The Planetsider Read online

  As a boy, no older than Elijah, Ethan had not been the first to ask the questions – why? how? when? – just as his nephew had been doing earlier that night, and he was not the first to be warned not to ask such questions. It had always surprised and even baffled Ethan that no-one wanted to know. The view was that this civilisation, no matter how advanced it was, had failed catastrophically, and it was best forgotten. The descendants of those who survived were a new people, a civilisation detached from these ancestors. We had our stories which linked us to the past, but that was as far as it went.

  As he had become older, and more influential, Ethan had managed to learn more. There was evidence that the ancestors possessed the ability to travel great distances, perhaps even to the stars, but most dismissed this as nonsense. Still, Ethan had been to the cities, and seen the machines – some of which remained intact, if decayed with age – and it fuelled his wonder that perhaps there were survivors from this time, and perhaps one day they would return. But, theories and guessing aside, the reality was that there was little hard evidence of anything. The earliest accounts were simply based on heresay and half-remembered stories that had been passed on from one to another. Any reliable record of history began an unknown number of years after The Fall, when settlements had been established and life had become ordered enough to allow for leaders to start chronicling their days. These records told of a time of fear and uncertainty; almost chaos. As The Maddening took hold and the adults starting dying, many of the other survivors simply died of starvation or exposure. It chilled Ethan to his core to think of children, younger even than Elijah, left alone to fend for themselves in the aftermath. They must have known fear like no human before them, or since. But, incredibly, some survived, enough to build a future. In the ashes, new leaders rose. Young men and women – boys and girls really – who managed to make it away from the cities, and their Maddened elders – some of whom were their family members, even parents – and lay the foundations of the settlements that exist today. Successive generations had enhanced these settlements and built new ones, eventually linking up with other settlers to form the network of twenty-seven that were known to exist today.

  But for Ethan it was still a hollow existence. The settlements ably provided for people’s survival, but to merely survive was not enough. Ethan thought of Elijah and tried to imagine the kind of life he would have as he grew up. In a few years he would begin to learn more about life outside the settlement and he would see how little of it there was left, and how little there was for him to experience. Then, having learned all this, he would be told that he couldn’t know the reason why; that it was best left forgotten. Perhaps Elijah wouldn't care, like everyone else Ethan knew. But Ethan believed differently. He believed that to understand who you are, and to know where you are going, you must first know where you came from, and why.

  He picked up a stone from underneath the tree and hurled it down the hill. It hammered into the rocks at the bottom and a sharp crack rang out into the still night air. As the sound died away, a flash of light appeared in the distance, hanging low near the horizon. “Ah, my guardian angel, come to watch over me,” he said out loud. Sarcasm always sounded better to Ethan when spoken out loud, rather than in his head.

  He watched as the light snaked across the sky and wondered for a moment if Elijah was watching it too. The light grew brighter and seemed to be getting larger, which was unusual. Ethan sat up. Suddenly a thrill ran through his body, giving him tingles. “You’re a bright one…” he said out loud again, and then felt silly for talking to himself. The light continued to grow brighter. Ethan pushed himself up, and scrambled out from under the tree canopy. The thrill he had initially felt began to be replaced by the cold chill of fear. No light lingered for this long, or this brightly, he realised. Something was wrong.

  A mighty roar filled the air, like the sound of a thousand pounding waterfalls, crashing onto the rocks with him at the centre. The light cut across the sky directly above him. Instinctively he ducked and covered his ears, shutting his eyes tightly too. As the noise started to pass into the distance, he opened his eyes again and watched as an object, trailed by fierce red flames, slammed into the open ground on the edge of the visible horizon, close to the city. The sound of the impact reached him moments later and caused him to jolt backwards. A huge cloud of dust arose from the impact site.

  Ethan stood motionless on the hill and just watched, for how long he didn’t know. Then he heard the cries from the settlement, and saw torches being lit along the walls, and inside, surrounding the main square. He realised that soon he would be missed, and raced off down the hill towards the opening behind the bush with the heart-shaped leaves, craning his neck all the while, trying to catch more glimpses of the dust cloud in the distance. He reached the wall, pushed past the branches and squeezed back through the small opening he had made, quickly replacing the stones behind him. People were already moving about inside and talking nervously. Ethan slipped past them unnoticed and ran – his heart pounding in his chest – for the guardhouse, feeling both exhilarated and terrified in equal measure.

  Chapter 3

  Maria opened her eyes. Smoke was all around her and she coughed violently. Her head felt like it had been used as a training bag by an entire squadron of rookie pilots, and her vision was blurry, as if she was underwater. She tried to find her bearings. She was still in the command chair. All around her she could hear the fizz of damaged circuitry and the crackle of fire. But somehow she was alive. Coughing again, she looked at the console in front of her and squinted to focus. It was smashed – useless – as were most of the controls around her. She checked her command chair and found that the auxiliary panel was still working. Words and numbers streamed across the booklet-sized screen, showing damage reports, weapons status, navigation data and a host of other things that no longer mattered. Her head was beginning to clear and she was able to make some sense of the information. The braking thrusters had activated, at least enough to slow their descent to a survivable velocity. But she didn’t need a sensor to tell her that; it was obvious, really, seeing as she was still in one piece and not a red, pulpy stain on the inside of the cockpit glass. The navigation readout was only partially complete, but it still managed to tell her the one piece of information she needed to know – Distance to objective = 0.0m.

