War World IV: Invasion

by War World IV Invasion v2 Lit

  His chin came up slightly. “I won’t deny that there’s considerable danger involved.”

  Janine laughed again. “ ‘Considerable danger?’ Is that a new synonym for ‘suicide’?”

  The momentary silence was broken by Vera; her voice was small but firm. “What Mr. Trainor suggests is risky, but not suicidal. Almost certainly, we will lose some of the non-atmospheric craft, but not more than two, maybe three.”

  Janine turned to glare at Vera. “How very cavalier, Mrs. Knecht--but what if you or your husband should happen to be on one of those less fortunate transports?”

  Vera’s tone did not change. “That’s the chance we have to take--along with everyone else. And as a pilot, the statistics indicate that if my boat does go down, I’m the most likely to die: the cockpit is the most dangerous place to be. during a failed deorbit attempt.”

  Janine looked at Emmanuel, then looked away and snarled, “This plan is madness; you Castalians are going to get us all killed.”

  Before he was aware that he had an urge to do so, Emmanuel stepped forward into the informal debating arena. “Your fears are justified, Janine.” She turned to look at him, surprised--and worried. Emmanuel faced the crowd. “But we can be sure of this; if we stay on Ayesha, we will die. I know a lot of you think that we Castalians--myself in particular--have some pretty strange ideas. But you also know that I’m a good life-support technician--and that I’m not a liar.

  “So here’s the truth; the self-sufficiency hydroponics aren’t going to work. Ever. We could have done it if we had access to the right technology--but that was too expensive. Now, to make matters worse, two-thirds of our community has had its pressure integrity compromised. We’ve lost a huge quantity of air and moisture out of our bioloop, and we’re never going to get that back. We can’t be sure that the fusion plant can be brought back on line; a number of the support systems have been damaged. And we can’t make new fuel for it or our own spacecraft: the ice-crackers and hydrogen purifiers were mined when the debris from the fuel station smashed through the two upper levels.”

  He paused, looked into the tense faces surrounding him. “What I’m saying is that we can’t stay here. Even if Castalia is a pipe dream, even if some of us don’t make it down to the surface of Haven, that’s better than certain death on Ayesha. If any of us are going to survive, we’ve got to make planetfall.”

  Most of the on-lookers were nodding slowly, somberly. Janine blinked, her eyes bright, and then she walked out of the circle. Vance was already button-holing community leaders to discuss evacuation strategies. Vera glided over to Knecht and circled his waist with her long, slender arms. “You did the right thing for us, Manny.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not the way I wanted it to happen, but I guess the two of us will find out what it’s like to live on Haven.”

  Vera looked up at him, smiled, shook her head; “No, not the two of us, Manny; the three of us.”

  At first, he didn’t understand what she meant. Then, joy washed through him; but that happiness was harried by the image of a small, frozen limb--bloated and ruptured from exposure to vacuum. Confused, Emmanuel leaned into Vera and buried his face in her shoulder.

  “How many of you survived the attack?” The woman’s tone was quiet, respectful.

  “About four hundred, not counting those whose wounds were mortal. We never found most of the six hundred who died; most of them were pulverized when the debris hit, or they were sucked out into open space. A lot of the casualties were low-geers; they tended to live close to the surface, close to their work.”

  The man hugged his knees with his arms. “You must’ve lost a lot of your spacecraft, too.”

  “Actually, we were pretty fortunate in that regard. Almost all our boats were in the repair bay, which was located almost a kilometer away from the main base and the refinery.”

  “How long before you abandoned the base?”

  “Almost three months. We waited until the Saurons had settled down in their new home. We knew that if they detected us making planetfall, they’d spare no expense in exterminating us; it was easy to guess that they weren’t going to brook any technological rivals.”

  “Which is exactly what you’ve become.” The woman smiled faintly.

  Knecht said nothing. He just stared at her.

