18. Hunter
CHAPTER 18
hunter
I let out a nervous breath as I waited on the gravity side of the hatch. I've spent the last two weeks up here, and I'm still not used to the transition of going from the zero-g section to the earth-normal section. It's bizarre and disorienting at best. Good thing I don't need to spend much time in zero-G—it makes me queasy.
"Nervous, sir?" asks Commander Racine, the officer in charge of administrating the platform.
She's an older woman with a lifetime of experience in large-scale admin, hand-picked by Valentine and Xavier. I'm late to the party, so I had no say in the pick, but she's who I would have selected anyway. She's much like Harriet, and in my book, that's a damned good thing.
"Yes ma'am, Commander Racine, I am. I'm shaking in my boots, as a matter of fact," I said.
She laughed kindly. "Good. You should be." She noted my quizzical expression and laughed again. "If you're not nervous about the outcome, then you're not fully invested in the process."
I blinked at her as I processed this statement. "Casual wisdom from Commander Racine."
She patted my shoulder. "I proposed to my husband. This was nearly forty years ago when such a thing was very much not the done thing. I was extraordinarily nervous even though I knew what his answer would be."
I chuckled. “The problem is, I don’t know what her response to any of this will be. She walked away from me. That was six months ago. She had zero warning that I was arranging this…meeting."
Commander Racine arched an eyebrow at her. "Wait, you sprung a last-minute trip to a space station on the poor woman?"
I cleared my throat. "Um. Yes?"
She laughed and shook her head. "Brave, brave man, and even braver woman, if she actually boarded."
"I have confirmation from Captain Malcolm that she is, in fact, on board the Brynhild," I said.
"Then I'd wager you have very little to be nervous about, Mr. Hawkins. If this woman is willing to wake up and go to outer space without, oh, say, several months of prep time and consideration, then she loves you." We both heard and felt the thud-thunk as the Brynhild docked with the Asgard.
The Norse mythology naming system is cool but a little on the nose. Again, however, I’m late for the party, having just started investing in the last few weeks. Right now, I’m a silent investor only—I need to assess what they’re doing, how, and why, and then figure out where I am best used. Valentine and Xavier both agreed to sell me a quarter stake in the project as a starter while I research and observe. Which is why I was on the first flight up here after wiring them the money—to get a boots-on-the-ground look at what’s being built, how it is being administrated, how the public perceives it, how the ROI will shake out…neither Valentine Roth nor Xavier Badd are morons, obviously, but neither are they me. They brought me in because they felt I could add something.
What a fucking challenge this is.
My thoughts were interrupted when the signal lights above the hatch changed; red indicated the chamber was open to vacuum, yellow—the color it had just changed to—indicated that it was cycling oxygen in, and green indicated that it was safe to open the hatch.
Another several minutes elapsed—the chamber was rather large and required a lot of oxygen.
Finally, the light turned green, and Commander Racine placed her palm on the biometric pad beside the hatch; the pad flashed green as it scanned her palm, and then a lock thunked as it retracted, and then the hatch cracked open with a hiss.
A short Black woman with her helmet under her arm was the first through—Captain Malcolm. Her flight crew followed, making the awkward transition from the zero-G of the chamber to full gravity with the seamless grace of people who've done it regularly. Last in line was Delia, helmet still on, drifting slightly out of true to the orientation of the inner section.
"Oh dear," Commander Racine muttered. "Captain Malcolm, our new guest is not accustomed to zero-G."
Captain Malcolm halted and turned to look. "Oh! My apologies, Ms. Badd." She handed her helmet to one of the officers and reentered the chamber to help Delia. “Grab these handles on either side of the doorway. Good. Now, swing your feet through and let go."
Delia, looking a little pale but determined, frowned, grasped the handles, swung her feet forward and let go. She gave herself a little too much of a swing, however, because she landed heavily and toppled forward.
Right into my arms.
I grinned at her as I helped her to her feet. "Hi, you."
For a minute, she just stared at me. "Hunter," she whispered. "It's really you."
