Manifest Destiny

by Allen Ivers

  They were about to hurtle towards a ball of rock inside a steel box; it takes a measurable amount of death wish to find that acceptable.

  Leo had no right to be shocked or appalled at their comparative recklessness. They looked more like soldiers than policemen today, young and full of bluster, and Leo was caught between how disturbing that felt and how grateful he was.

  “Don’t leave without us,” one man quipped. Martin, was it? Martin Isen?

  Leo brought his hefty suit around, like a gorilla suspended by invisible wires, “You realize that was in fact the original plan, right?”

  “Yeah,” the soldier-cop laughed, “Who’s a guy gotta blow to get a round trip ticket?”

  An ashen haired Viking of a woman gave the mouthy man a solid hit to the back of his head. A bit harder than needed, but hardly an accident.

  Locklear settled next to the hatch and Leo, “Two hours to refuel the bird, and secure the colony. Then Garner will reach out, and we’ll figure about bringing you and the rest down.”

  “Plus one hour flight time both ways,” Leo added.

  Locklear gripped the handlebar, white knuckles even through his olive skin. Leo touched off one wall, bringing himself into the most awkward casual lean against the airlock door, “Clear mind, trooper.”

  The big brown eyes looked back up at Leo. His mind elsewhere, brought back by the hardly private words broadcast by Leo’s suit radio. “Full heart, grease monkey.”

  “I’ll see you on the Red.” Leo shoved off the hull, heading back up the collar toward the Murci.

  Locklear pulled the security bar down on Strauss’ seat, latching him in for the rollercoaster to come, and the kid was bouncing like it really was. Wonder if he’d heard about that one shuttle that split in half on reentry last year? Telling might break the kid’s mood, and it wouldn’t change the outcome. So how annoying was Strauss being, really?

  Shaking his head, Locklear moved over to his seat, “The colony has gone radio silent! Pictures say possible foul play, no real activity! We roll out, stabilize the area, and then get the radios operational! Any questions?”

  Jazmin raised her hand through the steel cage pinning her into her seat. “Can I punch Strauss in the face?” Her eyes tracked over to his seat.

  “What did I do?” Strauss whined, the knowing smirk painted from ear to ear with a broad brush stained with a hefty dose of smarm and a solid dare.

  God, he had such a punch-able face.

  “You’ve never needed my permission before,” Locklear declared as he pulled his own rollercoaster guardrail down, twisting the magnet to lock in place. He flicked a small keypad next to his seat, “Murcielago, this is T9, prep for vertical drop.”

  A metallic clang as the docking collar separated.

  “You are clean and clear.” The radio hiss couldn’t hide Piotr’s predictable snark.

  Swear, that guy needed a big brother to kick the shit out of him and reorient that attitude. Then again, he might be into that.

  “Hold down the fort, Piotr,” Locklear called out over the shuttle’s growing rumbles, “And don’t touch my stuff.”

  “Quick question,” Piotr chirped, “What’s the over-under on the shuttle snapping in half? We have a pool.”

  Goddamit, Piotr.

  Sure enough, Strauss had stopped bouncing in his seat, but the rest of the team blanched at the suggestion.

  Not okay to joke about. People died in that incident, and it wasn’t quick or in their sleep. Those people suffered and Piotr was making light of it. Sure, trying to cut the tension a bit, but attempt versus result.

  Locklear pressed his face up to the radio, and hissed, “Betting against me is unhealthy.”

  A brief pause, as Piotr likely chewed on the venomous tone. Then: “Thought so. Happy trails!”

  And suddenly, Locklear’s lungs were in his ears, as the shuttle thrusts out from the underbelly of the Murcielago. Twin jets fired it clear of the hull, before angling the vector for the surface.

  It was so brutal and so loud, he didn’t even notice Garner cheering at the top of his lungs until the engines had quieted.

  It didn’t take much thrust to break the orbital vector. From there on out, there was half an hour of relative silence.

  The lack of thick atmosphere below provided a fairly even deceleration over a very long time. The team chattered back and forth, small things, but most were too nervous to speak.

