Angel Watch Who knows? A passing medical frigate might take you on board and grow you back up from whatever tissue survived the blast. But don't do the math. Space is big. Frigates are, despite claims to the contrary, not. So, a cell has to survive your death in reasonably intact state. Sure, you've got billions. And we can use pretty much any one to grow you back. Then we'll install your memory from your last upload and there you are. Literally. Will that be cash or credit, sir? How about sixty percent of your gross income for fifty years? But if no cell remains intact, or if we have to really, really search for one (low probability of success, insanely expensive; we never do it), you're screwed. Heh. You wish. Dead is what you are. Dead dead, as we say. That we actually have to reinforce and specify that most absolute of words is saying something about the advances of our civilization. What exactly it is saying? Um, I'll have to get back to you on that one. Janssen was dead dead, I could tell without breaking out the equipment. Massive doses of radiation will corrupt pretty much every single cell in the organism, tear the DNA to shreds and make a mess of everything. And as doses go, this one was something of a biggie. It had penetrated the shielding of the interplanetary shuttle and still had the energy to burn the lady's clothing and skin to a crisp. She must actually have died within half a second. Normally, a person doomed to demise by radiation sickness is granted the privilege of remaining conscious and aware of his surroundings for days, the better to savor the experience of one of the worst deaths known to mankind. With no possibility for regrowth, of course. Not Janssen, as is only reasonable, I suppose. A veteran Sirius Corporation Planetary Manager must certainly be treated with respect. By her colleagues, by her subordinates and, apparently, by nature itself. Still, I applied the basic technology to the corpse to give me a reading I could file. Sirius is big on correct procedure, as well as correct form. Just basically big, in fact. I got out of the wreckage and looked around. The surface was as dark, dull and rocky here as anywhere else on the planet. There was nothing special about it, nothing to distinguish this location from the other eighty million square kilometers on the night side of Helaxa 4. If anything, it would be that I could see the edge of the day side only about a kilometer away. Helaxa 4 has bound rotation, which means that it always presents the same side to its sun. One side is in perennial darkness, the other in eternal sunlight. It doesn't matter to us; the stuff we mine is deep down and not affected. So the spot where Janssen's shuttle had plummeted to its demise was for all intents and purposes right on the fuzzy terminator line. Nothing weird about that, necessarily. A glimpse of full spectrum light now and then does wonders for the soul, I'm told, and who can blame a manager, on her lonely way to a small installation on the other side of the planet, if she takes a little detour to work on her tan, as it were? Even if it had worked a little better than planned. I started gathering my stuff, putting it in a special container for contaminated equipment. The speaker in my helmet crackled. "Any hope, Doc?" I had told the pilot from Planetary Base to stand well back, since his protection gear was not of the same caliber and quality as mine. Carefully, because of the low gravity, I made my way over the coarse terrain towards him and the shuttle. "'Fraid not. Radiation. A lot of it. Dead as a penguin." "Ehh... pardon me, Doc?" "Penguin. Ridiculous bird from Sol. Went extinct a thousand years ago from a lack of ice. Never mind. Any word on the transport?" "Just three clicks off. Be here any minute." "Tell them to exercise extreme caution. That corpse is white-hot with all kinds of lambda. Don't worry about the wreckage. We'll have it buried later. Or not." "Okay, Doc. Are we done here?" "Yep. Let's get some vacuum under us." I had the shuttle hover at its maximum altitude of twenty meters above the site as the hazardous-cargo transport shuttle collected the remains of Janssen. I was slightly puzzled. I had spent twenty years with Sirius, and it was by no means an unusual occurrence that highly placed executives met with sudden death. Assassinations, poisonings, accidents that were anything but, genuine mishaps; all were more or less routine, and some victims could be regrown. But I had never before come across just this kind of death death. A localized gamma burst? Farfetched. Helaxa was a very stable star, not expected to blow up for six billion years. Besides, the instruments back at base would have gone berserk. Assassination? The practical problems of carrying it out would be formidable. Janssen was only Planetary Manager on this most remote outpost of any corporation, hardly a worthwhile target for anyone. In spite of her seniority, she did not fall into the 'highly placed' category. If she did, she wouldn't be here. Was the planet itself of interest to someone? As far as I knew, there was nothing of much value here. The hafnium mines were, albeit one of the few major sources in the known galaxy, only