Living in a place without sun or moon, they had developed circadian rhythms from the humans of Cruithne. The birds still had to sleep and eat and play, and did so based on the best times to get food and entertainment from the tourists, cargo ships and TSF detachments that arrived and left every day.
The other parrots didn’t understand, and Crash felt himself sinking deeper into his central problem: He was alone. Something as simple as object permanence, while not completely lost on the parrots, was difficult to explain when he was standing right in front of them. They didn’t understand why he wanted to leave, and he had realized he couldn’t make them understand.
In the end, he had stretched his neck and flapped his wings and flown away down the corridor that would take him to Ngoba’s hanger where the ship waited. Crash was a bit of a celebrity in this level of Cruithne and people walking back from the docks shouted and laughed at the sight of his red tail. He squawked in return, sending out flashes of amusement over the general Link channel.
Ngoba had told him once that if Cruithne had wanted a mascot, they would gladly adopt Crash’s image. At first, Crash hadn’t understood what his friend meant. Why would they want one parrot to represent all the people of Cruithne? Researching the word mascot had brought up images of people in suits dancing around at sporting events. Did Ngoba mean they would eventually use his skin as a ceremonial dancing suit?
Ngoba had found that idea endlessly amusing, especially when Crash asked: <Aren’t I much too small?>
In the end, it was only at the sight of a human wearing a shirt with an icon on it, that he understood. Then he had laughed along with Ngoba.
Flying alone through the corridor, Crash sensed a flutter on his Link, and looked back to see he was being followed by a wave of the black ravens and then another of grey parrots, and even the starlings, jays, pigeons, sparrows and other birds that lived in and around Night Park.
The humans, shocked at first, realized that some form of migration seemed to be taking place. They pointed and stared. Crash heard the questions on the general Link channel and wondered if he should let the humans know he was leaving.
<Crash,> a teenage girl called. She must have only recently received her Link. <Are you putting on a parade?>
That made him smile to himself. He clacked his beak and glided for several meters. <Yes,> he answered. <We’re putting on a parade. Do you like it?>
<It’s wonderful,> the girl said. <I’ve never seen so many animals in one place.>
<Where were you born?> Crash asked.
Children were rare, something of an anomaly among all the humans going about their business. Cruithne probably saw more children than other places in Sol, due to the bazaar becoming a tourist destination.
Children weren’t conducive to space travel. The still-recent history of illegal trafficking for things like bio-experimentation, had created a sense of dread whenever someone saw a child outside normal population centers, a sort of tragedy in motion. Crash had often observed the odd way certain humans viewed other people’s children, as if they needed to protect them, often watching them with trepidation. Some humans seemed to see children as a form of living hope walking down the corridor.
<I was born on the Cho, but my parents do the run from Europa to Mars now and then. Sometimes to Luna or High Terra. They brought me here just to see you.>
That surprised Crash. He sent her a smile, and enjoyed her warm mental response. <What’s your name?> he asked.
<I’m Londa.>
<I have to go, Londa. But it was very nice to meet you.>
<You too, Crash.>
He imagined her as one of the hundreds of people staring up at the parade, laughing or simply amazed.
He brought the birds around, skimming pipework along the corridor’s upper edge. Behind him, the ravens cawed and cackled as the other birds sang to each other. It was a wonderful, messy, un-ignorable noise.
Maybe there’d be no changing.
* * * * *
Crash perched on the back of the Furious Leap’s captain’s chair, tilting his head to study Ngoba’s black hair, noting the differences between the curly locks and the curve of the support piping of his friend’s EV suit. The Furious Leap had left Cruithne space without incident, and they were both enjoying the sight of the lumpy asteroid receding in the holodisplay.
<How do you like your room?> Ngoba asked.
