Gary Gibson - Final Days

‘Olivia told me you were aiming to head for the Moon,’ he began.

Mitchell nodded. ‘And she explained what you’re planning to do. I mean about shutting down the whole Array.’

‘What else did she say?’

‘That you’d done a pretty good job of digging up a lt of classified information.’

‘I know about the Founder Network and the recovered artefacts, if that’s what you mean. And I also know what happened to you .’

The hopper quivered as its wings realigned themselves in preparation for boosting it into the high atmosphere. Somewhere beneath their feet, the engines built up to a noisy rumble, and Saul gripped his armrests as the acceleration pushed them back deep into their seats.

‘What gave you the idea of using the EDP codes?’ Mitchell yelled over the roar.

‘It was the obvious thing to do,’ Saul yelled back. ‘I mean, Jesus, think about what will happen if we don’t shut those gates down.’

‘That depends,’ said Mitchell, ‘on what you think really is happening.’

Saul frowned at him. ‘What?’

Mitchell waved a hand dismissively. ‘Forget it.’

‘Mitchell, I’ve argued this through with two other people, one of them Olivia. In the end, they both decided to help me. So if you want to know how I’m sure it’s the right course of action, then know that I am very, very damn sure.’

‘Even if it means having the blood of countless innocents on your hands, once you slam the door shut on all of them?’

Saul felt his face grow hot. ‘I know what the goddamned consequences are. But doing nothing would be a hell of a lot worse, don’t you think?’

Somehow, that had seemed to be the end of any further discussion for the remainder of their journey. Once their craft had levelled out, Saul found himself some quick-heating food in a crew locker and devoured it. He then fell asleep for a while, and dreamed he was back in that car, with Donohue shouting warnings about Mitchell, and woke only when the hopper began its final approach to the Roses’ private spaceport, his body racked by a bone-deep ache.

Little about the spaceport had changed over the years since Saul had last seen it. Two lengthy roads cut their way through scrubby desert, while a hangar complex, looking like yesterday’s vision of the future of space flight, sat next to the point where they converged. He saw several huge VASIMRs mounted on the backs of trucks, while an airstrip ran parallel to one of the roads. A small hotel and several other buildings of much more recent vintage were strung along the side of it. Rail tracks extended towards a launch pad consisting of a strip of blackened concrete, several kilometres distant from the hangar complex. A massive gantry stood in the centre of the launch pad, supporting a full-sized working replica of an ancient Apollo Saturn multi-stage rocket that towered over the landscape. The gantry had been empty the last time Saul had seen it, several years earlier, waiting for the Roses to finish a round of fund-raising with a consortium of billionaire adrenalin-junkies, so that the pair of them could build more rockets.

font face="Times New Roman">He gestured past Mitchell and out the window. ‘I never understood the appeal of going up in one of those things.’

‘Adventure,’ said Mitchell. ‘Doesn’t get much simpler than that.’

‘What’s wrong with VASIMRs, then?’

Mitchell chuckled. ‘Where’s the adventure in that?’

‘You sound like Jeff.’ Saul turned away from the window and let his head drop back against his seat. ‘Did I mention that I never forgave you for talking me into that sub-orbital jump?’

‘I didn’t talk you into it,’ Mitchell reminded him. ‘You just took pity on me after my brother died.’

‘You told me the experience would reaffirm my enthusiasm for life.’

Mitchell shrugged. ‘You sounded pretty enthusiastic to me, at the time. You were screaming all the way down.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m just glad it’s someone else who’ll be flying in that thing, instead of us.’

He glanced sideways at Mitchell and felt a frisson of alarm on seeing the look on his face.

‘We’re going up in a VASIMR, right?’

The corner of Mitchell’s mouth twitched. ‘We would be, except all the seats are taken.’

‘Who by?’

‘The ground control crew and their families. There are maybe a hundred of them, altogether, not including relations – all those responsible for the engineering, fuel supply, onboard systems and general maintenance. The ones that haven’t taken off already are going up as soon as we head up on board the Saturn.’

Before Saul could say anything more, a landing warning flashed, and the hopper began to decelerate hard. He watched buildings hurtle by, and a stretch of black tarmac blurring past, before the hopper’s engines came to a halt and it dropped down, with a gentle thump, next to what looked like some kind of administration building. Sam stood up and pushed open the hatch, letting sunlight spill into the aircraft’s interior.

The air outside tasted gritty, dry and furnace-hot. Saul shielded his eyes with one hand and glanced past the VASIMRs towards the Saturn rocket, clouds of steam now drifting down its sides. Centuries before, men had flown craft just like it all the way to the Moon and back, but the development of the wormhole technology had put paid to almost all of that.

‘Car’s on its way,’ announced the pilot, indicating an open-top vehicle approaching from the administration building.

‘You’l’s oing up in one of those?’ Saul gestured towards the VASIMRs.

Sam nodded. ‘Soon as we get lock-in from the orbital powersats, yeah.’

‘I rode in one once before,’ said Saul. ‘It was a pretty bumpy ride.’

Sam shrugged. ‘Sometimes that’s down to the weather conditions. They’ve been taking off from here round the clock, over the past couple of days. The ones parked over there’ll be the last to go up. You know the Saturn’s going to be much, much bumpier, right?’

‘No,’ Saul sighed, as the empty car stopped beside them, ‘I didn’t know that.’

The car wasn’t much more than a glorified golf cart. It carried them past a lone billboard advertising lunar flights, and then a prospective, VASIMR-powered tourist flight to Mars that was now clearly never going to happen. Saul saw a gaggle of men and women in hard hats standing by a VASIMR mounted on the back of an enormous truck that was parked next to one hangar. Their car came to a halt nearby, and one of the men came over, his dark and weather-beaten skin scored with deep wrinkles.

‘Mr Dumont,’ said the man, as they all climbed out, ‘I’m Lester Rose. I believe we met some years ago?’

‘Briefly,’ said Saul, shaking Lester’s hand as he was offered it.

Lester nodded. ‘Well, we’re going to get plenty reacquainted before long, because I’m gonna be one half of your flight crew.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Saul, not quite able to hide his disbelief.

The old man chuckled. ‘Don’t look so worried. I’m an old hand at this game. Matter of fact, I was one half of the flight-crew on our last three launches, as well.’ He paused, then continued, ‘Jeff told me a lot about you. You two worked together, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Saul nodded, ‘although it was a long time ago.’

Lester’s expression became serious. ‘Jeff’s told me a lot of things, since he got in touch. I know what I heard on the news feeds, but’ – he glanced at the landscape around them, and shook his head slowly – ‘I’ll be honest with you, if it wasn’t for what I’ve seen on the news I’d have a hard time believing one damn word he told me. But Jeff’s a good man, so I know he ain’t going to lie to me.’