Foresight, page 2
Since then, whenever he saw a slick of dead trife, the memory flashed through his mind. Today was no different. For all of their efforts, for all of their sacrifices, for all of the death and suffering, no one could avoid the truth that humankind would lose the war. They had been surrendering ground to the trife for months, their resources dwindling, their morale destroyed. While he had heard some pockets of survivors managed to avoid the creatures, the writing was on the wall. They could either accept their destiny as a fallen civilization, eke out an existence spent under constant threat.
Or they could escape. Leave Earth. And never look back.
The ships were nearly finished. Sixteen in total. Massive vessels that would carry forty-thousand people each to the stars. Some called them ark ships, some generation ships, the name wasn’t as important as the purpose. Get humankind off Earth. Settle a new world. Multiple new worlds actually. The ships would go in different directions, to different systems, landing on planets that the best scientists on Earth, the ones still alive, believed could harbor human life. It was a risky proposition. No guarantees. But there was no shortage of volunteers. In fact, you couldn’t win a ride on any of the ships. You had to be chosen.
By test piloting Foresight, Nicholas had cemented his family’s ticket on one of the USSF ships. Not that Yasmin wouldn’t have earned them a place anyway. She was part of Grimmel’s top cabal of scientists, and he wouldn’t leave the planet without them. Even so, it seemed unfair that they were guaranteed escape just because Yasmin worked for a man who was so wealthy, so powerful he couldn’t be left behind. Yet, for all his status, Grimmel had been reduced to fighting for his life, just like everyone else.
It helped Nicholas sleep better at night, knowing he and Yasmin had at least a hands-on part in making this life-saving endeavor happen. As far as Nicholas was concerned, Grimmel wasn’t much more than a money man.
Surplus baggage.
Foresight shot across the landscape, covering ground in a hurry. Nicholas kept to a low flight path, skirting five thousand feet as he crossed the terrain. Small towns came in and out of view, all of them deserted. Cars had been left in the middle of streets. Doors left open. Businesses unlocked. Windows shattered. The bodies of both people and trife had mostly been picked at by carrion, leaving behind an eerie scene he would never forget.
“Mission parameters require climbing to ten-thousand feet,” Frank said without a hint of emotion. The AI wasn’t the kind popular in books and movies, with a programmed personality that made it seem not only human, but a hell of a lot more entertaining than any human he had ever met. Frank remained a machine. Not even that. It was a software-based neural network running on off-the-shelf hardware. The marvel was that Yasmin’s team had managed to get something so advanced stuffed into so little random access memory.
“The mission parameters didn’t outline when I had to climb to ten-thousand feet,” Nicholas replied, fully aware that Control could hear everything he said. “If this is going to be my last flight, I want to enjoy it for as long as I can.”
Frank didn’t reply.
Nicholas continued guiding Foresight south. He only needed a couple of minutes to come into view of Houston, or rather what was left of it. While the densest part of downtown had mostly been spared bombardment, the rest of the city lay in ruins, the buildings crumbling, the streets strewn with rubble, cars, garbage, and other debris. That included the remains of a number of USSF Butchers, APCs, and even a few tanks, their treads shredded to ribbons by the sharp claws of the alien trife.
What every military on Earth had learned was that it didn’t matter how superior your firepower was. When the bullets ran out, when the gas tanks ran dry, when the batteries died, the most powerful fighting force on Earth was reduced to flesh-and-blood hand-to-hand combat.. And the trife outnumbered humans by a factor of at least a hundred to one.
Nicholas wasn’t sure why he wanted to see Houston again. Maybe because he had been in the skies overhead the day it had fallen, watching helplessly as a slick of trife a quarter-million strong had descended on the city. Maybe because he had been born there. Maybe because he wanted to be reminded of what this flight was about. He had indirectly asked Colonel Haines for a few minutes, and she had granted them in her silence.