  Her smiled faded. “You’re a Magi, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a what?” Knecht suppressed a grin; a Magi. Haveners had foregone the correct singular form-Magus. “Magi” was the label some unknown Havener had conferred upon the mysterious wanderers who started showing up a year after the Saurons arrived, wanderers who occasionally helped an outlying community with a tidbit of scientific knowledge or medical insight. The name had stuck. So now--whether one or twenty were being spoken of--the term was “Magi.” “I’m a what?” Knecht repeated.

  The woman’s eyes never left his. “A Magi. You know what I’m talking about.”

  Her companion interrupted with a snort of derision. “The Magi are fairy-tales, made up by people who want to believe that the Saurons don’t hold all the cards--by people who don’t want to face facts.”

  She didn’t bother to turn toward him as she offered her rebuttal. “Didn’t you see his revolver? His pills?”

  “Yeah, so? They’re holdovers; there’s plenty of old technology left laying around.”

  “That revolver isn’t old technology; the barrel is too heavy, the frame too large. It’s post-war manufacture, just like the aspirin. Didn’t you notice? His pills were little, uncoated spheres; they weren’t flat and shiny like pre-war pills.” She nodded at Emmanuel. “I’m right, aren’t I? All you Ayeshan refugees--you’re the Magi, aren’t you? You rediscovered Castalia, found the old machines. That’s why people are starting to think you’re wizards--because you’re still producing technology that the Saurons have wiped out everyplace else.”

  Emmanuel shrugged. “We try not to use it unless we have to.”

  The man leaned back on his hands, slowly processing Emmanuel’s indirect affirmation of the woman’s hypothesis. “So you are a Magi.”

  Knecht smiled.

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Not as many as we’d like.”

  The woman leaned forward. “Did you lose a lot of people during planetfall?”

  Emmanuel felt darkness threaten his -vision again, fought it back, nodded. “Yes. We modified the spacecraft as best we could, but they were all in need of repair and replacement parts that we couldn’t provide. So we--we lost a lot of people when we deorbited.”

  “How many?”

  Knecht sighed, closed his eyes. “Too many . . .”

  They were initiating the third and final turn; a long, sweeping arc designed to eat up forward velocity. The tanker’s modular hold had grown uncomfortably warm; it wasn’t designed to handle the heat of atmospheric reentry.

  Down below, Emmanuel saw a dappled sheet of choppy grey water, occasionally occluded by clouds. Then the window’s blast covers slid into place and there was nothing to look at but the ashen, frightened faces of his fellow passengers, who were cocooned in mattresses and lashed to what had once been tankage baffles. The only sound was the rushing of air and intermittent whimpering--not all of which was coming from the children.

  Emmanuel turned his head all the way to the left, looked at the small round accessway that was just out of his arm’s reach: the passage to the cockpit module-- and Vera. The faint chatter of intercraft communications which leaked out of that accessway was becoming more frequent; they were approaching the landing zone. Knecht closed his eyes, concentrated on making out the incoming messages--

  “--reported multiple electronic failures just before Garvey crashed. So keep a gentle hand on your retros, everybody. The control circuitry wasn’t built for this kind of heat.”

  “Any survivors from Garvey’s lighter?”

  “Negative, Johnny; he broke up at four thousand meters, airspeed still over three hundred fifty kph.”
/>   Vera’s voice broke in. “Flight leader, what are your recommendations if we start losing retros?”

  Silence for a moment, then: “Vera, are you having trouble?”

  “Just a little, Vance.” Emmanuel felt his pulse increase; for Vera to admit any problem at all meant they were in deep trouble.

  Vance’s tone suggested he understood that as well. “You losing retros, too?”

  “Not as completely as Garvey, but yes. The main thrusters are failing, also; I don’t have enough kick for another pass. Besides, I don’t think the hull could take it.”

  “Airspeed?”

  “Two-sixty kph.”

  “Rate of descent?”

  A long silence. “Unpromising, Flight leader.” Vera’s voice was utterly flat. What do you suggest?”

  “Bring your nose up; take her in at a forty degree incline--and pray that your stabilizers hold. And before you hit, try--” There was a burst of static and then silence. Vera’s copilot swore.

  “What happened, Roy?”

  “The tight-beam’s orienting gimbal just fried and died. We’re on our own.”

