The Phoenix Descent

by Chuck Grossart

  Litsa watched Jarrod stand, looking each of his warriors in the eye as he spoke. “Erik and Mirda were lost to this thing, and I will lose no more. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, my captain,” came the replies.

  Just then, Jaxom and Fleet returned. “It is there, my captain, in the draw, as you described it.”

  “Oilers,” Jarrod commanded, “move! The rest of you, standard spread and spacing, hold your fire until the ring is aflame.”

  As one, the warriors moved off, well schooled in the tactic they were about to employ, but Jarrod held them back. “Wait,” he said.

  They stopped and turned.

  “Warriors, hear me!” Jarrod’s voice echoed. “Tonight, we fight!”

  “Urrah!” they all replied. Litsa’s heart pounded away in her chest as the excitement of the hunt raced through her body. If she were to die tonight, at least she would be doing what she loved, with the bow steady in her hand and her arrows flying true.

  “Deploy,” Jarrod commanded, and they all ran to their positions, spaced no more than twenty yards apart. Litsa stopped, crouched, and slammed the sharpened end of her torch into the ground. She grabbed a handful of arrows and waited for the ring to ignite, the signal for all of them to loose their first volley.

  The night grew quiet as they waited for the oilers to start the attack. It would take them some time to pour a ring around the hive, and the seconds slowly ticked by.

  With a whoosh, the fields to the east suddenly brightened, and the flames quickly raced around the circle as the oil ignited. At evenly spaced intervals following the curved line of the flames, Litsa saw her fellow warriors light their arrows and stand.

  As did she.

  Chapter 19

  Hunter brought the viewer back online, and what it revealed shook Sif to the core. The pictures proved Lucas’s theory were not entirely correct. They weren’t in the past. Hunter said it was all gone. And he was right.

  “That’s St. Basil’s Cathedral, isn’t it?” Sif asked.

  “Yes,” Hunter replied. “In the middle of Moscow.”

  “My God, what happened?” Lucas said, his voice shaking. “Look at it.”

  Three of the four large onion domes were still intact, but most of the structure was caved in. What was left of the Kremlin sat just to the west of St. Basil’s, and it showed similar signs of damage.

  Sif’s initial reaction was to assume there was a war, that the unthinkable had finally happened. But, no, that couldn’t be. There was too much growth.

  “Look at the plants,” Sif said. “That’s what I’m seeing, right?”

  “It’s completely overgrown.” Hunter turned to Lucas. “We’re not looking at the past. And it’s not Earth in our own time, is it?”

  Lucas shook his head and took a deep breath before speaking. “No. I was wrong about the—” He rubbed his eyes again, then stared closely at the image on the screen. “Is the whole city that way? I mean, overgrown like that?”

  Hunter brought up more pictures of the city, all the same. Some buildings were intact, but so many were damaged. Throughout, though, what was once a major city had been reclaimed by nature, inch by inch.

  “I was wrong about the Tipler cylinder,” Lucas said, “or whatever the hell we went through. You’re right, Hunter, this kind of growth takes decades.”

  Moscow, even though the streets and structures were visible, was completely overgrown with vegetation. It reminded Sif of Pripyat, the Russian city abandoned right after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster back in the 1980s. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, it looked much like what she was seeing on their screen. Mother Nature, taking back what man once claimed. “We didn’t go back in time, did we?” Sif said.

  “No,” Lucas replied. “I don’t think we did.”

  Sif watched as Lucas pulled himself toward the window and stared below at what seemed to be a lifeless Earth, where everyone they knew, the smiling faces of family and friends, had been snuffed out. “We’re not looking at our past,” Lucas said. “This is our future.”

  It was quiet for a time in the command module, as each of them struggled with their thoughts. It was easier to believe all they ever knew hadn’t happened yet, and every person in their lives—mothers, fathers, siblings, friends—were yet to be born. But this changed things.

