The Ides of Matt 2017 Read online

  “One of these days, I’m not going to come down and save your ass,” Karina didn’t move from where she leaned against his closed airlock in her space-black jumpsuit. She’d looked incredible in flight school. She looked even better now. His brain went there, even though experience had taught him not to bother hoping.

  “Never asked you to.” Besides, there’d only been the two times. One, when he got in beyond his ship’s abilities—the reason he’d replaced his first copilot with Felice. And the other when he’d faked an emergency because, in a rare, massive lift, there were more people to rescue than his one ship could handle.

  No one could agree on what to call this latest phase. The official term was The Aftermath. Felice’s vote had been The Exhaustion—as the last of free Earth tried to climb the gravity well. His personal favorite was The Expectoration, the last of humankind being spit out of the planet with nowhere to go except up.

  Brody sighed.

  Everything seemed to be a battle with Karina. A challenge to be faced down or a tally to be accounted for. Other than their ships being berthed side by side, he wasn’t even sure why she kept talking to him.

  “So, your new plan is to block my airlock for the rest of your life?” Yet he wasn’t sure he’d mind. His life would be far less if she wasn’t a part of it—no matter how small a part that was. Over the years he’d tried for a bigger part, but the answer had consistently been an evasive no—as if she hadn’t even heard him.

  “Maybe it is, at least until I figure out what to do about you.” Karina Rostov was a tough-as-plas pilot and had a dark-eyed beauty that he could never ignore.

  She was also a fifth-generation Expansionist. Her people had spaced long before the Russo-German-Turk War had erased all three countries in one bloody week, along with most of Europe. Back when humanity’s entire future hung beyond the sky.

  His family hadn’t been so fortunate. When he was a kid, they’d spaced aboard an old Minuteman VI missile they’d found in a Montana silo and converted for The Lift. Three families, four years of work, and he’d never forget the raw terror—or the man who had plucked the few survivors out of the sky before the missile ballistically reentered Earth’s atmo. He was retired now from his cargo hauling business, but still one of Lift Rescue’s main benefactors.

  With Karina’s pre-Exodus heritage and his family being just…Aftermathers (Expectorants sounded a little vile even for him), there were even higher barriers between them.

  “What are you doing here, Karina?” He couldn’t enter his ship until she moved away from his airlock and she didn’t appear to be in any mood to do so. While he’d be glad to look at her all day, she always had an agenda. It wasn’t like her not to state it and move on.

  “I don’t even know why I’d care if you died rescuing the useless,” like he was an idiot for doing so.

  “You mean the hopeful?”

  She shrugged uncomfortably.

  Maybe he finally needed to let go of his Karina Rostov fantasies. How could she think about people that way? It was hope that drove them aloft despite the horrific odds.

  Chapter Two

  Useless. There were times Karina would like to cut out her tongue.

  Her parents were old-school Ukrainians—a distinction that had been meaningless even before her great-great-grandparents had lifted during The Expansion. It was an isolationist distinction that Mom and Pop had brought back to life in reaction to The Aftermath. It made her first responses dour and the ones after that worse.

  And for some reason, Brody Jones brought out the truly horrid in her. But she couldn’t seem to stay away from him either. He was everything she wasn’t: blond, blue-eyed, and popular despite his chosen profession, a choice she’d never understood.

  Her own Night Stalkers commanders and crew only tolerated her because she could outfly any of them. She’d been born to fly a Stinger-60; it was in her blood. Yet her one great weakness, she couldn’t resist poking at this particular Mod18 pilot.

  “What is it about you?”

  “Me? What about me?”

  Karina tried to formulate some kind of a rational answer. Her mind was excellent at analysis—of everything except Brody Jones. She could master the most complex operation: deliver troops to Saturn’s Titan and extract another team off Jupiter’s Europa all with a minimum fuel burn rate and exact timing.

  But understanding Brody was completely beyond her.

