by G. H. Holmes
He'd see their real characters break out.
Ben sighed.
He'd be there to see them die, the men and women, boys and girls of the Terra Gemina Marine Detachment who'd meant to go to Kasaganaan. Within a few weeks it would all be over. And then he'd be alone again—with the debris they'd leave behind.
It's not gonna happen.
Ben massaged his forehead with his fingertips, closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. An iron fist was pumping his guts. But he had to go. He had no choice.
A rap on the door startled Ben.
"Come in!" he said.
Admiral von Schwarz peeked in.
"The hour has come." the admiral said. "Troops are waiting for their commanding officer to join them."
An iron band seemed to close around Ben's head and he began to shake.
Daniel von Schwarz noticed. He stepped inside and closed the door.
Ben lifted his head and inhaled briskly. His gaze sought the admiral's eyes.
Von Schwarz caught his glance and understood.
"You're not alone," he said. "If you get lost again, I'll find you again. I will not cease to seek you, Ben. I believe in you. You have much to give to mankind. But now you must go."
"Yes," Ben whispered. "Now I must go."
When they left the flag lounge, Lieutenant Stella Halvorsen was standing sentry by the door. She snapped to attention when the two senior officers came out.
"Ease," Ben said with a wave of his hand. Preoccupied, he didn't notice the stunning attractiveness of the young woman.
Stella Halvorsen wasn't used to being ignored, but she was way too nervous to think about that now. She stood a meter away from Ben Harrow—Harrow himself!—and felt his energy.
"I will escort you to headquarters on Transport One, S-Sir," she stuttered.
"Lead the way, Lieutenant," Ben replied calmly.
Immediately Stella turned and began to walk away.
The two senior officers followed her.
Ben's mood was gloomy and he fought the impulse to cut and run—until the tinted main door of the building opened before them and they entered the sunny afternoon of this splendid Terra Gemina day. The scent of spring lay in the air and Ben inhaled deeply. The planet had a sweet and pleasant atmosphere. The new Marine general looked at the swaying evergreens in the distance. By the entrance, palm trees were waving their fronds. The heat quivered on the tarmac.
Far away to his left, behind a steel fence, he saw the families who had come to see their soldiers off.
Families…
This was a good planet. These were good people. They deserved to be protected, and that was what this was all about, wasn't it? To protect people and to help them flourish, that was what his life was about.
The top of the black military hovercraft had been rolled back. Ben and Daniel von Schwarz sat down in the back and Lieutenant Halvorsen jumped into the passenger's seat. The ensign behind the wheel stepped on the pedal and they drove past the giant transport ships, whose thrusters were already glowing. They struck Ben like a giant animals, cats on the prowl, quivering with restrained power, ready to jump very high into the air. The warm wind on his face made him smile for a short second.
As they slid across the tarmac, the people behind the iron fence waved at them. Ben saw women with baby buggies and children, some of whom were waving little flags with the MARDET's colors on them.
They didn't seem to be afraid of him.
Ben leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. "Please drive over to those civilians, Ensign."
The ensign obeyed immediately and turned the wheel. When they had arrived by the soldiers' relatives, the hovercraft stopped and Ben stood up.
"Hello folks," he said with a joviality that he didn't feel. "Three days." He held up three fingers. "In three days we'll be back. I'll do everything in my power to bring your loved ones back in one piece."
As soon as he'd said it, he realized that this probably didn't calm a lot of the nervous spouses and friends on the other side of the fence.
"Now, don't let me worry you," Ben said. "We're not going into combat. We're just scouting out a space station. However, one thing I would like to ask you to do."
The listening throng became eerily quiet.
"When you think of it, would you mention us to Providence?"
The people relaxed and many nodded.
"Thank you." Ben sat down. "Ensign, drive on."
