Vaz 4: Invaders Read online

  ***

  Jeremy opened his eyes and glanced over when a pretty young woman sat down next to him. He’d started at a Sure Happy It’s Thursday happy hour last night, then stayed up late. He’d been hoping to catch a few winks in the shuttle saucer up to GSI’s habitat in low Earth orbit. The girl immediately closed her eyes.

  He was only seeing her from the side, but thought she looked familiar. However, Jeremy felt fairly certain he hadn’t seen her on the shuttle or up at the habitat before. Hoping she wasn’t just after a little shuteye, he said, “Been up before?” If she’d closed her eyes out of apprehension, maybe he could help calm her. Or at least take her mind off her fears with a little conversation.

  She didn’t turn his way or even open her eyes, just said, “A few times.”

  Worried that he’d offended her, Jeremy said, “Sorry, not trying to hook up, just hoping to help if you’re nervous.”

  A grin ghosted over her lips, “Not nervous, just have a lot to think about.”

  “Okay,” Jeremy said, hoping he didn’t sound sullen. He settled back and closed his own eyes again.

  ***

  Levon irritably luffed her wings, wishing there was enough room in the ship to fly. Of course, she wished the same thing every day. Closing her eyes, she thought back to the day she’d been invested as captain of the Flying Light. An image of the massively powerful Prenaust’s narrow muzzle floated in her imagination as the Prenaust leaned close to her for a moment. The Prenaust sniffed her, then said, “I choose this one.”

  At the time, joy had burst through Levon’s soul at the validation of all her hard work. Now, she wondered if she’d have still been happy if she’d fully understood what being captain of this ship would be like. She’d known that there would be sacrifices, living weightlessly in this cramped metal box for hundreds of days. However, somehow she’d thought that the DNA modifications that the scientists would induce in order to allow her to survive the heat and radiation of the ship’s approach to the sun would also somehow make them tolerable.

  Instead, she found the heat unbearable! It wasn’t the heat of a warm summer day. Not the heat you might encounter briefly around an industrial process. Not the heat you felt after exhaustive exercise. No, this was constant, unremitting, life-sapping, horrific heat that you knew you could not escape. Yes, her body could survive the heat, but it detested being hot!

  And, Levon felt sick! Although the doctor said it was “in their minds,” Levon thought, like many of the crew, that the radiation sleeting through her made her feel unwell. Cognitively she knew that her genetically boosted cellular processes adequately repaired the damage done to her DNA by the storm of protons and electrons coming out of the sun and incidentally ripping through her body. However, she felt she could sense the radiation mutilating, mutating and killing her cells. Even though her immune system was breaking down and removing those damaged cells, just thinking about the whole process made her feel sick. Not severely unwell, just constantly ill.

  She wondered if the bio-mods she’d developed as captain—increased size, muscularity and aggression; the changes that let her dominate the crew—might be making her more sensitive to the heat.

  Maybe, she thought, she could have tolerated all of this if it wasn’t for the constant exasperation that resulted from having to dominate the increasingly irritable crew. All rendas were aggressive, fighting upon minor provocation, but it was worse on this crowded ship. And worse yet in this oppressive heat!

  She blinked and looked down at her checklist. She asked, “The mirror’s still functioning within tolerance?” She could have queried the computer for the answer, but she wanted to give her crew something to think about as they made their closest approach to the sun. She resisted a strong impulse to glance toward the nominal ceiling of their weightless environment. The huge conical mirror which deflected the majority of the sun’s heat away from their craft was up there outside the hull, but of course she couldn’t see it.

  The sixth officer glanced at his screens, then his muzzle swung toward her, “Yes ma’am. And we still have 15 repair patches in reserve.”

  “The capacitors are holding their charge?”

  “Yes ma’am,” responded the third officer. “We’re holding at over 220 percent of the charge we need for the wormhole transition.”

  “Navigation,” Levon said, “we’re still on course for our jump point?”

