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Descent

Page 5

by Erik Schubach


  I don't know who was screaming louder, Glitch, me, or Sai as the g-forces pressed me back in my seat and the straps holding Glitch to the cabin floor groaned in protest. My voice cracked as I warbled out in a high pitch, “New Terra, this is Fixit, goin' ballistic!”

  I pushed my arm forward, it was like I had a hundred pound weight attached to it as I hit the big giant red button labeled, “Hit me second.” I could hear the turbopumps spinning up that would release the reactionary fuel and keep the tank pressurized.

  Vash was saying with a tinge of concern, “You gotta do it now, Fixie.”

  I was grumping, “I know, I know,” as I heard the air breathers cycle off. I knew the plasma drives would lose most of their efficiency in a few seconds and I had to ignite the rocket thrusters before that happened.

  My arm shook with the effort as I moved it forward, I grasped the orange lever labeled 'Boom!' and said to my co-pilot, “Hang on boy, here goes.”

  I pulled the lever.

  A moment later we were screaming again, and Sai was screaming on their end when my chest felt like I was hit with a hammer. My eyesight tunneled again as I hovered on the edge of consciousness as our vessel shuddered and tore through the remaining atmosphere like a wraith. I chanted in my head, “Don't pass out, don't pass out, don't pass out,” as I kept the edge of the planet's curve on the third of four lines I had drawn on the windscreen, keeping the equator in perpendicular to the vertical line slashing through the others. What? I didn't have a computer to keep us on course for orbital insertion, so zip it.

  My other hand on the joystick felt like it weighed as much as the Dodo herself as I forced us to keep on course. Then as the last of the fuel burned itself out and our acceleration slowed, I found I could breathe again and could think straight as my peripheral vision came back.

  I looked around and then took in the readings on the iso-pad I had attached to the useless control panel. I smiled hugely as I unclipped my belts and pushed off from my seat with a single finger and floated to the windscreen to look at the planet rolling past below us. I said into the visor as Glitch unclipped to join me in zero-g, “New Terra, the Dodo is on orbit. Orbital path nominal. Everything looks five by five here, we'll see you ladies soon.”

  I could hear the cheering before we lost their signal as we passed behind the planet. I was mesmerized by the moons that seemed so crisp and huge up here in space. Wow. I, Vega Hasher, was in space. I remember when I thought I'd never even see the floating cities in my lifetime. Space was a pipe dream as I'd never have been able to earn enough for a ticket even to the orbiting Agri-Domes, or the casino and pleasure ships that frequented the system.

  But here I was in space, and likely going to die.

  I heard a hissing and whistling and saw the windscreen start to crack from our makeshift repair.

  “Um, Glitchy?”

  He squeed out what sounded like, “On it, Fixit.”

  A moment later he was slapping on one of the emergency hull patches that all vacuum rated vessels carried. We only had two, and now one was blocking half the window as the ceramic putty sizzled, bonding with the window and frame at the molecular level then solidifying harder than titanium.

  I grinned at him and high fived him, sending us both tumbling back through the cabin. I giggled as I rebounded off the wall and pushed myself to the pilot's chair. I forced myself back into the seat and cut out the plasma drives, then made a couple minor burns with the maneuvering thrusters to refine our orbit so we could rendezvous with New Terra.

  I swallowed hard as we passed Starlight City, the smallest of the cities, it was completely dark, not a single light in a city of over a hundred thousand. The only thing I could see that showed they even had power was the light from the huge plasma induction coils under the city which maneuvered the cities when they were in space.

  I closed my eyes, it was just a floating tomb, like in my worst imaginings. All those people dead, and the Galactic Federation didn't even have to fire a single shot. The cowards. I don't know if I believe in a higher power, but I said a prayer for the people of Starlight City, just in case.

  A couple hours later, both Glitch and I were plastered to the window as we stared wide-eyed at Gamadine, or Gama City, the oldest, and second largest of the Prime cities. There, behind the infernal shield that prevented any help or escape to the upper part of the city, between the soaring towers, there were pockmarks of light!

