Now I owed her another... flower. Her orb was painted in a forest of vines and colorful flowers now, instead of the safety yellow that all my other maintenance pingers were covered in. Hey, I've been really bored the last two weeks, so sue me.
I told them, “I'm going to see if I can't get some more gain out of the com system. We should have been able to contact New Terra already, the ionization isn't half as bad as the last contact.” I saw Flower watching me. I'm sure she would be cocking an amused brow if she had one. I defended, “What? I miss her.”
They all giggled. I wasn't that bad. It was like living with a bunch of twelve-year-olds, I swear to the gods of the cosmos. And... I loved them all.
I prompted Glitchy, “Do me a favor? The scanners show the last storm system is hundreds of klicks out, we're in the clear, and we can shut down the photonic shields over our grid now. Can you take Blip and Wrongway out to do that and salvage any partially used backup crystals from the projectors for use in the shop?”
He saluted and his body rotated up and down, his nod, and his four toned whistling squee sounded like an, “Aye aye, Fixit.”
I gave him a quick grin, and he trundled over to the boys, who looked excited to be doing something other than just sitting around waiting for the Pass to end.
I headed upstairs while Flower followed them to the door, I knew she was heading just outside the door to the little flower bed she had been tending and protecting from the small percentage of the raging storms that made it through the photonic shields and rocked the very world around us for weeks. She is fascinated with all living things and dotes on her flowers.
The irrational part of my mind had been postulating that the photonic shields over the Agri-Grids were causing some sort of harmonic dissonance in the ionosphere and having a cumulative effect over time, and that's why we haven't been able to make contact with New Terra yet.
I know, impossible. It was just wishful thinking. I just needed to be patient and let the ionization from the storms dissipate naturally. I stepped into my office and looked around and sighed. About a dozen Crop Hatches were trying to nest in my cot again. Those silly Fluffers weren't even scared of me anymore so didn't fly off in an explosion of feathers to the rafters like they used to.
The flying rodents are one of the three mammalian life forms on Tau Ceti Prime. Apparently, they are like a cross between a sparrow and a squirrel from Old Earth. And they get into everything here. They are about the only thing native to this planet that isn't out to kill us.
I tolerate them because they kept all of the various insects of Prime at bay around my crops, and keep the creeping fungus away from the fruits since the fuzzy little critters find the fungus a delicacy. Well, that and they are so flanterskelling cute.
They are the only animal life besides insects here on Prime that can fly. It keeps them out of the Cath Saber and doglike Magna Lupus' jaws.
All of the Fluffers that were stuck here in Agri-Grid A1 with us inside the sonic fence, now that we put a lid of coherent photons over it, have started migrating into the shop for shelter from the part of the storms that made it through the barriers.
It was cute at first. But the past couple weeks they have grown in numbers that I don't think there is a single one flitting around outside and I wake up feeling like it is a thousand degrees in my office, just to find out I am covered by dozens of the little critters who snuggle in to steal my body heat.
I guess it doesn't help that I've been feeding them all during the storms. Once we open the big bay doors again, I hope they go back outside and let me have a moment's peace.
Flower has taken to naming them and seems to have a different squeeing chirp for each of them. I can't tell the cute little things apart. Well, except Dawn.
Almost on cue, the little one with the missing front paw landed on my shoulder and wrapped her little fluffy tail around my neck. I absently reached up and scritched her between her eyes and she cooed to me.
I looked down to the repair bay through the wall of windows and smiled at the harvesters and tenders which have been patiently waiting to get back to work. I saw Turk watching me, one of his ocular ports on its stalks tracking me. He was the biggest and smartest one in my family here and was fiercely protective of all of us. I gave him a little wave, and he bobbled his eyes in return. He must be bored out of his gourd just sitting down there.
Well, once Glitchy drops the shield, I'm going to send all of them out to stretch their treads and prep the fields for replanting. There's no rest for the wicked. They're going to love that!
I moved over to the communications system that was hard-wired to the arrays at the terraforming station and sat. I spun up the dynamo with the manual crank, then started the routine I have recently taken to three times a day as I spoke into the receiver, “New Terra, this is Agri-Grid A1 Actual. Please respond. Again, New Terra, this is Vega Hasher from Agri-Grid A1, requesting communications with Lady Peregrine. Please Respond.”
It was static I was met with... well not with static, but with nothing. I had to stare at the earpiece. Was it on the fritz? I should at least hear the hissing static background noise of the ionization. I checked the relays, and they were all green.
I looked up at the ceiling like I could see the sky. If everything was green, that meant things had cleared up enough I was getting a clean signal through. But then why wasn't I getting a response? I grabbed the big dial on the mechanical system and turned slowly to listen to all the orbiting traffic but got nothing between the bands of static from cosmic radiation.
Deflating, I realized what that must mean. The receivers in the communications arrays must have taken a hit in that last storm. So that would mean they can hear me, I just can't hear them. The gods of the cosmos must be laughing at me now.
