by J. J. Green
“Marks, check out the rocks that are trapping Ellis,” he said, stepping over the dead soldiers.
Had Ellis really taken out six hostiles by herself, all while her leg was stuck between two rocks?
But he had no time to dwell on the feat. He examined her trapped leg. The rocks to each side were gripping it like a vise. He pushed her calf, hard, and then tried pulling it toward him. It didn’t budge a millimeter. He grasped her lower leg and tugged it upward, with the same result.
It wasn’t possible to see Ellis’s face through her darkened visor, but from her hunched position Wright guessed she was exhausted. He was reminded of a fox he and his father had come across while out in the woods behind his home. The fox had been caught in an illegal trap for many hours and was lying on its side, its eyes closed, panting breaths shaking its rib cage. His dad had freed the fox, but its leg was broken, and as it staggered slowly away, barely able to move, he’d lifted his shotgun and killed it.
“Is there a way we can blast these rocks to get her out?” Wright asked Marks, who had watched his attempts.
She examined the two boulders from all sides.
When she replied, it was over one-to-one comm. “A hit from a mortar would definitely free her, and her suit will give her some protection, but whether she’ll survive, I just don’t know.”
He grimaced and wondered if he’d made the right decision to come back. He checked the time. They had less than three minutes to get to the Daisy.
“Ellis,” he said, “we can try to shift these rocks with mortar fire, but it might kill you. What do you say? I need your answer immediately.”
For a moment, she didn’t reply.
Then he heard her say softly, “Do it.”
IN THE END, THE EXPLOSION didn’t kill her, but it hurt her badly and knocked her out. Blood seeped through the breaches in her armor, and her visor was blown out.
Wright scooped the unconscious woman from among the broken rock fragments and put her over his shoulder.
Now it would be a sprint to get back to the Daisy before she took off. He raced down the mountainside, struggling to keep his balance. He had the weight of Ellis plus her armor on one side and the slippery rocks to contend with, but somehow he managed to stay on his feet.
Marks quickly drew ahead of him, but Cole was by his side, burdened by the XM57. Wright told him to drop the weapon. He would answer to Colbourn for it later, but the man had risked his life for a fellow marine without question.
Suddenly, a whine ran through the atmosphere.
It was as Wright had feared. The EAC had told its troops to withdraw because its jets were on their way. It was planning an air strike.
His lungs heaving, he sped up, taking crazy risks as he leapt down the mountain. He reached level ground and hit it running. Cole was ahead of him now. He and Marks would make it to the ship, Wright was sure, but for him and Ellis, it was going to be close. He didn’t even know if she was still alive.
The going was easier now the terrain was flat, but he felt as though his chest would burst. The open hatch of the Daisy and the ramp leading up to it seemed impossibly far away.
Wright felt Ellis move. She was coming around. He heard her groan, then...
“I can’t feel my legs,” she said.
Chapter Seven
The colony ship, Bres, stretched three hundred and eighty-five kilometers from tip to tip of her spiral structure, and the diameter of each turn of the corkscrew was exactly ninety-three kilometers. Her engine spread over one of the spiral tips like a colossal umbrella, and a cylinder that ran through the center of the ship held the fuel—enough for more than three thousand years of travel. Coupled with the engine’s spacetime compression capability, the ship could carry its passengers throughout the galaxy in their search for a new, habitable world.
For who knew how long it would take to find a planet suitable for colonization? The information on exoplanets gleaned by space telescopes over the centuries told of several potential candidates, but only visiting them would reveal for certain whether they could sustain human life. It was possible none were viable in that way, and the search would continue.
How long might the colonists spend in torpor, the processes of their bodies slowed to an almost-unmeasurable pace? How long before they could open their eyes upon their new, untouched world, rich in resources? These were questions Lorcan Ua Talman had often pondered over the years, as the building of Bres and her sister ships, Balor and Banba, progressed.
He rose from his seat at the center of the Bres’s central control room and picked up three soft balls—red, green, and blue—from a small, round-topped table at his side. As he began to stroll around, he tossed the balls in a simple, circular pattern. Juggling helped him think, and it helped keep his team on their toes.
Nervousness mounted in the men and women as he walked the open spaces between their workstations. Steadman, Head of Engineering, was casting glances his way; Kekoa, responsible for sustainable habitats, had become strangely still and rigid; and the suspended animation specialist, Jurrah, was clenching and unclenching his fists where they rested on his console. Less important team members echoed their disquiet.
Lorcan smiled.
He sauntered to the screen that occupied the entire wall of one end of the room. At the moment, the display featured a section of the Alciere Drive, where drones hovered over its surfaces as they worked, arriving and departing, transporting new parts and tools.
He commanded views of other zones within the Bres to be displayed, both the completed and uncompleted areas. New scenes appeared on the screen: Agricultural regions, laboratories, life support hubs, banks of cryo chambers, storage cells for the vast stock of organisms to be taken along, and living quarters where the colonists—the cream of humanity’s genetic heritage—would spend months of respite from the physical toll of deep hibernation.
