Post-Human Trilogy Part 4

Aldous pulled her in front of him and locked eyes with her, his grip surprisingly strong for a man of his age. He looked as though there was something he wanted to say but couldn't; however, his expression appeared to say she should trust him.

"They have a recording of you saying you don't support the war or the government," Aldous began, as he guided her back into her chair and took the chair on the opposite side of the small interrogation table. "It was recorded earlier today-a conversation between your husband and yourself."

Samantha was nearly dumbfounded. "Are you serious? They recorded that?"

Aldous nodded. "Yes."

She shook her head as though rebooting, her shock at the idea of being recorded quickly being replaced with indignation. "Well, so what? Am I not allowed to have an opinion in this country anymore?"

Aldous held his hand up to calm her, the same trust-me expression remaining earnestly across his face. "You can have your own opinion, but given the sensitive nature of both yours and your husband's involvement with top secret projects, you can understand why they want to be sure-"

"No, I can't understand it!" Samantha retorted, cutting Aldous off. "I've done everything that's been asked of me! Why am I being treated like a prisoner?"

Aldous smiled, leaning forward toward his young protege, taking her hand calmly in his and relating in a low, conspiratorial voice, "You've done nothing wrong. This will lead only to a simple lesson learned for you, Sam. In this brave new world of ours, it's best to remember that people in sensitive positions must sometimes keep their opinions to themselves."

The metal door swung open behind Aldous, a high-pitched squeak accompanying the movement, as a large man in a dark suit and navy-blue tie entered. "I'm sorry to interrupt, Professor, but it's time for me to proceed with the interview," the man announced.

"No trouble at all, my good man," Aldous replied. "I'm sure Samantha is eager to get this misunderstanding behind her as quickly as possible." He turned to Samantha and flashed a warm, calming smile. "I'll see you soon, Sam."

Aldous left, and the man in the suit closed the door behind him. He wore aug gla.s.ses and appeared to be reading a file. "I'm Agent O'Brien," he announced matter-of-factly.

Samantha laughed but quickly stifled it.

"Something funny?" O'Brien replied, his face stone cold.

Samantha shrugged. "Are you serious? O'Brien is here to interrogate me?"

O'Brien's face remained unmoving.

Samantha pointed to the door. "You know that door is marked 101 on the outside?"

O'Brien's face didn't twitch. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

She shook her head and inhaled deeply. "You really have no idea what role you're playing in history, do you?"

Finally, O'Brien c.o.c.ked his head to one side, curious. "What role is that, Professor Emilson?"

"Orwellian. It's right in front of you, but you can't even see it."

"Orwellian?" O'Brien removed a Bluetooth pen from his pocket and began to write on a computer-generated notepad that only he could see through his aug gla.s.ses.

"As in 1984. George Orwell."

"Ah," O'Brien said, finally understanding the reference. "Never read it."

"No kidding."

"I do know what it's about though-big government controlling the heroic populace. Is that correct?"

"Sure."

"A Luddite government perhaps?"

"You really oughtta read the d.a.m.n book."

"As you have, Professor Emilson? Will I then see our government as evil and wish to rebel against it, like the hero of 1984?" It was clear from his rapidly moving eyes that O'Brien was fumbling to look up 1984 on Wikipedia or Sparknotes like a C- student, desperate before a final exam. "Like Winston?" he announced, hoping she didn't recognize his use of a technological cheat sheet.

Samantha looked up at the ceiling and placed her hands on top of her head as she exhaled a long, frustrated sigh. "I'm in h.e.l.l."

9.

The SOLO team stood only inches apart from one another, all of them facing the starboard side of s.p.a.ceShip3 as they waited for the drop order. They were fully garbed in their SOLO suits, the Nomex outer sh.e.l.l giving the suits a sleek, wet look. The exoskeletons component of the suits were designed with structural batteries that took the shape of working parts so no single, heavy battery pack was necessary. The exoskeletons were imperative so each man could carry his large backpack, which housed his parachute and weaponry. The fuselage had mostly been depressurized, and the members of the team-five humans plus Robbie-stood at the ready, the humans flexing nervous fingers and toes inside their life-supporting suits. s.p.a.ceShip3's pilot periodically engaged the hybrid rocket thrusters to keep the craft over the target area as the group waited for word that the fallout had descended to an acceptable level in the landing zone.

"Listen up!" Wilson began, keeping his position at point in the triangular formation in which the SOLO members stood. "Remember, your SOLO suit doubles as a nuclear, biological, chemical protection suit, but we've never jumped into fresh fallout like this before. The NBC suits will increase our exposure time, but even they have their limits. The Kevlar woven into the material isn't likely to be enough to stop the armor-piercing ammo the Chinese have, so if you take a bullet down there, don't try to stay in the fight. Get your a.s.s to the extraction point as soon as possible, because you don't want to see what that radiation exposure would do to you. Is that clear?"

