Escape Velocity

by Jason M. Hough

  The captain cast her navigator a dubious glare. “Doubtful.”

  “Doubtful doesn’t mean impossible.”

  “I…” Gloria allowed herself a long, calming breath. “I know. Okay, fine. I’m revising the plan. We’ll poke around first. Good enough?”

  “Maybe I should go in and recon the situation,” Vanessa offered.

  Gloria shook her head. “We can’t all sit out here, so no matter what, we’re going in. All of us. If we can find a—”

  A painfully loud pop interrupted her. Gloria winced as the bright ring of feedback followed the sudden noise. She glanced down at herself, sure she’d been shot despite knowing how ridiculous that was. But there was no pain except for that in her ears. Xavi and Beth reacted similarly, but not, she realized, Vanessa or Alex.

  “What is it?” Vanessa asked, barely audible. “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she managed. “I—”

  Xavi’s hand gripped her arm. He was looking at the ground, at nothing, eyes darting back and forth. “Listen,” he said.

  Listen? Gloria could barely hear anything. But Xavi’s strong grip served to steady her, and the ringing finally faded, leaving other sounds behind. Alien sounds. Muffled vocalizations, indecipherable. And something else, too. A groan of pain, and labored breathing. Both, to Gloria Tsandi’s ear, very human sounds.

  “What is this?” Beth asked, whispering.

  Gloria held up a hand. She listened and at the same time racked her brain to figure out what they could possibly be hearing. They’d all gone on radio silence. And who else was here?

  Perhaps it was coming from far away, she thought. Quickly she summoned the comm portion of her suit’s interface. And then she saw it. A transmission on the emergency channel, slipping through because that had to be deliberately disabled, a separate action from radio silence. It wasn’t this that grabbed Gloria’s attention, though, it was the identifier displayed below. CAPT DAWSON.

  “Dawson,” she whispered, and looked up at Xavi, then Beth.

  The groans of pain flowing into Gloria’s ears turned into a shrill scream, quickly silenced.

  “That’s a short-range channel, boss,” Xavi said. “Nearby. In that fucking base. What are the damn odds?”

  Gloria looked into the eyes of each of them, and saw that, this time, no one needed to be told what the objective was.

  Carthage

  THE TUNNEL DESCENDED into darkness, beneath the crushing weight of the bay above.

  Skyler forced himself to stroll. Cracks laced the arched ceiling above him, allowing the frothy white ocean water—if it was even water—to bubble through. The mucuslike fluid dripped through and formed gelatinous piles on the sloping ground, making the surface slick and treacherous. Several hours passed before the slope began to even out. Here, the white fluid had begun to pool, and Skyler feared the basin of the tunnel would be completely flooded. He had no intention of submerging himself in whatever this gunk was, especially in a compromised suit. Already the acrid smell of it had begun to sting his eyes and forced him into several bouts of sneezing. His throat itched, and his stomach had started to complain.

  He trudged on, his feet sluicing through the stagnant “water,” each step leaving little bluish contrails in their wake. It reminded him of pearlescent liquid soap. If only it smelled as good.

  The fluid reached his waist when the tunnel finally flattened out completely. He stood for a while, trying to banish images his brain concocted of the entire ceiling collapsing, instantly crushing him under the weight of hundreds of meters of this muck. But as he watched, the depth of the accumulation did not change. Seeping out onto the ocean floor, perhaps, or just draining into some unseen lower chamber of the tunnel. It had been this way for centuries, a fact of which he had to continually remind himself. No reason to think it would suddenly fill up now, or collapse.

  Skyler waded farther into the pool. It was too murky to see his legs or feet, too dark in any case. Something bumped his leg and sloshed away, producing a string of frothy bubbles that left blue rings of film on the surface. He steadied himself and took another tentative step, probing with the toe of his armored suit. He stepped again, and shifted his focus to the ceiling, scanning it for any signs of surveillance equipment. His assumption so far had been that the Scipios relied on their viral snow for such things, the tiny cells relaying anything they found that was considered out of place. It made sense to do it that way, given how pervasive the little white flakes of engineered nastiness were. Still, this place had not been built by the Scipios. Surely the original occupants would have used more traditional means of defense and policing. But Skyler saw nothing. No cameras, no sensors. Not here, not in the city he’d fled through, either, though admittedly he’d been in a rush to find cover as he’d traversed those streets and alleys.

