by Dain White
If there was a moment in the story of my life where the author would have written about time stopping, this was it.
Rushing through the trench towards us was a wall of pulverized concrete a hundred meters high.
08232614@16:36 Steven Pauline
Head-sized hunks of concrete whipped overhead, as the gig rattled with a sudden torrential rain of gravel.
“Any sign of the crab, Pauli?” Captain Smith called up over the whine of the turbofans. “Anything on track?”
“Not yet, sir,” I called back. The targeting console was overloaded with the particulates, even with Janis working to isolate and filter the signal. “There’s too much—”
“Captain, come in,” Emwan’s voice crackled out on comms as the crab hove into view through the unending hail of debris. As she dropped down towards us through the haze, the dust cascading off of her looked like a long flowing dress.
“Solid copy Em… very nice shooting, my dear, great job,” he replied proudly behind me while Marines scattered and took positions around the dropship.
Waves of dust blew continued to blow past from the unfolding chaos ahead of us. The world sounded like it was ripping apart.
“Janis, I need you to pull all forces back. Em, please stay in close formation, we’re getting out of here.”
“Formation, aye,” she replied. He waited a moment longer, watching to make sure the marines were clearly on the move, and raised for the sky.
Chapter 7
08232614@16:48 Captain Dak Smith
“Captain Smith?” one of the men coming out of the lock reached over for a handshake. “Major Grimes, Captain. I was told you have a medical emergency?”
“That’s correct, Major. We have two injured, though to what extent we’re not clear. Based on their suit telemetry, we suspect there are excessive burns and possibly broken bones.” As I spoke I kicked over to the crab, while the medics and their gear followed.
“They’re in there?” he asked quizzically, looking strangely at the crab. I guess I hadn’t really thought about it much, to me it was starting to look pretty normal in our bay, but to an outsider, it looked nearly as alien as the alien ships we were facing.
“That’s correct. They are in… ah… highly advanced power suits, engineered to protect them in extraordinarily adverse environments. Given their injury and the support they are getting with these suits, we figured it would be best to leave them suited up.”
He looked at me strangely, as I led him into the crab, and moved past as I made way to let his team into the aft compartment. Their suits looked pretty beat up, covered with chalky dust and soot. Shorty looked the worst. Her entire body was covered in soot and scratches, and she had a massive dent on the left side of her upper thigh with a molten, melted appearance.
“Yak, Shorty, we have a medical team here… we’re going to move you now,” I said, not expecting a response and not getting one. They were alive, but thankfully, they were not conscious.
“Deploy the gurney and we’ll work on the short one first,” Major Grimes directed. Despite the pain I felt in my heart looking at her, I chuckled a bit at his choice of terms, and was again thankful for all of our sakes that she wasn’t awake.
Once they had the gurney deployed, I tapped out a command on my wrist screen and Janis opened her suit. The helmet separated from the neck collar, and the chest split down the middle and opened up. Major Grimes and another medic passed a thin collar under her and pressurized it to immobilize her neck.
With that done, I gingerly lifted the helmet up and over her head, while Major Grimes and one of the other medics held her carefully.
She looked awful, and it was everything I could do to keep from bawling like a little kid. What a trooper this little lady was. The right side of her face was blistered, and both of her eyes were swollen shut and deep purple. Her face had swollen to the point where she was hardly recognizable.
“Easy now,” Major Grimes cautioned, as we slowly pulled her out and away from the suit. From the scorched, blackened and blistered patches all over her body I couldn’t imagine how much pain she must have been in. Her left leg looked the worst, it was blackened and raw, oozing clear fluid from a large burn from her upper thigh to above her hip. It had also swollen considerably.
“Careful now…” he said, as we slowly laid her out on the gurney. One medic went to work immediately with medifoam while another started working her vitals. Seeing her like that on the gurney just about broke my heart.
Yak was next, and he didn’t look much better. His eyes were also both blackened and swollen shut, and he had a lot more surface blistering. Though none of his burns as bad as Shorty’s, he looked like he may have been a little more in the thick of it. We laid him on the gurney and they started working on him as well, and I stepped clear while more medics arrived to carry Shorty away.
I stepped out behind them, and met Gene kicking down from engineering, a terrible scowl on his grizzled mug.
“How bad is it, Dak?”
I swallowed and mustered what confidence I could. “They’re looking pretty bad, Gene, but it might not be as bad as it looks. We’ll know more when they get them under scanners, but so far the worst I’ve seen is burns and some hellacious bruises.
We paused to watch them haul Yak out of the bay. They had a rebreather on him, and were working it as they moved past.
“Serious burns?” he asked quietly.
“I won’t lie, Gene, I haven’t seen much worse. Shorty has a section that looked charred.”
“Third degree…” he replied.
“Yep, that’s probably a fair assessment.”
“Well, that’s not too bad. If they can keep them from getting an infection before grafts set up…”
“Yeah,” I trailed off and sighed heavily. “I’m going to stay with them, Gene. Please go ahead and power down, rebuild something, take a nap, whatever. Stand down.”
