by Various
Kalima doesn’t say a word for two minutes. She’s just spinning.
“Say,” she says at last. “Let’s finish this.” Below, she quits her spinning, hitches to the Lorentz tether spool, and climbs to the satellite’s edge.
“Kal.”
No reply.
“Kal.”
Nothing. She continues gathering her tools.
“Let’s not do this, okay? I don’t want something like before, Kal. Not safe. Not at all—”
Kalima’s EMU turns, its white surface bathed in the reflected orange glitter of the debris above. Charlie shades his eyes against her visor’s blinding light.
“D’you love me, Charlie?”
“You’re getting romantic. Don’t get romantic. I hate it when—”
“Hey. Relax, big guy.”
Charlie shakes his head. “No, Kal. No. Get back in the junkship. We’re going home.”
“Hell no.”
Charlie pushes himself against his seat. His fingers are shaking as he adjusts his harness, preparing for… for what? “I don’t want something like before, Kal. Not like—”
He can see Kalima look up at him one last time. “Shut up, Charlie. Shut the hell up. You weren’t there. I was. My brother, not yours.”
Her bulky figure turns and climbs around onto the underside of the Chinese satellite, passing the protruding metal stalagmites which are no doubt missiles, lasers, cameras, and protection systems. It’s definitely some sort of military satellite, Charlie’s finally realized.
“And we need the money, Charlie. I’m not going to grow old playing chum my whole damn life. It’s indentured servitude, and you know it.”
Her receiver crackles, then cuts off to the junkship’s groaning silence.
The Chinese barge’s transmission bursts into Charlie’s ears.
“Junkship 0577. Junkship 0577. This is a final warning. This is a final warning. Cease activities at once. Cease activities at once. We are approaching interception.”
Fifty minutes, the clock says. Fifty minutes.
• • •
Kalima clips the tether spool onto the satellite’s belly. She launches the tether, and it spills away. It brushes the ionosphere a kilometer and a half below, lighting up at its end. A current starts to run through the tether, which glows. The Lorentz forces begin their work, slowing the satellite, letting Earth’s gravity pull it gradually in.
She smiles and looks all around. One minute passes. She reads the plating beside the tether spool control board. It’s in Mandarin:
PAKISTAN—CHINESE—REFUGEES : Zheng He Station
Her face contorts. Her complexion has always been a constant thing, definable, no matter how indefinable, invisible, or evasive her inner persona is. Now her face conceals nothing, and in doing so remains concealed. It becomes twisted, wrinkled, tight—a mess of knots and folds as complex as the unbounded entropy of the Kessler Syndrome. The eye can never capture its true nature, can never fully grasp what is there, like the image of a fractal painting with no brush stroke in sight—only feature thrust upon feature into a muddle so detailed it remains an amorphous disarray.
She punches the button on her EMU’s chest. Her receiver opens to Charlie.
“Change of plan,” she says.
“What?”
“Change of plan.”
“You’re killing me, Kal. You’re killing me.”
“I know.” She grins briefly. “This is a military protection unit for the Pakistani refugees in western China, in the mountains. Where the Western Allies chased them out.”
“Protection for terrorists, you mean.”
She laughs. “You really don’t know politics, do you?” No reply. “They’re villagers. Not Taliban. Everyone thinks everyone’s the freaking Taliban. Or Al-Qaeda. Or whatever.” She sips her Dr. Pepper; it takes longer to bring it up the tube this time. Almost out. “The Allies really did it for the damn pipeline anyway.”
“Okay…?”
“So change of plan. Like I said. I can’t let ten thousand refugees suffer because of me. I won’t. Can’t do it.”
“Kal—”
“You think I don’t respect the place Mom let me and Rami out her damn ass? It’s my home country, Charlie.”
“China?”
“Yeah. China. Right.”
“Okay, Kal. Sorry, Kal. Let’s just… not…”
“Yes, Charlie. Yes. You’re going to detach the junkship from this satellite, and you’re going to back off a quarter kilometer. This thing is going up.”
