by In Churl Yo
“That’s my friend,” he replied.
“I understand that. I do. But she’s still going to need a place to sit if you want her to survive the launch. We all will.”
“So, I should trust you now? After everything that’s happened?”
Milton stepped forward. “I’ll get her, Caleb. We’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”
Caleb eyed the young hacker, then nodded and resumed bolting the remaining chairs as fast as he could, knowing that now both time and circumstance were conspiring against them.
“Best hurry out there, mate. I’ll keep the access arms from retracting until the last minute,” Baller said just as Milton crossed the hatch’s threshold and stepped onto the platform. Once outside, the first thing Milton noticed was that the wind had picked up—after that, he saw the elevator sitting in the distance, empty and inoperative.
“Not good,” Nox yelled against the whipping sound of the air blowing all around them. “And this weather sure isn’t helping. Come on.”
They moved across the catwalk, advancing hand over hand on the chain railing to keep from being blown off by an errant gust of wind. When they reached the other side, Milton took a knee, pulled the connector cable from his cufflink and accessed the elevator’s control systems.
“It’s been deactivated,” Milton shouted. “Some kind of diagnostic cycle that can’t be interrupted.”
“How?” Nox asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s out of service.”
“What about the coms?”
Milton typed some code on his virtual keyboard. “There’s not enough time for me to figure it out. It could be anything.”
The man with white hair clenched his jaw. “Damn. We’ve got to get back. We’re dead if we don’t,” he said. “I’m sure Neema has enough sense to get somewhere safe before this thing launches.”
Milton shook his head. “Let me try to bypass…”
“You said it yourself. There’s not enough time!” Nox pulled Milton’s arm until he yielded. The two then began to work their way back toward the hatch when the wind shifted, and Milton felt turbulence coming up from below them. The platform rattled at their feet. Both men stopped and held on as a military drone surfaced just beyond the catwalk, its rear hatch open and filled by a familiar figure.
“Neema!” Milton yelled, then remembered she couldn’t hear them.
The ship swayed from a crosswind before leveling out again. Milton watched as Neema directed the drone closer to them until they were only a few meters away. His eyes flashed when he realized their plan.
“They’re going to jump for it. Move!”
Tifa was the first one to try. He saw the shock of pink hair in her helmet and knew it was her. Milton also knew she was terrified. Her knees had buckled, and it looked like she might be sobbing.
Nox broke through the chain railing and cleared a path for them. Then he waved Tifa over, but she stood frozen. Neema was talking to her, and the white-haired man imagined her soothing voice giving the girl her assurances that everything was going to be alright. After a moment, Tifa looked ready to give it a go. The drone swung back like a pendulum with Neema piloting the ship’s virtual controls, forward then back again. Nox heard the countdown in his head: Three… two… one…
The last swing was a big one, its momentum helping Tifa as she jumped toward the catwalk, her arms swinging in the air as she leapt. Nox thought it was textbook, the girl landing between himself and Milton—although from the look on her face you’d have thought she’d missed the platform entirely. Tifa recovered though, overcome by a mix of hysterical laughter and tears. He gave her a comforting pat on her back as she stepped aside for the next jumper.
Milton signaled they were ready. Elsif stood with his knees bent and hand ready to push off, waiting for the right moment. The ship began its motion again, rocking to and fro, and then he vaulted across into their hands. As soon as he landed, Elsif spun to face Neema and pointed at his cufflink. She waved back and transferred control of the drone to him. It was her to turn to jump.
Then without warning the drone dropped as the winds shifted again, leaving Neema scrambling for a handhold as the bottom fell out beneath her. Elsif compensated, cursing as he brought the ship back into position with the platform. When she was ready, Neema gave them a thumbs-up, and the ship rolled again as Elsif commanded, but the gusts were increasing in intensity.
She jumped just as the drone wobbled.
Milton watched it happen and knew that her approach was off. He fell onto the platform and stretched out his hands. Neema’s arms interlocked with his, but their gloves were bulky and hard to grip with. She was slipping. Milton locked onto Neema’s eyes and saw no fear, only a calm, fierce determination that he recognized and cherished. No way was he going to let her go.
Nox twisted his right wrist and his glove fell away. He reached down and seized Neema’s shoulder with his bare hand and pulled at her suit with everything he had. That allowed Milton to reset his grip, and they both heaved again together, lifting her up over the edge onto the catwalk.
The three of them lay there for a second before a horn blast shook them and lights flashed everywhere. They scrambled to get up and ran for the hatch as the drone ship retreated, flying into the distance. The structural support arms between the tower and the rocket detached and swung away from the SLS just as Nox stepped off the platform into the storage container.
Neema refused to look at the countdown on her display, knowing there was little she could do to affect the time they had left. Instead, she focused on the task at hand. With only seconds left to seat and secure themselves, Neema found Caleb and sat next to him. He reached out and squeezed her hand, happy to see her safe. She smiled at her friend in return. While her makeshift chair seemed a little dubious to her, she was grateful to have it.
