James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 09

by Gethsemane

  “This is a whole different kind of technology,” the landing crew repeated in unison.

  “Stop that!” Caliph admonished them. She had no idea where some of these ridiculous Sapphirean customs came from.

  “Can you do it or not?” Alkema snapped at the recalcitrant hologram.

  Her avatar scowled. “I am doing it right now, you just can’t tell. Let me depict what I am doing for you.”

  She plunged her holographic hand into the nearest terminal. The displays above the smashed control boards blanked out, then reactivated, displaying a rapidly changing sequence of characters in the Gethsemanian language, accompanied by diagrams of the Gateway, the Gateway Center, and the Gateway complex.

  The reflections of the displays glowed across Banks and Alkema’s faces. “Is this the data you are currently accessing?” Banks asked.

  “No, these are just pretty pictures to keep you occupied while I do the actual work of figuring out the activation sequence,” Caliph replied. “In case you’re wondering, I did search the data files for some kind of Operator’s Manual, but there’s none here. The operating system for this device is based on trinary code. By reading the code, I expect to be able to generate a set of operating instructions.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Definitely,” she answered. “Can I figure it out in time, that’s another issue, entirely!” Port Gethsemane – Taurus Rook had departed the surface before Dawn of the last day of Gethsemane’s existence. She was back on Pegasus, coordinating the reception of the last of the planet’s survivors.

  This left Specialist Fangboner to be the last to leave Port Gethsemane. There were no more kids here. They had left two hours before. He was overseeing the last of the mission’s equipment being loaded into the Aves Edward.

  When the last cargo container was placed on board, he paused and gave a last look toward Port Gethsemane. The entire city, from one edge of the harbor to the other, was engulfed in flames.

  It had started a few hours before. The theory was a deep underground deposit of methane had been opened up by the groundquakes. Whatever the cause, flames burned through the streets, sent up the building like torches, and filled the sky with acrid smoke.

  Up until that time, Port Gethsemane had remained largely in the clear from the storms and groundquakes that were tearing apart the rest of the planet in land, sky, and sea.

  He made sure his ship’s visual sensors were recording the image of the whole city, on fire, burning across the horizon. It was like every twelve year old boy’s pyromaniac fantasies come to life. Fangboner felt like he was looking at a panorama of Hell.

  “We have to go,” Edward’s pilot advised him.

  Fangboner nodded, and looked at Gethsemane for the last time. “Goodbye, cruel world,” he said, and turned to get onto the ship.

  Gethsemane – The Gateway – For more than ten hours, Caliph read the Gethsemane equipment. Her features were perfectly placid most of the time, although she sometimes scowled for no understandable reason. She seemed at ease with her task.

  The rest of the crew were less at ease. Time was running out.

  Fortunately, the Gethsemanens has installed no outside surveillance feeds, no dramatic center screen showing how imminent was the collision with the rogue planet. If the Pegasus crew could see how fast the rogue planet was bearing down on them. It loomed over the far Horizon of the Gateway base, a scarred hemisphere of doom, growing larger and closer with each passing minute.

  Such a view might have made the crew even more panicked then they were. However, they had plenty of reminders of how precarious their position was. Every couple of minutes, a tremor rippled through the floor of the control room.

  “Do you have it yet?” Alkema asked Caliph.

  “I have the initialization sequence,” Caliph replied. She transferred the data to a display, then translated it into the standard language.

  “Three buttons!” Hardcandy Banks exclaimed. “All that effort to tell me I have to press three buttons.”

  “No,” Caliph protested. “All that effort to tell you which three buttons.”

  “I’ve got it,” Alkema reported. He went to the first wall panel. He looked first at the display. “Releasing energy to Gateway.” He touched the button labeled JX-225 and pulled the adjacent switch. It illuminated with a blue light, and a display activated, showing bar graphs and rows of characters in the native Gethsemane language.

  Alkema waited until all of the bar graphs turned light blue. “Initializing field,” he called out, and touched the button labeled IX-097. Another display activated, and the room seemed to build up a charge of its own. Arcs of electrical power began to exchange among the pieces of equipment in the room. A circuit board exploded out of a wall panel with a shower of sparks and a puff of smoke.

