Generation Four

By

Robin. B. Devlin

Lizzie stared out of the window of her quarters and heaved a huge sigh. The view should have been breathtaking. It was an endless vista of stars that spread as far as the eye could see. The vast ocean of a purple and pink nebula stretched out ahead of them. But she found it dull. Her great-grandparents had joined the fleet to secure the future of mankind among the stars. Her own great-great-grandchildren would be the first to leave the fleet. They would land on an Earth-like world. However, Lizzie and everyone in the fleet were stuck in the dead middle.

History remembered the original crew, almost canonised them. They sat for interviews with media outlets. As for the crew that landed, they would be immortal, the first humans to set foot on Proximal Centauri. Her generation, Gen Four, was there to keep the systems running and produce Generation Five. Lizzie swung her legs over the side of her bunk and slipped her bare feet into a scuffed pair of boots.

“I’m going to Nebula’s,” she said to her bunkmate, Tobias.

“Want some company?” he said without looking up from his jigsaw puzzle.

“Nah,” she said, grabbing her jacket, “Don’t wait up.”

The Interstellar Colonisation Vessel ‘The Adam’ was the flagship of the migrant fleet. It was home to almost four thousand men, women, and children. Lizzie made her way down the narrow corridor, barely looking where she was going. She knew the route so well that she could do it in her sleep. She dodged children playing tag, blissfully unaware of the futility of existence on board. She ducked under the washing lines that crisscrossed the hallway. No one paid attention to the ship’s regulations on this level. Her feet knew the way to Nebula’s, she had to let them lead her there. Nebula’s was the only bar on board where you didn’t have to be an officer to drink.

Lizzie walked into the hazy bar. Smoking was strictly prohibited on any ship in the fleet, but electronic cigarettes were tolerated. There were a few patrons unwinding after a shift in the ship’s oxygen recycling plant. She sat at the bar and tapped a ration token on the scratched and pitted surface. The barmaid offered Lizzie a friendly smile. Someone had rigged up an antique sound system to the PA and patched in a music player; a lively guitar song swelled. When the ship was new, and Gen One was full of explorative zeal, there was a large window on one wall. The then crew would spend hours staring at the stars. By now, hardly anyone paid any attention to it.

“Hey, what’ll you have?”

“A double vodka, on the rocks, please,” said Lizzie. On The Adam everyone soon got used to seeing the same faces again and again. You were born, lived, and died with the same four thousand people. However, the pretty, raven-haired barmaid was a stranger. The barmaid held up a bottle of clear spirit with vanilla and cinnamon sticks in it. She poured a generous measure of the potent spirit into a clean glass. Then, she dropped in three large ice cubes.

“You’re new, did you transfer over?”

“Yeah, I was transferred from The Montag last week. I’m Annabelle,” she said, offering a hand to Lizzie over the bar. Lizzie shook the hand warmly. Smiling into the eyes of the pretty stranger.

“I’m Liz, Liz Magruder,” she said, taking a sip of the ship-made vodka, it burnt her throat on the way down “Bloody hell,” she said between coughs, “That’s strong!”

“Yeah, when they gave me my marching orders, I brought across my still and a few cases from my own personal stash,” said Annabelle. She was buffing the bar’s surface with a clean cloth.

“So, you were a barmaid on The Montag?”

“Nah, I was a chemist, worked in water reclamation.”

“I hope you don’t mind me saying, but that seems like a hell of a step backwards,” Lizzie said. She drained the last of the drink and shuddered.

“I had a disagreement with one of the officers,” said Annabelle, filling Lizzie’s glass again.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I thought he was an asshole, and he didn’t agree,” said Annabelle with a smile.

Lizzie chuckled. “Well, it’s The Montag’s loss, welcome to The Adam.” Lizzie raised her glass. Annabelle lifted her own glass and chinked it against Lizzie’s. The bar was starting to fill up by now with the manual workers coming off shift. A heavy-set man in denim jeans and a shirt stood next to Lizzie. He had a prominent brow ridge and sunken, mean, piggy eyes. With bloodshot eyes, it gave the impression of two tiny tunnels leading to nowhere. A four-day stubble stood out on his jawline.

“Pint,” he said in a harsh, gruff voice, stale alcohol already on his breath.

Annabelle poured him a pint of beer. She accepted the two ration tokens, slipping them into the cash register.

“Here you go, Kane,” she said, putting the pint down in front of him. Kane turned to Lizzie, eyeing her up and down. He lingered on her breasts.

“Why don’t you slide on over here?” he asked.

“Why don’t you go boil your head?” Lizzie retorted.

