by G J Ogden
“You could say that,” Ashley replied, smirking and raising a single eyebrow.
Page took a long draught from the canister; whatever the liquor was, it kicked like a roamer. “I hope you can still land this thing drunk,” he said, stifling a cough.
“I’m sure as hell not going to try landing it sober.”
Page coughed and spluttered droplets of the liquid out into the cabin, where they floated and bounced around due to the lack of gravity.
“I’m joking!” Ashley laughed. “But you and I are going to have a proper drink once we get back, deal?”
Page took another long swig and handed the canister back to Ashley. He swallowed, feeling the heat start to melt away some of his aches and pains, and let out a contented sigh.
“You, my friend, have got a deal.”
Chapter 30
The shuttle’s reactor shut down, accompanied by a long, low whine, and Ashley hit the control to open the main hatch. The deck chief had ducked under and rushed on-board before the hatch had fully opened and began to run through the landing checklist with Ashley.
“Nice to see you guys back at it,” said Ashley, referring to the fact that the Flying Corps had ended their strike once news of Kurren’s deception and demise had spread across the base, courtesy of Maria.
“Nice to see a true flier back in the cockpit, instead of those blue boot imposters,” said the deck chief, smiling.
Page, unbuckled his harness and stepped out. “Don’t mind me, you guys.”
The deck chief smiled, but didn’t appear embarrassed. “No offense intended, Marshall Page. It’s good to have you back too, sir.”
Page acknowledged the gesture, genuinely heartened by the fact it felt sincere, and then squeezed past to allow them to finish their checks. He stepped down the ramp and onto the deck of the space port in the government sector, and looked around. Everything appeared to be business as normal, but it seemed somehow different too, as if there was a fresh sense of optimism in the air.
Marshall Page, he said to himself. That’s going to take some getting used to.
A crawler drew up and stopped beside the shuttle, carrying a purposeful-looking, ten-strong repair crew and several repair drones, which immediately set to work fixing up the ship. Ashley’s hard-burn back to the moon base had got them home literally in record time, but several hours had still passed since they left Ethan and the others on the rooftop with an army of roamers and maddened creatures surrounding them. This fact weighed heavily, but it wasn’t just the safety of his planetside friends that he was concerned about; with each passing hour, the swarm of maddened creatures drew nearer to more and more settlements, and it was possible that some of them had already fallen. They had to deploy the airborne serum into the planet’s atmosphere as quickly as possible, or there would be no-one left to save; or at least, no-one human.
He spotted Maria and her sister, Angela, walking towards the shuttle from the direction of the briefing room. He ran over to meet them, excitedly fumbling for the metal canister containing the serum that Gaia had given him but, as he approached, he could see that Maria’s condition had worsened, and the giddy sensation left him.
“Damn, I must look really bad,” said Maria, observing Page’s pained expression.
Maria’s skin was pale and slightly shiny, like it was wet or clammy despite appearing to be dry, and her hair was streaked with strands of silver-gray. The muscles in her face and neck were tense, and this caused her to tighten up and seem somehow shorter. He didn’t like it and, as much as he tried to disguise his concern, he simply ended up fumbling his words. “No… not at all, Sal, you look…”
“It’s okay, I look like hell, don’t worry,” then she slapped Angela on the shoulder. “It’s an adaptation of the meds Gaia developed on the planet. Angela said they’d keep me alive longer, though she didn’t mention that they’d also make me look like death incarnate.”
“It will actually keep her active for longer,” said Angela, quick to intervene. “But, unfortunately, they also have some undesirable side-effects.”
“She means they kick your ass, before they make you feel better,” said Maria, smiling weakly.
Page removed the metal canister and held it out to Angela. “Here, this is the regular serum that the scientist on the planet, Gaia, developed.”
Angela lunged forward and took it, excitedly. “You mean this will eradicate the damage to her cells and DNA?”
Maria glanced at the canister and then looked to Page, expectantly awaiting his answer.
