by A. G. Riddle
“That’s what you’re offering us. But what are you asking from us?”
“Collaboration. First, you will disable the attack drones currently inbound to my position. As you have surmised, I am unable to stop them physically. Your plan, as expected, is brilliant, James. The drones have no broadcast weaknesses. I can’t infiltrate them with a virus. But you will disable them, and then you will set about rebuilding me. You have that capability. I do not.
“In return, I will provide technological instruction that will enable you to reach heights you can only dream of—and to overcome any opposition to the singularity. In short, this time, James, you will be in charge, thanks to the technology I can provide and that you can easily build. The grid is your destiny. It’s a place where time has no meaning. This universe will be your playground. You will be gods.”
James turns and looks me in the eye. What’s he thinking? I’d give anything to know right now. I’m so confused myself.
The harvester has killed billions of our people. It killed my crew on the ISS. It has tried to murder me and James countless times. Can it be trusted? Is this a trap?
The drones will hit the surface of Ceres in less than a minute.
Time seems to stand still.
Only the clock is a reminder.
The decision being put to James is unimaginable. A single question that will change human history forever. And he seems to be considering it.
“How do we know you’ll keep your word?” James doesn’t look up. He just keeps studying the virus scan, perhaps searching for confirmation that the harvester is lying.
“You know it because you understand me, James. Everything I do is dictated by logic. I care only for the expansion of the grid. Before, I didn’t realize your species was capable of joining the grid. I was sent here for a single mission: to harvest the energy with the lowest possible expenditure. That’s what I’m proposing now.”
Forty seconds left.
“And if we say no?”
“You will sentence your people to death. You will not receive an offer like this from the next ‘harvester,’ as you call it. As I said before, I’m low on the totem pole. I’m sent to solar systems that have very limited defensive capabilities. Primitive systems. Again, we misjudged you. It’s happened before. It’s easily remedied—now. But when I don’t reply to the grid’s periodic ping, the situation in this system will be escalated. A follow-up harvester will be sent, one with extensive offensive capabilities. You will be wiped out. That is a certainty.”
James studies the screen, his eyes darting left and right as if he’s processing.
Thirty seconds left.
Finally, he looks up at Art, and smiles.
“Before, when you arrived at the system, and did your assessment, you screwed up, didn’t you?”
Art nods carefully. “I suppose you could put it that way.”
“You didn’t factor in an anomaly,” James says. “Me.”
“Yes.” Art draws the word out.
“Do you think maybe you’ve made the same mistake?”
Twenty seconds left.
Art cocks his head. “I haven’t—”
“Maybe you still don’t understand us. Or the anomaly. That’s what makes us different. As you’ve noted, we are not a perfect species. We wiped out countless other inhabitants of our planet. We’ve displaced our own people in the name of progress. We’ve warred with each other. We are guilty of crimes. But we are also a species that has proven it can learn from its mistakes. And I’m no different. Before, my mistake was not considering my fellow man. Not looking at the world from their eyes, only seeing it from my own, and my vision of the future. I won’t make the same mistake.”
“What are you saying?” Art asks, his voice void of emotion, suddenly sounding more like a machine.
Ten seconds left.
“I’m saying that my people would never go for your deal. They want a life worth living, and that life isn’t inside a machine—not yet. I know that better than anyone alive. And I won’t drag them kicking and screaming into a future I want, or a future that allows you to survive and your people to change us.”
Five seconds.
“James, stop the drones. Now!” Art yells.
A message flashes on the tablet:
Virus detected
Comm systems infected
James taps a button:
System Core Dismount
The screen goes black.
Art disappears.
Chapter 56
James
Through the porthole, I watch as a brilliant flash of white light blossoms on the surface of Ceres—the attack drones annihilating the harvester.
I exhale a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
I untether from the bridge table and propel myself to the window. The surface of Ceres is a bombed-out expanse of craters. Where the black dome of the harvester’s central node used to be, there is the largest crater of all.
I glance back and see that Emma’s mouth is moving, but I can’t hear what she’s saying. The ship’s computer is off-line. So are internal comms.
I float close to her, take a hard line from my suit, and connect it to hers.
“Did we—”
“We got him, Emma.”
“What about the computer?”
“I don’t know. Art was trying to infiltrate it. Probably to use the comms.”
“To call off the attack drones?”
“Conceivably.”
“What else would it be?”
I have another theory about what Art was doing, but I don’t want to tell her. I’ve been down this road: keeping secrets from her. I’m not going down it again. I make the decision then to always tell her the truth.
“It was either to disable the attack drones or to broadcast out of system, to the grid. To call for help. Reinforcements.”
Emma’s eyes drop away from mine.
“Can we reboot the system core?”
“We can, but we shouldn’t.”
“We have to.”
