Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (41 page)

Blood spattered on his armor,
making his right leg and hand visible as he killed the injured survivor with a
dagger thrust. Standing alone, Toby dropped his final grenade among the dogs
before he scooped up the Magi rifle.

He wasn’t counting on the sniper
still being alive. The panda toppled him toward the steep slope, and Toby
barely caught a patch of pine bramble on the skid down. His ankles dangled off
the edge of the precipice. If the dogs or sniper recovered, he wouldn’t make it
back to the top.

“Come,” Toby ordered the rover, his
secret weapon. The resulting explosion would take out all the remaining
enemies.

A considerate man would’ve scanned
every centimeter of the blaster so engineers could replicate it. Instead, he
pocketed the power gem and allowed the heavy rifle to slide over the cliff. He
heard the device skitter over the edge and saw it smash to bits like a snowball
on the rocks below. The thought of his bones sharing the same fate made him
pant with anxiety.

The sand dogs above were whimpering
and shaking their heads. He could hear the whir of the dune buggy as it
approached—too close. Dirt sprayed him in the visor as the vegetation he was
hanging from popped loose from the crevices.
Crap.
If he moved, the dogs
would see and shred him. If he stayed put, the detonation might shake loose the
only shrub holding him in place.

Over the helmet radio, he said, “If
I fall off the edge of the canyon, I’d appreciate if you push the button on my
failsafe before I hit bottom. I don’t want to suffer.”

Oleander responded, “I can’t do
that.”

Angry, Toby said, “Explain to
Snowflake that I have a
mahdra
crystal and the DNA analysis of the bones
from Crown Island in my pocket. My armor will run out of power before I can
reach the camp. If any part of me survives, the hand will be seen.”

The pandas besieging Elysium grew so tired of climbing the
spiked, stone wall that one of them chopped a tree down on top of it. So many
pandas fell asleep on the anesthetic moss that their companions were able to
roll them out of the way and establish a safe walkway. The defenses were
designed for pandas who stumbled across the mesa by accident, not an army. Herk
killed seventeen individual warriors in the hour before dawn, and then they
made an effort to swarm his first choke point. The moment the first panda
reached the other side, he blew the drawbridge, sending a dozen to their
deaths. Then he opened up on the remainder with autofire.

Over the listening device the team
had by the throne, Lou heard mention of almost two thousand troops coming this
way. He triple-checked the definition of each word. Evidently killing
graniths
gave a chief big juju. Herk didn’t have enough ammunition to kill them all,
even if they kept lining up like this.

Oleander announced on the radio,
“At your two o’clock, a hundred meters out, the Bloos are already cutting down
a tree to bridge the gap.”

“Got it,” Herk replied, finding the
threat on his night scope. He itched all over from those damn nettles Toby had
covered the slopes with, and it was ruining his kill ratio. “Whoever thought of
giving these maniacs saws needs to have their heads examined.” He emptied the
clip into the woodsmen.

“I heard that,” Risa replied.

“Boss?” Oleander called. “We have
a—”

When Herk heard the explosion on
the rim, he thought the fuel tanks had blown prematurely. Then the second burst
went off a second later, lighting up the sky. “What the hell?”

Over the radio, he could hear a
woman screaming in the background in the control room. Shit, not another one.
Oleander said, “Risa, get her out of here. The doc is already on the shuttle.
See how Nadia’s doing on the repairs. Yuki, you’re pulling a second shift.
Guard my ass while we calm Yvette down.”

“Are you kidding?” Yuki complained.
“I just wiped out a kill team sent after Pear Blossom. Then I had to beat the
charge of the black-and-white brigade over our bridge before Herk detonated it.
I’ve earned a rest.”

“Toby just committed suicide by
telling the truth to the Magi,” Oleander said.

“I’ll be right up,” Yuki agreed.
“Hopefully Rachael transitions through the phases of grief soon to ‘Kill them
all and let God sort them out.’”

Oleander cheered, “Go Amazon
Corps.”

