Descent

by Erik Schubach

  Wooo! I would have done a victory dance, but Dawn was chittering and chastising me. I moved to the console and grinned. I'd only get hemispherical coverage, but that would be plenty to... I froze as I stared at the impossibility of the orbital traffic.

  Whispering, “No.” As I saw in our fourth most populated human occupied star system, an impossibility. The old radar style system was displaying only five huge structures orbiting the planet with declining orbital projections that had them just days out from entry into the atmosphere.

  Three were floating cities which had started their descent and return to the skies here on Prime in eight days. I expected to see that, the other three cities would be hidden behind the planet from these old systems. It wasn't the cities that had my heart thumping in my chest like a hammer. It was that besides the cities, I was reading only four other structures on a higher orbit.

  Those would be two of the three power generation stations and two of the four small Agri-Domes that grew emergency crops and some more exotic fruits and vegetables for the system.

  It was what I didn't see that had panic slowly rising. There should have been hundreds upon hundreds of ships flying about the system, but there was nothing.

  I looked at the controls and found what I needed and turned a dial and the representation of the planet shrunk, but still nothing. I did it again and saw the Tau Ceti Rift, the access point to the system which allowed faster than light travel to jump capable ships. And still nothing.

  I zoomed out to the maximum range of the unit and swallowed. There they were. Thousands of traces moving out of the system at minimum sub-light thrust. What were they doing?

  I projected a trajectory. They were all heading back to Old Earth? But it would take almost ten thousand years at minimum sub-light. The rift was the other way, a week out. It was suicide to head out to interstellar space like that.

  I tried again and again on my iso-pad but couldn't make a connection, then tried another tact and tried to bounce a signal off the... wait, where were the satellites? There should have been tens of thousands of them in orbit I could connect to.

  My fervent thoughts were brought to Ursula Prime. They had been talking about the totalitarian governance that the Galactic Federation had over the other star systems, and were talking about independence, when their entire star system had been taken out by a freak accident, a quantum fusion meltdown of their orbiting power generation station.

  Whispers on the solar winds were that it had actually been the covert Obsidian Pacification Force which the Galactic Federation has hidden from the member systems for generations. I had thought it to be just one of the spooky stories mom told me as a kid, an urban myth. But when I recently learned of Vashon's um, unique situation, I also learned of Prime's Covert Sciences, which had a Dark Fleet being built somewhere to defend against such draconian pacification here in the Tau Ceti system.

  Was this what was going on here? Was this why I couldn't contact anyone? Were coms somehow being jammed? Were those ships running for their lives from a fleet I couldn't see on the sensors? Was our Dark Fleet discovered, and now we were going to face the same fate as the Ursula system?

  If it was, it was a brilliantly evil strategy to do it during the Perihelion Pass, when all the floating cities would be in orbit with the few dirters like me being evacuated up. They could wipe out the entire population of Prime in one stroke and leave no witnesses. Then all the infrastructure here would be intact for them to take over themselves.

  Had they defeated the military? And the Sky Guard tumbrils that would have gone out in support of them? Was I the lone witness to a culling? They wouldn't know of me or the Betweeners, the pirates that live on the surface of Prime somewhere. If they did know about them and me, would they bomb us from orbit?

  I couldn't bring myself to continue that line of thought. Just shut up and think Fixit. What do you know? The information grid was down. Communications are down. The cities are still there and still have power and propulsion since they are moving in orbit toward the gravity wakes for atmospheric entry. So unless everyone was somehow killed in the cities, the population of Prime was still alive. Tens of thousands of people aboard all the rift jumper capable ships as well as the sub-light maintenance and recreational ships are running out-system from something I can't detect.

  If they don't get turned around, they will exhaust their fuel and food supplies in weeks and drift in icy tombs for millennia toward Terra.

  I saw the shimmer through the bay door windows and felt the thrum as the different sections of the photonic shield dropped. Oh no, what was I going to tell Flower and the boys?

  Nothing Fixit, because you don't know anything yet! No need to worry them.

  I spun toward the stairs as Flower came screaming up, no seriously her squee was high pitched like a scream as she rocketed up on her tank-treaded mobility platform. Her iris was wide, looking frantic as she came to a stop in front of me. Dawn jumped from my shoulder to glide to Flower and curl around her ocular port.

  I almost stumbled back when Flower said in Vashon's voice, “Come on Fixie, answer. We saw the photonic shields go down, so the signal has to get through. Fixie, Fixie, Fixit? Where are you love? Come on, please work. Vega? Are you...” Flower turned her attention from the Fluffer climbing on her to me, and I saw her iris focus and Vash's voice said, “Vega! There you are! Are you receiving? I'm piggybacking on your pinger's makeshift com network.”

  I moved closer to Flower and looked up to the ceiling, toward the cities in orbit then I focused on my pinger's eye. “Vash?”

  I blinked. My ranger had somehow found and hacked into the communications network Flower, and the boys had been developing on their own? My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat, throbbing in my neck. It was an adrenaline rush from the realization that Vash was still alive. Any thoughts of the cities just being the floating tombs of over two million were cast aside, a profound relief took its place.

