No twilight on Ceres

It seemed their children were born to be happy
In fact they were born for wars
Tanya Sin' "k feiam"
(from Russian: "to all the fairies")

We had to raise all the sails, even the ones that needed minor repairs, but the pursuer was still sitting securely on our tail. The dot on the radar was getting closer slowly, quietly and inescapably.

"You have decided to manually deactivate the speed limiter, aren't you?" - Vita asked, sinking into her chair next to me.

"How do you know?"

"Your sleeves rolled themselves up. So you're going to do some dirty work. Which in our case, can only be the limiter.

She was right. At the very moment I decided to deactivate the system, my full dress uniform rolled its sleeves up. To stain white cuffs is considered bad practice among pilots.

"Do you have better ideas, trainee?" - I asked outwardly sternly and continued without waiting for her answer: "Our maximum speed is not the problem, it's all about the acceleration. In fact, their ship is inferior to ours and has not enough fuel to gain our terminal velocity. But their acceleration is outstanding."

The pirates had a middle-sized shuttle they had probably stolen from an unlucky rescue team or stranded astrobiologists. It was hard to say from the distance what exactly it was, but undoubtedly, we had no chance to escape.

Solar sails are really good for long haul cargo ships. However, maneuverability of these vehicles is awful. They cannot change speed or direction as sharp as that pirates' craft. Our ship has been designed only for smooth journeys and its structure is relatively fragile. Therefore, it is impossible to switch the limiter off. Well, the only possible way to do so is to physically cut its power. Such a barbaric act, though, will completely disable the autopilot due to unbelievable amount of errors.

I returned to the flight deck and as usual stretched my legs resting my feet to the sash of the front porthole. There were countless unblinking stars outside
this large window. I should probably be afraid of this emptiness, but instead, space always put me in a romantic and frivolous mood:

"I'm sure, these asteroid-based savages have never seen the real skies."

"But for me it is the real sky! - she drawled, - "I am from there myself, have you forgotten?"

"You are from Ceres. Despite its small size, Ceres is a planet. You folks have your gravitation controlled, children educated, and so on. Pirates have nothing like that. Desperate miners..."

Vita raised her hand making me to stop talking. Never before I saw her making such a gesture. It was so unexpected I flinched.

"It seems to me, you know nothing about the Belt. Do you want to see?

I knew very little about the Asteroid Belt indeed: its dangers and our possible routs. It was all I needed to send the load to the given trajectory before we would fly back.

Of course, I knew the pirates were there. The most important thing about them: they want energy and resources. They need our accumulators, oxygen, water, and food. Yet we are useless for them. I mean, they would leave us to die without a slightest hesitation.

However, I knew close to nothing about the population and history of the area, so I was delighted to see what Vita had offered. She used ship's main neurocommunication system to share her knowledge with me. This data flowed directly to my mind, so the process took just a few seconds. I was accustomed, of course, to this method of communication. We routinely used it to control the ship and send messages to each other. Yet the data was extremely unusual.

Vita told me much more, than just stories from her birthplace. She shared her dreams, secrets, and childhood memories. Transmitted through the neuro systems, this content could easily be interpreted as a flirt.

/"Have you just done it on purpose? "/

/"Yes"/

We disconnected, Vita Nin' looked at me. I saw something new in girl's eyes in place of her prudence and coolness. It was like a summer night, nice and quiet. She also sounded different pronouncing the next phrase. Her voice was much warmer than usual and the words were quite surprising:

"You have beautiful hair..."

I should have answered that her hair were even more beautiful than mine, but I did not dare. I was too confused by this change in her behavior. For the first time in my life, an "alien" girl showed so much interest in me. Basically, she was not an alien, of course,  but a human just like me. Still, residents of the Belt, as well as Mars, are slightly different from us. Sometimes they are touchingly naive. Vita's flirt was a good example. It was as strange as the combination of her name and surname, or as the fact she had extremely light eyes and astonishingly dark hair. To me her appearance was a bit unusual, yet beyond any doubt attractive.

"Thanks, Vita" - meanwhile, I refrained of paying compliments. To gain speed, I thought, was much more important for now, and then we would see.

I looked at the radar. The visualization was very basic: the dot which symbolized the pirates, the distance, and our ship's time. The neuro connection, not screens, transferred the rest of the data. However in our current situation the picture, this primitive way of communication, was rather useful. I touched the screen with my thumb and index finger measuring the distance.

"Now you're counting up how much time we need to reach the maximum thrust,  aren't you?"