He looked at me for a moment through a concerned frown. “I will Dak. Keep me posted, okay?”
I nodded, and kicked through the lock, palming it closed as I kicked past. The docking compartment on the destroyer was closed, so I had a few moments to myself, waiting for the ambers to flash. My head was spinning with self-recriminations, doubt, and all manner of morale-destroying thoughts, and I suddenly realized, I hadn’t had even a sip of coffee at least a thousand years.
No wonder my head hurt.
The companionway through the flight deck of the destroyer was marked with yellow hash marks and the activity was hectic, efficient, and blissfully unaware of my presence. I felt like a slow motion ghost, sliding through a storm.
I collared a rating running by with arms full of nothing, clearly going nowhere as quickly as he could. “Mister, what deck is sickbay?”
“Right through there, sir,” he replied with a wave towards the correct hatch, and scuttled off, looking for another non-task to look busy not doing.
People like him were endemic in the Service. Slackers that didn’t have what it took to succeed, but didn’t drop the ball far enough to bounce them out. I sighed again. This wasn’t my ship.
As I waited for the lock to cycle me through, I frowned at the grey paint. From time immemorial, the service has been painting with this stuff. If I looked closely enough, I probably still had some of it under my fingernails from my days in the Academy. At least everything was shipshape and regulation gleaming. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s a filthy ship. Well, except for socks.
“Gene, ears?”
“Ears, aye,” he replied immediately.
“Gene, before you stand down, I need you to be on track with our next evolution. I need to know when we need to jump.”
“On track, aye skipper,” he chided. “Aren’t we going to stand by for Shorty and Yak?”
I paused for a thought. It wasn’t likely. The Honorable had some of the best medical facilities available in orbit. I was definitely glad to see Captain Gates as we hauled mass off NT. I knew S
horty and Yak needed the help.
My mind had wandered far afield, as we raised past the silent chromate towers into the darkening sky, the glistening windswept pinnacles of mankind’s evolution falling below as we leapt into space. Thoughts of love, and loss, and the tragedy unfolding in front of me – my homeland, infested with incredibly dangerous, incredibly hostile aliens.
My emotions welled up, remembering the gig on the stardock with Pauli strapped down inside. That is a memory that will haunt me to the end of my days. If we had been a little slower, if Gene’s damned hip had given out and I had to carry the old timer, we might not have made it out of that one at all.
I hoped that Janis would have taken off if she had to, if there was no other alternative. The more I thought about it, she probably had hundreds of millions of simulations run to failure for that building – she knew exactly how long she could afford to hang on. Those are pretty big buildings.
“Janis,” I asked quietly, “what is the status of the Viceroy at this time?”
“It has collapsed to just above the seven hundredth floor and is holding precariously on a lean. It is essentially resting on an enormous unreinforced rubble pile at this point, with a runaway core fire inside it, sir.”
“Well, that’s not good. How goes evac?”
“I admit it is going a lot better than I had expected, sir. I am afraid that I thought casualties would be significantly higher.”
“How bad is it so far?”
“The collapse event itself occurred in sub foundation levels, there were no casualties from that. There were unfortunately many who assumed their end was at hand, and leaped to meet it. For most, though, there simply wasn’t any way for them to get much of anywhere. There are currently a small but growing number of missing persons, and a considerable amount of people who simply couldn’t survive the strain of the moment.”
“How many, in actual numbers, dear,” I asked softly, appreciating that she had completely briefed me on what I had asked.
“Sir, my best casualty estimate is between 8,326 and 8,372 – but with all services and power out, it is impossible for me to know precisely.”
“Well, that’s far less than the millions I expected, Janis. Keep up the great work down there. Have you located any other nests?”
“We’re currently removing the two we located. Terrain is definitely to our advantage in this fight. Now that we know the loss of a signal represents their locations down there, we’ve had no problems. The hunt continues, sir, but I am confident we have this situation well in hand.”
“Any chance they sent a signal off-planet?”
“Captain, it would be hard for me to answer that. Now that I understand teleportation, it would be trivial for me to engineer an in-system com pod. It certainly seems possible they have something similar.”
I frowned. “Do you think they might have?”
“Captain, I am not sure. Given my understanding of their systems, I think they would have used their AI. There’s very little chance a com pod could skip off planet far enough, considering how heavily trafficked Vega system is, sir.”
“That’s a good point. Their AI is being handled?”
“In this system, sir, it has been handled. We are still working on recovering systems, but the fires are out, power is on, water is on, enviro is on, and I am tasking community service to work on repairing riot damage.”
“Sounds like you have it covered, my dear,” I said, pulling up at the pristine white lock of the med bay. “Janis…” I trailed off, waiting for the lock to cycle, “I am just going to check on the kids here.”
“Please tell them we miss them,” she said sadly. “They have an excellent prognosis, but all the same, we do.”
“I will,” I replied briskly, as the lock slipped open.
As I stepped in and mashed the cycle, I tried to think about nothing at all.
“Captain Smith?” the orderly said the moment I stepped on deck, leaping to attention.
