Astral Fall

by Jessica Mae Stover

  “They are going to shatter it.” Thwip ran the numbers on how fast the civilians were removing, moving, and attaching each maglev, added what his hardhood told him about maglev power transfer time, activated a countdown on his IF, and pulsed it to Disar so she could see.

  “No scan on the friendlies,” Disar said.

  Why are they holding us back? Who else could—The answer was suddenly obvious—

  There’s an actual elite unit in there.

  Thwip pulsed another emergency signal. “Thwip to Sentinel. Thirty seconds to aquarium rupture. If friendlies are in trepid, advise emergency withdrawal.”

  “Negative RL unit. SJ unit will not withdraw. Hold your position.” The high voice over chatter wasn’t Sentinel or Captain Aullust—it was unfamiliar.

  Disar’s eyes snapped upward to meet Thwip’s through their IF connection. Thwip pulsed her a gold signal to confirm his surprise. P2 Command had directly responded on the RL loop and acknowledged that the unit inside was elite.

  “Twenty seconds,” he said, looking at the faces of the hostages in the unhashed scan view. Children.

  “Still no scan on friendlies. There’s no time.”

  He shared her grimness, shivered at the thought of the civilian body count. They’ll just be doing damage control after the act. He didn’t want to watch the next fifteen seconds.

  “Friendlies might have opted to hold back and defend the freighter.”

  Chief gestured, waved his security buster. The hostages backed away from him and the maglevs on the aquarium wall. A woman tripped and fell backward in the scuffle. Chief turned. His mouth moved, yelling something to the other targets. Thwip pulsed to move the unhashed scan in closer to see if his hood could pick up a read on Chief’s lip movement, but still found he had no access.

  “Ten seconds.”

  The capture surged forward. Thwip thought he had pulsed it out of control, but then two arms protected by the seamless knit of a trepid suit came in and out of view in a sprinting motion, and he understood that they were seeing from someone’s hardhood.

  Disar’s hand shot out and grabbed his forearm. “That’s the SOC of an elite friendly!”

  In extreme close-up Thwip saw the shock on Chief’s face as the SJ elite seized him, pushed him backward across the rink with enough force that his feet left the ground, and slammed him against the rink’s outer healiglass, just as a flurry of flashes struck the glass. The glass fractured, they crashed through—it happened in a split second—and the two were on the other side. The pressure walls activated behind them, sealing the rink and hostages inside. Chief and the SJ drifted together, furiously grappling with one another, in space outside the rink. Chief twisted, slipped out of the SJ’s grip. Thwip now had a visual on them from the waybob and could see unique pointed elite honor markings extending from the SJ’s hardhood.

  Horns.

  He dismissed the rink’s scans and split his IF between his and Horns’ point of views so that he had two angles devoted to the assault.

  “Stray fire warning!” Disar called. Weapons proximity warnings framed their IFs in red. Chief fired his security buster point-blank into Horns’ chest. Equations of motion exploded on Thwip’s IF in a spray of numbers that haloed the two, identifying the force on all concerned mass.

  The force of the blaster sent both backward. Horns maneuvered sideways just enough to dodge Chief’s second shot—then seemed to reconsider, changed course, allowed the trepid suit to take the second shot in the ribs, spinning Horns out of backward movement.

  The third shot took Horns in the shoulder. It wasn’t enough to penetrate the trepid suit, but the force flung Horns into the rink’s outer wall. The blaster’s recoil from the rapid succession of shots propelled Chief backward in the opposite direction. He turned to face the way he was going and used the azure suit’s propulsion to accelerate. Horns pushed off the wall and pulsed the trepid suit’s superior mechs, propelling toward Chief. Chief turned, aimed to fire, but Horns flipped over him, grabbed his neck with both hands, unlatched the azure hardhood from its suit, and ripped it off, fast and raw, spacing him.

  Chief’s eyes rolled, his skin space-hickied—he clawed at his chest—

  The sound of cheers flooded Thwip’s aurals—the voices of Sentinel, the other RL officers, and support crew, coupled with applause.

  Humans can survive exposure to space if they receive intervention within ninety seconds. Horns will capture him to use as an intelligence asset.