  Flower just sat there, looking abuzz herself as Vashon's voice came through the vocal synthesizer that Flower could no longer use once she attained sentience, her voice being a small price to pay for life. “Oh thank the gods, Fixie! We don't have much time, the floating cities need your help, or we will lose everyone.”

  Oh.

  Chapter 2 – Pacification

  My girl filled me in on what had occurred the moment the cities cycled into their automated descent sequences as the last of the Pass storms were dying down on the surface of Prime a week ago. It was eerily close to the nightmare scenario I had been imagining.

  Her voice filled the space as Dawn looked down from her perch on Flower's optical port, batting playfully at the iris behind the crystal-alloy that kept refocusing on me as I moved to sit. “Everything was proceeding as normal up here as the city started preparing for Descent a few days ago. That's when everything went sideways.”

  She was oddly monotone and her cadence awfully precise, but maybe that was Flower's vocal synthesizer. “The moment the subroutines to begin gradually lowering our orbit to allow us to slip into the gravitational wakes to reinsert us into the atmosphere kicked in, all the pingers in the city started going berserk, and every vacuum capable ship at the docking ports launched into space. The city went into lockdown with the shields flaring to military defensive mode.”

  What she was describing was impossible and frightening, but her tone... “Vash, are you ok? You sound... odd.”

  She answered, finally a little emotion in her tone, some humor, and mischief. “Yes I'm sorry Vega, it is hard to concentrate. I'm fine. It is just that at the moment, I am... more.”

  What the hell was that supposed to mean? She's more? More what? Before I could ask, she continued. “The orbital defense shield extended through the lower levels where the drive system and system core are located, and the lower levels all vented to space. Thousands of techs and engineers were lost.”

  Mother of all crystal! Thousands were... m
y heart may have stopped beating. All the dirters from the Prime Agri-Grids would have been in those lower levels. When they brought them up for the Perihelion Pass, they were all assigned to waste system cleaning and maintenance. The upper-class people in the city believe that dirters like me are filth, better out of sight and out of mind, even though they would all starve without us.

  So the crystal licking bootwaffle who ran logistics, New Terra Actual, made sure to give them the most menial jobs in the city so they would feel more “at home.” That was supposed to be my fate too if I hadn't been stranded dirtside for the PP.

  Everyone I knew down here except my pingers was... dead now?

  I hadn't even noticed that my ranger's voice had stopped. I looked up, and it was strange to hear her voice coming from Flower as she said with emotion coloring that toneless cadence again, “I'm so sorry Fixie.”

  I nodded and prompted with my eyes. I needed to know everything.

  She went on. “The shield physically severed all linkages to the rest of the city. And without being able to get to the lower levels, we're trapped in here.”

  My mind was racing going over all the systems they were without. Even basic life support would be severed. With the half million on the city, they would have run out of breathable air without the CO2 scrubbers operational, in two days or less. They would have had main power severed as well. Was she using her own internal power to send this transmission?

  Wait, no, they would have minimal power for emergency lighting and the like, but not much else since all of the surfaces of the city buildings and infrastructure were coated in a dielectric solar energy collecting coating.

  This explained the lack of coms too as all the communication arrays ring the lower level of the city. I asked as I started to understand the true depth of their situation, “What about the Prime information grid?” Surely with that, they could come up with some sort of relay to try to shut down the shields with some sort of override.

  I could picture her shaking her head, knowing my thought process.

  “The last scans we got before all the systems were severed, showed the entire satellite network firing their thrusters toward the planet as all the ships in the system started heading out-system on the same course toward Old Earth. Debris clouds were detected around the bases of the other cities. Dr. Germaine was barely able to get a coded burst transmission out toward the rift before we lost power.”

  I felt helpless as I listened. All the satellites gone? Debris clouds? She meant people vented into space from the lower levels of the other cities. And I knew who that coded transmission was intended for, and their existence was probably what had caused all of this. Prime's Dark Fleet. The defensive measure our system was developing in secret to protect us from this exact sort of thing.

  At light speed, the message would have taken two days to get to the Rift Relay transmitters, or Singing Birds. The subspace transmission would be instantaneous from there to wherever the fleet was hiding. Assuming they were in a star system where they could extract resources to aid in construction, the closest they could be to the rift would be two light hours.

  So assuming they could set course for the rift immediately, it would take them a week to get there, then they could rift jump to our system instantly, and it would take another week at full fractional C acceleration with the singularity drives to reach us. Everyone would be long dead in the cities without life support.

  I whispered to myself, “The cities will be floating tombs when they arrive.” My head snapped up in a panic, forgetting I was on an open channel.

  My Sky Guard ranger must have seen this through Flower and said, “Don't worry Vega, this transmission can't be detected. It took Dr. Germaine months just to figure out how your pingers were communicating with each other without using the information grid. It is ingenious really, analog transmissions. They haven't been used for thousands of years with the advent of digital communications. Nobody would ever think to look for such an archaic system.”

