Freefall

by Joshua David Bellin

  I’d asked Griff for so much already, I hesitated to ask for more. But with me and my parents no longer speaking—and Adrian and his dad no longer able to think about me without cursing—Griff’s dad was the only person I knew on the inside, the only one who might be able to make it happen. All I wanted was a few seconds alone with her—or if not alone, then at least alone enough for me to say what I needed to say. Alone the way we’d been on our first helicar ride together, and our last, where, despite everything going on around us, I’d felt for a few moments as if we were the only two people in the universe.

  It wasn’t much to ask, but it was everything.

  So I did.

  Griff looked at me. “You sure?”

  I nodded. Yes, I was sure.

  He eyed me strangely for a second. Maybe he was shocked to hear me say anything after two months of near silence. Then his face broke into a grin. “Yeah, what the hell. I think Big Rich owes me one for cooping me up in this dump the last few months. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it.”

  I tried to say something, found my heart too full to say it. “Thanks, man,” I choked out at last.

  “I’ll probably live to regret this,” Griff said with a laugh. “You stay here. I’ll go find him.”

  It was a week before launch. But I knew Griff wouldn’t let me down.

  Otherworld

  Earth Year 3151

  Night

  We reach the perimeter fence by this strange planet’s midnight. That’s some comfort, since it means I’ll be walking the rest of the way through a monster-free zone. The transport knows we’ve arrived before we do, braking and settling in response to the parameters Aakash entered into its navigational system. He’s eager to get me off the vehicle now that we’re here, which convinces me that my function in his master plan is pretty much what it was on Earth: I’m a pawn at best, a worm on the hook at worst. An easy target for Conroy to lock in on while Aakash and his team perform their part, whatever that might be.

  “Be swift,” Aakash says, before practically shoving me out the door. “And go with God.” Which, I’m pretty sure, is Lowerworld talk for It’s been nice knowing you.

  The door slams shut, and I’m on my own.

  I set off toward the Executor, its mammoth bulk invisible from this distance. Within seconds, the vehicle I left is swallowed in the gloom. This is probably only my state of mind, but I could swear the night’s darker than usual, so dark I can’t see the mist that’s preventing me from seeing. I try to compose my speech to Conroy, but I keep stumbling on the spongy stone. Stumbling on the words, too, before they’re fully formed. A stray memory of my early life with Adrian flickers through my mind, me and him out on the baseball diamond, the smell of dust and cut grass, the ball snapping and cracking in our gloves. The memory seems to come from much more than a thousand years ago, from some far-off place of pure fantasy, and it’s not enough to drive me to guilt that I never made any serious attempt to do what his dad asked me to do. The cold truth is, if our positions had been reversed, Adrian would have done the same thing—namely, nothing—for me.

  My solitary walk doesn’t last long. A searchlight pierces the fog, gleaming like a chill aurora through the haze. If Conroy’s got lenses on the surrounding terrain, he’ll see me as soon as I step into the light’s orbit, and he’ll see I’m by myself. I set my jaw, forget about my half-baked speech, and continue my plodding walk toward the ship.

  I can see it now.

  It rises out of the fog, a titanic shadow with a single eye sweeping the plain. Of all the things human beings built over all the time we inhabited planet Earth, the Executor was one of only two visible from space. The other was a wall stretching across southeastern MicroNasia. According to the lessons we learned in Two Worlds History, that one was built to keep the barbarians out. We tried to build walls like that in the Upperworld, but they didn’t work. And so we built the Executor: the world’s biggest getaway car, an unbelievable piece of machinery designed so we could flee the scene of the crime and never have to worry about the cops catching up to us. After all, the cops died long before we stopped running.

  The light from the hull is blinding. I’ve got to be close enough for them to see me.

  I am.

  The first warning comes in the form of a cannon blast that arcs over my head, ripping the night mist to tatters for a bright, searing second. Not meant to kill me, obviously—but just as obviously meant to show me that the weapons systems are alive and well.

  Message received, I continue toward the ship.

  It’s shrouded in a silence as deep as it is huge. I wish someone would make an appearance. A diplomatic envoy would be my preference, but at this point I’d take a group of thrill seekers who’ve come to watch me get vaporized. Anyone to put a human face on this sleeping giant.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  The second warning is a voice. Conroy’s voice. Amplified and mechanical, it squawks through the blinding light and fog.

  “Stay where you are, Newell.”

  I do.

  “Where’s my son?”

  My mind whirls, trying to come up with an answer that will convince him not to blast me into a trillion pieces.

  But I’ve got nothing. I can’t see the cannon, but I picture it wheeling, aperture narrowing, target locking. The silence is absolute. It stretches for minutes, lengthened by the dark.

  Then at last his voice comes again. “Drop your weapons.”

  “I’m unarmed.”

  “We’ve apprehended your team,” the voice says. “Brazenly approaching the Executor, armed with grenade launchers, in an attempt to force ingress. The Upperworld thanks you for delivering them to us.”

  I hold my tongue. I should have known sending me to the Freefall wasn’t only about finding Adrian. Maybe it was never about that at all.