  The crew ducked and covered. “This didn’t happen before,” Alkema said.

  “It’s not a malfunction,” Caliph said. “Energy is feeding into the system from another source. You have to activate the Gateway now!”

  “Activating Gateway now,” Alkema said, pressing GX-415.

  There was a flash, and additional bursts from exploding circuitry. One arc caught Hardcandy Banks in the hand and she cried out.

  Before her cry faded, a penetrating white light filled the room, blinding them. In that moment, Alkema realized he was supposed to close the shield over the viewports to the Gateway Plaza.

  When his vision cleared, he looked into the Gateway area, where a very confused and disoriented Keeler and Redfire were waiting, wearing the same robes they had departed in, staring confusedly up at the sky.

  Alkema grabbed the address system. “Commander Keeler, are you all right!” Keeler looked at up at the control room blearily. “Who?”

  “We have to get down there,” Alkema said.

  “We have to get off the planet,” Hardcandy Banks added.

  “You’re welcome!” Caliph said pointedly.

  Alkema touched the address system again. “Commander Keeler, it’s me, Ranking Dave.

  Stay there, we’ll come and get you.”

  “Aunt Sestina?” Keeler asked.

  “Pancakes!” Redfire shouted at the top of his lungs. “Delicious pancakes! I must have them!”

  “We better go,” Alkema insisted. He began to move toward the door to the stairwell that led to the Gateway Plaza, but paused before he got there

  “Are you all right?” Alkema asked Hardcandy Banks.

  Bank’s hand was scorched and blistered. A Medtech was tending to her. “I’ll be okay, but we really have to go… now. Get the Commander, I’ll stay here and help move out Caliph. Don’t worry, I’m not hurt.”

  “I’ll help,” Specialist Black said.

  Hardcandy Banks turned to Caliph’s avatar. “We can carry your module to the ship, but you may want to transmit yourself back to Pegasus, just to be safe.”

  “The risk is too high,” Caliph answered. “I’ll ride in the Data Module unless you have to abandon me.”

  Hardcandy Banks nodded. “Black! Let’s get this module to the ship.” Caliph looked Banks up and down. “Your attractiveness greatly exceeds the human mean for females.”

  “Thank you,” Banks said.

  “If you’re not busy later, would you like me to ride around in your head for a while?” Caliph winked at her.

  “I’ll think about it,” Banks promised.

  Alkema and a pair of warfighters pried open the door at the end of the parade ground and approached Keeler.

  “Commander, are you okay?” Alkema demanded.

  “The Aurelians are invading Republic!” Keeler announced.

  “I’m not who you think I am!” Redfire announced.

  “My son is a nerd and my friends are jerks!” Keeler shouted.

  “Adam and Eve on a raft, one shipwrecked!” Redfire insisted.

  “Their minds are scrambled,” Alkema said.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Commander Obvious,” Warfighter Topkapi replied.
“Let’s get them to the ship.”

  Before she finished speaking, a rumble began that emanated from far below them underground. What followed was less like a groundquake and more like an eruption as ground shook then burst open, creating a massive fissure that cut through the center of the Gateway’s arena and swallowed the arch into the chasm that opened.

  The Dome above the Gateway Complex shattered into pieces that began falling all around them. Nothing but luck prevented them from getting hit by falling debris.

  “Hell and Damnation,” Alkema shouted. Toxic, sulfurous gasses rose from the deep pit that had opened in the planet’s crust. He helped Commander Keeler to his feet. Topkapi helped Redfire. The Gateway complex began to fall to pieces all around them.

  “We’ll have to go around that chasm,” Alkema pointed, “The rift doesn’t reach that edge of the field. We’ll go around that way.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” said Topkapi. She tapped her COM Link. “Toto, come and get us. Bring the ship to us. The cover’s gone, you’ve got a clean landing field.

  Minutes ticked by, only a few but seeming like many, many. Aves Zilla flew into position overhead and fought the rising clouds of gas to set down on the ground on the opposite side of the chasm.

  “I have to pee!” Keeler proclaimed.

  “There’s no time!” Topkapi yelled.

