by Richard Fox
“Dr. Emelia,” Jack said.
Aunt Sally blinked. “Dr. Emelia … but she and the founders are so heavily guarded and never around corpses or anyone with dementia.” She picked at her blanket. “Dr. Inez, Hsu, and Bo Porter have been, but they continually brush me off when I awaken the dead around them. I thought I got through to Singh, but …”
Jack wiped his face with his hands. “Inez fired him.”
“You have to go to the Oort Rift,” Aunt Sally said. “And you have to be ready when the attack comes.”
“Attack?” Jack blurted. “When?”
A nurse came into the room. “All right, Miss Morita, it’s time for your medicine.”
“I hate this body,” Aunt Sally muttered. “It hurts and I don’t like wearing a diaper.”
Jack heard laughing and splashing from the sanitary cubicle. The nurse must have, too, because she backtracked, peered in, and screamed. “It will flood!”
“You know how to find me,” Aunt Sally said, just before Jack ran to retrieve a giggling Isaac from a two-inch puddle spread across the entire cubicle floor. When he came back out, the room was filled with maintenance guys, but Aunt Sally’s eyes were empty.
“The sun has gone to sleep,” observed Isaac. “I hope she doesn’t die.”
Ganymede
1 YEAR, 6 MONTHS, AND 21 DAYS PRE-INVASION
“A war between the stars is not something I’d picked up from my … association … with our friend,” said Dr. Emelia, sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee cup in hand. Janice had gone out onto the terrace to retrieve a food order for Dr. Emelia. Since the guards would scan it for poisons and bio agents, it would take a while.
“She said there will be an attack,” said Jack, pacing the kitchen.
“Useless to ask when,” said Dr. Emelia. “Our friend’s concept of time is too different. I think that’s why all her attempts to contact our astronomers with solar flares failed.” Her eyes narrowed. “Also, their language relies heavily on quantum entanglement, the shared particles that got dispersed during the big bang that—”
Before she could get too off topic, Jack said, “I need to let the Ganymeden Defense Forces know, without them thinking I’m crazy, or I’ll wind up drugged and institutionalized and be useless.”
Dr. Emelia gave a wry smile. “Maybe they’d just put you under house arrest?”
Jack looked at her guiltily.
She waved a hand. “What if we get the founders in touch with your Aunt Sally? They knew enough to restart Orbital Habitat—oh, they’re saying it’s for evacuation in the event of a larger asteroid—but they contracted me on the sly, despite my off and on psychosis, to set a course for the vessels.”
Jack stared at her. “If I got within ten feet of the founders I’d be shot.”
Dr. Emelia smiled wickedly. “But then our friend could use your body.”
Jack swallowed. He licked his lips. It might save Isaac and Kathleen …
“I’m joking!” Dr. Emelia cried. “Solar flares, Jack, I can just call them.”
“How?” said Jack.
Janice came back into the kitchen. Dr. Emelia turned in her chair and said, “Janice, I’ve had a breakthrough. I need to talk to the founders. Would you get that comm you’ve been hiding?”
“What sort of breakthrough?” said Janice suspiciously.
Dr. Emelia launched into a discussion of wormhole physics and mass transfer that had Jack and Janice’s eyes glazed over within two minutes. “I’ll get the comm,” said Janice.
A few minutes later, Dr. Emelia put down the comm and looked at Jack. “Does it bother you that we’ll be using your aunt to communicate with Sol?”
Tilting his head, Jack furrowed his brow. “This whole situation bothers me.” Talking to an unknown entity that claimed to be their sun. The potential of an invasion. He thought that maybe the entity was sincere, it had saved Isaac, and Dr. Emelia was right, having the orbital habitats ready for evacuating the colony were a good thing. Ganymede had been hit by asteroids before, and there was always the potential for earthquakes. Sure, the FCF might launch a rescue party, but he’d rather his moon not be at their mercy. Going along with the craziness, if it was craziness, wasn’t harmful and if what Sol said about an invasion came to pass …
Dr. Emelia swallowed. “But we’re using your aunt’s body to communicate without her permission.”
