Microstory 2626: The Horse Returned Home, Bringing Several Wild Mares

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August 31, 2526. Thank God for small miracles, the mining facility is fully intact, as is the mass driver itself. They used a lot of power getting there, and they didn’t start out at 100%, so they charge from the local mini-grid. Fortunately, it goes quickly as the geothermal generators are operating at peak performance these days. They spend their downtime getting to know each other better, Breanna and Cash have sex a couple of times, and Sorel enjoys breaks in a virtual oasis. They also prepare for departure, making sure they understand the procedures. The mass driver can fire them out at incredible speeds, including incredibly deadly speeds, so they have to be extra cautious. The pod is equipped with parachutes, but in case those fail, the rover actually has its own too, so they will be able to blow the bolts on the pod midair if they have to.

The world is falling apart, and maybe someone is to blame for that, but ignoring that one little apocalyptic eventuality, technology is fairly reliable, built with redundancies, contingencies, and redundancies. They fire themselves over the mountains and the chasm, and at the exact right time, the chutes deploy. They gently descend to the ground, landing only a few kilometers from the industrial vactrain depot. This is where the refined materials are loaded, and dispatched to the various domes in the northern polar region. Sorel looks at the map and finds their target. “This one.” He points to another spot. “If your hang-gliding friends landed somewhere around here, this is the dome they would have encountered first. But. It’s in a canyon, so there’s a chance they completely missed it, and just kept walking. If you know they don’t have a map, skipping it would be easy to do.”

“Still,” Breanna begins, “it’s the most logical place to start. Would you mind? They have passenger pods here too, so if you would rather go somewhere else, we can part ways.”

He shakes his head. “If this canyon dome is populated, they will be in just as much need of escaping. They could make for great customers. In fact, maybe better, because they’re less safe that close to the chasm than the more northern communities. They might be more willing to leave.”

“Okay, then we go there together,” Cash agrees.

Sorel drives the rover into the vactrain pod, and sends a message to the network AI, stating that they are ready to go. The tube closes up, and the pod slides away. Of course, the trip is a lot shorter than the one that brought them there, but it’s still not instantaneous, so the girls have sex again while Sorel occupies himself in his simulation. Once they finally arrive, the AI announces that it will not be able to let them out exactly at their destination. There is something wrong, and it has been sealed up. Instead, it takes them back up to the surface, and drops them off at the secondary depot, which leads to the outside. It’s farther away, and they will have to make their way down into the canyon from there, but it wouldn’t be so bad if not for the actual reason they have to do that. The main entrance was blocked because the dome....has been destroyed. Well, it has not necessarily been destroyed, but it’s not safe either.

“Holy shit,” Cash says as they are staring over the edge. The shape of the dome is still there, and in fact, may remain intact underneath, but it’s unclear how livable the environment would be inside of it. Molten lava has breached the canyon, some of it already having hardened into rock as it cooled. If the residents are still down there, there’s not likely a way for them to get out. The database doesn’t say a thing about who they are, or how self-sufficient they designed their community. They might be able to survive for millennia, or they need to be rescued today. Whatever the answer, the three of them are not equipped to help. Really, the only question on Breanna and Cash’s minds right now is whether their friends were there when it happened.

“Notus, Calypso, can you hear me?” Breanna asks into her comms. “Shimizu, anyone. Can anyone hear me? Anyone at all.”

Sorel looks down the way. “That hab. It’s for gondola ingress and egress. There might be survivors in there; perhaps your friends, or someone who saw them.”

They walk down there, and it immediately doesn’t look good when they round the corner. The entrance is wide open, exposing the habitat to the hostile outside environment. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any answers, though. They shut the door behind them and repressurize, then get a look around. Cash heads right for the logs. There aren’t any recorded reports, but there is still security footage. She feeds it into the auto-summarization software, and grabs the highlights. They watch when the lava breaches through the walls of the canyon, and heads for the dome. Shortly thereafter, the interior habitat cameras show the lone operator pull his helmet on, and bug out. It doesn’t even look like he warns the residents below what was happening. He just abandoned them. If they were using holographic imagery for their scenery, they might not have seen the lava, and if they didn’t think to include the right sensors—which would, admittedly, be quite odd—they might have sat there in ignorance for hours, or maybe even the last couple of days. They might still not know that they’ve become trapped. There’s no evidence that they tried anything to save themselves.

Cash rolls it back a little. Earlier that day, seven survivors appeared from behind a small mountain. “Oh, it’s gotta be them,” she notes. The operator came out of the habitat, and stood just outside the entrance, using hand gestures, likely talking to their friends. There’s no audio, so they can’t know exactly what he was saying, but the group turned around, and he went back inside alone. He obviously denied them entry, which was a dick move, but it possibly saved their lives.

Breanna lets out a sigh of relief. “So, they didn’t get in. Where did they go?”

“It looks like they went back where they came,” Cash replies, “but the cameras don’t see very far. They could have looped around to the other side of the canyon, or backtracked to the chasm.”

“Why would they do that?” Breanna questions. “There’s nothing for them there.”

“There might be,” Sorel says. He has the map up again as a hologram. “From where you lost them, they went northeast to get here. This area is impassable. It has all sorts of sharp rocks and hidden crevices; very hard to navigate, especially on foot. If they tried to head west, they would have hit that stone forest, and might have ended up all the way back where they came from before finding the trail that goes northwest, around the other side of the forest. Now, they could have skipped all of that if they had instead come towards this gondola station, and gone around the canyon’s east side, but it looks like that asshole didn’t direct them that way.”

“Sorel. We have to go look for them. Can you stay with us just a little bit longer?” Breanna begs.

“I would be happy to. Let’s get back in the rover.”

Tangent Point: Pulling it Together (Part IV)

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Ajax immediately ran over to the second shuttle. Reed wasn’t sure if Vasily hadn’t noticed that there was another one in this bay, or didn’t think that they would have time to catch up. But as the true, legitimate captain of this vessel, Ajax had the authority to skip all pre-flight procedures, and just go. Reed tried to follow him and Shasta up the ramp. Ajax turned around, and held up a hand. “No. You don’t have a local back-up body. This could be a suicide mission.” He turned back around and started powering up systems.

“Why would you be concerned with that?”

Ajax just kept working. “Because I secretly agree with you. Don’t tell anyone. Just take this thing, and go save our neighbors. I’ll be on the ground. The Tangent is so new that I only had one local back-up.”

“Shasta,” Reed said simply as he was backing away on the ramp.

