Samael's Fire

by L. K. Rigel

  Bing-bong. A gentle alert chime rang with a message on the room’s compad. It wasn’t Mike. Special Bulletin. Please access Channel One.

  Jake continued. “When I dropped Rani at the V, a guy in the bar swore he saw someone disappear right in front of him. I mean, teleportation is one of the ludicrous ones, but some of the rumors are going to be based in fact.”

  “How big was the raptor you saw?”

  “They fly in pairs. The bald eagles were the largest. I’d say their wing span was close to thirty feet, tip to tip.”

  “How is this kept secret?”

  “No reporter will touch the story. They’d lose access to everything else. But it’s not so secret. There’s plenty of chatter on the grid.”

  “Whack chatter.”

  “Exactly how the Emperor wants you to think of it.” He certainly had no love for the Emperor.

  “What about on Vacation Station? The observation deck.”

  “It seems their telescopes have been broken for some time.”

  Shibad. Raptors had mutated, truly. Even so, the stories had to be embellished. She’d heard the birds fed humans to their chicks, ripped the intestines from people’s bellies while they were still alive.

  Bing-bong. The chime rang again, and this time the message on the compad flashed continuously: Special Bulletin. Please access Channel One.

  The monitor in the sitting room covered three quarters of one wall. The picture came up split into four sections, each showing a mushroom cloud and the name of a city: Montreal, Houston, Redmond, Mexico City.

  “Those aren’t dirty bombs,” Jake said. “This is real.”

  It took Char a few moments to realize the disaster unfolding was a live feed and not some computer-simulated war game. “But all the nukes are gone.” This couldn’t be happening. With the Treaty of Pyongyang, the world’s nuclear stockpile had been destroyed. That was before she was born.

  “Someone didn’t get the memo,” Jake finally said, his voice barely recognizable. He pulled out his com. “Damn them to the last circle of hell.”

  Beneath the mushroom clouds, the crawl continually updated: Defenders of Gaia deny nuclear strike. Estimated 10 million dead. EU on alert. Pacific Zone quarantine delayed due to North American strike.

  On a repeating loop, a pleasant artificial female voice droned. “For your safety, please remain in your quarters.” They were far above the range of any effects of a nuclear strike on earth—the unacknowledged reason so many Imperial offices had relocated off planet—but all over the station people had to be watching. And panicking.

  “Do you have a com signal?” Jake muted the monitor. “I can’t get through to Rani.”

  Char fooled with her com. “I’m powered up, but I can’t send or receive.” A new headline crawled over the monitor: Emperor and family unharmed in Machu Picchu.

  Jake snorted. “Ten million dead, but the important thing is the asshole who created this mess is just fine.”

  The crawl changed: All ISS arrivals canceled until further notice. Departures advised to confirm at assigned docking station.

  “I’ve got to go, Meadowlark.”

  “Rani?” She was his crewmate. Maybe more than that.

  “The V is going to be invaded by ships getting off planet. The Imperial will be fine. No one will be able to dock without authorization codes, and its data links are too hard counterfeit.” He kissed her—with intensity she didn’t expect. Shib, he was afraid. “If things get too weird, stick with Mike. He’s a survivor. And he cares about you.”

  And he was gone. The feeling struck her that she’d had about the Pacific Zone, that same sense of finality. Jake wasn’t coming back. The gaping hole in her life, the one ripped when she lost Brandon and Sky, tore open a little larger.

  The monitor went blank and a different artificial voice said, “Incoming message, priority one.” Mike’s avatar appeared in the lower portion of the monitor. Char touched it and his face filled the screen. “Mike, what’s happening?”

  “So far it’s only four cities, all on the one continent. The DOGs are denying everything, o course, but they’re behind it.” He was calm and precise, as if he were performing on stage. The strong leader. “The Emperor is coming up. Just as a precaution.”

  That was big. The Imperial press secretary was always making noise about not being terrorized by the terrorists. That the media just wanted to scare people to drive up ratings, and the Emperor had no plans to go into orbit for his safety.

