Pyro Canyon

by Robert Appleton

  Dignity? Forget it.

  “Day-ymn! Now that’s what I’m talking about. Pyro Canyon, huh? Well, there’s plenty more where that came from.” The man’s sleazy drawl practically oozed from Gus’s headset, his sickening wink just about the least charming thing ever attempted by a living thing. But he was hooked. “It’s a hot region on one of the Forjorean moons, a smoldering canyon where you can’t even see the ground until you’re right on it. Apparently the pyrofluvium gas exhausts are so intense it’s like flying through Jupiter’s red spot. It was kind of a sport for the Altimere fliers, the Fifth Wing aces. They’d fly there off duty and compete against each other in the craziest maneuvers you ever heard of. ISPA never okayed it exactly, but they didn’t ban it either, at least not for a while.”

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t know. No one does. Apart from maybe the senior staff. But it was declared off-limits, under threat of court-martial, shortly after Perihelion. That’s all I know. Wouldn’t mind having a crack at it myself, though, someday. Reckon I could tear up some of those old records if they’d let me.”

  “I’m sure. But you said Cardie and Brink held all the records? And it was declared off-limits after Perihelion? Kind of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “Not really. A lot of things changed after Perihelion. Maybe ISPA just didn’t want to risk losing any more of their fliers.”

  “Yeah, could be. Or maybe Cardie and Brink had it declared off-limits.”

  “Where the hell did you come up with that?” he asked.

  “Beats me. Just thinking out loud.”

  “Mmm. So…about that cockpit. Has Pyro Canyon, you know, warmed you up yet?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You don’t—”

  “Gah, is that the time?” She got up and flung her cloak over her shoulders. “I’ve got a date with a Wing Commander in five minutes. Thanks for the drink, Arlinjay. Go easy on the joystick now.”

  “Hey! What?”

  By the time she reached Gus in the hallway, L.B. was already busy typing messages on her wrist set. She seemed distracted, a little hyper.

  “You were amazing back there,” he said. No response. Loud shuffling feet raced down an adjacent corridor. A battalion of them. The whoosh of an outer door opening ripped both their attentions in that direction—the landing strip archipelago. A cacophony of grinds and roars and heavy splashes sent her running into him.

  “You couldn’t have seen it from where you were stood in the lounge.” She peeled out of his embrace and they stood side by side, arm in arm. “I had to get out of there as soon as I saw it. The lighthouse is flashing red. The sky’s full of crippled spacecraft. It looks like an entire fleet’s coming to land at Altimere—or what’s left of one.”

  * * *

  News of the first wave of the Sheiker invasion spread as a fever through the base. Everywhere they went, virtual bulletins and holo-news alerts and pissed-off officers and EMS bots roused, like antibodies, Altimere’s languid setting to a fierce state of defense.

  The watery haven was now at war.

  As soon as the last vessel of the Outer Colonies fleet entered Altimere airspace, the great neutrino shield was raised, making the hub impregnable. It also meant that no ship could enter or leave without top-level clearance. Gus and L.B. were stuck here indefinitely.

  Hundreds and hundreds of dead or wounded ISPA personnel drifted through the bar lounge on grav-lev stretchers guided by EMS bots, headed for the hospital wing or one of several ad hoc emergency triage hangars. In a situation like this, with most of the OC fleet decimated and so many sectors now exposed to invasion, salvaging damaged vessels was arguably as crucial as saving the lives of wounded personnel, so for the next several days, engineers and tool-pushers worked side by side with doctors and nurses in the hangars. Oil mixed with blood mixed with grit and fear—and nowhere to hide inside this wartime cocoon.

  While news of the destruction trickled in, Gus and L.B. helped affix omnipods to the heads of wounded men and women in Diamond Hangar. Most chose the virtual adventure programs—the lighter and more exotic the better—for escape. Others passively watched classic Earth movies such as Indiana Jones or James Bond or Rendezvous with Rama. It wasn’t much, but the patients were grateful. And feeling like he was doing something, not just sitting by, waiting for bad news to come in, made all the difference in the world to Gus. For Christ’s sake, he knew all about helplessness, about lying in pieces, dying to be whole again. L.B. won umpteen kisses as she did her rounds, but even Gus got a few, from both men and women, which made him laugh.

