The Last Hour of Gann

Nicci shuffled off to one side, looking slightly relieved now that the situation was being handled by a person and in a ma

“Good morning,” he said pleasantly. “I’m Steven Fisch, the docking coordinator. How can I help?”

“She doesn’t like her assigned—”

“I’m handling it, Scott,” said Fisch, still pleasantly and without looking at him. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“My sister and I signed up for a five-year contract,” said Amber, presenting her thumb for him to scan, which he did. “And I was told we’d be stationed together for the flight and at the colony.”

“Mm-hm. And it looks like you’ve both been assigned to beds in the family housing unit.”

“Right, on different floors and different, um, letters. That’s not acceptable to me,” said Amber as Nicci sidled up closer to her. “I’m not looking for trouble, but I was told we’d be together and I kind of want what I was promised.”

“I understand.”

“We don’t have anything to do with the bed assign—”

“I’m handling it, Scott,” said Fisch again, not quite as pleasantly as before. He pushed a few buttons on his digireader. “It looks like you waited for the last minute before signing on with us, Miss Bierce. And Miss Bierce,” he added, with a nod to Nicci, who nodded nervously back at him. “I’m afraid the group units in family housing filled up months ago. There’s nothing left except singles and frankly, I’m a little surprised you got beds there at all. It’s just like any big event, Miss Bierce. These are the best seats in the house and after a certain date, you just don’t find two of them together. I’m sure the recruiters made you all kinds of promises to get you, but they don’t have anything to do with you once you’re on board and they shouldn’t have made you any promises at all.”

“I realize this seems like a petty problem to you,” Amber began.

Crewman Scott uttered one of those huffy little breaths that snotty people liked to use when they didn’t quite dare to laugh out loud. Amber was willing to overlook it this time, but Fisch’s face went cold.

“Excuse us for just a moment, please,” he said, and took Scott aside.

Amber couldn’t hear anything that was said and couldn’t hazard any guesses to judge by Fisch’s broad and rather bland face, but she waited and watched Scott’s ears turn red with a faint sense of satisfaction. In less than a minute, Fisch was back, smiling again.

“I apologize for the interruption, please go on. A petty problem…?”

“We’ll both be in Sleep,” said Amber. “I get it. We won’t be conscious, we won’t be lying there missing each other for years, we won’t miss anything at all. But we’ve been checking in for three hours already. I’ve got no reason to expect to check out in less time. And yeah, it may only be a few hours, but it’ll be a few hours on another planet, for God’s sake, and I want my sister with me.”

“Please,” said Nicci.

Fisch glanced at her and his eyes lingered. When he looked back at Amber, he seemed somewhat less politely pleasant and more sincerely thoughtful.

“Isn’t there anything you can do?” asked Amber. “We don’t have to be in family housing. We just want to stay together.”

He hmmmed again and checked with his digireader, tapping the stylus through several screens before frowning at her. “I think we could find a way to accommodate you, Miss Bierce, but you need to understand that once you’re confirmed to a bed, those may be your living quarters for quite a long time after we arrive.”

“We know.”

“The family units are much larger and, honestly, far superior in terms of comfort and entertainment purposes. The general housing mods are pretty much your beds, some public showers and a cafeteria. There’s no comparison to family housing. To prison, maybe, but not to family housing. And signing you off on a corporate mod or a suite or anything like that is simply out of the question, so if that’s what you were hoping…”

“General housing works just fine if we’re together.”

Fisch tapped his stylus against the top of his reader and glanced at Nicci. “Miss Bierce?”

Nicci stepped back, holding her case in front of her like a shield against his attention. “I…I guess. I don’t know. Amber?”

“Please,” she said.

“All right,” said Fisch, in that rising, sighing, I-wash-my-hands-of-this way that people use when they think you’re making, if not the biggest mistake of your life, at least the one people will be bringing up for the next ten years to embarrass you. “Scott, come over here, please. Gen-Pop hasn’t been boarded yet, so we’re just going to take two beds in the women’s dorm and bump them up to family housing, then put the Bierces in their place. See how I did that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Fisch sighed. “Scott, for God’s sake, relax. Mr. Fisch will do just fine. Did you see what I did?”

“Yes, um…yeah.”

“Okay, it’s probably not going to be the last time, so do the best you can with it and try to remember that these people are not the enemy.”