Nox strapped Neema into the recliner then moved over to Milton and repeated the process. When he got to Elsif, he was relieved to find him holding the glove he had discarded rescuing Neema. The man with white hair took a moment to thank him before fastening Elsif’s straps and reattaching the missing piece of his suit to his wrist. Surviving the vacuum of space would have been impossible without it, and though he had already resolved to accept that fate, he was happy not to have to.
Nox finished belting in Tifa before taking the final empty chair for himself as everything began to rumble and quake around them.
The SLS rocket, with Theodore Ogden at its controls and a team of nine stowaway revolutionaries hiding deep inside its belly, lifted off from a secret underground Ceres Corporation base hidden somewhere in New Mexico and rose into the warm desert air up toward outer space—destination unknown.
CHAPTER 29
Their current predicament was weighing Zoah down.
Below her, chambers of liquid oxygen and hydrogen were merging their contents together to create a violent thermochemical reaction that, together with twin aluminum perchlorate-fueled strap-on boosters, generated enough thrust to not only lift the rocket high into the heavens but press Zoah so far down into her seat that she could not move her head or arms, could not see anything around her but a small tunneled view of the ceiling above. She sat pinned in place, feeling like she was rising and falling at the same time, both at the scariest top and bottom parts of an epic roller coaster—and this with an elephant sitting in her lap and a fireball rumbling full-belch beneath her feet.
They passed through the troposphere almost immediately, soon nearly 30 kilometers above the earth and deep into the stratosphere, where the sky turned into a darker, rich cobalt—flawlessly clear and now curving as it met the inky blackness of space above.
Zoah felt the rocket roll, its trajectory adjusting for a path into high orbit. The intense shaking began subsiding, the load on her frame decreasing from the three Gs of force that had been applied to it. She thought her head was still buzzing from the synaptic overload of lift-off until the fuzzy static cleared and a familiar voice filled her
ear.
“I’ve debugged the com system,” Neema announced. “We should be able to talk to each other now. I also have something exciting to share with you all.”
A series of video streams appeared on Zoah’s helmet display. She could pick out different views from various external cameras mounted on the command ship and payload modules. She raised her hands and expanded a window with her fingers until it filled her entire field of vision—a wide image of the earth below, their position now past the terminator into the dark side of night, with only a few sporadic points marking lonely, illuminated Ceres city lights as they crossed above them at 20,000 kilometers per hour.
Zoah felt an overwhelming calm as she watched the world revolve beneath her. Despite the flood of adrenaline in her system, she was certain now more than ever that she was in the right place doing the right thing—following her destiny wherever it may lead, and that assurance brought a stillness inside her that matched the void of space in which they traveled, both solemn and serene.
“Please re-check your environmental systems,” said Nox. “We may have skipped over a few safety protocols along the way, so take a minute to confirm your seals are tight and oxygen levels steady. We may not be out here for long, but make no mistake, space is a hostile environment. Your earthbound bodies wouldn’t like it very much.”
“Does anyone else have to pee?” asked Elsif.
“You’re kidding, right?” Caleb said.
“He’s got a nervous bladder,” Tifa explained. “Happens all the time.”
“If you need to, you can,” answered Nox, “but…”
“No, I’ll hold it. I can wait.”
“Good,” the man with white hair replied. “Everybody hold on now. We’re coming up on LAS jettison and ICPS separation. You might feel a little… jolt.”
Zoah readied herself. She didn’t know what any of that meant but watched her video feed as parts of the SLS rocket disconnected and fell away from them, the action giving the module a hard shudder and bounce before smoothing out again, much to Elsif’s dismay. His groaning brought a small grin to Zoah, just as she noticed a blinking request for a private communication in her periphery.
“You okay?” Milton asked as soon as she switched over.
“All things considered?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, leaving the planet has complicated my plans for a family reunion happening any time soon.”
Milton laughed. “I can see how that might be a problem.”
“The worst though is getting on a ship without knowing its destination. I mean, what if there isn’t one?”
“Hey, you don’t believe that, do you?”
“No, not really,” Zoah admitted. “I just like to acknowledge the crazy as it’s happening around me. It gives me a false sense of contr… Wait a sec…”
“What?”
“Do you see that?” She switched over to the public channel and repeated the question to everyone. “Does anyone else see what I’m seeing on the port bow camera, second feed?”
“You mean that big white thing?” asked Arsenal.
“You’re not talking about the moon, are you?” Caleb said. “Because that would be silly.”
“Hold on there,” replied Baller, “that’s no moon. It’s a… huh, I have no idea what it is. Any takers?”
They were approaching something large in orbit. It appeared to be an oval, made up of revolving sequentially smaller layers. The object’s surface, smooth and adorned with lights, was moving—as if rolling around a long central shaft.
“Someone should say they have a bad feeling about this,” Zoah said.
“Why?” asked Caleb.
“Don’t anyone panic,” Nox interrupted. “That’s only our final stop.”
Maneuvering thrusters fired, slowing their approach. All eyes remained glued to their feeds as they moved in closer, their objective growing in their screens until it filled the feed’s entire view.
“That thing is massive,” said Caleb. “Must be 500 meters long, easy.”