When Yuki reported in to the
command bunker, Risa handed off the full gauss rifle and set to work repairing
the armor. “How did you manage to break this?”

“Some guy grabbed my breast. I
discouraged him,” Yuki said, stripping off her wet shirt and hanging it on a
hook on the back of the door. She shucked the armor bottoms next.

“Your weapon is plugged with mud.
You can’t use it like that,” Risa noted.

“It was empty anyway.”

“At least the sun’s coming up
soon,” Herk said. “Tell me we’re going to have lucky fog or a sandstorm.”

Yuki laughed. “Let me check the
weather report from our satellite. Hmm. Nope, weather prediction is dead.
Aerial view is dead too. Only the telemetry is still broadcasting. Fuck me
black-and-blue! It’s coming down.”

“Crashing?” asked Oleander.

“No, under control—not ours. Lou,
is this you guys?”

“Not Olympus. Snowflake is—” Static
cut off the rest of the reply.

“Damn aliens,” Herk muttered.
“Where is Zeus’ eagle coming down?”

“Somewhere in our neighborhood,”
Yuki muttered, typing like mad. “It’s screaming in from the south pole. I don’t
know yet whether it’s going to hit the Bloo throne or Toby’s dead, smoking
corpse. He pissed them off pretty bad.”

“Never mind. How long do we have
before impact?”

“An hour,” said Yuki.

“Really?” Herk said. “Cut me a
break. Okay, everyone into the shuttle. I’ll hold the natives off while
Oleander sets the timers. Go.”

Oleander hit the klaxon to warn the
others that it was evacuation time.

“You need me to watch the cameras,”
Yuki said.

“Fine,” Herk replied, sounding too
tired to fight. “There were four more empty slots on that blaster gun rack,
people. At least one more is coming after us. Someone tell me how we’re going
to get off this rock if there’s another sniper out there somewhere?”

Park spoke up. “We’ll be exposed
for less than a minute. I can drop over the opposite side of the mesa and use
it as a shield. I’ll accelerate like crazy, and by the time we reach open air,
they won’t be able to fire fast enough to hit us before we curve around the
next bend in the canyon.”

Oleander agreed. “Toby’s camera did
show about a ten-second delay between pulling the trigger and the flash.”

“How can we distract these guys for
that first minute?” Herk asked. “What if they paint us with a pink spot while
we’re taxiing to the edge?” He switched clips and shot two more pandas who
looked like they were planning something.

“They
should
be staring at a
pretty light in the southern sky,” Yuki said.

“Trace back the target beam and
shoot them with our sniper rifle,” Rachael said suddenly.

“And she’s back,” Herk said. “Great
idea, but I can’t hit him with the first shot at that range.”

“Then I’ll shoot,” Rachael said.
“We don’t need to hit him, just get him to duck for a few seconds.”

“No. He’d let the ship go, but the
sniper would cook you, lieutenant,” Herk decided. “If I switched to my combat
armor, it might shield me long enough for us to fly clear. We’d need to aim the
airlock that direction first for me to provide cover and a proper target.
Changing from stealth armor to the exoskeleton will take twenty-five or thirty
minutes.”

“Then it’s agreed—I’ll put on
Yuki’s sneak suit and hold off the assault until you’re ready. Give me ten to
gear up,” Rachael said. Turning to Oleander, she said, “Specialist
Dahlstrom,
once the timers are set, change
into your spacesuit and head for that ship. That’s an order.”

Auckland said, “As executor, I read
the recent addendum to Toby’s will the moment he was reported killed in action.
Oleander is relieved on medical grounds.
The child she’s carrying—”

Someone
shut off the speaker at the security desk.

Herk
ran for the command bunker, cursing. When he arrived, Oleander was gone. “What
did you do to Ole?”

“Nothing,”
Rachael said coldly. “She’s on the shuttle already. Some part of Johnny is
going to survive this.”

Herk
suspected that Oleander saving her life from the sniper had more to do with the
sudden change of heart.