  Here was only the arched ceiling, made of some kind of slightly glittering poured stone. Concrete laced with diamonds, his imagination decided. It sounded cool, at least. There were pipes as well, whole bundles of them that traced the entire length, eerily human in their design and layout. Skyler chalked that up to the universal obviousness of a round container for withstanding pressures. Still, it seemed strange to look at this place so. There was an implied kinship with the aliens who’d built this place, and the city around it, in a “See, we’re not so different after all” kind of way.

  As he pushed through the slurry, his thoughts drifted to the state of humankind. Their place in this universe. When first encountering the Key Ship, and Eve, Skyler had felt like a feral child encountering true technology for the first time. He remembered a certain embarrassed feeling, that these advanced beings had been wasting their time with such a messy, petty, nasty people and their fucked-up world. To go from that to the news Gloria Tsandi brought left him reeling. Humans belonged out here now. They were members of the club. Actors perfectly justified to be playing on this grand stage. Even knowing how much time had passed back home, this change in fortunes made him stand a bit taller. He wondered how much the “gifts” Eve had given Earth, in exchange for the help of Skyler and his crew, had assisted in this transformation. Eve had bestowed on Earth a way to probe the memories of all those who had succumbed to the plague, and a few of her incomprehensible time-distortion bubbles, in addition to ending her facsimile of the Scipio virus.

  At some point the tunnel had begun to curve upward again, a fact he realized only because he could see his knees now. He’d lost track of time, lost in thought, and now neared his destination. Skyler put his thoughts aside. He would look forward to talking to Gloria Tsandi about how, exactly, humanity had made such an incredible leap, should he ever see her again.

  And if he wanted to do that, he had a space elevator to catch.

  Skyler gritted his teeth as he waded through the last of the murky fluid. His foot plopped onto solid surface for the first time in hours, and almost slipped out from under him. He paused, let the gunk drip off his feet. His legs had begun to itch where the weird chemical stew had seeped into his shredded suit. He tried not to think of the alien bacteria and parasites that were no doubt now snacking on his legs and feet. They were, quite literally, the least of his worries.

  Sounds ahead. The hum of machinery and soft bustle of movement. He killed his helmet light. For a time he stood, motionless, allowing his eyes to adjust. Weak light filtered down from the unseen end of the tunnel, illuminating the gentle fall of viral dust, swirling in and out on currents of air. After a few minutes he could see well enough to mark the debris and piles of dripping ocean goop that lay between here and there. He guessed he could see about three hundred meters before the tunnel curved out of sight. If it ended up there, or merely continued on into the city as part of some underground transportation system, he could not yet tell. He picked his way forward, keeping close to the wall for no reason other than it felt reassuring somehow to have a solid surface at his back.

  It occurred to him that by walking upright he was making himself an
unnecessarily large target. Skyler got on hands and knees, lowered himself to his belly, and began to crawl like a soldier under razor wire.

  A barrier came into view. It looked to be a wall about a meter high, made out of some kind of composite material that reminded him of woven Kevlar. Body armor. It had none of the grime seen everywhere else. A recent addition? Made because they were expecting him?

  Skyler stared at the surface for a long time, allowing details to register. The grime of age, and in places the creeping vines that seemed to boil up everywhere on the abandoned side of the city. Here, the growth was pale and thin, barely ten centimeters high. New growth, in comparison, but at least he could assume this barrier had been here for a while.

  Movement just beyond the wall caught his eye. Two figures, one at either end, shifted position slightly. Until that moment he’d thought they were just support structures or random junk piled against the barricade. No such luck. They were guards, clearly. Each sat or stood on the other side, staring into the darkness toward him. If they’d heard or seen him, or even suspected his approach, they were hiding it well. Now and then they spoke to each other in low voices, too distant and quiet for his visor to recognize, much less translate.