“I’ll be here to help the Captain if he needs it,” she replied. “Now go so we can close the hatch.”

Reed stepped all the way out, and let them launch without him. It was frustrating, sending people on missions, placing them in danger. But that was the burden of leadership, and it was a lot better in real life than in the space operas, where death was usually permanent. He watched the shuttle for as long as possible until it disappeared around the bend. Then he just kept staring through the transparent plasma barrier. Bungula was beginning to shrink as they were breaking orbit. He breathed a sigh of relief, and then opened his comms. “Ellis calling the bridge. Seal the bulkheads in this shuttle bay and shut off the plasma. We need to save power.”

“Belay that order,” Shasta’s voice came on. “I’ll be coming in with the elevator pod shortly.”

Reed switched to a private channel. “You survived? How did you stop Vasily?”

“I’ll explain when I get back, but Ajax is gone. It’s just me, so have a security team on standby to secure the VIP hostages.”

Reed went back to the main channel. “Send a security squad to Shuttle Bay Four. We got the pod.” He could hear them all cheering on the radio, but he couldn’t celebrate with them. There was still one more loose end to tie up. Vasily was about to be resurrected in the crazy new chrysalis thing, and had to be dealt with too. If he told his people what happened between them, it would cause some internal conflict. Some here would be okay with murdering a human, and might end up siding with Vasily on this matter. Reed could stick him in hock, but there was no guarantee that he would stay there for long. One ally would be all it took to set him free. This was a very delicate situation. He had a number of options, and each came with advantages and disadvantages. He could even just pardon the guy, or straight up keep it all a secret in order to maintain peace. Even if he found a way to transport him off-ship far enough to shift his consciousness stream from the Tangent to Bungula, he might become a martyr. Vasily was a permanent problem no matter what. “Also, send one team to the chrysalis room to escort someone who is about to respawn.”

“Aye, captain,” his Head of Security acknowledged. “Alpha-Gamma squad, go to the shuttle bay. Beta team to the chrysalis room.”

“Hey, Thistle. Report,” Reed asked his AI as he was starting the long trip back up to the bridge alone. The summary ran for as long as it took him to reach his destination. Everything was going all right. Auxiliary engineering was holding the platform together, the security sweep of the tether complex didn’t turn up any other traitors or spies, and the bridge crew was establishing themselves, and settling into their new roles. The biggest job was the cleanup. There were a lot of dead bodies scattered all over the place, which needed to be disposed of respectfully, according to the user’s own personal wishes. Some of these could be found in the database, while others might have to be contacted later. The mutineers responsible for this work knew who they were, and were doing it without being asked. That went for everyone. Nothing was being neglected. Nothing was falling apart. They might actually pull this off.

“Captain,” his pilot began, “we’ve started acceleration. We’ll be on our way in six minutes.”

“Thanks, that’s good to know.”

“Sir,” his comms officer said, taking her turn. “Mediator Fenwick is on hold for peaceful negotiations.” She used airquotes.

“You didn’t alert me right away?” Reed asked.

“We figured you would want to make him sweat,” she replied.

Reed smiled. “Good call.” He took a deep breath, then did a 180. “On screen.” The image appeared. “Kemper, how the hell are ya? Long time, no blackout hock.”

Mediator Fenwick was already frowning, but deepened it now. “You have the audacity to criticize our judgment after what you’ve just pulled? What I did when I ordered your consciousness frozen was an executive decision that I take responsibility for, but it only affected you. You killed dozens of people—”

“Wait, we didn’t kill anyone. We destroyed some people’s substrates. You’re the only one here who has conspired to murder anyone.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Fenwick contended. “Did someone die in the drone strike? That was only meant to disable propulsion.”

“Now, Kemper, we’ve known each other for decades. There’s no need to play coy with me. I know about your spy.”

“We do not have a spy. I will not stand for this projection. It is you who infected our ranks insidiously, and instituted a mutiny. Now, we all have empathy for the Proxima Domanians, and we recognize where you’re coming from, but making us out to be the villains is reckless, and the history books will not remember it that way.”

“Well, I don’t agree with your prediction, but I’m not talking about the kinetic drone, and I’m not talking about you fighting back against the mutiny. I don’t even blame you for that, your people had every right to defend their post. They will be treated with the utmost respect while they’re on board my new platform. No, I’m talking about Vasily.” Everyone within Reed’s field of vision winced at the accusation, and probably everyone he couldn’t see too. “Now, I don’t know how you got to him, but he placed the VIPs in the elevator pod in grave—”

“Executor Ellis,” Fenwick interrupted. “I do not appreciate being accused of something that I had nothing to do with. If you suffered a betrayal, then I would call that an internal matter. I’ve never even heard the name before, so unless you are not done fabricating tall tales, I would like to move on to the matter of the hostage crisis. For the safe return of all hostages, we are prepared to offer the Tangent passage to Proxima Doma without any interference from the Bungulan military, or the government. It is all you need, let those innocent people go.”

Reed chuckled. “Nice try, Kempy, but I caught your sneaky little semantic trick. The Bungulan military is symbolic at best, which is why you were woefully unprepared for our takeover. Teagarden, on the other hand, operates under an entirely different jurisdiction, and would be under absolutely no obligation to uphold any promise of amnesty that the Bungulan authority might offer. I doubt you’ve even mobilized your own forces. I’m sure your first call was to that Teaguardian I see matching our speed on the port side. Are we quite finished joking?”

Fenwick knew that he had been made. “Reed, you don’t wanna do this. Even if you make it out of Bungulan space—even if you make it all the way to Doma—how do you think you’re gonna pull this off? What, you’re gonna hover over one of the poles for years at the shortest, and then you’re gonna fly to the other pole and do it again? And throughout all of that, the Teaguardian isn’t gonna figure out a way to rescue the undigitized humans, and then blow everyone else out of the sky? You won’t survive that. You’ll be too far from any back-ups. You’ll just be dead. We’ll rebuild the Tangent, and the galaxy will move forward.”

“You still think you’re the good guy here?” Reed questioned. “The people next door are dying. You really wanna do the right thing? Tell that Teaguardian to give us whatever magical engine they use to travel faster than light, so we can get this done, and get out! We will bring the Tangent back. Every single one of my people fully recognizes the consequences of our actions. No one is thinking they’re just gonna go back to their lives as if nothing happened. We’re doing it because no one else is. We’re doing it because you’re a bunch of self-obsessed, elitist nutsacks!”

