StAG: Chapter 5 - Leaving Astoreth

 After that toy ritual we went back to the living-room where Oakley was waiting for us.

The mercenaries payed Lord Bidiga and then she offered to take us to the port.

“I haven’t checked the road today anyway,” she explained. “And I already sent all your stuff to your ship while we were eating.”

We walked through the city with the convoy following closely behind. As we passed by the people would stop whatever they were doing, stand towards Bidiga, and lower their gazes as they chanted over and over: “Restorer of the Light, Restorer of the Light, Resto…”

At the gate we got in one of the cars, and we drove to the port. It was so much faster than the day before.

“I took the bus the other day and someone shot at us,” I said, trying to make conversation.

“Yeah, they are trying to provoke me, but they will have to be patient,” Lord Bididga explained. “How was the boy you found?. Scared?, wounded?, well fed?. I couldn’t get the picture you took.”

“Urbain looks fine, physically, at least.”

“Good, good.”

I stayed in silence for the rest of ride.

We stopped a few hundred meters before the gate of the refugee camp and walked the rest of the way, as a show of power I imagine. I saw Bidiga pointing at the ruins and explaining things to Tyr as she listened with concentration.

In the camp the refugees also stood up in silence as Bidiga passed by, but they didn’t chant anything, they just stood there, choking in their rage.

The port fortress was just a better illuminated version of the ruins with improvised machine-gun nests at some key positions. To be fair the hallways were clear of rubble and well lit, but I just focused on the many stores next to those hallways, empty, burnt or turned into trash. A few of those stores had been turned into weapon stashes or break-rooms for the soldiers to rest in between their shifts.

Finally we arrived at the elevators. Lord Bidiga called the elevator for us, and she held the door open as we went inside.

“Well,” Bidiga said, but this time her voice was less weary, I felt some pain coming out of it. “Jun, Khalfan, Sagira, Oakley… Jacob… I really enjoyed having you here. You should come one day in between jobs and have dinner with me a couple of days in a row.”

“One day,” Jun promised her, “first we have to…”

“I know. You’ll get there,” she promised back and she allowed the doors to close.

The elevator moved back, to the sides, and then up.

Once upon a time, before the Silence, my parents took me to some space port. I don’t remember which one, but I remember riding the elevator. We were on a civilian ship and the elevators came inside, rising from the floor. We got in, and I remember my dad made sure we got a spot near the wall. When it was full the elevator went down. I was scared, as we passed the hull of the ship everything was dark, but then we were outside and we were illuminated by the light of the Spine. I could see the city and its forests extending far in front of me. I could see a river crisscrossing through the city, glittering. I could see a pack of wild dear running through a clearing in the forest. I could see flocks of birds flying through the ribs… 

I could see none of that here. The elevator moved slowly through the catwalks at every level of the port. The farther up we went I could see more of the ring of lights, and how thin it was. I could see some spots of light in the ruins, Bidiga’s outposts, and I could see the shape of the ribs shining dimly against the ruins. But I reminded myself I wasn’t missing much in this case, Astoreth was never large enough to have forests anyway.

When the elevator stopped we were higher than I had ever been before. We were near the axis of rotation, close enough that I could see the seams in the sections of the spine. At such height gravity was considerably weaker than bellow, like if you could float away with one particularly strong jump. Thankfully there was chicken wire in front of the railing, but it still felt dangerous. 

Civilians were never meant to experience this aspect of the port, this was just for port workers or the passengers of small ships. The elevator was supposed to take you straight into your ship, but that was only possible with the large ships of old. Few of those remained and they would ever come to Astoreth.

Walking so close to the axis of ration in a cylindrical station plays tricks on your mind. You become very aware of the shape of the place and it doesn’t feel like you are moving anywhere. Rather it feels like the station is rotating under your feet, like a giant hamster wheel.

I looked at the few ships docked in that level, wondering which one was Sagira’s, dreading it would be one of those old ships being held together simply because physics had forgotten about them. But to my surprise we stopped in front of the nicest ship I had seen in my life. It was painted, you could use it as a mirror. None of it was bent, none of it had been deformed by gamma rays. I imagined this is what people saw when they bought ships before the Silence.