I unlatched and removed her helmet; her hair stuck to her cheeks. "It's really me."
She looked around and then backward at the still-open hatch. "Gravity. How?"
I shook my head. "The details are beyond me, but basically, this inner section, which contains the living quarters, mess hall, and common areas, spins, which creates gravity."
She looked back through the hatch. "So, then, I'm confused. If the inner section spins but the outer section doesn't…"
I laughed. “Hell, if I know, babe."
"Listen, Ms. Badd,” Commander Racine said, “unless you're planning on a career up here, I wouldn't worry too much about the details of how things work. If one of us who does live and work up here gives you instructions, follow them. Otherwise, just enjoy the experience. You're one of very, very few people on the planet to visit the Asgard. It is an extraordinary privilege indeed, ma'am."
Delia shook Captain Malcolm's hand. "Thank you for the safe flight up here, Captain."
A nod. “Just doing my job, ma'am." She nodded at me. "Mr. Hawkins, sir."
She and the rest of the flight crew tromped down the corridor and vanished around a corner.
Delia let out a breath. "I can't believe I’m here. This whole thing is…surreal. That’s not a strong enough word, but my brain is so scrambled right now I can’t think of a better one."
"Believe me, I understand," I said.
She arched an eyebrow at me. "Oh, you do, huh? So you were woken up out of a hungover stupor, flown on a hypersonic jet from Alaska to Texas, and then boarded a fucking rocketship to outer fucking space ?”
I winced. "A bit dramatic, I admit, but if I'd merely invited you, would you have come, knowing in advance where you were going?"
"A bit dramatic? A BIT DRAMATIC ? You know, a lot of kids dream of being astronauts, Hunter. I get that, but I’m not one of them. A bit dramatic would have been a flight to Paris. Bringing me to a space station is….is…fucking insane, Hunter! That’s what it is.” She sighed and rubbed her face. “Sorry for yelling. It is called jet lag up here or, like, space lag? Is there a time zone in space?"
"The Asgard observes Greenwich Mean Time," Commander Racine explained. "So you're nine hours behind. But since there's no sunrise or sunset and since there are very few people up here, I doubt you'll feel much lag. It is normal to be exhausted after that trip, however, so if you needed a nap, no one would blame you."
Delia shook her head. "I'm physiologically incapable of napping. I'm way too high-strung for that shit." She looked at me. "So…here I am, in space with you, as requested. Now what?"
I shrugged. "All in due time. For now, let’s get you out of that suit and I’ll give you a little tour. I’ll answer the questions I’m sure you have as we walk."
"If you'll accompany me this way, Ms. Badd," Commander Racine said, gesturing, "I'll assist you out of the suit."
A few minutes later, Delia was out of the suit and looking grateful. "You know, that thing is surprisingly comfortable, all things considered, but I'm glad to be out of it."
"Remarkable feat of engineering," I said. "The amount of ground-breaking tech in that suit is shocking. Everyone talks about the station itself, which, yes, is remarkable, obviously, but those suits are the truly remarkable step forward in space technology. According to your uncle, at least."
She frowned. "My uncle?"
I nodded. "Xavier? A majority stakeholder in this venture and the chief technological officer. He designed quite a bit of the tech, not just in the suits but everything else, as well."
She blinked. "Wow. I…I knew he was involved with Valkyrie, but I guess I didn't realize what that meant. He doesn't like to talk shop when he's around family. Mainly because he'll start lecturing, and he's aware that most people can't follow any of it." She looked back at the now-closed door that led to the suit room. "He designed the suits, huh?"
I tipped my head to one side. "As far as I'm given to understand, not the suits themselves. He refined and perfected the design already in the works when he joined forces with Valentine Roth."
She stopped short and stared at me. "Wait, wait, wait. You sold off your company and vanished, and now you're up here…"
I grinned. "You're looking at a twenty-five percent stake shareholder in Valkyrie."
"So...this is what you're doing now?"
"Yes."
She regarded me carefully. "How long have you been up here?"
"Two weeks. I needed to see it for myself. I need to understand the business from the top to bottom, inside and out, so I can provide the best insight."
