Escape Velocity

by Jason M. Hough

  The Scipios had arrived in four large aircraft. Bulky things that resembled mechanical whales, their design likely guided by the atmosphere and gravity of Carthage. They were parked in a half-circle some distance off from the impact zone, their cavernous bellies exposed by large ramps that opened from the sides rather than the back, as the Melville had.

  Smaller dronelike pods swarmed around the place where Skyler’s pod had met the building. As he watched, one ducked inside and extended those climbing tentacles he’d seen, suspending itself over the opening. The machine or vehicle trembled slightly, and then puffed a glowing cloud of shiny particulate into the space. The blue-white material coated what little he could see of the interior walls of the pit his escape pod had dug.

  More of the Scipios were milling about on the ground level, just a few dozen meters away from his position. These were the actual creatures, not machine augmented like those in the Swarm, but suited, intelligent alien beings. About a meter tall, they resembled upright-walking bats with roundish, flat faces and flaps of leathery skin that stretched from forearm to calf. They wore ugly outfits of grays highlighted in places with patches of color—yellows, blues, and greens. Perhaps an indication of rank or discipline, or merely some element of what passed for Scipio fashion. No way to know. They were huddled around some gear, gesturing to one another and making incomprehensible sounds. Their speech, he felt sure.

  None appeared to be armed. Perhaps they were a scientific team, sent to investigate a potential meteor strike or salvage a fallen chunk of one of their massive space stations. They hadn’t noticed him, or if they had they made no sign of it. Whatever their purpose here, though, it surely was only a matter of time before they realized the shell of material at the bottom of that pit was not natural or of their own making, and that something had walked away from it.

  “Likewise,” Tim said, so abruptly Skyler thought he’d misheard or missed something. Then came the sounds of relief and hugs. “Any sign of Sam or Vaughn?”

  “No,” the reply came. From Tania.

  “And Skyler?” Tim asked. “Any idea where he is?”

  “No,” she said again, sounding more distant than she ever had before.

  Oh, fuck no. Tim, you son of a bitch…Skyler ground his teeth and sent nothing in rebuke this time. These Scipios might have the equipment to sense a transmission. Besides, he could think of nothing to say. Tim had never made much of a secret of his feelings for Tania, and the complication Skyler posed to that equation. The sad bastard saw this whole thing as an opportunity for romance and was taking it.

  But then, Skyler recalled Tim’s battle prowess during those final moments aboard the Chameleon. Perhaps something had awoken in him, there, faced with such a formidable enemy and armed so. Or, maybe, his true nature had finally shown through.

  A shrill mechanical sound forced Skyler’s attention back to the Scipios. They were fanning out, suddenly. One of the airships lifted vertically into the air on a plume of vectored thrust. It went straight up, then hovered about two hundred meters up. Overwatch position. “Oh shit.”

  He heard a click. It came from behind, and he knew instantly what had happened. They’d found the door he’d cut through. If they’d been under any illusion this was some meteorite or fallen part of one of their space stations, that had ended there at that clean deliberate cut.

  And they’d followed his trail, which led them—

  Skyler whirled. Three Scipios stood just five meters behind him. The sound of their movement must have been masked by the liftoff of the airship.

  They seemed as surprised to see him as he them. Skyler raised an arm and fired. The creature took the blast in its chest, staggering backward. The other two hopped away, one gliding back to the ground using flaps of skin that stretched from forearms to calves, the other landing up on the wall, gripping its vine-covered surface and hanging there.

  Skyler relented, and to his surprise the one he’d fired on came back to a stand, looking down at its chest. Why hadn’t it—the door. The door he’d cut through. He’d dialed back the weapon’s output. Skyler dove left as the two on either side fired on him. Their weapons sprayed directed plumes of a bluish powdery substance, and he wanted nothing to do with it. He rolled, came to a knee, fired again, this time at increased output. The white-hot rail of energy annihilated the head of the one perched on the wall. It fell and landed in a silent heap. Skyler aimed, fired again. This time the one in the middle did not stagger back. It flew. Arms and legs flung forward like a rag doll, the creature vaulted backward on the power of the beam. Landed five meters away, rolled, came to a sprawled stop, flame and smoke billowing from its chest now.

