His reputation spread and he attracted some of the best, brightest and most eccentric minds in astrophysics, like Dr. Vijay Rao. Before he knew it, Marcus was in charge of a thirty-man team of problem solvers, who came to be called the Gypsies because they never stayed anywhere for long. They moved onto a station, dragged a troubled project back on track, and then departed for the next.
When the Foundation finalized plans for the Copernicus Observatory, the Gypsies were offered first crack at bringing the newest and most expensive deep space sensor array on-line. Marcus jumped at the offer without a second thought.
Now, six months later and more than three weeks ahead of schedule, Dr. Marcus Donovan was staring at the clearest freeze-frame yet produced of the object of his obsession. She floated there among the asteroids, half blanketed in a layer of sediment, but revealing patches of glistening hull here and there. She was some kind of vessel, of that much Marcus was sure.
He keyed his pad and the holograph rotated slowly. It was now clear that she had two separate hulls, one more than thirteen kilometers long, and the other about two-thirds that length.
Rao floated up beside him, staring in disbelief. “I’ve been riding you all this time, but… I can’t say it… I think you’re right, Marc.”
“Of course I’m right, ye of little faith.” Marcus was still staring intently at the holograph, soaking in every fresh detail. “Not to be an ass, but last month, I seem to recall you betting fifty credits that my theory was, and I quote, ‘wrong wrong one hundred percent wrong.’”
“When will I stop gambling? Hey, take a look at that,” Rao said, changing the subject. “The stripes aren’t visible.”
Marcus dragged his finger across the datapad’s screen, and the display cycled through different EM bandwidths. He stopped when it showed the object in dark blue streaked with glowing red-orange stripes. The amount of fine detail was startling.
“Ho-leee cow,” Rao said. “Those stripes are internal. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the patterns look… biological?”
When the words registered in Marcus’ head, the structures took on a whole new shape. Rao was right. They weren’t stripes at all; they were branching veins connected to some central organ. “Ummm…”
Marcus fumbled at the keypad and rewound ten seconds then started advancing frame by frame. Little by little, the veins grew brighter, then dimmed and grew brighter again. He rewound and watched it again, and one more time. The veins were pulsating. It… she was alive.
“You’re a genius, Jay.”
“No shit.”
Marcus’ mind was racing a little over 299 million meters per second. Alive. Zebra-One wasn’t a vessel at all, but a living creature that had been lying dormant in the asteroid belt for at least the past seven years. Judging by the accumulation of minerals, she might have been there much, much longer. How long? What did it mean? He couldn’t even begin to imagine the ramifications of his discovery.
Then he made a decision that was too long in coming. “I need to see her,” he said quietly.
Rao said, “Come again?”
Marcus blinked and then shook his head as if waking from a daydream. “I have to go see her, Jay. By hook or by crook, any damn way I can.”
“Sure thing. Let me call the Appropriations Committee. I’ll just tell ‘em we’ve found an enormous space serpent, and that we need a ship so we can take her out for lunch. That’ll be rubber stamped without a second thought, y’know, what with their stance on extraterrestrial life.”
Marcus watched the recording loop several more times. “Sarcasm duly noted,” he said, and started to chew on his lower lip. Then his eyes lit up. “Didn’t you write a long-winded paper about exotic materials?”
“My graduate thesis? Theoretical Conditions for the Formation of Metallic Hydrogen in Deep Space.”
Marcus smirked. “Lovely title. You’ve lost your naming rights.”
“Okay… Zebra-One?”
“You make a fair point. Dr. Rao, what would you say if I asked you to help me falsify months worth of sensor readings?”
Rao scratched his head while dozens of emotions momentarily bubbled to the surface and disappeared. When the bubbling stopped, he said, “Tell you what… knock fifty credits off my debt, and I’ll forget about the pesky ethics course I took as an undergrad.”
“You’re a scoundrel and a scholar, Jay. You should’ve asked for the whole debt.”
“Really?”
“Too late. We’ve work to do.”