"But…you're a businessman, Hunter. No offense, but what do you know about outer space?"
We continued down the corridor—here, the corridors were low-ceilinged and narrow, with white, featureless walls and floors and LED lights overhead providing warm yellow light rather than the usual harsh white of most industrial spaces. A door here and there broke up the walls, each with a biometric lock to keep out the unauthorized—some of them, even I, as a part-owner, wasn’t allowed in without an authorized crew member. Which was fine with me—you don’t want to go monkeying with things you don’t understand when you’re hundreds of miles above the Earth in the endless frozen vacuum of space.
"I know absolutely nothing about space," I admitted. "Which is why I'm up here. Valentine is a businessman, too, though. Albeit, he's been designing jets for years, so he has a leg up on me in that regard. But at the end of the day, this is a business. It needs to make money so we can keep functioning. Valentine is focused on R several dozen tables were scattered around the mess hall, with a traditional galley-style mess line. Next was the common areas—the lounge, with TVs and game consoles; a library with a limited selection of physical books and a large selection of e-readers stocked with every book imaginable; a rec room with a pool and foosball table, a golf simulator that lets you whack balls not just on simulated Earth courses but imaginary ones like Mars or the moon, with accurate gravity; and a VR room.
Last was what everyone on the Asgard affectionately referred to as The Fishbowl, a bubble of glass at the end of a long tunnel—since it was outside the inner section, the Fishbowl was zero-G but did have atmosphere. The tunnel was narrow and featured handrails to make it easier to pull yourself along. Since both of us were newbies, even that was a comedy of errors, with both of us either using too much or not enough force to pull ourselves along. We both ended up twisting around and drifting at awkward angles to each other.
I slipped past Delia to enter the Fishbowl first so I could catch her as she drifted in and then helped get her oriented face-to-face with me.
Her auburn hair floated around her head, wafting and drifting gracefully. She looked at me first. "Where are we?"
I gestured around us. "This is The Fishbowl."
Her eyes went up, first, and then around—the Fishbowl was so named because it was essentially that—a glass bowl providing a nearly 360-degree view of space. There were benches and handrails around the bowl and at regular intervals.
I watched Delia's eyes widen, heard her breath catch. "My… god ."
"Right?"
She tore her gaze away for a moment and met mine. "Hunter…this is…"
"Worth the trip by itself?"
She nodded. A tear slid down her cheek, unnoticed. "I…I'm speechless. It's…"
I guided us to a bench, which featured vehicle-style seatbelts to keep you seated, and latched us down. She spent several minutes in silence, just looking. I had to give her that time because everyone who comes to the Fishbowl for the first time has the same reaction.
It's one thing to see the stars from the ground, even in a place like Alaska. But up here? You're not just seeing them…you're among them. They're not above you ; they're all around you. The moon is a dim gray ball in the distance, and Earth is…
Well, it's the most beautiful thing you can imagine. Words fail. Seeing photographs of the Earth from space doesn't do it justice. Nothing does.
Delia shook her head as if shaking herself out of a stupor. "No one will believe this," she breathed. "I don't believe it."
"You have your phone?" I asked.
She nodded. "Yeah, but it won't work up here, obviously. Right?"
I grinned. "Let me see it."
She fished her phone from her pocket and gave it to me—I connected her to the Asgard's dedicated satellite system, which allowed smartphones to function nearly as normally as on Earth.
"There. Call someone. Your friend Emerson, maybe," I said, handing it back to her.
"What? How?"
"A special dedicated satellite system. You can video call her, just keep it brief. Data is not unlimited, although you're on my dime, so it may as well be."
A second later, her phone burbling; she held it close, so the camera only showed her face.
"Hey, bitch," came Emerson's voice. "Still mad at me or are we good?"
"Hey, hooker," Delia answered. "We're always good. I was just salty. You know how much I hate it when you're right."
"I'm always right. You should know that by now." A pause. "So. What'd you decide about your grumpy billionaire? Have you moved on, or are you still sitting around feeling sorry for yourself for running away from the best thing that ever happened to you?"
