by Tarah Benner
He bends down beside my knees and pulls a dark-green rucksack from under the bed. He goes over to his bureau and opens the drawers, surveying his belongings with a critical eye.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Packing.” He doesn’t offer any further explanation. Just “packing” — as if I’m supposed to know what that means.
“Packing for what?”
Jonah shakes open the rucksack and starts transferring clothes to the heavy canvas bag. He takes his fatigues, underwear, and socks — even some civilian clothes that I’ve never seen him wear.
“Are you going somewhere?”
It’s a stupid question. We’re stuck on a space station. There’s nowhere to go.
Jonah doesn’t answer me. He keeps stuffing clothes down into the rucksack, not bothering to keep them in their pristine folded squares.
He empties the top two drawers, and still the rucksack isn’t full. He drops it to the floor, digs around in his sock drawer, and withdraws a generous wad of cash. He sticks this in his rucksack, too, and reaches behind me for the picture of the woman and two little boys.
He handles this photo with extreme reverence and care, as though it’s a priceless historic document. He eases it into a worn manila envelope and slides it into his bag.
“I’m going after Buford.”
“What?”
“Buford,” he repeats, tugging down the drawstring to secure his rucksack. “I’m going to find him.”
“On Earth?” I say dumbly.
“Yep.”
For a minute, I just stare. His response is so absurd that I have the desperate urge to laugh.
“Are you serious?” I shake my head. “That’s insane.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
There’s a long beat of silence as I try to process what Jonah is saying. The rucksack, the cash, the photo — it certainly looks as though he’s going somewhere. It looks as though he’s skipping town, only there’s no plane to catch, no road to hit, and no train to carry him across outer space.
“You’re leaving?”
“The real war isn’t up here,” he says. “It’s on Earth.”
“What makes you think that?” From where I sit, we need Jonah here. The Space Force is in shambles, and Flaccid Greaves can’t save it.
“This is just the beginning,” he says. “It’s a distraction.”
I turn this idea over in my head, but I can’t make any sense of it. “A distraction from what?”
“There’s a reason Buford needed to get back to Earth. He and Mordecai are planning something.”
“Or he’s just trying to save his own skin,” I argue, feeling the anger bubble up in my chest. “He saw an opportunity, and he took it.”
Jonah shakes his head. “Ziva said there are a hundred humanoids down on Earth — not to mention all the other bots Mordecai could have hacked. There’s no limit to what they could do. People don’t know about the humanoids — they have no idea what they’re up against.”
Suddenly I’m furious. Jonah is going — just like that. He’s leaving me here with Ping and the others to deal with the bots ourselves.
“You can’t just go,” I stammer. “What about the bots here?”
“The bots here are the least of our problems,” he snaps. “They can only last forty-eight hours on a single charge, and by then, it will only be a matter of Maverick disabling them. Don’t you see? Buford wouldn’t have left if the end game was Elderon. The bot attacks here were just a distraction so that he could escape back to Earth.”
I squint at Jonah, considering this theory. With Buford gone, there will be no one to prevent the Space Force from rounding up the bots and disabling the malware that Mordecai installed. Ziva is the person to make that happen, and if Mordecai had cared to prevent it, he would have killed his sister.
“On Earth, there’s no containing the bots,” Jonah presses. “We have to move fast — before it’s too late.”
It takes me a moment to process what he just said.
“We?” I repeat, feeling slightly idiotic.
Jonah hesitates. He’s staring at me in a way I haven’t seen before — as though he’s gearing himself up to jump out of a plane. “Come with me.”
“What?” I’m not sure I’ve heard him correctly.
“Come with me,” he says, more urgently this time. Now I understand that look in his eyes.
“How?”
“We’ll take the emergency shuttle back down to Earth. We’ll find Buford — find out what he and Mordecai are planning. I still have some contacts in the army. We have to warn them about what’s coming. We have to find a way to stop it.”
