Astral Fall

by Jessica Mae Stover

  “We were both chosen as unit commanders.”

  On his IF, Charis lowered her eyes, as though she’d interrupted whatever she was doing to listen.

  “Events are abrupt in this line of work. Develop a strong plan, but stay flexible. The only constant you can count on is your unit.”

  Thwip nodded. The moment felt right. “You have the best PTs available to handle your suit ops. You’ve said that you didn’t recruit me because of my specialty. I didn’t have a particular skill that you needed specifically for this mission. You’d already prepped the plan to a unit of four. By adding someone who hasn’t been in-unit for ten years, you had to give up your status as a black-skull unit, delay departure eighteen hours, and make revisions to your mission plan to accept, transition, and include me. Why?”

  Crave watched him, expressionless.

  If I could read anyone’s mind, I’d choose his.

  “Plans are good. Flexibility—agility—is better. I didn’t know we needed you until I walked by the RL briefing room and knew you existed.” Crave rapped Thwip twice on the forearm. “Unit be advised: I’m heading up to the oh-command deck.”

  He left physically, but Thwip asked him one more question through the loop. “Do Nova units ever collaborate on missions?”

  “Rarely.”

  “But you’ve seen her or him—your best friend from academy—since you were assigned and split up?”

  “Unit-restricted intel: yes. We make a point of it.”

  The sound of movement pulled at Thwip. His ear now startled him at times, thanks to a new temporary treatment at the hands of Blyku and Sanders. In the commissary he’d noticed that if he concentrated, he could hear whispers from the other side of the module.

  If this treatment becomes public, it will change society the same way scan tech did. Donner would probably stroke out if she knew about it.

  He pulsed through his IF, scanning for the source of the noise.

  “Heard you.”

  The floor opened next to him. “Not before I wanted you to. Full coverage you can count on.” Charis pulled herself from the flooring and mimed pulsing a talon, as if snipering imaginary enemies threatening Thwip.

  “This is what you do during personal research time?” he asked.

  “Trying out the emergency deck connections. Not much to do on this bob without my weapons deck. Ready?” The floor panel sealed with a series of faint pops as she smoothed it into place.

  “Yeah, almost A-STAT.”

  She stood with her hands on her sheaths. “Tough intel about your recruit group.”

  “Then why are you smiling?”

  “Severity of the situation aside, what Crave didn’t say”—she glanced to Crave on her IF, but if he was listening, he didn’t react—“is that he thought your little honeypot tactic was funny.”

  Thwip grinned. She refused to indulge him by mirroring his reaction, instead shaking her head in reply. “Not so much the content or the execution, but the idea that of all the tactics you might have chosen to catch a saboteur, you wrote love letters—and it worked. Crave walked by the briefing room and overheard Sawyer yelling about love letters, requested the letters, and could hardly talk, he was laughing so hard when he brought you into the departure module. It took us twenty-two seconds to figure out what was happening and who you were. You didn’t even have a suit on, and you scanned as nervous. I thought you were an undocking loader.”

  The image of Crave laughing seemed impossible to Thwip. He walked with Charis toward the sleeping module, stopping after exiting to seal the 0-lab for what would be the last time before mission began. She waited.

  “Well, as you heard, it’s doubly funny now. It was a theoretical, but I agonized over it, completely fell for it. All of that work for fucking nothing.” They walked. “Can’t blame you for not wanting me in the unit. I thought Command was washing me out.”

  She stopped and touched his arm, stopping him as well, and turned to him, her eyebrows knitting up her forehead.

  “I didn’t want anyone. Which was what we’d decided months prior. I didn’t know anything about you, didn’t even pull your data. Yes, I did argue against recruiting you, but it wasn’t an analysis and rejection of your ability and skill set.”

  “So you were wrong,” he ribbed her, grinning.

  Charis resumed walking. “I’d swear on every stone on Earth that God sent you to us. I’m sure of it now.”

  Thwip didn’t know what to say to that. Resisting the urge to diffuse it with a joke, instead he rapped her twice on the forearm, and saw her smile, small and even. They turned right, traveling deeper into the V-0.

