by Doug Goodman
But most of all, he hoped she’d kill every last one of those monsters.
4
Screaming woke him up. Screaming, and the low oxygen alarm going off in his suit.
The screaming, he knew, was his friends. The alarm was a little thing called the “suit impact alarm.” It meant his AXES suit was open and he was breathing in carbon monoxide. He was lucky that he hadn’t slipped into oblivion while he was unconscious.
His view of the outside world was restricted by the rover. He was mostly upside down, one set of wheels laying in the dirt, the other set sprawled in the air. The GEAR blared its own alarms. System failures, low oxygen alerts, and of course, more impact alarms.
“Shut up,” he growled at the alarms. His words came out slurred. The alarms were doing nothing for the massive headache that was growing inside his skull. He put his hands to his head. No bleeding. At least there was that.
“Cole?” Emily shouted into his comm. “I thought you were dead.”
“Maybe I am. Hang on. I’ve got to get to a helmet first.” He unstrapped his five-point buckle and fell to the GEAR’s ceiling, rolling onto his shoulder as much as possible to reduce the damage.
“Go on. Get out of here,” he heard C.C. say to somebody, clearly not him.
Cole slowly pulled himself up. His whole body ached, like he’d spent the last ten hours in a Soyuz landing simulator. He staggered to the back of the GEAR, shutting off alarms as he went. Yes, he knew an impact had happened. Yes, he knew the environmental system was compromised. Yes, yes, yes. Now shut the hell up. His brain felt two sizes too big for his skull.
The GEAR stowed two emergency AXES suits on racks in the back of the GEAR. Both were in fine condition…except for the helmets, which were pulverized.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Cole said, and then he slumped in the corner. Breathing without coughing was hard. Concentrating was even harder.
“What’s wrong, Cole? Did you get to the AXES suits in the back of the GEAR?” Emily asked.
“I did, but their helmets are broken, too.”
“You’ve got to look for another helmet, Cole. Maybe somebody left one there. If there isn’t another helmet, you’ve got to find some other way to insulate yourself from the carbon monoxide. It will kill you.”
“I know,” he said, with a little laugh. “I’m so tired, though, Emily.”
“Don’t give up, Cole.”
“I’m not giving up. I’m just resting.”
There was more chaos in his eardrums. He didn’t know who was shouting at the others. He also wasn’t sure if the pounding in his head was just his headache on steroids, or if the monsters were back up on their feet.
“Baby, get up. I love you. Get up.”
“I…don’t think I can,” he mumbled. He was thinking of their training and how fortunate he’d been to be able to travel with his wife. Everybody says they want to travel, but how many of them actually go anywhere? Well, 51 Golgotha was definitely more travel than any of the other couples they knew (expect the Sorensons. Becky and Greg had traveled to two planets already before he ever met them). They were blowhards, he thought. Screw them.
Butler was the xeno-linguist assigned to the mission. He was a good fit, too. He was about Cole’s age, and one of the best linguists in the world. He was out of Northwestern. Of the five people brought in to decipher the language of the Jedik-ikik, Cole and Leo were two of them. But Leo broke three vertebras in the car accident, so NASA came to Cole to fill his role. He might not have been the adventurer his wife was, but he was no agoraphobe, either. He passed the physical exams and got to spend the next three months in a crash course to learn and practice as much of the systems as possible. It was exhilarating being on the other side of those rooms. He’d been the one training astronauts how to work the Jedik-ikik language before NASA added Leo to the roster. Now he was the astronaut learning from the trainers.
He liked those memories, and he liked that dream. It was a good dream to die in, if that was what fate had in store for him.
“You’re not dying on Emily, man,” a voice said from somewhere beyond the darkness. Cole looked for it in the dark but could not find it.