I sighed then perked back up. Well if there wasn't any more interference in the atmosphere, then I could just connect to the Prime information grid! Finally! I needed some different waves to watch down here, you can only watch the same shows a limited number of times before going flanterskelling nuts.
I'll just send a request for Vashon's condition. I tapped the virtual screen on an iso-pad and frowned at the flashing red “Unable to connect to grid, please contact technical support if the problem persists.”
I growled at it. “Piece of trollite.” Everything down here was going to crap. I needed parts and supplies to get the repair station back up to specs. Maybe it was time to take a stand? I grabbed another iso-pad but got the same thing.
Ooookay... they didn't rely upon the transceiver array, as they had their own lower powered transceivers in them. So what the heck was going on? For coms and data to both be down is almost impossible. There were hundreds, if not thousands of ships on orbit or in-system, and a dozen cities and agri-domes, I should be able to connect a data channel to one of them.
I paused as something in the back of my mind chilled, and I pushed myself and rolled on the chair to another console that was covered by a dust encrusted canvas tarp. I pulled the tarp off, and the Fluffers on the cot exploded into the air to avoid the dust cloud that had me coughing. They flew to the rafters and over the wall, and I saw them all flying as a flock down to land on Turk and the others.
I stared at the console that had probably never been used since the first days of terraforming when the Agri-Grids were first set up. An ancient air traffic control console. Once the Prime information grid was set up, consoles like these became obsolete relics of a simpler time.
I stared at it like someone would look at some other long-extinct species, like the platypus. “Ok, so if I were an air control system, how would I work?” I would need... “Ah ha!” I'd need a transceiver array. I found an old lead and looked from it to the comm system and plugged it into a corresponding jack. The screen started to flicker, and I ran to the com system and cranked up the dynamo to charge the capacitors.
Wooo! I would have done a victory dance, but Dawn was chittering and chastising me. I moved to the console and g
rinned. I'd only get hemispherical coverage, but that would be plenty to... I froze as I stared at the impossibility of the orbital traffic.
Whispering, “No.” As I saw in our fourth most populated human occupied star system, an impossibility. The old radar style system was displaying only five huge structures orbiting the planet with declining orbital projections that had them just days out from entry into the atmosphere.
Three were floating cities which had started their descent and return to the skies here on Prime in eight days. I expected to see that, the other three cities would be hidden behind the planet from these old systems. It wasn't the cities that had my heart thumping in my chest like a hammer. It was that besides the cities, I was reading only four other structures on a higher orbit.
Those would be two of the three power generation stations and two of the four small Agri-Domes that grew emergency crops and some more exotic fruits and vegetables for the system.
It was what I didn't see that had panic slowly rising. There should have been hundreds upon hundreds of ships flying about the system, but there was nothing.
I looked at the controls and found what I needed and turned a dial and the representation of the planet shrunk, but still nothing. I did it again and saw the Tau Ceti Rift, the access point to the system which allowed faster than light travel to jump capable ships. And still nothing.
I zoomed out to the maximum range of the unit and swallowed. There they were. Thousands of traces moving out of the system at minimum sub-light thrust. What were they doing?
I projected a trajectory. They were all heading back to Old Earth? But it would take almost ten thousand years at minimum sub-light. The rift was the other way, a week out. It was suicide to head out to interstellar space like that.
I tried again and again on my iso-pad but couldn't make a connection, then tried another tact and tried to bounce a signal off the... wait, where were the satellites? There should have been tens of thousands of them in orbit I could connect to.
My fervent thoughts were brought to Ursula Prime. They had been talking about the totalitarian governance that the Galactic Federation had over the other star systems, and were talking about independence, when their entire star system had been taken out by a freak accident, a quantum fusion meltdown of their orbiting power generation station.
Whispers on the solar winds were that it had actually been the covert Obsidian Pacification Force which the Galactic Federation has hidden from the member systems for generations. I had thought it to be just one of the spooky stories mom told me as a kid, an urban myth. But when I recently learned of Vashon's um, unique situation, I also learned of Prime's Covert Sciences, which had a Dark Fleet being built somewhere to defend against such draconian pacification here in the Tau Ceti system.
Was this what was going on here? Was this why I couldn't contact anyone? Were coms somehow being jammed? Were those ships running for their lives from a fleet I couldn't see on the sensors? Was our Dark Fleet discovered, and now we were going to face the same fate as the Ursula system?
If it was, it was a brilliantly evil strategy to do it during the Perihelion Pass, when all the floating cities would be in orbit with the few dirters like me being evacuated up. They could wipe out the entire population of Prime in one stroke and leave no witnesses. Then all the infrastructure here would be intact for them to take over themselves.
Had they defeated the military? And the Sky Guard tumbrils that would have gone out in support of them? Was I the lone witness to a culling? They wouldn't know of me or the Betweeners, the pirates that live on the surface of Prime somewhere. If they did know about them and me, would they bomb us from orbit?
