by Richard Fox
“Hello? Anyone there?” she said.
A handful of grid lines on the wall ahead of her faded from black to white, a rectangle big enough for a person to walk through swung open, and white light flooded the room. Stacey put her hands up to her face and tried to peek through her fingers.
A dark humanoid silhouette stood in the white light. The door closed behind it.
It was shaped like a man. A maroon jumpsuit hung over shoulders so thin it looked like it was made of pipes instead of flesh and blood. Its head was a mask of iron, with dark pits for eyes and slight mounds in the metal passing for features.
It stepped toward her, achingly smooth in its motions for something that looked almost primitive in design.
“Greetings,” the word was toneless, mechanical. “I am your integration assistant. Please follow me. We have much to discuss.” Its hand—made of exposed metal joints—gestured toward the door with the grace of a ballerina.
“Wait, where am I? Where’s Ibarra?”
It held still as a sculpture.
“The assessment AI remained behind, standard procedure. I do not know where we are in relation to your home world. Your hosts refer to this facility as—human equivalent—Rendezvous.”
Stacey looked around its shoulder toward the open door. Darkness awaited.
“You cannot remain here,” it said.
“No, guess not. Do you have a name?”
“I am purpose built and do not require a designation.”
“Then your name is Chuck. My commander wants me to meet with whoever sent the probe to our solar system. We deserve some answers after what we’ve been through.”
Chuck’s head spun around and his feet and hands followed suit, changing his direction without moving.
“You will have your answers. Come with me,” Chuck said.
CHAPTER 12
Driving a car felt natural to Hale. With his brother, Jared, in the passenger seat, Hale could almost imagine the world before the Xaros came. Driving through the neighborhood they grew up in brought back memories of bike crashes against walls, baseball games on overgrown fields and useless childhood brawls with local bullies on more than one corner.
That the neighborhood was devoid of other people ruined his memories. Only the emptiness remained.
“When is this scheduled for demolition?” Jared asked.
“Next month. Automated farms for produce and beans will go in, I think,” Hale said. He turned their car into their old subdivision, one- and two-story homes built near the turn of the century.
“We could put in a request with the board, keep the house,” Jared said.
“Let’s take a look at it first.”
Their parents’ house was there, on the corner across the street from a crumpled playground overgrown with weeds, same as it ever was. He parked across the street, on the curb of the house where his first girlfriend lived.
The brothers got out of the car, hands on their holstered pistols. There was no threat from the Xaros; every one of them had been destroyed in the battle for the Crucible. No bandits to worry about, the Xaros had left none alive. But there were plenty of coyotes and packs of feral dogs around them. With a few generations to forget humans, the animals saw them as prey.
The mesquite tree in front of the porch had grown out of control. Branches hung over the front door and swept against the roof in the breeze. Weeds poked through an exposed fault line of the solar panel driveway. Faded, cracked paint covered the house like a lake bed baked in the sun.
“You first?” Jared asked.
“Let’s get this over with,” Hale said. He pushed past the mesquite branches and grabbed the knob, which was rusted shut. A swift kick to the door knocked it loose and it swung open with a creak.
A sheen of dust and pollen covered the mahogany floors, real wood that his mother had dreamed about for years after their family moved into the house. Hale shifted his foot over the floor, exposing the dark wood. Their father had the new floors put in during a family trip to the beach. He remembered how happy his mother had been, dancing across the floor in her bare feet.
A layer of dust covered the furniture in the living room. A bloom of mold stained the ceiling like a stormy sky. An old-fashioned picture on the wall of the brothers—both in dress uniforms from their commissioning ceremony—and their proud parents had rotted in its frame, victim of the water that had invaded their roof.
“I knew it wouldn’t be pretty, but…,” Jared said.
“You think they were here?” Hale asked.
