Survive

by Vera Nazarian

  The hatch of our khepri opens upward, and I follow Oalla’s lead, climbing awkwardly into the compact interior, which is smaller than the inside of a standard civilian shuttle due to additional military equipment, panels, and weapon arrays.

  The two other crew climb after me—a young, tall, brown-skinned woman with black hair and startling green eyes, and a slim, olive-skinned young man with brown hair—who have been introduced as Pilots Axela Buiri and Xurut Ralafu.

  There are four seats inside, fully rotating at 360 degrees, and of equal position in relation to the central control panel and perimeter weapon-and-sensor panels that circle the ship. We take our seats at random, and I sit down next to Oalla on my right and Xurut on my left, directly across from Axela. My helmet and other gear go in a storage container bucket fixed to the right of my seat.

  Oalla is in command of my portion of this flight mission, so she turns to the central control panel and places her palms on the lumpy orichalcum surface. The moment she sings the keying command, the panel comes alive and lights up with multicolor indicators, while the perimeter panels flare with corresponding lights. The overhead hatch comes down and we are momentarily cut off from the world and plunged in darkness except for the panel indicators. Then, remarkably, the entire hatch becomes transparent, as if the hull material dissolves, in a disappearing illusion. It is holographically sensitive material, giving us a full surround window view of the exterior.

  Oalla’s fingertips move quickly over the command panel, engaging a central holo-grid that rises up to float in a pale-yellow light cube over the controls. Then she taps a communication sensor and speaks in a clear measured voice. “Astroctadra mission control, Bast registering vessel for takeoff. Lark is safely on board.”

  A moment later, we hear Aeson’s rich baritone voice issue from the hull walls. “Phoebos acknowledging Bast vessel for takeoff. Proceed to destination coordinates.”

  “Bast confirming arrival projection on schedule at 11:41 of Ra. Relayed and closing.”

  And then Oalla sings another sequence. The ship’s hull comes alive with a faint hum, while hair-thin lines of golden light start racing along the hull perimeter on the bottom and between the perimeter panels.

  “Buckle in, everyone,” she says with a glance at me, even though we are all duly restrained in our harnesses. “Now is the time to put on your optional eye protection. The view is a shielded holo-projection, no danger of ocular damage, but it’s still very annoyingly bright.”

  I reach into my gear bucket and take out a pair of military sun shades that have the additional blackout function. I choose the standard setting without blackout, and put them on.

  There’s a small lurch, as the khepri taxies out of the hangar, into the blinding white daylight of Hel—so that I’m grateful for the shades over my eyes.

  My pulse starts racing erratically. . . . Then, the world itself seems to time-dilate around us, while the khepri accelerates for a hundred feet of the airfield, going from zero to what feels like sixty billion, moving with the ease of a flitting hummingbird.

  And then the bottom falls out from under me—from under all of us—as the khepri shoots upward into the sky.

  I’ve never been inside a space vessel that had a window view during actual takeoff from a planet’s surface. Earth was already a distant view from orbit when I first had a glimpse of it from the grand observation deck on that fateful day when the ark-ships departed our home world. The shuttles we flew from on board the ark-ships were already in deep space, locked within the quantum stream. And the transports that took us into orbit and then back down had no windows in the passenger area.

  This time I get to see the planet fall away from under me all the way through the layers of atmosphere and into the cosmic vacuum of space. It’s slightly ironic that the first planet departure I get to experience visually is not Earth, but Atlantis.

  The physical sensation of rising through the atmosphere is now familiar—I’ve been in enough shuttles that I know the unpleasant sudden squeeze of gravity. This time, though, it is particularly brutal—I am experiencing the additional Atlantean baseline gravity with the acceleration forces added into the mix.

  The pressure is so intense that I feel as if I’m being stifled at the same time as I’m already flattened in my seat.

  However, the view is amazing—even as I’m being crushed and immobilized. Blinding white daylight, an ocean of it, all around . . . and then, everything slowly fading to lapis lazuli blue, atmospheric reflected light easing, colors gaining saturation and hue, as we approach the thinning upper layers and the space vacuum.

