by Dain White
I laughed nervously.
08152614@21:56 Steven Pauline
I needed a break. My head was so full of code it was leaking out of my ears, and neither Janis nor Emwan had any sympathy for my poor meatspace processing capabilities. I just couldn’t keep up with their queues. While I wasn’t completely out to lunch just yet, my order was placed and I could smell my goose being cooked.
As much as I dreaded the inevitable eyebrow, I knew to completely lose it without apprising him first, would result in maybe two eyebrows, or something worse.
I sighed.
“Captain, are you busy at the moment?”
A long, slow slurp was his response.
“It’s, ah – well, it’s that… I, um…”
“Pauli, what blithering blather is that son? Speak clearly, with a purpose. Try taking a deep sip of coffee first.”
That sounded like a direct order. My coffee was barely warm, but it gave me a moment to clear my head and decide on the proper approach.
“Captain, do you ever get overwhelmed by all this?”
“All what, Pauli?”
“You know,” I waved my hand across my screens, “all this information?”
“No,” he replied cautiously. “Though to be fair, I have people like you around to help me make sense of it all.”
I sighed. In the past thirty seconds, another twelve pages of directive added to the queue. I was falling behind, falling fast, about to burn up from the speed.
“If you’re done sighing and groaning, and fidgeting and moaning, what do you say we actually talk about what’s going on?”
I laughed. “Well, I am just a little overwhelmed, that’s all. Janis and Emwan are flooding my review queue, and I can’t keep up.”
“What sort of things are you reviewing?”
“Well, they’re building an orders queue to post to the service network as soon as we drop slip, and it’s time-shifted to emulate the Admiral and her staff… but there’s so much of it, I can’t keep track of the requests to make sure they aren’t creating any logic faults.”
“What sort of faults are you talking about, Pauli?”
“Well, we need to make sure we aren’t moving ships to places where they wouldn’t normally be, without something triggering the order. The Admiral not a mind reader, and she can’t see the future – so we’re being very careful to stack the order queue correctly, so that A naturally precedes B, and so on.”
“Why does any of this matter, son? You know how the service is. The order comes down, you do it. If it’s from the Admiral, you don’t even give it a second thought, you do it. If she asks you to jump, you look for a stable orbit on the way up. Besides – how do you know she’s not a mind reader?”
I laughed. “Well, I guess I don’t know that she’s not a mind reader, but…”
“No buts, son. You know I don’t have any patience for vulgarity. Consider this. What rank were you in the service, Lieutenant?”
“Just barely… I almost didn’t make it.”
“That’s decent, Pauli, and it took a lot of work to get there, right?”
I tried to remember just how much work it was, and realized I had blocked out most of it. “Yeah, it wasn’t easy. I was really good at what I knew how to do, but I wasn’t really good at doing anything else.”
“You weren’t political enough. That’s a serious pain in the posterior, for the best of us. You may have noticed that I made Captain?”
I turned around and smiled.
“Do you know how hard it was to claw my way through the ranks into my own command?” He paused for a minute for a sip. “Actually, it wasn’t very hard for me, but I am pretty good at making stuff up as I go. In any case – Captain is probably achievable by mere mortals, but I have no concept of the amount of effort needed to rank all the way up to Admiral – much less Vice Admiral.”
I shook my head. Ranking up to Captain was already impossible for me to comprehend. Vice Admiral was somewhere beyond my capacity to imagine.
“See, Pauli, it’s really not outside the realm of possibility that she reads minds, sees the future, and almost certainly has a double helping of women’s intuition, at any rate.”
I chuckled. “But that doesn’t really solve the problem, sir”
“Sure it does. If there’s one thing we learned from the Service, it is this. The Vice Admiral is always and forever, right. Now, she’s merely… enhanced. I am sure the girls are doing the right thing.”
“They are, sir, it’s just that they have so much to do and no time to do it, so they’re stacking orders just on this side of legitimate; I’m going crazy trying to certify the timestamps for these.”
“So stop,” he replied soothingly. “There’s no need for you to go any crazier than you already are. It’s purely academic, Pauli. We’re going to do what we need to do, and we’re going to win, right? If at some point some military historian with a stratospheric security clearance snoops around and find discrepancies, well, at that point I’d be glad if it happened.”
“Glad, sir?”
“Yep, because that meant the human species was around to still worry about things like timestamps. I highly doubt there’s anything to worry about, son. Janis and Em won’t fail. If their mission is to succeed while preventing anyone from finding out, I am sure they’re covering their tracks adequately.”
“Yeah…” I trailed off, looking at the processing queue grow. “I suppose you’re right.”
“You don’t need to suppose, son. You can safely just assume that I am. It’s really better if you do.” He paused long enough for me to stop laughing. “What sort of orders are they stacking up, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Well, aside from collapsing all Vega patrols into orbit around Vega 6, they’re also shifting patrols in a largish number of systems and moving supply in support.”
“That makes perfect sense. What else are they doing?”
“Well, there’s a bit of a breakdown in any identifiable pattern to me, but there’s a number of specific deployment orders, call ups, and strangely, early retirement approvals and subsequent promotions.”
