Everything here is new. Fresh. Clean.
The air brings me hints of things I’ve never seen before. The salty smell of the ocean. The dark, loamy scent of the Earth. I’ve walked through the Ag Annex, and it was beautiful, but it was nothing like this.
Open. Connected. Primal.
I can’t help but feel that it’s been here waiting for us, the stage wiped clean, prepared for the next act of the human race.
Would that we don’t fuck it all up again.
—Hera’s Journal, 6.19.2282
Ghost frowned. His internal gear still worked—his loop-based timer had no problem counting off the minutes. But everything electronic they’d brought with them was dead, including Hera’s biframe.
It was weird.
He was itching to do something about it, his engineer brain running through the possibilities.
The storm had been blowing outside for close to an hour, and so far it showed no signs of letting up. They’d shared a meal of water and protein bars, but Ghost longed for a junlei sandwich—tunnel cheese in a pocket of the fungal fruit, fresh and pungent, the cheese soft between the nutty junlei sides.
He emmed Hera. -You okay?-
-Yeah. Sucks not being able to move my legs.-
“Think about something else.” He rummaged through his pack, wishing he had a little more light. “How’s Tovey?”
“They’re fine. I think.” She frowned. “Last time I heard from them was when we left the Launchpad.”
“You miss them?” It has to be in here somewhere.
Rain pummeled the tarp above them like a drum deck.
“Yeah. They were so good to me. Most people would have broken up with someone going on a mission like this who might never make it back. It might have been easier if they had…”
Ghost frowned. He liked Tovey. He really did. But he liked Hera. He had to watch himself, lest he make a cratered mess of that one. “Aha!”
“Hey, Tovey’s a good person.”
“What? Oh, sorry. Not that.” He pulled a spool of wire connected to a bio-inductor out of his pack. “I think I can fix your legs.”
“Really?” She sat up, barely visible in the dim light.
“Yeah. But there’s a trade-off.”
“Okay….”
“Something’s blocking or draining electricity from everything we have. Everything artificial—except our loops. Those are powered from our own bodies. I think I can tap into that and get you enough power for rudimentary usage of your biframes.”
“Rudimentary?”
He could tell she was trying hard to keep the excitement out of her voice. “Walking. Slow walking. No running or jumping. And it’s gonna drain you.” Thunder rattled the tarp, emphasizing his warning.
“I can live with that. Could it hurt me?”
“I don’t think so.” He unwound the coiled wire. “Just make you really tired by the end of the day.”
“Do it.”
“You sure?” The whole thing had been done before, powering small things—headphones, smart pens, and the like—off someone’s loop. But he didn’t know if anyone had attempted it for something as big and power-hungry as Hera’s biframe.
“If it gets me mobile again, it’s worth it.” Hera sighed. “I’m useless stuck here on the ground in the middle of a zongi forest. I feel like a total layabout.”
“Okay. As soon as the rain passes, we can remove the tarp and get a little light to work with.” He checked the time. “Oh, the Launchpad should be coming into range again.”
Yeah, on it.
As if on cue, the rain started to trail off.
Ghost waited a minute to be sure, and then made his way out from under the tarp.
The forest was breathtaking. Sunlight was slanting down through the branches, and rain was evaporating, creating a golden mist. The ground was soft with decomposing leaves, and fast-growing fungi took advantage of the damp conditions to burst through into the light, creating miniature fairylands. The air smelled wet and loamy.
Above, great round fruits hung from the branches of the zongi trees.
He ducked his head back under the tarp. “Any luck on the x-band?”
Hera frowned. “No, there’s still no answer. It’s as if we’re being blocked.”
“Let’s get this done.” He knelt beside her, unspooling the wire. “If it doesn’t work, you can always ride on my shoulders.”
She didn’t reply, but when his eyes adjusted, he could see she was laughing.
Hera followed Ghost through the zongi grove, marveling at the sense of space, even among the confines of the trees, that she’d never felt inside Redemption. There were no cavern walls, no apparent limits to how far she could walk.
She and Tovey had gone for moonwalks together out on Luna’s surface, but even that was different, surrounded by the vastness of space but unable to touch it or feel it outside the confines of your protective suit.