  I hear Oalla’s voice through the ringing in my ears, “Hang in there, Gwen. . . . Just a few minutes more.”

  “Okay . . .” I reply with effort, breath squeezed from my lungs and forced through closed teeth. At one point I can feel my cheeks sucked in with the acceleration.

  And then it’s over.

  The last glow of atmospheric light dissolves, and we are in cosmic indigo, then the velvet blackness of true space. The sensation of gravity is momentarily gone, and we float light as a feather. . . .

  And the next moment, gravity blooms back in place—just enough to anchor us vertically, giving us a perspective of “up and down”—but not at standard Atlantean levels.

  Light gravity! How nice, I think. Looks like I might be getting a vacation from full-strength Atlantean gravity while we fly. . . .

  “We’ve achieved orbit,” Oalla says, looking at me. “How’re you feeling, my Imperial Lady? Doing okay?”

  “Yes, I’m okay now,” I say with a sigh of relief, taking a deep breath with lungs that are no longer being crushed with acceleration pressure. Now that I finally don’t feel like I’m dying, I can pay better attention to our surroundings. At once, I’m fascinated by the sight of the blue-green hemisphere of Atlantis filling up half the window view below. A clear, near-cloudless view, with only a few puffy cumulus—mostly over the oceans and underpopulated regions—thanks to weather control.

  “Stabilizing at MF Gravity. In three . . . two . . . one,” Axela announces across from me, as she does something on her side of the control panel.

  “MF Gravity?” I ask.

  “Minimum Fundamental Gravity,” Xurut replies from my left. “Used for short and medium distance space flights to maximize ship systems efficiency. Also, fewer messy spills.” And he gives me a wink.

  “I see.”

  “That’s right, you don’t want your lvikao floating in sticky droplets all over the cockpit,” Oalla says, raising one brow. “We will maintain this level of minimal gravity for the rest of our flight to Mar-Yan.”

  “Great,” I say, sitting up in my chair. “So, is it really just a two-hour flight?”

  “Pretty much. Mar-Yan is not that far. In fact, its orbit is a little closer to Atlantis than your Earth Moon is to Earth. We won’t even engage the quantum stream.” Oalla’s fingers manipulate the holo-cube surface as she makes some entries to the grid, which I recognize as the Yellow navigation grid. “Destination coordinates set, now requesting Thrust.”

  Axela manipulates the cube from her end and the grid turns Red. “Engaging Thrust,” she responds.

  And in that moment, I experience the initial lurch, which turns into smooth motion. In three heartbeats, Atlantis starts to slip away sideways in the viewscreen, as our vessel begins to move away from the planet.

  It’s amazing how quickly things can get boring when you’re staring at nothing but black space, and a few sparse, distant dots of starlight. Also—I don’t know what it is, but we must be flying in one of the most empty and uninteresting directions on this side of the cosmos. Because all that glorious, star-filled sky that I’m used to seeing from the surface of Atlantis is mostly behind us and off to the sides of the viewport. If you stare directly ahead, it’s simply not visible here.

  Where did all that celestial beauty go?

  I mention this to Oalla and she snorts. “I think we happen to be directly f
acing the Black Nebula that obscures most of the galactic center and Ae-Leiterra with its spewing relativistic jets. Thank all the deities for the nice Black Nebula, otherwise we would be in a non-habitable zone of the galaxy.”

  “What is the Black Nebula?”

  “Hot, non-radiant matter and gas,” Xurut replies. “Nothing but microscopic matter for light years in that direction, creating a safety dust curtain between us and radiation hell. The Ae-Leiterra quasar is spewing at us, and the long cosmic string-filament that is the Black Nebula, just happens to be in its path between us. It’s shaped like a worm, with its one end facing us, and the other end being bombarded by Ae-Leiterra.”

  I shake my head in amazement. “I had no idea.”

  “You might say some people in the SPC worship the blessed worm,” Axela says. “Pilot patrols just love it. It’s considered good luck.”