Chapter 2:
First Response
Jack Hernandez was rechecking his equipment when the ride began to buck and shake. The metal cabin dipped and shuddered violently, but the U-shaped metal restraint over his shoulders kept him planted firmly in his seat. At this point in his career, trans-atmospheric flight was slightly more exciting than riding a commuter train.
“Man, hell of ride, ain’t it?” Corpsman Walters asked. He was trying to sound cheery, but the quivering in his voice hinted otherwise.
Jack didn’t bother to look up. “Skip, right? Nothing but a little turbulence. You just hang tight and everything will be peachy.”
The cabin lurched up and then back down again accompanied by a rumble like nearby thunder. “Jeeez-Us. You ever… ever wonder what would happen if something went wrong?”
“What’s to wonder about? The tranzat is biting back into the atmosphere at twenty times the speed of sound. If anything went wrong, we’d be hamburger. Wouldn’t even know what hit us.”
It occurred to Jack that last part might have been a faux pas. He lifted his head and looked over at Walters, who was strapped into an identical seat to his right, with both white-knuckled hands clenched around his shoulder restraint. This was Skip’s first drop and it showed.
Jack gave him a little pat on the shoulder. “Relax, newbie. I’ve been through more drops than I can count, and this is nothing out of the ordinary. Right, guys?”
The twenty members of the San Jose Bravo Brigade ignored him. Each was strapped into their own seat on either side of the leviathan’s cabin, separated by five meters of floor filled with equipment. A few were checking their gear like Jack had been, while others were thumbing through magazines. Lisa Albright had her headphones on and was listening to some band no one else had ever heard of, and Leonid Nikitin was sound asleep and snoring.
“See,” Jack said, as if his question had been met with unanimous agreement, “nothing to fret your little head over.”
Right about then, the blue lamp at the front of the cargo bay came on; drop was imminent. “Oh boy. Now Skip, I want you to take a nice deep breath and try to relax. Can you do that for me?”
Skip nodded his head rigidly.
“And if you gotta puke, you damn well hold it until we’re back on terra firma, or I’ll watch you scrub down the whole boat.”
A quick series of loud mechanical thuds echoed through the cabin as the docking clamps released, and then the leviathan shifted and slid free of its cradle. The windows along the length of the cabin, which had been black throughout the rest of the trip, were suddenly filled with blindingly bright blue sky, the javelin shaped trans-atmospheric transport that had dropped them, and a half-dozen other glimmering orange leviathans also in free-fall. Jack thought the view was just marvelous.
Skip Walters screamed. Thinking back, Jack had screamed his first time, too.
Not today, though. Not for a half-dozen years. These days, he loved plummeting out of the sky. It meant the trip was nearly over, and he’d soon be pounding dirt in another foreign land.
Skip screamed until his lungs were spent, but before he could take his next breath, the cabin was filled with the sound of the leviathan’s twin rotor blades rhythmically chopping at the air. The free-fall was complete, and the helicopter was flying under its own power. Another second later, it leveled off and began its approach.
As the leviathan descended and came around, the rear door opened to reveal forested hills and a monstrous
plume of smoke rising high into the air. The helicopter tilted back, providing a good view of the grassy Earth below, while the two heavily laden pallets at the back of the cabin slid down the ramp, sprouted parachutes and drifted away.
Then it was down, down, down to the ground. The leviathan slowed, and its suspension groaned as the landing struts dug into soil. The pilot’s voice broke in over the loud speaker, “Welcome to lovely Santiago De Compostela, Spain. Once your restraints pop, you’ve got five minutes to disembark. No more. Take your crap with you, and thanks for flying Emergency Response Corps Air.”
The U-shaped restraints audibly popped and then raised themselves over-head, and the brigade stomped down the ramp. Skip charged out ahead of them, and after three long strides across the ground, he was on his knees and evacuating his stomach violently in the grass.
Lisa Albright nudged Jack’s shoulder to get his attention. “First drop?” she shouted over the thunder of the leviathan’s rotors, motioning toward the new corpsman.