worthwhile because of the enormous and well-oiled Sirius distribution system. A fairly useless element, with demand and price reflecting that fact. We looked on from above as the transport crew finished loading the radiant Janssen (I made a mental note to remember that joke and serve it up in appropriate company) into the heavily isolated cargo hold. The pilot cleared his throat nervously. "So, what happened, Doc?" I thought for a second. A superior should never admit ignorance when in the company of subordinates; his prestige will inevitable suffer. Sirius Corporation Junior Management Handbook. "I don't know," I said. "Think it might have anything to do with the black ships?" "Hm?" "Y' know, the black ships? That Charl- that the survey ship pilot saw ninety AUs out? Big black ships?" For some reason his voice trembled, just a little. "Ah yes. You know, I wouldn't put too much emphasis on anything Charlie says, okay? There's a reason why he is just survey ship pilot. And you know how funny those guys get in the head after a couple of years on the job. Asteroids, no doubt. His instrument log showed nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I know." "He said it was like he'd seen them before, only he hadn't." "And that very statement should tell you a bit about how reliable an observer he is, right? Now shut up about your black ships and let's get back to base. Two hundred ccs of Duckstein tonight, remember?" "Yes, ma'm," said the pilot and banked the shuttle towards base. There would indeed be a ration of quasi-alcohol tonight, as was the custom with funeral ceremonies. There were in fact quite a few of those, for mining is a hazardous business, and when a roughneck kicks the bucket, of course no regrowth is attempted; he would never be able to pay back the cost to Sirius. On an atmosphere-less planet such as this, we prefer to set up shop on the dark side. That way we're not as vulnerable, should the central star choose to erupt in flares or generally behave in an uncultured manner. The arrangement makes for a pretty bleak working environment, though. The base itself was of the standard Sirius semi-portable variety. Easy to install, fairly easy to uproot when it has served its purpose. Emphasis is put on utility and profitability, so few luxuries, apart from the most basic of creature comforts, are built in. From above, the sight was outlandish. Giant spotlights drew a gigantic and sharply defined pentagram of blue-white light in the darkness, casting cold, stark light on the large, yellow pieces of mining equipment that scattered the area. In the geometric center of the pentagram was the big main dome, under whose protective hemisphere we spent most of our time. It was made of a transparent synthetic material of some sort, which was the object of much swearing and grumbling. On slightly more upscale facilities, the dome is not transparent but opaque, illuminated from within with the most exquisite and vibrant landscape scenes in fine detail, down to changing weather and individual birds flying across the sky. This cleverly creates the very believable illusion that one is doing some heavy mining in the middle of, say, an Italian renaissance town, or a splendid island in a magnificently turquoise ocean, or, for that matter, an immense brothel of the most vulgar variety (the latter is quite popular, I understand). Arrangements of that sort are in fact not particularly expensive, but when it comes to making split-credit profitability decisions, the Sirius Corporation is second to none. And so such indulgences were not bestowed upon us. Instead, we were allowed to enjoy the view of a number of tall, black mounds- highly compacted molecular dust that was the waste result of the hafnium refining process that went on in the quirkily named Refinery. The shuttle powered down and I exited, carrying my case of medical equipment. Ropohl, the senior shift supervisor, was pretending to have had some business with another shuttle nearby and came over as I started for the cubical administration structure. We walked side by side along a solid steel railing which ran at chest-level and defined the walkway. "Well?" he said. "No, not really," I replied brusquely. Ropohl was not my favorite person in the universe, or even on this planet. "She's dead." "Dead dead?" "Yes. Radiation. Massive doses. Fried her on the spot. The shuttle veered out of control, of course. Crashed into the ground, tail end first. Unsalvageable." "Sure? A whole shuttle written off? There goes, whuh, a day's profits or something." Not to mention a portion of our bonus. A short, tired alarm sounded and we both reflexively stopped in our tracks and calmly grabbed the railing with both hands. Seconds later, there was a muted rumble and the ground shook violently as a massive amount of high explosives was detonated a thousand meters beneath our feet. After several years on a variety of mining installations, I hardly even registered it. We resumed our walk. "Right, Ropohl, I guess you are the new PM. I recommend we have the funeral ceremony as soon as possible. I don't want to have the body lying around. Pretty radioactive." "Hmm, yes. And bad for morale, I suppose." I didn't answer. Not