by JE Gurley
Walker did not meet Gate’s gaze. He had refused until the last minute to give up on his plan to accompany Gate on the Javelin. Sakiri had finally made him see sense by threatening to pull rank, but he was no less disappointed. Gate understood Walker’s dilemma. Ever since his inclusion on Fire Team Bravo when they had penetrated Kaiju Nusku to destroy it, Walker had assumed the responsibility of keeping him alive. Now, that was impossible. He would have to look out for himself.
“Aiden,” he said, “it’s the way it has to be. We all assumed the same risks when we left the Earth. If … if anything happens, at least I’ll have died trying to save lives. After what I’ve witnessed …” He stopped, unable to continue. He had never spoken openly about Indiana, Chicago, or his adventure inside the Kaiju, not even to Walker. He had kept it bottled up inside, revealing only that knowledge which aided in the destruction of other Kaiju. Only recently had he learned to live with it. Even so, many nights he awoke in a cold sweat.
Walker looked at him with sympathy in his eyes. “We’ve been through a lot together, Gate. I wish this was on me instead of you.”
“You’re needed on Haumea. You have to stop the Nazir.”
Walker nodded and held out his hand. “Good luck.”
Gate gripped Walker’s hand and shook it, trying to keep his own from trembling. “See you in a day or so.”
“Jesus, you two!” Costas growled. “You’re making me all teary-eyed.”
He embraced Gate in a bear hug so tightly Gate thought the burly sergeant would dislocate his shoulders. When he released him, Gate backed up a couple of steps and looked Costas in the face, surprised at the emotion visible there. Gate glanced at the packed room one more time before sealing the hatch. All their lives depended on him doing his job.
The Javelin was as deserted as a sinking ship. The main living quarters, before so tightly packed, looked like a dance floor. The galley still smelled of the last warm meal the crew would have as they waited for the Assegai. Except for the quiet creaks and moans of the expanding and contracting hull and the hum of the life support equipment, the ship was eerily silent.
“Just you and me, Dr. Rutherford.”
Gate looked up and smiled at Peters, who had Peters had volunteered to be his Lance pilot and fly the Javelin. It was good to see a familiar face. The thought of going out alone to meet the Kaiju pods had been disquieting. Better an experienced pilot at the controls of the ship than him. Of course, Peters had never sat in the control seat of the Javelin, but he had assured Gate it was simply a matter of inputting the correct coordinates and pressing the Go button. “A monkey could do it,” he had said.
“Did you draw the short straw?” Gate asked.
Peters grinned. “I just wanted to take this baby for a spin. What say we buzz the others?”
Gate sat at Blivens’ console to familiarize himself with the few controls he would need to destroy the ship. The process would be distressingly easy. Controlling the gravity drive was akin to harnessing an atomic bomb – one slip and oblivion. Blivens had downloaded a quick-reference users’ manual for initiating the overload sequence of the gravity drive. Since it was a barely controlled spatial anomaly, the procedure was short and sweet, essentially a list of red-highlighted warnings that he was purposefully ignoring. If the generators could not produce enough power to strengthen the magnetic bottle, it would be a short journey.
Unsure if the Javelin would continue to function once the drive reached near-critical mass, he would wait until the last moment to overload it. The ship would continue toward its destination until seconds before the explosion. Unless, he thought, it explodes in my face like a short-fused firecracker, or the gravity distortions rip apart both ship and crew.
Twenty minutes later, Colonel Sakiri contacted him. “Tank #1 is connected to the module. We’ve moved the Lances and the module twenty clicks out as a safety margin. Everything is Go. Good luck, Dr. Rutherford.”
Luck. Yeah, it will take some of that. “Thanks. See you later.”
