by A. G. Riddle
That’s life. Things always change. And we have to change with it.
The auditorium is half full when I walk onto the stage. Fifty faces stare down at me from the rows of stadium seating, tablets at the ready. My students remind me of myself when I trained at NASA: eager, bright-eyed, and dedicated to the cause. Some of these men and women will crew the two supercarriers being constructed right now. They will be on the front lines fighting the grid. Our future is in their hands, and it’s my job to prepare them. There’s only one way to do that, but still, I dread what I’m about to do.
I step to the lectern and speak into the microphone, my voice booming in the high-ceilinged auditorium. “Space is a dangerous place.”
I let the words hang there like a warning.
“So. What’s the key to survival in space?”
I’ve told the class that there will be an exam in the next three sessions. It won’t be a written exam; everyone knows that from stories passed down by past classes. It will be an applied exercise, one no class has ever seen before. As expected, they think their answers now might be part of the test. Voices ring out from every row of the auditorium, all students eager to register a response.
“Oxygen.”
“Power.”
“Situational awareness.”
“Sleep.”
“Capable crew.”
“A good teacher.”
That last one gets a few chuckles from the group and a humorless smile from me, but it won’t help the French engineer with his grade.
A slender girl with strawberry-blond hair in the front row speaks up as the answers die down: “Being prepared for anything.”
I nod to her. “Correct.”
I point to the EVA suits lining the walls, hanging there like bizarre curtains in a theater. The suits used by NASA in space are more than decoration today. There are a hundred suits, two for each student. I made sure of that.
“For example, at all times, you need to know where your EVA suit is.”
The students turn in the seats, eying the suits.
“Why? Because you never know when you’ll need it. I know, because when I was on the ISS, if I had reached my suit a few seconds later, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
As my students digest the words, I reflect that if I hadn’t gotten to my suit in time, I never would have met James or given birth to Allie or lived to carry the child growing inside of me right now. All of my fellow crewmembers were too late to get to their suits—except for one. He had the misfortune of being hit with shrapnel. There was nothing he could have done to survive, or me to save him.
“In space, seconds matter. A split second could be the difference between life and death—yours or that of the person beside you. And everyone down on Earth. Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do to survive. But you can always be prepared. And it always ups your chances of survival.”
I snap my fingers. “Suits on. Last five are cut.”
The auditorium breaks into chaos as the students practically jump out of their seats and run to the EVA suits hanging from the walls. The room soon looks like a game of twister, students elbowing and crawling over each other to get to the suits and slip inside.
When my fifty students are suited up, I signal them to take their helmets off. Every one of them is breathing hard, eyes trained on me.
I motion to the cameras behind the stage. “I’ll check the footage and notify the last five. If you don’t get an email from me, you’re still in this class. For those of you who don’t make this cut, I hope you’ll reapply. Remember, the second key to survival in space is to never give up.”
Though he works long hours and I see him less and less at home, James always meets me for lunch. It’s our ritual, a respite in the middle of our hectic work days.
All morning I’ve debated when to share my news. I’ve never been good at keeping secrets. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve worn my feelings on my shirtsleeve. He’ll know something’s up and, simply put, I need to tell him I’m pregnant, for my sake too.
He’s standing in the cafeteria waiting when I arrive. There’s a troubled look on his face but he brightens when he sees me, a smile tugging at his lips. The crow’s feet at his eyes and lines on his forehead have grown deeper in the last few years, like ruts ground into him by time and stress. But his eyes are the same: intense and gentle.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi yourself.”
His tone turns more serious. “Listen, I have something I need to tell you.”
“Me too.”
He bunches his eyebrows. “You do?”
“I do.” I hold a hand out. “But you first.”
He pauses, seeming to gather his thoughts. “Okay. But not here.”
I follow as he leads me out of the cafeteria and up to his office. On the screen there are three video feeds showing rocky, spherical asteroids. The date-time stamp at the bottom of the image tells me that these are live images, apparently from probes or drones. All of the asteroids have large craters, but without a frame of reference, I don’t have any sense of how large they are or where they are.
“These three asteroids broke from the Kuiper Belt about two years ago. We’ve been tracking them since.”
“Are they…”
“On an impact course for Earth? Yes.”
My body goes numb, mouth runs dry.
“Size? Time to impact?” I ask, voice devoid of emotion, mind struggling to process this potential death blow to our species.
“Each is about the size of Texas. Any one of them would be an extinction-level event. Time to impact is forty-two days.”
“The supercarriers—”
“Won’t be ready in time. Not even close.” He turns and faces me. “But we won’t need them.”
“The orbital defense array can handle them?”
“No. They could destroy smaller asteroids, but nothing on this scale. We’ve created a fleet of attack drones specifically for these asteroids. We’ve been launching the drones along with the parts for the supercarriers to try to keep it out of the news. A mass panic would cause even more issues.”
