Na Viro E-Book

Gina Cole

• Herausgeber: Huia Publishers
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 428

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Appearing before the head of the Academy for fighting at her graduation ceremony, puffer ship navigator Tia Grom-Eddy must either join the crew of a spaceship on a deep space mission or complete a lengthy probationary period on Earth. Mortally afraid of travelling into deep space, Tia chooses probation. Estranged from her parents, Tia is bereft when her sister, Leilani, joins the crew of a puffer fish spaceship sent to investigate a whirlpool in deep space. And when the cosmic whirlpool sucks Leilani's shuttle into its grip, Tia must overcomeher fear of space travel and find a way to work with her mother, who is leading the rescue, or risk losing her sister forever.

Leseprobe

First published in 2022 by Huia Publishers39 Pipitea Street, PO Box 12280Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealandwww.huia.co.nz

ISBN 978-1-77550-691-1 (print) ISBN 978-1-77550-744-4 (ebook)

Copyright © Gina Cole 2022Cover illustration copyright © Elsie Andrewes 2022Inside cover illustration copyright © Elsie Andrewes 2022

This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the prior permission of the publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.Ebook conversion 2022 by meBooks.

Ki vei rau na noqu i tubutubu lomani, Selina kei Roger Cole

For my parents

Contents

PROLOGUE – NAMU ISLAND

GRADUATION

TIJEN

KAURI

GROMTARG

MAPPERS TALK

THE WAVE OF WHERO

DAY TWENTY-TWO

BLACK STONE

VISITOR

LAUNCH

WAQA DRUA

PAWTA

HOLOGRAPH

SOTRAKKAR

THE BRIG

THE EDGE

DANI

ENTRY

A DREAM OF ANGELS

TURUKAWA STAR

MUTINY

LEILANI

THE PROBE

RESISTANCE

PASSAGES

EXIT

THRAE

RE-ENTRY

NA VIRO

EARTH

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PROLOGUE – NAMU ISLAND

Tia would bury this day deep in the hive, the day her mother abandoned her and Leilani. She woke from the link in the half dark and waited for her eye circuitry to adjust. She took a deep breath and screwed up her face, ready to scream, to send a noise into the emptiness and make it real. Green lights flickered into her eyes in the dim cabin. The lights soothed the cry about to erupt from deep within her lungs and out of her throat. Nearby, a familiar silhouette sharpened into focus, and curved out from the side of a helmet. The soft arc of her mother’s face. Humming fins vibrated through Tia’s seat and brought her to full consciousness. She had travelled with her mother Dani every day since birth, recognised the sulphuric taint of the passenger compartment walls, and the lakescreen’s pin-point colours glowing from the flight deck.

Dani sat in the pilot seat, staring at the instrument panel. Tia had no memory of who had placed her into the passenger seat. Did her mother carry her there and strap her in? Her small body jerked against the harness. She struggled to get free, cried for release, but the straps would not listen. Leilani, her big sister, lay calm and awake in the next seat, hands draped over the armrests, eyes engrossed in playing strike games. They wore matching blue exo-suits, dotted with red puffer fish spaceships and green dinosaurs, Tia’s favourites. She dozed off again to the thrumming beat of the fins. Her skull lolled on the spongy headrest.

The shuttle lowered onto a landing pad with a soft bump and jostled Tia awake once more. A red glow streamed into the cabin and bounced off the smooth carapace walls. Data cells in the shuttle’s vertebral column jangled and ticked in cool-down. Heated air wafted in through a gill vent and onto Tia’s face. On the lakescreen in the cockpit, the edges of the sun danced in far-off ocean haze and lowered into the sea. Her mother had not left the pilot seat. She held her belly, rocked back and forth like a weighted Daruma doll, heavy in the feet, upright. Tia detected the scent of fish and salty sea air beneath the hot tar, burn and singe of puffer ship flight. They lived inside each other, didn’t they? From the same substance, fish, salt, sea? Somewhere nearby, water lapped against a wall. The last time she’d heard the hollowed-out conk and slap was at Bubu Keleni’s flotation house. Bubu told her the sea never stopped moving. She tried to relax into the seat, listening to the pulsing swish of ocean waves bouncing off the pontoons under Bubu’s floating house. Anchor chains clanged, pulling taut against flotation struts beneath the homes throughout the settlement, straining in the gentle currents flowing over Namu Island’s submerged ridges.

The passenger door slid open, exo-ore sliding across exoskeleton, revealing a night sky shot through with bright crimson and yellow streaks. Warm tropical air curled into the cabin, sought out each molecule, heated them and released hot steam. Tia’s eyes locked onto Bubu’s shape, tall, slim, waiting in the open passenger door, red light bathing her smiling face. Bubu’s curly hair merged with a mass of crimson clouds stretching across the sky in thick ropy skeins.

‘Bula, Dani,’ said Keleni, hesitant. She scanned the cabin with her eye circuitry.

‘Hi, Mum.’

They said nothing further to each other. Tia breathed in the sea air, wrinkling her nose at the sharp, stinging salt. She squirmed in the seat, trying to free her body from the restraints. Dani ordered Leilani’s safety harness to release. The straps obeyed, unbuckled, and withdrew into almost invisible slits in the walls. Dani wrapped Leilani in a big, blue woollen blanket, Academy issue. Leilani nestled into her mother’s neck, hung on, stuck to her like a limpet, refused to let go. Keleni held her arms out to take her granddaughter through the passenger door. She gestured to Leilani, encouraging her to leave her mother’s embrace.

‘My girl. Come to me. It’s alright.’

