by David Mack
“Our pleasure,” Theriault said.
Tan Bao smiled behind his whirring medical tricorder. “All in a day’s work for us.”
As the other station crew members doffed their helmets, Beiana continued, “Can you return us to our planet?”
“We can . . . eventually.” Theriault was unsure how much she was supposed to reveal to the station’s personnel, but she had no intention of misleading them. “How much do you know about what’s happening on the planet’s surface?”
Worried looks traveled from one Austaran to another before Beiana answered. “Not much,” he said. “We picked up a few reports of strange coincidences, freak accidents. Things like that. Then we lost contact. After that, things started to malfunction on the station.” He looked around at the rest of his team, then cocked his head. “You know what happened then.”
“Here’s what we know,” Theriault said. “An experiment with a dark energy generator went wrong and produced a self-perpetuating, ever-increasing field of weirdness that’s engulfing your planet. Somehow it causes wild inversions in the laws of probability, which is what caused all those tech failures on the surface. Once it expanded into orbit, it fouled up your station. And some of its less intuitive effects, such as temporally inverted cause-and-effect relationships, might be to blame for bringing that asteroid storm down on your heads.” She sighed; it was exhausting delivering bad news. “Until the crisis on the surface is fixed, it isn’t safe to attempt any landing. For your safety and ours, you’ll need to stay out here, with us.”
Doctor Babitz reviewed Tan Bao’s tricorder readings, then looked up at Theriault. “Clean bills of health all around, Commander. No need for treatment or quarantine.”
“Glad to hear it.” She brightened her expression and tried to leaven the mood as she turned back toward Beiana. “If you and your team will follow Nurse Tan Bao up that ladder, we’ll get you set up in our mess hall and try to rustle up something you’ll be able to eat.”
Tan Bao quipped under his breath, “If you’re lucky, you might even like it.” Before Theriault could shoot a pointed glare his way, he started up the ladder to the main deck and the Austarans lined up to follow him, while Babitz stood nearby to assist those who might have trouble climbing due to muscular atrophy caused by prolonged exposure to zero gravity.
Theriault stepped away from the ladder and cornered Sorak, who was stowing his pressure suit in one of the equipment lockers. “I ordered you not to detach from the ship.”
“Yes, you did.” The centenarian Vulcan seemed unfazed at being called out.
“You disobeyed a direct order.”
“I made an unfortunate error while attempting to reposition my tether.”
It was so transparent a lie that it made her angry. “An error? You?”
“Despite being untethered for no more than a few seconds, I found myself outside the ship. Once ejected, I sought to arrest my motion and recover my bearings. In the course of doing so, I pinpointed Commander Beiana. Seeing an opportunity to recover him and bring him back to the ship, I did so.” He closed the equipment locker’s door. “And I have every reason to think that had you found yourself in my circumstances, you would have done exactly the same thing.”
Hearing her own rationale parroted back at her left her red-faced but speechless. What was she supposed to say? Even though the protocols of command required her to take him to task for disobeying a direct order, she couldn’t bring herself to force a confrontation and submit a formal reprimand after he had just risked his life to save a stranger’s.
So she nodded. “Well played.” Theriault headed for the ladder. “Let’s get back to the bridge. That asteroid storm and what’s left of Anura’s satellites are on their way down to the surface—and we need to warn the landing party before it falls on their heads.”
12
The highway north was anything but straight. Snaking curves and hairpin turns made it one of the most treacherous roads Taryl had ever seen—not that she was able to see more than a dozen meters of it at a time in the abyssal darkness that, according to Doctor Kavalas, would last for several hours that night, from sundown until first moonrise.
The transport’s chassis groaned from the stress of another high-speed turn, then the tires yawped in protest as Taryl stomped on the emergency brake to avoid plowing into the rear end of another vehicle creeping along on the other side of a tight curve. A quick glance showed no vehicles coming the opposite way on the other side of the road, so she jerked the wheel, swerved around the slowpoke, and shifted her foot to the accelerator.
In the rearview mirror she glimpsed Kavalas covering his eyestalks with his hands.
“What’s wrong, Doc? Don’t like my driving?”
Kavalas said nothing, but Captain Terrell said, “It’s my opinion you should be worried about, Ensign.” He grimaced as she pushed the fully loaded transport to its limits. “Racing the clock is one thing. Tempting fate is another.”
“Not my fault the Austarans didn’t light their roads.” A buzzing vibration shook the transport as she hugged the shoulder a hair too closely on the next curve. “Or use guardrails.”
From the backseat, Kavalas piped up in a timid voice: “We haven’t needed such features on our highways since we switched to guided navigation.”
His remark drew a disbelieving look from Ilucci. “Not even as backups?” He pointed at the navigation screen between Taryl and Terrell. “Don’t tell me you think that’s foolproof?”
“It hasn’t failed us yet.” An embarrassed pause. “Until today.”
Taryl checked the navigation system. “The good news is, we’re about to hit a long multi-lane straightaway. That should be it for the S-curves for a while.” She steered through the last gentle turn, then pushed the transport to full speed as the road straightened ahead of them.
