Janus 2

by S. D. Falchetti

  “It’s coming!” Hitoshi says.

  “It’s fast,” Isaac says. “Intercept in ten seconds.”

  Hitoshi looks back over his shoulder at Isaac as if to say how can you be so calm?

  “Leveling out,” James say. “If they’re going to catch us, they’re going to catch us.”

  In the external camera, the probe flies up to Goose’s starboard side, spinning quickly. It loiters there, a few meters from the wing, and strobes its rods in dazzling flashes.

  “Ultraviolet and x-ray radiation,” Ananke says over comms. “Low-level alpha radiation. Not enough to penetrate the hull.”

  “Ava, ideas?” James says.

  “Might be trying to establish communication,” Ava says.

  From behind Hitoshi, Beckman says, “Or warning us to get the hell out of their airspace.”

  “Try pulsing the strobes,” Ava says.

  In the exterior camera, Goose’s anti-collision strobes flick on, flashing twice.

  The probe stops flashing, its lights cycling between orange and red.

  “That did something,” Isaac says.

  A blur fills the camera as the probe wheels towards Goose. The impact feels like a parking-lot mishap, jolting everyone left. A collective gasp sounds from crew.

  “Yeah,” Beckman says. “Pissed it off.”

  The probe spins out of view of the starboard camera.

  Hitoshi digs his hand out of the arm rest and pokes at the camera displays on his workstation. “I lost it.”

  “It’s underneath us. Hang onto something,” James says. “Time to get us some separation.”

  Goose’s engines well-up and press Hitoshi firmly into his seat. He sinks further and further as an invisible weight pushes down hard on his chest. He grits his teeth, sucking in air. A sonic boom crashes outside like a distant detonation.

  “We’re supersonic,” James says. “Charging up the Riggs drive.”

  Atmospheric noise buffets the hull as Goose slices through the clouds.

  When Hitoshi reaches for his console, it feels like he’s bench pressing weights. His hand trembles as he switches to the aft camera. Janus curves away at a steep angle behind them, two bending contrails trailing from their wings. A few hundred meters behind them spins the probe. “That’s right,” Hitoshi says through gritted teeth. “Eat contrail.”

  The probe spins faster and faster, prismatic light trails orbiting it.

  “James…” Hitoshi says.

  The aft camera blanches to white from the jump flash as lightning bursts directly in front of Goose. For a split second Hitoshi sees the whirling red lights of the alien probe through the cockpit windows, then Goose kicks up and spins hard to the left.

  Everything goes gray for a moment, the sounds around Hitoshi fading into a muted chaos. As the acceleration eases, reality fades back in. Stars are just visible through the cockpit windows ahead, the faint glow of Janus’s atmosphere at the bottom. Red light dances along the trapezoidal frame of the cockpit windows as if an emergency vehicle were outside. The probe drifts in from the right and spins directly in front of Goose.

  Before, Hitoshi saw it through the filter of a display screen. Now, seeing it with his own two eyes through the front of the cockpit windows is terrifying. It rotates on multiple axis, each of its rods pulsing its own rhythm of red light.

  “Ninety seconds to Riggs charge,” James says. “Gonna need to do some aerobatics to get clear.”

  Ava says, “It’s changing.”

  The probe’s light pulses from red to purple to blue as it slows. Each of its arms is composed of twelve-sided platinum rods of varying lengths. The entire craft is four meters tall until the rods begin sliding relative to each other, collapsing towards the core. Now it’s three meters, two meters, no longer a star shape, but more like a giant metal soccer ball. It rotates and surges just off Goose’s nose.

  “James,” Ananke says. “I sense it.”

  “You sense it?” James says.

  “It’s…it’s looking at me. It’s like when a human feels another person is watching him. It’s scaring me.”

  Hitoshi can’t see James from where he sits in the cabin, but he hears him say, “Time to leave. Everyone brace!”

  Goose lurches right and the stars spin left, the alien probe drifting out of view.

  “Jump in thirty seconds.”

  Hitoshi clamps onto the console, pressing his thumb hard into the display to switch views. The alien probe is a sporadic whirl of red strobes in their wake. As its lights stretch to prismatic whirls, Hitoshi yells, “It’s going to jump again!”

