Fairchild

by Blaze Ward

  Took forever, but it was still the safest way to get to ground in the dark, as long as you didn’t fly into a mountain, or a building, or a car.

  Around her, the air temperature was dropping as well. Down from frying eggs on hoods to soft–boiling them, but still.

  She could feel the sigh of relief as her internal cooling system against her shoulder blades had a chance to back off the compressor some. The sound of fans and pumps went down slightly as well, adding to the eerie silence.

  More scallops, more stair steps. Slow, methodical, safe.

  Never say boring. Sounds too much like middle–age. Or worse, grown–up.

  Grrrrrr.

  Something loomed, breaking Dani out of her monotony.

  She squinted as the shape emerged from the fog and dust.

  Oh, shit.

  MOUNTAIN.

  Her lights revealed whole crags as ground suddenly became a thing.

  Dani leaned back and threw herself to her left as hard as she could as a cliff–face appeared out of nowhere.

  She almost made it, too.

  Another meter, perhaps half that, and she could have squeezed past, or maybe stalled sharp enough to grab on and pretend to free–climb the steep hillside.

  Instead, Dani heard her helmet clunk solidly against rock, and the squid that was gravity got hold of her toes.

  She start tumbling backwards down a small avalanche of scree.

  And then darkness.

  Chike

  Chike stopped in the open door to the comm room and reached out his left hand to locate the emergency button that would rouse the entire camp. He took a moment to look around the rest of the small quad that made up Ground Station Beta, at least as much of it as they had managed to unpack and set up after landing in the over–sized meadow on this upland plateau.

  It had been quiet, up until now.

  It was about to get crazy.

  The kitchen hut: a dark green, semi–soft deployable building, like an old–fashioned canvas tent that magically turned to rigid walls when you applied the right current for three seconds. Filled with microwaves, refrigerators, water, and a portable coffin freezer to keep the crew happy and fat.

  Radio hut: an archaic, apparently military term dating back to the dawn of the stellar age, when one man or woman had a coffin–sized radio made from finger–sized vacuum–tubes to talk to others with, instead of a portable server farm with a semi–intelligent AI, really just a smart system, to handle all the data and communication tasks.

  Break hut: four stalls of showers and two walls of absurdly high–tech incinerating toilets. The crew would happily sleep rough for weeks, as long as they could get a warm shower occasionally and didn’t have to squat in the weeds with the local analog of rattlesnakes.

  Convention center: conference room, planning table, visual comm screens, karaoke machine. Right now, half the ground crew were hot–bunking in there, while the others were in two–person popup shelters, scattered around the ring of central buildings like an outbreak of hives, or a convention of giant gophers.

  Ten minutes ago, before Fairchild had disappeared, it had been just another planetary survey mission. Several big–name planetologists on grants, a few professional support staff, and three gaggles of undergrad and post–grad students on an adventure or a professional expedition. Or both. Certainly beat the hell out of digging for Bronze Age artifacts in central England, save for the lack of a good corner pub to bip down to for a pint.

  Maybe they would need to include that in the next grant proposal. A stellar publican could have a field day out here, with a captive audience. Maybe custom–build an inflatable shelter like the rest, and figure out how to have a bar that turned into a wood veneer with enough current applied.

  Chike smiled. And then remembered where he was. What he was supposed to be doing.

  The Emergency.

  His left hand opened the cover over the switch.

  Deep breath.

  We have a problem.

  He pressed the big, red switch underneath, letting go to cover his ears as the air raid siren woke the dead and frightened any native critters within a kilometer.

  Heads popped up out of tents and from doorways almost immediately, many scrambling in his direction half–dressed and pulling on pants, shirt, or shoes. Hadley Swain, the post–grad in xeno–meteorology he probably needed the most right now, didn’t even bother with that, sprinting from the showers still covered in soap.

  Chike counted to eight and punched the switch to kill the alarm. No reason to make everyone’s head ring.

