The Dark Between The Stars

SIXTY-ONE
DALE REEVES

The ragtag group of Retroamer ships arrived at their isolated destination: an incredible and majestic alien city in space, built and abandoned long ago. Clan Reeves could call this place their own.

Dale Reeves and his wife rode with the bearded patriarch in the convoy’s lead ship. After investing so many years of work at the Rendezvous site, Dale had been uneasy about this great exodus, but he knew he would never change his father’s mind. Olaf Reeves was like an asteroid on a collision course, and those who got in his way would suffer from the impact. Garrison had proved that without question.

Sendra came to the forward compartment with their two sons. “The boys want to watch as we arrive.”

She was a good mother, patient with Jamie and Scott—more patient, in fact, than she was with him. Sendra was a strong woman, ready to fill her role as the wife of the future clan leader. The only problem was, Sendra had expected Garrison to be the next head of clan Reeves. Dale had never aspired to be a leader and did not quite understand why she had married him anyway. Maybe Sendra thought she could change him, strengthen him, make him into the right sort of person.

But Dale Reeves wasn’t malleable in that way. His father had attempted to bully, poke, and prod him into becoming a leader. Dale had tried—he truly had—but it didn’t work. He remained a quiet, amenable person who liked to listen more than he liked to talk, which was good when he sat next to Olaf Reeves, but didn’t bode well for making tough decisions of his own as clan leader.

Now, the Retroamer vessels decelerated as they arrived at a large, strange habitat built out in space, far enough from the parent star that it had remained unnoticed and empty for millennia. Dale had never seen anything like it—a giant self-contained alien metropolis, completely dark, bristling with towers.

The space city was built on a five-point pattern; separate arms of varying lengths radiated from a central hub so that the structure looked like a spiny, metal snowflake with swollen polyhedral modules—habitation areas? Storage chambers? Ildirans had a very distinctive architectural style—as did the Klikiss—but this station had a completely different origin. Someone, something else had designed this.

“Do you think it was built by some unknown alien race?” Dale asked. “This could be the find of the century. Shouldn’t we report it to the Confederation?”

Olaf grimaced with disdain. “Our green priest will share the necessary details, but I’m not having hundreds of scholars and xeno-archaeologists crawling all over our home. We found it. The right of salvage is clear.”

Dale thought he remembered that the Confederation Charter—which the Roamer clans had signed, so therefore clan Reeves was bound by the terms—classified alien artifacts and archaeological sites as “gifts to civilization” for the study of all. But maybe the wording specifically referred to “Klikiss artifacts,” because there were no other known alien races. He didn’t press the issue, knowing that his father would find some way to insist that he was right, nevertheless.

Dale considered it remarkable that anyone had found the derelict structure out here in the dark between the stars. One of their scouts had stumbled upon it during a wandering trip back from the closed-off neo-Amish planet called Happiness. The neo-Amish refused to deal with any outsiders, except occasionally for Olaf Reeves and his Retroamers. Clan Reeves wanted to create a similar home for themselves in the derelict city.

Dale found it uncharacteristic that his father would go to an already-extant city, even an abandoned one. He would have expected the old man to insist on building their own place from scratch, making every component with their own hands. When Dale pointed out the seeming contradiction, his father had frowned. “Roamers take advantage of valuable resources, wherever we find them. Why would I let this go to waste?”

As the Retroamer ships gathered around the huge, silent city, Dale studied the readings. “Gives off almost no thermal signature. That city’s been abandoned for a very long time.”

“What is that place?” asked Jamie, his older son.

Dale tried to think of the right way to answer, but his father spoke first. “That is the new home of clan Reeves.”

“I thought Rendezvous was our home?”

“We left Rendezvous,” Dale said to the boys. “I explained that to you. We’re not going back. This will be our home now.”

“But who built it?” Scott asked.

Olaf said, “Nobody knows, but we’ll find out. The city is ours for the taking. There’ll be room for every clan member to have twice as much living space as we had on Rendezvous.”

“Do we even know if we can live there?” Sendra asked him. “Have all the systems been checked out yet?”

Olaf looked at her. “Of course we can live there. We’re Roamers. If something’s not functioning, we’ll fix it. If it’s missing a system, we’ll install it. And if it proves untenable, then we’ll build our own city from scratch and use this place for spare parts. That’s our Guiding Star.”