  The passenger cabin explodes with a wash of heat and light, the impact smashing Hitoshi into a daze. His vision blurs as a ringing overtakes his ears. Freezing cold air crashes over his neck. Behind him, parts of the cabin rip and shred in a cacophony of destruction and he can’t think of anything but unclipping his harness and getting away from it. His fingers fumble with the latch and he falls to his knees. As he looks up, horror washes across his expression.

  The alien probe buzzes like an angry bee swarm, spinning inside the aft cabin only four meters from Hitoshi. Its rod ends strobe red, causing a freeze-frame effect to every movement around him.

  Julian and Beckman are both on their backs, crab-walking away from it, and Isaac is frozen in place in his chair, staring.

  “It’s inside the ship!” Hitoshi says.

  The probe accelerates its spin, its rods sliding outwards, increasing its height now to two-and-a-half meters. As it rolls forward, it rips apart the nearest sleep chamber, sending sparks flying.

  Beckman pushes to his feet, rushes over to Julian, and grabs him by the shoulder. He yanks him towards the starboard side. “Emergency area! Get inside.”

  Isaac is still petrified as the probe rolls straight towards him. Hitoshi’s legs are like rubber, but he lunges onto Isaac, unclicks his harness, and pushes him towards Beckman just as the probe reaches him. Hitoshi falls back against the media screen as the probe crushes Isaac’s chair. It rolls in an arc turning towards Hitoshi, cutting him off from Beckman and the others on the starboard side. As it increases its spin, shredded console parts and chair foam sting him. He curls up with both arms over his head and lets out a muffled scream. The probe rolls towards him like a massive buzzsaw.

  Blue flashes sear through the cabin, slamming into the spinning probe, showering sparks around Hitoshi. When Hitoshi looks up, Beckman advances from the other side of the cabin, firing another volley from his pistol. Something breaks off the alien probe and skitters to the ground.

  The probe flares cyan, retracting its rods, and darts towards Beckman. Beckman squeezes off three more shots before it clips him, sending him sprawling into the wall. It leaves him and turns towards the cockpit.

  James blares over comms, “Everyone in the emergency area, now!”

  Hitoshi pushes up and stumbles over to Beckman, grabbing him under his armpits and dragging him. “Crap, you are heavy.”

  As he gets Beckman inside the emergency area with Julian, he slaps the comm. “James, it’s coming your way. Get out of there.”

  “Buckle!” James replies.

  Hitoshi blinks and looks over at Julian and Isaac. The two help lift Beckman into his seat and click in his harness, then they settle into theirs.

  Hitoshi eyes the two empty seats waiting for James and Ava.

  Julian follows Hitoshi’s gaze. “They’re on the bridge, cut off.”

  As Hitoshi reaches for the comm panel, the airlock slams closed. A klaxon sounds as red strobes spin their warning. James is ejecting them. Hitoshi pulls his hand back and grips his harness straps.

  When the explosive bolts separate Goose’s emergency area from Goose, it sounds like firecrackers going off in rapid succession. The jolt is like a kick in the back. An instant later the pod’s thrusters blast continuously behind him, pushing his seat hard against him. Through the little window over his shoulder, Goose falls away from them, sparks wreathing around the open
wound of its missing wingtip where the emergency area had been. Goose’s cockpit flashes with angry red light.

  “C’mon,” Hitoshi says, intently watching the starboard side of Goose’s nose. “Get in there, eject.”

  Goose keeps falling away from them, Janus a blue-white marble.

  “Eject,” Hitoshi says again. The harness strap digs into his hand. He slaps the comm with his other hand. “James, get out of there! Ejec—”

  Goose’s cockpit explodes in a blast of fire, sending glowing shrapnel in a streaking sphere. As the ship spins erratically, parts of the open interior are visible surrounded by molten hull plates and structures. Debris spills out with the ship’s crystallizing atmosphere.

  Hitoshi’s stomach drops, his hand still on the comms panel. He feels sick.

  As Goose spins, electrical flashes flare from inside the cabin. A dull red glow brightens near the ship’s aft.

  “Oh God,” Hitoshi says. “The drive charge.”

