Launch
“What about me, Ase?” Tasser asked.
“Ideally you stay separated from Caleb,” Serral said. “If something did happen to him, you would be the one who knows the most about him. I’d rather not lose any intelligence about all this, but if it does all fall apart I don’t want us losing everything all at once.”
“Do we know what presence the Red Sails might already have?” Nai asked.
“They had a very limited garrison on the other side of the colony, that’s one of the main reasons we picked Cirinsko. Any real forces Red Sails want to deploy will have to be brought in from elsewhere. Plus, they’ll stand out,” Serral replied.
“If we’re fired upon, do we know who the enemy commanders might be?” Nemuleki asked.
“Admiral Laranta and I negotiated primarily with Adjutant Tox, but I don’t know much about him, nor do I believe he’ll actually be present. The Red Sails would be commanded by whoever leads the garrison in Cirinsko. I don’t believe bringing in forces from elsewhere would supersede their authority.”
Questions back and forth.
I needed to pay attention to every single one of them. And it was grating on me.
We were still sitting in the tent, going over details of the plan. I’d been exposed to some of the Coalition military planning before. But it continually surprised me how boring it could be, trying not to die.
Our actual destination did capture some of my attention though.
Archo was covered in a number of semi-subterreanean colony complexes, any one of which could rival cities back on Earth. Maybe it was only because I’d only been to the more isolated regions on this planet, but I had a suspicion that the moon colony would actually be more developed on average.
It came down to traffic. Almost anyone coming or going to Yawhere went through one of Archo’s colony cities. We were no exception.
Additionally, the minimum standard a structure needed to meet was higher on the moon. Things had to stay airtight on a moon with no atmosphere.
I had been taking the air bubble technology I slept under for granted.
The effect it produced was impossible under conventional physics, but Adeptry had more than complicated things. I didn’t even vaguely understand how it happened in this particular case, but it was clearly possible to derive new technologies from Adeptry.
And the moon colonies employed these air barriers extensively. The device Byr had given me was tailored to keep oxygen in, but the infrastructural ones on the moon operated on much larger scopes, keeping in all gasses.
Despite the option to do otherwise, the colony was still covered by a physical barrier too. In the pictures, rows of huge trapezoidal steel ribs poked a few stories above the dusty landscape. Reflective gold glass panels connected each arch. If you ignored the city carved into the rock beneath, the colony could have passed for bars of gold bullion lying in neat rows amidst pale green dust.
Hopefully we wouldn’t be there long.
“If I understand correctly,” I said, “the colony governor is the one insisting I depart from a certain point? Not the Red Sails rak? Tox, was it?”
“That’s correct.”
“That doesn’t strike anyone else as strange?” I asked.
“Negotiations weren’t exactly being hosted by anyone,” Serral said. “The governor was party to them because we were going to land in their settlement whether they allowed it or not. I wouldn’t consider the governor to be a neutral party. It’s exceedingly likely she’s cooperating with the Red Sails.”
“Sure looks that way,” I said. “But then why didn’t the Vorak pile on? I would have figured the Red Sails would be the ones to demand I use their preferred location, so then if we don’t, it gives them the excuse we broke the agreement.”
“The hu—…he has a point, Ase,” Yakne slowly said. “Regardless of which departure point the Warlock gets him to, we would only be breaking the agreement made to governor Amike. Strictly speaking, the only agreement we made with the Red Sails was not to engage Vorak troops unprovoked.”
“The governor was nominally concerned with the biohazard risk…” Serral mused. “She wasn’t particularly receptive to the Organic Authority certifications we forwarded. If Caleb stayed in a sealed spacesuit while moving through the colony, she wouldn’t even be able to complain about that…”
“The Red Sails didn’t ask for arms limitations Ase?” Nemuleki asked.
“No, they did not, Rahi,” Serral said. “Which means they’re either really not going to start a fight, so our weapons don’t matter. Or they’re posturing to make us the aggressors for any violence that does wind up incited.”
“This is rotten,” I said. “We don’t have any other options than to run head first into a trap?”
“Caleb…” Tasser said gravely, “we know that. There isn’t a single person flying off this planet who isn’t willing to die to get you to safety.”
“He knows,” Nai said.
I did know that. How was I supposed to feel about it? Honored? Maybe I felt that way a little. But even that little made me feel like a fraud despite having not a single secret from the Coalition aliens helping me.
“Ase,” I said, “there’s something that could give us an edge.”
Serral’s expression grew curious.
“I’m listening.”
“Nai helped me stumble onto an Adept trick,” I explained. “It can allow instant silent communication between people, even without carrying a radio.”