my problem. "So. We put this down to shuttle malfunction?" "Nope. There's no part of a shuttle that can emit that kind of dose, not even the drive core. And that was intact. I checked." "Whuh, natural causes? Act of fate?" "I'll have to file this as CU." "Whuh, causes unknown?" "Yes, that is indeed what it means, Ropohl. I can tell what she died from, but not why she died." We walked a few paces in silence while the gears churned in Ropohl's brain. For the first time, he had to think like a Planetary Manager and it did not come easily to him. I had figured out what he was going to say long before he himself had. "I wish you wouldn't do that to me, Abadiev. They'll insist on an investigation. If they send a team out here, even if it's just a coupla guys, that's our profits for, like, eight months gone to hell. Then we can just forget any kind of bonus for this year. All of us," he added, half-heartedly trying to look me in the eye as if to convey a special significance. Truth be told, I wasn't all that eager to lose my bonus either. But there's this maxim, or rather, expression, that I have become fond of: 'Not on my watch'. As a rationalization for doing the right thing, even in the face of own short-term disadvantage, that one is pretty peerless. Call me boring, call me square (God forbid), but in this world of so many temporary possessions, my integrity is one of the things I prefer to hold on to. Once lost, it can never be recovered. That's not what I said to Ropohl, of course. Pearls before swine and so forth. "It doesn't matter, " I said as we entered the admin cube. "The regulations are clear. If we can't establish a reasonable sequence of events leading up to a death, it's a CU. The data from the site have been filed. And at least we'll be able to actually collect what remains of our bonus. Janssen wasn't that lucky." The door closed behind us with a reverberating clang, and we were walking on a cheap, synthetic floor which gave way and bulged slightly under our feet with each step. Mining dust and fine sand crunched under the soles of our boots. "Oh, this is just shaping up to be the grandest day. Okay. Well, at least she had the decency to make sure she could not be regrown. That would really have cost us." Ropohl entered his office and gently closed the old-fashioned manually-operated door behind him. He had taken it surprisingly well. I put my stuff in my own tiny office, sat down at the desk and put my legs up for a minute. Ropohl was wrong; it wouldn't have cost us anything to regrow Janssen. On her level - but not on lower ones- the executives were insured by Sirius to keep their valuable experience intact. This was the reason why they weren't making the regrowth-technology available to a wider market- the strategic value was too important. No, Janssen would have been regrown at no cost to the facility she managed- but only once. All academic. She was gone. And her body was lying in one of the storage shacks, just waiting for me to dip it in molten lead and drape the Sirius Corporation banner over it, as is the norm with an employee under contract. I sighed deeply and got to my feet. Might as well get it done. I was still wearing the space suit, and decided to keep it on for the extra protection it gave me. The radiant Janssen. Heh heh. I picked up my equipment and went to work. The workers slowly sauntered into the main warehouse, still wearing their extraordinarily dirty miner's jumpsuits. No disrespect was meant by that; their shift had just ended. The funeral routine was very well known to all. After the short ceremony, the large lead block containing Janssen would be taken out of the main dome and dumped in a newly dug hole in one of the slag heaps. It figured. The former Planetary Manager was now nothing but waste to be gotten rid of as quickly and permanently as possible. There weren't as many workers on the planet as one might have expected from the physical size of the base. Twelve hour shifts of fifteen people made thirty, plus the PM, plus the two guys at the little EnRec facility, plus the survey ship pilot, plus the shuttle pilots, plus me made thirty-eight, minus Janssen made thirty-seven. Condrian and Nowak, the EnRec guys, were not present, for it would not be cost-efficient to send a shuttle to get them just for a funeral. A similar argument went for the fourteen people that made up the shift now on duty, Ropohl's old shift. A little cluster of twenty-one people in a warehouse, standing around an unusually big, leaden box, hanging from a crane at near floor level, with a seriously worn Sirius banner draped over it. As Planetary Manager, Ropohl would hold the eulogy, which turned out to be somewhat untraditional. "Janssen is dead, " he said flatly, "and Abadiev can't grow her back. Too bad. Makes you wonder what the use is if being manager at all. So. There's the beer. One canister each." We each took a 200 cubic centiliter canister from the case he indicated, opened them and gulped down the contents. I think I was able to disguise my slight revulsion. Warm water, even if it has been engineered to olfactorily and gustatorily (I'm a doctor, remember?) resemble some ancient Earth brew, was never a favorite of