Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  “He left me in charge, and if he thinks I’m losing it he’ll never trust me again,” Kaycee said. “Unless we can prove any of this to him, he’ll never see it.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” she asked.

  “Once you all head out on your field trip, I’ll do some snooping,” she said. “I’ll have to be careful since I won’t have anyone to watch my back, but I am pretty good when I need to be.”

  “Frak. You’ll owe me for this, but I can’t go now,” Ammo said, glaring.

  “Me either, but you won’t owe me anything unless you want to,” Quinn said. “Nuko asked me to go, but I don’t fit in a small-people-sized PSE, so I volunteered to stay and hold the door.”

  He looked down at the catwalk like he was embarrassed. “I told the cap’n I’d keep you out of trouble.”

  “I have also been admonished to prevent you from entering into a situation that would cause difficulties,” Marti said, walking up in its Humanform automech. “You are not seeking to do such a thing are you?”

  “Of course not,” Kaycee said, feeling like a kid caught stealing cookies.

  Marti’s face raised an eyebrow but said, “I advised the captain that I did not think you would do that while we were gone.”

  “We?” Ammo asked.

  “Yes. They have invited me to go along,” it said. “This will be an excellent opportunity to field test my new body, and to experience a range of sensory input that would not be available aboard the ship.”

  “You’re running from the recycler purge aren’t you,” Kaycee said.

  Marti looked to the side for almost a second before it shook its head. “There is no recycler purge scheduled on either the ship or the station.”

  “Maybe they haven’t gotten it in the log yet,” she said. “The Mission Director said we brought them parts and they needed to do it urgently.”

  “This is not true,” it said. “There are no recycler components listed on the cargo manifest, and the station maintenance records show that a standard maintenance purge was done less than thirty days ago.”

  “I must have misunderstood,” Kaycee said, glancing over at Ammo and making sure she was reading that bit of data the same way.

  She nodded imperceptibly.

  “So you’re leaving us alone up here?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “My cognitive processor will remain aboard the Olympus Dawn even as my body experiences the environment of the planet,” Marti said. “My awareness is capable of being in multiple places simultaneously.”

  “That kind of multiple awareness must be interesting,” Kaycee said.

  “I focus my attention where it is needed and let the body operate alone when it is necessary. This automech has the ability to function autonomously and possesses a rudimentary consciousness. I am simply the dominant awareness when I am connected.”

  “You’re saying we’d never know if you were here, or just your skinsuit on autopilot?” she asked.

  “I am sure you would see a different personality when I am in control,” Marti said.

  “I understand,” she said, her eyes lighting up as she nodded. “Enjoy the safari.”

  “Thank you, I will,” it said, turning and heading off into the chaos on the catwalk.

  As soon the automech was far enough away that she was sure it was out of hearing range, Kaycee turned back to Ammo. “Is there any chance I can look at the load manifest?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I noticed a lot of crates labeled medical gear being loaded out,” she said as a grin exploded across her face. “I think I need to see just what kind of gear they’ve been ordering.”

  Chapter Eight

  Angelique Wolfe was right at the upper edge of what could fit in a Pressure Support Exosuit and Ethan stood watching as Tashina and Sandi struggled to stretch the polymorphic liner far enough to cover all of the handler’s body. The somewhat limited space inside the shuttle made the process even more interesting.

  As part of their shipmaster license training, he and Nuko had both worn a PSE before, so they needed no help getting suited. Rene also knew how to put one on since sometimes an engineer needed to have a strength boost to do his job. But the process wasn’t intuitive, and Angel struggled with it.

  And the two anthropologists struggled with Angel.

  “It’s a good thing Quinn didn’t come down,” Nuko whispered, turning away from the spectacle and grinning.

  “I would have paid to watch that,” Rene said.

  “Would you quit giving them a hard time and just let them get you suited?” the captain said. He wasn’t sure if he should be annoyed or amused.

  “You know it’s only two-G. I could walk from here to the door,” she said. “Maybe they’ll have a bigger suit inside?”

  “This will fit,” Tashina said. “You just have to stand still and let it adjust to your skin temperature.”

  “That would be a damned lot easier if I didn’t feel like I was getting dressed for a sex party,” Angel said, glaring down at her. “This has got to be the strangest rubber suit I’ve ever put on.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a visual I needed to have,” Ethan said.

  “Wait until it turns on,” Rene added.

  “It turns on? I’m already there for frak sake,” she said.

  Both of the women helping her froze. She stood almost a head taller than Sandi and close to a half meter above Tash, and in that instant, both of them realized that their reality might shift profoundly.

  Fortunately, the liner activated and other than Angel’s audible squeak and bulging eyes, they escaped the ordeal with at least part of their collective dignity intact.

  “Just backup to the autovalet and let it put the exoshell on you. Then we can go,” Sandi said, stepping back and almost falling over the seat behind her.

  “I can’t watch this,” Ethan said. “Is it safe to go outside?”

  “It should be,” she said. “We run continuous scans when we’ve got a shuttle on the ground, and if there’s anything out there, they’ll let us know. Tash why don’t you walk them over and show them how to get inside?”

