Vacation

Commander Nathaniel Hawke took a sip of his Jack Daniels on the rocks, thinking about what he would do when he retired from the military. The notion occupied more and more of his time. A bad sign. Without family, the Command was all he had. As he stared at the glass, beads of condensation trickled down its icy sides staining a perfect crescent moon on the napkin.

With considerable effort, he shifted the direction of his thoughts before they spiraled down that dark road, a path he was all too familiar with. This was supposed to be his R & R, his one yearly opportunity to escape the bullshit and relax and unwind. Four lethargic ceiling fans suspended from the thatched palm leaf roof failed to stir the heavy, humid air. It looked quaint and authentic, but underneath the braided palm fronds and imitation bamboo poles was a stainless steel structure, engineered to withstand the fury of the tropical storms and hurricanes that bombarded the island every year.

Besides the bartender, a few local patrons sat at tables, drinking and talking among themselves. A petite Latino waitress busied herself with restocking cocktail napkins and straws when not attending to her customers. No one looked his way.

While he decided whether to order something solid to go with his liquid lunch, a raucous banging of the swinging doors made him turn his head. Three men entered. The one in front surveyed the room, nonchalantly adjusting the belt buckle under his protruding belly. His eyes immediately settled on Hawke sitting alone at the bar. He hocked and spat onto the floor.

Hawke turned back, absently swirling the cubes in the glass.

"Hey, José! Why’s this pale-face sittin’ on my favorite stool, eh?" The two men behind him sniggered.

The bartender raised his hands in supplication, a dirty rag clenched between his thumb and palm. "Please, Manuel, I don’ want no trouble today."

Manuel ignored him and thumped over to the bar. "You got some cojones, pale-face." Hawke’s blonde hair and ice blue eyes made him an oddity in the region.

"Hey, gringo! You hard of hearing? I’m talking to you."

Hawke put down his drink and swiveled on the stool. The man facing him was a real gorilla, complete with protruding brow. With thick arms folded over his chest, tufts of black hair sprouted from under his half-buttoned shirt and from the armpits of his torn sleeves. A corded gold chain hung around his neck. His bulbous nose looked to have been broken many times. Yellow, discolored teeth marked him as a frequent user of Chewbacco, a synthetic version of chewing tobacco common in poorer areas. Even substandard grades of the mild stimulant contained active cultures that negated the unsightly dental effects of long term use, but this man obviously used a locally grown variety of the stuff...that, or he didn’t clean his teeth regularly. Or both.

"I said, yer sittin’ in my seat." Manuel looked over his shoulder toward his mates, their toothless smirks giving him all the encouragement he needed.

Hawke figured to have a good three inches over the bulky islander, though he was outweighed by at least seventy or eighty pounds. "Well, then it seems you have a problem." Hawke casually shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet.

"Yeah?" Manuel’s nostrils flared in anticipation.

"Since you’re looking for a fight, I’d like to oblige by making some smart, witty insult about you; perhaps something about your rancid breath or your lack of fashion sense, or hygiene, for that matter. But unfortunately, a man of your intelligence wouldn’t realize he’d been offended, so I’d just be wasting my breath."

Manuel stared for a few seconds, mouth hanging open. His puzzled expression confirmed Hawke’s opinion of the man’s underpowered intellect. But then Manuel’s features twisted darkly and he lunged forward, swinging a fist the size of a basketball at Hawke’s head. Hawke easily leaned back out of reach and darted forward, jabbing his arm over the clumsy throw.

His fist hit squarely in the nose, but Manuel merely grunted without so much as blinking. Hawke guessed his adversary didn’t win many fights on technique. Hawke stepped lightly away from the bar so he wouldn’t be cornered. Manuel advanced in a grappler’s stance, careful not to overreach with his arms again. Hawke planted a sudden roundhouse kick directly on his jaw, splitting his lip and causing several yellow teeth to crack and scatter, plinking onto the ground like ivory raindrops. This time Manuel did go down, but only to his knees.

The man howled, spattering from his torn lips. He came at Hawke again, veins in his temple bulging. Hawke stayed loose, his body ready to dart in any direction. He feinted to his left and Manuel fell for it, charging. Hawke deftly scooped up a stool and brought it down so hard on Manuel’s head that the wicker bindings holding it together came apart.

The bully shrugged off the blow and twisted his arm, managing to his glee to snag one of Hawke’s wrists in his melon-sized hands. Hawke brought his knee up firmly into the man’s gut. Manuel gasped as the compressed fat was shoved deep into his diaphragm and the wind was knocked out of him. Hawke followed with an uppercut to the throat.

