by Samuel Best
“It creates a chemical reaction with whatever it touches,” said Kate.
“And the byproduct is air we can’t breathe.” He looked up at the sky as he stalked through the camp. “Imagine a comet the size of a continent hitting us and spreading that blue gunk all over the planet.”
“It would change our atmosphere completely.”
“We need to block that signal now. No more excuses from the pentagon, no more—”
A soldier ran around the side of the tent and barreled into the Colonel, almost knocking him over. The person didn’t look back to apologize as they scrambled toward the edge of camp.
“Watch it!” Brighton hollered.
Someone shouted off to Kate’s right. A group of people shielded their eyes from the Sun and pointed up.
A cluster of bright blue fireballs shot through the sky, directly toward the camp.
“Colonel!” was all she had time to say before the first meteorite slammed into the ground.
A woman screamed as dirt and debris exploded into the air.
“This way!” Brighton yelled.
Kate followed him through the maze of tents, headed away from the primary impact crater. The meteorite that just hit had to be smaller than the first, or else there would be a lot fewer tents still standing.
More screams to her left as another meteorite hit. A pillar of broken wood flipped through the air and slammed into her side, sending her flying into a tent. The tent cords snapped and the canvas collapsed on her after she hit the ground.
She groaned and rolled out of the fabric, her left arm bleeding.
“Colonel!” she shouted.
No answer.
“Kate!” Neesha yelled from somewhere nearby.
Kate slowly got to her feet. “Here!”
A third meteorite hit, this one farther away, closer to the crater.
Neesha came running around a corner, her eyes wide with fear.
“There you are!” Neesha yelled, leaping into Kate’s arm and hugging her fiercely.
“Ow ow ow ow!” Kate groaned.
Neesha released her. “I’m sorry! What’s going on?!”
“Where’s Santi?”
“We got separated. I don’t know!”
“I have to find the Colonel,” said Kate.
“He ran that way,” Neesha told her, pointing in the opposite direction of the crater. “He was shouting your name.”
“Okay. We need to get as far away as we can.”
Kate grabbed Neesha’s arm and pulled her toward the edge of camp.
She held her injured arm close to her body as she navigated the chaos. Smoke billowed from the fresh impact sites. More than once she had to step over a strand of blue goop snaking across the ground.
“Kate! Miss Jordan!”
Santi called for them from a distance.
They turned back as he ran through the camp, leaping over fallen support beams and dodging small puddles of blue goop. His skin and clothes were smudged with dirt, and he bled from a cut on his shoulder.
He smiled at Kate and Neesha as he came closer, now only fifty meters away.
“Santi watch out!” Kate screamed as a bright blue streak appeared above.
The basketball-sized meteorite sheathed in blue plasma hit the ground between them, shooting up boulder-sized chunks of earth.
Kate and Neesha were thrown backward from the force of the impact. They tumbled across the dirt and came to a hard stop against the wheels of a military transport truck.
The impact site was shrouded in dust. It covered the area like a dark cloud. As the dust settled, the white inflatable dome covering the primary impact site became visible.
One of the meteorites had struck it in the middle, puncturing a gaping hole in the fabric. Parts of the dome billowed in the soft wind like a loose parachute, slowly deflating, peeling back to reveal the arching ribs beneath.
Kate and Neesha helped each other up, scanning the scene in stunned silence.
“Santi?” Kate said quietly. “Santi!” she yelled.
He coughed from somewhere in the ruin of the camp. The broken door of a refrigerator lifted from the ground, then fell back down.
Kate and Neesha ran over and lifted the door. Santi lay curled in a ball underneath, groaning. The side of his face bled from a deep cut, and he cradled his wrist against his chest. It was bent at an odd angle, the broken bone within pushing against his skin.
Neesha quickly bent down but Kate stopped her.
“Just wait,” she said in response to the confused look from Neesha.
Kate performed a gentle examination of Santi, from head to toe, ensuring he hadn’t been touched by a single drop of the blue substance.
“Okay,” she said.
Together, she and Neesha helped Santi limp from the camp. They joined a group of people far beyond the outer ring of canvas tents, collapsing to the dusty ground after the long walk.
Colonel Brighton sat nearby, glaring back at the site with a deep frown on his face. A med tech wrapped a bandage around his bleeding forearm. A matching wrap encircled his forehead, where a small patch of red showed through over his temple.
“The signal, Colonel,” Kate said. She barely had the strength to speak the words. “We have to stop it now.”
“Will you help me?” he asked.
Kate nodded, and so did Neesha.
Santi gave a thumbs-up from his prone position on the ground. Kate patted his shoulder, and he groaned.
“You need to get that wrist back in the right place.”
At his request, the med tech helped Brighton to his feet. He dusted off the front of his uniform.
“We’ll need one of those trucks,” he said, pointing to the military vehicle Kate and Neesha had rolled into after the meteorite impact.
“I can drive big trucks,” said Neesha.
