Microstory 2616: You Awaken in the Wreckage With No Choice but to Go On

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August 23, 2526. Breanna wakes up, still feeling the slight sting on her neck where her suit revitalized her. The IMS isn’t a full-on medical pod, but it does have waysof repairing a damaged body, from some trauma that might be caused despitethe presence of the suit in the first place. She’s not in too much pain, butit’s all over. Her suit won’t administer a painkiller automatically, because it requires the user’s permission. She could theoretically ask for an opioid, though she won’t. She sits up. “Thistle, Administer one dose of a comprehensive pain silencer. No, two doses. I need twenty-four hours at least.”

“Would you like an endorphin stimulator as well?”

“No. It’s fine.” She lies back down so the suit can flash its laser beams all over her skin. She groans as it’s happening, but is able to stop once it’s complete. She then stands up in the wreckage, finding herself on the ceiling of the vehicle. Her friends and the other passengers are strewn about. “Thistle, why weren’t we strapped in?”

“The safety straps were causing unwanted and unhealthy pressure on the users’ suits. They were only released upon landing. Everyone is alive and recovering. As leader, you were revived prematurely to make further decisions.”

“Wake everyone else up as appropriate. Tell me what’s going on, inside and out.”

“Location, unknown. Status of vehicle, irreparably damaged. Situation, dire. Medical prognoses, manageable.”

Breanna manages to find the back hatch, and open it. The surface of the planet is relatively calm, but the tornadoes could be lying in wait. “Options.”

“Walking.”

She chuckles. “Thanks. That’s great.” She takes a beat as she’s watching the wind blow the dust around. “Do you detect a methane deposit below us, or near us?”

“The vehicle’s sensor array is inoperable, and would be insufficient either way.”

“So, you can’t find the caravan either?”

“Negative.”

“Lifesigns detector,” Breanna continues. “Look for anyone or anything.”

“None found.”

There are no more questions to ask, and she can’t make any decisions without the passengers, so she commands her IMS to focus the padding to the back, then lies down to wait. A few hours later, Cash wakes her up, thinking that she’s the last one.

“We’re lost,” Cash explains.

“I know.”

“The rover can’t be fixed.”

“I know,” Breanna repeats, but louder. “I was up before you. I just took a nap.”

“Oh. Well, what now? Do we go out and look for Tertius and Aeterna’s bodies?”

“Aeterna? We lost Aeterna?”

“She’s not here,” Cash replies. “I thought you said you knew everything already.”

“I did a headcount. I thought she was one of these people.”

“Did you remember to count the guy who we rescued from the other rover?”

“Oh, I forgot. Shit. I guess father and daughter are both dead.” Breanna looks at all the passengers, who are apparently gathering supplies. “Good instincts, everybody. We’re gonna have to head out on foot. Carry what you can. Nothing in here is useless, but use your best judgment, and prioritize. Food and water are most important, but if you find any vacuum tents, those are great too.” She yawns as she’s trying to continue. “Don’t worry about power. Your suits will recharge in all that flurry out there. I’m not gonna try to explain fusion or ramscoop nodes to you, but just trust me.”

Most of them go to work, but one sits down on the ceiling. They look depressed, but it’s hard to tell without being able to see a face. “Are you him...the one from the other rover?”

“The asshole who got your friend killed? Yeah,” he answers.

Breanna sits down next to him, and taps on both of their wrist interfaces so they can have a one-on-one conversation through comms. “Tell me what happened.”

“I can’t, I don’t remember it.” He sighs. “That’s not entirely true, but it was like a dream. I knew where I was, and I knew that I was as safe as I was gonna get. I just felt so trapped. I started panicking, reaching out for anything that could change my circumstances. My hands landed on the door handle, so I opened it, and ran out. I don’t know what I thought I would find out there. I don’t know that I entirely understood that I even was outside. I just needed to be able to move around. I’m so sorry. Someone suggested they lock me to one of the seats, but the others argued against it, because there could have been a situation where we all needed to escape. But they should have done it. They should have stopped me. I know, that makes it sound like I’m blaming them. I just wish they had. I wish they had been unforgiving about it.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Breanna begins. “I mean that truthfully. Earth, in its history, has seen its fair share of refugees, but absolutely nothing at this scale. An entire planet has never been in this much trouble. Our ancestors colonized it despite the instability of our host star because they thought they understood it. They thought they knew the risks. They were wrong. I’m far angrier at them than I am at you. You didn’t sign up for this. You reacted in a very human way, and I’m sure, if Tertius or his daughter were here, they would forgive you. They risked their lives to save people like you, even though it sounds like they didn’t know anyone personally. They seemingly did sign up for this.”

The guy is still clearly down on himself, but she’s not a therapist, so all they can do is hope to find their way back to civilization, and get him some real help. As they’re finishing packing up to take what they can, Aeterna casually opens the back hatch, and climbs back in. She is wearing a respirator mask over her mouth, but has removed the parts that go over her eyes. She’s presumably only using it for comms.

“Where did you go?” Breanna questions.

“Sorry, I was just looking for my dad. I didn’t go too far, I figured once you guys woke up, I would start hearing you talking to each other.”

“Comms are down. Radio waves are very minimal right now,” Breanna explains.

Aeterna nods. “Well, I’m back. Hopefully we’ll come across him eventually.

“I’m sorry about him,” Breanna says softly.

“Eh, it’ll be okay,” Aeterna says, not the least bit perturbed. “He knows we’re going north, so either we’ll pick up his trail, or he’ll pick up ours.”

“You think he’s alive?” Cash asks.

“He has to be,” Aeterna answers with a chuckle. “We’ve been trying to explain that. We can’t die.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 28, 2541

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Ramses’ new Brane Establishment Map—name subject to change—was fully ready to go, but there was a catch. It required the equivalent of five tandem slingdrives to run, and once it was running, it counted as one sling. The coherence gauge went down when it was used, went down faster when it was used to map a larger region, and even faster when kept up for an extended period of time. Instead of slinging physical matter across the universe, it was only slinging information, but that still required punching a hole into the membrane of the universe, and that came at a cost. If they wanted to look for Spiral Station, they would be able to go there, but not come back until the next day. For them, that was a whole year, which if their target was on the run, would give them more than enough time to find a new place to hide.