Jared shrugged his shoulders and pushed past Hale. They went past a decayed kitchen and into the hallways leading to the bedrooms. Each had had his own room, but they’d been converted into a man cave for their father and an art studio for their mother after they’d left for college.
A door at the end of the hall led to the master bedroom. Black mold covered it like soot from a long-ago fire.
Hale pushed the door open with his fingertips. The room stank of mildew. Closed shutters had robbed the room of light for years. Hale poked his finger into the wooden slats and let in the sun.
The bed was unkempt. He looked to the ceiling, no distinctive Xaros disintegration holes there. His father was a stickler for hospital corners and bed sheets so tight he could bounce a quarter off them. He wouldn’t have left the bed like that.
“Closet,” Jared said.
The closet door was ajar, light spilling around the crack and under the sill.
Hale stepped slowly to the closet, his footfalls like moving through clay. He could rationalize what was beyond that door. His parents were dead, murdered by the Xaros like every other human being that wasn’t in the fleet. His mind knew this, accepted it, but his heart hadn’t. Not yet.
The closet door opened with a squeal of rusted hinges. Light shone through two unnatural holes in the ceiling. Dust motes danced in the rays pointing to where their parents had died. Deep red dust on the floor and wall crudely outlined where they’d spent their final moments.
“They were holding each other,” Jared said.
Hale nodded. He wiped a tear away on his sleeve and knelt down. He reached out to touch the red dust, but couldn’t.
The scrape of metal against rotting wood came from above him. Jared had pulled a lockbox off a shelf.
“This should be it,” he said. Jared took the box into the bedroom and put it on top of a dresser. He un-holstered his pistol and slammed the butt against the rusted lock. The box popped open. Jared took an oblong wooden box the size of his palm out and looked it over in the feeble light.
“Held together well,” he said. He opened the wooden box, and gold glinted from within.
Jared held up a ring, thick and wide at the top, intricate crests on either side, a crown of sparkling diamonds and rubies on top.
“Granddad’s academy ring,” Jared said. The elder Hale had fought in the Iraq War and worn that ring every day he’d been in combat. Their father would take it out and share stories about Granddad on the anniversary of his death, tales of valor meant to guide the boys into becoming good men.
Jared held it out to Hale.
“Here, you take it,” Jared said.
“You always wanted it.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the one that fought through Euskal Tower, got the probe back to the fleet, killed who knows how many drones when you singlehandedly took the Crucible, etc., etc. I landed on node as part of the feint, shot at one drone and then the battle ended. You deserve it more than I do. Granddad would agree.”
Hale took the ring, tested its weight and slid it on. It fit snug, but it fit.
“But these are mine.” Jared held up a pair of brass spurs, another relic of their grandfather. Family lore had it that the spurs were from the melted down bust of the dictator toppled in the Iraq War.
Hale looked back in the closet, ice filling his heart.
“Let’s go.”
They stood in the driveway, swapping stories each knew by heart as
they waited to finally say goodbye to the home.
“Look, there’s Titan Station,” Jared said, pointing to the horizon.
The space station, originally designed as the hub for the Saturn colonies meant for orbit around Titan, crested over the horizon. It had grown from scaffolding to a dome surrounded by spokes in the month since the battle for the Crucible. The robot construction crews had built it in record time and more than one ship was already in dry dock for repairs. If Hale had his helmet on, he could have zoomed in to see the Breitenfeld docked against the station.
Hale looked to the other side of the sky, where a new moon orbited far beyond Titan Station. Ceres had arrived last week and nestled into the Lagrange point like it had always belonged there. The alien rings around the dwarf planet sometimes refracted light from the sun, an infrequent reminder to those on Earth that something new and terrifying was in the sky above them.
“Let’s get back to Phoenix. War hero or not, there’s a curfew,” Jared said.
“You going to miss this place?” Hale asked, climbing into the car.
“No. This isn’t our home anymore,” Jared said. He tapped the unit patch on his shoulder, then his brother’s shoulder. “This is all we have left. All we are.”
