by C. Gockel
Noa hoisted the cannon onto her shoulder. When she lifted her eyes, James, already by the skywalk, was peering into the broken window.
Sterling said, “Let me—”
James hopped up into the open space as though he were on springs. Bending down to one knee, he offered Gunny a hand. Gunny accepted, and James hoisted him up. A moment later, Noa watched as her sergeant pulled his phaser rifle around and slunk out of view, his practiced moves oddly out of place on a body with such a prominent beer gut. James dropped a hand to Sterling and hoisted him up, too. “Or I’ll let you go first,” Sterling finished.
6T9 followed them. He waved away James’s hand and hopped up into the skywalk with as much grace as James had.
Noa took a step back, then shook her head and turned around. Hefting her new weapon on her shoulder, she peered through its scopes at two ships whining by. The second ship made her blink. It was blue—or chrome reflecting the sky—in much better shape than the first. Her finger tightened on the trigger.
Wren fired first. The blue ship darted behind a building.
“Shit,” Wren murmured. Noa tried to follow its path with her eyes, but it disappeared in the maze of buildings and walkways.
“You recognize them?” Noa asked. She found herself breathing heavily, though her oxygen filtration mask was working fine.
Wren’s helmet was turned away from her, still canted to the sky. “No.”
“When you fired …” She’d been afraid he knew something she didn’t.
“I’m just trigger happy,” he snapped. He finally turned around. The sun was shining directly on his visor, and she couldn’t see his expression, but she thought she heard a manic smile in his voice when he said, “I don’t like being stuck down here.”
Her suit was perfectly warm, but she shivered anyway.
* * *
It was a mistake for James to have volunteered to go into the hospital. He was walking with 6T9 in between Sterling, on point, and Gunny taking the rear. The hospital was amazingly modern, and amazingly clean. The walls were white and pristine. The power had not gone out—which was one of the reasons Sterling’s team had holed up in the place. As they walked down the hall, tiny cleaning 'bots whooshed out of hidden doors in the baseboards of the walls and wiped away their footsteps. They hadn’t encountered any opposition; the only opposition was in James’s mind. He was having flashbacks of the long white hall the day he died. His left hand tapped his rifle. Not the day he died … the day he had been revived, he reminded himself.
James, Gunny, and Sterling were all wearing their filtration masks, in case they had to smash out a window and take aim at potential intruders, but they’d taken off the top portion of their helmets. The hospital was warm. The only thing that hinted that all was not well was the smell of damp.
“So, if you don’t mind me asking …” Sterling said, peering around a corner, rifle raised. “What is happening on Luddeccea? Why are the Luddeccean authorities after you?” The question brought James’s focus back to the present. He noticed Sterling was peering over the sights of the scope and was cocking his head strangely, as though trying to hear a far-off sound. Nodding almost imperceptibly to himself, Sterling motioned James and Gunny forward. James didn’t hesitate to follow. He trusted Sterling. He could hear him over the ether. Sterling’s team was using a cipher, like the Ark’s crew had when the tick landed. It had taken twenty-eight seconds longer than usual for James to decode, but James had been listening in ever since. At this particular moment, someone was saying, “Why didn’t the first evac ship come back from Luddie-ville?”
Following Sterling down the new hallway, his own rifle raised, James said, “The Luddecceans believe that an alien intelligence—or demons, or djinn, depends on who you ask—have seized control of Time Gate 8 and are controlling augments through the ether.” But they didn’t control James; they only … listened in? Were they trying to reach the larger galaxy through James? Was he infected? A contagion? Static fired along his augmented spine. His fingers fluttered on the rifle barrel. “They’re rounding up augments and exterminating them,” James finished.
“That’s illegal!” 6T9 exclaimed. “… and genocide!”
Sterling stumbled and paused. James had recognized that Sterling had augmented hearing and vision. That was why he was peering over his scope and cocking his head in such a peculiar way at each corner. Sterling hadn’t expressed any hope over the ether to go to Luddeccea, but just in case he harbored any secret desire, James wanted to quash it.