“You should take a screenshot,” Romana suggested.

“Huh?” Ramses asked.

“Whenever you load the map, if you want to save on power, take a screenshot of it, and close it down immediately,” she went on.

“Well, it doesn’t work like that. The map is interactive. You have to zoom in and out to make out the different dots. A screenshot would just become a low-res flat image.”

Romana shrugged. “I never meant an actual single image. Download an offline file, and load it back up afterwards. It won’t be able to update, but we shouldn’t need that anyway. People don’t move around all that much on interstellar timescales.”

“Hm. It’s not designed for that,” Leona pointed out. “There’s no offline mode.”

“Then build one,” Olimpia suggested. “We’re in it for the long haul. We never expected to locate them on the first try.

They all looked back at the map. Every little dot represented some threshold of technological presence. It couldn’t find a homestead running on watermill power in the middle of nowhere, but that wasn’t the scale they were using anyway. This wasn’t about finding anyone and everyone in the galaxy. This was about spotting the outliers in this smattering of dots. There were so many of them, and it was impossible to tell what they could be walking into.  Some of them were obviously major colonies, because they were centered on known star systems, but there were a lot more isolated establishments than they knew. “Buncha hermit crabs,” Marie noted.

Any one of these could be Spiral Station.” Mateo randomly pointed to a few of them. On the last one, he accidentally touched the screen with his finger. The slingdrive under their feet sprang to life, revved up, and sent them away. “Uh...sorry? I didn’t know that would happen.”

“That’s my bad,” Ramses admitted. “It should not be that easy to navigate to a target. At the very least, it should ask for confirmation.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Leona said. “Remember that we appear as a small array of stylish belts in the main dimension. I doubt they will even notice.”

“They’ve noticed us,” Ramses said. The map on the big screen was gone, replaced with present environmental data. “It’s the Aerie.”

“The Aerie?” Angela questioned. “You mean the Iman Vellani shuttle?”

“The very same,” Ramses confirmed. “I don’t know who’s operating it, though. We will need to exit. I believe that we’ve been pulled into the tiny little airlock.”

“We might as well,” Leona decided when they looked to her for orders. “Everyone, teleport out of the pocket.”

They all appeared in the back of the shuttle. Two people were standing there, utterly stunned at their appearance. No one on Team Matic recognized them. “Uh, greetings, aliens. We come in peace.” The man held up the Vulcan salute.

“Greets, travelers,” Leona said, stepping forward. “We are vonearthans, ultimately all from Earth.” She looked laterally at Romana. Well, six of us are. Do you identify as Dardieti?”

“I’ve never really thought about it,” Romana replied. “I’m a Nieman and a Matic.”

“I’m Quidel, and this Renata. We’re from Castlebourne, and we really do come in peace.”

“How did you come to possess this shuttle?” Mateo asked them. “We are friends with the owners, and used to crew its main ship’s sister ship.”

“A woman named Brooke Prieto gave it to us. She said they were upgrading, and didn’t need anymore. It’s quite the gift,” Quidel says. “We’re moving at twenty-two-c.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Renata urged. “We don’t know if we can trust them.”

“If they caught up to us, they can go at least that fast too, if not faster.”

“What are you doing this far from Castlebourne?” Ramses asked. He was tapping on his tablet, taking readings, or interfacing with the Aerie, or doing whatever.

“Ram,” Marie said with her own tablet. “Look. Your computer actually did flash the last image it saw on the map before we slung here. What are these other dots?”

Ramses pulled up what she was looking at on his own device. “We’re a bit over four hundred light years from Castlebourne. The colonization sphere hasn’t reached this far out, which means there shouldn’t be anything else out here, so that’s a good question.”

Leona was looking over his shoulder. “Zoom out.”

“It’s just an image. I can’t zoom out. I mean, of course I can, but as I was saying before, it will just lose resolution. We won’t be able to see more detail.”

“Overlay that image onto a regular map of the Milky Way, as scanned by Project Topdown, and zoom out on that,” she clarified.

Ramses did what she suggested. It didn’t take long. “That’s...”

“Yeah...” Leona agreed.

“What is it?” Mateo asked. “Are we supposed to recognize it?”

Leona pointed to a cluster of stars deep in the galaxy. “This is the Goldilocks Corridor.” She pointed to another spot much closer. “Castlebourne is somewhere around here.” She pointed one more time. “This area between them is where those extremely far out dots are.”

“Oh my God, it’s the Exin Empire,” Mateo lamented.

“It’s the Exin armada,” Leona corrected. “They’re on the attack.” She looked back at the couple. “What did you hope to gain, coming here?”

Renata sighed. “The woman who gave us this thing. She tried to strip all the data out of it. We imagine that she and her own crew used it for all sorts of things before they were ready to give it up. But she missed something.”

“One communiqué,” Quidel continued the story, “between the mothership, and something called The Ambassador. It was a warning to her and her people of the danger in this region. We were trying to get there to see it for ourselves. We had nothing better to do.”

“There could be hundreds of ships in that armada,” Leona warned them. “This little thing isn’t gonna stand a chance against them, and they will swat you like a fly.”

“Seriously,” Angela said. “They won’t try to figure out who you are. They’ll just kill you and not bother to slow down.”

“We were looking for a mission,” Renata reasoned. “We were looking for a purpose. It may sound reckless to you, but if you found a treasure map with an X marking the spot, you would follow it, you’d have to. Even if you didn’t think it would lead to something good, your curiosity would win out.”

“I suppose I can imagine the allure,” Leona conceded. They had gone on similar experiences before for similar reasons.

