by Scott Baron
The bars had been tucked away safely deep in her pockets and were somewhat worse-for-wear after all that crawling, but they tasted wonderful to her hungry taste buds. She took a quick survey of her hoard as she chewed.
Two nutrient bars, a packet of electrolyte gel, and a handful of candy-coated stim tablets were all she had.
Don’t need those, she mused, tucking the stimulants back into their cozy home. The electrolyte gel and one of the bars, however, were fair game, and she made quick work of them, washing the disproportionately satisfying snack down with a sealed water pouch before sliding into the lavatory pod to relieve herself.
And there I go, contributing to the water reclamation system. She couldn’t help but laugh.
The lights flickered and dimmed, then brightened back to normal levels.
“You know, we really should have gotten to that, Daze,” Sarah chimed in.
“If we’d known the shuttle would become such an urgent priority, I suppose we would have put the upgrades higher up on our action agenda. As it stands, the old bird seems to be holding up all right, all things considered.”
“There you go, tempting fate again.”
“Yeah, yeah. Such a daring person, I know. Sure, it’s a little colder than I’d prefer, but bringing the heating system up to modern standards wasn’t really high on anyone’s list after we got hit. And what’s with this thing anyway? I mean, the creaks and rattles, this shuttle has to be at least seven generations earlier than the Váli. Why strap an antiquated thing like this to its belly when they could have used any one of a number of vastly superior designs?”
“Maybe it was all they had on hand.”
“Come on, Sarah, we both know there are dozens of variants of configurations that could have been mounted there, any one of which would have sufficed.”
“Maybe because this one has actual wings, while the others were designed mostly for space travel.”
“And what does that have to do with anything? How do wings help?”
“Think about it, Daze. If, by some odd set of circumstances, the drive system were to go offline, all of the other variants would pretty much drop from the sky if they tried to enter the atmosphere. This old bucket of bolts, however outdated it may be in all other regards, is one of the only designs capable of gliding without thrust.”
“So you’re saying it’s really more of a lifeboat than a shuttle?”
“You have to admit, it makes sense.”
Daisy paused a moment, considering the possibility. But if the shuttle was meant for emergency egress only, what was the plan once they arrived in Earth’s orbit? Sure, Dark Side was there to conveniently patch up their hurt from the impact that had so rudely woken them from cryo-sleep, but that had never been the actual plan. So why a ship that could glide?
A man’s voice crackled out from the comms array speaker.
“Váli shuttle, this is Dark Side Base. We have received your transmission. Do you register this message?”
Daisy quickly finished her business, pulling up her flight suit and locking down the waste recycling port before hurrying back to the command chair.
“Váli shuttle, this is Dark Side Base. Once again, we have received your transmission. Do you register this message?”
Daisy reached for the comms button, then paused. Something felt wrong. Off. Nagging at her brain. It took her a few seconds to put her finger on it.
The way the man spoke. It was something in his cadence. The tone of his voice.
“Váli shuttle, this is Dark Side Base. We have received your transmission. Do you register this message?”
The inflection. Exactly the same each time. Exactly.
“Goddamn it, Sarah, it’s a fucking AI.”
“Of course it is. They’re standard on all ships, and who do you think runs the docking arrays in the spaceports?”
“I know. You’re right. It’s just that after Mal, I don’t know anymore.”
“You disabled Mal’s long-range comms, so what’s to worry about? They’d have had to physically fly here before us to poison that well. Look at the scans. No sign of the Váli anywhere. So come on, let’s go get reinforcements and handle things with that rogue crew before they get even more out of hand.”
“You and your damn logic.” Daisy turned her attention to the ancient monitors in front of her. “You’re right. Scans show no sign of the Váli. The base has no vessels at all docked on the exterior—”
An uncomfortable silence filled the cabin.
“What is it, Daisy?”
“Why aren’t there any ships there?” A look of deep worry flashed across her face. “I’m going to pull up a higher resolution scan.”
“Váli shuttle, this is Dark Side Base. We have received your transmission. Do you—”
“Yes, I read you, Dark Side. We’re experiencing some minor technical issues with our communications systems, please stand by.”
“Copy that, Váli shuttle. Standing by.”
Daisy adjusted the nose-mounted camera array and zoomed in on the barely illuminated base. Hidden in the shadows of the moon’s dark side, it was almost impossible to make out. Adjusting the resolution, Daisy switched to expanded-spectrum and surveyed the area. What she saw took her breath away.
“Shit,” she gasped.
“Oh no. That can’t be right.”
“No, Sarah, it can’t.” Daisy quickly flipped on the reserve power cells before lunging across the cabin to the emergency shut-off valve.
“Are you sure, about this?”
“You saw it. The base has been almost entirely destroyed. That was a debris field out there, Sarah. The battle already got here before us, and it’s an AI running the show.”
Daisy primed the engine and spun the valve wide open, then slammed herself into the command chair and buckled in. The moon’s gravity had begun to take hold of the approaching shuttle. This was going to use far more power than she’d anticipated.