Sterling’s bloodshot eyes widened. “Really?” he asked, his voice baleful. Earlier, Sterling had described Gunny to his team as, “Former Fleet, seems solid.” Of James, Sterling had said to his team, “Upper-crust Earther maybe with his accent, and cosmetic-augments, augmented strength definitely, Caucasian throwback … the team trusts him, but I dunno. You know how Earthers are, especially rich ones, and throwbacks are always odd.” When someone had commented that Noa was a throwback, too, Sterling shot back, “Maybe, but she’s Fleet and a Sixth vet.”
Now his eyes left James, skipped right over 6T9, and went to Gunny.
The sergeant spit. “Really.” Turning to look down the hall, Sterling tilted his head again, listening, and then led them forward.
“They don’t like outsiders either,” James added, fanning the fire. “I’m from Earth, I was on my way to Luddeccea for vacation, when my rented shuttle was shut down.” For just a moment Sterling’s head bowed—thinking of the evac ship? But he said nothing and thought nothing to his team. He just kept going down the hallway.
They reached a door and Sterling came to a halt. “I don’t want to use the lifts. The generator is on but if it goes out …”
“Right,” said Gunny. “We’ll be taking the stairs, then.”
Sterling nodded and opened the door to a set of stairs lit by dirty yellow lights coated with dust. The floors and ceilings were poured concrete. After the austerity of the hallway that was too much like James’s trip down the “final tunnel,” it was relief. He chided himself. It wasn’t the “final tunnel” because he was here, alive …
There was a grinding noise, and James’s internal apps went wild. “The gravity,” he said.
“The artificial grav is finally dying,” Sterling said.
“All the better to run up these stairs,” said Gunny.
“But terrible for your bones and immune systems,” 6T9 said primly. “It would be best to leave as soon as possible.”
Where he stood a few steps above the party, Sterling turned back and looked at the ‘bot, his brow contorted in a look of incredulity and confusion. “That's what we're d—”
“Don’t explain,” James said.
“Don't even try,” added Gunny.
“Explain what?” 6T9 asked.
“Right,” said Sterling, turning and taking the stairs two at a time. Weapons fire echoed down the staircase. Everyone on the staircase ducked—except 6T9—who looked up at the ceiling. “We must help those people,” he declared and started to move.
James dropped a hand on the 'bot's shoulder as Sterling’s thoughts spread across the ether. “What was that?”
“Another ship … flying way too close,” came the response.
For a moment the gray stairwell seemed to contract, as though the grav in the building had increased.
And then he realized the gravity had increased.
“Damn, antigrav is in its death throes,” Sterling said. “It's been increasing and decreasing at random.”
James looked toward the dusty ceiling. This could be the real tunnel of death.
Chapter Sixteen
A moan shook the biodome. Water splashed against the sides of the Ark, and the ship noticeably sank in the water. The cannon on her shoulder suddenly weighed four times as much, and Noa sank to her knees. An internal app blinked red. Kuin and Jun, on the deck to lend a hand, both stumbled and groaned.
“What?” Wren said, bowed over. He swung his rifle off his shoulde
r.
Noa grimaced. “The grav's been fluctuating for the past few minutes … just not as noticeably.”
“If it goes up much more, it will mean we’re going to have that much more trouble getting off this ice ball,” Wren said.
“The gravity is fine outside the dome,” Noa said.
“We’re not outside the dome,” Wren pointed out.
Her eyes searched the rapidly darkening skies. No ships. She reached over the Ark’s ether. “Ghost, no chatter of incoming ships?”
“Just because there is none doesn’t mean they’re not on their way,” her computing officer grumbled over the general frequency.
“Cheery guy,” Wren commented. “Also right.”
Around Noa, Kuin and Jun shifted on their feet. “You’re making people nervous,” Noa replied shortly over the link, hoping both Wren and Ghost would get the point.