All the while, as Lorcan assessed the progress of the ship building project, he juggled, meditative. Bres was to be the lead ship of the three colony vessels, his ship, where he would live for a few short years but sleep away hundreds, perhaps thousands, ensconced in a fluid-filled capsule.
Before he would entrust his life to his ship, she must be perfect.
One of the recreation habitats appeared on the display—an expanse of water surrounded by temperate forest. Young trees mounted the slopes to what appeared to be a blue, cloud-filled sky, though it was only an illusion created on the over-arching dome. Lorcan studied the habitat for a long moment, then he spun on his heel, took aim, and threw.
Kekoa ducked, but not fast enough.
The ball hit her forehead.
The small motions and noises within the control room abruptly halted.
There had been a time when Lorcan’s behavior would have drawn sniggers and giggles from the people responsible for the Bres’s construction, at least from those who weren’t his target, but that time had passed long ago.
He marched to Kekoa, who sat cowering at her desk. She lifted her gaze to him, and then closed her eyes just before he launched the second and third balls at her head. They struck her and dropped with soft thunks to the floor between her feet.
“Dunderhead,” he said between his teeth. Lowering himself until his head was level with hers, he added, his voice increasing in volume, “Fool. Buffoon. Idiot!”
Straightening up, he stabbed the index finger of his long right hand at the screen. “What is that?”
Kekoa leaned to one side to see around him.
“Uh, West Lake?”
“You sound like you’re asking me a question. Is it West Lake or isn’t it? I would have thought you might recognize it, considering you built it!”
“West Lake,” Kekoa said, more firmly.
“And what is wrong with it?”
“Wrong with it?”
“That’s funny, there seems to be an echo in here.”
“Um...” Kekoa gave a short, tense cough. “Er...” She frowned and squinted at the image
on the display.
When no answer appeared to come to her, she looked for help toward other members of the team, but everyone except herself and Lorcan was staring steadfastly at their consoles.
She swallowed. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t know. I’m surrounded by nitwits. Simpletons. Ignoramuses.”
Lorcan slapped Kekoa’s desk. Turning to address the room, he continued, “And to think you’re the prime of your fields, the best I could find. If you represent Earth’s elite scientists, the future of humankind is doomed. What will become of us?”
He snapped his head around to focus on Kekoa again. “Waves! Where are the waves? That stretch of water is still as a dew pond. Is there a waterfall? Are there feeder tributaries tumbling down from higher ground, through the forest?”
Kekoa quickly ran fingertips over her console as she sought the information.
“No!” said Lorcan, triumphant, yet angry that he knew the woman’s work better than she knew it herself. “So where is the oxygen going to come from?”
“Yes, yes, I see.” She covered her eyes with one hand. “I see now.”
“Do you? Do you really? Or must I spell it out? Without oxygen, within a few years that water will become stagnant as a Mississippi swamp. All the precious fish and water creatures you’ve seeded it with will die. The entire lake will be one murky, stinking mess.”
“Waves,” said Kekoa. “I’ll get on it right away.”
“You need—”
“Wind generators, I know.”
“Wind generators indeed. Without wind, that lake will die, and, what’s more, the trees surrounding it will eventually collapse, their roots too weak to support their weight.”
Lorcan ambled toward his seat, leaving his juggling balls where they lay at Kekoa’s feet. Eventually, someone would summon the courage to pick them up and return them to the small table.
Kekoa’s fingers flew over her console as she tried to source wind generators from the Bres’s stocks or, if none were to be found, to order some from the Antarctic Project’s manufacturing plants on Earth.
Despite her tension and haste, she found time to monitor Lorcan’s progress across the room, as if she were waiting for something.
The rest of the control room seemed in suspense, too.
When Lorcan reached his seat and lowered himself into it, he noticed, from the corners of his eyes, Kekoa’s figure relax.
“I was forgetting,” he said to her, “that’ll be one month’s salary for your mistake. Try not to make another, or you’ll end up owing me money.”
Kekoa hung her head.
Stretching out one of his long legs and placing his elbows on his arm rests, Lorcan rubbed a fingertip across his lips and smirked.
But his pleasure at punishing Kekoa soon faded. The woman shouldn’t have made such a simple mistake, especially not one that he, an amateur, could pick up. What else had she missed? If the habitats aboard Bres, Balor, and Banba were not truly self-sustaining, the effect could be more dire than the colonists simply having no natural landscapes to enjoy during their respite periods. The flora and fauna the ships were sustaining could die, and when they settled a new planet, the colonists would be forced to rely only upon the stored gametes to create Earth’s organisms.
The Project was a unique, unprecedented venture. There was no telling what species might be useful, or essential, to humanity’s survival in its new home, or homes. He was not prepared to accept any unnecessary increase to the risk of failure.
It was humanity’s destiny to travel beyond the Solar System and spread across the galaxy. It was his destiny, the explanation for his loss, and the whole reason for his existence.
He would not fail.