For several seconds I just stand there, frozen. What am I doing? Jonah’s plan is crazy. We shouldn’t be going back to Earth. I shouldn’t even be involved.
I’m not a soldier. I’m a journalist — and maybe an unemployed one at that. I’m not really sure where Alex and I stand, but she’s put a temporary gag order on her reporters. Maverick doesn’t like a scandal.
“Come on,” says Jonah, sounding more angry than cajoling. “What have you got to lose?”
“I can’t,” I croak.
“Why not?”
It’s a straightforward question — one I can’t really answer. I don’t know what’s holding me here. It isn’t my job, and it isn’t my duty. That’s when I realize that I’m actually scared.
“If we don’t move fast, there’s no telling what they’ll be able to do.”
“What about Greaves?” I ask. “Won’t you get in trouble for abandoning your post?”
“I’ve spent my whole life following orders from guys like Greaves,” says Jonah. “Sometimes following orders gets people killed. I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
I swallow. I’m a little floored that Sergeant Wyatt is disobeying a direct order. But there’s something he isn’t telling me — some ghost from his past that’s pushing him forward.
Still, I hesitate. I’ve made a career out of following my gut, and that hasn’t always worked to my advantage. I moved to New York when I couldn’t afford it, chasing one dead-end job after another. I went out on a limb with the Space Force story, and I bit off way more than I could chew.
But Jonah is the real deal. I don’t know why he was discharged from the army, and I realize I don’t care. If he’s disobeying orders and asking me to go, that must mean it’s important.
“Okay,” I whisper, dragging in a breath. “Let’s go.”
15
Maggie
As it turns out, borrowing an emergency shuttle and rocketing down to Earth to save the world from a fleet of evil bots is easier said than done.
By the time we get to the docking zone, the entire sector is blocked off. Bright-yellow tape is drawn across the waiting area, cordoning off the launch desk and the hallways branching off near the escalators.
Jonah ignores the barricade. He ducks under the tape and walks down the hallway to the office where the docking personnel were slaughtered.
I’m not sure what his plan is, but it doesn’t really matter. We’re immediately accosted by one of the FBI agents we saw back at Maverick, who looks as though he’s having the worst week ever. His bushy black eyebrows are drawn across his forehead, and when he sees us, his day seems to go from bad to worse.
“What the hell are you doing?” he calls. “This area is restricted!”
Jonah keeps walking, as though moving with purpose will somehow get us into an area where we aren’t supposed to be. “Sergeant Wyatt. I’m with the Space Force.”
“I don’t care if you’re with the goddamned Queen of England,” says Agent Eyebrows. “This is a restricted area. You aren’t allowed to be back here.”
“Last time I checked, the station was still under Space Force jurisdiction,” says Jonah. “If anything this should be a joint investigation.”
Agent Eyebrows’s scowl deepens. “In case you weren’t aware, Sergeant, a Space Force lieutenant just killed f
our people. He absconded in a government vessel. I’m sure you can see why the Space Force would have a conflict of interest here.”
Jonah lets out a huff of annoyance. I can tell he’s beginning to realize that he didn’t think this through. “I can help.”
“You can help by returning to your post. As I said . . . this area is restricted.”
“Thank you for your professionalism, Agent Ward,” says a familiar voice from behind me. “But I have requested Sergeant Wyatt’s presence.”
I turn around. Tripp is striding down the hallway toward us, looking as though he’s recovered from his earlier shock.
“All due respect, Mr. Van de Graaf, but I can’t let them through.”
“Ah, come on,” says Tripp in a cajoling voice, cuffing the agent around the shoulder. “We all know that I’ve been immensely cooperative throughout your investigation.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Van de Graaf, but this is an active crime scene. I cannot allow any unauthorized personnel —”
“How is Buddy Waldorf?” Tripp asks, smoothly interrupting Agent Eyebrows. “He used to hit the links in Bethesda with me and Pops every time we visited DC, and I haven’t seen him in forever.”
