by Ginger Booth
The one technology they most wanted to keep out of Earth’s hands. And he brought her along.
Clay said softly, “Sass, we came to talk. Damaging a dome would make those conversations go badly.”
She stiffened and hissed as her nanites extruded fresh bone at her right ankle. She was uncovered, exposed. These uncaring soldiers would watch while she was ugly and disgusting and alien. Normally when they regrew limbs the lovers hid in their cabin, under sheets. She turned her face into Clay’s crotch near tears with the humiliation.
Clay unzipped his light pressure suit jacket, matching her own wrecked top, and took it off, to drape over her legs. Her ruined arm lay hidden in the crack of the bench.
“No blanket!” one of the guards barked.
Clay ignored him, and rearranged Fidget to complete veiling her ghastly arm regrowth.
“Thank you,” she whispered, pulling herself back together. The soldiers didn’t choose to intervene, only complain. Good. “How long to reach this Pontiac?”
“Twenty minutes, they said. And Thrive is right behind us.”
“Have you ever heard of Pontiac?”
He shook his head and brushed the hair off her brow. “Sleep again. It helps.”
Sleep wouldn’t make her whole in twenty minutes. Limbs took time. But she accepted his comforting touch and dozed off
In the dismal life support bowels of Mars One, Ben perched on his newly cleaned air filter vat and listened to Floki’s report. He quietly patched his companion Remi and the computer guru Hugo Silva in to hear this too.
The emu’s news was already a half hour after the fact, embedded in a huge encrypted data dump sent at light speed. The burst contained new scientific findings and a soundtrack from Sass’s comm. She’d been recording throughout her time in Killingfield Dome, until the comm died just after she told her ship to run.
Ben stiffened and stood. “Did Thrive break atmo?”
“No,” and here Floki’s voice quavered. “Clay decided to cooperate with her captors. He went into the dome, to be with Sass. Thrive chose to follow to this Pontiac Dome. And…Clay took Enka with him.” His voice broke on that.
“Shh, Floki, it’s OK. We have a full backup of her, yes?”
“Yes.”
“If worse comes to worst,” he soothed, “we’ll restore my adorable grand-mink to a fresh new body. But if Thrive One is following along, we’ll get more incremental backups from her. She’ll be OK. Is she frightened?”
Floki sniffed, clearly crying. “She wants to prove herself. So brave. So foolish. Just a baby.”
“Shh. Tell you what. I’ll finish up here, and return to Merchant tonight. And you give Lenka a big hug and kiss from me, OK? Let me talk to Judge now.”
The tearful bird apparently got a hug from his first mate Judge on the way out of the office. That attended to, man replaced emu on the comms channel. “What’s our play, cap?”
“Not a lot we can do at this point. Regroup. Monitor the situation. Keep me apprised. I’ll extricate us down here.”
“Are we telling the Martians our business?” Judge asked.
The comms call didn’t count. Floki and Hugo assured Ben that their direct comms were uncrackable, encoded with private keys. And once he heard the gist of Floki’s report, Remi locked the door on their current work room, loud with motors, unbalanced fans, and churning vats.
“I don’t think so,” Ben returned, after thinking it through. “We told them all along we need the flagship to build real solutions.”
In the meantime, the locals already benefited from their stopgap efforts. He and Remi installed a temporary bubble airlock where the locals had planned to collapse the computer tunnels. The place still stank. Ben took a blessed clean gulp of air from their canned supply for its relief. But air pressure was rising, and should reach 88% of Earth normal by morning.
“Take care of Floki and Lenka for me, Judge. Possibly the most upsetting thing that ever happened to them. Everyone else OK?”
“No worries, boss.”
“Good. Ben out.” He cut Judge out of the circuit. “Hugo, how long do you need to wrap things up?”
“Am I coming back?”
“Assume so. And make the Martians believe it.”
“Uh, the latter suggests two hours.”
“Try to make it one.” Ben looked a question to Remi, who nodded. In here, the two of them could bring their projects to a stopping point in that time, if only by saying they needed to make new parts to proceed. “Ben out.”