  He looked around at the expectant faces as the camp gathered, until he found the face he wanted.

  Ann–Marta Thorgisdaughter. Ground Services Coordinator, Security, Search and Rescue Commander.

  Den Mother.

  Both sides of her family had left places in East Africa during the Twentieth Century Diaspora and ended up in Sweden. Her body was slim and her skin was chocolate milk to his asphalt, and there was nobody better equipped for the job.

  “We have lost contact with Fairchild,” Chike announced, loud enough that everyone in the camp would hear.

  Best to get it out early and not beat around the bush.

  Don’t overplay. Don’t minimalize.

  “She was flying a storm mission and some sort of massive electrical disturbance came up,” he continued as voices alternately gasped and murmured. Everyone liked Fairchild, as near as he could tell. “Her signal has disappeared from the comm and the radar, but we’re entirely blind and can’t see into the heart of that storm right now.”

  Everything came to stillness as the gravity of the situation took hold.

  “I have notified Dr. Jones–Parker and declared a formal emergency,” Chike declared. “Calypso is breaking out the other shuttle. Ann–Marta will be in charge of operations from this point forward.”

  She nodded at him from across the space and indicated that he should keep speaking.

  “Search and Rescue teams should shift to field operations planning,” Chike continued.

  Usually, that was for when someone had wandered into a box canyon and gotten turned around and silent without a clear line to the right navigational satellite. This was a little more serious.

  “Atmosphere teams, drop what you were doing and start processing the data we have from the storm so we can create search patterns and figure out how much risk there is to the camp when that storm front gets here in another fifteen minutes. Move it people.”

  And just like that, the mob scattered as rapidly as it had assembled. Asses and elbows going every which way, including a nice one on Hadley Swain as she raced back to finish her shower.

  Chike found Ann–Marta as his elbow.

  “How bad is the storm?” she asked quietly.

  She did everything quietly, even when she had to impose herself on drunk and rowdy undergrads.

  Chike took a moment to consider his response.

  “I’ve never seen a dust storm generate that much electromagnetic disturbance, even in labs,” he said. “The shuttle should be tough enough to handle it, but we should have heard something by now.”

  “Could Fairchild be surfing the winds inside the storm, flying in circles where she can’t talk to us?” Ann–Marta probed.

  Oh, yes. She knew Fairchild’s reputation for competence tinged with crazy.

  “Right now, A.M.,” Chike said, “I would be happy to be labeled the fussy, old hen who over–reacts.”

  “And?”

  “And I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  Ann–Marta studied his face for several moments, looking for something. She was almost as tall as he was, and perhaps half his mass, but she was a warrior and he was an academic. A slightly–pudgy, middle–aged field researcher.

  Chike could see Vikings in her cultural ancestry, and probably her bloodlines somewhere as well.

  “Okay,” she decided. “How bad is the storm? And how big?”

  “Dunno,” Chike replie
d. “The wall is huge and wide. It has slowed down from that first mad rush as the tower collapsed, but it will still roll right over us like a sand storm in a few minutes. And we can’t see through it.”

  “You said an electromagnetic signature as well?” she continued.

  “That’s right. Big enough that we might get static electricity off metal surfaces. The servers should be insulated, but I want to shut down all non–essentials, just in case.”

  “Good idea,” Ann–Marta agreed. “And get everyone out of the huts. They can shelter in tents, but the buildings might revert if the induced current is enough.”

  That shook him. Those huts were supposed to be proof against lightning strikes, being well–insulated themselves and carefully grounded. But this was a rolling lightning bolt, racing across the ground at them like a gaseous electric eel, looking for a soft belly to bite into.

  Chike wondered if his rugged field camera would be able to capture video of it. Equipment guarantees were one thing. He wanted evidence if the impossible actually happened.

  Escudra VI was turning out to be much more interesting than anyone had anticipated. Hopefully, that would make his career better, too.

