Michael Siemsen: Exigency

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.”

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.

A few seconds later, another smash, and the EV rolled completely over, loose objects raining down, Minerva’s back crashing into John’s chest.

“There went the stabilizer legs! We need to strap back in!” John shouted. “They’re going to bowl us all over the damned continent!”

Minerva rolled off of him. “Not going to happen just yet.”

John reclaimed his bearings and peered around. The seats now hung upside down above them.