  A blast of blue powder washed over Skyler, forcing him backward onto his rump. He raised his gun arm to shield his visor from the sandlike spray, ignoring the sudden eruption of alerts from his suit. Breaches, everywhere. That was no powder he’d been blasted with; it was like a mist of razors. It filled his vision even as it shredded his protective suit. Thousands of little craters clouded the surface of the visor. He gave up protecting it. He aimed blind, into the torrent of microscopic knives, and swept his beam across the entire space. For good measure he told his mortar to activate and launched eight of its potent bombs in a cluster pattern in a wide circle around his position. He felt the barrel extend from his back and fire—a series of deep whoomps. Skyler let the bombs fly and continued to swing his beam across the space in front of him. The powder attack died off. The third Scipio lay on the ground a few meters away, in several smoldering pieces.

  Skyler forced himself to his knees and covered his head with his arms.

  There was commotion all around him. Alerts and the excited chittering of Scipio-speak. And then the explosions. Eight, in rapid succession. Shock waves shook the ground and buffeted him like the fists of an angry giant. Skyler screamed and kept his arms clamped over his head, unsure how much his suit would protect him, but knowing he was in the shit like he’d never been before.

  Orange-yellow light flickered around the edges of his slammed-shut eyes as the fiery explosions tore up the dead city.

  “Move, damn you,” he roared at himself, and then he was up. Sprinting away from the shrapnel and falling debris. He could see nothing at all through the fractured glass before his eyes. Angry, he reached up and tore at the panel, but it wouldn’t budge. Fine, he thought. He leaned forward. He closed his eyes and mouth, then poked two fingers through the surface. The material, once, no doubt, super strong, had been weakened and came apart easily. Skyler moved his fingers around a bit, widening the openings until they met in front of his nose. Soon only a few centimeters of jagged yellow glass remained around the perimeter of the helmet’s opening. He looked up, could see again. Cold air bit at his cheeks. Luckily, the readouts Prumble had designed with Eve’s help still hovered in the lower left of his vision, though they were blurred now and parts were missing. Legible, but only just. He glanced around.

  One of the mortars had exploded into the side of the building he’d been circuiting, ten stories up. Huge chunks of broken wall slammed into the ground where he’d lain. Another piece smashed into the vine-covered walkway in front of him, showering him with debris. Skyler put his trust in his Earth-adapted strength and leapt. Here, on Carthage, he could about double his usual jumping height, and he cleared the lodged section of broken wall with a few centimeters to spare.

  Landing, he ran on, unwilling to stop and look at what kind of actual damage his desperate attack had wrought. He needed to get far away from here, and hope they never quite figured out if he’d lived or died in the violence of that assault. With any luck they’d yet to even report an anomalous finding back to whomever they reported back to.

  Skyler rounded a corner, surged down a gently curving ramp and through a plaza lined with teardrop-shaped pillars. Air crept in through the punctures in his suit. It felt wonderfully cool on his skin, and smelled of spring rain. He tried not to think about all the alien pathogens flooding his lungs, or the
engineered viruses of the Scipios floating like thick dust in the air. He hoped his immunity held on this planet as it had on Earth.

  The ground beneath him seemed to tilt. He stumbled, caught himself. Little white dots swam before his eyes. He blinked, hard, but the spots remained. Breathing became a chore.

  “It’s the air,” he wheezed. Oxygen levels had been marked in orange. Too low, or too high, he hadn’t bothered to check. Breathable to humans, that had been the extent of his interest. But then the top of Mt. Everest was still technically breathable to humans, wasn’t it? Until you died, of course. He slumped against one of the teardrop pillars and put his head between his knees, forcing himself to take long, even breaths. His nose began to run. Skyler swiped at it with his armored sleeve and saw a smear of blood there, black as ink.

  Altitude sickness. Had to be. Well, he thought, it didn’t have to be. “Get moving, then,” he muttered, and pushed himself to a shaky stand. He took several long swallows from the water tube in his helmet, hoping he wouldn’t regret the draw on his supplies later.