"Wrong guess this time. Have you ever been to the Earth?" - I inquired.

The auxiliary isotope unit needs almost no time to "heat up". But I need even lesser,  just a couple of seconds to show her the Earth. It will probably help me to stop thinking about what she had shared with me about the Belt. About the miners who were humans, not robots. About their life in constant danger, which was perfectly normal to them. Despite all the problems, they were able to lead a quiet life of relative luxury.

"Dad, has your team lost two man again?"

"Nope, not my own team, they were just repairmen who used to work with us..."

Their daily routine was almost like walking into space all the time.

I also shared with Vita my personal memories. Maybe they were too personal, as well as her story. I showed her endless plains, hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. Light rain in summer and other wonders never seen on Ceres.

"Where is dad? Is he hunting again?" - my father used to ask his grandmother.

My grandfather never tried to hide seeing a tornado. He faced them ready and armed, sitting on one of the masts...

"Oh, what these poles are?" - Vita failed to understand the picture.

These objects needed a little bit of explanation indeed. I did not see any problem with them, for to me it was absolutely clear that houses were built using a kind of big piles. There are usually four of them, one on each corner. In winter, houses climb up to avoid being buried in snow. In spring, it helps to deal with floods. But it is definitely a bad idea to stay up there when the wind is blowing.

So this is the picture: all the dwellings and other structures are lowered to the ground. The reason is the deadly whirlwind wandering around. Thus top parts of masts are free, and my granddad has already took the position on one of them. He has climbed there of his own free will and he has his pocket grenade launcher ready. Well, I should interpret this item for Vita, because she has certainly never seen one.

/"They used grenade launchers to blow up ice drifts on rivers"/

/"I don't understand. Loosing your point. Too many unfamiliar words"/

Actually, these words were unfamiliar to Vita, as they had nether rivers, nor any need to blow up ice on Ceres. The girl has probably heard of such things, but has not seen them. So I shall explain it in a different way.

/"These weapons were originally designed to destroy troops and vehicles"/

/"Oh, this description is much better"/

No doubt, it was clear to her. People have always create and stockpile means of destruction. The design and names were different. Say, it turned out that on Ceres they knew no "grenade launchers", but they had "heavy blusters". However on Earth we used the old fashioned name despite the "launcher" in its modern iteration used no grenades.

So, my grandfather used to stop tornadoes with the mentioned bluster. I have been always proud of this family story. Very few people dared to act like him. They preferred to hide. Hence a whirlpool could destroy a house only with "direct hit", people hoped it will skip their village or at least their own dwellings. Moreover, it was hard to stop a tornado, as the shooter needed to make a direct hit too.

Once when my grandfather returned from a hunt, a thick smoke came on his heels. It was puzzling, because all the doors, windows, and manholes were closed tightly. It turned out that he used to smoke cigarettes up there, as he did not want to do this at home. Stumps were thrown out with his special finger click, it was akin to using a slingshot. That time the strong stubborn wind sent the smoldering cigarette butt back to granddad hood.

One year later, my grandfather passed away. Tornado never had a chance to kill him, nicotine did. Yet, even the darkest clouds have some silver lining: my father was frightened by this and quited smoking. Who knows, maybe I would never have been born, had he continued to poison himself with cigarettes...

The ship's speed was increasing so fast, we got a little spacesick, when suddenly she started to slow down. Lights and the radar screen went out. The portraits on the walls became barely visible, so the faces of the great historical military leaders turned to shapeless grey marks. It took a while to grasp what had happened to these images. They were, in fact, not fluorescent pictures, but just regular paintings. This obsolete technique made it impossible to see them in the dark, but we had never noticed that before. The flight deck was always lit.

"It seems like an emergency lighting," - Vita guessed.

What we had was very dim light only. Still, it was better than nothing. The light was not necessary to stir the ship, so we were lucky to have what we had. The designers could have easily leave a crew in a complete darkness. Soon, my eyes had accustomed to this half-light, and I was able to recognize Napoleon Bonaparte painted on the wall to my left. At this point, a thought came simultaneously to both of us from the diagnostic system of the ship. A collision had occurred, an asteroid damaged our power supply.

The incident could have ended much worse. Had this tiny space rock struck our compartment, we surely were instantly killed. This was the worst case scenario, yet it could easily happen, as the autopilot was disabled since I disconnected the limiter. Controlling the ship manually we were not able to address the signal of anti-collision system fast enough. But our cab was located on the side of the ship and there was a shield in front of us. Thanks to this we survived.

