I supposed cost cutting existed in government as well as in business. I’d always thought the Federation was ultra-rich, but it couldn’t have been cheap to run a massive navy and administrate thousands of planets.
“We will start by entering the chamber behind me. Inside, you will be weightless. At the bottom of the silo section, the tower you saw on our approach, is the anti-gravitation generator. It counteracts the effects of this planet’s gravity, simulating weightlessness.”
I wanted to ask why anyone would want to simulate weightlessness on a planet. What possible use would it be to a civilization with space travel readily available? But I knew asking questions would only land me in hot water. I was still sore from our hundred push-ups the day before when one of the recruits stole a sergeant’s cap and put it on. We were encouraged to not hold grudges against our fellow recruits for punishments they earned the group, but we made an exception for that idiot.
“Enter,” Sergeant Ferrez ordered.
The twenty of us and four drill sergeants, including Sergeant Ferrez, filed into the chamber. As soon as we passed the threshold, we began to float toward the center of the room. It was a surreal feeling, considering even the smallest space-worthy craft in the Federation nowadays had artificial gravity generators to simulate a planet the size of Tar Ebon’s gravity. If I’d been around centuries earlier, during the pioneer days, I would have been accustomed to the zero-G experience.
Once everyone was inside the chamber, the doors slid shut. I floated there, in a cluster formed of my fellow recruits and the sergeants, unsure how to move in the zero-G conditions.
Sergeant Ferrez produced a silver device shaped like a handle from her utility belt and held it in front of her. “This is a portable propulsion device, or PPD. It is a highly efficient device which uses tiny amounts of a specialized gas to create propulsion. You simply aim it in the direction you want to go and hit the button.” She aimed it toward the ceiling and an instant later an exhaust trail appeared from the rear of the handle. She propelled toward the ceiling of the silo. “It uses micro-bursts to move you in your desired direction. Press the button too many times in a row and you’ll find yourself with too much momentum to stop yourself and you could die.”
She lifted her glove and the handle came with it. “The PPD is magnetic, so it will adhere to your gloves until you disengage the magnets in your gloves temporarily or unless enough force is applied to break the magnetic field. These devices are frequently used by maintenance crews and zero-G boarding parties. You will be assigned a PPD if you are being sent on a space mission. Marines have one as part of their standard kit.”
She used her PPD to direct herself to the wall, where she replaced it in her utility belt and lifted her legs. A vmmm sound emanated and her boots clicked to the wall. She was now walking down the wall toward the door to the room. “Your PPD will do you no good when you reach the hull of an enemy ship and need to be steady to plant a breaching charge or use a laser cutter. In such cases, you’ll activate these, your mag boots, and they will clamp to the metal hull of the ship. The Empire experimented with different alloys during the last war, which were not magnetic, but they were installed on a limited number of ships and bases, meaning mag boots continue to have a prominent place in any zero-G kit. They are activated using your HUD or tactical implant.”
Tactical implant? I thought. I wonder what a tactical implant is? Is it different from what Jarvis is?
A tactical implant is an advanced version of me, Jarvis answered. It contains military subroutines dedicated to tactics and combat. It allows complete control of a synth suit and all related articles such as mag boots, personal propulsion devices and much more.
That sounded cool. How do I get a tactical implant?
Upon completion of basic training, I will be upgraded to a tactical grade implant.
I won’t lose you? Your personality?
My personality shall remain intact, my tactical capabilities will merely be unlocked.
You have the capabilities now, they’re just not unlocked?
Correct.
Did all the undead get that treatment?
No. Most of the undead were given simple implants with a single subroutine designed to ensure the neural pathways remained intact through use of specialized nanites. Their implants are capable of no other functions.
I’m special? Again?
Quite. You were given the top of the line implant, me, designed by your uncle personally. I can upgrade as necessary to support your skill level.
Impressive.
“The last item is the mag grapple,” the sergeant continued. Only a couple seconds had passed, if that. She produced a metal pistol-looking item from her utility belt. A hook-like object sat at the tip of the weapon. “It’s the simplest of the articles. You simply point and pull the trigger. A tritonium-clad cable is launched at high velocity toward the target. It attaches to any metal surface, much like the mag boots. Do not mistake simple for easy, however. It is simple to use but difficult to master. The key to mastering the mag grapple is to know how far your range is with the pistol and to only fire when you are in range. It takes time to reel the cable in - time you may not have if your PD is out of gas and you’re not close enough to the enemy ship to engage your mag boots. The mag grapple can help close the gap.
“For the next hour, you are going to float here. The purpose is to acclimate you to weightlessness without other aids, which will in turn make you appreciate mechanical aids even more later. Your goal is to reach the top of the silo without any mechanical aid. You can use your fellow recruits.”
If their point was to make us understand how powerless we were in a weightless environment, it worked. Without handholds or propulsion devices we were helpless. Even trying to link hands and form a human chain required us to all get to each other. Flapping our arms was useless - as useless as humans trying to fly by doing the same. Unlike water, where kicking your legs could propel you, in zero-gravity there was no medium to move through except air. We were essentially in free fall, only without the falling part. Like jumping out of a transport high in the atmosphere but not dropping toward the ground below.
