Eden's Trial

by Barry Kirwan

  As soon as he’d rounded the corner, he leaned against the wall and hung his head. I’m not up to this. This damned jacket, he thought, glancing down at his father’s grey Air Force tunic, which he’d donned en route from the canteen. He’d put it on for a special purpose. Oh well, he thought, let’s get this done.

  He pushed off from the wall and marched forward, fixing on the hangar in the distance, not stopping to speak with anyone. He zoomed in on Zack – easily distinguishable from a hundred meters away – his gleaming, black, bald pate and gorilla-like frame somehow moving with the quiet, uncompromising ease of a sumo wrestler. His head turned this way and that every now and again, his gaze hawk-like never missing a trick. Micah always relaxed around Zack, though no one under Zack’s command ever did. He quickened his pace.

  “Hey, buddy, how’s it goin?” Zack’s voice boomed across the hangar. A few soldiers – this was a strictly military zone – stopped to see who had arrived, and to whom their commander would be so cordial. He paused just short of Zack’s reach. Zack’s bushy eyebrows knitted together, and he folded his ebony forearms. “Need a stim?” Zack said quietly.

  Micah shook his head.

  “Well, okay then, there she is,” Zack said, pointing to the sleek, blinding white, Moonwalker-class fighter, a mid-range, one man space-jet. Its delta wings ear-marked it as a hybrid, able to operate in atmosphere as well as in space. Micah’s throat went dry, and his stomach shrivelled. As a kid he’d dreamt about being an astronaut, but he’d never imagined how disorienting it could be in a small spacecraft, let alone the space-sickness: in the past week he’d thrown up during every single training session. This was the first time he’d be going out on his own in a Moonwalker, having been in a two-man Skyhawk until now.

  He braced himself. “Is she – it’s always a she, right?”

  Zack grinned. “Because you’re inside her, Micah.”

  “Okay, okay. Is she, er … loaded?”

  Zack’s grin stalled. He approached and planted a heavy hand on Micah’s shoulder. “She’s ready, kid. Now, go do what you have to do.”

  Micah swallowed. He turned towards the craft, then paused, but Zack answered before he could launch the question.

  “Blake’s already out there, putting your training buddies Luke and Saul through their paces. I’ll be on open-link comms. There’ll be a bunch watching remotely on level eight, but they won’t have comms with you.”

  As Micah marched to the ladder, a private handed him his flight suit, and saluted him. He took off his father’s jacket and passed it to him. The guy received it like it was precious, and almost bowed. Micah made sure he didn’t react, and then stepped into the cobalt-coloured, one-piece space-suit, zipped it up and activated the auto-seals. It sucked closed around him, making him feel like a vacuum-packed slice of soy-beef. He bent over to pick up his helmet. It was then he realised there was no sound. Everyone had stopped working and was watching. He strode over to the black torpedo slung under the port wing and laid a gloved hand on it. “Safe trip,” he whispered. He donned his helmet, and clambered up the short steps into the cockpit. Once seated, the chair automatically hugged the contours of his body. The transparent forward shield slid into place, cocooning him in silence. The fluidic metal dashboard lit up, casting a sapphire glow around him. Now, for the first time since waking, he really thought about the package he would soon be firing deep into space.

  “Ease off the aft port thrusters,” Blake said.

  Micah marvelled at how Blake never lost patience with him, only raising his voice if Micah was about to crash into the mother ship, or over-compensate with thrusters until his own craft entered a ‘tumble’, an uncontrolled spin ending with the pilot’s intestines serving as interior decor. He couldn’t see Blake’s Moonwalker – he didn’t blame him, best not to get too close. Micah wasn’t adept at this, but Blake had insisted he train to be a Captain, to develop the physical skills to match his analytic ones: the trappings of leadership are important. At least, he thought, Luke and Saul are out of harm’s way, on a recon mission.

  He complied with Blake’s monotone instructions, though it was all so damned counter-intuitive. None of his years of gaming and holo-sims when he’d been a kid had prepared him for the reality of flying in a straight line when there was simply no measurable gravity in any direction. Pick a star, he thought, focus. He selected one, and the oscillations gradually came under control. Micah was an Optron analyst, and Zack, the best pilot left alive, confided in him that this was his biggest problem – these craft had to be flown by feel. If you tried to think about it too much, he’d said, your brain was going to explode, sooner or later.