BO, the Teacher compy transferred to them from Academ, came into the cockpit to attend the two boys. “I will watch them, Sendra Reeves. It’s good that they’re seeing this with their own eyes. This is history—our clan history.”

“It looks spooky,” said Jamie.

Sendra said, “BO will protect you from any space-station ghosts.”

The boys giggled, knowing their mother was joking. The two had been born long after the Elemental War, but Dale certainly remembered the faeros, the hydrogues, the Klikiss invasion, the treacherous black robot attacks. He wouldn’t lie to his sons and tell them that monsters did not exist.

Like a conquering hero, Olaf opened a comm channel to all the convoy ships. “Welcome to a new beginning for clan Reeves. Let’s make this place ours. I need ten ships and some scouts to survey the exterior.”

The Retroamer ships scanned the derelict city, mapping the modules on the radiating spokes, identifying viable access points. At the first three door hatches the scouts encountered on the nearest spoke, bold but crudely drawn pink triangles marked the exterior hull. Nobody knew what that meant.

Until they found an intrinsic energy source, or hooked up their own power blocks to bleed heat into the complex one section at a time, the first groups would have to wear environment suits. Over the centuries of abandonment, it was possible—even likely—that the atmosphere had leaked away, but clan Reeves had plenty of oxygen generators, if needed.

The first suited Retroamer scouts inspected the hatch areas of the hub sphere, tried to decipher the exterior controls, and in the end dismantled them. Though they had no idea how the alien builders engineered their systems, basic physics and mechanics were the same. With a small power block, the scouts triggered the hatch to gain access to the city.

“Shouldn’t take us too long to finesse the controls so that we can open other hatches and some large docking bays. The hull seems intact, but there’s plenty to do,” the scout reported.

Olaf grinned. “Once we bring our ships inside, I’ll assign squads of workers.”

Four other scout teams reported in, and one announced even more exciting news. “There’s an atmosphere, Olaf! It’ll even be breathable once we warm it up.”

The clan leader issued orders throughout the convoy. “It’s a huge city, and we’ll be methodical with our exploration teams, but first things first. For now, give priority to the central hub and one primary spoke for our habitation. Engineering crews will make the place livable: light, heat, power, and air. We’ve got a lot of people waiting to stretch their legs.”

From all across the Retroamer exodus convoy, clan members shuttled over to the largest community ship to celebrate. The mood was light, and Dale felt his tension unwind. Though he had been reluctant to leave Rendezvous, he had to admit this alien city was truly remarkable.

Shelud, the green priest volunteer, joined them for the celebration. He was shy but smiled frequently, and Dale already liked him. Olaf came over. “I remind you, green priest, that when you use telink, you are not to reveal the location of this city—not yet.”

“His name is Shelud, Father,” Dale said, which earned him a sharp frown.

The green priest nodded. “I understand. I used my treeling to announce our arrival, but no one knows where we are. The worldtrees are waiting to hear further news.”

Olaf Reeves called for the attention of those gathered. He stood near a large viewing port, with the enormous empty space city behind him, but faced them all without looking at the impressive backdrop. “We don’t know who built that city or why they abandoned it, but our Guiding Star brought us here. It is our new home, our new Rendezvous. As part of the process of making it ours, the city deserves a name.” He paused, looking at the clan members there, and Shelud wondered if he was waiting for input. Before anyone could speak up, though, he continued. “I have decided we’ll name our new home Okiah, after the great Roamer Speaker who guided our clans for so many years before the Elemental War. Jhy Okiah steered us through good, independent years, kept the clans productive, before we were scattered, before we became outlaws, before we lost our soul by joining the Confederation.”

The Retroamers muttered, the tone of their voices clearly indicating they were pleased with the choice. Shelud said he knew about old Speaker Jhy Okiah, but promised that when he had a chance he would use his treeling to tap into the verdani database. He would learn more about the revered woman, especially since their new city would bear her name.

Dale looked out the windowport to see a few lights already shining in the derelict city, though most of the structure remained dark. Soon, they would make it bright and warm, fill it with laughter and hope. This strange city-station was their future and their new home.