He tucked the tab away and turned to his vat. Remi reopened the door behind him. A waiting Lieutenant Rover scurried in with another cleaned filter. Ben secured the refreshed pan to his assembly and Remi strolled over. He waited for Rover to exit with another cart of motor parts to de-gunk.
“What do you think?” Remi asked.
“I think there’s not a damned thing we can do about it,” Ben muttered. “We wish her luck. One and a quarter billion people, rego hell. And this Pontiac is defense HQ for a continent. At a guess, I’d say it’s impregnable.” The French-speaking Remi’s English was good these days, but not that good. He clarified. “We can’t break in. Only get ourselves shot out of the sky. So we wait for an opportunity. And stick to our knitting on Mars.”
“That sucks.”
“It does indeed. But not unexpected.” He jutted his chin toward the machinery Remi had partially dismantled. “Done enough here. Need a hand?”
“You OK?”
“Me? Why wouldn’t I be?” Ben returned sourly, then admitted, “No. Pisses me off.”
Remi nodded. “She does this. You remember the first time I call you for advice? A monster AI dissects my captain. And who left me in charge? You’re good, Ben. I am always impressed. You can handle this.”
“Thanks. Let’s clean up.”
So Ben, Sass’s backup, responded to her predicament by reassembling a grungy pump system. Best I can do for now. And that galled him.
22
The American West Coast was rich in geological faults, and battling droughts and wildfires. Carefully placed nuclear explosions added an earthquake disaster which eventually killed tens of millions. Many survivors fled south.
Sass woke as Clay shifted her to seated, to watch the descent into Pontiac. Her grogginess vanished instantly in her eagerness to see what they were getting into.
Stands of woods were small, the land paved with greenhouses, with large farmhouse-type structures here and there. At this hour of night, the greenhouses slept mostly dark, but housing for their tenders still glowed warmly.
“Ottawa River,” Clay murmured as the broad grey ribbon came into view. “We’re about twenty-five miles from Ottawa.”
On either side of the river banks to the left lay an immense airfield, bright with floodlights and signaling colors. She recognized the jet fighter design, as one took off, and another circled to land. At a guess, each of the low-slung hangars could shelter dozens of the things. But the runways fell away behind a ridge as the helicopter banked toward an urban center.
They flew between enormous tenement buildings toward a center of lower glass pyramids with streamlined corners. Sass craned her neck to see the ground between buildings. That too received the greenhouse treatment, with tall sections for trees to grow within. Parks, she surmised, with lamp posts along broad thoroughfares.
The entire district was a ‘dome’.
“Did you ever visit Ottawa?” she asked.
“No. Montreal once,” Clay admitted. “Far better shape than Boston or Albany. Millions living as though the Calm never happened, nothing had changed for a century. Kinda eerie. Resented it like hell at the time.”
“Of course.” Sass would have been livid.
“I’m guessing this place began as an ark. A bolt-hole for the powerful from the capitol.” He huffed a laugh. “I inquired. My comm data says its last known population was 5800, in 2025.”
In other words, Pontiac vanished themselves from the official
records as they built up. “Definitely an ark,” Sass grumbled. As the weather worsened and economy crashed, and the great unwashed tried to cope, some of the wealthiest took refuge in ‘arks,’ safe from the storms. Apparently this one was on steroids, then built up over a couple centuries.
She spotted a fancy pyramid in the center of the complex, bronze-colored and stepped like some kind of Nazi ziggurat. Powerful spotlights accentuated its squat majesty and multi-story falls of flags.
Their ride slowed, and a hangar door rolled open on the side of a nearer man-made mountain of a pyramid, bluish zinc-colored in its external lights. They entered a helicopter-sized airlock. Pilot and copilot stood for a stretch and muffled gossip. Parking lot air control took over, Sass figured. In seconds, the inner garage door opened, and they were drawn smoothly into a built-in hangar housing hundreds of vehicles. Few were larger than the helicopter she rode in. Many looked to be single-person flyers, racked like bicycle rentals instead of personal vehicles – take the next available.
She’d love to. But no, escaping here wouldn’t be so easy.
