Senescence (Jezebel's Ladder Book 5)

by Scott Rhine

  “I agree we should be selective about sharing technology, but we didn’t undertake this mission for our own benefit,” Zeiss said, stroking her back. “We did this for our species.”

  “Any word on precisely who did this to us?” Pratibha asked, addressing Mira’s concern.

  Stu replied, “The array’s software was custom. The signature was an elaborate E01.”

  Borrowing Stu’s marker, Zeiss wrote Intelligence with lines to Justice and UN. “If we can get Oleander on Earth in a sneak suit, she can find out who sponsored this attack. Her Out-of-Body talent would be invaluable in the search. Then we can make contact with UN leadership.”

  “You and I would be shot on sight by our own governments,” Mira said.

  Yvette, their legal expert, wrote the word Independence. “We can negate the charges against us and bargain from a position of strength if we declare Sanctuary to be an independent nation under the rules of the UN space charter.”

  The idea had been discussed before, but too many had opposed the gesture as disloyal to their countries of origin. Now, everyone voted in favor of the measure.

  “Does that mean we can declare war on the assholes who fired on us?” Mira asked.

  Yvette winced. “Theoretically, if our leader deemed it necessary and a majority of the council agrees. However, we must first present evidence of the crime under international law and give the affected countries an opportunity for redress.”

  Oleander shook her head. “We can’t trust governments. They’d murder us all in secret for the chance at this ship.”

  “So we approach the public directly. We send an ambassador with an offer they can’t refuse,” Zeiss suggested.

  “If the governments don’t meet our terms, we’ll leave them to rot in their own filth,” Mira said. “No Magi tech to save them from themselves.”

  Yvette added the condition Ultimatum to the flow diagram.

  Oleander asked the question hanging in everyone’s mind. “What if they harm the ambassador?”

  Mira answered coldly, “Our engines have the power to destroy their planet two hundred and fifty times over.” When the team looked at her in shock, she added, “Theoretically.”

  “Ultimatum, Fortune, and Intelligence,” Zeiss said, tapping the words on the table. “Fortune Enterprises always has the annual stockholders’ meeting on June twenty-sixth, in LA—Claudette Fortune’s birthday. It’s in the bylaws. As stockholders, Mira and I have a right to be heard. The meeting can give us access to custom parts for the shuttle and international media coverage.”

  “We can’t risk either of you,” the doctor said to the Zeisses, “or the rest of us would never be able to fly Sanctuary.”

  Zeiss replied. “We can’t afford to send our only physician, either. I can give my 2 percent proxy to any adult, whomever we choose as ambassador.”

  “Why do we need stock?” Stu asked.

  “Money and influence. The UN will have frozen all our bank assets, but we still need to purchase rare earth elements to fix Snowflake.”

  Oleander said, “I’ll be the spy, but that means I’m not the front man. Someone else will need to make a flashy entrance and create a distraction for me.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Yvette said. “The Ethics Page forces me to tell the truth—not a good quality in a spy or the front man. I nominate the mayor.”

  “I can’t go. If I die, so does your doctor,” Pratibha said. “Risa is in no shape to travel. That leaves Stu as the only pilot for the shuttle. As charming as his talent makes him to women of science, he would also be the ideal front man.”

  “All right!” Stu cheered. I’m going to Earth.

  Mira opened her mouth to object, but Zeiss raised a hand. “He’s a man now. Let him be one.”

  After a moment of silence, where static popped loudly over the dining-room speakers, Stu asked, “All in favor of me joining Oleander for the landing?”

  Oleander and Mira abstained, but the measure passed.

  Pratibha said, “Don’t worry about losing the boy just yet. We have no shuttle, and won’t have one by June. Sanctuary can’t get close to Earth without causing major disruptions.”

  Joan cleared her throat. “I have a solution for that, but if I share it, I want to ride along as the third member of the landing party.”

  “Out of the question,” her mother snapped.