“Breathe in,” the voice said again. What is breathing? Cole asked in his mind. He wasn’t sure if the voice heard him. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
“Come on. Em is gonna kill me if you don’t open your eyes up right now,” the voice said. He was sure the voice belonged to C.C. He wasn’t sure he ever really liked C.C. There always seemed to be an unspoken competition between the two of them, a competition seeded in her love for Cole and his life-long friendship with C.C. He knew it was him, though. Nobody else called her “Em.”
Suddenly, his lungs kicked in on him. He felt better almost immediately, but he was still dizzy. His eyes fluttered open like a newborn. C.C. didn’t smile per se, but he didn’t look disappointed either.
Cole glanced around. He wore a new AXES suit. C.C. did not. Was he holding his breath?
“You need this more than me,” Cole said.
“No. I can sustain myself off of the DSMU’s filtration system. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t brain dead.”
Cole held his hands out like a magician finishing an amazing trick: Ta-da! Alive!
C.C. patted him on the shoulder, then climbed back into the DSMU and closed the hatch. A few dozen eye holes brightened with life on top of the hatch, and then the filtration tube breathed a gasp as it shunted the poisonous gases back into the atmosphere.
“You ready, Cole?”
“Ready for what?”
“Not dying was the easy part. We’ve got to catch up to everyone else. Catch up to those things.”
5
The monster called Zree fell forward coming over the side of the mountain. The monster crashed into Renslot, who fell down, too. Renslot fell face forward into the ground, and Zree tumbled onto his back. The combined fall of the two giants caused dirt and rock to explode everywhere. As planned, the DSMUs veered away from the explosion. The robots were not so lucky. They were all but destroyed in the collision.
Elsewhere, the GEAR was throttled by the ground tsunami, and Cole gave his life over to inertia.
Before the dust could settle, Anna, Mathieu, and C.C. dove back into the cloud. They landed on Zree and began hitting him with their seismic pulse cannons. They gave no more than three pulse blasts in a spot before moving to a new spot.
Beneath them, the monster railed. Giant wedges of rock—the creature’s arms and legs—whooshed above them as the monster worked to gain purchase and upright itself. The astronauts had planned on the creature’s movements, so they stayed on its chest.
Mathieu’s eyes were messing with him. Everything was a blur. He followed the blur of his friends into battle, and now he was avoiding the blur of the giant monster’s arms. He hoped he was drilling in the right place. Felt confident about his odds. He was pretty good, spatially, even without perfect vision.
“I went too deep!” Anna said. From under her, a jet of hot air shot up and over her mech suit. Bright red lava bubbled from the hole she shot in the Zree’s surface.
“Keep moving,” C.C. said. “The goal is to destabilize the magma inside and cause a catastrophic eruption.”
The Rentok bucked underneath them, hoping to knock them off his rocky surface, but the astronauts were using tethers shot into the rock to keep them strapped to the creature.
The monster roared.
“He’s going to either stand up or come after us,” C.C. said. “Everybody ready?”
“As ready as we’re going to be,” Mathieu said.
Gargantuan arms rammed at them. The astronauts barely jumped in time, falling into crevices in the creature’s chest. Giant fingers scratched at the crevices.
Mathieu cried out. He’d been caught. The fingers snatched him and flung him into the dust.
“Mathieu, you okay?” When Mathieu didn’t respond, C.C. called out for him again. “Mathieu!�
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“I’m alright,” he finally said. “Just a little banged up.
“We will rendezvous to your GPS location once we’ve destroyed the beasts.”
But then the creature began to rise.
“Hold on!” C.C. shouted. “We’re almost there.”
As Zree stood up, he rose above the settling dust. C.C. could make out Anna. She was at her last point, and so was he. Only two more points needed to be blasted before they could trigger the eruption. They were making excellent progress.
“I’ll take care of those last two holes. You get out of here,” C.C. said.
“Nonsense. Somebody has to trigger Mount Monstersaurus to erupt. It will be quicker if I do it.”
He couldn’t argue with that. As Anna moved toward the center of the monster’s chest, C.C. used the tethering system to move to Mathieu’s last holes.
