by C. Gockel
“They’re killing me, Jack, and you and I don’t have time for this. They’re sending ships and I have to get your delightfully parasitic, violent, creative, crazy race out of this solar system before they arrive.”
Jack’s skin prickled. “Why do you want to help us?”
“I don’t know why … revenge maybe? To piss off the stars that are killing me.” The last sounded a lot like the real Sally.
She sighed. “Also, I do like humans. You’re the most interesting thing to happen to me since … ” She blinked. “I have a lot of trouble with your time scales, but I believe humans believe I’m four point five billion years old.” She muttered. “No idea if it’s right. I could spend a quarter rotation just studying your mathematics and all your different languages …” She smiled, swallowed, and picked at her bedding, not looking at all like someone or something that would set humans on fire and drove them insane. “But that is not to be.”
Jack tilted his head, all the information swirling around in a vast cloud of known unknowns.
She looked back up at him and smiled bitterly. “This body says that expression means that you don’t know what the fuck—”
… and there was Sally’s language again.
“—I’m talking about.” She took a deep breath and spoke very slowly. “Some of the stars are at war with humans, Jack, but I’m on your side. So are the stars at the end of the Oort Rift. They can hide you long enough for humans to become strong and take on their leader.”
Jack narrowed his eyes. “I still don’t know who you are.”
“I’m your son, Jack. How many bloody times do I have to explain that?”
Jack stared at her, feeling like the gears upstairs were overheating. Her talk of stars killing one another, and planets as living beings, slowly docked with the space station in his brain. “You’re not my son … you mean you’re my sun, like Sol, like at the center of the solar system?”
She rolled her eyes. “Finally. Even Isaac got that.”
Jack didn’t so much sit in a chair, as fall into it. He rubbed his temples. “Who else knows about this … and is sane?” Was he sane? He was doubtful.
She swallowed. “I think a few humans on Earth and Mars know … there are other classified materials that the FCF has. I’m fairly certain they’ve put my dimming together with other intel. I’d hoped they’d come forward to the public sooner … but they haven’t.” Aunt Sally’s voice trembled. “The Founders know that something is wrong and that they need to revive the orbiting habitats. They don’t know everything, though. I tried to reach out to a few directly, but one committed suicide, the other went mad.”
For some reason, Jack vividly recalled the zephie screams at that moment.
“I realized I had to communicate in a more roundabout way,” Sally continued. “I wish I could speak to the crazy bitch directly—”
“Dr. Emelia,” Jack said.
Sally blinked. “Dr. Emelia … but she and the Founders are so heavily guarded and never around corpses or anyone with dementia.” She picked at her blanket. “Dr. Inez, Hsu, and Bo Porter have been, but they continually brush me off when I awaken the dead around them. I thought I got through to Singh but … ”
Jack wiped his face with his hands. “Inez fired him.”
“You have to go to the Oort Rift,” Sally said. “And you have to be ready when the attack comes.”
“Attack?” Jack blurted. “When?”
A nurse came into the room. “Alright Miss Morita, it’s time for your medicine.”
“I hate this body,” Sally muttered. “It hurts and I don’t like wearing a diaper.”
Jack heard laughing and splashing from the sanitary cubicle. The nurse must have, too, because she backtracked, peered in, and screamed. “It will flood!”
“You know how to find me,” Aunt Sally said just before Jack ran to retrieve a giggling Isaac from a two-inch puddle spread across the entire cubicle floor. When he came back out, the room was filled with maintenance guys, but Sally’s eyes were empty.
“The sun has gone to sleep,” observed Isaac. “I hope she doesn’t die.”
Chapter Ten
Ganymede : 1 Year 6 months and 22 Days Pre-Invasion
“A war between the stars is not something I’d picked up from my … association … with our friend,” said Dr. Emelia, sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee cup in hand. Janice had gone out onto the terrace to retrieve a food order for Emelia. Since the guards would scan it for poisons and bioagents, it would take a while.
“She said there will be an attack,” said Jack, pacing the kitchen.