  “Hear her out,” Zeiss cautioned. “She has many of your memories and skills up until the moment of conception.” The Magi DNA transferred key parental abilities so children could function much the way many mammals were born able to walk. “Her hand-to-hand abilities would take anyone by surprise, and she can extend her Out-of-Body talent as a psi-bolt to disrupt her opponent’s nervous system.”

  Stu knew from personal experience as her sparring partner, if Joan could touch him, she could incapacitate him.

  “It’s too much to risk,” Oleander said.

  Joan took her mother’s hand. “If you died, I would feel the same about your loss. As the one who holds the communal memory, I am the logical choice to witness the offer—for the sake of history.”

  “She’s a member of the crew,” Yvette said. “Ethically, we have to risk as much for Earth as we did the people of Labyrinth.” Everyone on Sanctuary had dedicated five years to free and educate the panda race. Two crew members had given their lives.

  “We don’t owe the snakes from Earth anything,” Mira said. “They killed our friends.”

  Zeiss put an arm around her. “By now, there should be about nine billion of those snakes. Surely you wouldn’t condemn all of them because of a few.”

  “We can’t sacrifice our children,” Oleander insisted.

  Auckland stared at the two dissenters. “The way I see it, without importing more people from Earth, we won’t be having any more children. We can hide up here indefinitely, but where’s the profit? Our mission was to save Earth. Sometimes a mission demands sacrifice.”

  “Then we should send as many agents as possible,” Oleander said.

  Joan shook her head. “My way can hold up to three.”

  Stu perked up. The aliens did everything in threes. “She’s talking about the Magi escape pod. About five years ago, Joan and I discovered it while playing hide and seek. With her funny DNA, she’s the only one who can open it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Zeiss.

  “I told my mom.”

  “Could we even pilot the escape pod?”

  “I found an instruction manual—one of the fancy, golden pages the Magi use for teaching.” Stu tapped his forehead. “It downloaded as soon as I touched it. The escape pod is more of a glorified parachute.” He described the microthrusters in the pod, tiny cousins to the large Icarus fields that drove the starship. The primary constraint was fuel.

  “Reading that Page is why you started flight school at thirteen. I didn’t start till age fourteen,” Mira said. “Five talents inherited from your parents, plus this one—you must be the only human alive with more talents than I have. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t support you. Congratulations, Ambassador Llewellyn.”

  Grinning, Stu accepted her handshake. “Don’t worry. I’ll get the three of us there safely. The hard part will be finding a ride back home.”

  After the meeting, they buried the dead near the waterfall in the ecosphere, next to Johnny, Joan’s father.

  Chapter 3 – Halo Jump

  Stu plotted a path from Saturn to Earth to minimize fuel consumption and arrive the week before the stockholders’ meeting. This approach gave them almost two months to prepare. Each day, Pratibha, Mira, and the doctor listened to radio broadcasts and wrote summaries.

  As they orbited Earth, meetings became more frequent. Since most took place in or near the control room, Stu would eavesdrop during his shift on the bridge. He was supposed to be watching the skies for approaching star drives.

  Gesturing to the screen, Zeiss said, “If you filter out the new ore haulers, Fortune customers
had more ships than this on back order when we left. What happened?”

  Mira analyzed the data. “There’s less colonization on the moon and in the asteroids than anticipated. The transponder signatures fall into five distinct groups.”

  Zeiss peeked over her shoulder. “Did governments restrict access after the war or are companies just too loss averse?”

  “That’s something Oleander will need to poke around to discover,” Mira said, adding to the list of questions.

  “Not enough data?” Zeiss asked.

  “Too much,” Mira replied. “Near-Earth signal intelligence picked up several billion transmitters. We can’t process them all. We did discover that the heaviest population centers are under what we would term military or totalitarian control. However, these regimes seem more relaxed than in our day.”

  The commander rubbed his temples. “How is the stealth gear coming? Earth people are going to be harder to fool than pandas in the jungle.”