Leilani relented, unclasped herself from around Dani’s neck, and allowed Bubu to take her. Tia puffed her cheeks out and exhaled, waiting for her turn. Her mother approached, backlit in the glowing sunset, touched the centre of the buckle on Tia’s safety harness and ordered it to open. Nothing happened.

‘Open,’ said Dani, again.

The buckle remained locked. She pulled hard on the straps and tried again. A hint of frustration crept into her voice. ‘Open.’

This time the buckle heard her, unlocked itself, and the straps slithered back into the wall.

Newly medi-phased nanobots raced over Tia’s irises enabling her to gather focus. She squinted hard, trying to make out her mother’s face. The blurry shape, an indistinct nose, flat eyes, mouth a smudge. She pulled back from the featureless face, the blank spaces, the nothingness. The strongest trace of her mother came from a burnt apple and woodsmoke scent on her skin, residue from the blackened breakfast hurriedly cooked on the stove that morning in their Tāmaki home. Tia reached up to touch her mother’s face, hoping it would become clearer. Her pudgy fingers gripped at the air.

Dani placed Tia’s small arms into the sleeves of a warm exo-jacket. As soon as the jacket patches contacted Tia’s skin, she plugged into the network. Somewhere in the rush the Academy logged her arrival into the hive once more and her senses swarmed into the great embrace of the hive mind. She greeted the hive, chased the sparkling colours zipping among the data streams. The hive acknowledged her. She was well known to the information network. The first human to have instinctively plugged into the system in utero since the Water Wars ended one hundred years ago. Tia loved talking to the hive but in that moment, she snuggled into her mother, instead of losing herself in hive trails. Dani hoisted her up onto one hip and held her tight. She hooked a bag onto one shoulder, stepped from the shuttle onto the landing pad, and walked across the platform. Tia whimpered and grabbed hold of her mother’s flight jacket.

×

Keleni’s flotation house unnerved Dani. Her ancestors had refused to be rehomed on the mainland of Aotearoa, 1900 kilometres away, when the seas had risen and submerged their archipelago of islands two centuries ago. But Dani would never understand Keleni’s refusal to leave Namu Island when the invitation was still open to refugees to live on dry land in Aotearoa. The ‘island’ was not what she would call an island. It had now become part of the ocean floor. Her stubborn mother insisted she would live nowhere else except on her own land. Even though the yanuyanu lay submerged ten metres below water.

Keleni’s people lived in the flotation settlement, anchored to the island beneath. And although it was below the water, they still referred to it as Namu Island. On approach from the air, the village rose from the ocean, a group of bouyant structures arranged in a half circle on the surface of the water. They resembled ancient oil rigs, although hardier and more streamlined. The landing pad jutted out from the corner of a platform which, in turn, sat on four thick struts atop a foundation of exo-ore pontoons that floated on the sea. The entire flotation house structure rocked in time with the sea currents and rhythms.

Dani struggled to keep her balance as she carried her daughter in her arms and moved with careful steps towards the squat house at the end of the platform. A warm breeze wafted from the ocean expanse. The mauve horizon curved around them in a 360-degree circle. She stopped to gaze at the blood red sun until it dropped like a molten coin into the sea. She moved through the lakescreen doors and down a narrow hall into the bedroom. Tia’s eyes opened as she placed her onto the bed. When she straightened up without the weight of Tia in her arms, Dani’s body lightened, almost floated. She sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Tia’s warm cheek.

‘My dear little mapper.’

The night grew colder and the atmosphere in the room changed. Dani wrapped her arms around her middle and rocked from side to side. She leaned forward to kiss Tia’s head. Fat tears dropped into her daughter’s hair. Tia reached up and spoke in her three-year-old way, her words slurred and sleepy.

‘Mummy, don’t leave.’

‘Shhh … go back to sleep,’ whispered Dani.

Tia’s eyes closed. Across the room Bubu leaned over Leilani’s bed and tucked blanket corners under the mattress. Keleni smiled at her eldest granddaughter. ‘Turn off your game now. Sa gauna ni moce.’

‘Ok, Bubu.’ Leilani exited the strike game, spun her iris circuits into close-down and turned over in the bed.

Keleni walked out without a word to her daughter, Dani, who stayed in the darkened room for a while longer. Finally, Dani pulled herself upright, kissed Tia and Leilani and tiptoed to the doorway. Light filtered into the room from the hall. The girls might be fright-ened if they woke up during the night in unfamiliar beds. She left the door open a crack allowing a thin shaft of light into the darkness.

Alone in Keleni’s kitchen Dani rummaged in the pantry, on the hunt for alcohol to calm her nerves. Nestled among Keleni’s jars of pickled seaweed at the back of the cupboard she found a half-full bottle of red wine. It took some time to prise free the squeaky cork. She poured the dark red liquid into a tall glass. The wine had an unpleasant smell, like mouldy wet towels. Eager to dull her senses, she took a sip anyway. A sharp vinegary tang bit at her tongue. She spat the red liquid and bits of rotting cork into the kitchen sink and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. After some twisting and pushing she managed to screw the decaying stopper back into the glass rim. She banged it in with the heal of her palm and shoved the bottle in among the jars filled with seaweed.

In the kitchen, she flopped onto a white barstool at the kitchen island. Out through the lakescreen doors, the shuttle waited on the landing pad, shrouded in the dark like a moth at rest. Keleni appeared from the hall and moved into the kitchen with silent footfall. She glanced at Dani and turned to look out to sea. Dusk had painted the black night canvas with thin lines, fiery and blue at the horizon.