Peters fired the gravity drive. Again, the lack of pressure as the Javelin moved away disconcerted Gate. His mind told his body to expect a strong G-force, but none came. He relaxed when it became evident that Peters handled the ship as expertly as he flew his Lance. Leaving peters to his flying, Gate pored over the hastily written procedure provided by Blivens, trying to commit it to memory. He would not have the opportunity for a practice run and could afford no mistakes. It was a one-time only, do-or-die effort. If he did something wrong, he and Peters would not even know about it. They would be dead; atomic particles scattered over thousands of cubic kilometers of space.
To place distance between the Javelin and the abandoned crew, Peters pushed the ship to maximum. Each hour widened the safety margin but increased their return time to rendezvous with the Assegai. The Javelin’s speed was tenfold that of a Lance. Peters’ Lance would have to fly a wide intersecting arc to intercept the Assegai’s flight path. If they missed it by a few degrees or if the Assegai veered from its course, they would drift in space until they depleted their oxygen.
Gate checked the approaching Kaiju often. At first, the data confused him. Given what they knew about the alien gravity drive, he did not doubt the gravimetric readings. They meshed with the data from previous Kaiju pods. However, they did not jibe with the mass spectrometer readings. He voiced his concern to Peters.
“We may have a problem. The mass spec readings indicate the Kaiju are larger and more massive than expected. Either the aliens have increased the power of their engines, or the pods are half again as large as previous pods.”
Unlike Gate, who now had serious doubts about their mission, Peters maintained his composure. He looked as though he were out for a Sunday drive than speeding toward an enemy armada. “You’re sure?”
Gate shook his head. “No. We’re still too far away, but I recalibrated the equipment before running a second scan. The figures double-checked within five percent.”
“Look, I’m just a space jockey, Dr. Rutherford. I know enough about gravity drives to fly my ship, and in a pinch, this one. I’m no engineer. If you say they’re bigger or more powerful, I believe you. My only concern is that your plan will still work. Will it?”
“Maybe.”
Peters arched his eyebrows and frowned. “Maybe? If this mission is a No Go, I need to know now, so I can turn this baby around.”
“Their speed is constant, and the grouping hasn’t changed. I am certain the explosion will destroy the Kaiju pods regardless of their size. In fact, the additional energy output of their gravity drives works in our favor. My concern is the aftereffects.” He paused.
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Doc.
“The explosion could be much larger than I calculated. We might not escape the danger zone.”
Peters appeared to give the idea proper consideration, and then said, “We both knew this might be a one-way trip, so nothing has really changed has it? Mission is still a Go.”
Part of him had hoped Peters would scrub the mission. Fear was creeping up from that place he had tried to imprison it deep inside him, sending fingers of doubt into his mind. He didn’t want to die, but the likelihood was increasing with each passing hour. Despite his fear, he could not turn back now.
“Okay, we continue.”
The decision made, a sense of liberation settled over Gate. Accepting imminent death freed him from the cloying fear and nagging doubt. He maintained a constant watch on the oncoming swarm in case of any changes. As the Javelin closed with the pods, the single pod that had changed course to intercept them veered sharply back toward the main body. The aliens did not suspect a trap. If they continued to hold their present course, the explosion would destroy all of them.
Wanting to place as much distance as possible between the explosion and the men of the Javelin, Gate had suggested a wide, looping intercept course. That had added hours to the already long journey but had seemed the best solution. That meant that Peters had to rema
in at the controls the entire trip. It was not as exhausting as flying a jet, but his mind had to remain focused on the various ships functions that normally three technicians controlled. He had placed himself into a personal state of autopilot, reacting only when the need arose.
To Gate, the intervening eleven hours crept by. He listened to music on his laptop to unwind. Finding himself tiring of jazz, he played Isao Tomita’s The Planets. It was a bit astray from his usual jazz interests, but seemed appropriate. Unable to reach the state of serenity music usually took him, he gave up. Reclining in his seat, he closed his eyes and mentally went over the arming procedure until pangs of nervous hunger began to gnaw at his stomach. He realized he had not eaten in eighteen hours. The colonel had taken the bulk of the food and water for the habitat, but Gate located two meatloaf dinners with brown gravy and a bag of frozen rolls. It was not a banquet, but he hoped it would not be their last meal.