“The last message I received from Washington said the comet headed for Earth was speeding up.”
“No time to stand around jawing, then,” said Kate.
“There’s something else,” Brighton said, looking right at her. “The Venus comet is moving faster than we thought. They don’t have much time.”
Kate stared at him, her mouth open in shock.
“I have to tell them!” she exclaimed.
Brighton nodded. “There will be a satellite radio in the truck. I can relay the message for you.”
Kate ran toward the transport truck, Neesha and Colonel Brighton jogging to keep up.
23
RILEY
“Riley, time to wake up. Riley!”
His eyelids fluttered open. The world was a bright blur outside his helmet.
“Am I alive?” he croaked.
Commander Brighton’s face sharpened in the blur. Piper was beside her. They were in the crew cabin, still wearing spacesuits, floating in the space between the sleeping cubbies.
“I tried to ramp up the burn as gradually as I could,” said Brighton. “I’m sorry.”
He tried to smile and failed.
“As long as we got out of there.”
Piper and Commander Brighton shared a quick glance.
“What?” Riley asked. “What is it?”
“I ran a medical scan on you while you were unconscious,” Brighton admitted. “You’re hemorrhaging internally. The burn…” She paused and swallowed thickly, her voice on the edge of cracking. “The burn put too much pressure on your organs.”
“I feel fine.”
“Warmer than usual?” Brighton asked.
“Yes…”
“Inside your ribcage?”
“Oh, come on…”
“I’m sorry, Tag.”
“Then why am I not dead already?!” he shouted.
“We don’t know,” Piper said gently, resting her gloved hand on his arm. “It might have something to do with what the torus did to you on Titan.”
He clenched his jaw and shook his head.
“So the biological machine is broken,” he said.
“There’s something else,” Piper hesitantly told him.
“Do go on."
“The comet is going faster than we are.”
“It will overtake us in an hour,” Brighton added.
Absurdity had a way of wiping out anger, and for Riley, in that instance, it worked like a charm. He barked laughter until searing pain exploded in his chest, forcing him to cough a small droplet of blood into his helmet.
“We should probably move out of the way,” he said quietly, distracted by the blood droplet.
“We still have to release the fission bomb.”
“Okay.”
“It…it has to be prepped outside the ship,” said Brighton.
“Of course it does,” Riley snipped. “And why wouldn’t it?”
“Miller’s suit has the remote detonator.”
He glanced back at the work lab. Miller’s limp suit was still strapped to the metal table. Blue gunk coated his left arm, caking his wristpad.
“Well,” said Riley. “No point in waiting around, is there? I’ll do it.”
“The engine is cold,” said Brighton. “We only need to extend the bomb from the hold a few meters and release the clamps. After it’s primed, you get back inside and we’ll move out of the comet’s path. It will overtake the bomb, and you know the rest.”
Riley nodded and took a deep breath. Piper caught his eye and offered him a scared smile. He grinned back at her and winked.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” he told her.
And so Riley found himself back in the airlock, waiting for the hatch to open.
The warmth inside of his ribcage had taken on a very acute burning sensation, like a pool of acid slowly spreading out from the middle of his spine. The inside of his face shield was now covered with a thin constellation of blood droplets.
He hummed a soft tune while he waited.
“There are four clamps securing the bomb to the Odyssey,” said Brighton over his helmet comms. “The control panel is on the side with two orange clamps.”
“Copy.”
“I’ll relay the detonation code when you’re at the panel. As soon as you hit confirm, come on back and we’ll get out of here.”
The airlock door slowly opened. Riley coasted into space.
“It doesn’t feel like we’re going ten thousand miles per hour,” he said.
“You don’t want to be out there for the next burn,” Brighton replied. “You’d see what this baby can really do.”
He turned his suit to face the back of the ship, and his breath caught in his throat.
The comet was larger than the Moon appeared from the surface of Earth. He had been outside not more than an hour ago and it was merely a spark in a sea of black.
A corona of blue energy shimmered around its edge, blurring space beyond. Explosions erupted from the surface like solar detonations, and were quickly swallowed back into the central mass.
“Now that is a sight to see,” Riley muttered.
The fission bomb looked like a car-sized steampunk hourglass. It seemed as if a thousand different moving parts had been crammed into one dense package. On each side of the hourglass, metal tubes crawled over a solid black cube at the core.
The robotic arms holding the bomb were fully extended, reaching out from the open cargo hold as if making an offering to the void.
Riley coasted forward, slowing his momentum as he neared the bomb. He grabbed a handhold near the control panel and pushed a large green button on its left side. The screen glowed to life.
“I’m at the panel,” he said.
“Releasing clamps now,” Brighton said from inside the ship.
The four metal pincers silently released the bomb and retreated back into the cargo hold as the hatch closed.
“Ready for the code,” said Riley.
Commander Brighton rattled off a string of number, letters, and symbols. After she finished, Riley pressed the button which read Begin Countdown?