Finally, after much pushing and shoving to bounce recruits off walls and ping-pong them into other recruits we had a twenty-woman chain formed and we bounced from wall to wall up toward the ceiling. We made it with three minutes to spare.
“Good,” Sergeant Ferrez said. “Now...”
Red lights flared into life directly above our heads and interspersed along the walls of the silo in that moment. Loudspeakers incorporated into the lights blared a long tone and then a mechanical voice spoke. “Alert, alert, containment breach. Alert, alert, containment breach.”
“Shit,” Sergeant Ferrez swore. “Hurry, to the exit,” she snapped. She withdrew the sole PDD in the room and propelled herself to the first person in the human chain. “Take my hand, Tanya. And everyone hold hands tight. Do not let go.” Then she activated the PDD in bursts.
The PDD didn’t seem designed to propel twenty people through space, for we moved much slower than the sergeant had when she demonstrated it. All the while, the lights continued to blare and the mechanical voice droned on.
I exchanged glances with Julianna. She squeezed my hand briefly and smiled. “It’ll be all right,” she said, though she didn’t sound too confident.
We were halfway between the ceiling and the door when an ear-splitting wrenching noise came from below. Then, the metal cover we’d seen at the bottom shot into the air, propelled by a hazy wave of energy that mimicked waves of heat rising from hot duracrete. The cover stopped its ascent, floating like we were, but the wave washed over us, sending the whole lot of us floating upward again, like leaves on the wind.
I felt something in that moment, as I tumbled through the air, still clutching the hands of the recruits on either side of me. Something inside me.
Genetic mutation sequence detected, Jarvis declared. Energy absorption critical. I wasn’
t sure whether it was meant to be a warning or a notification, for I had no idea what that meant.
But before I could ask, the waves of energy buffeting us upward ceased and we began to fall.
Some of my fellow recruits screamed as we free fell. The silo was tall but not that tall. A few more seconds and we would slam into the ground only there was no ground. Instead, a black blob swirled around below us, like a whirlpool of ink.
Terror entered my heart in that moment. I felt Julianna’s grip weakening, while the girl next to me let go completely, flailing her arms.
For some reason, I seemed to fall slower now. I looked over and Julianna was the only one holding my hand. Some feeling inside told me not to let go of Julianna’s hand. “Hang on!” I shouted over the screams of the falling, who were now below us.
“I...can’t,” the words seemed to be a struggle to Julianna. “Something...pulling.”
I frowned. I didn’t feel any force pulling me. And yet...the others were falling. “Just hang on,” I repeated, pleading with my friend as a feeling of dread descended on me.
We continued our descent, at a much slower pace, but Julianna pulled downward, her arms stretched to the max and my muscles straining likewise. “Can’t...hold...on,” she grunted.
The first of the recruits hit the dark blob below us and I stared in horror she was ripped apart, first skin stripping, then bone cracking and shattering, internal organs turning to mush. In an instant she was turned into a green streak tinged with pink and white spiraling into the tidal wave of darkness.
No, I thought. Think, Rachel, think! That’s got to be a singularity. A black hole. We were falling toward a fracking black hole. But why wasn’t I feeling the pull of the singularity? Only my connection to Julianna was dragging me down. Could I somehow save my friend?
I tried pulling, but with nothing to brace against it was futile. I closed my eyes. What had Jarvis meant with his warning? Clearly something had happened to me. Jarvis, quick, what happened when the wave of energy hit me?
Your cells absorbed the unknown energy.
Unknown?
There is no known record of the energy in my databanks.
Well, when it hit we all started rising, so could it have been associated with anti-gravity?
Anti-gravitons are a theoretical particle and there is no record in my databanks of them being observed by the scientific community.
But you would have said the same about the virus that killed me, I pointed out. You had no knowledge of the virus. Could the anti-gravitons have been hidden?
It is possible, Jarvis mused. He fell silent. Perhaps I’d stumped him.
I decided to go with my gut feeling, and my high school physics lessons. Assuming I’d absorbed some form of anti-gravitons, did it mean I could manipulate them? It wasn’t unheard of for people to be able to manipulate matter and energy - mages did it all the time. And my father could manipulate time, which wasn’t even an energy. Then there was Bridgette and Isabelle, who could travel to a sub-dimension or whatever shadow space was.
I had to try. I opened my eyes to a horrific scene. Another recruit had reached the event horizon and I watched as it tore her apart. Sergeant Ferrez had angled toward the wall and anchored herself there using her mag boots, then held her grip on the human chain of recruits. Only, her ankles were at an odd angle and she wore a look of anguish on her face. It looked like her leg had snapped and now she was being torn between the mag boots and the gravity well. As I watched, she released the mag boots.
“No!” I shouted, trying to feel something inside of me. I did feel different, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I’d never heard magic explained - how it felt to mages, that is - so I didn’t understand the mechanics of manipulating matter or energy.