  Launch detection! The alert blared out of both of the sleevepads in their flightsuits. It echoed around the hangar as well as over the PA system.

  They tapped in unison and a quick holo of Earth formed above each of their raised arms with a first-approximation orbital track rising from the surface.

  “Kourou, French Guiana,” Brody identified it faster than she could. Northeastern South America. “The old European Space Agency site.”

  “Threat or Lifters?”

  “Lifters,” Brody declared without hesitation. “Minimal military there before The Exodus. Most of it is underwater since The Melt and the sea-level rise, but someone found a way to lift.”

  No threat. Stand down alert, her sleevepad announced. For a decision to be made that fast, the launch must not have been big enough to escape Earth’s orbit. If it couldn’t reach them, it was no longer her concern.

  “Out of my way, Karina. I’ve got to fly.” But it most certainly was Brody’s.

  For reasons that eluded her, she didn’t move, forcing him to push her aside. The globe projecting above his sleevepad came straight at her head and she flinched away.

  “Oh, sorry,” Brody pulled back, tapped his sleeve, and the globe went away. He tapped again, “Felice where are you? We have a run.”

  This time a big red cross projected above his arm for a moment before it switched to her face. “Hey, Brody! How are you, buddy?”

  She sounded toasted. Actually, the hospital logo flash said drugged not drunk.

  Felice raised a bound arm into the image area. “The Skyball game last night rocked. Too bad I’m sidelined until the bone reknits. You shoulda been there. Where were you? Probably off doing your usual: getting drunk and mooning over Queen Bitch Rosto—” Jones slapped the disconnect.

  “Crap!” He looked about the hanger helplessly.

  Karina could only blink in surprise. Not about the “Queen Bitch”—that one she’d heard a thousand variations on. But Brody Jones was attracted to her? Really? How had she missed that?

  Before she could collect her thoughts into a question, the other two members of his crew came racing down the hangar past the long line of Stinger spacecraft.

  “I need a copilot,” he declared to no one in particular. His arriving crew shrugged—Vetch and Warwick were a med and a gearhead, not flyers.

  Was Brody too hyped to react to the end of Felice’s comment? No, he was blushing. First time for everything.

  His eyes swung to her. His blush slowly turned into a smile.

  “No way, Brody.”

  “Are you on the first-call list?”

  She wasn’t. Though a Night Stalker was always ready, she wasn’t on the alpha-alert team today. “There’s no way I’m going to copilot your crap Mod18 to go help a bunch of suicidal Aftermathers.”

  Even as she complained, Brody wrapped a big hand around her arm and was easing her aside.

  “But…” he ignored her protests, punched in the airlock code, and hustled her past the outer and inner hatches.

  Once they were both resealed, he let go of her to tap his sleevepad. Moments later, a copilot’s pre-flight checklist popped up on her own.

  “I’m not flying with you.”

  “Sure you are,” his easy grin was infectious. “Do you have something better to do on a Thursday morning than go flying?”

  “On a Mod18? Sure!” She hadn’t flown a Mod18 since basic training, and hadn’t flown copilot since very early in her career.

  “Go,” he gave her a shove toward the engine inspection port.

  For reasons s
he couldn’t unravel, rather than flattening him and departing back through the airlock, she went. It was only as she was signing off on the last items on the list that she spotted the date—it was Sunday, not Thursday—technically her day off, as much as a Night Stalker ever had one.

  Karina watched Brody as he slid into the command chair and began systems startup. Thursday? Why had he said that? He had to know the day. Then she almost laughed. Brody had always been the one with the sense of humor—a skill she totally lacked. He’d said Thursday because it was the most boring-sounding day of the week—not mid-week and still too far from the weekend. Anything was more interesting than a Thursday and he was using everything he could to coax her into going along.

  Well, Jones was right about one thing: there wasn’t anything better than flying.