  Thank you, Piotr, for reminding them that they were in a steel casket hurtling toward the Martian surface at nineteen kilometers per second. They had been so calm before that.

  A few of them got up to move around the cabin. They had some brief time before the shuttle would encounter turbulence. Jericho and Cally took the moment to don their suits. Smart, as any accident that occurred from here on out would prove instantly lethal without it. Locklear would’ve followed in their footsteps if his feet could stop shaking, patting out a subtle drum beat on the shuttle floor.

  The complete lack of windows, or even a pilot, made this ride rather harrowing. Piotr up above drove by radio, and when he wasn’t, the computer took over. Knowing Piotr, he was probably driving out of sheer boredom. Thank God the computer would break him off from doing anything truly dangerous. Like a barrel roll.

  After a half an hour was when it really started. The ship started to shake, first minor shudders, then entire bounces that slammed Locklear’s head against the padded roof of his seat. Each pocket of air, thin though the atmosphere was, was not homogenous – it went from warm to cold, and the pressure changed, and with it, the resistance. Didn’t need weather for this to be a bumpy ride. And if one bump took them too far off course, there was no amount of correcting the T9 could do. The shuttle would shear right along the floor under his feet.

  It’s exactly what had happened a year ago. The lab coats had said they fixed the problem. Of course, the problem is fixed, at least until it happens again.

  Thinking clinically about it kept Locklear sane. Otherwise, he’d have to imagine the sound steel makes when it tears at high altitude. The howling a thin atmosphere would make as the pressurized cabin tried to wrench its way inside out, the muted banshee howl of wind peeling off steel plating. Or what the Doppler effect does to screams as a person is flung out into space.

  Deep space was plenty terrifying. Exposure to true-vacuum conditions and near zero cold was one thing, along with solar radiation and tiny metal particles flying at relativistic speeds. As if the chance of getting shot wasn’t bad enough, let’s make the bullet small enough and fast enough it passes through armor plating like paper.

  But low-atmosphere exposure might just be worse. In addition to many of the vacuum dangers, passengers also had the terrifying principles of falling for a very long time, and if they were going fast enough, they’d be on fire for a large chunk of the time they were conscious. Just flaming meteorites, immolating on the express elevator to Hell.

  This, this is the primary method of delivering people to a new planet. And we find this acceptable.

  The steel creaked under his feet, somewhere. Like the shuttle was letting out a sigh, or a pained moan. As if it might warn him when something was about go wrong. If Lady Luck were to deem it so, he was certain that it would be dead silent right before the whole shuttle flew apart, as if to lull him into a false sense of security before ripping his body limb from limb. There must be some immutable law that states the cosmic whiplash of bad luck strikes when least expected.

  Jazmin and Cally held hands, knuckles wrapped white against each other. At least he wasn’t alone in the knowledge of how daring they were being right now. The odds may be good for them, but that doesn’t ignore that dice were actively rolling at that very moment.

  Locklear shuddered, and decided to start counting seconds instead. Maybe he’d bore himself to sleep.

  He had no idea how long it had been when Amelia cranked the bar over Locklear’s head. She glared up at him, some combination of a sneer and a hug, all in one l
ook. Locklear gave her a nod, sending her back on her way. He had to swallow his nausea, tuck it back down, before he could finally move.

  The shuttle was still coasting in, bouncing and rattling, but that haunting steel sigh had stopped finally. Chance of accidents from here on out were minimal, about as bad as a commercial flight landing -- still quite possible, but after what they had just been through, most people got up for their luggage.

  Hardly safe or regulation, but basic humanity commanded that people be allowed this bit of freedom after so flagrantly telling God and Gravity where they can stick it. That, and it seemed to stop people from shitting themselves.

  Locklear took a step forward, then another, then swallowed the bile pushing up the back of his throat.

  “Careful, Lock!” He could hear Isen jeer from somewhere in the back, “Hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times.”