  Second Officer made a show of checking her screens, though Levon felt sure there was nothing to see. The computer would have set off a klaxon if they weren’t exactly on target. Instinctively Levon still found it difficult to believe that it was possible to navigate by the stars when you were so close to the sun. Of course, because there wasn’t any atmosphere to deflect the sunlight back at them, looking straight outward in the shadow of their mirror you could still see the stars.

  Especially, their destination, the nearby star her people called “Obi.”

  Second Officer began counting down to transition, an experience no one on the ship had been through—though, of course, everyone’s ancestors had done it.

  It was reputed to be unpleasant. Some rendas even died…

  As Second Officer droned on through the countdown, Levon let her mind wander. She imagined returning to tell the Prenaust that they had indeed found an oxygen bearing world. One that wouldn’t require large degrees of genegineering. Of course, an oxygen world would have to have water and temperatures at the lower end of the liquid water scale for oxygen forming organisms to thrive so that would be a given. However, Levon dared envision a world with enough oxygen at a reasonable pressure, and with gravity the same or less than their current world of Naust. In other words, a world so close to what her people had already been genegineered for that they wouldn’t need to be geo-formed to fit the new world before they could immigrate.

  She’d be a hero when they returned!

  Levon heard second Officer reach the final numbers and turned her attention once more to the boards. She confirmed that the capacitors were charged and navigation was on track. Her eyes turned to the navigation board and she saw Obi reach the center of the aiming reticle.

  A booming thrum rumbled through the ship to herald the discharge of the capacitors.

  Levon screamed with all the others as her body felt like it was being ripped inside out…

  ***

  Jeremy woke once when the shuttle saucer went weightless to coast on out to the habitat’s orbit. He woke again for good when the shuttle rotated and began retro-thrusting to slow for its final orbital match with the habitat.

  He glanced over again at his seat companion, but she still had her eyes closed. A minute or so later some clanking told him the airlocks had been matched. Jeremy switched on his thruster harness and gently moved the joyball located over his stomach. Pushes and pulls from the assorted thruster discs on the harness reassured him it was working. A moment later a chime told them they could release their seat belting.

  Jeremy released his belting and drifted up out of his seat with a gentle push. He looked out of the corner of his eye to make sure the young lady next to him didn’t begin to flail like newcomers often did. Instead, she didn’t even push up out of the seat. It looked like she used her joyball and moved out of the seat using only the thrust pads.

  Wondering where she’d gotten the experience without him encountering her out at the habitat, Jeremy used his joyball to start pushing toward the airlock. He glanced curiously back over his shoulder at her to make sure she was doing okay. His head snapped back around and he felt a blush rising up on his cheeks. Tiona Gettnor! Holy crap, I was chatting up the owner!

  Jeremy kept his eyes straight ahead as he made his way through the airlock and into the big chamber. He didn’t want to run into Ms. Gettnor again, at least until she’d had a few months to forget him. He saw Barry across the big chamber and aimed himself that way. He hoped Barry could give him his assignment and he could get out of the big room before Ms. Gettnor came through t
he airlock.

  Jeremy slowed to a halt in front of Barry along with five other guys and three women. Despite being bright people who could have their pick of jobs back on Earth, here in the habitat Jeremy and the other seven served as a general, though highly skilled labor pool. They helped out various scientists and the GSI build and maintenance team as needed.

  Jeremy and almost all the rest followed the unwritten convention and oriented themselves the same direction as their boss, in this case Barry. Mark as usual was off at an angle. He argued that real space men didn’t care what orientation they were in, but Jeremy found his insistence on it kind of irritating.

  So did Barry. He glanced once at Mark and rolled his eyes. Then he turned and looked at the rest of the faces around him. His eyes arrested on Jeremy. “Jeremy! Didn’t you check your messages? You’re supposed to still be on the shuttle, helping Ms. Gettnor with her project. Nancy, you too!” Misunderstanding Jeremy’s stricken look, Barry said, “Relax guys. She’s really nice.”

  Nancy and Jeremy backed away from the group, then turned and headed back across the chamber to the shuttle to the airlock. Sounding a little apprehensive herself, Nancy said, “Have you met her?”

