by Samuel Best
Kate rubbed her eyes.
“How’s he doing?” Neesha asked from the doorway.
A bandage covered her left upper arm where the nurses had removed a deep wood splinter. Other than that and a few light cuts on her cheek, she was in good shape.
“He’ll be fine,” Kate replied. “He woke up for a minute earlier and asked when he could go back to school.” She hesitated before asking her next question. “What’s it like up there?”
Neesha shrugged. “Well, you know how much I hate being dramatic…”
Kate offered a tired, knowing smile.
“It’s downright apocalyptic,” said Neesha. “I can’t think of another way to put it.”
Right on cue, the lights in the small room flickered. A deep, hollow thoommmm echoed in the distance. The two of them shielded their eyes as concrete dust showered down from the ceiling.
“Go take a look,” said Neesha. “If this is it, you should at least see it coming.”
Kate glanced down at Santi. “I don’t want to leave him alone.”
Neesha sat next to him and held his hand. “I’ll stay. I’ve seen enough already.”
Kate lingered. Finally, she said, “Thank you for everything, Neesh.”
Neesha smiled. “Thank you for everything, too.”
Santi’s room was one of many lining a long concrete hallway in the underground section of the base. Lightbulbs hung from hooks on the ceiling.
Another meteor struck the base aboveground, shaking the walls. The ceiling lights dimmed for a long moment, then slowly brightened.
At the end of the hallway, Kate climbed a metal ladder that led her up to the top level of the bunker.
A soldier from the Namibian Defense Force nodded a greeting and helped her climb off the ladder. Her legs were shaking from the climb.
The sole room at the top of the underground bunker was a circular command center—a smaller version of the main command center at the primary facility. A ring of screens covered the walls. Three concentric circles of workstations faced the screens, with a command station at their heart.
Colonel Brighton and a group of military personnel Kate didn’t recognize stood in the middle of the room at the command station, speaking quietly and occasionally pointing at the screens.
All of them showed the same image, albeit from different locations around the side of the planet unlucky enough to be facing the direction of the oncoming comets: blue meteor streaks falling from the sky, striking oceans, lakes, rivers, farmland, highways…and cities.
Colonel Brighton checked his watch, then noticed Kate standing off to the side, her arms folded over her chest as she watched the screens. He excused himself from his group and walked over to her.
“How much longer will it last?” she asked.
“An hour,” Brighton replied. “Probably. The comet that the Odyssey crew broke apart was larger than we thought. It created a substantial amount of debris. Some of it is going right past us, but the rest…”
He gestured at the screens.
“It’s horrible,” said Kate.
“A degree of horrible less than the alternative,” he added, “but horrible nonetheless.”
“What about Venus?”
“Confirmed impact, same as Mercury,” said Brighton.
Kate watched a live feed of Newport Beach, California. Two meteors hit the shore in rapid succession, sending a wall of water over a neighborhood of houses.
“We evacuated as many as possible,” said the Colonel. “Hard to send them to a safe location when everywhere is a target. I can’t help but wonder if there was another way to stop it.”
“We did what we could,” said Kate.
The Colonel frowned. “Before the mission to destroy the comet, some of my colleagues at the Pentagon were prepping the Odyssey for something else.”
Kate thought about it a moment. “That explains why it was ready to go so quickly.”
Brighton nodded. “I commandeered the vessel when I realized what we were up against. My colleagues had decided we should capture the alien for study. They bolted a tensor net system onto the front of the Odyssey to haul the creature back to Earth orbit.”
Kate’s eyes widened. “The orbital shipyards.”
“Yes,” Brighton admitted. “One of the six was to be used to house the alien.”
She cackled with laughter, unable to control herself. “No wonder the contracts went through so quickly! Neesha warned me to be careful when I signed them.”
“I’m telling you because I can’t fight the administration anymore,” said Brighton. “Whether it happens next year or in the next fifty, my colleagues will try again. They won’t forget the alien is out there.”
Kate wiped her eyes as she settled down, then sighed heavily as crushing drowsiness seeped into her bones.
“Have you heard from Jeff?” she asked.
“No. I’m sorry. Carol is still on board the Odyssey. She had planned to swing by the lab on her way back to check for…” he paused a moment before adding, “…survivors.”
Kate turned toward him. “Just Carol? What about the others?”
Brighton shook his head.
A wave of dizziness washed over Kate and she stumbled in place. Brighton grabbed her elbow and guided her into a chair as she collapsed.
“You need rest,” he told her.
“I need to watch,” she whispered.
An image lingered on the aftermath of a meteor impact in the middle of a populated European city. Buildings crumbled around the crater. Glowing blue plasma covered the area like webbing.
“We’ll survive,” said Brighton, staring at the same screen. “Everything is going to change, but we’ll survive.”
Kate sat silently, hands held loosely in her lap, and watched the meteors fall, and fall, and fall.
28
CAROL
The comet disappeared.
Commander Carol Brighton blinked in surprise. The piercing blue light that had been flooding through the narrow cockpit window from behind the ship flicked off.