Agent Eyebrows looks taken aback. Bradley “Buddy” Waldorf is the Director of the FBI. I’m not sure whether or not Tripp is bluffing about their golf outings, but it seems to have had its intended effect.
“Sir?”
“How is ol’ Buddy?” Tripp presses.
Agent Eyebrows gives him a blank look. “I . . . don’t know, sir.”
“Well, next time you see him, tell him I said hi. And I’ll be sure to tell him what excellent treatment we’ve had from your team throughout the investigation.”
Tripp claps Eyebrows on the shoulder again and walks right past, leaving Jonah and I standing there dumbfounded.
Tripp turns casually over his shoulder and shoots me a look, and we brush past the agent without another word.
“You really are something else,” mutters Jonah as we catch up to Tripp.
Tripp shrugs. “Ahh, it’s nothing. Sometimes when public servants get a little uppity, it’s important to remind them that we’re the ones who pay their salaries. I pay a lot in taxes, and I expect to get my money’s worth.”
“Unbelievable,” Jonah grumbles.
“What are you two even doing here?” asks Tripp.
“We’re going to Earth to clean up this mess.”
“You’re leaving?” Tripp looks about as confused as I did when Jonah first broached the subject to me.
“No point sitting on our asses while Buford and Mordecai activate those humanoids,” Jonah grumbles. “We’re running out of time.”
Tripp frowns. I can tell that part of him wants to shut Jonah down, but the fact that he doesn’t seems to underscore the seriousness of the situation.
“All right,” he says finally. “I’ll let you borrow Carl . . . and the pocket rocket.”
“What?”
“Carl is one of my backup pilots,” Tripp explains. “The pocket rocket is what we call the emergency medevac shuttle.”
“Great,” I say, privately wondering if we should really be taking the emergency medical shuttle in the midst of a war.
Jonah scowls. I can tell he hadn’t expected to accept help from the likes of Tripp, and it pains him to do it.
“Just . . . lay low for a second, and I’ll get Carl,” says Tripp, glancing back toward Agent Eyebrows. “We’re going to have to keep this under the radar or risk pissing off our FBI friends.”
Tripp disappears to go find the pilot, and Jonah leads me down the hallway toward the area where the spacecraft are docked. When we first landed on Elderon, a jet bridge led us from the enormous commercial shuttle into the main waiting area, but the smaller shuttles are docked farther out.
We reach the airlock doors leading to the jet bridge, and I hear a garbled voice on the intercom. Apparently the investigating agents have an all-hands meeting in Sector E — two decks up from the docking zone.
I smile to myself at Tripp’s ingenuity. A special “meeting” on the upper deck has Tripp’s name written all over it.
A few minutes later, the pilot appears — a middle-aged man with a splotchy red face and unruly gray-and-black hair. His blue uniform is wrinkled as though he slept in it, and he has the look of someone who was just roused from an all-night bender.
Jonah and I exchange a nervous look.
“You Carl?” asks Jonah as the guy shoves past us to get to the jet bridge.
“Wish I wasn’t,” the pilot grumbles, his voice low and scratchy like gravel. “Today especially.”
This is Tripp’s backup? He’s a far cry from the professional pilot in command of our flight to Elderon. This guy looks more like a backup mall santa with a bit of a drinking problem.
The doors open with a loud hiss, and I get an uncomfortable pang in my stomach.
We follow Carl through the doors, and he hands us two flight suits that smell like plastic. I feel a rush of gratitude that there are no blue onesies that we have to wear underneath, and the three of us quickly suit up for the flight.
These suits are heavier and uglier than the ones we wore aboard the Impetus. Clearly whoever designed these suits didn’t care about making them stylish and comfortable for a bunch of space tourists.
As soon as we’re all zipped up, Carl leads us down the jet bridge to another set of doors. This one is covered in caution signs warning about possible interruptions in oxygen supply.
We all stop to pull on our helmets, and I feel along the rim to check the seal. The helmet automatically syncs with my Optix, and my suit’s internal temperature and oxygen levels appear at eye level.
