THE LAST FLIGHT OF A TALE OF

THE CASSANDRA BY JAMES

S.A. COREY

My name is James Holden and my ship, the Canterbury, was size and power of nations. And some that had withered into shame and just destroyed by a warship with stealth technology and what history. The push out and out and out into the system—the main belt, appear to be parts stamped with Martian Navy serial numbers.

the moons of Jupiter and Saturn—had left them behind. But generation Data stream to follow.

by generation, the mining technologies had improved. Now ore that

“Well,” Darius said. “We’re fucked.”

had been exhausted generations before was rich enough for the new Amy’s voice came up to the flight deck from the galley below. “Are techniques to wring out a little more. But only for ships willing to add we fucked again, honey?”

the sun’s punishing light to their drives’ waste heat. Sundivers, they With the Cassandra on the float, “down” was a convention more than were called. It was a good way for a crap ship to grind out enough a direction, but Darius had grown up on Earth, and perception is a habit.

capital to upgrade. It was also a good way to fail out. Or get killed.

He saw her as rising up to him. Her hair was in a bun. Her sweat-stained Amy looked away. A sheen of tears covered her eyes, and she sleeveless undershirt revealed the tree-shaped electrical scar that ran grabbed a strap of undershirt to wick them away.

down her left arm. She wasn’t his wife, and she wasn’t not his wife. Back

“Get the others, will you?” Darius said, more gently. “I think we need in Paris, that might have caused problems for their Basic registration to have a talk.”

forms. Out here on the ship, she was just Amy, and he was just Darius,

“Yeah,” she said. “All right.”

and what they were to each other didn’t need a bureaucrat’s stamp.

She pushed herself back down in a spiral that put her back to him.

Darius gestured to the screen with one angry thumb.

He was sorry now that he’d led with his despair. Usually he was better

“You see this asshole?” he asked, scrolling the feed back to the start at waiting for his own private darkness to pass before he brought Amy of the message. My name is James Holden.

into it. The news had caught him unawares.

“Sure,” Amy said, grabbing onto a handhold and pulling herself to a The rest of the crew were just Lester and Abril. The four of them stop. “It’s all over. Everyone’s rebroadcasting. What’s he to us?”

living in a space smaller than the flat he and Amy had taken in Paris.

“He’s why we’re fucked.”

He stretched and yawned. The heat in the flight deck was sapping his A thin line appeared on Amy’s forehead the way it always did when energy. The breeze from the air recyclers was slow and weak. The thin-she was getting annoyed. The heat did that. They’d been leaving the ness of the air put an ache behind his eyes that he knew from experi-ship five degrees warmer and the oxygen mix thinner than usual. It ence wouldn’t leave until they pumped more oxygen into the system.

saved money, but it made them all more irritable. All except Lester, Which they could get by splitting some water, if they’d had any to spare.

who was unchanging in his irritability.

He heard Lester and Amy below him. The concern in the man’s

“The Canterbury,” Darius said. “It’s a water hauler.”

voice, the sharp humor in the woman’s. And Abril’s accented murmur

“Saturn to Ceres,” Amy said. “We’re not on that run.”

like music. He didn’t want to do this.

“The market’s the market. Ceres won’t let itself go dry, so it ups the The Cassandra had been a fluke for him. A dream. He’d been living orders from other places. Ships that were heading for Pallas and Vesta on Basic in a suburb of Paris, spending his days sleeping and his nights go to Ceres. Luna gets in on it. It’s straight supply and demand. Less playing drums—actually ancient plastic buckets turned mouth-down—

ice on the market means it costs more to fill the tanks.”

with a street band. He and Amy had used the tips to buy cheap mari-

“We’ll be alright,” Amy said.

juana cigarettes from the drugstore dispensers and smoke them with

“We won’t. We’re running at the edge now. There’s no more fat we her friends. For Darius, it had felt like having all the time in the world can cut off the budget.”

and no time at all. Every day a day where nothing happened except

“We have savings,” she said, but they both knew they didn’t.

you had one fewer. He’d felt like he was drowning.