Thirty seconds before the Odyssey was going to be overtaken, the comet vanished from existence. The ship shot forward, free from the invisible bindings that had been pulling it back.
“Riley?” she said. “Piper?”
Carol ran a diagnostic on the ship’s systems. Everything was in the green. Her gloved hands flew over the console as she tried to diagnose the situation.
The star charts showed the Odyssey as being in the same region of space as it was moments before.
“So I’ve hardly moved…” Carol muttered, shaking her head.
Blue light flooded the cabin and every alarm in the Odyssey shrieked as the comet blinked back into existence—
—only this time it was in front of the ship.
The Odyssey rattled violently in the comet’s wake as debris from the comet peppered its hull. Swirls of blue gas washed over the ship like neon aurorae.
Carol increased thrust and veered to port, clearing the turbulence.
One by one, the alarms went silent.
She forced the system through four rounds of diagnostics, just to be sure—paying particularly close attention to hull integrity.
So far, the Odyssey was still in one piece, thanks in no small part to Riley’s patch of the hull.
She now had a clear view of the quickly-receding comet, and of its brilliant blue tail. The comet was already thousands and thousands of miles away—almost a mere spark in the distance once more.
“Commander Riley,” said Carol, opening every comm frequency. “Piper. This is the Odyssey. Are you out there?”
Ship’s scans weren’t kicking back any signs of life in the vicinity. Carol triggered the Odyssey’s homing beacon—a signal the Constellation-class spacesuits could lock onto for pickup.
A small yellow rectangle popped up in the middle of her console.
She tapped it, and the rectangle expanded to an audio stream that danced as it relayed a message fro
m her father, the Colonel.
“Carol, if you get this, that means you succeeded. Which also means I have a better chance of being here when you get back.”
Carol smiled as warmth flooded her body. Tears pooled at the corners of her eyes. Not so long ago, she would have taken a two-year hauling mission to Mars to avoid hearing his voice so often.
“I need you to swing by Venus Lab on your way home. Dolan’s ship is only big enough for two, so you may need to take on extra passengers. The Odyssey is fast enough to catch Venus before it’s too far along its orbit for a rendezvous. In another three days, we won’t be able to attempt any kind of rescue mission.”
She programmed a full stop and set the system to perform the maneuvers on its own. The process would take a little over three hours, after which she could plot a course for Venus.
“Carol, be safe,” said her father. “All my love.”
The message ended.
She stared at the control panel.
Riley and Piper had been directly in the path of the comet, as had the Odyssey. If the ship had somehow escaped being overtaken, was there a chance they might have been spared as well?
Carol didn’t want to admit the truth—that anyone outside the ship when the comet passed could not have survived.
She would leave the homing beacon on all the same.
Carol unbuckled her safety harness and looked toward the back of the ship.
Beyond the crew cabin, Sergeant Miller’s boot was visible on the work table in the lab. The blue substance that infected him after the meteorite impacted the hull had crept over his spacesuit, cocooning him in a thick layer of fuzzy mold. Carol’s gaze drifted up to the air vent above her head, wondering if any of the substance had gotten into the recirculation system.
Thinking back on the meteorite shower, she realized she’d have to warn her father that there was likely more of the blue substance on the hull of the Odyssey. Bringing it to the International Space Station would not make for a welcome return.
Carol drifted through the crew cabin and into the lab.
Keeping her distance from Miller’s body, she searched through storage bins and cubbies until she found what she was looking for: a long roll of thick, clingy plastic wrap used for securing bundles of trash and human waste for jettisoning.
It took her half an hour to wrap Miller’s body in plastic from head to toe on the table, encasing him like a mummy. She was thankful for zero gravity for a change. Being able to float around the table to wrap his body was much easier than trying to avoid the blue mold while reaching over him from a standing position.
Carol found a hand drill in Riley’s tool bag. She removed the bolts that kept the work table legs secured to the floor. Miller’s body and the table drifted free.
It was a tight fit, but she managed to maneuver the table through the crew cabin and into the airlock.
As Carol sealed the door between herself and the table, she wondered if any of the blue substance had escaped her plastic mummification of Miller’s body.
Guess I’ll find out soon enough, she thought as she opened the outer airlock door.
Without pressurizing the airlock first, the table shot out of it like a bullet from a gun, carrying Miller’s body into space.
Carol checked her wristpad—only thirty minutes before the ship came to a full stop. She bid Miller a silent farewell, gritting her teeth in anger at not being able to afford him the respect he deserved.
After running another fruitless scan for Riley and Piper, she spent the remaining time barricading the section of the lab where the meteorite had punched through. Traces of blue gunk still remained around the patch. If she was going to be welcoming new passengers, she didn’t want them going anywhere near it.
The next forty-eight hours were filled with busywork. Carol checked and re-checked the ship’s systems; verified oxygen levels and cleaned the scrubbers every few hours; re-plotted the Odyssey’s current course multiple times to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake.
She also said a proper farewell to Miller.
He had mostly kept to himself, even during the rare moments the crew really let down their collective guard. His unobtrusive personality only became glaringly obvious due to his absence.