They cruised for several minutes, the lull in conversation filled by the droning of smooth pavement under tires and the steady rush of air against the windows. Then a trio of soft beeps from the navigation system commanded Taryl’s attention. “Traffic ahead.” She nudged the brake to slow the transport to half its top speed. “Looks fairly heavy.”
“Backup from earlier system failures,” Kavalas said. “If those transports are controlled by the central traffic network, they’ll be grouped too closely for us to go around them.”
She pointed at the display. “Why are some vehicles tagged with different colors?”
“Green marks an occupied vehicle. Amber denotes empty vehicles. The system uses that to assign priority to occupied transports over extra vehicles being moved to serve other areas.”
She took a fresh look at the screen. “Hang on, then. According to this, almost all this traffic is empty transports. There are only two with passengers, stuck in the middle of the pack.”
“Must be another malfunction,” Kavalas said, stating the obvious.
A muted double beep announced an incoming communicator signal and masked Taryl’s muttered string of expletives. The captain flipped open his communicator. “Terrell here.”
Theriault’s voice pierced an uncharacteristic wall of static on the channel. “Captain, is there anywhere you and the landing party can take cover in the next sixty seconds?”
That ominous question made everyone in the car sit up and take note of the conversation. Terrell did his best to maintain a sanguine demeanor. “Why do you ask, Number One?”
“Because a meteor storm that just wiped out the Austarans’ space station is on its way down to the surface, along with the wreckage of most of their satellites.”
The captain’s trademark calm started to slip. “How severe is the risk on the surface?”
“Sorak estimates pockets of moderate to heavy damage across an area of roughly three hundred thousand square kilometers on the night side of the northern hemisphere.”
Hesh leaned forward
to be heard over the communicator. “Can he be more specific?”
“No, but I’d bet the improbability field will land the meteoroids where it’ll hurt most.”
Ilucci asked the question Taryl was thinking: “What about us? Are we in danger?”
“Look up. Do you see streaks of fire in the sky?”
Kavalas pointed at a symbol on the transport’s master console. “Ensign Taryl? Push that. It makes the roof of the vehicle transparent.”
She did as he instructed. The opaque roof above their heads faded to reveal a panoramic dome of open sky—filled with blazing yellow-white tails of fire growing larger by the second.
“Number One, that’s an affirmative on the streaks of fire.”
“Then I’d say you’re in trouble.”
“Thanks for the heads-up. Terrell out.” He closed the communicator’s grille and tucked it away, never once taking his eyes off the descending firestorm. “Suggestions? Anyone?”
Taryl looked up and assessed the angle and speed of the approaching barrage. “Hang on!” She slammed on the brakes. The tires screamed as the brakes locked and the transport skidded across the asphalt. It took all of Taryl’s strength to halt the fishtailing transport and keep it on the highway. As soon as they came to a stop, less than fifty meters behind the sluggish wall of receding traffic, she shouted, “Duck and cover!”
The first meteoroid crashed down half a kilometer ahead of them, beside the highway. It exploded on impact, sending a fireball laced with glowing rock across the roadway and tumbling automated transports like dice. Dozens more impacts followed in rapid succession, but Taryl knew not to let herself be hypnotized by the pageant of destruction.
Great thunderclaps split the air and shook the surface. A brutal shock wave of broken pavement and white-hot rock pummeled the transport and cracked its windshield a dozen times in the span of a few seconds. A gust of superheated air blasted over them and raised the temperature inside the vehicle ten degrees in a matter of seconds. Taryl was sure the only thing keeping them on the ground was their combined weight.
After less than half a minute, the cataclysmic noise outside fell away, leaving only a deathly hush. Taryl sat up slowly, as did Kavalas and the rest of the landing party. Behind them, the road and landscape looked normal despite being hidden behind a dusty veil. Ahead of them, the highway had been narrowed to a single lane through a cratered, apocalyptic vista of fire and ash. The fleet of automated transports that had clogged the route ahead of them was gone, scattered in pieces across the charred, broken plains.
Terrell looked at Taryl. “Are we mobile?”
“Let’s find out.” She started the engine and checked the gauges. “Looks like it.”
“Good. Take us half a kilometer down the road.” He looked back at Hesh. “There were two occupied cars ahead of us. Start scanning for survivors.”
Taryl put the transport in gear and cruised into the fresh hellscape. “Sir, do we really have time for this? We need to get to the dark energy generator while there’s still—”
“Ensign, if the passengers of those vehicles are alive, we’re the only ones close enough to help them. I’m not going to drive on and leave them to die. Is that understood?”
A sheepish nod. “Yes, sir.”
Hesh’s tricorder filled the transport with its high-pitched, oscillating whirring for a few seconds. When it ceased, the science officer reported in a bright tone, “Captain! I’m reading five survivors. A pair on one side of the road, a trio on the other.”
“Lock in their coordinates.” Terrell nudged Taryl and pointed at a broader section of the road ahead. “Stop there.” To the group he continued, “We’ll split up. Doctor Kavalas, you and Master Chief Ilucci will join me to treat the trio of survivors. Taryl, you and Mister Hesh will tend to the pair. Render first aid and stabilize them as best you can. If it’s safe to move them, we’ll bring the survivors up to the main road and summon emergency personnel before we move on.” He looked around as Taryl stopped the transport at the location he had specified. “Any questions?” There weren’t. “Then move out.”
