She turned and walked back into the kitchen. Dev stood by the door, admiring the view. Letha stood a head shorter than himself, her body voluptuous, generous curves even more pronounced as she neared the beginning of her third trimester. He had been in love with her almost from their first date, but tonight couldn’t help comparing her with the willowy blond he had glimpsed in the trans-rail terminal. A wave of guilt swept through him, leaving him feeling dirty, and still he couldn’t get the image of the stranger standing at the rail out of his mind.
No, Dev thought to himself, stranger wasn’t the right word. He knew the woman as well as he knew himself. After all, they had been created for each other, born to mate, to create the next generation of pilots for a ship now long dead. Two decades of separation vanished as if they had parted only yesterday, a pair of crying twelve-year-olds torn apart, the memory driving a spike through his stomach.
“Luv, you okay?” Letha looked up from the pair of plastic cartons she had set on the counter. “You look like you just bit a turd.”
“Long day, that’s all.”
“Well, sit down and eat. You’ll feel better for it.” She gave him another swift kiss. “Besides, I might have been exaggerating that ‘too pregnant to romp’ bit.”
He forced a smile and scooped up a bite of the stir-fry in his carton, the tiny red peppers in it so strong his tongue felt ready to ignite. Letha took a bite, paused, and added a dash of hot sauce. Dev held back a chuckle. Like every other native Oasian he had met, his wife was utterly addicted to peppers and curry, the hotter the better. Feeling better despite his burning mouth, he ate, convinced once more that he was a very lucky man.
“By the way,” she said, mopping up the last of her stir-fry with a torn piece of flatbread, “you had a message from the Pilot’s Association. They’s called a general meeting for tomorrow at oh-nine-thirty.”
“Oh?” The imploding sensation he had felt earlier returned. “Did they say why?”
“Nah, it was just a bot call. I’m willing to bet it’s about that white ship that’s popped in today, though.”
“You saw it?” Dev tried to hide his growing unease.
“Saw the tower feed.” Letha worked out of the apartment as a spot trader, buying and selling the various cargo containers off the long-haul freighters that passed through Oasis. Despite having never once been outside of the enormous station, she probably knew more about the various ships docked here than most pilots. “According to her manifest, they’s got nearly eleven thousand refugees aboard, most of them kids. I can’t even imagine what it must be like down in her decks.”
“Yeah. They must be stacked in there like bees,” Dev agreed. Again, the image of the woman at the railing flitted through his mind and he fought down a premonition that she was somehow tied to the gleaming white behemoth tethered outside the station.
“So,” Letha said, waiting as he stood up from the counter. “You want to run a vid?”
“Not really,” Dev replied.
“Good. Then take me to bed.” She kissed him on the neck, her tongue exploring the little hollows under his jaw, then turned and led the way into the tiny bedroom. Rain fell on the wall murals, speckling a slow, sapphire-hued river while a tiny blue sun sank into the trees. They made love gently, careful of her pregnant belly, both of them gasping in spent pleasure as they finished. Letha collapsed against his shoulder and within minutes was snoring softly. Dev sighed and pulled her closer, furious with himself that it wasn’t his wife’s face he had seen when he closed his eyes.
A strange tension filled Oasis, the white ship, the Blanca Rosa, on everyone’s mind. Rumors choked every message box, the electronic overflow stating everything from the absurd, that Portius had sent the ship as a vanguard of an invasion, to the barely possible, that the government of the dying planet had secretly shipped their own families away from some ecological disaster that threatened the colony. As nine o’clock and the general meeting approached, Dev toyed with the idea of not attending, but in the end joined the crowd shuffling into the repair hangar the Pilot’s Association used for meetings. Cheap plastic chairs stood in rows, the aroma of coffee and spilled propellant thick in the cool air. A low stage had been erected at one end of the hangar, a wall screen glowing behind it. Dev found one of the chairs and sat down, the legs scraping against the bare floor.
When he glanced up at the stage his breath caught in his throat. Seated among several other people all wearing identical blue flightsuits and padded jackets was the woman he had seen at the trans-station. She glanced in his direction, and despite being seated five rows back, Dev was certain she saw him, the same electric tingle he had felt earlier stronger now. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and was about to leave when a pot-bellied man with sparse gray hair stepped to the podium.
“Thanks for coming,” the association president said, his voice booming via the sound system. He adjusted his microphone and continued. “I’m sure you’ve all been keeping up with the texting this morning. I think at last count I had thirteen hundred messages in my inbox.” A polite chuckle ran around the crowd. “As I’m sure you’ve guessed, this meeting is about the Blanca Rosa, and what’s happening out at Portius. They’s have a pretty significant request, so rather than me relaying it, I’ve asked the Rosa’s flight crew to explain it themselves. Captain Alvarez?” He nodded at someone standing just off the side of the low stage.
A tall, athletic-looking man with graying black hair stepped onto the podium with an easy, confident grace. He also wore a blue flightsuit and quilted jacket, a white rose holo’d above his name patch. Dev’s hands bunched into fists as Alvarez casually brushed the blond woman’s shoulder with his hand as he passed her chair.
“Good morning,” he said in a rich baritone. “I’m Fortino Alvarez, Captain of the Blanca Rosa. We are indeed carrying children and selected parents en route to Novus where we hope we can find refuge for them. My ship will be departing tomorrow, but part of my crew will be remaining here, and hopefully returning to Portius with some of you.”
Alvarez paused, letting the murmurs die down. “A hundred and fifty years ago when remote probes discovered a planet orbiting a yellow, Sol-like star that had both liquid water and a breathable atmosphere but only primitive terrestrial flora, it seemed too good to be true. We were quick to terraform the world. Unfortunately, some factions on Earth considered colonizing an already established world a sacrilege against that planet’s ecology, and in retaliation they released a fungal plague that destroys all Earth-native plant life. By the time the fungus was discovered, it had already spread to the point that widespread famine is a virtual certainty.” He paused. “There is no possibility of evacuating everyone before they starve.”
A collective gasp ran across the floor, and again Alvarez waited for the noise to subside. Dev leaned forward, more intent on the glance that passed between the captain and the blond woman than on the impending disaster.
“There is, however,” Alvarez said, “a possibility that we can stop the plague and reseed our world. We have developed an inoculant against the fungus, as well as resistant strains of plants, which can be dropped via canister from orbit.” Alvarez’s dark eyes swept the crowd. “But, for the plan to work, we need a large number of pilots and pusher-ships. Portius is an agricultural colony with only a limited space fleet. That is why we are here. Oasis is the only point both in range and with enough experienced pilots to help us. I’ll let my chief pilot Kammie Tule explain in more detail.”