‘How long will you be gone this time?’

‘Nine years,’ said Dani, face drawn down at the mouth.

Keleni took a step back, held onto the kitchen sink.

‘Nine years! Why didn’t you warn me?’

Dani didn’t speak, stared off into her own world.

‘Have you told them?’ asked Keleni.

‘I couldn’t risk it, Mum. Tia’s linked into the hive. I’m leaving for Mars tonight,’ Dani stammered.

Keleni shook her head. ‘Look, alright I’ve cared for them in the past. But this is absurd. They won’t even have the chance to say goodbye to you. You’re not being fair to them. If you do this, it will traumatise them for life.’

‘Tia’s strong. Leilani’s on track to be a striker. You left me with your mother, and I turned out ok,’ said Dani. She tried to still her trembling hands.

‘I never left you for longer than a few weeks,’ said Keleni, eyes glassy and wide.

Dani did not reply. Her lips began to quiver. Keleni sank onto a barstool. She cradled her head in her hands.

‘Mum, look. I’m sorry. I can’t do it anymore.’

The colour had drained from Dani’s face. How to separate from people, even for a brief time? A good mother would never do such a despicable thing to her children. If she had anyone else to turn to, anywhere else to go, she would. But she didn’t.

‘Please. I will come back. Right now, I can’t have them with me.’

The lies dropped from her mouth. She would not be back. She’d put the girls in the best place though, at home with their grandmother, their bubu, where they would be safe. Keleni would look after them and teach them the old ways. Then they’d have the best chance of surviving in deep space. For that is what Dani dreamed for her daughters, that they would follow her and become space mappers. Then they would come to appreciate her sacrifice and all the time she had devoted to the Academy.

×

Tia woke sometime later to the sound of frigate birds cawing out at sea. Agile birds, hovering above the waves, waiting for flying fish to launch into the air. They swooped on the hapless fish and snapped them into their beaks. Tia climbed from the cot, tottered across the room, pulled herself up, opened the door and wandered out to find her mother. She crawled along the smooth, cool floor in the dim hall light. Her small baby body cast flickering shadows against the kitchen block and on she went towards the comfy sofa in the lounge. A bright glow shone at the sky’s edge, a planet. Her mother had told her stories about the shiny planet. The Venus planet. She squatted on her three-year-old haunches. Pudgy rolls of dimpled brown flesh folded over the edges of her exo-suit pyjamas. She placed her hands on the lakescreen windows’ cold wet membrane and blew bubbles into the water. Bubu scooped her off the floor. Her tiny hands splashed at the door and left waves of charged water molecules rippling across the lakescreen. She hummed a song her mother had taught her and watched the morning sun rise above Planet Venus.

GRADUATION

Tia sat alone in her quarters, the way she liked it, no one to annoy her. The mattress stripped of any covering, the shelves now empty of books, her clothes packed. She had lived in this small grey cell for three years and her belongings fitted into only one bag. But then she liked to travel light, efficient, ready to leave. She read the green dot message from the Global Indigenous Alliance once more. A wide grin spread across her face. The GIA had accepted her application. Her dreams had come true. The director had messaged her personally. This had brought a spark of light into the end of her bleak life at the Academy. She clutched her hands to her chest, overjoyed at the prospect of working for an organisation that ran separately from the Academy. The Alliance ran on Indigenous principles, in harmony with nature, with chaos and creativity, with the order of the cosmos. An honourable place to put her navigational skills to work. Where the knowledge of her Fijian and Tongan and Mayuro ancestors, their truth, would help her and guide her. A place that honoured Indigenous knowledge.

She checked the patches on her black exo-battlesuit, made sure to arm all pressure notes, activate all green dot calls, charge the communication lines. Every transmission channel covered. She planned to leave the Academy precinct right after the graduation ceremony. If it were up to her, she wouldn’t take part in the pointless graduation ritual at all. But she had to because Bubu would come, and Uncle Dua and Uncle Va always supported her. Leilani would also be there. Her mother Dani would not come. Dani hadn’t even bothered to send a pressure note, or a lakescreen call, or a green dot message. She checked again. The pressure notes on her sleeves held their charge but remained blank. She pushed the lakescreen membranes until they broke, and water droplets floated out. The membranes closed over at once, sucked in any lost water, and stilled to a shiny rectangular transmission surface once more. The lakescreen lay flat and silent on the wall, ready for any incoming messages. Yes – she’d made sure to charge all green dot ports in her jacket, in full, the night before and had checked them and rechecked them. She waited, but Dani didn’t call.

At least Gromtarg, her absentee father, had the decency to send a pressure note, congratulating her. Over the years, she’d spent a lot of time with Gromtarg and Leilani on green dot calls, and lakescreen sessions. He’d sent her sleeve patch pressure notes and played strike games with her and Leilani. She had talked with her father many times on these calls. Gromtarg was not only her biological father, or a distant acquaintance, or some weird stranger who she sometimes spoke to onscreen. He’d become more than a stranger. He’d turned into a faraway friend. Too far away to ever hurt her.

Dani didn’t call as often as Gromtarg. Neither of her parents mentioned the other in any messages or online calls. How did they ever get together? They seemed too different to ever have been a couple. Gromtarg laughed out loud, at ease with himself, generous with his time. Dani on the other hand, on the few occasions when she’d spoken to Tia by lakescreen, always remained in control, always held herself in a rigid body lock. Tia had counted. There were four, maximum five times when she’d spoken to her mother by message, and of course once in person.