Jack blinked. “Aunt Sally wasn’t talking before Sol took over her body, so I really don’t mind.”
Dr. Emelia released a long breath. “But we’ve violated her bodily autonomy.”
Jack’s brow furrowed, remembering the bruises the real Aunt Sally had given him. “No.”
“But the philosophical implication … Sol has hurt humans, caused them great pain and suffering.”
Jack thought of Walton’s fingers leaving a trail of black on the zephie’s skin, its terrible shriek of pain and fear, and the sorrowful wails of its podmates, and that had all been to impress a girl. Sol, or whatever it was, had hurt out of a desire to help, at least.
It was a long story, and not one he wanted to talk about or think about too much, so Jack just said, “Ma’am, every Marine knows the concept of friendly fire.”
Shaking her head, Dr. Emelia said, “Friendly fire in more ways than one.”
Ganymede
11 MONTHS, AND 16 DAYS PRE-INVASION
Jack took off his helmet as he entered Aunt Sally’s nursing home room. She was lying on her back staring at the ceiling, face hard as stone.
“Hi, Aunt Sally.” He coughed. “You there?”
She didn’t even blink. The staff said they didn’t expect her to last much longer. Jack knew Sol could reanimate a corpse, at least for a while, but he was pretty sure that wouldn’t go over well with the nurses here … and he doubted Sol would bother.
He hadn’t seen Sol in any form in a while. It was busy with the experts. The founders had commissioned some computer whizzes to create a “solar interface.” Dr. Emelia said Sol now spoke through a machine to her every day. “Drives me crazy,” she’d said. “But not literally.”
He adjusted the helmet in his hands. He wasn’t needed here; the experts were in charge. He was surprised how sad it made him; his brush with the extraterrestrial, or “celestial,” was over.
“You again,” said Aunt Sally. Her voice was raspier than before.
Jack looked up, not sure if it was Aunt Sally or Sol talking.
“I hate this body,” she said. “This woman was a real bitch, Jack. I realize she was frustrated about not being able to pursue her dreams of higher education on Earth, but there was no way your grandfather could have afforded it. Did she try and work her way back and pay for it herself? No. Selfish narcissist.”
“Uh …” said Jack. He’d never known that about Aunt Sally. Wasn’t sure he’d wanted to know, either.
Her eyes slid to him. “That’s a new uniform.”
“I’m part of the Ganymeden Defense Force, now,” he said. He’d got his rank back, and his family a really nice cabin aboard the Habitat One. They were already living there.
Brow furrowing, she said, “That sounds dangerous.”
It would be, if Sol was right about an invasion. Jack shrugged. “I have combat experience.”
“You’ll never win against them!” she snapped, sounding just about as happy as Kathleen had been.
“Point isn’t to win,” Jack said. “The point is to hold them back until civilians can evacuate.” It would be nice to have evacuated everyone already, but the other three habitats weren’t done yet. Also, there were plenty of people who thought the founders had finally gone crazy, and they weren’t ready to leave.
She huffed. “After all the trouble I went to bring Isaac back to you, you’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Hey, my goal is to survive,” he said. “But if I’m going to go …” He ducked his head. “It’s the way I’d want to.”
“I understand,” said Aunt Sally. He glance
d at her. Her eyes were wet. “I understand that well.”
Of course she did. Jack sat beside her, wiped his face, looked at the picture of Mars on the wall, and back to Aunt Sally. He shifted in his seat. “Could you survive this?” he asked.
“No. Empyrean is draining me, sucking away my fire.”
Jack had heard the name bandied about before. The leader of the stars set to destroy them.
“Could you hide some of your … fire … somewhere?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Jack shifted again. “I don’t know …” He wiped his chin, and then reached out and touched her shoulder. “You’re in here. Could you stay?”
“This body is ready to croak, and I can’t fix that … well, not for long.”
He blinked, remembering the maintenance worker. “What if the body was relatively undamaged?”