“I heard something about that,” Serral said. “Tasser said you can even share it with non-Adepts?”
“Yes.”
“Could you demonstrate?”
“Sure. Write down a long number and show it to only me,” I told him.
Serral did.
I pointed with both hands to Nai and Tasser, cuing them. “Seven hundred forty-two thousand two hundred seventeen point one one,” they said in unison after I relayed them the figure.
Serral blinked in surprise. Yakne just gaped, which always felt good. Months ago he’d been in firm agreement with Nai that I couldn’t be trusted.
I grinned behind my air mask.
Even Nemuleki smiled at the trick. “Okay,” she said. “Count me in. Whatever you’re willing to share, I’ll try it out at least.”
“That is why I ask,” Serral said. “If you have a way for soldiers to communicate that can’t be intercepted by enemies… it could make a difference on Archo.”
“It probably shouldn’t be too many,” I said. “I’m still figuring out exactly how the signals interact.”
“How quickly can you make them?”
·····
‘As soon as possible’ hadn’t quite been the right answer. So, it was put off until the morning of our launch. There would be plenty of time to practice during our flight.
In the end, only a handful of Casti volunteered for psionic enabling.
Serralinitus and Nemuleki were first among them, but it was reassuring to see all the other Casti who’d been with us inside the Green Complex volunteer too.
It wasn’t ideal, but if the normal squad arrangements flexed slightly almost half the groups would be able to stay in psionic communication.
Installing the psionics went much smoother for the other Casti than it had for Tasser.
We’d learned our lessons about adapting the signals to suit who was receiving them, but it was hard to put into words. For any given Casti, I could easily figure out how to tailor the constructs, but I had few words to describe the changes.
More surprising was how simple it was to develop a way to keep everyone’s signals from interfering. Handheld radios had been the original inspiration behind the telepathy. Nai and I both proved capable of making the modification with little trouble.
With the updated transceivers modified for Casti ears and tunable to different channels, I didn’t need to distribute them alone. I could make them a few dozen at a time, hand them off to Tasser and Nai, and they could help push them into the minds of the volunteers.
I left them with a few extras just in case they might need them.
Psionically, our pace of progress was encouraging.
I had no idea just how far I’d be able to take psionics. But given the primitive comparable structures I’d glimpsed in Vather’s mind…I felt like I was on the cutting edge and pushing it forward too.
Progress was happening everywhere though. Today was the day I left this planet.
We were all traveling light. Crates of supplies were being loaded into an adjunct module for one of the rockets. It would break away toward the further reaches of the star system. It wouldn’t be carrying any people, so it didn’t need to stop anywhere or accelerate so slowly.
Most of my stuff would be in it, save for what I would carry on me. Uniforms, spare munitions, everything of value in Ramshackle the Coalition didn’t want to leave behind was going on a long quiet trip through space. Even the precious complex fabricator the Prowlers had left behind was disassembled and packed up.
The rockets themselves had been assembled underground in a hangar and so I’d been slightly confused how the rockets would wind up in the sky. But in the night the hangar had been properly opened. Its roof could be levered out of the way by massive steel arms.
An hour after dawn, two rockets poked up out of the ground, ready to launch.
They were flat.
I hadn’t been prepared for that. Rockets were round. Tubes almost.
But these almost resembled the dimensions of carpentry pencils, right up to the tapered points. They lacked the familiar pure white coloring I’d expected, instead opting for greys and oranges. A rocket’s color was an important part of temperature regulation, at least on Earth.
But their architects of this spacecraft knew what they were doing. Presumably.
These rockets were not original creations, rather, the Coalition had used a modular template refined by every known alien species. Even if their computer science was far behind, this was the culmination of three civilizations’ finest astronomical minds, designed in such a way that Ninety Casti and an Adept had assembled two rockets in just under forty hours. That alone was jaw dropping.
And these were supposed to be inferior rockets! These were ultimately improvised craft, template or not.
More than their shape, it was their size that surprised me more than anything else. They were only a couple stories taller than Ramshackle’s central building.
I couldn’t be sure—my estimation was thrown off by them sitting on the hangar floor—but there was a possibility the rockets weren’t even 150 feet tall.
“We keep setting new records,” Tasser said aloud, while I fiddled with our telepathy.
“How’s that?”
“This is going to be a record number of people in a craft launched unassisted,” he said.
“Unassisted?”
“Thrust only,” he clarified. “No gravity manipulation.”
I laughed.
“Is messing with gravity…common?” I asked.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“What do you think the big space ports have?” he asked.
“I honestly hadn’t given it much thought,” I said. “…But if I had to guess, they’re all near water?”
He nodded.