When she peeked into the hallway, Tia recognised some classmates, thundering past, like idiots. She grabbed the door to slam it shut. One cadet slowed down and stared right at her. Mārena, the repeat student who sat up the front of the lecture theatre for every subject. Mārena had failed navigation simulation year after year. She persisted until she passed the exam on the third and final attempt.

Tia stared down the bridge of her nose. ‘What are you looking at?’

‘I watched your simulation runs. They helped me, a lot,’ said Mārena.

Tia remained silent. Mārena backed away and ran off into the crowd where a pack of cadets welcomed her. She pushed her way in among her friends, the ‘dog pack’. Roimata, the leader of the pack, looked over at Tia. Another classmate she’d always ignored; one she’d beaten every time in combat training. Roimata, the deadbeat, ran up to Tia, proffered her hand. A handshake? The gall. What did she think she was doing? Nobody touched hands at the Academy; too unhygienic. What an insult. Touch my hand and have my germs. Tia reacted instinctively, and slapped the back of Roimata’s hand, hard. Roimata cried out. Two more girls, Roimata’s sycophantic sidekicks, moved out from the throng towards Tia. She braced herself for the inevitable fight. This kept happening to her.

Rangimarie, one of the pack, wore a faded blue exo-jacket. She advanced on Tia. ‘Stop being such a Grom bitch. What are you trying to prove?’

A few passing students glanced at Rangimarie and Tia and hurried away to distance themselves from the yelling. Adrenaline streamed into Tia’s veins, burned into her muscles. Her fists bunched up. She might not know much about her Grom heritage but there was no way she would back down.

The rushing cadets slowed to a silent parade. The blood drained from her face. In an instant, she launched into the hallway and grabbed Rangimarie’s faded blue exo-jacket by the scruff. They fell to the ground. Rangimarie struggled beneath Tia. She screamed for escape. But Tia kept her down. Someone dragged Tia away and Rangimarie sprang up, ready for battle. All around them cadets formed into a distorted, braying mob. Tia focused on Rangimarie, put up her fists and sank into a fight stance, then popped up and bounced on her toes, like a boxer in the ring. The onlookers cheered. Rangimarie began to flag.

Tia bounded up to her. ‘Come on then, what have you got?’

Rangimarie’s iris circuitry spiralled. ‘Just because you’re in the hive, doesn’t make you better than us.’ She threw an awkward punch at Tia’s head.

Tia ducked, came up under the rib cage and punched her hard in the kidneys. Rangimarie let out a grunt and fell to the ground. Tia stepped into the raucous onlookers crowded around. She’d had enough and wanted to leave. But the mob pushed her back into the circle. She stood ready and strong. Her eyes flicked back and forth, challenging anyone else to take her on.

The cadets cheered and drew their circle tighter around the fight. From the centre of it all, Tia spied Leilani in bright blue post-graduate uniform wading into the crowd. She shouted at everyone to disperse. Tia’s heart lifted. For a second, her attention strayed towards her sister, relieved that the fight would soon be over. Rangimarie took the advantage while Tia was off guard, tackled her to the floor, straddled her, and flailed at her head with a rain of punches. Tia brought up her arms to deflect the blows. One punch landed, sock! On the left eye. Another glanced off her right cheek, splitting the skin. Pain shot up through her head. Warm blood splashed out onto her face.

Leilani pulled Rangimarie off, threw her to the ground, and dragged Tia through the crowd. Tia cut her eyes at Roimata who yanked Rangimarie to her feet and faded into the throng with her minions. The horde of cadets dissolved into the hallways. Several of them looked back at Tia over their shoulders and whispered to each other as they walked away. The blood kept trickling into her eyes. In her mapping array, she followed her attackers’ ghost images running like dogs through the building. Their heat signatures trailed behind them in bright red lines.

Leilani pulled her inside the dorm room and kicked the door shut. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

Tia struggled to escape Leilani’s vice-like grip. Leilani let go and blocked the door with her body.

Tia’s iris circuitry whirled to a halt. Locks of long black hair fell over her shoulders and framed her face.

‘Why are you brawling in the hallway, again?’ asked Leilani. She glared at Tia for a moment, shook her head and disappeared into the tiny bathroom.

Tia clamped her arms around her torso and shouted at her sister. ‘They started it. I was minding my own business. They’re dogs.’

Leilani appeared from the bathroom, a wad of wet tissues in her hands. She trailed water droplets on the floor. ‘You had to pick a fight today, didn’t you?’

‘She called me a Grom bitch. Anyway, what do you care? You’re off to Mars. Leaving me the same way everyone else has left me, just like our parents.’

Leilani dabbed at congealing bloodlines trailing down Tia’s face. Tia winced and swatted Leilani’s hand away.

‘That is unfair. Why are you comparing me to them?’ asked Leilani.

‘Well, you’re leaving me, aren’t you?’

Tia sank back onto the bed in a huff, relieved to have Leilani there, but unable to even look at her. Leilani had always protected her, ever since Dani had abandoned them as kids. Together, they’d learned to sail all over the archipelago in the drua, Bubu’s Fijian canoe. They’d attended the Academy at the same time. Now they would separate for the first time, ever. Tia stared down at her feet. Why did her people keep abandoning her?

‘You’re the one who can map the ocean. I can’t do that. I don’t have your skill. What are we going to do about these bruises on your face?’ asked Leilani.

‘I’m not going. It’s a farce.’

‘You are going. This is your graduation day. Come on. They’re waiting for us.’

Tia glared at her sister. ‘Who’s waiting?’