“Useless to ask when,” said Emelia. “Our friend’s concept of time is too different. I think that’s why all her attempts to contact our astronomers with solar flares failed.” Her eyes narrowed. “Also, their language relies heavily on quantum entanglement, the shared particles that got dispersed during the big bang that—”
Before she could get too off-topic, Jack said, “I need to let the Ganymeden Defence Forces know, without them thinking I’m crazy, or I’ll wind up drugged and institutionalized and be useless.”
Dr. Emelia gave a wry smile. “Maybe they’d just put you under house arrest?”
Jack looked at her guiltily.
She waved a hand. “What if we get the Founders in touch with your Aunt Sally? They knew enough to restart Orbital Habitat—oh, they’re saying it’s for evacuation in the event of a larger asteroid—but they contracted me on the sly, despite my off and on psychosis, to set a course for the vessels.”
Jack stared at her. “If I got within ten feet of the Founders I’d be shot.”
Dr. Emelia smiled wickedly. “But then our friend could use your body.”
Jack swallowed. He licked his lips. It might save Isaac and Kathleen …
“I’m joking!” Dr. Emelia cried. “Solar flares Jack, I can just call them.”
“How?” said Jack.
Janice came back into the kitchen. Emelia turned in her chair and said, “Janice, I’ve had a breakthrough. I need to talk to the Founders. Would you get that comm you’ve been hiding?”
“What sort of breakthrough?” said Janice, suspiciously.
Dr. Emelia launched into a discussion of wormhole physics and mass transfer that had Jack and Janice’s eyes glazed over within two minutes. “I’ll get the comm,” said Janice.
A few minutes later, Emelia put down the comm and looked at Jack. “Does it bother you that we’ll be using your aunt to communicate with Sol?”
Tilting his head, Jack frowned. “This whole situation bothers me.” Talking to an unknown entity that claimed to be their sun. The potential of an invasion. He thought that maybe the entity was sincere, it had saved Isaac, and Emelia was right, having the orbital habitats ready for evacuating the colony was a good thing. Ganymede had been hit by asteroids before, and there was always the potential for earthquakes. Sure, the FCF might launch a rescue party, but he’d rather his moon not be at their mercy. Going along with the craziness, if it was craziness wasn’t harmful and if what Sol said about an invasion came to pass …
Emelia swallowed. “But we’re using your aunt’s body to communicate without her permission.”
Jack blinked. “Sally wasn’t talking before Sol took over her body, so I really don’t mind.”
Emelia released a long breath. “But we’ve violated her bodily autonomy.”
Jack’s brow furrowed remembering the bruises the real Aunt Sally had given him. “Still don’t mind.”
“But the philosophical implication … Sol has hurt humans, caused them great pain and suffering.”
Jack thought of Walton’s fingers leaving a trail of black on the zephies skin, its terrible shriek of pain and fear, and the sorrowful wails of its podmates, and that had all been to impress a girl. Sol, or whatever it was, had hurt out of a desire to help, at least.
It was a long story and not one he wanted to talk or think about too much, so Jack just said, “Ma’am, every M
arine knows the concept of friendly fire.”
Shaking her head, Emelia said, “Friendly fire in more ways than one.”
Chapter Eleven
Ganymede : 11 months and 16 Days Pre-Invasion
Jack took off his helmet as he entered Aunt Sally’s nursing home room. She was lying on her back staring at the ceiling, face hard as stone.
“Hi, Aunt Sally.” He coughed. “You there?”
She didn’t even blink. The staff said they didn’t expect her to last much longer. Jack knew Sol could reanimate a corpse, at least for a while, but he was pretty sure that wouldn’t go over well with the nurses here … and doubted Sol would bother.
He hadn’t seen Sol in any form in a while. It was busy with the experts. The Founders had commissioned some computer whizzes to create a “solar interface.” Dr. Emelia said Sol now spoke through a machine to her every day. “Drives me crazy,” she’d said. “But not literally.”
He adjusted the helmet in his hands. He wasn’t needed here, the experts were in charge. He was surprised how sad it made him, his brush with the extraterrestrial, or “celestial” was over.
