Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4)

by Scott Rhine

  Red chuckled. “Right. Smoke your cigarette later. Prepare to disembark. Everybody carries cargo, even Z. We lift off the moment you have the portable shelter deployed.”

  “Roger,” each person on the shuttle echoed as they checked their helmets and seals.

  “You missed your calling, Nadia,” Lou said over the comm. “You should have been in weapon design.”

  “I took all the same classes,” the Russian power expert admitted, “but we can’t set the really big bombs off on Earth anymore—too dangerous. Space was my only chance to see massive release.”

  Lou laughed but didn’t block the channel with an obscene retort.

  Zeiss read the instruments. “Mein Gott, the missile blasted clear through the cavern and pancaked into the floor, making a crater inside, too.”

  “Brace for landing in five . . . four . . .” Red counted down. Between two and one, the engines whined and struts smashed into rock. “Go!”

  As the person in combat armor, Herk had the honor of being the first human to set foot on the new planet. His helmet camera recorded the event casually as he ran toward cover and shrugged a fifty-meter coil of rope to the ground.

  “Any words on this solemn occasion?” Zeiss prompted.

  Focused on his mission, Herk had been caught off guard and forgot his prepared speech. Instead he recited the motto of the rescue corps. “No limits. Fellow Homo sapiens, we made it.”

  With that benediction, he sank hooked pitons in along the perimeter and looped the ropes through, providing a guide in the low visibility and high winds. “Stay close to the rock face. It’s like walking in a sandblaster. My suit held, but yours are more fragile.” Then he leveled the ground under the belly of the shuttle with the equivalent of a push broom. “Cargo drop zone clear.”

  Red flicked switches that caused the cargo section in the belly to lower to the ground. Once motion halted, Red signaled the groups of people waiting in the two airlocks. “Commence Fire Drill. We’re behind schedule already. You have thirty-one minutes remaining.”

  The crew in spacesuits hauled everything already in their hands toward the rendezvous point. Once there, Risa began to anchor the corners of the emergency shelter. “Take the generator next so we can power the air compressor,” she told her husband.

  Herk ran to grab the next crate himself while all the others lifted in male-female pairs. Zeiss and Nadia worked in synchronization without wasted motion; however, Toby lagged behind, causing Oleander to complain. “You didn’t lift the weights, did you?”

  People could hear him panting apologies over the comm channel as the pale nanobiologist struggled in the higher gravity.

  “Save your breath and move,” Oleander urged.

  The other teams passed them with their second crates as Oleander and Toby jogged back to the shuttle. He was putting them even further behind.

  When Zeiss and Nadia passed them with the third crate, he said, “Risa, you take over as Oleander’s partner. Toby, you arrange the crates as a windbreak around the shelter.”

  Despite the wounded pride evident on Toby’s face and Risa’s frustration at the interruption to her task, both chorused, “Yes, sir.”

  Red kept announcing the time left. Once the final crates were unloaded, she announced, “Four minutes until wheels up.”

  “Everyone grab part of the fuel distillery and heave it past the ropes,” Zeiss barked. “Don’t bother to assemble it.”

  The fabricator they had employed to manufacture rocket fuel on the asteroids took up a large portion of the cargo area. Herk single-handedly dragged the main chemical tanks across the sand, like a highlander about to toss the caber.

  As Zeiss reopened the airlock, they found that Red had moved the remainder of the parts inside, resting atop a variation of Mercy’s floating wheelchair. A pile of six antigravity planks rested beside the unwieldy device, with no room to spare for people. “Nadia, lay a single-width track toward that ditch. Oleander, help me build the ramp two panels wide.” Together, the three cajoled the massive load toward safety.

  “One minute.”

  Over the jackhammer assault compressor noise, Toby announced, “Inflating shelter now.” He was hung up on something and couldn’t take the final step toward the tent. The storm made it impossible for him to see the cause. I can’t screw this up, too. Desperate, he yanked his safety line with all his strength and tripped Herk.

  Ironically, this part Toby could do. He was first on the scene, checking for broken bones because a fall in this environment could be disastrous.