“How could that thing exist and none of us know about it?” Neema asked. “What the hell is it anyway?”
The command module positioned itself next to the object, then pitched until it arrived at a 90-degree perpendicular attitude before moving to match the rotation of the object’s surface—now traveling in a synchronous orbit around it. Beneath them a door large enough to accommodate their ship and its payload module slid open, and they began to descend below the surface down into the insides of their mysterious destination.
“Looks like we’re about to find out,” said Zoah.
The camera feeds died, leaving them in the dark. The further they travelled into the interior of the object, Zoah realized the heavier she felt. Then it dawned on her that for a good while now they had been in a zero-G environment, and she had missed the opportunity to experience what weightlessness was like. Before she could get too bummed out, their ship landed.
Nox was the first to unbuckle his restraint and stand. The white-haired man observed the readouts on his cufflink, then twisted his helmet and lifted it from his suit. “It’s okay. The air is good,” he said, giving everyone a thumbs-up.
Zoah removed her helmet and sniffed. The smell reminded her of the same filtered, recirculated air from home. At least something was familiar up here. When she stood, there was a noticeable zip to her step, and she smiled and looked at Nox.
“Artificial gravity,” he explained. “We’re at about 70 percent of Earth up here, so it’ll take a little getting used to.”
“I like it,” said Tifa. “I can think of at least three ways to have some fun with it and three to make trouble.”
“Since when have you needed artificial gravity to do either?” Baller asked.
“Since, nevah,” she said, parroting his London accent. “But you make a solid point, mate.”
Once everyone removed their bulky suits, the group gathered at the off-loading doors at the rear of the storage module and waited until Neema nodded, giving Milton the go-ahead to release the locking mechanism and open the doors. They descended the ramp outside together as one, unsure of what they’d find at the bottom.
The landing bay was otherwise large and empty, save for their ship and a lone man who stood nearby waiting for them, his hands clasped together in front and a warm smile on his face, which a few of them recognized.
“Hello, Z.”
Zoah stepped forward from behind the others. “Dad?”
“You’ve come a long way,” Dr. Lightsea said. “I’ve really missed you, kiddo.” He stepped forward with his arms wide, and she ran into them, squeezing her father.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Are Mom and Thomas…”
“They’re here, too. They’re safe,” he replied, then looked at the rest of the group. “You’re all safe here.”
“A premature assumption, surely,” a voice declared from behind the command ship. Dr. Lightsea moved his daughter aside and stepped toward it.
“It’s good to see you, Theo,” he said. “We’re overdue for another conference, aren’t we?”
“Long overdue, from the looks of it.”
“Do you suppose we could do this one without the gun?”
Theodore Ogden stepped out of the shadows and moved the pistol in his hand around the room, considering several targets before settling on Zoah. “I did not realize this one was your daughter, Charles, but I see now she has Madeline’s eyes. As for my gun, well, let’s just see how this goes, shall we? The rest of you—toss your weapons down, if you please.”
Neema glanced at Caleb and Nox and read their faces, then turned to Dr. Lightsea, who gave her several nods and a look of resolve. If there had been any other choice, she would have taken it. “Do it,” Neema said. The clattering of stun rifles as they hit the floor echoed across the landing pad.
“There’s no point to this, Theo,” said Dr. Lightsea. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
&n
bsp; “Of course you will. But I know so much already, the most important fact being that this monstrosity you’ve constructed out here in the nether is a Ceres facility. That you did so without my knowledge or consent is admittedly impressive, but ultimately beside the point. Whatever plans you have for this…thing…”
“It’s a ship.”
“A ship, you say? This ship belongs to me.”
Dr. Lightsea crossed his arms and put a hand to his chin. “That’s not entirely true, Theo.”
“You’re a scientist, Charles—an engineer. Don’t lecture me on the finer points of commercial law or business enterprise. You’ll only embarrass yourself. Every component part, microprocessor and bolt used on this ship came from my production plants, was conceived in my laboratories, shipped through my distribution network. The very hands that worked the tools, wrote the code, were my employees. I don’t give a damn what you think is true. All of this is Ceres property, and I am Ceres.”
“Would it surprise you if I told you that Cecil Ogden thought differently?” Dr. Lightsea asked.
“You dare invoke my father’s name? Charles, how desperate must you be to stoop so very low? It’s beneath you. Quite frankly, this ship is just another SKU in my inventory, another asset to allocate to the bottom line. You would jeopardize your position in the Ceres Corporation for what? A line item? A thing?”
“This thing could save all of us. Your father knew as much.”
Ogden laughed, then pointed his gun at Dr. Lightsea. “You would do well to save yourself.”
A doorway slid open in the distance. Three figures stepped into the shuttle bay and approached. The first to arrive offered a stern and disapproving look to the Ceres chief executive.
“Please put the gun away, Theo. You’re not making this any easier,” said Miranda Pyle, who then softened her face and shook her head. “I’m so sorry it had to happen this way.”
“What way? Why are you here?” Ogden asked, shaken for a moment before recovering. “This changes nothing, Mother. Besides, you above all others should know: Negotiations are won from a position of power. I will not relinquish mine.”