“A lot of our job is doing not-smart things,” he said. “Someone is going to have to go in there. That’s us. That’s what we do.”
“We have to be smart about it, even so. So we survive, and don’t just throw away our lives because it seems to be what we do today.”
“You’re being overly harsh here.”
“No,” Bee said, stopping to take a calming breath, “I’m being honest. I’m all for half-baked plans and charging in where everyone else fears, sure. That’s a lot of what we end up doing, and I get that.”
“So then—”
“No, listen to me,” she said forcefully, “this isn’t going down to a planet and rescuing someone, this is leaping into a situation so unknown that physics doesn’t cover it yet. That’s not just some strange moment that other people are afraid of. There literally isn’t enough data to make an informed choice.”
“So how do we get better data?” he asked.
“We try a probe. Just try one. Attached to a GravPack so it has engines, hopefully, maybe. Just a quick test in and out.” She turned her screen a bit so he could see it clearly. She’d been building plans for exactly the sort of probe she wanted.
“We send this and then we go in?”
“If we need to, if it’s even a livable space. Then we go explore, and figure out who’s doing this and what they want.”
“Could be a natural occurrence, too,” Mud said.
“Neither of us believe that though, right?”
“Not really. All right, get the probe up and out the door soonest. I’m gonna go brief Mills in person and see if I can relieve him. He must be driving himself to destruction down there.”
Mud hit the hangar deck and pulled a wheeled terminal station over to where Mills worked. The two shared the job of managing the evacuation, speeding things up, and as they worked, they talked. They caught each other up at speed easily and moved toward working out the next steps on both sides. Mills only had one lingering problem.
“You can’t send that data to your parents,” he said, directing a group to one of the last shuttles.
“Too late, but what’s your problem?” Mud asked him. He looked around the almost empty hangar, glad to be nearly done with this phase of the evac.
“Proprietary Gov information, the fact that they have nonsecured data the Gov should already have, using consultants without running it by me—I don’t know, Mud, pick one.”
“And you know the answers to all of them. I couldn’t get them to hand over the family storage any more than you could. And in an emergency, even without one, since when do I check with you about using my own contacts?” Mud looked at Mills, smiling. “You just don’t want the old man thinking we need his help.”
“I don’t want him coming out here and, I don’t know...blowing things up.”
“That’s mom, and they won’t come out here. I just need to check data.”
Mills held up a finger, checking his console. “The Amalfi is close enough for short comms, so they should be here in about ten minutes.”
“Surely that’s close enough to start boarding people,” Mud said.
“I want them on the other side of us, with the Ratzinger between it and the Fold. Then we can dock crews. There can’t be a chance of needing to evac a second time.”
“I’ll start sending out notices, then,” Mud said, typing quickly. He flashed notices to the ships, one after another, with instructions, putting them in text to save miscommunications and garbled read-backs of coordinates.
“Anyway,” Mills said, sending the same messages as Mud to more of the ships floating and waiting, “send the probe into the Fold, but nothing else happens until the Amalfi is away.”
“Where will you be?” Mud asked.
“Not sure yet. I’m going to leave a small security crew here, just to wait for a tow, but we’re transferring everything else to the Amalfi and I’m taking it out as a replacement. Speaking of, make sure Bee sends all her data—”
“I’ve sent her terminal instructions already,” Mud said.
“Good. You guys going into the Fold is incredibly stupid, you know.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I’ll realistically have to be on the Amalfi settling everyone in, but that means getting a good distance from the Fold. You won’t have backup.”
“Sure I will. The Arrow stays on this side with some of my team. Mills, we do stuff like this without you all the time. No offense, just...don’t worry about us.”
“You do not do ‘stuff like this’ all the time,” Mills said. “No one does. This is—”
“Don’t do it.”
“What?”