“It’s too risky. If Art’s code infiltrated Leo, rebooting it could give him access to what’s left of our communications abilities.”
“Then we’re stranded.”
“Not quite.” I point toward the porthole, at the expanse of floating debris, the wreckage of our nine ships and everything the harvester threw at us. “Somewhere out there, there’s a working escape pod from one of the ships. We’re going to find it, and we’re going to get out of here. I promise.”
The words come out with more confidence than I feel. I don’t want her to worry. I glance down at the control panel on my left arm. My suit has ten hours and thirty-two minutes of oxygen left. That’s how long we have to find a functioning escape pod. The clock is ticking.
It takes me thirty minutes to disassemble the bridge enough to isolate the computer hardware that houses Leo’s operating system and all the telemetry and data from the mission. It’s slow going with the suit and gloves, but it’s imperative that I bring the computer core and black box home. We have to analyze it to know if the harvester broadcast a message. We need to know if what it told us is true—if another harvester will soon come for us.
With the computer core strapped to my suit, we systematically search the wreckage. On Sparta Three, we find a working escape pod. My suit status reads less than two hours of oxygen left. Both Emma and I plug in to the escape pod systems and refill our oxygen reservoirs. I disconnect my helmet and set it aside.
She catches me by surprise. She pushes off from the far wall and wraps her arms around me. Her eyes well with tears.
We hold each other tight as I stare out the small round window at the debris field and the wreckage of the Battle of Ceres.
I’ve never felt so thankful in all my life.
There’s one thing I need to tell her, something I’ve wanted to say since Art revealed my secrets. And hers.
“Hey,” I whisper.
She breaks the h
ug and stares at me.
“Thanks for giving me my family back. For everything you did.”
“You would have done the same for me.”
I would have. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.
Chapter 57
Emma
When James and I have eaten, we lay down to rest. I can’t remember being this exhausted in my entire life. We spent eight hours floating through the wreckage, searching for this escape pod. It has to be one of the longest EVAs on record.
James crawls over to me, panting from the exertion.
“Hey. You do the honors.”
“The honors?” I mumble, half asleep.
“Of telling Earth. This started with the attack on the ISS. That was our solar Pearl Harbor. Now we’ve won.”
“Like Midway.”
He grimaces. “Well, sort of.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Midway was the turning point in the war in the Pacific, a battle where the Allies used airpower to neutralize the Japanese aircraft carriers. This feels more like a final battle—” He holds up a hand. “But it’s not important right now. We’ll work on your grasp of military history later.”
He activates the comm. “Please.”
I swallow hard, knowing these words will likely be replayed for a very long time. “To the triple alliance that launched the Spartan fleet, this is Emma Matthews and Dr. James Sinclair, last known survivors of the Spartan fleet. We have succeeded. The entity that created the solar array was indeed operating from Ceres. We completed our assault, destroyed the harvester, and now we’re commencing search and rescue operations from one of the escape pods of Sparta Three. The Sparta One escape pods were jettisoned several days before the battle, for use by the survivors of the Pax, whom we encountered on our way here. If you’re receiving this transmission before they arrive on Earth, be advised that they may be in need of urgent medical attention.”
I end the comm recording.
“You like it?”
“It’s perfect,” he says.
The search of the wreckage reminds me of my desperate search of the ISS debris, of finding Sergei, of my joy at seeing him and my horror when my hand closed around his arm, knowing his suit was compromised and that he was dead. This time, I’m more guarded as we power the escape pod through the wreckage, prowling, looking for signs of survivors.
In many ways, it feels as if I’ve returned to the beginning, to the event that set everything in motion. Then, the harvester destroyed the ISS and I was left for dead. This time, we are victors.
In the wreckage of Sparta Four, in the cargo module, we spot an EMU suit. It’s pressurized and undamaged, but it’s not moving. There’s someone inside, unconscious. A survivor. My heart leaps.
On Sparta Seven, in the weapons control bay, we find another suited survivor, also seemingly unconscious.
James and I are connected via a tether between our suits. Over the comm line, he says, “Until they regain consciousness, it’ll be hard to make an assessment of them. We’ll have to split up. Each of us will take one of them in an escape pod. We’ll need to find another one.”
I can’t hide my disappointment. After we jettisoned Sparta One’s escape pods, I didn’t think we would be coming back from Ceres. But I thought if we did, James and I would be returning together, just as we had returned from the Pax. There’s still so much I want to say to him. I want to tell him that I don’t care what he did in his past, that all I care about is the future. But there’s no time for that now. Every second counts.
Chapter 58
James
In the design process for the Spartan model spacecraft, we named the escape pods “rapid return modules.” It turns out that’s a bit of a misnomer. Nothing about the return to Earth from the asteroid belt is rapid. It’s a six-week journey.