Mediator Fenwick shook his head. “This is the last chance you will get to talk to me, Ellis. If you finish breaking orbit, it will be out of my hands. The Teaguardians will take over the case, and they won’t be as nice. They may not care about the VIPs. Their ancestors pioneered neural digitalization, and it’s been centuries. A lot of people think we should stop worrying about humans who willfully reject virtual immortality. I’m not one of those people, but you’re about a minute away from it being out of my hands. Abort the burn, come back down. I’m not asking for any hostages yet, or for you to surrender. Let’s just talk about this some more.”

“No more talking,” Reed decided. “I tried talking to you for a week. You offered airdrops—airdrops! A coward’s hollow gesture. I’m sick of looking at your face. Tell your Teagarden contact to bring it on!”

Without his order, his comms officer cut the call.

Reed took a breath, and looked over at his weapons officer, Aletha. “I already know the answer to this, but maybe there was some faulty intel. Does the Tangent have a weapons system?”

“No,” Aletha said. “It’s not a battleship. The only things keeping us from the next salvo of kinetic drones are in that elevator pod that we hooked.”

Reed nodded, then looked back over at comms. “Shipwide message.” He waited half a second. “New crew of the Tangent, Phase One is complete. Aletha will be coming around to collect your weapons from you, and check them back into the system. Only designated security personnel will be keeping their sidearms. Thank you for everything you’ve done. I hope you’re ready to keep going, because there’s no going back now.” He double checked the screen. “We are officially on our way to Proxima Doma.” He could hear more cheers over the radio, and out in the corridor.

“Congratulations, Captain,” Transdimensional Regulator Van Horn said.

“Thanks, Amulet,” he replied, “but I didn’t do it alone. In fact, I took a nap earlier today while everyone else was getting in place.”

Everyone giggled at that.

Reed breathed deeply, and sat down in the captain’s chair for the first time. That was when Shasta walked in, so he jumped back up. “Ajax?”

“He didn’t make it,” she replied.

“In here,” Reed decided, gesturing towards the captain’s bridge office. They went inside for a private conversation.

“It happened quite quickly,” Shasta began. “Vasily was able to send the shuttle forwards, but not particularly fast, so we were able to catch up before it could collide with the pod. I programmed our shuttle to match vector with the target, flying above it, while Ajax sealed the airlock. He wasn’t even wearing a suit. He tethered himself to the wall, and then swung down. I don’t know exactly what happened then, but he immediately broke the synchrony and altered course. He eventually burned up in the atmosphere. I think he killed himself so there would be no question who was in charge here. He did it to protect your authority.”

“No one can know,” Reed determined. “The official story is Vasily, delirious and dying, fought back, and the shuttle was lost. On the record, Ajax must be our enemy. Maybe we’ll be able to thank him one day.”

“I’ll fill out the report. And Vasily himself?” she asked

“He’ll be in hock alone. We need to minimize the amount he interacts with others so he doesn’t influence and infect my crew.”

“Understood.”

The doorbell. “Enter,” Reed offered.

The door opened. A security officer was standing next to—not only a VIP—but the most valuable hostage asset they had on board right now. “Sorry, sir. She insisted. She threatened to kill herself.”

“It’s all right, officer. Delegator Jodene Chariot, it’s an honor,” Reed said without a hint of sarcasm.

She sighed exasperatedly. “Report.”

“Six months. With only two operational fusion torches, it will take us six months to get to the Proxima Centauri system. Once we’re there, we’ll hover over the poles one at a time, and transport as many as we can off of the surface. Once the job is done, I will hand the reins over to you, and you can do whatever you want with me. We’ll negotiate specifics...in six months.”

“When I was in the elevator pod, we only saw one torch get hit by a drone,” Jodene said. “If you absolutely must do this, and no one can stop you, I would like it to get done faster.”

“You can thank the military for the delay. Without that fourth torch, propulsion is out of balance. We can only actually use the two opposing each other. The third one will just be sitting there, doing nothing.”

“Can the fourth one be fixed en route?” she pressed.

“Yeah,” Reed answered. “It’ll take about six months.”

“Why bother?” Jodene questioned.

“We’ll need it,” Shasta interjected. “When we get there to hover over the poles, we will need as much power as we can muster. The repairs will not be a waste of time.”

“Your crew is not equipped to handle such an undertaking.”

Reed smiled. “I’m not allowing anyone else on board. We will be releasing some hostages as a sign of good faith, but my people know what they’re doing. They can handle it. That’s why they’re here.”

“Still, you could use some extra manpower,” Jodene reasoned. “I just so happen to know of a bunch of people who were literally enrolled to work on the Tangent, and could expedite the work, as well as make sure it lives up to code.”

Reed nodded. “You’re just talking about the other hostages. You want some kind of work-release program? You just got on board, and you’re already negotiating?”

“No time like the present,” Jodene said. “Immediately acknowledging the value of the regular crew will go a long way to earning their trust.”

“It will be hard to trust them,” Reed admitted. “It would only take one person to sabotage a vital system function, and take us all down.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Jodene volunteered.

He gave her a funny face. “That doesn’t help. I would have to trust you too.”

“I can’t tell you what to think, but you should know that I have a neural suicide inducer. I can simply deliberately transfer my consciousness in full to a back-up without having to shoot myself in the head, or whatever. I don’t have to stay here.” Jodene pointed to the viewscreen on the wall that was showing the port side live feed. “That Teaguardian over there is fully ready to receive the digitized mind of anyone who dies. They don’t have to have a substrate waiting for them. They’ll just hang out in a virtual environment until a new body can be built.”

“All right, no need to make threats,” Reed contended. “We can make this work. Let’s head to hock right now, and address the crew together, so it’s clear that we’re on the same page.”

They did manage to make it work. It wasn’t easy, and there was plenty of friction, but the two separate crews fell into a routine, and eventually became one. It was difficult to remember which of them was part of the mutiny, and who belonged there legitimately. With the extra hands, they were able to rebuild the fourth fusion torch, negotiating for rare materials by releasing some non-essential crew to the Teaguardian escort, including a couple of VIPs who had almost nothing to offer. While some crewmembers were working on that, others were braiding tethers together. When you’re over the equator at geostationary orbit, the tethers can be fairly thin, but must be ultra-long. Over a pole, it’s the opposite. The strain causes a demand for extra strength, but they can hover closer, so the tethers don’t need to be as long.

They arrived in the Proxima system within five months. By then, the Domanians had been suffering their own socio-political issues. Low resources and high waste heat led to raised tensions, and muted morale. Reed now faced the first actual dilemma to come out of this whole thing. Should they rescue the refugees from the southern pole first, or the northern pole? The people on the ground sure had their opinions about it.

