Exigency Read online

  27 years later, he couldn’t imagine what gimmicks the manufacturers and modders had come up with since. He was excited, however, to learn what functional enhancements had been achieved 20 years ago, back when the incoming pod launched from Earth.

  Upgrades brought not only augmented software, but also typically included higher resolution pic and vid capability, greater magnification in binoc mode, occasionally new visual spectrums beyond the standard thermo, infra, kinetic, and mag. New versions of ear modules were rarely released, as they too required a surgical installation.

  John flicked through his contacts to Qin and selected VOICE. The receiver in his ear activated.

  “Hey, what’s your best guess on when the pod will be ready for unloading?”

  Qin replied, “We don’t even have visual yet, but Ish has established control. Ish? … She says it’s still decelerating … maybe a few hours before docking.”

  “Great, thanks. How’s she doing with those controls? Comfortable?”

  “Totally.”

  John flipped to his calendar and sent an open appointment request to Pablo, flagging “asap” for the time.

  Less than a minute later, John received an acceptance M for tomorrow, 0900. Pablo had included a note:

  PABLO: That housing still bothering you?

  JOHN: Often enough to make me cut in line like a jerk. But anytime in the next week is fine, really.

  Why? John rebuked himself. Why is it fine? Why can’t you just say “I need this.”?

  Aether had put up with it as long as she could, among other issues. How many times had he told her “whatever you want” after she specifically asked him to never utter those words again? When it came to the mission, or to a task at hand, he led without hesitation. But if it had to do with him—something personal—there was a sort of block there.

  PABLO: We’ll do it tomorrow. My first open slot. You will be the guinea pig. I just read the upgrades are 2 generations newer!

  Thank you, thank you, thank you! John shouted in his head, but replied with a nonchalant:

  JOHN: Whatever works…Thanks!

  John shut off his fone and Optical Pass-Through engaged. Everyone was required to shut down into OPT for at least 4 hours a day, but John knew that many slept with their fones still on. It wasn’t healthy. He wished he could force a settings change in everybody’s devices, but that would only further outrage those with whom his relationship was often precarious. With the amount of complaints Aether received from disgruntled crewmembers, it was a wonder how John managed reelection to a second term as mission commander. He supposed that, when it came to elections, he was the known quantity, or the most desirable of the undesirables.

  The least undesirable?

  With his fone off, the pain had subsided a small amount. These reprieves were his primary source of optimism when it came to the upgrade. Likewise, when Pablo had removed the fone, John’s discomfort vanished entirely.

  He leaned the recliner farther back and closed his eyelids. Somehow the pain felt more bearable knowing this could be the last time he’d have to sleep with it.

  * * *

  The piercing blare of the emergency alarm plucked Minnie from her dream.

  A drill at this hour? What a hole!

  The room lurched beneath her, followed by a violent vibration. Yellow and green lights strobed above her bed. She clung to a handhold and tried to open the hatch, but the actuator didn’t respond. Rotation shift. The personal quarters cylinder was slowing down. They’d lose gravity soon.

  A synth voice announced through the PA: “This is not a drill. This is not a drill. Exigency procedures. Exigency procedures. This is not a drill …”

  Minnie hurriedly dressed as she activated her fone to call Aether.

  ALERTS: Wireless unavailable.

  Crap! Crap! Crap! It’s real!

  She leapt to the window shade and pulled it open. Bits of debris, small and large, streamed by. Planet Epsy streaked by the window at an arcing diagonal. Something had exploded or impacted the sta—

  The supply pod!

  Minnie accessed her fone’s settings and requested a direct connection to Aether. She accepted a few seconds later and an undelivered M from one minute earlier popped up.

  AETHER: Minnie, we are in full exigency. Go to Wheel A and your assigned EV. I’ll see you on the surface. I love you.

  MINNIE: What happened?!

  AETHER: Supply pod impact, hull breach, fire’s out but envr + cooling are inop. We have 8 mins.

  MINNIE: Backups? BH?

  AETHER: Minerva, go to your EV NOW.