I had to roll my sleeves up again. It was good that we had artificial gravitation, thank to which I would be able to wash my hands using a tiny sink. Yet, in addition to it I would be glad to have more masterpieces of engineering here. Say, robots to keep our hands always clean. However there was a little problem. Even though there was a wide variety of multifunctional human amplifiers, it was impossible to find one suitable for the unpredictable challenges we faced.

With the oxygen mask on I went to assess the damage. The air pressure dropped only slightly, so I weared no spacesuit. While working, however, I started to feel an inexplicable fear. There was nothing to worry about, I was inside, not outside. But...

/"Are you okay there?"/ - Vita asked.

Through neuro communication she had a general impression of my thoughts, but the computer was unable to specify the reason of my worries. To tell the truth, I did not know it myself.

/"It's nothing. It's cold here, that's all"/ - I answered.

It is absolutely normal to afraid, why not? You make just one step aside from your normal daily route and it scares you. I should point out, however, that for us this "normal" is the cold deadly vacuum beyond ship's portholes.

To fix the problem took a lot of effort, but I managed to do it. Half the way back I pulled the mask off my face and sat down to take some rest in a well pressurized roomy compartment. Our cargo was hanging over my head. It was an armed short range shuttle on the way to its test flight. I had checked the rigging, just in case, and contacted Vita:

/"You know, in the past, people used to make computer simulations for their new military equipment. Now we have the opposite. Now people make these real prototypes to prove their crazy concepts of war machines used in virtual reality"/

/"Are you a philosopher?"/ - she replied.

Am I? I just think now and then. I believe, it is so surprising that people continue to make wars. Nowadays the battles are not real, and these prototypes are needed only to assess crafts' feasibility and costs. It is strange, is it not? People are clever enough to design an armed spacecraft for the virtual arena verifying thoroughly: how good it is and how many of them each side could have afford in reality. On the other hand, these wise people cannot get rid of the very idea of an armed conflict.

I returned to the flight deck. The light was back, so I could see the heroes of the past. Alexander the Great, Tamerlane, Saladin, Bonaparte. Their portraits were here to remind us that this bulky space freighter was to some extent also connected to the military.

Interestingly, gunships do not have any murals. For example, the shuttle we have in the cargo bay lacks decorations, while it has a cockpit. The later is crucial for the testing, because the majority of virtual fighters are "manned".

"Now, it seems they will get us"

"What makes you think so, Vita?"

"The collision has caused the computer to shut down the reactor, we are sailing. We have to try the other way."

I was going to ask what magic exactly had she meant, but some spherical carnivores started to penetrate into the compartment. I yelled:

"They've gobbled up a half of our crew, watch out!"

Next moment, I got hit in the face...

---
/"Trainee Nin', I'm ordering you back!"/

Vita punched me too hard trying to stop my madness. When I regained consciousness,  my only recollection was that hallucination. Apparently, as the pirates got closer, they managed to lock a psychotronic emitter on us.

Probably, this unconventional weapon took its toll on Vita too: she decided to stole the shuttle.

/"Unfortunately, there are people who should be killed"/

/"Vita, come back! Scare them, but come back! You should never attack human beings"/

Just one such a case would bring wars back to the real world.. Yet, maybe...

Maybe nobody will know?

Maybe pirates use an unmanned shuttle?

Maybe they will be scared by the armed enemy and will flee?

However, I knew very well that these assumptions, except the last one, were unrealistic.
---
Yes, the sunsets here are so strange I can hardly call them sunsets. As well as dawns. In my opinion, they are much more beautiful on the Earth.

I never regret anything, Vita, even the things impossible to undo. I have always been optimistic.

You wanted to go to space because of me, but I got your real reason too late. So, you did what you did, in a sense, also because of me. However, it was not exclusively your fault. You probably just was not able to deal with the artificial intelligence designed for war.

Undoubtedly, the pirates were well served. Our shuttle neither killed the opponents, nor did it mutilate them, nor drove them to madness. It just throw them out of the material world...

The distant sun flashed rising suddenly and making the visor of my helmet to darken. I leaned as low as I could with the old spacesuit. I touched letters one more time. The oxygen tank was extremely small, but it was the best they had here to give me.

I am glad they have spacesuits here at all, thanks to it I can visit this place.

I hope you have managed to escape, and the phenomenon you have created has sent the pirates to the Hell, but you, one day, you will be returned by the same force...

Meanwhile, these strange openspace-stile dawns and sunsets illuminate your humble cenotaph at this airless deserted cemetery. Just in case you will never return.