mine. It was an unusually quiet funeral. Normally, after the eulogy, which I must say I thought Janssen used to handle a lot better than Ropohl, people would loosen up a bit, and some degree of chit-chat would break out. This time, the silence was as thick as the containers of hafnium ore which surrounded us. I doubted that the disgracefully unprepared and short eulogy had shocked the congregation into silence. These were colonial miners, not easily shocked into anything, and certainly not by social faux pas committed by their managers. The only thing I could think of that would actually shock them was the loss of their bonuses, but I would have thought those news to have the opposite effect of silence. These people were not slow to let it be known when they were experiencing monetary unhappiness. I studied them closer. They seemed apathetic, each worker gazing emptily into the air or down to the floor between gulps of lukewarm non-alcoholic synthetic beer. Even Charlie, the survey ship pilot, who was normally a chatterbox of twenty-first century caliber, was keeping quiet. Well, not quite- his lips were visibly moving, as if he was talking to himself. I went over to him. "Hey Charlie, you okay?" He slowly shifted his gaze up to look emptily at me. "Hey, Doc. Good beer, huh?" "Sure. Anything bothering you? Feel okay?" His head sank back down. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks." "Not talking to yourself at all? I won't ground you just because you start seeing mysterious black ships, you know." "Nah. No problem." Hard to argue with that. As a doctor, I would actually allow some eccentric behavior for any survey pilot, as they have the loneliest job I know of. They spend weeks at a time in their Sakers, cruising uninhabited systems, surveying celestial bodies for minerals. Occasionally they check in with the nearest base for supplies and one night's sleep on firm ground before it's take-off time again. Must keep the ship in space and Sirius' investment paying off. There was a dissonant, cheap clink as Ropohl had finished his beer and unceremoniously dropped the canister down on the steel floor. Without a word, he started walking for the exit which led to the admin cube. More clinks followed as the group dispersed and every person started for their individual destination. I put my own, still half-full canister down on an empty water-drum and followed Ropohl toward our offices. I wanted to check something. I hadn't known Janssen that well, but still I was mildly surprised at the lack of emotion I felt at the demise of a co-worker of three years. Nor did the loss of my bonus weigh particularly heavy on my mind, even if it would make up more than half my pay and I really needed it. It was as if I had a reduced capability for emotion, just like the way the workers had seemed at the ceremony. Come to think of it, Ropohl had also been untypically stoic about the disastrous developments with our bonuses. It would have to be put down to the effects of the fairly potent multi-suppressant drugs we were all being continuously fed through the air-supply. A docile and pliant worker is a better worker, according to Sirius, and so it thoroughly dopes its workers up on what at Sirius HQ is humorously known as 'prole juice'. In the Federation and the Alliance, there are laws against this. But Sirius is, well, Sirius, and more than big enough to make its own laws. This is a corporation that owns not just planets, but entire solar systems. Not fringe systems, either; actual Core systems with inhabitants up the wazoo and their 'constitutions' written by highly paid corporate law specialists. So they drug their workers. Who's going to complain? Not the workers, certainly. That would be 'union activity' and punishable by lengthy jail terms. Problem was, I hadn't known that the drugs were quite as strong as this. Could be that the dosage, based on continuous efficiency calculations and regulated every hour by a computer, was on a peak. That was quite possible; the moment it was reported that the PM was missing, the computer could have boosted the dosage to keep any possible outbreak of emotional activity among the workers in check. Keep 'em toiling away regardless. So far so good, but this was the first time ever I had been prompted to consciously think about the effects of the juice. That was not supposed to happen, not even to me. The current dosage setting must be massive if it was this noticeable. Had there been a malfunction? It was my job to find out; indeed, I was the only one who had access to the information. I reached my office and sat down behind the desk. "Doctor Abadiev, access air purification," I said out loud. Immediately, the relevant data were projected on to my retina. It was a list of everything the air supply system did to the air before it was pumped into the base, all the additives and purification processes. The same display could be accessed by the PM, but the computer would not show him the first paragraph, headed 'Pre-emptive Security Measures'. Apart from the funny idea that you can justify absolutely anything if you just attach the word 'security' to it, the list told me that the amount of diverse drugs in the air mix was at a higher rate than I had ever seen it or even heard of. It was approaching the level where any kind of work would actually be obstructed, not facilitated; it is one thing to have a worker not be rebellious or overly emotional, but quite another to make him ask himself why he should bother working at all. "Details PSM log," I said, even though I increasingly didn't care. The log came up, displaying the hourly changes made by the computer. 