Freefall: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 1)

by Felix R. Savage

  And now he was gone. Unceremoniously bundled home to Japan, without even returning to JSC to say goodbye.

  “What happened, Rich?”

  “It was political,” Burke said. He looked tireder than ever these days. “You know the Chinese can’t stand the Japanese, and vice versa, right?”

  “Yes, and so?”

  “Something had to give.”

  “Don’t you just love international cooperation,” Hannah said, scowling at the dove logo on Burke’s desk calendar. “Why’d it have to be him?”

  “He slipped up. Did something that gave the Chinese an excuse to demand his removal from the mission. I do not know what that was, Hannah.”

  And then the dreaded, inevitable words:

  “Don’t ask.”

  Hannah asked, anyway, because asking was what she did, as an engineer. But no one had a satisfactory answer, and so she took the rest of the week off and flew home to California.

  She spent Thursday and Friday in a Santa Monica roach motel, getting sloshed.

  Walking on the beach, she analyzed her own slipshod approach to human relationships. Alcohol stripped away her illusions about herself. In vino veritas. A clear pattern emerged.

  Koichi—

  I never got close to him. All those late nights talking shop, and I never asked him anything about himself. He used to look at me with those lovely dark eyes and I—I would just look away. I didn’t want to—

  —end up sleeping with him—

  —ruin it.

  Inga—

  She was one of my first hires on the project. She was a friend. And when she quit—

  —when she called me from the airport, in tears for fuck’s sake—

  —I never followed up. Never called her again, because I was too busy.

  The pattern was letting go. Over and over again, Hannah let go of people, let them slip away without even trying to hold on.

  Ralf Lyons! Her closest colleague on the Juno project, he’d got fired for violating his NDA, and had Hannah phoned him to say hey, sorry you wrecked your career?

  Yes, she had. Eighteen months later. Which was when she found out he’d died. Gas leak in his apartment. He never knew a thing.

  Wine from the carton. Canned cocktails. Punching Mules, her favorite.

  She drank them all, and passed out on the beach. She woke up astonished to discover she had not been robbed, raped, or beaten up and left for dead.

  A half-circle of miniature teepees sat behind her on the sand—people wrapped in blankets. They were dark shapes in the light from the distant Santa Monica pier. A joint glowed. “Just watching over you, sister.”

  Hannah struggled to her feet. “Th-thank you,” she said.

  “Be careful now.”

  “I will.”

  “They’re coming.”

  Oh God. Whenever someone said they with that meaningful emphasis, it meant the aliens.

  “Be ready when that day comes, sister.”

  “I w-will. Thank you again.”

  Staggering away, Hannah wondered: was this what her life had come to—protected from muggers by walkers?

  While the fallout from the Earth Party’s mid-term election antics percolated through the political system, the full-time devotees of the movement seemed to have settled down to wait and see what happened next. Instead of occupying city centers, they were now trickling back to their mountain-top hideouts—or, more appealing in November, California beaches.

  Hannah circled around numerous groups of them as she stumbled back to her car.

  By the time she got there, a new resolve had taken shape.

  She might be guilty of letting people go, over and over, but there was one set of people she could not and would not let go: her sister’s family. Since the early death of their parents, Bethany and Hannah had been each other’s only family. Hannah loved Bee-Bee and her gang to death—even though Bethany knew just how to push her buttons—and it had been far too long since she visited them.

  She put the car in gear, resolving that she would go to Pacific Palisades today.

  It ended up being tomorrow, because she had to finish off the alcohol in her hotel room first. She was still sweating it out as she crawled in her rental car along the leafy road to her sister’s home. She figured it was better to show up early, and a little bit drunk, rather than later, when she might be too drunk to show up at all.

  “It’s eight in the flipping morning, Hannah!” Bethany cried, when she opened the door.

  Jetlag, Hannah said, making much of the two-hour time difference between Texas and California. She’d put Visine in her eyes before getting out of the car, but they still looked red, which would support her story that she’d just got off the plane.