“Tell me how this is different, more dangerous, whatever. That’s what I mean. It’s what we do. The unknown. You know this, hell, you send us to do it!” Mud pushed his terminal away and looked out the hangar into empty space. A gravity shield sealed them off from vacuum, phasing in ripples to allow ships to pass. “We’re going, and no amount of warning or doomsaying will stop it. We both know it’s our job, so don’t feel guilt or concern and try to ease it off by lecturing me. Is this what having normal parents is like?”
Mills laughed, “Yeah, Jonah and Shae would just be annoyed you got to go first.”
“They’d also,” Mud said, shaking his head and laughing lightly, “trust me to take the right precautions and adapt as needed.”
“All right, all right,” Mills raised his hands, palms toward Mud, “I give. If the Amalfi is out of communications range, I expect that same probe delay message from the Arrow, though.”
“Fair enough. Now go to a comm deck and get the Amalfi aligned. It’ll be easier, I’ll keep watch down here until loading starts.”
“Thanks, Mud, and fly safe.” Mills shut down his terminal and started off toward the ship’s interior.
“And if my parents get back to you and say they’re on their way, remind them I haven’t sent an alarm yet. It’ll make mom stand down and put them off.”
“They’re still going to demand to run the room remote, you know.”
“That’s your problem,” Mud said, waving Mills out of the room. “Now get going, you need to keep the transfer running smooth.”
CHAPTER 15
STEELBOX CAME BACK to the observation deck to find Bee working on a GravPack, attaching remotes and a sensor box to the bullet-shaped casing, muttering while she worked. He nodded at her and dug in to help.
“Probe?” he asked, looking at the components laid out across the table.
“Yeah. Hand me that wrench?” She’d gotten down to the crew storage and grabbed one of the spare GravPacks and as many sensor collectors as she could carry. The problem, as she saw it, remained figuring out and limiting what they needed to probe for. The probe needed to be small, which meant she only had so many options. But given the utter unknown on the other side of the Fold, she wanted to scan for literally everything that humanity—and everyone else they knew of—could think of measuring.
While they worked and Mud kept an eye on the hangar deck, reading scans from the waiting ships, Mills started running the reverse end of the evac. The Amalfi edged gradually into position, moving as slow as it did in hopes of not attracting attention from the thing in the Fold. No one knew if the creature cared, but they had to act like it might.
Around both giant ships, the fighters, shuttles, and extraneous vessels from the Ratzinger drifted like tiny minnow around whales. The cluster needed to stay close, but far enough apart to avoid collisions and to make sure none of the ships would cut off escape routes if the situation suddenly changed.
Mills kept requesting field information from Mud, who had an eye on the swarm of smaller ships. Everything looked good, and Mills gave him a pattern move that he thought should work before turning his attention fully to the Amalfi.
The Amalfi switchover presented interesting problems. A much older ship, Mills had to make sure its data stores could handle the load he’d put it under, transferring everything p
ossible from the Ratzinger. That process started, Mills checked on the pseudopods crawling along the ship. They continued, slowly enveloping the Ratzinger foot by foot. No engines meant no way to escape their grip at all, except to try firing at the thing. Mills didn’t want to go down that road just yet, not if he could avoid it. But that avoidance meant getting the Amalfi ready for his crew. As it stood, the ship arrived with a skeleton crew to fly it in. They were really just a docking crew who could pilot the ship.
Mud identified the ship’s carrying bridge crew from the Ratzinger and Mills started working out a rotation to get the right people in board in the right order. He didn’t have the hours it would take to do the job right, so he’d have to do it right enough to get by.
Mills caught a launch from the Ratzinger, unplanned and not on his list. Without thinking, he targeted it, locking onto the small shape quickly. “Damn it, Mud, did you guys just launch a probe?” He squinted at his monitor.
“Is that what that was? I caught it, too. Damn, let me confirm.” Mud went silent for only a second before he came back on the line. “Confirmed. Probe is ours.”