  “From Atlantis, you can only see it as a small dark spot in one part of the sky,” Oalla says. “Here, it’s still only a spot but we’re facing it, flying at it, head-on, and it becomes an optical illusion. Space perspectives can be strange. . . . So, yes, nothing but the pesky dark blob straight ahead. Funny how Mar-Yan happened to be orbiting in that part of the sky for our alignment purposes.”

  “Could it be intentional, somehow? That its vertex point during alignment would be pointing there?” I ask. But even as I say it, I realize how nutty it sounds, so I recognize I must be rambling.

  “Hm-m-m. . . . Don’t know.” Oalla taps the panel surface.

  About half an hour later—in addition to the one or two sparse dots of stars amid the black—one lonely, slightly bigger light source starts to move into the view directly ahead. It resolves itself into a small, blue-grey, planetary body.

  We are now on approach with Mar-Yan.

  Chapter 77

  Fun fact—the moons of Atlantis do not orbit along the same flat plane. Furthermore, their orbit shapes are not circular but strongly eccentric. In other words, the moons don’t go around Atlantis in concentric circles relatively parallel to each other. Instead, they move in wildly diverging ellipses along different rotational planes.

  As a result of this oddball orbital motion, at some point all the moons make closer approaches to Atlantis—and to each other, encroaching on each other’s general orbits—then move farther apart.

  In fact, this crazy, wobbly rotation is the only way that the complex astroctadra alignment becomes possible in 3D space—as opposed to a simple, flat, two-dimensional alignment along four points, as seen from the vantage point of the star window.

  But it’s not a complete mess. Despite their irregularities, the moons have a general order of proximity to Atlantis, based on their average orbital distance.

  Mar-Yan, one of the three—no, four—Atlantean moons, is sort of like the middle child. Its orbit generally lies between Pegasus and Amrevet, and so does its size.

  Mar-Yan is about two-thirds the size of Earth’s Moon. Meanwhile, tiny Pegasus is approximately one-half, and huge Amrevet is almost twice the size.

  In terms of distance from Atlantis, Pegasus is generally closest—which means that my brother Gordie will likely get a shorter trip than me before reaching his lunar destination (but no guarantees, because, again—orbital weirdness). Then comes Mar-Yan with its middle orbit, and only then comes Amrevet, which has an orbital distance approximately comparable to Earth’s Moon, although it does make a closer approach to Atlantis at some points. Of the three of us, poor Aeson has possibly the longest trip to make.

  What about the Ghost Moon?

  From what little is known so far, the Ghost Moon is larger than Pegasus but smaller than Mar-Yan in size. And its orbit is generally outermost, far beyond Amrevet—although for today’s alignment it’s supposed to be at its closest apsis point, encroaching on the other moons’ orbits and in some case passing them.

  And now—even as Mar-Yan grows in the viewport window, and my thoughts go off on astrophysics nerd tangents—I pause to wonder at the serendipity. . . .

  Truly, it’s a miracle that such a highly specific configuration of planetary bodies in this complex system can even exist, much less be a regular occurrence.

  Mar-Yan fills the window with its bluish, dull grey pallor and minimal rocky surface features, when Oalla engages the comms.

  “Astroctadra mission control, Bast vessel is now in Mar-Yan orbit, arriving on schedule.”

  “Phoebos acknowledging. Bast vessel, commence landing procedure.”

  “Bast confirming. Landing in progress. Relayed and closing.”

  And with those words, Oalla defines the final surface coordinates on the Yellow grid, then flips the holo-grid cube to Green. “Requesting Brake.”

  “Engaging Brake,” Xurut responds, and begins to manipulate the corresponding controls on the cube.

  We start to plummet down at a controlled incline, grazing the edges of the ultra-thin atmosphere, even though such caution on approach is not really necessary in this near-vacuum.

  Meanwhile, gravity disappears altogether as we fall.

  Our landing coordinates place us in daytime, with Helios a fierce and bright white ball halfway across the Mar-Yan sky. Here in this rarified atmosphere, the alien golden light grid around Hel is clearly visible at the fringes of its corona, like a net of deadly pearls. Meanwhile, the large, gibbous, blue-green disk that is Atlantis hangs below, near the pronounced curvature of the horizon.