<It’s very big for a single parrot, as far as rooms on ships go,> Crash said. <But it’s not as big as the aviary on the Hesperia Nevada.>
<You remember that place, huh?>
<I remember very well,> Crash said. <I remember the tree and the wide spaces, as well as the laboratories full of incubation equipment. I hope it’s all still intact >
Ngoba faked a shiver. <Mad science—figuring out how to implant AIs in humans using little grey parrots as test subjects. It breaks my heart to think about it, but our friendship wouldn’t be possible if you hadn’t endured that torture. You wouldn’t have access to all the world’s knowledge without those heartless bastards. The ravens wouldn’t be able to crack jokes at tourists back home without the Hesperia Nevada. Without those labs, I would never have felt a parrot smiling in my mind.>
<I can’t smile anyway.>
<You smile as well as anyone else. I see it now when you twist your head—either that, or you’re secretly mocking me all the time. But I like to imagine it’s smiling. Honestly, I know you aren’t mocking me because you share your emotions over the Link. On a side note, it continues to amaze me that we share similar emotions at all. That seems one of the amazing things about the Earth and her various animal species. We all experience joy and pain and love…or our versions of them.>
<It’s not hard to figure out,> Crash said, abruptly aware of his parrot pragmatism now that Ngoba was dreaming out loud as humans did. <It feels good to smile. The problem is understanding why you do it. For a long time, I thought you were trying to protect your face. Or that it was some sort of feeding behavior.>
<That makes no sense at all,> Ngoba said.
<It makes perfect sense. Strong winds might blow seeds into your teeth, so you show your teeth to catch those delicious seeds, and maybe some insects. That makes perfect sense to me. If I had teeth like yours, I would gladly fly around, smiling, hoping to catch some bug snacks.>
<I suppose it’s basically what whales do.>
<Humans are just air whales,> Crash said.
Ngoba raised an eyebrow. <Are you saying I’ve gotten soft in my old age?>
Across the command deck, a lean woman named Kirre Ters—mercenary, accountant and currently ship’s pilot—leaned back in her seat, nodding to Ngoba. “Everything’s laid in,” she said. “We’re clear for acceleration. Ready to activate the flight plan.”
She pushed her hands back through her short brown hair, which had been shaved a month earlier. Since Crash had met her, she’d been complaining about how much her ‘long hair’ got in her way.
<You want to stay up here for the acceleration, or head back down to your quarters?> Ngoba asked Crash. <You might be more secure down there.>
<I can hang onto a latch up here as well as I can in my rooms,> Crash said, craning his neck to study Kirre.
<Well,> Ngoba said, brushing the front of his stylish EV suit, <I don’t have a delicate way of putting this, so I’ll just get it out there. I don’t want you getting any mess on my suit.>
<I’ve learned to control myself quite well,> Crash said, <which you’ve seen many, many times in your office. I don’t understand why you keep making jokes about my bathroom habits. It’s something that confuses me.>
Ngoba grinned. <I think that’s just the place where monkeys and birds diverge. Birds never had a way to use their body’s waste to a comedic effect.>
<That’s not true,> Crash said. <From our perspective, humans all have targets on the tops of their heads.>
<Now that’s just disgusting.>
With the course laid in, and the crew secured in their s
tations, Kirre lit the main torch.
In the holodisplay, the spinning rock that was Cruithne receded in a breath, and the display shifted to show statistics tracking fuel, distance, velocity and other ship’s systems.
The g-forces weren’t immobilizing, and Ngoba opened his hands so Crash could hop down to nestle on his chest, wrapped in his friend’s warm palms. Under the increasing pressure of acceleration, they both fell deeply asleep.
When the burn completed, and g-forces had leveled out, Crash was awakened by Ngoba who was using a free hand to unstrap himself from the captain’s chair. As Crash stretched his wings, Ngoba stood and raised him to his shoulder in true pirate fashion.
“How about some espresso?” Ngoba asked. “Kirre, you want some espresso? I’m pulling.”
The pilot didn’t look up from her station as she shook her head, engrossed in some report on the display.
