The Last Children of the Arvad

PART ONE: Natalie Allen, Age Eight

As crazy adventures went, floating helplessly in the enormous zero-gee cargo hold of the Arvad with her classmate and friend Areanna was certainly pretty interesting, thought a slowly spinning and shoeless Natalie Allen.

It had all started with Monday’s lesson at their elementary school when Mr. Bronson had introduced them to the basics of Newtonian mechanics, orbits, and the zero-gee movement of satellites and spacecraft. But, as always, Mr. Bronson had moved on to a different topic just as the girls were becoming interested.

Both equally clever, curious, and a little bit crazy, Natalie and Areanna were about as close as two young friends could be. At an age when the term ‘best friend’ was tossed around casually, they felt each other to be more like sisters. Mainly because both were only children, and especially since both shared a common tragedy that set both of them apart from their other peers.

“Why do the teachers always treat us like little children?” asked Areanna after their all-too-brief taste of Newtonian motion. “Why is the answer to every question always ‘we’ll come back to that later?’”

“We are children, Areanna,” Natalie replied.

Areanna made a face. “Still, Mr. Bronson could at least make an effort to give us an answer. Adults always go on and on about how we are the ‘last children of the Arvad, with a great destiny ahead of us.’ But as soon as we have any questions about it, it’s always ‘later!’ We’re out of later! They are already pulling the Arvad apart around us right now, Natalie!”

On Tuesday, they had added a new layer to their long-running “Pirate King” game by expanding the theatre of combat beyond the traditional melee combat and shootouts to include a space combat element. But the other children — especially Oscar — struggled to commit to proper Newtonian motion as Areanna and Natalie were hoping.

So Areanna had come up with a plan to get some practical experience in the Arvad’s cargo hold. Or maybe it had been Natalie’s idea, who could remember; that had been all the way back on Tuesday.

Of the pair, Areanna was better at finding ways into places they were not supposed to be, so she had gone exploring Wednesday after class.

On Thursday morning, she had found Natalie on the playground and excitedly described the route that she had discovered in hushed tones. They quickly made their plans. Areanna’s father worked long hours now that the “planetary scans had come back,” whatever that meant, so she would not be missed for at least a few hours. Plenty of time for a quick adventure.

And Natalie wouldn’t be missed by her family ever. That was her superpower.

Breaking into the hold had gone exactly to plan. With the steady stream of miners and salvagers going in and out of the cargo hold, it had just been a matter of waiting in the right spot for the right moment, then clutching on to the empty bed of one of the big rumbling cargo movers as it drifted serenely past under fractional gravity.

The exhilaration of floating weightlessly in the kilometer-long space had been even better than they had figured.

But then there had been the miscalculation.

The hold had no gravity, as planned. But it wasn’t like the Newtonian motion of stars, ships, and satellites in a vacuum that they had learned about in class.
The hold was pressurized. It had a breathable atmosphere — which was good–but also had friction — which was a problem.

Unlike what they had learned in class, where an object in space would keep moving in a straight line forever until some internal or external force acted on it again, in here a too-weak leap would carry you for a while, but the air resistance would slow you until you stopped.

That was how they had ended up in the middle of the space between the outer bulkhead and a container of twenty stacked temporary Planetfall shelters, too far from any handholds to move.

Natalie had tried to move herself a little further, applying what they had learned in class by throwing her shoes in the opposite direction that she wanted to go, jus like a textbook rocket. But her first strong throw with her right arm put her into a sickening clockwise spin, and her second clumsier throw with her left arm only slowed that spin.

At that point, she had run out of shoes and thus also delta-vee, so she slowly turned around and around, making faces at Areanna and giggling each time she came into view again.

“So, how’s this for an adventure?” Natalie asked one rotation.

“It’s better than hanging around the playground and trying to get Oscar to play by the rules,” Areanna replied.

They continued chatting in short little bursts each time Natalie spun towards Areanna again. Areanna herself was on a different orientation where Natalie was almost directly overhead, and her own much slower spin just affected how much she needed to bend her neck to see her friend. It was actually a little like laying on a bed and looking at someone across a bedroom, a comfortable sensation that the two friends had experienced many times before.

Eventually, a crew member working salvage duty found the two of them, retrieved them, and handed them off to the grumpy Quartermaster to return them to their families.

For Areanna, this was a simple enough task. Her father was alerted and came to retrieve her right away.

“See you tomorrow, Natalie!” Areanna called cheerfully as she was lead out of the Quartermaster’s office.

“Goodnight, Areanna!” Natalie called back.

But with Natalie, the Quartermaster hit a bit of a snag. Natalie had no parents. Or rather, she had no one that would come and claim her.