  “Sneak suits have been customized for both Oleander and Joan, as have survival packs, weapons, data taps, and encrypted communications,” Pratibha said. “Joan practices every day. As short as she is, she has trouble clearing the landing zone before security teams surround it in the drill.”

  “By the time we drop, Oleander and Yvette will have her trained to evade,” Zeiss said with confidence. “And the assault armor?”

  Pratibha sounded grim. “The exoskeleton spinal column was damaged. We can’t give Stu extra arm strength or back-mounted launchers.”

  “Which means that Herk’s spine was damaged,” Zeiss deduced, frowning. “Will Stu have enhanced running, carrying, jumping, and kicks?”

  “Yes, sir. We were able to adjust the armor to … cover the holes,” Pratibha explained.

  “Good. We’ll just emphasize ‘we come in peace’ and ‘meek as lambs.’”

  Forgetting he wasn’t invited to the meeting, Stu spoke up from his control couch. “Herk was like an uncle to me. He taught me to fish. It feels wrong to take his equipment.”

  “I understand the feeling, but he’d lend you anything if it improved your odds of survival,” Zeiss said. “You want to honor him? Do your job and get him the best medics on Earth.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When they capture you, make a big deal about being raised in low g. They’re trained to treat it like a handicap and might let you keep the leg amplifiers,” Zeiss advised. “Have you practiced the landing on the simulator?”

  “Twenty times, sir. Without grav cues, I crashed twelve of those runs,” Stu admitted.

  Zeiss smiled. “Mira made the scenarios harder every time you passed.”

  When Stu didn’t lay back down and put his head under the interface cowl, Pratibha pointedly asked, “Is there something important you’d like to share?”

  “Our spies gaining access to Earth’s government data is going to be a sticking point.”

  The commander turned to face him. “You have an idea?”

  “It’s a little theatrical, but it should get us several of our goals. The main idea is to get the people holding me to do the work for us.” Stu explained his plan.

  Mira approved, adding a few twists, including listening devices. She coached Stu about using his natural charisma to create a spectacle. “The media loves a circus. You don’t have to tell the truth for them to publish it. As long as the story is interesting, people can overlook a few facts.”

  ****

  On the day of the drop, Stu wandered down to the shower level, wearing a loud, orange Hawaiian shirt. Joan and Oleander were already dressed in their snug sneak suits. The suits wouldn’t withstand a vacuum, but they could handle nearly every environment on Earth. The Zeisses waited next to an old spacesuit on the bench like squires next to a knight’s armor. Since Stu hadn’t arrived from Earth via the shuttle, he would need to use Lou’s suit.

  Joan snorted. “Somebody’s finally awake!”

  “Dad always told me to get plenty of rest before a mission,” Stu explained. “You never know how long you’re going to stay awake if things go wrong.”

  The doctor put a nozzle the size of a garden sprayer next to Stu’s shoulder and squeezed the trigger.

  Stu yelped and rubbed his shoulder. “I thought I already had my shots.”

  “That was another spectrum of immune-system boosters. It will only last a couple days. Keep your breathing mask on, and don’t shake hands with anyone,” the doctor said.

  “Don’t worry, the clashing colors will keep people away,” Oleander joked. “The kid can differentiate twenty colors of blue into the UV spectrum, but he can’t dress himself.”

  “I wore this to honor Herk,” Stu explained.

  “With a lime green stripe on your sweatpants?” Oleander said, shaking her head.

  “You asked for distracting. Can we get on with this?”

  The Zeisses helped Stu into his spacesuit. In tandem, they sealed his gloves while Oleander snapped on the helmet. They tested all functions before giving the thumbs-up.

  Joan placed a bare hand on a section of flooring, and it lowered to form a ramp, revealing a pear-shaped escape pod.

  “The shower stall is bigger,” the doctor remarked.

  With another touch, she raised the clear canopy to allow them access.

  Stu climbed into the center of the pod. “Start with the biggest items. Oleander, take the right side and lie across my chest.”

  Oleander sealed her mirrored helmet. She squeezed in with help from the Zeisses but had to leave her dignity outside. “Good thing I didn’t eat a big lunch.”