"Hooah!"

"Okay, we just got our orders. We're sixty seconds to drop time," Wilson relayed excitedly. A green timer began counting down on the OLED heads up displays on each of their visors. "It's time to stop breathing, boys. Hold your breath and activate your respirocytes."

Craig tried to resist the instinctive urge to take in a last gulp of air, but the SOLO suits only had a minimal air supply-just enough to make it possible for the team members to speak to one another. Instead, he closed his eyes meditatively and concentrated on not taking in another breath. Just as before, only hours earlier in the presence of the doctor with the beautiful smile, Craig found himself marveling that he could live without air.

The green timer display dropped below thirty seconds.

"You holdin' up okay, Doc?" Wilson asked over his shoulder.

"h.e.l.l yeah," Craig replied. He turned to Robbie. "Robbie, you stay on my six until we reach the surface, understand?"

"I understand, Captain Emilson," Robbie replied.

Craig turned back and faced the same direction as the rest of the team. In only ten seconds, the bottom of the ship would open up in trap-door fashion, and they would begin their descent.

"Remember, Doc," Wilson barked, "when the door opens, you won't even feel like you're falling for the first thirty seconds, but keep an eye on your time gauge. If you aren't in the delta position by then, you're a goner."

The count reached zero.

"Away!" announced the crackling, radio voice of the pilot.

The doors swung open and the small pressure vacuum sucked the six figures out into s.p.a.ce in their triangle formation. Craig was the far man on the left.

The silence was perfect-not even the familiar sound of his own breathing accompanied him. Wilson had been right: As the seconds ticked by on his HUD, Craig didn't feel as though he were falling at all. The formation seemed to be a tableau, hanging in the blackness of s.p.a.ce, the azure blue of the Earth mixed with the warm brown of the Asian continent below. The other members of the SOLO team expertly adjusted their trajectories, each man putting himself into the critical twenty-five-degree angle to control his speed and drag when they hit the atmosphere. Craig awkwardly performed the maneuvers needed to match their delta positions-movements much more difficult to perform in a supersonic s.p.a.cesuit that felt like a sleeping bag with arms than they were in his familiar HALO suit.

The seconds continued to tick by as the telemetry, communications, and pressure readouts flashed on the OLED of his HUD. The thirty-second mark was reached, and the aneroids in his suit reacted to the atmospheric pressure as they began to hit the outer rim of the atmosphere, the psi remaining at 3.5 to keep him comfortable and conscious.

"Good work, Doc. You're doing fine," said the rea.s.suring voice of Commander Wilson over the radio. Craig looked down at the commander, just a couple of meters below him, still the point of their formation. "Keep those arms tucked. The pressure won't feel like much at first, but when we hit Mach 1, the turbulence will be powerful. Even a little twitch can send you into a fatal tailspin."

"Noted," Craig replied. He wanted to gulp a nervous breath of air but resisted the urge. The HUD read just over four minutes remaining on their descent. Their alt.i.tude was dropping dramatically as their speed approached Mach 1.

"Sonic boom is imminent, boys! Steady!" Wilson shouted.

The SOLO suits were equipped with sound dampeners in the helmets to dull the thunderous clap of the sonic boom, but they couldn't do much to curtail the turbulence. Craig braced every muscle in his body as the speedometer continued to climb. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.

The sonic boom percussion felt like the explosion of a nearby landmine. The members of the team were seemingly all able to ride it out, and Craig's eyes flew back open when the turbulence seemed to settle. The position of the four others in the triangle formation remained perfect, but the green dot signifying Robbie's position on Craig's HUD was suddenly dropping away behind him, moving further and further from the team.

"Doc, did you just lose your robot friend?" Wilson shouted.

"Looks like it," Craig confirmed. There was no way to turn his head to get a visual confirmation, but it appeared the boom had sent Robbie into a tailspin behind them. "It's okay. If he recovers from the spin and lands all right, he'll double-time it to our target and meet us."

"All right," Wilson replied.

A second later, Craig's HUD suddenly went blank, before briefly turning back on and then going blank once again.

"Uh, my HUD just went down," Weddell stated in controlled alarm.

"Mine too," Craig replied.

"We're all down," Wilson quickly realized. "We're gonna have to open high and do it manually!"

Then, just as suddenly as they had flashed off, the HUDs came back online.

"I'm back up!" Craig shouted.

"Is everyone back up?" Wilson shouted.

Each member of the team confirmed.

"Okay! Then we stick to the original plan. Adjust to thirty-five degrees!"

Craig watched the time to opening tick down on his HUD. They were now only a minute away from their computer-controlled low opening. Their speed was slowing, but something didn't feel right.