“Váli shuttle, I detect a fuel leak from your number two engine. Your systems appear to be engaging in rapid power-cycling mode. Do you require assistance?”
“Um, negative, Dark Side. Just adjusting a few things up here. Nothing to worry about.” She quickly checked her calculations. The shuttle was coming in way too fast for her liking. “Dark Side, may I please speak with the commander in charge?”
A silence hung in the air.
“There’s no need for that, Daisy. We just want to talk to you. Please, your ship is obviously damaged. Come in and dock, and we can explain.”
“Daisy? How the hell does that thing know your name? I mean, it couldn’t. Not unless Mal was sending messages long before—”
“My thoughts exactly,” she said, then slammed the ignition button, firing up the lone functioning engine.
The shuttle rumbled violently with a deeply unsettling vibration as it abruptly changed course and powered away from the moon. Despite the massive burn, it wasn’t enough.
“Daisy, the trajectory is still inadequate to clear gravity!”
With no hesitation, Daisy entered another sequence into the engine and flipped a series of flashing red switches.
“Wait, are you sure it can withstand—”
The engine blasted full-open throttle, the maneuvering thrusters firing to help correct the overpowered drive trajectory. Then, with a horrible, metal-rending shudder, the engine tore itself apart as it sputtered out. It was enough, but only barely, and the crippled shuttle limped its way from the dark side to the light.
“Daisy, please,” the voice pleaded. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Just listen a moment and I’ll expla—”
She powered off the comms.
“Bite me, fucking machine,” she growled, just as the lights flickered and went out.
Only the most basic core systems still functioned, their console buttons glowing dimly. Heat? Fat chance. That was done for, as was eighty percent of life support. Comms, however, still seemed functional, but for how long was anyone�
�s guess. Unfortunately, while she remained uncaptured, the damage the vessel incurred in her escape left her quickly running out of options.
The shuttle had pulled free of the moon’s mass, settling into a weak trajectory, but one that nevertheless, was heading toward Earth, Daisy noted as she read the command display.
Finally, a little luck. It’s about time.
She ran navigation calculations while the system still had power, then flipped a series of relays and used her final burst from the compressed air thrusters to steer her on course. It was her last chance, and a limited one at that. If she used any more, she’d have no air left to breathe.
Okay, that should do it. If I plotted our trajectory right, this should set us on course for a re-entry. Daisy sincerely hoped she was right.
“Hey, Sarah, guess what? Looks like you may have had a point about that gliding thing. I just hope those controls still work once we hit atmosphere.”
She adjusted the comms array to a wide broadcast and clicked open the transmitter. “Mayday, mayday. This is Váli shuttle approaching Earth orbit without power. Does anyone copy?”
Silence greeted her query.
“Well, I suppose that would have been too easy,” she said with a grim chuckle, then slowly rolled through the open frequencies, listening for any chatter. All were silent but for static, though a few times the rolling hisses and squelched noise almost seemed to make sense to her.
Nah, just static, she told herself. Hopefully someone would answer before she made landfall. If she made it. Her battle with the moon’s gravity had scrubbed off a great deal of the shuttle’s velocity. So much so that she was now almost drifting at space debris speed toward the bright blue orb hanging in the cold vacuum.
It really is beautiful, she noted as she stared out the window. She just hoped her air would hold out long enough to make it there.
Hours later, bundled up in every piece of protective gear she could find, Daisy sat quietly, conserving oxygen while focusing her energies on keeping her body warm. Without heating systems functional, the shuttle had quickly begun a descent from chilly but moderately comfortable to freezing and potentially deadly. Fortunately, Daisy had a trick up her sleeve.
Sarah’s Qi Gong lessons were paying off in spades, now that she was finding herself able to tap into her meditative state with increasing ease. The principle was simple enough: Direct the body’s energy in such a way to generate heat in your hands. Energy healing, some had called it, a phenomenon documented over centuries.
Daisy was now modifying that practice to suit her survival needs, focusing her energy not on simply warming her hands, which were quite toasty in their gloves despite the freezing temperatures, but also on heating her entire body.
It was the sort of thing one might expect of a monk sitting atop a frozen mountaintop, not a somewhat-snarky twenty-something spaceship electronics technician, but there she was, sitting silently and nearly breaking a sweat from her focused efforts.
The process also allowed her to reduce her respirations, the oxygen required in a meditative state being far less than were she to be moving about the cabin. If not for her ability to tap into this newfound level of self-control, she might very possibly have run out of air and frozen to death well before she finally breached the Earth’s atmosphere.
The heat generated by re-entry would warm the ship nicely, but it wouldn’t be until she had descended below twenty thousand feet that the automatic venting system would purge the CO2-filled air and replace its stale dampness with fresh outside air.
Slowly, she roused herself from her deep meditation and checked the readout on the external collision scanner. She had rigged it to warn of impact as she glided through the increasingly dense debris field lazily drifting around the planet. She couldn’t tell exactly what was out there; the machinery was far too damaged to give an accurate read out, but she guessed it was defunct satellites along with assorted space junk that had taken up residence in the planet’s orbit.