“What’s the plan?”
“The drones will engage the asteroids in one hour. We’re going to blow them to bits.”
I exhale. “This is what you’ve been working on. Night and day.”
“Yes. For two years.” He takes my hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I knew it would worry you.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“I want you to join us in ops control for the battle.”
“Of course. I’ll cancel my afternoon class.”
“Great.” He steps toward the door but stops. “What did you want to tell me?”
“Nothing.”
He glances back at me. “Sure?”
“I’m sure. It’s nothing.”
There’s no way I can tell him now.
After. I’ll tell him after.
Chapter 4
Emma
NASA’s mission control center looks like one of the old stock exchanges: people are standing at terminals, shouting, pausing to listen to their headsets, and shouting some more, occasionally falling silent to stare at the screens in front of them. The large viewscreen on the far wall displays video feeds of the three asteroids and stats from the drone fleet.
The room is hot and loud and smells of coffee. There’s a sense of tension, of time running out. Through the crowd, I spot Harry sitting at a workstation, typing furiously on the keyboard. Grigory is shouting in Russian to a person at his station. Lina is next to him, headphones on, staring at her laptop, lines of code scrolling up as she searches for something. Min is conversing with Lawrence Fowler, both sipping from coffee mugs. I don’t see Charlotte or Izumi.
James leans close to me and whispers: “There’s about a thirty-five light-minute delay between us and the asteroids, so we’re nearing the end of our time frame to issue changes to the pre-battle sequence for the first fleet of drones.”
“The attack is automated?”
“Yes.”
“Are the drones camouflaged?”
“They are. We’re using the same methods we employed on the Pax and the Spartan fleet. The drones look like floating space rock.”
“The image quality in the video feeds is incredible.”
“More of Lina’s handiwork. She’s been tweaking the data compression algorithm. We’ve positioned the drones in a daisy chain to comm-patch the images back to us.”
Fowler wanders over to us and gives me a light hug. “Good to see you, Emma.”
“Likewise.” I motion to the frantic activity around us. “Was it this busy when the Spartan fleet launched?”
“No. It was busier then.”
Fowler excuses himself to see what Grigory and his colleagues are debating, and James and I settle in at his terminal.
My voice low, I ask, “What do you think is going to happen?”
“I expect the asteroids to deploy countermeasures.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Our drones will hit them. The asteroids will be split into pieces. My second fear is that the asteroids have some sort of propulsion apparatus attached. Once we hit them, they might accelerate and change course, trying to get past our other drones.”
“I assume you’ve accounted for that?”
“We have. We’ll attack in waves. We’ve got twelve fleets of drones out there—all spaced out. We’ll make adjustments after the first four fleets hit the asteroids.”
I watch as James scans the data and types messages and occasionally answers questions via his headset. The minutes pass slowly. Finally, an announcement booms from the overhead speakers: “First fleet command cut-off in ten, nine, eight…”
When it reaches zero, it feels like air going out of the room. People slump back into their chairs and stare at the screen, a few throwing pens onto their desks, others burying their faces in their hands. It reminds me of a college exam where the proctor’s just called time and half the room wasn’t finished and the other half is second-guessing their answers.
“What now?” I whisper to James.
“Now we wait, and see if we got it right.”
I’m chatting with Lina when a countdown appears on the main screen.
<<30>>
<<29>>
<<28>>
Around the room, conversations die down. Everyone stands. Some people pull off their headsets.
I drift over to stand next to James as a voice once again booms over the room’s speakers. “First fleet ordnance deploying in three, two, one.”
White flashes consume the three video feeds as the drones release their missiles.
I hold my breath, eyes glued to the screen, waiting for the white to fade. When it’s gone, I see nothing but the blackness of space, dotted by rocky objects of all sizes. There must be hundreds of them.
James immediately sits back down and scans the data coming in. I can read some of it, and I know it’s good news—the payloads hit the asteroids, and hard. The survey shows that the asteroids have broken into more than one thousand objects, ranging widely in mass, the largest still classified as extinction-level targets. Where there were three extinction-level asteroids before, there are seven now. While that’s technically bad news, it’s a step in the right direction.
The voice over the loudspeaker sounds again. “Second fleet acquiring targets.” The seconds seem to tick by like hours. Finally, the voice says, “Second fleet deploying ordnance in three, two, one.”
Again, white flashes cover the screen and fade, leaving a field of even smaller rocky objects against the black backdrop.
When the data from the drones appears, I exhale. There are almost two thousand objects now, but only three that would cause an extinction-level event.
The shouting resumes, until the third fleet deploys its ordnance. And the cycle repeats once more.
After the fourth fleet’s flyby, everyone in the room springs into action, resuming the fever pitch of activity I witnessed when I first arrived. I soon learn the reason: they have a very short window to issue new commands to the remaining eight fleets.
