by K. M. Ruiz
The crew on that shuttle would begin the final preparations on the Ark for its passengers, joining the lead group who launched six months ago. Dalia watched the shuttle until it wasn’t even a pinprick in the sky, the smoke trail dragged to pieces by the wind. A soft beep brought her attention back to her console, an arriving encrypted message requiring her attention. She tapped in a few commands, downloading it to a separate folder. A background filter was already running, keeping the download from being discovered by the central command system. She’d crack the file later and retrieve her new orders from Nathan. At the moment, she had other duties to perform.
“Sir,” Dalia said to her supervisor. “Preparing for communications with the Ark in fifteen hours and counting.”
She set the clock, the numbers winding down.
PART THREE
VITIATE
SESSION DATE: 2128.06.29
LOCATION: Institute of Psionics Research
CLEARANCE ID: Dr. Amy Bennett
SUBJECT: 2581
FILE NUMBER: 596
“I’m tired,” Aisling says. The nurse taking a vial of her blood for testing doesn’t look up.
“We’re almost finished, Aisling,” the doctor says from where she stands behind the nurse, watching the procedure.
The nurse pulls the needle out of the girl’s arm and places a small bandage over the hole in her skin. Aisling leans her head back and stares at the doctor, wires framing her face.
“There’s nothing special about my blood,” she says.
The doctor waves the nurse out of the room. Only when they’re alone does the doctor step closer and stare down at her small patient. “It’s not your blood we want.”
Aisling slowly nods, the wires swaying with the motion. “You can’t see what I see, but you want to. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
“We have records of people that don’t exist and years none of us or our children will live to see because you refuse to help us.”
“Everyone has their part to play.” Aisling blinks rapidly, the machines changing pitch. “Right, Threnody?”
“What about us?” the doctor asks sharply.
“You’re running out of time.”
[TWELVE]
SEPTEMBER 2379
AMUNDSEN-SCOTT SOUTH POLE STATION, ANTARCTICA
They flew straight into the polar night until even the ocean became impossible to make out as darkness filled the sky. They passed over the Ross Ice Shelf, shuttle lights cutting through a blackness lit only by long streaks of green. The aurora australis guided their way from time to time, a brightly glowing ribbon in the sky. Maps drawn across hologrids surrounded the navigator’s seat. They showed only two points marked on the continental outline of Antarctica. Twenty minutes later, the shuttles flew over the first point, McMurdo Station an invisible ruin below. It had long since given way to the elements.
“Gonna be a tough flight the rest of the way,” Matron said as she stretched in her seat. The sound of metal popping was uncomfortably loud as she rotated her arms in ways real limbs couldn’t bend. Her cybernetic replacements were covered in synthskin, but these moments reminded Lucas that she wasn’t all flesh and bone.
“Wind is gonna be a bitch. Here’s hoping the deicing coat we put on the shuttles holds up after the Arctic.” Matron glanced over at Lucas, who was in the navigator’s seat. “You want to comm them or should I?”
“When we’re past the mountain range,” Lucas said as he continued to monitor their route. “Piggybacking off the government’s satellites is easier to do farther inland.”
“You’re the boss.”
They kept one eye on their instrumentation and the other on the dark around them. They couldn’t see the Queen Alexandra Range as they approached that small subset of the Transantarctic Mountains, which spanned the frozen continent. All they could rely on was the computer as the shuttles flew over snow and ice far below.
Like the Arctic, Antarctica was relatively untouched, only two areas of the continent having been inhabited when the bombs first fell. Most of those eight hundred people had been pulled out by their respective countries at the time due to distrust. The abandonment of McMurdo led to the abandonment of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station as well. The domino effect meant no one should have remembered that either place ever existed, but Lucas had a knack for finding abandoned history.
Thirty minutes later, Lucas started an uplink, one with a noticeable lag in sending and receiving. “South Pole, this is Alpha shuttle leading Operation Deep Freeze, do you copy, over.”
The uplink hummed for over a minute before someone answered. “Alpha shuttle, this is South Pole. We copy, over.”
“We’ve got nine shuttles en route and our ETA is one hour, over.”
“Thought you were bringing more’n that, over.”
“This is all we’ve got. Be ready to transport, out.”
Lucas cut the connection.
Matron gestured at her terminal. “Get me a route.”
Lucas silently plotted her a vector, and she waved her thanks at him when he finished. Night flying was always dangerous, especially when one needed to land in unfamiliar terrain. They saw the lights of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station well before they arrived. The illumination wouldn’t make it any easier to land on packed snow in the middle of the polar night.
The spotlights shining through the dark illuminated the improvised airfield. Tiny figures milled about near two half-buried buildings, one in the shape of the letter E, but with a fourth little leg added on, and the second, which looked like a dome. Bumps protruded from the icy snow, eroded foundations of buildings that no one could live in anymore. The shuttles landed in careful unison.
Matron stared through the windshield at the group making its way across the airfield. “She’s grown,” Matron said as she went through the postflight protocol.
“Children do that,” Lucas replied. He slid the hood of his insulated skinsuit over his head, sealing the skinmask to it for protection against the dangerous cold.