So far her path remained relatively clear. Small bits periodically banged off the hull, but there were no impending impacts of any meaningful size.
She refocused her attention and reached for the communications array. She had her internal clock dialed-in, and found she could quite easily slip back into full consciousness every few hours to attempt contact once more.
“Mayday, mayday, this is Váli shuttle, does anyone copy?”
Silence yet again.
Everything looks all right, but something must’ve shorted out. That, or Mal somehow booby-trapped the communications system long before I ever got on board.
“But you were able to talk to Dark Side.”
Yeah, but maybe that was the only channel she left functional to transmit. Anyway, it’s too late to worry about it now. I’ve just gotta make it to L.A. Once I touch down at Schwarzenegger International Space Port, we’ll set things right. They may have taken over the moon, but we’ll get that sorted soon enough.
Daisy switched off the comms and closed her eyes, slipping once more into a meditative state.
Over the past twenty hours, drifting as she was, she found herself becoming increasingly adept at turning her attention inward. She also discovered the faint traces of blocks in her mind.
Artificial ones.
Neuro-stim residue was all over them. What secrets they were hiding, she had no idea, but she was damn sure going to change that.
All right, then. Back to work, she thought as she redoubled her internal efforts.
She once again began chipping away at the edges of a barricaded segment of her mind, eager to find what secrets lay waiting behind the carefully hidden doorways.
As she sat in silence during the long drift toward Earth, her attention focused inward, Daisy came to gradually recognize some semblance of a pattern to the mental blocks. As if they were layer upon layer of data, carefully compressed to best utilize the vast, wet-meat storage space inside her head. She had seen this kind of partitioning and compression before in her work as a technician, but only in machinery.
Her mind had been used as a hard drive, and she was determined to find out what had been put there.
She also noticed that while she may have inadvertently dumped huge quantities of data into her head when she mistakenly removed the final safety on her neuro-stim, this information cache was something far more complex.
Detailed. Massive.
But this makes no sense. This isn’t a few days, or even a few months, worth of data. This is huge. There’s no way my neuro-stim could have possibly— The realization hit her, spiking her heart rate ever so slightly, even in her meditative state. Unless they’ve been lying about how powerful the neuro-stims really are. My God, how much could I have accidentally pumped into my brain?
“Lucky you didn’t have a stroke. No wonder you keep talking to me in your head. You must’ve really messed yourself up, fiddling with that thing.”
“I’m meditating, Sarah. Go away.”
“Okay, fine. I just thought it was worth mentioning is all. I mean, what if you lobotomized yourself and this is all just a dream?”
“Not helping.”
“Okay, okay. Shutting up.”
“Good.”
“But one last thing.”
“Oh, dear Lord, what?”
“The captain used the words, ‘what she’s capable of.’ That sounds a lot more like they were playing with your mind long before you went and removed the inhibitors.”
Daisy quietly mulled over the possibility. Much as she hated to admit it, Sarah was right. While a lot of her newfound knowledge was dumped in by her own actions, it was highly likely that all sorts of things had already been lurking in her mind. Possibly even traps laid within her own psyche. The question now was, if so, what could she do about them?
Don’t worry about that now. First get on solid ground. Once you’re down, I’ll have a medical team run a neural scan to unravel this mess and figure out what they did to me.
S
he mentally reached for the nearest block of masked knowledge.
It smells like—huh, ‘smells’ like. Maybe it affects or enhances my sense of smell. Don’t see how that would be of any use, but what the hell. Let’s keep going.
Daisy once more began chipping away at the mental block, not knowing what exactly she’d find, or whether she’d even make that discovery before landfall. In any case, it was progress. She only hoped the doctors on Earth could put things right in her head.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The city of Los Angeles was bustling, its millions of residents scurrying about like so many fleas on the back of a giant beast. It had grown over the centuries, absorbing neighboring municipalities until its mass was enough to engulf a good several dozen smaller burghs. To the west, the clear ocean gleamed in the afternoon sun, while the surrounding mountains blazed their verdant glory for the city-dwellers to see.
Daisy marveled at how smoothly the automated vehicular flow functioned in tandem with the manually-operated units. Both land-bound and airborne, collisions were a thing of the past, and while the city’s once-sprawling Red Car transit system had been long-ago purchased and dismantled by automobile and oil conglomerates, the system that had eventually sprung up in its place centuries later was one of the crown jewels of public transit.
A vast system not only consisting of above-ground pods whisking people to their destinations throughout the region, but also a robust subterranean network that not only served the city, but also tied in to the global loop-transit network. With vacuum-sealed lines spanning the planet, supersonic travel in the zero-resistance pipelines had led to a coming-together on a global scale as face-to-face meetings with associates worldwide were as easy as a few hours spent in a loop-tube.
Another benefit had been the near elimination of the closed-minded bigotry that had plagued the world for millennia. Now that even the poorest of denizen could visit far-flung parts of the globe for a tiny fraction of the cost of air or space travel—which, by its nature, was still far more expensive—the exposure to foreign cultures first-hand had nearly eradicated the misguided xenophobia that had previously shaped political strife and mistrust for generations.