Kane made a clumsy grab for Lizzie’s arm. He stopped when Annabelle brought down a heavy wooden baseball bat on the bar.

“Sit your two-bit ass down before I make change,” she said calmly “In fact, drink your drink and piss off, you’re barred.”

The man muttered a curse under his breath and stood up, knocking over the barstool as he left.

“That was amazing,” said Lizzie.

“Guy’s a jerk,” said Annabelle

“Tell me about it, since he found out he’s in my top one hundred, he’s been trying to get me to sleep with him.”

The top one hundred was a list of potential mates that you could take on the fleet. Due to the need to maintain genetic diversity, you could only pick one of the hundred. The list, compiled by Pythia, the ship’s AI, was set in stone. Picking anyone else was punishable by up to ten years in the ship’s brig. Each couple was expected to produce at least two children to replace their parents. This would keep the migrant fleet at a viable crew size. Annabelle poured Lizzie another drink and one for herself.

###

“You know why they let us brew our own beer and distil our own spirits?” Annabelle leaned over the bar. It was late, and the crowded bar had thinned out, so only the real serious drinkers remained. Lizzie had spent most of the night monopolising Annabelle’s time. The other barman on shift, Tony, didn’t seem to mind. In ancient Egypt, slaves were given a kind of early beer every night as part of their rations. It was basically an alcoholic liquid bread. It would make them too stoned to rebel after a day’s work,” she said.

“Never looked at it that way,” said Lizzie. She played with her hair and looked into Annabelle’s sapphire blue eyes. “I guess it makes sense. They ply us with dink so we don’t get out of control.” She put the glass to her lips and drained it again. As she did, she slid unceremoniously to the floor and sat there giggling. Annabelle rolled her eyes and hopped over the bar.

“Hey, Tone, I’m gonna see that Cinderella here gets home in one piece, cover for me?” she called out, helping Lizzie to her feet. The other barman gave her a thumbs-up and went back to talking with the other patrons.

###

Annabelle walked with Lizzie’s arm slung around her neck. Lizzie looked up bleary-eyed. “Hey, that’s my quarters,” she said with a drunken smile.

“Yes, I know. You’ve been telling me how to get here for the last ten minutes,” said Annabelle. Lizzie leaned against the bulkhead to her quarters and held a finger to her lips.

“Shhhhh!” she giggled, “You’ll wake Tobi”

“So, I guess I’ll see you around?” said Annabelle.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

Annabelle leaned forward and kissed Lizzie softly on the lips. Lizzie kissed her back tentatively but pulled away.

“Oh, you’re…” started Lizzie.

“Erm, yeah, that okay?”

Lizzie bit her lower lip and tried to order her drunken thoughts. “I’m not, I mean, I haven’t ever…” stammered Lizzie.

“It’s okay, I’m sorry,” said Annabelle, lowering her eyes, taking a step back away from Lizzie. She rubbed the back of her neck, her cheeks crimson.

“No, I liked it, I just… never even thought about…”

Annabelle caressed her face.

“It’s okay, this doesn’t have to go any further than you want to take it.”

Lizzie put her thumb over the biometric scanner to unlock her door. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” asked Lizzie, stumbling into her bunk.

###

Tobias frowned at his tablet PC and tossed it onto the bed. “I swear the chess program on that thing is precognizant,” he said to no one in particular. Lizzie let out a low groan.

“Tobi, for fleet’s sake, knock it off,” she moaned, rubbing her eyes with the balls of her thumbs. Her mouth felt like the bottom of a monkey cage.

“Need coffee,” she rasped, sitting up in her bunk.

Tobias put a pod in the hot drinks dispenser. Then, he filled a mug with a hot, brown liquid that could be called coffee, in the way a tomato in a burger could be called vegan cuisine.

“Here,” he offered. Lizzie sat at the moulded plastic table set into the centre of their shared bunk and held the mug in both hands.

“Heavy night?” asked Tobias, retrieving his tablet and starting a new game.

“Yeah, you could say that,” said Lizzie “Tobi, have you ever met someone, and everything’s going fine, but then they kiss you, and you’re like da fuq!?” said Lizzie.

“Bit specific, Liz, and you know I don’t ‘do’ romance, but I’ll roll with it… something on your mind?”

“I kissed a virtual stranger last night, and I kind of liked it. I’m meeting her again later today”

“Her? Way to bury the lead, Liz!” he smiled, “Sounds illicit and very exciting.” Tobi waggled his eyebrows. Lizzie shoved him playfully.

“Frack off, Tobi!” she said.

