on you as it has on soldiers who juice up with combat drugs. You show certain symptoms that suggest that, but these powers are strange.”

He shook his head. “Ahh. This is not drugs. It’s not the same thing. I am just powering up.”

Sam was not convinced. “I will talk with the Doc.”

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Was Sam thinking about putting his foot down? Before Milo put sounds into his counter argument, both their hand terminals chirped. Leo. Sam stepped out from his combat suit and Milo wiped his sweaty forehead.

“Leo, we are on our way,” Sam said, putting away the hand terminal. “Alright, let’s race back. On my go.”

“Are you really sure about that?” Milo said, feeling the sweetness flow down his tongue.

“Go!”

Sam shoved him to the side, making him crash into the wall. The Captain sprinted out the room. No holding back. Milo scrambled up on his feet and dashed after.

Milo would never catch Sam on normal human terms. He looked into his mind, some of the added capacity was still there. The blood deposit was distinct. He tore into it. Iron taste rushed into his mouth, pushing away the sweetness.

...Empowered. The conduit of excited electrons. The lightning storm brewed within him.

He ran forward, electrical tendrils snaking around his legs. His speed increased a bit, but not enough, he would not reach the bridge before Sam.

The third deposit.

Milo leaned into the sprint, willing himself to go faster, much faster. But the third deposit was not growing distinct, and the added capacity from the draining of the battery was still continuing to leak out.

Faster!

...Worn out. The capacity returned to normal levels. Milo came to a stop, leaning against the wall. Out of breath and out of mind. A headache bloomed behind his eyes.

“You alright?” Sam asked, coming back around the junction.

Milo shook his head. “I had it. Almost. I was just not strong enough.”

“Next time,” Sam said. “Come on, Leo wants us.”

Milo followed after his Captain.

Leo smiled wider than Milo had ever seen before. The old pilot sat in its seat and inspected a new star chart that he had projected onto the main view screen. Milo didn’t recognize any of the planetary features or star constellations, but that had never been his strong suit either, so it was no surprise.

“This is it, Capt’n,” Leo. “The best the house can offer.”

Sam moved forward and looked more carefully at the trajectories on the planets and asteroids. “Yeah, this might do and it is almost aligned with the alien sphere’s trajectory. Good hiding spots for the nukes and mines.“

Dr. Birgitta slumped over a console on the side of the bridge, not paying attention to them being there.

“And I have been thinking, Capt’n. Look at the distance and pattern of the other asteroids,” Leo said, zooming in. “Given a shootout, I could maneuver the Final Sight between and through them, like a dreadnought never can. We will have great cover, while being able to take potshots. This is the turf we needed.”

“Good work, Leo.” Sam craned his neck. “The railgun could be mounted here,” Sam said, pointing out a set of barren asteroids. “With a cache of munitions and fuel cells. We could park the ship here.”

Milo followed Sam’s gestures and finger pointing, as the Capt’n explained his analysis of the star chart. Would they actually be able to pull this one through? Sam sounded optimistic and Leo had not burst out with negative remarks.

“Birgitta, they liked the location,” Leo said. “How does it line up with your calculations?”

Milo had forgotten about that. They were going to accelerate asteroids and use them as weapons. A wild idea.

Sam stepped over to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “This looks great.”

“I know, right?” Birgitta said. “Look at these.”

New trajectories were drawn in the main view screen. The asteroids.

“Essentially, if one or two strikes their hull directly on, that will be a huge win for us and maybe enough to let us win entirely. Thus, I went for this strategy.” Birgitta rotated the view of the screen, showing a better angle of the asteroids’ trajectories. “A wide band of them, the widest we can create. I want to pepper this entire region of space. We cannot know that the enemy ship will be at a specific location.”

“But at least they are a big ship,” Milo said.

Sam sighed, shaking his head.

“Relative to us, yes. Relative to the rest of the celestial bodies in space, not so much,” Birgitta said. “This is it, Capt’n.”

Sam nodded. “Good work, people. You have done fine work. I think we will be able to pull this one off. But now the real work begins.”

-

“Mines away!” Leo yelled and initiated the dump.

The weaponized probes had their own embedded thrusters, thus they would be able to scatter and cover a larger area. Importantly, they would be able to alter their trajectories to match the enemy vessel.

Sam leaned forward. “Leo, you see that asteroid, way over there? Split the nukes between that asteroid and the planet. I will micromanage their placements before putting them in cold mode.”

“Nukes are leaving the tubes,” Leo said.

Half the nukes flew over to the asteroid, the other half flew to the planet.

Sam took over, his hands steered the deadly weapons with precision. Cracks and crevessaes that barely showed on the detailed charts came into view. The nukes were maneuvered into these, hidden from both scans and views.

“Take us to the nice looking asteroid over there, Leo,” Sam said and pointed at the star chart. “Blue, you are up.”

Milo nodded, stepping away from his console. “I know, I know.”

They had talked through the preparations thoroughly before, Sam could get nagging sometimes. Was the micro managing a fallout from the isolation and stress? The Captain had been at war before, dealt and been dealt by violence. But this was different. Now they were at conflict against the very thing Sam had protected and cherished all his time he had served in the Navy. That betrayal could put anybody off. Their situation would probably not improve for a long time, how would that affect his mood?

Milo’s vacuum suit stood ready, not the one Birgitta was building for him, that was still under construction. The vac suit stood still and calm, as a husk of a metal man. When his palm touched its back plate, cracks shot out and the surface flaked. The flakes folded away and he stepped into the suit. The suit actually had to constrict around his gut, since he was not as fat as last time he used it. It was hard to tell sometimes, because weight loss was a slow process and the result was not always clear. But when comparing the states after several weeks and even months had passed, the change was distinct. He smiled.

