Protectors of Earth

by Felix R. Savage

  Tancred is wriggling. I transfer my plate to my right hand and raise my left hand to hold him still.

  “The wild card …” Elsa pauses. “Is the Void Dragon eggs which we now believe to be scattered over Earth, and possibly in the Jovian Belt, as well. Based on the discovery of two Void Eggs so far, we have been able to reconstruct the event that we are calling Eggfall. Our hypothesis is that the Void Dragon laid its eggs when it died after consuming Sol. Its death was an explosive event which scattered its eggs in the direction of our planet.”

  She is talking about Tancred’s mom. I wonder if he understands that, and that’s why he’s upset. He lost his mom before he was even born, and now all he’s got is a crappy dad-substitute, a.k.a. me.

  “Our models indicate that there may be as many as several hundred eggs scattered in locations ranging from Scandinavia to central Africa …”

  THUD.

  The floor comes alive and throws me off my feet.

  Everyone goes down like chess pieces when you shake the board.

  I land with one hand in a plate of food, breaking my fall, and with my other hand I instinctively reach out to help Elsa, letting go of Tancred.

  He pops into the air, flapping his wings.

  Screams and curses fill the workshop. Everyone’s on the floor. Someone’s crying out in genuine pain—maybe one of those heavy lab instruments fell on them. The same klaxon from earlier starts wailing again. WOWWW WOWWW WOWWW. I feel like I’m reliving a nightmare. I can’t hear anything over the noise.

  Then it suddenly stops.

  Thank God. Just another false alarm. I help Elsa up.

  All the lights go out.

  There’s an instant of shocked silence, apart from that poor person who is still screaming for help.

  We’re standing in the pitch dark, all bumped and bruised.

  Then we’re not.

  Flickering reddish light falls upon a hundred upturned, frightened faces, as the toilet paper-esque decorations start to burn.

  Tancred’s flapping around up there, getting more and more tangled up in the stuff, panting fire in his panic.

  The decorations turn out to be highly flammable. The streamers look almost pretty as they burn along their lengths, until fragile worms of hot ash begin to fall on us.

  Half the guests stampede for the exit, and the other half, led by Dr. Joy, rush to save their precious lab equipment.

  The room fills with smoke.

  “Jay!” Elsa yells at me. “Control that dragon!”

  What does she think I’m trying to do? Wading through spilled food, I right one of the buffet tables and drag it into the middle of the room. Standing on it, I yell, “TANCRED!!”

  His panic shrills in my head. Smoke stings my eyes.

  “TANCRED! Tancred, GET DOWN HERE!”

  He flies above my head, breathing fire as hard as he can, scorching the ceiling. I am six feet three, which usually just attracts attention to my lack of physical coordination. But sometimes it comes in handy. I leap straight up—this is easier on Ceres, as the artificial gravity in the ARES dome is only 0.75 Gs—and snag him. “Gotcha!”

  I am so scared and mad I could … I could … do something. Ignoring Elsa and everyone else, crushing Tancred against my chest, I blunder towards the exit. I have some trouble finding it in the darkness, especially as half of the guests have had the same idea. Distinguished scientists and military officers shout intemperately. I hear “Offense attack,” and “Void Dragon” and “loss of life support.” Sprinklers come on, putting out the burning decorations, and turning ash to mud underfoot. It’s slippery.

  Someone switches on a flashlight. “Steady, steady. Take it easy, people.” It’s Patrick. He grabs my elbow and steers me through the crush, respectfully easing people aside. He probably prevents a lethal stampede right there.

  Outside, the fresh air tastes divine. But there’s still no light. No, that’s not right. There’s Jupiter, shining in the … in the blackness overhead. What it is is there’s no sky.

  The dome roof refracted the light of Jupiter, so it appeared like a blue sky. But with the power off, the active refraction is down. This is what it really looks like in the ARES dome in the afternoon.

  Yet we’re still breathing. “Dome … breached?” I gasp.

  “Naw,” Patrick says. “We’d be dead. It’s just a blackout.”