  Skyler remained motionless, weighing options. Going back was out of the question, as far as he was concerned. It would take hours, and put him back where he started. However dangerous continuing might be, he simply could not contemplate the idea of retreating after coming so far. Somewhere up there, past that barrier and the tunnel’s exit, amid all those buildings and lights, was a space elevator. A way off this world. He was not going back.

  So, forward it was. Skyler stayed put. Forward was to reveal himself. Another battle, more death. Critically, the drawing of attention. As of now the Scipios seemed to have no idea where he was, and that was a situation he intended to hold on to as long as possible.

  Idly he wondered what would happen if he simply walked up to the wall, hopped it, and kept going. Would they shoot him? Tackle him? Stare in stunned disbelief? Or what if he gave himself up? Walked forward with his hands raised, demanded an audience with their leader. Demanded a lawyer. Skyler almost laughed aloud at that image. Him in a Scipio courtroom, surrounded by arguing attorneys and a gallery of upset citizens, shaking their appendages so that their gliding flaps swayed beneath.

  The ground beneath him began to vibrate, and then a humming noise reached him. Ahead, the two guards perked up, and began to move toward the walls. What the hell is this? he wondered, shifting to push himself into the space between floor and wall. More light reached him, from behind now. Behind, the way he’d come. Skyler held his breath and watched, helpless, as the noise and light grew. Something was coming through the tunnel.

  A new noise, then. The scrape of stone against stone. Skyler shot a quick glance to the guards and their wall, only to see the wall had changed. A wide gap had opened in the center, perhaps ten meters in length. The two Scipios stood to either side of it now, waiting for whatever approached. They did not seem alarmed. He saw no weapons raised nor heard nervous shouts. Skyler returned his focus to the dark depths, and waited. There was nothing else he could do.

  No, that wasn’t true. A few meters behind him lay a moldy, decaying length of metallic sheet, like a torn bit of body from a vehicle left behind ages ago. He crawled backward to it and slid his body underneath.

  Light played over him, pushing through erosion holes in the metal. The air filled with a deep, thrumming moan that made Skyler’s whole body ache. He felt sure at any moment some ground vehicle, a train perhaps, or some kind of tank, would roll over him, leaving nothing but a red smear in this ancient tunnel to mark his visit to this world. Only the knowledge that this chunk of scrap metal over him had been here for countless years eased his mind. If it had survived all this time, a body under it should, too.

  The light, the heat, the sound all reached a crescendo. He squeezed his eyes shut and, feeling helpless yet unable to control himself, placed his hands against the underside of the metal sheet as if that would keep him from being crushed.

  Whatever it was, it moved past. Over him, in the center of the tunnel. Skyler gave his heart several seconds to stop hammering, then rolled, and watched.

  A vehicle slowed to a stop in front of the guarded barrier. It was a bulky thing, not wheeled, but instead riding on a series of humming disks that rippled with heat and fantastic amounts of electrical energy. The setup allowed the transport to hover a half-meter off the tunnel floor. The frothy liquid seeping through the ceiling had been evaporated instantly by the passing of the car, and now rolled away across the ceiling as an oily sort of steam. It smelled terrible, like rotten milk. Skyler switched to breathing through his mouth. He crawled forward on his elbows to get a better look.

  The vehicle appeared to be of Scipio design, favoring the functional over the elegant, a direct contrast to the cities the Creators had built. Riding atop the array of lifters was a bulky carriage nestled under a series of tubes, heat sinks, and vents. Heat poured from every surface, making the air shimmer. A series of grimy windows ringed the center of the hull, and Skyler could see several figures moving about within. The two guards approached as the huge car settled onto the ground, its engines winding down.

  A hatch popped open on top of the car, and a Scipio pushed up. Words were exchanged between it and the guards. One made a sound like laughter, though Skyler knew such assumptions were dangerous. He focused on the body language of the guards, not that he had a better understanding of that, either. Still, they seemed relaxed. In his mind the conversation was going something like “See anything out there?” “Nah, just the usual wandering diseased.” “Okay, then. Good night.”