When Milo arrived at the airlock, Claire was already in her vac suit. Two drums of equipment stood beside her.

“You ready?” Claire asked. “One for me, one for you”

The railgun had been dismantled into four sections, each hooked into a safety line and the harness around each piece had small thruster packs. The airlock finished its cycle, the outer door slid open. He connected two of safety lines to his suit, and one at a time he pushed out the railgun pieces. Claire did the same. The safety lines grew taunt before the pieces came to a halt. Leo slaved the thrusters to his console and was able to control them. Milo grabbed the equipment drum hard and clenched his jaw.

“Here it comes, Milo, Claire,” Leo said.

The thrusters came online, pushing the railgun pieces forward. The tug that pulled at him was not comfortable. Living behind inertia meshing made you soft and the vac suits could only do so much.

The asteroid was black, quite a bit smaller than the Final Sight and impact craters from micro meteorites were scattered across its surface. Leo parked the four sections right in the depth of the deepest of the craters. This placement would offer great anchoring for the mount and added protection against incoming projectiles. But as noted in the battle plan, it would severely limit the railgun’s line of sight. The transport thrusters used to move the sections would do nicely if mounted on the right places around the asteroid. They would be able to rotate the entire asteroid on a whim, providing the line of sight the railgun needed.

Milo had been thinking about what Sam had said about the crew’s effect by the anxiety, stress and isolation. Maybe he should try to talk with them more? To see if anybody neared their individual breaking point. He could proactively work against these and then maybe, just maybe, their crew could hold together.

“Claire, how are you holding up?” Milo asked as he touched down on the hard surface. “From what I have gathered, your parents are housed back in Europe13. Is that correct?”

Claire placed the foundation section at the predetermined spot and started to bolt the anchors down. “Well, if you ask the Doc, he would have told you that I suffer from insomnia. A lack of sleep doesn’t really steady your hands for delicate work, a good thing that you are out here with me and performing those tasks. Why are you asking? Has the Capt’n put you up to this? He wants you to check me up?”

The sliver of anger in her voice was apparent. Maybe he was overstepping her personal boundaries.

“No, no. I was just thinking about something. We all left people behind and it is not easy,” Milo said, placing the auxiliary fuel cells in the pits they had dug. The railgun could not be fed electricity from the ship, out here on the asteroid, but it still required sufficient energy to function. These fuel cells were a great higher yield than the miniaturized batteries that he and Sam used for training. The railgun needed a lot of juice.

Claire pulled forward the second section. “And dishonored everything we stood for. Those people we left back home, they will never understand why we did it. That is the toughest bit. They will think we are the traitors and we are the ones that need punishment. Not Saif or his minions. My grandma will think I am a terrorist. That shakes my bones. They will never see or understand how rotten the whole world is underneath Saif’s boot.”

“That is how it works, I guess. That without the correct perspective it is easy to miss how horrible things really are,” Milo said, anchoring down the cables running between the fuel cells and the railgun, as sturdy as possible. Everytime the railgun fired an iron ball and when the enemy’s weapons fired against it, vibrations would permeate through the asteroid’s surface.

“At least your loved ones are still alive,” Milo said.

Claire turned to him. “I don’t know. But do you think we’ll ever be able to go back? Even if we win over Saif, do you think they will understand what we have done? Or else, I will need to face my grandma, trying to explain how we were the heroes in all of this.”

“Impossible to tell. Saif’s power works in mysterious ways,” Milo said. “Thank you for talking with me, Claire. No one in our small family should feel the need to be silent. Discussing difficult subjects with others can provide new and important perspectives. We all need it, to ease the burden on our shoulders. Especially given our unforgiven circumstances, if we cannot rely on each other, what do we have left?”

Claire bolted the weapon’s tube onto its mounting. “Thank you. It has been strange, all this. I have had some long conversations with Diego. Our crew is small and we need to endure with each other. Avoiding conflict will only lead to disaster. It is better to deal with it right away. Like me and Cap. I want to be more involved with the off-ship missions, I can fight too. But Capt’n doesn’t like it.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Well, to change the mind of a cold, stark rock will take time and patience. Persist and I think you will be alright. But you need to ask yourself, do you want to go with us? Once you have killed a man there is no going back. There will be repercussions, both mentally and physically, if you survive contact with the enemy,” Milo said, her confidence looked hurt and he felt bad about being so harsh. “Ha, Sam had this exact same talk with me before the escape. His famous lecture about violence and here I am preaching the same thing he did, sounding all mature and all. Be careful. It will affect you in ways you cannot imagine.”

“I know. I am not a little kid. I signed up for the Navy years ago, before you tripped into our ship. My tinkering with combat suits, weapons and reactor cores, which are the things that let men kill other men,” Claire said. “From my perspective I am as much a part of this killing as the person who uses my machines to do said killing.”

She had thought this through, Milo recognised and her stubbornness shone through. “If you come dressed in your combat suit, I have seen your new build in the workshop, I am sure Sam could not stop you even if he wanted to,” Milo said, it made her smile. “Do you remember when we replaced the railgun with the new one?”

Claire laughed. “It feels like an eternity ago. So much has changed. Much for the worse.”

“Ahh. Don’t be like that,” Milo said, seeing the communication’s array coming online on the railgun. “Leo, do you copy? Try to take control of the weapon.”

Its motions were smooth and silent in the vacuum of space. The ammunition boxes had been dug underneath the ground just besides the mounting, giving short feed lines to the tube. An iron ball moved inside the line and loaded into the tube. The weapon stood up from its mounting and Leo made it go through its movements. If anything broke during the action, there would be no time to adjust or repair it. They needed to get it right.

“It is looking good, Leo! We will finish up here and then you can pick us up,” Milo said.