  Minnie’s mind raced. What if it was something she could fix? What about the Backup Habitat? Why were they jumping straight to Evacuation Vehicles? Surface evac was last on the list of exigency measures. Aether didn’t want to hear any of it, but she was as susceptible as anyone to groupthink. Someone probably said “We have no other options!” and everyone listened. It was surely John, and no one would think to challenge him in an emergency. People listened for anyone with an authoritative tone, and complied without question.

  Minnie slid open one of the emergency panels and grabbed a breather, pulling it over her head, and pressing it to seal.

  Back to the hatch.

  The mechanism override clicked into place and Minnie forced the door into the bulkhead. The tube was still pressurized. She climbed the ladder, her weight shifting right and then left as the station’s irregular rotation toyed with gravity. At the top of the tube, she peered out the window in the hatch to the long duct that led to the Backup Habitat. One entire side of its solar array had been disintegrated, and the escape duct had clearly been breached.

  That doesn’t mean we can’t use it! Minnie yelled in her head. We only need suits!

  She opened a new M to Aether.

  MINNIE: BH intact. Escape duct breached but passable.

  AETHER: 3 mins Minerva.

  MINNIE: Why EVs?! This is not protocol!

  AETHER: Listen in 10 seconds. Sound of EV containing Qin and ME.

  Aether severed their fone link.

  “No!”

  Aether knew exactly how to force her compliance. Epsy’s surface was a permanent refuge. Once Aether’s EV launched, the only way Minnie would see her again would be to do the same: abandon ship in one of the pre-programmed EVs, all the way down to the rally point in Threck Country. And Minnie was the one responsible for first contact—the only one with a real handle on the language. Even Tom, her backup, had hardly bothered to learn the spoken language. If the duty fell to him, he’d have to fumble his way around the Livetrans app.

  The ladder began to vibrate with a new frequency, followed by the loud clang of retracting anchors as inverted electromagnets blasted an EV from its bay. Aether was off. And despite the screaming in her head, Minnie knew she had no choice but to follow. She descended the ladder, fighting intense gravity shifts, until she dropped into the hygiene pod. Loose articles filled the zero-grav air, drifting around like a slomo insect swarm.

  Minnie bounced from floor to ceiling to bulkhead, swatting away water droplets, razors and combs, washcloths, until she reached the tube to Wheel A. As she grabbed the first rung, another telling vibration began. She pulled herself into the tube and looked out the window.

  Clang!

  To her horror, she watched an escape vehicle launch not toward Epsy’s atmosphere, but straight out into the black of space.

  She screamed “NO!” and her breather fogged.

  Aether! No no no … Are they all ejecting wrong?

  Clamoring through the tube to Wheel A, Minnie emerged just as EV4 began its launch.

  Who’s assigned to 4? Ish and Tom?

  Minnie floated across the common area. Chess pieces, a well-gnawed chewstick, and a paintbrush bounced off her visor as she approached the open hatch of EV6, and the person she very much wished to strangle. She was surprised he’d waited for her.

  Clang! EV4 launched.

  Minnie glanced back to the
panoramic window at the far side of the common area. Another doomed launch. The EV’s silhouette in front of the Epsilon star shrank to a tiny, heartrending dot. The occupants would already realize the mistake. They’d know they were as good as dead.

  Minnie felt something impact her chest. An instant later, her head flew backward as she was yanked forward into the EV. She slammed into the seat just as John came into view through her breather mask. He was already in his orange survival suit, fuming, shouts muffled behind his visor. Sensing her presence, Minnie’s suit activated, detaching from the seat around her and wrapping over her head, legs, and arms. Automated clutches stretched out and joined to each other at the seams.

  John popped his visor open and shouted again. “Hands, feet, head!”

  She remembered and leaned forward, spotting her boots still clamped in their charging docks. She kicked off her slips, pointed her toes, and shoved in both feet. Eager ankle clutches joined to the boots as she stuffed her hands into the awaiting gloves on her armrests. Overhead, she found her helmet, tugged it from its dock, and pulled it on, sealing it to the receiver at her neck, then synced her fone to the suit. System checks confirmed all seals as John turned to the hatch, slapped the ejection button, waited for the three-second safety count, then struck it again. He disappeared out of sight beside her. Restraints sprang out from the seat, binding her shoulders, waist, legs, and head.