  “Jake’s gone to Vacation Station to get Rani,” Char said.

  “Good. Now listen to me, Char. I’ve sent directions to your com. I need your help with something before the Emperor gets here. Please come. Right now.”

  Please. A word not usually found in Mike’s vocabulary. “Sure. I’ll be right there.”

  In the corridors the friendly green lights blinked like little pixies beckoning her on. After several passages and two Ppods, the voice said, “You have arrived at your destination.” Char was in a docking bay with one aircraft, a hybrid runabout, part personal jet and part old-fashioned racer. Mike waved to her from the pilot’s seat.

  She climbed in beside him. There was room behind them for four more, but Mike sealed the bubble canopy before she had secured her harness.

  “What about your bodyguards?” she said.

  He winked like he was getting away with something. “There’s no security risk.” The racer lifted off without noise or force, and they floated toward the opening bay door. “We’re going to check a glitch at the hydroponics annex. It’s completely automated, but we’re picking up some odd readings. The agronomist has gone down to the planet, so you’re really helping me out here.”

  The runabout broke free of the station. Char felt like a mosquito compared to the massive complex. It was huge, really, an actual city in space. Ships hovered about its perimeter, from passenger shuttles to cargo transports, and more kept coming.

  They were dayside now, but from where she sat she couldn’t see the earth. Four nuclear bombs wasn’t the end of the world, right? A hundred and fifty years ago, the Americans dropped two nuclear bombs in the eastern hemisphere. The world recovered.

  The world was already adjusting to this. The Emperor would relocate. She would help Mike take care of glitches in the hydroponics annex. Fertility entrepreneurs would avoid the northern hemisphere.

  But god. Ten million people in a matter of hours. Ten million were annihilated by the TU in LA/San Diego, but it had taken months to a year for the deaths to add up from fallout sickness. This was a new standard. Another degradation of civilization. Now we would count mass murder by the tens of millions.

  Jake was right about people getting off planet. Once word spread that the Emperor was coming up, orbit was going to be crammed.

  “I’ve never seen a ship like this,” she said.

  “It’s a prototype. I call it the Mikemobile. Trying to promote the idea that it’s mine. The designers call it an orbit runner. One of Tesla’s real successes.” Mike pulled up a menu on the console and pointed at the word hydroponics. “Push that.”

  Char pushed hydroponics. They rotated and backed away from the station.

  “It runs on a charge off the solar net, the same power source for the hydroponics annex. This thing will go till it falls apart.” The com voice said course acquired, and the Mikemobile eased backward, picking up speed.

  “You’re piloting your first ship.” Mike ran his hands through his hair and blew out a deep breath. “Ah, Char. Being governor of the Imperial Space Station wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds. I’m glad you came.”

  Governor, cripes. That explained the Your Excellency stuff. And the bodyguards. No wonder the best table in the Blue Marble had been conveniently available. But what did he mean, wasn’t? Was he going to lose his position?

  “Shíb dài!” Mike’s curse stopped her from asking the question. A mid-sized shuttle swerved just past them into the space they’d cleared. “That ship would lose its
data link if I wasn’t preoccupied.”

  The pilot could have kept twice the distance from the orbit runner, and Mike would still have taken offense. Even swearing, Mike wanted everything proper. No shib, shibad, shibadeh for him. You could count on him that way, but you could also count on him never bending, always insisting on the rules. Char could see why Sky dragged her feet when he proposed.

  The offensive shuttle moved toward the docking bay they’d exited. The bay door was almost closed, but a portal beside it slid open and a ball shot out toward the incoming ship. The ball opened and expanded into a net that spread over the shuttle’s hull. It covered the observation windows and its sunflower logo.

  The shuttle lit up with electrical arcs emanating from the net. Like vicious living lightning, the arcs darted about the ship’s exterior. The pilot’s windows blew out, and the vacuum of space sucked a stream of objects out of the ship. Including people.

