Arrival: Chapter 28

  “Oh no… the other shuttle’s taking off,” Neil reported in deep dismay.  In response Wiremu issued a thought command to put a communication request through to Sadhika.

  “Oh shit,” In-Su uttered after another satellite passed overhead of the battlefield and revealed in disturbing detail the outcome of the fighting.  It was still dark, but they could all see the devastation for themselves.  Between radar, locator beacons, and the infra-red signatures of the still relatively warm bodies, a clear if unsettling picture of what had happened was easy to see.   The airstrip was littered with dozens of bodies.  The only place where bodies couldn’t be seen was the narrow strip down the middle which Halley had cleared so that he could take off in the shuttle.  Neil and Wiremu were too stressed and distracted to notice at the time, but it was the first time either of them had ever heard In-Su curse.   Ordinarily he looked down on profanity as a failure of vocabulational imagination.  These however, were not ordinary circumstances.

  “Oh shit indeed…” Wiremu added more coldly as the first light of dawn broke over them and out the front window.  For now it remained pitch black over at the site they were monitoring and where the battle had taken place.  “Come on Sadhika…” he uttered with increasing fear for her.  “Come on, answer…  Don’t you dare be dead.” He added in an angry whisper.

  Wiremu brought up her locator beacon, and the display they were watching zeroed in on her location and zoomed in with a blinking crosshair.  They were all panicked momentarily when they saw her lying motionless on her back, but breathed a sigh of relief when she reached over to flick open her wrist scroll.  Wiremu wondered why she had waited so long to answer.

  “I’m here.” she answered despondently with a ghostly vacancy in her voice.  Her face appeared on the left front window of the shuttle’s flight deck while the right window continued to display a semi-transparent overview of the battle field and her location within it, compiled from different information streams.

  “Wii… Halley.” she said distantly.  “You have to go after Halley.  Now.”   She was lying on her back in the exact spot which the shuttle had been parked until Halley had taken off in it.   She seemed profoundly dazed, to the others she gave the appearance of being completely emotionally drained.

  “The other shuttle?” Neil asked.  They all knew what it meant if he was returning to the mothership at this point.

  “The other shuttle.” Sadhika miserably affirmed.

  “We’ll come get you first,” In-Su suggested, though in his mind it was much stronger than a suggestion.  He was deeply concerned for her; he’d never seen her act or sound this way before.

  “No time.” she replied, softly rotating her head back and forth.

  “She’s right,” Neil confirmed.  “It would take us hours to fully refuel again for an orbital insertion after picking her up, especially without a super charger.”

  Wiremu turned to address In-Su in the back seat.  “I’m sorry In-Su, but she’ll be fine.  She’ll certainly be safer than us!” he added with a bit of a harrumph.   He then noticed the empty seat across from In-Su and then looked up into the sky through the ceiling window.  He undid his seat restraints, stood up, and then opened the door behind the empty seat opposing In-Su and exited the craft.

  Wiremu put two fingers to his mouth and whistled loudly.  “I’d like to speak to everyone here who is neutral, now please.” he said loudly and authoritatively.  Ten or so people were working on and around the airstrip and new industrial area.  They had all spent their entire lives waiting for this moment.  For a long time they’d been preparing and practicing all of the things they would need to do upon their distant and eventual arrival.  Now in this crisis, with nothing they could do to avert or alleviate the situation, many had simply reverted to the tasks and duties they would have otherwise been responsible for had none of this ever happened.  They didn’t know what else to do, and it provided a certain comfort for them.   It was a physical manifestation of their hope that everything which had happened to get them here had somehow not been in vain.

  They acted this way in part as a result of simply not knowing what else to do, but it was also a hopeful gesture, continuing to work on the mission was itself an implicit hopefulness that things would work out, that the crisis could be averted and the mission at some point resumed.  These were crew members who had no strong allegiances to either warring faction at this point, people for whom their allegiance remained to the mission first and foremost.  As requested, all of the crew members who had previously affirmed their neutrality gathered in front of Wiremu again in the early morning light.