<Kirre runs on pure irritation at the world,> Ngoba told Crash. <She doesn’t need caffeine.>
<I can hear you,> Kirre said. <If you’re going to talk shit, do it better and don’t use the general comms.>
Ngoba chuckled as he left the command deck. Crash rotated his head to watch Kirre as they left. She had stripped off the top of her EV suit so it hung from her waist harness, her muscled shoulders visible beneath a faded t-shirt.
He had been trying to determine if Ngoba and Kirre were going to mate, as Ngoba once had with Fugia. Humans didn’t appear to mate for life like parrots did. Or at least, Ngoba didn’t. Despite their banter, Ngoba and Kirre worked as colleagues, even though the syndicate boss was in charge. It wasn’t Ngoba’s style to dictate to people. He didn’t have to; everyone wanted to please him, even if, like Kirre, they would never admit the fact.
Crash enjoyed the clicking of Ngoba’s magboots on the deck as they took the short walk to the galley. Once they were out in the corridor, Crash kicked off Ngoba’s shoulder and floated ahead of him, spreading his wings for balance.
Flying in low-g was a different skill than truly flying. It was more long-hopping with style.
While Crash spread his wings out of habit, he didn’t need them except to make small adjustments in his momentum. He did his best to stay upright, since that was how Ngoba was walking, but Crash could easily roll and float upside down, quickly shifting to the new arrangement of deck and bulkheads within the corridor. Adjusting to changing horizons was one area where birds out-performed humans by far. Crash’s spins would have left a human vomiting in the corner.
<Stop enjoying yourself so much,> Ngoba said. <You’re twittering on the Link like a little kid on a rollercoaster.>
<This is fun,> Crash said. <Why wouldn’t I want to laugh?>
Ngoba rubbed his face. The nap seemed to have made him more tired. <Let me get some coffee in me, then I’ll laugh alongside you.>
<Are you all right?> Crash asked. <You seem to be in a much worse mood now than when we launched.>
<I got an update while we were leaving,> Ngoba said. <There’s activity on Vesta. We’re doing our best to scan the surface now, but there’s a lot of interference. Everyone in Sol seems to be looking at that asteroid. At the same time, someone or something appears to be jamming everyone’s ability to look. So while Vesta used to be a junkyard, now it’s a twinkling blob in space that everyone can see but can’t see.>
<I thought no one cared about Vesta?>
<Well, twelve hours ago, I would’ve told you that Vesta was a trash heap in an interesting location, caught between Psion and the rest of humanity. But it seems that someone has moved to take control of the trash heap just because they can.>
<Do we know if it’s Psion or the Sol Alliance?> Crash asked.
<If I were a betting man, and I am, I would say it was the Alliance. All the noise in the Assembly has been getting louder and louder, so they sound like a bunch of your ravens calling each other. When people get that riled up, they need to do something to blow off steam, and there’s nothing better than a little military action to expend all that energy.>
<Isn’t that a huge waste of resources?> Crash asked.
<Of course,> Ngoba said. He laughed. <That’s the point.>
Crash bobbed his head, filled with new worry. <What are we going to do then? Are we still going?>
<Of course, we’re going,> Ngoba said. He rubbed his hands together. <There is no better place to be to take advantage of the situation than right in the middle of two armies smashing each other’s noses. Opportunity in chaos, my friend.>
They reached the galley and Crash floated to one of the chairs to perch. He preened his chest feathers as Ngoba clicked over to the coffee machine and pulled himself an espresso.
Grumbling about the erratic gravity and its effect on his beverage, Ngoba sniffed at the vapor escaping the machine and then walked to the table with a tiny cup sheltered in his hands.
Setting down the cup, he unlocked the chair and slid it out, dropping heavily into the seat. Ngoba hung his face over the coffee to sniff deeply from its curling fumes.
<Oh, that’s helping just a little bit,> he said.
<Does war on Vesta mean bad things for Cruithne too?> Crash asked. His mind was spinning with previous examples of war fallout from human history, but he wanted to hear Ngoba’s opinion.