"I'm not grumpy," I said.
"Uhhh,” Emerson coughed. "You're with him?"
"Yes?” Delia said, making it a question and then turned the phone to face me. “Emerson, meet Hunter Hawkins. Hunter, meet Emerson, my best friend and sister, whom you may hear us refer to as Sunni.”
I smiled and waved. “Nice to meet you, Emerson.”
Emerson’s eyes were wide. “Um, yeah. Hi, Hunter. Nice to meet you.” Delia turned the phone back to face herself, and I heard Emerson squeal. "Did he take you to Paris? Where are you? Also, why do you have it so close? I can't see anything but your triple chins."
Delia pulled her chin and made a face, managing to look remarkably unattractive in a comical way. "There. That better?"
"Troll," Emerson said. "Where are you?"
"Not Paris," Delia answered. "Guess again. Although I warn you, you'll never get it."
"Better than Paris?"
"Much. Infinitely better. A shorter flight, though."
"Shorter flight than Paris and better. London? Prague? Caribbean?"
Delia burst into laughter. "I told you, you'll never guess. The keyword is infinite .”
Emerson sighed. "Then just tell me, if I’ll never guess."
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Delia answered.
A disgusted sigh. "Then…what? You're not making sense."
Delia pulled the phone away slowly and panned it around to give Emerson the full panoramic view, ending with Delia and me in the frame with the Earth in the background.
A long silence ensued. "I don't understand. Is that a, like…VR thing? Some fancy techno-dork thing in Vegas?"
"No, Em. It's the real thing."
"When you say the real thing…what does that mean?"
Delia tapped on the glass. "I mean, you're seeing what I'm seeing. It's not VR. It's real reality."
"But…but…" Emerson spluttered, leaning closer to her screen. "That's…Earth?"
"Yes."
"So…you're…on the moon?"
Delia cackled. "Not quite, babe. I think that's a bit longer of a trip than six hours."
"More like three days, I'm told," I said. "I haven't been there yet, although Valentine told me they're planning an excursion to survey sites in the next few months."
Emerson was silent. "But…but… how ?”
"Apparently, when Hunter cashed and out vanished, this is what he was doing—investing with Valentine Roth and Uncle Xavier in Valkyrie."
"Okay, but how does that end up with you in outer space? I texted you yesterday , and you didn't mention, oh, I don't know… spaceflight as being on the menu."
"Because it wasn't. It was…sort of last second."
" TO OUTER SPACE?! " Emerson shouted. "Do you realize how fucking insane that is?"
"I do, since I'm the one who got strapped to a goddamn rocket while still hungover," Delia said.
"Again? Boo, you gotta quit that shit. The drinking isn't doing you any favors."
Delia frowned. "Can we not, right now?"
Emerson sighed. "Sorry, sorry. You're right. So…let's get back to the salient question. OUTER SPACE?"
I laughed. "I don't do things in half-measures, Emerson. If I'm going to make a dramatic gesture to get Delia back, it's going to be…well, very dramatic."
Emerson snickered. "I'd say so. Not sure anyone will ever top that as a dramatic declaration of love."
Delia seemed suddenly uncomfortable the moment her friend dropped the L-word. "Em, don't."
"Oh for fuck's sake, Delia," Emerson snapped. "The man brought you to space . Who does that? If you don't see it for what it is, you're the dumbest human on the planet."
"I'm not on the planet," Delia muttered.
"You know what I meant, bitch-face." Emerson sighed. "Why are you wasting your time up there talking to me? Hang up on me and talk to him !” She blew a kiss and waved at us both. "I'll make it even easier—like this. Bye!" The call cut out, going back to the FaceTime call screen.
"Your friend doesn't pull punches, does she?" I asked.
Delia shook her head. "No, she does not." Her voice was quiet. "Hunter, I…"
I took her hand. "We don't have to go there yet, okay? You just got here. It's overwhelming, being up here. Seeing…this?" I gestured at the vast infinitude of space beyond the Fishbowl. "We have seventy-two hours. We have time. It's okay."
