Gethsemane

by James Wittenbach

  She trained her Spex along the city’s skyline. North of the downtown sector, rows of slim thirty and forty story residential towers stretched along the seafront. South of town, the buildings were blocky and industrial. She spotted a large, solid structure with two humps that had probably been an energy plant. Rows of Quonset-style warehouses crowded along the southern edge of the harbor.

  “How many people do you think lived here?” she asked Specialist Fangboner, her liaison with the Survey crew.

  “At least twenty-million people and maybe thirty,” he answered. Instead of the skyline, the gangly technician was studying aerial reconnaissance. He was not interested in the towers at the center of the city, but looking toward places where artifacts and recoverable data might be recovered. He tried to identify which buildings might be government data centers, libraries, or museums; any of which might contain valuable archival data.

  “This city was a major transfer point for the evacuation of their planet,” Taurus Rook mused.

  “I wonder why they didn’t build the Gateway closer to it,” Fangboner mused.

  “The isolation of the Gateway helped them control access and kept the evacuation orderly,” she replied. Since leaving the Warfighter Combat Core, she had become a master of logistics. “Lt. Cmdr Alkema said they had to move 80,000 people a day… probably more than that. To do that, they worked out a system of moving people from the countryside to the large cities, and as the big cities emptied out, they moved new people in. And they kept it for years.”

  “Moving that many people must have caused a lot of nightmares,” Fangboner added.

  “Transient populations tend to be more violent and disorderly than stable ones.” Taurus Rook agreed. “They also had to keep the population that wasn’t being evacuated busy producing food, energy, and whatever else it took to sustain the operation, all the while adjusting to a constant state of population decline. A very challenging balancing act.”

  He zoomed in on a section of the city. “There’s a large building here that is surrounded by parks and plazas. It’s very common for government centers or museums to be designed like that. Direct Team Winnie II Alpha to that sector. They’re the closest.” Taurus Rook turned to Specialist Frontenac. “You heard him, get Winnie II Alpha to those coordinates.”

  Frontenac conveyed the order, while Taurus Rook looked over the reconnaissance display. “Where’s Phoenix Alpha?” she asked.

  “Phoenix Alpha is looking through the buildings at the edge of the docks,” Fangboner answered, and activated their position locator. They appeared as five yellow dots, two kilometers away, among the clustered Quonset warehouses of the South Bay.

  Taurus Rook looked up into the bronze-colored sky. A few arc-seconds from the sun was a bright star. This was Rogue, hurtling toward them at 60,000 kilometers an hour. In seven days, it would crash into the planet, wiping Port Gethsemane and everything here from existence.

  “So, how do they think they can find star charts if there hasn’t been a ship calling on this port in a thousand years?” Taurus Rook mused out loud.

  “If only we had time to search every building on the planet,” answered Specialist Fangboner. “But, since we don’t know, we have to look for the likeliest places to find old records. There were probably companies portside that handled cargo from the galactic freighters and shipping to the adjacent sectors. With any luck, we’ll find some kind of records archive.”

  It would actually require a great deal of luck. Sapphire’s records of transactions from the Commonwealth period were fragmentary. In fact, no colony Pegasus had called upon in the nine years of her journey through space had uncovered more than a few records of the locations of ancient worlds. Perhaps, that was par for the course when looking into a civilization that had collapsed nearly two thousand years previously, but it was still very annoying.

  Gethsemane – Team Phoenix Alpha – Phoenix Alpha was a team of five, and its core was once again made by Warfighters Johnny Rook and Max Jordan, joined by Flight Lieutenant Trajan Lear. Two others, a man and a woman, Specialists Cottonmouth and Sting, with dual specialties in Planetology and Technology, accompanied them as they picked their way through the warehouses at the edge of the harbor. The warfighters wore light combat jackets and single weapon gauntlets on their arms. No fighting was expected, but the possibility of giant wharf rats kept them on alert.