  Sif felt sorry for Hunter and Lucas, as each of them left loved ones behind. One of NASA’s requirements for this mission was that none of them could be married, as asking a person to leave behind a spouse, and maybe children, for such a long time—almost two years—on a trip that could very well end badly, was too much of a sacrifice for any person to make and could draw their focus away from the mission, which was their top priority.

  She was an easy choice. Parents deceased. Divorced. No kids.

  Alone.

  Hunter was never married but came from a large, close family, with three older sisters. He spoke often of his nieces and nephews.

  Lucas’s family wasn’t as large, but he was extremely close to his younger brother and sister, who idolized him. Sif remembered seeing them at the last meeting before quarantine and how heavy Lucas’s heart seemed after saying good-bye.

  Sif’s thoughts drifted to memories of her own parents, lost when she was just seventeen, a junior in high school. Her dad was larger than life, a Navy fighter pilot and war hero who flew F-14 Tomcats during Desert Storm. His call sign was Thor, as his favorite saying was “Drop the hammer!” Teaching her to drive a year before his death and taking her out on the interstate for the first time, he prodded her to hit the gas and speed up. “Drop the hammer, Cate, let ’er rip!” Sif smiled at the memory. She still missed him terribly. Her purpose in life from that point forward was to make Deke “Thor” Wagner proud, wherever he was.

  She remembered her mother, Carla, a beautiful woman, tall and thin, with hair the color of honey and large, expressive green eyes. Sif took after her father, as she was short, had a smaller version of his pug nose, his same jet-black hair, and shared his wide-spaced hazel eyes. She also shared his determination and drive to succeed, qualities that eventually landed her at the Naval Academy. One of her father’s former commanding officers, an admiral and family friend, smoothed the application process after the accident, helping to ensure Thor’s kid would get her shot.

  And she took full advantage of the opportunity.

  Her dad wasn’t there to see her receive her golden wings and become a naval aviator, but wherever he was, he must have been watching.

  Once she made it out to the fleet, her squadron mates tagged her with her call sign after learning who her father was. Thor and Sif. She saw the movie, too, and even though she never told anyone, Sif was her favorite character. A badass. And a warrior.

  She had been alone for so long, by choice, that the situation didn’t affect her as much as Hunter and Lucas. Even her ex-husband, whom she once thought she loved, was only an unfortunate mistake; she’d latched on to someone else even before the divorce was finalized. She would shed no tears over him.

  Hunter and Lucas were thinking about their families. From what they saw of the planet so far—the darkened landscape at night and the ruined city—they must assume their loved ones were all dead.

  And they didn’t know why.

  Another question still remained, too, just as valid as it was when they thought they’d gone backward in time: they still had no idea of when they were.

  Lucas finally broke the silence. “Do either of you remember the old Viking probes?”

  “I do,” Hunter said. “The first two Mars landers. Launched back in the seventies.”

  “Correct,” Lucas said. “But there were more than two.”

  Sif looked at Hunter, and he shrugged.

  Lucas continued staring out the window as he spoke. “There was a third Viking. Classified. They didn’t want everyone up in arms about launching a spacecraft with a small nuclear reactor as a power source. If the booster failed, they would have one hell of a mess
to clean up. And explain, too.”

  “What does it have to do with us?”

  “It disappeared, Hunter, on the way to Mars. Vanished. They never knew what happened to it until they found it in Earth orbit almost twenty years later. They brought it back—again, secretly—in Atlantis’s cargo bay. The vehicle showed no signs of being adrift in space for two decades—no pitting, no scarring—and even more surprising, its reactor’s power level was exactly the same as when it was first launched. It was as if Viking 3 appeared in Earth orbit almost immediately after it disappeared, yet twenty years had passed. There were theories about black holes, rips in space-time, even aliens, but it still remains a mystery.” Lucas turned, faced them.

  “So you’re suggesting whatever happened to Viking 3 happened to us, as well?” Sif asked.