“We’re doing what are called ‘unified’ launches,” he explained. “Everything that leaves the ground here is making it into orbit. They’re cheap, fast, and inefficient.”
“But if you have a bit more time and infrastructure to optimize things,” I said, “you can have unnecessary parts of your rocket fall away. Lighten your load.”
“Hence the water for after they fall,” he said.
“Yeah, we have those too,” I told him. “They’re called [multi-stage launches] in English.”
“[Multi],” Tasser said, “meaning ‘many’?”
I smiled. His English was still in its early stages. But coming along.
Once again I was going to be hurtling toward some Vorak who wanted me dead or worse.
I didn’t feel so bad about it today.
It would be tempting fate to say I was used to it though.
I was still apprehensive.
“Nervous?” Tasser asked, almost reading my mind.
“Yeah,” I said. “Wait, did you actually read my mind? Did you get that from the psionics?”
“Wasn’t quite sure,” he said. “But I could tell there was something. And, come on, there’s only so many possibilities right now.”
That was fair.
Somewhere near the boarding scaffolding, someone shouted at one of us. Time was thin.
“Time’s up,” Tasser said.
“Just a second…” I said. This needed to record all the data it picked up. Devising a storage method had been difficult, but on top of that it was proving slow to transfer to his mind.
“
“Good luck, Caleb,” he told me, and walked off toward the boarding rocket.
It felt like an icy hand squeezing my innards, knowing that he wasn’t going to be with more for what was coming.
But in the end, it had to be.
If something went wrong, there was no one I trusted more to speak of who I’d been.
·····
The backpack I’d taken from Korbanok had, tragically, been forced to be stored with my belongings on the adjunct module.
At an altitude of roughly five thousand miles off the surface of Yawhere, a piece of our rocket about the size of a school bus would detach, adjust its angle, and fire some much more efficient boosters to accelerate it for several days toward the gas giant very far away.
It wouldn’t even save fuel for the return trip, Nai told me.
A Coalition ship would meet it just before it arrived, catch it, and decelerate it safely.
It meant the backpack I was using today was a Coalition one. I stuffed it into one of the compartments above my jumpseat.
I was the only one on this rig with assigned seating. Since they’d outfitted me with a custom spacesuit, it had only been fitting to make doubly sure I didn’t fall out of my seat when we hit mach 20.
Every jumpseat was essentially horizontal, so it would be hard to fall out anyway.
But still.
I recognized a few faces nearby. Serral and Nai. Wurshken too.
We were near the top of the rocket, in the highest of six cabins stuffed with jumpseats to strap into for launch. There wouldn’t be a pilot. Our trajectory was precalculated. Funnily enough, it was an unfamiliar Casti officer who would actually be pushing the button to launch us. I hadn’t imagined anyone but Ase Serralinitus to be the one to launch us.
It wasn’t quite our turn though.
Our launch time was more than an hour away. We’d loaded up both rockets and it was time for Tasser’s to go ahead.
The simple intercom in both rockets counted down toward ignition.
Funnily enough, one of the new psionic Casti was also counting down. It was Corphica, and she’d tapped into the timer construct I’d included.
Theoretically, the rocket next to ours could launch without disrupting ours. The exhaust of the launch would be channeled into tunnels running under and away from Ramshackle instead of spreading out and slamming into our rocket.
If that wasn’t enough, there was a divider twice as thick as either rocket built into the launch pit, really making it launch ‘pits’. Plural.
For good measure, Nai had materialized supports to keep our rocket upright, once again forcing me to question just how much matter she could supply.
The rockets worked flawlessly. There were a million things I could think of that could go wrong launching a rocket even remotely close to another that was going to launch the same week, much less the same day.
But while the alien engineers knew their rocket science, it was my psionic experiment that wobbled.
Though not Adept, Tasser was proving to be quite adept at psionics. His instinct had been spot-on, because I lost any words that he, Nemuleki, Corphica, or anyone else on that craft broadcast.
It was the sound.
I don’t think it’s possible to overstate just how mind numbingly deafening a rocket going off is. Thunder could only rumble in fits and starts. But the roar of a vehicle pursuing escape velocity did not waver for a millisecond.
Earplugs had been provided. We were inside an airtight rocket of our own. And still, for the minute of the launch, there was nothing to be heard but fire.
Psionic telepathy was wired into our sense of hearing.
When Daniel had been in my head, his words had been able to override the ringing in my ears when I’d been hit with a flashbang and the roar of reentry.
But he’d been inside my own head, intertwined deeper than any of the psionics I’d imparted.
