Earthfall

by Joshua Guess

  It was a satellite, much larger than the ones I’d dropped off on the way. Its own skin was more advanced than what wrapped around my ship, capable of absorbing and redirecting waves from the bottom of the radio spectrum to just below visible light. It was maybe the most advanced piece of purely human technology ever created, every system made without the aid of any alien species.

  That was also part of the deal with the Friendly and the handful of other species who gave us help. We couldn’t use any of their technology in ways the Gaethe might trace back to them, meaning the listening post floating in the black over Earth had to be all us.

  Well, mostly. There was a little Gaethe technology in there. We had only managed to reach between the stars because of their crashed scout ship, after all.

  Another piece of Gaethe tech dangled from my waist, a slightly flattened ellipsoid with attachment points on the base. As I floated closer to the satellite, Jax goosed the thin filament tether to slow me down. I didn’t feel even a minor jerk, but my forward motion slowed as the reel on the Val applied careful force.

  I made contact with the satellite gently as a first kiss. My suit clung to it perfectly, the hundreds of magnetic connectors in its skin managed by Jax to give me total freedom of movement. Finding the port was similarly easy with Jax overlaying a map onto my vision. Bright green lines wrapped around the satellite, giving it a more solid appearance, along with flashing arrows leading me straight to my goal.

  I had studied the structure of this thing obsessively for weeks. Having experienced an EM burst capable of knocking Jax out of commission, I had no desire to be stuck in space with no idea what to do. Jax knew this and showed his level of confidence in my abilities by outlining everything in blinding neon. It was a little like having your subconscious come alive to constantly remind you of every doubt and fear.

  Wait, no. It was exactly like that. The only reason Jax could operate and function independently was because his structure and processing capabilities utilized my actual brain. When people wonder why Blues seem frustrated and standoffish, it’s because of our NICs. They’re a constant reminder of the ways we know we’re vulnerable, because they exist to shore up those vulnerabilities.

  Swallowing my irritation, I made my way to the port and had Jax open it with a transmitted command. A section of plating moved aside silently, revealing a space perfectly shaped to fit the module. Installation was ridiculously simple; I just plugged it in and waited.

  A status bar blinked into existence in my field of view and showed me the progress of the integration. The satellite’s operating system took a few minutes to reconfigure. When it was done everything was green across the board.

  Commence signal?

  “Yes,” I said, the sound lost through the liquid in my suit.

  My HUD blinked, the concentric waves in the upper right hand corner flashing as Jax communicated with the satellite and its new package. Technically the Val was sending it, but I tended to think of my NIC and my ship interchangeably.

  Signal acquired.

  I closed my eyes and focused on my speech, making sure the simulacrum of my voice was calm and steady. The words sounded in my ears as I thought them and they were transmitted, and I thought I came across as confident.

  “This is Mars Cori, please respond.”

  “Mr. Cori,” came the reply, instantaneous and clear. “It’s nice to hear from you.”

  A swell of pure joy suffused my entire body as the full realization of what we had just accomplished slammed into me. By finally reverse-engineering a piece of Gaethe technology, humanity had its first real-time link to Earth since the exile. I knew the rough outline of the science involved, using quantum entanglement and more forms of exotic matter than I could name, but the how felt less important than the reality.

  This would change everything.

  “The feeling is mutual, Director Kitur,” I said through the interface. “All lights are green across the board.”

  “Yes,” came the reply. “We’re looking at the telemetry now. Apparently the last pilot was successful in refueling the platform before he vanished. If there are no obvious visual issues with the satellite, you’re clear to return to your ship.”

  Being reminded about the death rate on this run didn’t exactly lower my pulse, but I didn’t dwell on it. “Understood, ma’am. Should I have Jax back up the data from the satellite just in case?”

  The Home Run had always been a data retrieval mission at its heart. Before installing the module giving it essentially infinite real-time communications, the run had been the only way to get observational data about the Earth back to the UEE. Sure, we refueled the thing and made sure no rocks moving ten times the speed of a bullet did any catastrophic harm, but boiled down to basics the Home Run was a spy mission.

  The response took long enough that I checked the connection to make sure the signal hadn’t dropped. “Yes, Mr. Cori, but have your NIC package it with a floating encryption. Better to be safe.”

  In case the Gaethe caught me, she meant. The module was transmitting at full capacity, but with several years of backlogged data to pass on, it would take a long time. That much I knew from my preparation for this trip. Entanglement communications could handle only so much bandwidth.

  Also, the damn satellite was in relatively near proximity to Gaethe ships and orbital weapons platforms. It could be shot out of the sky any time. A backup was just common sense. I was relieved Kitur granted permission, because I was going to do it anyway.

  “Maintain a tight beam with the platform on your way out of the system,” Kitur said. “We want telemetry on you until you reach the Halo. No more lost pilots, Mr. Cori.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied, groaning inwardly.

  I didn’t want to keep that signal lock. Tight beams were the safest way to transmit data that didn’t involve pissing on the speed of light, but they weren’t perfect. The only way they could be seen or intercepted was if the enemy moved directly into their path.