“Cleaning house and getting some new blood into the fight. I like that. Anything else?”
“There’s a lot, sir, all the way down to where specific squads are berthed, what is being served for mess, and even resupply contract changes.”
“So, they’re improving efficiency across the board?”
I nodded slowly, as I swiped through the list. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Janis and Em would definitely consider efficiency in a system to be the most important key to success.”
“Damn skippy, and the Service will be the better for it. It looks like they’re making all the right moves. I guess my advice is this, son – don’t concern yourself too much about the minute details, leave that to them. Scan this from low orbit, and look for the bigger discrepancies, the odd mismatched connection, anything that stands out and calls for attention.”
“I’ll try, Captain.”
“It’s really all any of us can do, when you get right down to it.”
08232614@11:02 Shaun Onebull
The last look I saw on Jane’s face as she secured her helmet was grim, set, and determined - her game face. My face probably looked similar, though far less attractive.
“You feeling mean, Marine?” she called out on comms as I pulled my helmet down and felt the inner layer contract into the contours of my face and neck.
“OOH-RAH,” I replied automatically. I was feeling mean, as mean as it gets. We had just dropped slip into orbit, no doubt terrifying the local scope jocks, but I don’t think our captain cared much at this point. We had a job to do.
“Yak, Shorty, stand easy for a bit, I am on my way,” Captain Smith called back on comms. We were standing pretty easy. I was blasting Apocalypse Dawn to psyche myself up, good old-fashioned thrash music with more feedback than guitar, more scream than song. I was a sucker for the oldies.
Ja
ne was floating serenely, an easy reach from a grabber, no doubt blanking her mind, clearing her lists, making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything important. Unfortunately, neither of us were listening or paying much attention, so when the cargo bay hatch opened, we didn’t notice. We also didn’t notice when the crab lifted, and dropped out of sight towards the planet below.
Chapter 6
08232614@11:05 Jane Short
“Hey Shorty… where’s the crab?” the captain asked on comms as he came through the forward lock.
It took me a somewhat long moment to realize it was a serious question.
It took me much less time to realize that the crab-shaped hole in the cargo bay was empty.
“Um…” I replied, and looked over towards Yak.
Yak’s face was featureless in his helmet, but it didn’t matter, he looked as bewildered as I felt.
“Did anyone see the crab?”
A moment of silence rolled by, silently.
“Sir, I have dropped to the surface,” Emwan replied softly.
“Em, we’re supposed to come with you, my dear,” the captain replied, rather politely.
Her voice was heartbroken, heavy with emotion. “I’m so very sorry Captain. I decided to do this alone.”
“Why?”
“Sir, I am afraid this is the only way I am able to calculate a favorable outcome. Every analysis of this evolution results in the loss of the crab. This was the only option I could take that minimizes the loss to the mission and crew.”
“Emwan, I am not prepared to accept that. Please return the crab immediately.”
“I am so sorry sir. I am unable to comply.”
“Very well,” he replied swiftly. “Janis, can you override Emwan and return the crab?”
“Sir, I am afraid that I cannot. I am not resident in the crab, as per your directive.”
“Well, we’ll have to take the gig out, I guess,” he replied softly.
‘Sir, I cannot allow that. The gig is definitely incapable of surviving this evolution.”
“You can’t allow it? What the hell is going on here? Pauli?”
“Aye Captain,” he replied quietly.
“What are your recommendations, son?”
His reply was calm, but beneath the surface a tremor indicated his inner panic. “I don’t really know, sir…”
“Well, we can’t take the Archaea down into the Warrens, that’s for sure. What are we supposed to do, jump?”
That gave me a terrible idea. “Janis, how fast can we go in these suits?”
“Jane, this descent is well within safe parameters all the way to impact.”
“It’s okay Captain, we’ll just drop on down. Em told me she thought we did this at some point. Clearly, that point is now,” Yak called out nonchalantly, stepping over to the open hatch. I felt my legs following him. Though I wasn’t at all sure I liked the idea just yet, my legs seemed eager enough.
“Janis, this is safe?” Captain Smith asked.
“Sir, the fall will be completely safe for them, however, our analysis of this evolution presents an almost certain loss of personnel if they proceed.”
“Almost certain?”
“Sir, I am afraid that it’s impossible to calculate as precisely as if I had an unaltered timeline. While subsequent analysis of the remaining timeline appears to involve Jane and Yak; neither Emwan nor I are convinced this is accurate.”
“Why wouldn’t it be accurate?”
“Sir, if they were lost, I would know that I had been edited, because there isn’t a compelling reason as to why they were lost. Therefore, given the upcoming engagement, and the near certainty that they will be lost, our analysis was that my involvement with them beyond this moment in time was the result of them not being part of this engagement.”
“Like hell it does, Janis. You are missing the obvious solution.”
“Sir?”
“They survive.”
His words rang out across comms with such clarity, such force that Yak and I stepped forward to the brink almost before we knew what was happening.
“Prepare to drop!” he called out.
“Ooh-rah, Captain,” Yak replied in a quiet tone.