  He didn’t time it! We’re screwed!

  Minnie regained her senses and struggled to turn toward John. The EV seats were positioned in a V, two passengers facing slightly away from each other. She could only see the edge of his arm.

  The EV began to quake. Minnie pressed her head to the front of her helmet, grasped the grips beneath her hands, clenched her eyelids shut.

  Clang!

  Her body thrust forward from the launch, her restraints a little loose. g-force fighting against her, she pulled a hand to her chest, found the adjuster knob, and twisted it until her body pressed snug into the seat.

  He didn’t override and launch manual. We could be drifting into open space!

  Minnie opened her eyes, peered out the little porthole above her. Among the black of open space, she imagined a tiny white dot, a mislaunched EV, drifting away.

  Aether…

  She tried to calm herself, unmuddle her brain. The EV’s intercomms hadn’t automatically connected their suits.

  Direct Connect!

  She sent a DC request to John. He accepted a few seconds later. She had the M primed the second they linked.

  MINNIE: Our trajectory is screwed. Other EVs launched into space.

  JOHN: I know.

  MINNIE: If you knew then why didn’t you launch manual?

  JOHN: I know now. Not when I activated.

  MINNIE: Well, we’re heading for entry, but no way we’re on course.

  JOHN: The station just went up. It’s gone.

  The EV rattled briefly from the destroyed station’s shockwave, then returned to unnerving stillness. Minnie closed her eyes, inhaled a breath, and held it. She needed to ask the question.

  A series of thruster bursts slowly rotated the EV to entry orientation, followed by a new wave of tremors.

  JOHN: We are definitely entering the atmosphere.

  Brilliant effing observation. Ask him the question.

  MINNIE: Do you know if Aether’s EV launched on mark?

  No response. Violent shaking. An orange glow brightened outside Minnie’s porthole. Entry friction.

  MINNIE: John? Please answer.

  JOHN: I don’t know.

  JOHN: I don’t think so.

  Minnie shut her eyes, felt her chest compress from the inside, like hooks over her ribs, winching inward. Her gut twisted. He didn’t know. What did he know? He didn’t know anything. He knew more than her. At least saw more than her. What did he see? He must’ve seen. He knew. He saw. It’s why he said he didn’t think so. He wouldn’t have said that otherwise.

  Aether was gone.

  Vibrations subsided, but she could feel them decelerating.

  She hoped the chute would fail—a 20 km/s impact on land, instant vaporization—done.

  She opened her stinging eyes, tried to squeeze away the blurring tears to see out the porthole. They were in the shadow of the planet—nighttime wherever they were headed. And where might that be? She hoped not an ocean. What time was it when she awoke? Her fone indicated it was 0840 station time. She tried to recall her last visuals from the window, the last landmass in view. She remembered thinking EVs on the flagging side would launch roughly correct, could head close enough to Threck Country to make it, but now she wasn’t so sure. Had she seen land out there? Could it have been clouds?

  She could simply play it back. Her fone was set to queue up 30 minutes.

  The chute popped from the EV, expanded, and she felt her spine and legs depress against the seat bottom.

  As the EV descended toward an unknown surface below, Minnie retrieved her earlier view outside the common room window and closed her bio eye to see it clearly. Beneath scattered altostratus clouds, she recognized at once the jagged eastern coast of Threck Country, the typical cloud pattern above the inert volcano. Which meant that her EV, launched out the opposite side of the station, was either headed to an ocean, one of the major islands, or Hynka Country.

  MINNIE: We’re def not on course.

  JOHN: I know. I just finished calculations. It’s not good.

  MINNIE: You have an LZ?

  JOHN: Yes. And we’re touching down in 10 … 9 … 8 …

  The EV landed with a surprisingly soft thud, nothing like the overzealous simulators on Earth. John seemed intent, however, on matching the training drills, right down to the scripted verbals.