  It looked like a dozen of those fire beetles that lit up the night dirtside. One of the Fluffers' favorite snacks. They would take to the air at night in flocks to devour the light emitting insects. It was always a sight to see.

  As we passed at the closest point, merely five miles from the city, I could see the glow was coming from domelike constructs on the main promenade level. I almost shouted to Glitch. “The parks! The people fled to the parks!”

  The two oldest cities, Gamadine and Tireial, were constructed before the protective shields were developed for future cities and they were outfitted with the shields at a later time. So the city parks were under crystal-alloy domes for when they went to orbit during Passes. The parks in the other, newer cities, would have frozen solid when they lost power, without temperature and environmental controls working under the energy shield.

  The engineers of Gama City must have evacuated their three hundred thousand people to the parks. They'd have natural oxygen and CO2 scrubbing there if they didn't overcrowd them. I tried to remember the layout of the city from the data I read on the cities from the information grid whenever I got bored.

  It takes a thousand leaves to provide oxygen for one person, but twice that to clean the CO2 from the air since the plants process less oxygen when CO2 is more plentiful. So that equates to roughly seven hundred plants per person. There are twelve parks on Gamadine. So with a twenty percent safety margin... I did some quick math in my head then balked. There wasn't enough. Over ten percent of their people would have to be left out, or the plants wouldn't be able to keep up.

  I whispered as I looked back like I could see the city shrinking behind us. “Thirty thousand people.”

  I steeled myself as we were almost out of Prime's shadow and would be able to reestablish communications. Then I nodded to myself. “Don't think of the thirty thousand, Fixit, think of the two hundred and seventy thousand they were able to save.”

  Nodding again, like I could convince myself, I wondered how they were able to maintain heat in the domes, and they obviously had power for lights. The dielectric coating on the buildings! They were siphoning what little power they could from them. That would give them enough power for rudimentary environmental controls. I had to hand it to whatever tinker they had over there to bastardize the systems they'd need so quickly before the parks froze.

  If they could do it here, maybe there was hope for Tireial as well?

  As soon as we cleared the hemisphere, my visor flickered back on, and three eager faces were crowded into my view. Sai, Lady Peregrine, and Anna. Vash said before I could, “Fixie.”

  I was nodding to myself. “New Terra, Dodo, we're here. Flight path is nominal for a zero-zero intercept in 307 minutes.”

  They were all smiles, and I blurted before anyone could speak, “Gamadine is alive! They're all in the park domes!”

  There was a look of shock on their faces for a few seconds before my words sunk in. Lady Peregrine was smiling. “Sarah, that old sneak. If anyone could pull that off, it's her.”

  Sarah Stettler? The mayor of Gamadine? It was so odd to hear people talk like a mayor of an entire city is just a friend or peer.

  Sai said, “We have teams rrready to deploy to the otherrr cities to effect rrrepairs and tie them into Vashon's neural net, once we can get thrrrough the shield and boarrrd the Dodo.”

  Board the Dodo? Why didn't they just... then I remembered, all the ships and tumbrils moored at the docking ring around the city had gone out-system. The Dodo was the only space capable ship in th
e system on orbit. They had to use this patched up beast to conduct all of the rescues.

  After we shared information and status, I almost winced when Lady Peregrine addressed the topic I didn't want to be in the middle of. “Vega. You... you spoke with the Betweener leader?”

  She was almost speaking in code, dancing around what I may or may not have figured out. I didn't have time for games. “Yes. Your ex wanted me to tell you that he told you so.” I thought I heard Vash gasp over the coms. The other two ladies didn't look surprised that our leader had been married to the leader of the pirates who terrorized the skies of Prime.”

  Then I accused, “If you had just let him know that the Tau Ceti Prime was working on the problem instead of hiding it from him, we would never have had Betweeners, and so many lives would have been saved.”

  I couldn't believe I was siding with pirates. But it was just on this one point. And when had my level of respect for the ruler of Prime dropped so low?