  “Not your best landing, Sal,” she said out loud, although her voice came out as more of a guttural croak. She reached down and unfastened the harness that kept her strapped into the command chair and stood up. An intense stabbing pain immediately shot through her thigh and groin taking her completely by surprise. She collapsed heavily on the floor, letting out a pathetic sounding yelp. The damn control yoke… she remembered. This is the last thing I need!

  She stayed down, waiting for the pain to subside, and called out, “Kurren! Kurren! Are you okay?” Then she remembered that Kurren had fallen during the attack, and for a split-second she panicked. Maria twisted herself around and looked towards the back of the cabin to see if she could see him through the smoke. Her vision was still foggy, but she could just about make out a figure, lying motionless on his back. The fire was creeping up on him but it had not yet become out of control, so there was still time, if he was alive.

  She called out to him again, “Kurren, can you hear me? It’s Sal, we made it! We’re planetside!” There was no response.

  Maria's training kicked in and adrenalin started to rush through her veins. She reached underneath the co-pilot's console and dislodged the emergency medpack stored there. She then pushed herself towards Kurren with her good leg, using the medpack in one hand to guide her while keeping the other hand pressed firmly on her thigh, as this seemed to ease the pain. She slid up next to him and systematically checked the area for any potential dangers; only the encroaching fire was a visible threat. She lifted her hand off her thigh and winced as the pain rushed back in. Fighting back tears she shook Kurren's shoulders, shouting his name again and again.

>   “Kurren! Chris! It’s Sal, can you hear me?” Kurren lay unconscious, but Maria saw that his chest was rising and falling slowly and this made her feel a little calmer. She reached over and grabbed his right hand by the wrist, pulled it across towards her and pushed up his sleeve to reveal his personal vital signs monitor, or PVSM. This displayed basic information, such as heart rate, blood pressure and toxicity levels, all of which looked stable. She let go of Kurren’s hand, which fell limply to the floor, and checked him for any obvious sign of injury. There was some minor burning to the left side of his face, probably from the electrical fire, and there was some matted blood in his hair at the back of his head, no doubt from the fall, but it didn’t look serious. As she worked, she could see the fire was getting closer.

  Maria laughed. “You had me worried for a while there, old man,” she said, opening the medpack and rifling through its contents, “but you’re going to be all right. In fact, once I’ve pumped you full of this stuff, you’re going to feel pretty fantastic. Until it wears off of course, and then you’ll feel like I do right now.”

  She took an injector from the medpack, inserted a small blue capsule in the bottom of it and then held it firmly against Kurren’s neck. She squeezed the trigger gently and the capsule instantly liquefied and shot into Kurren's neck, accompanied by a slight hissing sound. Reaching back into the medpack, she picked out another capsule, this time in a very light yellow colour, and repeated the procedure on herself. “One for you and one for me,” she joked, as the injector hissed and the capsule emptied into her neck. She put the device back in the medpack and took out a bandage. “Well, make that two for me,” she said, and then wrapped the bandage tightly around her thigh, putting as much pressure on it as possible. “Now, I need to get us both out of here.” She pushed herself up and winced again as the pain shot through her thigh; the painkiller had yet to take effect. But there was no time to worry about that, the fire was creeping closer and they had to get out.

  She struggled over to a storage compartment on the other side of the cabin, away from the fire, opened the door and pulled out a rectangular metal plate – about a metre by a half metre in size – and an emergency fire extinguisher. She rested the metal plate on the floor underneath the compartment and turned to aim the fire extinguisher at the source of the fire, near the auxiliary power distributor at the rear of the cabin. A clear gel shot from the extinguisher’s nozzle and coated the wall of the cabin, immediately extinguishing the flames. She repeated the procedure, tackling the most dangerous fires first, finally aiming down to where the flames were beginning to lick at Kurren’s feet. She actually covered him with the gel up to his ankles to make sure. He won’t be pleased about that, she thought, those are his best boots.

  With the fires put out, the cabin started to clear of smoke and she proceeded to inspect the rest of the damage. It was bad. Most of the consoles were smashed and only the main screen on the engineering console was still working, although it was currently showing only static. Maria's adrenaline rush was subsiding, the painkiller was kicking in, and for the first time since they’d crashed, she started to think about what had just happened, and how lucky there were to both be alive. It sent a chill down her spine.