Closure. That’s why he guided Foresight over Houston. He needed closure. He knew Haines well enough to believe she wanted some too. After holding the compound for nine months against constant trife assaults, their time here nearly done, he wanted to make a statement.
Chapter 3
“Colonel,” he said, using his thumb to make a quick right turn, orienting Foresight toward San Antonio. Toward the Interenergy solar array. “I noticed weapons testing isn’t part of today’s mission parameters.”
“That’s correct, Captain,” Haines replied.
“I was thinking that since Mister Grimmel joined us for the occasion, it might make sense to add to the parameters. It’s been a while since we activated the spines.”
“The power draw is significant,” Yasmin said, still linked to the comms from the lab. “Besides, the parameters are already uploaded. They can’t be altered.”
“I can pull the charge for the spines from the batteries instead of the reactors. We can recharge the system with the compound’s power supply. If everything goes according to plan we won’t need the base tokamak for much longer,” he said, referring to the base reactor. “And as long as I stay under the threshold ceiling Frank can’t take over.”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep calling it Frank,” Yasmin said. “It’s a machine. It doesn’t have a name.”
“Frank is a lot easier to say than Foresight Automated Flight Control, love,” Nicholas said. “And FAFC isn’t much better. I’m sure Mister Grimmel would agree.”
“Standby,” Colonel Haines said.
Nicholas remained on course toward the array, occupying himself by guiding Foresight through a series of maneuvers that put high-G stress on both the airframe and his body, even wearing a G-suit. He had flown fighter jets long enough to know his limits, and he pushed Foresight to its edge as well, careful to remain below the angels ten ceiling that would force him to relinquish control.
He rolled the starship in a tight corkscrew before throwing it into a turn just hard enough to marginally overstress his G-suit. His ingrained response was automatic, his stomach muscles tightening to prevent enough blood from rushing to his lower body to leave him lightheaded.
Haines’ voice broke through the comm just before Nicholas put Foresight into a hard descent. “Captain, when you’re done doing loop-de-loops, parameters are updated to include a complete test of the spines. Mister Grimmel is very interested in seeing them in action.”
“Yes, sir,” Nicholas replied slightly breathlessly, quickly flattening Foresight’s flight path. “I already have a target in mind.”
Haines laughed. “I assumed you did, Shepherd. From the flight pattern, it looks like you’re heading for the Interenergy nesting ground.”
“I know it’s a futile effort, but it’ll make me feel better,” Nicholas said.
“It’ll make me feel better too, Captain,” Haines replied.
“Then I guess it’s decided.”
Two buttons on the control pad activated the spinal array, something Nicholas couldn’t see from inside the flight deck surround, but he could picture it in his head. Made from the special metal alloy invented at Grimmel Corporation, nearly one hundred of the long, whisker-like barbs spread out from the fuselage when they received an electrical charge. Each one was an individual weapon that fired a focused blast of energy, but they could also be used to concentrate energy onto a single spot to devastating effect.
That same energy could also be used defensively, by forming a shield around the craft. According to Yasmin, the defensive posture was the true purpose of the spines, but granting the same technology an offensive capability had been “relatively trivial.”
After twenty-six years of marriage, he remained amused by what his wife found trivial.
The Interenergy solar array, a field of thousands of mirrors, was already in view. A good portion of the mirrors were in ruin, leaving the outline of the reflective surface jagged and uneven. The generating tower was dark, its entire two-hundred-meter height coated in the rough black material that soaked up the intense heat generated by the mirrors. It was heat the broken internal mechanism of the tower couldn’t use.
The ground beneath the mirrors appeared equally as dark as the tower, as if someone had laid fresh asphalt across the dirt before installing the reflectors. Nicholas knew that wasn’t the case.
The darkness under the array undulated and writhed like a black sea, occasionally broken by a yellow crest. It appeared to have taken on a life of its own.
Because it had. It was alive with trife.