“What are you talking about? Kal, I can’t just—”
“Trust me, big guy. Just this once. Is that too hard, or do I have to kill myself first? You tell me.”
“I—”
“I’m doing what I’m doing. Goodbye, Charlie.”
“But the money—
“Now you’re worried about the money?”
“The contract.”
“Huh. The contract. You know what, Charlie? Fuck the contract.” She laughs, takes the last bite from her Twix bar, and switches off her receiver, this time for good
• • •
The Space Preservation Treaty was revived in 2029, over twenty years after its US equivalent failed to pass the floor of the US House of Representatives. The 2029 Treaty followed the first extraplanetary war—a battle between the United States and China, a new species of proxy war not in which one nation funds the insurgents of another, but one in which corporations and private enterprises fund nations to do their bidding. After the end of government shuttle programs and the beginning of corporate rentals of aerospace vehicles and stations, outer space had shifted from a government to corporate frontier.
The war was so damaging in terms of lives, economic resources, and the post-war price of the ensuing space debris that suddenly the world wanted an end to the gathering domino effect of the Kessler Syndrome.
Under the new international Treaty of 2029, Zombies were booted to high orbit—the graveyard orbits—to be left out of the way, at least for the time being.
• • •
Fifty-three minutes.
Overhead, the Chinese vessel crashes through the medium orbit debris like an icebreaker through Arctic water. The vessel is huge, the size of a small space station, and its dark blue surface flickers through the sun’s emerging light.
The transmissions are still raining in from the Chinese barge. “Junkship 0577. Junkship 0577. Last chance. Last chance. Cease activities at once. Cease activities at once—”
Charlie shuts the receiver. He’s cut off completely now—from Kalima, from the Chinese, from anyone. He has only himself to listen to. Himself and the thundering mechanical workings of his junkship.
“I’m gonna die,” Charlie says. “I’m gonna die…”
• • •
The Lorentz tether glows orange, electrified, by Kalima’s side. The satellite shivers.
She has to do it herself, she realizes.
By the time the Chinese arrive, it will be too late to pull the satellite from its downward spiral toward Earth. Retracting the tether will do nothing to undo the damage that has been done. The satellite’s already set on a gravitational path to atmospheric burn. If Charlie tries to pull the satellite up with the junkship, it will be a dangerous move—risking both their lives and possibly failing to yank the satellite to safety in the first place.
She needs to do it herself.
With no significant, independent power source at hand, Kalima unplugs the safety tether from her EMU and lets her suit run on battery. As she holds tight to the satellite with her left hand and pulls the safety tether forward with her right, she can feel the tension give as her safety tether spills out of the junkship, which is blocked from her vision by the white bulk of the Chinese satellite.
She grits her teeth, shoves open a panel in the Lorentz tether’s maintenance unit, fixes an adapter, and jams the power output of her safety tether into the access jack.
Conventional current rushe
s from her safety tether, to the satellite’s power supply, to the Lorentz tether. She reverses the voltage, tugging electrons up the tether system.
With the potential difference set the other way, the system inverts.
The magnetic forces reverse in Earth’s magnetic field, the tether’s current no longer dependent on the atmospheric ions but on the current forced by the EMF of Kalima’s jury-rigged safety tether. The Lorentz forces point in the opposite direction, accelerating the satellite upward.
Suddenly, the entire machine begins to swivel around a gut-churning rotation.
“Hell no.” Kalima holds back the urge to spit onto the inside of her visor.
The EMF her safety tether has supplied is too large and the impulse time between deceleration to acceleration too short. Instead of simply accelerating the satellite to a higher orbit, the reversed forces are strong and quick enough they’ve fixed the machine into a 180-degree rotation.
“Shit shit shit.”
Kalima bites her tongue, holds on, and waits for the satellite to gather its angular momentum. If she retracts the tether at the precise angle along its spin, she might still get it to a stable orbit.
All she needs to do is wait.
