by Nick Webb
The giant gray orb of El Amin filled his viewport, and given how small the planet actually was the visual told him they must be pretty damn close to it. In the distance, maybe a hundred kilometers away, he could just make out the dot of the mystery ship, and the shimmering purple-white beam that was boring into the surface. He aimed the shuttle down at the research station just a handful of kilometers away from the impact zone and punched the accelerator.
“Here goes nothing,” he breathed. The craft shot forward, and the planet started growing even larger in the viewport, filling the entire area. Down below, several dozen kilometers away, he gulped as he saw bright red magma leap up out of the widening hole being dug by the alien’s beam, and he knew that time was not on his side.
“Is that thing going to blow anytime soon?” he asked.
The comm cracked. “Yes,” came his father’s reply.
“Ok….” He pushed down on the accelerator, maxing it out. “Uh, any advice?”
“Hurry,” was all his father said. The comm fell silent.
“Got it,” he replied to no one. “Ok, no atmosphere, so no brakes. Time to reverse thrust in,” he glanced at the surface range-finder, “three … two … one….” He cut off the main thrusters and switched to the forward thrusters. The inertial cancelers took a moment to adjust, making his stomach churn a bit as the g forces thrust him forward against the restraints, far more than the collision into San Martin’s ocean had just an hour earlier. Good thing Sara isn’t here….
The research station loomed ahead. A small armada of fighters and shuttles from the Independence was in the process of either landing or taking off from the station’s lone shuttle bay, the protective energy field holding in the air pressure shimmering each time a ship passed through. In the distance, kilometers away, the purple-white beam illuminated the entire landscape, casting long, alien shadows over the ice rocks and craggy peaks the rippled away into the distance.
He passed through the field and found an unoccupied spot to land on the deck. As soon as the engines were idling, he popped the hatch and started dashing down the still-descending ramp….
And was immediately assaulted by a wave of fear, excitement, anger, rage, sadness, all at once. Just like he’d felt back on Watchdog. Oh shit, he thought. This is going to get intense.
Barely able to suppress his mix of anger and fear he ran towards the doors at the end of the bay—where was the anger coming from? His father, of course. The fear? Obvious—he was about to die. The sadness? Who the hell knew? All he knew, all he focused on, all he could force himself to think about was, rescue. Find the students. Find as many as I can, and cram them into the shuttle, and get the hell out.
He rushed into the hallway where another fighter pilot was ushering a group of frightened-looking college students back towards the bay. The other pilot, obviously trying to suppress his own mix of fear and emotion, waved towards a door at the end of the corridor. “They’ve all assembled in the mess. Just a few left. Grayson should be able to fit most of them in his shuttle, but the rest will need to go in yours.”
“Got it,” he said in a rush, and ran down the hallway. In the mess hall, the pilot he assumed was Grayson was arguing with one of the women he assumed was a professor or senior researcher. Everyone—the dozen or so students, the researcher, Grayson—looked terrified. The alien’s field was taking its toll on all of them. “What’s the problem?” he yelled.
The researcher pointed at another door in the mess hall. “There’s more. They’ve barricaded themselves in a lab. I can’t convince them to leave. It’s … it’s….” She balled her fists and actually shrieked. This was getting out of control, he thought. Should I smack her? He batted the irrational thought aside and pointed at the exit, yelling at Grayson.
“Get them all in your shuttle. I’ll handle the stubborn ones.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. GO!” He grabbed one of the students sitting on a cafeteria bench fidgeting uncontrollably with his hands, and shoved him towards the door. “GO! All of you, go!”
Luckily, they all ran for the door, and he didn’t have to resort to violence. Unfortunately. He was kind of hoping for an outlet. Maybe as consolation he could have a little…. He reached down to his boot, and caught himself halfway when he realized, again, that it was empty. Dammit.
He ran towards the door the researcher had indicated, and nearly fell over as the entire room shifted, sloping down to his right. “Holy shit,” he mumbled. The walls and floor were shaking violently, and all the tables slid down towards the far wall to his right as he stumbled towards the door.
He wrenched it open—luckily it didn’t jamb with the shifting orientation of the entire building—and ran down the hallway lined with laboratories, struggling to keep his footing against the rightward slope, as well as the glass that was falling out of the laboratories’ windows. Which was a blessing and a curse, he supposed, as looking through all the shattering windows let him know that none of the labs were occupied.
Except for the door at the very end of the hall. It was shut, and through the tiny still-unbroken window next to it he could see a fear-filled face looking out.
Using the leaning wall as leverage to occasionally redirect his course, he launched himself down the hallway, and pushed on the door’s handle.
It didn’t budge.
“Oh, hell no.”
Supporting himself on the slanting wall, he kicked the door. The dull thud of his boot told him the door was not exactly made to be kicked in. In fact, it probably served as an emergency airlock, by the looks of it.
The wide eyes staring out the tiny window watched him in terror. Zivic cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled into the glass. “We’ve got to get out of here! This place is going to blow!”
Wide-eyes retreated from the window further into the lab, and Zivic peered in. Three other students huddled in the corner, while a fourth lay sprawled out near the other corner.
A pool of blood surrounded his head.