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Microstory 2625: Have Your Baggage and Your Passports Ready and Follow the Green Line

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August 30, 2526. The girls have been looking for an alternate way across the four-kilometer wide chasm separating them from the northern pole. They didn’t find a rocket, a drone, or replacement IMS units, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist somewhere. In one of these apartments, a resident of this closest dome might have stuffed an IMS in their closet, and left it there. They can’t search every unit, so they’re just looking in the common areas, hoping to get lucky. They have either been picked clean, or nothing useful was ever there. The people who lived in this dome were already pretty far north when the planet went to hell. They would have had a lot more time to make their own evacuation while the equatorial settlements were rushing to reach even a modicum of safety.

They’re in the main control room now, trying to find some kind of master asset database. They aren’t finding any luck here either. Suddenly, they hear a beep that isn’t too irritating. “What’s that?” Cash asks.

“Proximity alarm. Non-emergency. Someone’s coming in for a visit.”

“There are still people on this side of the death chasm?”

“Apparently.” Cash opens a channel. “Unidentified extra-domal vehicle, please respond. Unidentified vehicle, this is the control room of Queen’s Egg Dome, are you reading me?” She waits a bit longer. “I don’t think the signal is punching through.”

“Do we definitely want to get their attention or maybe no?” Breanna poses.

“They might have what we need, I say it’s worth the risk.”

“All right.” Breanna turns back to her own workstation. She identifies the flare array, and shoots them all off. There is no reason to be conservative here.

They both watch on the viewscreen as the flares go up one by one, just outside the dome. Cash glances back down at the proximity map. “It’s turning. It sees the flares.”

Breanna grabs her helmet from the table in the corner. “Let’s go say hi.”

They cart down to a maintenance garage not too far from where the flares went off. They open it, and wave the rover down. The driver pulls into the airlock, then waits for Breanna to repressurize it before getting out. He’s not wearing a suit. He shakes their hands after Breanna and Cash take their helmets back off, and introduce themselves. “It’s very nice to meet you. My name is Sorel Arts, and I’m here to save your life.”

“How would you do that?” Breanna questions.

Sorel smirks. He gestures for them to follow him to the back of his rover. He opens the hatches to reveal a mind-uploading set-up. “This is how you’re gonna get out of this mess. I can send you anywhere in the known universe at the speed of thought. Ladies, let me ask you this, have you ever heard of a planet called Castlebourne?”

“We’re undigitized,” Cash points out, “otherwise we would have already left.”

“That’s okay,” Sorel says. He slaps the manifold like an ace salesman. “This baby can digitize you as well as transfer your mind. It’s an all-in-one.”

“No, what I mean is we don’t want to be digitized, or we already would be,” Cash clarifies. “We’re looking for a physical way to get to the other side of the chasm.”

“Chasm?” Sorel asks. “You mean over the equator?”

“No,” Breanna begins, pointing. “There’s one to the north of us. We’re cut off from the northern pole.”

“We think it goes around the entire circumference at that latitude,” Cash adds.

Sorel frowns. “I came this way to pick up stragglers. You two are the last I’ve found, but I wasn’t planning on quitting after this. Once I reached the northern domes, I was going to spread the good word there too. Resources will be spread thin, and rescue will be delayed at best, I’m sure. It is still the best way to escape this dying world.”

“Unless you have an IMS unit with a working parachute, you’re not getting across that chasm,” Breanna says. “Maybe you send your mind to a substrate on that side.”

“I don’t have a substrate there, and no one is answering me through my quantum terminal. I can get you across empty space, but I think there’s too much interference for ground-to-ground communication.”

“Then I guess we’re in the same boat,” Cash muses. “Unless...you have an actual boat...and it can float on lava?”

Sorel chuckles. Then he sighs and shakes his head, annoyed. “No. But there is something that you might be able to use.” He sighs again, and is maybe a little scared. “There’s an osmium mining operation towards the night side. It may technically be on the night side, which would be why it’s fully automated. The mining automators extract the raw materials, and shoot it towards the domes in a mass driver. We actually use a little bit of Os in our apparatuses, and I think it comes from there.” He pats his machine again.

“How far away is this mass driver?” Breanna asks him.

“From here? About a thousand kilometers,” he answers “It’s actually closer to the northern pole than we are. It’s right below the Chappa’ai Mountains, which I’m guessing is where this chasm has formed. If the mass driver is still intact, it can shoot you across the gap, because that’s exactly what it was designed to do. Well, it was designed to do it with rocks, but if you slow it down, you should be able to make it over safely.”

Breanna eyes the rover. “If we have to walk, it will take us a month to get there.”

“I dunno...” Sorel says.

“You have to get over there too,” Cash reasons. “We can take the rover with us. It will actually be safer to be strapped inside of it, inside of the payload pod. It is the only logical choice. Railgun or death.”

He nods. “Yeah, you’re right. There’s nothing left for me on this side. I have to go where the people are, and that’s at the pole. I’m just...nervous about it. I don’t relish the idea of being shot out of a railgun. I only live in base reality to facilitate others leaving it. I would prefer a virtual simulation, where it’s safe.”

“The rover has a computer, right?” Breanna figures. “You could always upload yourself into that, and leave your husk behind.”

“No, I’ll be all right. I have ten or eleven hours to psych myself up.” Sorel claps his hands. “Okay. Let’s go shoot ourselves out of a giant-ass cannon across a giant-ass canyon.” He opens the rover door. “Ladies first, but I’ll drive, and I get to pick the music. Fair warning, I like heavy metal.”

And so the three of them get back on the road, and head to the dark side. It feels a little awkward, remembering that they warned a faction of their caravan to not go this way, because it wasn’t safe. But to be fair, that was much farther south. As insanely dangerous as their new plan is, it’s their only hope.

Microstory 2622: Sometimes You’re the Windshield, Sometimes You’re the Bug

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August 27, 2526. The ragtag group of survivors have almost made it. They can see the Chappa’ai Mountains up ahead. They will still want to get as far north as they possibly can, but according to the science, crossing that threshold will allow them to breathe a sigh of relief. The ground is more stable and solid. After all this, salvation is within their grasp. So of course something else has to get in the way. And it’s huge.

“Brake!” Breanna orders. “Brake, brake, brake!” she repeats.

“I see it!” Cash responds, matching her energy. She can’t brake any harder than this, though. It’s just a button, and it does what it does as fast as physics allows.