I was left to watch as the entire chain of recruits, with Sergeant Ferrez at the tail, slithered toward the singularity, like a piece of spaghetti being sucked up by a diner. One by one they were torn apart, some dead before they reached the event horizon, the G forces bursting blood vessels and causing aneurysms.
“I can’t...hold...on,” Julianna protested. “Slipping...”
“No,” I shouted, desperate, fist clenched. Finally, something flowed within me, spreading to my brain. I shivered as if suddenly exposed to frigid temperatures. Then, my world expanded in a flash within my sub-conscious and I could see something, like flecks of black, pulsing out in wave-like clusters. I looked at my hand and it glowed white.
So, if black is gravitons and white is anti-gravitons...I looked at my hand still grasping Julianna’s hand. The white of my hand met the black of hers. The gravitons surrounded her like a black halo. If I could just extend my white anti-gravitons out of my body to encompass her...but how?
I imagined the white halo around me spreading down my arm and up Juliana’s arm. It felt like times when I was downstairs and would imagine the upstairs of my house. I wasn’t there, but my mind’s eye showed it to me. This was similar, for when I looked down I saw the white spreading over Julianna’s arm like a film, pushing back the black. It passed over her shoulder and up around her head, then across her other shoulder and down the opposite arm. It covered her chest and back, passed over her waist and at last encompassed her legs.
Finally, the strain I’d felt lifted and, since I’d been pulling with all my strength, she hurtled toward me. I let go of her hand and embraced her. “You’re safe now,” I said frantically, trying to be reassuring. “I promise.”
Sergeant Ferrez’ screams cut off as she turned to mush or goo and disappeared, the last remnants of the others in the room. Only the flashing red lights and sirens remained.
Julianna and I floated there, a white aura surrounding us both as we clung to each other.
Seconds, minutes, hours, I lost track of how long we floated there. But at last the gravity well started to shrink and within moments became a pin-prick of darkness that popped out of existence, taking the black waves of gravitons with it.
I let out a sigh of relief but an instant later the white aura around us bled away like mist in the wind and we were in free fall. The last thing I remembered was the floor of the chamber - the gravity well emitter, nearing.
Chapter 17
I awoke to light in my eyes. I blinked and tried to focus. Someone shone a flashlight in my eyes.
“You’re awake, good,” a male voice said.
“Can you get that thing away from my eyes?” I asked. I wasn’t restrained, so I lifted a hand to brush it aside.
“Of course.” The light retreated before my hand.
I blinked several times as the afterglow faded. Then I focused on the man standing next to my hospital bed. Jason Thorpe. My uncle. “What are you doing here?” I refrained from saying his name or relationship to me.
“Don’t you remember?” he asked.
“I...” a flood of memories returned. The silo, the death of eighteen recruits and five sergeants. I clenched my eyes shut against the torrent. “...remember.” Tears dripped down my cheeks.
My uncle said nothing, giving me the time I needed.
I opened my eyes and met his. “How did I survive?”
“I was hoping you could shed some light on that same question,” he replied. “Tell me what happened, from your perspective.”
“First, I want to know what made that...thing...go haywire,” I gestured vaguely, not wanting to speak the name of the machine that destroyed my friends.
“The FIA believes it was sabotage.”
“Sabotage? From who?”
“Your cousin and aunt are trying to answer that exact question. Right now their lead suspects are a sub faction of the Cult of Rae known as the Xanos Reapers, the Empire or a yet-unknown player.”
“Could they have made it any broader?” I asked.
He chuckled. “It’s in the preliminary stages of the investigation. They found the control room crew slaughtered but no sign of the attackers. The surveillance video had been wiped, even the backups.”
&nb
sp; “It could have been an inside job? Who else would know about this facility?”
“Not many people knew its true purpose, but many recruits passed through here and trained in zero-G. They just weren’t told how the technology worked.”
“Anti-gravitons,” I said.
My uncle nodded slowly. “Yes.” He studied me, eyebrow raised. “And I suspect they played a role in your survival. Am I correct in my assumption?”
“You could say that.” I launched in to my story, leaving nothing out, not even the gory bits.
My uncle obliged me by staying silent the entire time, interspersed with numerous raised eyebrows. After a long moment, he spoke, “How intriguing.”
“Intriguing?” I repeated. “You think my friends dying is just intriguing?”
He had to sense to look chagrined by my rebuke. “My apologies. I sometimes struggle to connect with others emotionally. I am sorry for your loss. The part I was referring to as intriguing was you seeing the anti-gravitons. I am impressed you were astute enough to guess what they were.”
“My implant was of no help,” I complained. “He said he had nothing about anti-gravitons ever being observed by science.”
“Yes,” my uncle said. “The details of our research here was highly classified, which meant it would be kept outside of any public databases. Your implant does not yet have military clearance, an oversight I should correct.”
“I know what classified means,” I snapped. “I’m young, not stupid.”
Jason smiled. “Feisty like your aunt.” He produced a data pad from his lab coat and tapped away at it for several seconds. “I just need to touch your head with this,” he held up a metal wand emitting a red light, “to upload the clearance authorization codes.”
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