by Joshua Guess
She paused, chewing on the inside of her lip. “As for the armor, that’s a more complicated answer. The black stuff you see everywhere is called CRUNP, which is an acronym for Centrally Replicating Universal Nano-machine Particulate. Everyone outside the labs just calls it Sand. The short version is that we can use one of these—” she tapped the metal band “—to implement a control program in the Sand to create complex structures like armor. The version I was piloting also had integrated artificial muscle strands to increase its strength and durability. The manufacturing plants for the Sand always leaves a bunch of the fibers laying around for us to use if we need them.”
I blinked, trying to take it all in. “So…you’re telling me that our information is completely wrong. That there are more than a handful of survivors, that you’ve been engineering and building on a massive scale, using weapons developed from technology we haven’t been able to create on Ceres, which is filled with some of the most brilliant minds the human race could find?”
Rinna scratched her chin. “There’s a lot more to it, but basically? Yeah.”
I thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Okay. I’m gonna pass out now, but when I wake up I’d really appreciate it if you could explain how any of this is possible.”
If she was offended by my need to escape into sleep, Rinna didn’t show it. Instead she favored me with that same bemused expression. I turned over the last few hours in my brain as sleep rushed to overtake me, trying to come to my own conclusions about how everyone at home had been so incredibly wrong about the state of the Earth.
I didn’t find any answers in my dreams, either.
Twelve
I woke up in a small but pristine room with walls made of precisely-cut stone. I had come to briefly during the transition from the maglev transport to the infirmary, but the experience was one defined at the edges by extreme pain, mental fuzziness, and mild confusion.
Full wakefulness came with a cringing expectation the pain would come with it, but I was wrong. Beautifully, spectacularly wrong. Also I was a little high.
A cuff on my right arm beeped. Someone in a pale blue uniform brushed aside the curtain serving as my door a few seconds later. He was older, with the lined face and gray hair of someone who has seen some shit in his day.
“I’m Doctor Ross,” the man said. “How are you feeling?”
I gave the question more consideration than I normally would, considering how badly I’d been hurt. I frowned.
“I think you might have given me too many painkillers,” I admitted. “I’m aching but it’s not very bad.”
Ross nodded with a pleased look on his face. “No, that’s perfect. We’ve kept you under for three days while the nanites worked on your damaged tissues. It’ll be a few weeks until everything is fully healed, but for now you should be able to get around without any problems.” He checked the readout on my cuff. “If you’re up to it, Captain Gianopoulos has asked for you to join her in the command center as soon as you’re able.”
“I just woke up,” I protested. “Did she get a notification from this thing, too?”
“No, it was a standing request,” Ross said. “There’s no hurry. I’ll leave your medication level where it is if you like. You won’t hurt as much when you start moving around.”
I felt pretty good, but that itself was worrying. “Can you dial it down some? I’d rather not overdo it because I couldn’t tell I was pushing myself too hard.”
Ross agreed pleasantly, and I started to think it was his only setting. I spent the next ten minutes carefully dressing myself in a borrowed set of the blue togs the medical staff wore, though my own uniform boots sat next to the bed.
A soldier was waiting to escort me from the infirmary to wherever I was going, and the trip managed to confound my expectations again.
We were underground, I’d known that much from my conversation with Rinna. What caught me off guard was the scope of the place.
Look, I grew up on a planetoid converted into a colony ship. I understand how hard it is to move rock. When you’re working inside a huge mass of stone, it’s easier to keep the hallways narrow, the rooms tiny, and make the use of space as efficient as possible.
Bravo 2 was a man-made cave, but it was gorgeous.
Our path took us around one side of a high level within a terraced central shaft. Lights shone in a perfect imitation of the sun, giving the place a comfortable and natural feeling. I paused behind my escort, resting my hands on the smooth stone railing as I gazed around like a slack-jawed yokel.
The shaft was thirty meters across and stretched above so far I couldn’t see the top. The bottom was another hundred meters below, and there was a thin haze between my vantage point and the floor. I realized it was a weather system in miniature. I was seeing clouds.
Everywhere I looked, there were people. More people than I could fathom existing in one spot. All the terraces were wide, some housing what looked like storefronts, others winding gardens. Each had its own bustling flow of bodies, roughly half of them in the same gray-green uniform.
Plants grew all over the place. It was similar in that regard to the public spaces on Ceres. I could see a few people tending to the greenery here and there, several with baskets to collect vegetables. I itched to explore the place. I wanted to wander among the crowds, drink in their language, experience what it felt like to be a human being on the planet of our origin. It wasn’t the idealized image I had seen in so many movies. It was even better because it wasn’t a carefully constructed fantasy. It was messy and inefficient and full of actual humanity.
It was real.
“Sir, we should probably move along,” my escort said.
He was right, too. A few people had noticed us, and their attention drew the attention of others. I’d had similar experiences back home, if for different reasons. Here I was a curiosity because I came from the colony these people had managed to send to safety. Back on Ceres I was stared at by strangers for being a Blue.