  “The battle was a senseless bloody slaughter,” Wiremu grimly told them.  “Everyone is dead, almost half of the ship’s entire crew, including most of the adults of breeding age.   You fourteen are in fact, basically most of the breeding adults left.”  It only occurred to him a moment before he said it, and he looked at these people a little differently now as a result.  Neutral, loyal, already on the planet and reproductively capable, he now saw them as the most important humans alive in the universe.  In a worst case scenario now, it could very well all come down to just them alone in the alien wilderness with only what hardware had already been deployed for them.

  “The worst part though people, is that it’s not over yet.  Halley and possibly a few others have taken the other shuttle back to the ship.  Their intentions are… impossible to know for sure at this point, but given what’s happened and his unwillingness to communicate with us… we think it’s fair to assume his intentions to be hostile.  We have the other shuttle, it’s ready to ascend… and we intend to stop him.   We intend to put a stop to this madness today, one way or another.   At least… we’re gonna try.  We don’t have time to go get Sadhika first, so… we have an extra seat on our shuttle.  I’m looking for a volunteer.  You all know my background… this is a peacekeeper mission, not an assault.   It will be dangerous and there’s a good chance of you getting killed; our objective is not to help either side win, but to save the mission itself.  Our goal is explicitly, and simply, to end the conflict however we have to, with as little further loss of life as possible.”

  Before anyone else could raise their hands to volunteer, Armina Shostack stepped forward.   “I can’t allow anyone else to volunteer Wiremu, as the keeper of combat this is my duty, and my duty alone.  I’ve literally been training my entire life for this.  This is my life task, finally, and I am happy to serve.”

  Wiremu smiled at her.  She had just demonstrated herself to be his kind of woman.  “Very good.  As for the rest of you… as you were.”

  The simulant put his arm around Armina’s shoulder as she passed him on her way to joining him and the others in the shuttle.  “Thank you,” he said.  “Let’s go.”

  The two were greeted by In-Su and Neil who had watched the entire exchange from the shuttle’s hatch.  “Welcome aboard,” Neil offered to Armina, who only smiled back at him.

  “What’s the weapon situation?” she asked as Wiremu headed for the captain’s seat.

  “One for each of us,” Wiremu answered her, “three shotguns, a laser rifle, and my own personal side arm.”

  “Well at least there’s that…” she replied.

  “Why don’t you take the co-pilot seat Armina,” Neil offered.  “I think I want to sit back here with In-Su.”

  “Sure,” she answered, and then slid into the seat beside Wiremu, who smiled at her in acknowledgement.  Neil likewise took his seat across from In-Su in the back and strapped himself in.

   

  Wiremu rushed through the pre-flight checklist.  His complete and absolute professionalism forbid anything less, even in this situation.  

  Hanging under the wings were four inflatable bags which were torpedo shaped, with a cylindrical body and a rounded cone on either end.  Of the two large bags under each wing, which very nearly touched the ground when completely full, one held liquid hydrogen and the other liquid oxygen, the same rocket fuel which had been launching humans into orbit from a planet’s surface for over three and a half centuries.

  As the fuel in the sealed system was used, vacuum pressure retracted the bags back into the wings, and they were fully retracted after the vessel left the atmosphere, but long before orbital velocity was achieved.  It was an extraordinary amount of fuel which was required, but it was a truly extraordinary speed which was required to allow them to fall so fast sideways that they perpetually missed the ground in order to achieve orbit.  For shorter point to point flights across the planet’s surface though, the auxiliary fuel tanks weren’t required and thus weren’t deployed, since such ballistic flights required far less speed and energy.  However, if for whatever reason on a point to point trip one wished to carry more crew than could fit into the flight deck, the main internal fuel tank could be purged to carry crew (as in a descent from orbit), and in such a configuration the auxiliary fuel bags could serve as the primary fuel tanks.

   “Launch.” Wiremu stated unceremoniously as he hammered the throttle immediately after finishing his abbreviated checklist.  They rocketed down the airstrip and lifted off with only modest room to spare, and only a few meters clear of the canopy as they passed over top of its edge.  The shuttle’s engines powered back to slowly gain altitude in as energetically conservative a manner as possible.  In this phase of their ascent it would take twenty minutes or so to achieve the required altitude for an orbital insertion burn.