  “Knock it off, Isen!” Amelia snapped, somehow appearing right next to Isen without being seen. For a person that large, it was really disconcerting how stealthy she could be.

  Romanov chuckled, pointing like the little schoolboy he was.

  Amelia was having none of that, “Rom, do you have an opinion on your own?”

  “Nah,” Jazmin chimed in, “That would mean he’d need to climb off Isen’s dick for a few minutes.”

  Isen was now laughing at Romanov, hooting and hollering in that unforgivable backwards howler monkey way.

  Locklear shot a glare at Jazmin, who just shrugged in response. She didn’t understand her mistake. Yeah, nothing like a little sex joke to make a bunch of pent up military types turn on the smallest guy in the room.

  Romanov tried to cackle along, but he wilted at the attention. He’d pushed it too far, and didn’t know how he had. Guy just didn’t know any better. And now the room was punching him for it, like the fact they were hitting an asshole was any more acceptable than hitting an innocent.

  It was fuckin’ high school in here.

  Locklear stumbled into one of the jump-seats, falling into Jericho’s cushioned chest. It was like leaning against a wall. Locklear picked himself up to see Jericho’s limp frame hanging off his restraints. Somehow, the big lug was actually asleep. Or he’d passed out. That was possible. Chiseled cheek bones and broad shoulders laid limp against polyester cables and steel bars. That big a body, it was perfectly plausible he’d blacked out from the forces.

  He even smelled good. How was that possible? Locklear probably smelled like the inside of a swine paddock with all the sweat falling into his eyes.

  Locklear scrambled as slowly as his adrenaline would allow toward the front control panel -- seemed a bit of a misnomer, the screen was a sixteen inch display of the operating conditions around the shuttle and the live feed from the nose-cam mounted contradictingly off the port wing-tip.

  The grainy footage showed the vague dome and cube shapes of Manifest before them, a single stubby spire of the Operations Tower looming over it all, like a child’s sand castle at low tide – so fragile.

  “One minute!” Locklear called out.

  Amelia nodded, ducking back under her roll-cage, securing it back down around her. Locklear stared at the screen for a moment longer, unable to tear his eyes away from it.

  The colony was made up of a series of pre-fab structures, connected by modular reinforced canvas tubing. They all resembled modules off the Murci, having been airdropped from low orbit and then hauled into place by rovers. After the temporary build, foundations and proper structure were laid to literally cement man’s footprint on the Red.

  An eight foot high barricade was erected around the colony, blunting the sandstorms, but mostly offering that little bit of civilization: man felt safer when he could peek out over the ramparts at the rest of the wild. Purely a division between man and nature.

  The front gate of the colony could be made out between the stuttering frames of the camera feed: it was curled inward, the bottom slumped like a pile of dirty clothes, ignored and abandoned.

  An angry moaning again from somewhere beneath him took his focus as the landing gear deployed and locked. He felt his stomach turn and his muscles tighten as the shuttle pitched backward, tilting slightly in preparation for landing.

  “Lock!”

  He nodded at the call, rushing back to his seat. Not much to do until they could get a closer look. He grasped the security bar and brought it back down over himself.

  Seven, six, five…

  The landing strip was three miles long, a project completed by the very first colonists. The longest landing recorded was the third one ever done, stretching two miles after the chutes didn’t deploy. Another shuttle had careened off the runway in high winds. No injuries were reported in either instance.

  There’s a first time for everything under the sun.

  Two, one… Locklear wrapped his hands around the bar.

  It jolted him up, his knees buckling from the sudden force. The shuttle’s tires hit the landing strip a tad hard, but it didn’t take long for the disc brakes to clamp down and the packed parachutes flared out of the back of the shuttle. This sent every single person hard against their restraints, steel and rubber and human all squealing alike.

  Locklear tried to steal a look at the dashcam again, but all he could see was the flickering monitor. There would be no comfort had today. He let go of the bar, resting against his restraints like a sideways hammock, or a thick lazy piano wire vainly trying to garrote him. He couldn’t decide which.

  If this rollercoaster was going to kill him, it’s not as though he had a say in the matter.