  How does he know? He doesn’t know. He’s just guessing. And now the silence intrudes on my ears. Never noticed, always humming in the background, the dome’s life support machinery has quit working. The air is not being refreshed. If they don’t get that back up soon, we’re all going to die.

  Harsh, like bright moonlight, the Jupiter-light illuminates people dashing to their cars. The cars, of course, are backup life support systems. They can be sealed, and contain emergency consumables. More headlights move around the lake.

  I start towards Elsa’s people-mover, but Patrick drags me off to the side, into the vegetation that surrounds the building. I can identify each type of tree by its familiar smell. Jacarandas. Banana trees. Mangos. Just like home. Apart from the part where we’re all going to die.

  “Where’re we going?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Patrick says. “Your aunt and that Joy guy were heading for the back exit. If anyone knows how to get the power back on, it’s them. I told Paul to stay on them.”

  His flashlight is off now, and I’ve totally lost my bearings in the dense trees, yet Patrick seems to know exactly where he’s going, warning me in a whisper not to step on dry twigs, which he effortlessly avoids.

  “How do you know this stuff?” I whisper. He’s a former sapper, a mine-clearance guy, not a ranger or anything.

  “I got us onto this wilderness survival course one time. Watch out for that branch.”

  “Why’d they approve a wilderness survival course for a bunch of people who work on asteroids?”

  “Oh, you know, it’s the army ...” Patrick grabs my arm. We halt.

  Right the other side of the jacarandas in front of us, I hear a voice.

  “What a goddamn mess.”

  It’s Dr. Joy. Breathless, furious.

  I know how he feels. I’m about to move forward and speak to him when Tancred writhes in my hands. Oh please God, no, not this again.

  “Have you got all the ECAPP backups?” Elsa’s voice.

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Check. Now. If you’ve forgotten anything, we’ll have to go back in.”

  They went back to save Dr. Joy’s data.

  Blue light filters through the undergrowth. Dr. Joy has switched on a computer. “There isn’t time for this,” he says.

  Elsa says, “The dome is holding. If there is another impactor on its way, and our useless goddamn navy can’t intercept it, we will either die, or we won’t. So there isn’t actually any particular hurry.”

  Dr. Joy clatters away on his computer. I hardly hear him, as Tancred is biting my palm, he’s so frantic to escape.

  I can’t let Elsa see me losing control of him again! In my desperation, I get down—quietly!—on my hands and knees and crouch down on top of him so he’s trapped between my chest and the ground. When he tries to wriggle away, I catch his forelegs in my hands. I’m the boss.

  Daddy! HUNGRY!

  I don’t care. You have to behave!

  He twists his head around on his neck and blinks up at me. His eyes catch a sliver of Jupiter-light that stabs through the trees. They are a different green from the rest of him, the color of Granny Smith apples. He’s so freaking cute. And so dangerous.

  Do you understand me? You wrecked Elsa’s house, and then you set the workshop on fire! This cannot go on! I give his forelegs a little shake. Do you understand me?!

  Patrick crouches down beside me. He puts his mouth so close to my ear that it almost touches, and says under his breath, “What are you doing?”

  Still holding onto Tancred, I turn my head and breathe into Patrick’s ear, “Obedie
nce training. My mom used to do this with our dog. You have to show them who’s boss.”

  “You got a dog?” he whispers.

  “Used to have,” I whisper back.

  “What happened?”

  “She ran away. Got hit by a car.”

  “So that didn’t work.”

  “No.”

  “He isn’t a dog, anyway.”

  “No.”

  At this point, Patrick and I are both shaking with suppressed laughter. I don’t know what’s so funny. But our hilarity seems to calm Tancred down a little. Meanwhile, Dr. Joy is muttering to his computer on the other side of the bushes. He finally says in a calmer voice, “It’s all here.”

  “Including the test data?” Elsa says.

  “Including all the shitty, worthless test data. When are you going to let me test the prototype on that Void Dragon?”

  I freeze. Patrick freezes. Even Tancred freezes.

  I knew this beardy asshole was looking at Tancred as if he’d like to eat him. What he’d actually like to do is get him into the lab and use him as a guinea pig in his research!

  “Never,” Elsa says, and I go limp with relief.

