Perihelion: Chapter 1
Just passed the lunch rush down at the base cafeteria. I sit down alone at a bench with my meal, back to the wall out of habit. The ventilation hums overhead, recycling the same air it's been moving since the colony was built. Somewhere behind me, someone is heating something that smells aggressively synthetic.
No doubt the commanding officers have started their planning on the final details of launching the experimental ship. A shame I can't get in there. But I should be able to access the meeting notes afterward.
I start to eat. My blackmailer is nowhere in sight. Maybe she was invited. I file that away as unlikely but worth following up on. I look at my chocolate pudding and consider saving it as a tribute for her.
The cafeteria door opens.
She, the blackmailer, Milly MacCarthy, moves like someone who is always slightly behind where she wants to be; quick, purposeful, scanning the room before she's fully through the door. Her eyes find me the way they always do, like she's already annoyed at me before she's close enough to have a reason. The freckles across her nose make her look younger than she probably wants to.
She sits across from me without asking. Slides a datapad across the table. Takes my chocolate pudding and my spoon in the same motion, the way someone takes something that was already theirs.
"What the hell is this, Wes?" She tears the foil off the pudding.
"Pudding."
"No." She says with an incredulous look of annoyance. "Where is the missing stuff?"
I look at the datapad. Several items flagged in red, quantities off from what the system says should be there. Innocuous things. Office supplies. Cleaning chemicals. A food inventory discrepancy someone probably resolved informally and forgot to log. A ventilation filter, which given the smell in here seems like a more urgent problem than she's treating it.
"I don't know, Milly. They weren't there when you told me to count them."
"I know that." She points the spoon accusingly in my direction. "I thought you were supposed to be the one in the know. Isn't that like, your entire thing?"
"Tracking missing inventory isn't really something worth reporting on."
"How unfortunate for me that I don't have such a luxury." She scrapes the bottom of the pudding cup with more aggression than the situation requires. "I even double-checked your work. Made sure it wasn't malfunctioning RFID tags. Do you know how long that takes? This technology is supposed to be making my life easier." She sets the empty cup on my tray without looking at it. "I did not survive nine weeks of Quartermaster training to count cans. That might be what they do in the Army. I'm a navigator. I didn't learn orbital mechanics by hand to sit around playing errand girl."
"Relax. You won't be doing orbital calculations by hand anyway. We have computers for that."
"That's not the point!" She says, slapping the table.
I take a quick look around, it doesn't appear anyone has taken notice.
"The launch is in a week. Be patient. The senior QM will show you the ropes."
"The ropes." She says it like the word offends her. "I've already put fifty hours in the simulator. I know how this works. This last week might as well be a hundred years."
"They're short-staffed. Everyone pulls extra weight."
"Oh, I'm very well aware of that." Something shifts in her expression. The complaint's still there but underneath it something that might be genuine frustration rather than performance. "Which is why I recruited you. So I can be more productive. So I have time to actually study instead of chasing down who borrowed the ventilation filters."
Recruited. That's one way of putting it.
"When you get off, message me. I'll get you an RFID scanner and we can track these down together."
I have other things I need to do. I think about saying so. "Sure."
She takes the datapad. "Thanks for your assistance." She says, and there's a brief grin, sheepish, almost involuntary, there and gone before she seems to realize it happened. Then she's moving again, already halfway to the door, already somewhere else in her head.
I watch her go.
I look at the empty pudding cup on my tray.
I won't be needing to save this dessert for her after all.
I still have 30 minutes before my shift starts. I eat with purpose knowing I still need a 5 minute elevator ride up to the spoke of the colony.
I'm Wesley Cole. Or simply Wes, if you're blackmailing me. I'm a 23 year old fresh graduate from Michigan. Go Blue, as they say. Or that's what I tell people.
"Go Blue!" Benson cheers at me as I clank into the microgravity of the hangar. "Did you catch the game last night?"