A deadly roar deafened their ears. It seemed to come from nowhere, though the astronauts knew exactly where it came from. The largest of the monsters was getting back up.
The dinosaurian head ascended slowly through the dust cloud like a rock outcropping in the fog. Two red eyes glared at C.C. and Anna as the giant monster continued moving upward. Its gaze never left the astronauts as it stood up.
“We need to leave now,” Anna said.
“Go on. Get out of here,” C.C. said. “I’ll finish this.”
“Don’t be a martyr. You don’t have the genes for it.”
“Good point.”
“Time for Plan B.”
6
C.C. landed near the GEAR. It was half-buried in the dust and looked a hell of a lot worse than he thought Cole was capable of withstanding.
“You still in there?”
Cole didn’t respond.
Out on the plains, the two monsters moved toward the Hab, which made an easy target out in the open. Anna and Mathieu followed them at a safe distance.
“You don’t have to do this, Em,” C.C. said. “We can find another way.”
“One way or another, the Hab’s going down today,” she shot back.
“That is the only link to the Anchor. If you destroy it…”
“If I destroy it, we can figure out what to do after that.” Emily spoke with a tone of finality. “Get my husband.”
“Let her work,” Anna said.
C.C. ripped back the sides of the GEAR. Lying among the suits in the back of the rover, he saw Cole deep in sleep, like Cinderella waiting for her prince to come. C.C. knew he didn’t have any extra gear in the DSMUs, so he removed his AXES helmet and climbed out of the embryonic-like safety of his DSMU and secured his helmet onto Cole’s AXES suit. The suit pressurized, then began purging the suit of carbon monoxide while converting the outside air into oxygen.
Once C.C. confirmed that Cole was alive, and after he placed him in the DSMU, he climbed back into the DSMU and exhaled. He knew he’d be okay. He’d learned to hold his breath for two minutes during their training, which prepared them for aborted ascent scenarios that had them landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They had to pick up scuba diving lessons and learn open ocean wilderness survival, up to and including holding their breath for at least one minute. C.C. was okay. Loads better than Cole, who had held his breath one time for one minute. Emily was the champion, though. She could hold her breath for three minutes and twenty eight seconds.
He held Cole in his arms and entered the “Run” program into the DSMU’s command system. He was tired of burning SRBs. The DSMU was no Jesse Owens when it came to speed, but it wasn’t a couch potato either. Twenty four kilometers an hour—the speed of the GEAR when its limitations weren’t disengaged, by the way—was the top speed of a running DSMU. He aimed for the monsters and decided to put the speedometer to the test.
No matter what speed he set, though, the monsters were too far away for him to catch up. They would be at the Hab before him. And then, whatever happened, he’d have no control over it.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Maybe there is another way of doing this.”
“Oh?” Emily asked.
7
Emily watched her husband go streaking across the plains in the GEAR with the Christmas lights flashing on top. She giggled to herself. Then the colossal thundering of the giant monsters whammed everywhere. The two monsters chased her husband across the plains, and her husband bounced around as he fled.
She wondered about the plains. They were known only as Plains 421. Colossal plains? Cole’s Plains? That had a much better ring to it. And he’d earned it, hadn’t he? Certainly naming things was one of the perks of being the first person to set place somewhere, a sort of spoils of war for explorers. He’d probably tease her about naming something plain after him, of course, but he’d see the sincerity in the gesture. He’d love her for it, too. That was how they were. So different, and yet so the same.
The monsters went over the southern mountain. Again, we really need to name these places, she thought. That was Mountain 421, to correspond with Plains 421.
Emily tensed up. This was the pivotal moment. She trusted her math, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still a little nervous about the trap. What if something went wrong? What if the bulldozers were too slow for the monsters, or if the DSMUs didn’t hit them quite the way they should, making her thrust equations too low to topple the two great behemoths? She could easily think of a dozen or two things that could go wrong. She hoped everything would go right.
