Ulrich closed his eyes, and he thought he heard Djima laugh, quietly.
‘That’s it?’ asked Steve Ames. ‘That’s it?’
Ulrich didn’t reply. He kept his eyes shut, and remember who sat in what seat, and who’d listened, and who hadn’t, and...
That was it.
What else could he do? He hadn’t lied. They weren’t a team, and they weren’t soldiers, but the best he could do in the time they had was what he’d done. After that...anything else could be figured out on the fly. No sense in wasting energy guessing.
And he was tired, at last. Not too tired to speak, but certainly tired enough to save his breath.
‘What is your area of expertise?’ asked Anna, nearby.
He turned his head so he could see her with his one eye. ‘Killing, and not being killed.’
At that, Jin’s head moved, just a fraction, but Ulrich knew the Titan understood that well enough.
It wasn’t any more complicated than that.
*
18.
White Fire
Blue Sun Dawning
Atmospheric Entry
Entry was far better than anything Ulrich had experienced. Among them, only he had experienced re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The unknown planet wasn’t the same, and Blue Sun Dawning wasn’t a shuttle ship to an orbital dockyard. She bucked, but only slightly. Dampeners minimizing drag, the ship’s hull experiencing zero ablation, repulsion shocks pushing air and heat aside...almost like gliding, to Ulrich.
‘Is this normal?’ asked Anna, her face pale and her left fist clenched tight against her chest.
‘It’s fine,’ said Ulrich.
‘Entry stress is well below acceptable parameters,’ Blue Sun Dawning said for the benefit of all. ‘There is no cause for concern. Planetary weather conditions are hostile to a degree that on Earth would equate to a storm though...’
That was the last thing Blue Sun Dawning said.
Ulrich was aware of a sudden, hard pull on him. Wind, but sucking, not blowing, as though a giant was trying to breath him in. It stole any words he might have had, and any chance of movement.
Jin, however, moved faster than Ulrich ever had, or could. Almost as fast as Ulrich registered the movement, and the pressure, and the instant of Blue Sun Dawning’s death.
Jin saved their lives. Blue Sun Dawning, he could do nothing for.
*
The giant trying to breath in all the ship’s passengers was the planet’s atmosphere – sucking at them through a rent in the hull fifteen or twenty metres long, through starboard and aft.
Ulrich saw nothing of the ship’s demise after that.
The ship held together. It wasn’t a commercial air ferry. It was built to withstand battle, and high atmospheric conditions, and take planetary entry as easily as a bird flying in the summer sun. But it was horribly wounded. A dead thing already, plunging toward the surface of the frozen planet.
Ulrich barely had time to understand what Jin did, and then the ship ceased to exist for him. He saw only white, and the sense of falling abruptly vanished in that micro-second between understanding and confusion. His face was warm with blood. His team were in terror and shock, pain and fear. Sound and vision mashed together, like a flash grenade had exploded. White noise, and white surrounds. Tinnitus inside a snowdrift.
It wasn’t Jin who’d killed their transport, though. Without Jin, Blue Sun Dawning’s passengers would already have died. Jin had put them inside some kind of shell.
It’s a shield, thought Ulrich. Fear was on him, hot and warm as the blood on his face, and his suit, but he wasn’t a stranger to that feeling. He wasn’t a stranger to wonder, either, even in the worst situations he’d known.
A protective shield. Something Titans had never been able to do. Before they had left Earth, such technology hadn’t even existed.
Fast as the destruction of the ship, fast as Ulrich’s thoughts, the Titan had thrown a hard, maybe even impenetrable, barrier around them.
Perhaps Hush was not the only one upgrading during their exodus.
The screeching, high-pitched bland sound of ear damage stunned Ulrich. He didn’t know if Blue Sun Dawning spoke, or issued commands, or if there was anything the ship could do to save them, and herself, or if she was already dead.
There was no sense of a loss of gravity, like in free fall, inside the shield.
There was pain. While gravity seemed stable, motion, too, affected them. A melee of arms and legs, of screams heard through the filter of the ringing in his ears. Blood ran and splashed across the inside of Jin’s shield.
Jin faced inward, as though the shield was some kind of wings thrown around them, wrapped. His blank expression was no comfort. No panic in the Titan. Who could tell? Expressionless and face blank, the Titan did not speak. Cries of pain were distant to Ulrich as those inside tumbled and smashed into each other. Jin’s face, Anna’s, Lian’s, bounced and thrown around, each visage only there for an instant before they were hurled away again to be replaced by someone else, something else. It felt like everyone and everything which passed, tumbling, hit Ulrich.
Face, ribs, legs...each part of him hurt bad.
Fear, concern, kindness, anger...perhaps the Titan felt those things. Perhaps it was like the battlefield medics Ulrich had known, telling men missing half a body they’d be home soon. Perhaps the Titan was capable of empathy and wished to comfort them with words, but words were weak against pain and panic and even Jin couldn’t stop the universal forces asserting themselves over his shield, and his charges, when Blue Sun Dawning smashed into the ice.