  “A small part of me wants to pray that tomorrow they read us on entry and move offensively so that we can have some fun. It’s been a while since I had a scrimmage.”

  She was excited, but his attention hitched on the two religious references she’d just made. “Communion seaweed,” he said.

  “Yeah? I’ve always got some on me. You want?”

  “You have enough?”

  She pulsed and unsealed her quick innie reach, fished a strip out of her suit’s internal kit, handed it to Thwip.

  Better be certain before I risk my guess. Thwip dropped the strip of communion seaweed. Charis lunged quick, snatching it out of the air and cradling it as though it were precious.

  “Communion seaweed from Earth. Endless supply. Along with a custom storage device.”

  Charis stood with her hands cupped in front of her, looking at him via their IFs, and put away the strip of seaweed through her suit’s innie reach. “Unit be advised. Thwip guessed my sweetener.”

  Crave’s eyebrows rose slightly.

  Skregs looked smug. “Wheck, I thought you were close to it?”

  “I had its general category correct, but hadn’t yet deduced the particulars. Using your sweetener in the open this early in the game; risky, Char. I like it.”

  Charis pulsed them all an image of a murky sea drenched in sunlight. “It’s pure Communion, from the true Nativity: the source of humanity, from the oceans where we were created, and it’s harvested by human hands. I always wanted to have it, but it wasn’t possible due to resources, so all these years I packed the tank-farmed brand most people use and settled for the symbolism.”

  “My parents are grocers,” Thwip said. “When they can get it, they special-order it for a few customers. Some of them are near poor, but they’ll spend every credit they have to get a couple strips. We were torn on selling it to them.”

  “It’s sacred, and only found in one place in the entire universe,” Charis said. “You can’t put a price on that.”

  “Yet somehow they always manage to,” Crave said. “You’re on the defensive now, Wheck.”

  Wheck nodded. “One point to Thwip, one to you. Two points still available, yours and mine. It’s still anybody’s game.”

  Charis squinted at Crave as though she might discern his sweetener by force of mind. He shook his head at her, and she smiled, and then rapped Thwip twice on the forearm.

  Wheck went on, “Crave’s right, though, in that I can’t guess my own sweetener, since I already know it, obviously, so I can’t use my own for a point. With everyone else’s already guessed, the best I can do is to guess his, scoring one to tie him and Thwip, and ensure that no other player scores two points, so that we have to create a tiebreaker.”

  If I guess Crave’s or Wheck’s, then I might actually win.

  Wheck and Skregs were already inside the sleeping module, and Thwip crossed the threshold imagining himself hanging the UNP flag over Sovrin One while announcing victory. Charis lingered by the entry. “Last chance to swap wake duty with me, Crave. Can some rest before you meet the general tomorrow. Your ambition, not mine.”

  “Good dreaming,” Crave replied, declining her offer from his position on the 0-command deck. Charis sealed the entry to the secure sleeping module, and they climbed into their sleep holds. She tossed Thwip something—he snatched it in midair.

/>   “P2 trepid techs invented the storage for me.”

  Thwip scanned in her communion seaweed container, pulsed it open and closed. “It’s basically like an upgraded thinbents case, since the regular version isn’t stealth-code, so Novas can’t pack them. They have too many scan cues to be picked up on, even in a trepid’s internal kit. I see what they did.” He tossed it back to her. “If you need a replacement, I could make it.”

  She caught it, pulsed it open, took a strip from inside, pulsed her hood mask back, and lay back in her sleep hold, chewing, her eyes pressed close. The sound of tiny crunches nibbled at the darkness.

  Thwip reclined in his own hold, and felt a surge of nerves before his chem balancers compensated, and he was drifting. He pulsed his IF status to private, and the unit blinked out on his IF as they did the same. The commencement of numbers from Crave’s mission countdown was the last thing he saw as his eyes shut.

  Phase one. Seven hours from now. Ridrain.

