Space: Above and Beyond 1 - Space: Above and Beyond

by Peter Telep

WAS SHE DEAD?

  He had to know.

  When things got tough, as always, Nathan got running. He charged toward a hallway that ended at the rear exit of the bar.

  "Hey, Nathan—"

  Shane's cry faded behind him. He shot out of the club and into a narrow, moonlit passage between the bar and rear wall of another structure. Stumbling to the wall, he visualized himself beating his face against it, but he already knew he didn't have the guts for that. He draped an arm across the stone and rested his forehead on his wrist. He thought of Kylen, how she might have suffered. He placed her in scenario after scenario, in life-and-death struggles with the aliens or floating helmetless in the silent void of space until she was caught by Tellus's gravitational pull and burned up in its atmosphere. To someone on the planet, she would be a tiny, shooting star.

  Nathan pushed away from the wall and drew the photo tags from beneath his shirt. He looked up and spotted the twinkling blue light, center of the system that would have been their future. Then he stared hard at the tags, not realizing his knuckles were whitening as he held them. He touched the corner of Kylen's tag, and her voice came from a tiny speaker:

  "I believe in you."

  ten

  When Nathan and the others returned to the base, they witnessed a light show worthy of the Las Vegas strip. Every room in every building and barracks was illuminated. Moths fluttered in the beams of the powerful pole-mounted spots, which lifted the tarmacs out of the shadows. The runway lights repeatedly chased to the horizon, and the lights of fighters pulsed and rose as each craft thundered toward the stars, toward battle. Crisscrossing the service roads were the headlights of ground vehicles which seemed to be driven by mad speeders but were, in fact, controlled by carriers on urgent missions. Lording over it all was the tower's main beacon, its powerful narrow beam rotating and casting the hangars and complex in a rhythmic, alternating pattern of light and gloom.

  Nathan ached with the desire to get into the fight. He was more than ready for a little payback.

  Unfortunately, they were assigned to temporary gopher detail and attached to the anything-but-glamorous cargo crews. They slaved until 0500, fetching crates, double-checking invoices, and sometimes, as Pags put it, "just getting in the damned way. We oughta be flyin'." At 0500, they were ordered back to their barracks to clean up and change. Chow was at 0600. At 0630, they were to report to hangar nineteen to receive new orders.

  Cranking the knob all the way to the left for full heat, Nathan planned to stay as long as he could under the shower. He kept his eyes closed and tilted his head back to let the water stream onto his face. Somewhere along the line there was a moment where his mind emptied. Either his lack of sleep or the shower had made it so. He no longer worried about Kylen's fate, about his future, about the war. There were only the million tiny rivers cascading over him, the tranquil, hypnotizing music of the water seeping down the drain, and the arms of warmth that cradled and rocked him.

  "Come on, West, you're usin' up all the hot water," Wang shouted, his voice echoing too loudly off the tiled walls.

  "Wang. I know fifteen silent ways to kill a man. Come here. Let me demonstrate one of them."

  "Just hurry up. Please."

  He sighed, the spell broken. Kylen... piloting... the war... all coiled around him.

  During breakfast, Nathan's spirits lifted a little. Someone once told him that bagels and cream cheese were the food of the gods. At least they made him feel better. He remembered sitting in a doctor's office, waiting for his preliminary colonial physical. He'd read an article about how foods affect one's moods, but there had been nothing about bagels and cream cheese in the report. Chocolate made people happy, peanut butter made people alert, and steak made people aggressive. Judging from the article, what the Marine Corps ought to be feeding its people now were T-bones so big that they hung over their plates and slices of German triple chocolate peanut butter cake for dessert. They would have many divisions of happy killers all singing:

  From the halls of Montezuma,

  To the shores of Eridani,

  We will fight our planet's battles,

  In space, land, air, and sea.