“You again,” said Aunt Sally. Her voice was raspier than before.
Jack looked up. Not sure if it was Aunt Sally or Sol talking.
“I hate this body,” she said. “This woman was a real bitch, Jack. I realize she was frustrated about not being able to pursue her dreams of higher education on Earth, but there was no way your grandfather could have afforded it. Did she try and work her way back and pay for it herself? No. Selfish narcissist.”
“Uh …” said Jack. He’d never known that about Sally. Wasn’t sure he’d wanted to know either.
Her eyes slid to him. “That’s a new uniform.”
“I’m part of the Ganymeden Defense Force, now,” he said. Got his rank back, and his family a really nice cabin aboard Habitat One. They were already living there.
Brow furrowing she said, “That sounds dangerous.”
It would be if Sol was right about an invasion. Jack shrugged. “I have combat experience.”
“You’ll never win against them!” she snapped, sounding just about as happy as Kathleen had been.
“Point isn’t to win,” Jack said. “The point is to hold them back until civilians can evacuate.” It would be nice to have evacuated everyone already, but the other three habitats weren’t done yet. Also, there were plenty of people who thought the Founders had finally gone crazy, and they weren’t ready to leave.
She huffed. “After all the trouble I went to bring Isaac back to you, you’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Hey, my goal is to survive,” he said. “But if I’m going to go …” He ducked his head. “It’s the way I’d want to.”
“I understand,” said Aunt Sally. He glanced at her. Her eyes were wet. “I understand that well.”
Of course she did. Jack didn’t so much sit down on the chair by her bed as fall down onto it. He wiped his face, looked at the picture of Mars on the wall, and back to her. He shifted in his seat. “Could you survive this?” he asked.
“No, Empyreon is draining me, sucking away my fire.”
Jack had heard the name bandied about, before. The leader of the stars set to destroy them.
“Could you hide some of your … fire … somewhere?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Jack shifted again. “I don’t know …” He wiped his chin, and then reached out and touched her shoulder. “You’re in here. Could you stay?”
“This body is ready to croak, and I can’t fix that … well, not for long.”
He blinked remembering the maintenance worker. “What if the body was relatively undamaged?”
Sol sighed. “I don’t think so. I jump-started Isaac’s nervous system after I burned the tumor, but he was still in there. I would have driven him insane if I’d stayed. Maybe if he’d been dead longer, and all his processes had truly stopped, but the longer a person is dead, the more cell death occurs, and the less there is for me to work with. That’s why your conversation with the maintenance worker was so short. The conditions would have to be just right … ” She shook her head. “I have no memories from that first host, but Isaac …” Smiling, Sol nodded. Her eyes went to the ceiling. “I liked being Isaac. There was so much going on within him.” She frowned. “I don’t like being in the computer the Founders made. They can turn the computer off at any time, and it has no senses and it doesn’t feel. I like the data of emotions and sight, touch, taste, and sound. Watching humans on Earth has been fascinating … but being human.” Her lips parted and her eyes shone. For a moment that lasted too long, she didn’t say a word or blink, and Aunt Sally’s chest didn’t expand. Jack felt his heart catch and his eyes prickle. He never thought he’d be sorry to see Aunt Sally pass … but then he guessed it really wasn’t Sally he was sad for.
Gasping, her eyelids fluttered, and Jack released a breath.
“Drat this old shell.” Her gaze came back to him. “I can’t keep resparking the synapses in here, Jack.”
Jack felt his chest get tight. He’d heard this conversation before from friends in the field a few times, and with his dad on the terraces. The words were always slightly different, but they came out sounding the same. “Thanks for stopping by,” he said.
She reached out a frail, papery hand, and Jack took it in his own. It was very cold.
“Thank you for stopping by, too,” she said, her voice raspy beyond recognition. She took a breath, and her hand went limp and her eyes became vacant.
Jack swallowed; his eyes got blurry. He knew that Sol still burned at the heart of the system … but for him, it felt like the sun had completely winked out.