The bio-inductor was attached to her temple, drawing power from her loop, and the wire slipped down her back to connect to the biframe’s battery pack. Hera’s legs felt heavy, sluggish even, but she was grateful to be able to move again under her own power. -Ghost, you’re a genius.-
-Genius in training, but thank you.-
Hera grinned. The cool breeze played over her skin, raising the fine hairs on her forearms. Water dripped from the leaves above, striking the forest floor and the back of her neck with equal force. The air smelled wet, heavy and thick with the scent of the Earth.
She knelt to touch the soil. It was covered with layers of decomposing leaves, but as she sank her fingers into it, she could feel its richness. It was dark, loose, perfect for growing things.
Indeed, in addition to the fungi, ferns had sprouted up in some of the shadier spots. Those hadn’t been part of the zongi seed packs. She’d studied them in depth in high school, but was astonished how beautiful their fronds were in the afternoon light. She smiled to herself. Some of Earth’s own children remained.
“You okay?” Ghost’s green eyes traced the wire that ran from her temple down her biframe.
She closed her eyes, imagining this was a primordial forest, and her the first woman. “It’s… amazing here.” She looked up at Ghost—he was grinning like a bandit.
Ghost nodded. He held out a hand to help her up. “The sky almost knocked me over.”
She laughed. Ghost was a big guy—very few things could bring him down.
He growled. “You know what I mean. I expected it to feel… big. But this—”
“I know. It’s almost overwhelming.” She followed him toward the edge of the grove, stepping carefully over a fallen log that was slowly rotting into the forest floor.
She was worried that she hadn’t been able to reach the Launchpad or their other crew mates.
Rai had been so scared, even before the drop. She hoped he was safe with Tien.
She almost ran into Ghost—he’d stopped dead, looking up at the open sky outside the grove.
She looked up, too, and almost fainted.
The sky was vast. It reached impossible heights, seeming to go up and up forever, and the horizon was so far away that it made her dizzy. She grabbed Ghost’s arm to steady herself.
There was something strange, though. A blue shimmer in the air. Their briefings had mentioned nothing about shimmers. “What’s that?”
Ghost was staring at it, too, his forehead creased. “Not sure. The sky’s not supposed to look like that, right?”
“Don’t think so.” Whatever it was, it seemed to form a bubble over them, a dome that reached the ground about fifteen meters away. “Come on.” She limped downhill, using more power than she should. It felt good to be up and about.
“Hey, be careful!” Ghost followed her. “We don’t know if it’s harmful.”
As they drew closer, she could make it out in more detail. It was a coruscating curtain, shifting within its confines like water filled with sparkling crystals.
She reached it and stopped, staring at it, unsure what to do next. Where it touched the ground, the grass had turned dry and brittle, almost burnt.
She knelt and picked up a rock and threw it at the transparent wall. It passed right through, emerging seemingly unharmed on the other side, and bounced down the hillside.
Ghost ran back up the hill to the zongi grove and returned with a long stick. With a glance at her, he pushed it through the blue field.
It seemed to encounter some resistance, then poked through the other side with a pop. He let it go, and it sank slowly to the ground.
Nothing ventured…. Hera took a deep breath and stepped into the wall.
“Hera, wait—”
She passed through it, and her entire body tingled where the blue field touched it. Then she was through to the other side.
Her biframe beeped, and the charging indicator lit up. She turned to stare at Ghost through the curtain. “I’ve got power!” Her solar cells were charging.
Ghost’s expression went from concern to glee.
Hera stepped back a few meters to stare up at the dome as Ghost pushed his way through.
“Oooh, that tickles.”
She laughed. “Yeah, it kinda does.” If she had her bearings right from their impromptu landing, it surrounded most of Martinez Base. Some kind of protective field, most likely. She tapped her loop. “Launchpad, can you hear us?” She waited a couple seconds. “Is anyone up there?”
Sam sat in the control room, staring at Martinez Base on the tridee’s station feed. A strange blue glow surrounded it now, something that hadn’t been there before. Some kind of shield?
At his side, Maria Gonzalez, the station manager, peered at it with him.
...access > data: military hardware > nau…
He had fumbled this entire mission badly, not expecting the old military base to still have a working defense system.
Now a second team was gone, or at best lost on a hostile planet. And the quakes back home continued to worsen.
He watched the explosion of the Zhenyi on a loop, trying to see if his dropnauts had escaped. The resolution was iffy, but it looked like they’d gotten out. Maybe.
In another fifteen minutes the station would pass the West Coast and move out of range of the dropnauts again.
“Sam?”
