Aspirant Training Center, New Prometheus

Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge

4454.2.5 Interstellar

Janus, Ivan, Lee, Xander, and Lira met the Promethean mutineers at the borehole-facing entrance to the aspirant training center. Security aspirants watched over them from the doorway, ready to let loose with stunners and gas grenades, while the mob—nearly eighty residents of the colony—looked on from a few meters away, ready to charge if their leaders were harmed.

As for the leaders themselves, Janus recognized Wilbegarth, a hydroponics worker; Dufresne, a biochemist who supervised a shift in environmentals; and Bennini, who was supposed to work for Elsbeth in the marketplace but was mostly a drunk. Then, there was Callie, maintenance supervisor, and knife in Janus’s heart.

“Janus,” Callie said.

“We couldn’t have talked about this at home?” Janus asked.

“We tried that,” Callie said. “You didn’t listen.”

Lira looked at Callie and Janus. “Please tell me this isn’t just about the two of you fighting.”

“It isn’t,” Dufresne said. “No disrespect to Callie here, but we don’t think the Invarian family should just be allowed to drag us into a war.”

Lira scoffed. “I wasn’t aware I’d been adopted, and Lee is here to represent the Hunters, who are all on our side of this if that wasn’t clear.”

“But not all of the aspirants are,” Bennini said, pointing to a few aspirant-suited protesters behind them.

That part had thrown Janus for almost as big of a loop as Callie’s defection. If they didn’t want to go to the Core, why did they volunteer for training?

“What are your demands?” Lira asked.

“Cancel the expedition,” Callie said.

“She was talking to the grownups,” Lee said.

Janus winced as Callie’s brows came together.

“Callie Invarian is one of us,” Wilbegarth said. He was an older man, not prone to excitement, and possessed of a certain dignity the others lacked. “If she’s old enough to hold a position of responsibility in maintenance, she’s old enough to speak.”

Callie looked at him gratefully, her temper temporarily defused. Janus clenched his jaw. Having her on their side lent them the legitimacy of their family name. How had they gotten to her?

“You’re one to talk, anyway,” Bennini said to Lee with a leer. “You’re just Invarian’s birthing vat.”

Lee didn’t get the chance to answer. Janus saw the look and heard the words directed at the mother of his child, and the punch was thrown before he even had time to think.

Bennini stumbled back with murder in his eyes, clutching his face, and the crowd surged forward.

“It’s all right!” Wilbegarth said, holding them back with a raised hand. “You all know Bill! He deserved it!”

There were some scattered laughs. New Prometheus was a small settlement. Everyone knew everyone, and Bill Bennini was good at stirring up trouble and not much else.

Wilbegarth turned back to them, glancing at Janus before addressing Lira. “Anything more than that, and I won’t be able to hold them back. You need to cancel the expedition.”

Lira looked at Janus.

“It’s out of the question,” Janus said. “The purgationists want us exiled or dead; the compartmentalists were this close to killing all of us on Irkalla.”

“All the more reason not to send a third of our people and all our security experts away.”

“They’ll come for us!” Janus said. “It’s not the first time. You all lost friends and family in Prometheus Base.”

“Yes, we did,” Dufresne said. “That’s why the people chose us. We know what it’s like being led down a road to destruction by Invarians. Your family doesn’t know when to quit.”

“I’m sorry,” Lira said, “but I agree with Janus. If we don’t do something to push the compartmentalist majority in the Consensus past the tipping point, they’ll recover. They’ve got a ten-percent overlap with purgationist voters. I know that may not mean much to you, but it’s a coalition we won’t survive.”

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“We will if we make peace with them,” Callie said. “You aspirants keep treating the factions like they’re single voting blocks, but they’re people. If we stop fighting them and stick to surviving, the compartmentalists won’t have a reason to come after us.”

“Is that what your boyfriend told you?” Lee asked.

“Her what?” Ivan said, speaking for the first time.

“Callie’s been sneaking off to a different settlement in the Reef more and more often lately. She told me it was to trade with the Cult, but I’m thinking it was more than that.”

Callie was blushing and furious at the same time.

Janus looked at her. “Callie, is this true? Did you do all this because some boy told you to?”

“He didn’t tell me to do anything!” Callie snapped. “I’ve just met the other side, and we don’t need to fight!”

“Regardless of how it happened,” Wilbegarth said, placing a hand on Callie’s shoulder, “we have an opportunity for peace, and we need to explore it.”

“There isn’t time,” Janus said, looking at Lira and the others for support.

“We’ll make time,” Wilbegarth said. “Lira Allencourt, you’ve served the colony well as its administrator, but the vote has been held in accordance with the colony charter. We would appreciate it if you would continue to coordinate New Prometheus’s operations, but a council of the people, represented here by us, will make the decisions going forward.”

***

Janus, Lee, Ivan, Lira, Syn, and Mick regrouped in Ivan’s office. Fury was curled up in a corner, and Xander had decided to take a nap against her warm side, so they had to be quiet, but there was palpable tension in the room.