The Cassandra wasn’t a great ship. In truth, she was barely even And then his parents had both died in the same wreck. They’d left a good one. A bubble of steel, ceramic, and air with a fussy Epstein him a bank account with actual money, a two-bedroom house in Bangui, Drive and third-rate recycling systems. They called her a rock-hopper, and a choice—uproot his life in Paris and go back to live out his days in and even that was a shade more dignified than she deserved. But the same house he’d been in as a child, or sell the house and live off the if she had a fatal flaw, it was that she was thirsty. Her heat radiators money until it was gone and he could go back on the Basic rolls.

didn’t have the surface area to shed as fast as Darius would have liked.

He had taken a third option. Two tickets to Luna, a down payment on a There were other fluids they could have carried to let out onto the used rock-hopper, and a call for crew who might keep the ship alive long ship’s skin to evaporate away, but none that they could also use as enough to turn a profit. He’d wanted to name his new ship the Icarus, but reaction mass and tea.

it turned out that every sundiver with their eyes on the Aten and Apollo And where they worked made things worse.

asteroids had the same idea. There were over two hundred ships already The Aten asteroids spent most of their time sunward of Earth’s named some variation of Icarus. So they’d named it for Amy’s baby sister.

orbit, crossing out for a third or a quarter of their time. Sometimes less.

He learned later that Cassandra was also pulled from mythology, but They’d been accessible in the first days of humanity’s expansion into he’d never gotten around to reading the story.

the void, and so they were some of the first to be mined. The titanium And just like that, the nature of his life had changed. There were prob-and platinum and nickel-iron had made fortunes that had grown to the ably thousands of other things he could have done with his inheritance, 5

but this was the one he’d chosen. If he’d gone to Luna, then he’d be at visual—” The display jumped. A black dot caught against the sun’s eking out meals and a bed there. If he’d joined up with a ship he didn’t corona, pulled up and enhanced until the details hidden in the darkness own, he’d have been out in the black somewhere. Maybe dead with the came clear. “That looks glacial to me.”

Canterbury. If he’d left Amy behind, he’d be waking up next to someone

“How far?”

else or no one. His life was defined by all the paths he didn’t take. And

“It’s not perfect,” Lester said, “It’ll mean a two-day burn to match yet somehow, he’d picked the one that had this meeting in it.

orbit. But we can do it if we skip 19-Daedelus. Just swap them out on Lester was an older man—gray, close-cut hair and pale skin with the schedule and change our angle a little before we light the drive up.

a scattering of freckles. Abril was Amy’s age, with a musical voice, It’s not that big a deal.”

straight black hair, and a strong aversion to being touched. That Darius felt hope stealing into his chest like an assassin. He shook his she was half a meter taller than any of the rest of them and that her head. “No. Free water just sitting here, waiting for someone to come head was just a little out of proportion had stopped being strange to along? People have been scraping at these stones for generations. No Darius months ago. He looked at her and instead of thinking Belter, he way they leave that sitting there all this time.”

thought Abril. That, he thought, was what being a crew meant.

“That’s what I thought,” Lester said. “But look. Most of the work gets

“Que kennst?” Abril asked Darius as he pulled himself into the tiny done closer to Earth orbit. This one never gets that far. It’s almost a galley they used as a meeting room. He silently translated it. What’s vulcanoid.”

on your mind? Lester, scowling, looked like he already knew, and Amy

“Still,” Darius said. “It has to be high-albedo silicates or something.

wouldn’t meet his eyes. The heat of the ship was like being locked in Not ice.”

a sauna.

“And . . .” Lester looked away. Darius felt the hair on his arms stand up.

“You all know how thin the last runs were,” Darius said. “Well, we

“And?”

caught another bad bounce. With water prices going up, I don’t see how

“It’s under UNN military quarantine,” Lester said. “It has been for a we make another run and stay safe. We’re already late replacing the hundred and sixty years. All the prospecting lists neglect it. It doesn’t microfilters. And every drink of sour water reminds me we ought to have even show up as an option.”

flushed the H2O reclamation feed lines last time we were in port. Even if

“Military. Quarantine.”

we make the docking fees. . .”

“You never served, Dar,” Lester said. “You don’t understand. You He sighed. He was dancing around it. Better to say the words and think military means well-regulated, controlled, everything buttoned be done.

down. I did my twenty, and I’m telling you it’s not like that. You heard

“This is our last run. When we get back to Luna, I’m putting the the story about the guard and the bench?”