“Hold on!” Breanna shouts. Even though she’s magnetized to the floor, she reaches up and takes hold of the overhead oscilight for balance. They certainly don’t need it to see, and if anyone is on the tracks, the oncoming railcart is the least of their concerns. Before them, the ground is opening up. The mountains are sliding apart from each other. They can see the red glimmer of the vengeful lava below, even as the day side begins to overtake the shrinking breadth of the Terminator Line. “Be prepared to jump if I say so! It may be our only hope! Once we do, you’ll wanna start running in the opposite direction! But not yet! We’re still moving too fast!”

“Can we just parachute off!” someone asks.

“Too much turbulence!” Breanna cries back. “Just wait for my instructions!” 

They all scream into the comms. Even Tertius and Aeterna look worried, though that may be more from empathy than fear. The chasm is pulling the tracks ahead of them down now, along with the spine that led others up to the safety of the pole. Hopefully, no one is in them right now. The train stations have all become non-operational, but that doesn’t mean no one is trying to walk it. Breanna isn’t so sure about her instructions anymore. There may be nothing they can do. Even if they manage to stop, the ground is falling away, and they don’t know when that’s gonna stop. The fact is, they started this evacuation late, and got held up too many times. Survival was never guaranteed. They did their best.

“Okay, bad news!” Cash says seconds later. “The brake broke! I’ve lost control!”

Suddenly, as if in response to Cash’s problem, a large object flies in from the side, and slams into the front of the railcart. There is no time to figure out what it is. Two people are catapulted forward, one of them being Aeterna, and the other unknown with their IMS fully on. They arch over the object, and down into the bowels of the planet. Having finished saving the cart, the beetloid drone reopens its elytra, and reengages its rotowings. It dives down into the abyss. They hold their breaths and wait, too afraid to move on this precarious cart. It could tip over too at any second, and they want the beetloid free to rescue them again, so they’re gonna let it finish its latest mission. After a minute or two, it darts back into view, and lands safely on the tracks behind them.

Only one person is sitting on its head. They slide off, and appear to be hyperventilating, but otherwise alive. Tertius looks over at Breanna. “I missed out on 200 years with my daughter. I just got her back. I can’t abandon her again.” He leans back and lets himself fall into the chasm. Okay, he may have survived the pyrotornado somehow, but they’re not surviving that!

“We need to go,” Cash says.

Breanna doesn’t move. She’s looking out at the impassable new obstacle, thinking about the Valerians, and in general how deep of shit they’re in.

“Bre! We have to go!” Cash urges.

Breanna nods, then follows the group off the cart. They all stop and look back when they hear the sound of metal scraping against metal. The cart has finally slipped over the edge itself. “Go into a light jog, but slow down if the tracks start to feel unstable. We wanna get as far from that thing as possible, but not if that means falling over the edge anyway. Even away from that chasm, we’re pretty high up.

They go a little under a kilometer back southwards before finding a ladder to climb down to the surface, where they start walking westwards, trying to see where the new chasm ends. A young woman named Calypso rushes up to Breanna. She’s the one who fell over with Aeterna. “Why did it save me? Why did it save me and not her?”

Breanna looks over at the beetloid, which is walking alongside them like a loyal dog. It’s a specialized service drone. She’s not exactly an expert on them, but she wouldn’t have thought they programmed it with any sense of duty to rescue humans. But maybe they did, or maybe someone modified it aftermarket, or maybe it’s learning. “I can’t say for sure, but my guess is it calculated the likelihood of survival. Had it not caught you, and brought you back up, you would have fried in the toxic gases before your body could have hit the bottom. Aeterna was practically naked. It probably figured that she was already dead. There was no point in trying to rescue both of you, and losing the one person who might still stand a chance.”

“Is she? Is she dead?”

“If she’s not, I don’t know how she would get out of that. You don’t really sink in lava, but that’s because your body would be incinerated on the surface. But if she’s a god, and can survive that, she might not be able to get out anyway. I can’t imagine we’ll be seeing either of those two ever again.” That’s what they assumed last time, however.

“There,” Cash says, pointing. “That hill takes us high enough.”

“High enough for what?” Breanna asks.

“To parachute. We’ll glide across the ravine, and land on the other side. The plumes of gas actually help us. It won’t be easy, but it’ll get us there.”

“Well, you remember that the two of us don’t—” Breanna tries to begin.

“It will get us there,” Cash interrupts.

Brenna shakes her head, and looks at her wrist interface. “It’s already quite hot. The day side is drawing closer. We shouldn’t go that far west.”

“We won’t be there long,” Cash justifies. “We’re just gonna jump off and go, and then we’ll scramble back to the Terminator Line, and continue northwards.”

“Fine. Let’s take a vote,” Breanna says. “Fair warning, your parachutes might not make it. Those fumes are dangerous. We’ll have to teach you how to control them, you might need to change directions midflight, and you still might come up short. I will say,  there’s nothing for you on this side. The northern pole is the only option.”

And so the group heads for the hill in the middle distance. Breanna and Cash choose not to tell the others that there’s a problem.

“Wait, what about that thing?” Cash suggests.

“That?” Breanna looks at the Beetloid again. “That can only hold one person.”

“We could play Rock, Paper, Scissors for it?”

Tangent Point: Death Spiral (Part III)

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Shasta is a very capable woman, but she is not a pilot, nor an engineer, nor a mechanic, nor anything else that they would need to get them out of this mess. She was able to fire the three torches because that much was obvious from the console. Since it had been almost a minute now, and no more kinetic drones had destroyed any part of the platform, or the propulsion attachment, they were guessing that her initial act had worked. But they were still in trouble, and something had to be done about it. They needed their pilot back at his workstation. But that seemed to be impossible. The platform was spinning like a carnival ride. Artificial gravity was down, and they were all pinned against the wall. No one was going anywhere. Shasta was barely holding onto the console, even if the pilot could somehow walk her through whatever procedure needed to be done.

Suddenly, however, they found themselves slowing down. They were still rotating, but their eyes were no longer bulging out of their heads, and what food remained in their stomachs wasn’t threatening to follow what had already come up. “Grab my ankle!” Shasta cried.

The pilot jumped over and took hold of her leg. He climbed her body until he could hold onto the console himself. “Someone is controlling this,” he announced, looking at the screen. “I can’t pinpoint where, but it’s not remote. They’re somewhere on this ship.”

“Get me AG!” Reed ordered.