“I don’t know what the hell it actually does, but yes, the short version is that it can reverse the effects of G-DARP.”
Maria raised her eyebrows. “I can heat a ‘but’ coming…”
“Yes, and I’m afraid it’s a pretty big but,” Page replied, pressing his hands to his hips in an effort to stop himself from slouching, despite feeling utterly drained. “Gaia said that if the genetic damage was too advanced then the serum would kill you, the same as how it kills the roamers and the maddened.”
Angela and Maria exchanged glances, and then Maria sighed. “And I suppose there’s no way to know if I’m already too far gone, right?”
Page shook his head. “Gaia said not, at least not without further research.”
“I’ll take a look at it,” said Angela, trying to remain optimistic. “There may be something more I can glean about the nature of its action using our facilities and equipment.”
Maria nodded at her sister and smiled but, in her heart, she knew that if Gaia didn’t already have the answer then it would be unlikely that Angela or the scientists on the base could find it sooner. Gaia and the other planetside scientists had already learned more about the uniquely toxic nature of orrum radiation, and how it corrupted DNA and caused the Maddening, than all the UEC scientists on the base had learned with their vastly superior resources.
Angela squeezed Maria’s shoulder. “Will you be okay if I leave you here and get to work on this?”
“Stop fussing, I’ll be fine,” Maria chided, but she also squeezed Angela’s hand and winked.
“I’ll catch up with you as soon as I know more,” Angela said and then she bowed her head to Page and jogged towards a transport waiting at the exit to the space port.
“Do you think she can figure out if the serum will work?” said Page, hopefully, but Maria just sucked her thin lips into her mouth and shook her head.
“Then just take it now!” said Page; he was struggling to keep his composure and his eyes were imploring her to act. “The longer we wait the more we risk it won’t work, Sal.”
“Another hour won’t make a difference, Karl. Let’s wait to see what Angela comes back with.”
Page turned away towards the shuttle, trying to hide his frustration from her, but Maria just stepped by his side and hooked her arm through his.
“Look, Karl, whether it works or not – whether I even take the damn stuff or not – you should know that you did all you could.” Then she laughed. “Hell, you did more than any sane person should have done. So, thank you.”
Page remained tense; he didn’t want Maria trying to make him feel better. “You deserve to see it, that’s all.”
“See what?”
“The future you made possible, both up here and down on the planet.”
The future I made possible… Maria thought. A future without GPS, because of her. A future without Kira Raina or Diana Neviah, and thousands more, all because she had been outmaneuvered and outplayed. Yet she had personally escaped the horrific consequences of her inability to see Kurren’s plan and stop him from carrying out genocide. It didn’t matter to her that she had saved a few hundred, and it didn’t matter that Kurren had met his end on the planet, and that his cohorts and cronies had paid the ultimate price; her failures could never be made right, or forgiven. Not to her.
“You’re just going to have to see it for both of us.”
“Maria…”
Maria unhooked he
r arm from Page, grabbed his shoulders and peered into his sullen eyes. “Not now, Karl. We have more important matters to deal with, like getting that ship and the modified serum back to the planet before there’s nothing left to save.”
Page didn’t like that Maria was changing the subject, and he liked it even less that she was right. The survival of the planetsiders had to take priority over one person, even if that person was Maria Salus; his partner.
“We’ll talk about this later, okay?” said Page, in a manner that made it clear it was a demand, not a request.
The mechanical whir of another crawler approaching made them both turn around and take notice. It was pulling a trailer that was stacked high with drones.
“What’s that all about?” asked Page.
Maria slapped him on the back and started walking over to the trailer. “That’s our ingenious solution to the problem of how to deploy the modified serum into the atmosphere.”
“With these probes; but how can those little things survive atmospheric entry? Surely, they’d just burn up?”
“We fly them through in our stalwart little shuttle here, and then deploy them in the lower atmosphere.”
Page inspected the contraption with interest; it was like a huge cube built from a latticework of tubes, creating dozens of cells, inside each of which was a probe. He admired the ingenuity of the design. “It looks like a modified storage frame.”