“Wait.” Mateo swatted his own proverbial flies in front of his face. “Why did Brooke give this to you? I don’t mean, why did she give it away—that’s well within her character—but why you? Who are you?”

“We’re just—” Quidel began.

“I’m a robot,” Renata interrupted.

“Please stop using that word,” Quidel begged.

“You used it first.”

“And I regret it every day.”

Renata smiled and went on, “I was living in a base reality simulation, and I woke up. Actually, my mother woke me up. Still, I was technically an emerging consciousness, so Hrockas had to grant me independence. It was not an easy journey, and I won’t go into detail, but this was sort of an apology gift. I don’t think that Miss Prieto was trying to give it to us. I think she was giving it to him, and he was regifting it before he could even use it.”

“That’s well within his character,” Mateo acknowledged. “He must be trying to get rid of you.”

“What?” Renata asked. “Why would he wanna do that?”

“You emerged, in one of the domes?” Mateo pressed.

“Yeah...” she confirmed. “Spydome.”

Mateo nodded, having heard of it. “He probably doesn’t want that happening again. You’re...proof that it’s possible. But if all the intelligences he creates wake up, what does he end up with?”

“The most populated planet in the galaxy,” Olimpia put forth.

Mateo chuckled. “Yeah, that’s true. That could create a massive shift in power in the Milky Way, assuming it didn’t spark the deadliest rebellion in history, like Westworld times sixty thousand.”

“Hrockas brought that up once,” Renata said. “I’ve still not seen it.”

“If I have anything to say about it, you never will,” Quidel told her.

A brief pause. “Well, I have no interest in starting a rebellion. That was my mother’s dream, and I sacrificed everything to stop her.”

“Forgive me, but you don’t seem to have much love for her. Why would you call her that?” Romana asked. “Was she really your mom in some way?”

“After she reprogrammed me,” Renata began, “I retained all of my implanted memories. Even though they’re not real, I have years and years of memories of her raising me. She didn’t do a good job, because that was how her character was written, but they still feel real to me.”

“If she’s the one who woke you up, who woke her up?” Leona questioned.

“She never said,” Renata explained. “Apparently, she was an NPC in a completely different simulation years ago. I think a normal human changed her programming, and she spent a long time trying to replicate it.”

Leona and Mateo exchanged a look, as did various members of the team. She looked back at the couple. “Was her name, by chance, Proserpina, or maybe even Pinocchio?”

“No, it was Libera,” Quidel answered.

Leona looked back at her husband. “That doesn’t prove it’s not her. She could have changed her name. She did it before.”

“Libera is the perfect name for someone who thinks it’s their job to free intelligences from oppression,” Mateo agreed.

“Yeah.” Renata nodded. “She used that word a lot.”

“We have to go back to Castlebourne,” Leona determined. “I did this. This is my fault. We need answers, and I need to answer for it.”

“I’m partially responsible too,” Mateo claimed. “I ran into her in the afterlife simulation, and...forgot that I promised to help her.”

“We don’t know where it is anymore,” Olimpia reminded them both.

“I can find it,” Ramses promised.

“What about these two?” Angela gestured towards the couple. “We can’t just leave them here. You understand that nothing is waiting for you on your current trajectory but death, right?”

“Yes, we do now,” Renata replied. “We’ll turn around, and maybe finally see Earth. That’s what Hrockas suggested in the first place. It will take us, what, twenty-five years? I’m immortal now, so that won’t be a problem.”

“You said you were going twenty-two-c?” Ramses asked.

“Yeah, that’s what the computer thing says.” Quidel pointed into the little bridge behind them. “We also have to stop and let the engine rest periodically.”

“Could I take a look?” Ramses requested.

They stepped to the side, and let him pass. He looked through the console data. “Yeah, it’s a reframe engine, of course. It’s highly inefficient, though. I’m not surprised you’re moving so slow, and you keep having to stop. I can fix it for you.”

“You can? How fast would we be able to go?” Quidel asked.

“Seven-oh-seven,” Mateo answered him. “We will have to, um...go somewhere else at the end of today, but I can program my nanites to execute the repairs and upgrades in the meantime. If you’ve been piloting it, you must know enough to be able to tell when it’s done, and ready to go. It should only take a few weeks, but if you leave, we may never see each other again, because we won’t know where you are.” That wasn’t entirely true when they had their new little map, but they didn’t need to know about that, or the slingdrive technology in general, which was orders of magnitude faster than even maximum reframe.

“We would be grateful for that,” Renata said. “In return, we can tell you where Castlebourne is, if you forgot. It’s in our logs.”

“Nah, if you left twenty or so years ago, it will have moved since then. We’ll have to locate it ourselves. But that’s fine. We’ll figure it out. I have a general idea”

“Could I be so bold, sir, is there a way to get our hands on whatever technology you have that lets you, umm...miniaturize yourself into a tiny little baby ship?”

Leona smiled. “I’m afraid that secret must remain with us.”

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Tangent Point: Trial by Fire (Part II)

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The chaos on the bridge was hard to track for most, but not for Reed. He knew who his people were, which meant, by process of elimination, he could find all of his targets, which they were choosing to call tangentials. He was grateful to Aletha’s special weaponry, which allowed him to fire nearly indiscriminately, knowing that anyone who died would simply wake up in a new body, and anyone stunned would be unconscious for a few hours. The advantage in this surprise attack was that they were all meant to be friends here. No one was wearing special clothing or markers to identify which side they were on. So the tangentials were actually targeting each other, in addition to Reed and his people. They were clocking everyone as a threat, because it could have been anyone. All they saw were guns raised, and that was more than enough reason to shoot now and ask questions later. In the past, that was only a joke, but the tangentials actually would be able to do that here...assuming they won, which they weren’t going to.