  After chow, Sergeant Maxwell escorted the recruits to hangar nineteen and left them at the threshold of an open door that was, Nathan estimated, five stories high. This was arguably the largest hangar on the base. Indeed, as he had suspected earlier, a Tellusian launch vehicle could be housed within the structure. It seemed nearly a kilometer to the rear of the hangar, and cargo trucks and support vehicles raced into and out of the place. A division of landing troops marched inside and filed into an APC that was a hybrid of jet car and tank. The armored personnel carrier rolled out of the hangar and up the ramp of one of at least a dozen gigantic Inter-Stellar Troop Transports. The ISTTs, Nathan had learned, needed only half the fuel of a colonial launch vehicle to make orbit; they utilized some kind of new technology that combined fusion with anti-grav principles.

  "What do we do now?" Wang asked.

  "Oh, don't worry. Mr. Congeniality will be around," Pags said.

  And, as if on cue, they heard a voice from the rear:

  "We... are at war. HOO-YAH! This is what Marines pray for."

  Nathan, along with everyone else, snapped to triangular attention. He was at the tip of the triangle, with Hawkes and Shane standing at the rear points. Wang, Damphousse, and Pags formed their triangle to his right, with Damphousse leading off. Nathan glanced at her. She looked at once horrified and exhilarated.

  In sharp contrast to her, the tank scowled. He probably didn't want war. All he wanted was to do his time and get out. Do what he had to do. Just enough. Get by.

  Asshole.

  Nathan was about to flip Shane a look when Bougus proceeded to the front of the squadron and continued:

  "From here out every move is crucial. All personnel, vital. While combat-ready pilots are dispatched into battle, you have been assigned a training mission, nonetheless imperative to the global war effort."

  "Sir, permission to speak, sir," Pags said.

  Bougus found a spot a few inches from Pags's face and paused. "Granted, but if you're gonna gnaw at me about your plane, then—"

  "Sir, I want my plane, sir."

  The sergeant eyed the rest of the squadron. "You people hear that? This hamster thinks he can fly. Anyone ever seen a flying hamster?"

  "There are squirrels that can—" Wang started.

  "HOLES SHUT! Now, I know how anxious you people are to die, so listen up." He moved to face the group. "You will proceed via military heavy launch vehicle to Space Station Goddard. There, you will board an Internal Solar System Cargo Vehicle and proceed for eighty-four hours to the planet Mars.

  "You will be issued rationed supplies: food, air, and water. You will also be issued one Urine and Fecal Collection Device. A yellow flashing light on the flight suit indicates full capacity. I know some of you will forget that. Do your buddies a favor—don't.

  "Your mission is to repair a malfunctioning Mars Tracking Drone vital to interplanetary communication. If successful, you will proceed to Accelerated Flight Training. At which time"—Bougus stared wide-eyed at Pags—"you will be assigned a plane and then be considered combat ready. From this moment, until we win this war, the only easy day was yesterday."

  Since they were on a training mission, the Marine Corps wasn't going to waste valuable space aboard an ISTT for the squadron. Instead, the recruits were, as Bougus had mentioned, going to hitch a ride on an MHLV, the commuter bus of the military. The short-winged rocket was at least twenty years old and sat nestled on a launch platform even older.

  As they rode in a small transport toward the vehicle, Damphousse remarked, "We're going in that? I think not."

  "It'll get us there," Hawkes assured her.

  "What makes you so sure?" she shot back.

  "My luck."

  Nathan hissed. Yeah, and mine, to be stuck with you.

  They reached the platform, caught the elevat
or, then were led by a pair of MPs to the main hatch.

  The passenger compartment of the MHLV was no colonial launch vehicle. The seats were worn and tom, the walls scuffed where equipment and personnel had dragged along them, and more than half of the overhead lights had burned out. A cursory look at the consoles told Nathan the redundancies went back three instead of the usual six. A main failure, say in the compartment's pressurization system, followed by two more failures of backup systems, and that would be it. There wasn't much technology standing between the Marines and a vacuum that had a nasty habit of turning people into red and gray mush.

  "Thank you for flying Marine Corps. Now bend over and kiss your ass good-bye," Pags instructed, not even trying to make a joke. He found a seat and collapsed into it.

  "All right. Everyone relax. She don't look like much, but she'll get us where we're going," Nathan said.

  Shane looked him straight in the eye. "You sure?"

  He shook his head no. "But I feel better saying she will. Confessing it, I guess."