  A middle-aged woman slammed against the bubble canopy in front of Char. Her eyes were open. She stared through a cascade of curls with the same surprised expression Tyler had had. Char and Mike both shrieked. The woman was still alive—no. She shifted. The back of her head was missing. The body slid over the canopy and floated away.

  “What the hell was that?” Char said through sobs and chattering teeth. Shibadeh, the world was coming to an end.

  “The guys in logistics call it an electric blanket.” Mike’s voice was flat, emotionless. He rubbed the back of her neck, but it only made her feel worse.

  “No, I meant why?” Her eyes stung. “There were people on that ship.”

  “They might have been DOGs,” Mike said. “That shuttle was ordered not to dock. Approaching the station was a hostile act.”

  The supposedly hostile shuttle went dark, its sunflower logo illuminated by natural light. It drifted, dead in space.

  Slipscream

  The hydroponics annex was a rectangular monolith the size of a football field in synchronized orbit about ten minutes out from the Imperial station. The Mikemobile linked to the annex, acquired docking data, and glided into a bay large enough for a supertransport.

  Coming out of the airlock into the control room, Char was bombarded by the smell of green growing things. Still shaken, she closed her eyes and filled her lungs with the sweet air, grateful for the small measure of comfort it gave. Now the faces of two dead people haunted her, Tyler and the woman from the sunflower shuttle.

  Two out of ten million.

  “Will you do that to Jake and Rani when they come back from Vacation Station?” She followed Mike to the docking bay’s control panel. “Wrap the Space Junque in an electric blanket?”

  “The Emperor’s son and daughter are not terrorists. The Junque’s data links are cleared for all Imperial docking bays. They’ll find a place.”

  The sting of Mike’s sarcasm was blunted by that other thing: Rani was the Emperor’s daughter. I love all my sisters. Jake’s sister. This shouldn’t make Char so particularly happy. But it did.

  They took a Ppod to the other side of the annex. Char used the hand anchors to keep her feet on the floor. Entering the main communications center, she experienced the same disorientation as at the Blue Marble. This time she looked up at the world through a broad-spanning window in the ceiling.

  They were dayside, crossing Europe and coming up on Asia with the earth perpendicular to the ceiling. Or was the ceiling perpendicular to the earth? It made her dizzy. In the corner, the Imperial station drifted into view.

  A bank of computer screens along one wall monitored crops in the annex’s growing areas. The agronomist had left a supplemental compad on the desk. When she pushed the switch, the screen beside it came on tuned to an entertainment channel. He must have it on a timer, because Terra! Terra! Terra! was playing, muted with Chinese captions and set to record.

  Char let the cheesy soap opera play on. Maybe she’d find out what happened to that baby.

  At first blush, nothing seemed out of order. There were tomatoes, soybeans, all kinds of greens, corn—yellow squash, her favorite. And purple onions.

  It looked like every crop was enhanced with micronutrients. It was a fantastic rig.

  She indulged in a little self-pride. The micronutrients had been her idea. She and Brandon had lobbied hard to have that included in the project. Once accepted, Brandon went into geek-maniac mode until he worked out the Best Efficient Practices for the system. He would have been ecstatic to see this.

  “So Rani is Jake’s sister?”

  “Half sister. Different mothers.” Mike cut off the alarms at the com station in the center of the room. “My mother was their private tutor. Didn’t Sky tell you?” He sounded hurt. “The three of us were raised together.”

  Sky had said Mike’s family was attached to the Imperial household, but nothing more.

  On the soap, the mother of the baby was speaking earnestly to the unbeknownst-to-him father. She looked away forlornly. He, apparently, was suffering great anguish. A headline crawl ran along the bottom of the screen. DOGs admit North American strike. Char glanced up at the earth.

  “Oh, god.” Her knees went weak, and she leaned on the desk. In the middle of old China, a new mushroom cloud was in full bloom. A brilliant flash went off over Asia’s east coast. New Korea. She felt like she was going to throw up.

  The panel at Mike’s left hand blinked. “Do we need to go back?”