  “They’ll be tried and executed for assaulting a JIPOC starship,” the voice continues. “With their death and the girl’s, the Lowerworld revolution ends. As it should have ended on the dying planet where it began.”

  “As opposed to this dying planet,” I say, having nothing to lose.

  “The only one dying tonight,” Conroy’s voice blares out of the void, “is you.”

  An explosion of white fire rocks the night, and I fly backward, blinded, ears ringing. For a crazy moment as I sail through space, I think that death’s not so bad. It’s actually kind of nice, not to have to hear or see or feel anything anymore.

  But I land in one piece, my body smacking the spongy rock, and that brings me back to my senses.

  I’m not dead. I’m not even hit. It wasn’t the cannon that fired. It couldn’t have missed me so badly from such close range.

  I lift my head to find the Executor belching smoke in the glare of white lights.

  I try to stand, lose my balance on the first attempt, get my feet under me on the second. The ringing in my ears has turned to a dull roar: maybe the sound of pressure rushing from the ship, more likely the shock wave that’s taken up permanent residence in my head. I can’t keep my eyes steady, can’t pierce the confusion of light and sound to figure out what’s happened to the ship, the cannon, Conroy’s voice. I can think of only one thing.

  Sofie’s in there. And if Conroy survived, he’s on his way right now to make sure she doesn’t.

  I run toward the light and smoke and flickers of flame—there’s not enough oxygen to sustain a decent fire—but the ground pitches under me, and I lose my balance again. Nothing’s clear. I think I make out voices, not the mechanical bellow of Chairman Conroy, but plain human voices screaming incoherently. Shadows streak the banners of light and dark, dancing shadows with arms as long as ropes and bodies that slide like fog. The pod creatures? Is it possible they’re the ones that attacked the ship? I want to run past them, run right into the Executor through whatever hole’s been opened in its side. But when I get close enough to see what happened, I realize there’s no way I can advance any farther.

>   The Executor’s main cannon is a blackened stump protruding from the ship’s prow, twisted and smoking like a spent candle. People I can’t see clearly enough to identify run through the smoke, casting unnatural shadows as they try either to help or to get out of the way. If I were them, I’d opt for getting out of the way. The massive prow tilts downward, as if it’s been partially separated from the main concourse or the ground has collapsed beneath it. And the cannon—one of the few things on this world or any other capable of penetrating the ship’s own hide—has been reduced to shrapnel. It took a direct hit. But from what?

  It rolls to a stop beside me, and I have my answer.

  The ExCon vehicle. Fully automated, and now, I see, fully armed. Not an exploratory buggy at all. A private military cruiser. I should have realized that’s what it was when I found all the hardware inside, but I guess I never expected the Freefall to transport something like this. But here it is, guns jutting, engine growling deep in its mechanical throat. While Conroy and his men were busy tracking Aakash’s forces, thinking their puny arsenal was the best the Lowerworld could muster, this mini-tank took out the Executor’s main forward cannon.

  The cruiser’s door opens, and I lift myself inside. Then it slides shut, sealing me off from the smoke and screams. I don’t have time to think about that. I have a single objective, and Aakash and the others have risked their lives to give me a chance to fulfill it. The man was right. If I’d known what his team was up to, I could never have played my part so well.

  He trusted me after all. Now it’s up to me.

  “Take me to Sofie,” I tell the cruiser, and it glides across the battlefield, its treads rolling over the smoking rubble from the Upperworld starship.

  Earth, 2151

  Upperworld

  I told Sofie I loved her the day we boarded the ships.

  I sidled close to her in the loading bay. She was easy to spot, even with the massive crowd, thanks to the worldlink lenses that surrounded her. The Peace Corp. stood on alert, but they let me be. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  She stiffened. Her black braid curled down her back. The jewel on her forehead flashed red. We hadn’t seen each other since that night, months ago, when she’d lied to me and led me to believe she might one day be mine.

  “I love you,” I said. “I know that doesn’t matter anymore. I just needed to tell you.”

  She wouldn’t look at me. Her pod stood ready to receive her. Across the bay, separated by a distance infinitely smaller than the one that would soon divide us, I knew mine waited for me, too.

  “Cameron,” she said. “You did not need to tell me that.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I really kind of think I did.”

  She looked at me then, and smiled. I tried to hold on to that smile, knowing I’d never see her again.

  Not in a thousand years.

  PART THREE

  Freefall

  Love is metaphysical gravity.

  —R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path

  Otherworld

  Earth Year 3151

  Night

  The battle cruiser knows where to go. It stops before a ramp, does something I can’t see that overrides the controls, and rolls into the loading bay. Then it does the same thing to the airlock’s interior door, and we enter the Executor.

  Inside, lights flash red up and down the sterile white corridor—a bit of a surprise, since last I heard from Griff, the emergency warning system was another casualty of the ship’s sabotage. But if his dad got the executive chambers and the guns working, maybe he’s restored other systems as well. Guards in their gray jumpsuits and helmets, blast visors lowered, stream toward the site of the explosion, but they ignore the cruiser, either thinking it’s one of their own or knowing better than to mess with it. I sit back and let it take me where it will. Though I don’t remember how to reach Conroy’s quarters, I know now that Sofie is the lodestar that guides all our actions. The cruiser’s locked onto her, and it’ll take me there, no matter what stands in its way.