  “Izzy isn’t up yet,” Bethany said. She wrapped Hannah in a hug. “Oh my God, I am so happy to see you! You couldn’t call to say you were coming? OK, OK, it’s fine. Never mind. You’re here.”

  Hannah relaxed into the hug with a profound sense of homecoming. Both sisters inherited heavy hips and large bosoms—their grandmother had dryly called it ‘famine insurance’—but Bethany had really packed on the pounds since having kids. Her hugs felt like being enfolded in the world’s coziest quilt, all the more so since she was wearing vast patchwork pyjamas, which she’d probably made herself. Hannah smelled laundry softener and milk, and belatedly held her breath lest Bethany should smell the booze on her, although she’d made sure to shower, brush her teeth, and gargle with Listerine.

  “Well, well, a stranger comes to town!” David Marshall, Bethany’s husband, ambled out of the archway leading to the open-plan living and kitchen area. On his hip sat a golden-haired cupid, thumb in mouth.

  Bethany and David had had a second child, to everyone’s surprise, when Isabel was eleven. It stunned Hannah to see how big Nathan had gotten since she last saw him, and furthermore to realize—this was really awful—that this was only the second time she’d seen him, in the flesh, since he was born.

  “Aw, bubbeleh,” she crooned, breaking away from Bethany. “Do you remember your auntie?”

  Nathan hid his face in his dad’s shoulder.

  “Can I hold him, David? Just for a minute …”

  But when they tried to transfer Nathan into Hannah’s arms, he started to wail. Hurt, Hannah retreated.

  “He just needs to get used to you,” Bethany said. “David, is that coffee I can smell? Perfect.”

  Sitting on the deck out back for a breakfast of freshly perked coffee, rolls, cantaloupe, and kefir, Hannah felt like she’d stepped into a dream world where there was no MOAD orbiting Europa. She played peek-a-boo with Nathan, and won a single heart-melting smile from him. She decided that her goal for the day would be winning her little nephew over.

  Isabel, now thirteen going on twenty, stumbled past them clad in a bathing suit, her short hair tousled from sleep. Without a word, she dived into the backyard pool and began to swim lengths.

  “An hour every morning,” Bethany said proudly, “and on weekdays she trains after school, too.” Bethany raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “It’s self-directed, Hannah. We don’t push her. Some things just come from inside.”

  “And I was worried about drinking and boys,” David joked.

  The reference to drinking made Hannah twitch, even though she knew that Bethany and David didn’t suspect she had a problem. “She’s driven,” she said, watching Isabel flash through the water. Up and down. Up and down.

  Although she didn’t say this to her sister and brother-in-law, Isabel’s swimming reminded Hannah uneasily of the Earth Partiers’ walking. On, on, on, going nowhere. Was Isabel swimming for hours every day—overtaxing her barely-teenage body, if Bethany was telling the truth about her training regimen—because there was an alien ship orbiting Europa? It was a horribly un-mathematical idea, but it wouldn’t let go, even after Bethany glowingly showed her Isabel’s trophies from junior high swim meets. Isabel was no ordinary swimmer, anyway.

 
“I’m hyper-competitive,” Isabel herself frankly acknowledged, at lunch. “I blame this guy.” She tweaked her father’s apron strings. He was BBQing, the Marshalls having organized an impromptu cookout in honor of Hannah’s visit. Neighbors and fellow parents of toddlers stood around the pool, chatting. “He made his first million before he was thirty, then started his own law firm. And I’m not gonna inherit a competitive streak?”

  “You better also inherit my talent with a grill,” David growled. He deftly thrust the tongs into his daughter’s hand. “Keep an eye on the bloody, dripping lumps of flesh while I get a beer.”

  Hannah grinned widely. They were such a lovely family. In that moment, she’d have given up everything to trade places with her sister.

  She trailed after David to the fridge in the kitchen. Bottles of chichi local microbrews, rosé, and sparkling white wine, most of it brought by friends, crammed the spaces in between Bethany’s tupperwares of specially prepared food for Nathan. David grabbed a bottle of something called Dead Ringer. “How ‘bout a tall one, Hannah?”

  She stood paralyzed, staring into the fridge.