  Risa sprinted to her husband’s side, examining the suit for hole. “No breach.”

  “He has a mild sprain in his ankle,” Toby reported, “and the main tanks are scratched.”

  The color drained from Zeiss’ face as his group pushed the final piece across the finish line. Zeiss had been the only one to stand by him through the trial. Disappointing him was worse than the shuttle ride down.

  Before anyone could accuse him or complain, Toby volunteered. “Request permission to stay behind to fix the mess I made, sir.”

  “Time to go,” Red broadcast. Oleander and Nadia ran for the airlock.

  Looking at Herk, Zeiss asked, “Can you still do this, or do we scrub?”

  Herk replied, “We’ll make it work. Go!”

  Zeiss bolted for the shuttle, and Oleander helped him aboard. The moment Nadia closed the airlock door, Red gunned the throttle. While Ascension shot skyward, Yuki read off the revised speeds and positions needed for Red to catch up to the lens of Sanctuary as it streaked by the mesa base.

  Once the shuttle was clear, Risa finished assembling the shelter, refusing to look at the man responsible for her husband’s injury.

  Herk limped over and planted an explosive on top of the tanks. “Gilligan’s Island rules,” the head of security explained. “Nothing permanent is allowed anywhere on our island. It all has to be made of native materials like clay, bamboo, and vines. We have to have a way to destroy anything modern by the end of the episode. Anything below the summit can only be what the aborigines know or tech we give them via pages. We don’t have the stealth suit yet, so we can’t travel anywhere or do anything that would be visible to the natives nearby.”

  Someone had stenciled S S Minnow on the base of the survival tent.

  Herk continued. “Once this storm slows, Risa and I will build the walls to the spaceport. You can construct a shed for the distillery.”

  Toby shook his head. “No. Anything I built would collapse. I’ll ease your load by dropping the rope ladder down the hole and start hauling gear into the cave. I can even do that while the sand is flying, and I fit better than a Goliath like you.”

  “You’re going to be exhausted,” warned the large man in armor.

  “If I don’t pump up my muscle mass from day one, I’m no good to any of you. Your wife bench-presses more with her legs than I do.”

  “Everything is going to take us more effort than anticipated. Even the gardens will need to be covered by a greenhouse so the sandstorms don’t kill them.”

  Risa wouldn’t shake his hand, no woman would, but she seemed sincere as she said, “Welcome to the team, Doc.”

  Toby was glad no one had called him Gilligan.

  The moment the wind died down, he checked every millimeter of the distillery exterior for damage. Finding nothing significant, he opened up the maintenance hatch to run an internal systems check on the electronics. That’s when he found the note from Plato about Magi secrets in Meteoropolis. His presence here wasn’t an accident. Fate had offered him a way to regain Yvette. If he could uncover what the Magi were hiding, she would consider him her dearest ally. He hid the note in his bio-sample collection pouch.

  Chapter 27 – Wish You Were Here

  Because of Sanctuary’s orbital path, the second flight needed to take place exactly one L week after the first. The ground team completed the dome of the spaceport a day early and verified atmospheric integrity. Toby told the Olympus cr
ew, “Inside, the temperature is perfect, and the water in the pool is drinkable if we add the standard pellets. In the domes and caves we can breathe with just a gas mask. Over time, the greenhouses should scrub the carbon dioxide in the caves down to acceptable levels. Of course, we’ll need to plug more of the cracks since the missile strike made a lot of those fissures to the surface wider. Risa wants to convert them into skylights if you agree.”

  Waiting in the shuttle hangar with Nadia and Red, Zeiss shrugged. “No objections. Why do you need my approval?”

  “The mesa is windier than we anticipated, so we can’t farm algae up top. We can’t farm it on the surface without drawing unwanted attention. I pureed most of our starter stock to supplement our food supply, but no algae crop means we can’t synthesize the acrylic here. Risa is hoping the others can convert some of Sanctuary’s algae stockpile into the necessary chemicals before you come down. You’ll have extra mass allowance because the forklift and I aren’t on board. Since the distillery will be up and running sooner, I can cover any extra fuel expenditures.”