The screen flashed red, and no countdown started.
“It didn’t work.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing is happening,” he stressed.
“Um,” said Brighton. “Hold on.”
Riley pulled himself to the top of the bomb and looked back at the comet. It had swelled in apparent size since he last looked at it, bathing the Odyssey in bright blue.
“We don’t have much time here, Commander,” said Riley.
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” she shouted, flustered. “That’s all it says in the schematics!”
Riley pulled himself back down to the control panel and rapidly cycled through the system menus. He found a log of error messages and read the most recent.
“It says ‘awaiting input from second panel’,” he said.
“What panel? I only see one.”
Walking hand-over-hand, Riley pulled himself on top of the bomb and down to the other side.
Another control panel had been added to the bomb.
“Code again,” he said.
Brighton recited it quickly.
Riley pressed Begin Countdown? on the second panel. It flashed red and spit out an error message.
“Come on!” he yelled at the screen.
He called up the error message and requested more verbose output. A line near the bottom of the message read simultaneous input required.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he whispered.
“What is it?”
“The system needs two people to start the countdown.”
“No,” said Brighton in disbelief. “Miller didn’t say anything about it being a two-person job.”
“I will go,” Piper said quietly over the comm channel.
Riley shook his head inside his helmet. “Piper, you stay right there.”
“But you said you can’t do it alone.”
“I’ll go,” said Commander Brighton.
Piper raised her voice. “You have to fly the ship! If you die out there, I’m stuck here anyway!”
“It’s mostly autopilot, Piper. You’ll be fine.”
“Please listen to her,” Riley pleaded.
“NO!” yelled Piper. “I will not have come all this way for no purpose! Do you understand me? We don’t have time to argue. I am going.”
A minute later, Riley watched with dread as the airlock door opened, and Piper emerged from the ship. Her eyes grew wide with terror when she saw how close the comet was to the ship.
“It’s hot,” she said. “Even through my suit.”
“Pretty balmy out here, right?” Riley joked. “Go around to that side.”
As Piper moved to the other control panel, the bomb drifted into Riley, bumping against his spacesuit.
“Hey,” he said in surprise.
He looked down at the hull of the Odyssey. The ship slowly moved forward, slipping away from the bomb…and from Riley and Piper.
“Brighton, what are you doing?” asked Riley. “We’re not done out here.”
“I’m not doing anything,” she replied. “Just waiting on you.”
“The ship is moving away!”
“I’m still at the same speed.”
“She’s not moving away,” said Piper, looking back. “The bomb is moving closer to the comet.”
Riley realized she was right.
“Get back to the Odyssey,” he said.
She met his eyes. “What’s the code?”
Brighton began reading out the code. Static burst over the line as she recited it for the third time. With a few numbers to go, the line cut out.
“Commander?” said Riley, his gloved finger poised over the touchscreen.
Silence.
He moved to wipe sweat from his brow and his hand bumped against his face shield. Heat from the comet was cooking him inside his spacesuit. The space around him had been electrified by piercing blue light.
“She’s too far,” Piper groaned. “We can’t make it back to the ship.”
The bomb slipped faster and faster toward the accelerating comet. Riley could feel it drawing them in, pulling them closer.
The Odyssey’s orbital thrusters fired, trying to spin it out of the path of the comet. The thrusters burst nitrogen into space, but the ship remained where it was.
On instinct, Riley closed his eyes. A hammer of cold pounded his skull and surged down his limbs. They went numb despite the heat.
Piper gasped.
Riley opened his eyes, and the Odyssey was gone.
He felt blood trickle down from his nostrils.
“Type this in,” he said to Piper, turning back to the control panel. He spoke the rest of the code from memory. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
He pushed the confirmation button, and the screen flashed green. A five-minute countdown appeared on the screen.
“Up here,” he said.
He pulled himself to the top of the bomb, where he met Piper. She grabbed his arms as he kicked off. The bomb quickly drifted away, falling toward the looming comet.
Riley jammed his control stick forward, letting out fat streams of nitrogen from his pack. They were useless against whatever force was pulling them into the comet.
“We’re stuck out here?” asked Piper.
“Looks that way,” Riley quietly admitted.
“What happened to the ship?”
“It’s still there. You just can’t see it.”
Another droplet of blood fell from his nostril. The pain in his chest had spread throughout his body. His joints felt swollen to the point of bursting. He wasn’t sure if that was because of the internal hemorrhaging, or the intense use of fold space to send the Odyssey into another instance of its own immediate location, or both of them combined.
“Carol is going to be just fine,” said Riley. “After the comet passes, she’ll fly right out of the little room I put her in.”
“What about us?” Piper asked.
Riley closed his eyes. If he could tap into his fold space ability and send him and Piper to another instance of their four square meters of space, the comet, as far as they were concerned, would vanish.
After it passed, he could snap them back to the original instance.
He waited for the cold sensation to grow at the base of his skull, but he felt nothing.