“That’s my job,” his specialist insisted. Her official title was Transdimensional Regulator, and Reed did not understand what exactly her job entailed. He just needed her to make it work again. She was crouched on the wall, tapping on her tablet. “I’ve been trying to fix it this whole time. It’s giving me so much shit!” She growled as she continued to work on it. “I need more power. I need someone to reroute it from non-essential systems. I don’t care which, but the portals are closed. I need one burst to reopen them, and then they should draw normally.”

“Climate control,” Reed decided. “Reroute from climate control.”

“On it.” Shasta swung over to environmental control, and gave the Regulator what she needed.

“Ramping gravity to thirty seconds,” the Regulator informed them. “I would make an announcement if I were you.”

Reed placed his wrist in front of his lips. “This is Acting Captain Reed Ellis, calling all hands. We are restoring dimensional gravity. Relocate the floor, prepare for a sudden shift.”

“Sudden shift,” the Regulator mumbled. “There’ll be nothing sudden about it. I do my job.” She stood up on the wall, and deftly walked back down to the floor with perfect timing. Everyone else tumbled towards it with varying degrees of gracelessness.

Reed got back to his feet, performed the Picard maneuver, and cleared his throat. “Report!”

“We’re still spinning, sir,” his pilot answered, “but gradually regaining attitude control. Soon enough, we’ll still be plummeting to our deaths, but doing so straight as an arrow.”

“Arrows spin,” the Regulator argued.

Reed ignored her casual combativeness. She was one of the most important people on this platform. Of course, everyone had their own job to do, but transdimensional gravity was incredibly rare, and one could count on their fingers how many people were qualified to operate it safely and effectively. Again, he had no clue how it worked. Some unnamed singular genius invented it, and doled it out very selectively. At the end of the day, his Regulator could do or say whatever the hell she wanted, because everyone here was replaceable...except for her.

“Did you find out who fired the thrusters to control our spin?” Reed asked the pilot.

“Not who, but where. They’re in main engineering.”

“That should be impossible.” Reed pointed out. “I was told that it was not survivable.”

“It might be temporarily survivable,” the pilot reasoned, “and the person in there is about to die, or already has after fixing the issue.”

“Good point. Stay here, and get us the hell out of this gravity well. Fire all three operational thrusters if you have to. It doesn’t matter if we have our own gravity working.”

“It’s the elevator pod, sir,” the pilot reminded him. “They don’t have AG, so they’re in danger as long as they’re still out there.”

“Then reel them in!” Reed turned to face Shasta. “You’re with me.” He started walking away. “I also need one engineer.”

“Sir!” an eager young engineer said, literally jumping at the chance. He would learn these people’s names eventually.

They walked in silence for a moment before Reed was finally ready to ask, “how are you here?”

Shasta shrugged. “We’re immortals.”

“I didn’t ask how you were alive,” he snapped back.

“I had a back-up in a respawn sector. Not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. I had to bring you into this. You didn’t have Tangent clearance. I’ve never actually been up here before, yet you’re telling me that you had time to construct a clone of yourself? You would have had to do it months ago at least.”

“I had this substrate made while you were in blackout hock.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. No one can clone or print a body that fast.”

“They can on Castlebourne,” she contended.

“Yeah, they use special technology that we don’t have. We got artificial gravity, they got rapid bioprinting.”

“We got both,” Shasta insisted. “You just need to know where to look.”

“How did you know where to look, but I don’t?”

“You were asleep,” Shasta tried to explain. “There were many last-minute details that you don’t know. We recruited others that you are not aware of. Someone from Castlebourne came here to help. We don’t know how they knew that we needed it, but we didn’t question it after they proved their worth. I watched a copy of her materialize in a pod in seconds. It was phenomenal. I’ve never seen anything like it. It does not look like what you’re used to.”

“However it looks, it would not have been a software issue, but a hardware issue,” Reed said. “You would have needed to get this mysterious savior on the Tangent to make the secret upgrades.”

“She said that she would take care of it, and she did,” Shasta replied. “We decided to trust her. I don’t know if she magically made her way onto a secure yet to be operational space elevator platform in record time, or if she already had someone on the inside, but it obviously worked.” She swept her hands down in front of her chest illustratively.

They were back at main engineering, so Reed couldn’t press the conversation, but he was determined to get more answers later. Random people didn’t just help like that, and they certainly didn’t show up unprompted. He pointed at the dented door. “I need you to tell me what’s happening in there without any of us going in there.”

The engineer’s fingers were dancing in the air before her. She was controlling an augmented reality interface that they could not see as it was being projected directly into her pupils. These weren’t too terribly common, probably because it was a little awkward, pressing buttons that you couldn’t feel. People tended to prefer the haptic feedback of more traditional form factors. “This way.” She walked off. They followed her around the corner, and around the next corner, to the opposite side of engineering. “This door is fine, but I don’t have authorization.”

“Are you sure it’s not gonna boil me alive?” Reed asked the engineer. He glanced over at Shasta for a second. “I don’t have a magical back-up body.”

“You would if I had had time to ask for your consent,” Shasta claimed.

“I’m sure,” the engineer said. “This door doesn’t lead all the way into engineering. It’s just a mechanical service terminal, but it’s undergoing unusual power spikes, so I would start there. I promise, it’s safe.”

Reed opened the door.

None other than their shuttle pilot, Trilby was on the other side. He was elbows deep into an access panel of some kind. Wires and power crystals were hanging out of other panels behind him. Trilby looked over at them. He quickly pushed his steampunk goggles to his forehead before going back to the wires.  “Cap’n. Nice to see you again.”

“What are you doing?” Reed questions.

“Fixing your ship,” Trilby answered.

“It looks like you’re taking it apart.”

“Oh, no sir. I couldn’t get into engineering, so I’m piloting ‘er manually.”

“Those are just the power relays,” his engineer said. “How the hell are you doing anything from here?”

“Power is everything,” Trilby said. “It’s all just ones and zeroes, on and off, stop and go. You can make a machine do anything if you pull the right connections in the right sequence.” He let go of the wires, pulled his arms out, and faced the three of them.

“That’s ridiculous,” the engineer retorted. “You would have to have an insane amount of intimate knowledge of this platform’s systems to exercise any semblance of control over it. Not to mention the fact that the fusion torches are an attachment, not tied directly into the infrastructure.”

“Is the platform still spinning?” Trilby posed.

“No,” the engineer admitted.

Trilby showed a cocksure smirk that was eerily serious. “You’re welcome.”

“You were supposed to leave,” Reed reminded him.

“I got held up,” Trilby replied.

“Good, I’m glad,” Reed said.