Sol sighed. “I don’t think so. I jump started Isaac’s nervous system after I burned the tumor, but he was still in there. I would have driven him mad if I’d stayed. Maybe if he’d been dead longer, and all his processes had truly stopped, but the longer a person is dead, the more cell death occurs, and the less there is for me to work with. That’s why your conversation with the maintenance worker was so short. The conditions would have to be just right … ” She shook her head. “I have no memories from that first host, but Isaac …” Smiling, Sol nodded. Her eyes went to the ceiling. “I liked being Isaac. There was so much going on within him.” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t like being in the computer the founders made. They can turn the computer off at any time, and it has no senses and it doesn’t feel. I like the data of emotions and sight, touch, taste, and sound. Watching humans on Earth has been fascinating … but being human … ” Her lips parted and her eyes shone. For a moment that lasted too long, she didn’t say a word, or blink, and Aunt Sally’s chest didn’t expand. Jack felt his heart catch and his eyes prickle. He never thought he’d be sorry to see Aunt Sally pass … but then he guessed it really wasn’t Aunt Sally he was sad for.
Gasping, her eyelids fluttered, and Jack released a breath.
“Drat this old shell.” Her gaze came back to him. “I can’t keep resparking the synapses in here, Jack.”
Jack felt his chest get tight. He’d heard this conversation before from friends in the field a few times, and with his dad on the terraces. The words were always slightly different, but they came out sounding the same. “Thanks for stopping by,” he said.
She reached out a frail, papery hand, and Jack took it in his own. It was very cold.
“Thank you for stopping by,” she said, her voice raspy beyond recognition. She took a breath, and her hand went limp and her eyes became vacant.
Jack swallowed; his eyes got blurry. He knew that Sol still burned at the heart of the system … but for him, it felt like the sun had completely winked out.
Ganymede
DAY ZERO
For the first time in Jack’s life, Dome 4 was almost completely dark. From the terrace above the dome’s central park and lowest level he could see the last civilians running for the military transport vehicle, a squat wide thing about as long and wide as a freight car parked on three heavy landing struts. There was a ramp from the ground to its back airlock. The civvies’ flimsy enviro suits gleamed silver in the scant emergency lights, reminding Jack of a school of fish.
The sod and plants had been torn up from the lowest level and replanted in the orbiting habitats. The grav plating that had been hidden beneath the sod gleamed dully in the low light. The plating was iron fused with an outer layer of graviton sheathing. Here and there the slate gray of the sheathing had worn away, revealing the rusted orange of iron beneath.
Above him, through the shattered remnants of the dome, a firefight raged. Strange tetrahedron craft were firing at FCF ships. Sol had warned of foot soldiers, but Jack had seen none so far. Still, he and his team of sixteen waited, plasma charge launchers ready on their shoulders, covering the last of the evacuees.
Jack’s breath was loud in his ears and caught on the face plate of his helmet, freezing into delicate patterns, even though the suit’s defrost was on maximum. At the moment, he was more worried about freezing to death than aliens. The comm in Jack’s helmet crackled. “Team 4, civilians are aboard, transport is ready to pull out.”
“We’re coming,” Jack said.
His comm crackled again. “Turning off plating to facilitate your descent.”
“Copy that,” said Jack.
There was a groan from the plating below, which Jack didn’t hear so much as feel in his boots as the shift in gravity affected even the upper terraces. Jack’s body became lighter, and he motioned for his team to leap over the terrace while he covered them.
“We’re down, Sarge,” said Basu.
“On my way,” Jack replied. His heart started to pound. So close.
Hopping over the railing, he sailed through the air, and gently landed five meters below. If it weren’t for his helmet’s reading of his guys’ suit signals, he wouldn’t see them. Between the darkness and their camouflage suits, they were virtually invisible. His helmet projected a quick scan of their vitals. Everyone was cold, but upright.
“Let’s move out,” Jack said. Ahead, the transport’s main airlock was open and glowing. A readout in his helmet displayed the distance, three hundred thirteen meters, three hundred eleven meters, three hundred nine …
Basu and Song reached the transport first and hopped on top in the low G. They dropped to their knees, raised their launchers, and began covering their retreat. The other members of the team poured into the airlock.