  Hawkes fell asleep during the countdown. Nathan wondered if the tank were trying to prove something, or if he simply was so tired that even a rocket launch wouldn't wake him.

  At six seconds, the engines ignited. At three seconds, tons of thrust and flames created billowy clouds that were visible through a porthole. At one second to go, Nathan did, in fact, feel the urge to follow Pags's earlier instructions.

  She was a temperamental rocket and, though a veteran, still anxious and unsure of herself. She trembled through the troposphere, the temperature around her decreasing at a rate of about one and a half degrees Celsius for every 305 meters she climbed. Once the sixteen or so kilometers of troposphere were cleared, she punctured the stratosphere, then the mesosphere, and, at about the 644-kilometer mark, she smoothed out into the ionosphere.

  Her pilots were good. No doubt about that.

  "I'm thinkin' a martini would work right about now," Pags said.

  Hawkes stirred, then his eyelids flickered open. "We there yet?"

  "I wish," Damphousse answered.

  "Hey, hasn't it dawned on any of you?" Wang asked. Shane gave him a quizzical look.

  The young Marine answered himself. "We're going to Mars."

  Hawkes yawned, one of the few things he was good at. "So what."

  Wang looked at Nathan. "Hey. You ever been on another planet?"

  "Accused of being on another planet, yes, but literally, no. Tellus was going—" He cut himself off.

  Shane frowned at him. "Tellus?"

  He had trouble meeting her gaze. "Nothing. Forget it."

  "How about you, Shane?"

  "Uh, well..."

  "Well what?" the tank asked, furrowing his brow.

  Shane looked at her knees. "I was very little. During the war my parents were stationed on Mars for a short time. I don't remember much."

  "All right," Wang said, brushing off the strain in Shane's voice. "At least we have someone with experience among us."

  "Don't look to me," Shane corrected. "Lake I said, it's all a blur."

  The overhead link buzzed, then the pilot spoke. "Now in Earth orbit. ETA to Space Station Goddard: seven minutes."

  Through the porthole, Nathan saw the convex Earth arcing across the top of his view, giving him a brief flash of vertigo. Europe was a brown smudge with clouds pasted on it as if by a preschooler. The white spiral of a hurricane tore a hole in the center of the Atlantic. Beneath the planet, hanging by an imaginary thread, was a gleaming, expanding, ivory-and-silver dot. Soon, the station was in sharp relief, a lone, angular lifeboat floating in a night where straight lines were imposed by man.

  Goddard was the result of twenty-five years of multinational funding. The largest orbital platform yet built, the station had fourteen individual and diverse habitats, and sixteen research facilities within a university that rivaled M.I.T. Layover accommodations were not very glamorous, but anyone who wasn't assigned to Goddard never spent more than a day or two there. As it was, Nathan figured they'd be lucky to have an hour touring the place.

  Once the MHLV docked with the station, they were joined by four other recruits. Lynn Bartley was a tall blonde whose feet, Nathan guessed, would have been more comfortable on a California beach than in a pair of standard issue Marine Corps boots. Ken Carter was a dark-haired young man absolutely awed by his surroundings but trying desperately—and unsuccessfully—to hide that fact. Charlie Stone, a tall African-American who, in street clothes probably still looked like a Marine, made it a point to shake hands with everyone, a handshake that augured the power contained within his muscular arm. What Michele Low lacked in height, she made up for in charm. The graceful young Asian woman spoke in a captivating lilt, and, for a moment, Nathan felt guilty about staring at her.

  They were ordered to report immediately to the Internal Solar System Cargo Vehicle's boarding platform, gate seven, flight number 08790. No time for touring.

  As the ten Marines walked in line through the tunnel that led to the ship, Pags complained, "Not even five minutes for that martini."

  "I hear the in-flight film is one of those old science fiction classics, Aliens," Damphousse said.

  "That was back when they used real actors, wasn't it?" Bartley asked.

  "Yeah," Stone replied. "I think so."

  One by one the squadron members stepped through the hatch into the cylindrical troop transport. Nathan was last in line, and before he entered the craft, he stole a look through a large, rectangular, slightly convex viewport. On his left, the ISSCV's troop cylinder jogged straight out into space. The gray hull of the craft had been repaired too many times and was impaled by rotating dishes and antennas of various sizes. Nathan thought that the engineers who had designed the troop carrier must have been fond of Italian food: the craft was like a tube of manicotti, but it was being stuffed with Marines instead of chopped ham and ricotta cheese.