"You know it. Ohio didn't stand a chance." I didn't actually watch the game. I just saw the highlight reels and the final score.
"How can you have such confidence? It was a good game. Michigan got lucky with that last minute field goal."
"Always have faith in the ol' alma mater." People seem more than willing to overlook a wrong detail as long as you project unwavering confidence. Michigan fans especially. "How's the CBI integration coming?"
"Should be all finished up if you want to run simulations. All the diagnostics passed and the sensors are reporting green. Should feel like a second skin for Captain de la Rosa." Benson unclips a rag from his belt and wipes his hands on it; not that it's going to get any cleaner. "I can finish getting the armor and weapon systems back on before the test flight tomorrow."
Captain Sofía de la Rosa. 45. Distinguished military career, 23 years of service. She takes her coffee at 0630 in the cafeteria. Always the same corner table. Always facing the door. She has a photograph of two children on her desk that she turns face-down when junior officers visit. I filed it as irrelevant three months ago and keep noticing it anyway. She is no doubt in the commanding officers' meeting right now, finalizing the details for next week's launch. The timeline feels compressed, but I suppose they're ready to unveil their prototypes to the world.
The sunstrip is running at about sixty percent; mid-afternoon in the colony's approximation of a day. Benson has been here since 0700 and it shows in the way he moves, careful and economical, a man conserving energy for the work still ahead.
Between us is the Prova Veltro, mounted in the gantry. Half its armor panels are off, exposing the frame underneath. The Dhoruba emitters along the fuselage are the part that makes engineers nervous and accountants furious. Continuous thrust without chemical propellant sounds like magic until you understand the field mechanics, and then it sounds like something that has no business being miniaturized into something as awkwardly shaped as a giant humanoid robot.
The exposed cockpit gives me a direct line to the CBI port at the base of the cocoon collar, the standing interface that will lock around Captain de la Rosa tomorrow when this machine is supposed to be hers. The cocoon is open now, waiting, the gel reservoir visible through the transparent housing. When it closes it fills around the pilot completely. Bulletproof casing, impact gel, the CBI port seated directly at the base of the skull. You don't sit in the Veltro. You become part of it.
Benson is three feet away.
"What exactly are we running tomorrow?" I ask, as if I don't already know the answer.
"Responsiveness on the Dhoruba system, and confirming the weapon systems trigger correctly. I've already set the Vulcan cannons and short range lasers to test mode so you'll get accurate feedback without live fire." He nods toward the exposed cockpit. "Should be straightforward."
"I'd feel better if we had the armor installed first. Get readings on whether the sensors in the panels are providing proper feedback to the frame."
"You sure we need that? The sensor simulations in the frame should be accurate enough."
"In theory there's no difference between theory and practice," I say. "In practice there is. I'd prefer we're as close to real world conditions as possible."
Benson considers this with the expression of a man who has heard worse arguments. "All the connections are done. Drop in and plug and play. Give me an hour."
He goes back to work.
An hour of Benson focused on the armor installation. An hour of nobody watching the clock on my simulation times. That's why I suggested it.
I climb the boarding stairs and sit in front of the cockpit and pull the access cable from the cocoon's collar. I connect it to the physical jack at the base of my skull with the specific click that still feels strange no matter how many times I've done it. The simulation suite loads in my field of vision. Underneath it, three layers deep, my own diagnostic tool begins its quiet work, pulling data on the Veltro's systems and software architecture, packaging it for transmission the next time I have a clean channel to my handlers.
Knowledge is power, Milly once told me, with the specific confidence of someone who had just demonstrated exactly that.
I'm not here to sabotage. That's not the mission. But I note, with professional detachment, that the feedback thresholds are already running hot from previous simulations. Captain de la Rosa is an exceptional pilot with 23 years of experience.
This death box might kill her without any help from me.
Several minutes pass when I receive a tap on the shoulder. I turn to see Benson standing behind me, though my augmented reality overlays are still hovering in my mind's eye. I dismiss the overlaying interface from my vision with a thought. "Done already?"
