Sunday, April 4, 2156
Alaraph Central Spaceport, Zavijava V
Beta Virginis Colony
THE DUFFEL THAT CONTAINED her clothing and imaging equipment slung over her shoulder, Gannet Brooks watched the frantic press of humanity from one of the gallery’s upper levels. The bright yellow light of the star, after which both the colony and its spaceport were named, streamed in behind the frantic prospective travelers, suffusing them with an appropriately unearthly glow.
Brooks judged that comparatively few of these people had come merely to bid farewell to friends and loved ones; just about everyone she saw was laden down with baggage of some sort. These people meant to get off the planet, and quickly. She wondered what percentage of the multitude that crowded the departure gates had booked passage in advance, as opposed to the proportion that had decided to flee at the spur of the moment.
She reached into her pocket to extract the printed plastic flimsy that would get her aboard the transport scheduled for departure at 1430, local time. Nash McEvoy had just narrowed her options down to exactly one: boarding the transport when the time arrived to do so and returning to the Sol system. Her desire to remain here, to continue covering the war’s unfolding drama, had apparently counted for next to nothing.
In retrospect, she supposed this day was inevitable. Nash had been gently cajoling her for the past three weeks, first asking her to tone down her critiques of Starfleet’s conduct of the war, then suggesting that he might have to reassign her if she wouldn’t agree to be a little more “even-handed.”
She’d brushed him off. He’d persisted. They had repeated the pattern as necessary. Then she had appeared to relent, promising to think about it before ultimately going her own way. (She was amazed that this should have surprised him, even a little bit. What did he expect? Hadn’t he been paying attention all these years?)
She had begun to avoid taking his real-time subspace calls, stretching out the intervals between her receipt of his many messages— mostly of the “C’mon, Gannet, Starfleet is really riding my ass about you!” variety—and her ever more belated return calls.
He’d finally lowered the boom on her, making good on a threat that she’d always assumed to be an idle one born more of frustration than of practicality. She had never really believed he’d do it.
Despite the praise she’d recently heaped on Starfleet for the triumph at Berengaria VII, Nash had temporarily rescinded her Newstime credit chit—a fact that she had discovered while trying to use the chit to pay a restaurant tab. The maneuver had forced her to call him in real-time, right then and there, in order to sort things out with the annoyed restaurateur.
Now Nash wants me to do some nice, safe puff pieces about the Martian terraforming project, she thought, both discouraged and disgusted by the prospect. Even though the Romulans are coming.
The public address system finally announced that her transport was about to begin boarding. She allowed her ticket to dangle from between her index and middle fingers over the upper gallery’s railing. It would be so easy to just let go.
Snatching the ticket with her other hand, she shoved it into her pocket, and hated herself for her powerlessness. She straightened her duffel and wended her way through the crowd in the direction of her departure gate. As she walked, she tried to find something positive to focus on about the dreary homeward voyage that lay ahead.
A full ten minutes later, as she presented her ticket to the young woman at the departures desk, she thought she’d finally come up with something.
Credit chit or no credit chit, Brooks thought, there probably won’t be any shortage of trouble spots for me to point a lens at between here and Mars.