  “We always were, Roy. Let’s bring the nose to thirty-five degrees; give me forward retros at seventy-five percent.”

  “You’ve got ‘em.” A persistent tremor crept into being along the belly of the tanker. “How are we doing?”

  “Not good enough; give me another five percent.”

  The tremor increased--and was abruptly succeeded by a muffled metallic screech and a vicious portside wrench. The rush of air became a howl and Emmanuel felt his stomach try to push its way into his ribcage. They were falling--fast. One or two of the passengers’ whimpers became wails of panic.

  Roy’s voice cracked. “Shit, what was--?”

  “Portside stabilizer has sheared off. Give me full port-side retros.”

  “Aye--” and then Knecht was rammed back into his mattress. His stomach lost interest in his ribs, dove down to press against his intestines.

  Vera’s voice was tight, sharp. “How much time do we have left on the portside retros, assuming full burn?”

  “About fifteen seconds--but, Vera, I’ve got red lights all over that board; we’ve only got fifty percent function with those retros. The rest burned out.”

  There were two long seconds of silence before Vera murmured, “Cut the forward retros back to thirty percent.”

  “Thirty percent? But, Vera, that will bring our nose down.”

  “I’m aware of that, Roy; just do it.”

  “But with our nose down--”

  “Roy, if we come in with our nose up, our aft end will hit the water and swing us down into a high-speed bellyflop. But, at one hundred fifty kph, we’ll have too much forward momentum to just stop and sink; we’ll start cartwheeling across the water--and we’ll wind up looking like modem art. But if we go in nose first, the cockpit module will absorb the brunt of the impact--enough to help the cargo module dig into the water. It’ll roll once-- maybe twice---before it starts to sink, but the passengers should be able to survive it.”

  Emmanuel could hear Roy swallow--a constricted gulping sound--before he replied. “But if the cockpit hits first--”

  Emmanuel painted the picture in his mind. The transport’s dome-eyed, wedge-shaped head--the cockpit-- plummeted toward the water, the thoracic tankage section stretched out behind it. For a moment, the whole ungainly structure leveled off and sped above the choppy waters, the swells reaching up toward it--and then the head pitched down. There was a white explosion of steam and spray, a screech of tortured titanium as the narrow neck joining the cockpit and the tankage section snapped. The decapitated cockpit flattened under the impact, the dome-shaped eyes shattering inward, the rush of water smashing the precious contents of that metallic skull, smashing--

  “Vera!” Emmanuel shouted as he began unbuckling his makeshift harness. No; not nose first. And not Vera. Anything else, anyone else--but not that, and not her. “Vera!”

  Emmanuel heard her voice, but the words were not meant for him; Vera was speaking in the utterly calm tone she used with Roy. “Seal passenger section for impact and immersion.”

  Knecht undid the last buckle, struggled out of the mattress that enfolded him, jumped towards the cockpit accessway. “Vera! Don’t--” The pressure-rated cockpit door slammed sideways across the accessway. Knecht pounded on the door with his fists once, twice--

  Then the floor fell away from him; the nose was dropping. Knecht had his mouth open to scream, but he never got the chance to do so. The tanker hit the waves; the cockpit door seemed to leap at him. He rebounded off that surface and was thrown back into the tankage area. Then the door buckled, burst, and a jet of water rammed into the hold. The flume hit him square in the chest and sent him tumbling the length of the tankage section. Screams and rushing water filled his ears but all he could hear was a voice inside his head, a voice which sounded like his own--a voice which kept repeating the only thing that mattered: Vera Vera Vera . . .

  “How did you survive?” asked the man. “We were all wearing vacuum suits; when we hit the water, we sealed up and swam out.”

  The woman’s eyes were lowered, her voice low and gentle. “How many people did you lose?”

  Knecht cleared his throat, cleared an image of Vera from his mind. “Seventy-one. Most of those went down with Garvey’s lighter. We lost another sixteen on my transport, mostly people who were knocked unconscious when we hit; they drowned in their harnesses.”

  “So you refounded Castalia with only three hundred thirty people?”