  In the module they slept, dreamt, and woke together, Thwip with roses on his mind. A garden of them, red and dry, eternally preserved. When he touched them, they fell apart, and the wind carried them—His eyes opened. The dream faded. Fifteen minutes later he, Charis, Wheck, and Skregs walked the V-0’s corridors in a diamond formation, wearing their trepid suits, carrying their hoods. Thwip brought up the rear, working his final PT diagnostic.

  Bio systems were next. Body maps, chem balancers, essential elements, formulas for generating H2O and patch materials, enriched air blends…

  Thwip rapped Charis twice on the back of her neck to confirm that her gear was golden. The red knot of hair tied at her nape disappeared as she pulled her hardhood over her head and face. The fletching etched into the sides of her hood caught in the violet prep lights of the corridor, creating the passing illusion of feathers aflame.

  Five rhythmic paces later Thwip rapped Skregs and Wheck, and they pulled their hoods on in concert with him. As the ship’s corridors branched into a Y shape, without breaking stride the four converged with Crave, and the diamond formation widened in the middle by one.

  The SI suit Crave wore looked weak compared to his usual gear, and out of place against his trepid hardhood and the rest of the unit. Thwip looped the unit, and chatter came through. With all five hooded, suited, and sealed, the prep lights winked out. The Vesper-0 was dark; they’d see via their scans.

  Thwip reviewed Crave’s basic vital bio sys on the SI, made sure his hood was connecting to the suit without issue. He hurried through his battery of tests, moving on next to a radiation management test.

  Wheck pulse-signaled that the UNP forces were prepared for them to slip through the outer defenses. Thwip checked the mission count. Ridrain Two would drop a window in their defensive net for three seconds, and they’d dash into the base’s controlled space while the base simultaneously sent ships to engage Sovrin Two’s forces as a cover distraction.

  Wheck orchestrated control of the Vesper-0 via his hood IF as he walked the corridors, with Crave and Charis at either side, watching space on their hardhoods and running defense. Skregs was on point, protecting their way on-ship, which seemed excessive, but was protocol. Thwip trailed them, listening to mission chatter and finishing his tests, his core fluttering with adrenaline that his chem balancers smoothed away.

  “Entering ODIZ,” said Wheck. “Defense net replaced. Ridrain Two confirms Ridrain One notified and prepared for docking.”

  “Space and atmo clear,” Charis reported. “Five stack of troyers inbound to meet R2’s diversion attack. Holding position. No engagement.”

  “Good,” Crave said. “They don’t know we’re here.” He clapped Wheck on the shoulder.

  Wheck exchanged chatter with terrestrial base command and came back with no issues to report. They entered the docking module just as the ship moved into the planet’s atmosphere, passing from Ridrain Two’s protected zone into Ridrain One’s.

  “All suits and PT systems golden,” Thwip said. “Holding on visuals.”

  Skregs accepted a secure link from the base, used it to scan the terrain and brought up the view on the module’s arc wall for the five of them to see.

  The scan showed snow-peaked, grey-based mountains misted in drifts of clouds. A close grouping of ivory- and sand-colored towers shot out of the mountain’s rock. The cupped formations around Ridrain One looked fingerlike, as though the mountain were the palm of a giant hand outstretched and the base a clump of rockets it was trying to grab before they launched and escaped its grasp. Landing platforms connected the base’s tiered structures, the largest of which was the infamous rise balcony, protected by a shieldguard invisible to the naked eye and known for its dramatic views of the Red Theater that lay far below at the mountain’s foot. Most of Ridrain One was built into the mountain and then shielded in layers. Generally, heavier location scans had a limitation of about a kilometer deep, and that was before other antiscanning tactics that Ridrain deployed. Enemies knew the base was there in the mountains, but during an attack they could not mark its exact location, or, more importantly, get a picture of what was inside. The surrounding mountains dwarfed the base, so when the hashes on the scan revealed its enormous size, Thwip transferred the numbers to his IF to get his head around how large it was.

  “After P2, is Ridrain the largest UNP military installation?”

  “Affirmative,” Skregs said.

  “Second largest that we know about, anyway,” said Charis. “I knew it had to be large, but I didn’t know that it was larger than Triven.”

  Crave nodded in silent agreement.