Ngoba shook his head. <In most cases, I’d say it would be good. Back when Cruithne was all piracy and crime, it would mean years of fights, scores, paydays and murder. But the spin’s changed in the last thirty years. You and your friends have brought a whole new flavor of character to Cruithne. Families. Legit business people. People have put down roots, built lives. I would hate for something to come along and pull up those roots after we’ve taken so long and been so careful to get them to grow.>
Crash bobbed his head understanding the plant analogy very well, but it only reinforced in his mind the need for them to go to Vesta and find the Hesperia Nevada.
<We have to find the ship,> Crash said. <We need their equipment. I need to be able to put down roots for my kind too.>
<We’ll get there, my friend,> Ngoba said. <I promise you that.>
Crash hated that he didn’t quite believe Ngoba Starl. His friend had never let him down, but Crash had never asked so much of him before. Sometimes the man’s limitless optimism seemed naïve, like he was daring the universe to smash him.
Ngoba opened his eyes and looked directly at Crash. <I’ve been thinking about this problem, my friend. The Hesperia Nevada is only one part of the solution. Once we get you these incubators, and the means to uplift more of your kind, it still doesn’t protect you from this dangerous world. If I’m not around, who’s going to look out for you? Not that I don’t love you, because you know that I do, but this world is a dangerous place.>
Crash tilted his head, blinking. <Humans are strange,> he said. <I never met Cara, but you’ve told me so much about her and Lyssa. I think they would help us if I asked.>
<Cara Sykes? She’s missing. Disappeared from the light of the sun.>
<Fugia would help us.>
<Fugia is selfish but, yeah, I imagine she would. I don’t know that she would want you to stay on Cruithne. She’d want to hide you away like a byte of her precious data.>
Ngoba rose to fight the machine again. This time he filled two of the tiny cups, then poured them into a single mug and caressed the coffee with steamed milk. He poured the espresso between containers several times, forcing Crash to tilt his head as he watched. The strange ritual was finished when Ngoba brought a wide mug back to the table with a delicate leaf shape in its surface foam. He raised the cup to his lips and sipped, sighing.
Crash raised a claw and picked at his ear. <I don’t want to leave Cruithne. It’s our home.>
Ngoba gave him a solemn nod. <I know, my friend. I’m not suggesting you should live anywhere else, or th
at I would ever want you to. But I want you to be safe.>
<Humans on Cruithne might be unpredictable, but I think they would protect us.>
<As my friend Andy Sykes liked to say: Hope is not a plan.> Ngoba sipped his coffee and attempted to smile.
<Hope is not meant to be a plan. Hope is what makes plans work.>
Ngoba laughed sadly at that. He nodded.
<Did I tell you the joke about the Psion AI who walked into a bar?> he asked.
DUE TO THE NATURE OF MY TRAINING, IT’S DIFFICULT FOR ME TO REMEMBER
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: High Orbit
REGION: Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Travel in a military shuttle: Fourth Class.
Travel strapped to a missile: Sixth Class.
Travel in a general service shipping container: Seventh Class, maybe.
Suspended in cargo netting, Ty tried to imagine worse methods of travel than the current situation. The whole mental exercise was moot, really, because in the military there was no concern for comfort. There was getting from point A to point B in the most expeditious manner possible. If that method did not involve using his leather personnel carriers, i.e. feet, that was just a bonus.
He dangled among what appeared to be plas bags of plant material, covered in ice crystals, which served to remind him that without his combat EV suit, he’d be dead.
Manny hung across from him in a similar bit of netting, arms spread and head angled like a scarecrow. They both wore combat EV suits that provided light armor and enhanced communications, though they wouldn’t stand up to much more than human-portable weaponry. For now, the suit’s main purpose was keeping them alive in the freezing container.
The only lighting in the space was from their suits, which created creepy shadows. Stacks of crates in all sizes sat mag-locked to the decking, creating valleys of darkness. Ty tried not to think about the lock systems failing. The place reminded him of an ancient vid of a haunted house. A ghost was going to step from the shadows at any moment.