V. Larson - Velocity

(In the great void between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, a soul is lost. Telescopes on Io note the anomaly — a brilliant pinprick of light seven degrees off from Sirius. The popping of a flashbulb in the heavens. The spacestation Ulysses orbits Saturn in a cylindrical region of space known to be one of the Lagrange points in the complex gravity system of Saturn’s moons. The Station forever chases after the moon Hyperion, but never catches up. The tense minds aboard the Ulysses also watch the brilliant anomaly, and understanding it, they despair.)

“Damn,” said the computer.

I heard more quiet expletives. I glanced at the general, but he said nothing. There was no need to question the bio-processor’s single, dismal remark. I knew exactly how the computer and the general felt. The test had been another failure, the pilot had been killed.

The pilot.

I frowned and remembered Colonel Richard Boyd. Summertime beer-and-fishing trips, cruising the outboard around the delta. The time we took the girls to Catalina and Nancy fell overboard. The way his uniform always seemed to fit just right. The brownish burn scar on the back of his hand. Memories of a dead friend.

Another man killed. Another victim, smashed into the Barrier like a wineglass hurled against a concrete wall.

Soon it will be my turn. My chance to fly a human trash compactor, I thought. But I didn’t really feel that way. I didn’t feel-bitter. I felt-no, I knew that I would be the one to break the Barrier. As soon as the new ships were in, the latest models, I would get my chance to make history. I was scared, but inside a part of me ached to have my chance. I suppose the psychs wouldn’t have sent me out here if I felt differently.

“What were the losses like at Edwards, back in the fifties?” the general asked me, as if he didn’t know. Idly, his hands rubbed at the holster flap of the antiquated Colt. 45 that he always seemed to wear.

“The pilots trying to break the sound barrier? About one in four. We’re running one in three,” I replied. Not all of them died, not right away, at least. The old Demon usually gave them two or three shots at it before swatting them down with finality. “Sort of like playing Russian roulette with two chambers loaded,” I added, smiling grimly.

The general grunted his acknowledgement. Then he eyed me critically. “Cold feet, Major Davis?”

“No sir.”

The general pulled out a pocket computer and tapped at it. “How many ships left?”

“Four, all obsolete models, sir. Plus two drones.”

“How many pilots?” he asked, knowing full-well the answer to the question, as he had the first one. He was a stickler for procedure, the general. I suspected that it helped to keep him going.

“Just you and I, sir,” I replied.

The general side-glanced at me.

“Two, sir,” I amended. The brief calm that had fallen over the control room during the test faded into memory and the usual clamor resumed. Everyone breathed freely again. The test had been a failure, yes, but it was over. Everyone knew that would be the last test until we received new ships and pilots. Another horrible failure, but at least we were finished for now. Technicians clicked at touchboards and slid styluses over reflective pads, checking results and reporting them. Acceleration chairs swiveled and creaked. Coffee cups were raised to dry lips.

I barely noticed them. My eyes, like those of General Crossfield, were gripped by the main viewing screen. There wasn’t much to see. The Ulysses’ computer-controlled cameras had finally caught up with the wreck and locked-in. They were tracking debris that was burnt, compressed down and mostly vaporized by the implosion.

Inside I felt a sick sort of shock, as if I had been punched in the guts while laughing at a joke. I knew I was taking Colonel Boyd’s death harder than most. I had never watched a real friend die before, not like that.

Oh sure, I had seen plenty of pilots die, but they were mostly fly-ins, dirtside hot-shots-not friends. There had been times of course, during the first Bug invasion, especially during the low-orbit battles over Sao Paolo and Stockholm, when I had seen a fellow pilot get hit and go down burning. But not like this.

When the Barrier got you, you were more than dead; you just didn’t exist anymore. Even if they did find a few of your molecules out there, maybe attached to some fused bit of collapsed matter, the molecules were changed. Pressed down into neutrons, mostly. It took theoretical physicists to figure out what was human and what was ship.

“Damn,” General Crossfield said as he surveyed the wreckage. We had all been saying a lot of that lately.

“Maybe we should try a few more of the drones, sir,” I suggested. “They don’t work past eighty percent, but the techs seem to learn a bit more each time.”

“No drones.”

I pursed my lips and grimaced. Drones never worked because their computer systems crashed at about eighty percent of the speed of light every time. Fortunately, however, humans seemed to keep operating until the bitter end.

“Sir, the support bases on Luna have notified us that there will be a new shipment of test pilots and better-designed spacecraft here in less than a week.”

The general was silent for a moment, as if he hadn’t heard. Then he wheeled on me, the heels of his vacc-boots clacking on the plastic decking.

“We’ve got to break the Barrier, Major Davis. We’ve got to have FTL. We’ve got to have it now.”

“I know the Bugs got your family General,” I said, my mind reeling in disbelief as I spoke the words. “But that’s no reason to send us both out to die in obsolete ships we’ve proven don’t work.”

We both knew that all the eyes in the control room were on us now, but we didn’t care. The tensions, the deaths, the worry, it all came out at once, and the last two test pilots on the Ulysses faced one another in sudden flash of rage.

“You and I, Major,” shouted the general, stabbing me in the chest with his thick index finger, “will get into those ships out there and we will fly them and we will either break the Barrier, or run out of test ships, or we will die in the attempt.”

“Just like Boyd,” I yelled back, breaking every rule of protocol. “Without a hope.”

The general stepped up to me, putting his face into mine in the exact way that my drill sergeant had in boot camp, so many war-torn years ago. “Right, Major. Just like Richard Boyd.”

I decided right then that the General had gone bonkers. He was vacuum-happy and was ready to make us all walk the plank. Next he would be stuffing terrified techies into the cockpits of the airless drones, shouting ‘Go faster! Push her to the limit!’

“Why?” I asked simply.

His face fell then, and he seemed to deflate. He glanced around at the audience that watched us silently from their terminals. A green radiance bathed every one of their pale, hollow faces.

“I might as well tell you all,” he began, puffing back up a bit. “The Bugs have been sighted again. It’s a new fleet, a bigger one than the last, coming from the Tau Ceti region this time.”

My face drained of color. The mere mention of a second invasion was enough to freeze any human in their tracks. We had beaten back the first one, but back then we had been fat with population. There had been billions of us to throw into fight. It took me a moment to realize that the general was still talking.

“… many more than the first wave. The last time was really no more than an exploration group, you know. They’ve hidden it well in the press, but we haven’t seen a real Bug warship yet. Our warfleet is ready to fly, but if we have to fight again close to home, if our ships can’t move one-tenth the speed of theirs…” he shook his head. “Their weapons systems will tear us apart. Our ships will be blown from the skies like biplanes, like Sopwith Camels facing F-87 fighters.”