“Aw, shit,” he said. The building started to tremble again as another earthquake struck. His comm device crackled from his pocket.
“Ethan, you’re out of time,” said the father. “The alien’s hole is full-on erupting now. Magma is jetting out into the sky like a fountain. You’ve got a billion tons of a hot lava rain incoming within minutes.”
“Double shit.” He peered back into the room. Ok, new plan, Ethan. One of the pair of students in the corner had thick glasses, and his eyes were flitting back and forth nervously. His mouth moved as if he was mumbling under his breath—though for all Zivic knew the kid could be shouting since he could hear hardly a thing through that window. The other kid in the corner only held his head in his hands, sobbing, while Wide-eyes paced back and forth.
An idea struck him. Ethan, you’re a horrible, horrible man. He pounded on the window, and wide-eyes looked up, his eyes somehow getting even wider. Zivic pointed to the corner. “Hey! That one! Four eyes! He’s a fucking alien! He’s going to fucking kill you both!”
Part of him—the juvenile, evil half—wanted to laugh out loud as Wide-eyes and Cry-baby both snapped their heads to look at Four-eyes, and before he could even smile the pair of them bolted towards the door.
Zivic was waiting for them. He reached down and picked up a piece of railing that had fallen onto the floor and brandished it behind his back, just in case. The door opened and Wide-eyes burst out, followed by Cry-baby.
He concentrated, trying to keep all snark, all anger, all fear out of his voice. Anything more could set them off—the whole situation could go downhill very fast. He thought of the sloped floor beneath him. Well, further downhill. “I’m an IDF pilot. I’m here to rescue you. Go to the bay and wait right next to the shuttle. Move!”
They both blinked wildly. Wide-eyes dashed off, making Zivic relax his arm a little—looked like he wouldn’t be needing the piece of railing he was holding. But Crying-baby just retreated to the corner in the hallway by the
door and whimpered. Zivic dropped the railing, grit his teeth against the raging emotions jumbling his thoughts, and took a step forward. He reached out and touched the kid’s shoulder. Couldn’t be more than eighteen.
“Hey. What’s your name? My name’s Ethan.”
The whimpering paused. “N—N—Nicky. Nicky Epstein.”
“Listen, Nicky,” he squeezed the kid’s shoulder. This one needed a softer touch than Wide-eyes, apparently. Good God, where the hell was that flask? “We’ve got to go. Time to run. Can you run?”
He nodded quickly.
“Good.” He smiled, and squeezed again. “Then run.” He pointed down the hallway. “Run!”
The kid swallowed visibly, and ran.
One more.
The building rocked, as if something had slammed into it. “Shit.” He dashed into the room and knelt down to check on the kid laying in his blood. The building shook again. He reached for the neck, feeling for a pulse.
Nothing.
His comm cracked again. “Ethan, NOW!”
Four-eyes was still sitting in the corner, crying now. He ran up the slope of the floor, grabbed the kid by the wrist, and started pulling. Luckily, the kid let himself be led through the door, and even managed to keep up through the hallway and into the cafeteria.
But as he tried running past one of the cafeteria tables, the kid tripped on debris, slipped, and hit his head on the bench on the way down.
Knocked out. Cold.
The building shook again as something else hit it. “Dammit!” he yelled, and bent over to lift the kid up. Four-eyes was rail-thin and light as a ten-year-old, despite the post-pubescent stubble on his chin. Zivic, adrenaline-fueled, lifted the kid over his shoulders and resumed his sprint towards the bay.
A voice blared out from his pocket. “Ethan, if you’re pretending to be a hero when you should be getting people out, I’m going to—”
Zivic slapped his pocket and the comm flipped off. He ran towards the bay, where, in the space beyond the shimmering force field holding in the atmosphere, he saw the unmistakable sight of giant balls of lava crashing down on the landscape all around them.
“Well, kid, this is going to be a close one,” he murmured.
And he ran.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Irigoyen Sector, San Martin System, El Amin
Bridge, ISS Independence
Admiral Proctor nervously tapped her armrest. The Golgothic’s purple-white beam continued drilling down into El Amin’s crust, and magma was spewing out into the skies of the tiny planet, hundreds of kilometers out in all directions, splashing down in great red globs all across the surface. Where they struck, ice explosively sublimed and steamed out into the non-existent atmosphere like great roiling white oceans that dissipated as they boiled off into the vacuum.
“Any word from him?”
The comm speaker nearby answered. “Haven’t heard from him in a few minutes,” said Volz.
He sounded pissed.
The magma eruption intensified. Vast showers of lava rained down, with several large globes slamming into one of the wings of the research station. Proctor stared at the screen.
Something moved against the backdrop of the station and the rain of fire. Fast. “Is that him?”
Lieutenant Whitehorse nodded. “Yeah. It’s the shuttle.”
“Zoom in.” She breathed a little easier.
But not for long. The screen zoomed in to the shuttle as it streaked away from the station, just as a giant globe of lava crashed into the landing pad of the shuttle bay.
The entire station exploded. With gut-churning weaves and barrel-rolls, the shuttle dodged another hail of falling lava, with maneuvers that Proctor was sure would have resulted in the contents of her stomach being smeared all over the shuttle’s window had she been aboard.