  Skyler glanced back the way he’d come. Several small fires burned in the distance, judging by the flickering orange glow that now lit the buildings around him. Of the Scipios he saw nothing at all. Whatever they were doing, however many yet lived, they weren’t following him.

  He turned and walked now, intent to put as much distance between himself and the crash site as he could. At the far side of the pillared plaza he found an archway that led out into a long, meandering, narrow lane. Circular patches of ground dotted the length of it on either side, and must have once been home to magnificent trees. Now they were choked with tall spikes of sandy-colored grasses, and the trees were nothing more than gray shapes lying on the ground, their long-petrified remains now sprouting smaller plants and wispy vines.

  Skyler hardly paid the scene any attention. His gaze was firmly fixed on what lay beyond. The undulating pathway led down to a bay, where foamy water lapped against a rugged shore. Beyond, perhaps two kilometers distant, was another city perched on a headland. The twin of this dead place, only over there the lights were on. Most of the light clustered around the tallest of the buildings there, a majestic shard that vaulted easily a full kilometer into the sky. And where the structure ended the thread continued. A space elevator, like a ribbon, extending straight up and through the clouds.

  For a long moment he simply stared, part of his mind convinced that he was back in Darwin. This was Nightcliff he gazed upon, as seen from the water processors on East Point. The geography was remarkably similar, in fact, and he suspected that was no coincidence.

  “Tim, are you there?”

  He waited. He wasn’t sure if his comm even worked anymore. No reply came.

  “Listen up, you bastard. I’ve found a way up. I’m coming. I’m going to find the rest of you, and you’re going to have to answer for yourself. Do you understand? So, last chance. I’ll give you a pass, if you just pretend right now that you’ve suddenly made contact with me. Let the others know I’m okay.”

  Silence, save the water lapping on rocks in the distance, and the wind.

  “We can still do what we came here to do, Tim. I know you’re a good person. Stop this deception now and no one need ever know.”

  The link remained silent. Skyler shook his head and took a step forward.

  “We’re leaving,” came the whispered reply. “You won’t reach us in time. Finish the mission or not, I don’t care, but we’re leaving.”

  “Tim—”

  “I have a chance to save the one I love. I have to take it. I say now what I’ve wanted to say for a long, long time: Piss off, Skyler.”

  This time the link did close. A barely audible click that somehow was the loudest sound Skyler had ever heard. Alone, then. Betrayed by a self-styled knight in shining armor, a man who no doubt envisioned himself carrying Tania, literally, away from all this with no consideration for what she might want. Oldest mistake there was, and one it seemed some men would continue to make for time eternal.

  Skyler rested his chin on his chest and let out a long breath. More blood trickled from his nose. He ignored it. What now? he thought. What now, what now, what now.

  The answer was the same as it had been every time he’d asked the question of himself. The same as it had been when he’d found himself alone when the plague had arrived in the Netherlands. The same when he had crashed the Melville in the Outback far from the safety of Darwin: Press on.

  And that’s just what he did.

  Location Unknown

  TANIA CAME TO a stand, gazing at her two compatriots. “Well,” she said. “How about that.”

  Prumble crossed to her and pulled her into a soldier’s embrace, then held her at arm’s length by her shoulders, then enfolded her in another embrace.

  “Good to see you, too,” she said to him, not bothering to fight her tears. “Both of you.”

  “Likewise,” Tim said, sounding almost sad. He must have thought he’d lost her. The young man came up beside them and awkwardly added himself to the reunion. “Any sign of Sam or Vaughn?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “And Skyler?” Tim asked. “Any idea where he is?”

  Tania shook her head, offered a weak, “No.” She was barely able to say the word.

  “Vanessa is missing, too,” Prumble said.

  “A minute ago I thought I was all alone here,” Tania said. “That the two of you made it safely gives me hope that we all did. Eve did this on purpose, I’m sure of it.”

  Tim’s face darkened, and he slowly shook his head.

  “Tim?” Tania asked. “You disagree?”

