Terra's Wake - Chapter 3

Rosa Huang

The bench at the space dock is hurting my back. Captain Gomez-Velasco isn’t here yet, nor is the Vice-captain or the Chief Engineer. Should I just go to the bar or something? Should I stay he-

“Hello, Ms. Huang, I assume?”

Captain’s here.

I stand up straight, stop myself from doing a salute. It’s trained too deeply into my mind. “Hello, sir.”

“Glad to see you here, I actually wanted to run down some ship-related things with you,” He smiles, extending his right arm for a handshake and hefting his luggage with his left.

I didn’t bring any luggage.

I shake his hand, “I, uh, I’m willing to talk with you… but I have to go back planet-side really quick.”

“Why?”

“I got too… excited… and left my luggage in my apartment.” God he’s going to request another pilot, this is stupi-

He chuckles, “I’ve done that before on my first mission, too. Don’t beat yourself up too much.”

What.

“Ri- uh, right,” I stammer.

“I’ll meet you on the bridge when you get back,” he says and goes to the airlock door.

That would never happen in the Militia, I think to myself before spinning on my heels.

***

My apartment is simple, on the hundred-and-fiftieth floor, overlooking a small park where I can see street vendors and their customers lining around the block, in between trees. I pick up a little bag out of the closet and pull open my squat, cheap, little wooden dresser. Three red uniforms, some underwear, an extra set of shoes.

As I lift my shoes out of the drawer, the navy blue-black of my old uniform reveals itself. The silver emblem on the lapel reflects the red sunlight that’s drifting in through the window: a pointed chevron holding up a bright blue sphere. Terra on the precipice, Terra in balance. The two ideas had to coexist: perpetual danger and perpetual greatness. Else, there would be no Terra left.

That was the idea, anyways. The Militia destroyed Sol because they couldn’t stand not being in charge. I don’t know how I didn’t see the illogical nature of the Militia sooner. It took the apocalypse for me to finally work up the courage to leave.

I catch myself staring at this little lapel pin and put it down, burying it under some socks and spare shirts, and slide the drawer shut. I look around the small, simple room. Even this small accommodation is better than anything that would be provided by the Militia, even if I was the best pilot they’ve ever seen.

Pling.

I freeze. The notification sound is partly muted, soft, and distant. I know exactly what it is. Slowly, I turn back to the dresser and open the bottom drawer, move aside the blue fabric of my old uniforms, and lift a square and chunky commpad out. The top left corner, the Militia emblem was embossed. A single notification flag showed on the black screen.

_STATUS?

I let out a shaky sigh and swipe up on the screen. A round keyboard appears under my palm and I instinctively begin typing out a reply.

_{MISSION IS GO. PLACED ON VERDANT. DESTINATION IS BETEL.}

A moment passes while I hold the awkwardly-shaped pad in my lap. I see a rail-shuttle slide by the window, its tinted windows refracting golden-red light around my room like an animated stained glass window.

Pling.

_{NEGATIVE. DO NOT ENGAGE PLAN ON VERDANT. AGENTS IN PLACE ON BETEL.}

Oh thank god, I sigh hard. The commpad slides off my legs onto the hardwood floor with a plastic clatter. I rub my eyes and stand back up.

* * *

Parker Burnham

Fszzzhf.
Fszzzhf.
Fszzzhf.
Clink.

Fuck.

The little screw bounces around oddly in the low gravity, defying any attempt I make at grasping at it. Finally I am able to corral it into my chest, bluntly and awkwardly using both my arms. Carefully reaching into the safe little nest it made itself, I pick out the escapist screw and softly place it onto the magnetic screwdriver tip.

Fszzzhf.

There. Final panel put back in place, I’m able to mark off checking the engine control unit circuitry on the pre-flight.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

What’s that?

I poke my head up from behind the engine control console. A short, dark man with long, slick, black hair stands in the middle of the bridge, looking out the viewscreens.

“Can I help you?” I ask.