He turned to find the other three pilots watching him anxiously—Sydney, Dennis, and Ying Yue. “Yes?”
“We have an idea.” Corey stepped forward. “Let one of us take our jumpers out and stay in a geosynchronous orbit. Then we can monitor the site for signals constantly.”
...run: projection > plan: use moon jumpers as relay stations…
“It’s too dangerous. We never deployed communication satellites because of all the space junk out there. We were lucky Dek’s self-defense routines remained active after the collapse. Besides, we don’t know if Martinez Base has any other active defense systems. Possibly even long-range missiles.”
“We can’t all just stay cooped up on-station—besides, we’re sitting ducks here too.” He pressed their case. “If we deploy the remaining three jumpers equidistant around the globe, we can create a continuous network. That way we can relay anything that comes up from the ground your way. And we can manually avoid the debris for a day or two—your maps are good enough .”
That stung. They hadn’t been good enough to save the Bristol. “I don’t want to lose another team—”
Corey shook his head, his moonstone earrings sparkling in the light of the control room. “We’re way past that. We all came here knowing the risks.”
Ying Yue stared at him calmly, her eyes fixed on his own receptors. “This is not your fault, Sam. None of us blames you.”
That was the crux of it. Sam felt a nagging pain, like a deep ache or an open wound, every time he thought of his lost teams. “I don’t know. We can’t risk it—”
“It’s a good plan, Sam,” Lorelei, the comm officer, spun around in her seat. -Let the kids do something. The Zhenyi team are their crew mates too.-
“Let me think about it—”
“Launchpad, can you hear us?” Hera’s voice came from the comm deck. “Is anyone up there?”
Lorelei spun around and activated the comm speaker. “We’re here, Pilot Quinn. What’s your status?”
“Lorelei? Oh thank the stars.” Hera sounded tired but elated. “All of us escaped the destruction of the Zhenyi. Ghost and I are together, but we haven’t been able to reach the other two.”
Sam stepped up to Lorelei’s deck and took over the call with a nod from the comm officer. “Understood. Are you unharmed?”
“Sam! Affirmative, we’re okay. There’s some kind of dampening field here covering the base. We can pass through it, but inside, all non-bio-energy becomes quickly depleted.”
Rendering her biframe inoperative. It made sense now: the blue dome, the lack of contact from the dropnauts.
The pain in his circuitry lessened. They were alive.
Sam made a snap decision. “Hera, we’re deploying the other jumpers to create a communications network. We should be able to stay in touch with you even when the Launchpad is on the far side of the planet.”
There was a cheer behind him.
He turned and waved them off. “What are you waiting for? Go!”
“That’s g… hear.” Hera’s voice was broken up by static.
He glanced at Lorelei.
“We’re moving out of range.”
“Got it. Hold on.” He could at least find out what they were dealing with down there.
…search: parameters > nau field power disruption shimmer…
“Hera, your field is probably an emp-shield. It was designed to shut down any enemy weapons within its radius.”
“Thanks Sam… going back… Rai and Tien.”
“Negative! I want you to stay put. Give us a little more time to find out what we’re dealing with here.”
“…cutting out…. talk… disable the field. Hera out.”
“Dammit, Hera!” Sam slammed his fist down on the deck, startling the control room staff. She’d always been headstrong, ready to take on the world. It was one of the reasons he’d chosen her for the mission, despite the issue with her legs. But now she was putting herself in unnecessary danger.
Sam turned to the station manager. “Maria, is the Recovery ready?” It was the final jumper, the one he’d flown to the Launchpad all those years before.
She nodded. “It’s never been tested in atmosphere.”
“Doesn’t matter. I need to get down there, and I need to go now.” No more leaving things to chance.
…requisition: supplies > earth landing…
“Sam, are you sure that’s a good idea? They’re going to need you up here.” She pushed a strand of silver hair behind her ear. “Besides, you’ll do no one any good splattered across the terrain.”
Sam flexed his tensors. She was right, but it didn’t matter. He had to go. They needed him down there—he knew it. “I’ll land away from the base and hike in.” It should be safe enough.
Maria frowned. “I still think it’s a bad idea.”
“I appreciate that. But it’s my call.” Alpha had given him total control over the Return Mission, and it was time to exercise it.
“Yes, Sir.” The station manager nodded, but she didn’t look happy about it.
...download > data: martinez base file…
By the next transit, he would be ready to go.