  “There’s always time to pee!” Keeler insisted.

  “Let him,” Alkema said. “This planet’s going to smack in about 55 minutes. If there were ever a time to suspend the prohibition against public urination, this is it.” There was another groundquake, powerful enough to knock all of them to the ground.

  Alkema landed on his back. From his perspective, the rising clouds of gas and smoke took on the shapes of monsters and howling spirits.

  Only a narrow bridge of intact ground stretched across the opening pit. Commander Keeler walked to the edge of the pit, opened his robe, and pissed into the yawning chasm, laughing hysterically.

  “Allbeing,” Alkema cursed.

  Zilla hovered just above the ground. When the Commander had finished his business, Alkema led the way across. Blade Toto stood in the hatch and helped the last of them on board.

  “Are y’all right?” he asked Banks, seeing the bandage on her hand.

  “Yeah,” she assured him. He gently kissed her hand anyway.

  When all of his passengers were on board, he sealed the hatch, and his ship rose into the sky, which was rapidly turning into a narrow space between Gethsemane and the oncoming rogue planet.

  Phoenix – The very last Aves to leave Gethsemane was Trajan Lear’s ship Phoenix. Lear stood outside her as the last group of children were brought on board, in near pitch blackness illuminated in lighting that flashed like strobes, creating an eerie stop motion effect to the world around them.

  With less than a half and hour on the clock before impact, the last 73 children of Gethsemane were strapped into the Main Deck. The ship also contained three Medical Technicians, and four Warfighters. But not Miranda.

  Trajan Lear and Johnny Rook had gone into each of the shelters, shouting her name, and finding nothing. They had systematically gone through each of the other buildings in the complex and not found her there either.

  Now, they stood in the main courtyard, amid the fury of the storm the planet had thrown up as it lay dying. Johnny Rook shook his head and linked to Trajan Lear, having to shout above the storm. “She must have taken one of the other ships.”

  “She wouldn’t do that,” Trajan Lear shouted back at him. “She said she wouldn’t leave until the last group of kids was safe. We have to look for her!” He lifted the binocular-like device that hung around his neck up to his eyes and scanned the landscape. The Oculus was 200x more powerful then standard Spex implants, but in all the interference, the lightning, the blowing debris, it could distinguish nothing.

  “She had to have gotten on one of the ships,” Rook shouted. “Why would she be out in this? There’s no way.”

  “How can we be sure?” Trajan Lear shouted back at him. “We can’t leave her.” Johnny Rook took Trajan Lear by the head and forcibly turned his face upward. The storm clouds had parted. The rogue planet filled a third of the sky. Its craggy surface features and craters were visible even through the blowing dirt and sand. “We’ve got forty minutes to get off this rock,” Rook shouted at him. “If she didn’t make it off, we don’t have time to find her.”

  Trajan Lear was tempted to raise a protest, but he knew Johnny Rook was right.

  Reluctantly, he followed his friend into the Road Warrior and secured the hatch behind him. Rook put the truck in gear and guided it to the landing strip where one last Aves waited for launch.

  Trajan Lear re-boarded Phoenix as Rook took the vehicle around to the ship’s aft cargo bay. He waited for Rook to seal the cargo hold and come alongside. As he approached, Rook paused, looked up at the sky, took one last look at the desolate landscape, about to be gone, shook his head and came into the ship.

  They stripped off their weather gear and pressed their way through the crowded main deck. Trajan Lear climbed the short ladder to the Main deck with warfighter Johnny Rook behind him. Waiting for him was an unexpected co-pilot.

  “Can I sit here?” Aeric Tuck asked, running his hands across the back of the right-hand seat on the flight deck.

  Trajan Lear nodded. Johnny Rook strapped in at the tactical station. Technical Specialist Idlewild activated the Flight Engineering console.

  Trajan Lear abbreviated the pre-flight check. “Phoenix, condition all systems?” Phoenix replied. “All ship’s systems within acceptable flight parameters.”

  “Begin Main Engine sequence,” Lear ordered.

  “How long to impact?” Johnny Rook asked.