  Then a fresh bulletin blazed onto the hangar screen, and he stopped laughing. The latest casualty report from out past 85z, where little news had emerged so far, made everyone who had mobility sit up and stare. L.B. spilled her carry-all tray full of omnipods sideways onto the concrete. She shot Gus a puzzled look, a gaze that never quite reached him. Before he knew it, she was on the floor, fainted. Several wounded men got up from their beds to help her.

  Gus began to tremble, organically, cybernetically. He glanced up to the hangar screen in disbelief, then down to the faded smudges of colored paint on the cold concrete floor. He buried his face in his hands, praying that the newscast had made a mistake.

  “The Vike Academy has been completely destroyed. No survivors.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Let’s just swim until we can’t swim anymore.” As L.B. slid the uninflated buoyancy bands up her arms, Gus gazed out over the endless lake.

  “You’re on.” He squinted to reduce the sun’s metallic silver glare as it chopped up the water into a billion blinding fragments. Between the Altimere hub and the lighthouse tower were three concentric rings, each intersecting the giant radial spines. The resulting four stretches of water between the rings grew progressively narrower the nearer one got to the lighthouse, but also more volatile, the unfathomable alien currents forged by the dish’s unyielding gravitational design creating a kind of maelstrom at its center. Few had ever reached the lighthouse by swimming. Most considered it an achievement to cross three bands of water. But legend had it that Cardie and Brink had habitually climbed the tower before each mission, having swum the four bands to prove to each other they had no fear of death, that they were still fit to lead Fifth Condor.

  Such recklessness. Such stories. Such bullshit, Gus thought. They were no superheroes. They might have been the best pilots, but they’re not all they’ve been cracked up to be. IPR hasn’t made them into gods. People have done that all on their own.

  “Gus, he might not have been there when it happened.”

  “I know.”

  “He might have gotten out.”

  Gus didn’t reply. Clinging to her denial made him feel better than facing what he knew in his heart to be true. At least through her, Barani was still alive, somewhere, on his way home.

  A vicarious hope, then, but a hope nonetheless.

  Vike.

  She executed a perfect surface dive and began to bob up and down with an aggressive breaststroke, though she gradually settled into a more relaxed, paced rhythm. Gus couldn’t see the next ring, over a mile away through the silver mist, but the diffuse red flash of the lighthouse roved like a bloodied finger through the dull sky every few seconds. He didn’t intend to reach it, but he did intend to stay by L.B.’s side for as long as she could swim. Being near her kept the darkness at bay.

  No one swims alone.

  There was truth in Altimere’s motto.

  They rested on the first ring, a hundred-yard-wide, slightly concave platform made of the impervious alien metal that constituted the rest of this miraculous structure. The mist cleared a little, affording them a faint view of the second ring, some three-quarters of a mile away. Behind them, the hub base was completely obscured by fog. The clank-clank of
ship repairs and the hum-drone of metalwork machines forging new flier parts had disappeared behind the lolling, lapping sounds of water.

  Again they swam, this time against a noticeably increasing current. Gus grew tired toward the end of this leg, his chest as heavy as wet concrete while he battled a sudden undertow just before reaching platform ring number two. L.B., too, coughed and wheezed when she climbed out. Together they lay flat on their backs, not speaking, the cold of the alien bridge seeping into them.

  Five minutes passed. Ten. He’d gone as far as he wanted to today. But if she was determined to swim on, he’d stick with her no matter what. After all, that was the whole point of this insane practice on Altimere—relying on each another, putting your life in your partner’s hands.

  No one swims alone.

  But when he got up, she didn’t move or even blink. Her head rested to one side on the bridge, her mouth agape, dribbling saliva. Oh my God. She was still breathing but…was she still conscious? This had been a dumb idea from the start. Hers, yes, but he hadn’t tried to talk her out of it. He was to blame too—

  His cold fingers pressing over her jugular wrenched her awake. She sat up. Coughed violently. Gus palmed a vigorous circle on her back, then rubbed her hands in his.