  “Yah, if she fights the shell like she fought the liner, you might need more room in here anyway,” Tash said visibly relieved to be getting a pass on helping with the rest of the process.

  “It can’t be any worse than this can it?” Angel asked, looking at the captain like she was about to rethink the whole idea of the field trip.

  Ethan shook his head. Then changed his mind and nodded. “Back into the rack and the sensor will trigger the unit to assemble and fit your limbs together. Just don’t move unless you want to find out what it feels like to have a leg shell shoved up your ass.” He ducked through the door and out into the night air before she could respond.

  Jumping down, his PSE cinched up on his body to help push the blood back to his brain and his head bobbed as he landed. He recognized the delay in response from the exoshell’s neck-support actuators as he crossed the transition boundary between gravity levels.

  It was profoundly dark outside, and an arm popped up over the back of his head and swung an infrared lens in front of his eyes so he could see. Nuko and Rene stood a few steps ahead staring at the trees and stars above them.

  “Space looks so different when you’re looking up at it,” she said as he stepped up beside her. “And the air smells incredible.”

  “We should keep moving,” Tash said. “Unless you want to be lunch.”

  “I thought you said it was clear?” Ethan said.

  “A boar korah can cover a kilometer in about twenty seconds if they catch our wind,” she said.

  “What’s a korah?” Nuko asked.

  “It’s a six-ton carnivore,” she said. “It hunts at night and has a sense of smell that’s unbelievably refined. If there’s one within ten klick downwind of us, it knows we’re here. It’s the alpha predator anywhere on Ut’ar.”

  “I detect no large creatures within a kilometer,
” Marti said, stepping up behind them. “However, it would be prudent to move quickly to shelter as there are a great number of other life forms in close proximity and differentiating their intent is difficult.”

  “We’re holding up traffic since they won’t send the off-duty team out, until we’re inside,” Tash said. She glanced back at the shuttle and nodded. “Here they come, so let’s make feet.”

  She trotted off toward a large rock outcropping with the rest following along in a single file line. She turned and angled up a narrow slit between two large boulders and stopped at the end of the tiny channel. In infrared, Ethan could see a faint difference in temperature on one of the stone walls.

  Tash reached out and set her hand in the middle of the rock and it slid back and then to the side to reveal a standard looking airlock hatch. She keyed in an access code on the panel and it swung inward. The lights were off inside, and it wasn’t until they’d all squeezed inside and the door closed behind them that the lights came on.

  “We’re home,” she said. “Watch your step going inside, we’re back to standard gravity on the other side of the door. Your suit should react quickly enough, but if you’re moving fast, it might send you hard down first.”

  Ethan nodded and followed her through the doorway. He felt his suit loosen its grip and he sighed in relief. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but a generic PSE tended to bind in some intimate places if you moved wrong.

  “The locker room is to the right,” Tash said, nodding toward the appropriate door. “While you’re here, you’ll keep the same suit and you’ll have your own autovalet to hold it for you. Find an open locker and then remember which one you used. It will save having to refit everything each time you need to get your kit on.”

  “After you’ve done that, the mission commander and medical officer will meet you in the Main Gallery and walk you through your orientation,” Sandi said. “The unofficial uniform of the Rockpile crew is thinskin, but if you’d be more comfortable, we can get you jumpsuits.”

  The captain glanced at his crew and nobody seemed worried about running around in their underwear. “I think we’re good,” he said with a wink.

  “Marti, you can come with us since you don’t need to gear down,” she said. “Sandi and I will be taking you out tomorrow and maybe the next day, so we’ll see you in the morning.” The two of them disappeared through a different door with the automech following behind.

  A few minutes later, and with only a minimum of grumbling from Angel, they all assembled in the Main Gallery. Above a huge wallscreen that rose four meters up the side of the vaulted dome, a hand painted sign said:

  Remember, you are a rock.

  Marti sat along one side of a table, waiting. “This is Dr. Tobias Stocton, the mission 1345 commander,” Marti said, nodding her projection face at the man who sat at the end of the table. “And this is Dr. Leela Singh, the mission medic.”

  Please, we are casual around here,” the commander said. “Toby and Leela is fine.”

  “Understood,” Ethan said. “I’m Ethan Walker, and this—”

  “Oh yes, we know who you all are,” Leela said. “Even if you weren’t famous, we have to read over and approve any guests that come down.”

  “I’m not… Nevermind,” the captain said. “So, first names it is for all of us then.”

  “Excellent,” Toby said. “Let’s get the formal business side out of the way and then we can get you bunked in for the night. We’ll be hitting the ground early in the morning and you’ll need to get a good night’s sleep since it’s almost a twenty klick round trip.”

  “Sounds good to me,” he said.

  “We have to do this for everybody on their first time down here,” Leela said. “Even though you probably know a lot of this, it’s a matter of safety.”

  “We do the same thing with passengers,” Angel said. “Emergency exits and all that.”