“We weren’t supposed to launch it yet, I want my people safe before we—”
“I know, Mills. I’ll yell at them later, let’s get this done first.”
“Mud, if they—”
“Mills! Watch your screen! You almost sent two shuttles into each other.”
“Damn it, sorry,” Mills said, sending adjusted coordinates quickly, “it’s just distracting watching something eat the ship.”
“If only we knew that’s what it’s doing.”
“True enough. Mud, if you have this, I’m going to head over to the Amalfi myself and oversee from that end, get the place running.”
“The Arrow is returning from dropping its load—I’ll have them at the hangar for you.”
“Perfect. I’m signing off the board. Bring them in for me.”
“Got it.”
Mills stopped by his quarters on the way down, shoving a few things into a bag to take with him. He looked around the room and sighed. The situation ate at him like utter failure. No crew lost, as of yet—no secrets given away, weapons stolen, nothing. But the downing of the Ratzinger hung in Mills’ head as a giant sign he should resign, or at least demote himself, since he knew his superiors would side with a rational view and agree that this situation remained out of his control.
Zipping his bag angrily, Mills stopped and took a few deep breaths, pushing the feeling down and centering himself. He could feel like crap later—for now he needed to go and ensure the continued safety of the people below him.
Mills walked through the hangar without saying a word to Mud, giving him a nod in passing while the lanky Hurkz kept working, speaking softly into a headset and typing furiously. The Arrow sat in the hangar, doors open for him. Engines still glowing, Mills picked up his pace a little. They took off for the Amalfi without Chellox or Olivet saying a word to him. They knew, he could feel, his sense of failure, and either agreed or didn’t know how to defuse it.
The Arrow looped over the Ratzinger to bring the Amalfi into view. Mud’s scheduled triage for the shuttles left a clear path, and Chellox guided them in swiftly. Mills departed without a word, not seeing Olivet trying to say something. Shaking his head inside his helmet, Chellox sealed up the ship and took off, opening up a hangar spot for other landing ships.
Mills hurried to the bridge of the Amalfi, swallowing his insecurities as he went. He needed to be, just then, a leader, and he couldn’t let the hundreds of people counting on him down. He just hoped that if he faked it long enough, he would start to believe the mask. His bridge staff filtered in, one by one, as shuttles landed and they made their way directly to the bridge, dropping their bags next to their stations. Each one of them felt a duty to help before dealing with themselves, and it warmed Mills to see. Clapping his hands loudly once, he looked around the bridge, easily eighty-percent staffed already.
“All right, people, let’s bring them home and set up shop.” They got to work, checking their stations and bringing systems online.
Back on the Ratzinger, Mud considered an option. Protocol would be to land the shuttles with weaponry first, as the Amalfi had minimal stock in its weapons cache and what it did have sat badly outdated. The last thing he wanted, though, was for Mills to try attacking the Fold before they had good data. If he held back the supply ships, he could delay any sort of preemptive launch. Assuming you could really call it preemptive at this point. That itself would be the source of the debate.
Mills wanted to arm up—a standard, and rational, choice—but he’d be too busy to notice Mud messing with the order of ships just a little. A nudge here and there and he could have his way. Running his hands across his board, looking at ship positions, Mud decided to trust Mills rather than force his hand either way.
Switching one of his monitors to an external ship view, Mud realized how calm they all were about the Fold. What should’ve been a big, frantic event was unfurling almost leisurely, as if the slow pace of the creature engulfing the Ratzinger itself drove the speed of reaction.
Mud wanted to rush, to hurry in and deal with it, but everyone around him was pushing for slower reactions and careful maneuvers. He didn’t blame them—hell, he found he mostly agreed with them, on paper at least. He glanced at one of the hull cameras again and felt his hackles rise. He agreed with them on paper, sure, but he needed to move on this now. Right now it was a slow invasion, a quiet attack, and they could take their time and do things with utmost care. That could change any second, and when it did, they’d be caught by it.