No one had ever taken an exact count of the trife that occupied the array. There was no point. What they could see from the air was only the tip of the iceberg. More of the creatures lived inside the tower and below ground, including their queen. Looking at the massive slick, Nicholas guessed somewhere around one million of the demons were down there, soaking up life-giving radiation in preparation for another night of hunting.
“Spines activated,” Nicholas said, pulling back on the throttle to slow Foresight for the approach. “Charge at eighty percent.”
The Interenergy array wasn’t where the trife that attacked the base nightly came from. This nest was too far away. They had learned that the alien queens tended to be more competitive than cooperative, though there were documented occasions when multiple queens had joined forces against hardened human defenses. It had created a strange dynamic during different stages of the war, where a battle between a slick of trife and a company of Marines suddenly became a three-sided affair that devolved into total chaos.
“Ninety percent,” Nicholas said. Even if the array wasn’t part of their immediate problem, it was just too juicy a target to ignore, especially if destroying it and the trife with it meant putting on a good show for Grimmel. Of course, even if they were able to destroy the entire array and kill over a million trife with one shot, it wouldn’t make any difference in the outcome of a war that was already lost.
But it would make him feel better. For a little while, at least.
Nicholas tapped the control surface beneath his left hand, activating the fire control HUD. The spines could fire at multiple bogeys at once, selected by looking at the display and blinking to confirm when a box appeared over the intended target, his eye movements precision-tracked by Frank. Within a literal few blinks he had assigned the spines to six locations among the mirrors with half of his firepower. He directed the other half at the base of the tower.
“Targets locked,” he announced. “Spines fully charged. Firing.”
Nicholas pressed the third button on his control pad to trigger the spines. He imagined the blue balls of energy forming at the tips of the spines, and a split-second later, the ion beams launched from the spines, creating a blue glow through the camera feeds.
The beams cut through the piles of trife under the mirrors and dug into the ground, creating a ripple of energy that tossed the creatures in every direction. Some disintegrated into fine dust amidst the plasma toroids and balled lightning as it whipped out from the contact points.
The same force struck the tower. The beam slid along its length, slicing through the aliens clinging to its exterior and burning clear through to the other side. The tower shook, putting unsustainable stress on the structure and shedding trife like a dog shaking off water. The dead and dying landed amidst the aliens sleeping below, waking them to rage at Foresight as the starship shot overhead. From the flight deck, Nicholas imagined the unnatural sound of their unified scream.
He banked Foresight hard, using his left-hand controls to switch camera feeds so he could continue watching the destruction behind them. The tower groaned and shifted, more trife falling off, while the aliens on the ground did their best to untangle from one another and flee before it collapsed.
They weren’t fast enough.
The base of the tower snapped, and then the whole thing toppled, thousands of trife crushed when it smashed to the ground. It didn’t end there. The weight and force was enough to weaken the structure beneath the dirt. The ground opened up, swallowing the collapsing lower half of the tower, killing even more trife.
Nicholas smiled, elated by the death and chaos he had wrought and equally amazed by Foresight’s weapons system. At the same time, knowing the ship was a prototype and that all of the onboard tech was intended for the ark ships, he hoped they would never need to use it.
“Spine test successful, Colonel,” he announced over the comm. “What do you think, Mister Grimmel?”
It took a moment for the businessman to get back on the comm. “Perfection.”
“Okay, Shepherd,” Haines said. “You’ve had your fun, and Mister Grimmel got his show. Head to ten thousand feet and let the AI take over.”
“Copy that, sir,” Nicholas replied, guiding Foresight into a lazy ascent. “Frank, you’re up.”
Chapter 4
“Control, manual flight ceiling has been reached,” Nicholas said. “I’m passing navigation to Frank.”
“Copy, Captain,” Duff said.