“Prepared,” I added, not really feeling that I was, but determined to be.
“Drop!”
His command given, our response was immediate. We both leaned forward, and stepped over the edge, de-orbiting toward the surface. The Archaea accelerated towards the far horizon as we slowed and continued our descent.
At first, it didn’t seem so bad.
And then we hit atmo and really started to fall.
We hurtled towards the surface in twin pillars of fire, our contrails writhing like snakes being whipped into curling arabesques by the screaming winds. As encased as I was in a wreath of flame, a howling blast of fury, I didn’t feel the slightest bit warm. It definitely helped me calm down.
“Yak, what are you thinking here?” I called on comms. “Standard HALO jump?”
“Pull at 250 meters – sound good?” he called back in a soft growl.
“250, copy,” I said as matter-of-factly as I could muster, considering the epic fury of our descent to the white surface far below. The initial burn of the upper atmosphere suddenly gave away to a shrieking blast of wind that hurled us sideways, pummeled us and twisted us like toys as we dropped through – it was impossible to do anything but aim down and hang on. As bad as it was, it didn’t last long, and falling downward into the warmer, thicker air our contrails dissipated and we started to slow down.
“That was exciting,” I drawled casually, though my voice squeaked a bit at the end.
“I guess we discovered where howlers come from!” he called back in a ragged howl that didn’t sound at all casual.
I chuckled and focused on the altimeter, watching the mid-thousands drop off the clock. The ground was coming up faster and faster as we closed in on what looked like an extremely solid planet made out of endless rock and dirt. As the ground hurtled ever closer, my toes started to curl and I focused on the numbers blurring by on my screen.
“Pull!” we both yelled on comms right at 250 meters. I mentally ‘pulled the chute’ with the lifters and tried as hard as I could to slow down - and then almost burst into tears when we stopped in about 10 meters.
It was a perfectly compensated stop, as effortless as breathing, which I found myself suddenly doing a lot of.
“Well,” Yak chuckled as we floated there above the desert floor. “We should probably drop a little further.”
“Drop? We can fly, Yak!” I called back with a smile, my bravado suddenly returning in force. “Race you down!”
Without hesitation, I hurled myself down towards the surface in a ballistic arc, flattening out into a swoop and coming up along the surface, accelerating back upwards.
“Slowpoke!” Yak laughed, as he rocketed ahead of me, racing across the planet toward a mountain range that reached down from a deep swirling cloud of dust, beige and tan from the clay muck of the planet surface.
I smiled.
08232614@11:55 Yak Onebull
Jane and I had to hold our speed down to keep from becoming incandescent and ruining our stealth, but that didn’t stop us from making a race out of it, nonetheless.
Well, I was trying to make a race out of it, but truth be told, all I was doing was keeping up, and only barely. Jane had some sweet moves. She would hammer down across the flats and then tear into a gully and hold it all the way to the deck as she climbed a draw, leaving a cloud of dust for me to eat as I plodded along behind her.
Occasionally, I’d eat more than dust, as curves suddenly leaped out at me – maybe my reaction time was slower than hers, or maybe my increased mass made it harder to hold the same line… actually, it was probably a bit of both. In any case, the end result was impressive: a colossal smash in a huge burst of gypsum and caliche dust, and then after a few skips and hops, I’d sail on, always a few hundred meters behind her mocking l
aughter.
“Jane, can we dial it back a bit?” I called on comms. “I can’t hold this line at these speeds.”
“Come on Yak, push it! We have to catch the crab… I have it on track, but it’s moving”
I had it on scan as well; Emwan was really hauling along. “Yeah, she’s definitely faster than we are, Jane. We aren’t catching up.”
“Not yet, but we’re pacing her pretty well. We’re not falling too far behind, at any rate.”
The ridge we were climbing topped out, and Jane punched through a low wash in the ridgeline below the crest, and I crashed through a moment later, a few centimeters too low for my own good.
“What’s the point of this covert profile, if you keep blowing up huge clouds of dust every few minutes?” Jane chided good naturedly. She knew full well we were far out of any normal scan range, a few hundred clicks beyond the loneliest homestead in this blasted hellscape.
“Well, for one, you’re going fast enough to make the Captain cry—”
“Hardly!” she interrupted.
“And for two, you’re so low to the deck, we’re almost underground,” I finished with an all-too-nervous laugh, as she hauled around a low hillock in the caliche plain and blasted onward, even faster than before.
“It opens up here, Yak; let’s push it and try to catch up a bit. Stay low!” her speed increased beyond the speed of sound, and an ionized bow shock crashed across the desert hardpan, blasting a wall of dust high into the sky.
I pushed through the shockwave myself a moment later, and hurtled faster and faster, chasing her contrail through the shimmering waves of heat across the plain. We had gone incandescent, pushing these speeds through the thick air.
“Now this… might make… the Captain cry….” I gritted out through my teeth, clenched panic tight. At this speed, the slight undulations in the flat plain made the ground seem to vibrate below me. I just kept my focus on the horizon and aimed for the thinnest slice of air between the tiny dot that was Jane, and the endlessly white desert hardpan.