“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ohana asked, unsure whether she should be offended.
“Oh, c’mon. No offense, but you’d have to be at least a little bit insane to want to be a pilot. Everything about what you do goes against the grain and yet you choose to do it anyway. You thrive on it. That’s you and Dell in a nutshell, right there. You know you shouldn’t, but that’s part of the allure. Especially now that you’re serving together. The fact that he’s your CO only makes it worse. Rationally, you know you don’t want any part of the consequences of that. Physically, your body couldn’t care less about what your rational mind wants.”
“You might have something of a point there,” she had to admit.
“Maybe. Or I could be totally full of shit. We deck rats have a lot of time to philosophize while we’re nursing your wounded birds back to health, which is to say we tend to do a lot of talking out of our asses.” When Ohana laughed, she practically beamed in response. “Yes! There it is! I knew if I kept at it long enough I’d get a chuckle out of you eventually.”
“Thanks, Alexia. I needed that this morning. I really did.”
“No prob.”
“They’re looking a lot better lately, by the way,” she said. Alexia looked at her a bit quizzically and she quickly added, “The bruises, I mean.”
“Oh! Yeah, I barely even notice them now. Thanks, though. For a while I was really self-conscious about them but Torrey’s been so great. Anytime I mention them he just says, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I see is your beautiful face.’” She ducked her head a little to hide the sudden flush infusing her cheeks.
“Torrey’s a great guy.”
“The best. Can I just say I’m really glad you decided to join up, though? We’ve needed some new blood in the wings for a while now, even before what happened back at Eden Prime, and Dell raves about you virtually every chance he gets.”
In spite of herself, Ohana felt a touch of heat creeping into her own cheeks. That was definitely news to her. “He does?”
“Yup! Which is why I’m going to be taking care of your bird personally.”
“Oh, Alexia, no,” she said, trying to refuse as politely as she knew how. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. You already do so much—”
Alexia raised her hand in a manner suggesting she would brook no further argument on the subject. “You didn’t ask. I offered. And, unlike a traditional offer, it’s not up for discussion. Weird, I know, but that’s kind of just how we do things for the people we care about around here. Got it?”
Smiling wider, she nodded. “Got it. And thank you. Again. I know I keep saying that, but I really appreciate you looking out for me like this.”
“My pleasure, Wingman First Class.” Alexia took one last bite, then stood and collected her tray. “Well, it’s about time I head down to the deck. But look, don’t stress too hard over this whole Dell situation, okay? You’ll work it out. And hey, if you don’t, it wouldn’t be the first time people around here politely looked the other way.” Winking playfully, she left Ohana to her thoughts and her fruit cup.
It was only then that Ohana realized Alexia had eaten every last bite of the heaping mound of food on her tray. The girl was a human food processor, apparently.
Meanwhile, Ohana had barely touched her fruit cup.
“Yeah,” she said once she was alone again. “Don’t stress too hard.”
40 • HOMECOMING
In lieu of sleep, Fenton took to working at night. Of course, the concept of night in space was something of a relative one. More accurately, he took to working during third shift, when activity aboard the ship was at its lightest. Roon didn’t seem to mind. She slept fitfully anyway and often brought him coffee when nightmares troubled her sleep. She liked to watch him work, saying it helped soothe her.
“Is that your way of telling me that watching me work puts you to sleep?” he’d asked, laughing the first time she told him that.
“I meant it as the highest form of compliment.”
“Then that’s how I choose to take it.”
He was close. Tantalizingly close. At this point, all it really came down to was the programming. It was grueling. Trillions-of-line grueling. It was the most intricate, delicate code he’d ever embarked upon, and programming wasn’t even his primary field. Much of the groundwork was adapted from the findings of his former research team; much of the rest was repetitive and could be done rote by memory. Still, it took time, even with the new team he was assigned. Someone had to work when at last sleep inevitably claimed him, after all.