Jack nodded and said, “Another fine day in the Corps.”
He glanced into the cabin to make sure his people were out and transmitted an all clear, then motioned toward Skip. He and Albright flanked the vomiting corpsman and moved him over to the side, while the emptied leviathan lifted back into the air and was away.
They were in a clearing at the southern mouth of a two kilometer valley, surrounded by densely forested hills on the other three sides. The sky above was thick with leviathans, the biggest swarm of which buzzed around the smoke plume to the North. They’d be dropping smoke jumpers and loads of fire retardant. Another steady stream of the helicopters headed east over the city of Santiago De Compostela, and Jack supposed the local air field was off in that direction.
His brigade stood in a rough circle waiting for orders, and a dozen other groups of orange jumpsuits were clustered throughout the clearing. It had taken them a full hour to come in from Vandenberg, which meant they were last to the party yet again. The whole summer had been that way.
Jack flipped through channels on his wristset until Logistics came up, opening a direct line to whoever was hosting the party. Then he tapped his headset and began transmitting. “San Jose Bravo Brigade present and requesting assignment.”
A voice with a thick Spanish accent came back. “Roger that, San Jose Bravo. What’s your specialty?”
“Wilderness search and rescue, and first aid. We have surgical personnel on hand.”
“Hold. Report to Med Station Three for triage detail. Coordinates are as follows…” The voice rattled off a long string of numbers that Jack hardly paid attention to.
“Roger, over and out.” He took a deep breath and clicked his headset off. The Bravos weren’t going to like this. With any luck, they wouldn’t shoot the messenger. “Good news, folks. We’re on triage again.”
“Again?” the lot of them asked in chorus.
“Come on, Jack. I didn’t join up to stick band-aids on boo-boos,” Leonid Nikitin said before jamming a cigar in his mouth. The man was pale and towered over the rest of the brigade like an old fashioned lighthouse. He had a point; he had extensive experience in tracking and wilderness survival, skills that were totally wasted at a triage station.
The same went for the rest, who all had first aid or first responder certs, but were specialists in other fields. All except for Dr. Lisa Albright who was a real bona-fide MD, but even she preferred to be in the bush. Jack couldn’t do anything about it, though. He’d tried before, and it was a lost cause.
“Cut me some damn slack, Nicotine. It’s hard work ignoring you all day. Hows about you complain to someone higher up the food chain, and let them ignore you for a change?”
Nikitin’s lip quivered until he couldn’t contain it any longer, and then he let out a huge belly laugh that flung his cigar to the grass. The rest laughed, too. That was a good sign. Tedious work was bad enough with a good attitude. With the wrong attitude, it could be torture.
From there on in, the Bravos were all business. They descended on the tent that was Med Station Three and didn’t so much relieve the exhausted Madrid Echoes as push them out of the way. They came up to speed in minutes and dug into the work of examining, sorting and usually treating the refugees who had fled the raging wildfire.
The bulk of their patients had cuts and scrapes, and few suffered anything worse than a touch of smoke inhalation and first degree burns. There were plenty of oxygen tanks on hand, and the Bravos were surprisingly good at putting pseudermal band-aids on boo-boos, so those patients moved through the system quickly. The fact that they had a physician meant they could also treat the few who required real care, instead of sending them on to the busy ICU tents or the city hospital three long klicks away.
By the time sunset rolled around, the Bravos were running on empty. Up above, the billowing clouds burned bright magma orange in the setting sun’s light, made starkly visible against the pallid and darkening sky. The raging fire stretching across the low hills could now be seen like a great glowing serpent, hungrily digesting the blackened trees within it. The crews couldn’t stop the fire, but word came through that they had contained it, and the remaining danger to the area was negligible.
The stream of patients finally thinned down to nothing around then. “Let’s think about packing it in,” Albright said.
Jack took a look at his watch and discovered it was coming up on 2100 hours local. They’d been working for ten straight hours, but the exhaustion didn’t hit him until he did the math.