“Aw, come on, Liz, you know your life is my soap opera.”

Liz draped an arm around him and kissed him on the cheek.

“Will you cover for me with Attila the shift manager?” she asked. Tobi flexed his fingers and began typing on his tablet.

“Your wish is my backslash, colon, execute, command,” he said hitting keys on the surface as he spoke “There, if they check your registered as being in the Med-Bay with a migraine”.

“You’re a genius, Tobi, have I told you that lately?” she said, sipping the watery brown liquid.

“Not nearly enough.” Tobi shot back, bringing up a chess app on his tablet. Tobi was Lizzie’s oldest friend. They had bunked together for the last five years. In all that time, he had never made a move on her or on anyone else. For that matter, sex was not even a passing interest to Tobi. She had asked him once, outright, if he had any feelings that way. He told her he found the whole prospect of sex and romance terrifying, like a horror movie. It was fun to watch, not so much to be involved in.

###

The lights on the Adam were programmed to simulate natural daylight. They dimmed in intensity depending on the hour. In practice, the over-a-century-old system produced a dirty red light in the morning, a dirty yellow light in the afternoon, and a dirty blue light at night. All the ships in the migrant fleet kept to Greenwich Mean Time, as an acknowledgement of the home the original crew left behind. Currently, the light strips set into the ceiling were radiating a dingy yellow light. Lizzie opened the bulkhead that led to Nebula’s and smiled as she saw Annabelle leaning on the bar, talking to the barman on shift. Annabelle nodded as she walked in and held up one of the bottles of clear spirit by way of an invitation.

“Oh yeah,” she said, sitting down next to Annabelle “, Big time.”

“Bad Morning?” asked Annabelle.

“No, it’s just the last time I try and match a chemist drink for drink on bootlegged hootch,” she said, smiling.

“Never mess with a chemist. Most of our training is how to avoid making things go bang, that and making drugs,” said Annabelle. She checked her reflection in the mirror over the bar and ran her fingers through her hair.

“So, last night…” started Lizzie.

“Yeah, sorry, it just kind of happened,” said Annabelle, flashing her startlingly blue eyes and playing with the stud in her lip.

“No, no, I’m glad it did, just what happens now?”

“Now we finish our drinks, and I’ll take you to a party,” said Annabelle, draining the last of her drink. Annabelle ran her fingertips along Lizzie’s palm, interlocking her fingers with Lizzie’s. Then, she stood up, leading her out of the bar and down into the lower decks.

###

The lower decks were where the lowest-ranking crew of the ship’s crew lived. Lizzie and Tobias lived in the middle of the ship. As a programmer, they had numerous citations for insubordination. As a mission specialist, they were not essential to the mission but were considered above the ranks of manual workers who kept the ship running.

Annabelle strode purposefully through the grungy metal and scuffed plastic. She seemed to turn left and right at random. She eventually stopped at a bulkhead, written in chalk next to it was a sign saying, “Teutonic Checkers Club: Members only”.

Annabelle whispered into Lizzie’s ear, “Follow my lead”. The door was opened by a mountain of a man, at least six and a half feet tall, with powerful, hairy hands.

“Belle, good to see you,” he said in a deep voice “Meetings just starting.”

“Thanks, Little John. This is Liz; she’s with me, kay?” The man nodded and held the bulkhead open for them.

The cabin was cramped and hot. Tables were set up. A young man with a patchy beard sat on a stool playing acoustic guitar. A few couples sat close together, kissing and holding each other. Lizzie’s eyes adjusted to the low light, and she saw that the couples dancing, kissing and holding each other were all of the same sex.

“Belle, I’m… I mean, aren’t you worried?” asked Lizzie, putting her hand on Anabelle’s arm. Annabelle ran her slender hand over Lizzie’s, interlocked her fingers with Lizzie’s and shushed her.

“Just dance, drink… be merry – it’s okay, here no one cares. We’re all alike here, no secrets, no need to pretend.” She said soothingly. The musician finished one song, thanked the crowd for a smattering of applause, and, seeing Anabelle, smiled and called out. “Annabelle, you wanna do the vocals on one?” Lizzie gave Anabelle a tiny shove with an impish smile.

“Chemist, barmaid and singer? This I have to hear,” she said.

“Oh, you suck so much!” teased Annabelle, but walked up to the stage anyway, her hips swinging, and she picked up the mic.

“The La’s?” she asked the guitarist, who flashed the peace sign in appreciation.