  Trajan Lear, standing in an alley between two warehouses and looking toward the ocean, thought the warm humid air smelled like sea salts, and wondered if the oceans were richer in minerals here than on other worlds. On Yronwode, he remembered, the atmosphere had been dry, and smelled like old, yellowed paper. On Aurora, the air had smelled faintly of ozone and copper… as though an electrical storm had passed through but left no rain. On Bodicea, on the Isle of Mab, the air had smelled of green lilacs, and the breezes had been soft as kisses.

  Trajan counted to himself. He was 23 years old, and he had stood on nine worlds. Only a tiny sliver of humanity would ever set foot on any other world than the one they had been born on. He had been in three different universes. He knew of only one other person who could claim that. Now, he would be one of the last humans to ever stand on the planet Gethsemane. Quite against his wishes, his life had turned out to be extraordinary.

  He also reflected that although he had stood on nine worlds, he had not really known any of them beyond one or two places on their surface. And the planets had been, most of them, fairly ordinary.

  Looking around this old warehouse district, it was not much different than Midlothian or the City of Logistical Support on his own planet of Republic. Warmer, of course, and the sky was golden instead of gray, but it was still a place humans had built to satisfy their needs, in both cases, a need to distribute goods and resources across a planet.

  On Aurora, he remembered, they had had spheres made up of tiny mirrors, which they hung above the dance floors in their music clubs and shined low-powered lasers on to make lights and patterns. They called them disco spheres. That’s what these colonies were.

  Each one was a little mirror on the surface of the disco sphere that was human civilization.

  And if someone shined a laser on them…

  He realized then his metaphor had gotten silly.

  He left the alley and walked along a broad street that ran parallel to the water. It was strange to be in a city – on a world – whose inhabitants had abandoned it. The streets were empty. Clearly they had been designed for vehicle traffic, but there were only a few abandoned vehicles and these were parked neatly off to the sides of the street. The buildings had been carefully shuttered and locked, which struck some of the crew as odd.

  It was like cleaning your house the day before demolition, which, incidentally, was required by law on Republic.

  “I wonder what it was like,” Trajan Lear mused out loud.

  “What what was like?” Max Jordan asked through the COM Link.

  Trajan Lear shrugged. He had not meant for anyone to hear him. “Life on this planet.

  What was it like to live in this city.”

  “Team Neville Alpha located what they think was a recreation district on the beachfront,” Rook answered through the COM Link. “Apparently, the Geths had some very, um, open-minded, ideas about sex and pharmaceuticals.” He sounded a little jealous.

  Max Jordan tried to give him perspective. “Just think, someday, you’ll be telling your grandchildren how you took their mother and grandmother on a trip to a planet that doesn’t exist any more.”

  Rook nodded. “Za, so true. Now, I just have to find the right souvenir to remember this world by.”

  “A star map to Earth would be nice,” Anaconda Taurus Rook broke in to the COM

  Link.

  “Za, dear,” Rook replied, even through the link sounding embarrassed he had brought up the “recreation district” on an open channel.

  Trajan Lear continued his survey of this street, moving away from the warehouses toward the City Center
. Up ahead was a large building that had once been called the Port Gethsemane Sea-Land Commercial Center. But the letters forming those words had been torn from its edifice. A more recent sign erected in front of the building identified it as the

  “Planetary Evacuation and Relocation Authority, Processing Center 1AA-2C.” He had just begun to wonder if there could be anything inside worth “recovering,” when the voice of Johnny Rook came through his COM Link. “Hey! Somebody just hit me in the head with a rock!”

  Reflexively, he began running down the street toward Rook’s location. He was the first to reach the warfighter, who was holding the side of his head, bleeding from a wound to his temple and looking a little dazed.

  “Someone threw a rock at me,” he repeated to Trajan Lear. “There’s supposed to be nobody here but us.”

  “Let me look at it,” Lear said. He leaned in close to Rook’s head and took his hand. He sensed elevated adrenaline levels and some dizziness, but he didn’t sense that the blow was serious. Soon, Specialist Cottonmouth arrived with a medical kit. Max Jordan came from around a corner, brandishing his single pulse gauntlet. He had deployed a combat helmet.

  “I didn’t see anyone,” Jordan reported.