"Looks like your girlfriend has shown up to say 'hi.'" He sticks a thumb over to the work bench as Milly scans it with an RFID tag reader.
I can already feel my free time slipping away. Luckily the simulations and diagnostic program are automated, so they shouldn't require me to babysit them.
"Ah ha!" Milly says, grabbing a box of pens. "I knew it had to be you."
"Hey Milly." I say, stepping down the stairs.
"Don't, 'hey Milly,' me. You have a box of pens that you need to submit a requisition form for." She says, pointing the box of pens in my direction.
"Benson?" I say, looking at him.
"Leave me out of this lovers' quarrel, Cole. This is a you problem and I got armor to finish installing." He says, returning to a lift holding a piece of armor. Amazing how much more diligent he's become. I guess my request has suddenly backfired.
"I don't even use pens, Milly. I put everything in digitally."
"A likely story."
"Let's ask the Work Center Supervisor. Polk?!" I call out to a middle aged man monitoring the 3D printers in the back of the hangar.
"Damn it kid, I ain't got time for this. These clown engineers got yet another change they want to make to the PV before test flight tomorrow." He says grumpily. "Just do me a favor and give your girlfriend a kiss and do what will make her happy."
"She's not my girlfriend."
"Wife. Side-girl. Whatever. I'm not here to judge. All I know is there ain't enough hours in the day, and they want to make sure we've bolted on some new thingamajig or doohickey; as if it doesn't take hours to print it."
Milly hands me a datapad with a requisition loaded on it. I sign and fill out the form. Polk walks over with the clicks and hisses of magnetic steps and takes a pen from Milly.
"Oh hey, what are you doing? File a discrepancy report, not a requisition. These are Hendricks' pens. He borrowed them for the sensor calibration last week and forgot to log it."
You couldn't have told me that sooner! I swap to the other form and enter the data. Milly appears to be impatiently waiting for me. I submit the form and hand back the datapad.
"Thank you for your service," she says, accepting it with a smile.
She scrolls to the next item. Then stops.
"That's weird." Milly frowns at her datapad. "The inventory system hasn't synced in–" she checks the timestamp "-forty minutes. I can't pull the current stock levels."
I'm about to tell her I need to get back to the simulations when–
The colony shakes.
No. Not the colony. The hangar next door.
The shock hits the deck before the sound does. In near-zero gravity there's no falling; just sudden displacement, everything that wasn't anchored now somewhere else, Milly's datapad spinning slowly toward the Veltro's cradle, while her shoes' gecko grip isn't enough to keep her attached to the deck. Everyone else here is wearing magnetic boots that have handled the shock well enough. I grab Milly to keep her from floating away. Benson is already moving toward the mecha on pure reflex. Polk heads for the entrance.
Through the bulkhead I can hear the structural groan of composite panels that flexed past their tolerance. The smell arrives next. Something burning that shouldn't be burning.
That was no accident.
Polk starts to say something, but is cut off by gunfire. He goes down mid-sentence. No ceremony. Just, there and then not. He doesn't float away; his boots keep him in place by the hangar door.
Still holding onto Milly, I pull us toward the lift holding the armor. I swing us behind the armor plate. Benson is already here.
"WS-07!" Shouts a marine as they enter.
What the hell are these amateurs doing? They didn't even try to contact me to set up a linkup protocol. Unless I'm compromised. Maybe they're Confederation? Why would Earth attack their own black site? Even then how did the Confederates get my callsign? I should try to make contact. But then what happens to Milly and Benson?
I turn to Benson. "Can you take the weapons out of testing mode?"
"Uh, sure, but we haven't loaded the ammo for the Vulcan cannons yet."
Lasers it is then.
I'm still connected to the Veltro wirelessly. The wireless connection is noisy in an active Dhoruba field but close range is all I need. I replace my natural vision with the feed from the main camera, a bit laggy but workable. With a thought I activate the main laser and sweep the arm across them. Slicing them in half and cauterizing their wounds. Part of them float off while the other half is anchored by their boots, like Polk.