  Chapter Three

  NAS-LR1 entering LEO. This is NAS-LR1 entering LEO.” Brody made sure that the transmission was on automatic repeat. “Non-Aligned Ship, Lifter Rescue One entering Low Earth Orbit.” They were only halfway down from Luna, but it was always best to give a clear warning to prevent a preemptive strike from the surface.

  “That and a Stinger-60 gunship will keep us in business,” Karina muttered. “Except we don’t have a Stinger do we, Brody?”

  “No, we’ve got a group of civilians in trouble. Find them, Karina.” Felice was good, but the whole ship felt different with Karina beside him. There was a sudden rightness to his world that he wished he had more time to enjoy.

  “This part of space give me the creeps,” but she started working the problem while he focused on finding a safe orbit.

  “Creeps me out, too. No matter how often I fly into it.” Most of Low Earth Orbit was a blind spot courtesy of the IndiaBeam. Coming anywhere near the I-Beam Zone was bad news, really bad news.

  There were only a few groups remaining in any semblance of power down on the dirt. The biggest was India. They hadn’t joined The Exodus. Instead, they lofted a satellite that had opened into a big mirror. Using a ground-based destructive beam, they’d laid down scorched earth for a thousand kilometers around their borders—which just happened to include Pakistan, a swath of China, and several other irritant nations. After that was done, they’d proved their willingness to burn anything out of the sky that they could spot, which had included all the eyes-in-the-sky above the Eastern Hemisphere.

  Even doing an overflight at two hundred kilometers in an NAS-declared ship on a rescue mission was a dicey proposition. Bottom line: if an Earther lifted anywhere within the I-Beam’s range, they were on their own. Very few who did ever crossed out of it. In Low Earth Orbit, India’s range was two-thousand kilometers in every direction. Basically overflights anywhere between Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and Mongolia were screwed.

  “Got them!” Karina put up a projection.

  Brody saw that it would take three orbits to match speed. And it was going to happen directly over the I-Beam.

  Chapter Four

  No! I didn’t come out here to die, Brody Jones. Not for you. Definitely not for—” Karina could feel her parents’ bitter epithet striving to surface, Aftermathers. By sheer will, she managed to suppress it. “—people I’ve never met.”

  She wasn’t her parents—who were parochial even by modern isolationist standards. She refused to hold their system-view. But she wasn’t going to die for unknown Lifters either.

  “I’ve followed your missions. Since when did you, a Night Stalker, shy away from risk?”

  “There’s a difference between calculated risk and suicide.”

  He’d followed her missions?

  “Do you follow all the Night Stalkers?” They weren’t exactly public record—hell, most of her missions were extremely classified. But there was a fraternity among pilots that Brody did a better job of fitting into that than she did. He’d be able to get the stories if he tried.

  “Just yours,” it was barely a gruff mumble.

  “Why do you do this?” She waved toward Earth because she wasn’t comfortable pursuing why he followed her missions.

  He tapped for a full orbital display which filled the space between them. It made his face hard to read and any continuing conversation awkward. He didn’t speak, though she could see his jaw working hard.

  “They’re on a decaying ballistic arc.” Instead of reaching true orbit, their trajectory was off. They were going to make three orbits, then… The reality caught in her throat.

  “Early in the fourth orbit they’ll reenter and burn up,” Brody concluded softly.

  “We can’t cross through the I-Beam Zone!”

  “Even if they don’t fire off the I-Beam, these Lifters will already be in reentry by then. We have to find a way to catch them sooner.”

  Karina checked the fuel load and ran some rough calcs in her head. They were going to have to catch them in their second orbit to have time to get the Lifters offloaded before the I-Beam came over the horizon.

  “How about this?” She tapped out a course.

  “That places us inside the Aussie protection dome.”

  She spun the projection and saw that it did. The only other big Eastern Hemi player—the Australia-New Zealand dome—wasn’t playing at all. They’d put up an energy field and disappeared behind it three decades ago. No one had heard from them since. The dome was huge, reaching well beyond the atmosphere. Anything that hit its silvered surface disappeared in a flash of static discharge and was never seen again—no debris, nothing. Broken down to component molecules and no one knew how they did it. They weren’t telling either.