The clock on the forward screen counted down the last moments before contact. The numbers seemed to freeze in place, changing only when he blinked his eyes, as if playing mind games with him. The two lines on the plotting chart representing the Javelin and the Kaiju pods grew closer together.
Taking a deep breath and holding it before exhaling slowly to calm his nerves, he said, “It’s time.”
“Do it,” Peters urged.
“Reduce our speed to twenty thousand miles per hour. I’ll increase power to the magnetic bottle and initiate the overload sequence. If we stop the ship or slow too much, the aliens might become suspicious. We will have to release the Lance and drift away before you fire the drive. Maybe we can slip away unnoticed.”
“It will be tricky,” Peters replied. “Once we release the clamps on the Lance, the Javelin will be moving away at high speed. If we brush against her…”
He didn’t have to elaborate. Gate understood the consequences of a mishap. Leaving the Javelin was not like launching from an aircraft carrier. Once they were free of the Javelin’s gravity field, the relative velocities of the two craft would increase within seconds. From their perspective, the Javelin would disappear. If leaving a wake were possible in the vacuum of space, her wake would destroy the tiny craft.
“We have only one shot at this,” Peters warned. “They won’t give us a second chance.”
Gate watched the line indicating the gravity drive output steadily climb toward the red danger zone. No one knew just how far into the red the drive would go before exploding. No one had been foolish enough to test it. The fluctuations of the magnetic bottle disturbed him, as gravity spikes pushed and tugged at the magnetic field surrounding the drive. Any slight deviation in power would release the gravity drive, now a barely controlled bomb, too early.
Peters looked at the countdown clock and grimaced. “We’ll be cutting it close.”
Peter’s voice carried an edge of alarm. He had every right to be concerned. If the Javelin blew too soon, the gravity wash would envelop them. Gate didn’t know what kind of spatial distortions they would encounter in such an instance. The ship could disintegrate or turn inside out. He tried not to dwell on it. It was like not thinking about an itch on the end of his nose.
Gate imagined he heard a Siren song inside his head as gravity distortions and changing lines of magnetic force played havoc with the fluids in his brain. He began reciting the names of stars to be certain he wasn’t suffering random memory loss; then, stopped as he realized he would not know if he had forgotten a star. He decided it was a baseless fear, since he could do nothing to prevent it.
Fluctuations in the power grid affected ship’s functions. Life support failed first; then, artificial gravity. As he floated free of his seat to don his spacesuit, the lights failed. During the few moments before the emergency lighting switched on, the absence of light sucked the breath from Gate’s lungs. The utter darkness was a living entity drawing him into its mass. No darkness on Earth, except the bottom of the sea or the deepest caverns could match the total absence of light outside the ship. He welcomed the dim red emergency lights with utmost joy. He was reborn. For a terrifying moment, he forgot everything they had taught him about suiting up. He took a deep breath to relax, and tried again. This time, the process went more smoothly. The heavy gloves made typing on his keyboard difficult, but he entered the final overload sequence and hit the Enter key. Now, there was no turning back. An explosion was inevitable.
One hundred thousand miles from the estimated point the two alien craft would meet, they abandoned ship. This time, the short distance between the airlock and Peters’ Lance was easier for Gate to negotiate. There was no Earth below to disconcert him, only the vast blackness of space. He glanced around where Jupiter should have been. He discerned nothing at first; then, finally spotted a tiny dot a few million miles away. Once safely strapped into the seat in the Lance, Peters wasted no time disengaging the docking clamps. He fired the gravity drive in a short, low-power burst to move the craft away from the Javelin. Gate sensed a slight increase in gravity, and then an uncomfortable pressure in various parts of his body as the two conflicting gravity drives fought for dominance. The vague unease lasted only seconds before Peters cut the drive. The Javelin disappeared in a blur, as if swallowed by space.