  Much better than “Who’s that weird creature hiding under the sheet metal back there?” Skyler eased back a bit into the shadow. A few minutes later the transport, or whatever it was, powered up its engines once again and pushed on past the barricade. It drove away, soon out of sight, though its engine noises went on for several minutes, growing quieter all the while. Skyler began to worry the tunnel might go right underneath the city and out the other side.

  He lay there for a long time, watching, ignoring his aching limbs and spells of dizziness from breathing this stagnant, alien air. Perhaps he was dying, allowing this foreign atmosphere into his lungs. No way to know, he supposed. Soldier on.

  Minutes passed. His body began to shiver uncontrollably despite the warmth in the tunnel. Something would have to give, and soon. Skyler shifted to get one arm forward. He sighted along his wrist, trying to keep one of the guards in his line of fire. A memory came to him, camped with his sniper, Jake, on a hillside during the Purge, sighting down on a village overrun with subhumans. He wondered if Jake ever had to take a shot when his body wouldn’t cooperate. Probably, and it probably hadn’t mattered. Jake had been born to snipe, he’d said it himself. In his veins. Skyler let his wrist fall to the damp ground with a dull smack, laid his head on his arm, and waited for the buzzing in his body to go away.

  He ate, and drank a little water. He drifted off. A strange sensation woke him seconds later. Maybe more. A feeling he hadn’t had since childhood, the knowledge of falling out of bed before fully waking to stop it from happening. He jerked awake, just as the sheet of metal finished sliding off a knee he hadn’t meant to raise. It clanged on the hard floor, a noise that rang like a bell, rolling along the tunnel in both directions.

  Skyler whipped his gaze to the guards. They were up, moving toward the center of their barrier and crouching behind it at the same time. One of them shouted something. Lights came on, from their weapons as well as two floodlights he’d not noticed before, embedded up on the walls. Another command caused a small device to lower from the ceiling. It resembled a turret. Skyler took aim at it, but held fire when he saw it spewing forth a cloud of white powder.

  Virus. Immune or not, he still suspected they served as a kind of meshed sensor network. Trillions of little biological machines. A cloud
of eyes and ears. As the bank of billowing dust rolled toward him, Skyler clenched his jaw, took aim, and fired. No time to even notice how still his hand now was. A beam of reddish energy tore through the air, creating a visible tunnel through the virus fog. It hit one of the Scipio guards square in the face, vaporizing the flesh in a sudden, wet burst.

  The guard fell away, behind the barrier. His companion smartly ducked as Skyler swept the beam in his direction. He lowered his arm to compensate, tracing a glowing path across the barrier’s surface.

  Skyler knew he had to end this quick, before they could report what had happened, assuming the virus wouldn’t do that on its own accord. He kept the beam fixed on the position he guessed the enemy to be in and willed it to increase in power. A flash of heat bloomed across his wrist and hand, crawling up his arm, and then came a blinding flash. The beam pulsed, bright and hot as the Sun, for an instant. The barrier exploded, flash-heated to incomprehensible temperatures, the moisture in the air exploding right along with it in a column that stretched all the way back to Skyler’s wrist. It rocked his arm upward, wheeling backward, sending him sprawling onto his back.

  He sat up, shook away the dizziness of the impact. The center of the barrier had been obliterated. Of the Scipio guards there was nothing left, nothing identifiable from here, at least. “Fucking hell,” he whispered, glancing at his arm. He wondered how much of his “ammo” that blast had used. No way to tell with that part of his visor smashed.

  Instincts honed from years of scavenging in the wastes beyond Darwin propelled him to his feet. More Scipios would come, he had to get through now. Skyler raced ahead to the barrier. He dove over it at one edge rather than rushing through the blood-smeared center. One glance at the gore there was all he needed to know. The poor creature had been liquefied.

  He tucked midair, rolled, came up at a full sprint. Weaving amid debris, Skyler ran until he could no longer see the scene of the brief skirmish behind him. Ahead, the tunnel had flattened out and changed.