The thing about magic is that by its very nature it cannot last. Moments of wonder are pinnacles we climb toward, which also have to be left behind us as we move forward. Those glances, innocent as they might be, were enough to send me packing back down the mountain.
“Sure,” I said to the guard. “Lead the way.”
***
We sat in a conference room, comfortable and large. Someone sent word ahead that I was coming, so everyone who was supposed to be in the meeting was waiting for me. This turned out to be a very small group. It included Rinna, a small man with a shock of bright red hair who introduced himself as Doctor Paulson, and an unassuming woman of middle years who told me to call her Vera. Her voice was utterly calm and controlled, and she scared the shit out of me.
“Mister Cori—I’m sorry, I don’t know your title,” Vera began. She watched me patiently for a few seconds, until I realized she wanted me to correct her.
“I’m a pilot,” I said. “We don’t use military rank, just job title.”
Rinna blinked. “You don’t have a military?”
I shook my head. “Not the way you do. Not a separate thing. Our defense is integrated into our society. It has to be.”
“Sure,” Paulson said. “Because you’re in space.”
I nodded, but Vera didn’t posture. “Please explain that, Doctor. I don’t understand what you mean.”
Paulson glanced at me and cleared his throat. “It’s just more efficient, which is a primary concern when living with limited resources. Even something as large as Ceres with advanced technology is still an artificial habitat. The command structure, society, everything in a mostly closed system has to be streamlined as much as possible. I’m guessing that means people with broad training and multiple specialties, including spreading defense across the entire population. Sort of like how everyone would need to know the basics of fixing an airlock, right?” He directed the last toward me.
I was impressed. “It’s more complicated than that, but yea
h. You’re basically right. There are a few exceptions, like the scout crew.”
“Of which you’re a member, yes?” Vera asked.
“Yes,” I replied. I wasn’t sure how much these people knew or how they would react, so I just plowed into it. “We’re genetically engineered, so we’re not risked on low-priority tasks like maintenance and such.”
There was a decided lack of reaction. “You knew what I was.”
“Of course,” Paulson said. “We had to run tests on your blood to make sure you didn’t bring any pathogens back to Earth that might start a plague. We checked for allergies, anything we could think of so our treatments didn’t cause you harm.”
“Doctor Paulson is being cautious,” Vera cut in. “He isn’t sure whether he is allowed to admit that you aren’t the first pilot from Ceres to end up at this base.”
My mouth dropped open. “What?”
“It’s true,” Rinna said. “The other one was a female, I don’t know her name. She died from her injuries after crashing. We did everything we could to save her, but there was too much damage.” She frowned as if she tasted something bitter. “I was the one who brought her in. It’s why they sent me after you. Before she lost consciousness, she transmitted a huge data dump to me.”
“Miyazaki,” I said. “That was her name. Hitomi Miyazaki.”
“We learned a lot from that transmission,” Vera said, seemingly determined not to let the conversation be derailed by anything like humanity. “Which is part of why we were determined to retrieve you. Sifting through a petabyte of information doesn’t give us the context a living person can.”
I leaned back in my chair, ignoring the slight flare of pain in my ribs. “Is that why I’m here? Just to give you an understanding of how life in the UEE is?”
“That’s actually a pretty small part of it,” Rinna said, shooting a warning glance at the others. “I’m sorry you lost your friend, but we’re trying to save the entire world. To do that we need information.”
“So do you,” Paulson said. “This isn’t a one-way street. I’ve prepared notes and video to give you a crash course in what’s been happening on Earth for the last hundred years. For better or worse, you’re stuck here for the time being. We’d like your help, but we don’t expect you to do it blind.”
I stewed for a long minute. The casual way they talked about Miyazaki—who always went by her last name—bothered me more than it should have. They didn’t know her, hadn’t spent a big chunk of their lives with her the way I had. We’d grown apart in the years since becoming full pilots, which added to my bad mood. I hadn’t even thought about her when I’d been training for this trip. I hadn’t said her name.
I couldn’t stay angry. They had no connection to her. Not that I was unaware of the low blow Rinna hit me with; telling someone you need their help to save an entire planet is the nuclear option in getting over stubbornness.
“Why do you need me?” I asked. “I’m pretty awesome, but I find it hard to believe I’m some kind of chosen one meant to lead you to salvation.”
Rinna chuckled, and Vera actually cracked a smile.
Paulson shook his head, however. The scientist wasn’t the joking kind. “We do want to see if the computer in your brain can integrate with the Sand more efficiently than our current methods,” he said, an intense look on his face. “But there are other reasons, as well. We want to study you and that machine in your head.”
Vera waved Paulson to silence. “You’re right, Mister Cori. You aren’t a savior. We have worked for decades to create the conditions where we might be able to drive the Gaethe off this planet. We have infrastructure, soldiers, and a strategy. Our hope is that we can improve what we have with the technology in your NIC, and use you as an asset in the field. We’ve studied your friend’s machine extensively. The potential is huge.”
