SOMA (LGBT-scifi-romance)

Chapter Two: The Black Ship

Sector 06: Cita Avis

Dec. 25, 461 After Cataclysm

Eleven Years Later...

In the dark before Christmas, a black ship came to Cita Avis.

It cut soundlessly through the industrial core to the outer rim, and settled in the shadow of Sentinel Tower. Its blue-pulse engine dimmed. If any colonists looked out of their windows they would've seen it hover there: sleek and scorpion-tailed, with sails along its polished carbon shell and a pair of escape pods clutched in its underside. No one emerged from the ship's unmarked hatch, and the cockpit was hidden by a screen of opaque glass. The ship's single red light panned slowly up the tower's slender silhouette.

By morning, the black ship was gone.

Soma didn't see the black ship. A nearby lunaroid had fallen out of orbit that night, dangling by its nanocables and dragging a dozen other rocks off-kilter. As the only local without a tightly programmed sleep schedule, Soma worked through Christmas night, wedged in a narrow air shaft of that lunaroid with his knees braced against the magnetic drums of a gravity generator.

He heard the sky fish outside go quiet, and then a frantic scrabble of cartilage fins as they fled. He cocked his head to listen. Sky fish were serpentine giants, with coils hard enough to bend aluminum. He didn't know what could possibly frighten them.

Silence, then the lunaroid shell rattled as something enormous passed close by. "Fat Father Christmas," Soma swore, as his rock pulled off course again.

If Soma had peered outside that air vent, had seen the sickle sail of the black ship slice out of Sentinel Tower's shadow, perhaps everything would've turned out differently. Instead, he rubbed sparks from his scarred palms and returned to his work, parsing through wires and rubber couplings by touch. He didn't finish until mid-morning. He bundled wires back behind the magnetic drums with duct-tape, wriggled out of the vent, and dropped into slanted gravity.

The lunaroid housed a convenience store: three shelves of vacuum-sealed food paste, a crate of shriveled fruit and onions. The owner, Mrs. S, loomed by the front hatch with her arms crossed and a frown like sour cabbage. She was a thickly built woman with dark hair in ringlets: taller than Soma—but that wasn't a high bar. "Soma boy," Mrs. S asked, "is my rock fixed yet?"

Soma wiped his hands along his coat, leaving pale streaks of calcium. "Sorry, Mrs. S, your rock is still very lopsided. I bypassed the left calibrator but it's a really old generator."

Mrs. S slumped against her crooked counter and futilely straightened magazines and packets of electrolytes. "Everything needs a newer model. Generator, fridge, me."

"Don't be melodramatic, Mrs. S." Soma grinned, mouth curved as a sickle. "The key to a balanced lunaroid is interior design. Cain will come tomorrow to help you rearrange your shelves."

The old syn nodded. She reached under her counter, then pressed a quarter of un-pulped chicken and a thick-skinned ham into Soma's dusty hands.

Soma startled. "I haven't fixed anything yet, Mrs. S."

Mrs. S shushed his protests and steered him out the hatch. "Merry Christmas," she said. Aluminum sealed shut behind Soma. He rubbed his scarred hands together and climbed up the nanocable towards Sentinel Tower.

Christmas morning brought a semblance of prosperity to Cita Avis. For the first time in weeks, the climate generators stuttered to working order, and gumbo smog vented through the terraforming barrier into space. Sunlight became fierce. Everything glistened—from the geostationary lunaroids in their nanocable webs to the floating trash spheres, which were mostly coagulated masses of wadded toilet paper and plastic bags of sewage. Flocks of synthetics met along the nanocables and exchanged greetings. They waved to Soma as he passed.