The driver stepped on the pedal and the hovercraft sped away towards the first transport in line. The craft elegantly slid to a halt by its front entrance and the officers got out. While Lieutenant Halvorsen stood by the door of the transport, Ben and the admiral shook hands. Then Ben turned around and stared at the huge side of the spaceship. He inhaled briskly and walked up the door-ramp with resolute steps.
Admiral von Schwarz watched him vanish in the black opening. Lieutenant Halvorsen followed her general, then the hydraulics lifted the ramp until it turned into the door and was sealed. Von Schwarz went and sat in the back of the hovercraft again.
"Let's get out of here," the admiral said and the hovercraft sped away, back to the spaceport building.
"Make sure everybody's harnessed in," Ben said after he was greeted by the headquarters staff.
His voice was scratchy, deep lines were etched in his face and his gray eyes were so piercing that Lieutenant Colonel Piero LeBlanc, executive officer under General Harrow, thought they might burn holes into the hull of the ship.
"Where?" Ben said.
"This way, Sir," LeBlanc said and began to walk the short distance to flag quarters right behind the ship's bridge, where he ushered Ben into his stateroom.
"I'm going to be alone until further notice," he said to the colonel by the door. "I will not come out to get harnessed."
A second went by before LeBlanc said, "Aye, Sir." The soldier saluted and closed the door.
When the command was given, the thrusters flared and whined and the three transports took off, one after the other. They quickly ascended through the cloudless sky, rose ever up into the atmosphere and in time reached the edge of space. It took the lumbering giants the better part of an hour until they'd reached the entrance to the pylon road out in the dark.
The monitors filling the wall in Ben's stateroom were blank. He'd switched them off as soon as the door closed behind his XO. Now he sat on the white chair, waiting, his hands grasping the armrest, his body tense. A black cloud filled his mind and paralyzed his thinking. The ship suddenly became very still. He could sense that it got ready to jump.
Then it began.
Ben barely stifled the scream that suddenly filled his throat when the telltale ghostly-cold wind swept over him as the spaceship was thrown into hyperspace. Almost immediately it began to vibrate insanely—as if it were gearing up to explode.
Ben lowered his head and closed his eyes.
The soldiers in the back sat strapped into their fold-down seats along both walls. They looked at one another wide-eyed when a peculiar sound out of nowhere began to fill the ship and made everybody's hackles to rise. It began faintly but got louder and louder until it filled their ears completely. An opera singer seemed to have gone mad and was now holding one eerie note forever without running out of breath. It had a human quality to it, but that couldn't be and that made the experience all the more unnerving.
Then the light changed.
Most soldiers had never been on the pylon road before and his was all new to them. They thought that something was wrong with their eyes when their world slowly acquired a neon-blue sheen.
Joel Anderson of Aleph Company was a neophyte, too. He looked at his left hand with big eyes. It was no longer the color of flesh, but had turned into a kind of glowing blue art sculpture.
He waved it.
His blue fingers left bright blue traces in the blue air.
Amazed, he looked down on himself. His boots, his pants, his hands and arms: everything was neon blue and he was
radiating. A mist seemed to rise from him.
Fascinated, he looked at his troops.
They had turned into ghosts.
The ship, too. It was a ghost ship now.
Awesome.
The coldness crept through his feet, up his knees and into his body—and suddenly Joel Anderson felt himself immobilized.
Then the nausea set in.
Joel wanted to cough, but found he couldn't. He tried to blink, but his eyelids wouldn't go down. He was about to choke. In fact, he knew he was going to choke to death if this continued for another second.
The ghostly glow faded and the ship and his men returned to normal. The opera singer's one-note song faded into the distance.
Joel took a deep breath and blinked furiously.
The troops whooped and screamed. Some kicked and tore at their harnesses. Joel saw a private down the line clutch his throat and gag. His own nausea disappeared.
Good thing this is over, he thought.
