Erebus

by Ralph Kern

  Twilight Garden orbited Sirius B, which, as I was quickly reading on my HUD, was dead. It certainly didn’t look that way. It still shone like a star, but it was a white dwarf little more than the size of Earth, and no new nuclear processes were occurring within. Sirius B was a corpse where the body hadn’t cooled yet. That would still take another billion years.

  Its companion, Sirius A, was just as young as B, and young, my HUD informed me, meant a few hundred million years. But whereas its companion was effectively stillborn, Sirius A was going strong, the brightest star in Earth’s sky—other than the sun, of course.

  Twilight Garden wasn’t the only world that circled one of the twin stars. A few gas giants and rocky terrestrials kept the capital world company. The reason for the rather fetching name was because most of Twilight Garden’s light came from either the much dimmer B or the distant A, creating a near-perpetual state of dusk.

  “There is no sign of Erebus in orbit. Unless she’s somehow managed to stay on the opposite side of the planet from us, she’s somewhere else,” Vasily called from where he was standing behind one of his bridge crew, looking down at a console that, to my HUD, was blank. I didn’t bother to slave into the ship’s systems. I most likely wouldn’t be able to follow what was on there.

  “Any sign of exotic particles from an A-drive?” Frampton asked.

  “No,” Vasily shook his head, and his voice got clipped. “I’m no amateur, thank you.”

  The lies at the gateway had gotten to him. The formerly friendly looking man was looking distinctly annoyed with the imposters on his bridge. It would only be a matter of time before he shooed us away if we weren’t careful.

  “Captain,” I said in an effort to placate him, “no one is calling you an amateur. We’re all here because we care about this job.”

  “Hmmm,” he grunted. “Let us contact Twilight Garden again. Dana, if you please.”

  ***

  “Surely the damn system can’t be that big.” I knew a whiney tone had infected my voice, but I didn’t care.

  We had the twisting representation of the Sirius system up on the holotank. We may as well have been running divining rods over it for all the joy we were having. Sure, Twilight Garden may be a good place to start, having the only planet-based facilities, but Erebus couldn’t land, and she wasn’t in orbit.

  “Could she have done a switch back to the gate? Gone on somewhere else?” Phillips asked.

  “No,” Vasily shook his head. “I took the liberty of requesting the gate logs. No one has transited out in months.”

  “Frain does have a sophisticated e-warfare package. Is it possible for him to have doctored the logs?” I asked.

  “From what you’ve told me, sure, he can override the gate, but Frain’s a blunt instrument. He would leave signs. Notwithstanding that, Sirius Control would surely have told us,” Vasily said after a moment’s consideration.

  “Right, then. The way I see it,” Phillips gestured at the holotank, “we deploy probes to track her down. Then we just pick a good spot to wait and settle in. Either here, since this is the most populated place, or at the gate, in case he makes another break for it. Option three is we go to ground and see if he comes out of whatever hidey-hole he’s parked in.”

  “May I suggest a compromise?” Captain Vasily said after another pause. “Blockade the gates with one of your assault shuttles, then I take Gagarin for a look around the system.”

  “Our Hawks can’t support any kind of long-term mission. A few days in a cramped environment is about all we can get out of them and their life support,” Phillips pointed out.

  “Yes, but our landers, they are designed for long-term missions. If we deploy lander and assault shuttle together, they can mate up. If Erebus makes a run for the gate, the Hawk can break and intercept,” Vasily pressed.

  “Can one of your shuttles handle Erebus if she comes blowing through?” I asked. “I mean, you guys look pretty mean decked out in one of those shuttles, but she did manage to disable another ship that was a hell of a lot bigger than one of those things,” I said.

  “Possibly…” Phillips looked thoughtful. “As you say, they’re mean and designed for opposed boarding, but nothing is for certain. I’m more concerned about what happens if we get Erebus to heave to and accept boarding. If I split my team in half, taking and securing a starship becomes a bit trickier.”

  “What about simply disabling the gate?” I mused. “Prevent him from leaving full stop?”