  Mike ignored her and the com board too. He was focused on the Imperial station, now framed in the center of the window. Two ships on the perimeter sparkled as if covered with firecrackers.

  The soap crawl continued. China accuses New Korea of nuclear attack. Threatens retaliation. “I think they’ve already retaliated,” Char said. A new mushroom cloud climbed into the air where the light had flashed.

  Electric blankets shot out of the Imperial station portals catching some ships while others pulled away. There was no surprise on Mike’s face.

  “Did you know about this?”

  He glanced at the flashing com, but he didn’t respond to it.

  Char pushed the lit-up button and the com burst to life, the operator frantic. “Repeat. All Imperial channels: DOGs have boarded the station. Repeat. Defenders of Gaia are attacking the Imperial Space Station. This is not a drill. All Imperial—ah!”

  A scream and a few grunts. Someone said no. The signal was gone.

  Maybe ten ships were dead in space outside the station with electrical arcs dancing on their outer hulls. Another twenty had slipped past the blankets and rammed the station, blowing out entire sections.

  “You knew. You knew this was coming when you called me down to the … the Mikemobile.” She could barely get the word out of her mouth. Frivolous. Disgusting. “There’s nothing wrong with hydroponics. You just wanted to save your own skin.”

  A cargo transport headed toward the Blue Marble’s see-through floor. In relentless slow motion, the transport plowed through the barrier.

  “All those people! Excellency. You were supposed to keep them safe, and you abandoned them.” She covered her eyes. She’d reached her dead body quotient for the day.

  “Shíb, Char.” Mike finally said something. “It’s going to crash.”

  What? The transport had already crashed.

  But he was talking about the station itself. The DOG ships must have been carrying bombs. Simultaneous explosions had knocked the station out of its orbit.

  It was getting smaller.

  Not smaller. Farther away. They stared at the ceiling in stunned horror. It took less than ten minutes for the Imperial Space Station to enter the atmosphere, ignite into a fireball, and disappear into the Pacific Ocean.

  The annex slipped into nightside like it was creeping under the covers. In the darkness, glowlights lit the floor, giving the room the feel of a techno-fairyland.

  “I had to.” Mike slumped into the chair at the console beside the monitor, blank now. No signal. “I had to save you, Char. For Sky. I couldn’t fail her a
second time.” He searched her face. For what? Did he think she’d give absolution?

  “Why didn’t you tell Sky you were governor of the ISS?”

  “I met her during a site inspection. I’d been separated from my entourage without a compad, and she found me wandering, lost in a corridor down in the bowels of Tesla. I told her I was a tech assistant. I don’t know why. I guess I liked how she was nice to me. To me. Not the governor. She shared her sandwich with me and we talked. Or she talked. She could go on about tidal power and photovoltaic arrays.”

  Oh, Sky. Char fingered her pendant.

  “She had to get back to work. Said she was avoiding the official visit and all the damn poobahs. I’d already fallen for her. I couldn’t tell her I was the biggest poobah in the group.”

  “So you kept lying to her, even after you asked her to marry you.”

  “I was going to tell her. But things got so complicated.”

  Right. Char walked the room, rechecking the data on the crop monitors, her mind racing. There were worse places to be stranded than where they grew all the food. Water shouldn’t be a problem either, for a while—this was hydroponics, after all.

  She sat down beside Mike, the burst of adrenalin fading. Please let Jake and Rani be alive.

  Who was she pleading with? People believed in gods once, people who weren’t crazy either. But when an orbiting city hurtled to the ocean in flames and your fellow creatures set off the last remaining nuclear devices, you had to be pretty sure there was no god.

  Seeing angel clouds was as close as Char would get to divinity, and that was fine.

  She looked up at the perpendicular earth. It was full dark, a hint of the sun’s corona on the horizon. There didn’t seem to be enough lights on the surface.

  How long had she been awake? Up here she had no sense of time, with the constant cycling through dayside and nightside. The computer clock read 2242. Was that based on Greenwich Mean Time? Not that knowing would change anything.