James and his team left a large gap between the fourth and fifth drone fleets. The fifth fleet (and all the fleets behind it) are still close enough to Earth for us to issue updated commands before they encounter the asteroids. The idea is to adapt the approach with each wave of drones, maximizing the impact of the ordnance.
The team around Min’s desk talks quickly but in an orderly fashion. The debate at Grigory’s station is chaotic.
James plops down on his chair and stares at his screen. He suddenly looks so tired. Harry wanders over and smiles at me. “Hi, Emma.”
“Hi, Harry. How are you?”
“Oh, you know, I love a good game of asteroids.”
His reference to the old Atari game gets a laugh from me and a tired grin from James.
“Figured we’d be seeing more action,” Harry says to James, who just nods, eyes still on the screen. I can almost see the wheels turning in his head. I’ve seen that look before: on the Pax and here in Camp Seven in the months after. He’s working something out in that big brain of his, and I think he doesn’t like where it’s going.
Harry turns to watch Min’s group for a while; then he glances back at me. “They’ve got about…” Harry leans over and peeks at James’s screen. “… seven more minutes to make course changes to the second wave of fleets. Sounds like they’re going to split them into two smaller groups of two fleets each.” He nods toward Grigory’s group. “And they’re trying to figure out how to maximize the payload efficiency.”
“And you guys…”
“Thought this battle would be less one-sided,” Harry replies. “Figured we’d be dealing with an active combat situation, issuing new commands to each fleet to adapt our attack.”
James leans forward and types a command on the keyboard. On the screen, a message appears.
<
Harry peeks over, sees the command and starts asking James questions about it. I stand and walk away, leaving them to work. Is that what James thinks is happening: a virus? Are the drones infected? Sending bad data back? It’s possible. It would mean that the asteroids might be whole, untouched, and still heading for Earth.
Izumi must have slipped into the room during the battle. I spot her near the back wall, standing beside Oscar, who smiles widely at me. He’s been working on his facial expressions. They’re getting better, but the levity of his expression is wrong for the mood in the room. Still, I’m glad to see him trying. Charlotte’s here too now, conversing with an Italian cryptography expert whom I taught in my class eighteen months ago.
When I reach her, Izumi hugs me and whispers in my ear: “He struggled with whether to tell you.”
“I figured. How has the group been?”
“A mess. Stressed. Sleep-deprived.” Izumi’s gaze drifts to the wall screen. “I hope it’s almost over.”
She has perhaps the toughest job of all: keeping the team healthy, mentally and physically.
The command deadline for the second wave passes and the tension in the room ebbs. It ratchets up again about thirty minutes later when they make contact. By the time the third wave finishes, the asteroids have been pulverized almost to dust. Cheers go up around the room. The mood turns jovial. I hear a few people apologize to the colleagues they shouted at during the battle. Everyone is standing, smiling, relieved. Except for James. He sits at his desk, staring at the screen.
I walk over and read the message flashing in red letters.
<
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he mumbles, eyes still on the screen.
I settle into the chair beside him and try to make eye contact. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. It’s nothing.”
That night, everyone comes over to our habitat for dinner. Harry mans the grill, w
earing a T-shirt with a logo for a fictitious restaurant called “Apocalypse Grill.”
Grigory stands beside him, drinking a cocktail that I’m pretty sure is ten parts vodka, one part something else. He started the night speaking English. Now, as his blood alcohol rises, the Russian words are slowly creeping in every now and then. Lina stands next to him, drinking a Beck’s. It’s weird seeing a branded beer after the world economy has collapsed, but recovering items from the now thawed cities has become a big business. Salvage companies have been scouring the world for bottles of medicine, beer, and whiskey. Those are the biggest sellers—not diamonds and gold. The Long Winter has changed us in ways I never imagined. And I never imagined Grigory and Lina getting together. It’s always the quiet ones that surprise you.
Min and Izumi sit at a wooden picnic table near the grill, talking quietly. Their budding romance is the worst-kept secret in Camp Seven, and it’s going at a glacial pace, like a chess game where each player takes months to consider their next move.
James and his brother Alex are laughing about something, but I can see in my husband’s tired eyes that his mind is elsewhere. I had thought I would tell him about the pregnancy tonight, but I sense that this still isn’t the time. I’ll wait until tomorrow.
Beyond the house, the kids are running in the open expanse of hard-packed desert, playing soccer, Oscar serving as referee. At the height of the Long Winter, I wondered if I would ever see kids playing soccer again. But here, against the backdrop of the setting sun, the world looks normal again.
But it’s not normal for us—not for James and his team. They’ve told everyone outside the group that tonight’s celebration is for the completion of a new drone design. This is what endless war looks like: lies to the people around you and danger they never see.