  Horns spun Chief’s inferior hardhood in space between them like a top, watched as Chief panicked and convulsed. Finally his body floated, still, dead.

  Thwip continued to view the scene via Horns’ standard operational capture, a close-up on the rotating hardhood and the dead pirate’s face, blue, bloated, and exposed to space radiation.

  His IF went black. Command had cut their access. Thwip felt his gloved-palm vibrate. Disar looked down at her hand as well, and up at the humm freighter. It wasn’t adrift—someone had secured it safely back in its locks.

  Thwip and Disar shifted through the scans they could still access, and Thwip pulsed the capture view SEC OVERHEAD to center. The pressure walls had activated when the exterior healiglass broke, so the once transparent floor and walls were now a thick grey. Red smears scanned in on the floor, marking the last known position of the other targets. The maglevs lay disconnected on the rink. Civilians huddled together, confused. Scattered shoes and other loose items shifted from their rink-side storage cubbies now littered the scene. The café entry to the galleria had been reopened. The healiglass that Horns had pushed Chief through appeared smooth and undamaged.

  Thwip scanned the exterior of the dock to watch the extraction, but Horns was gone, as was the pirate’s body and hardhood. He used every scan mech available on the roselaurel hardhoods and suit system, yet the surrounding space yielded no signs of Horns, of the rest of the elite unit, or of any craft that might have retrieved them. It was as if they’d never been there.

  Thwip exchanged a look with Disar.

  “That was fucking beautiful,” he said.

  Behind a transparent security wall, near the far wall on the other side of the hangar-size personal tech lab, an arrow suit lay prone, inactive and alone, dwarfed by the size of the diad arc table it rested on. Diad tables were built for war and could hold fifty suits in repair at a time, although this one had never been called to purpose. The suit’s right side gaped open from chest to thigh, slashed ragged from combat. Raised clasps held the joint of the right elbow at an angle above the table. The elbow’s outside layer lay on the table in strips, like flayed skin discarded, leaving the interior construct exposed. Four instruments were pointed at the suspended joint, as though a team of medicas had abandoned a patient's arm mid-surgery. Thwip scanned as much detail as he could from the outside.

  Disar yawned. “Sentinel hasn’t used our tethers in weeks.”

  The yawn was contagious. Thwip looked at her through their hardhood IF connection and stretched. Her eyes darted back and forth in light concentration as she followed the next maneuver he showed her on the cramped flat arc table assigned for his use in the front of the lab. There were three blank spaces next to her; Sentinel, Tomtom, and Pilo had disconnected once they’d docked at P2. Despite their absence, Disar muted her aurals, allowing only Thwip. She gestured for him to do the same toward her, so that they could hear one another without the possibility of being overheard. He did.

  “We’ll be out of roselaurels soon. Maybe tomorrow. We’ll be officers, ready for elite unit assignment.”

  She says it so casually.

  Over the past few years they’d pushed through academy and elite pretraining, then qualified for the elite consideration challenge. Completing the challenge put them into the elite recruit selection pool. Those selected from the pool became elite recruits and went on to indoctrination boot. Space school came next, followed by unit, tech, and specialty training, while many around them washed out at every phase. They
’d done well enough in UTS training to pass into roselaurels and train on live missions. If deemed worthy, they would graduate, receive their custom trepids, and form an elite unit with some of their fellow recruit group members.

  Until a few months into UTS, every day of training I thought I was going to wash out, that I wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t see the end. Just one foot in front of the other. One sim at a time. Day by day.

  Disar glanced up in response to Thwip’s silence, saw his doubt. “The criteria for shedding roselaurels might be secret, but officers show subtle changes in attitude before they advance someone. Sentinel could have chosen any two roselaurels to fill out her unit tonight and observe the Leto Cross mission. She chose us. And we haven’t been debriefed yet. Something’s happening right now.”

  He laughed quietly.

  She paused. “What?”

  “I was thinking. If I told my parents that I’m in the elite program”—Thwip smiled—“they’d never believe it. They’d say I wasn’t serious enough for this kind of work. They’d take it as a joke.”

  “A joke?”

  “I wasn’t the most motivated kid. Take the bananas and chicken crackers.”