Abruptly they seemed to fall from a great height—complete with rising stomachs—and Joel wondered if the gravity generator had gotten damaged during the maneuver, but then they hit rock-bottom and the ship began to accelerate again like an old-fashioned roller coaster.
This really is like sitting on a stone that's skipping across a pond, he thought.
And he was right in a way.
Hyper-capable ships jumped into hyperspace for a short period of time before they left it again to prevent being turned into sheer, pure energy. The virtual pylons in space were the points where the stone—the ship— came out of hyperspace and hit Einsteinian space. The whole procedure was very much comparable to a pebble that skipped along on the surface of a pond—just that the pond was the universe and the pebble was a man-made object teeming with life and not a dead stone devoid of feelings.
The neon sheen came over him again.
The eerie opera singer was back, too. And soon the nausea made his stomach to heave once more. This time it seemed to take longer until they came back to normal space for a brief period of normalization.
This time the nausea didn't leave him entirely and Joel thought, If this goes on for six more hours, I'll be dead on arrival. He was not alone. They all suffered alike and shared his sentiment.
All but one.
No nausea plagued Ben Harrow. His trouble was of a different kind. With every bounce, his mood got darker, until he found himself singing with the eerie opera singer. When he noticed that he was screaming—not that anybody was able to hear him—Ben caught himself and stopped.
Nervously he waited for the deceleration. Each time they slowed down, left hyperspace and hit a virtual pylon, a lance was rammed through his heart, until the armrests that his hands clenched were in danger of being crushed. Each time the ship accelerated again, the lance was withdrawn and Ben breathed easy for a few seconds, before the dark cloud settled on him again.
For six hours Ben died a thousand deaths and was revived again before the ship arrived at its destination. The ship decelerated one last time and a soft ping resounded throughout the entire ship, signaling that they were there.
For a few minutes he just sat. They made it. They hadn't got lost.
Breathing deeply, Ben stood.
He looked at the objects in his hands: he'd broken off the chair's curved armrests without even noticing. He threw them down and wiped his hands on his blouse.
He steadied himself for a second before he left his stateroom and entered the ship's bridge.
"Well, we made it," he said with a wry smile.
Colonel LeBlanc, still harnessed in his chair, was positively blue in the face. His eyes were unfocused. He seemed to be fighting to stay awake. A soiled towel was in his hand.
When Ben saw the condition of his second-in-command, he said, "We've got half an hour before we reach the station. You'll be fine by then."
To the captain of the transport he said, "Keep us moving, Skipper."
The ship's crew—two pilots and one loadmaster—didn't seem as affected. But they were trained in simulators to cope with the stress of a ride like this. The Marines enjoyed no such luxury. They were expected to cope with situations like this by default.
"Aye, Sir," the pilot acknowledged. In spite of his training, he was white around the nose, too.
Harrow went over to the comm station, selected the universal channel and took the microphone that was going to make him heard in all three transports.
"This is the general speaking," he said with a calm and reassuring voice. "Men and women of Task Force Harrow, I know what you just went through. I assume that some of you are in a pretty sorry state right now.
"There's no shame in that.
"It's now safe for you to get out of your harnesses. We still have half an hour until we go to shore. Take a wash and get cleaned up.
"Carefully go over your equipment again and make sure all your weapons are set to stun and not to kill. Don't forget in the heat of the moment that this is a recon mission and not an assault. We're concerned about our neighbors; we're not on the warpath. General Harrow out."
Technically, his XO should have said all those things. But Ben didn't mind covering for him.
Ben's gaze went to the giant screen that gave the illusion of looking straight ahead into space. In truth, there were no vitrum windows on utility vehicles like this one. There weren't even any portholes. Everything was sensor-driven.
The yellow planet of Kasaganaan with its green belt around the middle and its long bodies of water hung before them, its lower part shrouded in darkness. The silent planet wasn't ugly, but there was something menacing about it, Ben felt. At least the galaxy made for a beautiful sky.
Thank God, we made it.
His serenity was coming back.