The Strykers were waiting for Lucas by the cold-storage units when he finally made it into the cargo bay. From a nearby seat, Kristen yawned behind her skinmask, gleaming dark blue eyes tracking her brother’s every move. Samantha sat beside her, expression ruthlessly blank. Lucas curled his fingers at his sisters in a commanding gesture, expecting them to follow him out.
The cargo door opened, letting in a blast of freezing air. Even sealed against the elements behind skinsuits and heavy clothing, it was impossible not to feel the cold. Jogging up into the shuttle, leaving wet footprints behind her, came a slim young woman. Behind the skinmask she wore, her face was as black as Matron’s, her smile one of vast relief.
“Shit, Ma, took you long enough to get down here,” the stranger said as she was pulled into a fierce hug by Matron.
Matron gave herself a five-second reunion before putting her only child at arm’s length. “You put on weight, Zahara,” Matron said with a decisive nod. “Didn’t think that was possible down here.”
“You’d be surprised at what the hydroponics lab can produce. None of us starved.” The woman turned to face Lucas, jerking her thumb in the Strykers’ direction. “They ain’t scavengers.”
“Like mother, like daughter,” Lucas said, a hard smile pulling at his mouth.
Zahara didn’t seem to mind his coldness. “You know it. But, hell, if you brought ’em, we’ll work ’em.” Zahara patted one of the large cold-storage units bolted to the deck. “These the precious cargo?”
“Observant as always, Zahara.”
Zahara shrugged, ignoring the glare that Samantha turned on her for the familiar way she addressed Lucas. “It’s what you pay me to be. We’ve got the dome open and snowcats ready for hauling. How much are you gonna be teleporting?”
“None of it,” Lucas said, gesturing at the others. “Jason here is your telekinetic.”
“For half the load,” Jason said. “If that. I need a fucking break.”
Zahara eyed Jason before sighing in exasperation. She crooked a finger at him. “Follow me. Let’s get you a visual.”
“I take it you don’t need an explanation on the functions of teleportation.”
“Been working with Lucas for years. I know how you telekinetics work.”
Jason followed the younger woman outside, sliding through the crowd gathered at the bottom of the ramp. Matron tracked her daughter’s path for a second or two before refocusing her attention on her people.
“All right, everyone. Listen up,” Matron called out. “Getting out of Buffalo was worse than getting out of DC two years ago. Lost about as many people, but we don’t got time to grieve right now. So choke back whatever arguments you’ve got and get to work. We’ve got cargo to shift.”
Matron expected her people to obey, and she had Everett to help make them toe the line. Lucas watched her call out orders, content for the moment to let her organize the work flow. Quinton came to stand beside Threnody, watching the scavengers.
“You’re not up to playing stevedore, Thren,” Quinton said, glancing over at all the cargo strapped down in the shuttle.
She bristled at the implication she couldn’t pull her weight. “Watch me.”
“I have. You’re going to undo everything we’ve done to keep you breathing.”
“He’s right,” Lucas said. “You’re not helping with this, Threnody. Get inside the station. Korman needs to look you over.”
“Korman?” Threnody said. “That doctor with biomodifications for eyes?”
“The very same.”
“I don’t need to be operated on again.”
“Which is good, since he’s probably drunk.” Lucas shrugged at Quinton’s angry expression. “He’ll be coherent enough to run some tests.”
Quinton shook his head. “You want me to trust some goddamned drunk with Threnody’s life?”
“No. I’m telling you to trust me. Now get to work, Quinton. Threnody? Get inside.”
Lucas walked away. Kerr drifted over, giving Threnody a sympathetic look. “You can’t really argue with him. He got us this far.”
“Yeah,” Threnody said as she started down the ramp. “Makes you wonder how much further he’s going to take us before he finds a reason to discard us.”
Kerr nodded. “Come on, Quinton. Let’s do this.”
As Threnody headed for the nearby station, Quinton and Kerr moved to join the scavengers, all of whom had separated into small groups charged with operating gravlifts and a dozen old-style cargo sleds hooked up to ancient-looking machines with flat tracks in place of wheels. They joined a work queue, adding their strength to hauling out boxes of seeds and other items, and organizing them into piles for teleportation into the dome.
The cold-storage units in every shuttle were unbolted and gravlifts used to pry them out. They were transferred onto cargo sleds, stabilized with heavy metal chains and hooks, then driven down a brightly lit icy path. Kerr rode along with the first load into the snow-covered dome. The entrance looked as if it had been carved into one side of the dome, the road they were on canting downward at a slight incline. They drove through the entrance at the bottom, the way braced by walls of ice whose weight Kerr didn’t trust.
Zahara and Jason were still looking the place over, Jason needing to know the dimensions of the dome and the placement of everything inside to form a safe teleport. It looked as if various rooms had once existed inside the dome before the scavengers tore the interior apart to form an open space. Kerr jumped off the vehicle and let the scavengers start unloading the cold-storage unit.
“Are you going to be all right, Jays?” Kerr asked as he approached Jason.
“I’ll be fine,” Jason said as he squinted up at the geodesic ceiling. “This needs to be done. I can do it quicker than the machines.”