Manuel made a violent gurgling noise and let go of Hawke’s wrist. Then he doubled over and vomited on the floor. When he finished, he wiped the bile from his mouth across his knuckles and glared savagely up at Hawke.

Hawke didn’t see him pull out a weapon, but the way Manuel protectively cupped his hand made him instantly wary. Manuel’s leg muscles tensed and he sprang, simultaneously reaching with one hand while making a slashing motion with the other. Hawke sidestepped the blade and pivoted, lashing out with his foot. He grunted with satisfaction as he connected on a solid roundhouse kick to the side of the head. The impact made a sound like splitting wood. Manuel’s eyes rolled up into the back of his skull and he was unconscious before his body smacked down on the floor like a slab of meat. A wickedly curved knife slipped from between his fingers.

Hawke faced the two locals who’d accompanied the bully. They took one look at Manuel before hastily retreating from the bar, ignominiously leaving their fallen leader lying on the floor in his own blood and vomit. Hawke went to the bar and downed the rest of his Jack Daniels. The few customers who had remained when the fight started broke into a cheer and toasted him.

Hawke reached into his pocket and threw some money on the counter. "Here, José. Hopefully this will pay for the damages."

The bartender grinned, the gold filling in his front tooth glinting. "Awww, Hawke, you don’ have to do that, mon. It was worth it just to see you wipe the floor with that macañema’s face. He been comin’ in here bullying the customers for three months now."

"Well, take it. You can buy María something nice. Maybe she’ll let you move back in." Hawke winked.

José laughed out loud. "You a funny man, Hawke. You come back, okay?"

"You know I’d never give up my favorite watering hole. Where else can I get this view?" He gestured to the open expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

José pocketed the credits with the practiced ease of a man who’d spent a lot of time around unscrupulous customers. "Why do you think I stay, eh? It’s not just for the money, y’know?" Then he sobered. "You take care."

Without a specific destination in mind, Hawke strolled along the docks. He felt the thrum beneath his feet of the hydraulic lifts designed to raise and lower them according to the ebb and flow of the tide. During a severe storm the lifts were capable of raising the docks – stores, bars, seedy hotels, and all – a total of twenty-five feet above sea level. This was generally sufficient for them to weather all but the most severe storms with minimal damage.

The people he passed stared overtly at him but no one confronted him. From his clothes and complexion, they assumed he was a Fed, and standing at six-foot-three and two hundred and thirty pounds, he presented an intimidating figure. Nevertheless, he wasn’t kidding himself. The locals were more leery of the pirates who roamed these waters than any government officials.

With three days before his leave was up, he pondered browsing the black market district again. It was one of his favorite places – a place where you might find relics from past centuries – things like parts of combustion engines, or books made out of paper – at prices he could afford. He had a fondness for these kinds of antiquities; his favorite items to look for were music compact discs. He even had a machine that a buddy of his had refurbished to play them. His rare collection of Jimmy Buffet CDs was his most valuable possession. He had many artists from that bygone era: the Beatles, the Doors, the Who, but Jimmy Buffet was his favorite. There was something enchanting about the way his songs ranged from sad and melancholy to fun and whimsical. Most of his friends just thought he was crazy.

Suddenly, his military-issue cellular buzzed in his pocket. What the hell? Thought I’d turned the damn thing off. According to regulations he was supposed to wear it on his person at all times, even on leave, but wearing it about openly at a place like this would get him killed. He slipped it out but didn’t answer it. Instead, he set it to text and read the transcript. He knew he’d catch flak from his superiors about that later. "Damn. Priority CAT-1. So much for my vacation."

For just a moment, Hawke considered ignoring it, knowing the Admiral would have his hide if he did. He wasn’t in the mood to endure one of Langolier’s tirades, so Hawke pocketed the UCD and turned back in the direction of his hotel, such as it was. Really, it was just a place for locals to have affairs with their mistresses and for the prostitutes who worked the docks to conduct their business. The hotel staff was more likely to give you a second look if you asked to pay by the day than the hour. Hawke grabbed his backpack (he made it a rule to travel light) from his room. As an afterthought, he left a few credits for the elderly woman who straightened his room each morning, even though he was certain she’d never see them – the hotel’s miserly manager swept the room for ’souvenirs’ first.