‘Bubu, Aunty Rota, the uncles.’ Leilani threw her hands up in the air. ‘She didn’t come to my graduation either.’

Tia folded her arms and pouted. ‘I hate her.’

‘Come on,’ said Leilani. She hefted Tia’s bag over one shoulder and surveyed the room. ‘Wow, sparse.’

Tia had kept it sparse. For her it might as well have been a prison cell, and today marked the end of her sentence, a release. Soon she would join the sane ranks of the GIA and leave behind the Academy and bullies like Roimata and Rangimarie. She followed Leilani from the room and slammed the door shut without even looking back at the space she had occupied for three years, glad to finally put it behind her. Leilani took hold of Tia’s elbow and gently shepherded her down the hall. Tia let her sister guide her. The fight had left her sore, and angry. They skirted the cadets crowding the corridors and flyovers, made their way into the jam-packed foyer, out the door, and down a wide flight of stairs onto the concourse at the entrance to the grand hall.

The adrenaline in Tia’s veins had levelled out to a soft glow when she spotted her loyal family on the concourse. Well, four of them at least, the close ones. If the whole mataqali had arrived, they’d have filled the entire grand hall. Warmth spread throughout Tia’s chest. Even though her parents were not there, she had people.

‘You alright?’ asked Leilani.

Tia nodded. ‘Yep, fine.’

‘Just try and remain calm and dignified, ok?’

Tia followed behind Leilani to where the family stood together in a knot beside a beautiful meteorite which sat on a low plinth in the concourse, a shiny lump of pallasite. A cataclysm had embedded green peridot gems deep within the meteorite. They shone from the synaptic web of polished iron rock. Bubu stood next to the meteorite dressed in a dark royal blue Academy exo-suit. She bent her head to inspect the rock, then turned and spotted Tia and Leilani. Her granddaughters brought a smile to her face.

Aunty Rota also wore an Academy exo-suit. She had flown in from Orojet Station via the staging port on the moon. Tia looked forward to hearing Aunty Rota’s stories. Her thriving tourism business attracted interesting people from all over Earth, Mars, the moon, the fleet, and some of the hardy souls living on Venus. Rota always brought exciting news about the sightseeing tours she flew out to Ajak whirlpool. Although Ajak had closed into a long grey wrinkle many centuries ago, it still emitted colourful lights. People enjoyed the flight out, the close experience, the impressive electron display swirling around Ajak. Tia had seen the famous whirlpool entrance in the simulators and marvelled at the spectacular lightshows. Aunty Rota loved her life, even though it meant she had to live on a space station in deep space away from Earth. Tia was grateful for her support.

The identical twin uncles, Dua and Va, had taken an automated AT aerotaxi from their home in the refugee quarter in Herne Bay. Dressed in casual suits, they waved at Tia and Leilani, and bounced up and down like elderly pogo robots. Tia often mistook one uncle for the other whenever they got together. They sported identical haircuts, had the same brown eyes, wore matching circuitry glasses – the old-fashioned black ones – and identical shoes. Over the years, despite their busy lives, the uncles had managed to attend all Tia’s prize-giving ceremonies and speeches. She had to admit she loved them all: the loyal uncles, Aunty Rota and devoted Bubu.

They gathered around and hugged and smiled and laughed together.

Bubu Keleni reached out to touch Tia’s bruised eye. ‘Karuwaqu. What happened to your face?’

Tia jerked her head away. ‘Gravity combat training,’ she mumbled. She averted her gaze and glanced towards the entrance. She was determined to be the first to see Dani if she did happen to walk into the grand hall.

‘We’ve been waiting here for a while,’ said Aunty Rota.

Tia and Leilani exchanged a conspiratorial look. Leilani had broken up past fights between Tia and other cadets. Usually, the other student ended up with bruises on their face, not Tia.

‘We had trouble getting through the crowd. The halls are packed,’ said Leilani.

Tia changed the subject. ‘Has Dani called anyone yet?’

Silence descended upon them like a dark rain cloud. After a while they all spoke in a rush, eager to share their news.

‘I saw her when she refuelled at Orojet Station six months ago,’ said Rota. ‘She’s always working hard.’

‘Did you hear about the mining ship disaster? She saved the whole crew from an asteroid collapse near Venus,’ said Dua.

Va nodded along with his brother. ‘Oh yes, the new refugees told us the story. Such a brave thing to do.’

Tia hadn’t heard anything about it. She glanced at Leilani who shrugged.

‘I spoke to Dani a few months ago. She lakescreened from Mars. But nothing since then,’ said Keleni, her voice flat.

They all fell into reflective states. Tia’s eyes narrowed. She scrunched her lips together and folded her arms. Dani, ever a focal point for them, even in her constant absence. She worked hard and never attended family functions. Dani’s younger siblings, Rota, Dua and Va, had grown up with their older sister. They had followed her travels over the years.

‘Dani constantly reaches out for the next mountain, the next achievement, never sinks into the moment,’ said Rota.

Tia kept her face expressionless, a pretence to show she didn’t care, but also a defence. All she wanted, right now, was for Dani to turn up. These family get-togethers always played out the same way. When Dani’s name came up, everyone updated the group on their latest contact, often a brief lakescreen call or a second-hand sighting from some other source, and they carried on and didn’t mention her again.

Tia scoffed. ‘What is she trying to prove? She’s doing all this stuff and it’s got nothing to do with any of us, her family. It’s like we don’t exist.’

No one voiced any agreement or disagreement. The fun went out of Dua’s face. Va hung his head.

‘And you all give her a free pass,’ said Tia. She took a deep breath and tried to stay calm.