Cassandra up for sale. I’ve looked at the going rates, and I can’t make

“The what?”

enough to break even. So this. . . is going to be it. I’m sorry.”

Lester waved a hand like he was erasing something. “Old story. It His crew didn’t say anything. Not even Amy. He pulled himself up to goes like this. There’s a fort that gets a new commander. Guy comes the flight deck and watched newsfeeds for the rest of the shift without in, and he tours the place, and in the middle of the yard, there’s this old really seeing anything. He’d dreamed of making a go of prospecting.

bench with a guard stationed beside it. Every shift, the guard changes.

Enough money to upgrade the ship or trade it for a new one. Something Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Rain, snow, or storm.

robust enough to head out for the Jovian moons, maybe. Try his luck Doesn’t matter. There’s always a guard there. So the new commander in the mainline belt. And now that wouldn’t happen. All those possible gets curious. Looks into the records to see why. What is it about this futures, cut away. His life redefined again. Another path he didn’t take.

bench that it needs that much attention.

He left them there to grieve together while he grieved alone.

“It takes him weeks to find it, but he does. Fifteen years before, someone painted the bench and the commander put a guard there

* * * * *

to make sure no one sat on the wet paint. No one ever rescinded

“What if we found clean ice?” Lester said. “Pure enough we could the order. Everyone just forgot.” Lester grinned. “That’s what it’s like.

process it on the ship? I mean, yes, it would mean buying new filters a Things fall through the cracks all the time. Always. And this is one like little sooner, but look at how much we’d save, yeah? Drop our overhead that. I can feel it.”

that much, and we could afford at least two more runs. And safely.”

Darius felt the objections rising up in him like bubbles in a beer.

Lester’s machine shop was hardly more than a wide spot in the hall Even if Lester was right, other ships might have broken the quarantine down near the reactor, but he’d made it his own. The gray metal work and hauled off any good ice decades before. Or maybe there was no stool was painted with emerald-green flowers on silver vines. The good ice. Or maybe the whole place was lined with decaying nukes set drawers and tool shelves were engraved with complex designs. What-by someone’s paranoid great-grandfather and just waiting for anyone ever else Lester might be, he was an incorrigible artist.

to touch the tripwire. All the reasons not to. And the one argument in Darius folded his arms across his chest like he could hold in the favor: that Lester had thought of all the same things and still wanted to ache. “You have something in mind?”

try. That the Cassandra meant enough to his crew that they’d take a Lester grinned and pulled up the familiar map of the Aten asteroids.

risk for it. And if Lester would, how could Darius do less?

The first time Darius had looked at it, it had felt like watching snow.

“Let’s figure a course,” he said. “Then we take it to Amy and Abril.

Now, he saw the patterns in it. Lester shifted the display, lighting up No pressure, no persuasion. Just lay out the option, and if anyone and darkening whole arcs of stone and ore, until only one remained.

balks, we don’t. Agreed?”

“Xi-Mallow 434,” Lester said.

Lester grinned. “Unanimous or nothing.”

It was a small marble of a rock. Not technically an Aten, since it It wasn’t nothing.

never crossed Earth’s orbit. It didn’t even make it out as far as Venus.

The burn was designed not for speed or comfort, but to minimize

“It’s locked,” Lester said. “Always the same face to the sun. Which waste heat. Even then, they agreed to let the internal temperature rise means always the same face away from it too. Shadowed. If there were another half degree rather than spend the water to cool the ship, and ice on the back end of that, it would stay there forever. And looking the recyclers were doing their best to keep the ambient humidity low.

6

Darius sat in his couch, sweating, and his dreams weren’t about wealth it for longer than their air supplies would last, so they moved slowly.

or freedom. They were about winter mornings along the Seine and the The suits all had compressed gas thrusters, but they’d learned not to feeling of ice cubes against his lips. The sounds of the ship changed rely on them.

with every degree of temperature rise as heat expansion changed Darius’ first priority was the ice. If the asteroid itself had ore worth the tensions and altered how the ship fit together. As soon as they hauling, that would be good, rationally speaking. But there was some-had their orbit set in, Abril shut down the reactor. Even the radiative thing in the back of Darius’ mind that made scraping a little ice off heat from the sun kept the ship’s temperature ticking slowly upward. A the surface of an asteroid under quarantine feel less dangerous than point would come, Darius knew, when they’d have gone too far, where collecting ore. As if one substance was somehow morally different the balance of heat and water would mean that all the paths back to from another.