“I’m glad we came,” she claimed aloud, to persuade herself more than Clay. “Otherwise Ben would have someday. If I were lost, and you. He’d come for closure, to finish my dream.”
Clay suggested, “Ben’s smarter than you think.”
She shook her head. “He couldn’t imagine, Clay. What he’s up against. How many here, do you think? Millions surely, in this one town.” Poor Ben’s home ville of Poldark held maybe 1500, dull even by Mahina standards. “Now he’ll know. We’ll handle it for him.”
Her lover smiled softly. “There. Your optimism.”
“No, it’s dead,” Sass hastened to claim. “I’m back on street smarts now.”
The helicopter turned to slide into a recharging port, medical gurney and attendants lying in wait, both white-jacketed and masked, and the armed variety. As a clunk announced their power umbilical latching on, one of the soldiers in the cabin rose.
“You stay here!” He sidled into the cockpit and out. The pilot team stayed put.
Sass bit back a retort about how she planned to scoot out on her butt, propelled by one good hand, while Clay carried the mink.
Clay patted her back, encouraging her to keep her mouth shut. “What is this pyramid?” he asked the remaining guards.
“Medical,” one replied.
“Research,” added the other.
The main cabin door opened, and the gurney squeezed in. Gentlemanly, Clay lifted her in his arms, and lay her on the mattress, holding her eye. “Don’t make it worse,” he murmured, and kissed her lightly on the lips.
Gritting her teeth, she didn’t return the kiss, just looked daggers at him. Which was wholly unfair, she acknowledged. But she needed to take her fear out on someone.
Sass was wheeled into wide hushed corridors that put Killingfield’s narrow halls to shame. Clay held her hand, Fidget firmly clamped under his other arm. Until they reached a graciously appointed reception area complete with potted trees, well-dressed bureaucrat, and liveried police. To the left lay more of the hotel-grade hall. To the right, a wide glass doorway led into clinical zones.
Clay went left, cordially making the acquaintance of the bureaucrat. Sass rolled onward to the right.
She craned her neck to watch him every last second. And with him out of the way, one of the white-clad crew snuck in and gave her a hypo-spray to the neck.
“What was that?” she asked suspiciously.
“Just something to calm you,” he said, no doubt intending to sound kind. But Sass finally glanced up to meet the nurse’s…metal eyes.
This was going to suck.
Darren, Thrive’s chief engineer, was thinking much the same thing, as he brought the starship to a halt at the edge of an airport of a size to boggle the mind. “I think we’ll just stop here.” Here was hovering over a bit of dark field, trees cleared from the verge of the vast hard-top.
“You need to park in a hangar,” Three-Eight attempted from the hallway.
Kaol stood bodily blocking his entry to the bridge. Mercifully, the lieutenant accepted Darren’s claim that none but qualified space pilots could be on the bridge – too dangerous. The fact that Kaol could barely drive a balloon-tired rego buggy hadn’t arisen in conversation.
In exasperation, Three-Eight whined, “I have to show him which hangar I mean!”
“Would that be the tall one?” Darren deadpanned. “Two o’clock?”
“Two what?”
Darren pointed to the only nearby hangar taller than Thrive. “I think it’s better we stay out here. You’re welcome to disembark, though.”
“No, he’s not,” Kaol contradicted him. “Three-Eight is our liaison. Darren, we need someone who can communicate with the fighter jets.”
“Oh. Tell them we’ll sit here quietly –”
“You can’t!” the wolf man insisted. “Storm coming. Check your wind speed if you don’t believe me!”
Not adept at the bridge controls, Darren took a minute to retrieve that information. He probably should have flown from his engineering pedestal in the hold, where his touch knew his console better than his ex-wife’s body. But sitting on the bridge granted a certain authority, at least until he rummaged clueless. “Gusts to 80 kph, falling back to 50. Is that fast?”
Kaol turned a pained grimace on him. “If the winds are rising, yes. It’s bad.”
“A derecho is headed straight for us!” Three-Eight insisted. “Straight-line winds up to 250! Rain, lightning, down bursts!”