*
The fire raged outside the Jin’s shield. Friction heat inside the ship burned everything – screens, seats, equipment – and without the protection of the hull, metal burned, too. Then, into an atmospheric barrier at a lower altitude than Earth’s, and at a speed of just under 40,000kph, wind and turbulence stole the fire. Blue Sun Dawning’s hull integrity, heat shielding, weapons systems, life support capabilities, guidance – everything was lost. Her last act was to burn all remaining repulsion thrusters on port, sending the ship spinning, like a bullet through a rifled barrel, but on an uneven trajectory. The spin changed the angle of descent but a dying ship couldn’t beat gravity. The best she could do was to aim her carcass so the ship might avoid ploughing straight down and bounce, her discus form skidding across ice. It was nothing like enough, and such a small chance of success. The hurtling hull, Jin, and his charges hit a glacier 7000 meters high, sheering away most of the remaining starboard side of the ship. Any illusion of control was gone. Through a 5000 meter drop, spin uncontrolled, a warped projectile, she slowed by only 30%. Not enough. The warp was too great for Blue Sun Dawning’s final act to help beyond the initial strike. Gravity, too, took hold, and the nose of the ship angled toward the ground.
The section of the hold containing Jin and his shield ripped free. Seconds later, port repulsion thrusters exploded, taking the bulk of the ship to the surface in pieces strewn over more than ten kilometres.
Chunks of ruined metal tore through ice and rock over, leaving behind jagged hull and wreckage. Slower, she bounced, spun end over end through air heavy with snow and eight kilometres from the first impact at altitude, the last of Blue Sun Dawning came to rest.
Those who survived within the shield careened across the ice nearly two kilometres further.
*
19.
Outside the Shield, and Inside
Ice Field
Undesignated Planet
28 KM outside anomaly
Orde Vella and Samantha Wain were lost on first impact. There might have been some burned fragment, a small part, something from which DNA might have been found, but certainly no portion large enough to be considered remains.
Steve Ames was gone moments after the initial strike, wrenched screaming from the dying ship just as she breached the troposphere. He was already dead as he fell through the planetary boundary layer to plummet, froz
en, into the same mountains which shattered the ship.
Most of the blood spilled over the interior of Jin’s shield came from half of John Alison, severed in two by the shield itself.
*
Jin’s shield was impervious to the cold and external damage, but the forces inside the shield rolled and slammed his cargo around as they tumbled and slid and bounced across the vast ice fields.
At distance those fields might have seemed monotonous, but it was a deadly illusion. Cliffs, crevasses, rents in the ice, jutting rock sharp as daggers, blasting winds forever changing the complexion of the landscape so the tips of those slashing rocks appeared or disappeared in mere moments.
Jin’s only means of slowing was the friction from his exposed back and those parts of his frame which cut into the crystalline, ancient ice. Directionless and without control he could do nothing until he slowed enough to release them.
Jin’s shield wasn’t stasis, but a barrier, and no more than that.
Ulrich’s ears rang, but for him it was as though the impact woke his senses rather than numbed them, like he functioned better when he was in pain, rather than worse. He brought his knees in and expelled his breath in great puffs as the orb hit the surface again and again, or whenever other survivors collided with him. He had engaged his helmet when the ship was hit. Now it was too late, and it felt as though every person in the energy field hit him, with their foreheads, fingers, or knees.
The first sound he heard as his hearing returned was that of the wind being knocked from the survivors, a constant noise, like boxers at a punch bag, breathing out with each punch.
Lian’s elbow opened Ulrich’s lip and knocked a tooth down his throat. Djima’s knee broke Lian’s rib and at some point her head smashed against the shield, leaving her concussed, a flopping ragdoll. Ayobami, older than Ulrich but nothing like as heavily muscled seemed to fare worse than Lian – something broke inside Ayobami, certainly. Brittle bones snapped, but more bones, and worse breaks, than the others. They weren’t unconscious, and Ayobami didn’t cry out, and Ulrich thought Ayobami was almost certainly fucked.
As their progress slowed, Ulrich could make out more detail, see more injuries inside the sphere. Everything had the hue of blood – faces, faceplates, their suits, even Jin’s blank face peering at nothing like a head hung on a wall. Blood splashed in mad spirals over and around the interior of the shield.
Cassie Kiyobashi tucked her head in but someone snagged her arm and pulled it loose so it slapped around, not under her control – like it’d snapped, or been pulled from the socket. She screamed then.
Ulrich found old pains he’d ignored for so many years, and decades later those injuries were still there. Not welcome or unwelcome, just someone who lived inside, opening and closing doors, checking to see who was in and who wasn’t.
Something hurt his hip, a blow, and he had no idea what but the old pain sang out loud and strong.
Perhaps Anna fared better because she was lighter, but she was a ball rolling inside a ball. Djima, Lian, Ulrich, Ayobami, all heavier, seemed to play a game Anna wanted no part of.
Jin remained silent. What could he say, had he been able to speak?