Carl punches in a code on the keypad mounted along the wall, and the doors slide open with a loud suction-y sound.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. I’ve only been aboard one space shuttle in my life, and I was picturing something like the Impetus.
This isn’t it.
The emergency medevac shuttle is absolutely tiny. Carl pulls on a latch to open a door the size of a man-hole cover, and I step over a rubberized accordion bridge and half climb/half dive into the shuttle.
When I try to straighten my spine, I realize that I can’t stand up without hitting my head on the ceiling. Jonah and Carl squeeze in after me, and I climb over the pilot’s seat to a tiny nook in the back. I have no idea how one would maneuver a stretcher in here.
Carl settles into the miniaturized cockpit and starts flipping switches to initiate launch procedure. I settle into one of the tight bucket seats and realize that someone on Tripp’s payroll must be talking to Carl from the control room.
Jonah shoves his rucksack into the cargo area, and I realize I didn’t bring a single thing. I didn’t even pack clean underwear. I was so caught up in Jonah’s plan that it never occurred to me I might not be back.
Jonah lowers himself into the seat next to mine, and I can read the anxiety in his eyes. He straps himself in and fixes his gaze forward, and I realize that he too is having doubts about our plan.
I want to say something — what, I’m not sure — but then Carl tells us to prepare for separation, and I realize that our comms are connected.
The shuttle trembles as the engines ignite, and I feel a surge of anxiety. I glance over at Jonah, who’s gripping the armrests for dear life. I’m not sure what his last space flight was like, but I’m guessing that he did not enjoy it.
“All right, here we go,” says Carl through my helmet speaker. “We need to get about twelve kilometers away from the station before we ignite the secondary thrusters.”
I nod once even though he can’t see me and double-check my harness.
“Five . . . Four . . .”
I swallow down my nerves and try to calm my breathing. As soon as we separate from the docking station, there’s no going back.
“Three . . . Two . . . One . . .”
Everything starts to shake as the shuttle
separates from Elderon. I feel a sudden jolt as we lift away from the station, but it’s not the violent thrust into outer space that I was expecting.
Our shuttle separates from Elderon, and I feel the propulsion capsule powering our liftoff as we slingshot around the space station.
“We have physical separation,” says Carl in my ears, sounding surprisingly calm for a guy who’s going to take us to Earth in a shuttle the size of a minivan.
“Pocket Rocket, departing Colony One,” says someone in the control room.
“Godspeed,” says a third voice that sounds like Tripp.
Just then, I hear a high-pitched whirring as Carl lights our secondary thrusters. I grit my teeth, preparing for the worst, and suddenly I’m thrown back in my seat.
I squeeze my armrests with all my might as we rocket away from the colony, and I imagine people on Elderon rushing to the windows to see the streak of fire whirling past the space station. The stars become shimmering remnants of light, and soon their streaks blur together into a fine silvery mist.
We did it.
I look over at Jonah, whose eyes are fixed straight ahead. He still looks like someone blazing into battle who knows he’s going to die, but the violent quaking has subsided. We’ve found the trajectory that will take us back to Earth.
“All good,” says Carl’s voice in my ears. “We have a nice weather window. The return flight’s only about three and a half hours. As long as this holds, we should have a fairly smooth landing.”
“A fairly smooth landing?” Jonah repeats.
“That’s the best you can ask for on an emergency trip to Earth, bud. Reentering Earth’s atmosphere ain’t like drivin’ down the freeway. You’re lucky if your shuttle makes it all in one piece.”
Jonah and I exchange a nervous look, but I take a deep breath and try to stay calm. One of us has to keep our shit together.
Now that I’m sitting still, I realize that my body is exhausted. I’ve lost count of the hours I’ve been awake, and my body aches as if I’ve been in a car wreck. This is the first time since the kidnapping that my life hasn’t been in danger, and my body seems to take notice — begging me for rest.