  “Exactly,” Toby said. “We’ve got two different potential situations you need to be aware of and ready to respond to. First is a failure of the basecamp’s gravity grid leaving you abruptly in the local gradient. This hasn’t happened in the forty years we’ve had the Rockpile in place, but it did once in one of the other expedition encampments. It was a fairly bad situation because four of the team there were standing upright and ended up with broken bones as the result of forcefully eating floor. Fortunately, the engineer was off duty and in his bunk when it happened, so he was able to get the artificial gravity in the ceiling back online and we got the injured evacuated before any of them had lasting damage.”

  “So that’s how you control the gravity here,” Rene said, nodding. “Overhead plating is cheaper than reversible bias panels like in a ship.”

  The commander nodded. “It’s actually a simpler system and takes less power.”

  “It also gives an extra benefit because the gravity gradient effect relaxes the vascular system toward the top of an upright body,” Leela added.

  “If we have a grid failure for any reason, it is imperative that if you aren’t injured, you get to your PSE and into the polymorphic liner as quickly as possible. It won’t protect your skeleton but it will keep your blood in the right place, so you don’t pass out. If there is still power to the autovalet units, then get the shell put on. You have to do this before you render aid to any of the injured.”

  “The most serious injury that happened when that expedition encampment went down was one of the uninjured collapsed from muscle fatigue and circulatory deficiency and landed on the person he was trying to help,” she said. “The one on the bottom ended up with broken ribs and nearly suffocated before the other one managed to get rolled off.”

  “Always get your suit on before you go back to help,” Toby said.

  “That makes sense,” Rene said. “Sometimes it isn’t human nature to save your own skin first.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Now the other gravity problem you might face is a PSE failure. Although rare, these do happen. Especially when you’re not paying attention to power reserves. A suit will operate for several days without a recharge depending on how hard you push it. If your suit fails like that, it goes off in stages. The exoshell shuts down an hour or more before the liner fails. This gives you plenty of warning but it’s still possible you could be caught too far from basecamp to make it back.”

  “If your suit stops working for any reason, you can survive and function for a while, but it will get to be exhausting quickly,” Leela said.

  “Always pay attention to your power levels,” he said.

  “If you reach the point where your suit has quit, do not push,” she said, making sure she made eye contact with each of them. “Prolonged exposure to the high gravity can cause irreversible circulatory problems in twelve hours. Even if your suit has not failed, the most important thing to remember is that if you get lightheaded, lie down flat. A person who remains upright in this gravity cuts their survival time by over half.”

  “Also, it’s important to remember that a working PSE compensates for most of the problems of heavy gravity, but the effects do build up. We rotate observation teams on a twelve day cycle because of the cumulative impact,” Toby said. “None of you will be staying with us that long, but gravity related problems could affect any of you, at any time. We train for this, and we only allow people down here on teams that have proven they have a long-term tolerance.”

  “Don’t feel bad if you have problems and need to tap out,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of recreation space here in the Rockpile and we’ll only need to keep you confined inside for a maximum of four days before the next ride home.”

  “Why is it every four days?” Angel asked.

  “The lunar cycles give us a deep dark every fourth day,” he said. “The outer moon works out to be totally down every 120 hours, and the inner one is in a close orbital resonance that only drops out of phase one out of every thirty-six dark nights.”

  “What if there’s a problem?” she asked.

&n
bsp; “We deal with it until then,” Leela said, shrugging. “The one most important thing we’ve got to adhere to is a lack of cultural contamination.”

  “Which brings us to the next thing,” Toby said. “We don’t fool around with the potential for exposure. Nothing gets dropped, and nothing gets left outside. Ever. We don’t even take a piss on a tree. We cart everything back. No exceptions.”

  “The issue is that there is a widely diverse environment out there,” she said. “If we find out that a microbe is attracted to some artifact of our biochemistry that we leave behind and it goes out of balance or mutates from exposure, then it can have unpredictable consequences to the indigenous ecosystem.”

  “That makes sense,” Nuko said.

  “The Viroxycin Immunoxate-112-E injection you all got, will keep you safe from anything microbial,” she said. “It also suppresses certain features of our own internal biome temporarily to keep us from contaminating things here.”

  “That doesn’t sound healthy,” Rene said.

  “None of you had a reaction to the injection?” Toby asked.

  “Not yet,” Ethan said.

  “Normally you’d know already,” Leela said. “It takes twelve to twenty-four hours for the injection to cause a problem. If that happens the effects wear off in a few days.”

  “We only got our shots a couple hours ago,” the captain said.

  Toby rolled a side eye at the medic and she shrugged. The reaction wasn’t lost on the captain.

  “It shouldn’t be a problem,” she said. “The shots are pretty much benign. I don’t recall anyone having a severe reaction to the Immunoxate in several years. The most common symptoms of a problem are a rash and some muscle weakness. Since none of you have that, we’re good.”

  They all shook their heads.

  “As long as you don’t take any risks, you’ll be alright out there,” he said. “Although it’s important to remember that even though we can protect you from the microbes and viral contaminants, some things you might encounter are just simply poisonous. It’s best not to go native and eat or drink anything indigenous. Fortunately, if you get into something messy, in most cases it’s unlikely that it’ll kill you.”