As promised, Bidiga's soldiers had taken all of our bags and crates and they had left them in front of the ship. Sagira opened it and we began loading all the stuff.

"Is this everything we need for the trip to Earth?,” I inquired.

"We are not going to Earth just yet,” Jun explained. "We need to get a couple of important things first… one important thing actually.”

"What thing?.”

"The return pod,” Sagira explained.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Have you ever been to a planet?.”

“No."

“Any idiot can land on Earth, rocks do it as a matter of fact. The hard part is getting back up. Usually, you do that with the help of a sunken space port, like the ones they’ve got on Mars or Venus… but the ones they’ve got on Earth are… in rough shape. So we need the return pod. It’s a small ship whose only function is to land and get back up.”

“Oh yeah, I think I’ve heard of them, but… Aren’t they just for landing in asteroids?”

"They were,” Sagira explained. "But a few people have created pods capable of dealing with the gravity of Earth. Necessity breeds invention, not that you would know anything about breeding.”

Khalfan silently extended his hand and Sagira gave him a discrete hi-five.

I sighed in resignation.

"Add it to the check then,” I said.

Everyone laughed at me, specially Khalfan with that booming laughter of his.

"Jacob, my boy!" Jun put one arm around me. "Those are military technology. When one of those enters the black market it’s like christmas to us, but that hasn’t happened in a while, so we are stealing it.”

"Is stealing gonna be a problem with you?,” Sagira asked.

“Since we do this to save a life Saint Thomas Aquinas would argue that…”

"Holly shit!. I was joking…”

We continued loading the ship. I could hear many noises. Mechanics working on ships bellow us, a group of friends sitting in a catwalk while drinking beer and throwing stuff at the people bellow, someone playing music on their stereo… but I also heard something else, I couldn’t quite place it, but the noise was getting louder, until I was finally able to recognize it. Some was screaming.

“Jacob!, Father Jacob!.”

I looked down. A couple of levels bellow us there she was, Karina along with some guy carrying something. ‘Now what?,’ I thought to myself.

"Karina, here,” I said to her, but my tone of voice betrayed how little I really cared.

“Father Jacob!,” she screamed when she saw me. “Wait!, we are coming up.”

“Sure,” I replied, but I don’t even think she heard me.

“Who is she?,” Jun asked me.

“The receptionist form the brothel… I gave her my contact for some stupid reason. It won’t take long. She wants my help with something but I will just tell her we have to leave and send her on her way.”

“Sure, take your time,” Jun said, and I felt he really meant it.

After a few minutes I saw Karina and a man running towards us, they were gasping for air, they were exhausted.

“I…” she was having trouble breathing, “I… was told you were leaving. We didn’t wanna miss you, I need…”

“Wait,” Jun interrupted, “who told you he was leaving?.”

“The hotel.”

“How did you know which hotel he was in?,” Jun was in full on suspicion mode.

She had recovered her breath by this point.

“He told me it was half an hour from the market, there’s only one hotel there. I asked for the priest. I took the bus to the port and looked for him for a while, but then I saw you all arrive with Lord Bidiga. I didn’t want to interrupt…”

“Alright,” Jun accepted her explanation.

“I need…”

“To ask me a favor, I imagine,” I said. 

“Yes,” she admitted. Knowing fully well how this looked from my perspective.

“I talked with Krisette, I did what you asked me, and more.”

“You talked to her?.”

“Yes!.”

“I didn’t know. I haven’t seen her.”

“Well, ask her.”

“I will, but this is not about that, it’s about him,” she looked at the man that came with her and she encouraged him to talk.

“Jesus Christ!, I… I had… I had not seen a priest in… in decades!, since I was a child!.”

"If we get a couple more we could open a zoo,” Khalfan said, only half joking. Jun hit him in the ribs so he’d shut up.

"I am leaving though,” I warned him. ”So perhaps you should take a picture.”