Annabelle spoke into the mic, “Here’s one for a special friend, it was old when the ship left Sol, but I’m sure you’ll know it.” The guitarist started to play the opening riff of “There She Goes”. The effect was electric. A ripple of applause went out. When Annabelle started singing, Liz felt a current move through her. She was transfixed by Annabelle’s pretty blue eyes and raven black hair. Her voice was husky but also sweet. By the second chorus, everyone was singing along. Liz had heard the song before; new music was rare, and although the song was ancient by this point. Something in the lyrics resonated in her chest. When she finished, Lizie just stood frozen. Annabelle walked back to her, took Lizie’s hands in her own and laughed playfully. 

“It’s not every girl I sing a hundred-year-old love song for,” she said, swaying gently as the guitarist started to play the next song in his set. Lizzie leant in and kissed Annabelle softly at first, tentatively and soon passionately.

###

Liz spent the next few weeks in a blissful haze. Even if she did need to hide her burgeoning relationship. Her role as a mission specialist consisted of resource management, and by now she could do it in her sleep. In fact, she realised, she had been doing most things in her sleep until she met Annabelle. She had been in a deep, deep sleep for all this time, waiting for a kiss from a brave princess to wake her up. Everything felt better now. Things made more sense, from obscure song lyrics to the oblique, ancient philosophy books that Tobi left in the head.

Liz sat on her bunk, brushing her copper-coloured curly hair, humming happily, some mindless jingle that she heard in a Gen Zero movie. Tobi let himself into their quarters. He collapsed into his customary seat at the table in the centre of their cabin, rested his head on the table and let out a low groan.

“Frigging amateurs!” he grumbled “What do they teach these idiots at the academy these days? Most of them can’t even find their own backsides with both hands, a map, and a frigging cheat sheet!” He kicked off his battered boots. Then, he went on a tirade about how the first officer had locked himself out of his own quarters. He insisted that it was Pythia herself who was malfunctioning. Lizzie was only half listening, offering the occasional half-hearted platitude. Tobi sensed that his diatribe was falling on deaf ears. He added, “So, then I stripped naked and ran around the officer’s mess screaming ‘Chipmunks stole my G-string!’”

“Yeah,” said Lizzie, “you sure told…” she mentally caught up. “Da fuq you say?”

“You were off on planet Liz again, sweetie,” said Tobi, kindly “How’s the weather there?”

“Sunny,” she said dreamily.

“You need to be careful, hon, you don’t wanna go through the ‘re-education’ course, it’s not pretty.”

Homosexuality was treated as against the mission charter. The charter stated that each crew member must pair off with a member of the opposite sex. In vitro Fertilization was only an option for mixed-sex couples in case of infertility. Once you were paired with your partner, your names were removed from the breeding stock list. You were not allowed to pair off again. This made one-night stands illegal, but not impossible.

Like so much else on the fleet, all this was put down in the Charter. The Charter, by the time the first generation had left the Sol system, ran to thousands of pages. Over time, it had been redacted, changed, and distilled. Now, it is summarised as “To do nothing except secure Mankind’s future amongst the stars.” Those ten words were the reason for the draconian censorship rules. They also led to the top 100 breeding eugenics programs and anti-gay laws.

Each ship had its own bylaws and the details differed amongst the fleet but the ten words were sacrosanct. Which was ironic, since religion was considered to run contrary to the harmony of the fleet, and thus was against the charter.    

Tobi had been accused of homosexuality at the academy, the fleet’s equivalent to a university on Old Earth. He had been subjected to a gruelling six-month ship-sanctioned brainwashing. He wasn’t even gay; he just had no interest in sex at all. Groupthink and mob mentality had led his peers to believe that the lack of evidence that he was straight was, ipso facto, evidence that he was gay.  By the time he got out of the brainwashing, he was utterly repulsed by the idea of being with anyone. He hardly ever spoke about what had happened to him during that time.     

Liz put her hand on his slender brown forearm “I’ll be careful, Tobi… you should come with me to meet her tonight, you’d like her.”

      “Sure, so I’m going to be your ‘decoy’ for the night,” he teased, chocolate-coloured eyes twinkling. 

Lizie playfully shoved him “It’s about time you paid back the favour,” she said, moving to the vanity unit and putting on some make-up.

Everyone on the ship had to be employed in some capacity. Every job on the Adam was considered mission-critical. This includes the lowest seamstress, who fixes and patches clothes, and the mission director herself.

Tobi was a programmer, and a good one; he could have done well in his field if only he hadn’t had such a rebellious streak. He loathed authority. Under his mattress, he had a cheaply printed and well-thumbed copy of Catch-22. Many considered the work subversive and in conflict with the mission charter. Tobi had mastered the art of what he called malicious compliance. Lizzie had asked him once, after he completed a weeklong stint in the brig for insubordination, why he didn’t just try to get along with his bosses. He had said that he would try to be nicer if they tried to be smarter. Liz had loved him for that.