  This perfect day needed a drink to make it complete.

  She could already taste that rosé, cool and sweet. That’s what she really wanted. Not a beer. Dared she ask for it?

  “Oh, forgot, you’re driving later,” David said, taking her silence for a no. “Got iced tea, iced coffee, diet cherry coke—that shit is disgusting, but don’t tell Bethany I said so!”

  Hannah laughed. “No, you’re right, it is disgusting. Maybe I’ll just have one. Same thing you’re having.”

  She didn’t even like beer. So she wouldn’t be tempted to have another one. That’s what she told herself.

  “Good call,” David said blithely. He plumped the cold bottle into her hand, and talked at length about the qualities of this beer—its rich caramelly taste, its toasted malt aroma—as they meandered back out to the deck.

  Everything he said was true. Halfway down the bottle, Hannah wondered how she could’ve been so wrong about beer.

  The afternoon became kind of a blur after that.

  At one point, she found herself trapped by the hedge with a man who used to be a partner in David’s law firm. He interrogated her about the SoD. Word had got out that she worked on the project, although Bethany and David had been great about not giving out any details, and in fact, not even they knew that she was the worldwide leader of the propulsion group. This guy wasn’t interested in the propulsion system, anyway. He wanted to know about the ship’s armaments.

  Everyone wanted to know about the armaments, despite NASA’s never having officially confirmed that the SoD would carry any.

  “Are they nukes?” he asked. “This thing does have a nuke, right? I mean, it runs on nuclear power!”

  “Yeah,” Hannah said. “The reactor puts out 1.1 gigawatts. If the heat rejection systems fail, the ship will be instantaneously reduced to an expanding cloud of atoms.” The bottle in her hand was empty. She wanted to get away from this guy and get another one.

  “So it’s like a self-destruct button?”

  “I guess you could put it like that,” Hannah said. The angel’s trumpets growing by the hedge smelled so intense, the scent was giving her a high. The water in the pool sparkled blindingly.

  “That’s good,” the guy said. “Because I guess you know the MOAD is a trap.” He leaned closer to her. His body odor overpowered the scent of the flowers. “They sent it here so we’d see it. And of course, being stupid fucking monkeys, we’re going to poke it …” His eyes were bright, crazy. “I hope at least one of the crew survives long enough to hit the self-destruct button.”

  Bethany materialized at Hannah’s side. She cooed, “I’m gonna steal Hannah, sorry, Craig. I hardly ever get to see her …”

  “We’re leaving L.A. next month,” Craig said. “I’ve got a place in Montana.”

  Towing Hannah away, Bethany whispered, “Poor Craig. He’d gone totally off the rails. I wish David wouldn’t have invited him. He feels sorry for him, I guess. I mean, he used to be a brilliant lawyer …”

  But it was clear to Hannah, as Craig stood alone, staring after the women, that he felt sorry for them. After all, they were going to stay behind and die when the SoD returned to Earth with its lethal cargo of—alien bacteria? Nano-goo? What did he imagine could have survived a journey of millennia? She wondered what difference he thought moving to Montana would make.

  And yet, if you believed in a looming threat to Earth, what else was there to do? A brilliant lawyer wouldn’t be able to settle for just walking.

  “Is he right, Hannah?” Bethany said. “Is the MOAD dangerous?”

  Looking into her sister’s frightened eyes, Hannah understood that the lovely normality of this cookout was a lie. Everyone was scared. Hell, how did Bethany and David rustle up twenty-five friends and neighbors at zero notice, anyway? Pre-MOAD, they would all have been busy on a Saturday, doing important stuff by themselves. Now they jumped at the chance to come together. Because they were scared.

  She said, “The whole ‘it’s a trap’ theory is so full of holes, I don’t even know where to begin. If the aliens who built the MOAD, if they had a specific vendetta against humanity, which is implausible for other reasons, they would’ve invaded us in the first place. Why over-complicate it by making us go to Europa to get infected with alien cooties, or turned into pod people, or whatever the hell these nutsos think is going to happen? No. The MOAD is a hulk, equipped with limited autonomous defence systems. It wound up here the same way driftwood winds up on a beach.”