  Had he secured the gas line properly? This is how Leo chewed right through the inside of his cheek for an hour at a time. He didn’t want to be the engineer that killed a shuttle full of nine people because of a faulty part he didn’t recognize before the drop.

  It’s not like he hadn’t been doing daily checks on the fuselage, fuel lines, boosters, and communication systems. It’s not as if he had been negligent in scouring for manufacturing errors or damage from random space stuff. Technical term.

  Everything worked just fine. He had two weeks of clipboards and checklists to find something amiss, and he had done each checklist two times a day, just to satiate the anxiety creeping up with each passing hour.

  They were never out of radio contact with the shuttle. Piotr guided them in like he’d done this since grade school -- only half-awake and drooling.

  Not that Leo could confirm that vivid picture that Kieran relayed to him. Leo was down at Medical trying to keep calm with a small trickle of Diprivan -- just a little -- into his arm.

  It stopped him from hyperventilating about the re-entry ceramics on the shuttle’s left wing. For some reason or another, he was never concerned with the right wing. Just the shitty, shitty left wing, as though it was that one student pushed through its classes and everybody universally understood its flaws.

  His brain was constantly telling him it was going to be his fault. Not just here, but always. Someone said a mean thing to a person he didn’t even know; he could’ve stopped that, spoken up from a half a solar system away. A mugging in a city half a hemisphere from him; he could’ve stopped that had he bought a plane ticket and been there.

  Never mind that logic dictated these were beyond his control. Everything was in his control, had he been aware enough. Maybe, if he’d gone with his father to work that day…

  The shuttle down below him was beyond his control. Well, realistically, that actually might be his fault. Not that anyone would blame him to his face, at least not until the debrief combed over the checklists and finds that one box he didn’t initial on a late Thursday.

  Had he done those checks? Had he checked his own checklists to check for mistakes?

  Leo wasn’t sure the meds were working, tapping the button on his hand to give the IV another push of the chilled happy juice.

  Doctor Olivia Gamble looked great to him right now, but that was surely a product of the sudden burst of meds pushing u
p his arm like a soft blanket made of hope and possibility. The waifish but surly woman hovered over another bed on the far side of the room.

  He often wondered how many serious injuries she actually had to contend with. Short of work-related damage, her day job presented largely as a Pharmacy. One instance a few trips back she had to treat a broken tibia and the muscular atrophy that followed – some fool had closed a hydraulic hatch on his leg.

  If wasting away healing in a bed on Earth was devastating, it was ten times worse without gravity. Gamble had to meticulously care for the muscle tissue, or the patient would likely never have rebuilt it.

  Short hand: she was very good.

  Leo never liked hospitals. The gray lights on the gray floors, everything accented with the lightest of pastels, just trying above all else to force calm on to pained suffering shells. That, and when upon entrance to the building full of sick people, one often came out just as sick as they went in, this time with different sick.

  Doubly true here for space travel. The amount of contact people have in a steel container in deep space is double what would be normal in any apartment stack in a mid-size city. The same air is recycled through and through, so if one person coughs two hundred meters aft, everyone gets sick.

  The simple common cold forces a patient into quarantine to think about the life choices that brought them into a plastic prison below the Lido deck.

  Even he couldn’t keep up with his brain’s runaway train. Leo shook his head. Now the meds had really kicked in, because colors were starting to brighten up and he hadn’t thought about the shuttle crumbling into seventy six pieces in Mars’ upper atmosphere.

  Oh, God.

  Leo took a bracing breath of the medically scrubbed stale air, and glanced back at the beautiful, crotchety Doctor Olivia Gamble.

  She hovered over a patient’s cot, as though she might whisper the poetry of Heaven, “And what stupid fuck thing did you do to your leg this time?”

  Lovely. Lovely person.

  The patient was Walter Rook. Leo remembered him as a researcher bound for the archaeological site, short man with a pointed graying goatee -- like a satyr on the verge of retirement, or just too old for his normal satyr-shit these days.