  “Sure, but Risa is our expert in that field. Will the others be able to synthesize acrylic without her?”

  “Risa’s certain she can talk Rachael and Mercy through the extraction process.”

  “Why both?”

  “We’ll need to add a little lead to the mixture to block the heavier rays.”

  “Will that be enough?” Zeiss asked.

  Yuki interrupted from Olympus. “We think so, boss. I’ve been doing weather modeling. When we’re far from the suns, the weather is cooler and calmer. Right now, severe, sudden radiation events tend to generate windstorms, which reduce visibility. During the expected peaks, we can shutter our windows like hurricane season.”

  “Well, Pratibha will need to juggle the schedules, weight loads, and production plans, but if she signs off, I’m game,” Zeiss said. “With Park and Yuki running Olympus, that only leaves Johnny, Oleander, and Yvette out of the loop for this next launch. Is there anything they can do?”

  After chatting with Risa off camera, Toby replied, “Oleander can haul cargo. Johnny might be able to do some of the plastic-reducing steps in his kitchen. It’ll smell horrible, but acrylic skylights will give us natural lighting and enable us to grow food inside. More plants will also help us scrub the air in the cave faster so we don’t need to wear masks indoors.”

  “And Yvette?”

  Toby said, “If she could talk to me every once in a while . . . I’d appreciate it.”

  “I can’t order her to,” Zeiss said with regret in his voice. He clearly didn’t want any of his people suffering.

  Yuki provided the thin veneer of duty they needed to nudge Yvette into communication with Toby. “Maybe if we tasked Yvette with collecting trace elements for the fabricators, she could give Toby her reports.”

  “She’s always exploring the foothills anyway. I could sign off on that,” Zeiss said diplomatically.

  “Thank you both,” Toby said, terminating the connection.

  ****

  Because there was no storm, the second touchdown took place during the black of night, without even the reflected glory of Daedalus to light the sky. Oleander had to snap her night-vision adapter into place because Zeiss didn’t want any light leaks to alert the natives. Without this requirement, they wouldn’t have needed helmets for the landing.

  “But none of the L pandas are anywhere near us,” Nadia complained on the descent to Elysium base.

  “The hand must not be seen,” Red recited. “We’ll have seventy-five minutes this trip to unload. Herk spent the extra day leveling and marking the landing pad. This should be a cakewalk.”

  Nadia snorted in derision. “Magi don’t believe in cake. Why does this area reek?”

  Johnny apologized. “Sorry. The last load ran late. The steam from that witches’ brew for the acrylic got in my hair, and there was no time left to shower again.”

  “No showers where we’re going.”

  “I can wash it in a basin and give him a trim,” Oleander volunteered. “I cut hair . . .” Embarrassed, she stopped. Talking about prison in front of the other women didn’t bother her. Discussing it in front of the men did, especially someone she wanted to impress, such as Johnny.

  “That would be magnificent,” Johnny said graciously. His hair was longer than hers and had to be difficult to fit into the spacesuit.

  Zeiss said, “Keep the food somewhere easy to access. The advance crew hasn’t eaten since yesterday. Toby collected some gourds for them to try, but I didn’t want to court disaster. We can experiment when we’re not under deadline. Time for our heavy lifters to gather in the forward airlock: me, Johnny, and Oleander. The secondary lock is already full of skylight panels. Herk will retrieve those with the floater. Our job is to offload everything from the cargo hold underneath. We form a bucket brigade so that no one has to move more than a step in the darkness. We’ll also make less noise. Risa will step into the line the moment after she hooks up Ascension to the fuel pumps. Toby doesn’t have enough muscle mass yet, so he’ll monitor the transfer of fuel from the distillery to the shuttle. Nadia and Rachael will join us outside once they fill the airlock with everything else we have in here. Red will handle the countdown and watch the ridges on either side for thermal activity. If she sees so much as a coyote, we all hit the dirt. Understood?”