And that was how Natalie was left in the temporary care of a mid-level administrator type in Crew Management while Quartermaster Andrews and others tried to figure out where she was supposed to be.

Natalie, of course, knew who was responsible for her and where to reach them, but she was enjoying watching everyone struggle too much to give them any hints. She would rather be back drifting in a slow spin in the cargo hold than go back to her room. She was in no hurry.

“You know, I knew your mother,” began the administrator, a middle-aged woman with the saccharine tone of someone with only theoretical knowledge of how to talk to children.

This lady and I are going to end up fighting, Natalie thought.

Just about everyone who was a teenager or older had known her mother, and nearly all of them seemed to think this was an acceptable thing to say to Natalie, who had been less than an hour old when her mother had died of complications of Natalie’s birth.

Natalie crossed her little arms tightly over her chest like she was shielding her heart from further injury.

“She was such a lovely lady,” the administrator continued, obliviously. “So full of life!”

Natalie stared moodily. “So I’ve been told,” she said flatly.

“And you look just like her!”

Natalie stared at her. Oh yeah, they were going to end up fighting. Definitely. “Yes,” she said, more coldly. “I’ve seen pictures of her.”

The administrator seemed to pick up on her tone and changed the topic.

“Your grandfather’s big promotion to the Prime Council must be very exciting for you.”

Natalie smiled genuinely, surprised by this new topic. Her arms relaxed incrementally, more like a gentle hug now. “Yeah, Grandpa is really interested in asteroid mining and is happy that his knowledge is suddenly so important to everyone.”

She smiled for a moment longer, thinking of her grandpa and how much she loved him and how much he loved her. But then The Memory shoved its way in again, turning everything sour.

In The Memory, a slightly younger Natalie snuck up on her hardworking grandpa with the picture she had drawn for him.

“Sup-ise!” the younger Natalie had shouted, holding up the drawing proudly.

“Oh, that’s amazing, Cassie!” Grandpa had said, smiling.

“Grandpa, I’m Natalie,” she had said slowly, confused. And Grandpa’s smiling face had gone slowly through confusion on its way towards sadness and heartbreak.

Natalie hated The Memory. It kept barging in, reminding her that her whole life she had been at the centre of an emptiness she couldn’t fill.

Grandpa Allen loved her, but he had loved his daughter Cassandra Allen more. He knew it. Natalie knew it. The Memory made sure she always remembered that truth.

The administrator didn’t notice all the quick emotions on Natalie’s face and had continued. “And your father is doing important work down on the asteroid below, with the — “

“Yeah, we are not talking about my father today,” Natalie said firmly.

“Oh, um, but I thought…”

“My mother is dead, my father’s not around, and I live in an orphanage,” Natalie said. “You thought wrong, lady.”

Natalie knew the deal. Grandpa loved her because she was so much like his dead daughter. But her father struggled for the same reason: she was so much like his dead wife. He had drifted in and out of her young life over the years, staying when he could control his pain and sadness, losing himself in his work when he could not. In recent years, the time together had shrunk to almost nothing, and Natalie lived full time in the care of others.

And there just wasn’t anyone that loved Natalie because she was Natalie.

Well, Areanna did. Areanna was only a few weeks older than Natalie was, so she wasn’t carrying around a ghost of Cassandra Allen in her mind like all the older people were. And Areanna knew better than anyone what it was like to grow up motherless: her own mother had died just thirteen days before Natalie’s had.

But the administrator seemed to have taken the ‘you thought wrong, lady” thing a little personally and came back at Natalie with a tone of wounded authority.

“Young lady, I think your mother would be appalled at your behaviour. Breaking into places you shouldn’t be, getting Areanna into trouble, and talking back to adults.”

Natalie felt the anger rising inside of her. This woman was stepping on all the old wounds, blithely oblivious to how hurtful it might be to a half-orphaned child.

“Well, she’s not really here to have an opinion about any of that, now is she?” she hissed, half-standing and tensing. If she says the thing, I’m going over the top of this desk, and I’m going for the face, Natalie promised herself.

“Well, a little part of her lives on in you — “

Twenty minutes later, a social worker finally arrived to collect Natalie and bring her back to the Children’s Creche. The social worker noticed the red scratches running down the forehead and cheeks of the woman waiting outside the door of the room where Natalie was silently brooding.
The social worker and the administrator shared a glance.

“In the future,” the social worker began, his tone guarded, “it’s best to not press her too much on the topic of her family.”

The administrator just nodded, reaching up and gingerly running a finger down a deep scratch that ran hairline to jaw, narrowly missing her left eye.