He jumps, startled, clutching his commpad to his chest, and he’s frozen like a statue for a moment before chuckling to himself and shaking his head.

I stand up fully, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s no big deal, I thought I was the first one on board.” He extends a hand out to me, over the console. “I’m Captain Max.”

Oh shit.

I shake his hand quickly.

Probably too quick. Oh, don’t worry about this now.

“I’m Parker, the chief engineer,” I stammer out.

“Oh good! I was wondering when I’d meet you,” he smiles. “How’s the Verdant?”

I put both hands on my hips, following the captain’s gaze around the bridge. “She’s in top shape, if I didn’t know better I’d think she came out of the shipyard yesterday.”

“Wonderful.”

“Yes, wonderful,” I agree.

We both stand in the muted white LED light for a moment longer before I continue speaking.

“I hope you don’t mind, I’m going to the engine room to finish my pre-flight.”

“Please!” He says, “Don’t let me keep you.”

I tap my chest and he nods. Putting my head down, I walk through the open bulkhead at the rear of the bridge and down the narrow corridor that runs the length of the ship, from bridge to the closet at the rear of engineering. All one hundred and nine feet, eleven and-a-half inches. Crews four, umbragenic drive rated for seven hundred and fifty light years before the risk of overheating becomes significant. Deployable emergency radiators and a solar sail should the drive be pushed beyond its limits and fail. But the problem with umbragenic propulsion is that, when it fails, it doesn’t just stop working. The drive keeps warping space, keeps pushing the ship along, until the space around the ship gains enough energy to become a black hole.

But that’s only if you push it.

Einstein stays happy because you’re not pushing the ship, you’re pushing the space around the ship. Standard relativity stuff, but it’s what lets us fly among the stars. Captain stays happy because he gets to where he wants to go.

Pling.

A new flag shows up on my commpad, strapped to my arm with velcro, airlock door opens and closes.

That’s three of four.

it doesn’t take long to reach the back of the ship. It’s short. It’s compact. It’s efficient.

The last thing on the pre-flight checklist is the umbragenic drive diagnostic. Three simple button presses on the console and that should be done within the hour.

Pre-flight done ten hours early.

 

 

Terra's Wake - Chapter 2

 

Chapter 2 - Sophie Paradiso

Five years ago.

Edgar isn’t coming. His last communication denounced us as a family of cowards. He says we’re disappointments to Sol, to Terra, to the entire human race. All that militia bullshit. But when the Scream happened, and he didn’t run away to us, and when I knew he was dead—when I knew he and the Militia killed Elli, was when I finally let myself cry.

Oh, hell, did I cry.

I wanted to sink into the floor where I stood, my mother held me in her arms, comforting me even though I didn’t want her comfort. I tried and tried to escape her embrace but she held on to me, grabbed a chair from behind her, and slid it underneath me. She made me sit.

It felt like she stopped my free fall with that chair, she denied me the time to wallow and allowed me time to think. She knelt down on her bad knees to get face to face with me, tears navigating the creases and folds of her own face, and spoke to me. I couldn’t hear it between my own chokes and sobs and the whining tone that screamed from the inside of my head, like my brain was thrashing around in its own sorrow, but I certainly could feel the words she said.

“Cry now, cry hard,” she said. “But tomorrow we’ll remember. Tomorrow we’ll remember Elli and Edgar.

I didn’t want to remember Edgar. I wanted Elli back in my arms, I wanted to rip her from whatever disaster befell Mars and the Sol system, and hold her and never let go.

For years, I watched the star that hung silently over the mountain range to the northwest, where I knew she was. That light is from when Elli and I were together. That light washed over Jupiter as we hugged for the last time on Jovia. That light emitted from the sun when Elli was on Mars, doing whatever she was doing. Maybe she was at work when it happened. Maybe she was at home watching the TV. Maybe she was on her balcony looking up at Carina.

I had blinked.

I had looked away for a second.