  Everyone indicated assent. Oleander asked, “What if my radio goes on the fritz again?”

  Red replied, “Don’t worry. Opening the lens this deep in the atmosphere generates its own weather. Z predicts Saint Elmo’s fire will appear at five minutes out, and your two-minute warning for our departure will feel like a tornado.”

  Oleander snickered at a random thought as they squeezed into the tight airlock.

  At her elbow, over a person-to-person channel, Johnny asked, “What?”

  Smiling, she answered on the same private link, “We’re the UFOs now. The aliens will be telling campfire horror stories about humans from outer space.”

  “No,” Johnny said. “My people faced such things long ago. In Rome, we would become the subject of myths.”

  “I don’t feel like a goddess.”

  “You look like one,” he countered softly.

  An Italian gentleman, Johnny always did know how to make a woman feel special. This time the compliment made her stomach flutter. They had spent months circling each other, their mutual attraction drawing them ever closer. Keeping things strictly physical, the word ‘love’ had never been mentioned. Several times during his girlfriend Rachael’s Olympus shifts, he had fooled around with Oleander in secret. The adrenaline rush had been fantastic, but with Lieutenant Rachael in Elysium 24/7, they might never get that chance again. The affair had to be over. Oleander was resigned to life as a nun until the testing was completed. However, her body craved his touch like it had cigarettes—just one last long, slow, sensuous drag. She remembered the long soak in the hot tub, blindfolded, and the chocolate-covered fruit he fed her.

  The thump of landing and the hiss of the door release jolted her out of this fantasy.

  The unloading went without a hitch, almost boring.

  ****

  In the predawn moonlight, Oleander lay on the floor of the distillery control room in her sleeping bag. The new room was climate-controlled, and the walls were thick enough to block out the sounds of construction that reverberated everywhere else in the complex. She could ignore the burbling sounds of liquid and the faint methane smell by telling herself it was a faulty toilet. This was the closest thing to privacy she would see on Labyrinth. For some things, satellite views weren’t detailed enough, but traveling in-the-flesh was too dangerous. At the beginning of her career in space reconnaissance and rescue, she had read an alien page that enabled her to leave her physical form behind. Relaxing, her perceptions rose out of her body. Floating dreamlike over the alien desert and jungle landscapes, she scouted several potential paths down from the mesa.

 
; That afternoon, she helped Toby into the shimmer armor. Everyone watched the opalescent scales shift to swirls of golden orange until he blended into the mesa’s sand and stone perfectly. Oleander couldn’t detect him with her physical eyes until she was a meter away. Returning to the glorified utility closet for privacy, she could use his mental signature to find him with ease.

  Normally, she would watch him Out-of-body while the world slept, but for descending cliffs he would need daylight. Oleander used a combination of satellite, radio beacon, and binoculars to track him. They established a shared communication channel that recorded every word, with timestamps using the new language-decoding software Lou’s team developed. Zeiss insisted on this in case Toby picked up panda chatter in the distance. Mostly, it recorded Oleander warning people she was going on a bio break or Toby logging his alien-biology observations.

  Agreeing with her choices of the best paths, Toby marked unwanted routes down with white chalk so she and Herk could eliminate them with explosives during the next storm. Ironically, as the only person with mining experience, she was stuck above ground while others shaped the base interior. She stood watch as Toby used a machete along the easiest descent. He wasn’t very good at fashioning bridges of safety rope in the dangerous sections. The first time, she had to climb down and show him the technique. Eventually, Herk would install drawbridges in these gaps. At the second gap, Toby dropped his rock hammer off the cliff. She had to lower another bag of climbing equipment down the side of the mesa. She said nothing of this embarrassing event on the record, passing the bundle off as additional cold water. He went through enough liquid in the heat that people didn’t think twice.

  After sundown, which only took four hours after ‘noon’ on this world, she flew cover on him Out-of-body, taking every step with him and watching his back for predators. At the end of the shift as she helped him out of the hot armor in the spaceport, Toby thanked her. “I want you to know that I trust you with my life.”