  “I think that’s a distinct possibility. Look, the easiest way to get to Mars is to wait until the two planets are closest—and that only happens at certain times, once every two years or so. If our trajectory to Mars just happened to coincide with the same trajectory Viking 3 followed, and if the two spacecraft happened to travel through the same part of space between Earth and Mars, and if Viking 3 encountered the same Tipler cylinder—or whatever—that we did, then yes, I’m suggesting that what happened to Viking 3 happened to us, too.”

  “If Viking 3 was only gone for twenty years, that doesn’t explain the amount of growth we saw in the city,” Hunter said. “That took more than twenty years.”

  Lucas shrugged. “Maybe the amount of time spent in the cylinder’s influence—and the amount of time skipped—has to do with the mass of the object it’s attracted. I really don’t know, but what I’d guess is Viking 3 apparently went forward in time, and so did we.”

  “I’m surprised they were able to keep something like that under wraps for so long,” Sif said. “Were you involved with Viking 3?”

  “Nope,” Lucas answered. “I’m not supposed to know anything about it, but hey, scientists talk.”

  “So,” Sif said, smiling at Lucas, “do you have any cool classified stories about Area 51 that you’re not supposed to know about?”

  Lucas shook his head and laughed. “I wish I did.”

  Hunter broke in. “We’re still going down.”

  Sif nodded in agreement. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  “We don’t know what happened yet, guys,” Lucas said. “It could’ve been some sort of global plague, or maybe it was a war.”

  “It doesn’t change things.” Hunter said. “We can’t stay up here forever, like we agreed before. Sif and I will take Beagle down.”

  “Since we don’t know what happened, we have to assume the worst,” Sif said. “This isn’t the planet we left, and we don’t have a clue what might be lurking in the air down there. Maybe you’re right, Lucas, maybe it was a plague. Or a war, and everything’s radioactive. Either way, I think we should treat this just as if we were landing on Mars.”

  “Full suits and protective gear.”

  Sif nodded at Hunter. “We might as well get some use out of it, right?”

  “Is Beagle good to go?” Hunter asked.

  “Still needs some sim runs to confirm the changes we made. She might need some tweaking until I’m confident she’s ready,” Lucas said.

  “She’ll be ready,” Sif answered. “Question is, where do we put her down?”

  “We keep looking. I don’t want to believe we’re the only people left alive. If humanity managed to survive whatever happened down there, we should be able to see some sort of evidence.”

  “Without electricity, they’d be plunged back into the Middle Ages at least,” Lucas said. “They’d have to learn how to live off the land again, how to farm.”

  “Moscow looked abandoned. Do we look at the cities, or assume any survivors moved away?” Sif asked, wondering aloud.

  Hunter joined Lucas at the viewport. “I don’t think we can assume anything, at least not until we get a closer look. Liv?”

  “Yes, Webb.”

  “Continue viewer imaging. Land only. One-hundred-meter resolution outside of urban areas, ten-meter resolution over urban areas. Switch to infrared during terrestrial night. Record snaps at thirty-second intervals. Notify Webb immediately of any significant infrared signatures, Liv.”

  “Understood. Will comply.”

  “Now, Sif, how about we start running some simulations on the changes you’ve made to Beagle?”

  “Got it, boss.”

  “Lucas, start checking the cargo lander specs. See if they’ll need to have their flight programs adjusted, too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hunter pushed himself toward the tunnel at the rear of the command module and grinned at Sif as he floated by. “What are you waiting for, Navy? Let’s go fly.”

  Chapter 20

  The sky was filled with the sound of arrows whistling through the air, each aflame, arcing through the darkness toward the hive. Litsa could see drones, their arms held high, moving about behind the flames, sensing the heat, trying to find a way out for their hive.

  Within the flames, the hive rose partway from the draw. Even from this distance, Litsa saw its surface undulating wildly, part of it covered in flame, arrows covering its surface and wiggling like a hundred feathered spines.

  One by one, Litsa sent her flaming arrows into the hive, watched it roll and stretch as it tried to escape from the flames.

  She had seen this before and knew what happened next.

  “We need to get to the trees,” Jarrod said, standing behind her. “The others should be at the rally point by now.”