I couldn't bring myself to continue that line of thought. Just shut up and think Fixit. What do you know? The information grid was down. Communications are down. The cities are still there and still have power and propulsion since they are moving in orbit toward the gravity wakes for atmospheric entry. So unless everyone was somehow killed in the cities, the population of Prime was still alive. Tens of thousands of people aboard all the rift jumper capable ships as well as the sub-light maintenance and recreational ships are running out-system from something I can't detect.
If they don't get turned around, they will exhaust their fuel and food supplies in weeks and drift in icy tombs for millennia toward Terra.
I saw the shimmer through the bay door windows and felt the thrum as the different sections of the photonic shield dropped. Oh no, what was I going to tell Flower and the boys?
Nothing Fixit, because you don't know anything yet! No need to worry them.
I spun toward the stairs as Flower came screaming up, no seriously her squee was high pitched like a scream as she rocketed up on her tank-treaded mobility platform. Her iris was wide, looking frantic as she came to a stop in front of me. Dawn jumped from my shoulder to glide to Flower and curl around her ocular port.
I almost stumbled back when Flower said in Vashon's voice, “Come on Fixie, answer. We saw the photonic shields go down, so the signal has to get through. Fixie, Fixie, Fixit? Where are you love? Come on, please work. Vega? Are you...” Flower turned her attention from the Fluffer climbing on her to me, and I saw her iris focus and Vash's voice said, “Vega! There you are! Are you receiving? I'm piggybacking on your pinger's makeshift com network.”
I moved closer to Flower and looked up to the ceiling, toward the cities in orbit then I focused on my pinger's eye. “Vash?”
I blinked. My ranger had somehow found and hacked into the communications network Flower, and the boys had been developing on their own? My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat, throbbing in my neck. It was an adrenaline rush from the realization that Vash was still alive. Any thoughts of the cities just being the floating tombs of over two million were cast aside, a profound relief took its place.
Flower just sat there, looking abuzz herself as Vashon's voice came through the vocal synthesizer that Flower could no longer use once she attained sentience, her voice being a small price to pay for life. “Oh thank the gods, Fixie! We don't have much time, the floating cities need your help, or we will lose everyone.”
Oh.
Chapter 2 – Pacification
My girl filled me in on what had occurred the moment the cities cycled into their automated descent sequences as the last of the Pass storms were dying down on the surface of Prime a week ago. It was eerily close to the nightmare scenario I had been imagining.
Her voice filled the space as Dawn looked down from her perch on Flower's optical port, batting playfully at the iris behind the crystal-alloy that kept refocusing on me as I moved to sit. “Everything was proceeding as normal up here as the city started preparing for Descent a few days ago. That's when everything went sideways.”
She was oddly monotone and her cadence awfully precise, but maybe that was Flower's vocal synthesizer. “The moment the subroutines to begin gradually lowering our orbit to allow us to slip into the gravitational wakes to reinsert us into the atmosphere kicked in, all the pingers in the city started going berserk, and every vacuum capable ship at the docking ports launched into space. The city went into lockdown with the shields flaring to military defensive mode.”
What she was describing was impossible and frightening, but her tone... “Vash, are you ok? You sound... odd.”
She answered, finally a little emotion in her tone, some humor, and mischief. “Yes I'm sorry Vega, it is hard to concentrate. I'm fine. It is just that at the moment, I am... more.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? She's more? More what? Before I could ask, she continued. “The orbital defense shield extended through the lower levels where the drive system and system core are located, and the lower levels all vented to space. Thousands of techs and engineers were lost.”
Mother of all crystal! Thousands were... my heart may have stopped beating. All the dirters from the Prime Agri-Grids would have been in those lower levels. When they brought them up for the Perihelion Pas
s, they were all assigned to waste system cleaning and maintenance. The upper-class people in the city believe that dirters like me are filth, better out of sight and out of mind, even though they would all starve without us.
So the crystal licking bootwaffle who ran logistics, New Terra Actual, made sure to give them the most menial jobs in the city so they would feel more “at home.” That was supposed to be my fate too if I hadn't been stranded dirtside for the PP.
Everyone I knew down here except my pingers was... dead now?
I hadn't even noticed that my ranger's voice had stopped. I looked up, and it was strange to hear her voice coming from Flower as she said with emotion coloring that toneless cadence again, “I'm so sorry Fixie.”
I nodded and prompted with my eyes. I needed to know everything.
She went on. “The shield physically severed all linkages to the rest of the city. And without being able to get to the lower levels, we're trapped in here.”
My mind was racing going over all the systems they were without. Even basic life support would be severed. With the half million on the city, they would have run out of breathable air without the CO2 scrubbers operational, in two days or less. They would have had main power severed as well. Was she using her own internal power to send this transmission?
Wait, no, they would have minimal power for emergency lighting and the like, but not much else since all of the surfaces of the city buildings and infrastructure were coated in a dielectric solar energy collecting coating.
This explained the lack of coms too as all the communication arrays ring the lower level of the city. I asked as I started to understand the true depth of their situation, “What about the Prime information grid?” Surely with that, they could come up with some sort of relay to try to shut down the shields with some sort of override.
I could picture her shaking her head, knowing my thought process.
Fixit Adventures Anthology Page 16