Scott’s ears pinked. “Yes, sir. Mr. Fisch.”

“Good. I’ll take over here for a bit. Why don’t you help these ladies with their cases and get them settled in their beds?”

Pink deepened into red. “Um…sure. I could do that. I don’t mind.” He turned stiffly to Amber, hesitated, and then turned away and took Nicci’s things.

She could have let it go. She should have let it go.

Amber cleared her throat and held out her duffel bag.

Scott did his best to stare her down, but Fisch was standing right there and now he was watching pretty closely too. He took the strap out of Amber’s outstretched hand and slung it over his shoulder with as much dignity as such a menial task allowed. He started walking, his boots clicking firmly along the grey stripe on the floor like it was a tightrope over lava.

“He looks mad,” whispered Nicci, following close behind Amber as they moved out of the intake line, away from the rumbling, stuffy excitement of a thousand nervous families and into the largely empty corridor leading to the general housing mods. “I don’t think he likes you very much.”

“He doesn’t have to like me,” Amber told her, talking low but making no real effort to be inaudible. She didn’t care if Crewman Everly Scott heard this or not. “There’s going to be fifty thousand people and an alien planet to entertain us where we’re going. We’re never going to see each other again.”

Scott did not reply or give any indication that he’d even heard them. He brought them into the empty, echoing, half-lit elevator bay and over to the lift marked with an A. Between the gunmetal-grey paint and the stark stenciled lettering, everything looked very much like a military operation. Cold. Authoritative. Menacing.

The lift was big enough for fifty people, according to the capacity rating posted above its utilitarian doors. The sound of three people breathing was very loud. They went up just one level and Nicci was clinging before the doors dinged open.

The first two doors on the first left-hand hall were theirs. WA-0001 and WA-0003. They opened at a swipe of their keycards on what indeed appeared to be a broom closet: narrow enough to touch both walls at once while keeping her elbows bent, just deep enough to accommodate the Sleeper, with a door she had to duck through and a ceiling that did not allow for jump rope.

Crewman Scott dropped Amber’s duffel and went inside to secure Nicci’s to the wall. He opened up her Sleeper and moved back as far as the dimensions of the room allowed. He waited.

Nicci looked at Amber. “Do I…just get in?”

“Yeah, that’s what they said at the seminar.”

“I don’t…I mean…Do I take my shoes off?”

“You can if you want,” said Amber, and Scott said, “No, you can’t. No loose articles in the cabin.”

“She can put them in her bag,” Amber told him.

“I already secured her bag.”

“You can unsecure it and secure it again with her shoes inside!”

“I’ll just wear them,” said Nicci, looking and sounding right on the edge of tears. “Okay?”

Amber looked at her, feeling her temper at full throb right behind her eyes, and then turned that look on Crewman Everly Scott. “Listen, Space-Scout.”

“Amber, please!”

“You got a problem, you take it up with me, you don’t take it out on my sister.”

Scott gave her a cold look and a wide smile and said, “Just lie down, Miss Bierce, and we’ll get you all tucked in!” in a voice like preschooler’s poison.

Nicci slunk past Amber, her head bent and lips trembling. She sat on the edge of the Sleeper, kneading at its hard sides as she looked one last time from Amber to Scott and back to Amber. “Please,” she said, but whether it was please say we don’t really have to do this or please don’t fight, she didn’t know. Scott put his hand on the Sleeper’s lid and Nicci lay obediently down, even as she gasped out the first hoarse sob. The lid shut, snapped, hissed, and the single panicked, silent cry that Amber saw her sister make faded into sleep. Or into Sleep, she guessed.

The snake-like cable of the umbilicus slipped out of its port inside the tube and slithered under Nicci’s shirt. She watched it tu

She looked dead.

“Any time,” said Scott, waiting in the hall.

Amber backed up until the door hissed shut on the sight of Nicci in her (coffin) tube. She told herself they had nowhere to go, no one to take them in. This was the only way out. It was the only choice.

‘I just killed my sister,’ she thought.

“Your turn,” said Scott, printing out a nameplate on his sca

This was really it. She was going to close her eyes and it would be over and either she’d wake up on Plymouth and she’d be fine, or…or she wouldn’t. And that would also be fine, she supposed. At least, it’d be just as over.