  Knecht shook his head. “Less than that. We lost another twelve before we actually found Castalia.”

  “Low-geers?”

  “Only four died because of gravity-related medical problems. The rest--well, that’s how we learned about the stobors.” As if to emphasize his point, a banshee-like yowl rose in the distance, wavered, and then fell in a warbling diminuendo. A moment later, a pair of similar cries answered it.

  “They’ve caught the scent of the Sauron we threw on the fire.” Knecht nodded. “That’s good.”

  “Good?” The man sounded skeptical. “If the Saurons follow the sound of the howling, they’ll find our campsite--and our tracks--pretty quickly.”

  Knecht nodded. “Yes, but by the time they find the campsite, the Sauron I killed will have been torn to pieces by the stobors.”

  “So?”

  The woman answered for Emmanuel. “Once the stobors have started in on the Sauron’s corpse, no one will be able to tell how he died--at least, they won’t be able to determine that he was killed by high-quality, homemade slugs.”

  Knecht nodded. “The stobors will hinder the Saurons more than they’ll help them. If a good-sized pack descends on the campsite, they should obscure our tracks--even cover my blood trail as they drag off pieces of the Saurons’ bodies.”

  “Okay,” said the man, “but we’ve got to get moving-- and soon. Are you just about done with your story?” Emmanuel nodded, smiled. “Almost . . .”

  Knecht was the third person to enter the facility, behind Owen and a wide-eyed Janine. Their helmet lights played about the dome-like room, their misty breath showing up as bright wisps of fog.

  Knecht advanced, following the wall; his palm brushed through cold droplets of condensation. He felt for cracks in the internal surface; a smooth, icy surface met his touch. “Hull integrity seems pretty good,” he remarked.

  “It may be,” responded Janine, “but the air is terrible.”

  “After a century and a half, that’s no surprise.” Owen played his helmet light across the floor, moved toward the rows of lockers that protruded from the far wall. Before reaching them, he came upon a small table and stopped; there was some kind of demarcation line painted on the floor in front of it.

  Janine joined Owen, looked down at the line’s yellow-and-black diagonal crosshatching. “Hazard marking?”

  Owen nodded. “Yeah. Probably indicated the periphery of the mandatory
dress-out area.”

  “Dress-out?” echoed Janine. “Why would the founders have been worried about radioactive contamination?”

  Emmanuel angled away from the wall, came to join them near the table. “Not just radioactives. The founders tried to be prepared for everything: biochemical agents, marine microorganisms, unknown viruses. They were pretty thorough.”

  Owen reached down toward the table. “Speaking of thorough”--he picked up an old-style hardcopy clipboard--”take a look at this.” He handed it to Emmanuel.

  Knecht shined his helmet light down on the ancient yellowed paper and read:

  WELCOME TO CASTALIA

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIMITED BASE RESTART: PROCEED TO CIRCUIT BOX (LABELLED A-1B) LOCATED FOUR METERS DUE NORTH.

  Knecht turned, lights sweeping along with his gaze, until he had turned ninety degrees to his left. A large grey box--power conduits running from it both laterally and longitudinally--was spotlighted at chest height. White stenciled characters identified it: “A-1b” He turned back to the instructions.

  LOCATE RHEOSTATIC CONTROL (COLOR CODED RED) AT EXTREME UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER OF CIRCUIT-BOX A-1B’S INTERNAL CONTROL PANEL. ADJUST RED RHEOSTATIC CONTROL TO A SETTING OF .065.

  Knecht looked at Owen, who was reading over his shoulder. Owen shrugged. Knecht responded with a similar gesture and crossed over to the box, dripping cold Haven seawater as he went. He took firm hold of the box’s hinged cover, yanked--and almost fell to the floor when the cover swung back easily.

  Janine approached, surprise in her voice. “No rust?”

  Knecht squinted, ran a finger along the edge of the cover. “Nope; coated with grease--must be a couple of millimeters thick.” He slowly tilted his head upward, illuminating the length of the circuit box’s control panel. As advertised, a red rheostatic dial was located in the upper left hand comer; it was already set to .065.