  As it turns out, the only things that stand in its way are time and distance. But time and distance might be all it takes to defeat me now.

  We roll through corridors, past housing cubicles, infirmary, dispensary. The few people we see shy from our approach. The hallway lights are working, as are most of the doors—and the ones that refuse to cooperate end up lying in a crumpled heap beneath the cruiser’s wheels. The ship shudders unnaturally as we advance, periodic spasms passing through its kilometers-long spine, but whether they’re from explosions or something else I can’t tell. We’re moving deeper into the ship’s innards, close to Conroy’s stateroom. When we get there, my gut tells me, he’ll be waiting for me, holding his trump card. He won’t have been at the blast site—why man the cannon when he could supervise everything from the safety of his chambers? Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I have to believe Sofie’s alive. And so long as she’s alive, I have hope.

  The cruiser glides to a stop in front of the double doors I visited once before, the JIPOC crest emblazoned on their shining surface. “Let me out,” I say, and the vehicle’s door opens with a hiss. The absolute silence of the cockpit yields to the throbbing I heard the last time I was here—the throbbing that comes from Sofie’s deepsleep. Or maybe it’s a residual effect of the blast, the muted roar of the explosion in my ears.

  Please let it be her, I say silently. Please let me have one more chance.

  I shed the bulky outer suit, grab a pistol from the stash, and hop down to the floor. The doors to Conroy’s chambers slide open when my hand nears them, and over the amplified throbbing, I hear a voice.

  “Time’s wasting, Newell,” it says. “Why don’t you come join us?”

  Us. I cling to the word.

  I slip inside. The first thing to meet my eyes is Aakash, lying facedown, his head twisted painfully to the side so I can see the blood streaming from his mouth and caked in his beard. He glances at me, the one eye that’s visible glittering like a jewel in his dark face. There’s no sign of the other members of his team. I take a step toward him, my hand held out as if to help him up. Then something else comes into view from beneath the catwalk, a gliding shadow, and I jump back, aiming my gun as it enters the light.

  It moves like a giant crab, lumbering forward on spindly legs. Now that I see it in full light, it seems much clumsier, less agile, than the ones that attacked me during the night. Maybe it’s slowed by the small space. The carapace opens and closes with a clacking sound, the humanoid figure inside concealed by metal valves. On a helmet lined with razor teeth, yellow optic lights glow as they swivel to face me.

  A pod.

  “Good to have our merchandise back up and running,” Chairman Conroy says, emerging from the shadows behind the biomechanical horror. I wish I could get a clean shot at him, but he stays to the rear of the pod creature. He presses a finger against the JIPOC crest on his uniform, and the living pod spears Aakash with one of its metal blades and jerks him from the floor, a splotch of blood spreading across the front of his white jacket.

  “ ‘Centurions’ is our branding,” Conroy says. “A hundred private mechanical mercenaries, all operating under JIPOC authority, manufactured from the bodies of Upperworld passengers whose genetic histories lay outside licensed parameters. A value-added line, with the ability to think and react like human soldiers but without the inefficiencies of flesh and blood. Test models proved much more cost-effective than the Peace Corp. Even more so when we realized the Freefall provided a vast pool of raw materials for the taking.”

  Hearing my suspicions confirmed doesn’t make me feel any less like I’m the one squirming on the monster’s blade. “Raw materials? You’re talking about human beings, you son of a bitch!”

  Conroy shrugs. “You didn’t honestly expect us to hand over one of our prohibitively costly starships without a return on our investment, did you? The Freefall was originally programmed to follow the Executor. It was only a matter
of reprogramming the Lowerworld pods to monetize our line.”

  I’ve been subjected to corponational doublespeak all my life, but it sickens me to hear Conroy’s pitch. And it sickens me even more when I realize he couldn’t have created this army on his own. JIPOC approved it, leveraged it, commissioned the people who made it happen. Griff’s dad must have programmed the Freefall to stick with the Executor instead of following the Lowerworlders’ desired course. My own dad oversaw the stocking of the ships, so he had to be in on it too. And my mom—she was the deepsleep expert, the one who would have known how to turn sleeping voyagers into corponational soldiers.

  But it still doesn’t make sense. The metamorphosis didn’t work on any of the Lowerworlders Aakash and I freed from their pods. And the pods that escaped the Executor turned against the ship. Whatever Conroy’s plan was, it backfired on him. So far as I know, the creature holding Aakash is the only evidence of his success.

  I have to admit, though, it’s pretty convincing evidence. The chief bodyguard writhes on the pod’s metal skewer, his face contorted in pain, his blood dripping on the floor. I could try shooting the monster, but the beam would kill Aakash with no guarantee of disabling the thing that holds him. My heavy artillery sits outside, and even if I could reach it in time, its firepower would destroy everyone in the room, Sofie included. Conroy’s got me, and the smile that spreads across his face proves he knows it.