Lizzie’s dream was to be a writer, a proper one like on the Earth they had left behind. Entertainment was a class-2 priority. The mission director knew how important it was to mollify the masses with entertainment. However, creative efforts were heavily censored. Almost everything for fleet-wide consumption was written by AI, engineered to be as bland as possible and as edgy as a sphere. Even on less censorious ships, artists were never free to create what they wanted. She was stymied by a lack of time from her job. Doing her best not to go insane from tedium and the ever-present censors’ red pencil, she had given up on her dream. Since meeting Annabelle, she had started to write again, just for her. She wanted to hold something that she had willed into existence from her imagination.

###

Nebula’s was bustling. Workers from the recycling plants and the stockades were side by side with the lowly non-commissioned officers. Every table and chair was occupied, and even then, crew members were standing, talking, and laughing.  Tobi froze when he entered the bar. Lizzie took his hand and deftly led him through the throng. The ancient PA system was broadcasting the Friday Night Playlist, a collection of mindless, happy melodies.

Annabelle’s smile flashed as they entered, and Lizzie pulled Tobi up to the bar.

“Hiya, you’re Tobi, right?” she said, leaning on the bar and extending a hand. Tobi smiled shyly and nodded; he shook her hand. “Do you speak at all, hon?” she teased.

“When I have something to say,” he said tensely. He stood ramrod straight, almost to attention.

“Yeah, you’re Tobi, alright,” said Annabelle. “You want me to choose for you, babe? You look a little overwhelmed.” Tobi nodded stiffly, Lizzie put her arm around him, and she ordered him a shot of vodka. Annabelle poured a shot for Lizzie as well. Tobi put the shot glass to his lips and almost robotically drained the spirit. He started to cough hard.

“Shit! You could use that to clean the flux off circuit boards!” he spluttered.

“Right, but at least now you’re talking,” said Annabelle. She poured another measure of her homemade vodka. “This one’s on me, hon,” she added.

Tobi leaned into Lizzie and spoke into her ear, “You’re right, she’s pretty cool,” he said. Lizzie kept by Tobi’s side. It wasn’t that he didn’t like people. Normally, he preferred to keep them from afar. This was the longest time he had spent out, as long as Lizzie had known him. She squeezed his hand.

“Wanna go somewhere not so… people-y?” she said.

“Oh, ship yes!” said Tobi, tossing back another vodka. He added, “You know what? It kind of grows on you”.

Annabelle poured another measure for the pair and left the bottle “You two make a dent in this, and I will be with you when my shift ends,” she said. Tobi lifted his glass and whispered, “She’s definitely very cool.”

###

Most of a bottle of home-brewed vodka, flavoured with liquorice, and a couple of hours later, the three of them wove their way to the lower decks. The mountain of a door man sat on a small stool, reading from a leatherbound book.  In his massive hands, it looked preposterously small. He turned his head to face the three, and his stern expression melted away. “Belle! Lizzie! My favourite friends.” He said in his deep bass voice. Lizzie, already a little tipsy, gave the big man a hug.

“Hiya, Little John, this is my bunkmate, he’d like to join us, he’s cool,” she said.

“On your head, Red.” said Little John, playfully tousling Lizzie’s copper coloured mop of hair.

Tobi glanced at the spine of the book; even in his drunken state, he recognised it.

“That’s Joseph Heller! I love his stuff,” he said. Little John smiled widely and clapped the skinny programmer on his shoulder, making him buckle at the knees.

“He saw the world in a subversive and dangerous way; he was a genius,” said the bouncer. He regarded Tobi for a moment, taking in his skinny frame, unruly mop of curly hair, and rumpled ship issue jumpsuit. Lizzie held onto his arm tenderly. “I’m a good judge of character,” he said,  “Here, take this one and read it. Be careful. It was onboarded with the founders and survived the purge.” He handed the book to Tobi, who accepted it with a reverent, awestruck look.

The great Purge was an event around Gen Two. Pythia compiled a list of any material that may run contrary to the fleet’s charter. Bibles, copies of the Quran, and the Communist Manifesto, along with every major revolutionary work of the 20th, 21st, and 22nd centuries, were shot out of an airlock. Almost every trace of these works was lost to the stars. Pythia silenced the voices of these thinkers to a whisper, but whispers travel in the dark, and space is very, very dark.