Carol floated next to his sleeping cubby, staring down at a picture of a beautiful young woman she’d found while packing his personal items.
There was no name or date written on the back.
His wife? she wondered.
It made her feel sick with guilt that she hadn’t even known if he was married.
Carol tucked the photo into the small container with the rest of his personal items. Then she closed her eyes and bid Sergeant Kenneth Miller a peaceful journey.
At the end of the long two days—after finally forcing herself to pack the personal belongings of Riley and Piper and store them alongside Miller’s—she was presented with a close-up view of an uncharacteristically blue-tinted Venus. The traditional yellowish haze of the planet’s atmosphere had been infused with swirls of blue. Lightning crackled in the murk.
Carol triggered the ship’s automatic greeting protocol, sending out handshakes on every frequency and in every language.
What she got in return was a simple radar ping—an object in a high, precarious orbit around the planet, just now coming into view.
The magnified image on her control panel showed a small, dart-like ship: the Seeker. It wasn’t in a tumble—which would have complicated any attempt at boarding or docking—but it did appear to be without power.
Carol began the tedious process of matching its orbit.
She swiped through the Seeker’s schematics on her control panel and found that she could directly dock the two ships. She released the Odyssey’s controls to the onboard computer to complete the final maneuvers.
With a gentle bump of airlock-on-airlock, the Seeker and the Odyssey met to form an X orbiting high above the stormclouds of Venus. The auto-locking seals engaged, securely connecting the ships.
Carol cycled the airlock and drifted into the Seeker.
The ship was dark. Ice crystals glimmered off every surface as light from Carol’s helmet lamp swept the walls.
Three people in spacesuits floated in the cramped cockpit. Venus Lab’s roster had listed three occupants: Sandra Jordan, Niels Erikson, and Hideo Tanaka.
Carol approached them hesitantly, her stomach sinking at the thought of what she might find.
All of them were alive—but only just.
Their wrist pads indicated they were breathing the dregs of their oxygen. The two men were unconscious, but Sandra’s eyelids fluttered open when Carol pulled her toward the airlock.
“Jeff,” she whispered.
“No, I’m Carol,” said Commander Brighton.
“Find Jeff. He’s still out there.”
Carol opened her mouth to reply but quickly shut it again. If Jeff was outside the ship, that meant he had been EVA for forty-eight hours. Unless he had a pile of spare oxygen packs, there was no way he’d still be alive.
“Is he on Venus Lab?” asked Carol.
Sandra slowly shook her head. “It was destroyed.”
Carol glanced at the other two men. “Let’s get you into the other ship.”
Two hours later, the Odyssey broke orbit and left the Seeker behind. Niels and Hideo had regained consciousness. Hideo rested in one of the sleeping cubbies, one arm draped over his eyes. Sandra sat in the copilot seat next to Carol in the command cabin, and Niels sat behind them.
“We’re not leaving without Jeff,” he reiterated for the tenth time.
Hideo spoke up loudly from the crew cabin. “He didn’t have enough oxygen, Niels. I am sorry, my friend, but you’re searching for a corpse.”
“Doesn’t matter!” Niels snapped. “We can’t leave him out here.”
Carol tapped on her control panel, plotting their course for Earth.
“I’m running every possible scan,” she said. “Unless the ship find
s him, there’s nothing we can do. If his suit lost power…”
She didn’t have the heart to finish the sentence. She had already delayed their departure by repeatedly scanning the same section of space, hoping for a radar blip.
But she had found the alien.
The sight of it froze her in place. The Odyssey had broken orbit, leaving the Seeker behind as Carol put some distance between her ship and Venus.
She watched with a mixture of awe and terror as the creature orbited the planet, traveling past her small viewing window in the cockpit of the Odyssey. It was only the size of her finger at that distance, but Niels told her it was much, much larger.
“There might be a way to find Jeff,” said Sandra.
She had been silent for an hour while Carol coaxed the ship’s system through the best way to get back to Earth.
“I’m all ears,” said Carol.
“Jeff said the torus that brought him back to Earth put something in his head,” Sandra told her. “A small black sphere that lets him use fold space. I triggered the alien by broadcasting a signal at a specific frequency. If I use that frequency in a broader scan, we might be able to pinpoint Jeff’s location.”
“Assuming the sphere in his head responds to the frequency,” said Niels.
Carol pulled up the broadcast interface on her control panel and gestured for Sandra to go for it.
She worked quickly, tapping out long sequences of numbers and manipulating an audio wavelength until it resembled a jagged mountain range.
“There,” she said, tapping a final button to broadcast the frequency.
“That’s it?” Carol asked. “How long will it take?”
Sandra shrugged inside her spacesuit. “Depends on how far away—“
BLEEP.
An external video feed popped up on the control panel. A pair of red brackets blinked around a gleaming object amidst a sea of stars.
Carol enlarged the image, focusing on the object between the brackets. The computer crunched the incoming video data, smoothing out a wall of blurry pixels.
The unmistakable shape of a spacesuit materialized in the blur, its face shield gleaming with reflected light from Venus.
