Far Horizon (Juggernaut #4)

Four

From low orbit the red atmosphere from which Kinebar took its name appeared as a glowing crescent backlit by the sun.

The private shuttle, another reminder of Conway's present benevolence, travelled an inverted curve through the upper thermosphere and into space.

Twinkling at them in the distance was the Skygarden. A construction project so outrageously expensive it had bankrupted three trillionaires, leaving the way open for a consortium, led by Alastair Conway to buy the assets at a fraction of their true value, and complete the build.

In the five years since it's completion its reputation had transformed from a white whale to a modern legend simply because it was legendary.

Humans are not naturally equipped to survive in space. They build ships and space stations and technology to protect them from the deadly void. Any breach of that metal skin means death in moments. Space stations have to be hard and impenetrable and resilient or people die. To conceive of anything less is foolish.

To build it is madness.

But Skygarden was built, and it lived up to its name. This was itself a rarity in a society where space stations and cities and ships were named for their metaphorical qualities. Names like Titan, or Defiance, or Far Horizon.

Where most names were figurative, Skygarden was literally a garden in the sky. A garden in space. Skygarden was a synthetic paradise. A bubble of light in the dark.

Two giant geodesic domes were built onto platforms six hundred metres wide. The domes faced each other, becoming one where their crowns met, looking like nothing more than a giant hourglass in space. The bracing struts holding the base of each dome together only added to the effect.

Inside the domes were the landscaped features that gave the station its name. Trees and plants from all over the commonwealth had been transported here at great expense, together with birds, squirrels and a dozen other harmless creatures. The domes shared one ecosystem.

The biggest trees grew in the centre of the dome, reaching up toward their counterparts in the other half. Smaller trees and shrubs covered the floor of the interior. Among all of this was built doorways and tunnels concealed from casual view, so that any visitor could easily think they were lost in a garden somewhere on a planet. Even the lighting and humidity had been carefully controlled to support that illusion. The only way to know the truth was to look straight up, through the triangular frame and see the planet close by overhead.

The five visitors marvelled at the site. Malachi tried to calculate the ridiculous expense of such a project but gave up as soon as the numbers became too fantastic. Jayce nodded his approval. Tila, Ellie and Nina only stared.

"Are those birds?" Tila said when they were close enough to make out smaller details.

"Birds? What? That would be—" Nina began, then stopped and looked closer. "No, you're right. Now I've seen everything."

Their shuttle banked and dropped underneath one of the domes to the main structure of the space station. While the domes were impressive, a space station still needed a lot of utilitarian construction to hold the quarters, generators, the docking bays and all the other bits and pieces humans needed to survive. As always, the glamour was up top and on show while the real work took place out of sight.

Nina turned and dropped back into her seat once the dome was out of sight.

''We could do something like this on the Juggernaut one day, couldn't we? Theo could make that work?'

'Malachi could help him,' said Nina with a touch of pride.

'Malachi wouldn't know where to start with a project like that,' said Malachi. 'I'm fine with fixing things.'