08.00.00 +0.00054 % 09.00.00 -0.00002 % 10.00.00 -0.00018 % 11.00.00 +0.00560 % 12.00.00 +0.00003 % 13.00.00 -0.00505 % 13.15.29 +600.00000 % [Externally set] 14.00.00 +0.00000 % [Automatic override] 15.00.00 +0.00000 % [Automatic override] 16.00.00 +0.00000 % [Automatic override] So the computer hadn't done it. It was someone manually boosting the prole juice to seven times its normal value, then setting up a procedure for automatically overriding the computer every hour after that when it tried to reduce the saturation. I lazily wondered who could be behind it. Janssen hadn't been reported missing until well past fourteen hundred; at quarter past one she was still here at the base. But she couldn't even see the PSM display, much less make any change to the setting. Even I couldn't do that. Who could? Only the Regional Inspector and up. He hadn't been here for months and wasn't expected for even longer. And I would have known if he had been here today, because his presence was always preceded by frantic activity to implement the directives we had received since his last visit. Could Sirius remotely set the mix from HQ? Probably, when the facility in question was within reasonable distance. If not, they would have to wait for ages for the message to come through. Also, this kind of distant facility was designed to be completely autonomous. Indeed, that was one of the few perks about working this far away from the Core; you didn't have HQ looking over your shoulder at every instant. In normal circumstances, I would have been worried about this. High as a Mirage on prole juice, I was probably still worried, but I didn't feel it. What I felt like was just sitting here in my office and think about nothing. I tried it for a few minutes, but my mind would not leave me alone. Rationally, I knew that the effects were cumulative. Another hour or so of this, and I would lose absolutely all my willpower and who knew what else. Also, the stuff was probably pretty toxic in high concentrations. Most drugs are. I had to do something. Immediately. It was my responsibility. Not only was I the doctor, I had also spent most of the day wearing my spacesuit or away from the base and was consequently not as affected as the others. Prole juice poisoning on the Helaxa 4 Planetary Base? Not on my watch. I calmly filled a syringe with an appropriate amount of amphetamine-solution and emptied it into a vein. Okay. I still felt very little, but my energy level would not allow me to sit still. I got to my feet and started trotting around in a circle on the floor, bumping into walls and furniture. What to do? I had to talk to Ropohl. He was the PM. Time for him to rise to the occasion. I crashed through his door, but he didn't even look up. He was in his dirty jumpsuit, slumped in his chair, chin on his chest. He wasn't sleeping or unconscious, for his eyes were open, although just barely. Red light pulsated through the otherwise dark room. "Ropohl, wake up. Something's happened." No reaction. "Wake up!" He rolled his head across his chest and lifted it slightly. "Hmmm?" "The prole juice has gone through the roof. You have to contact HQ." "Hmm," he mumbled, giving no sign of taking action or even moving much. On his desk was mounted the emergency panel, just a panel of pre-historical buttons and controls that could be used if there was a fire, an atmosphere problem, an earthquake or anything else that the computer for some reason or other was not dealing with. It also controlled the emergency communications display, on which a red light was blinking insistently. I looked over at him. "Ropohl!" I shouted. He slowly shifted his gaze to my chest. The pupils were dilated to the extent that the iris was nowhere in sight. He was clearly in orbit. An orbit of great eccentricity. "Ropohl, there's an emergency comm light! How long has it been blinking? Why is there no buzzer sound?" He rolled his head slowly, eyes closed. "Turned it off. Noisy." Crap. There was no help to get from him, that was for sure. I scrambled around his desk to get at the display, forcefully trying to shove his great, soft mass out of the way. The flashing light indicated that the two men at the lonely EnRec installation, where Janssen had been on her way when she died, were experiencing some sort of emergency and were trying to contact us through the narrow-band audio-only emergency system. I opened the comm channel. "This is Dr. Abadiev. Report." No reply, only strong static. "This is Planetary Base responding. Report! Condrian? Nowak? Anyone there?" Deafening static. This was pretty alarming. The emergency comm was hardwired into the spacesuits of both men, and also into the shack where they slept. If they didn't respond, something was definitely wrong. There was one last possibility. All messages on the emergency comm were recorded. I pushed the appropriate button to play a recording which, according to the display, had been made ten minutes earlier. "Base, this is Condrian." Static. "Please respond. Come in, Base." Static. "Janssen, are you there? Janssen!" Static, getting stronger. "For the love of space, Janssen, we have to get out of here. Something weird is going on." Heavy static. "Base, we're being fried here. Send a shuttle, for God's sake!" Static, now almost drowning out Condrian's desperate voice. "<...