It was too dark to see inside the young men's visors—which meant they couldn’t see Noa, either. Noa couldn’t give them a reassuring smile. There was a low moan and waves sloshed higher. An internal app flashed in her visual cortex, warning her that the gravity had fluctuated yet again. She felt the Ark rise. Noa looked to where the prow of the Ark was now rubbing against the bottom of the skywalk. The water in the dome was rising, too.
She looked up at the sky again. There was nothing. The Luddecceans hadn’t sent any of their warships when they’d been discovered at Adam’s Station. Maybe they didn’t think it would be necessary? Her heart beat faster in her chest. They wouldn’t make that mistake twice …
She heard a shout from the skywalk and saw Gunny. He saluted her and waved behind him. A few bedraggled civilians all wearing masks but not all dressed for the elements started across the deck. Some were helping a few children and other adults in hospital gowns.
The Ark had two airlocks on the deck, and Noa had them both open. She hurriedly directed the first six refugees to the first. A trickle of new refugees appeared on the Ark’s deck, and she directed them to the second airlock, and then called through the ether. “Ghost, close the locks!” The airlock doors slid closed. “Manuel, the airlock grav, now.” She repeated the procedure as soon as the doors slid open again. As the deck cleared, she looked around. 6T9 was trundling an enormous barrel larger than him across the deck on a wheeled dolly.
Noa blinked. “What—?”
6T9 smiled. “Toilet goop!”
“You were supposed to get medical equipment,” someone said.
“This is medical,” 6T9 responded. “Kuin said sharing a toilet was making him sick!”
Someone snorted, and 6T9 chirped, “Laughter is the best goop!”
“Where is James?” Noa asked everyone and no one.
Gunny must have picked up her words with his augmented hearing because he said, “The antigrav stretcher collapsed in the last grav shift. The man on it was already in bad shape.”
Noa looked up at the sky. It was still empty. Luddeccea hadn’t sent warships to Adam’s Station, just a small scouting party. Maybe her team wasn’t that valuable to them? She bit her lip. It wasn’t the team they wanted according to Monica’s little girl—it was James. But what could capturing James possibly do for them? He was better lightyears away from Luddeccea, where his existence, sanity, and humanity couldn’t be witness to their madness.
She took a shaky breath and looked down the "canal" that ran perpendicular to the Ark. The hospital was there. Its internal generators were holding strong, and the lights were on, even below the waterline. She couldn't take the Ark any closer, the canal abutting the building was too narrow.
Her mind leaped into the ether. “James, where are you?” she whispered. For a moment, she felt the flutter of connection, and then the electrical impulses that should have activated by his channel went dark.
* * *
With one hand, James held his rifle. With the other, he patted the new heart for Oliver, resting in his satchel. “I have it, Manuel,” he said. The engineer's relief rushed through the ether. Noa was concentrating on other things, but the channel was open. The refugees should have started reaching her by now.
On the floor in front of him, an Atlantian doctor was kneeling above an antigrav stretcher crashed on the floor. An unconscious patient was stretched on it. Life support equipment that had more mass than the patient was clustered by the patient’s head, beeping rapidly.
James scanned the room, static fizzling over his skin. They were in what had been a restaurant at the hospital’s top floor. The view was spectacular, even though the floor-to-ceiling windows were partially obscured by desks, sandbags, and anything else that Sterling’s team had been able to scavenge before the real scavengers arrived. Just outside the windows there was a wrap-around balcony. Sterling’s men perched on every corner.
The Atlantian attending said, “The patient has stabilized, but we have to get the grav stretcher working again.”
One of Sterling’s men said, “The gravity is shifting too fast. We should carry him.”
“The equipment is too heavy!” the attending protested.
“I can carry it,” James said.
“You can’t!” the attending protested.
“Yes, I can,” said James again.
The attending turned to look at him. He was a thin man, clean-shaven with short hair. He looked perfectly normal until his eyes began to glow red. “What … are you?”