  “Bananas and chicken crackers? What’s that code for?”

  “It’s not code. Why would a kid use military-style codes?”

  Disar refocused on the flat arc.

  “My parents are grocers. I used to switch the product numbers. When customers pulsed for bananas, they’d get chicken crackers.” He laughed. “I used to do it to an old guy named Mr. Zenra, just because he had this scrunched up angry scowl, like a cartoon character. Then I’d switch the numbers right, so when he pulsed again for bananas, he got bananas. He’d watch other customers go first, but I’d make it so the error only happened to him. One time he staked out the bananas for an hour, watching shoppers pulse for them successfully, and when he finally tested it himself, I swapped the chicken crackers in. You should have seen his face, Disar. He couldn’t figure it out, he—” Thwip stopped because Disar didn’t seem interested. “Anyway, that’s the best behavior I exhibited prior to academy.”

  “But your parents know you got into a top military academy at a young age.”

  “Yeah, they were shocked when I showed them my acceptance. Had a teacher help me apply and waited until I had evidence—they wouldn’t have believed me otherwise. They thought I’d faked the acceptance notification—I had to have the teacher come home with me and verify it in person. You would have thought I’d single-handedly won the Constellation Championship, as excited as they were when they realized it was true.” The thought of it brought another smile. “Academy is one thing, but being a best-of-the-best elite? I’ve pranked them too much for them to believe that without evidence.”

  She synced their hardhood views. “I’ve done it.” She looked at him, as though making a decision. “The lowest rank in my extended family is air captain, held by one of my cousins. They nearly disowned him when he didn’t make it into flight school on the first round of selection.” She shrugged. “I’m tenth-generation military. A thousand years of honorable service unbroken. It’s expected.” She resumed her work. “For my parents, I’m elite or I’m nothing.”

  “But they’ll never know if you’re assigned to a unit, because that’s secret. Won’t they disown you if you wash out and also disown you if you don’t wash out, thinking you washed out? They think you’re just an intern-level analyst on some small rural base. At least, that’s the cover P2 gave me.”

  “They’re familiar with the military’s cover story protocols—they’ve been through them too. They know I’m in training.”

  “Just like you know we’re almost out of our roselaurels and into a unit?”

  “Yes.” She continued practicing sync mechs, separating and syncing their IF views over and over, faster each time. Then she stopped. “You were right about the friendlies in position being an elite unit.”

  “You were right about the internal movements.”

  She flicked her hand dismissively. “If I thought it was crucial to tactical op, then I would have interrupted my main effort and reviewed my SOC of that moment.” She looked up at him, evaluative. “You somehow exceeded my performance tonight.”

  “Goddamn, and I thought my parents had a low bar for me. Syncing IFs is about as impressive as walking.”

  “That’s not what I meant. How did you know so soon that there were elites in there? Why did you request a gear refit or to go in suitless, and then urge Command to pull that unit out?”

  He returned his attention to the flat arc. “It’s not something that I was briefed on, so I don’t know that I’m clear to tell you.”

  “Then don’t. Secrecy only works when compartmentalized without exception, and I th—” Disar gasped.

  Thwip’s body locked in position as one of their trainers remote-seized their tethers, ripped his IF from his control, rendered his pulse gloves useless. The mute function on his aurals lifted.

  Disar struggled to bury a look of indignity that would have made him laugh, if he weren’t so annoyed himself. He relaxed and waited.

  A few minutes later, Commander Sentinel entered the lab, still in her trepid suit. Her face appeared smooth and ageless on his IF. Pilo and Tomtom followed her entrance, their faces also appearing in the loop. Thwip placed Pilo at around fifty, but it was difficult to be sure, given the amount of treatments that elites received, and that Pilo had the personality of a two-hundred-year-old. His eyebrow flickered in irritation, like a cow flicking its ear at a fly.

  “It’s not a question of ability,” Pilo intoned, mid-argument.

  “It’s always a question of ability,” Tomtom replied. He turned his head side to side, scanning, and the sledgehammer carved into his hardhood came into view.

  Pilo’s fingers moved as he multitasked on his IF. “Thwip and Disar have already completed a successful target-clearing mission.”