She shook her head, sighing. "Emerson has been calling me out for how I walked away from you since I did it. She thinks I'm stupid for it."
"I don't," I said.
She jerked her gaze to mine, shocked. "You…you don't?"
"No. It hurt, obviously. It wasn't the reaction I was hoping for, obviously, especially after what we shared. But I get it. I've made a lifetime out of avoiding commitment. It's scary. And I don't have the legacy hanging over my head that you do." I took her hands in mine. "Like I said, we don't have to get into the deep shit right now."
She sighed in relief. "So…you don't hate me?"
I laughed. "Yes, Delia. I loathe you entirely. Clearly. I bring people I hate to outer space at immense personal cost."
She blinked at me. "How much personal cost?"
I shrugged. "Well, we've been working on ways to bring costs down, but if you were just some random schmuck who wanted to pay to spend the weekend up here, you're talking a minimum of ten million. That's way down from the early days of spaceflight tourism where a single seat was something like fifty million."
Delia coughed. "T-ten million ? Dollars?"
"No, Delia, ten million seashells.” I rolled my eyes at her. "It's not exactly like hopping a 777 red-eye to Paris, babe."
"What about that jet?" she asked.
"Oh, well, those fancy jets of Valentine's are all privately owned, so there's no way to estimate a per-seat or per-flight cost. Once he finalizes the design and starts selling them, though, he anticipates they'll start at a hundred mil, with no real upper cap since they're essentially infinitely customizable."
Delia sighed. "Jesus. A flight to Paris really would've sufficed to get my attention, sweetheart."
My gut clenched at the endearment. I tried like hell not to read too much into it. "It wouldn't have sufficed for me. You're worth everything, Delia. The whole world." I touched her jaw. "If it got me you, I'd give up everything. I'd start over from scratch. You and me in a crackerbox loft in Astoria. It doesn't matter."
“Easy to say from your personal space station," she muttered.
I snorted. "It's hardly mine, babe. I’m not even a majority stakeholder yet."
"So, what's the business? Tourism?"
I let her steer us back to a less emotional footing. "No, that's going to be fractional. There aren't enough people who can afford the cost of entry to make that a profitable enterprise. No, the idea is that in order for exploration beyond the Earth to really make sense, we can’t keep wasting time, money, and resources getting rockets out of the atmosphere. That's heinously costly and ineffective. Plus, you're inherently limited by the constraints of gravity."
She blinked. "I'm not following."
I twisted, pointing at a long gantry extending away from the actual construction platform itself. "See that? The long arm thing? We're going to build a ship there. But because it's being built out here and will never see the atmosphere, our design options open up drastically. It can be any shape and almost any size. Again, I'm not an expert in this stuff. My job is going to be helping market it and brand it to potential investors and clients."
"Okay, I follow that part. But what clients? What's the product you're selling?"
I shrugged. "Deep space mining, for one. There are asteroids not all that far away that have billions and trillions of dollars worth of minerals on them that we haven’t been able to access simply because of how prohibitively expensive it is just to get out of Earth’s atmosphere, into orbit, and then back safely. But if you have a station like this, you can send a custom-designed ship and crew to mine and only make the return voyage to Earth once in a while. That’s just one possibility. Essentially, Valentine and Xavier saw the potential a long time ago and started building Valkyrie on a gamble that others would see the value and invest. It’s still a gamble. The whole enterprise is still a long shot in the dark, but we’ve got investors and clients in talks. Plus, various governments will want a presence out here or on the moon. Maybe someday, there will be a colony on Mars. This is sci-fi come true, basically."
"And it's a challenge," she said.
"The biggest challenge of my life," I said. "Professionally speaking, that is."
Delia sniffed a laugh. "Me being the unspoken greatest challenge of your personal life."
I shrugged. "Nothing worth doing or having ever comes easily."
“Well, as we've established, I certainly do not come easily," she quipped.
"I haven't encountered that with you, as a matter of fact," I said, nuzzling her throat with my face. "Quite the opposite, rather."
