by J. N. Chaney
“Athena has her practicing hand movements,” he continued, ignoring my sarcasm. “Her grip strength is already impressive. That’s what Athena says, anyway. I’m trying to do everything I can to help, but all I have are words.”
“You don’t think you’re doing enough?” I asked.
He scratched his ear. “I don’t know, truth be told. What do you think, Captain?”
I took another sip. “I think what’s happening to Petra is up to Petra to fix. Not you, not me, not anyone else with two working arms. All we can do is support her and be there when she wants to complain about how hard it is or how much the prosthetic hurts. When that happens, don’t try to relate. Just shut up and listen. That’s your job, Freddie.”
“To shut up and listen?” he asked.
“Maybe throw in a smile or two if she needs it. You’re always good for that.”
He chuckled. “Thanks, Captain.”
I raised my cup at him, saying nothing, and then took another sip.
Before I could pull the mug from my lips, a sudden burst of thunder rumbled from a distance.
No, not thunder. The sky was clear and blue. This came from the west, towards the far side of the valley. “What was that?!” asked Freddie, sudden panic in his voice.
Black smoke came together, pluming in the expanse, just short of the horizon. “Look over there!” I barked.
“Isn’t that where the dome is?” asked Freddie.
I went to tap my ear, but the click had already come through. “Sir, there’s been an incident,” said Sigmond, his voice breaking in before I could say anything.
“Was it the Alpha site?” I asked, quickly. “Put me through to Dressler!”
It took almost no time for the connection to process. When the line activated, panicked breathing and several screams coming from the background was all I could hear.
“Doc!” I snapped, holding my ear. “Are you there? Doc, say something, so I can—”
“H-Hello? Who is this? K-Karin! No, you can’t go back in there! Tell everyone to evacuate right—”
The comm cut out with a hard click.
I tapped my ear. “Siggy, what just happened? Get her back on the line!”
“I’m afraid the connection has been lost. The explosion may have damaged the doctor’s earpiece, sir.”
I shot a hard glance at Freddie. “We’re going out there right now. No time to prep.”
He nodded, quickly.
I turned back to the valley, watching as the smoke continued to rise. “Keep trying her, Siggy. Get me Karin if you have to. Anyone with a working comm. Then tell Abigail and Octavia to gather a team. We’re going to need a medical unit out there right away.”
“Anything else, sir?” asked the Cognitive.
I shot a quick glance towards the beach I had taken Abigail and Lex. “We need water to put out those fires. Can your drones pick some up from the ocean?”
“I can have water delivered before you leave the city.”
“Don’t waste any time, Siggy,” I told him before looking at Freddie. “The rest of us are on our way.”
Seven
Before we even touched down, I could see the panic on the ground. The Eternals and colonists alike had moved far from the smoke and destruction of the dome and into the open field. Many of them had blackened faces, making it difficult to differentiate them from one another.
As soon as my ship had landed, I popped the door open and quickly made my way towards the crowd, snapping on a breathing mask in the process.
Most of these people were still in shock from the blast, unable to process their surroundings. I wagered most would come unwound by tomorrow, and then the real breakdowns would begin.
For now, they stood around like living corpses, barely holding themselves together.
A young woman moaned nearby, her voice just one of many. Freddie ran to check on her with the ship’s med kit. It probably wouldn’t be enough to treat the wound in her stomach, but it might keep her stable long enough for the others to arrive. Octavia and Abigail were still on their way, flying a few minutes behind us. Once they showed up, we’d have a better chance at saving some lives. However, in the precious moments between now and then, I feared the worst.
I spotted Karin near the front of the dome, standing with frazzled white hair and a torn shirt. She also wore a breathing mask, along with several individuals who were crowded around her, listening as she barked orders. As I drew closer, her words became clearer. “Don’t worry about the equipment,” she told them. “Focus on recovering any survivors you can find. Do you understand?”
I reached out and touched her arm. She flinched, instantly, and swung around. She took a second to process who I was and where I’d come from but then relaxed. “Are you alright?” I asked, not waiting for her to speak first.
She blinked but finally nodded. “I’m okay,” she assured me. “Just a headache, that’s all. Did you bring help? We’re missing people. Dr. Dressler went back inside to look.” She spoke quickly, almost vomiting out the words.
“Abigail and Octavia are on the way,” I told her. “They’ve got a whole team coming. Are you sure you don’t wanna sit down?”
She shook her head. “Tell them to hurry, please. We have wounded all over this field, and we need to start triage right away--”
Her knees buckled at once, and I had to move in quickly to catch her before she hit the ground. “Easy!” I snapped, managing to get my arms around her waist. “Got you!”
She let out a short yelp as her foot twisted in the dirt. Her head fell into my chest, and I could feel her taking heavy breaths.
I brought her down slowly, setting her against the soft earth. As I did, I noticed a line of blood ease out from her scalp. It was also on my shirt.
“Godsdammit, Karin,” I muttered, wiping her hair away. There was a gash there, and the blood was pooling. “Why were you even still on your feet?”