She can feel the last minutes of life upon her, whirling untethered through the dark of vacuum. Her energy fills the emptiness of outer space thinly, the way space trash scatters across its chaotic orbits.
It’s strange how easily the tether has dragged, how volatile. Too fast, too sharp an angle, to burn slowly in the atmosphere. How many Zoombies hit the ground? How many skip off the atmosphere like a stone on water? How effective are the tethers, really?
• • •
Failure to enforce the Space Preservation Treaty of 2029 resulted in the global resurgence of space weapons proliferation until the UN Security Council launched its Kessler Initiatives in 2034. As in 2029, the Initiatives also followed an escalation of extraplanetary warfare—this time a full-scale, multi-lateral world war over orbital territory, each corporation funding its own country to protect its preferred region of outer space.
The Initiatives concluded that satellites in the graveyard orbits could eventually fall Earthward and, regardless, become a collective threat to spaceflight. The financial consequences bore a price no one was willing to pay. So the Security Council decided satellites needed to be burned in the atmosphere, not left in high orbit where they could eventually pose further risk in the years to come.
• • •
Sweat floats before Charlie’s face like frozen spittle. He shakes his head, and more sweat dashes off him like water from a dog. The droplets warble back with his distorted, tiny reflection.
“Damn you, Kal,” he says to the empty channel. “Damn you.”
He unhooks the arms from the satellite’s docking mechanisms, and they retract into the junkship. Only Kalima’s long, gray safety tether links the junkship to the bottom of the satellite, curving around the satellite’s hull to where Kalima hangs on, doing whatever it is she’s doing.
“I’m trusting you, Kal. See? I’m trusting you.”
Charlie’s fingers grip the controls. He steadies the junkship alongside the satellite. His eyes dart from the controls to the satellite to the Chinese vessel driving through the debris above, its dark tip pushing aside the swarming bits like a snowplow.
Suddenly the satellite below begins to turn, cartwheeling through vacuum.
• • •
Kalima clutches the satellite’s rungs. The Chinese barge is here, looming dark blue above, casting the junkship and the satellite in shadow, blocking out what fraction of the sun has edged over the gray horizon.
The satellite hits 90 degrees. It begins to decelerate.
She’s going to vomit.
The barge’s docking mechanisms have just locked to the junkship, which cowers beneath the conical behemoth like cat and mouse.
Kalima grips the rungs with all her strength as the hunk of Chinese military metal twists 180 degrees like a misshapen giant football.
“You’re crazy,” she tells herself. “You’re crazy, and you know it. Outta your damn mind, Kal.”
The Chinese satellite pulls her along in its broad, powerful arc. Her left hand breaks away. Her right slips against the satellite’s escalating rotational inertia.
“Here’s to you,” she says to the barge. “Commie bastards, I love you dearly. I’m saving your asses after all.” She looks down. “Saving mine—theirs, actually. Down there.”
South Asia blooms brown and green below, barely visible beneath the grayish smog of industrial runoff, which clings to the clouds like space trash to Earth orbit.
• • •
Several years of international disputes led to the establishment of a small but sizeable fleet of junkships. Kradys, Inc., which emerged as the most profitable corporation following its success in the World War III proxy wars, was a manufacturer of Lorentz tethers, and so it was the tether—more than the laser, nanosweaper, or any other method—which was given the greatest precedence in the Kessler Initiatives.
Every satellite from 2039 onward was required by international mandate to be fitted with a tether. Even if it could afford the price, no country would approve laser or missile technology to nudge down the satellites; those were dangerous, unpredictable methods, the corporates told them.
By the year 2040, competitors and nations once kingdoms worthy for Kradys to wage war against had diminished to the modern equivalent of weak rebel alliances fighting the ubiquitous throne of a global empire.
Under the authority of world peace, the concepts of nationality, heritage, boundary, and place had begun to dissolve
• • •
They’re boarding the junkship. They’re through the airlock. Charlie can hear it hiss opened and closed, the clambering, the snap-and-quick Mandarin, a different smell in the air. A salty taste in his mouth.