A brief tone signaled the handover, and Nicholas lifted his hand from the controls. At first, Foresight remained on the same gently ascending course, headed south toward the equator. The Texas coastline sat just up ahead. Hundreds of boats of all sizes bobbed in the glistening blue water—a reminder that humankind might be down, but they weren’t giving up. The trife couldn’t swim or fly, leaving the world’s oceans as the only true refuge from the creatures.
It wasn’t enough to survive. They would never thrive out there. And they still had to send parties ashore to search for potable water if nothing else.
“I have control,” Frank announced. “Setting coordinates. Captain Shepherd, prepare for rapid acceleration to escape velocity.”
“What?” Nicholas replied, confused by the statement. He tapped on the left pad, bringing up a display of the mission execution list. His role once the neural network had full control of Foresight was mainly to ensure the AI followed that list down to the last decimal.
Yasmin and Colonel Haines had briefed him yesterday and they hadn’t mentioned anything about an exo-atmospheric test. But it was in the outline, along with checkboxes for full thruster burn and something called a slip test. He already knew some of the parameters had changed.
Now, it seemed all of them had.
“Frank, standby,” Nicholas said. “Colonel, the mission parameters don’t match what we covered in the briefing at all.”
“Initiating acceleration in thirty seconds,” Frank announced.
“I said standby,” Nicholas replied.
“Interrupting network control this early into automated flight will result in mission abortion. Shall I confirm the cancellation?”
Yasmin’s voice cut in before Nicholas could answer. “The patch I uploaded contained the new parameters.”
“Frank hasn’t even completed a single autonomous flight, and now you want him to take the ship into orbit and run through zero-G testing? I understand we’re running out of time for this project, but this is suicide.”
“Fifteen seconds to acceleration,” Frank announced. “Shall I confirm the cancellation?”
“I told you, Nick,” Yasmin replied. “We’ve made some significant progress since the last flight. I know it seems like we’re skipping ahead and I completely understand your concern. You have to believe I wouldn’t send you out there to pin your life on software I don’t trust. It’ll be okay. I promise.”
Nicholas exhaled sharply. He trusted Yasmin, but at the same time he couldn’t dodge the feeling that his wife and her team were rushing things. Not for the benefit of the exhausted Marines fighting to hold the base against the trife hordes, but because she wanted to look good in front of Grimmel. He didn’t want to think she was capable of doing something that calculating. Of risking his life to make herself look good. But there it was.
They were still together, but it wasn’t as if their marriage had always been smooth sailing. Yasmin had never chosen him over her career. And while he was grateful they were able to spend their last days on Earth together, it was circumstance that had brought them back into one another’s orbit, not devotion.
He didn’t want to pin all of the blame on her, though. They had both made sacrifices since the trife rained down on Earth that had taken a toll on their marriage, and maybe that was the issue with Lucius. His parents were so busy they didn’t have time for each other, let alone him. They both knew how badly humankind needed a win, and in the process of throwing themselves into their work, they had overlooked how badly Lucius needed them.
“Five seconds to acceleration. Shall I confirm the cancellation?”
“Okay, love,” Nicholas said. “I trust you. Negative, Frank. Proceed with assigned parameters.”
“Mission continuance confirmed,” Frank said. “Accelerating to escape velocity.”
Nicholas shifted his right hand to the end of the armrest, holding on for the ride as Frank opened the throttle, the thrusters creating a barely registrable hum and shudder through the airframe. The spacecraft burst forward, at first continuing on the shallow ascent and then increasing both speed and altitude. Nicholas watched the counters on the HUD, monitoring the G-forces and altitude. He’d been forced to abort earlier missions because Frank hadn’t honored safe human thresholds. That wasn’t the case today.
Frank adjusted the vector, maintaining a smooth, steady climb toward space. Nicholas continued tracking the starship’s course. Everything seemed smooth so far. Better than he had experienced in any of the earlier flights. There was no wobbling, no over-adjustment or inconsistent burn. Yasmin had said they’d made progress, and it showed.