  Something pops over the red glow and molten metal sprays out in a widening arc. Orange globs spin like bits of magma freed to space. Goose pinwheels there a second, colliding with fragments of its own wreckage, then flashes brilliant white as Hitoshi’s window automatically opaques.

  “No…” Julian says, sitting across from Hitoshi.

  When the window fades back to transparent, incandescent chunks of Goose spin everywhere, lost in a sea of dying embers.

  11

  Twenty Minutes

  When James looks over his shoulder through Goose’s open cockpit door, the passenger cabin is a riot of shredding noise and flickering crimson light, electric blue strobing from somewhere in the back as a pulse pistol’s shots ring out. Three more shots and a muffled scream. To James’s right, Ava sits in her chair, eyes wide, and Ananke’s screen pulses silver. James slaps the intercom. “Everyone in the emergency area, now!” Behind him, the red lights of the alien probe flare in the access corridor smoke. He snaps his attention to Ava. She looks at him, questioning.

  “Take Ananke, get in the escape capsule,” James says. “Right over there. Mash the big red button, grab the bar, and drop inside. Go, go, go!”

  The comms icon illuminates and Hitoshi’s voice blares out of the speaker. “James, it’s coming your way. Get out of there.”

  Ava’s out of her seat with Ananke, dashing towards the red hatch labeled emergency.

  James hits the comm transmit back to Hitoshi. “Buckle!”

  The corridor walls behind him rip and crumple as James opens the lifeboat interior video. Beckman is slumped unconscious buckled into his seat, and Julian, Isaac, and Hitoshi are all secure. Hitoshi has his hand on the comm panel. James keys in the command code and overrides the lifeboat airlock, closing it.

  Flickering red light appears in the cockpit. The probe is nearly through the corridor.

  James’s console displays a blinking eject icon. He hits it and a five second countdown appears, then he’s out of his seat, diving for the escape hatch, grabbing the pull bar, and swinging his legs into the circular opening. Goose pops and shudders as the lifeboat containing Hitoshi and his crew jettisons.

  Beneath James, the escape capsule looks like the interior of an old Soyuz capsule. Six seats are arranged in a circle facing outwards. Ava sits in one with Ananke on her chair mount, and two are empty. The other three are filled with empty EV suits. A red klaxon strobes from the capsule’s apex.

  The cockpit doorframe splinters and the probe rolls in, crushing the center cockpit seat. It spins slowly at first, its lights cycling between orange and red, then picks up speed. James slams the escape capsule hatch and drops into his seat, buckling his harness. The sound from the cockpit area intensifies.

  Ava’s breathing hard to his left.

  Ananke’s voice is filled with terror. “James! It’s me. It wants me. It’s accessing my matrix. I can feel it.”

  “Hang on!” James says. He taps in the launch sequence on the slanted panel in front of him. A red eject icon blinks urgently. As he extends his hand towards the icon, gravity amplifies and his arm slams down hard on the armrest. He grits his teeth and bears down, trying to force blood to his head, but his vision narrows. The red eject icon blinks, waiting. As he looks down at his hand, thousands of little light points collect across his skin, tingling like ants crawling over him. As the points collide they merge into brighter flashes spinning with prismatic bursts. Every surface of the capsule is alive with speckled light, coated in pinpoints, and the capsule walls twist and breathe. Gravity increases again and his vision fades to black.

  In the distance, like a dream, Hitoshi says, “James, get out of there,” then there is searing heat and nothing but darkness.

  James stirs awake to the tingling of wind chimes and the crashing of distant ocean waves, a sheet draped half over his chest. Overhead, a ceiling fan spins, wafting cool air. When he rolls to his right, the bungalow is white and filled with sunlight. The sliding glass doors are open, a slight breeze cascading in, and the wind chimes dangle to the left of the deck. Kate leans against the deck railing. She’s put on her torn jean shorts that James loves, and a wispy white top which billows in the wind. Sand stretches out behind her until it marries with azure Caribbean waters.

  James swings out of bed and pulls on a pair of shorts, joining her on the deck.

  Kate looks over, her elbows on the railing. Her sunglasses have a brown gradient and her blonde hair rustles in her face. “Morning, sleepy head.”

  James sets his hand in the small of her back. She looks perfect in every way. He gives her a kiss. “Morning.”