Hawke scanned the docks for a suitable mode of transportation. There were no teleport terminals on the island. It was one of the main reasons he enjoyed coming here. The pristine beaches and hotels tourists flocked to decades ago had long since been washed away. Without the tourist trade, the tenuous economies of these small island paradises dried up. The only businesses to flourish in the aftermath were the illegal ones – smuggling, pirating, prostitution, and the like.

He was in luck. A large hoverboat was getting ready to embark. He stopped first at a dock-vendor and bought a cold beer and two bean and rice tamales. It was unusual to see such a large boat on an island of this size, but he recognized the logo splashed across its hull as legit: Caribbean Freight Services, Inc. Two armed deckhands surveyed the crowded pier with fingers lightly on triggers as dockworkers operated the cranes unloading several large crates from the barge.

Hawke walked up to the skipper who stood apart watching with a keen gaze. A gangly man with a close-cropped beard and dark eyes, he wore a white short-sleeved shirt with white slacks that hung loosely over his gaunt, weathered frame. A captain’s hat was tipped back slightly revealing an age-spotted forehead.

"Excuse me, Captain. If you’re headed back to the U.S., I’d like to cop a ride. I’ll gladly pay you for the trouble."

The skipper looked him over head to toe through drawn, bushy eyebrows. "You’re military or I’ll eat my cap. Marine?" When Hawke didn’t respond, he chuckled and stuck out his hand. "It’s all right, son. Chief Petty Officer Argo Scanlon. Spent over thirty years in Uncle Sam’s Navy."

Inwardly, Hawke breathed a sigh of relief. In these parts you could never tell who looked favorably upon U.S. servicemen. He took the proffered hand. "Commander Nathan Hawke, Space Corps."

Argo nodded. "What d’ya fly?"

"Mostly SC-8’s, C-500’s. Routine stuff. Occasionally an EC-14/B."

"Cargo, eh? I’d have pegged you for a fast-mover."

"Used to be. Flew SF-109’s."

"What happened?"

"Lost interest."

The skipper searched his face intently. "Well, it’s good to have you aboard, Commander. Don’t normally see your type here. Just the usual tourists and scalawags." He nodded his head toward the bridge, "Pay the Quartermaster for the passage. Tell him I said to give you a fair price or I’ll take it out of his pay." He turned away, shouting orders to the seamen on the dock.

*****

Less than twenty minutes later, the boat slipped away from the dock and turned northwestward. Besides the crew and himself, there were five passengers on board. From snippets of talk he’d overheard, two of them were a couple, recently married, on their way to visit relations in the States. Two were a man traveling with a young child, presumably his daughter. The last appeared to be a businessman, though judging from the sorts of transactions that took place in these parts, his trade was most likely something less admirable than selling Digi-Bibles.

Hawke had no desire to strike up conversation, nor did they seem to have any interest in him. The businessman in particular took pains to avoid his gaze and steer clear of him. Hawke gazed out to sea and admired the scenic mountains of Puerto Rico as they cruised ten feet above the waves. They were close enough for him to make out houses magnificently engineered into their steep slopes. They resembled a child’s geometric buildings blocks jumbled against a jagged landscape. Were it not for teleportation, he could think of no way its inhabitants could gain access to the outside world. He imagined what it must be like during a category six or seven hurricane. He unwrapped his last tamale, having finished the first before they left port, savoring the spicy jalapeño relish and washing it down with a few swigs of beer.

"Pretty, don’t ya think?" a voice said amid the low rumble of the electric engines.

Hawke had been aware of the skipper standing behind him. Argo stepped forward and leaned on the rail. "Course, I remember the day when those mountains hadn’t been ruint by all those condos cut into ’em. And the beaches. Beautiful white sand as far as the eye could see. Then we had to go and screw up the planet." He hocked loudly and spat into the ocean. "Guess you could say we’ve been screwin’ it up for a long time."

"You lived through the Rise then?" It was a moot question. The skipper looked old enough to have accompanied Moses on his exodus out of Egypt.

"Yep. Water rose so fast there weren’t time to warn folks. Millions and millions lost everything they owned. Lots drowned, of course. But that ain’t nothing compared to what happened in the months followin’. Those were black days then." His eyes took on a faraway look.

When he didn’t continue, Hawke prompted, "What happened?"

Captain Scanlon spat over the rail again. "Storms. Floods. Disease. Famine. You name it. It was hell on Earth, you might say. A lot of folks did, the preaching kind. Course, it weren’t the Apocolypse. It was just Mother Nature kicking us in the ass, letting us know she was pissed at what we’d done to her over the centuries. Anyways, hundreds of millions died, as you know, all around the globe, though mostly in the poor countries no one gave a lick about."