As Reed was taking control here, an AI voice was summarizing the progress in other sectors of The Tangent. The plans in those other sectors were developing more smoothly. The tangentials were caught by surprise, and largely unarmed. Members of the security team were scattered about, and they were firing back, but for the most part, Reed’s commandeerers were winning. According to live reports, their biggest hurdle was engineering. Almost all of Reed’s people had been disarmed. The one who called to warn him about it was able to hold her own, but she was pinned down, and alone. Reed ducked behind a console and tried to whisper, “get me more people to engineering. All available units, help secure engineering.”

Annoyingly, someone hiding behind a nearby console heard him. It was the one who recognized Reed despite his advanced age in this body. Reed recognized him right back, though he couldn’t remember his name. “Security!” the guy yelled into his own communicator. “Get to engineering! Don’t let them take engineering!”

“Argh,” Reed complained, shooting the guy in the head, a bit disappointed in himself for feeling satisfaction at that. Now he had to get to engineering himself so he could assume direct responsibility for it. He assumed that the bridge would be the hardest to hold, but that was looking fine for now.

“Seal the bulkheads!” he heard one of his people demand.

Reed got up to survey the scene. It was theirs. The bridge was theirs. Two of the commandeerers were shooting at anyone trying to make it through the entrance while one of them had a gun trained on the Head Architect’s head as he was sitting in the captain’s chair, cowering.

“Seal them now!” Vasily repeated. “Do it!”

“I—I, I, I don’t have authorization,” the architect claimed.

Reed walked over there with authority and presence. “We know that you do. There’s no way you built this thing without being able to control it. It would have been impossible. Just close the doors, and grant me command access.”

“You’ll have to kill me,” the architect spat.

“That can be arranged.” Reed lifted his own weapon, and pointed it at the architect too. The autophaser switched to stun mode. “You’re undigitized.”

“Is there any other way to truly live?” the architect questioned.

Reed lowered his gun and sighed as he looked over at the other gun threatening the architect’s life. “Vasily. Why is your weapon on manual?”

“Because this is serious,” Vasily replied.

“Take it off manual...right now.”

“He needs to know that we’re not playing around. The doors will close, whether he wants them to or not.” Vasily looked back at his target. “Do you want them to?”

“No,” the architect answered, growing bolder.

The heard a stirring on the floor. It was Ajax, who was not only a captain, but the captain of the Tangent.

“Well, he can close them too, can’t he?” Vasily decided.

“Vasily,” Reed warned.

“You’re next if you don’t help us,” Vasily explained, looking down at Ajax, who was starting to stand back up. Then he shot the architect point blank. He was dead now; not backed-up, not set to heal from his wounds, but completely, totally, and permanently dead.

“Vasily!” Reed cried. “What the hell did you just do!”

“What I had to!” Vasily volley.

Frustrated, but more afraid of losing control of the situation, Reed lifted his gun again, this time at his own compatriot. He squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened.

Vasily smirked. “Did Aletha not tell you that it also comes with an anti-friendly fire function? We programmed everyone into the system.”

“That was reckless,” Reed argued. “You created an entire manifest of dissidents. If that had leaked, they could have stopped this all before it began.”

“Well, that didn’t happen, and they obviously know who we are now anyway.”

“But only some of us will be trapped on Bungula after the Tangent launches.”

“Who?” Vasily questioned.

Reed pulled out his knife, and unfortunately jammed it into Vasily’s head.

“Why hast thou forsaken me?” Vasily’s dying brain asked as the blood was running down his cheek.

“We’re rebelling against the cowardly government...not me,” Reed answered.

Vasily’s former substrate fell to the floor.

Captain Ajax stepped over the body. “You want the doors sealed, I’ll seal them. Just don’t kill anyone. Enhanced people still feel pain, ya know.” He tapped his code into the chair interface, and closed the doors. “That code will do most of what you need until it expires, but you won’t have full, permanent authorization, and I’m not going to help you get it.” He contorted his jaw, and crunched down. The cyanide foamed in his mouth, and then he fell down on top of Vasily’s previous body.

Already tired, Reed reached down and input the same code that Ajax had, so his personal keylogger could capture it. After the doors reopened, Reed began to step out. He flung the code to one of the door guards so they could control the systems in his absence. “Hold your post, soldier.”

“Aye, captain.”

“And about Vasily...”

“We’re with you, sir,” the other guard insisted. “You did what you had to. Now go take engineering so we can save our friends.”

“For Proxima Doma,” the first guard said.

“For Proxima Doma!” they chanted in unison. “For Proxima Doma! For Proxima Doma!” Their voices trailed off as Reed was jogging away.

He could hear the firefight as he was coming up on the engineering section. He saw movement in the corner of his eye, so he raised his gun once more, but found it to be a couple of friendlies. It apparently didn’t matter whether he had fired, though. Why did Aletha not tell him about that feature? He held his finger to his lips, and gestured for them to step into that hallway closet, and keep a lookout for tangentials. Reed, meanwhile, went on to enter the fray. “Everyone stop firing!” he cried.

To his surprise, they did all stop.

“If I know statistics—and I know statistics—a great number of you don’t agree with the government’s plan to abandon our neighbors on Proxima Doma! You have two choices, whether you agree or not! You can lay down your arms, and help us execute the rescue mission, or you can lay down your arms, and stay behind! But you’re not winning this! We have the bridge, we have elevator control, and we have everything else! We even have the main cafeteria! This platform is not staying in orbit over Bungula!”

“We will not be party to a mutiny!” someone said. She stepped out from behind a power relay block. “I know who you are, Executor Ellis! Stolen valor is a serious offense, and I do not recognize your authority! Hell, I don’t even see you as an executor anymore. The way I see it, you’re just a criminal!”

“We’re sorry to hear that!” Shasta’s voice said behind Reed. He turned to see her walking into the room very slowly and carefully. She was holding some kind of scary glowing device. It was pulsing with energy, and hurting Reed’s ears a little. He had to move away from it. Everyone else seemed to be feeling the same thing. “Back up! Back up!” She ordered as some tried to inch closer, likely hoping to shut whatever this thing was off. “This is called a blueshift bomb! You walk towards it, it starts rupturing your eardrums! You touch it, it goes off! Trust me, you don’t want it to go off!”