“No, I literally got held up at gunpoint,” Trilby clarified. “But then someone shot them, and I ran off. I’m not sure whose side they were on.”

“It’s all settled now,” Reed determined. “Please report to auxiliary engineering. I know you didn’t come here for this, but no one gets in and no one gets out. We won’t begin hostage negotiations until we’ve broken orbit, so you might as well keep yourself busy.”

“Aye, aye.” Trilby began to walk away, but stopped. “Hey, you know you have five hours to keep from crashing into the atmosphere, right?”

“Yes, we’re working on it,” Reed concurred. “Thanks for helping with that.”

“Sir, I think...” his engineer trailed off.

“You should go to aux engineering too,” Reed interrupted. “Keep and eye on him for me, but don’t get in his way. We may really need him.”

“Aye, sir.” The engineer left.

Reed turned back to Shasta. “I need to see this crazy advanced bioprinter.”

“I can take you to it,” Shasta promised, “but I warn you, it’s not going to make sense. It’s not just the same ol’ technology made faster. It’s entirely unrecognizable.”

“Stop teasing me, and let’s go.” Reed went down the hallway, figuring that he had a fifty-fifty chance of choosing the right direction.

“It’s this way,” Shasta countered.

“That’s all you had to say.” He spun around, and followed her down.

As they were walking, they listened to updates from engineering, the bridge, and other sectors. It wasn’t going to be easy, but they were making it work. They would get out of this mess and finally be on their way to the Proxima system. Everyone was doing a fine job, and the hostages weren’t giving them trouble after having reawoken from being stunned. The two of them ended up in the bowels of the platform; precisely where you would expect to find a secret respawn chamber. It was dark and damp, until it wasn’t. They entered a different section, and found it to be pristinely new, sleekly designed and sparkling.

Shasta stopped. “Okay. I warned you that it was different, but nothing can prepare you for actually seeing it with your own two eyes. Nonetheless, I assure you, it works. I woke up not an hour ago, and I’m fine.”

“Just open the door,” he urged.

She punched in the code. The door slid open.

Reed walked in first, slowly, and very confused. He was looking at something rather gross hanging from a pipe on the ceiling. It had come out of there apparently, and grown afterwards, and according to Shasta’s claims, it had done it impossibly fast. “What is that, a cocoon?”

“A chrysalis,” she corrected.

“It’s organic?”

“Yes.”

“That’s even more outrageous than I thought,” Reed began. “If anything, something like this should be slower.”

“The Castlebourner said the growth acceleration was a separate thing from the medium. It doesn’t have to be that fast. In fact, it usually isn’t. As a senior...rebel, I was granted the fastest development time, but not everyone has that luxury.” She jerked her head over to another empty chrysalis a few meters away. “I didn’t have time to learn who this was, but it was sealed up when I was here, so they must have eclosed since then.”

Reed stepped over to the second open chrysalis. He looked around it, and on the ceiling, but didn’t find any sort of interface, or anything that might point to who this would have been. “Wait. Are all of our people in the system?”

“Almost. Notable exceptions include you. Our mysterious benefactor said that she wouldn’t allow it since you couldn’t give your consent in person. A few others just straight up refused, since it freaked them out.”

“What about Vasily? Was he a holdout?”

“No,” she answered. “He was a junior rebel, so he qualified for fairly fast growth time; just not as fast as me. Why, did he die in the fight?”

“You could say that. Vasily, this is Ellis, report in,” he spoke into his comms. “Vasily, report in. Where are you?”

“Why do you look so nervous?”

“He murdered someone,” Reed explained. “A normal human.” He went back to his comms. “Vasily, report in right now!”

“Captain, sorry, I know you’re looking for Vasily, but we got a major problem on our hands,” Sartore, the elevator tech interjected. “The tethers have snapped. The pod is in a steeper decaying orbit. I hesitate to say, but...I think they were sabotaged.”

“Sabotaged by someone here, or in the pod?” Reed asked.

“Definitely here.”

“Security, get to the tether sector,” Reed ordered. “Search the entire complex. Shoot anyone who isn’t a part of our group.” He paused. “And if you find Vasily, bring him to me.”

“Sartore,” Shasta spoke in her own comms. “Can we get the pod back?”

“With a shuttle, sure,” Sartore replied. “But every second counts.”

“We’re very close to the shuttle bay,” Shasta told Reed.

“Let’s go!” He ran out of the room.

“Thanks, Sartore!” Shasta yelled into her comms as she was running out too. “Take stock of the tethering that we have left! We need to make sure we have enough to actually help on Doma!”

They raced down the corridors, and into the shuttlebay, but Vasily was one step ahead of them. He was standing at the top of the ramp of the shuttle, his gun up and ready to fire. Once they were close enough, he tensed his arms, and aimed at Reed’s head. “I know you’re not in our chrysalis system yet, Captain. If you die, you’ll end up off-world.”

“Are you so mad at me, Vasily, that you would ruin our chances to help the Domanians?” Reed asked him. “I didn’t tag you as that petty.”

“Well, I am. Have you ever been stabbed in the head before, sir? It’s not pleasant. It’s the worst way I’ve ever died.”

“You killed someone in cold blood,” Reed reminded him. “I would have shot you cleanly if I could have, but the gun wouldn’t let me, so I improvised.”

“You tried to banish me back to Bungula, where the authorities likely would have been waiting!” Vasily screamed.

“I’m sorry about that, but we need that shuttle to go retrieve those VIPs. The mission isn’t over yet. Let us finish it. Help us finish it.”

“Nah, I’m done with that. I knew you would come here, so I didn’t come alone.” Vasily slammed his palm against a button on the inside. The door to the cockpit slid open. Someone was in there, tapping on the console, likely running the pre-flight check. “How are we lookin’?” he called back.

“We’re just about ready to go.” The shuttle pilot turned around, which showed Reed and Shasta that he was not one of theirs, but a hostage. “I just need to run diagnostics on the hook that we’ll use to grab the pod. It’s never been deployed before.”

“Hook?” Vasily questioned. “We don’t need the hook. We’re just gonna crash into it. I have no interest in dropping the VIPs off on the planet. I just want to prevent him from using them as leverage.”

“Hey, that’s not what I signed up for,” the shuttle pilot argued. “I thought we were gonna save them. Some people on there aren’t even backed up.” He tried to continue arguing, but couldn’t finish.

Vasily quickly swung his arm around to shoot the shuttle pilot dead, which was just enough time for Reed to take out his own maser, and point it into the shuttle. Vasily smirked at it. “You can’t shoot me, remember?”