Luna ended with them baked to death in their couches. There wouldn’t

“It’s not bad,” Lester said. “But it’s not dense either.”

be a warning, either. They could sail past the point of no return without They were a few hundred meters from the Cassandra where Amy noticing it if they weren’t careful. Whenever there was nothing else to had brought it to rest. With the sun hidden by the asteroid, it was as do, Darius ran the numbers and planned his exit strategies.

dark here as in the depths of space beyond Neptune. Darius played Xi-Mallow 434 was a dot of black, but it grew larger as they got his worklight over the pale crust around them.

close. At its farthest point from the sun, it was still well inside the orbit

“It’s castoff,” Darius said. “All of this around here. The formations of Venus. The solar disk felt oppressive and huge. The braking burn over the horizon might have been here naturally, but this is all either meant taking the temperature up another degree. Even if there was no steam from drives or native ice that was heated to steam, cooled, and ice, there would be shadow. Darius felt himself growing hungry for just recollected here.

a little darkness to park the ship in. He had the irrational certainty that

“It’s clean, anyway,” Lester said. “We can use it. Fill the tanks and the Cassandra’s heat sinks would melt, fuse, and lose their surface area.

more with all this to work from.”

The braking burn was short and harsh. The supply of reaction mass

“Coyos?” Abril said in Darius’ ear though she was nowhere in sight.

dropped quickly, the heat rose fast, and Darius watched, unable to There was something in her voice that dropped adrenaline into his blood.

affect anything. Then Abril shut the reactor down again, and they were

“We’re here,” Darius said. “Where are you?”

on the float and moving into the pencil-thin shadow of the asteroid.

In response, Abril turned on her locator. The cheap heads-up display Darius pulled up the external cameras in time to see the silhouette of in Darius’ suit pointed him to the far side of the ship and down into a Xi-Mallow 434 against the vastness of the sun. A dead-black iris in a split in the stone body of the asteroid. Long streaks in the frost-like ice vast and burning eye. In his baking-hot ship, he shuddered.

showed where Abril had gone. Darius gave in to fear and used his suit’s

“I’ve got a few places for a decent dock,” Amy said. “I’m not seeing thrusters, driving himself deeper into the fissure. Lester flew at his side, any structures, but there are some flat spots we could anchor on.”

a little slower.

“Let’s take this slow,” Darius said. “Coming out all this way to heat

“Abril?” Darius said. “Tell me you’re alright?”

shock the hull would be a stupid way to die.”

“Bist bien,” she said, but her voice had a strange tone. Like she was

“Dychanie lloga es,” Abril said cheerfully. It was a Belter idiom about looking at a puzzle she didn’t know how to solve.

the transience of life. Darius thought it literally meant “breath is rented”.

The fissure bit deeper into the stone than he had expected. The

“Lester?” Darius said. “Make me happy.”

rough sides spoke to a natural formation. Mining would have been

“Be happy. That out there? It’s not silicates. It may be a little dusty, smoother and more controlled. Ahead of him and below, Abril’s work but it’s ice.”

light glimmered.

Darius closed his eyes, relief flooding into him. “Amy, pick a mooring And something ahead of her glimmered back.

spot. We’ll let the ship cool down before we snuggle up and spill a At the bottom of the fissure was an airlock. The outer doors were little heat—”

half open. The steel frame set into the natural, unworked stone was

“Conduction!” Amy sang out like a victory cry.

polished and smooth. Only a thin layer of dust served to dim its mirror

“—and let’s go do a little prospecting. Lester and Abril, meet me in finish. Darius braked hard, the jet of nitrogen kicking up fines and dust the airlock.”

and tiny crystals of ice like fog rising from a river.