My fr–, co-wo–...er... cover story assets and I are not safe. If this is a Compact operation, friendly fire will be frowned upon, but that's their fault for not establishing contact. At least my cover isn't blown. Anyway, I'll file a complaint about the callsign later.
If there's a later.
"We're under attack. Wes, get in the Veltro and get me to the Daedalus." Milly orders.
"Hold on, we need to finish putting the armor on, else the Veltro will be turned into swiss cheese." Benson chimes in. "If you guys help me, we should be able to finish this in 10 minutes and load the ammo for the guns."
Benson showed us how to secure the armor in place. While we were doing that he loaded a drum of 20mm ammo into the Vulcan cannons mounted on a gyroscopic swivel arm on the back of the mechanized unit. While we worked, we could hear the sound of combat in the apron. We finished early, in about 8 minutes.
"Why did you say it'd take an hour?" I ask.
"Because we skipped a lot of steps. The sensors aren't calibrated, the bolts aren't sealed, Polk–" Benson pauses just a moment. "Isn't reviewing my work. This might be a very unpleasant first flight and there could be major problems."
"Maybe I don't want to pilot this." I mutter.
"Get in the robot, Wes. You need to get me to the Daedalus." Milly orders.
"About that, there's only room for one in the cockpit."
"You'll carry me."
I shrug.
I climb into the pilot cocoon. It's very tight. My CBI plugs into the Veltro's access cable. Benson makes sure I'm strapped in correctly. He places the oral-nasal mask over my mouth.
"Have you done this before?"
"No." Though my training did cover this in simulations.
"It's going to feel like you're drowning. Just try and stay as calm as you can. The machine will start to breathe for you as the perfluorocarbon will be too thick for your lungs to move."
"Sounds delightful," I say, muffled by the mask.
Benson seals the cocoon and the hatch to the cockpit closes. I can hear and feel the liquid beginning to fill the cocoon. When the liquid starts to fill my mouth, I attempt to suppress my gag reflex and let the liquid fill my lungs. I feel the liquid push into my ear drum causing my ears to pop followed by not hearing anything. It is a panic-inducing experience having your lungs fill with a tasteless and odorless liquid that you know won’t kill you, in complete darkness without any sound. I feel the pump forcing the liquid to expand and contract my lungs. It's unsettling and I attempt to breathe with the machine to not fight it.
My vision is replaced by the Veltro's camera feed. It feels like the world got smaller. And I suppose, in a sense, it did. I feel the gantry's restraints release and I balance myself in the microgravity of the hangar.
"How do you feel?" I hear Benson's voice with a bit of lag but still more than coherent. "The bootup diagnostics are coming up green now."
"I thought I was dying, but it feels pretty–" I take notice. I actually don't feel my human body at all anymore. Only the Veltro. "I guess you're right. The Veltro really does feel like a second skin."
"Good, drop your hand and take me to the Daedalus." Milly orders over the comms.
"What about the combat on the apron?" I respond.
"They'll handle it on their own. We need to protect the ship."
Well, I can't argue with that logic. I bend over and extend my hand…er… the Veltro's hand. Milly sits in the palm of the hand…my hand. Benson jumps onto my forearm. I see Milly and him say something, but I can't hear it. Milly grabs his jumpsuit and pulls him up. Guess he's coming along. I can feel their weight, and even their warmth though the sensors. I pull them close to my chest. This is dangerously stupid, but I'll try to keep my back to any enemies to provide cover for them. I head toward the entrance.
I open the door and peek through. I can see a pair of Confederate Wardens in rough shape, but they're laying down suppressive fire on the Compact Vantablack ME, which itself is oddly white. Not that the white implies anything special about this Vanta; they're all just white.
I turn on the Dhoruba system. With a thought I align the rear emitters to focus the force field, and it produces thrust.
I rocket out of the hangar.
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