The Solar War (The Long Winter Book 2)

by A. G. Riddle

  There are fourteen long barracks buildings under the domed canopy and people are pouring out of each one, mostly army troops dressed in green fatigues. A few wear the insulated expedition suits like mine, but we only have nine, all fitted specifically to the owner’s body. If we had more of the necessary raw material inputs for the 3D printers, we could make more of the suits. In moments like this, I wish we had more—and I think maybe what James is doing is truly important enough to risk his life for.

  At the command post, Colonel Brightwell is issuing orders rapid-fire, her voice low, the British accented words snapping out like suppressed gun fire.

  “Launch both surveillance drones.”

  At the long table in the middle of the room, Corporal Aguilar types quickly at his terminal, then glances up. “Drone launch confirmed.”

  “How long until we have line-of-sight with Carthage?”

  “Another hour,” the young man responds.

  “Launch the relay balloons.”

  “All of them, ma’am?”

  “All of them, Corporal. We need eyes in the sky and Dr. Matthews may want to issue orders to the ship before it reaches line of sight.”

  Brightwell pauses, seeming to consider her options. “Activate Alpha Tac Team. I want them in the western jungle ASAP. Orders are to take up defensive positions along the herd’s path and await further instructions. No active measures are authorized at this time.”

  Another technician relays the order over the radio.

  Brightwell turns and realizes I’m here. She nods slightly and eyes the troops following.

  “Major,” she calls to one of them. “Lock down protocol.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” The major’s loud, crisp voice makes me wince.

  The command post is a small, one-room habitat that’s only about five hundred square feet. Every inch of it falls silent.

  Brightwell sighs. “Quietly. All of you.”

  The troops turn and creep away. Leaving only the pounding in the distance, like the sound of a thousand cannons firing during a great battle at sea, the rumbling drifting closer to us.

  “Drone telemetry incoming,” Aguilar says.

  The wall screens switch from the perimeter cameras to video feeds from the drones flying above the camp. The vast domed canopy glitters in the unrelenting sunlight. Ripples from the vibrating ground flow across it like ripples on a placid pond.

  A blue-green sea of grass spreads out in every direction, broken only by a field of white comm panels near the canopy. Those panels are our only link to the two colony ships orbiting above.

  The grassy field around our city is bordered to the south by a wide, blue river with white-capped waves. The stream has surged since the storms began. For now, the water isn’t our greatest concern.

  To the north, east, and west, the grass ends in jungle, a thriving ecosystem that reminds me of the rain forests of Earth.

  But for all its similarities to Earth, Eos still feels foreign to me. The sun it orbits is dim and orange-red, a Red Dwarf star that burns less than a tenth as bright as the sun we left. But the temperature here is about as warm as Earth because Eos orbits closer its star.

  This planet, like Earth’s moon, is tidally locked—one side always faces the sun. The hemisphere facing the star is a vast desert. The dark side is the opposite—an expanse of ice and mountains that reminds me of my last glimpses of Earth, the ice ball world we departed from.

  On Eos, in the dividing line between the desert and the ice, lies a sliver of habitation, a band where conditions are just right for human life. We live in that valley, which runs all the way around the planet. We thought it was a paradise. We were wrong.

  We made one miscalculation. There’s a dwarf planet in this solar system with a highly irregular orbit. That planet is moving closer to Eos. It won’t collide. It won’t drastically change our orbit. But the planet’s gravitational pull has caused the Eos to wobble slightly, just enough to cause a minor ecosystem disruption—an event that may well be our undoing.

  On the screen, the drones fly toward the Western Jungle. Our camp passes by below, then out of sight, leaving only the thick canopy of the trees. The first time I entered one of those jungles I was shocked by how dark and cold it was. The leaves and branches are so thick it almost feels like night beneath the trees’ canopy.

  “Switch to IR,” Brightwell whispers.

  The screen changes from color to a landscape of blue and black. In the heart of the western jungle, red life signs light up the display, covering it from edge to edge.

  “Zoom out,” Brightwell says slowly.

  The image widens, but it’s still covered in red dots.

  “Again.”

  Finally, the entire group of red heat signatures is revealed. The dots are formed in a diamond, moving quickly through the jungle, directly for this city.

  If it reaches us, we’re finished.

  Chapter 2

  James

  On the dark side of Eos, I stop the ATV and dismount and walk across the icy plain.

  Arthur stares at me, exasperation on his face. “Go home, James.”

  Ignoring him, I glance down at the tablet, confirming the location. It’s here. Right under my feet.

  A cold wind blows across the plain, pelting me with snow. At the ATV, I pull a shovel from my pack. To the west, ice covers the mountains that separate the dark side of Eos from the habitable valley. The valley we call home, a valley that I fear is in danger from an enemy unseen and unknown. But the answers are out here. I can feel it.

  “What do you tell them?” Arthur asks.

  “About what?”

  “About why you’re out here.”

  “What does it matter?” I mumble as I walk back to the location on the map and begin shoveling snow.

  “My guess?” Arthur says, pretending to contemplate. “My guess is that you tell them that you’re searching for material for the printers. You bring back just enough raw material to assuage their suspicions.”