Keleni stepped forward. ‘Tia … she should be here for you. Especially today. You’ve worked hard.’

Tia tried to stop the tears, but they flowed anyway. ‘No. Stop. I don’t care. She doesn’t care and neither do I.’

Rota placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Darling. She has to deal with herself. We’re here for you. We’re proud of you.’

Tia pulled away from Aunty Rota and then wished she hadn’t. Rota didn’t make excuses for her sister. Nobody expected Dani to arrive. Tia’s chest tightened. She took another deep breath. Why waste time with this graduation ceremony. If only she were on Namu island, with her rat and the drua and the sea. She dragged her feet. But the uncles bustled her towards the hall. She brushed her hand along the smooth meteorite, for good luck.

Later in the grand hall she huddled in among fellow cadets and waited for the Registrar to call her name. At least Turukawa made the ceremony bearable, standing up there, on stage in the line-up with the other dignitaries, a graduation iteration, resplendent in a black and red exo-battlesuit. A cadet saluted Turukawa, the Grand Matrix, moved on to salute the Chief, Ratu Shakti, and collected their graduation scroll. As each cadet walked across the stage, the crowd applauded, and the cadets grinned back at them. Blood rose into Tia’s face and neck in a deep red blush as she watched Turukawa on stage. The embod stood proud and strong next to the aged Chief. She smiled at each cadet, saluted them, congratulated them, and handed them their certificates. Nanobot microbes in their millions raced to cool Tia’s temperature to normal. This crush on Turukawa laid her bare. She shook herself.

Another classmate walked up on stage and greeted Ratu Shakti. The crowd roared and clapped. Tia glanced over at her whānau seated in the crowded hall. Bubu craned her neck, searched the line-up. Tia waved at her from among her classmates and tried to keep her balance. They moved in an unruly mass towards the stage. To her horror Mārena, Roimata and Rangimarie fell into line behind her. They whispered to each other and shot hateful looks at her. She ignored them. They wouldn’t try anything now, would they? Not in this formal setting.

She searched the grand hall to take her mind off them, kept an eye on the entrance. A foolhardy but involuntary gesture. Although Dani had never attended any Academy prize-giving ceremonies nor celebrated her daughters’ achievements, a part of Tia had twisted into an unreasonable fantasy world where Dani did show up to important family gatherings. Where Dani put family first, put Tia first, before work assignments and unexplained work orders in the New Worlds, whatever they were, and on the Home Planets – Mars and Venus. Although Tia also considered Earth a Home Planet, the first one and the most important one. In the few lakescreen calls and green dot messages Tia had received from her mother over the years, Dani hadn’t talked much about her work in deep space. She always dodged Tia’s questions. Tia had learned not to ask.

A pressure-note pushed down into a small sleeve patch on Tia’s left wrist. An exhaled whisper caught in her throat. ‘Dani?’ She tapped the patch in a state of disbelief. Dani had contacted her. She thought her eyes had deceived her when Leilani’s name appeared in the sleeve patch instead, and not Dani’s. Leilani had sent her a snapshot of them together on a sweltering day at Bubu’s house. A childhood memory, their arms slung over each other’s shoulders, they smiled at the camera. Heat flushed over Tia’s body. She should have known it wouldn’t be Dani. How stupid.

She glared at the graduate cadets in the Academy seats on the other side of the cavernous room, and scanned the blue mapper uniforms for Leilani, row after row. She spotted her sister’s long, slender frame lounging in the top row. Leilani chatted and laughed with friends, her wild hair now pulled back into a loose ponytail. Somehow, she caught Tia’s eye and waved at her from across the room. Tia hung her head and peered at the photo from the distant past. All those years ago when she stood on the platform at Bubu’s house, happy and open and innocent. It was the day when Gromtarg had shown up unannounced, the one time she and Leilani had met their father in person.

Tia’s memory of that youthful version of her father had dimmed over the years. He had aged. Events had blurred together, a jumbled assortment of changing scenes. After sitting for years in her mind, and with no in-person follow-up visits from Gromtarg to cement his youthful image, her memories of him as a young man and his one-time visit now presented themselves in faded snapshots. What might happen if she sat quiet and composed, and concentrated hard? Would she be able to recall the day with more accuracy? She had never tried, and it didn’t seem necessary because he still rang her on the odd occasion, via lakescreen. Whenever she spoke to him now, he had the face of an older man with multiple enhancements, ageing iris circuits, and white hair. What she did recall from the day he visited was her delight in meeting a living, breathing person who looked the same as her – well, sort of – was a Grom, anyway. She had researched their shared Grom ancestry, his people, her people. His mere existence had replaced the gaps in her knowledge and in her being, with the surety that she belonged to a tribe, a community, a line of ancestors. Even if Grom tribe had lived on Mars for centuries.

×

Anxious bodies pushed into Tia and carried her in an undulating wave towards the graduation stage with Roimata, Mārena and Rangimarie pressed into her back. She tried to elbow them away, but they wedged themselves in. Flashes of light shone into her eyes as she neared the platform. Her iris circuitry spun into shield mode. Two cadets waited ahead of her. This should have been a time of pride, but Tia dreaded the walk on stage. An urge rose in her to flee the building, but she wouldn’t do it. Bubu and Aunty Rota and her twin uncles had come to see her graduate. Her mother would miss yet another milestone in Tia’s life. She pushed Dani out of her mind and concentrated on Bubu and the others, her supportive whānau. The Registrar’s face towered above the hall on a huge and silvery lakescreen as they announced each graduate. Their names rang out and bounced around the grand hall. A cadet in front of her disappeared up the steps, walked across the stage and waved at the crowd. The hall erupted into applause and cheers.