  “No,” Vasily said firmly. “We are not to be messing around with the gates themselves. If his e-warfare package is as good as you say it is, even if we switch them off, he will simply switch them back on again. It would only be a matter of time before he defeats the firewalls or interlocks. And I tell you one thing, we are not screwing with the gates physically. We’re not going to risk we break something we can’t put back together again. Then we are all trapped here until we can get a new one online.”

  “Okay,” I nodded. A reasonable point, but another idea was growing. “We don’t mess with the gate, but Frain doesn’t have to know that. Ava, can your shuttle target the gates with missiles, guns, or whatever else they have onboard? If Frain appears to make a run for it, we simply tell him that we’ll blow them away.”

  “I happen to agree with the captain on this one about fooling around with the gate. At some point, I want to go home and cash in the huge paycheck that’ll be waiting for me.” Then she broke into a big smile. “But my guys play a mean game of poker, mate. They know how to bluff.”

  I hoped they were as good as she said; we’d need a better bluff than the one Vasily delivered at Twilight Garden to fool Frain. “That’s the important thing.”

  “Good plan. That’ll at least give us a trip wire at the gate,” Vance said. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t call our bluff.”

  CHAPTER 39

  GAGARIN

  We dropped off the lander, shuttle, and four troops, giving them the rather catchy call sign of Blockade, and then we set to work A-driving around the Sirius system, sniffing for signs of Erebus and deploying probes as we went.

  Sirius was a sparsely populated system, yet we still had a hell of a lot of space to cover. Sirius A had a respectable-sized asteroid belt, one decent gas giant, a bunch of smaller ones, and a few other rocky worlds. Sirius B had a number of scorched ciders tumbling around in close orbit, burnt rocks left over from when the star had swollen into a red giant before shrinking to its current size. Twilight Garden and a gas giant circled farther out.

  What there wasn’t, though, was the slightest whisper of Erebus. She had disappeared.

  ***

  “If Frain had a reason for coming here, what is it? Any clues?” I asked of Sihota.

  We were jogging around Gagarin’s habitat ring, burning off some excess energy. Since the troops had embarked, they had pretty much monopolized the ship’s gym. There wasn’t any time when you could go in there, day or night, when some heavily combat-enhanced soldier wasn’t doing exercises that made you wince, whether that be bench pressing a crushing amount of weight or engaged in a brutal sparring match—hence the reason I had taken to jogging.

  “No, but I still think this destination wasn’t random,” Sihota panted. “He’s been too deliberate, too in control. He had a reason for coming here beyond simple escape. If that was what he wanted, it would have been far easier to go to ground in Sol. Here? Well, you’ve seen this place. Earth has superscrapers with more people in them than this whole system.”

  “Call me old-fashioned, but I’m still an advocate of getting down to Twilight Garden and asking some of the locals. There has got to be the Sirius equivalent of a shoeshine down there,” I wheezed.

  “A shoeshine?” Sihota said without looking at me, continuing running powerfully.

  “Yeah, someone with their ear to the ground who knows what’s going on around here.”

  “You know Vance’s take on that,” he said, and indeed I did—minimal contact with the
locals. But that policy had been decided when we thought Erebus would be sitting in plain sight, waiting for us.

  “We’re just sitting on our arses in the mess, enjoying Vasily’s hospitality while Gagarin searches high and low.”

  Sihota gave me a level look, pointedly wiped the sweat from his face, and picked up the pace. I pushed harder to keep up with him. “You know what I’m saying. Look, it can’t hurt. Let’s get down there and see what we can see. Gagarin can continue looking and pick us up in a couple of days.”

  “And if they find Erebus while we’re stuck on the planet?” Sihota came to a halt and looked at me.

  “Then we miss the party,” I shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong; it’ll piss me off having come all this way and not getting in on the final act, but it’s not as if we’re making a massive amount of progress at the moment, is it?”