“Haha, maybe, but no, you see, I’m a christian… I’m a christian too. Karina told me she had met a christian priest the other day and, well, I wondered if you could baptize my son.”

Only then I realized the thing he was carrying was a baby, his son. He continued pleading. 

“I know you are in a rush, but please. I had not seen a priest since I was a little boy. I haven’t been to mass since forever because… well…”

“Yeah…”

“You know… Anyway, please. I know I ask too much but I can’t go to Mars, I…”

“Okay, okay, calm down. Calm down. I will baptize your son. I would never refuse to help you. What’s your name?.”

“I’m Zakhele Ledwaba, nice to meet you…?”

“Jacobo, but everyone calls me Jacob. Also, you should know that in special circumstances anyone can baptize.”

“Really?,” he was overjoyed.

 “Yes, and these are certainly special times. Now, can someone hand me a bottle of water?.”

Khalfan threw me a bottle. The path was weird because of the low gravity, but I caught it. Then I said a blessing on the water. It was still water, but now it was holly water.

“What will be the boy’s name?,” I asked Zakhele.

“Zenzele,” he replied, smiling.

I poured a little water on the baby’s forehead.

“Zenzele, I baptize you in the name of the father, the son, and the holly spirit, amen."

Looking back, that was the first ritual I performed during this quest.

I could hear Khalfan whispering jokes about the ritual to Oakley while the receptionist and her friend left, but I just ignored them.

Then we finally boarded the ship. It was cozy. Instead of the surfaces of exposed metal you see in most ships it had walls covered in a nice lightly coarse resin with a reddish color, it reminded me of wood. The floor was covered in some kind of smooth ceramic with a cream color. The seats were made of black leather and they seemed new. Nothing in the ship looked improvised or like it had been fixed a hundred times, and yet, it must have been. I could tell because it had windows, real windows and not just screens.

Back when people began exploring space they all wanted to sit next to the windows and see their planet go away and become smaller. They all wanted to see Mars or the Moon becoming bigger when they arrived. They all wanted to see the wonders of space and all the new places they would explore… but then the real exploration started. Long journeys through the void of space to find asteroids, to reach the small moons of the gas giants, to arrive in lonely space stations far from everything. 

In those journeys there’s not much to see but the vacuum of space, so eventually people made without windows in their ships. This one must have been made before that, which meant it must have been repaired a hundred times using pieces from a hundred different ships, like a modern day ship of Theseus. And yet, somehow, it felt new, like the most advanced ship you could buy from the fanciest shipyard in Pallas.

I occurred to me in that moment that this was my last chance to condemn my actions and turn back. There was no way my actions here were correct, we even had plans to steal now, and the mercenaries would certainly have no problem injuring or even killing people in the process.

The Church was the Institution of God, and for that reason this was a small sacrifice in order to save it, but then again, the Institution of God should not require sin to be saved. 

Perhaps in a thousand years, when people looked back, they would learn about my actions and condemn me as one of the many regrets and shames of the church, like Pope John XII. But if I succeeded there would be a church to condemn me, a church lead by good people, like Pope John XXIII. 

I was an imperfect instrument, but the Bible is full of stories of God doing his will through imperfect people, like me, like these mercenaries who didn’t even believe in God. We were all God’s instruments.

We took our places around the dashboard and the safety belts automatically wrapped around us, then Sagira spoke to the control tower.

"Joke to Astoreth Station, ready to undock for take off, over.”

"Here Astoreth Station, you are cleared for take off, may we never meet again, over.”

"May we never meet again, over.”

The ship shook and began moving on a system of rails, headed towards the wall of the station where a hexagonal door opened for it. The ship crossed that door and the doors closed behind us, leaving us on a dark compartment. Soon we heard the hiss of the air being sucked away. It took a while, but when it was finally unpresurized another set of hexagonal doors opened, revealing nothing but the vacuum of space. Then the system of rails kept moving the ship until we were hanging outside of the station, like hanging over a cliff, and it released us.