  She almost whispered like it was a prayer, “I couldn't. It was compartmentalized, and I wasn't the ruler yet.” There was actual pain in her voice. “I had been the Director of Sciences back then and was sworn to secrecy.”

  Ok, I sort of understood that. And I did understand that they were trying to save orders of magnitudes more people than were lost in Betweener raids. I nodded, not knowing if I truly understood the complexities of the pressures she had been under when she kept the secret of the construction of a Dark Fleet from her then husband.

  She looked from the room like she was looking at someone. Sai never looked that direction on purpose when we spoke, so I assumed that's where they had my girl hooked into the systems of the city. “Did... did McGreery tell you anything else.”

  She didn't want me saying what I'm pretty sure I had pieced together, and I said flatly, “He didn't have to.” We stared at each other through the link. She heard my silent threat that she should tell Vash before I did. Then she inclined her head. By the lords of the cosmos, I had the most dysfunctional extended family.

  I added with a dare in my tone, “And by the way, I told them Prime was granting them all pardons of all past crimes for the fuel donation.” This didn't seem to surprise anyone either. Our ruler just inclined her head yet again, looking perturbed that I had negotiated for Prime in her stead.

  I had enough of playing tiptoe around family and state secrets, so I said, “If you will all excuse me, I have work to do here, and I'd like to talk to my girl.”

  They all looked around, trying to find something to do as Vash cooed over the coms, “So, how's Prime's sexiest tinker?”

  I felt my cheeks burning. Most of the time I loved Vash's problem with impulse control, but sometimes it was a little embarrassing when she spoke like that in earshot of others.

  I spoke with her about nonsensical things as I removed the net securing the old traffic control console to the cargo area of the tumbril. I was going to need it if we were going to do a manual intercept of the city. I had done some reading up on the system. I knew it wasn't quantum binary pulse tech, but it wasn't even phased lidar, it was some archaic system called photonic radar. It was based on wave signal return instead of signal degradation or light reflection. That was like one step up from stone knives and wooden clubs.

  But it is what we had, and I knew it actually worked. Over the next couple hours we ran the leads to the iso-pad mounted on the control console we didn't dare have connected before launch, and ran a diagnostic test run on it as I chatted with my girl about everything and nothing. I didn't even care that everyone there in New Terra Control was listening. It was important for me to remind my girlfriend about her humanity.

  That, and this could be the last minutes we had together, and I wanted her to know she was loved.

  Chapter 6 – Contact

  I again floated to the partially blocked window and pointed at what appeared to be a bright star just above the atmosphere of Prime. “Look Glitchy, New Terra!”

  I smiled at him as he gracelessly tumbled through the air to my side then his iris went wide in wonder as the tiny bright pinprick of light slowly grew. The Capitol!

  I pushed back and hooked my toe under the control panel and drifted down into the pilot's seat and checked our status on the iso-pad as I said, “We have you in sight, Vash.” I checked the chrono and added, “Time to intercept, sixty-three point one five eight.”

  She almost giggled at that, and I smiled at the sound and told her, “I thought you might like the precision.”

  I reached for the iso-pad to activate the, umm, radar, to get more accurate readings when I saw motion out there amongst the star-packed sky, between New Terra and us. I hesitated squinting. Then I saw what I had seen before, a few stars were blotted out by a dark shape as others flickered back into view as it moved... angling toward the Dodo.

  I muttered, “What the ever loving fuck?” Then snapped out, “Glitch, ten o'clock, eighteen degrees.”

  He squeed an affirmative, and I called out, “New Terra, we have some sort of cloaked vessel moving to intercept the Dodo.”

  Then just as I jammed my finger on the iso-pad to activate the radar, the star-field shimmered, and a huge leviathan of a vessel seemed to shimmer into view. A huge blob showed up on the display screen in front of us as smaller contacts seemed to spit out of it like fleas from the back of a dog.

  I whispered as I fed the data to New Terra, “Mother of all crystal! Contact! A dreadnought class attack tumbril carrier! We have multiple bogies incoming!” They had been watching us this whole time. This had to be part of the Galactic Federation's Pacification Fleet. Flanterskelling bootwaffles! And this is likely where the activation signal had originated which started the genocide.