  Sihota smiled at me. “Well, I guess we should see what all the fuss is about with the place. I’ve always wanted to visit Twilight Garden.”

  ***

  “We’re trying to keep this whole damn mess on the down low, and you want to go on shore leave?” Vance scoffed. Frampton was trying to look very busy doing whatever he was doing with Gagarin’s sensor officer, but still, the smart arse had a smirk on his face.

  “As much as I love hanging around with you guys in a glorified tin can,” I replied, “we are not actually accomplishing anything here. We’ve been waiting around for a week. Why not head planet-side and shake down the locals for any ideas? This is their manor, after all.”

  “Be that as it may, we don’t want to start a mad panic.”

  “No, we do not, but how do you think it looks having a strange ship hovering above their capital (and I use that term loosely)? We are giving them nothing but the vaguest of information, and that’s what’s going to panic them as much as learning the truth of some planet-destroying fugitive wandering around their system.”

  “Soon they will get an update from Sol,” Vasily cut in. “We may have kept wraps on the fact that Erebus went through the gate unscheduled at the Sol end, but they are going to be putting things together. They aren’t stupid; they will know that Io is destroyed and that two ships have arrived here—and one of those, she is chasing the other.”

  “Okay.” Vance threw her hands up. “Head down. See what you can find out. Just don’t start a damn riot.”

  CHAPTER 40

  TWILIGHT GARDEN

  “Twilight Garden, Gagarin. Orca 12 heavy, on approach. May we have a landing pad, please?” Sihota said into the com.

  I overheard the chatter on the radio responding to Sihota’s request and saw a blinking approach path appear in the cockpit. It looked like a neon ladder extending toward the planet. With just us two aboard, I was riding shot-gun and was very much enjoying my front-seat view.

  As we slid into orbit around Twilight Garden, I watched the dim light of the twin stars paint the world’s craggy grey rocks with soft shadows and its white glacial ice sheets with a gentle twinkle. We dipped into the thin atmosphere and were buffeted about as a flickering flame encased us. Before long, though, we were flying smoothly through the indigo sky of the dusky world.

  “I’m just going to trim the lander up. The atmosphere is so thin that we are going to need a combination of lifting surface and raw engine power.” Sihota ran his hands over the controls.

  “You’re the expert,” I said, craning my head to look down at the rock and ice far below. Relentless glaciers had left long claw marks across the grey stone of the landscape like the glacial scarring of Earth.

  “Do you want a go?”

  “Want a go? As in flying?” I replied with more than a touch of incredulity that I’d be allowed to pilot the airliner-sized Orca-class heavy lander.

  “Yes, as in flying,” Sihota smiled.

  I slaved my HUD to the lander’s pilot mode and looked around. It was all readouts and buttons and whatnot. “Okay, but this looks awfully complicated.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Layton,” Sihota smiled. “I’m here if anything goes wrong.”

  “If you’re sure…” I thought I should ask him to be sure he was serious, because to me it was the best idea ever!

  “Twilight Control,” Sihota said in response. “I have one trainee aboard. We are going to go for a slight deviation from flight plan for instructional purposes.”

  “Roger that. Orca 12 heavy. We have you on flight following.”

  “Right, see that stick in front of you? We use that to control what we call attitude. That’s the direction you are pointing. Although pilots can control a lander through direct HUD interface, most of us still prefer to use that control when in atmosphere rather than autopilot. Take that in your right hand and the thrust lever in your left.” I followed his prompting and wrapped my hands around the stick and throttle. “Now you have control.”

  I remained rigid, rocketing along at a ridiculous speed, miles above the surface of some strange glistening ice planet, not wanting to move a muscle.

  “Go on, have a bit of a play; turn us. Move the stick to the left and then pull up on it.”

  Gingerly, I pushed the stick over and watched as the horizon tilted in front of us and pulled back. The lander turned back again, and the distant glittering mountains sailed across my view.

  “And now the other way. That’s it. Pushing the stick up and down will pitch you, that is, move the nose toward the sky or ground.”