  Trajan Lear checked the chronometer. “Twenty-five minutes.” Johnny Rook shook his head and whistled. “This is way closer than I wanted it to be.” Trajan Lear paused. His hand was the control stick. All he needed to do was fire the lifting thruster and bring his ship up. He had to leave the planet. There was no option. He wasn’t completely sure they would make it as it was.

  He looked out through the canopy, at that darkened landscape thrown into shadow by the world about to smash into it.

  He knew for a fact that Miranda had not boarded any of the other ships.

  “We have to go,” Aeric Tuck reminded him.

  Trajan Lear fired the lifting thrusters.

  Struggling against gravity and the wind, the Aves rose into the turbulent sky. Lear calculated his course.

  There were only 10,000 kilometers left between Gethsemane and the Rogue Planet. He plotted the shortest way out.

  At 2,000 kilometers, Phoenix began to struggle. It was caught between two large planetary masses at very close and constantly changing proximity, which was playing havoc with the ship’s propulsion envelope. The Aves was bouncing like a ping-pong ball.

  From Trajan Lear’s perspective under the command module’s canopy, there was ground above him and ground below, just minutes from pancaking into each other, and he was trying to get his ship out through an ever narrower passage. He was also navigating a storm of rocks as the two planet’s gravitational field began interacting and the informal landscape-swap began in advance of the final smash-up.

  Aeric stared in wide eyed terror at the scene through the ship’s canopy. “Get below,” Trajan Lear ordered him. But the boy stayed put, figuring that not watching what was happening would not make it stop, and Lear did not pursue the issue.

  “Crap,” the Flight Engineer burst out.

  “What?” Trajan Lear asked,

  “The rogue planet’s still accelerating!”

  “What?” Trajan Lear and Johnny Rook said in unison.

  Something hit the underside of the port wingblade. The Flight Engineer checked his scanners. “Oh, now this… this… this pushes the boundary of really, really, bad.”

  “What?” Trajan asked again.

  “Look,�
� said the flight engineer.

  But Trajan could already see it through the display. Although the planets were still several minutes from impact, their mutual gravity fields had begun tearing each other’s crusts apart. Magma balls were falling from the rogue planet toward Gethsemane, igniting into massive fireballs as they hit the atmosphere. Rocks and dust were also falling upwards toward the rogue planet from Gethsemane. And in the midst of this fiery maelstrom was Phoenix.

  Ka-Thunk, another rock bounced off the dorsal hull. “Hang on,” Trajan Lear said.

  “Are you going to try something?” Johnny Rook asked.

  Trajan didn’t answer because answering seemed like a waste of time and concentration.

  He pushed the thrusters hard to maximum, intending to get out from under the Rogue planet before it got any worse. He concentrated hard on altering his perception of time, so that he could guide his ship through the rock-fight-of-the-gods currently taking place outside his canopy.

  Beneath him, giant fissures appeared in Gethsemane’s surface as tectonic stress gave way to gravity, and the crust was pulled apart like strips of old paper. A fleeting thought came to him, wondering what had become of Miranda, but he immediately put it aside and focused on the challenge of piloting his ship out, as two vast landscapes prepared to smack into one another.

  Trajan Lear pushed his ship’s engine to maximum, but could not seem to reach escape velocity. Space around the ship was distorting, changing somehow, and it was impossible to keep that systolic gravity envelope around his ship stable.

  Then, an alarm began to sound. Trajan Lear checked his scopes.

  “What is it?” Johnny Rook asked.

  “Remember your ambition to ride out the shockwave from the planets colliding?” Trajan Lear asked.

  “Yeah?” Rook replied.

  “Strap in, because it’s about to happen.”

  Chapter 16

  When the rogue planet smacked into Gethsemane, the crew of Pegasus saw a brilliant and silent explosion.

  Slowed down a few thousand times, what happened was this: The rogue planet knocked into the northern hemisphere, creating at its impact point into a concave dent thousands of kilometers across. The southern hemisphere perpendicular to the point of impact bulged outward and exploded as the insides of the planet were knocked out; like an over-ripe melon hit by a cannonball. A geyser of melted rock sprayed into space for thousands of kilometers. It would eventually be pulled back by gravity and rotation into a molten ring.