  “Come on,” Dr. Joy says. “The null field has potentially infinite energy storage capacity.”

  “In theory,” Elsa says. “But that Void Dragon belongs to my nephew.”

  I love you, Elsa.

  “Sorry, Clay.” Her voice moves away. “You’ll have to wait until they find some more eggs.”

  Patrick snorts quietly beside me.

  “Hurry up,” Elsa says. “The kids are probably waiting for us. I haven’t received an order to evacuate, but we ought to get into the car, just in case there is another impactor coming.”

  Dr. Joy follows her, making enough noise for an elephant. Patrick holds me back. He needn’t. I’m perfectly aware that we must not let Elsa know we overheard that conversation.

  When they’re gone, Paul’s dark face emerges from the shadows, followed by the rest of him. “Did you hear that?” he says. He’s still got a piece of chocolate cake in one hand. He finishes it off in one bite. “Wheels within frigging wheels, mate.”

  “Everyone’s got their own agenda,” Patrick says. “Didja bring any cake for us?”

  “Milosz’s got it,” Paul says, as Milosz comes out of the back door of the building, carrying a tower of paper plates with various delicacies sandwiched inside.

  Elsa and Dr. Joy risked a smoke-filled building to rescue their data; Milosz risked it to rescue dessert. I can’t help smiling.

  “This was on the floor? That’s nasty,” Patrick says, grabbing the top plate. It’s melting ice cream. He digs in as we walk back around the building. “Man, I can’t even remember the last time I had ice cream before this.”

  Our near brush with death has killed my appetite, but I feel calmer, anyway. And Tancred has gone back to being a lump on my shoulder. I feel a bit bad for yelling at him, but mostly relieved that he isn’t spitting fire anymore.

  We come out at the front of the building. Dr. Joy’s car is the only one left. “There you are,” Elsa shouts, waving at us from the driver’s seat. Badrick is already in the back, regaling Dr. Joy about the time his high school caught fire back in Jamaica. He’s throwing up a verbal smokescreen to distract them from asking where we were. Dr. Joy nods along dazedly.

  Elsa drives.

  We’re halfway to her house when the power comes back on.

  The sky lights up sunset-gold and violet.

  Spontaneously, we all cheer.

  A moment later, Elsa gets a notification from BeltCOM. It was another Offense impactor. This one struck so close to the ARES dome that the shockwave tripped the auto-scram on the dome’s reactor. Instant shutdown. Now it’s back on.

  Elsa places a call to BeltCOM. She’s still yelling at them when we pull into the drive of her house. Leaving her and Dr. Joy in the car, we get out. The cawing and twittering of disoriented birds fills the air. In the background, the life-support machinery hums quietly. Uplifted by happiness, I stroke Tancred with a forefinger— Hey, little guy, everything’s OK! He just tucks his head further under his wing.

  Milosz sniffs the air. “Something’s burning.”

  In the car, Elsa is informing BeltCOM that the blackout started a fire in the ECAPP lab. I feel another wave of love for her. She’s covering up for Tancred, letting us off the hook.

  But Milosz is right. There is a smell of burning.

  We troop warily around to the lawn behind the house.

  A long scorch mark stretches thirty feet across it.

  In the middle of the scorch mark sits the metal workbench from Elsa’s garage, which I’ve been using. My stuff has gone off it. Now its vise holds Francie’s Void Dragon egg, Pinkie Pie.

  The bench is blackened, the plastic handle of the vise melted.

  Pinkie Pie looks just the same as ever.

  Huifang pushes the lawnmower out of the garage. She stops guiltily when she sees us. She was clearly planning to mow the lawn in hopes of disguising the damage.

  Francie comes out after her, holding a homemade flamethrower. I recognize the tank bit of it as formerly belonging to Elsa’s fire extinguisher. Full marks for creativity.

  “What the H E double hockeysticks,” Patrick says dangerously, “is this?”

  Francie shrugs. “I had another idea for hatching her.”

  Patrick swallows audibly. “Looks like it didn’t work.”

  “Nope,” Francie says. She has a grease mark on her lightly freckled cheek, and soot on her hands, and fury in her lovely green eyes. “It didn’t work.”