“First we need to get off this
rock. The timing is going to be tight,” Yuki warned.

Rachael grabbed the gauss gun and
all remaining clips. “Well, since we can’t take these toys back inside
Sanctuary
,
I’d better use everything I can here. The pandas on the cameras are swarming up
the path again. I’m making a stand at the second bridge, 50 meters from the
summit.”

Herk said, “Don’t get too cocky
with the gauss gun. On the lowest setting, it creates a lot of noise and makes
a great deterrent, but it takes a lot to actually kill a panda at long range
unless you hit him in just the right place.”

As Herk and Yuki helped Rachael
into the shimmer armor, he commented, “There are dents and scratches all over
this suit.”

“Yeah. I forgot those bastards are
born ninjas.”

As Rachael ran out the airlock into
the hostile atmosphere, Herk looked worried.

Yuki said, “Don’t worry. She’ll be
back.”

“How do you know?” Herk asked.

“I had to toss my air filter a
while back, and the suit has no oxygen left,” Yuki noted. “She won’t be able to
stand that soup they call air for more than thirty minutes.”

He laughed as the Japanese woman
helped him change. “The lieutenant will be pissed.”

Yuki shrugged. “Oxygen deprivation
makes stubborn people easier to rescue.”

****

Once everyone else was safe in the
shuttle, Herk strapped himself into the open airlock, facing the cliff where
Toby had died. It was over ten kilometers closer than the other side, and the
place Herk would have picked to shoot from. The shuttle would have to fly at a
diagonal to keep him guarding their flank, exposing them to enemy fire for a
full forty-five seconds once
Ascension
started moving. He knew that his
role was more of a distraction that anything else, so in addition to the space
armor, he hooked up the external speakers to his microphone. With a bit of
pro-wrestler theater, Risa had drawn a thick panda mane on his helmet and
placed tassels on his elbows to intimidate the natives. He also traded the
sniper rifle for a noisy gauss gun.

Park waited until the glow of the
plummeting satellite lit the southern sky. The moon Talus, named for the
murdered nephew of Daedalus, rose in the west. The suns were already obscured
by the gas giant, casting an orange tint over the mesa. Blast off was
unimaginably loud from the open door. The engines thundered, and the wind
plucked at the strap holding him in.

Seconds later, a pink light sprang
up on the tail of the craft.
No you don’t!
he thought. Over the
speakers, Herk shouted, “I am the Vengeance of Shuulagar!” He unleashed the
needle launcher and roared in primitive challenge.

The pink targeting dot flew over
the hull toward him. Soon after, a second dot appeared, bobbing unsteadily. Two
out of a possible four shooters had come after him. “Blow the fuel dumps,” he
shouted, not caring that he broadcast over all the channels at once.

When he felt the heat at his waist,
Herk reached for the airlock door controls. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea
after all. He used his talent to ignore the pain. The second dot lit his chest
when the COIL hissed. He wanted to cheer when the spot on his navel
disappeared, but the heat remained.

Breathing hurt. “Now,” he ordered.

As the first set of explosives
triggered, the blast sent shrapnel his way, but he worried more about damage to
the ship than him catching a fragment. The chain reaction of bombs followed
them across the plateau, erasing everything they had worked for years to build.
Clouds of ash and dust rose up to obscure his position as he collapsed onto the
door control, sealing the ship so it could make orbit.

He could only see spots in front of
his eyes. Coughing, he smelled burning hair and nylon. His rubbery legs dumped
him unceremoniously to the floor.

He heard Risa override the interior
door and shout, “We have to peel him out of that armor now. Ouch. It’s so hot
it’s glowing.” Someone dragged him toward the main cabin as his wife unlatched
his spacesuit. “We’ll save you,
caro
mío
,” she promised. Tearing the abdominal armor off ripped off
skin that was still clinging to it like a piece of fried chicken.

Only then did he pass out.