Taryl opened all of the transport’s doors with a master switch. Everyone clambered out into the smoky, sulfuric aftermath of the meteoroid strikes. Hesh pointed out to Terrell the vehicle holding the trio of Austarans, then took point and led Taryl toward the other pair of survivors’ shattered transport.
As she followed the slender science officer through the swath of burning desolation that flanked the road, she wondered when her misanthropy had crossed the line that would have let her drive away from a calamity such as this without even thinking of looking for survivors, much less argue against rendering aid.
When did I forget how to feel compassion for other people? Have I shut my feelings off for so long that I’ve lost all empathy? And if I have . . . how do I undo it?
She didn’t know the answers to those questions.
All Taryl knew for certain was that she could no longer ignore them.
• • •
Pursued by a gaggle of her advisors, Tribune Saranda quickened her pace as she pushed through the doors that led outside onto the quad. Her chief of staff, Soparen Tosc, jogged after her, calling out between labored breaths: “Tribune! Stop! Where are you going?”
“To address the crowd in the plaza.” She marched past a squad of constables, who belatedly realized who she was and scrambled into a protective phalanx around her.
Tosc was desperate. “That’s no crowd, Madam Tribune—that’s a mob!”
“All the greater their need for a voice of reason.”
“Madam Tribune, please! Why face a riot in the making, today of all days?”
She refused to be deterred. “Why? Because the entire world is spiraling into mayhem. Fire is falling from the skies. And all the media can talk about is an endless string of wonders and horrors sweeping the planet. They need to see the government is still functioning.”
“But we’re not functioning. All our offices are closed!”
“Let’s not lead with that, shall we?”
Her obstinacy pushed Tosc over the fine line separating fear from anger. “What do you plan to say? You can’t tell them the truth. Doctor Kavalas’s project is top secret!”
“I’ll think of something.” She ascended the stairs to the high rampart that separated the public commons from the inner courtyard of the Executive Complex. Armed officers lined the top of the rampart, living symbols of authority intended to hold the chaos of the world at bay. Saranda stepped toward the permanent podium that in centuries past had been used by previous heads of state to address the people on occasions of great importance.
Her appearance on the rampart drew a mix of proud cheers and angry hoots from the sea of faces that packed the city for several blocks around. She lifted her hands, hoping to invoke silence, but the tumult of the masses only grew louder.
It’s going to be one of those nights, then. So be it.
She switched on her vocal amplifier, which she wore as a nearly invisible patch on the lapel of her jacket. Her voice boomed from speakers mounted along the ramparts and drowned out the roars of the madding throng. “People of Anura! Hear me and be calm!” Some of the angry noise abated, so she continued. “We know that unusual events seem to be occurring with improbable regularity, but it’s vital that we not panic. The worst thing we could—”
An amplified voice from below interrupted, “Is it the aliens?”
The question left Saranda wondering how word had gotten out. “I don’t understand.”
“Aliens! We have citizen footage of an alien vessel landing here just a few hours ago. Now aliens have been spotted at the scene of a massive road bombing in the Sirkun Territory.”
Saranda shielded her eyestalks from the lights shining upon her and followed the voice from below to its source: a notoriously tenacious journalist named Sy
rem Eguen. He stared back at Saranda, his transceiver goggles no doubt relaying his questions and her answers around the world on an open channel. He met her stare with an accusatory look. “Are the aliens causing these strange events? Are we under attack? Why did you meet with them?”
“We are not under attack, and the aliens are not causing the recent oddities.”
Enraged boos swelled up from the crowd, encouraging Eguen’s interrogation.
“Then why are they here today of all days, Tribune?”
She wanted to throttle him. How could she answer him without making things worse? She couldn’t admit the Sagittarius and its crew had come in response to her government’s plea for help. Knowing that the government was appealing to offworlders would only accelerate the panic already sweeping through the populace. But what lie could she possibly concoct to make their appearance during the crisis seem plausibly like a coincidence?
A clumsy falsehood started to take shape on her tongue, but it never got the chance to escape into the world. Just as she inflated her vocal sac to answer with the rich timbre of authority, the sky above the capital turned crimson with fire from the heavens.
The mob’s angry jeers turned to cries of terror, and the crowd scattered in all directions. Around them, meteoroids ripped through the darkened façades of empty office towers.
Behind Saranda, a cascade of fiery projectiles crashed down into the Executive Complex and reduced it in a matter of seconds to a flaming husk. Fire and debris exploded outward from the gutted building.
Insistent hands closed around Saranda’s arms. Tosc and a pair of constables hustled her off the rampart, through an emergency escape hatch that was slammed shut above them while they descended the stairs in a frantic scramble. Long before they reached the secure sublevel, they heard the blast wave quake the rampart and the trapdoor above them.
Tosc’s wrath was gone, replaced by sincere concern. “Are you hurt, Madam Tribune?