Tia waited at the foot of the steps. Her head throbbed. Healing nanobots flew through her bloodstream to the site of a furious purple haematoma that had formed around her eye socket and cheekbone. She wished she had Turukawa’s ghostborg ability to merge into walls. She recalled the first time she’d met the embod, in the hangar at Bubu’s house. With each updated version, Turukawa had improved, become more human, and increasingly more integrated into the network, the hive. Over the years, Tia had become less frightened of the ghostborg. When she entered the Academy, over a million iterations of Turukawa existed, everywhere, working in every type of manual and service work imaginable. The Grand Matrix existed in all places at once. Tia envied and admired the ghostborg’s hive mind, and physical strength.

She tried to move away from the stage and away from the cadets bunched up behind her in an undisciplined mob. But Roimata, Mārena and Rangimarie loitered at the back, eyeing Tia and whispering to each other. Nanobot microbes swarmed over her suit regulating body temperature, absorbing the sweat under her arms, and sending data to the sleeve patches in her exo-jacket. She glanced down at a wrist patch. Her heart rate elevated when the Registrar called out her name, ‘Litia Grom-Eddy’. The next few moments ran together in a blur. She watched herself as if from above. She lifted one foot onto the first step up to the stage. Someone tapped her ankle and she fell face first onto the stairs. She turned in time to see Rangimarie, smiling. The heat rose into her chest. These bullies sickened her. She would not let them get away with it. She launched herself at Rangimarie’s legs and tackled her to the ground. Next thing, she found herself sitting on Rangimarie’s chest and punching her in the head. Multiple hands grabbed her, pulled at her, arms still flailing and trying to land hits on Rangimarie’s face. In the middle of the melee, she glimpsed the lakescreen high above the stage. The screen displayed her name, ‘Litia Grom-Eddy’, spelled out in elaborate gold lettering. And beneath her name, the words Prize for Excellence in Navigation.

TIJEN

Inside the control room at the top of the tower, Tia and Leilani sat sheltered from the winds gusting outside. Clouds scudded past and intermittently obscured a shy full moon. Over the last twenty-four hours Tia had cried a lot. She struggled to see through puffy red eyes. The haematoma around her left eye had turned dark purple, with a rim of dark green and yellow flaring out across her temple. It had taken three seniors to drag her off Rangimarie. They had pulled on her arms and ripped her exo-jacket. Nanobots worked to repair the damage to her clothing and her body. In the confusion that followed, the seniors had pulled and pushed her through the crush of cadets and onlookers to the edge of the hall. She tried to find Bubu and Leilani in the crowd, but the throng had closed around her. Ratu Shakti stepped down off the stage and left Turukawa to carry on the graduation ceremony. The cadets parted for the Chief, allowing her to walk through to where Tia and Rangimarie, their faces swollen and bloody, struggled against the restraining grip of senior students. Through gritted teeth, Ratu Shakti ordered them both out of the grand hall and excluded them from taking any further part in the formalities. The seniors escorted them to the sick bay.

Later, Ratu Shakti called them into her office. ‘Your behaviour today was a disgrace. I’m disappointed in both of you. Two of our best cadets,’ she said, peering at them from behind her desk.

‘I am banning you both from graduating. You are placed on probation until you complete a deep space mission.’

Tia’s chest caved in as Ratu Shakti spoke. She uttered an involuntary ‘No’ before she could stop herself. Ratu Shakti ignored her and continued itemising further severe penalties.

‘Tia, you are hereby banned from starting work with the Global Indigenous Alliance. Rangimarie, you too are banned from beginning your mapper work with the Academy Fleet.’ The Chief glared at them both standing to attention before her. ‘Once you have completed your deep space missions, I will take you off probation and you may begin your placements with the Academy and the GIA. If those places are still available. I cannot guarantee anything.’

Rangimarie had lost all her bravado. She stood rigid and obedient. ‘Yes, Ratu Shakti. I will leave on the next puffer ship bound for Mars,’ she said, and bowed her head low.

Rangimarie’s obsequious behaviour sickened Tia. But worse than that, Rangimarie had made it harder for her. Tia wouldn’t admit it to Ratu Shakti, but she feared deep space travel.

‘I have a position waiting for me with the GIA,’ said Tia. ‘This is unfair. A mission into deep space will take years. You can’t do this. I won’t do it.’

Ratu Shakti’s eyes narrowed, and her cheeks reddened. Tia’s continued defiance called for sterner measures. ‘Well, you give me no choice.’ She drew a sequence into the lakescreen on her desk. ‘I am assigning you to indefinite duty in the Sky Tower beginning tonight. You are dismissed.’

Tia’s eyes welled up. She dared not continue with any protest. Ratu Shakti had already begun work on another matter. A view of Mars flared across her lakescreen. Tia shuffled out of Ratu Shakti’s office behind Rangimarie. Her mood did not brighten when Leilani jumped up to greet her outside the office. Rangimarie smirked at them both and walked off down the hallway without a word. Tia put her hands on her hips. A faux display of strength.

‘Are you ok? What happened?’ asked Leilani.

The tears started, and she found it hard to breathe. ‘Ratu has banned us from graduating until we take a deep space mission. I refused to go. She put me on indefinite tower duty. Starting tonight, with you. It’s cruel.’

‘Oh no,’ said Leilani.

‘It’s not a fluke. Ratu has access to the Pirimia’s records, the Grand Matrix, the hive, all duty rosters. She’s put us on the same duty on purpose.’