How long did they roll? How fast? How many hits did they all take?
How much blood?
Ulrich had no idea.
It wasn’t just blood, either. Body parts were in there with them, too – certainly not a whole body.
They slowed, and Anna sobbed until Jin finally came to a halt and released them. The shield disappeared to replaced by wind, and snow, and blinding white-light bouncing from flakes closer in consistency to ice-shards than any snowfall Ulrich had ever known.
Lian was directly beside him. She was silent, and thankfully her helmet had been in place before the death of the ship or her head might have split, making her dead rather than just unconscious. Her chest moved inside the orange and grey suit they all wore which kept them from freezing.
Lian’s alive. Move on.
The cold and wind snatched any words Ulrich might have had. He didn’t complain, but fuck he hurt. Old wounds, like his hip, and new. His nose broken, a tooth gone, two fingers snapped, a wrist that wouldn’t work. His other hand was fine, though, and he managed to get his helmet in place and the relief from the cold, if not the pain, was immediate.
His aches, bruises, lacerations were considerations for later, Ulrich was thinking, trying to find some order in which to act. It wasn’t a thing you could plan. You looked, thought, acted and strived to do the best you could when you knew damn well someone was going to die, no matter what you did.
Ayobami was helmeted, too, their chest moving, but barely. Their painted face was visible, just, beneath the snow settling on their faceplate.
Kiyobashi grunted, bit down to some place deep where her will was and spat out blood into the driving wind and snow. She took whatever pain she had to get her helmet and faceplate in place.
The wind was more of a factor that Ulrich had anticipated. It howled, and was strong enough to stumble him even as he stood and tried to take in something, anything useful. Colour? White and red. Their suits bright orange and grey. Jin stood tall, his shining, silver-hued frame covered in blood, too. No landmarks, just these colours to remember.
He marked these things, noting how he felt, too, but moving on, in his mind, and making his body obey him, too.
He tugged at something caught in his suit which might once have been someone’s organ. No way of telling whose, or which organ. He wiped at his visor. It wasn’t designed to prevent damage, but to keep out the environment. He cleared the visor on the outside, some small accumulation of snow, and it was still stained with blood.
Broken nose. Bleeding into my visor.
Blue Sun Dawning told them the suit had basic commands enabled.
‘Suit,’ he said, his voice muffled with blood running into his sinus cavity and down his throat. ‘Clean faceplate. Assess and treat wounds.’
Instantly he felt the very slightest discomfort of an injection in his thigh. The blood drained away from the plate and warmth suffused him as the suit did exactly what it was designed to do.
A read out appeared beside him and the suit, a simple thing, told him all he needed to know. Blood loss, minor. Contusions, fractures – no compound breaks.
‘Suit breach and major bleed right thigh,’ the suit told him, and he read it at the same time, but couldn’t feel the wound.
Maybe because that leg’s already dying from the cold.
‘Seal?’
‘Wound sealing. Suit integrity compromised.’
Shit.
He couldn’t help anyone else if he died. Ulrich catalogued each problem they faced as he catalogued his own injuries. Nothing he suffered was life threatening, or debilitating enough to threaten the lives of his team. Not yet. Even so, He skipped himself up some kind of mental ladder of priorities.
The pain faded as the meds injected into his thigh flooded his system, but he never had minded pain anyway. Pain was his wage, and he’d earned it, hadn’t he?
‘Jin,’ he said. ‘Assess and assist. Lian first.’
‘Understood,’ said the Titan. Anna was groaning, still in a ball in the snow, but she was safe. Ulrich couldn’t tell what state she was in, but she wasn’t dying and certainly wasn’t dead.
Ulrich pushed on again – forced himself – into the wind.
We’re in shit.
Now wasn’t the time for anything complicated. First rule; save those who could be saved, but make yourself safe first.
Why?
Because it’s fuck all use picking up pieces and losing your own.
*
20.
Death Stripped Bare
Ice Fields
Planetside
How many times had he told fresh meat that little bon mot as they stood in a battlefield, fighting an enemy they could never beat? Reminding them while fires burned and war-machines exploded and dirt filled the air? Here, it wa
s a different landscape, but it felt like a battlefield. Same vista, different colours. The ice storm abated while he tended as best he could to the wound in his leg, tearing his pack-belt free from his waist and cinching it over the rent in his suit. In the lull Ulrich saw an ice plateau which stretched further than he could see. Fires, dim and shifting in the harsh wind, still burned. Sections of hull, small and far distant. Bodies on the ground, people crying, blood.
Not a battle, but it didn’t matter what it was – in some ways, it was worse. No help, no cover, no transport, no medic – their medic was out cold. Their suits were their only medics now, but that wasn’t going to help all of them.
The storm returned just as suddenly as it had quieted. His suit comms cut out most of the wind’s howl, but he heard Kiyobashi’s eloquent cursing no problem at all when her suit compressed her arm in, twisted, and up. A swift and rough relocation of her roving shoulder, but effective.
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