> get <...> out! Janssen! Respond, <...> pompous bitch!" Heavy static. Abrupt silence. Loss of carrier signal. Comm channel shut down. End of recording. Thank you for using the emergency communications system. Have a nice day. I skimmed the hard, black surface of the planet at the greatest acceleration the little planetary shuttle could offer, which was not a lot. But enough for me. Even with great waves of all kinds of drugs sloshing around in my veins, I felt myself having a cramp-like grip on the controls as drops of sweat dripped from my eyebrows down onto the spacesuit. I breathed in rapid, shallow gasps as I tried to gauge where space ended and hard rock began. I'm not a natural born pilot, I'll freely admit. When alone in a shuttle, which is a situation I try to avoid as best I can, the auto pilot is not just a handy tool that makes my life easier. It is the de facto pilot and commander. I always turn on all the optional aids so that I can just sit back and enjoy the ride. Problem is, that only works when travelling between locations that are actually stored in the navigation computer. And I couldn't remember how to do that. So I had taken the controls, using the scrolling map to navigate. It was a long way to go, for the little EnRec installation was located diametrically opposed to Planetary Base. This location makes sense: When one is mining using high power lasers, explosives and other ingenious methods that release a lot of energy, the crust of a planet is set in motion. Extremely long frequency shock waves will emanate from the point of energy release, especially when said point is far underground. The whole crust will bulge in long, imperceptible waves that travel at equal speeds radially out from the epicenter and then meet again, hours later, on the other side of the planet. At the exact point where they meet, there arises an interesting physical phenomenon. The wave fronts meet, nay, crash together with great force, and the energy that drives them is released. Now, calculate precisely where this happens, plant at the right location a device that can soak up this energy, and a lot of it can be recovered and sent back to Planetary Base. Thus, the base in question can make do with a smaller and cheaper power reactor. Sirius values in practice: a credit saved is a credit earned. - - - I was sweating more than ever when I finally arrived at the little Energy-Recovery installation. Helaxa was pouring kilojoules of infra red into the cabin of the shuttle which, being a Sirius budget model, had no temperature-regulating system. That was okay on the night side, not quite as okay here. I flew a short round to see if I could spot anyone, but among the shiny cylinders, antennas and wires there was nothing recognizable as a life form, or even a Sirius employee. Metallic parts lay strewn across the landscape, and the whole installation gave me a strange impression of disorder and chaos, quite unacceptable by Sirius standards. The crew would have to be inside the shack. I tried the radio, but there was no reply over the static. I carefully put the shuttle down as close to the shack and the nearby technological structures as I dared. I would have to go inside and check. I put on the helmet, grabbed my doctor's bag, put my hand on the hatch release and habitually glanced down at the atmospheric readout on the control panel. Radiation level [External]: 6101,03 REM. I yanked my hand from the hatch release as if stung. I suddenly felt weak at the knees. Lethal dose, as far as I could remember, was at 600 REM . This was over ten times more. Only a brief exposure would kill me. But it was my duty. I was a doctor. Exiting the shuttle, running over to the moderately shielded shack and getting inside would only expose me to the radiation for a few seconds. Condrian and Nowak had called for help. It was my duty. My moral duty. Six thousand REM. They trusted me to help them. Ten times lethal dose. I couldn't leave them there without at least trying to help. Two men killed by radiation from an unknown source? Not on my watch. I looked at the readout display again. 6313,15 REM. Not on my watch. 