  “I’m all right, damn it.” She rose, steadying herself on him. “Come on. We need to get back to base. It’s all happening.”

  “What’s happening? I thought you were—” Ah, not unconscious at all. In all the years he’d known her, L.B. had never once coined in his presence. Her desire to fit in, to not be branded a freak, had made her turn her back on that phenomenal astral travel ability. But why had she reverted here? Why now?

  “Sorry, Trillion. I should have warned you first.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “But we’ve no time to waste. The hub’s going absolutely crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. They’re all leaving their posts, disobeying orders, like rats fleeing a sinking ship.”

  “We’re under attack?” He followed her running dive and surfaced beside her. “L.B.? What the hell’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, but watch the skies. This might be it.”

  * * *

  The hub perimeter was unguarded, the doors locked. Gus and L.B. donned their dry robes and sandals and had to jog all the way around the northern hangars to the grav-lev freight tracks, where they hitched a ride on a maintenance car traveling to the east-central loading dock. No one there either. It was as though the evacuation alarm had sounded and every soul on Altimere had packed into the first available shuttle and left the moon in lightning fashion. A few cigarette butts had been left on a work bench, a mug of steaming drink knocked over. Tools left haphazardly around unfinished assembly jobs.

  “Come on, we weren’t gone that long.” He checked the nearest wall screen for alert messages. Nothing.

  A chorus of distant voices rose, then died, then erupted again at twice the volume. Just what the hell was going on?

  “South wharfs.” L.B. dashed off before he could concur. She kicked her sandals off in order to sprint barefoot along the water’s edge. The best Gus could manage was a lumpen jog, and he soon fell far behind. But the farther he ran, the more alive he felt. These weren’t voices of despair at all. They were waiting expectantly for something. Excitement continuously pierced the anxious atmosphere in jubilant jabs. Cheers. Smatterings of sharp infectious laughter.

  You are the patient sun behind the eclipse.

  By the time he reached the southern wharfs, thousands were gathered along the lakeside. He couldn’t find L.B. in the crowd. Everyone from the dirtiest tool-pusher to the squeakiest top brass official was packed together, gazing across the water, into the mist.

  Gus hustled his way near the front of the spectators, then watched, waited among them. Instead of regaining his breath after the long run, he found himself gasping even faster, even deeper. It was like something out of a dream, one he was lost inside. As lost as everyone else here.

  “I wonder if they’ve changed.” The speaker, an elderly Chinese woman, was dressed like a waitress.

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think, mister? Those aren’t Sheikers swimming the channel.” She unfastened her white apron and waved it aloft, then gave him a nudge. “Say, I used to serve them their breakfasts. Wonder if they still eat continental. Always runny eggs and soldiers with their bacon. That’s how I remember Cardie and Brink.”

  Yes, yes, and hell yes! Gus pumped his cybernetic fist in celebration, then hugged the old woman. Sighed with freezing breath. Shook hands with countless more spectators.

  A man wearing omni-goggles in the lookout tower whistled and shouted down, “I see them now. It is Cardie and Brink.” An almighty roar eradicated all memory of fear and doubt. “And wait, there’s more…lots more.” A tide of frantic whispering. “Thousands of swimmers!”

  The first of them emerged from the mist, side by side, and a cheer went up. Gus thought he could see a man and a woman but he couldn’t be sure. They were too far away. Every time a new swimmer appeared, people cheered, until there were too many swimmers and too many cheers and the influx grew to an irrepressible wave of euphoria.

  Altimere had never seen the like.

  In the midst of it all, Gus remembered his brave young protégé, Barani. More than anything, he wanted the lad back beside him here and now, at this turning of the tide, to experience the fruits of their mostly invisible, inestimable, often thankless work at IPR.

  Shaping a better tomorrow.

  For some.