  “Joan, take the smaller, left lobe and hold onto my leg.”

  Mira handed down equipment and a shard of the enemy telescope array.

  Stu objected. “Whoa. That wasn’t on the manifest.”

  “Props,” Mira insisted.

  Joan crawled around the luggage to nestle against him. She had slept like this often as a toddler. Despite her creepy special abilities and training, she was still a young girl. Stu whispered, “I won’t let anything happen to you. We take care of one another.”

  “I trust you. I just can’t watch.”

  ****

  At four o’clock Pacific time, during the keynote speech of the Fortune annual meeting, Sanctuary dipped low over the ocean, causing all manner of gravity distortion. Winds howled. Waves leapt.

  Stu pushed the launch button and left home for the first time. He struggled to brake the pod’s descent as the high winds battered him. With this much weight, the controls weren’t very responsive. A white vapor trail streamed behind them as they streaked toward the California coast.

  His grin couldn’t get any wider.

  An alarm on his suit sounded. Something had painted the pod with radar. Already? These people must be paranoid. When he sensed the missiles arcing toward him, he turned on the ancient UN friend-foe transponder from Ascension. The rockets didn’t veer off. The pod didn’t have countermeasures, so he improvised. Spiraling wildly, he dumped his reserve fuel tank. Sanctuary control shouted in his ear, but he said, “Audio dampers full.”

  Explosions rocked his little craft, sending it farther off course.

  “I’m going to puke,” Joan complained.

  “Just a little turbulence,” he insisted in his most soothing voice. One of the thrusters caught a fragment of shrapnel. More fuel leaked from the hole. This bucket is already overweight. I need to borrow some fuel fast. That little cloud over there is perfect. He broadcast Mayday over civilian air-traffic channels and then told his passengers, “I have to perform emergency braking. It may get loud.”

  Oleander said, “Open your mouth all the way, baby.”

  The detonation of all thrusters against the cloud rang his bell worse than his black-belt exam. As he recovered, he watched a crack form in the pod window. Their speed wasn’t good, but it was better. On Sanctuary frequencies, Stu broadcast, “We’re not going to reach the target landing zone. I’m aiming for a cluster of TV transmissions on t
he beach.”

  He dropped altitude as fast as possible, but the crack in the canopy continued to spread. The pod hugged the waves, almost skipping across them as they rocketed toward the sand. “I’m going to create a diversion. The pod will self-destruct sixty seconds after we eject.”

  When he reached the source of the TV transmissions, he was traveling sixty kilometers an hour. However, the beach was far too crowded for a landing. There was a grandstand surrounding a sand playing court of some kind.

  By now, the crack spanned most of the window. Stu targeted a spot twenty meters from shore and shut down all engines. At the moment of splashdown, a safety gel called supergoo filled the pod to further cushion the occupants. He felt like fruit suspended in a gelatin dessert. After the impacts died down, the goo relaxed into a thinner liquid. Stu blew the canopy off, and seawater washed away the goo.

  Oleander’s shimmering suit of scale mail was composed of a hundred palm-sized, alien, ceramic disks, resembling the cover of some fantasy magazine. However, when she activated her belt controls, the disks displayed images of the pod interior, allowing her to vanish from normal sight. The sneak suits also were built on a neoprene base and operated efficiently underwater. Twin splashes were the only indication that Oleander and Joan had left the craft.

  After Stu pressed another control, the ejection seat propelled him in a high arc, closer to shore than he had planned. People on the grandstands pointed at him as he plummeted feetfirst into half a meter of water. His amplified muscles and the ocean prevented damage. Then, a wave brushed him farther ashore on the floating seat. Uncontrolled spinning made him a little dizzy. He detached from the chair, staggered onto the sand court, and bumped into a tall net.

  Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

  The group of women stopped their volleyball game to stare. Scores of cameras pointed at Stu as he unscrewed his helmet. So many people! They blurred together into a sea of faces, heads of wheat moving in the breeze.