  But first, Fairchild.

  He couldn’t imagine someone less likely to need anyone else’s assistance, but this planet was trying to prove him wrong on everything else.

  Ann–Marta nodded.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” the Viking woman declared.

  Chike wished he could agree.

  Fairchild

  “I know you’re not dead, Danielle,” the angry, hectoring voice intruded on her darkness, forcing her to bob to the surface from an especially dark and quiet place. Sleep had been nice. “It would be helpful if you would get off me and let me look around.”

  Eleanor.

  That was Eleanor’s voice. Muffled and tinged with a bit of nervous energy, but certainly her Governess.

  Dani decided she must have had one hell of a good time last night. She hadn’t had a hangover like this in years. Everything hurt, not just her head.

  And damn, this bed was hard.

  Dani considered rolling over and going back to sleep. Eleanor could wait until the sun came up, at the very least.

  “And I would appreciate an explanation of how we came to be here, young lady,” Eleanor ranted on. “And whatever it was you did to my short–term memory files. I’ve lost more than an hour of realtime.”

  How would Eleanor lose an hour of realtime? That would require…

  Dani sat bolt upright with a gasp of intense pain. Her whole right side hurt, crown to ankle, like the time she had slipped and fallen backwards off the speaker stack at that one concert where she had been go–go dancing topless.

  “Ow,” she groaned, seeing cute little stars and waterbugs racing around her head in the dim sky.

  At least everything was still attached. And not spinning too badly.

  The twin headlights were still on, cutting a path into the dusty darkness around her. The suit was feeding her air from the recycling plant.

  Dani found herself slightly buried, about half a body deep, in pea–sized gravel that looked vaguely pink in the white light. She wiggled her butt until the rocks settled under her instead of against her and over her legs.

  Standing up might be a bit much to ask right now.

  Right arm hurt, but moved normally and hung at the right angle. Probably not broken. Ditto the leg.

  Dani took a moment to unhook all her flight membranes and dump out all the gravel they had accumulated so everything would retract tight against her skin.

  “System: comm on,” she said.

  No response.

  “System: comm unit activate,” Dani repeated, louder.

  Still nothing.

  “Let me look at you, Dani,” Eleanor said in a much more quiet and concerned voice.

  Dani figured that would help. She pulled the Aide from her breast pocket and held it up at arm’s length so the Governess could scan her.

  “Well, that explains part of it,” Eleanor announced in a voice somewhere between smug and fearful.

  “What?” Dani asked, her brain only slightly back on line at this point.

  “You hit your head on something sharp,” Eleanor replied. “Hard enough to penetrate the helmet’s outer casing. How’s your air?”

  Dani sucked in a quick breath. Nothing special.

  Onboard air. Headlights. Gravel.

  She had been free–gliding in a dust storm after bailing out of a dead shuttle.

  Darkness. Electrical interference. MOUNTAIN.

  Her life support system still held. Apparently only the electronic computer had gotten a concussion. Or a worse one. Her organic one was doing pretty well, considering.

  “Life support seems fine,” Dani said aloud. “System: lights off.”

  Nothing.

  Dani realized that the Heads–Up–Display she was used to living with wasn’t there. Nothing but clear steel between her and the planet.

  She reached up her right hand and found the spot where her skull had kissed the mountain, just above her right temple. Sure enough, she could poke a finger through the outer layer of a material that was supposed to be bullet–proof.

  At least the inner layer had held.

  And the helmet’s external controls were ambidextrous.

  Dani reached up with her left hand, the one that didn’t hurt nearly as much, and flipped the radio button manually.

  Nothing.

  She must have really smashed it good.

  For a moment, Dani nearly panicked.

  Being lost was one thing. It was, in fact, a total adventure on the right planet, like Escudra VI might be.

  But that presupposed a working radio, so she could call for help if things got out of hand.

  Like now.