She took several quick breaths, her eyes darting from side to side as she tried desperately to focus. Her eyelids were growing heavier by the second.
“Never mind,” I whispered, leaning closer. “Just stay down and try to stay awake.”
My ear caught the sound of a ship arriving, not far behind us. I glanced over my shoulder to see two vessels landing in the field, not far from the crowd.
That would be the medical team, I thought. I tapped my ear and ordered Sigmond to put me through to Abigail immediately. “We’ve got injured all over the damn place. Tell your people to spread out and hurry. I saw several people with blood on them, and that’s just what I could see. Gods know how many of them inhaled smoke or might have broken bones. We need to get them all looked at immediately.”
“We’ll get right on it,” answered Abigail. “Have you found Dressler yet?”
“She ran inside to look for survivors. I haven’t seen her.”
The transport doors swung open, and the team unloaded into the field. Abigail motioned for everyone to fan out, then set her sights on me. To my surprise, she had Petra at her side, carrying a med kit in her good hand.
I made eye contact with Abigail. She said something I couldn’t hear to Petra, and the two came jogging towards me. Before I could say a word, Petra had her kit halfway open, her knees slamming into the mud beside us. “Where was she hit?” she asked, quickly.
“On the scalp, best I can tell,” I explained.
Petra reached into her kit and retrieved a small handheld scanner, bringing it close to Karin’s forehead. “She has a closed head injury, but there shouldn’t be a need for surgery,” explained Petra. She took out a small container, full of pills. Popping the top, she handed one to Karin. “Take this. It should help with the pain.”
Karin swallowed the pill while Petra examined the gash on her skull. “Thank you,” said Karin, once she had the pill down.
“We need to get you back to the ship, along with anyone else with a serious injury,” said Abigail, who was standing beside me and watching all
of this. She swung around and waved at someone. “Over here, both of you. That’s right. Bring the cart.”
A minute later, two men were on their way with a hover cart. The five of us hoisted Petra off the dirty ground and onto the transport.
Abigail leaned over her and rubbed her shoulder. “Try to relax. We’ll get you home soon.”
Karin smiled, her eyes half-shut. “Thanks.”
As the two men rushed her off, I crossed my arms and let out a slow sigh. “Let’s hope it ain’t much worse than that.”
“It is,” bemoaned Abigail, looking out at the crowd, half of whom were sitting on the ground. “The medical ward is about to be full again.”
I noticed Petra glancing down at her prosthetic hand. She clenched her fingers, slowly opening them.
“How about you?” I asked, turning to her. “You good?”
“M-me?” asked Petra.
“How’s the hand? The pain still bothering you?”
She stared at her palm for a second. “I’d rather not think about it right now if it’s all the same.”
“Sure,” I said, knowing when to leave well enough alone.
“Perform another sweep immediately,” came a voice from inside the dome. I turned to see Dressler and four individuals, all of them covered in dust, making their way out of the decimated structure. “Who is that out there? Karin?” asked Dressler, her voice a little muffled by the breathing mask she wore.
I stood with my thumb in my belt, waiting for her to stumble through the rubble. “Just me,” I said, once she was close enough to see my face. “Been looking for you, Doc. Find anything in there?”
She nodded at her team, who quickly returned inside the building to continue their search. “I’m afraid not,” she said, taking long strides as she walked through piles of fallen debris. There was a hard crunch every step she took—the sound of glass and broken stone. “I believe the explosion occurred near the other side of the building. That area has taken the most damage. Several people were working nearby at the time have gone missing.”
I was surprised by the look on her face. Where once there had been a stoic, contemplative expression, I now saw something else. A jarring sense of fear for what she knew must be the truth. Knowing her, she’d already done the calculations and determined the most likely outcome—that those missing people were likely all dead.
But I also knew she wouldn’t blame herself, because she wasn’t the type to let her emotions overtake her objectivity. Yes, there was fear in her now, but Dressler had no control over this situation, so she wouldn’t waste time dwelling on it. She would gather herself and move forward to look for solutions. Maybe that made her a little cold-hearted, but it also meant that no matter how difficult our situation became, I could always count on her to be pragmatic.
“Thank you for coming, Ms. Pryar,” said Dressler. She looked at Petra. “That goes for all of you. I don’t know the cause of this, but I plan to find out immediately.”
“Let’s see where this explosion happened,” I told her. “Think you can show me?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“We’ll see to the others,” said Abigail, motioning for Petra to follow. “Let us know if you find anything.”
The two women grabbed their med kits and took off for the nearest group. “Alright, then,” I muttered, glancing up at the dome’s missing ceiling and the smoke high above us. “Guess we’d better get to it.”
* * *
Sigmond’s drones had calmed the fires along the rear half of the dome, but the air still smelled like fire.
The smoke had yet to fully clear, and likely wouldn’t for a while. We walked around the outside of the building, towards the rear where Dressler believed the explosion had occurred.
As we passed a section where the wall had come down, the innards of the dome became visible again. A brief glance caught the remains of several biomatter storage modules. According to Dressler, those contained the DNA of ancient animals and would likely be used to repopulate during the next terraforming phase. I had to figure the loss would set us back, even if the other domes had their own stash of animals to pull from.