  Karina studied the problem again. Angle of insertion, delta-vee, the I-Beam Zone, the dome…the factors swirled about her. She looked out at the Earth, like a perfect blue-and-white Skyball, glittering among the stars. They were directly above the sunlit, daytime sky and the old planet glittered. There was no way to see the problems from up here: the disease, the political and religious rifts, the pollution, the radiation.

  And then she superimposed all the factors and obstacles in her mind on the actual Earth. It was one of those tricks that she’d concluded made her such an exceptional pilot. Others relied completely on the virtual projections, but she could see the multiple orbits in her head, superimposed on the real world.

  She finally saw one, and only one possibility. She keyed it in without looking.

  Chapter Five

  Oh my god, you’ve totally lost it!” Brody looked at the shift in the projection. It broke a hundred safety rules. Maybe two hundred. He’d never have thought of that in a million years. The stress factors on the Mod18’s structure began rolling up the screen: a lot of yellow but, surprisingly, no red. Even factoring in her present condition, it should be okay.

  “But that’s…” he ran out of words. It was elegant. Risky, wild, and wholly unorthodox, but there was a beauty to it that told him it would work. There was no time to decide, but he didn’t need any. If Karina said it was good—

  He rammed his thumb down and print-authorized the course change into the flight computer.

  “Hang on! We’re—” his warnings to Vetch and Warwick in the rear were chopped off by the hard burn.

  A muttered curse was all that came over the intercom.

  Maybe he should have given them a little more warning. It didn’t really matter; the intercept wasn’t the hard part. It was the escape that was going to get interesting.

  They caught up with the Lifters over the remains of Canmerica East. The Melt had drowned most of the coastal cities, except New York which had built a skyscraper-high dike wall. Then in a final fit of isolationist paranoia, they’d dropped an asteroid on the Isthmus of Panama to cut apart the two continents—as if nations in South America didn’t have a navy or a space force.

  Brazil had collapsed early on, which hadn’t surprised anyone. But Argentina and Chile had joined together and retaliated with a line of meteor strikes from Quebec to Atlanta. Canmerica East had no longer existed by the time of The Exodus.

  He and Kar
ina caught up to the Lifter halfway through their second orbit.

  “That was beautiful, Karina.”

  “Thanks,” she kept her head down, studying the controls.

  Brody temporarily cleared the nav projection and looked right at her over the much simpler docking control layout they’d need in a few minutes. “Seriously, Karina. I wouldn’t have come up with that in a decade.”

  “Actually, Brody, you already did. Last semester of flight school, Advanced Orbital Mechanics. There was a problem in the seventh chapter I couldn’t get.”

  He vaguely remembered her tracking him down one night with a flight problem. It was the one time she’d come to his room—which was what he really remembered.

  “I was so afraid I was going to flunk out if I missed it.”

  “It was only one problem, Karina. You always worried too much. You were the top of the entire class. And the way you flew, there wasn’t a chance of them failing you.”

  “I’d spent two days on it. You said you hadn’t looked at it yet, but you cracked it in under an hour.”

  Impressing Karina Rostov had been plenty of motivation. He didn’t even remember the problem now. But he could picture her electric smile the moment she’d understood his approach on it. Her kiss had been no mere peck of thanks. It hadn’t been romantic either, but it had sizzled in his mind for all of the years since. His “one big moment” with her—how utterly pitiful.

  A squawk from the computer forced him to focus on the docking procedure. Mating up with the old Ariane rockets was always a challenge. They’d never been engineered for human transport, so the fabricated ship-mating collars were often a challenge. More than one Lifter hadn’t thought it through beforehand. Open-space transfer without spacesuits had a very low survival rate. One Lifter ship hadn’t had a hatch at all and there’d been no way to cut one in time before they fell and burned up during reentry. That one had been hardest—their radio had worked most of the way down.