###

Tobi stood in the Teutonic Checkers Club in a happy alcoholic fog. Belle and Lizzie danced to the music. The club was dark, like an old Earth cave.

“Why Teutonic Checkers Club?” he asked a couple nearby.  The taller man shrugged, “It was little John’s idea, I mean, who the hell would want to join a club with a name like that?” His partner rested his head on his chest “A name like that implies that only people who know what it is will know, you know.” He let out a chuckle and kissed his partner. Tobi smiled at the two men and went to the bar, where little John was now sitting. Lizzie nuzzled Anabelle’s neck and whispered in her ear, “I’ve never seen him so relaxed out of our quarters. It’s like you’re a witch or something, like you feed people your magic potion and…” Anabelle silenced her with a kiss.

Soft music filled the air. Couples danced and revelled in each other’s company. Then, the door was wrenched open. Several dark uniformed security officers barged in, Taser rifles held ready. Small explosions lit the room. It was like being caught in the middle of a surprise firework display. Little John was shot with a taser; he sank to his knees, gasping and gagging in convulsive agony. Lizzie and Annabelle clutched each other. A man in a crisp black uniform marched into the club. He looked around with an unpleasant sneer on his face. “Attention please, Attention,” the man said in a high-handed tone, silencing the cries and panicked shouts. “This is a raid. Lie on the floor and put your hands behind your head.” He walked over to Little John, kicked the big man sharply in the kidney, and added, “Or please do try to resist. My men could use the exercise.”

###

Lizzie sat in the stifling interrogation cell. She wanted to look defiant, so she sat with her back straight, staring at the door. She drummed her fingertips on the brushed steel table. Her chipped painted nails beat out a staccato rhythm. Her eyes drifted to the two-way mirror that took up one wall. A scared young woman looked back. The holding cell was kept a little too warm to be comfortable. Tobi had once told her the clock was deliberately running too slow, with an irregular tick. The walls were dark, and the floor and ceiling were light. All the tiny things they used to make you uncomfortable and off-kilter. The fluorescent light in the cell flickered, either due to poor maintenance or as part of the design to make her feel uncomfortable.

She had gone from scared to angry to bored and back again a few times; this was normal as far as she knew. What she did know was that they could only hold her for a few hours, legally.

Legally. But they make the laws.

The door opened, and a man walked in. It was the same security officer from the club. He sat down, without acknowledging her. Then, he laid out a file, tablet computer, and coffee mug. He took an electronic cigarette out of his pocket and took a sip from his mug.  Lizzie recognised the unmistakable aroma of real coffee. He laid out photos from the file: Annabelle alone and with Lizzie. One at a time, snap, snap, snap

“I’m Warrant Officer Nathaniel Hallstrom, as you can see, Miss. Magruder, we have had our eyes on you for some time.” He brought up a form on the tablet PC, the forged med bay form that Tobi had falsified for her.

“Nice to meet you, Nate,” she said, voice dripping with furious facetious calm. “What do you think I have done? Why am I here?”

“We know that your illegal relationship with Miss. Autum started around the time that Mr Cash falsified your records. Tell me, does your deviant behaviour bring you peace? Or are you conflicted about your disgusting lifestyle?”

“Under the ship’s charter, I am entitled to a legal advocate,” said Lizzie, fixing the officer with a cold stare.

“Yes, I can understand why you would think that. But in cases of gross indecency, membership of a radical anti-charter cell, and class B computer system misuse, you have forfeited that right,” said Hallstrom. A small, contented smile twisted his lips into a smug grin.

“Da-fuq?” said Lizzie, her mind reeling. She gripped the table.

“It means I have the authority to hold you without limitation or to offer you legal counsel. It’s standard procedure for Anti-Charter activity,” said Hallstrom

“I have nothing to say to you,” she managed, her eyesight was starting to show sparkles of light, and her breath was shallow.

“I think you do. You see, the high command has moved gross deviancy to Schedule 1 offence status. It would be punishable by serious brig time. This makes re-education a thing of the past.”

Lizzie reflexively stood and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“That’s a pile of crap!” she blurted out.

“Eloquently put, but no,” he said. He tapped the tablet computer and turned it for her to see. “The order came through this morning, signed off by the mission director herself.”

“I have nothing to say,” she said numbly.

###

Lizzie sat in her cell. The brig-issue jumpsuit was deliberately cut to be uncomfortable. The seam felt like it was sawing her in half. She sat on the wafer-thin mattress and knocked the back of her head into the wall behind her rhythmically. “Not gonna break me,” she said again and again. She punctuated each syllable with a soft, dull thud of her head on the plascrete wall. The ship’s regulations did not allow her to have any reading material, writing implements, or anything with a screen. Tobi must be going mad.