“That’s exactly what it is. It’s crude, but all it’s required to do is spit these drones out into the atmosphere and then they will do the rest.”
Maria pointed to the bolts that held each probe inside its cell, and the slide rails that had been added to each layer.
“It’s a simple system. We start at the front and release the bolts, and with a bit of a nose up, the probes will slide out. Then we release the next column and so on and so forth. Once they’re in the open air they fly off under their own power and atomize the serum contained in their storage capsules. There are enough probes here to blanket the entire island. We can deal with the rest of the planet in time.”
Page seemed impressed. “I don’t think even Tyler could have come up with anything better.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but I’m sure he’d love to explain his solutions in painstaking levels of detail, given half a chance.” They both laughed, and though neither one said so aloud, they both missed that eccentric group of scientists, who had spent their entire lives inside a mountain, only to emerge when the world needed them most.
“If that crazy old hermit was here, he’d be talking to us about hope right now,” said Maria. “The hope that this box of metal has the potential to deliver.”
They both watched in silence as the engineering crew maneuvered the huge honeycomb matrix into the aft section of the shuttle. The rear compartment had already been hollowed out to accommodate it, and the rows of seats and harnesses that had been inside were lined up a few meters away. Page recognized the seat that he had occupied during his original descent to the planet, as the commander of General Kurren’s forces sent to retrieve Maria and the survivors of the GPS space station. It still tore him up inside that he had been so easily deceived by Kurren, and used as a tool to complete his act of genocide. Then he noticed that one of the seat systems still had a helmet attached to the equipment harness, which hung above it. Page let out a despondent laugh and walked over to the seat, plucking the vibrant blue helmet from its housing and examining it. Maria eyed him curiously and then followed him.
“Hankering for the good old days of hunting child survivors on the planet?” said Maria, but Page’s solemn expression indicated that her attempt at humor had been sorely misjudged. “I’m sorry, Karl, that was in poor taste.”
“No, it’s not that,” said Page, offering some reassurance, though the comment had reinforced the dark emotions that were already sweeping over him. He held the helmet up to Maria. “This was General Kurren’s helmet; he never wore it, though I tried to remind him.”
Maria took the helmet and juggled it in her hands. “He thought he was invincible, but the planet showed him otherwise.” She offered it back to Page, and he took it and hung it back on the harness.
“Maybe things would have been different if he had. Maybe, if he hadn’t become maddened, he wouldn’t have done the things he did.”
Maria had spent enough time pondering her choices and the ‘what-if’s to recognize when someone was miring themselves in guilt and self-doubt. She had been stuck in the same place for longer than she could remember, and had fallen so deep that she doubted she could ever claw herself out. Page didn’t deserve the same fate.
“Don’t do that to yourself, Karl,” she said warmly, but also with a forcefulness that made Page straighten up. “Kurren went planetside to finish what he started. The Maddening didn’t change anything; he was already corrupted long before he set foot on that planet.”
The engineering crew finished loading the cube and began to fix it in position and connect it into the shuttle’s systems. Maria had never seen so many individual engineers, technicians and drones working on a single ship before, and was impressed at how quickly they had managed to fix-up the antique shuttle. Ashley appeared out of the side hatch; she was still talking with the deck chief, but appeared to be flustered, waving her arms around angrily.
“Something is wrong,” said Maria, reading her old teacher’s aggravated expression. “We should get over there.”
Page nodded and moved to leave, but Maria caught his arm and held him back. The ass-kicking phase of Angela’s most recent medication was easing and she felt stronger.
“Hey, listen, Karl... When the time came, you did the right thing,” said Maria, with the same forcefulness as before. “You risked your life to take a chance on me, and since then you’ve done everything possible to make things right, and more than I could have ever asked for. The rest is on Kurren and Kurren alone, okay?”
Page nodded. “Okay. Though, you’d do well to remember that yourself too…”
Maria smiled and then released his arm and gave him a gentle shove in the direction of the shuttle. “Whatever you say, Marshall Page.”