Mercy watched the crew returning from Elysium as they
emerged from their pods. The
Ascension
airlock would need repair work
before flying through space again. Herk still had liver damage from microwave
radiation because the pod couldn’t repair all of his extensive injuries from
almost cooking. Even super-science had limits. When Auckland told him he had to
give up beer, Herk actually cried.

The deep-healing process restored Auckland to his normal bronze tone.

Risa and Rachael needed scrubbing
from excess arsenic.

Yuki rid herself of dozens of cuts
and bruises.

Yvette was memory-wiped back to the
first day she entered
Sanctuary.
Even her age regressed.

Without the Magi in charge, pod use
wasn’t enforced. Oleander was permitted to enter through the storage room with
Johnny’s body because decontamination was too dangerous for her. Park assisted
as he was the only colonist without a scratch. That left them with only thirty
pods—an average of two for each survivor. There would be no more.

“They were very costly to
manufacture, even for our species. Consider the rest a reward for your rapid
victory,” Snowflake said. “Use them wisely.”

“How is this a victory?” Mercy
demanded. “We started with eighteen astronauts, and we only have fifteen left—Crandall,
Johnny, and Toby are all dead. Yvette doesn’t even remember the mission.”

“Those who remain may join the
Communion of Souls.”

Mercy cried in the control room.
“But we made a mess of everything. We didn’t help the society on Labyrinth. We
tore it apart with civil wars and gave tools to murdering slavers.”

“You helped them take the next step
toward maturity and eliminated nearly all the contamination. Gifts are neutral.
The hearts of the recipients decide good or evil. The fires of war heat the
crucible of the soul.”

“Isn’t Sensei going to explain
everything?”

“No. His task is to instruct
children. You are now adults.”

That sucks.
“How do we fix
our mistakes?” Mercy asked.

“Atonement through service.”

“For the pandas?”

“No,” Snowflake said. “Uplifters
may only visit each civilization once. There is no back, only forward.”

There were many other questions
into the night, until Mercy couldn’t keep track of the list of new questions
they generated.

****

When the crew built a memorial to
the fallen in the chapel, no one mentioned their crimes.

To cheer up the mourners, Mercy
threw a party to celebrate Stu’s fifth birthday and Oleander’s pregnancy—a girl
according to Toby’s notes.

Yvette’s only question during the
party was, “Was I happy?”

Mercy replied, “You and I were very
good friends. We will be again.”

“That’s all?” Yvette asked.

“We gave you the option to write
yourself a letter or send a video. You declined,” Mercy explained.

Yuki asked, “What did we get for
all of this abuse and cleaning up someone else’s mess?”

“We inherited this ship, as
promised, and everything our people can glean from it. Someday, we might be
able to build more.”

Addressing the group at the
celebration, Mercy explained, “We have a few months until our scheduled jump to
subspace. Once the majority of you are safely in stasis, I’ll enter the second
saucer under the mountain. Refueling on Labyrinth is pretty simple. I open a
secondary valve, and the pilot will lower us into a clean water supply. I
located a high-elevation lake that radiation has wiped clean—that way we don’t
need to filter out the fish. Once we submerge the opening, water will pour into
our reservoir. With a methane or ammonia world, the process takes longer.”

“And then?” asked Zeiss.

“You wake up in Earth’s orbit,” she
replied.

“We have so much to share with
them,” said Risa.

“We’ll be heroes,” Nadia added.

Glancing at the floor, Zeiss said,
“Some of us.” The commander and Red had taken full responsibility for violating
several UN edicts when they stole
Ascension
, and by extension
Sanctuary
.
No one knew what the result of the court martial had been.

“Way to kill a party,” Lou
complained.

“Either way, we’re going home,”
Zeiss insisted. “They need what we’ve learned.”

“We can finally have children,” Red
countered. “Even if we have to stay on
Sanctuary
.”

Lou said, “Mercy, you were talking
to Snowflake a long time. There must be some other news.”

“All we need before the big freeze
is a second volunteer to belong to the ship.” When she explained her sacrifice,
Lou refused to believe it.