Chapter Twelve
Ganymede : Day Zero
For the first time in Jack’s life Dome 4 was almost completely dark. From the terrace above the Dome’s central park and lowest level he could see the last civilians running for the military transport vehicle, a squat, wide, thing about as long and wide as a freight car parked on three heavy landing struts. There was a ramp running from the ground to its back airlock. The civies’ flimsy enviro suits gleamed silver in the scant emergency lights, reminding Jack of a school of fish.
The sod and plants had been torn up from the lowest level and replanted in Habitat 8, and the grav plating that had been hidden beneath them gleamed dully in the low light. The plating was iron fused with an outer layer of graviton sheathing. Here and there, the slate gray of the sheathing had worn away revealing the rusted orange of iron beneath.
Above him, through the shattered remnants of the dome, a firefight raged. Strange tetrahedron craft were firing at FCF ships. Sol had warned of foot soldiers, but Jack had seen none so far. Still, he and his team of sixteen waited, plasma charge launchers ready on their shoulders, covering the last of the evacuees.
Jack’s breath was loud in his ears and caught on the faceplate of his helmet, freezing into delicate patterns, even though the suit’s defrost was on maximum. At the moment, he was more worried about freezing to death than aliens. The comm in Jack’s helmet crackled. “Team 4, Civilians are aboard, transport is ready to pull out.”
“We’re coming,” Jack said.
His comm crackled, again. “Turning off plating to facilitate your descent.”
“Copy that,” said Jack.
There was a groan from the plating below which Jack didn’t hear so much as feel in his boots as the shift in gravity affected even the upper terraces. Jack’s body became lighter, and he motioned for his team to leap over the terrace while he covered them.
“We’re down, Sarg,” said Basu.
“On my way,” Jack replied, his heart starting to pound. So close.
Hopping over the railing, he sailed through the air and landed gently five meters below. If it weren’t for his helmet’s reading of his guy’s suit signals, he wouldn’t see them. Between the darkness and their camouflage suits, they were virtually invisible. His helmet pro
jected a quick scan of their vitals. Everyone was cold but upright.
“Let’s move out,” Jack said. Ahead the transport’s main airlock was open and glowing. A readout in his helmet displayed the distance, 313 meters, 311 meters, 309 …
Basu and Song reached the transport first and hopped on top in the low G. They dropped to their knees, raised their launchers, and began covering their retreat. The other members of the team poured into the airlock.
Almost there …
Jack’s helmet cracked “Incoming!” just as a streak of light flashed above him. An instant later he was lifted off his feet and knocked through the air. In the low G the fall wasn’t painful, but the ground was so frigidly cold it penetrated through his suit. He scrambled awkwardly to his feet and saw one of the tetrahedron-shaped alien vessels had plowed into the plating directly to his left. It was steaming in the glow of the transport’s lights.
Someone’s voice cracked over his helmet. “Run, Sarg!”
He almost did.
But then he saw a flash of silvery shapes coming out from below a terrace overhang. The transport was at twelve o’clock, the alien vessel was at nine o’clock, and evacuees were at seven, and hidden from his guys on the transport by the alien vessel’s shadow.
Jack lifted his launcher to the shoulder, engaged the recoil dampener, and said, “Civies, my seven your two o’clock.”
“Are you sure? I get no reading.”
They were in the shadow of the alien ship—it had to be blocking their signals. Jack cursed, and there was a flash of light from the alien vessel. For a moment it left him blind, and then his helmet adjusted, and its sensors displayed the outlines of four bipedal spots of heat that were nearly ten feet tall emerging on the shadowed side of the vessel. Jack fired, knocking one to its feet. The signals that were Basu and Song leaped toward the vessel as he aimed for the second at the same time the third one fired its own weapon: not at him hidden in his armor, or the ship on the far side of its vessel, but at the civilians glowing in the night in their silver suits. Landing on the vessel, Basu shot at the fourth thing, as thing one and two, blasted backwards by Jack, wobbled to their feet. Jack swallowed. Their weapons were next to useless, just as Sol had predicted.