She thought of her best friend. They would use a different strategy for Tobi. Instead of deprivation, they would try to send him into sensory overload. She felt a tear run down her cheek. She thought about the socially awkward programmer, bombarded with lights and sounds. It would be torture for him.

Lizzie, mind numb from the sensory deprivation and lack of human contact, lay on the meter-wide section of floor her cell afforded her. She started to do push-ups. She worked her slender arms until they hurt too much to continue. Then, she lay on the floor, her eyes stinging with tears and sweat.

“MOTHER FUCKERS!” she bellowed into the dark. The claustrophobic walls stifled her cry. She heard whistling from the other side of the door. The bastard was whistling the same song that had been playing when the fleet security had raided the club.

“You don’t dare, you little prick!” she yelled furiously at her cell door “You keep that damn song off of your lips!”

“Temper, temper,” came the calm, measured reply. “It’s been a month, Miss Magruder. You should know that the hacker is dead. He hung himself, and the other members of the terrorist cell have been processed. This is your last chance. Give me information, and I can petition the Mission director. Appeal to her. You might only serve ten years. You’ll have to be artificially inseminated, and your offspring raised by a childless couple, but…”

Lizzie threw herself at the cell door, pounding on the thick metal until her hands hurt. She threw curses and obscenities at the door until her throat was ragged. The officer just laughed, and she heard his feet slowly walking away.

###

Her cell door opened, and the harsh light from the corridor flooded in; her eye snapped shut. “Da fuq!?” She said, her voice a hoarse whisper. Locked up, she had lost track of time. She had no clue how long she had spent in solitary confinement. Her face was puffy. The light seared her eyes, even with her lids closed tightly.

“Magruder, your transfer request came through. We have moved your hearing up. You’re being transferred to The Lambda. Do you understand?”

“Yes… no… I…” she started, her mind reeling. She felt hands pull her to her feet, pulling her up by her aching arms. Her wrists were restrained behind her back. She was led through the brig to the shuttle bay. She stood blinking in her filthy brig issue jumpsuit. One of the guards was talking to a colleague; he paid her no attention. His com went off, and he stared at it dumbly for a second.

“That’s odd, my ringtone changed”, said the guard. It chirped a few familiar bars again, and Lizzie’s head snapped up. She mumbled the next line, to herself more than anything.

“There who goes?” asked the guard, pocketing his com.

“Nothing, what happens now?” asked Lizzie.

“You’re on the next shuttle out, and you’ll face trial. It’s odd, though; mostly the court system is dealt with here. Guess they must be too busy to try your case.”

“R-ight,” said Lizzie, pulling out the first syllable. She had spent a long time in solitary, and she was certain that they were drugging her food, but… something, something was tugging at the back of her mind. The song, the transfer…

The guard pulled a label out of the printer and fastened it to her wrist.

“That’s your ID until you get processed on The Lambda” Lizzie’s hands were cuffed behind her.

“What is it?” she asked.

“T-zero-B-one”, said the guard offhandedly “, It’s only a transfer number.”

Lizzie’s shoulders started to shake with silent laughter. The guards looked dumbly at each other. One shrugged and took a penlight out of his pocket, using it to check her pupils “Did you take something?” he asked.

“No, I, I’m sorry,” she said. The shuttle landed in the bay in front of her, and a massive man in an ill-fitting uniform came out, thrusting a tablet computer at the ranking officer.

“I’ll need your autograph, chief,” he said in a deep baritone. Little John didn’t even look at Lizzie.

“You are new,” Said the guard, automatically taking a step back, “and you’re a fracking giant”.

The newcomer laughed, a deep, rich, rolling laugh “Yeah, folks call me Tiny, I’m the F-N-G,” said little John. “Guess it kinda followed me from the Apollo.”

The guard scribbled his signature on the tablet and tapped the icon to email himself a copy.

“Well, she’s all yours, Tiny,” said the guard, turning and walking back to the cell block. Little John fixed Lizzie with a stern stare that vanished as he flashed a smile for a fraction of a second and winked.

“Let’s get you transferred, convict,” he said

“After you, guard”, said Lizzie, letting the big man steer her into the shuttle.   

Little John held her gently by her elbow. And guided her to a seat. The pair sat in silence until the shuttle was in the air. Lizzie glanced around the bay of the shuttle. It was noisy from the engines and the rattling of the generations-old fixtures vibrating, and they were the only passengers.

“Can we… talk?”

Little John undid the top button of his tunic, massaging his neck.

