Outcasts of Gideon

Fellowship : Part 1

Kishan was dreaming of home again. It was the one place in his life he'd ever thought of in that way. It was after his mother died, his early teens, a time alone with his father.

In his dream, he was in the room filled with discarded electronic equipment. There was a small, round window near the corner that gave view to the landscape outside. It was a gray silence offering a foreground to the enormous ringed planet in the near distance. If he sat still long enough, he could watch Thetys make its way across the massive planet it orbited. From behind the gas giant, he could see Rhea and Iapetus emerge. Even Titan would appear every three or four days. In this dream, Enceladus spewed dust and ice from its southern pole. He could see its trail far clearer than was ever possible in his youth.

The building sat just to the north of the crater Oebalus, a wide impression in the moon's surface. In his dream, he saw the jagged rim of the crater. It was a frame for the dancing planet and its many moons. The inner rings were hardly visible save for the shadow they cast across Saturn's surface.

It was a place he visited often in his dreams. He hadn't been back to that moon since the death of his father. It probably hadn't changed much since then, but his dream didn't reflect any change at all. The small, round window. The room full of equipment. The antiseptic smells and muffled sounds of his past.

In his dreams, he usually tinkered endlessly with the equipment. He crossed wires and spliced chips. Cobbling together the remnants of completely disparate devices, he invented new ones. Some of it even worked, at least in his dreams.

His father was always there, hovering in the background. Snippets of their conversations echoed in those rooms. They talked about history, philosophy, politics. He tinkered while the words filled the darkness of that far-away place.

These dreams of home rarely included his mother. When he dreamed of her, it was usually of an earlier time. Fleeting wisps of Martian dust. Yet this was that rare instance when those periods of his youth mingled. He tinkered, the gray silence keeping a watchful eye on his progress. She sat at a distance, not speaking. He wanted her to speak. There were things he wished she would say. He didn't know what they were, a memory lost.

In this dream, she began to speak. He couldn't hear her. The words evaporated from her lips before he could make them out. Then they didn't evaporate, but they were the words of someone else. Deeper. Gruffer.

"We're through the bubble."

Kishan rubbed his eyes. He shook his head to clear it. They had traversed the empty. He couldn't tell how far out they were, but a ringed planet was on the vid screen before him. "Is that Saturn?"

"Yes, Saturn."

As his head cleared, the long night on Phaethon returned. He had dreamed of Dione as the small vessel slowed its approach to the empty. They'd pierced the bubble while he slept. In his slumber, he sat among a sea of unexplored technology. Awake, he was back in the Saturn Terminus, a region of space that filled the dreams of a younger Kishan.

"About 3 million klicks out," said the pilot.

The man had an accent of sorts, one that Kishan couldn't place. He'd accepted the ride without asking questions. He believed that any delay might have been dangerous, so he went along. It might have been better to know where he was going. Now he did.

"This is where intel puts shuttle. We think Damasos vessel went to another system. We have time on them."

"Who are we following? Who's on the shuttle?"

"Was hijacked with owner. Grant Lackey. He carries our package."

Kishan pictured the leikela shining in the Phaethonian night. That was his quarry. It might also be his only means of survival. Several things still bothered him about the night before. "So they came to Sol. What do we know about that?"

"Just gave you all I have." A wry smile crept across the pilot's face. "Was told you were the smart one to figure it out."

"What about fuel? Do we know how much they have?"

"Probably light. Not sure. If Lackey is running, might have more."

Even if the shuttle had limited fuel, the leikela could solve that problem. That was only true if they understood how to use it. Kishan wasn't sure he understood it enough, but the potential had to be there.

He scanned his surroundings for the first time. The flight deck accommodated a crew of four. He'd climbed past cramped bunk spaces when he boarded, so he assumed that was standard crew size. As far as he could tell, it had little cargo space. The ship's size and design implied high G burns. That might come in handy should the Damasos find them. If he needed to use it in an extended escape, he'd have to consider fuel options. The leikela might serve him there as well. "We can assume they won't have much. It's a shuttle, so it's not built for high G either." The pilot didn't respond. "If they know what they're carrying, we can assume they're looking for a buyer. Titan is the best market."

"If they didn't plan on Titan, they don't have the fuel." The pilot programmed in coordinates.

"Right, so adrift. That will make them easier to catch."

The pilot engaged main engines. The sudden thrust pressed them into their seats. Kishan reached for the panel before him and selected the long distance scanner. He searched the space before them. "How much lead did they get?"

"Hours. Three or four."

Kishan adjusted his search pattern. He anticipated a short burst by the shuttle. It wasn't likely they landed in the same place, but heading to Titan gave him a general trajectory. "They didn't think this through, did they?"