“I’m sorry,” Syn said. “I was so focused on external attacks, I didn’t see the pattern until it was too late.”

“Not your fault,” Lira said.

“How much have we lost?” Janus asked.

“Most of it,” Lira said, sounding more exhausted than upset. “They control the security systems, administrative records, maintenance controls, and the colony accounts.”

“So, we’re broke,” Mick said.

“No,” Lira said. “I’m not insane. I loaned the colony our money, and we even get a revenue share of trade deals it financed, but most of it is tied up in transactions.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t have a collapse clause,” Lee said.

“What’s that?” Janus asked.

“It’s an escape hatch in case a dome fails,” Lee said. “Most Irkallan contracts have them.”

“Our counterparties in the Cult wouldn’t accept it,” Lira said. “Too much risk with us being a new colony and both the compartmentalists and the purgationists gunning for us.”

“Right,” Lee said. “So we can pull out, but we’ll get maimed in the process.”

Lira winced. “Yes. But I’d rather not think about that.”

Janus listened as the two of them brainstormed more options to get their credits back without giving most of them away in penalty clauses. Lira was the financial genius, and Lee’s people had spent over a thousand years on Irkalla having to get out of bad situations with their trade counterparties, but they were stuck. Lira had used every trick she’d known to leverage their personal funds to start a two-hundred-person colony, and that meant their credits were tied up in knots.

“Let’s focus on what we do have,” Janus said.

“We still have the sub,” Lira said. “That’s in your name. We still have the Cult ronin mariners, about thirty aspirants—”

“Twenty-seven that I’d trust,” Ivan said.

Lira nodded. “Twenty-seven aspirants and the ten colonists who trained to run the ship.”

“All ten of them?” Janus said, surprised. “Why so many when we lost half the aspirants?”

“They signed up because they wanted to see what was under the ice,” Mick said, and Lira nodded.

“As for the aspirants,” Ivan said, “most of them are young and doing it to protect their families. Hard to keep your motivation when your family is against it.”

Janus felt grief twist his expression, and he dug his thumbnail into the side of his index finger. “I just don’t understand how Callie could have done this to us. Everything I’ve done is to keep her safe.”

“Hah!” Ivan said.

“What?” Janus said, genuinely surprised Ivan wasn’t as mad and upset as he was.

Ivan looked at him across the table with more life in his eyes than Janus had seen there in years. “You don’t see why I’d think a relative turning on you after you saved their life might be funny?”

“It’s not the same.”

“The void it isn’t,” Ivan said, sitting back, and his mirth took on a bitter edge.

Janus looked at his uncle incredulously. “You caused all of this. You got our parents killed.”

“No,” Ivan said flatly, crossing his arms.

“You called in the Cult! Prometheus Base was destroyed because of you!”

Ivan shrugged. “I’ll take that. Didn’t think you were still naive enough to think I was the only one keeping the Cult informed, but I’ll shoulder those deaths. I made the wrong call. But I didn’t kill your parents. I was going to get them out, the same as you and Callie, but they refused to come. Anika was my sister for twenty-five years before you were even born, boy. You don’t even know what you lost.”

Janus felt like a trilith was sitting on his chest. Ivan’s eyes were red and shiny. It was the most he’d said on the topic in two years and the most emotional Janus had seen him while sober.

“And this is why we love ’em and leave ’em,” Lee said.

“S’truth,” Mick said, fist-bumping his fellow Hunter.

“Let’s not go there,” Lira said with a wince. “What are we going to do about the expedition?”

Janus took a deep, steadying breath, willing himself to take his eyes off Ivan instead of lunging across the desk, and said, “Does anybody think this happy pipedream of giving peace a chance is going to work?”

“Nah,” Mick said.

“Not a chance,” Ivan said.

Syn winced. “It could last long enough that we won’t be ready to leave.”

“We?” Janus asked. “I thought you were staying.”

Syn shrugged. “To protect this lot? They’re revolting.”

“Nice,” Mick said, patting her shoulder with his cybernetic arm.

“Thanks,” Syn said.

“I’ll go too,” Ivan said. “We can ask Elsbeth. There will be others who will join, now that we’re short—people we’d disqualified because they weren’t up to the physical standards or because they were vital to the colony.”

Janus looked at his uncle. Running the aspirant training program had brought some of the old Ivan back. He was fit and mostly sober, and Janus couldn’t afford to turn anyone down. “Thanks.”

Lee looked at him expectantly.

“I’ll think about it,” Janus told her. “Really. But only as a last resort.”

Lee frowned, but she nodded.

And there were other last resorts Janus could consider. Nikandros had told him he had qualified people who would jump at the chance to go to the Core. That would mean having a greater share of the crew under the Cult architect’s control, effectively giving him control of the expedition. Was that a better risk to take than exposing Lee to unseen dangers below the surface of Lumiara? And if Callie and the Prometheans were going to hand New Prometheus to the compartmentalists, were they all better off below the ice?