It was during one of those rare moments—having fallen asleep at his desk, appropriately enough—that Fenton awoke to one of his young, fresh-faced assistants jostling his shoulder. “What?” he groaned, blinking back fatigue. “What is it?”
“I think we did it, Major Wilkes,” the young man—what the hell was his name again? Banks?—said enthusiastically. “The simulation is holding.”
Fenton was on his feet immediately, torn between irritation and excitement as he shook the last lingering remnants of sleep from his arms. “You ran the simulation?” Five times they had tried; five times it had collapsed within as many minutes. “When? For how long?”
“Yes, sir. We finished tweaking the programming about ten minutes ago and ran it through on a whim and, well, it’s holding.”
“Show me.”
“Is it still holding?” Banks asked as he led Fenton over.
“It’s actually getting stronger!”
“What?!” Fenton pushed in close, eyes rapidly scanning back and forth as he processed the ever-updating list of parameters scrolling upward across the screen. They were green across the board, stable or better. “I don’t believe it…”
Within an hour, he no longer had a choice. And that was just fine by him.
“We need to get down to the command module.”
“Shouldn’t we celebrate, sir?” another of his new assistants asked.
“No. Well, not yet. Right now, I need you to go down to the deck and find Specialist Alexia DeCoud. If she’s not on duty, have the ranking NCO wake her.” She was the only one he trusted to deliver the specially designed nanite pods. He looked to another young assistant. “I need you to go down to weapons and find Lieutenant Trelleck. He should be on duty, but again, if he’s not, ranking officer, et cetera, et cetera. Trelleck knows what order the pods should go out in, where to send them, and how long in between. You.” He pointed to Banks, smiling. “With me.”
“What for, sir?”
“We’re executing the launch. Right now.”
“Now?” Banks gaped as he hustled after Fenton. He was so excited he was practically jogging to the lift. “Shouldn’t we wait for Commandant Soroya, sir?”
“No,” Fenton said as they stepped into the lift. “You saw what happened on Eden Prime. There’s no time to just sit around, not anymore. The simulation held for over an hour. That’s good enough for me. Besides, if for some reason it fails, we try again, but at least we’ve started the process. There’s no reason to conceal the objective anymore.”
Fenton could tell that beneath his apprehension he too was bristling with excitement. “Alright, sir. I’m with you.”
“Good. Thank you, Banks.”
Arriving at the command module, Fenton was glad to see that Captain Weller was on duty as the commanding officer.
“Major,” Weller observed with a cock of his head as the lift doors swished closed behind Fenton and Banks. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“I’m relieving you of command, Captain.”
“Sir?” Weller seemed to hesitate. “I… I’m not sure you’re—”
“Are you disobeying an order from a superior officer, Captain?” Despite his disdain for military culture, Fenton had picked up on the lingo and its utility quite quickly, finding it had a surprising way of expediting certain requests and requisitions even from his superiors. If they wanted to fete him with more authority than he felt he deserved, the
n so be it.
“Sir, no, sir.” Weller straightened and saluted stiffly. “Absolutely not. The command module is yours, Major.”
Even as Weller stood down, Fenton was sure he was going to inform either Commandant Soroya or Marshal Harm about his takeover. He had to move quickly.
“Helmsman?”
“Yes, Major?”
“This is Ensign Banks. He’s going to be feeding you coordinates to input into the star map.”
“Understood, sir.” The two greeted each other tersely as Fenton settled into the command chair. He couldn’t help smiling a little. He felt like a right badass. “Weapons, are we ready?”
“Trelleck here, sir. Locked and loaded per your instructions.”
“Very good. Helmsman?”
“Ready, Major.”
Fenton nodded. The moment was finally upon him.
“On my mark. Three… two… one… execute.”