As though she could hear my thoughts, Dressler said, “As soon as we have the site secure and evacuated, I want an excavation team on the ground, ready to salvage whatever we can.”
“You’ll have it,” I assured her.
She said nothing as we continued towards the rear, coming around the south side of the dome to a mound of debris. It was a piece of the upper wall, broken into rubble and scattered.
“Is this it?” I asked, looking around. “There wasn’t much to this section, was there?”
“No, it was mostly vacant,” said Dressler, taking a careful step over some glass.
I’d only been here once before, but I couldn’t remember anything significant about this place. Most of the computers and DNA modules had been in the other rooms. “So, what caused this?” I asked the doctor.
“That’s what I’d like to find out,” she said.
I touched my ear. “Siggy, is this the source of the blast? Can you confirm that?”
“Calculating, sir. Standby,” he replied.
“In the meantime, let’s see what we can find,” I said, edging my way around a jagged piece of metal.
Dressler was careful not to get too close to the pile, leaning forward every few seconds to examine something, and then moving on. It would take us days to go through all of the wreckage and pick out whatever was still useful. That was to say nothing of the investigation into who caused this.
Who? The question ran through my mind and sent chills down my neck. Was I already leaping to conclusions about what had caused this? What part of this felt intentional? Was it the fact that there were no known combustibles in this section of the dome? Or was I just being paranoid?
“Siggy, do you have it yet?” I asked, my impatience getting the best of me.
“As it happens, sir,” he responded. “Orbital scans of the building suggest you are standing close to the origin of the explosion.”
I looked at Dressler, expecting her to say something, but then remembered that her comm was damaged. “Siggy says this is the spot,” I explained.
She peered around. “Then I was right. Ask him if he can extrapolate an exact location. Precision would be useful.”
“Siggy?” I asked.
“I’m unable to determine that at this time, I’m afraid.”
“He says he’s working on it,” I told Dressler.
She took a step inside one of the mounds of charred debris and leaned forward, trying to get a better view of something before pulling back. The doctor sighed in a way that almost felt like defeat. “I’ll have to return with the proper equipment before I can examine any of this.”
“Doctor!” called a voice. A young man hurried from the other side of the building, opposite from where we’d arrived. He walked quickly, but carefully, as he neared the mound between us. “There you are! Mica says he saw someone over here before the explosion. We’ve been looking for you.”
“Who?” asked Dressler, straightening herself. “Did he give you any names?”
“Not yet! I told him to keep his voice down and wait for you. He’s with Ms. Pryar now!”
Dressler started shuffling her way to the other side of the pile like she was walking through deep snow. “Excellent! Take me to him immediately!”
Dressler was quick to get the hell out of there, scurrying her way back to the crowded field. I followed after, keeping a few paces between us. She was a woman on a mission, and I didn’t feel like getting in her way.
“Where is he?” asked the doctor as she approached the ship.
Abigail popped her head out. “MaryAnn?” she said.
Over here,” said the young man leading us. “She needs to see Mica.”
Abigail hopped off the ship and made room. “Inside.”
Dressler climbed aboard the ship and disappeared. Abigail looked at me, curious
ly, but I only shrugged. She turned to the ship, waiting to see what all the fuss was about.
“Siggy, were the other ships damaged in the explosion?” I asked, turning back towards the dome.
“No, sir. Not according to sensors,” he replied.
“Good. Tell the medical crew to have anyone who isn’t seriously injured to report to their transport ships and head home. We need to start clearing this place out.”
“Understood,” he answered.
Seconds later, I noticed the crowd thinning as survivors began to leave. With the wounded tended to, there was no reason for most of these people to stay. They needed rest, and I wasn’t about to deny them.
“Have you told the others about this yet?” asked Abigail.
“If you mean Alphonse and Hitchens, I haven’t had the chance. Besides, they both have their hands full, last I checked.”
“Still, we may need to call in a cleanup team. Don’t you think?”
“We’ll worry about that when we’ve cleared the field,” I told her. “One thing at a time.”
A moment later, Dressler reappeared from inside the ship. As soon as I saw her, it was clear she’d heard some disconcerting news. The look on her face was unmistakable.
“What did he say?” I asked.
Dressler stepped off the ship, then came closer to both Abigail and me. “Mica believes he saw three Eternals in the rear compartment moments before the explosion.”
Abigail and I exchanged a quick look. “What?” I asked. “Is he sure?”
“Yes, but none of the three were carrying anything that he could see,” she explained. “However, we know very little about their munitions capabilities. During my time working for the Union, I had the chance to catalog multiple explosive devices of varying size. Some were no larger than my palm. They didn’t have the ability to level a building of this size, but the Eternals could have taken a completely different research path. It is impossible to know.”
“That’s crazy,” said Abigail, shaking her head. “These people haven’t shown any signs of violence before. Why would they strike here and not the city? What reason could they have?”
“That is a question I would like to ask, myself,” said Dressler.