  Jeremy shook his head, “Not really.” After a moment, he continued, “Um, it’d be nice if you did the talking for us.”

  Nancy shot him a look, but they were arriving at the circumference of the saucer where Ms. Gettnor was working to release a big box strapped to the wall. Nancy said, “Hi Ms. Gettnor. I’m Nancy Hester and this is Jeremy Salmon. We’ve been assigned to help you with… whatever it is you’re doing?”

  Gettnor glanced back over her shoulder and Jeremy couldn’t help but notice her grin a little when she saw him hanging there. “Thanks guys. Do you have any cutters for the straps holding this thing in place?”

  Jeremy said, “Yes ma’am.” Using his left hand, he tugged forward on his joyball and his thruster harness moved him closer. His right hand reached in one of his pockets and pulled out a wire cutter. “Does it matter which one we cut first?”

  Gettnor pursed her lips, “I don’t think so, but you guys have more experience moving things around in microgravity than I do.”

  Saying, “My philosophy is to cut the ones that look tightest first,” Jeremy started cutting the ones that looked really snug. “If you cut a tight one last, sometimes the recoil sends your object flying off somewhere.”

  Nancy was coiling up the straps and stuffing them in a big pocket. In another minute, Jeremy cut the loose last strap and the box gently floated loose. To steady it, he grabbed one of the straps that was just holding the box closed. “Where do you want it ma’am?”

  Gettnor looked toward the airlock, saying, “I’d rather you guys called me Tiona. We need to take it to an airlock that goes outside.” She looked back at them, “But maybe it’d be better to take the box off of it here? Then we could strap up the packaging to go back down home for recycling?”

  Nancy said, “Okay Ma’… Tiona.” She pulled out a box cutter and started cutting on the dashed lines. It didn’t take Nancy long to get the box open. This time Jeremy collected the debris. He took the straps from Nancy and folded some of the cardboard around them, taping them in place with the roll of strapping tape he always kept on hand. When he looked back at what Nancy was opening, he was astonished to see a person in the box!

  A moment later, he realized it wasn’t a person but some kind of dummy.

  Fully unwrapped it turned out to be what looked like a crash test dummy covered in ballistic gel and stuffed in one of the spacesuits they all wore out in the habitat. It even had on a thrust harness, though the thrust harness looked a little different than the standard one. Unable to restrain his curiosity, Jeremy asked, “What the heck is this?”

  Gettnor laughed pleasantly. As if that much wasn’t already obvious, she said, “A dummy in a spacesuit and thrust harness.”

  Jeremy snorted, “I can see that. But what’s it for?”

  “You’ll see,” she said mysteriously. “You guys are both certified to go outside, right?”

  “Um, yeah,” Nancy said. “We’ll have to get helmets.”

  “Me too,” Gettnor said. “They keep a bunch by the airlock to the outside, right?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Jeremy said. “Shall I tow… what’s-his-name on over to the airlock?”

  “Tiona please,” Gettnor said offhandedly. “Let’s call him… ‘Torch.’”

  Brimming with curiosity, Jeremy grabbed Torch by the arm and manipulated his own joyball. Soon he was moving toward the airlock between the saucer and the habitat. It took a moment or so to slow and negotiate his way through the narrow opening, but then he was sailing across the big space to the large airlock that went outside.

  Stopping by the airlock, they got a large helmet and slipped it onto Torch. Tiona turned down the power to the electroactive filaments in Torch’s suit and, once the suit had tightened up, they went over it looking for folds or twists that might pinch him. Tiona over pressurized Torch’s helmet a little to make sure it was sealed to the suit then said, “Okay, let’s suit up ourselves.”

  A couple minutes later, Jeremy was towing Torch out the airlock on the space side. Tiona gave a little giggle, “For some reason I had a sudden picture of Torch’s helmet blowing off and flying away into space. Let me get my AI to check his programming.”