  In the distance, an aircraft engine buzzes in the sky. Kate points to her left. “Tour time. Think he’ll stick it today?”

  James follows her gaze. Saint Jean’s bay is an aquamarine crescent against a white sandy beach dappled with red-roofed houses. The airport’s runway connects nearly directly with the beach, rising at an angle to a grassy top. In the glare of the blue sky a Twin Otter approaches, descending, rocking its wings to level out. Rainbow colors adorn its nose and tail. James feels his hands turning the imaginary controls, trying to correct its approach and get it back on centerline. The Otter drifts left, straightens, and comes in for a smooth landing, quickly slowing. It disappears out of sight when it turns onto the taxiway, heading for the parking area where James’s Piper waits.

  “Not bad. Getting better,” James says.

  “What should we do today?” Kate asks.

  James look out at the azure water. “Let’s go sailing.” He smiles, but then his smile fades. Sailing, he thinks. He glances around at the island, confused. “Didn’t we want to go to the Whitsunday Islands?”

  She squints. “We can still do that sometime. You really wanted to try this airport with your Piper.”

  He slides his hand from her back, taking a step back.

  She looks at him, questioning. “What’s the matter?”

  This never happened, he realizes. We had to choose, and we chose Whitsunday.

  “James?” she asks, but before he can answer, Kate, the beach, and the ocean disappear.

  For a moment, James is nowhere. When he looks left, thousands of James stand in a line, all looking left. When he looks right, it is the same infinite line of himself, like standing between two mirrors in a fun house, endlessly reflecting. He lifts his right hand and spreads open his fingers. The images closest to him do the same, but the further he looks down the line the more they diverge. Some raise their hand but do not spread their fingers. Others never raise their hand. Most wear the same Hayden-Pratt flight suit he wears, but some wear other outfits—business suits, casual clothes. As he looks further down the line there are skips where no one stands.

  He focuses on one of the men wearing a business suit. When he blinks, he’s twenty-six, sitting in a conference room at Hayden Aeronautics in Pasadena. Twenty other people sit around the oval table, turned towards his father. Christopher Hayden is talking about market share and strategies for hypersonic aircra
ft, and the chief technical officer, Liam, is waiting in the wings to discuss development and product launch. James sets his hand on the table, feeling the grain of the wood. No, he thinks, I am not here. I’m at Edwards Air Force Base learning to be a test pilot. I don’t know Will here. How can I not know Will?

  The scene falls away and he’s back in the line of men. And, looking over them, he realizes it. They’re all versions of himself which he could have been, or perhaps, now are, in other realities. The nearest ones mirror his choices the closest. The furthest diverge. He thinks on this a moment, searching for the version which went to Saint Julian instead of Whitsunday. He watches, through his eyes, as the events play out. Kate, breathless in the sun, this time while sailing in the Caribbean bay. Months later the diagnosis. The funeral on a snowy February day. He pulls back, his chest hurting, and looks for another version.

  In some versions, he never meets Kate. In those, the Pasadena conference room scenario plays out. In others, they discover her sickness earlier or later, but in each case the only effect is to move the month of the funeral. There are no versions where Kate survives. Based on the missing people in line, there also are versions where James does not survive. The one common thread to all of the timelines is that without Kate, James does not go to Edwards, and without Edwards he does not meet William Pratt. Inevitably James ends up leading Hayden Aeronautics, but without William there is no Hayden-Pratt, no Riggs program, and no interstellar travel leading to this moment. Still, he thinks, if I could have found one reality where she lived, I would have sacrificed all of this to have it.

  As he’s standing there, his throat tight, swallowing hard, the images fade like falling dominos. When the succession reaches him, a crushing weight presses down on him and he falls to the ground, squatted and curled up. Flashing stars accumulate on his hands like snowflakes as his vision grays. Searing heat rushes over him as the blackness blares brilliant white with a sound like rushing wind, then it fades, the weight receding. As he shakes, his eyes still closed, he feels something cool beneath his forearms. He presses his hands down and the glossy surface of the armrest console presses back. When he blinks open his eyes, the red light of Goose’s escape capsule shines down. Ava is to his left, stirring in her chair.