  Nathan went inside and a tech sealed the hatch behind him. There were no seats in the cylinder. He and the others strapped themselves to the wall and stood, waiting for launch. When it came, it was soundless and pleasant, the anti-grav units dampening nearly all of the force.

  "We moving?" Low asked.

  Nathan pointed to the porthole. "Take a look." Goddard shrank with surprising speed. While the others joined Low as she took in the view, Nathan unfastened his straps. "Listen up. They've done it for us already, but let's meet up in the supply room and doublecheck our gear."

  "Yeah, right. Never trust cargo techs," someone muttered.

  The ten Marines barely fit in the small, square cabin at the end of the troop cylinder. Shelves weighted down with allotted supplies covered three of its walls.

  Nathan suggested that each Marine gather and report on his or her water and air tank status, suit and helmet integrity, and personal supply of Meals Ready to Eat.

  While Nathan was hunched over, amid the shifting and clattering of personnel, something hit him on the side of his neck and stuck. He slid off the rubber, diaper-like part of the Urine and Fecal Collection Device, held it up, then looked to the end of the cabin.

  Hawkes stood in the threshold, a cocksure grin plastered on his face. "Think that one's yours. How 'bout a demo?"

  Low, Bartley, and Stone broke into laughter. Shane, Wang, Pags, and Damphousse knew better and stifled their chuckling. Carter hadn't been paying attention.

  "I'm not as full of it as you are," Nathan retorted, then resumed going over his gear.

  Once all supplies were accounted for, they changed into their olive-drab skivvies then unfolded their bunks from the walls. Less than a meter separated the top from the bottom bunk, and the aisle down the center of the tube was narrowed so considerably that passing meant getting intimate.

  From his bunk on the top, Nathan couldn't help but wonder why Shane stood next to hers, apparently reluctant to climb onto the mattress. Sweat beaded her forehead as she gazed with dread back and forth from the bunk to her palm.

  "Sha
ne. You okay?" he asked.

  "Yeah. Just give me a minute."

  "You getting a little space-sick?"

  "More like claustrophobic."

  "I think we got something for that in the medi-kit," Damphousse said, sitting up in her top bunk, two down from Nathan's. "I'll check." She climbed down and headed toward the supply room, but Shane snagged her arm.

  "I'm all right, Vanessa. Don't worry about it."

  "Sure?"

  "Yeah."

  With a doubtful expression, Damphousse returned to her bunk. After one false start, Shane disappeared beneath Nathan's bunk.

  Stretched out on his mattress and leaning on an elbow, Carter addressed the group. "Hey. I heard they had an army of six million."

  Bartley, pounding some softness into her pillow, stopped to look at Carter. "They can't know that, can they?"

  Carter shrugged.

  Nathan rolled over and now he had a view of Pags, who couldn't get comfortable in his bunk. The Marine tossed and turned as if lying on a bed of ants. Finally, he settled down and turned to Stone, who bunked across from him. "You think they got better planes than we do?"

  Stone nodded. "They gotta be more advanced."

  Nathan repressed a chill, and he guessed he wasn't the only one moved by Stone's assessment.

  "I knew we couldn't have been alone," Damphousse chipped in. "But now that we're not, I don't know what's scarier, being alone, or"—she cut herself off, shuddering visibly, then eyed Pags. "Do you think you'd be scared if you saw one?"

  "If it looked like Sergeant Bougus."

  Wang, bunking below and two across from Damphousse, half-grinned, then his gaze went distant. "I'll never forget when I was a kid. The first time I saw an A.I."

  "What did you think?" Shane asked, sounding more than just casually interested.

  He pursed his lips in thought. "I don't know... they looked perfectly human, but something inside me could tell."

  "I felt that way when I saw my first In Vitro," Damphousse said, then put a hand to her mouth and looked down at Hawkes, who lay a few bunks away, cupping his head in his hands. "I didn't mean nothing by that, Coop."