I had looked down to pet my cat.

My neighbors gasped.

When I looked up, the soft fur pushing itself against my leg in the cold night air, the quiet star was gone.

I thought I had lost it, I thought I’d misplaced it momentarily

The warm light was gone, and this time I had nothing to stop my crying.

I ran into a sheer cliff of logic. There’s no logical response to seeing a star just blink out of existence. But it wasn’t there. She wasn’t there.

Terra's Wake - Chapter 1

 

1. Max Gomez-Velasco

“Twenty years ago, Terra screamed,” the director said.

“Every light-radio channel lit up with as many desperate voices speaking in as many desperate languages as could fit in the nigh-unregulated electromagnetic radio spectrum. The quantum telegraphs flipped out of control, spitting out message after message. The New Solar Militia had unleashed something terrible, something beyond scientific understanding, and then they were gone.

“A few more warpships faded in on the outer edges of the Carina system, packed full to the brim with desperate people fleeing the cradle of humanity, but then they stopped coming.

“Over a decade later, with very little understanding of what happened back in the ancestral home of our species, the authorities of Carina ordered everything that could pick up a radio signal point at the dim little star named Sol. As the photons finished their fifteen light-year journey to Carina, they stopped coming too.

“Sol winked into darkness.” He let the weight of those words rest on the heads of everyone in attendance for a moment before continuing, “Any expedition there to examine what might remain has reported the exact same thing: nothing.”

The auditorium was silent. The stinging void in space where Sol and Earth used to be was also stinging the minds of every human that sat in the arched rows, silently twiddling pens and styluses in the shared remembrance of the event. Some here were children on the warpships that fled.

“So, that leaves the children of Terra scattered,” Director Yakovich announced finally. He let the room stew in the mock funeral for Earth as long as he could bear. “We’ve had infrequent contact with the other three colonies, very little trade, and definitely not any academic or scientific exchange.

“So that’s where you come in.” He clicked the remote in his hand, and the lights fade up on the simple auditorium. The black walls behind him were lined with screens that duplicated his image and banners for the Carinaean Republic, waving lightly in the recirculated air. “You captains and vice-captains assembled here are to dispatch on a mission of good-will diplomacy, to reconnect humanity and rebuild the infrastructure that Sol was maintaining.”

My commpad beeped, one in a small and quiet chorus of other devices alerting their owners.

“Each of you is receiving a ship to command, a small crew, and as many resources as you may need. Your command is hereby reorganized, by authority of the Carinaean Council of Ministers, into Special Detachment Gold Wing, under the Carinaean Interstellar Corps.” The director paused, adjusted his uniform, and continued, “I am your fleet commander and therefore your point-of-contact with Carina. If you run into unforeseen difficulties that are not outlined in the mission briefs you’ve been sent, you are to q-telegraph me at once.”

The director set down the remote on a desk in the center of the room. “You depart in twenty-two hours. Dismissed.”

There was a rumble of personal items being collected, chairs being pushed in and out, commpads waking up, and voices of people in several languages as they all collectively spread out towards the exits.

Sophie looked at me, “Well, Captain Max,” she said lightheartedly. “I have to go hire a cat-sitter. I’ll meet you at the docks?”

“Agreed, Vice-captain,” I said. “Twenty-two hours.”

She smiled and picked up her heavy faux-leather coat. A rainbow of patches from various ships and missions were arranged on its back, and as she draped it over her arm it appeared as if she was wearing the patches more than the coat.

Terra's Wake

Twenty years ago, Terra screamed.

Every radio channel lit up with as many desperate voices speaking in as many desperate languages in as many radio bands could hold them. The quantum telegraphs flipped out of control, spitting out message after message. The Solar Militia had done something terrible, something beyond scientific understanding, and then they were gone. A few more ships warped in, fleeing the cradle of humanity, but then they stopped coming.

A few years later, as the photons finished their three light year journey here to Carina, they stopped coming too.

Sol winked into darkness.