6444,97. Not on my watch! I took a deep breath. Yes. On my watch. It would kill me. Nobody could expect me to willingly give my life for this. For nothing. They were probably dead already. I sat heavily back down in the pilot's seat. If I exited the shuttle, I was dead. Dead dead. I wouldn't. End of argument. I saw no reason to hang around. I had the shuttle take off and did a final circle around the area, examining the shack from all angles. As I came around the back of it, I couldn't help noticing that the entire back wall was gone. Well, not gone, I realized on further inspection; it was merely lying on the ground, buckled and burnt. But definitely not filling its intended purpose of providing a fourth wall for the shack. I took the shuttle lower to be able to see inside through the gaping hole. The insides looked intact, but something vital was missing: Condrian and Nowak. I set a course back to Planetary Base and keyed for full acceleration, but for once, the shuttle didn't move fast enough for my liking. I tried to get my brain to function properly. Janssen dies suddenly of radiation. The prole juice goes amok. Strong radiation on the day side. EnRec shack destroyed, crew missing. I had a strong and nauseating feeling that there was something going on. Something obvious that I was somehow not quite getting. But it was slowly dawning on me. And it was bad. A fair portion of the sweat I was now discharging felt decidedly cold. - - - The night side of the planet came at me, first visible as scattered mountaintops that seemed to hover over the horizon, then as a forbidding darkness laying claim to everything, from the dusty, crater-strewn plains to the highest peaks. The flying gradually got more difficult and I grasped the controls in concentration. With my eyes struggling to find a point of reference in the black void, I suddenly felt the shuttle dive dangerously. I reflexively let go of the controls, accustomed as I was to any vehicle, when left to its own devices, automatically straightening out any mistakes made by the pilot. The dive seemed to continue unhindered, and as I slowly regained my bearings, I saw the uneven terrain, illuminated by the shuttle’s navigational lights, zoom by at breakneck speed close underneath. The whole shuttle shook as its underside scraped and bounced along the ground for what seemed like about six decades, although it couldn’t have been more than about a second. I clumsily grabbed the controls again and pulled back on them, hard. The nose of the shuttle climbed spacewards, and in my relief I let it climb for too long. Soon, the vertical-lift engine, always needing something to work against, was clearly losing power and also its battle with gravity, and the nose again pointed down. Once more I pulled the controls back, and there followed a series of oscillations, up and down, before I managed to stabilize the vehicle and resume some manner of level flight. The shuttle was obviously not designed with anything other than ground-hugging travel in mind, although too ground-hugging flying was apparently also not ideal: The outer hull had been breached and the air pressure in the cabin dropped rapidly. I scrambled to put my helmet on without having to let go of the controls. The light, Sirius standard issue space suit was now all that stood between me and the vacuum. The vacuum and whatever else was out there. I put my splayed-out gloved hand over the secondary display screen and then turned it off, all the while making a conscious effort not to look at the atmospheric readout. I didn’t need to know. And I sure as space didn’t want to. - - - I was approaching the location of Planetary Base when the scanner displayed a white blip on the horizon, and then I saw it, straight ahead: A large ship rapidly gaining altitude. Not one of ours, for we only had the shuttles and the survey Saker. Looked like an Imperial Trader, if my memory from the Federal Military served me right. It was definitely not one of the Panthers that carried the hafnium Coreward. This was not a Sirius ship by any stretch of the imagination. Then what was it? I didn't care. I just knew one thing: It was leaving me behind. Higher and higher the ship rose, faster and faster, until it was suddenly gone from my instruments, not even leaving a hyperspace cloud. Even knowing the exact coordinates of the base, I had some trouble finding it. The enormous spotlights, usually very trustworthy guides, seemed to have been turned off. No, they hadn’t, I realized; the tall masts on which they were mounted had been cut down halfway up their length. The big dome was gone. The large mining machines lay in a dirty-yellow heap. As I got closer, I saw that all that was left of the installation was practically rubble, except the hangar, which looked intact. I put the shuttle down right outside it. My only hope lay in finding the Saker, which had a hyperdrive and would allow me to escape. I entered the hangar. There was a large, jagged hole in the wall on the far side. Also, there were two shuttles, both broken and seemingly split down the middle by a laser, wisps of smoke-dust still drizzling slowly to the ground from the burnt edges. And in the last berth, the Saker. Trisected, with considerable precision, right behind the cockpit and again straight through the drive. And that was it. I was stranded. The only person left on the planet. I threw up violently, horribly soiling the inside of the space helmet. I was standing beside what was once the administration cube. The roof and two walls were missing. It was night, as always, the sky was pitch black. I could only see a few stars. Normally, the whole splendor of the night sky was visible from the ground on this