  “Your deductive powers are breathtaking. It’s almost like you’re a machine capable of running infinite calculations of the possibilities.”

  Arthur smiles. “Touché. But I’m much more than that. And I’m telling you that you should go home, James.” He stares at me, serious now. “Listen to me.”

  “I’d already be at home if you’d help me.”

  “I just did.”

  The shovel breaks through at that moment, catching air below the snow cap that covers the entrance to the tunnel. I dig faster, uncovering the mouth of the passage. It’s dark, a jagged corridor carved into the ice at a descending angle, just big enough for me to walk in if I stoop a bit.

  In the distance, beyond the mountains, I hear a faint rumbling. Probably another storm coming in from the desert.

  “Go home,” Arthur says. “I told you the storms of Eos are dangerous.”

  “I’m not worried about the storms.”

  “You should be.”

  “Why won’t you tell me what’s buried out here?”

  “Because it wouldn’t help you, James.”

  I trudge down the tunnel, the light from my helmet lighting the way.

  “Come on,” I call back to him. After a moment, I hear his heavy footsteps crunching in the ice at the floor.

  At the end of the tunnel lies a black metal sphere, slightly larger than a basketball. It’s the third one I’ve found. Quickly, I take a measurement and confirm that it’s larger than the other two. But only slightly.

  A symbol is carved into the ice on the wall beside it—the same symbol we found on the comm panels at the abandoned Carthage settlement. Except one of the curving lines is carved deeper and its endpoint is larger.

  Harry made this mark. Was it message to me? Or simply a marker for him and his team?

  He’s dug around the device on all sides, allowing me to examine it. Like the other spheres, there are no markings, only a thick shell and a square door that lies open. It’s empty inside. The other
two were as well.

  Since the first time I saw the symbol—the Eye of the Grid—I thought it was a map. My first instinct was that it was a map of this solar system. Now I believe its a map of Eos—a map that leads to whatever is buried out here. But with no scale or frame of reference, there was no way to identify those locations.

  Finding this third spheres changes everything. Now I have a proportional dot plan to overlay on the Eye. On my tablet, I plot the points on a map of Eos, then overlay the symbol.

  They match. Using this, I can find every one of the spheres—if that is what’s out there. Things will go faster now, I don’t need the rovers combing across the ice looking for metal readings.

  I turn the tablet to Arthur. “It is a map. What will I find at the other locations? More spheres?”

  He rolls his eyes. “I imagine you’ll find that you’re wasting your time.”

  “That’s cute.” I study the map a second longer, considering which point to search next.

  “There’s only one line that terminates on this map. Is it the start? Or the end?”

  “Who says it can’t be both?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s the only one you’re going to get.”

  I exhale. I’m tired and cold and sick of being in the dark—figuratively and literally.

  “We’re going to the point in the middle. It’s different, isn’t it?”

  Arthur shakes his head, disgusted.

  “Why do you call it the Eye?”

  I wait, but Arthur doesn’t respond, simply looks away.

  I press him. “It’s because an eye sees everything, isn’t it?” A thought occurs to me then. “No. It’s more than that. The eye sees something very special: the beginning of our lives and the end.”

  His gaze snaps back to me, but he remains silent.

  “We don’t remember the first thing we see, when we’re born. The eye sees but the brain doesn’t understand. What the eye sees is lost in the past. But we see the end, with our eyes wide open, like the arcs in the eye. What does the Eye of the Grid see? What’s lost to the past?”

  Arthur’s face freezes. His eyes go glassy. I know this expression. He has paused all bodily control functions. Every bit of his processing power is focused on some calculation. I’ve only seen this a few times. What does it mean?

  Suddenly, he reanimates, as if waking up. “Interesting.”

  “What is?”

  “You, James.”

  “You didn’t think I would figure it out.”

  “The probability was so small as to be indistinguishable from zero.” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t go to that point or any other.”

  “Why?” I step closer to him. “There’s only one reason you wouldn’t want that: because it might harm the grid.”

  “That may be, but consider this: what if that’s not the only reason. What if it could harm you?”

  “You don’t care about us. You’ve said so. You only care about the conservation of energy. The grid’s great work, whatever that is.”

  “People change.”

  “You’re not a person.”

  “Not by your definition, but it doesn’t mean I can’t change.”

  “So you care about us now?”

  “Is it so hard to believe that I could?”

  “Yes. It’s hard to believe you’ve changed.”

  Arthur stares at me. “You have. In prison, when all of this started, you were unafraid, even in the face of a riot that could have killed you.” He pauses. “Maybe you would have even welcomed it. You had nothing to lose then. Your family hated you. The world didn’t understand how valuable you were. They rejected you, locked you away. But now, you have it all—your brother’s love, a wife, three children, a band of people that celebrate you and trust you. You have it all, and you’re terrified you’re going to lose it again. You’ve been fighting the Long Winter so long you don’t understand that it’s over now.”

  “It’s not over. Now start walking.”

  Arthur doesn’t move.

  I draw the energy weapon from my pocket and let it hang at my side. Grigory made the device. One shot will completely disable Arthur.