Chapter Eight
The sick bay aboard the Daisy wasn’t equipped to deal with Ellis’s wounds, so Wright had her transferred directly to the Valiant as soon as the corvette returned from the surface. An extended debriefing session with Colbourn followed, during which he doubted she would have believed his account if it weren’t for the undeniable evidence of the ‘mummy’. When the brigadier finally dismissed him and he’d showered and changed, he decided to pay the injured marine a visit.
He discovered that the severely dehydrated man had been placed in the room set aside for cases that required intensive care. As he entered the main area, a medic in full protective gear and carrying a vial of blood emerged from the room and hurried off, paying the major no attention.
He’d been worried the duty doc might prevent him from seeing Ellis so soon after her surgery, but it seemed the medical staff were too preoccupied with their new patient to bother about a regular marine.
She was wearing a full torso cast, and one of her legs was held up by suspension wires. Her arms appeared unaffected by the mortar blast aside from reddening. She was resting an interface on her chest and watching it, her head raised on a pillow.
It was the quiet shift. Aside from the glow emanating from the window to the intensive care room, the ward was only in half light. Two other patients were there, but they were asleep.
Ellis’s face was lit by the illumination from her interface. She was frowning slightly as she watched it, and also wearing a look of intense happiness that made him reluctant to interrupt. He was about to turn around and leave when she noticed him.
“Major Wright? Sorry, sir, I didn’t...” She tried to sit up and salute simultaneously. In her position, neither was possible, and her efforts caused the interface to slip from her hands.
Wright dove for it and caught it just before it hit the floor.
“Shit!” Ellis exclaimed. “I mean...” She was still, for some unknown reason, trying to sit up.
“At ease, marine.”
She relaxed. Her gaze traveled to the interface in his hand. “Sir, could I...?”
Curiosity overcame him and, though he felt bad about the invasion of privacy, he took a glance at the screen before passing it over. All he saw was a children’s playground. Nothing special.
She turned the interface screen downward and put it on the table next to her bed.
“How are you doing?” Wright asked.
“Pretty good, thanks. They fixed up my spine. The doc said they did something to trigger the nerves to regrow and I shouldn’t have any long-term effects. And they gave me some strong painkillers, so I’m high as a kite.” As if suddenly realizing who she was talking to, Ellis’s slightly unfocused eyes widened. “Um, what I meant to say was—”
Wright chuckled. “It’s okay. Do you mind if I...?” He gestured toward a chair.
“Go ahead.”
She watched as he slid the chair closer and sat down. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees. He wasn’t sure how to broach the subject he wanted to discuss.
“You don’t have to pussyfoot around,” said Ellis. “I’m a big girl. Let’s just get it over with.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Get what over with?”
“I have to be disciplined, right?”
“Disciplined for what?”
“Wasting time, putting other marines’ lives in danger, being a dumbass. I don’t know. Something.”
“What...Are you telling me you deliberately got your foot stuck?”
“No. Why would I do that?”
“You said you might be a dumbass.”
“I’m certainly a dumbass, but I’m not that dumb.”
“Right. Did you ask to be rescued?”
“Uh...” Her eyes moved left as she appeared to try to remember.
“As I recall, you did not,” said Wright. “I made the decision to go back for you. Therefore, if anyone was wasting time and putting lives in danger, it was I.”
“It was? Then I guess you must be the d—”
Wright put on his major face.
Ellis gave a small cough. “Sorry, sir.”
“I want to talk to you about the events that took place after you were trapped. There must have been a lot going
on. What do you remember?”
“I remember we lost Chen, McEndry, and Blake,” Ellis replied sadly.
“Yeah,” said Wright, his expression grave. “All good men.” He looked toward the separate room in the corner of the sick bay. Had the loss of life been worth it? The question was still open. Only time would tell if the marines’ sacrifice had been in vain. He had no idea what he’d found within that mountain in West BI, and he couldn’t imagine how the discovery might benefit the Britannic Alliance.
“After they were blued,” continued Ellis, “I knew the EAC knew where I was, and they would try to take me out. Luckily, they didn’t all get there at once. Whenever an EAC soldier got close enough, I killed them. Until, finally, they stopped coming. I thought they must have been recalled for some reason. All I could do then was carry on trying to get my leg free. Then you and Marks and Cole showed up. So here I am, alive, and very grateful.”
“About the EAC soldiers.” The officer knit his fingers. “We found six of them. You said you’d killed them all yourself. Are you sure that’s right?” He wanted to give her the chance to change her story. When he’d reached her she’d been on her own for some time and she was in a lot of pain. She didn’t seem the type to exaggerate, but it was possible she’d been confused.
“Huh?” She tried to sit up again, sending her suspended leg swinging. “You think I’m lying?!”
“Hey, it’s just a question.”
“Just a question? Why would I lie about something like that?” When Wright didn’t answer, she continued, “You think I made it up so I’d look good? That I stole kills from the men who died? What the hell?”
“Ellis,” he said sternly, “remember who you’re talking to.”
High or not, he wasn’t going to put up with her insubordination.
She slumped onto her bed and stared at the ceiling, her lips set and her jaw muscles twitching.
“You have to admit it’s...unusual,” he said.
Ellis didn’t reply.
“Isn’t it?” he probed.