He undid his straps, pulled himself up from his couch. Amy grinned at

“Lester?” Darius said. “What am I looking at?”

him, and he pulled himself in to kiss her. Her lips were salty.

“No idea,” Lester said.

“Keep the comms up too,” he said softly. “If the UNN starts coming Slowly, Abril moved forward, her work light shining into the lock.

for us, I’d like to be someplace else.”

The inner doors were open too. Darius scanned infrared, but nothing She made a mock salute. Humming merrily to herself, she went rose above the ambient cold of the stone. Whatever this place had back to mapping possible landing sites on the asteroid, and he went been, someone had vented it intentionally, and a long time ago.

to the airlock. The others were already waiting. It took an hour to get

“We sure this is a good idea?” Darius said on the open channel.

all their equipment together—suits, kits, core samplers—and by then

“Are we sure what is?” Amy said from the ship, but Abril had already Amy had picked a place for them. It was flat, and the stone had been moved inside the lock.

melted at some point recent enough from a geological perspective Darius and Lester exchanged a look. “One of us should stay that the cooled surface was stable.

outside,” Lester said. “Just in case.”

Once the Cassandra was in place, Darius cycled the lock and they Darius lifted a hand in agreement and moved forward. In the micro-went out. It had been a while since he’d heard Abril and Lester through gravity, he had the uncanny sensation that he was falling down into the the suit radios instead of the shipboard air, and the thinness of their airlock like it was a pit. Or a grave. Inside, Abril’s worklight was playing voices reassured him. When they sounded like this, it meant they were over a wide chamber. The walls had been insulated once, but the foam working, and working meant things were going right.

had broken down over time, leaving long strips that had drifted to the The gravity of the asteroid was hardly more than a suggestion. A floor. The bare stone was polished and worked. The fissure that led here strong jump would have been enough for them to part company with might have been natural, but the chamber had been created. Abril pulled 7

herself along the wall, and Darius followed, his thrusters off to keep from

“And these are the traditional Chinese families of Dahl and Hoff-stirring up more dust. His breath sounded unnaturally loud in his ears.

mann?” Darius said.

“Ah,” Abril said. “Vise la.”

Lester looked hurt. “I didn’t say I knew what it was. I said it could be

“I am looking.”

a number of things. But it doesn’t matter what it was then. Not really.

“No,” Abril said, pointing forward. “La.”

The point is what it is now. And we do know that.” He looked around Thirteen figures were sitting in a semicircle, legs folded beneath at them all solemnly. “That thing is our ticket out. We know that, right?

them. Their vac suits were all a dusty red color, plasticized fabric that Whatever that thing is, it’s immediately convertible to money. We put it had broken down over decades. The helmets were swept back and in the hold, haul it back to Luna. A few words in the right ears, and we’ll weirdly aerodynamic, like something out of a history book on the have buyers lining up. We might even get a bidding war.”

first days of terraforming. All of them had holstered side arms at their Darius knew this was coming, and even so it shocked him a little to hips and military insignia that Darius didn’t recognize. For a few long hear it said out loud. That he already had arguments for and against the breaths, he thought the suits were empty, but then his light passed plan—What if it’s a nuke? It’s been stable here for over a century. We over a faceplate, and the corpse inside it stared out. Gray, desiccated don’t have to open it.—told him how much he’d already been thinking flesh. Sunken, empty eyes. Everything that made a human except for about it. About saving the Cassandra. His inheritance from his parents.

water and life. Abril moved forward slowly, letting her feet drift down The path he’d chosen. After all, they’d come here trying to get enough to the chamber floor. There were nameplates on the suits. Hoffmann.

water for one more run. This was that hopeful impulse answered a thou-Gutierrez. Dahl. And ten more beyond them. The ancient dead.

sandfold. If they left it here. . .

“What the hell is this?” Darius said, as much to himself as to anyone.