  “Maybe a chunk of masonry fell off one of the buildings,” Trajan Lear suggested.

  “What’s going on Phoenix Alpha?” Anaconda Taurus Rook demanded through her COM-Link.

  “Someone hit me with a rock,” Johnny Rook repeated.

  “Was it Jordan?” Anaconda Rook asked.

  “Negative,” Rook answered, as Trajan Lear cleaned the wound, which had stopped bleeding.

  “Are you okay, baby?” Anaconda Taurus Rook asked.

  “Za, dear,” he answered.

  Anaconda Rook ordered. “All teams, reset your combat Spex to detect human life signs and report.”

  Trajan Lear and the warfighters mentally reset their combat Spex, and scanned their territory as one of the other teams protested that the city was “supposed to be deserted” and Anaconda Taurus Rook replied to them that it was possible some Gethsemanians (“Geths”) had chosen not to evacuate and had attacked the Phoenix Alpha team so get the Allbeing-dammed Spex reset to detect human life forms.

  “Holy crap,” said Johnny Rook. Trajan Lear linked to him and saw what he was blessing excrement about. Within a 100 meter radius, the Spex had picked up fourteen human life forms other than the Survey Team.

  Johnny Rook tapped his COM link. “Phoenix Alpha, here. I just detected movement at our periphery. Investigating.”

  His wife’s voice answered him. “Acknowledged, Phoenix Alpha. Go to LIVE Link.” He cocked his head and activated the transceiver inside his Spex. Now, the command crew would see what he saw. He slowly swiveled his head to the surrounding buildings, where humanoid forms were detected, primarily in the upper stories.

  “Ow!” Max Jordan said. Trajan Lear turned toward him. A rock the size of a ping-pong ball had just bounced off his helmet.

  “Fall back,” Johnny Rook ordered. The Spex indicated a nearby warehouse was clear, and he directed the team toward there.

  “It’s just a rock,” Jordan protested.

  “They might have something worse,” Johnny Rook replied. “Survey Command, we are arming weapons to non-lethal mode and retreating so we can re-assess.”

  “Acknowledged, Phoenix Alpha. Do you require back-up?” Anaconda Rook asked.

  “Not yet,” Johnny Rook answered. “We’re going to beat a cowardly retreat while we assess the situation.”

  The door to the warehouse was sealed with a bolt lock, but a hit from Jordan’s pulse gauntlet opened it up. Inside the old warehouse was a stench of dust and rotting leather.

  Boxes of old and rotting shoes were stacked all about. Trajan Lear took up a position just behind Max Jordan.

  Johnny Rook was frustrated. “I can’t seem to get a tactical read on the life forms. I’m getting interference.”

  “There are low-level EM fields all over the planet,” Cottonmouth explained. “We think they have something to do with the operation of the Gateway.

  Johnny Rook grunted. “We’ll return to the ship and figure out what to do from there.”

  “No fighting?” Max Jordan asked.

  “Disappointed?” Rook replied.

  Jordan shrugged. “At one time I would have been, but now, I’m at a place where I can let it go and still feel good about myself. I no longer need to prove myself in combat to validate my self-worth. It’s a good thing.”

  Johnny Rook rolled his eyes. “Is there any chance a rock to the head could flip your brain back to normal?” Ever since Yronwode, where the artificial intelligence known as Caliph had erased Jordan’s traumatic childhood memories, he had been … far too mellow.

  “I can still fight,” Jordan reminded him. “But right now, I agree with you. A peaceful retreat will serve us best.”

  “There should be a rear entrance that way,” Trajan Lear pointed toward the far end of the warehouse. “That should take us back toward the ship.”

  “They’re moving in on this cargo storage facility,” Johnny Rook reported. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The team made their way through the dark to the far end of the warehouse. A door was located ‘round the back, secured from the inside with a deadbolt. Max Jordan was about to shoot it when Trajan Lear calmly opened the unlocked mechanism. The door opened on a narrow alley between the shoe warehouse and an adjoining one. Rook pointed down the Alley. Trajan Lear led, with the warfighters taking position at the rear.