The Arrow landed in the hangar and Mud called Chellox over. Explaining the way the ship rotation needed to work—and with a reminder that the human pilots, with only human engines, couldn’t fly like Tsyfarians—Mud left him in charge, letting Mills know but not sticking around for the reply.
He knew what the reply would be.
He didn’t care.
Grabbing his GravPack off the Arrow, he made his way quickly to the observation desk. “Probe back yet?” he asked, entering to see Bee and Steelbox staring fixedly at a screen.
“Yup,” Steelbox said, not looking away.
“Good, so it could go and return,” he said, “so let’s—”
“Mud, you have to see this data,” Bee said softly.
He walked over to the screen they stared at and gave it a look.
“If this is right—”
“It’s right,” Bee told him. “Upon entering the Fold, the probe accelerated from a normal insertion speed to something beyond the speed of light.”
“The GravPacks can do that,” Mud said, peering at the data thoughtfully.
“Sure,” Bee agreed, “but not by themselves, generally. It maintained that speed, relative to this universe. But in the Fold, it seemed to still be going the same speed it entered at.”
“This universe?” he asked.
“That’s what hurts my head, too,” Steelbox said. “Look at the data we got. That’s kind of provably not this universe. The laws of physics seem slightly off.”
“More than slightly at some points,” Bee said, pointing at the screen. “It seems to be survivable for humans.” She looked at Mud. “You know what I mean.”
“Carbon-based oxygen breathers?”
“That’s the one,” she agreed. “So yeah, probably survivable, but definitely a different universe. Gravity seems to work, but differently, the speed of light is...off. I don’t know what they use to see by, or what we would. There’s a chance the gravity shield would manage to slow down tachyonic particles back to visible-light speeds? I think that’s what this reading could indicate.”
“So the camera didn’t grab anything?”
“Sort of. The lens activated, it tried to capture photons, all normal. But the pixel translation went odd. I think. You know how looking at the Fold kind of hurts? This seems to be the same thing.”
“Just...if we go in, could w
e see?” Mud asked.
“I don’t know,” Bee told him, “maybe. But only maybe.”
“But we could also get back out,” he said.
“The probe was set to repel against anything it could find, in the opposite direction of entry. And it did. So, yes. But Mud—”
“We’re going in.”
“We need more data,” Bee said, poking the screen. “This is a start, but it’s only a start.”
“And when the Fold increases size, or shit comes out of it we can’t deal with, or any of a hundred different problems?”
“Mud,” Steelbox said, “none of that is happening. We should use the time we have.”
“And we will. From the other side of the Fold, working out what’s actually going on, instead of waiting for it to come to us.”
“Fine, but you’re not going alone,” Bee said, shaking her head, “and I’m bringing as much equipment as I can carry. Steelbox, too.”
“Yeah,” he said, stopping quickly to think. “Wait, I am? Oh, who am I kidding, of course I am.”
“You both are,” Mud agreed. “Get your equipment gathered and suit up. We breach a new universe in five.”
CHAPTER 16
MUD, BEE, AND STEELBOX STOOD on the hangar deck of the Ratzinger, divvying up sensor equipment just outside of the Arrow. Olivet waved Mud over to the terminal he still worked at. Mud shook him off. Again.
“You know Mills is trying your comms, too,” Steelbox said.
“Of course he is. And if I talk to him, this gets messy for him if anything goes wrong. So we’re silent. It absolves him.”
“Did you ask him if he wanted to be absolved?” Bee asked.
“That,” Mud cocked his head to one side, like he was listening for something, “would defeat the purpose of not telling him, wouldn’t it?”
“But at least he’d have a choice,” she said.
“No,” Mud countered, “he wouldn’t, because by asking if he wanted to know, I’d be telling him, so even if he didn’t want to know he’d know, which would implicate him, which...why are we having this discussion?”
The Endless Sky Page 11