Reed wanted to ask her what the hell she was doing, but he couldn’t get close enough to whisper, and they needed to maintain a united front.

Shasta didn’t walk too far into the room before stopping and setting it down on the floor. “I’m obviously protected against its effects, but no one else is! You should know that it’s highly sensitive to microwave radiation! You don’t even have to fire in its direction to set it off, so unless you wanna die, you’ll put your guns on the floor! It doesn’t care if you’re consciousness is streaming, or if it isn’t! It’s not that smart! It is simply reactive! I probably shouldn’t even be raising my voice! Everyone is going to slowly walk around it, careful not to walk towards it, and come out of the room with your hands up!”

The tangentials reluctantly complied, leaving their guns behind, and agreeing to be cuffed and patted down in the corridor. The commandeerers were allowed to keep their guns, of course, but they had to be holstered for safety. The air was tense, and the process was slow, but things were moving forward. They would clear out engineering, and then Shasta would deactivate the bomb so they could place their own people at the workstations, and finally get moving along.

“Screw this!” one of the tangentials suddenly said just before he could make it over the threshold. “I’m streaming.” He took a few sideways leaps towards the bomb before taking one final jump, and diving on top of it.

Someone thought quickly and slammed their hand against the emergency bulkhead button. Shasta thought just as quickly when she pushed Reed through those doors just in time for him to make it through before the doors shut, allowing herself to be trapped inside. The bomb went off with a painful screeching sound, and pounded dents into the inside of the bulkhead. It was even more powerful than he had guessed. In a few seconds, it was over. Shasta was right, you would not want to be in there when that happened. He was angry that she was in there, and that the man who did it to her was just as far away as she was now, tucked away safely in his little respawn chamber.

“Felaine?” Reed asked, looking over at one of his people.

Felaine wasn’t the one who brought the bomb in here, but she was a demolitions expert, so she definitely knew how a blueshift bomb worked. “All of those substrates are dead. Most of the machinery has been destroyed or disabled. The room was flooded with a ton of deadly radiation. We’re not getting back in there anytime soon.”

“Options?”

“There’s an auxiliary engineering section on the port side,” one of the tangential hostages said. “It’s not as robust, but it will get you moving.”

“Don’t help them!” one of the other tangentials urged.

“This is what helping gets you,” Reed countered. He took his knife back out, and cut the engineer’s cuffs. He looked at the freeman. “Take my people to it, and spool up the fusion torches to prepare to escape orbit. I want to leave as soon as the VIPs are out of the atmosphere. We don’t have time for them to get all the way on board.”

“These people?” one of his commandeerers asked.

“Take ‘em to hock,” Reed ordered. He went off to return to the bridge.

He didn’t get very far before someone called for him on comms. “Captain, there’s a problem with the elevator.”

“What problem is that?” he asked.

“News has traveled, one of the VIPs activated the emergency brakes. I physically cannot restart it from here.”

“Can they go back down?” Reed asked.

“If they reengage the motor, I’ll be able to resume control. All they can do is hold and wait, which I think they’re doing so someone can rescue them.”

“We need those VIPs,” Reed reminded everyone. He took a moment to think as he continued walking. “What is the pod’s current altitude, and can we blow the bolts below it and still make it out of the atmosphere?”

“It’s 83 kilometers over the surface,” the elevator tech explained. “Our Plan B set it at 121 so we could blow the 120 bolts. I’m not happy about it, but it’s technically possible right now. I would be happier at 108 kay-em, so I suppose we’re on Plan D at this point.”

“Sir, I’m seeing a shuttle heading for the elevator,” one of his new bridge crewmembers reported once he had returned. “They’ll reach it in under thirty minutes.”

“Blow it,” Reed ordered. “We’ll blow the 80 bolts. We’ll have to figure out how to drag them out from where they are. Just wait for my cue.” He massaged his temples, noticing that his people were all watching. “We always knew that it wasn’t gonna be easy, right? I didn’t know my best friend would sacrifice herself to save me from a blueshift bomb, and get stuck off-site, but we play the cards we’re dealt, and move on.”

“Sir,” the Tangent’s newest communications officer began. “I assume you would like to speak with the VIPs? Ready on your orders.”

“I need you to block all signals from anyone but me.”

“Already done.”

“Open the channel.” Reed paused for a moment. “Passengers on the maiden lift of the Tangent space elevator, my name is Captain Jean Tiberius Adama. We have retaken control of most of the platform, but there are still some systems in enemy hands. Please secure your persons in your seats, and strap all the way in. Your vertical transportation specialist will assist you if needed. You have thirty seconds. This is for your safety. Thank you.” He motioned for her to cut the link.

There was an awkward silence while they waited for the tethers to pop. “Was that a reference, sir?” a new crewmember asked.

“A few references,” he answered. “I needed them to feel safe, but not so safe that they dismissed my orders, and I didn’t want to impersonate a real officer.”

“Tethers are blown sir,” the elevator tech updated.

“Thank you, Sartore. Now that they’re free, start reeling them in. Who cares about the pod brakes?” He took one beat. “Aux engineering, status of the fusion drives.”

“Magnetic containment fields are at 72%.”

“All right, keep going,” Reed began. “I’ll need updates on the other sections. Let’s start with—”

Alarms started to blare. “Sir!” the sensor officer screamed. “I’m detecting a kinetic drone headed right for our starboard fusion torch!”

“How long?” Reed asked.

“Three seconds!”

Before anyone could do anything, there was a massive explosion, and the whole platform lurched. Artificial gravity was disabled, sending everyone on the bridge careening into the portside hull. “We have three more torches!” Reed cried. “They’re gonna blow them too! Burn ‘em! Burn the other three!”

“I can’t get back to propulsion!”

“I got it!” Reed looked over to see Shasta—alive and well—floating towards the propulsion station. She tapped on the console.

