“Can I help you, old man?” Sergeant Weatherly challenged.
“You look like a soldier,” the old man stated with suspicion, as he looked him up and down. “The only soldiers I know are the Takar.” The old man looked Weatherly and Mendez over before continuing. “Are you Takar?” he asked, a trace of hatred in his voice.
Sergeant Weatherly could tell that the old man was trying to bait him. “No,” he answered without missing a beat. “But I’m pretty sure I’ve killed a few,” he added, a smile creeping onto his face.
The old man squinted at Sergeant Weatherly for several seconds, a grin finally breaking through his stern gaze. He laughed openly, spitting onto the deck. “I like you.”
“Well, that just makes my day, it does,” the sergeant answered.
The ship continued to rise in altitude as it streaked away from the spaceport. As it continued to accelerate, the turbulence became more severe. It wasn’t as bad as it had been during their descent, but it was still a pretty rough ride. Mendez looked out the window nearest him and saw three ships forming up on their starboard side. Two of them appeared to be small cargo shuttles, while the third one was equipped with some sort of an open scoop under its belly.
“Who the hell are they?” Mendez asked no one in particular.
“Relax, them’s ours,” the old man informed him, a puzzled look on his face. “First time in the rings, boy?”
“You might say that,” Mendez admitted. “What’s that little ship for?”
“That’s the harvester,” the old man explained. “Scoops up rock and ice from the rings and brings it in to be processed.”
Mendez watched as the little ship danced about the others, bobbing in between them and maneuvering around from once side to the other. “What’s wrong with that guy?”
“Oh, that’s just Josh, showing off again. That boy couldn’t fly a straight line if his life depended on it!”
The nose on the ship began to pitch up, as her engines began to scream louder, accelerating them up and out of the little moon’s thick atmosphere. A few moments later, the shaking began to subside as the air thinned and they entered the blackness of space once more.
The five of them continued to stroll down the crowded street, weaving in and out of the surging crowds as they made their way past the produce merchants. Nathan felt more than one person’s glance linger on their group a little longer than he thought normal, which made him a bit apprehensive.
“I get the feeling we kind of stick out in the crowd,” he whispered to Jalea.
“No more than any other visitor to Haven,” she insisted. “Most of the shoppers are residents of this world. It is rare that an off-worlder shops the street markets here. Most of them don’t even come to the surface. They just hire through proxy.”
“I would think a crew would want to leave their ship, even if only for a few hours,” he offered. “Even if just to stretch their legs and get some fresh air.”
“Some do. But most would not consider the air of Haven to be fresh,” Jalea smiled.
“Yeah, I’d have to agree with them on that point,” Jessica said from behind. “Does it always smell like a fungus factory around here?”
“Ah yes, the molo. It is pungent. Especially during the harvest.”
“Captain? I vote next time we don’t come during the harvest,” Jessica said.
“I’ll make a note of it,” he promised. “Why is this molo so popular?”
“It is one of the few plants that continues to grow during the long darkness. The molo does quite nicely in the long, damp nights.”
“That explains all the greenhouses we saw on the way in,” Nathan added, stopping to examine an odd- looking piece of fruit on one of the vendor’s display tables.
“Yes. Most other food is grown in such facilities,” Jalea admitted. She picked up the fruit and pulled it apart, offering a piece to each of them to taste. “It is more difficult and requires considerable energy. That makes it more expensive to purchase as well. This is why the people here eat so much molo. It is cheaper. Most of the food grown in the greenhouses is sold to the ships that ply the rings. It is one of the many reasons this world will never fully develop. Had it not been for the riches of the rings, this moon would never have been reformed.”
“What do you mean by reformed?” Nathan asked, as he chewed his small sample of the strange, purple fruit. It was slightly bitter, with just a touch of sweetness to it. It reminded him of a grape, but with a really chewy texture.
“Haven was not always capable of sustaining life,” Jalea explained. “The atmosphere was too thin, and the composition of gases was not correct.”
“This world, it was terraformed?” Vladimir asked, a bit of excitement in his voice.
“I am not familiar with this word,” Jalea apologized as she indicated to the vendor that she wished to purchase a few pieces of the purple fruit.
“It means to make Earth-like,” Nathan explained.
“I have never been to Earth,” Jalea said. “But I believe the term is correct in this case.” She pulled out a few credit chips and paid the vendor for the pieces of fruit.
“It was tried on a few fringe worlds long ago. But we do not know if it was successful,” Vladimir added, as he ate one of the pieces of fruit.
“I know of several worlds that have been created in this way, and with great success,” Jalea assured them. “However, Haven was not one of those successes.”
“How so?” Nathan asked. “It seems pretty successful to me.”
“It is true, it is habitable. And since that was the original goal, then in that sense it was a successful reformation. But because of the long nights, it can support only the most meager of existence, without the aid of substantial infrastructure. As you know, such infrastructure is expensive.”
“Then why reform it in the first place?” Jessica asked.
“I suppose they thought it was cheaper in the long run than operating an orbital facility. But of this, I cannot be certain.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Nathan commented.
“As I said, I cannot be certain. Nevertheless, the stigma attached to Haven has made it an undesirable destination for most people. As you have probably surmised, it seems to collect the least favorable residents.”
“What do you mean… least favorable?” Nathan asked.
“Let’s just say that no one comes to Haven by choice, as much as they do by necessity. And if they do come by choice, it is for a very compelling reason.”
Ensign Kaylah Yosef sat at her console on the bridge. Although originally a science officer, she had been serving as the sensor officer ever since they lost more than half of their skeleton crew during the events of their first few jumps. Since then she had been working eighteen-hour days, leaving her station only for trips to the head. After nearly a week of staring at mind-numbing sensor displays, she longed to perform a task that was even slightly science related.
As usual, she was watching the various plots of the countless ships flying about the Haven system. Most of them were small ships, cargo shuttles she assumed, that traveled to and fro between the host ships and Haven. The only reason for monitoring all of the traffic was to alert the commander when one of them appeared to be of interest and warranted a transfer to the tactical station for more precise tracking.
Whenever something on her display moved, she would check its calculated trajectory to see if it would pass near them. As a small group of ships suddenly changed course, the course projections appeared, indicating they were on an intercept course with the Aurora
Kaylah straightened up in her seat. “Commander, I’ve got four ships on an intercept trajectory with us.”
“Where are they coming from?” Cameron asked as she stepped up next to Ensign Yosef’s console.
“They came from Haven, sir.” Kaylah touched the slowly moving icon on the screen that indicated the lead ship in the approaching formation. In a smaller window to the right of the main tracking window, a monochrome line drawing of the selected ship appeared, with all the information the system had to offer on the vessel listed neatly below the image. “One of them matches the profile of Tobin’s ship.”
“Is there any way to be certain?” Tobin’s ship was undoubtedly not the only one of its kind in the area, she