“I’m an augment,” James supplied tersely. “Like you, apparently.” He raised an eyebrow, gaze intent on the other man’s glowing eyes. A device that aided in medical diagnosis?
The man’s brow furrowed. Shaking his head, he turned away from James and waved a hand. “We don’t have a stretcher.”
“We’ll make one,” said Sterling’s man. “Give us three minutes.” He waved his companions from where they were keeping watch at the windows.
The beeping of the machine, still too loud, stabilized. The attending glanced again at James. “What … are you?” echoed in James's mind. He patted the heart and reassured himself it was just the size and make Monica had suggested. Enough to last Oliver another year. If they got the gate in the cloud working, Oliver would be fine.
If they didn’t … He imagined what Noa would do to try to get the child a heart.
The attending was alternating between looking at the machines whirring by his patient’s head and looking at James.
James remembered Oliver declaring the Ark a “space shit” and racing down the hallway, leaving behind a trail of toilet paper while 6T9 counted in the access tunnel. It had been funny. Oliver and 6T9 had been two of the few bits of brightness and levity during the whole damn escapade. Maybe all the levity they'd have for a while.
“I need another heart,” James said, and he only had two minutes. An extra one, one a size larger than Monica had asked for, just in case.
The attending didn’t ask. He looked back at the stretcher very quickly and said, “Maybe I can get this to work …”
James stepped around the attending. There was an elevator and a staircase at the center of the room. The room with the replaceable organs was downstairs, if he ran. He headed for the staircase and felt the ether between himself and Noa flicker out. Ghost’s ether extenders were reliable, but being so far away was testing their range. He kept going, not sure if he was attempting this good deed to keep Noa out of trouble, to keep himself out of a situation like this again, or if he was doing it just to get away from the doctor with the red eyes.
He was steps from the elevator and stairs when the world exploded.
* * *
The sound of breaking glass coming from the hospital shattered the night. Noa could hear it even through the muffling of her helmet. She spun around. Beside her, Wren and Sterling did the same. “What’s happening?” she called over the general channel, her thoughts running together with Sterling’s … James’s conspicuously absent.
One of Sterling’s men answered, “They flew a ship through the window.”
And an
other, “The lights, what are they doing?”
And another, “Returning fire. Chu is down!”
There was a groan and the gravity of the dome shifted again. The Ark sank and the cannon Noa carried suddenly doubled in weight.
“Devi? Martinez?” Sterling’s thoughts swept through the ether.
“They’re down,” said the first voice. “I’m …”
“Sukarno …” He looked at Noa. “My men, they’re all down.”
“James!” Noa screamed into the ether.
She felt a lightness in her mind as the connection re-established. “I have Oliver’s heart,” he said over the shared channel.
Manuel’s thoughts flew across the connection. “James, get out of there!”
“Get out of there!” The thoughts swelled in a chorus from Noa, her crew, and Sterling's men.
“I think we may have other, bigger problems,” said Wren, his neck craned upward.
Her heart feeling heavier than even the malfunctioning grav could explain, Noa lifted her eyes to the glow of S8O5 and saw the shadows of warships there, marring the heavens like black scars.
* * *
Pinned beneath a heavy weight, James heard Gunny’s thoughts. “We’ve got three Luddeccean mid-class battleships up there. Estimated entry into atmosphere, six minutes, thirty-three seconds.”
Blackness and bright flashes flowed so quickly together, James couldn’t see anything. He heard a roar, a loud whoosh, and two thunks in the region he’d just been before. Cold air bit his face above his air filtration mask. He had dropped and spun when he’d heard what must have been the ship Sterling’s men had spoken of crashing through the windows. He was on his back, but his head was crushed against a wall at an uncomfortable angle. His left hand was cradling the satchel; with his right he searched for his rifle. Somewhere in the black and white flashing in his eyes, he heard footsteps and voices. “This one is down.”
“This one, too,” said another.
Someone else said, “We caught the medic and a corpse! The med’s got glowing eyes.”