The three-legged monster tripped and fell over the goliath, and they hit the ground with a crash that rocked her in the Ascent Vehicle. A giant dust cloud blew across the mountain and then subsided.
Once the world stopped swaying back and forth, she began making the lift adjustments. The ascent vehicle was tilted ten degrees to the south for launch purposes. That would not do. The support beams repositioned the ascent vehicle based on her inputs. She felt the vehicle strain against the support beams. It was now almost thirty degrees to the east. Any steeper of a tilt, and she risked falling backwards onto the ground and exploding. No biggie.
She checked her LOX fuel. Reserves were 99%. She was good. She turned off the automated countdown clocks. The warning alarms blared. She shut them off, too. They were just doing her job, but she knew what she was doing.
She was now looking back over 51 Golgotha upside down, as if the sky was the ground, and a strange, rocky terrain loomed over it.
She breathed in and out slowly and tried to relax.
Two giant heads appeared in her window view. Erupting the monster had failed. They were moving toward her now, as expected. There was something strange about the two giant monsters that they hadn’t figured out yet (as was pretty much everything they hadn’t accounted for—there were twenty eight things on her list of unaccounted items for the giant monsters). The monsters had stared at the graves of the other fallen monsters. Were they thinking about them? Were they grieving lost family or friends? Or was there something more to it? She had a hunch it wasn’t grief. The way they stood around staring at the graves. It reminded her of radio towers, just standing there lifeless. These monsters were on to more than they let on. They weren’t dumb brutes wracking vengeance for nature. Either they were keenly aware, or they were under somebody’s control. Either way, Emily figured they would recognize the threat of the Hab and go for it if they were not destroyed in the fall.
This was Plan B, a.k.a., the Final Solution, a.k.a., Emily Is Off Her Gourd.
She synced up the Ascent Vehicle’s computer, Major Main 101, with OGRA. Then she turned off the Abort locks. These were preset destinations that would send the Ascent Vehicle to specific landing spots should the mission need to be aborted. Of course, she had no intention of aborting the takeoff.
As the earth shook and the monsters marched across the plains toward her, she continued her flight preparations, shutting down emergency systems and purging the main engines and pressurizing the LOX tanks.
“Commander Emily Musgrove,” OGRA said. “I mus
t again request that you do not use the Ascent Vehicle for any purpose other than return to the Anchor.”
“Thank you, OGRA. I understand, but our lives are threatened. This is the only way to stop the monsters from killing us.”
“You know this is all being recorded and returned to Earth?”
“Yes.”
“Then may I quote to you from the launch of STS-1?”
“Yes, OGRA.”
“If you will accept my edits, ‘You go forward this morning in a daring enterprise, carrying the hopes and dreams of all the people of Earth with you.’”
“Thank you, OGRA.”
“You don’t have to do this, Em,” C.C. said. “We can find another way.”
“One way or another, the Hab’s going down today,” Emily said. She was looking at the approaching monsters carrying the power of mass destruction with them.
“That is the only link to the Anchor. If you destroy it…”
“If I destroy it, we can figure out what to do after that. Get my husband.”
“Let her work,” Anna said.
She maneuvered around the guidance system in Main Major 101, convincing it that her manual adjustments would not need to be overridden.
“I’ve been thinking,” C.C. said. “Maybe there is another way of doing this.”
“Oh?” Emily asked. “What’d you have in mind?”
“What if we blew up the ISRU Station? OGRA could do that pretty easily, couldn’t you, OGRA?”
“I am not authorized to detonate,” OGRA said.
“But we could authorize you.”
The monsters were within a few hundred yards of the Ascent Vehicle.
“Thank you, C.C., but I think we’ve run out of options,” Emily said.
“No, there are more. You shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I’m the commander and it was my plan. I am exactly the person to do this.”
“C.C., stop,” Anna said. “Please, just stop. Let her go in peace.”
“But I’m not ready to let her go. I’m not ready to let any of this go.”