  He relaxed a little, and maintained a straight line for twenty seconds without any appreciable yaw or wavering. For the first time, he saw Blake’s craft pull up beside him, three wing-widths to starboard.

  “Keep your eyes fixed on whatever star you’re looking at, Micah.”

  He nodded inside his helmet and looked at the tiny speck of light in amongst the carpet of stars draped around them. He’d only realised after leaving Earth and Eden just how dark space was. But for the first time he felt in control of the ship. His shoulders dropped.

  “You’ve got it,” Blake reassured him.

  Zack’s voice cut in. “Hey, you’ve made me a rich man, Micah, you just wrecked the sweepstakes’ prediction back here! They were sure you’d puke again!”

  He smiled, but it didn’t last. It was now or never; he couldn’t do this unless he was in control of the craft. “Which way is Earth, Commander?”

  “You’re pointing in her direction, as far as we can tell after fifteen fractal transits.”

  Blake’s gravel-like voice fit the occasion. Micah flicked up the lid covering the red push-button on the joystick. He paused.

  “You have to say something first, Micah, some words,” Sandy said.

  He was taken aback, hearing Sandy. But then he remembered Zack had wanted to train her in battle comms, on account of the cutting edge in her voice.

  “We’ve split the comms links,” she said. “Blake is going to give a eulogy for everyone else, relayed to level eight. This line is just you and me. No one else can hear. No one alive, that is.”

  This time, her tone had none of its usual acid-coating. He wished she’d known his mother. There: he’d been avoiding that word all day. The image of his Mom rose up in his mind, triggering a cascade of scenes and emotions, from his early childhood, to three days ago, when she’d slipped away from him in the hospital wing on the fifth level, with an air of serenity, knowing she would at last join her long-dead husband.

  Micah had managed to rescue her in the last days of the Q’Roth onslaught, but she’d been wounded, and she was just too old, the doctor had said. Micah had another opinion, however, as his Mom had always been so strong: she’d survived just long enough to see that her son was safe, and then, resources depleted, and too plain tired to countenance another adventure, she’d finally let go of life.

  She’d had one last request: she didn’t want to be buried on the new planet. She wanted to go home. He’d protested that it was impossible, but she’d gripped his wrist with withered yet firm fingers, and said “you’ll find a way.” It was the last coherent thing she’d uttered.

  She hadn’t been alone in this request. Many had been fatally wounded in the exodus, and seventy-four on Blake’s ship had perished in the past two weeks since departing Eden. The Chief Medical Officer had been having a hard time determining what to do with the cadavers – all freezer storage was reserved for food and med-supplies, and the few relatives onboard had railed at the thought of their loved ones’ bodies simply being dumped in space. So they’d cremated all the bodies, and placed the ashes in a torpedo casing, which he now aimed towards a dying planet God alone knew how many light years away. It would probably never get there, of course, instead winding up in some star’s gravity well. But it was the best they could offer, a symbolic gesture.

  Somewhere in
the main ship behind them, a gathering of relations and friends was taking place, and various priests, rabbis and mullahs were casting prayers over these souls who had almost, but not quite, made it.

  He realised he’d been silent for a while. He cleared his throat, his right hand locked around the joystick. “Sandy, I’ve never told anyone this before. When I was born, it was during one of the last outbreaks of the nannite plague. The hospital was infected and, well, my Mom was locked in with everyone else, under quarantine. In two days almost three hundred people died. When they pulled me out of her, they left the placenta attached, kept me incubated, as independent from the external environment as possible. Everything was contaminated, you see. So they cut the umbilical very late.” He coughed. “My father used to joke that that was why I was such a mommy’s boy, never able to break the ties with her. Truth is –“

  “Incoming! Break off Micah, now!” Zack shouted.

  He was trying to process what Zack could mean, but he’d been trained to react first and think about it afterwards when a CO yelled at him. He yanked the joystick hard to port as his right foot rammed the main thruster pedal. The move spun him around one-eighty degrees and displaced him fifty metres. He watched in disbelief as a white missile tore past him. Blake’s craft lurched around and streaked behind him, in hot pursuit.