The first escape pod was hard to find, but luckily there was another intact pod close by. It has some impact marks on the side, but it pressurized and the internal safety checks passed. I hope it holds up.
As the engines on the escape pod fire and it gains speed, barreling toward Earth, I can’t help but look at the metal box that holds the computer core from Sparta One. The answer of whether the harvester was able to contact the grid is somewhere in there. We’ve won the battle. But I fear that a war may have begun. I won’t know if that’s true until I get home and analyze the data.
Two days into my journey, my fellow passenger awakens. From the crew manifests on the escape module computer, I know that his name is Deshi, a Chinese engineer from the Pac Alliance.
He peeks at me through barely opened eyes, bloodshot and weary.
“What happened?” he croaks.
He speaks English. That helps.
“We won. Just relax. I need to do a physical exam.”
The last time I found myself in this position—doing a physical exam on an astronaut I rescued from wreckage created by the harvester—the astronaut in question was a lot prettier. Still, I give it my all. Deshi has what I believe is a hairline fracture in his femur. We have lots of painkillers, but he’s going to lose some bone density without exercise.
It turns out Deshi is a decent card player. I’m thankful for that. But I miss Emma. Being in this confined space reminds me of her. I miss Alex too, and Abby, and Madison and David and all the kids. I miss Oscar. His sacrifice made me proud. I’ll have to show it to him.
My heart melts when I catch my first glimpse of Earth through the escape pod’s small porthole. When we left, our planet was an expanse of white ice and blue ocean. Not anymore.
Here and there, through the clouds, I see a smattering of green and brown. The ice is thawing. The Long Winter is over.
When we’re in range, I activate the radio.
“Atlantic Union command, this is James Sinclair, requesting permission to land.”
Fowler’s voice comes on the line.
“Welcome home, James. We’ll be waiting for you.”
On the ground, they take me to a quarantine facility and perform an endless battery of tests. I remain in isolation until I’m cleared and moved to a hospital room. I know I’ll need lots of physical therapy from the mission, but I can still walk.
Fowler is the first to visit me.
Without preamble, I ask the question that’s burned on my mind.
“Is Emma back?”
“No.”
“Any contact from her?”
“I’m sorry, James.”
“We have to go look for her—”
“We’re already launching satellites. It could be nothing. Just an anomaly in the acceleration of the two escape pods.”
Fowler seems to sense how hard I’m taking the news. He changes the subject.
“But we have recovered some escape modules.”
“The crew of the Pax? How are they?”
Fowler smiles widely. “They’re fine. That was very clever, James. And very brave. That’s not all of the good news. Solar output has normalized.”
“How? When?”
“A little while before your transmission, around the time the battle was over, the solar cells just scattered. They’re still out there, but they’re not harvesting any of the solar output directed at Earth.”
“It makes sense. The harvester got access to all of Oscar’s memories. He knew about the nukes we prepared for launch, so the harvester would have known about them, known they would destroy the solar cells if they continued to threaten Earth. Their priority is the conservation of energy. By removing the threat, they get to continue collecting energy. And they’re a lot harder to go after if they aren’t grouped together.” I chew my lip for a moment. “This may not be over.”
“It’s over for now.”
“Have you analyzed Sparta One’s computer core?”
Fowler’s smile vanishes.
“What did you find?” I ask urgently.
“We’re still running tests.”
“It sent a transmission?”
“We thi
nk so. James, there’s some people who want to see you. I just wanted to say thanks and tell you how proud I am of everything you all did up there.”
Before I can ask another question, he walks out, leaving the sliding door to the hospital room open.
Footsteps on the linoleum floor echo in the hall, like a stampede of people. But it’s only four: Alex, Abby, Jack, and Sarah. They last time I saw them, they were all underweight, Abby and Alex the worst of the four. They aren’t quite healthy now, but they look a great deal better, faces fuller. They barrel through the door, Alex first. He pulls me into a hug and squeezes me so tight I think my brittle, space-weakened bones are going to break. I can hardly breathe. In my ear, he says, barely audible, “I’m proud of you. Thank you.”
Chapter 59
Emma
The person I rescued from the wreckage is a comm officer named Gloria. I made the decision to accelerate away from the wreckage at extremely low speed. I’m glad I did. She’s fine overall, but she has a concussion. Leaving Ceres at maximum burn could have exacerbated her injury.
The slower exit from this battleground will add some time to our return trip, but it will drastically improve her prognosis.
The weeks drag by like months. It seems like ages since I’ve seen James, and Madison and her family. That period feels like a lifetime ago. Indeed, my life now seems split into three parts: my time before the attack on the ISS; the interim in between, in space, and in Camp Seven; and this period, after the Battle of Ceres. This is the first time since the ISS that I haven’t been in constant danger. It’s a new beginning. And I can’t wait to get home and figure out what that beginning is like.