  “I…I’m not sure. About all that, I mean. Eve was headed here, on this trajectory I mean, when she exploded. I think she protected us from that, put us in those escape pods, because the alternative was to just let us die. We simply continued on the path. Textbook orbital mechanics. We couldn’t help but come here.”

  Before Tania could consider that, Prumble voiced his own disagreement. “Somehow I doubt she’d save us unless she knew we’d have a fighting chance to finish the job.”

  “You think she’d kill us?” Tim asked.

  “I think we know too much,” Prumble replied. “About how the Builders look for species that can help them. If the Scipios knew what we were tested for, what traits the Builders hoped to find, they’d change their defenses to account for that, would they not?”

  Tim said nothing, but the darkness in his expression remained.

  “Now,” Prumble added. “How about we get out of the open and figure out what we’re going to do with our second chance.”

  —

  The big man led the way. Tania fell in behind him, keeping herself just a few meters back, not wanting some bulkhead door to suddenly clap down and separate them, yet wanting to be close enough to help should Prumble turn a corner and run straight into trouble they all somehow knew would come at any moment. This was an enemy that specialized in viruses, and here was an infection of humans in their body. Of course they would react. The question was when?

  Tim trailed behind, too far for Tania’s comfort, but he seemed to need some time and solitude to process what had happened. Once she thought she saw him speaking, his mouth moving in silent conversation, comm perhaps malfunctioning. “Repeat?” she asked. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Never mind,” he replied, after a few seconds. “I…I was talking to myself. Embarrassing, really.”

  “No need to apologize,” she said, only then realizing he hadn’t, actually. Tim let that go, and Tania turned back to following Prumble, feeling slightly embarrassed herself for having brought it up.

  The smuggler had found an iris door on the outer wall and pried it open a few centimeters. Machinery in the walls whined as it struggled to outmatch Prumble’s suit-augmented strength. A sign above the circular portal read EXTERIOR [ERROR].

  “Look through,” he said, voice strained.

  Tania moved up and peer
ed through the narrow gap. A small cube-shaped chamber waited beyond, with another iris door at the far end. “Airlock, I think,” she said.

  Prumble grunted. “Help me with this. Tim, get inside and hold it from in there.”

  Tania positioned herself opposite the man and heaved against two of the door segments. Once a gap large enough had been made, Tim squeezed through and took her place from the inside, placing his miniature aura shard against one wall. Tania followed him in, guiding her own aura shard to rest beside the other, then added her strength so Prumble could join them.

  The door hissed closed with a thin clack.

  A palpable silence surrounded them.

  “Suddenly regretting this,” Prumble said. “Feels like a cell all a sudden.”

  “Or a tomb,” Tim added.

  “Go back?” Tania asked.

  Prumble shook his head. “Let’s at least peek outside, shall we? Assuming that’s what this is. Be nice to get some sense of the lay of the land.”

  The technique for opening the door proved surprisingly easy: a simple handle in a slot that moved horizontally, then rotated ninety degrees. The lights in the chamber changed hue once the handle clicked into its open position. Green to orange. Tania heard a hiss as air was pulled from the room, a detail confirmed by the readouts on her visor display. She held her little aura shard under her right arm, left hand resting across it. They each had one. She wondered if Eve had given them to the entire team, or if only those not immune were the recipients.

  Air pressure fell, into the unbreathable red zone, then finally to negligible. Almost immediately there came a series of mechanical taps from around the edge of the outer iris door, and the panels rotated apart to reveal a breathtaking view.

  The graceful curve of Carthage’s horizon, kissed by the red-orange hue of the star it orbited. Space stations stretched away from Tania’s viewpoint, bending to match the planet’s circumference, vanishing somewhere beyond the rim of the world. An artificial ring system of floating cities, networked together by physical bridges as well as those made of shimmering laser light, connected to the ground in several places by familiar strands of silk. Space elevators. A strange comfort to see them. For all the alienness of this place and its inhabitants, for all the unknowns that lay ahead, space elevators were something she knew. She thought of Darwin. Of her father.