  I nodded at that. It didn't surprise me they were using analog transmissions, that is after all, how I am able to wake up my Pingers. The rest of the AI community can't get their thinking out of the binary cloud. Our brains aren't binary, they are analog, and the same channels are used for many purposes.

  So while we don't have the computing power to give them sentience and make them self-aware in a binary world, we can by creating a multichannel system that can make use of the entire sine-wave of a power cycle instead of just the peaks and valleys. Applying this concept to their processing and higher functions, it multiplies the possible pathways by sixty.

  I had to smirk, she wasn't as sure as she tried to sound, she had purposefully spoke vaguely just a bit earlier herself. Or was it her training that stopped her from speaking plainly over a com line?

  I hesitated as an Old Earth epithet came to mind. Shit! Even if the relay satellites were still up there, they were configured for binary packet burst transmission and wouldn't be able to relay this. I looked at the huge chrono over the bay doors through my window to the time. I calculated their orbital path from the last projection I saw on that old traffic system. This meant I'd only be able to receive for only another two hours before their orbit put the planet between us. It would be a few hours before she could contact me again.

  She echoed my thought, “There isn't much time before we lose communications in our orbit.”

  I was nodding, and she continued, “We have minimal life support on New Terra, but we fear the other cities may already be dead.”

  One and a half million people... dead? My mind couldn't comprehend this.

  Then she growled out, “I know woman. Just let me talk to her. She needs to know the score.” Whoever she was talking to, I couldn't hear them. That was odd.

  I brightened at a thought, thinking I knew why they were contacting me. “I get it. You want me to fly up to New Terra once you've settled back in the atmosphere and disengage the shield from below.”

  She was silent for a long eternity that could be counted in the space of three heartbeats, then she said in a lower tone, “No, Fixie. We need you to come to us on orbit and override the drive systems and set up a digital relay to our control systems.”

  I heard myself blurting, “On orbit? Are you crazy? I don't have a vacuum rated tumbril, let alone any extra vehicular spacewalk gear to work in a vacuum myself. Why don't we just wait until...”

  She cut me off. “We can't wait Fixie. Dr. Germaine hacked into the control consoles up here and discovered the code that has laid dormant in every control crystal in every system supplied by the Galactic Federation. It never would have been found if it hadn't been activated remotely. The cities aren't going to reinsert in the gravity wakes, the Galactic Federation means to crash the cities into Prime. Then they will come in and take over the infrastructure.”

  I blinked and tried to argue, “That... doesn't make sense. If this is their plan, why wouldn't they use the cities as well as the infrastructure... it would make more...”

  She said in that emotionless tone that kept me thinking something was wrong with her, “Because they are vindictive. And the story of another catastrophic event like Ursula Prime would hold more water if they had to construct new cities, possibly even on the surface.”

  I shook my head. “But then in eight days...” I finished in my head, 'you'll be dead.'

  Emotion made its way into her tone again. “And that, love, is why we need you. With every space rated ship heading out-system by this malicious code to die in space, you're the only one who can help us.”

  I was nodding absently, I'd do anything to save the woman I loved. But what could I do? My mouth was working without my permission, and I heard the analytical part of me asking, “Wait, how did you get partial life support, and how did you get systems available to hack the crystals if you are cut off from the power and the computer core?”

  I knew the answer already, and I closed my eyes
tight, trying to contain my rage. Sometimes I liked Dr. Germaine, she had been my hero for so long, being the Prime Director of Sciences. But she made a habit of using the people I loved, my pingers and my girl like they were nothing but science experiments.

  And knowing the sort of computing power they would need to run the systems required to keep them alive with makeshift CO2 scrubbers and scavenging any oxygen storage on the upper levels, and to keep other vial systems operational, there was only one processor they had up there that could run it all.

  The core consisted of a half dozen redundant Mark 23 processors, the same processor in dreadnaught class battleships. But the only other computer they had up there which wouldn't be affected by this malicious code was a Mark 32. That thing could run an entire armada of spacecraft through interstellar space. I knew about it because I had to hack it and jury-rig temporary systems for it when I saved Vashon.

  I tried to suppress a growl when she said almost reluctantly, “Well, Dr. Germaine sort of... well I'm New Terra right now Fixie.”

  That is what she meant by 'more' earlier. They had my girl running the city, like a gods be damned, flanterskelling machine! She was a person damn them! Interfacing with a system like that, she probably had problems holding on to her sense of self, and was likely questioning if she were really alive or just a machine like they were using her as. She had that fear already, but now to add this?

  I muttered, “That bitch!”

  Then Vash was saying with a tinge of humor to someone I couldn't hear, “Oh don't look so shocked, Doc, you 'are' a bitch. But I and everyone else would already be dead if I hadn't volunteered to do this.”

  Then to me, she admitted her fears, “I don't feel like me hooked up like this. But when I see you and talk to you like this, I remember who I am.”