  I bet they still haven’t cleaned up the living-room, either.

  “You can’t just do stuff like this,” Patrick says.

  “Says who? Says you? As you keep reminding me, we’re not in the army anymore. So that’s actually just your opinion,” Francie snaps, and I realize I’m seeing the corona of an ongoing argument, something to do with their relationship.

  “OK,” Patrick says, getting red in the face, “but that doesn’t mean you can just—”

  “We have a job to do. Thanks, I’m aware of that, and I was trying to do it, while you guys were partying.”

  Patrick goes redder still. Paul says, “Wasn’t much of a party. The Offense crashed it.” He elbows Patrick.

  Patrick makes a visible effort to deactivate his inner non-com. He exhales loudly. He stops thrusting his head forwards like a bull, and straightens his back. His beefy fists unclench. “Yeah,” he says lightly. “It was a mess. But we saved some nibbles for you.” Paul passes him a squashed piece of cake in between two paper plates. Patrick holds it out to Francie. He obviously planned this as a sweet gesture, but now it’s been spoiled.

  Francie just glares at him. “Do you realize everything here is imported at vast expense? Even the freaking air! The waste is just unbelievable.”

  “So you don’t want this?”

  “No, I don’t want it!”

  Patrick curses and hurls the cake into the bushes.

  Badrick ambles around the corner of the house just in time to prevent a major explosion. “Hey mon. Have yuh seen de sky?”

  We all look up—and gulp.

  A huge crack disfigures the dome’s zenith, like a bolt of frozen lightning

  It obviously isn’t a breach. Just a stress fracture.

  All the same … “Holy shit,” Patrick says, expressing my thoughts exactly.

  I hurry back around the front. Elsa’s just ending her call. I point to the crack in the sky. “I think we’d better leave as soon as we can,” I say, striving to communicate to her with my tone all I cannot say. “As long as we’re here, no one’s safe.”

  3

  Naturally, it takes another week to arrange transport.

  The crack in the sky is fixed by people and mechas scrambling about up there on ropes, a sight which makes Tancred tremble.

  In a gesture towards normality, Elsa decides to bake cookies for Halloween
. It’s coming up, but we’d all forgotten about it. She asks me to help her.

  For a little while, it’s just like old times back home in Kenya. I keep expecting to turn around and see my mom. I roll and cut out the first batch of cookies, eating the bits from around the edges of the cookie cutters. Elsa creams butter and sugar for the second batch.

  She clears her throat, and I feel a sudden pang of apprehension. “Where’s Tancred?”

  I point to the oven.

  “Jay, it’s preheating!”

  “He likes it,” I assure her. I know that putting him in a preheating oven sounds terrible, but he’s a Void Dragon. I go over and knock on on the oven door. He nuzzles the heatproof glass.

  Elsa peers in, then goes back to her cookie batter. She still looks worried, but she manages a smile. “Can you grab the vanilla extract for me?”

  As I reach up to the cabinet, I glance out the window. Francie and Patrick are in the garden, trying to pry Francie’s egg out of the melted vise—a task Francie had been putting off. They’re sitting close together on the scorch mark, which doesn’t look so bad anymore. Have they made it up? It’s none of my business.

  I resolutely turn away and give Elsa the vanilla. “It’s funny … you never used to cook anything. Let alone bake cookies.” When we all lived together, my mom was the cook. Elsa’s sole domestic contribution was loading the dishwasher.

  “I know, right? I guess I felt like I was spinning my wheels, so I decided to learn something new.” Elsa dumps flour into her bowl. Some of it goes on the floor. I remember what Francie said: everything here is imported at vast expense. That’s not actually true of the air, which they get from cracking Ceres’s abundant water. But it sure is true of cookie ingredients. “Actually,” Elsa adds, “it was Jules who taught me.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  My mom moved up to the Great Rift Valley after I graduated college. I worry about her living alone up there, cooking for one. I roll cookie dough with all my strength.

  “I might be able to arrange for you to get down to see her while you’re in Belgium, if you don’t get eaten by wolves,” Elsa says, casually.