"Commander, have the onboard SOLO systems ever glitched like this before?" Craig asked.

"No. This is a first," Wilson replied.

"Then I recommend we do a high manual-"

"Cut the chatter, Doc!" Wilson shouted. "Concentrate!"

The yellow dust covering the ground was closing in below them, its surface gleaming in the sunlight as it crawled like a yellow, living fog. The impact crater into which they were supposed to be touching down wasn't visible.

A horrifying possibility suddenly reached into Craig's skull and drummed its frozen fingers over his brain. The time readout was now below twenty seconds. "Oh no," he whispered. "I'm taking command!" Craig suddenly shouted, nearly screaming in desperation. "Open your chutes now! Override! Override!"

"Belay that order!" Commander Wilson shouted back.

"Override! Override!"

Ten seconds...

"Follow protocol, SOLO!" Wilson screamed.

"The telemetry's wrong! Open! Open!" Craig bellowed furiously. He opened his chute, the wind catching it hard as it unfurled, tugging him into a dramatic deceleration. The other members of his team fell away into the yellow dust, disappearing as though they'd been figments of his imagination.

Craig continued to float downward for several seconds, the yellow dust reaching upward to envelop his boots. "SOLO team, do you copy? Commander Wilson? Do you copy?"

The silence continued for a few seconds more before, finally, Weddell's voice crackled through the interference. "Doc! Commander Wilson is...he's dead, sir."

10.

Craig touched down in a thick yellow cloud of dust. His parachute ejected automatically so he wouldn't be dragged away into the dust storm. Above, the sun's rays were nearly visible, suggesting that the dust cloud was abating, as predicted, but for now, he was blinded, with only his HUD to guide him. "Weddell, I'm on your three o'clock," Craig said, "fifteen meters away."

"Copy."

The green dot on Craig's HUD that signified Wilson was also still active, and Weddell's dot was next to it. Cheng and Klein had vanished. Craig strode in his exoskeleton, only a few steps taking him most of the way to the quickly materializing silhouette of Weddell, leaning over the crumpled form of Wilson. A couple strides more, and the image came into focus, the stark reality of Wilson's nearly pulverized body emerging.

"You were right, Doc," Weddell said as he turned his head to look up at Craig. "The telemetry was all wrong. I played it safe and followed your orders at the last second. My chute opened in time, but I hit the surface hard." He turned and looked down at his fallen officer-in-charge. "Commander Wilson didn't even open his chute. He...G.o.d, he hit the ground at terminal velocity." He shook his head. "I saw him hit."

Craig dropped to his knees and tried to get a view of Wilson's face, but the commander had fallen face down, and his helmet had burrowed into an impact crater of its own creation. Craig could read Wilson's absent vitals on his HUD, so it seemed true that the commander was, indeed, dead. But the SOLO team were super soldiers. "There might still be hope," Craig said to Weddell.

"What? What are you talking about? I saw him hit the ground myself. He's dead as dead, Doc."

Craig pushed Wilson's pulverized body so that it turned over, revealing the golden reflective facemask. He popped Wilson's mask up so he could see inside the helmet; the visor was splashed with blood, but Wilson's head appeared to be intact. "The respirocytes," Craig replied. "His brain is still getting oxygen. If I can get him into suspended animation fast enough-"

"I understand," Weddell quickly said. "SOLO team, do you copy?" The radio crackled for a few moments, but there were periodic pops and chirps, and one sounded like it might be a voice. "Did you hear that?" Weddell asked Craig.

"Yes. Weddell, they were on the far right of the formation." Craig stood to his feet and stepped a few paces through the yellow dust before he quickly stumbled over a ledge, tumbling onto his stomach, digging hard with his exoskeleton's strength into the earth to keep from tumbling further down the steep incline. "d.a.m.n it! Weddell, we just missed the crater! It was to the south! If Klein and Cheng opened manually, they might have made it!"

"That makes sense," Weddell replied excitedly. "The crater goes down one kilometer. If they're far enough down there, that would explain why we can't get radio contact through all the interference."

Craig finished crawling back up over the lip of the crater and returned to see Weddell standing, having retrieved his twin machine guns from his backpack. The guns were gigantic, and the armor-piercing bullets made them far too heavy to be carried by a regular human; fortunately the exoskeleton did 100 percent of the heavy lifting.

"I can head down there," Weddell said determinedly. "If they're already there, I'll establish contact, and we can still finish the mission. You should stay here and wait for Robbie to return. We might need that thing after all."

"There's a problem with that plan," Craig replied.

"What?"

"I don't think that was just a glitch with our telemetry. I think we were sabotaged. New coordinates were fed to us at the last minute, pushing us off target so we'd miss the crater and hit the outer surface."