With the ship laid down against the stone, microgravity pulled him Abril agreed with a hand gesture, then looking up, said, “Y que es la?”

gently toward the wall. The others all looked at him like they were Her work light angled up. There, suspended from the wall, was a expecting a pronouncement. He pulled up the ship’s stats. Since thick rectangle of dark ceramic. An ancient storage container. The circle they’d made contact, the Cassandra had dumped so much waste heat and arrow symbol for masculinity stood out in silver and blue, and what into the asteroid that life support was adding heat to the living space looked like three ideograms in a form Darius didn’t know. A seam ran now. If he listened, he could hear the ship ticking to itself as it cooled around its edge, making it seem like a great, still sarcophagus.

and contracted. He loved the ship, and he loved the people on it. He The semicircle of the dead faced it, as if the end had caught them felt the weight of his dreams and aspirations on his shoulders, stronger all in a final and terrible act of worship.

than the actual pull of gravity.

He took Amy’s hand, running his thumb along her scars by long,

* * * * *

affectionate habit. “Get the drive up. And a path to Luna.”

“Ah. Well. Could be a number of things,” Lester said.

“Yes!” Lester said. “I’ll slap together a loading mech and have that They were back in the Cassandra. All four of them in the galley thing out in—”

again. The three of them who’d gone outside were still wearing their

“Anybody who leaves the ship stays here,” Darius said. “We’re vac suits, and it made the space feel smaller. Tighter. The dust of getting out now.”

Xi-Mallow they’d tracked inside smelled like gunpowder. Darius almost Lester sputtered. “But. . . I mean, the water—”

never felt the claustrophobic sense of being buried alive that he’d

“Fuck the water,” Darius said. “Get us a path to Luna. As soon as suffered when they first started flying, but it was tickling at him now.

we’re clear of this place, I’ll put in for a berth and an indigence auction.

“A number of things,” Amy echoed. It came across as skepticism, Whatever we get, we split four ways.”

but Darius has known her long enough to tell it was only not knowing Amy squeezed his fingers. “Babe, are you sure?”

what else could be said.

“We can get work on Luna,” he said. “Maybe we can crew up on some

“Yes,” Lester said. “Could be a religious cult. There were several other ship. Find a captain who knows what they’re doing, maybe.”

of those on Mars in the early days. Or this could have been a secret He tried out a smile, and the power behind it wasn’t sorrow. Or at research facility. Mars was all about that back in the day.” Then a least it wasn’t only sorrow.

moment later, “Still is, probably.”

“Dar,” Lester said, cajoling.

“If it’s Martian,” Amy said, “why’s this place under UNN quarantine?”

“You want to come back here, Lester,” Darius said, “I can’t stop you.

“When was the Epstein Drive invented?” Darius said. “Did those But the answer now is no. Everyone go make ready. I want to get out people in there. . . Did they get here in a flying teakettle? Old chemical of here in the next two hours.”

rockets, maybe? And what killed them? I mean, they were there to die.

There was a moment of silence in the galley while the others caught You saw how the lock was forced. They were all in suits, and they just up to where Darius already was. Abril lifted an acknowledging hand sat there and died.”

and Lester nodded. They pulled themselves out of the galley, and a Abril waved a hand like she was shooing away all the questions.

moment later, he heard the unmistakable sounds of them pulling off

“Ab que im eske, sa sa?” But what’s in it? She meant the black storage and stowing their vac suits. He was still holding Amy’s hand. He looked container.

into her eyes. He’d been afraid to see tears in them, but they were dry.

“It has a label on it,” Lester said. “The Mars sign, and the writing.”

After a moment, she squeezed his fingers again, and hauled herself

“Mars sign?” Darius asked.

toward the flight deck. Darius took a silent moment alone in the galley.

“The circle and arrow. It’s an old symbol for Mars.”

He didn’t know what would come next. How he would make his

“Thought it was the old symbol for the pisser you could use standing living once the Cassandra was gone. Lester and Abril with it. Probably up,” Amy said, but the joke had an overheated quality. Like there was he’d still be with Amy, but that was her choice to make, and he was fear behind it.

never perfectly sure. But whatever it was, it wouldn’t be what it could Lester nodded, and Darius didn’t see fear in him, but a growing curi-have been if he’d made the other decision. His life was defined by all osity. “And the ideograms. . . there was a lot of Chinese influence on the paths he didn’t take.

Mars at the beginning.”

And the mistakes he avoided.

8

Document Outline

- The Last Flight of the Cassandra

Table of Contents

The Last Flight of the Cassandra