“If you’re sure.”
“What, you don’t trust him?” Zahara said, arms crossed over her chest.
Kerr stared her down. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“The hell it doesn’t. The South Pole is ours, not yours.”
“I’d like to see you use that argument on Lucas.”
Zahara scowled, but kept quiet at the pointed reminder of who was really in charge. “You ain’t worth the people we lost,” she said before walking away. “Hey, Rex! That thing don’t go in the damn middle of the dome. Move it to the fucking side.”
“She’s got a mouth on her like Matron,” Jason said as he finally turned toward his partner. “Strong genes.”
“There are those who would argue that conclusion,” Kerr said.
Jason shrugged. “Let’s get to work. The sooner we finish, the sooner we sleep.”
Jason wrapped his telekinesis around the both of them, exhaustion forcing him to go slow. Beside him, Kerr watched as Jason struggled for a second to find a balance that had shifted permanently off-center. Kerr swallowed, his mind empty of the solace Jason’s shields once gave him through the now-broken bond.
“You okay?”
“I don’t see the world like I used to,” Jason said. “It’s strange.”
“I can only imagine.”
Jason’s power finally steadied, and in the blink of an eye they appeared outside again, off to the side of the airfield so as to not arrive in the way of anything or in anything. They fell a few centimeters to the ground, feet hitting against hard snow.
The two separated, Kerr returning to help load up the cargo sleds and Jason moving to the nearest pile of seed boxes stacked haphazardly in the snow. Kristen was leading the work crew nearest him, and it was almost funny how the scavengers were keeping their distance from her.
“Humans are so easy to scare,” Kristen said as Jason approached, her voice cheerful. “It gets boring after a while.”
“I don’t think Lucas would appreciate you killing anyone here,” Jason said, eyeing her warily.
Kristen gave him a sly look, her mind briefly brushing against his mental shields. “Lucas doesn’t like cleaning up my messes.”
Jason didn’t know how her damaged power functioned and wouldn’t trust her, no matter what assurances Lucas made. The dysfunctional empath rarely left her victims breathing, but Jason was still alive. The mental pattern of his natal shields must have been enough to stabilize her, to show her how to build her own. He wondered how long her sanity would last.
“Stay out of my head,” Jason said. He placed a hand on top of a wide stack the scavengers had created in the twenty minutes he’d been gone.
With a slow, methodical wink, Kristen answered, “Maybe.”
Jason gathered his power and teleported the boxes of seeds with him to the dome, the first of many teleports. It was less weight than the cold-storage units or the various pieces of disassembled terraforming machines, which was easier for his mind to handle. He’d have to deal with the heavier items eventually.
An hour later, but what felt longer due to Jason’s headache, a commotion around one of the shuttles caught his attention. Quinton was yelling instructions at scavengers as they painstakingly shifted one piece of the terraforming machines out of a shuttle’s cargo hold. Jason swore under his breath and jogged over to that area, holding his power in reserve.
“You should have called me for this,” Jason said.
Quinton shrugged. “You were busy with the seeds.”
“Of everything we brought out of Spitsbergen, these machines are pretty fucking important.” Jason took a step forward and raised his voice. “Hands off, I’ve got it.”
Telekinesis stabilized the heavy weight of the piece, the final product something he couldn’t fully envision. Lucas had the diagrams downloaded and stored in a datapad, stolen from the Arctic. The terraforming machines could be reassembled, but more would need to be built eventually. Learning to reverse engineer that technology was going to be integral to rebuilding the planet. The terraforming machines were capable of cleansing and cloning with the aid of nanites on a level that could jump-start a previously
uninhabited planet such as Mars. Fixing Earth came with government interference, and in the past no one had been willing to fight it for the sake of everyone. Even now, it was anyone’s guess how long the machines would last.
“Just don’t drop it,” Novak joked as Jason carefully settled the piece of machinery on the flatbed of the cargo sled.
“Novak, shut the hell up,” Quinton said. He followed a step behind Jason, keeping an eye on the telekinetic. He didn’t like the strained look on Jason’s face. In the back of his mind, Quinton could feel the push and pull of power not his own, and it made him a little dizzy. He wasn’t sure when the bond would settle, but he hoped it would be soon.
“You need to find yourself a sense of humor, man,” Novak said.
“Give me your lighter and I’ll show you what I do for fun.”
Novak didn’t offer it up.
With a shuddering groan of cold metal, the transfer was complete, and Novak climbed into the enclosed cab of the yellow vehicle, flat tracks rimmed with snow.
Jason bent over to rest his hands on his knees and breathe. “How many of those are left to move?”
“Two more pieces for this set,” Quinton said.
“I’ll move them, but I won’t be able to teleport anything afterwards.”
Quinton nodded and watched as Novak started the engine of the snowcat, carefully pulling out into the small road that linked the airfield to the station and the dome, joining the work caravan that was departing and returning in a steady loop. Headlights mingled with taillights while the aurora australis moved across the night sky high above them.
[THIRTEEN]
SEPTEMBER 2379
AMUNDSEN-SCOTT SOUTH POLE STATION, ANTARCTICA