  As she mumbled to her AI, Jeremy realized he was looking at Torch’s back and that the back of his thrust harness was substantially different from the standard one. It had two large discs on it; one with about a 10 inch diameter down over the buttocks and another one of about 12 inches up over his back.

  “Okay, here he goes,” Tiona said. As they watched, Torch pivoted in place, then rapidly moved away from them.

  To Jeremy’s experienced eye, it looked like the thruster over his buttocks was applying the main push. Torch was dropping away, downward toward Earth. Jeremy looked at the direction the Earth was moving past below them and realized that the thruster was de-orbiting him! Worried that Gettnor might not know to check and be sure Torch wasn’t going to hit one of the satellites beneath them, Jeremy said, “Um, what’s he doing?”

  Tiona said, “Well, you guys probably noticed he’s got a modified harness. Right now it’s giving him a retro-thrust to drop him out of orbit.”

  “Um,” Jeremy said uncomfortably, “did you check to be sure… he’s not going to hit another satellite?”

  “No,” she said, “but his AI did. And my AI confirmed it. That’s part of what we’re testing.”

  Nancy said, “You’re calling him Torch because he’s going to burn up in the atmosphere?”

  “He is if we screwed up,” Tiona said. “If we got it right, the big disc on his shoulders is going to pop out and keep him descending slowly enough that he won’t overheat.”

  Gobsmacked, Jeremy stared for a moment. He said, “You mean we’ll be able to land from orbit in our suits?!”

  Tiona laughed, “Not routinely! But, assuming Torch lands in one piece, and it was a real emergency, yes.” She looked in the direction that Torch had gone. He’d faded from view. She said, “Well, I guess the show’s over. Shall we go back inside?”

  ***

  Levon blinked in confusion. Sixth Officer stared at her, head cocked to one side apprehensively. He said something and she thought that he’d probably said it before. “What?” She asked, her voice sounding hoarse.

  “Are you okay?” Sixth Officer said.

  “What happened?”

  “We made transition to Obi,” he said, as if it was obvious.

  Levon reached up and wiped at her numb muzzle, finding it matted with drool. Her mind working a little better, she remembered the heat and feeling of illness as they approached perihelion with the sun. Then she remembered watching Obi reach the center of the aiming reticle and hearing the thrum of the capacitors. Then came the agony. We’ve made transition to Obi! She thought without really realizing that was exactly what Sixth O
fficer had just said to her. “We’ve confirmed transition?” She asked.

  Sixth Officer nodded, “We’ve identified our own sun just off the center of the aiming reticle.”

  Levon looked around the bridge, seeing dazed expressions on the rest of her officers. As predicted by the records of earlier generations, the younger ones seemed to have awakened and recovered more quickly than the older ones. Everyone on the bridge appeared to be alive. “Did the hibernators make it?” she asked hopefully.

  Sixth Officer turned to look at the fifth officer. Sixth said unhappily, “Fifth reports five deaths among those in the hibernation pods.” Sixth leaned a little closer and spoke in a barely audible tone, “And, I’m worried about Second Officer as well.” His eyes flicked meaningfully toward Second.

  Levon looked toward Second now, noting as she should have earlier that Second didn’t seem to be holding his head upright. In fact, Second’s head wavered listlessly back and forth. “Second,” Levon called, hoping to get an alert response.

  Instead, Second turned his muzzle awkwardly toward Levon. His eyes wandered about and didn’t meet hers. “Yes,” he said in a slurred voice.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I think so,” Second said, sounding like he had something in his mouth.

  Definitely not okay, Levon thought. But hopefully it’s temporary. “I think the transition hit you pretty hard,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll feel better in a few minutes.” Levon wondered if she should send him to the medic, but decided it wouldn’t hurt to leave him there sitting on his rest for a little bit. Going to the medic could raise all kinds of questions in subordinates’ minds.

  “Fourth,” she said to the officer assigned as backup for navigation.

  “Yes ma’am?”

  “Until Second is feeling better, I’ll need you acting as Primary Navigator. Determine whether we’re still on the elliptical orbit we should have brought with us from home.”