Red supported Mercy’s claims. “We
can’t refuel or leave this system until someone occupies the control cradles. Without
a replacement, we would eventually crash into Labyrinth.”

“I’ll still be me… but I’ll be the
ecosystem and gravity for the ship as well. We can see, hear, and still talk to
you all through the interface,” Mercy said. “We just won’t be able to walk
around.”

“The volunteer must be one of the
six planners,” Sojiro clarified. “That’s why our initial selection was so
important.”

Lou insisted on being the second
volunteer. “If my wife is the ship, no one else is going to commune with her.
Besides, I’m the best pilot.”

“Our son should have one living
parent,” Mercy objected.

“You can still pilot or commune as
a normal human,” Sojiro said. “I’ve been merging with the control systems since
we arrived. Snowflake let a few facts slip over the years. I’ve been trying to
keep the rest of you away from the second control room until you knew the
consequences of entering.”

“That’s why you’ve been secretly
hiding evidence of the Magi?” asked Yuki. “You wanted to make sure no one else
got chosen first?”

“No. If anyone opened the door, I
would have offered to take their place,” said Sojiro. “I was hoping to complete
my paintings first. Since I have, I should be the second volunteer.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“I’m . . . expendable,” Sojiro
said.

“No, you most certainly are
not
,”
Yuki replied.

Sojiro spread his arms. “Everyone
else has someone to stay behind for.”

Yuki and Park both hugged him and
went to his room to see the final artwork fictionalizing their voyage to other
worlds. One by one, all the crew members flipped through the pages on the
meter-tall smart paper, often peeking over someone else’s shoulder. Zeiss
summed up the consensus with, “This is your best work yet. I hope you can still
paint when you’re out of your body.”

“There will be other art,” Sojiro
replied.

Mercy spent most of the evening drawing
up legal documents and making financial arrangements for her family. Before she
entered the control cradle, Lou requested time alone with his family.

Auckland said, “The rest of us have
a better idea. We want to give you seven of the pods as a final gift.”

“That seems like a waste,” Lou
replied.

Mercy cleared her throat. “Your
optic nerves improved a little each of the last two times you went through. The
doctor thinks that seven more passes should be the magic number. You’ll be able
to see again. Don’t you want to look at Stu with your human eyes? See
all
of
me?”

“Wow,” Lou said. “That’s seven
critical injuries, seven rejuvenation treatments to return someone to age thirty
again.”

“Two pods each from you and the two
volunteers make six. I’ll give you one of mine to complete the set,” Red said.

“You’d give that up for me to have
a few normal days?” Lou asked, his voice cracking.

“They’ll be extraordinary days,”
Red said, her own throat tightening with emotion. “Consider it payment for
Mercy for the next hundred years or so of service to mankind.”

Lou accepted the gift of sight.

****

When the
Llewellyn
s could delay no longer, the entire family stood crying
in the barn chapel beside Sojiro. Everyone else was frozen.

When the Japanese man approached
the wall of Persephone, it turned white. After he tapped it three times, he
said, “I come to join.”

A triangular hall opened in the
side of the mountain, and Sojiro walked in without hesitation. Even when he
vanished from sight, Mercy lingered at the threshold, kissing each family
member one last time.

Stu grew bored and wandered off to
read a book.

“You can all still talk to me any
time you want,” Mercy explained, sniffing back tears. “Once the ecosystem is
safe again, I can unfreeze anyone who wants to collect data from the star
systems we’ll be passing through. Several people have volunteered to keep you
company. Cheer up. On Earth, you’ll both be rich and famous.”

“But you’ll always be our home,”
Lou said.

“Stu is special—the first human
child born among the stars. Earth will need him.”

Lou asked, “Can I come join you
some day?”

“Maybe you’ll find a
flesh-and-blood woman to take your mind off me.”

“Never happen,” he insisted,
pressing his forehead to hers.

“If you still feel that way when
Stu no longer needs you, I’ll welcome you at the door.”

###

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