  “You can walk or I can strap you to the back of the ATV. I don’t care which.”

  He turns and trudges up the out of the cave.

  The wind has picked up and snow is falling. It feels like a storm front is forming, moving towards the mountains and the valley beyond.

  Arthur lifts his chin to gaze at the sky.

  “You don’t want to get caught in this storm, James.”

  “Then we better hurry.”

  He jogs beside the ATV on the plain and walks when we enter the mountains. The origin point on the map—our destination—lies in the mountains at the edge of the dark side.

  As we travel deeper into the mountains, shafts of dim light break over the peaks in the distance. The barren, frozen ground slowly gives way to life, shrubs at first, then giant trees that reach into the sky, trying to catch the meager scraps of sunlight. The branches have no leaves, only a blue green spongy substance that hangs like ripped-up curtains. They remind me of Spanish Moss on the trees in the South where I grew up.

  The ground is as black as soot, damp, and soft. In the distance, I hear animal calls, but the only life visible to me are the tiny insects that crawl across the trees, making small bits of bark seem as though they’re shifting back and forth.

  The tablet beeps, and I check the map. The location is a hundred feet away. I stop the ATV and dismount, hiking the rest of the way, Arthur plodding along in front of me. Up ahead, I catch sight of the cave entrance. The mouth is wide and tall, an opening that goes right into the side of a mountain.

  Arthur stops and opens his mouth, but I draw the weapon and motion him forward.

  “Keep moving.”

  “Don’t you want to go in first?”

  “No. It might be dangerous.”

  “Finally, you’re right about something.”

  A wind gust blows through the forest, swaying the trees. Pieces of the moss-like substance drift down, the dead particles gray, the living blue and green, falling all around us like confetti in a ticker-tape parade.

  “The storm’s coming,” Arthur says as the moss collects on top of his head.

  I wave the weapon again, and he continues into the cave. Within a few feet, the darkness is complete. I snap my headlamp on and study the walls. They’re rock, black and damp like the forest floor. After another wave of the gun, Arthur marches forward. The cave turns ahead, and when I round the corner, the beam of light rakes over piles of bones.

  I grip the gun tighter as my heart thunders in my chest. Slowly, Arthur turns to me, his face half in shadow.

  I step back until I feel the cold of the cave wall on my back. I glance left, then right, searching for any predators that might live down here. But I don’t see any. The cave is dead silent.

  I move my light to the bones, sweeping across the piles that stretch so deep into the cave I can’t see the end. Only then do I realize they’re human.

  “Who are they?” I whisper.

  Arthur’s voice is loud, echoing off the rock walls like a megaphone. “You know who they are.”

  “What is this?”

  “This is the end of the road you’re traveling, James.”

  Chapter 3

  Emma

  For a long moment, the command post is silent. All eyes study the drone video feed on the screen, the red heat signatures moving through the jungle, headed directly for Jericho City.

  Brightwell breaks the silence.

  “How long before the leading edge reaches the city?”

  Corporal Aguilar chews his lip as he studies his terminal. “Twenty minutes, give or take.”

  Troops are continuing to arrive at the command post, men and women apparently not needed for the lockdown protocol—and not subject to it. The crowded one-room building is overflowing out into the s
treet, the crowd shuffling and elbowing as they try to get a peek at the screens.

  Brightwell turns to a tall captain standing just inside the doorway. Her name is Rachel Harris, and she’s third in the chain of command for Jericho City’s armed forces.

  “Captain, execute Omega Protocol. Form up on the herd’s vector and shoot anything that breaches the tree line.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Harris snaps before turning and weaving out of the command post.

  Omega Protocol mobilizes our entire army and arrays them at the city’s perimeter for its defense.

  Brightwell nods to me and cuts through the crowd to a nook at the back of the room. She keeps her eyes on the screens, voice low.

  “We don’t have the firepower to take the herd down.”

  “Can we evacuate?”

  “Not everyone—not in twenty minutes. And those who get out might be overrun.”

  Brightwell’s piercing eyes betraying no emotion, as if she’s just recounted today’s lunch menu. We can’t fight and we can’t run. What does that leave? One thing is certain: it’s my decision to make.

  It’s a been a year since we completed the buildings of Jericho City and began settling our families here. Six months ago, we held elections. To my shock and horror, I was elected Mayor. I don’t know exactly why. James thinks it was my experience on the ISS and, in his words, my leadership during the Long Winter, when we were trapped in the Citadel and during those difficult months before we left Earth. I think he was glad I was elected—it’s given me less time to wonder about what he’s doing. I never imagined we would face a conflict like this.

  In our last year on Earth, we faced similar crises—but we faced those decisions as a team. Fowler, Harry, Charlotte, and Earls were all at the table, giving their opinions and sharpening our plans. They’re all gone now, as are the rest of the colonists from the Carthage.

  Vanished.

  Their camp, almost a mirror image of ours, lies ten miles to the north. It’s deserted, the buildings crumbling and caved in from falling tree limbs. Is this what happened to them? Is that our fate? Did they face a similar decision and chose wrong?