Banks of toxic clouds the size of continents scudded against each other beneath the dead planet’s atmosphere. Limned acid yellow and gaseous green, the two fronts mixed and swirled like the ugliest cat’s eye marble Fenton had ever seen. The surface itself was invisible beneath the impenetrable shroud, though he doubted it was any less ruined than the atmosphere. Beneath that roiling blanket of turbulence, nuclear winter would have long since ravaged any areas that somehow survived the initial bombardment.
How anyone could do this to another species, in times of peace or even war, he simply couldn’t fathom. The planet was dead. Completely, utterly devoid of life even at the most basic level.
Still, another part of Fenton—the scientist, not the humanist—could hardly have been happier. The storms were almost hypnotizing. They would contain no shortage of raw material for the nans to draw from. He grinned at the thought.
“Sir?” The voice belonged to Trelleck. “We’re ready down here whenever you are.”
Fenton nodded. “We’re ready up here, too.” Calling the command down the line, he watched as moments later a series of controlled bursts erupted from the prow of the ship.
“Stage one, off and running.”
The very words sent an electric charge racing down his spine.
Over the course of the next several hours, stages two, three, and finally four and five were deployed right on schedule. Indeed, the entire thing was going like clockwork right as third shift gave way to first shift.
“Wilkes,” Flight Marshal Harm barked behind him as he stepped onto the command module. “What in the hell? Who gave you authority to take command like this? And where the hell are we? I don’t recognize this—”
“Please stop talking, my love,” Commandant Soroya said as she stepped out of the same lift. She stood agog for several seconds, staring wide-eyed at the projection hub. “Is that… are we where I think we are, Major?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded solemnly, hands clasped before him. “Welcome home, Madam Commandant.”
She narrowed her eyes. For a moment she looked as if she was about to cleave his head clean from his shoulders. Instead, she threw her arms around him. Neither of them spoke in that moment she clutched him so close, and that was just fine with him.
“When,” she said as she pulled away. “When can I see for myself?”
“It’s going to be a while. We’ve only just finished deploying the last wave of nanite pods. Now we have to give them time to do their work.”
“Well, you are the expert,” she allowed, “but I want to be among the first on the surface.”
He nodded. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Very well. Thank you.”
“Seems like you’re really starting to get the hang of this whole ‘ranking officer’ concept, aren’t you, Wilkes?” Harm observed once his wife was out of earshot, having left them to consult with the various operators stationed around the command module.
“You know,” he said, a bit of a grin tugging at his lips, “I really think I am.”
It was two full days before Fenton deemed it safe to visit the surface. In that time, the once-annihilated planet underwent an astounding transformation. Soroya barely left the command module, so transfixed was she by the process healing her broken homeworld. Fenton was all too happy to explain how the first salvos of nanite pods were programmed to detonate at various elevations within the planet’s toxic atmosphere. The first would detonate at its outermost reaches, the second roughly midway, and the third just a few thousand feet above the surface. The nanites released would begin scrubbing the atmosphere, breaking down the toxic material so as to allow the latter salvos to reach the surface unhindered by compromised guidance systems or structural integrity woes.
The fourth and fifth salvos, meanwhile, carried much larger payloads of the nanites and were directed to detonate at the poles. Those nanites would then begin breaking down all the planet’s surface material, scrubbing it of radioactive fallout as the two waves worked simultaneously to reach the planet’s core, at which point they would literally rebuild the planet from the inside out. They would have additional assistance in the form of the first three salvos. Having cleared the atmosphere, they would then drift down to begin reconstructing the geographical landmasses that together constituted the surface of Shih’ra.
“How are the nanites not harmed in the detonations?” she wondered.
“It’s not really a detonation in the traditional sense. The pods themselves are the nanites. Basically, they reach a certain preprogrammed point, perform the action required, in this case rapidly dismantling, and then proceed to the next part of their programming.” He cupped and then spread and waggled his fingers before him in a very loose and vague approximation of the actual action.