Page smiled back and then set off again towards the shuttle, but once his back was turned, Maria’s smile faded. Page had said exactly what her old partner would have said in these circumstances, and just as she would have ignored him, Page’s words had washed over her too.
Already too deep in the mire, Sal…
Maria caught up with Page just as the deck chief departed Ashley’s side, leaving her staring down at the deck, one hand on her hip and the other dangling limply at her side, a thin data pad squeezed between her fingers.
“I haven’t seen you stand like that since I crashed the fighter trainer on my first solo,” said Maria, but as with Page, Ashley didn’t appear to be in the mood for jokes. She stepped up to the shuttle and wrapped her knuckles on the scorched metal.
“The really funny thing is that this old shuttle is in a worse condition than that trainer was, after you’d finished with it.”
Maria remembered that she’d lost a wing and part of the tail-section of the trainer. The shuttle was looking practically pristine in comparison.
“It looks like they’ve patched it up pretty damn well to me. What’s up?”
Ashley blew out a long, exasperated sigh, and then placed the thin data pad against the metal hull; it attached with a sharp clunk and activated. Maria and Page moved closer so that they could view the screen more clearly and saw that it was a condition report.
“Where do I start?” Ashley began, staring at the red chevrons on the screen. “They patched up the hull plating, but the core is littered with micro-fractures and the main engines would be taken out for scrap if they were in any other ship. I could go on, but you get the picture.”
Maria pressed her lips together and adopted a pose similar to that of Ashley, but Page just scowled at them both.
“You’re going to need to describe the picture to
me, I’m afraid. I’m just a dumb blue boot, remember?”
Ashley looked to Maria and she gestured back with a casual wave of her hand, inviting her former instructor to explain the implications to Page.
“The shuttle could make it back to the planet, and probably survive re-entry… probably… but it would likely also blow itself to pieces as soon as it reached atmosphere. And, even if it didn’t instantly explode, it would certainly crash a short while later due to a dozen or more failed or failing systems. Bottom line is we need another ship.”
Ashley had painted a bleak picture, and Page almost wished he hadn’t asked.
“But there are no other ships that are capable of entering the atmosphere,” said Page, “I may not be a flier, but I know that much. This shuttle and the larger transport that Kurren had modified based on the shuttle’s design were the only two left, and the transport is still planetside.”
“Kurren may have overlooked something,” Ashley offered as a ray of hope. “He doesn’t know ships like we do.”
“I’d like to believe that, but I doubt it; Kurren was many things, but he was nothing if not thorough,” said Page, glumly. “If there was another ship that Kurren could have used, he would have.”
Ashley had to concede that point, and deep down she knew Page was right. “Then we have to modify another ship, like Kurren did.”
“But how long will that take?”
Maria listened to Page and Ashley argue and debate the options, until their words all blended into one. They were clutching at straws. Both knew it, but neither wanted to admit it, to each other or themselves. The simple fact was that the only ship capable of doing the job was the one standing on the deck next to them. She knew this better than anyone, because she had taken all of the other UEC ships that were capable of making a one-time trip through the atmosphere with her to the GPS space station during her escape from Kurren, right back at the very beginning of his coup. And as Page had already pointed out, if there had been another ship capable of a return trip to the planet then Kurren would have used it, rather than extensively modify a ship in secret. When it was boiled down to the hard truths, there were only two choices: take the shuttle and take the risk or let the planetside civilization fall. And she would not let a civilization fall again, not if she could prevent it. Yes, it had been Kurren that had given the orders and pulled the triggers, and undoing Kurren’s regime had gone a long way to easing her sense of shame and guilt over the destruction of GPS, and the deaths of Raina, Diana and so many more, but the stain on her conscience remained. Perhaps in time, it would fade, assuming the serum gave her life enough to find out, or perhaps not. But she no longer had the luxury of finding out; she was clear what she had to do. She looked up at Page and Ashley, both still debating options, and tuned back into their conversation.