Suddenly we were falling, the same acceleration that had been pushing us against the ground in Astoreth kept acting on us, but now there was no floor to stop our fall. I could see the kilometers of station passing by extremely quickly, and we just didn’t stop falling. It was like one of those dreams where you fall from a tall place, until we passed the last bit of the station, and we kept falling, but now it just looked as if the station was moving away form us. That’s when you stop feeling like you are falling and start feeling like you are floating.

"Okay guys,” Sagira announced. "It’s gonna take me a while to position the ship and start accelerating towards our destination, until then you can move around.”

When I took off my seatbelt I remembered how nice it is to float. Perhaps the nomads are right and gravity was a mistake. Then I saw it, a small toy floating above the dashboard: a jousting knight.

If you have never been in zero G you may not know this (it’s difficult to believe) but when you spin something in space, and that thing is unbalanced, it will flip backwards and forwards extremely quickly as it spins. This is called the Dzhanibekov’s Effect.

The jousting knight was a toy whose front was shaped like a medieval knight with a horse and a jousting lance, but the back was like a cone with an opening for a screw. You could screw it in and then with one quick motion of your hand make it spin. It would get unscrewed and then it would flip. The lance would be pointing backwards, just to flip again a second later, the lance pointing forwards again, and the process would repeat over and over, very quickly. If you pushed it forwards it would continue to spin and flip as it flew through the air.

The idea was that you and a friend would each send their knights flying towards each other, the knights would joust, and if you timed it right one knight would send the other one flying away and win the joust. Or you could just spin them in place and watch them flip, that was fun too.

I had not seen any other instance of that toy ever since I left mine behind that desperate day… But here there was another one, in pristine conditions, proof that I had not imagined it all, proof that there had been other children who played with them.

"That’s mine, don’t touch it,” Segira warned me. She grabbed it and placed it back with the other toys on top of the dashboard, screwing it in a sort of base so it wouldn’t fly away.

"I used to have one just like this.”

“Hmm."

"Were did you get it?”

"I don’t know. They were popular on my station when I was a child.”

Of course she didn’t want to talk about it, so I changed the subject. 

"Why is the ship called The Joke?”

"Because my father laughed when I said I would fix this ship one day.”

"An interesting story we have no time for today,” Jun interrupted. “You can fight well Father Jacob, but we will need more form you. Khalfan, Oakley and I will take turns teaching you so that you may be useful for this mission.”

Oakley smiled hatching her devious plan.

“Shotgun.”

I shivered.

"Can we practice with fake knives this time?. My leg is still sore from yesterday.”

“We didn’t do anything to you yesterday,” Jun replied. They heard what Bidiga had said, that I had been in the ruins. Oakley ignored this completely.

“Sure, I have some rubber knives, and if you still get hurt Khalfan can teach you to patch yourself up.”

Then Khalfan laughed with his BOOMING laughter.

"And I do LOVE teaching.”

“Come,” Oakley said, then grabbed my hand. “I'll give you a tour.”

“Okay.”

“First, the cabin, of course. Here is the elevator, although in case of emergencies a hole can open through the floors, right there, you see?.”

"That circle?.”

“Mhm, that one. Come,” she went into the elevator and I followed her.

In the elevator was a panel with a diagram of the ship.

“You select where you wanna go here, we don’t use voice commands,” she selected one section of the ship.

The elevator started moving, but I forgot to grab the handle and the roof of the elevator hit me in the head and Oakley laughed.

“In zero G you don’t move if nothing moves you,” she said as if I was little kid.

“At least I made you laugh.”

Then the doors opened, but only on one side.

I could see a bed, a small desk with unfinished drawings and a closet.

"This is my room. The first three floors are divided in two bedrooms each, you can take one of the rooms we never use. They are full of crap but I’m sure you can make space. Just move everything to the other room.”

“Sure.”

"Let's continue,” she selected another level and this time I did grab the handle. The doors opened completely this time. “This is the dinning room and the common area. Sometimes we watch movies here, we play board games, we have orgies and we also like karaoke.”

"Wait a moment… you didn’t mention video games.”