“That’s…” began Ensign Riisa at the helm. “That’s … incredible. I’ve never seen anyone fly like that.”
Proctor nodded in agreement. It was true—out of any fighter pilot she’d ever met, Ballsy’s kid outshone them all. Even Ballsy. She supposed that was half of why he hated the kid, in spite of what Ballsy claimed.
But the fiery hell he was flying through was worse than any fighter battle with the Swarm she’d ever seen. Thousands of globules were falling down through the black sky all around the shuttle….
And yet it still weaved, looped, darted, rolled, and banked its way through. She found herself gripping the armrests so tight that her knuckles turned white.
“No!” Lieutenant Whitehorse yelled from behind her. Proctor stared in horror. One of the globs of lava had struck the shuttle. Red-hot streams of the stuff fell away as the shuttle accelerated upwards, and Proctor realized what he was doing—since there was no atmosphere to blast the lava off the shuttle, he had to rely on the shuttle’s acceleration to shed the boiling rock.
Another glob struck the shuttle. And another….
And it was free. Clear of the maelstrom of lava rain, it accelerated even faster, and the rest of the lava coating the ravaged surface of the shuttle streamed away as it made a bee-line for the Independence.
Proctor breathed a sigh of relief. She tapped her comm on. “Lieutenant Zivic, this is Admiral Proctor. Well done, Ethan. You guys okay in there?”
“Yeah…” came the hesitant reply. “I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Well … just covered in the vomit from three other people, each of whom have also soiled themselves. We might have to just hose out the entire shuttle.”
Proctor smirked at that. “Well if that’s the worst that happened, we can thank our lucky stars.”
A pause. “I … uh … I did lose someone. Couldn’t carry two people at once. I left the injured one. At least, I think he was injured, but he might have been dead. I … guess I could have tried to carry both—”
“It’s not your fault, Ethan,” she said, “you saved three lives. If it weren’t for you, they’d be dead. Remember that. We can’t save everyone.”
“But—”
“End of conversation. Report to the fighter bay, and for reassignment to the fighter squadron.”
Zivic protested. “But, ma’am, I don’t think I’m ready for that.”
“Bullshit. After that fancy flying? No. You’ve got your wings back, I don’t care what your father says. Proctor out.”
She glanced at the timer on her console, then back up at the screen where the alien mystery ship was still drilling into the planet. Plenty of time, she thought. and turned back at Whitehorse. “You think he can handle it?”
Whitehorse shrugged. “Honestly? Don’t know, ma’am.”
“You two were pretty serious for awhile, from what Ballsy tells me. No one here knows him better than you. Even Ballsy—parents’ perceptions of their kids can get … colored, over time.”
Parents, and aunts, she thought, her mind drifting momentarily to the news about Danny that Curiel and Rex had given her.
“He’s good,” Whitehorse said, reaching back to re-tie her hair into a tight regulation bun. “The best. But his mental state? Ever since his mom and stepdad?” She shook her head. “That changed him. Almost killed him. It was soon after that when I ended it between us—I just couldn’t handle it anymore. There’s … there are some things you just don’t come back from, accident or no.”
Proctor nodded. It reminded her of her little speech to Curiel about Granger. There are some things you just don’t come back from. Black holes chief among them, she thought wryly.
“He’ll get over it. He has to. And the way I figure it, he just saved three kids. That evens the score.” Proctor glanced at the timer again. Almost there….
“With all due respect, ma’am … I don’t think it works that way,” said Whitehorse, somberly.
She was right, of course. But she’d made her own share of mistakes—innocent, honest mistakes, made in the heat of battle, the spur of the moment, that led to deaths. Some of those mistakes led to untold number
s of deaths. But in the rush to save humanity, what the hell else could she have done? “No, it doesn’t. But whether redemption or a lighter conscience comes or not, we need him.” She glanced at the ship again, still drilling away. “And given current events, we’re going to need thousands more like him.”
The timer approached zero, and she finally turned to Commander Mumford. “Status?”
He nodded. “The progress of the drilling is proceeding just like at Ido. Identical to a T.”
“You ready with the scans? As soon as we start this thing, I want to be ready. I want to know everything about that ship, and we don’t get a second shot at this.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re ready.”
She tapped the comm on. “Ballsy, your boys ready?”
A few seconds later he answered. “Yeah. Last of them just offloaded the passengers, and we’re ready to launch.”
Commander Yarbrough looked up from his XO’s station, and nodded once. “All systems reporting ready, Admiral.”
She gripped her armrests. “Good. All hands, prepare for Operation Proctor One.”
A deep breath. Here goes nothing.
“Now.”
Chapter Forty
Irigoyen Sector, San Martin System, El Amin
Bridge, ISS Independence
Commander Yarbrough nodded his acknowledgement. “Launch fighters. Ensign Riisa, move the Independence to flank the Golgothics at z plus five kilometers. All mag-rail crews prepare to fire. Laser crews, standby.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Riisa at the helm. The other ship grew large on the viewscreen as they closed in, and several dozen fighters flitted out into the shrinking gap between them.