  “They haven’t been through a target-clearing mission with hostages.” Thwip heard the amusement in Tomtom’s voice. Sentinel had at least twenty years training elite forces under her hood. Tomtom had two. “Maybe Command didn’t think the youngbloods could handle it.” He directed a threatening grin and a wink at Disar and Thwip. “Kill a hostage and you wash out!” Thwip forced himself not to chuckle. Tomtom was their drill instructor, an unforgiving daily taskmaster, but when assigned to RL missions they were temporarily part of his unit team, and he turned more toward bantering with them, as he did with Pilo, including them in RL unit discussions. If Disar’s right, then soon I’ll be their colleague. How will that transition work? Thwip envisioned himself jokingly telling Tomtom to shut the fuck up without the risk of repercussion, and bit his lip to keep from smiling.

  Pilo cleared his throat. “What I meant is that we could have cleared that mission as a unit, however—”

  “That’s all I wanted you to confirm, Pilo. I ran these two nobodies into the ground and built them up into roselaurels. I picked them for this mission. Command sidelining us better not be a comment on their ability. We can all ghost a couple handfuls of pirates as well as any other unit.” Thwip coughed to hide his smile. From Tomtom, that was as close to a compliment as it would get.

  Commander Sentinel’s patient response was mostly directed at Thwip and Disar. “In this instance an observational demo was worth more than the in-op experience. SJs are rarely base-side.”

  Using the tether, she stood Disar and Thwip at attention. She pulse-sealed the entry closed, and dimmed the images on Thwip’s flat arc. Pilo set to work on a nearby arc wall, and Tomtom leaned a shoulder against the entry’s frame. Sentinel moved Disar around the flat arc like a puppet, stopped her next to Thwip, and stood across from them, her hands clasped behind her back.

  “You’re working together on RL missions for now. Permission granted to disclose all information with each other. Speak freely.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s unpack what you observed at Leto Cross. W
hat was the principal challenge to mission success?”

  Disar responded. “Collateral damage to civilian hostages.”

  “Certainly a significant factor. RL Thwip?”

  Thwip hesitated. “Water.”

  “Explain.”

  “Yes, sir. RL suits are basically low-tech trepids. They have the same materials, technology, and logic, though with less functionality. But the exosuits of both must be exactly the same level of tech, because they have the ability to reknit at a nano-level, and even to heal or regenerate in patches after damage. That’s not something you can or would want to scale back or simplify for recruits to train in. For the same reason, both roselaurel and trepid exosuits have the same construction and capability when it comes to radiation management. So there was a high risk of mission failure while wearing elite combat tech with so much water present.”

  “You didn’t log a direct concern about water and tech during your observational sitrep.”

  “Yes, sir. It wasn’t our mission and I thought it might be restricted information.”

  “Explain how you arrived at your risk assessment. In detail.”

  “Yes, sir. To penetrate space-grade healiglass requires multiple single-focus, rapid-fire shot sequences. You could blow it up, of course, but to get through it without destroying the structure is challenging, because space-grade healiglass, like trepid, stops a single talon shot and re-knits quickly. And as with the techs who built RL and trepid exosuits, one of the primary concerns of the engineers who use healiglass in space structures is radiation management. It protects against cosmic hazards and was invented for military-caliber defense. That’s public knowledge, even though the technology and its application is proprietary and classified, so I know a fair bit about the glass’ capabilities, which means that I know that the glass tech relies on Walalin’s simple theory of excitation.

  “According to Walalin, healiglass must perform certain functions while sacrificing others. If you want a dynamic glass to function well in liquid environments, then you have to give up some of the solid-matter manipulation and radiation management, and if you want it to have superior defensive capabilities, including reknitting and radiation management, then you have to give up functionality in liquid environments. So I assumed that Walalin applies to healiglass, and that if Walalin applies to healiglass, then it must also apply to trepid. Defensive protection is too important to elites; Command would never sacrifice the reknitting, radiation management, and other high-caliber defense specs on trepid. So as with healiglass, they must have given up the liquid specs. Therefore trepid does not function when submerged in water—and that’s also why the aquarium glass wasn’t healiglass.”