  Maria took a moment to compose herself, then picked up the metal plate from the floor and knelt down next to Kurren. She carefully slid the plate under his back and then pressed a switch on the edge closest to her, causing the lower lip of the plate to extend underneath Kurren’s legs to just below the knees. Then she pulled out two black straps from the sides and ran one across his upper thighs and the other over his chest, clicking them into place on the opposite side of the plate. The plate emitted a low hum and rose about five centimetres off the deck. It remained hovering there with Kurren strapped to the top. Maria double-checked the straps to make sure they were secure, got up and moved to the main hatchway next to the engineering console. A small screen at head height flicked on and started to display some information: atmospheric composition, temperature, humidity and toxicity levels. All levels showed green, apart from toxicity, which was in the mid portion of the Yellow quadrant. Still within tolerances, though, Maria accepted. The temperature was probably the most remarkable of all the figures, though; it was registering as half the average ambient temperature of the moon base. The base was kept at a steady twenty-five degrees, and even though this only ever fluctuated by a couple of degrees either way due to sporadic and occasional power variances, Maria could usually detect the change, especially when it went colder – she hated the cold. She wondered for a moment what it would feel like outside and decided there was only one way to find out. She threw the emergency release lever on the door and stepped back.

  The door pushed away slightly from the cabin wall and air hissed through the gaps around the seal membranes as the pressure equalized. It then swiftly retracted up and over the outer shell of the craft. As the hatch disappeared, a blast of cold air washed over Maria, literally taking her breath away. She had not been remotely prepared for it and she could do nothing but stand and stare, trying to process this new sensation. Not just the temperature, but the sensation of wind on her skin, of feeling and even hearing wind for the first time. It was like being jolted awake by a pulse of electricity. The moonlight was also like nothing she had seen before. The lighting in the base was constant, and while their relative position to the sun did alter the light level in some areas, especially the domed sectors, the photo-reactive coverings always moderated the brightness, so that it varied only very slightly. The only place where light varied naturally was in the observation lounge, which is where Maria went to relax. And while the sunlight on the observation deck was beautiful, the light on the planet was entirely different, almost ethereal. It felt alien to her, and incredibly powerful. The wind licked her face again and she felt invigorated. The sensation of pain was a distant memory as she stood looking out on the planet for the first time. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she thought it might explode.

  Another gust of wind broke her trance-like state, nearly knocking her off her feet and forcing her to adjust her balance. Then a shiver ran through her, not from adrenalin, but from cold. I'm going to have to get used to this, she thought. She stepped back inside and gathered her survival pack, placing Kurren's over his legs, and then stepped down the walkway, leaving Kurren hovering on the stretcher inside.

  Her first steps onto solid ground were cautious. It felt strange, soft. She crouched down and pressed her hand into the loose dark soil that had been churned up by the ship's violent landing. The wind hit her again and without the shelter of the cabin Maria felt its full force. She lost her footing on the uneven ground and fell backwards, landing rather inelegantly on her backside. To her surprise this made her laugh out loud.

  “Not the most graceful way to set foot planetside for the first time in almost a generation!” she laughed. “Archer would be most displeased...” She looked at Kurren as if expecting a reaction. He lay still, the grav plating humming gently beneath him. “You're no fun today, old man,” she mused.

  She got herself up and onto her knees, and then a little gingerly, pushed her hand into the loose soil again, letting it fall through her fingers with a sort of quiet exultation, as if it were a million tiny, precious jewels. Then she looked up at the sky and everything else paled to insignificance. Of all these new sensations, this was the most powerful. She had felt soil before (or a manufactured version of it), but she had never seen a sky before. Tears began to stream down Maria’s face as she watched the wisps of cloud move slowly across the moonlit expanse above her. She had dreamed of seeing the sky all her life; a real sky, not a picture or holo. It was everything she'd hoped for and so much more.

  A crack of electricity from somewhere on the hull of the craft snapped her back to reality; or at least the reality of her situation, which had not altered and was far from ideal. She stood up and walked around the craft, still getting used to the buffeting of the wind. The hull was p
ocked with dark scorch marks, about as wide as a fist. They had clearly taken quite a beating from GPS fighters as they had made their run into the atmosphere. As Maria circled around the ship, inspecting it, she spotted two larger blast marks on the hull just to the side of where Kurren’s engineering console was. One had actually penetrated through the hull plating, but luckily not anywhere near a key system. The same could not be said of the aft quarter, which had taken most of the damage. The main engines were badly damaged and it was these that were producing angry, electrical sparks.

  Maria hurried back inside the cabin as quickly as she could and sat back down in her command chair. She tried the main console in front of her but it still would not turn on, so she switched on the auxiliary console on her chair and selected ‘damage control’. Pages of information zipped across the screen listing the extensive number of damaged systems, until she came to main propulsion and stopped. A red border appeared around the screen as Maria read the words. She slumped into the chair, threw her head back and sighed.

  She pushed herself out of the chair and knelt beside Kurren, checking his PVSM again. He was still stable, although his blood pressure and heart rate had dropped slightly, probably due to the drugs. She took out another capsule from the medpack, which was lying beside the hovering plate, pressed it into the injector and administered it to Kurren. She waited for a few moments and then leaned close to his ear. “Kurren, it’s Sal, can you hear me?” she said. No response. She waited a moment and tried again, and this time Kurren stirred. He opened his eyes, turned his head towards Maria and then grimaced.