She let out a shaky breath. "I'm getting a little disoriented," she said. "Can we go back down, or in, or whatever?"
“For sure."
We drifted out of the Fishbowl and I led her to the guest quarters, which were rather more luxuriously appointed than the crew quarters.
I showed her the door that led to her quarters and the biometric panel that was coded to her for the duration of her stay.
About the size of a suite in a four-star hotel, the guest rooms were also decorated to resemble a hotel room, with one major difference. Instead of curtains and a window to outside, the wall was a single digital LED screen that could be programmed at will to show a variety of scenes, from a real-time view of space as if the screen was a window to a view of Earth, or other select scenes from space, such as a composite of the Milky way or the Pillars of Creation. Otherwise, the room felt pretty much like a hotel room anywhere on earth, with a queen bed, a bureau, a TV, and a bathroom.
"My room is right next door," I told her, feeling oddly nervous. "I…obviously, I wasn't going to assume that you'd want to, you know, share a room with me right off the bat."
She smiled. "I appreciate that, Hunter. Thank you. And, if I'm being honest, I wouldn't mind a little alone time to decompress. It's been a bit of a whirlwind today, if you know what I mean."
"I sure do." I indicated the bathroom. "Let me show you one thing, though. The showers are a little different since hot water is a pretty precious commodity up here. Each room, meaning each person, is allotted a certain amount of hot water per twenty-four hours." I showed her the digital panel beside the shower stall. “This shows you your allotment as it is now. Obviously, you currently have your full allotment. So you can select increments—five minutes, ten minutes, and fifteen minutes. If you do fifteen, that’d be your full allotment for the twenty-four period. So, if you don’t mind washing your hands in cold water later, go for it. You can start with five, and if you need more time, you can add it, but once you go through the whole allotment, that’s it until it replenishes. And obviously you can always stop it early."
"That's easy enough," she said. She turned to face me as I paused at the door. "Hunter, I…"
I went back to her. "Hey, it's okay. You don't need to say anything. You don't need to know how you feel right now or what to say. Take your time. Decompress. Get a shower." I indicated a two-foot-by-two-foot cupboard near the bed. "This is a miraculous little device. It's a coffee and tea dispenser. It can’t do anything fancy—plain black coffee and green or black tea. But it's hot and damn near instant, right here in your quarters. Pretty simple to operate. I stocked you with plenty of Splenda packets." I showed her the small drawer full of her favorite sweetener.
She shook her head. "You're killing me, Hunter," she whispered. "Now go away so I can have the freakout I've been fighting off for the last six or seven hours."
"I'll be in my quarters right next door," I told her. "I've got paperwork to catch up on, so take your time. And if that's in the morning, that's okay. If you wake up in the middle of the night and want to talk, that’s fine, too. The lock panels beside the doors have a buzzer, like a doorbell."
She closed her eyes, sniffed a harsh breath, and let it out. "I'm glad I'm here, Hunter. I can tell you that much."
I couldn't stop myself from pulling her against me in a hug. Or from kissing the top of her head. "I'm glad you're here too, honey."
She pulled away. "Also, you're crazy. And lucky as fuck that I'm just crazy, because I don't know many other people who would've gone along with this batshit plan of yours."
"Plan is a generous term," I said. "I set it up and hoped. Until Captain Malcolm confirmed just before takeoff that you were on board, I wasn’t sure you’d even want to see me, especially once you realized where I wanted you to go.” I cupped her face, wanting desperately to kiss her. “And believe me, I know exactly how lucky I am."
She grasped my wrists in her hands. "Hunter…" she trailed off, eyes closing. "It's hard to know what to say, what I feel. I'm all mixed up and overwhelmed right now. But you need to know that I care. I care a fucking lot. I just need some time to sort out my head and heart."
I smiled at her. "I know." I leaned in slowly and touched my lips to hers, softly, reverently, more a promise of kisses to come than a kiss in itself. "Go. Do what you need to do. Take the time you need."
I backed away, and she entered her quarters.
Once the door shut, I collapsed against the wall next to her door, shaking with hope.