“Long as we keep it down, welcome to the next stage, Red,” he said.

“What?”

“The resistance.” Grinned little John. “Tobi has been working flat out to get everyone sprung; that boy hasn’t slept in a week”

“Tobi’s really not dead?”

“Dead? He’s pretty lively for a corpse, mind you he is pretty jittery… he has discovered real coffee.” Laughed the big man “Belle is waiting for you on The Lambda, along with almost every other member of the Checkers Club”

“I don’t understand, I’m… what happens when we get to the Lambda?”

“Well, Tobi gets you lost in the system, you’re transferred but never arrive, then, the way he describes it, your old identity gets scrubbed, and you’re given a new one.”

Lizzie’s racing mind started to come around to what she was being told. “Every member got transferred?”

“Not all at once, some were sent to other ships and left there for a bit, but the goal is to get every member of every club in the fleet. The captain is a member of the Lambda chapter, and we can just be left alone.”

Lizzie started to laugh.

“We’re going to get to… be together? Without worrying about raids?”

“We won’t be able to be out in the open, but there’s having to hide it and having to hide it, if you get my drift,” said Little John with a sly smile.

“I wish I could hug you, you massive lump of man.”

The shuttle shuddered, and there was a jolt as they touched down in the Lambda’s docking bay. A pair of guards in mismatched uniforms stood waiting. Little John ducked as he climbed through the airlock. The big man folded himself like an origami crane to fit in the tiny bulkhead.

“Fleet’s sake, Tiny!” Said one of the guards, “It’s like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat.” He pocketed his electronic cigarette and looked Lizzie up and down. “What did this one do?” he asked, signing the transfer order.

“She slugged her ship supervisor, but she’s low risk, I’d go ahead and pop her restraints off,” said Little John.

“A lot of it going around,” said the second guard, rocking on the spot “What’s that like the fiftieth one in the last thirty cycles?”

“Don’t ask me, boss, I just ship ‘em,” said Little John dispassionately. He turned and sauntered away from the pair of guards and Lizzie. One of the guards laid a hand on her shoulder. “Now, if you kick off, I’ll wallop you with my stun stick, you got that?” he asked. Without waiting for a response, he undid the cuffs and led Lizzie to the brig “We’re minimum security here, you’ll be in gen pop until we can requisition you a berth, your court date should be sometime in the next fourteen cycles”, said the first guard.

###

The next three cycles were a walk in the park compared to solitary and the mind games of Hallstrom. Lizzie kept her head down and did her best not to make any waves. A few of the other inmates were hostile, but mostly she was left alone.  Lizzie started a friendship with a girl from the medical corps called Jack. Jack was in for dereliction of duty – according to her, she slept through her shift and would only be in for another five cycles. Lizzie knew it was bull; she hummed a few bars of “There she goes”, and Jack grinned knowingly. She held a finger up to her lips, “The Cobain Chapter,” she said.  Lizzie nodded. Tobi played video games with a programmer on The Cobain through the Nexus.

“I’m with the Adam,” she said.

“GTFO”, said Jack “That place sucks, you’ll like it better here. Well, not here, but once you’re out and your wizard gets you lost in the system,” she said. “Just keep your head down, wait for your papers, and if someone calls you by a name that isn’t yours, answer to it.”

Lizzie sipped water out of the plastic bottle that she had been clinging to “And what about… the resistance?” she asked in a hushed tone.

Jack chuckled, “That’s just what Tiny calls us, he has a flair for the dramatic, truth be told, we’re not looking for any kind of revolution, like everyone else in this fleet, we just want to be, to exist”.

“But we have to take over a ship by stealth to do it?”

“Tiny would say that the struggle makes our freedom have meaning.”

“Tiny?” said Lizzie to herself “It suits him. I knew him as Little John.”

Jack wrinkled her nose and nodded to a figure standing behind Lizzie “Looks like your representative is here,” she said.  Lizzie turned around and smiled. Belle walked in, dressed smartly, carrying a tablet computer and an old-fashioned briefcase.

“Ah, Miss Magruder,” she said with a knowing smile, “I’m Anna Parks, I’ll be your representation.”

“Anna?” said Lizzie.

“Follow me, please.” Said Annabelle. She led them to an interview room, and as soon as the door was closed, they melted into each other’s arms.

“You’ll be sprung in two days, your new identity is Larna Porter, you’ll be in for reporting for duty while intoxicated and assigned a new bunk, with a lawyer called Anna” she smiled. She took Lizzie’s hand in hers and interlocked her fingers with Lizzie’s.

“We won,” she said softly.

THE END