  “Can he make it?” Micah asked, guessing the target was the mother ship.

  “If anyone can, he’ll do it,” Zack said. “Micah, listen, I don’t know who fired – Luke or Saul. Maybe they’re both in on this. They’re headed your way. No one comes past you. Arm both your… damn!”

  “I know,” Micah said. He had one live and one empty torpedo – well, not entirely empty. He knew better than to ask questions of Zack, as he’d be helping Blake take out the missile, relaying nav data and time to impact.

  “Micah, listen, it’s Sandy, all hell’s breaking loose back here.”

  “Has Blake reached it yet?” He strained his eyesight looking for any telltale movement of Saul and Luke ahead of him. His radar showed no signals, so they must have switched off their transponders and employed stealth mode.

  There was a pause. “No – it’s going to be tight. He’s already pushed eight G’s just to track it. We’ve just found two dead soldiers in armaments, and two nukes missing.”

  Great, he thought, they have live missiles instead of dummies. “Shut the hangar doors, Sandy. Those Q’Roth ships are tough bastards. At least one survived a nuke attack, remember?”

  “The doors are jammed open, and the two spare Moonwalkers have been disabled. They planned ahead.”

  “Move the ship, then!”

  “You know we can’t move between jumps, not for another four hours, not until the engines are recharged.”

  Micah knew that and more. He guessed what Sandy and everyone else would be thinking: Alicians. It meant they had at least one, probably two, and maybe more Alician spies aboard, with a simple objective. He flicked up the protective cover on the live torpedo, and nudged the joystick forward.

  “Sandy, I’m going to need to concentrate for a while.”

  “Okay, Micah, good lu–”

  “Micah. What are you planning exactly?”

  “Hello, Saul.” He’d hoped it would be Luke; Saul was the better pilot. He wondered why they hadn’t fired the other nuke. How long had it been now? Thirty seconds? No detonation yet. Maybe Blake had made it, and wing-tipped it off course.

  “Why, Saul?”

  Luke answered, his voice higher-pitched than Saul’s. “Loose ends, Micah, an intelligent race doesn’t leave any. You’re smart enough to do the math. Intelligence. That’s what counts in the galaxy. Only the clever survive, and Alicians are more intelligent, so humanity loses. Again.”

  The blood rose into Micah’s head, but he knew he had to stay carb-steel cold. A message flashed up on his screen. Missile diverted and destroyed.

  “Seems our flight instructor is as good as his reputation, eh Micah? But he can’t stop a second one, he’s too close to the ship now, and his fuel will be low after that little sprint.”

  “Micah, missile disabled,” Zack cut in, “but Blake’s now way over the other side of the ship. What’s your situation?”

  Micah was surprised – whatever he answered to Zack, Saul and Luke would hear. Zack must know that. He decided to play along. “On intercept. I can maybe take out one – but I don’t know who has the nuke. Instructions?”

  “Take out Saul.”

  Now he was perplexed. With their transponders de-activated, he wouldn’t know which craft was Saul’s unless he was close enough to see into the cockpit. What was Zack up to? But more importantly what would Saul and Luke do next? He had to outflank two Alicians – humans genetically altered with Q’Roth DNA. Ideally they’d want to get closer, just to make sure with their last nuke. They could split in two directions, giving them a 50:50 chance – no, Alicians wouldn’t trust to luck. So, they would take him out first, together. And both were better pilots than he was. How could he take down even one of them?

  “Micah, Blake here, don’t respond. I’m on a split channel, so Luke and Saul can’t hear me. Set your starboard weapon to heat-seek, and disable its proximity protection. Then key in TX-24-03-64-2.”

  He tapped the code into the fluidic keyboard; it felt like pressing down on liquid mercury. Even as he wondered what the code was, Blake filled him in, audible through his helmet’s left-ear speaker.