He had a job to do.
Chapter 11
When T1 approached Kasa Station, the total-wall screens were activated on all sides. The troops had the impression that the sides of the ship fell away and they now sat in space itself. Some harnessed themselves right in again, just to be on the safe side, even though there was nothing to be feared, of course. The screen that filled the ceiling was activated and blue and green and red stars began to shine up there, too.
A chill went down Joel Anderson's spine. Looking at the rows of men in front of him, he felt like a Viking in a ship of old plowing through a sparkling black sea. Just that they were space-going Vikings on an honorable mission and not hairy barbarians out for loot.
When he saw the curvature of the planet ahead, its solemn majesty made him forget the lingering stench of sweat and bile for a moment.
It was getting warm in the hold.
A rapid succession of slight shivers ran through the ship as the loadmaster back in the cargo bay fired the drones aboard T1 into space. The Marines saw the slender cigars cruise away. They'd immediately descend onto the planet, where they were to monitor the air space above the green belt—and Kasaganaan's bodies of water. Because, who knew what was lurking in those deep blue seas?
"There it is!" a private shouted and pointed to starboard, where the cube-like tangle that was Kasa Station came into view. It wasn't glowing yellow has its holograph had been, but rather a gunmetal gray with white and red and blue patches on the bigger modules. The sun glinted off its vitrum tubes and solar panels.
T1 was scheduled to deliver its passengers to the civilian docking station deep within the maze, about one kilometer away from the station's center. The general intended to drive right for the command area, which was a logical thing to do, Joel Anderson felt.
So far there were no threats. They were approaching the installation and no fighters were in evidence to try and intercept them.
The Marines heard thrusters flare in the hold's surround speakers as T2 passed them on their right side and swung down towards its destination. T2 would connect with the station down by the cargo bays and hangars in the tactical Southeast.
The buzz of thrusters sounded above them and everybody's
gaze rose to the ceiling, where T3 flew up and away from them. T3 was now on its way to the armory dome on top of the station in tac Northwest.
Still queasy in the stomach, Juggernaut sat in the cockpit of his prepped x-jet and looked down T1's narrow ejection channel, which gleamed like a shiny gun barrel. He could see the stars beyond the opening at the end. In a moment he'd be one of three pilots to provide fighter protection to the mission.
"Three, two, one," Juggernaut heard in his head, "and exit."
His engines began to whine and a shiver went through the big ship when the x-jet blasted off. Juggernaut raced down the ejection channel. The spiral of the barrel's striation gave him the illusion of going round and round.
Then he hung in space.
This wasn't half as bad as an alpha scramble on Terra Gemina. He worked his HOTAS-stick, flew an elegant loop and lined the jet up with T1.
The jet-channels of T2 and T3 slid open and their x-jets manned by Rambler and Gargoyle shot out into space, too, one after the other.
Instead of going into formation, all three fighters accompanied their respective transports to their destinations—which became a tricky thing for Juggernaut to do, because T1 soon entered the Kasa tangle and began to fly between the cubes and pipes and spheres that made up the station. In some spots the tubes were tightly woven, in others there was ample room for the big ship and its jet consort to maneuver.
Sometimes they passed vitrum tubes so closely that they could look into them. They saw deserted walkways and withered plants, but nothing else. There was no red fog in evidence and Ben didn't know whether this was good or bad.
This fog…
Perhaps it was an alien life form.
Maybe even a sentient one.
But that in turn would mean that it wasn't human in origin. Humans did not exist in gaseous form—apart from himself on rare occasions. Ben reminded himself that he didn't believe in true aliens. Crick and Hoyle were right, abiogenesis—life arising from dead matter—was a foolish notion. But life on earth had not come from outer space as Anaxagoras and Berzelius and Kelvin and Helmholtz and Crick and Orgel and Hoyle and their latter-day disciples surmised. Life had begun on earth and nowhere else.