  As I did, the shuttle started to shake. I looked over at Sihota. “Don’t worry about the yaw; I’ll take care of it. You just leave the peddles beneath your feet alone.”

  I nodded and pushed the stick forward and felt my stomach begin to rise into my chest. I felt that sickening feeling I got on a roller coaster or in free fall. For some reason, it was easier when you controlled it yourself. We started to race toward the ground, and I hauled back on the stick in a reflex response. I could feel myself being pressed back into my seat, and the dark, starry sky filled the view in front of me.

  “Easy does it. We don’t want to go back into orbit. Start taking us in lower again. Let’s head toward that ice sheet over there.” Sihota pointed at a white expanse to our right.

  Nosing us over toward the sparkling sheet, I pushed the throttle wide open and raced toward it.

  “That’s it. Take us lower. I’ve set a minimum safe altitude, so don’t worry; you can’t crash us. The lander will automatically level out when it gets to five hundred meters and not let you go below that.”

  I took us lower and lower, the grey rock turning to blue-tinged ice sheets below us. I could see why Twilight Garden was considered one of the beauty spots in explored space. The crystalline mountains and valleys were pure ice rather than the snowy expanses of the Earth’s poles. Some of the glaciers were even somewhat transparent, revealing dark masses of mountains beneath them.

  “You know, once this might have been habitable for humans with a little terraforming,” Sihota said quietly as we swept into a valley. I pulled back on the throttle, slowing us down so we could take in the vista. I was getting into it now. We weaved through a valley, sparkling mountains passing us on both sides. “But it was never meant to be. Sirius B was doomed from the moment it was born. In its death throes, it swelled up into a red giant and melted all the ice here into huge seas that refroze when the sun shrank. This is what we’re left with.”

  “So”—I gestured out of the cockpit at the mountains before quickly gripping the stick again. I was still nervous about crashing us, despite the fact that it was apparently impossible—“how did the seas become mountains?”

  “I don’t know. I’m guessing they are subject to the same geological process as simple rock. Remember, all this happened a hundred million years ago,” he said before sighing. “The greatest regret of my life is not qualifying to crew on an explorer ship. To see these sorts of things for the first time…I find it sad that my first journey out of Sol is hunting down a fugitive.”

  “You and me both, but hey
, at least we get to see it.”

  Sihota smiled. “That we did.” He gave a wistful sigh as he looked across Twilight Garden, then said, “I suppose we had best get back to it. I have control.” He didn’t bother with the controls, just sat back and let his implants do the work. “Twilight Garden, we are coming in for our approach. ETA: fifteen minutes.”

  He put the lander into a hard turn and opened the throttle. We raced over the glittering landscape, glaciers and mountains flashing by. Before long, a bright beam of light was visible lancing into the sky in the far distance.

  Twilight City’s landing beacon.

  CHAPTER 41

  TWILIGHT GARDEN

  Twilight City was a misnomer. It would have barely qualified as a town on Earth; in fact, village would have been more appropriate. It was nestled under a large inflatable dome. It wasn’t a rigid one like on Calisto, but rather made of clear plastic that showed off the glittering stars beyond. Small buildings filled it, many of them prefabs, but they had been here long enough that the occupants had placed brick facades over them, making them look like cottages and houses, not just the temporary accommodations they originally were.

  While it wasn’t a capital as such (Sirius had no central government in the system to speak of), this was where the scientists who worked in the system kept their families and came for R&R. Twilight City was an oasis of humanity and normality far from home. What Sirius did have in lieu of a capital was a central administrator, and right now, the look on her face showed that she was not happy with us at all.

  “Yes, I know we are all sponsored by the corporations here, but rest assured, we are all our own women and men; we have to be out here. We will not see Sirius turned into a playground for industrial espionage, corporate machinations, or national fallouts.” Lynn Langdon thumped her metal desk to emphasize her points as she made them. “And the sheer discourtesy you have shown since arriving is unforgivable—hanging in orbit, not deigning to tell us the full story. Completely unacceptable!”