Almost there …
Jack’s helmet cracked “Incoming!” just as a streak of light flashed above him. An instant later, he was lifted off his feet and knocked through the air. In the low G the fall wasn’t painful, but the ground was so frigidly cold that it penetrated through his suit. He scrambled awkwardly to his feet and saw one of the tetrahedron-shaped alien vessels had plowed into the plating directly to his left. It was steaming in the glow of the transport’s lights.
Someone’s voice cracked over his helmet. “Run, Sarge!”
He almost did.
But then he saw a flash of silvery shapes coming out from below a terrace overhang. The transport was at twelve o’clock, the alien vessel was at nine o’clock, and evacuees were at seven, and hidden from his guys on the transport by the alien vessel’s shadow.
Jack lifted the launcher to his shoulder, engaged the recoil dampener, and said, “Civvies, my seven, your two o’clock.”
“Are you sure? I get no reading.”
They were in the shadow of the alien ship—it had to be blocking their signals. Jack cursed, and there was a flash of light from the alien vessel. For a moment it left him blind, and then his helmet adjusted, and its sensors displayed the outlines of four bipedal spots of heat that were nearly ten feet tall, emerging on the shadowed side of the vessel. Jack fired, knocking one to its feet. The signals that were Basu and Song leaped toward the vessel as he aimed for the second, at the same time that the third one fired its own weapon: not at him hidden in his armor, or the ship on the far side of its vessel, but at the civilians glowing in the night in their silver suits. Landing on the vessel, Basu shot at the fourth thing, as thing one and two, blasted backward by Jack, wobbled to their feet. Jack swallowed. Their weapons were next to useless, just as Sol had predicted.
“Transport reverse grav plating,” Jack ordered across the general channel. “Team activate magni-grip.” Flipping on the magni-grips of his own boots and suit, Jack fell to his knees and aimed his launcher. The grav plating went from moon-like gravity to anti-gravity, lifting objects from the ground, including the transport.
In his sights he saw Basu, locked onto the tetrahedron vehicle by his magni-boots, swinging a grav staff at one of the invaders. The enormous armored alien went soaring backward above the first two creatures Jack had fired upon. It crashed through the icy wall of what had
once been a decorative waterfall from the first terrace into the parkland.
“Dropping directional phase blast grenade,” Song said. There was another flash, Jack ducked his head, and both Song and Basu curled protectively. A millisecond later, Jack felt the blast. His monitors screamed, but his suit held. Directional blasts read friendly signals and theoretically protected them, but the blasts weren’t perfect. He looked up to see it had done its job. Song and Basu’s vitals were still good, and the invaders had been blown back behind the ice wall of the waterfall with their comrade. Seized by inspiration, Jack ordered, “Turn the plating back on. Fire on the terrace. Melt the water and bring it down between us and them. I’m retrieving the civilians!”
Not waiting for a response, Jack charged.
Someone said, “I’m not getting any life signs,” but his feet were already moving and his mind was set. In the periphery of his vision he saw water spilling from the second terrace, freezing almost instantly, and making another icy wall to lock in the invaders, but not fast enough. Jack kept running.
“I’m helping,” the pilot of the transport said over the comm. Jack was dimly aware of it lifting and turning to aim its guns at the second terrace.
“Bring the whole thing down! Trap them beneath it,” cracked over his comm.
There was the light of plasma fire, bright enough for Jack to see the civilians the aliens had shot at. Three figures. A woman who’d been blasted through, her body severed; a man whose face mask lay on the ground, his face covered in frost; and another shape … Jack flipped on his helmet light.
“Sarge, get out of there!” rang in his ears as Jack stared down at a child, wrapped in an ad hoc enviro suit: a plastic bag over blankets. Both had slipped to the kid’s waist. A too-large oxygen mask was dangling off his face; there was no way it could have ever fit him. The ground trembled, and Jack was dimly aware that the second terrace must be toppling, but his eyes were locked on the kid. Before Jack had even thought about it, he’d scooped him up.