  Minnie’s ear module ticked to life with John’s voice breaking up, and annoying crackles accompanying every consonant.

  “—aps off … Full spec—weep … —ival kit.”

  Audio was still trying to go through the EV’s inop wireless.

  Minnie found herself running on autopilot, her restraints flying off, fone shifting through optical spectrums, as she extracted the surface survival kit from the console beside her.

  Thermal optics were useless—the EV outer shell was still blazing from entry, displaying only a wall of white in all directions. Kinetic and infra only worked for line of sight. She paused at the mag setting, picking up a muddle of hazy electromagnetic waves, then enabled the bio filter. The world beyond the EV cabin materialized before her in dreamlike color—a black and white vid after colorization, but with transparency and overlapping objects, like a 3D comic book. She closed her real eye and surveyed the area. Focusing past the dim ghosts of foliage revealed a disturbing sight.

  “Switch to mag,” she said.

  “I am,” he replied.

  “Bio filter?”

  A brief silence. “Uhh…”

  “See them now?”

  “Yes. We must … clo— … a village.” It could be one of their helmets screwing up. Both of them needed to disconnect and DC their suits. “… got at le—wenty within two— … —s’side. You?”

  Was that “twenty” he sees?

  Minnie slowly panned across her swath of visibility. “I’d say more than a hundred on my side. And they’re all coming.”

  1.3

  The chute was still burning when the gossamer hoard of approaching Hynka began to spread into a circle around the EV. Once a wall had formed, John couldn’t tell how many of the creatures stood beyond the first line, their mag waves merging and blending, obscuring the view. Worse, he didn’t think it particularly mattered. 50 Hynka or 300 meant pretty much the same thing. The beasts simply didn’t lose interest in things, and a strange, shiny sphere with a flaming cloth waving overhead had certainly made a considerable impression. Retracting the chute on touchdown probably would’ve been wise.

  A tapping on his helmet.

  John turned and saw Minerva, perched on her seat, helmet off. Beset with rage,
her pointy pixie face appeared poised for attack. She motioned for him to remove his helmet. He found the release and pulled it off.

  “Everyone! Dead! You’ve killed us all.” She waved her hand around at the sketchy waves of tentative yet eager Hynka, inching ever closer to the EV. “Some of us more horrifically than others.”

  “We had to evac. There was no choice. Anyone left on the station would be dead now. Everyone escaped.”

  Minerva’s chin stiffened into pits and lumps, quivering as her eyes fell to her knees. She tried to say “Aether,” but faltered.

  But perhaps there remained some glimmer of hope. “I didn’t see her launch. I don’t know for sure.”

  “She was EV-one, storage side. They were all faced out after the stabilizers died.”

  John reached out to her. “I’m just as scared for her as you are right now.” She looked at his hand like poison. “What makes me feel better is that she’s with Qin, they have thrusters and axis controls, and if there’s any way whatsoever to turn an EV around and guide it in, Qin will figure it out.”

  He watched her eyes—desperate, glassy eyes that so wanted to believe him.

  Something heavy crashed against the hull. John and Minerva refocused their fones on the biomag view through the EV shell.

  Minerva said, “I think they’re throwing rocks. Think we should dim the lights?”

  “Good idea.” He shut off the main lights, leaving only the blues. “There’s one over here gathering the nerve to touch the hull.”

  “It should’ve cooled enough to touch by now. That reminds me…”

  “Thermal?” John swiped his optics setting. Indeed, he could see through the hull now, though the massive blob of red didn’t render the scene much clearer. He increased the sensitivity and reestablished the baseline temp higher. He flinched at the new view. “Oh crap. Turn up your sens—”

  “Already on it … oh crap!” she echoed.

  The enhanced picture picked up the minutest detail—eyes, mouths, skin lines, and just how far back the horde went. He could see Hynka pushing and shoving, clawing and biting at each other.

  “Hang on!” Minerva shouted, and John grabbed a handhold just as the EV was slammed from her side.