I shrugged. “Of course I want to help. I don’t know how I can add much in a fight, but if Jax can give you and edge, you’re welcome to study him.”
Rinna’s mouth twitched. “You named your computer?”
I looked at her curiously. “Jax started as a chip the size of a grain of rice and grew inside my skull as I matured. He’s as close to true artificial intelligence as we’ve ever come, and when I lived in a cube three meters on a side, isolated from the rest of my civilization, he was my only friend. So, yes, I named him.”
To say the silence which followed was tense didn’t do it justice.
“Apparently we have more to learn from each other than we thought,” Vera said.
Thirteen
Vera was certainly not wrong.
The presentation was interesting far beyond my expectations. This was due mostly to the interaction with the other people in the room, giving context and a back-and-forth about the things Paulson prepared for me. It was more a conversation with visual aids than strictly an info dump.
I learned that the Sand was both a weapon and a clever tool. The huge artificial caverns housing the secret military forces of North America existed in lesser form before the Gaethe invasion. The Sand was created as a means of enlarging the spaces and creating the tunnel network for the maglev transport system.
The really clever part was in how the Sand worked. See, when you’re digging a hole in the ground, you can just toss the dirt to one side. When you’re digging one beneath the ground, you can’t just create new space. The soil and rock you’re moving—the spoil—has to go somewhere. I’ve lived beneath the crust of Ceres my entire life. I understand the concept.
As it turned out, the Sand was the solution to its own problem. As the stuff carved away rock, the metals and minerals were utilized by the central production units to make more Sand. The unusable portions were sent to the surface and spread around. The Sand spread across half a continent that way. Inside the tunnels the grains were powered by fusion-driven microwave wireless energy. On the surface, the old energy satellites in orbit provided the same. Some of them were massive solar facilities, others used later-generation fusion tech.
The coverage wasn’t perfect, but more than enough for the needs of the resistance.
I was the first person from the UEE to see the consequences of the invasion from the surface, which answered a lot of questions. My people had known for years that the Gaethe hadn’t made a serious effort to exterminate humans on Earth. What we didn’t know was how much of the population survived. It was a big chunk. I’d be lying if I said the Gaethe were without mercy.
Paulson put together a concise video of the events following the emergency evacuation of Ceres. I saw the Gaethe transmissions warning the people of Earth to evacuate their coastal cities. There was a montage of talking heads and politicians arguing about how to proceed, whether or not to take the invaders seriously. Some argued for war, others for abject capitulation, and the majority were too scared to take a side.
Indecision killed the first city.
Jacksonville, Florida was only half empty when the deadline expired. It was, according to the Gaethe, the only warning shot humanity would get. At the precise second marking the end of the ten day grace period, an object sixty miles long fell silently from the sky. The translation from the primary Gaethe language calls it a warseed.
In the recordings, the warseed slowed and landed, most of its length resting on the surface of the Atlantic. Ten solid miles of shining white material, however, crushed everything beneath it. Buildings puffed apart like so much smoke, the screams of tens of thousands of people audible to the cameras from half a mile away. When those terrified wails rose up, I flinched. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Nor the tears in my eyes as those voices fell silent.
The military attacked the warseed to no effect. Ballistic weapons, even objects moving at the speed of bullets and ultrasonic missiles, were swatted from the air or outright vaporized. This made delivering a nuclear payload impossible for all practical purposes. Not that the option was seriously considered, according to Paulson. The people of that time had long since outgrow
n the idea of engaging in suicidal gestures.
The coasts were evacuated, which by and large worked out for humankind. The Gaethe didn’t expend the effort it would have taken to exterminate the species. They cared for the continental interiors not at all, which meant people were free to live there so long as they didn’t cause trouble.
Because, sure, if humans are known for anything it’s our even dispositions and desire to avoid rocking the boat.
People died. They died in droves. The Gaethe were technically responsible in a secondary way. They killed those who attacked them, much as you or I might slap a bug, but the majority of the losses following the invasion were the unavoidable result of having the infrastructure-dense coasts suddenly removed from the equation.
Flooded with refugees, the nearer states couldn’t handle the influx. Disease spread, and without the heavy manufacturing capacity from the industrial complexes destroyed by the Gaethe, supplies ran short and were exhausted in quick succession. I’m couching this in terms of what used to be the United States, but all around the world the story was the same. The people receded from the coasts in crushing waves, causing chaos, shortages of everything, and death.
Within the first year, twenty percent of the human race was gone.
***
“What I don’t understand is why our observation platform hasn’t been able to see how many survivors are left,” I said as we chatted during a meal break.
Rinna waved the pickle she had just picked up in a small circle. “That’s also the Sand. It’s not as thick going west, but it’s everywhere. Every continent. The civilian uses for it include a specialized coating we developed to allow the stuff to serve as active camouflage. It makes the grains able to change color, scatter heat and other energy signatures, and block electromagnetic waves. It’s not perfect, but it keeps the eyes in the sky from being able to zero in on us easily.”