After a brief moment of wondering how much cosmic radiation his body had absorbed outside the Javelin’s magnetic field, Gate set an intercept course that would place them in the path of the Assegai, plus or minus four thousand miles. He hoped it was close enough for the Assegai’s gravity detectors to locate them. They were engaged in a battle that would determine the lives of tens of thousands of people on Earth, but they sat alone in the emptiness of space thousands of miles from the scene of the battle. With the press of a button, the magnetic bottle containing the rampant gravity distortions of the Javelin would evaporate, releasing a fury.
Gate watched the final flight of the Javelin on the Lance’s radar and gravity detector screens. The Kaiju pods had begun to spread farther apart, but he estimated they would still be within the blast radius. An aurora visible twenty thousand miles away surrounded the Javelin, as the lines of magnetic force of the shield encountered random electrons and cosmic particles. She looked like a fireball aimed at the heart of the alien armada.
“Do it,” Peters urged.
“A couple of more seconds,” Gate answered. Like Peters, his finger itched to press the button, but he had to be sure of maximum impact. He didn’t want to miss a single pod. He glanced at his screen, and his heart skipped a beat. “Oh shit!” he said.
“What’s happening?” Peters demanded.
“One pod is increasing speed and breaking away from the swarm toward the Javelin.”
“Do it,” Peters repeated with more vigor.
Gate pressed the button sending the signal to the Javelin. Seconds later, a small sun exploded into existence behind them as the Javelin disintegrated.
“Yes!” Peters yelled.
The incandescent orb expanded for twenty seconds before the outer edges tattered as the boiling gases cooled. The Lance lurched as gravity waves crashed against it and pushed through it. One moment, the ship drew his body down into the floor. The next, the front of the ship became a bottomless well into which he fell face first. His feet were heavy, but his head was light. His vision blurred as the fluid in his eyes swelled and swirled. His ears screamed from blood rushing through his inner ear; then, reversing directions. Time surged forward and snapped back to the present between the space of two heartbeats. The sensation passed quickly, but left him feeling exhausted and disoriented.
As soon as his vision cleared, he checked his screen. One blip emerged from the rapidly dissipating cloud of plasma. He did not have time to consider the implications.
“One pod escaped,” he informed Peters.
“Pursuing us?”
Gate traced the pod’s course. “No. It’s still headed for Earth.”
“Earth will have to deal with that one,” Peters said. “We stopped the rest.”
“What happened?” he asked, trying to keep the rising panic from his voice.
“All the needles are pegged out. The distortion caused a system overload. We have no power.”
“Are we dead in space?” The thought of drifting aimlessly until they froze frightened him.
“The gravity drive is still functioning at full power. We’re traveling 41.5 thousand miles per hour. I just can’t see where we’re going.”
“How much oxygen do we have?”
“The tank is fully pressurized. We have about twenty-two hours left in it, plus an additional six in our suits.”
Gate did a few calculations on his laptop. “We should rendezvous with the Assegai in twenty-six hours. That gives us a two-hour leeway. I calculated an intersecting course with the Assegai closing with us from behind. Of course,” he added, “that depends on how long it takes to transfer personnel to the Assegai and dock the Lances.”
“I’m flying blind,” Peters reminded him.
Gate could help with that problem. “See the bright white star off to the left a few degrees?”
A few seconds later, Peters answered, “Got it.”
“That’s Vega, also known as Alpha Lyra, in the Lyr constellation. It’s about 25 light years away and the fifth brightest star visible from Earth. Center the Lance on it. We’ll reach the rendezvous point before the Assegai.”
“How will we know haven’t missed them?” Peters asked.
“If they don’t find us before we run out of air, it won’t matter.”
Peters remained silent for almost a minute; then, said, “At least we accomplished our mission, even if we don’t make the big one.”
Gate wasn’t ready to give up. Walker had taught him that. “As long as the drive is functioning, they can detect us from halfway to the Kuiper Belt. They’ll find us.”