  Chapter Nine

  Creamy soap. That was what the air-conditioned interior of Altimere smelled like. Cardie had forgotten—so much that now spiked her memory, and seemed to have been there on the tip of her tongue all this time, had in fact been lost. Truly lost. Locked away with a million other sensorial details of life in the Fifth. The way her adrenaline motored her through the water, lactic acid tearing at her shoulder muscles as she neared the hub wharf; the parallel buoy lights of landing lanes touching on the water in the far-off distance; a feeling of privilege, of pride, of faint amusement as she realized the balls it must have taken for the first colonists to have started building here, in a giant freaking alien dish full of water. A sensation of floating on lighter-than-air began to catch in her lungs, a sensation she’d missed without ever having realized it. She gasped. Shivered with excitement. Gasped again.

  The soundproofed lounge security doors whooshed closed behind them, shutting out the reception high jinks, and for the first time in almost a lifetime, she was alone in a room with Scott. Wearing guest bathrobes. The soft brown carpet was new. A kind of spongy, patterned AstroTurf. It caught their whispers and held them close.

  “Never thought we’d be here again, huh, propping up the bar?” He tapped the smooth carbon counter with his scarred knuckles. Little about Scott Brinkman had really changed, except he’d grown a slight paunch, his face was a few punch-ups more grizzled and he slouched. Pretty much what she’d expected him to look like after all this time. In the best possible ways…and the worst.

  Because, damn it, she’d stolen more glances at him than a dizzy prom-swan in a line dance. But heavier glances, tinged with vinegar, the residue from their torrid love affair heated by match flame, releasing fumes intoxicating and forbidden. Hurtful. Deeply regretted. Never to be renewed again. But the fire they’d shared all those years ago hadn’t waned a lick. Only her perception of the smoke had changed.

  Smoke. Ashes. Death.

  She snapped herself out of her morbid funk. “Yeah, but they’d probably think twice about eighty-sixing us now. Me being a congresswoman and all.” She flicked her eyebrows up at him, then invited him to sit at the bar.

  What did he think of her, how much she’d changed? Dumpier, frumpier, no longe
r the razor-sharp athlete who’d iced him in pretty much every indoor sports activity, burned him out in the bedroom more than a few times.

  “So what changed your mind? What convinced you it was time to return?”

  A direct question. She shouldn’t be surprised—it was Scott after all. But what a direct question. “You first.”

  He looked her over from head to toe, poured a couple of drinks from the free taps, handed her one. “Double Arinto, rocks, twist of lime.” He’d remembered.

  “And you’re guzzling a Bolshoi brandy, malted, no ice.”

  They clinked glasses. Maintained eye contact all the while they sipped. Déjà vu descended in a discombobulating drizzle, and for several moments they were back in Fifth Condor, kicking back the night after a deep zee sortie, completely obsessed with themselves and each other.

  Hell, if Pyro Canyon hadn’t happened, they might very well be here right now anyway…only with a decade and a half of not hating themselves and each other for what had happened in the mist. That hot mist. She’d been the one who’d lost control of her craft. She was the one who’d skimmed the rock, smashed her starboard thruster, barely pulled up in time to avoid a fatal nose dive—

  Well, maybe not fatal for me…

  Brink saw her shudder, cleared his throat. “What convinced me it was time? That’s easy. The kids.”

  She nearly choked on her drink. “Excuse me?” Wiping the dribble from her chin suddenly made her feel right at home, a million light-years from Congresswoman Acton.

  “The kids they lost at the Vike, and all the other academies out there.”

  “Ah. For a minute there I thought you were going to say—”

  “That too.” He swilled the brandy around in his glass. “Okay, that mainly. They’re getting too close for comfort. I really didn’t think they could penetrate so far. Not now. Not after all this time.”

  Her words exactly. Her sentiments. Fifteen years exiled from each other and it was as though they’d ticked by on a common rhythm, attuned to each other’s sense of guilt. She imagined him crying himself to sleep every time she had, punishing himself in various sporting activities to relieve the stress at the exact moments she had.