"That’s different than what I remember in the history books."

"Books lie. People lie. The bean-counters in the bureaucracy didn’t include them. Made it seem like the disaster wasn’t so bad, but people knew all the same. I was still in the Navy then. Even did time on a relief effort along what used to be Bangladesh. I done my best to forget what I saw there."

"What about humanitarian groups? Didn’t they try to raise awareness, put pressure on governments to provide additional aid?"

"Sure, they tried. But with so much happenin’ at once, they turned a blind eye to it and looked after their own. Not that you could blame them much. Resources were stretched real thin. The Guard, the Corps, the Navy – we had about all we could handle. Then the storms hit, making a bad situation infinitely worse."

"I remember my father lecturing me about those years, though I always felt he was embellishing a little to make his point."

"I was lucky. Say all ya want about grub in the military. It may not be good, but they make sure you get plenty of it, which was more’n I could say about most folks at the time. What little the farmers could coax from their fields wasn’t enough."

"Right. That’s when governments mandated traditional farms be replaced with factories, to be better equipped to handle the demand."

"Yeah." The Captain removed his hat, scratched his peeling scalp and plopped it back in place. "Maybe I’m getting senile, but food tasted better when it was growed naturally the way God intended, not in them giant, stale warehouses. All that genetic engineering and artificial crap they inject into the soil may increase crop yield, but it don’t do shit for flavor." Argo tipped his hat. "Anyway, pleasure yakkin’ with you, Commander," he said, absently wiping the rail with a rag he pulled from his pocket. He held it up and inspected it, then muttered to himself and ambled away, shoving the dirty cloth back where he kept it.

Looking at the departing Captain felt eerily like looking at a reflection of himself, aged another forty years. If I even make it that far. He glanced back toward the mountains receding in the distance, now no more than a faint purple haze smudged between where the ocean met the sky. He raised his bottle to his lips. The hoverboat made a sudden swerve in its heading, nearly causing him to spill his beer down his shirt.

On the bridge, a senior boatswain was yelling at a red-faced young helmsman who cringed under the tongue-lashing. The Captain soon joined them, appearing wraith-like against the whitewash of the boat. Hawke shot a glimpse off the port-side of the bow. The vast array of floating piers and buildings he saw there, like trailing tendrils, gave the docking station the appearance of a giant jellyfish. Elevators on the piers carried people and cargo back and forth from the underwater city of New Orlando to the surface. The boat cut a wide swath around the docking station to get out of the city’s commercial traffic lanes. A few minutes later Scanlon returned, shaking his head in frustration.

"A whole freakin’ ocean to navigate over and the knucklehead couldn’t spot the warning buoys." Hawke turned to face the skipper. "Course, if you ask me, people were meant to sail on it or swim in it, not live under it."

"I’ll drink to that." The thought of living, day and night, beneath tons of seawater sent shivers down Hawke’s spine. He would rather take his chances in the cold blackness of space than under the cold blackness of the ocean. Nevertheless, hundreds of millions of people lived, worked and died in those cities without incident. In fact, according to the latest statistics he’d seen, there were more recorded mishaps in land-based cities per million citizens than in sea-based ones, but that did nothing to dispel his reservations. And the media sensationalizing the occasional accidents didn’t help matters either.

"And you can piss on the moon colonies, too. Things may be screwed up here, but I don’t want to lie awake at night wondering whether some freak power failure’ll leak all the oxygen out into space."

Hawke agreed with Argo, although since space travel was a natural part of his livelihood, he accepted its inherent risks. But he thought he’d rile up the salty old sailor anyway. "Can’t happen. There are multiple safeguards built into the oxygen generation systems. The geodesic structures are massive enough..."

"Big fucking deal! I’ve seen what it does to people. Sorriest lookin’ lot I ever laid eyes on. I got a grandson who lives up there. You should hear all the health problems he’s got. He’s in worse shape than me."

"Well, I agree quality of life during the early years was pretty poor, even by bureaucratic expectations, but with the improved gravity enhancement generators, muscle and bone atrophy problems have drastically gone down. And the addition of holographic skies to simulate Earth’s weather patterns has been proven to counteract nearly all the psychological side-effects."

"Now you’re starting to sound like one of them relocation specialists. If it’s so great, why ain’t they more self-reliant? Why do we still have to ship so many blasted supplies to ’em on a regular basis? And now I hear there’s even talk of rationing water and food on account of the droughts across Asia and the U.S."