  The stench was so bad it was hard to breathe, and it was about to get worse.

  As they approached the rally point, they were met by Jaxom. “Our count is twenty, my captain, including you and Litsa. No losses.”

  Litsa watched Jaxom shift his eyes toward the hive.

  “My captain, it moves.”

  From their high ground, they could see the draw clearly, illuminated by the flames. Within the circular ring of oil-fed fire, the hive took on a rounded appearance, like a huge, black ball. Where it was on fire, folds of the blackness stretched from its body and enveloped the flames, snuffing them out, but too much of it was on fire to make a difference. A large group of drones was situated toward the eastern edge of the ring, where the oilers first ignited the flames, and it was at this point in the ring that the hive would attempt to escape. The flames were lower there, the oil consumed.

  The hive ball shape elongated toward the eastern point, absorbing the drones, and it crossed into the flames. It didn’t move quickly, and much more of its surface ignited.

  The giant mass slowly crept out of the ring. Large flaming globs of the hive dropped to the ground as it shed the parts of itself that were aflame, sacrificing mass for survival. As it exited the flames, Litsa could see it was much smaller now, nearly half its original size.

  The hive was moving off to the east, away from the Dak, and for the time being the threat was over. A cheer arose among the warriors. “Urrah! Urrah! Urrah!” They held their bows high, pumping them in the air.

  The hunting party returned to the Dak while it was still dark. The large, flat rock serving as the main entrance was rolled to the side. The watchers saw them approaching and alerted Joshua. He was waiting for them.

  “The hive is moving east, my chief. Just as we’d hoped,” Jarrod said.

  “Who did we lose?”

  “Not a one, my chief.”

  When the gas canister landed at Jarrod’s feet, spewing a cloud of white mist, Litsa rolled to her right and nocked an arrow. She searched for a target and aimed.

  The Takers were here.

  Chapter 21

  “Come on, Sif, one more try.” Hunter had sat through seven sim runs with Sif so far, and they hadn’t survived a single one. Coming up with an atmospheric reentry profile was proving to be a bigger bear than he thought. “Maybe we need to adjust the pierce-point angle by another deg
ree or so.”

  Sif was sitting in Beagle’s pilot seat beside him, a perplexed look on her face. “I don’t get it. This should be working.”

  Hunter had always admired Sif. He never admitted to anyone—especially the crew selection committee at NASA—that he had grown fond of the bob-cut Navy fighter pilot, small in stature and built like a gymnast. It took a while to warm up to her, because she came with a reputation, one he quickly decided was well deserved. He found her to be standoffish and self-centered, but flying with her at the USAF test pilot school changed his perceptions. She was smart, fearless, and a good stick. “Okay, maybe Lucas missed something. We’ve tried increasing the angle, decreasing the angle, I’m not too sure what to try next.”

  “We let her bounce, Hunter. Once.”

  He knew exactly what she was thinking. She wanted to allow Beagle to bounce off the upper atmosphere, which would slow her enough to enter the atmosphere at a lower velocity the second—and final—time. A skip reentry. “It might work, if we can figure out the exact parameters,” Hunter said.

  He watched Sif replay the last simulation, which was the closest they’d come to making it through the most dangerous part of the reentry process. “Here. The thermal protection system fails here,” she said, pointing at the screen. “We’re still coming in too fast, and I don’t think our pierce-point angle has anything to do with it. It’s got to be a longer, shallower reentry to reduce the rapid heat onset. But if we stay shallow, the heating lasts for a longer period of time, and it’ll fail again. If we skip her, like a stone across a pond, we’ll come in much slower the second time.”

  “Okay, but if our calculations are off, we’ll bounce into space, and we don’t have the fuel to correct our orbit, land, and make it back to Resolute. We’ll be stranded.” He watched her close her eyes, thinking.

  “If we slow her down enough with the first reentry segment, we won’t have to worry about bouncing off into space. We’ll land. And I’ll flip her around, brake earlier.”