Soroya was silent for several seconds as she considered the statement. “That any one man could wield all this power…” She couldn’t even finish the thought, shaking her head incredulously.
“Now you see why I couldn’t let Morgenthau-Hale have it. Once I understood what it was fully capable of, I knew it would make them into monsters, if they weren’t already.” Clearly, Fenton had his doubts on that point.
“Then why bring it here, to us? How can you be so sure we will not become monsters ourselves?”
“Honestly, I can’t. But your sister put in a good word for you after Roon hired her to spring me from custody.”
Not surprisingly, that seemed to catch Soroya like a backhand to the face. “Xenecia put in a good word for me?”
“Surely did. Said if there was anyone I could trust with something like this, it would be you. Don’t get me wrong, she didn’t gush or anything. But once I realized Shih’ra would be the perfect staging ground for the ultimate test of its capabilities, well, I guess it just seemed like fate.” He turned to look at her directly, smiling a little. “I still have a hard time believing you two are sisters. You’re so different. Aggressively different.”
Soroya laughed knowingly at the observation. “Yes, it is true. The two of us have never seen eye to eye on much of anything. We had many other brothers and sisters, of course, though they perished defending our world from the Tyroshi Menace. We were the only children of our line off-planet during the struggle.”
Fenton nodded somberly. “I’m sorry to hear that. I had a sister, but she passed when I was a teenager. A congenital defect. I think in a way that’s why the nanite project was so appealing to me, at least initially. I realized the medical implications before anything else. The nanites could have fixed that defect painlessly, almost instantly.”
“And because of that drive, Dell DeCoud remains defiantly among the living.” She raised her hands to encompass the view offered by the projection hub. “And now, this.”
“And now, this,” he repeated. After several moments, Fenton broke the reverent silence that had blossomed between them. “I think it’s about time we go take a look, don’t you?”
“I thought you would never ask.”
The flight to the surface was a solemn, silent affair. There w
as none of the revelry of the descent to Eden Prime, no laughing or oohing and ahhing among the shuttle’s passengers. Only the weight of the moment pressing down upon them all. The sense of expectation was electric, practically palpable. As much as Eden Prime had been historic, this was a whole other animal, as it were.
As they touched down, no one moved to stand. It took a moment for Fenton to realize they were waiting on him to take the lead. Looking to Soroya and Xenecia, he gestured to the descending ramp. “I think it’s only fitting the first feet to touch this soil should belong to the people it gave life to.”
“And we feel it only fitting the man who gave it life again should join us.”
A bit surprised, Fenton looked to Xenecia.
“Please,” Xenecia confirmed. “Come.”
He nearly made a joke about thinking her repertoire lacked that word entirely but caught his tongue just in time. “I’d be honored,” he said instead.
At the bottom of the ramp, the three stood stock still, breathing deeply of the planet’s reconstituted air. Fenton had to admit there was something a little intoxicating about it. Maybe just knowing he had helped to restore it, but still.
“It’s breathtaking,” he finally said. Before them a wispy field of silvery grasses spread for kilometers beneath a warm golden sky. Beneath it, a glittering green lake reflected the twin suns the planet orbited. The larger was twice as big as the smaller and pink like a grapefruit. The smaller was pink as well, but of a softer, more subdued shade.
“It is,” Soroya said, her voice thick with emotion. “Every bit as beautiful as I remember it.”
Perhaps the most surprising moment came when Xenecia leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Thank you, Fenton.”
Petrified at first by her movement, he just laughed afterward as the others joined them. “And thank you for not using those flechette rounds.”
Xenecia smirked, taking in the scene before them. “I suppose this does make for a better bounty, all in all.”
Two more shuttles landed in short succession behind them. Fenton was briefly surprised to see several more Shih’rahi descending the ramps. Soroya and Xenecia moved to greet them, speaking quietly while the wind buffeted their backs. They gestured to Fenton and he unconsciously drew himself up.
The Lazarus Particle Page 32