“For now. We’ve got our world back and we’re going to rebuild it.”
****
Bodel and Kallen made their way through the long-term care ward. Most rooms were filled with Marines and sailors still recovering from injuries sustained in the Battle of the Crucible, skin grafts over burns and limb regrowth that needed more therapy and time to heal.
Kallen, pushed along by Bodel, nodded to patients as they went past rooms. They’d gotten to know most of the ward during their daily visits. She smiled as they passed an empty room; Johanna was finally discharged after her body accepted the cloned organs.
The windows surrounding Elias’ room were opaque for his privacy, a favor he’d appreciate when he finally awoke. The door slid to the side as Bodel and Kallen got close and she saw Dr. Yanish, a diminutive bald man with a hawk nose and round glasses, before Elias’ tank.
Elias remained in his armored tank, catatonic after he’d redlined during the fight on the Breitenfeld’s hangar. The trauma to his nervous system was severe enough that Dr. Yanish and the rest of the doctors and engineers dedicated to the armor program wouldn’t risk removing Elias from the tank. Elias hadn’t made a move or a sound since the battle ended.
“Doctor, nice to see you,” Kallen said.
“Is it?” Yanish asked. “When have we ever seen each other for something positive? It’s always ‘He’s bleeding to death’ or ‘Does this look infected?’ never ‘Come to this bar often?’” Yanish ran a finger down a display on Elias’ tank and grunted.
“Bad news?” Bodel asked.
“His cognitive state remains unchanged, still catatonic. I don’t believe he’s lost higher brain functions. Still, the longer he stays in the tank, the better chance he has of developing an infection and then everything will go south. His body is withering, but we can’t risk stimulating his muscles remotely for fear of what it’ll do to his system.”
“My offer still stands,” Kallen said. “Let me link with him, see if I can coax him out.”
“And my very firm ‘no’ remains. No. What you propose has no basis in medicine and would certainly be dangerous to you both.”
“We’re the ones with plugs. We are armor. Let us try,” she said.
“No,” Yanish said with a slight shake of his head. “If you’ll excuse me.” He left the room with a huff.
“I hate crunchies,” Bodel said. He tapped on Elias’ tank and a view slot opened. Elias hung in the amniotic fluid, eyes half-open.
“Hello, Elias,” Kallen said. “We found someone with a copy of that old Japanese Anime series you were always talking about. Want to watch it?”
Elias hung in his tank, unresponsive as ever.
Bodel tapped at his Ubi and a holo screen playing a 2-D cartoon popped up between the three Iron Hearts.
Inside the tank, hidden from Kallen and Bodel’s eyes, Elias’ fingers twitched.
****
Admiral Garrett crossed his arms over his chest and sighed loudly. Every time he had to visit the Crucible’s command center he ended up losing hours as Ibarra yakked incessantly over every detail of maintaining the Crucible.
The control center had been converted for easier human use—the control rings lowered, seats installed and the temperature brought down to cool and crisp, just how Garrett liked it—although the Crucible remained unmanned most of the time. Ibarra could handle the station with minimal effort and the crew of the fleet was better utilized repairing the fleet and rebuilding Phoenix into something habitable.
Now, Garrett’s bridge crew—the few that survived the damage to the America and an amalgam of sailors from other ships—took up duty stations around the plinth where Ibarra had remained since he took over the station.
“The amount of omnium recovered from Mars and the mines within Ceres is in the tens of thousands of tons, more than I’d projected,” Ibarra said. A hologram over the plinth displayed the Crucible as time projections and mass numbers pinged from the incomplete edges of the ring of thorns.
“We can’t use omnium. Why are we wasting time with this?” Garrett asked.
“We can’t use it yet, as I’ve told you every time you whine about the most amazing substance my intelligence has ever come across. Once we know how to convert it, we’ll be able to complete this station and access the Xaros jump gate network,” Ibarra said.