  The possibility of putting another, even a series, of satellites in the solar system had been raised more than once. Why not? You could send less critical pilots on runs to a satellite hanging out around the orbit of Saturn or Jupiter instead of the inner system and have them bring back data every ten weeks. No Halo required. That would leave the Home Run for maintenance and refueling, but the data would be coming more often.

  Except you’d have a tight beam transmitting regularly. Over time the statistical probability of the Gaethe detecting the signal rises, and rises a lot. And that’s with predictable orbits of satellite and planets, which can be planned for.

  I was about to start my run back to the Halo, which would involve a complex flight. My tight beam with the satellite was going to be all over the place as I moved. The likelihood of it being intercepted was still small, but it made a dent in my chance to get home.

  Kitur was a scientist and not an idiot. She knew this just as well as I did. I didn’t get the sense that it was disregard for my safety or personal dislike, but practical consideration. The risk I might be captured or killed was worth the real-time information I’d be sending back via the satellite.

  I did a quick pass around the damn thing again, using my suit’s sensors to check for irregularities, and activated the reel. My body went limp inside the confines of my survival suit, my arms and legs feeling like they were rattling against it, even though soft foam wrapped most of my skin.

  The reel socketed me gently into the open top of my pod and the Val enclosed me once more. A weary relief flooded through me even as the stored liquid filled the empty space.

  It was only when Jax gave me a view of the outside that I realized I hadn’t taken the time to look at the Earth with my own eyes again. It hung there in transmitted images, a beautiful blue marble, but it wasn’t the same. Not that it truly mattered in the long run; taking that last look wouldn’t have changed anything for me.

  The pod refilled completely and I extended my boots toward th
e rear of the space. When under thrust, the ability of the gel to absorb the force on my body only went so far. Since there was no way for a warp bubble to form this close to a planet, I’d be using the conventional drive systems. Which meant locking my boots into place and grabbing onto the wheel.

  My link with Jax gave me finer control than the physical controls could ever allow for, but there was a certain comfort to having the half-circle of metal in my hands as we departed. I reached forward and tapped the small protrusion on the wall of the pod that would release the mechanical locks holding the controls in place. There was a thick, syrupy whoosh as the metal freed itself from the wall and stopped a foot in front of me.

  Tiny servos in my suit whirred as I locked my fingers into place. The stream of data crawling across my vision was again all green lights. The Val was already pointed right where we wanted to go. Initial burn with the plasma drive was set, subsequent actions ready…

  I would have sighed with regret had it been possible. I’d worked most of my life for this moment. Not that I was disappointed or letting nostalgia for a place I had never seen before impair my judgment. You want to survive driving a tin can around the stars, you lose the rose tint from your glasses.

  I sent Jax the command for our burn, and he gave me a countdown.

  Eight

  I was on the opposite side of the planet from the handful of ships the Gaethe left in orbit as a rapid response unit. There were defense platforms and the like spaced out at much greater distances, but I’d slipped past those on my way in. The seven large destroyers in formation were the only serious threat, which was why I had an entire world between us.

  So you can imagine my surprise when, after moving only a hundred kilometers, I was hit with a kinetic weapon. Some dick had fired a bullet at me.

  I knew it was a projectile rather than a piece of debris because Jax told me so. During my approach to orbit and my EVA, our sensors had been fully passive. Incoming data only. Moving under thrust was a lot trickier, though. You had to have at least minimal active sensors or risk killing yourself with ignorance. The low-key sensor package shouldn’t have been enough to get me spotted, though.

  Jax tracked the slug just before it hit, which wasn’t enough time to even warn me what was about to happen. Instead my NIC took the fraction of a second it had and fired a burst from the attitude thrusters on the nose of the ship. What would have been a strike right through the core of the Val instead hit half a meter from center.

  I was only informed of this development after my ship shuddered around me, small pieces of hot metal flaring off into space.

  We took evasive maneuvers, which didn’t translate to the tight and fast turns Star Wars led me to believe were the reality of space combat. The projectiles—which the display told me were cylinders of a dense metal five centimeters long and two wide—were being shot at me from a good distance. Jax had automatically kicked our sensor envelope to maximum at the first shot, giving me a much clearer picture of what was happening as well as more warning about incoming shots.

  Several facts became painfully clear.

  One: the ship firing at me could just as easily turned my little corner of space into a hail of point-defense rounds, which was what had hit me. It hadn’t. Which meant they probably wanted me alive, or at least my ship intact. This was reinforced by the sensor returns, which showed a Gaethe scout ship moving toward me. The offensive weapons on that little bird were enough to turn the Val into a glowing cloud of ions.

  Two: for that ship to have targeted me for a disabling shot and gotten so close, it had to have been watching me. No way could it have done so in the minute or so since beginning my burn.

  Three: facts one and two implied a lot about what had happened to the missing pilots. My brothers and sisters.

  The series of minor course alterations as Jax fired bursts from the thrusters kept me from being hit by any other targeted shots, but it wouldn’t be enough. Since we were screwed either way, I sent Jax the all-clear to engage our engines at full power.