Unlike him, these could be overwhelmed if it was too loud for someone to think. It wasn’t technically tele pathy, because it was rooted in words not feelings. Words needed sound, so when they failed so too did telepathy.
But only the telepathy depended on sound. And Tasser had the brilliant idea to make a signal module that interacted with position more than anything else.
Simply put, it was an ultra-primitive version of the radar that could only detect other copies of itself.
I had one, and Tasser had the other. I’d barely been able to complete it before Tasser had needed to board.
When it was quiet enough for Nai and I to hear each other, I asked
She gave a shrug. She seemed reticent to talk.
And yet, as the minutes dragged on, I kept getting a steady signal from Tasser. Although, it became harder to properly comprehend how far away he was.
It was just so fun to experiment with this stuff. Enough that I distracted myself from the reality of where I was.
I would have to contemplate the results of our test later, because soon it was our turn to launch.
The Casti were maddeningly calm about it all. But of course they were. They were stupid space soldiers, throwing themselves through the void to land on a moon was normal for them.
More and more it was normal for me too…
Those around me made sure I was properly laid back and strapped into my seat before getting into position themselves.
I bit my tongue when I was tempted to make a crack about tray tables and upright positions. They wouldn’t have gotten it anyway.
The countdown ticked down and I reassured myself of all the things I’d been told. I wouldn’t pass out, the engineering wouldn’t fail, and unlike every rocket that Earth had ever built, this one hadn’t been manufactured by the lowest bidder.
Still, nothing stopped one last devastating question crawled its way into my mind in the final seconds of the countdown.
It was all the response I heard.
I couldn’t even tell from whom. It could tell it hadn’t been Nai though. She’d been even quieter than usual.
Nothing was quiet after that.
There were only two experiences I could compare to this one. The first moments of being abducted and jettisoning from Korbanok.
The grip tightening around my heart returned in an instant and despite the deafening rumble of the rocket, I felt myself tremble.
Of the two experiences, it was the former that clung to me now.
Being abducted, sucked into a black void, kept entombed in a steel box for hours…
I’d been in denial then. I’d been able to feel the upward momentum for hours. But I hadn’t really believed where I was going until I’d seen the stars from the ship with Daniel.
Before that, when I’d first been snatched off the ground…
It had been simpler. More primal.
There hadn’t been any questions then. Fear overrode everything else. There wasn’t any room for loneliness to creep in, or even dread at what the future might bring.
Just cold fear.
Images flickered into my mind, called forth.
Another launch. Not this one, or my abduction.
My eyes didn’t have an angle to see from this position, but I sensed her. The connection intensified, becoming reciprocal.
She saw… some, not all, of what my mind was dredging up now. I saw her own first experience going into space.
Nai had only been Kiraeni then. They wouldn’t call themselves Farnata until after.
She was just a girl. Going into space…not to the moon…but it was exciting.
Inside the coffin, I had only fear.
In her seat, she’d had nothing but joy watching her planet come into view below her.
But the memory was tinged.
Nai was trembling too. No one on our rocket could have noticed but me.
The knowledge of what had happened…she had only learned later.
That while she smiled so happily, her planet had withered below her. She’d watched her father die so far, far below her. And smiled the whole time.
I could feel her, catching snippets of my memory while I did the same of her.
My reflex was to pull back. And I did. The connection snapped.
So did she.
On reflex, I was angry she’d seen me like that, weak and alone. Even if I knew it hadn’t been on purpose.
She was angry too. I’d seen a horror of hers. Some of her oldest reservations about me were related to privacy.
These were intimate and personal moments both of us had endured, and neither of us had chosen to show them to the other.
We were both angry at what had just transpired. And yet we both could see that anger, and why it came.
Behind my reflex to be upset, I felt…honored to have seen a glimpse of what I was sure was Nai’s lowest point. The connection was severed now, but I allowed myself to hope that she felt the same way about seeing some of my worst hour.
But I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t be sure what all she saw, how much or how far. It stayed my tongue.
There was nothing to say. Not now.
·····
The rocket hurtled toward the moon on momentum now. I could find out exactly how many hours it had been now, but I didn’t check, absorbed in thought.
We took turns leaving our seats and moving about.
I didn’t float in zero-g long. The novelty of it cut down by what had just happened and what was to come.
It was so hard to put into words what I felt.
Whatever had transpired between my mind and Nai’s was only one of many things occupying me.
There was so much. And so many times I’d felt overwhelmed.
But my mind didn’t stop turning. It felt like a locomotive, or a snowball rolling. It had taken so much to begin, but for the months I’d spent on this planet, Yawhere, I’d been mustering up what I needed to go forward.
I was close. So very close now.
There was one last hurdle.