“We don’t have any!, that’s why we have to make do with orgies.”

“Oh, so sad. But after I pay you, you have to get some, so that you can stop getting some.”

She finally couldn’t help it and let out an energetic laughter.

“You can joke after all!.”

“I wasn’t sure you were joking,” I confessed.

“I was, we keep it professional here,” she selected another section of the ship and the elevator opened in a completely empty room, not even furniture. “Finally this is the Common Room, we are going to use it as a training room as soon a Sagira starts accelerating and we have gravity again. Bellow is the Storage Room, you saw that when we were loading stuff.”

“I have to go for my luggage.”

"And bellow that is the Engine Room, but only Sagira is allowed to got there.”

After that I went for my stuff to the storage room, then I claimed one of the rooms for myself. It was indeed full of crap: sets of armor, medical stuff like bottles and pills, dresses, boxes of dirt… I had to move everything to the other room before gravity returned, because most of it looked quite heavy.

Then I changed into sport clothes, and just in time because soon after I heard Sagira on the intercom.

“Accelerating in 30 seconds bitches,” Sagira announced.

And indeed 30 seconds later I felt a violent jolt as weight returned to me and everything around me, it was such a bummer.

Then I went back to the common room to begin training with Oakley.

When I arrived she was opening compartments in the walls and pulling out the stuff we needed. Training dummies, rubber knives and matts.

“Ready?,” she said.

“I am, teach me.”

“I can tell form your style you mostly fight with your hands, without weapons, so let’s practice that. Grab a knife.”

We began practicing, but it wasn’t an intense fight like before. I would try a few movements with the rubber knife and Oakley would stop me to give me suggestions. She would propose hypothetical combat positions and we would explore how to best react in each case. I don’t remember what I did in one of those situations, but I remember she found it amusing.

"Okay, sure, you could pull it off, but now let’s do a worst case scenario. Give me the knife and get on the floor…" I laid down face up. "What would you do, if you were down like that and I did… this!”

She jumped on me holding the rubber knife as if to stab me. I knew the knife was false, I knew she meant me no harm, I knew I was safe, and yet, in that instant, I was terrified.

I didn’t want to be there anymore, I was breathing heavily, I wanted to run away and finally I punched Oakley in the face with more strength than I had deployed in more than a decade.

Oakley backed away, swaying. She would have fallen but her hand found the wall on time. She was bleeding form her nose. I wanted to apologize but I couldn’t speak, I could hardly breathe.

"Yeah, that’d work,” Oakley admitted while looking at how the blood pooled on her hand.

She rubbed her hand on her clothes, soiling them with blood, and came back to help me.

"Easy, easy, it’s fine, everything’s fine,” she said.

I didn't want to see her, I had my face buried in my hands, hiding my tears and my erratic breathing.

“I… remembered one time…”

I stayed in silence, but she didn’t say anything, she didn’t move, she just waited until I was ready to continue.

“I remembered one time when I used to… play with knives…” I was shaking.

"What happened?.”

I whispered, I couldn’t say it aloud.

"I killed him… they… congratulated me.”

"Fuckers. Well, I think it’s fair to say you turned your life around… Now, get on the floor again. We cannot have you having panic attacks on a mission. It’s okay if you cry or you freeze or whatever, just… don’t hit me like that again. I only have so many teeth.”

We continued practicing the same scenario over and over until Khalfan came in and saw me as a mess of tears and snot. Meanwhile Oakley had blood stains on her clothes and a huge bruise extending from her nose to bellow her left eye.

“This is why: WE DON’T ASK HOW WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW!.”

Oakley laughed.

"Kinda unavoidable sometimes Khalfan. He had a trigger situation and this is the only way I know how to deal with that.”

"He should hire a psychiatrist, not make you waste your time.”

"He has a point, you know?,” she told me.

"I’ll get one when this is over, I promise.”

Then we heard Jun calling form the kitchen.

"Dinner’s ready!.”

“Dinner?," I asked.

"A kind of meal" Khalfan replied.

I stood up and followed them into the kitchen.