  The electronic compass was as dead as the System was, if she couldn’t turn it on.

  “Eleanor,” Dani said. “We might have a problem.”

  “Oh, dear,” Eleanor scoffed. “You noticed? I was hoping to keep it a secret.”

  “Not helping, Eleanor.”

  “Well excuse me for computating, young lady,” the Aide snarked back savagely, her voice rising and growing louder. “Last I knew, we were about to fly into a thunderstorm instead of around it like I had first suggested. Now the Shuttle’s gone, you’re hurt, and we’re lost on this stupid planet, and…”

  “Control Override,” Dani barked. “Null emotion reset.”

  Eleanor dropped instantly to silence.

  The silence felt wonderful, at least for a little bit. Too much silence and Dani might find herself gnawing on the walls.

  It happened, occasionally.

  “Thank you,” Eleanor whispered in a much calmer, flatter voice. “What happened?”

  “No prob,” Dani replied. “It’s messy.”

  She shook her head a little harder and nothing rattled loose. Pain level about a three on a ten point scale.

  Briefly, she considered standing up, but thought better of it when she realized that the slope of the mountain she was sitting on kept going down for a long ways. Not cliff–face, but one pitch and she’d ass–over–teakettle for a kilometer pretty easily.

  The sky was full night, lit by stars, three small moons in various phases, and the twin beams from her ram’s skull.

  “Shuttle died mid–flight,” Dani continued, aiming the lights down–slope to survey her terrain options. “We were flying into and through the hot parts of the dust storm’s outflow boundary. That was fine. Then something failed.”

  “Failed?”

  Eleanor’s voice sounded almost robotic, but that was the factory–reset. Even AI’s could panic. It was useful to be able to hit them with the electronic equivalent of a double shot of whiskey.

  She’d be good as new in a few minutes.

  “Hydraulic system ruptured somewhere,” Dani replied. “That would have been okay, but whatever happened took out the rest of the el
ectronics and I was flying a falling brick at four thousand meters ground elevation.”

  “I see.”

  “Grabbed you. Bailed into the sky. Rode the free–glider down and out into the dust storm.”

  Dani stretched her legs. Everything felt okay, more or less.

  She decided to try standing.

  Pull the legs underneath. Yeah, that worked.

  Lean forward and put hands down. Whoa. Maybe a touch slower. Head’s still a little iffy.

  Squat and drive slowly vertical. Only wobble a little.

  Victory.

  Now don’t fall down a mountain, ya big goof.

  “As we were gliding, we found a mountain. Or something.”

  “Where are we?” Eleanor asked in a careful, almost fearful voice.

  Her tone was getting better. Quieter, but there were emotional traces sneaking in. Fear and despondency, but that was better than nothing.

  Right?

  “Dunno,” Dani shrugged, and immediately regretted it as all the nerves on her right side lit up like fire. “Mmmmph.”

  She sucked a hard breath down to her toes and let it wash all the bad mojo away, like turning a firehose on the kids at a party to get them to take their action somewhere else.

  Or words to that effect. Dani would never do anything so uncouth.

  Sober, that is.

  “Was free–gliding for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes,” Dani continued. “Don’t know with the electronics zarked. I don’t even know where north is, at least until the sun comes up.”

  “I see,” Eleanor responded flatly.

  Dani wasn’t sure a panicky, snarky, semi–abusive Governess wouldn’t be an improvement over this flat, semi–void of a person. At least Eleanor was programmed to not hate Dani after the few times she had to trigger the mode over the years.

  It was like dealing with Tina, one of the times when she had mixed the wrong brain pills with too much booze and went total zombie for four hours. But Tina and Eleanor would both kind of agree with any proposition when that happened.

  Dani didn’t need artificial stimulants to agree, most of the time.

  “So what happened to my memory?” Eleanor asked.

  There was definitely an edge there now, if a little ragged. Fear. Hurt. Possible betrayal.