I waved him down. “That’s correct. Can you point me in the direction of my crew?”
“Aye, sir,” he replied smartly, and led me immediately into a port companionway. Various highly technical looking bits of engineering jutted out here and there as we pulled past.
“Here they are, sir,” he replied, and hung by while I went up for a look.
They had the kids in tanks, and Jane had a fresh dressing on the inside of her left thigh. Their burns already looked better; they were less flaming red, at any rate.
Immersed in some sort of fluid, and floating in null-g, I was struck by how bruised they were. Yak especially. They both looked like raccoons, and Jane was pretty much a solid nasty blotchy bruise on her left side, but Yak was covered in bruises pretty much everywhere.
These two were warriors. They had what it took to do this sort of thing. I deeply respected their will to carry the fight into the unknown like that, while at the same time, I hated myself for being the catalyst of their decision.
Major Grimes hauled in, and stood by from a grabber. “How’s her leg,” I asked, dispensing the formalities with a nod.
“We stabilized her femur with titanium epoxy, it was a torsion fracture, and hadn’t split, so luckily we didn’t have to pin it.”
“And her ribs?” I asked, looking at the deep bruising up her side.
“Luckily, her ribs weren’t broken, but the muscles throughout the side of her chest are heavily contused, and I am sure it felt just as bad.”
I nodded. “She was in a lot of pain. How much pain is she in now?”
“None, Captain. We have them in an induced coma. We find that pain, especially with burns, is often overwhelming. It’s not at all conducive to the healing process.”
“How long will they be laid up like this?”
“About twelve, maybe sixteen hours, sir,” he replied thoughtfully.
“That’s not very long!” I exclaimed.
He replied reassuringly, “These soldiers look messed up, but they’re really not terribly life-threatening injuries, sir – especially when you get them to support as fast as you did.”
“Not even a third degree burn like that?” I said, nodding sideways at Jane’s tank.
“The grafting gel we use these days is pretty decent. Once the leg cells start growing into it, it’s pretty much all she needs, until her body eventually just consumes it. It will be tender for a while, so we’re going to keep both of them turned off for the worst of it, but after a few days, maybe a week at most, those burns will just be itchy skin.”
“Is there any chance we could move them to the Archaea?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it, sir. If they are not kept in a coma, it will take them much longer to recover. We are also keeping them on a vitamin regimen, hydrating them, and managing muscle spasms. The biotic fluids in the tanks are alternating hot and cold to help with their muscle damage.”
“Any chance they could hear me?”
“I think it’s unlikely, Captain, but if you have something to say, you should let them know.”
Yak slowly reached up and tapped on the tank, and gave me the vitarka mudra, the ancient gesture of discussion, the calming symbol used by divers since the dawn of time, as if to say ‘all okay’. I would assume there to be a sir at the end of that gesture, but I wasn’t going to push my luck. His capacity for hand gestures far outstripped my own.
I swallowed, took a breath, and stepped up to the communicator. “Rest easy Marine,” I called out. “You deserve it, son. Both of you earned this one. These guys are taking good care of you and Jane, and we’ll be right here when you wake up.”
He nodded slowly, and smiled under his mask. He waved a thumb at me, and I nodded at the Major, who gestured at the orderly standing to attention. Yak slipped off into a dream again – or at least it looked like it.
“See that you properly sedate him, Major. Don’t underestimate his capacity for inebriants. He’s a Marine, you know, and a damned big one, at that.”
�
�Very well, sir,” he replied, coming to attention.
“At ease, son,” I soothed. “Keep me posted on their condition the minute it changes, please. I am going to call on the bridge by way of the nearest coffee pot. Where do you keep the good stuff?”
“Deck ten forward; Captain’s mess, sir.”
08232614@16:58 Gene Mitchell
“Pauli, send me those reports on Deneb,” I asked, sweating despite the chillers on the helm.
“Sure thing, Gene, should be onscreen now,” he replied quickly. “We may also want to look at Tau Sigma.”
“What’s happening there?”
“A similar signature to what we had going on in Vega, Gene, a high incidence of AI infection.”
“Well, that’s what Deneb looks like, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Well,” I said, swiping back and forth between the reports, “what do I tell the Captain?”
He turned around and looked me in the eye momentarily. “Well, I’d tell him about both.”
“Well of course I’ll tell him about both, Pauli – that’s not what I mean. He’s going to want a good sense of direction. What should happen next?”
“Well…” he trailed off.
“Gene, if I may?” Emwan spoke up, her soft contralto fluting through the bridge.
“Please,” I nodded.
“We are nearing completion of the field generators, and should complete installation and integration with the crab in the very near future. My suggestion is we take the time we need to restore Janis.”
I had forgotten about that.
“How long will that take, Em?”
“Not very long, but we both feel this is necessary to do.”
“What about Deneb? Or Tau Sigma?”
“We are deploying forces in response. We need to restore Janis now, Gene”
“Open comms with the Captain, please.”
Pauli turned around.
“Ears, Captain?” I asked.