  Well, we knew this to be a possibility, and now we were all dead. The light armament on the Dodo was nonexistent now, the plasma energy weapons power had been redirected to other systems for launch, and the two light, solid fuel, missiles had been left on the surface to lighten our load for launch. Not that I'd know how to use any of them or had a chance against the fifty fleas that were closing to energy weapon range.

  I just stared at the window at the traces of light swarming toward the Dodo, and I whispered into the coms, “I love you Vash.”

  That's when the Betweener com system crackled to life, and a familiar baritone voice yelled out, “Yeeehaaaa!” Just as dozens of missiles shot past us from behind and dozens of tumbrils followed at full burn. The voice called out, “You do what you came here for little dirter, leave these crystal licking asswipes to us.”

  I just blinked as the two groups came within energy weapons range as missiles started exploding, taking out attack tumbrils as the two groups engaged each other. Another volley of missiles went past us receding into pinpricks of light, there were so many, but these were targeting the carrier, not the tumbrils.

  Weapons fire bloomed from the beast taking out large swaths of the incoming missiles, a small portion made it through, doing minimal damage to the carrier. Then I realized they were shooting for the gun ports, knowing they likely couldn't penetrate the dreadnaught's hull.

  I checked the radar as Lady Peregrine's voice came over coms, “McGreery?”

  The man chuckled and responded over my relay, “Yes, Abigail, I'm here to save your ass, yet again. Now hush and let me and my people get to work here so Fixit can do her thing.”

  Over my terror of flying through a space battle unarmed, I saw hundreds of contacts on the radar overtaking the Dodo from behind. Had the entire Betweener Fleet followed me to orbit? I had no way of knowing. They must have been riding escort this whole time, and I never knew!

  I buckled in and put a look of determination on my face and yelled out, “Hang on Glitchy! This is going to get rough.” With one eye on the radar plot and one on the window, keeping New Terra in view as it slowly grew in the windscreen, I slammed the joystick over, sending us into a corkscrewing barrel roll, just avoiding the wreckage of a Galactic Fe
deration tumbril. Glitch squealing and bouncing around the Dodo until he magnetized his treads and held himself to the deck.

  Vash was in my ear, reading the data I was streaming through coms to New Terra and our new allies, faster than I could even see. “Port Fixie, yaw twenty degrees down, now starboard, yaw thirty-seven degrees up.” I was just following her lead without question after we weaved through some debris of a couple Betweener tumbrils without a scratch.

  Then it almost felt like we were catapulted forward as we exploded from the aerial battle into clear space, New Terra now looming in front of us. I know it was my imagination, but I had felt so... claustrophobic going through the tight quarters of hundreds of vessels slinging energy and missiles at each other.

  Another tumbril settled in on our wing and I strained to look out the window, seeing sparks flying from a huge gouge in the other ship's hull and a smug looking McGreery giving me a thumbs up in the pilot's seat.

  I shook my head and smiled. “Why didn't you tell me you were back there?”

  He actually chuckled at me and said, “You never asked. We thought that if there was someone out there like we thought, you might need the support. And besides, this was more dramatic wouldn't you say?”

  I grred and said, “Bootwaffle.” Then added as he laughed at me, “Thank you McGreery.”

  He responded, “Rex. Any time little dirter. Now go get your girl, I've got your six.” Then he peeled off, shooting at something I couldn't see.

  I started chuckling to myself at the impossibility of it all. I had just been saved... by pirates.

  We watched as the Capitol filled our view over the next twenty minutes. I tried not to listen to the chatter on the coms of the men fighting and dying to keep the enemy off of me.

  The proximity alarm finally started beeping, it had felt like it should have gone off long before then, but the mammoth scale of the city made it feel closer than it actually was. All I could see now was a sheer wall of ceramic alloys and one of dozens of black dots along it that were airlocks that were supposed to be closed but were wide open to space.

 

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