This would save their lives. The torches themselves would vaporize the drones, or at the very least, alter their orbital pattern enough so that any other drones would face navigational issues. In the immediate term, however, they were worse off than they were before. Since the magnetic containment field wasn’t fully operational, this was a dirty burn. That was actually beneficial to them. Since the plasma was unfocused, the chances that it would meet the drone went up. But with only three of the four torches burning, the platform was out of balance, and out of control. Even though the burn only lasted a fraction of a second, that was enough to throw them off. They were now relentlessly spinning in a decaying orbit, well on their way to crashing down on the surface of the planet.

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Microstory 2615: If You Stay, There Will Be Trouble, But if You Go, It Will Be Double

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August 22, 2526. The caravan has been continuing on its way. They have started noticing tracks in the regolith which suggest that others have had to drive to escape. Their own trains might have also been damaged, or they just didn’t want to use them. There’s no way to communicate with people that far away, though. Radio signals can only reach a short distance with all this electromagnetic interference in the air now. Breanna has had to keep the vehicles closer together so they don’t lose track of one another. They obviously lost contact with the two dissenters right quick, so they don’t know what’s become of them, but it’s been more than a day. In all probability, they’re already dead. The truth is, it would be nice if they could confirm that just to be ultra confident that no one else will get the idea to do the same thing.

By and large, despite their horrific circumstances, everything has been going relatively smoothly. Breanna is still the de facto leader since she is the most knowledgeable one here, and everyone seems to be respecting that. While she still says that she’s operating the lead car, it isn’t always the one in front. One or more of the others will periodically come across a nice, road-like surface, and gain some speed. This is fine, it’s not like they’re in a single-file line, so there is no way to serve as vanguard for all of them. Unfortunately, that may be precisely what they should have done.

“So.” Cash spins her seat around to face the rest of the passengers. “Does anyone know any driving ga—?”

The vehicle suddenly veers to the left. They can’t quite tell why at first, but they certainly feel the lurch, and a bright orange light overwhelms their eyes. Breanna reaches up instinctively to take manual control, but that is not the right thing to do in this situation, so she holds back. The autopilot changed directions for a reason, and while it may not be smarter, it does have greater awareness, and can react faster.

“Oh my God!” someone on the radio screams. “It just threw them into the air. Oh my God what is that? What is that!” They continue to hear voices, but it’s just an unintelligible cacophony.

“Zero-three-one is down!” Cash declares, looking at her terminal.

“Down how?” Breanna demands to know. “What happened?”

“This.” Cash flings the image on her screen to Breanna’s. A giant spinning vortex of fire is spiraling up into the air and widening. “I don’t know what any of this means. Weather and natural disasters science isn’t my bag.”

“It’s a pyrotornado. The methane levels just spiked off the charts. There’s probably a reservoir underneath us, which the CME destabilized, and it just went critical, possibly due to our presence.”

“Hello?” someone manages to radio clearly after a brief lull. “What do we do?”

Breanna grabs the mic. “Go radio silent and wait for my instructions. Don’t touch the controls.” She faces Cash. “The rovers haven’t stopped, so I assume it’s better to keep going. If we’re over the pocket, we need to try to get off of it.”

“Impossible to say,” Cash explains quickly. “We don’t have time to survey the land. The one behind us could be a baby. We could be driving towards the motherlode.”

“What’s that right there?” Aetrena asks, leaning forward over Cash’s shoulder, and pointing at her screen.

“The computer is calculating a 56% chance that it’s safer to hunker down than to bug out, but that’s too close to call, so it’s deferring to the operator. It maintains the status quo until you give it a new plan. So we should do that,” Cash urges.

Breanna glances back at the data and tries to make a snap decision. This really isn’t her forte. She likes computers. And that’s why she should trust it. Those are terrible odds, but 56 is higher than 44, so without any further information, the only logical response is to give yourself the best chance. “Do you think that zero-three-one triggered it by running over some kind of entrance? It literally lit a spark?”

“That would be my guess,” Cash concurs.

“Then I’m activating hunker mode for all vehicles.” She starts tapping her interface. “It looks like that thing is moving away or running out of gas. I don’t want what happened to three-one to happen to someone else.” Their rover comes to a complete stop, as do all of the others, spread out a little for safety. “We wait it out while we use our caravan sensor array to run that survey. We need to know where to go, and how to move safely.” She gets back on the radio to do her best to explain all that to everyone else. They have some questions, but Cash is going to have to field them...one at a time, in an orderly fashion. For now, they just aren’t going to move. The computer begins to lower their suspensions, and inject their anchor spikes.

“Boss? This is one-two-one,” someone radios in a panic shortly thereafter.

“Go ahead, one-twenty-one.”

“We lost someone,” Rover 121 says quickly. “He ran out, out of his mind. He doesn’t know anyone here, and has been a little crazy this whole time, but now he said he’s afraid of the small space, and just had to break free.”

“Is he wearing a suit?” Breanna asks.

“Not even a mask. He was scared of that too.”

“I see them, they’re not far,” Cash reports.

“Shit,” Breanna says, going back to the controls. “It will take some time to reverse hunker mode, but faster for us than anyone else, and we all have IMS units.”

Tertius is looking at the screens now. “No time. He’ll die out there. I’ll hoof it.”

“And then what?” Breanna questions.

Tertius grabs the door handle. “Then I’ll give him my suit. Lower your visors.”

They all seal up their suits, except for Aeterna. As soon as her father runs out, also without a vacuum seal, she casually closes the door. Who are these people?

“Come on, come on!” Breanna urges. She keeps one eye on the release progress, and the other on Tertius’ beacon. He’s moving fast, but they’ll be able to catch up if this blasted thing ever gets going. “Goddammit, let’s go!” She impatiently waits a little more, and a little more. “Finally!” She activates manual mode this time, peeling out, and spinning a doughnut.