“And the Xaros will have access to this gate too. I’m in no hurry to open the door for more drones,” Garrett said.
Captain Valdar entered the control room and stopped to gawk at the alien construct.
“Isaac, come over here,” Garrett said to Valdar.
The captain of the Breitenfeld tromped down the steps, marveling at the holo display.
“I’d heard rumors, but this is incredible,” Valdar said.
“We’ve kept this classified for as long as we can,” Garrett said. “Some of the civilians are already trying to worship the Crucible, calling the Xaros decimation the rapture and claiming the probe here is a prophet.”
“They send the nicest letters,” Ibarra said.
“We’ll man this station once we have the need and personnel available. Let the civvies come up and talk to this joker for a bit. His attitude should convince just about everyone that he’s the same sanctimonious jerk he was in human form as he is in…electrons. Whatever you are.”
“What is this place supposed to be?” Valdar asked. “There are stairs, atmosphere, and gravity. The drones need none of that.”
“Correct,” Ibarra said. The holo collapsed back into a sliver of light. “We’ve seen the drones build gates identical to this one in systems with Earth-like planets. Some systems have been rearranged: planets moved into the Goldilocks’ Zone where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface, and terraformed. Thus far, none of the planets have ever been colonized.”
“Someone is coming,” Garrett said. “Whoever sent the drones to clear-cut intelligent life from the galaxy isn’t interested in sharing the neighborhood.”
“OK, but what does that have to do with me? I’ve been neck deep in repairing the Breitenfeld since the battle ended,” Valdar said.
“The Xaros display an interesting foible,” Ibarra said. “When they come across an intelligent species, they wipe it out. When they come across a planet once inhabited by an extinct civilization, they preserve what remains.” The holo morphed into a planet covered in lush jungles, shallow and small seas and tiny ice caps.
“This is Anthalas, colony world of a spacefaring race that vanished almost fifty thousand years ago. Anthalas is just within range of our solar system,” Ibarra said.
“Range? How? I thought this gate was incomplete,” Valdar said. “And why should we care about some rock when the Xaros will almost certainly come
back here?”
“Captain Valdar, there is more than one way to travel. As for your concerns, we believe Anthalas may have technology capable of helping us win this fight with the Xaros.”
“And this involves me…how?” Valdar said.
“As soon as my wayward—ah, here we go,” Ibarra rose from the plinth and a column of gold light coalesced around him. Golden points of light swirled into a perfectly white portal and lowered to the ground.
Stacey stepped through the portal wearing her battle armor. She moved clear of the portal and pressed her hands against her temples.
“Ugh, that got old fast,” she said. She looked at her hands, then furrowed her brow at the armor covering her body. She tapped at the armor, like is wasn’t meant to be there.
“That’s funny,” she said.
“Ensign Ibarra,” Garrett said, “do you have it?”
Stacey’s head shook quickly, like she’d been woken from a deep sleep.
“Sir! So nice to see another actual human being,” she said and blanched as she looked around the room.
“Where is the DNA interface?” She jogged around the nearest ring of workstations and pointed at a naval rating.
“Move.” The rating jumped from his seat and scurried away. Stacey stripped a glove off and pressed her hand against the black rock. The rock glowed with a pale blue light and the holo display above it went wild with incoming data.
“It took the Qa’Resh days to come up with the equations, but it should work,” she said.
“Ensign, what are you talking about?” Valdar said.
“Grandpa, we have to adjust the gravity field for the station. Move the spikes into the configuration after I leave,” Stacey said. She removed her hand and put her glove back on. “No time to explain, I’ll foul the wormhole if I stay too long. Ibarra will fill in the details.” She took a deep breath and jumped into the portal, which shrank to a pinprick and winked out.
“We’re sending the Breitenfeld to Anthalas, Captain Valdar. First, we need the means to get there, and someone to show us the way,” Garrett said.