atmosphere-less planet. Now, it looked as if it was obscured by something. Like a curtain, with symmetric tears in it. A very dark curtain. A curtain which not only blocked light, but absorbed it. Well, not quite. There was light. Right there, on the planet surface. The horizon, on all sides, 360 degrees around me, was aflame in a white, calmly pulsating fire that I could only look at for a split second at a time before I was blinded. It was like looking into Sol from Earth. The flames were coming closer, I could tell, for it was getting warmer. The fact that I could actually feel the heat of the flames through the space suit, when tens of kilometers of vacuum separated me from them, told me precisely what I hadn't wanted to know. Suffice to say, I knew I would soon join Janssen in the not very prestigious pantheon of non-regrowable Sirius proles. - - - I thought I was hallucinating until the sensor package in my space helmet confirmed it: There was a ship in the sky above me. A tiny little MkII Viper. Thank God, the police. No, just kidding. Nearest police authority would be like fifty light years off, and that was only Sirius' own Auxiliary Colonial Militia Ensemble or whatever. Fat lot of help they would have been. And they don't have Vipers. So this one had to be - well, someone other than Sirius. Strange. I couldn't feel my right leg. Nor, I soon realized, the left one. Both gave way underneath me and I was studying the dust on the ground up close. Laboriously, using only my arms, I rolled over on my back to be able to see the sky. The Viper was closing in on me, its silhouette now a tiny trapeze, meaning the nose was aiming straight this way. Could he see me? I had never flown on a Viper, didn't know how sensitive their stuff was. I could only assume he understood that, to the best of my medical knowledge, I was dead. Beyond hope. Beyond regrowth. It really would be stupid of him to lose his own life trying to save one who could not be saved. Ah. Of course. He understood. He was merely going to spare me the agony of a torturous death. He was going to shoot me with his laser, vaporize me, extinguish me. Okay, good. Planetary dust was displaced as I stretched my arms out to present a better target to him. Come on, I thought. Do it. Do it now. I'm ready. Many years ago, when I was a medical officer with the Federation, there was a war in the Phekda system. A local, ground-based war on an anarchic planet. So what else is new, right? There are always hundreds of minor wars going on in the galaxy at any given time. True, but back then, I was there and could watch up close. There were two factions contesting a patch of land. It was an uneven struggle. One side, although primitive, was clearly stronger than the other and would obviously win eventually. So the other, weaker party started systematically ruining and poisoning their own land, rendering it worthless for the conquerors who would soon roll their heavy armor across it. Thus, the value of the entire venture was severely diminished for the victors, and they could not turn the loser's own resources against him; those had all been destroyed. It's a bit like when you're a kid, and you and your brother flip a credit for the last donut on the plate, and you lose; don't you quickly pick the donut up, give it a good lick and put it back in delicious, evil triumph? It's an ancient strategy. 'Scorched earth', they call it. Last ditch. Really last ditch. Last last ditch. And I didn't even know we were at war. Until I was lying there, alone, and the amphetamine and the pure air in my space suit had finally cleared my mind of all the fog and I looked up at the blackening sky and it clicked. I found myself looking at the planet from above. It was now an intensely white globe, glowing like a star. The area where the base had been, where I had been lying not a minute earlier, was rapidly shrinking as it was being engulfed by the white flames of the inextinguishable cold fusion-process that Janssen had unwittingly triggered by getting too close. The Viper pilot had assured me that they could cure my radiation sickness. Their tech, he said, was at least a hundred years ahead of anyone else's. I really wanted to believe him. So I let him save me. Like they had saved the rest of the crew, Condrian and Nowak included, after having first doped them up thoroughly to make them docile and easily herded into the strange Trader. The crew on a mining installation, innocent victims of a desperate defensive strategy? Not on their watch. The Viper narrowly slipped through the sphere of black ships, like a mosquito escaping between the fingers of a black-gloved fist that tries to catch it. A fist made up entirely of gigantic Thargoid motherships. A fist which was now tightening around a worthless planet. I wonder what they'll make of it. They are now going up against a species that willingly destroys its own assets, however insignificant, rather than let them fall into their hands. I hope they get the message. We're an unpredictable enemy. Unpredictable and dangerous. You shouldn't mess with us or we'll destroy our own planets. All things considered, I think we're in trouble. paolo.mariani@spray.no  |
paolo.mariani@spray.no