  Bethany looked reassured. “Well, that makes sense when you put it like that,” she said. “I’m going to go check on Nathan. He’s had a long enough nap.”

  Hannah headed back to the table on the deck, where the drinks now stood in a cooler full of ice. The rosé had already been opened, so she didn’t feel bad about pouring herself a plastic cupful, and swiftly draining it (no one was looking, she was pretty sure) and then refilling the cup.

  She wandered over to the pool. Some grade-school-age kids splashed around in swim rings. Isabel was back in her swimsuit, patiently teaching a younger girl how to swim with her face in the water.

  It was unthinkable that all this should be wiped out.

  Alien cooties. Oy vey.

  Yet her own voice came back to her down a long tunnel of intoxication: They just wiped out our most advanced space probe …This is not going to end well.

  That’s what she herself had said, reacting to the death of Juno. She’d changed her mind when she got more information, as you were supposed to. But most people didn’t have the training to understand the data which proved the MOAD was a fatally damaged hulk. They just had to believe what the government told them. And with good reason, people had lost the habit of doing that.

  Bethany came out of the house, carrying Nathan, who was fretful after his nap. David took over. He swung Nathan up into the air until the toddler laughed. “Here’s your auntie, buddy. Want to hang with Aunt Hannah for a while?”

  Now cheerful, Nathan smiled and held out his arms to Hannah. Utterly charmed, Hannah set down her drink on the lawn table by the side of the pool and took him.

  “Is that wine, Hannah?” Bethany said disapprovingly. “Don’t you have to drive?”

  Damn. She should have had the sparkling white, then she could have passed it off as Sprite. Hugging Nathan, she said, “I can always stay over, can’t I?”

  Nathan started to squirm. Oh, no! Hannah held him in front of her face and cooed, “How did you get to be so cute? It should be illegal.”

  Nathan turned his face aside. Maybe he was smelling her breath. He let out a grumpy cry.

  Desperate to make him smile, Hannah resorted to what she’d seen David do. She lifted Nathan over her head and dipped him down again. That did it! “That’s fun, huh? Air Nathan, preparing for takeoff! Zzzzzoooom!”

  Nathan smiled widely. Carried away, Hannah started to sp
in in circles while making him fly like an airplane. “We’re off, we’re off to … where shall we go? Not Europa …”

  “Not too high,” Bethany cautioned.

  “We’re fine. Aren’t we, bubbeleh? Zzzzooomm!”

  Nathan laughed out loud, and Hannah slipped.

  The tiles around the swimming pool, where the children had been climbing in and out, were wet and slick.

  Her feet skidded out from under her.

  Nathan!

  Instinctively, she clutched him to her chest instead of using her hands to break her fall.

  Bethany screamed, far away.

  Hannah went down full length, hitting her legs on the lip of the pool. She pitched headfirst into the water, and lost her grip on the child. She sank, her arms empty.

  CHAPTER 38

  “Hannah! I’ve been trying to reach you all weekend. Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  Hannah thought about all the ways she could respond to Burke’s enquiry.

  She sat on top of a cliff at Point Dume, wrapped in a blanket. Far below, surf crashed onto the beach. She’d driven north along the Pacific Coast Highway and stopped when she saw a sizable encampment of walkers. She’d borrowed the blanket from them.

  “Just personal stuff,” she said eventually.

  *

  “You were drinking!” Bethany had screamed at her, in front of all their guests.

  When Hannah and Nathan fell in the pool, David had dived in after them, followed by several others. Isabel—already in the pool—had rescued her little brother before he had time to swallow much water. Turned out she had a lifeguard certificate, too. Nathan had never been in real danger.

  But that, understandably, did not appease Bethany.

  “I slipped,” Hannah said numbly. “The tiles are wet. You should get terracotta.”

  Cuddling her squalling, terrified son, Bethany yelled, “You did not fucking slip because we were too cheap to get fucking terracotta! You slipped because you were fucking drunk!”

  Complete silence. Hannah’s gaze drifted to David. His mouth hung open in unfaked astonishment. He hadn’t known.