“But I can shoot the junction box, which will disable the shuttle, and if I aim it just right, it might even blow your body up.”

“You’re not that good ‘a shot,” Vasily contended.

“But I am.” Shasta lifted her weapon too. “Put your gun down, and step out of the shuttle, Vas. We need it.”

“You’re not getting it.” Vasily looked over his shoulder. “Shoot the box for all I care. I don’t need it to fly. This is just a bullet now. You’re the one who needs a fully functioning shuttle to retrieve it.”

They heard a gunshot. Vasily seemed to be hit in the chest. They all looked over to find Ajax behind them, walking up fast. He shot again, and again, and again, and again. Vasily’s whole body shook like a cliché as he stumbled backwards towards the cockpit. He fell to his back, and was struggling to breathe. “You should have gone for the junction box.” He reached his hand up and tapped on the console. The shuttle suddenly shot forward, through the plasma barrier, and headed straight for the floating elevator pod.

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Microstory 2617: Leave it Alone as it is Neither Useful Nor Worth It

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August 24, 2526. The passengers are wildly impressed with how easy it is to walk over the land. The Integrated Multipurpose Suits aren’t just fancy, thin vacuum suits. They are made of multiple layers, one of which is specifically designed for muscular support. It’s composed of extremely strong threads, woven together to mimic the arrangement of natural muscles. You can feel yourself taking it step by step, and it’s not like it doesn’t burn any calories at all, but it definitely feels like your arms and legs are tied to an invisible friends who is doing the majority of the work for you. So, it’s great. Despite the fact that the world is ending, everyone mostly feels like they’re going to make it. There is just one other little problem.

What the guy in the other rover was feeling was claustrophobia, but being outside like this has not diminished that. They’re all experiencing a very common psychological phenomenon called encapsulation anxiety. In order to be able to move around freely while being protected by the IMS, the user must inherently sacrifice their freedom within the suit. That’s actually why it became more common for people to just wear them all the time. Even if you don’t use your helmet and gloves unless you need them, experts recommend growing comfortable with your suit; even sometimes emotionally attached to it. The passengers here do not have that luxury. This is their first time, and it’s freaking them out. Luckily, there are safeguards in place, which stop them from being able to start removing components on their own in such a hostile environment, but a few of them have tried, driven purely by their panic and instinct.

These two aspects of the journey are at odds with each other. The muscular support layer, and other lifesaving features, are allowing them to keep walking for an extended period of time. The cleithrophobia, however, is making it hard to do that psychologically. They have had to take multiple breaks just to let people move around less encumbered. There were two vacuum tents in the rover. One of them fell out of its case, and was damaged in the wreck, so they only have one, but it’s better than nothing. They can all technically fit in it at the same time, they just have to take turns stretching and sprawling. They need to sleep anyway, though, so Breanna has decided to take these frequent stops as an opportunity to encourage a segmented sleep schedule. None of them has done that before—except for Cash, who worked many split shifts on the Sentinel—but everyone has napped, and they understand the stakes, so they’re figuring it out. They have no choice. They would still rather find transportation.

“I see something up there.” They’ve been walking in a sort of random formation. Just like the caravan, Breanna and Cash aren’t always in the front.

“What is it?” Breanna asks.

The passenger is up on a ridge while everyone else is still behind it. “Uhh...the magnification on this head up thing says two kilometers. I don’t know what that means, and I can’t actually tell what it is. The little man in here says it’s artificial because of ninety degrees?”

“Yeah, nature doesn’t really make ninety-degree angles,” Breanna explains. “It’s probably a manmade structure of some kind. It could be a permanent outpost, or it could be debris that got thrown around, just like we did. Is it in the same direction that we’re headed?”

“It’s a little out of our way,” the passenger replies. “You’ll have to decide whether we go for it, or keep trying to find those connecting spine things that the domes have.”

Breanna makes it over the ridge, and looks out at what he’s seeing. She squints her eyes, but it’s obviously not going to help. If the sensors can’t identify, she’s certainly not going to be able to. “This is one of those voting times we talked about yesterday. Everyone needs to get up here and take a look. Then we’ll raise our hands for who wants to go check it out. “We don’t just need a majority, but a supermajority. That means eight out of the ten of us need to agree.”

She waits for everyone to get a good look at the difference between the main quest and the side quest, and then they take a vote. It’s unanimous because it’s not too far out of their way, and it could lead to their salvation. The answer turns out to be rather complicated. Once they reach the object, they find that it’s a partially sunken, dusted over rover. A quick link-up shows that it was one of the ones from the caravan. There are no bodies inside, alive or dead. The assumption is they got stuck, and had to get out. The question is whether the other rovers let them distribute amongst them, or if there forced to go on foot, just like Breanna’s ragtag team. Optimism says the former, of course. That’s one reason why they deliberately grouped Breckenridgers and Levins together. They wanted everyone to have some kind of connection to every other vehicle, so if some crap like this happened, no one would get screwed.

The other feeling of optimism is that the caravan managed to get out at all. It might have just been this one vehicle, and maybe another, but one can hope that all of them survived the thermal cyclone, and are continuing northwards where it’s safe. That is what Breanna and Cash are choosing to believe right now. They’ve been growing close over the last couple of days. As harrowing as their adventure has been, the walking portion has been rather uneventful. You have to spend your time doing something. Some people are just watching TV on their HUDs, but the two leaders have been talking, and wishing they were friends prior to this. Maybe something more? Breanna knows that it’s not the time to push for anything like that right now. Survival is paramount.

“Can it be fixed?” one of the passengers asks.

“You know this stuff better than we do,” another adds. “Maybe they abandoned it because they didn’t know what they were doing.”

“We’re not mechanics either,” Breanna admits. “So we’re not the ones to ask. There’s one among us who would know best.” She chuckles when they look at Aeterna, the weird immortal. “Not her. Thistle, damage report.”

“The vehicle could be repaired, but it would have to be dislodged from the mud first. There is no equipment available to perform such a maneuver. Recommendation: salvage anything left inside, and return to the trek.”

“Thank you, Thistle,” Breanna says. “I’m overriding that recommendation,” she says to the people. “Our friends who were in this car weren’t stupid. They would have taken anything valuable, and I can’t vouch for the stability of this thing. So we leave it alone, and leave. I’m not taking votes on it this time. It is not worth the risk.”

“We might need to vote on this, though” the guy they rescued from the other rover says, looking out on the horizon.

“What is it?”

“More ninety degrees...and far out of our way.”