“I’m gonna die…”
Beneath, Charlie can see Kalima hanging on by one hand. She reaches forward, fighting centripetal force, and punches the Lorentz tether’s rewind mechanism as the satellite reaches 100 degrees. Newton’s Third law holds strong, too strong, so that the force she exerts is the force the satellite exerts back on her. Equal and opposite forces rock Kalima from her handhold.
She floats untethered in outer space, hurling away along the tangential velocity of the satellite’s arc.
Her transmission blinks on the dashboard.
“Hey. Charlie. I realized something.”
He closes his eyes.
“Ever seen a Zombie burn all the way?”
“No.” He doesn’t know what to say.
“Ever seen the stats for the ones that don’t?”
Charlie opens his eyes, realizing what she’s getting at, but still can’t say more than a word: “No.”
“The tethers never worked. How could we have thought they did? They crash to Earth or deflect into deep space. It’s shit for engineering. Whole thing’s for show. And espionage.”
Charlie’s staring at the dashboard.
She grunts. “Hey. Big guy—”
But the Chinese military men are in the cockpit, tearing the gear from Charlie’s ears. He’s crying.
“With us,” the first official says, grabbing Charlie’s arm and unstrapping him from his seat. They’re wearing dark red skinsuits. Charlie flails like he’s never done before, thrashing in a seizure of boundless fury and imprisoned guilt. He’s not strong enough to do anything but rasp like a wounded deer stumbling, bloody, between the trees.
He sees the headset still blinking green in the second official’s gloved hand, rips an arm from the first man’s grip, and hits the com so it opens to the barge.
“Save her!” he screams at the headset.
They’ve got both his arms again.
“You can save her!”
They’re yanking him away.
He stares out the window. In the periphery of the frame, the barge poises at the edge of motion over
Kalima’s lonely figure like an anthropomorphic cloud drifting near the inanimate pinpoint of a bird in the sky. Is the barge headed her way? Will it turn a blind eye?
Below, beside Kalima, the satellite’s tether retracts like a long, inward bound tongue. As it does so, the very tip—glowing with heat—grazes the junkship as it completes its 180 degrees.
There’s enough momentum to make Charlie’s vessel roll.
A loud creaking erupts from above the junkship as the Chinese docking mechanisms overhead break at their joints, Kalima’s jury-rigged safety tether snaps, and the junkship tears free of the barge, spinning toward Earth.
The Chinese officials hurl into the wall. Charlie squeezes the arms of his chair, buckles back in, and closes his eyes as the ship corkscrews down. It jolts as it collides with the atmosphere. He opens his eyes.
The windows flood with the red of atmospheric entry.
• • •
Kalima clings to vacuum like the fetus of some cosmic womb. She bathes in the dark amniotic fluid of outer space.
The Chinese satellite climbs to a stable orbit, slowly rotating. The junkship drops through the atmosphere.
She smiles. Her eyes wander to the debris overhead. The debris looks back with its bright shadows of light.
“Lookit all that,” she whispers. “We like to shit ourselves, don’t we, Mr. Kessler? Yeah, Kal. Yeah we do. We shit ourselves all the time, everyday. Whole loada fun, dontcha think?” She laughs. “Dontcha think, Mr. Kessler?”
Kalima lost her grip on the satellite at just the wrong angle so that now she’s a long while going before she runs into the medium orbit debris above or gets dragged into atmospheric burn. Her jetpack’s thrusters won’t get her anywhere safe. She’ll probably suffocate before anything physically tears or burns her body to shreds.
She laughs again.
She tastes blood in her mouth, and it smells like chocolate inside the EMU despite the fact that she’s already eaten through her Twix bar. She bends her neck forward to sip Dr. Pepper from its tube, but there’s nothing left.
The Chinese barge hovers in the near distance like a pointy balloon at a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Maybe, she wonders, they’ll offer a hand.