  The rise half ringed the base on the outside of its lowermost tier, and on the scan Thwip could see the large numbers and symbols for emergency landing and other operational markings on the rise balcony’s floor.

  Sovrin One was set into a chain of lower mountains on the other side of the grey, barren valley known as the deck, and utilized the same depth-limit techniques as Ridrain to limit hostile scans. Skregs attempted to locate it, but failed and resorted to using Ridrain’s projections on where the base was, filling the arc with their intel and mapped images. What little they could see of the Lucian’s key terrestrial base looked like gigantic knuckles stacked in rows. The thin amount of intel Ridrain had available on Sovrin One after all these years was sobering, and indicative of a worthy opposing force. The unit was in the only protected space inside an enemy territory that spanned the world.

  “Important tactical question,” Thwip said, rapping Skregs’ shoulder.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Is that where I hang the flag?”

  Wheck snorted a stifled laugh that made Charis chuckle quietly.

  Skregs threw an arm around Thwip. “We might have to make a side wager. And be careful, because that’s Charis’ knowing chuckle. You ready to guess Wheck or Crave out, Char?”

  She waved a dismissive hand.

  The Vesper-0 drew within weapons range of Ridrain, and Skregs returned to scanning their docking approach. The view shifted back to Ridrain’s colossal towers, which filled the arc, shimmering in the afternoon daylight. Thwip’s eyes widened with their approach, as though it were possible to take in the monolithic base from this close all at once. The base’s design reminded Thwip of Crave’s hardhood wings: bold and intimidating, yet also elegant.

  The pressure of Wheck’s hand lit on Thwip’s body map as they each placed a hand on the shoulder of the next, forming a huddle, syncing their visuals. Their faces came through on the innerfaces of one another’s hardhoods.

  They waited.

  The ship passed into the base.

  The count-up locked, the ship docked, and they broke the circle, still connected in a way that transcended touch. Thwip ran his hands over the honeycombed stripes on his hood.

  Charis pulse-locked her gravis. Skregs hashed in a scan of their position, and Wheck logged their completed flight path, fidgeting with the data. Crave stood at rest, calm, then pulsed his mask to transparent, catching
Charis’ attention. She pulsed her own to transparent, and they shared a ghost of a smile, and she relaxed. They both returned to opaque.

  Thwip caught his reflection in the module’s carbon interior. Wings, Hurricanes, Sickle Moon o’ Bones, Fletching, and Honeypot. The others stepped back to give the hatch room, their reflections joining his. The image of the group together scanned across his innerface, as did everything they encountered when in gear, but that particular image he duplicated and tucked away in his personal data so that he could easily find it again.

  We’re going to win the war.

  Thwip envisioned how envious Disar would be if she knew about his mission. He thought about her, Illotar, Magi, and the rest of his recruit group traveling to the Lethe River Nebula. They would go in groups to the same place he had been to take an oath and form their own units, as all Novas had before them. The mental picture of Disar waking after her spacing, the gravity of how she would experience the meaning of it, warmed him—he imagined her as glassy-eyed, hands pressed to heart, like Charis. It was the moment she had worked so hard for, a moment she was born for. There are only so many Novas in the universe, and we’re all connected. I’ll see her again, eventually.

  The shrill, sustained ultrasonic whine of the hatch release filled his aurals. Daylight silhouetted Crave as he disembarked. Thwip’s hood scanned Ridrain’s dock color, blocked in regulation whites and greys hashed with amber markings. Skregs leaped down from the craft to the dock, followed by Charis.

  A dark-haired Ridrainer in an SI suit waited hoodless at the other end of the gangway to receive them. Thwip disembarked from the Vesper-0 last, scanned her lightly in passing. Her breathing was short and shallow, and her heartbeat accelerated; the typical nervous response that most crew had around Novas. Her suit’s rank hashes surprised him.

  “Welcome.” She dipped her head in frank greeting. Her eyes lingered on Crave’s SI suit.

  “Deputy GC,” Crave acknowledged her in return, and took courtesy a step beyond, making his hardhood IF transparent so that she could see through to his eyes.