The outdoorsman from Denali reiterated, “Yes, Darren, it’s bad.”
The chief turned in his seat and looked past his hulking Denali. “You see, the way a spaceship deals with weather like that? Is to go up.” He pointed a finger to the ceiling. “Above the weather.”
“Do that, and they’ll shoot you out of the sky!” Three-Eight hollered. “And kill me and Ivett too.”
Kaol shoved him, and gritted out, “Keep your voice down!”
The doctor had taken Ivett down to med-bay. She hyperventilated, the whites showing all around her enormous eyes, fists bunched, with an unnerving keening. Liam promised to solve her panic attack. Eli joined him to help talk the woman down and see if he could learn any more from her.
Darren turned back to his controls, and glowered at the high hangar. There did seem to be a lot of twigs blowing around. He pulled out his generous engineering tablet and ran some calculations. He had no idea what derecho meant, but at 250 kph, at this air pressure, with added rain pummeling…yes, the ship would steer like a wallowing barrel.
In fact, he might clip the hangar door on the way in. This cheery thought decided him. If the locals thought a hangar roof would keep Thrive penned when it wished to leave, they had no idea what kind of engine power it took to reach escape velocity. So the confines would be more psychological than physical. But they’d ruin his view of what the hell was going on around here. He sighed and put his tablet away.
“Fine. We park in the garage.” He turned the ship to proceed across the broad wet tarmac, going about 20 kph.
“No, stop!” Three-Eight screeched. “That’s the runway!”
23
The Rayas colony, transported from Mexico, was dominated by California refugees. Four out of ten original Diaspora worlds hailed from North America. It was wealthy.
As though invoked by Three-Eight’s hysteria, a jet screamed in and decelerated, hitting the pavement with a sideways bound, then settling to brake even harder, fighting a crosswind.
From Thrive’s bridge, Darren stared at the tableau ahead of him. “The blue lights mark the – what did you call it? The right of way for those to do that? Then how do I get from here to there?”
“Gah!” The lieutenant grasped his head, shaking it. “I can see it, I just –!”
“Kaol, get him to draw what he means on my tablet.” Darren paused to snapshot the view before him, and handed the tablet over.
The hu
nter patiently showed the soldier how to draw a line with his finger. Darren checked the wind speed, which had risen another 20 kph. “Quickly, Kaol.”
With his tablet handed back, to portray Three-Eight’s lousy drawing skill, Darren decided he understood. He turned Thrive left to follow along the line of blue lights toward the yellow-green-red blinking lights on a low hangar, and proceeded, picking up the pace to 30 kph, 100 meters up from the tarmac. The wind was beginning to fight him. He laid on the thrusters, none too expertly.
And another jet screamed in, missing Thrive’s stabilizer wing by less than a stone’s throw as the wind buffeted him toward the runway. By spaceship standards, a stone’s throw was a heart hammering at his Adam’s apple, an inability to catch another breath, and an overwhelming desire to puke. Darren gulped and slowed further, guiding the ship farther from the blue lights, into the yellow. And a line of ground vans raced up the yellow lane, red and white lights flashing on rotating stalks from their roofs.
Darren cut his ground speed to zero and threw up his hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing!”
One of the red-strobing vans pulled ahead of him, plus one to each side, and one behind. He was 100 m above him, but the diamond clearly denoted where he’d be, if he were on the ground. He turned a raised eyebrow to Three-Eight.
Their liaison shook his head in frustration. “I fly by wire into Pontiac. It’s too busy for human piloting.”
Darren turned back to his display. Fine, he’d proceed to pilot by nonverbal cues. He settled Thrive down to 10 meters above the hardtop, neatly centered in his gaudy entourage. The red van ahead of him, lights still twirling, started moving, and Darren followed, trying to match his speed. Wind gusts made it hard to stay centered between this wingmen, so he didn’t immediately pick up on the flashing tail-light in front.
The lead van slowed. Darren slowed. The van made a gradual curving right-hand turn at dead slow. Darren noted that it followed a white line on the wet airport surface. He toddled along after it. “Three-Eight, could you ask our escorts if I’m doing this right?”