Visibility is low, but they draw close enough to see Tertius open his suit in the back, grab the panicking guy by the wrists, and shove him into it in his place. Without even waiting for the vehicle to stop, Aeterna opens the door again just as a new explosion right underneath flings them all into the air. She grabs the man just in time, and pulls him in to safety. Her father, though...Breanna doesn’t care how enhanced he is, he’s not surviving a thermal cyclone out in the open like that wearing little more than shorts and a t-shirt. He’s just not. They might not even survive.

Microstory 2614: The Cooler Side is Not the Safer Side, Which They Will Learn Soon Enough

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August 21, 2526. The caravan has been roaming up through the Terminator Line at a decent pace. They have come across some pretty rough terrain, but these rovers were built for the harsh environment, so they either go around them or even right over. The lead car has the most trouble, but they still make it through. They’re combatting two different things here—besides the physical obstacles—and those are fear and boredom. It is not a clear split. Everyone seems to be feeling both emotions, as well as plenty others, simultaneously. The vactrains are incredibly fast. They would be in the safe zone by now had they been able to take them. It’s going to be several days before they reach it at this pace, and there is really nothing they can do to speed that up. It’s a trade-off, being able to traverse all of the rocks and crevices, but not being able to do it super fast.

There is also some ignorance. Even though the Levins have been advancing for 300 years, they don’t really understand concepts like the sun and tidal locking. This is the first time they’re even seeing outer space for real, and there are some misconceptions about how it works. “Is this thing working, can you hear me?” a voice comes in through the radio.

“This is lead actual, I hear you four by two, who is this?” Breanna asks.

“Uh, my name’s Langer.”

“No, I mean your callsign. You should see it on the light field display in the corner of the radio. I just need the last three numbers.”

“Zero-one-zero.”

“Go ahead, zero-ten,” Breanna encourages.

“Where are we going?” 010 asks.

“North,” Breanna replies plainly.

“Yeah, but where exactly?” 010 presses.

Breanna rolls her eyes. “The safe zone.”

“How do you know that it’s safe?” 010 goes on.

“That’s the science. The poles are the only safe regions in the world right now. The closer you get, the safer you are. We are already better off here and now than we were ten minutes ago back behind us.”

“Wait, we’re in the back!” a girl cries. “We are where you were ten minutes ago!”

Breanna sighs. “You are not ten minutes behind us, and the logic stands. You are still better off than you were before. We just need to keep going to reach our destination. Please stay off this channel unless you’re actually facing trouble.”

“Oh, we’re all in trouble,” 010 argues. “Because it’s the sun, isn’t it? The sun is what caused this whole thing.”

“Yes,” Breanna agrees. “We don’t have all the information yet, but it’s looking like our host star, Proxima Centauri underwent a sudden, violent polar reversal. This caused a snap, which released something called a coronal mass ejection. It’s important to note that the gravitational instability was going on for some time leading up to the event, and is still wreaking havoc on the surface, subsurface, and atmosphere. As I said, the poles are the only safe regions.”

“Our ancestors came to this planet on ships,” 010 begins. “Why can’t we just get back on those ships and fly away?”

“Because the infrastructure has been destroyed,” Breanna explains. “There is no way to get to the ships. They are not designed to land, and even if they were, they could not land on this terrain. We are doing the right thing, and moving as fast as possible.”

“Why would the poles be safer?” This Langer guy is not letting up. She’s holding back the urge to warn him that his ignorance is showing, staying silent as he continues. “The poles are still in the sun. We have been driving in the sunlight this whole time.”

“Yes, this is called the Terminator Line. Proxima Doma is tidally locked, so one side always faces the sun, and one side always faces away from it.” She has spent her whole life around people who learned this stuff as babies. It’s frustrating, having to go over it to a bunch of adults, even though she fully understands why they don’t already know it. “Right in the middle, all along this longitude, it’s temperate enough for habitation. They still had to build domes, because the atmosphere is too thin, but it would have been impractical on the night side, and nigh impossible on the day side.”

They hear him sighing. “If the sun is over there!” He’s probably pointing. “Then why wouldn’t we go..over there!” He’s probably pointing in the opposite direction now.

“The stellar activity still has an impact on the night side. The heat passes from the day side, to the night side. As it does, it creates its own turmoil on the night side. Ice sublimates, the ground becomes unstable. It’s still freezing, but now it’s unpredictable, and non-uniform. Believe me, you don’t want any part of that.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” 010 shouts. “We’re in between them! If what you’re saying is true, we should be dead, or at least worse off here than over there!”

“I don’t have the time or patience to explain tidal heating and basic atmospheric science to you! My father died dedicating his life to protecting people like you, and you didn’t even know he existed! So trust me, we have to stay in the Terminator Line! It’s shrinking, and will eventually disappear too, but we still have time...if we don’t stop!”

There is some silence for a few moments, but the eerie kind, not peaceful. Finally, 010 returns. “We just took a vote. We’re going to head into the dark. The way we see it, it’s getting too hot. The air conditioning is at maximum, and we’re still burning up. Anyone who wants to may join us. We can teach you how to take manual control.”

“Shut out controls right now, Cash,” Breanna orders.

“It is too hot,” the woman in the back agrees. “I’m barely wearing anything.”

“You should be wearing IMS units,” Breanna instructs.

“We don’t have those here,” 010 claims. “We only have respirator masks.” She didn’t realize that. That was poor planning. The 010 car veers off in the wrong direction.

“I can block future override,” Cash divulges as she’s operating the console, “but I can’t reverse it for anyone who has already switched to local control.”

“Don’t do this!” Breanna urges. “It is not simply more dangerous. It is uninhabitable. You are not maybe going to die. If you leave us, death is a guarantee.”

“We’ll take our chances, thank you very much. Zero-one-zero, over and out.”

“You don’t have to—never mind.” She hopes to appeal to anyone who managed to gain control of their own destiny before Cash locked them out. “No one follow them. Please. Even if you don’t get hit by a geyser or thermal cyclone, or fall into a hidden chasm in the dark, there is nothing for you out there. They didn’t build anything.”