‘I’m sorry. Well, at least we get to spend time together before I fly out. That’s something, isn’t it?’

Tia didn’t want to talk about Mars with Leilani as they ambled through the busy forecourt below the tower. But as they dodged sombre, tool-clanking engineers she did not hold back on detailing the unjust punishment she had received.

‘Rangimarie started it. She tripped me up.’

‘Yeah, but I’m going to Mars soon. That’s my focus right now. I won’t be here anymore to pull you out of these brawls you get yourself into,’ said Leilani.

‘I know you’re committed to the New Worlds. But I don’t want to hear about Mars.’ Tia shut down whenever Leilani mentioned their parents’ home. Any talk of Mars infuriated her.

‘We need to talk about it.’

‘I don’t care that Groms have lived on Mars for centuries. Galactic Rocketeers of Mars. What a joke. They forget their origins are on Earth, not Mars. Even though we are Grom, our roots are in the earth, Planet Earth.’

Leilani lapsed into silence, a defence against Tia’s sullen moods. Tia followed her into a bubble carrier which floated up beside the tower’s exo-ore trunk, sixty floors high, and into the control room at the top. The city spread out below them, with the survivor camps in the inner city, the wealthy in their gated enclaves further inland, and everyone else in between.

Now, stuck in the Sky Tower, Tia tried to ignore the significance of the night – the final time she would work with her sister before Leilani shipped out to Mars forever. They sat in silence, the way they always did when they worked sky watch together, comfortable in each other’s presence, not needing to talk, but noisy on the inside – as Bubu Keleni often described them. Tonight, Leilani fidgeted in her seat.

‘I don’t get it. You’re a brilliant mapper. Why are you always scrapping and sabotaging your career?’ asked Leilani.

Tia snorted. ‘Career. What career?’

‘You’re always angry.’

‘Why aren’t you angry? That’s what I’d like to know. Look at the state of everything,’ said Tia.

‘Well, look what’s happened now. You can’t start at GIA. Your dream job busted,’ said Leilani.

‘I’ll get there. She can’t leave me rotting on sky duty forever.’

‘Why don’t you come with me to Mars? If you apologise to Ratu Shakti I reckon she’ll scrub your sky duty. Then you can come with me, finish your deep space mission, return to Earth, and slot right in with the GIA.’

‘What are you talking about. How can I go with you? You’ll be gone for years. I’m not doing it. It scares me. All the enhancements. Aren’t you scared?’

‘Look, I know deep space is frightening. But there’s no need to be afraid. Our parents have done it. Bubu has done it. Enhancements are good for you, even here on Earth. Look at your eye circuitry and the organic nanobots. They are all enhancements. How would we live without them?’

‘They’re different. No one would be able to see without them, with all the radiation everywhere in the atmosphere. It’s a human right to have eye circuits and nanobotics,’ said Tia.

‘But we aren’t born with them. They’re medi-phased into us at birth. Same with space travel enhancements, they’ll help you.’

‘There was a time when we didn’t need them at all,’ said Tia.

‘Yes, a very backward time when people lived terrible lives filled with disease and didn’t live past a hundred years old. We will live for hundreds of years.’

‘Ach! I don’t care. It’s all fuelled by the Academy. It consumes people.’

‘You’re talking about Dani, aren’t you? I know she left us, but you’ve got to let her go. Don’t let her mistakes rule your life.’

‘She doesn’t rule me. I can make up my own mind.’

‘Ok, sis.’ Leilani pushed her chair back and switched into a strike game.

They should have been checking cis-lunar space, keeping watch for any interlopers in the sky; rogue satellites falling from their orbit, inbound meteors which might be a threat to Earth, puffer ships in trouble. Instead, Tia dozed fitfully at the console, head on forearms, unaware a raft of satellites had begun to weave a gravity network in the night sky above. Leilani lay tipped back in her chair, feet up on the instrument panel, playing strike. They had settled in to spend the entire night in these attitudes. Nothing major ever happened on Sky Tower night shifts, anyway.

Meanwhile, in space, far above the Pacific Ocean, a winged satellite detected a change in the currents spiralling up the east coast of Aotearoa into the long bone of the Kermadec Trench, and on past the Tongan archipelago towards the Lau Basin floor. At the edge of the Lau Basin sat Namu Island – where Tia lived with Keleni. Fourteen fin satellites had teamed up with the winged one. They hovered over an area of flagging currents and formed a protective gravity network. The satellites pinged the nearest sky duty watch tower – Tāmakimakaurau Sky Tower.

The early warning system buzzed and woke Tia. She raised her head from the console, rubbed her eyes, and tried to make out the strange readings on the lakescreen’s watery surface; red alerts from multiple satellites in orbit over the Kermadec Trench.

Leilani’s seat tipped forward with a sudden clunk. ‘What is it?’

Tia jumped. She had forgotten Leilani followed everything in her field of vision, even while she focused on the strikers flying across her eyeballs. She stared at the lakescreen and gulped.

‘Fifteen gravity satellites off course over the trench.’

Leilani leaned forward and switched from the strike game to her mapping array. ‘Can we reprogram them from here?’

Tia manipulated the controls on the instrument panel. ‘Gravity readings are all wrong. They’re trying to compensate.’ The satellites formed a criss-cross blanket of electrical links trying to raise the dip in Earth’s gravity field to a normal level.

‘Turukawa, we need some assistance here, please,’ said Tia. She sent out electrical pulses to help the satellites. What had happened in the ocean to cause this dip in the gravity field?