"That’s just the media blowing the situation out of proportion," Hawke assured him. Though not by much. "Over a billion people call the moon home, and there’s more room there than here. In fact, there are more incentive packages available now to entice people to move than there were years ago." Some of his mandatory government training included Colonial Rights and Privileges on the benefits of transglobal expansion and he was amazed at how easily he could recite the propaganda, even though he didn’t believe it.

The Captain wasn’t buying it either. "Yeah, well I’ll never be one of ’em! You can hang your hat on that!"

The senior boatswain rushed up to them. "Sir! Atlanta Port Authority is on the COM. They’re demanding an explanation for the unauthorized heading violation."

"Damn assholes!" Captain Scanlon swore. "Did you tell ’em it was just a simple screw-up?"

"Yes, sir, but they’re insisting they talk directly to you."

"Excuse me," the skipper said to Hawke. The senior boatswain, for all his younger years, had to hurry to keep up with Argo.

Hawke finished his breakfast and washed it down with the last of his beer, belching loudly into the wind, the sound drowned by the whine of the engines. He placed the wrappings and biodegradable bottle into one of the boat’s onboard W2E recyclers. The device used chemical processes to reduce wastes to a liquid form which could be reused as an energy source, but that was as far as his knowledge of the basic science went. Compared to earlier forms of fuel, it was not as efficient but it was plentiful (twenty billion people generated a lot of trash!) and had no adverse toxic emissions or byproducts. As was always the case, necessity was the mother of invention.

Hawke wandered closer to the bow and rested his arms over the railing. The married couple off to his left held hands and pointed toward the encroaching coastline. The father and daughter were also on deck, he looking somewhat bored compared to her youthful enthusiasm. There was no sign of the other civilian; Hawke suspected he had gone into the small passenger cabin space to stay out of the wind and salt air as they cruised along at sixty knots.

"My dad says you must be an iNARC," a voice said without preamble.

Hawke turned. The young girl peered candidly up at him with uptilted head. She appeared to be six or seven and was dressed in shorts and a yellow T-shirt. There was a cartoon character emblazoned on her shirt Hawke didn’t recognize.

The girl’s father was trying hard to seem unconcerned, a scowl darkening his face. Hawke looked sidelong at her. "What do you think?"

"Nah! You’re too obvious. A dealer would tag you in a second. I think you’re just lookin’ for stuff you can’t get over there." She pointed her chin toward the tall buildings beginning to dominate the western skyline.

Hawke was surprised by her streetwise manner. She was far older than her years, but that was the way things were. Kids rarely had time to be kids any more. That was the perception anyway, each generation resisting change, fighting to slow the inexorable passing of years, nostalgically remembering how things were. Or maybe it was the continual advancement of technology making the world seem smaller that hastened the loss of innocence. He stared over the water. She followed his gaze, saying nothing, showing remarkable patience for her age.

"What’s your name?"

"Alyssa," she replied with a child’s lack of hesitation.

"Mine’s Nathan. You can tell your dad you were right. I was looking for something."

"Did you find it?"

Hawke gave her a crooked smile. "Almost." She looked at him quizzically before shrugging her shoulders and skipping back to her father.

When they had docked in Atlanta, Hawke thanked the skipper one last time before he was swept up in the bustle of crowds and noise. He approached the first ESV vendor he could find for a means of transportation to take him to the nearest teleportation hub. The cars relied on one or more plasma batteries to provide the necessary current to generate a powerful, locally contained, magnetic field. "How about this model? Just got it in last week. The Suzuki StarBlazer. Isn’t she a beaut?" the salesman asked. Hawke agreed that it was, but the price tag for the rental would have set him back a week’s wages. "I’ll make you a special offer, just for you," the salesman persisted. It was sleekly designed and meant to carry up to six people, with cargo space to spare and way more than Hawke needed.

In the end, he selected a practical one-man mini-vehicle that had seen more than its share of use, much to the salesman’s disappointment. He stepped onto the eighteen inch diameter platform and pushed the starter. The electromagnetic coils hummed to life and the scooter rose a foot off the ground.

Hawke weaved his way through the traffic until he came to the Atlanta Teleportation Terminal. He returned the scooter in one of the self-return stalls. It seemed everyone was heading in his direction. He pressed ahead in an attempt to save time. I hope this isn’t going to be a reprimand for missing the Admiral’s "all hands" pep talk last week, he thought sourly.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3: The Mission