  I watched course plots flash through my field of vision as Jax prepared dozens of contingencies between heartbeats, then tensed every muscle in my body as the ship darted forward like a startled fish.

  Being the over-engineered beast that it was, the Val utilized a combination of propulsion systems. The gravity drive wasn’t much use in a close fight, and completely useless as a warp drive this close to a planet, so it stayed idle. The ability to create an artificial tether to a distant object was handy in a long chase, and that I could use near a gravity well. Jax would certainly do so once we rounded Earth and made a break for the outer Solar system.

  The Gaethe scout ship was trying its best to catch up with me, though, and that was a problem. The small but powerful fusion reactor in my ship could vent small streams of plasma as propellant, which was the primary drive. It wasn’t that simple; the process was way more involved. The plasma drive was great in short bursts but not something I could use for very long.

  Jax was making liberal use of the traditional engines, which were fundamentally just more efficient versions of the rockets used to take the first astronauts to the moon. It was more important to stay ahead of the scout ship—and to keep from being shot down—than it was to blast away in a single huge expenditure of fuel.

  I made sure Jax was also feeding the ion engine all the power it could want. The relative thrust created by the thing was tiny, but advances over the centuries meant it wasn’t meaningless. I wanted every scrap of speed I could get.

  Because I’m an idiot, I allowed myself a brief thrill of victory after a minute passed. We moved in long arcs, the ship suddenly changing course when Jax thought it necessary. Every time I saw a volley of shots pass through a space we had avoided being in, a got a little jolt of satisfaction.

  I guess the scout ship decided it was better to lose the chance to capture me than to risk letting me go, because all of a sudden the goddamn thing was accelerating wildly. The increase was sudden and way beyond anything the relevant profiles I’d read indicated a Gaethe ship was capable of, which translated into me being caught totally off guard.

  Much worse, Jax was equally unprepared.

  Point-defense rounds peppered my ship mercilessly. My interface burned red with warnings, and a tug of pressure across my entire body made me clench every muscle in my body. The pod had been hit.

  Luckily, the liquid surrounding me was designed for this purpose. Upon touching naked vacuum the stuff hardened and froze almost instantly, turning it into a wonderfully efficient plug. The utility of this had never been more apparent than at that moment.

  I didn’t panic, but the number of good options in front of me dwindled rapidly. I made a command decision and engaged the gravity drive, intending to use the sun to get me away. It was exactly the opposite direction I wanted to go in, but was the only real choice if I wanted to get away with any speed. The bigger the anchor, the better the tether.

  I could explain how dangerous it would have been, how I would have had to use every propulsion system to attain enough speed to escape the scout ship, and how much strain that would have put on my bruised vessel. All of that would have been true, and probably fatal.

  I never got the chance. As soon as the gravity drive spun up, something invisible hit the Valkyrie and knocked it out of commission. It was eerily similar to the EM burst I’d encountered in a distant system, and with the same effect. Jax went into safe mode and my connection with the ship went from intimately electronic to strictly mechanical.

  Bullet-riddled, cut off from my computer, and navigating by dead reckoning, I found the biggest part of my irritation focused on the liquid keeping me from being able to swear.

  ***

  In the seconds following whatever electromagnetic attack the Gaethe used on me, I was easy prey. The scout ship could have cut me to ribbons. It didn’t. I had to assume they had darted in and distracted me to get close enough to use the EM weapon against me. The part of my bra
in trained to collect and understand data suspected the scout hesitated to use its unknown engine improvements to avoid revealing them to me. I also learned that they had an electromagnetic weapon capable of disrupting our technology—which had its own implications, too many to consider—and that its range was something like knife-fighting distance.

  All of these things would be vital for my people to know, and I planned to tell them assuming I wasn’t super dead in the next few minutes.

  The tight beam was cut off by Earth, whose upper atmosphere wasn’t very far away. The plan had been to use it for a gravity assist on the way out. I knew how long it would take Jax to fully reboot, and though I was without detailed sensors, I was confident the scout ship wouldn’t give me that long.

  Without my NIC managing the ship, the only means of propulsion at my disposal was the emergency system. It was the worst sort of déjà vu.

  The flat visual feed I got from the backup system wasn’t even as good as what I could have seen with my own eyes, but it was enough. The shielded camera and wireless transmitter gave me a view that, while lacking the depth and variety of information I was used to, was more stark and without clutter. The smattering of stars across the black sky contrasted beautifully with the heavy presence of the world below.

  Backup drives weren’t meant for daring escapes. Planets, however, were meant to be landed on. A brief moment of soul-searching gave me a clean conscience. It was my only real option.

  I felt around on the controls in my hands, searching for a thick switch nestled in a recess. I flipped it, holding it in place until a green signal light flashed on the wall of my pod. The emergency command computer came online as it was designed to do; quickly and without any undue fuss. I hadn’t used the thing outside of training, not even the last time I’d been left adrift. It overrode the control of my NIC, and required a six second delay to shut off and hand back command controls.

  That series of fail-safes and electronic handshakes took time that could get me killed, especially during atmospheric entry.