  They hadn’t made it very far, when he hard Rook say, “Oh, Crap!”

  “What oh crap?” Trajan Lear asked.

  “The life-forms just disappeared from my Spex,” Johnny Rook reported

  “Interference?” Trajan Lear asked.

  “Don’t know, but they were moving this way the last time I had a fix.” Rook gestured down the alleyway. “Let’s take the next right and try and stay ahead of them.” Jordan and Rook raised their pulse gauntlets and quickened their pace. From the corner of his eye, Trajan Lear caught a swift movement in an alley up ahead. He turned, Spexed it, but couldn’t make a firm contact. The distance and closing data displaying in his retinas seemed to be accurate, so he didn’t think there was an interference problem.

  Johnny Rook sent a message. “Phoenix Alpha to base, we’ve lost telemetry on the life-sign indicator.” A display in his Spex indicated there was no contact with the land-base.

  “COM Link seems to be out,” Rook reported.

  “Did you see that?” Max Jordan asked suddenly. “Something moved.” No one replied. They were almost at the turn in the alleyway.

  Trajan Lear sensed from the others, a rising sense of apprehension. They moved more quickly through the next street, but they found the next alleyway blocked by crates and debris.

  “Did you hear that?” Max Jordan asked.

  “Za,” Rook answered. He gestured for the others to stay back while he scouted ahead.

  When they turned the corner, a band of ragged, feral children was running toward them. A few were brandishing pipes, and all of them were screaming.

  Before Rook could say, “Holy crap, they’re kids,” the first and fastest had leaped upon him.

  Beating children in hand-to-hand contact had not been a required course in warfighter training. Johnny Rook improvised, applying the martial arts techniques from the

  ‘Hand-to-Hand contacts with Humanoids of Sub-Normal Stature’ course, flipping the first two kids hard onto the ground.

  Max Jordan found himself conflicted. Even a feral horde of children were still children.

  Figuring he avoided hitting them but pushed his attackers back while brandishing his side-arm, set to a non-lethal stun yield as he backed off away from the direction of the attack.

  Trajan Lear didn’t like kids, and kicked aside his first three attackers with ease. Then, he touched his tactical gauntlet and sent out a Pulse Effect Wave, a wall of dense, energized air tha
t arced out in front of him like a concussive wave. As soon as it hit the raggedy children, they fell over like a Siberian forest under an exploding comet.

  Johnny Rook looked over the children slumped in the street. His tactical gear had softened the impact of the Pulse Effect Wave. “Where in Perdition’s flames did these kids come from?”

  Chapter 05

  Redfire – The little bell on the door tinkled as Redfire entered the Celestial Café. He took a moment to survey the immaculate white tables with their clean, crisp red-checkered table cloths. The walls were painted in murals of photo-realistic cloud scenes. The café was huge, considerably larger than a groundball field, tables with immaculate checked tablecloths stretched off into the distance by the hundreds, but he appeared to be the only customer.

  A perky waitress with a halo crossed quickly to him, her hard heels clicking on the blue and white tiled floor. “Hi, darlin’ How’re you?” she drawled, between snaps of gum. “I’m Gabrielle, I’ll be your waitress. Where’d you like to sit down, hon’?”

  “Something by the window, I guess,” Redfire said. This was not what he had been expecting at all. Yet it seemed to make some weird sort of sense to him.

  He looked through the window as she seated him. Outside were clouds and sky and nothing more.

  “What can I get you, sweetheart?” Gabrielle asked, tapping her pen against her order pad. It dawned on Redfire that he had not seen an order pad, or for that matter a waitress, in anything but old fictional entertainments about the pre-technological renaissance.

  “I was hoping for some enlightenment,” Redfire said to her.

  “We’re still serving breakfast, sweetie,” Gabrielle asked him. “How ‘bout some pancakes? A nice stack of pancakes, with bacon and butter pecan syrup. And some nice hot kava? I just percolated a fresh vessel?”

  Resigning himself, Redfire agreed. “Okay, pancakes and bacon it is. And the kava.”