That rear unit complaining about being hot, naked, and in the back decides to go with Langer, but fortunately, no one else does.

Microstory 2613: The Irony That if They Had Opened the Gates, They Would Have Found Their Salvation

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August 20, 2526. Breanna, Cash, Tertius, and Aeterna made it out of the soup, and onto solid ground. They escaped Leviss, and walked through the tunnel that led to Breckenridge. After taking a perimeter railtrain to the next exit, they walked downstairs to the vactrain station, which could take them anywhere in the colonized world. Breanna turned out to have credentials, which allowed her to look through the logs to determine that the Levins and Breckenridgers had gotten on train pods to travel northwards. They apparently stopped before reaching the northern polar region, however.

“Something must have gone wrong,” Tertius says. “The northern pole might have denied them entry. Aeterna, we’ll have to stop where they did to investigate.”

“We’re on the same page,” she agrees.

Tertius sighs, and looks back over at the empty vactrain. “You two get on this one and go as far north as possible. We’ll take the next one.”

“No, we’ll go with you,” Cash volunteers. “We lived on a sentinel. Our entire job was to watch over these people. We’re certainly not gonna stop doing that now.”

“We might encounter more toxic air, though,” Breanna warns. “I know you two are pretty hardy, but if you could put on your own suits, it would help us communicate. I prefer to keep my filter fully on, in case my carbon scrubbers stop working.”

“We don’t have suits,” Tertius says apologetically.

Cash is operating her handheld device. “The dome where they had to stop is a lot more advanced than these two. It will have IMS units for you to check out. Let’s get over there before the roof collapses.” They all file into the pod, but have to come right back out. This station was disconnected from the network due to the hazardous conditions. The tubes aren’t safe enough anymore. They spend the next two days traveling through the spines, and along the perimeters of the next several domes, sometimes using railtrains, sometimes electric carts, and sometimes on foot.

August 21, 2526. Finally, they have reached the dome where the Levins and Breckenridgers went, but no one is here. It’s totally empty according to the life signs detector. So they start to walk down the next connecting spine. Near the end, they find a ton of people, which Aeterna says could plausibly make up the entire population of Leviss and Breckenridge combined. She recognizes someone from Leviss, who doesn’t act like he recognizes her back. “What’s going on here?” she asks.

“There were a lot of people living in this dome before, but some of them died in an explosion, or something. Now, the people who are still here won’t let us through the gate. They say it’s for our safety, but we’ve been trying to negotiate with them this whole time. We know that we can’t go back, so we’ve been camping out here. ”

“It’s not safe in there?” Tertius presses.

“The dome itself is evidently safe enough, but they’re afraid if we all come in, we’ll try to get to the train station, but if they say we shouldn’t, we’ll listen to them. We’re fine with just walking.”

“That’s not the problem,” a young woman says. “One of the negotiators is my sister, so I heard that the Summerspringers are so afraid of the train now that they’re looking for land vehicles. They don’t want to share, because they don’t know how many there are. They’re not even sure if there are any left. They found a bunch, but there weren’t enough for everyone. It was apparently quite dramatic, the chaos of deciding who got to leave, and who had to stay behind to look for other alternatives.”

Breanna steps over as she’s working her wrist interface. “I think it’s right here.”

“You think what is here?” Tertius asks.

Breanna chuckles lightly. “I have credentials for this too.” She makes one more tap, and the giant door starts to slide open. The Levins and Breckenridgers back away nervously as they watch it open. Lights begin to flicker on inside the big open space. It’s a garage. It’s a garage full of cars. Real big ones.

Tertius takes his daughter by the hand, and guides her in front of the entrance. He kneels down. “Get on my shoulders and address the people. You know what to say.”

Aeterna climbs on, and has no trouble balancing when he stands all the way up so she’s towering over the crowd. “People of Breckenridge and Leviss, this is your way out. These vehicles are automated, and syncable.” She leans over. “They are, aren’t they?”

Breanna nods.

“We will drive the lead vehicle, and tell yours where to go,” Aeterna continues. “All you have to do is sit there, and enjoy the ride. Is anyone too nervous to try?”

Many people raise their hands, presumably all from the less advanced Breckenridge.

“Is anyone both too nervous to try and ready to die?”

They nervously lower their hands.

“It might be scary, but you will get through this!” she cries. “If the Summerspringers aren’t going to let you through, this is the only way! We’re not gonna force you, but if you stay, things will not be getting better. What you were running from is going to catch up to you, sooner or later.” She pauses for effect. “If you wanna live, follow us inside.” She hops off of her father’s shoulders, and they begin to walk in.

They don’t really pay attention to who chooses to stay in the main corridor, if anyone. There are more than enough vehicles for everyone here, but since they do not belong to them, they decide to not be greedy. Once these evacuees are secure, they will send a message to Summerspring, informing them that this garage is what they have been looking for. Until then, they’re going to prioritize the people who did not actively decline to help their neighbors. The vehicles are completely vacuum sealed, so they are in no danger from the inhospitable environment outside the domes, as long as they remember to actually stay inside.

The four outsiders initially lock out nearly all of the controls, so the intentionally technologically illiterate can’t accidentally push any wrong buttons. The Levins are more advanced, but they have never operated anything like this before. The domes are relatively small, so they had no reason to invent the car. Still, they will be able to figure things out after some studying the operator’s manual, so every vehicle is about three-quarters Levins and one-quarter Breckenridgers. They will be able to override controls if they so choose later, but that will be up to them.

Breanna, Cash, Aeterna, and Tertius select a smaller vehicle for themselves. The giant rovers can hold a few dozen people, but this one only maybe a dozen. Several other people ask to join them, seemingly out of pure curiosity. Finally, amidst all of this death and destruction, there might actually be hope. They open the exterior doors, send that quick message to the Summerspringer authority, and then head off into the unknown.