  “It’s Saul’s training mission log from yesterday. Your missile targeting device has a fast-acting neural net. When you fire it will recognise Saul’s piloting characteristics from his evasive manoeuvres and lock onto him. Okay, no more time, move to intercept. You’ll only get one shot. Wind up your engine to max, but apply the forward thrusters in reverse. You’ll black out when you release them and catapult forward, but it means their missiles won’t be able to get a target lock. You can do this, Micah.”

  He swallowed. Blake had saved his life twice before, he reminded himself, so why not a third time? He tapped the required console symbols, then jammed his foot on the left pedal till it reached the floor. The Moonwalker stuttered and vibrated with a teeth-juddering intensity, then settled down and pitched forward, gathering speed despite the brakes being full-on.

  “Micah, you’re no match for either one of us, let alone two. This is suicide,” Saul said.

  “Bring it on, Micah, this is going to be like an old-fashioned turkey shoot,” Luke added.

  Good, while you keep talking, I know you’re not firing. He understood what Zack was doing. By saying take out Saul, he was trying to throw them off-balance, to break their teamwork rhythm. He had to join Zack’s game.

  “Maybe so, Saul, but you’re coming with me.” There, that should do it. There was an odds-on chance Saul held the nuke, being the better pilot – unless they’d already thought of that.

  Blake’s voice cut in. “I said full throttle, Micah, hit the turbo.”

  He prodded the dashboard in front of him. A shrill whining noise made him check where the ejector release was, in case the ship tore itself apart. After three seconds of banshee vibrations, his ship accelerated, pressing him deeper into the warm embrace of his gel-seat. His eyes blurred with the accelerative pressure. He remembered his training, and tapped the right side of his joystick to switch to computer-audio, since he couldn’t read any of the data.

  “Four hundred, four-fifty, five-sixty...”

  His eyes re-focused. ‘… stabilising eight hundred kph.’

  He silenced voice-comp and punched up the radar onto the plazshield: two green blobs appeared a hundred and eighty klicks ahead of him, closing. They were moving at a slower speed. They could have accelerated too, but since the torpedoes couldn’t lock on at closing speeds in excess of fifteen hundred klicks, it was clear they wanted to kill him first.

  “Micah, get ready to release the live one. When I say ‘now’, fire it and then cut the brakes.”

  Fuck! If it doesn’t lock onto
one of them, it’ll track me, and I’m dead: I can’t outrun a torpedo.

  “Micah,” Zack said. “Soon as you’ve taken out Saul, pivot and pursue Luke. Blake’s re-fuelled, he’ll be there soon.”

  He watched the radar – they both accelerated towards him, but one edged forward – that must be Luke.

  “Now!” Blake shouted.

  Micah squeezed the missile release and then flicked the brakes off. He cried out as he was engulfed by the chair, his eyes rammed backwards into their sockets. His tongue retracted and his cheeks tried to shear away from his skull. His chest felt as if a space-craft had landed on it. He heard a shrieking alarm, recognising it as the warning for pushing G’s way beyond pilot tolerance, half a second before his brain switched off.

  “… up, Micah, WAKE UP!” Sandy screamed at him.

  He opened his eyes, then shook his head. “I’m… I’m back online. What happened? How long –“

  “Thirty seconds. One ship is down, you’re chasing the other one.”

  His head was still reeling. “Which one?”

  “Hey, Micah, just me and you, now, pal, see if you can catch me before I take out the trash.”

  Micah scrutinised the radar screen – Luke was ahead, but not by much. Why hadn’t he fired yet? And where were Zack and Blake? He shoved hard on the joystick, exceeding recommended maximum tolerance.

  His head raced. Saul was gone, but Saul would have had a missile lock alarm seconds before Micah’s missile hit him, so if Saul had had the nuke aboard, he’d have launched it; so Luke must have it.

  “Micah, this is Blake. I’m on intercept, but I need two minutes. Distract Luke if you can. He won’t fire until he’s in the red zone.”

  He figured it out. The first nuke they had launched long range, using the element of surprise, not counting on Blake’s reactions and pilot skills. But by now Zack must have assembled targeting scanners and pulse lasers from the open Hangar. Once Luke launched the missile, it would fly a straight course, and maybe, just maybe, Zack could shoot it down. But if Luke got close enough, then it wouldn’t matter, the blast would cripple or destroy the ship.