He tuned back to the logistics band, and was just about to make the call when a loud burp like a hail of automatic gunfire sounded from the hills. The initial burst was followed by a handful just like it, each weaker than the one before.
The weary corpsmen throughout the camp snapped to attention. “What the hell was that?” Nikitin barked. “Since when is this a combat zone?”
Jack switched back to the report channel and hurried messages from firefighters flooded his ear.
”…some type of small community. Musta missed it.”
”…could be a weapons stockpile. Debris everywhere…”
“Survivors. Fifty, maybe a hundred. Hard to tell. Some badly injured. Send medevac.”
“Barrier broken at section twelve. Need immediate air support. I repeat, need air support!”
Jack clicked the headset back off with a sigh. He didn’t need to hear anymore. “Grab a fast bite and a cup o’ joe, Bravos. More work on the way.”
It didn’t take long for leviathans laden with new refugees to return from the hills and start unloading. Men, women and children painted in a mixture of soot and ash stumbled out of the cargo bays, while the rest were carried out on stretchers. All three med stations, almost empty just moments before, now had more work than they could handle.
Injuries were more severe: third degree burns and the kind of wounds Jack had only seen near combat. Bullet holes from small and large caliber rounds, flesh shredded by flak, whole limbs missing in some cases. The orange jumpsuits were soon painted in an even coat of blood, making them hardly distinguishable from the patients in their care.
The work became a blur. There were no patients anymore, just wounds. Jack was applying a beige pseuderm bandage to a badly bleeding arm whose owner occasionally grunted from the pain. The patient was a tough customer just as they’d all been. Then Jack felt a tap at his shoulder and heard his name, and it snapped him out of the trance.
Standing behind him was young Skip Walters with concern all over his face, and behind Skip, a mother and daughter. The little girl’s face was so dark with soot that her bright eyes seemed to glow, and even though her shoulder had a deep gash in it, she wasn’t crying. She looked lost, and was shaking like a leaf in the cool night air.
“Jack, these people…”
“What!” Jack barked, in no way a question. He was tired. It was late. There was work to do, and his fuse was dangerously short.
Skip motioned to his upper arm, then poi
nted to the mother. “The tattoo. These people are separatists, Jack.” He leaned closer and whispered conspiratorially, “Terrorists.”
When the last word came out, Jack went on autopilot. His hands finished applying the bandage while he stared at Skip with cold eyes. “Nikitin, help the girl,” he growled, and his fingers latched onto the new corpsman’s collar.
He strode out of the tent dragging Walters stumbling behind him into the darkness. His pace quick, his skin on fire, Jack slammed Walters against a titanium supply crate and punched it hard with his free hand. The wall rang like a hammered gong. His grip moved from collar to throat.
“Remember this because I only tell you once. The Corps helps everyone the same. Everyone! If you ever hesitate to help anyone again… if I see you even think about it, I’ll God damn kill you myself. Are we clear, Corpsman?”
“Yes sir,” Skip croaked. His eyes were wide with fear. Both men’s hearts were racing at full speed.
Jack took a deep breath. His grip loosened, and he straightened the young corpsman’s collar. “Now get back in there and do your damn job.”
Skip took off running with a fire under his heels, two parts fear and one part shame driving him. He wouldn’t need to be told again. The kid would probably make it, Jack hoped, get with the program and fly right. Maybe even make a good corpsman some day. His first day had been a bad one, though.
Then Corpsman Jack Hernandez, knuckles bleeding and muscles burnt, turned and headed back into the massacre. San Jose Bravo Brigade worked long into the next day.
Chapter 3:
Snake Oil
The Global Aerospace Foundation’s main campus was a huge complex covering two square kilometers outside of Bangalore, India. The architecture married gothic and high-tech, with great swooping roofs that gave the impression of the buildings themselves reaching for the distant stars. To Marcus Donovan, it was a modern day revival of renaissance cathedrals, pure pomp and self-importance, evoking the immeasurable vastness of space and by comparison, man’s own insignificance. Other times, he just thought it was huge and ugly.
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