  The sky itself is black, with a faint, bluish, atmospheric haze—present only at the edges—that quickly fades to full cosmic vacuum overhead. Compared to Earth’s Moon, Mar-Yan has slightly more atmosphere, but the difference is barely significant.

  The gravity however is back—lighter than Earth’s, but not by much. Which implies that Mar-Yan, this little moon, is denser in mass than Earth’s Moon, and has stronger gravity, despite being smaller in size.

  We “land” softly on the barren grey surface of the moon. The khepri spacecraft doesn’t actually make physical contact but hovers about two feet off the regolith, casting a dark shadow on the ground. Mar-Yan’s regolith consists of ashen dust and rocks, some bluish in color, and occasional impact craters.

  The area directly underneath the ship is undisturbed by the khepri’s silent presence, except for the gradual heating up that comes from the proximity to the plasma shield. Given enough time, it will leave a minor radiation burn imprint like a “crop circle,” fusing the dust particles.

  Of course, the shield will be turned off for us to get out safely. . . .

  As soon as we come to a hover stop, the ship’s hull goes silent, and Oalla makes another call, to tell Aeson we have arrived.

  I hear my husband’s voice issue from the hull in response. “Bast vessel, your arrival on Mar-Yan is acknowledged. Stand by for further instructions.” And then, after a pause, he speaks informally. “Oalla, put Gwen on. . . . Gwen, can you hear me? Glad you’re okay.”

  “Aeson! I can hear you! I’m fine,” I say with a smile, hoping to convey it through my voice. “Oalla landed us safely, all is well, and it’s just amazing, this moon! Now, how are you? Or better to say, where are you now?”

  “I’m still in space, almost there. . . . Amrevet is prominent and visible. As soon as I land in a few minutes, we will talk again . . . very soon . . . and I’ll set up the conference link between all of us.”

  “Kass, do you want us to sit here in the ship and wait or proceed into the resonance chamber habitat?” Oalla asks. I have a feeling that under normal circumstances there would be no need for such a question, but Oalla is trying to accommodate me and make me as comfortable as possible.

  “Why don’t you go ahead,” Aeson’s voice comes after a pause. “Go into the habitat, it is newly installed and has better environmental support. Don’t waste your ship’s oxygen generator power.”

  “All right, will do,” Oalla says, concluding formally, “Bast confirming. Relayed and closing.”

  As soon as we end our communication link, I turn
my head in every direction, staring at the dismal grey view outside. “Where is the resonance habitat?”

  “Right behind you.” Xurut and Axela both point, while Oalla sings a command sequence and does something on the control panel.

  I swivel my seat 180 degrees, and notice what I first assumed was a rock formation not too far from us. It’s an irregular shape, but then I realize that this pile of rocks surrounds a smooth metallic hemisphere peeking upward from what appears to be a small crater. The sphere is imbedded in the crater like a robotic eyeball in an eye socket.

  How large is it? Hard to tell, since I don’t trust myself to accurately judge distances in this monotonous, alien landscape. . . .

  “All right, shiny new Team Lark—ahem, Kassiopei—time to put on the rest of the suit gear.” Oalla completes whatever she was doing and swivels her chair to face me, even as I swivel back to my original position, to pay attention. “Yes, these chairs are fun to play with,” she says with an arched brow. “But we need to get moving, My Imperial Lady.”

  “Okay—of course.” I chuckle, feeling suddenly punch-drunk with nervous excitement.

  I’m about to walk on an alien moon!

  “Remember the correct order. Helmets first. Then plug in the life-support pack. Then the gloves—they go last. Do not turn on the life-support system until the suit is fully sealed and pressurized.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Oalla snorts. “I know you know, but Kass will kill me if I somehow manage to kill you. . . . So—”

  I laugh.

  Our fellow crew members exchange glances and watch our exchange in equal amusement.

  “And you two—enough staring and snickering. Gear on! Now!” Oalla claps her hands, and looks like she means business.