Atonement

Atonement

A short story by John Peace

Tylane floated in a batsuit with feet clamped to the lip of the circular dropwell, staring beyond his toes into the darkness. The deck of the Europa shook under his feet and some tools on a shelf nearby rattled. Bursts of acceleration made his body sway. He stooped and held on with his hands too.

"Twenty 'til drop. Nineteen." Taha Malik in Ops sounded like he was biting his nails. Normally he was like ice.

The growl of Stripes Gerone came on the channel. "What the kred are you doing, Tylane? You're in custody for desertion! Report back to the brig!"

Tylane's mouth curled into a half-grin. "No can do, sir."

+ + +

The Europa. Tiny puffed needle, bristling speck of bio-ceram and titanite. Hostile drone contacts phasing in and out of detection, just beyond the lip of real spacetime. Ship sweating with the efforts of crew. Trembling. Running silent. Racing around bright, airless planet; planet racing around giant yellow star, tidally locked. Europa's Higgs-wave operators, drugged-up, twitching and blinking; projectors pulse. Hostile contacts swarming out of phase space for nanoseconds at a time, release hyperluminal charges, fading away. Incoming charges merge with Europa's pre-emptive defensive pulse. One charge spins erratically; squeezes through the pulse and slices off Europa's midships radiator and comms. Europa shudders: pain? Relief?

+ + +

Behind him: noises in the corridor outside the droproom. He spun, clumsily in the batsuit, and found his sidearm where he'd left it clipped to the wall. Henk and Amoyo were in cover down the hall, peeking out at an ugly, segmented Trans drone that was rapidly forming out of a black dust cloud. The drone was forming halfway between his squadmates and him. Space around the dropzone planet will be seeded with nanodust. Briefing got one thing right, anyhow, thought Tylane. He ducked back inside the droproom and took two gamma-burst mines from the rack, set one, lobbed it, yelled, "Gamma!" and threw himself back into the droproom. The label read, Shipboard use of this device prohibited. Even through tight-shut eyelids the gamma ray burst's secondary photons lit up his world for a painful instant.

A few moments later, Henk poked his helmeted head around the droproom door. "All clear," he called. "Thanks. Now we're quits."

Tylane was back at the lip of the dropwell.  "Watch your backs," he replied through his suit's speaker, without turning round. "Where there's one, there are many."

Taha again, whispering in his ear: "…One. Drop!"

He grabbed his aerobrake board and pivoted head first through the ionised air curtain, into vacuum.

+ + +

Below the Europa, nearing the airless planet: five mech-marines, huge waldo suits, like dark hawk titans. Falling. One out in front, four spaced in wide square formation.

Sudden invisible radiation from below: leading mech glows, falls apart silently. Others start to skid around on thrusters like nervous flies. One, two more hit by the giant fist. Other two getting close now. Nearing their target: a gaping circle, some five kilometres in diameter, on the planet's lava-ridged equator. Directly below the burning sun, where it's always high noon. One mech is hit – the pieces fly apart – one piece hits the one remaining mech. Some damage. Jostled. Recovers. Time to decelerate. Fires thrusters: malfunction! Mech spins wildly, out of control.

Last surviving marine from Europa's second mechanised Eagle Ops strike team impacts surface fifty metres from edge of target shaft at velocity of eight hundred and thirty metres per second. Shards of debris describe arcs in the empty sky. Some casing and components fall into the shaft.

They keep falling for quite some time.

+ + +

Ahead of him, the planet burned in his retina, glowing with reflected light. It had almost filled his field of view. He spotted the head of the shaft, below and slightly ahead, still no more than a dot. Like threading the eye of a needle, he thought.

"Hold up, Tylane. We're right behind you."

It was Amoyo and Henk. Tylane knew it was too late to send them back. "Why?" is all he could manage.

Amoyo: "Your ideas. They're always the craziest. Might just work."

Henk: "What idea? Nobody told me no idea. Man, I'm just here for the fireworks."

Amoyo, patiently: "The mech troops never made it 'cos they're big and metal. We're small. Invisible. Slip through their detectors. Grab that dude and -"

Henk: "Uh. Right. Cool with me. But why we bring no hardware, man?"

Amoyo: "You want to set off the defences, get fried? We're stealthed. No guns. No metal."

Tylane: "No more transmissions 'til we're down. Radios off."

Just as he clicked off his transmission, though, there came a wild burst of voice and static over the Europa's channel. Then silence. He looked in his board's rearview mirror. Where the Europa had been there was merely a cloud of glittering particles, moving apart like pollen on a pond.

Tylane swore quietly, trying to ignore the way his stomach convulsed. Transhuman filth! Now there was certainly no going back.

+ + +

Three dust motes float straight down towards mouth of shaft. One far out in front. Five kilometres from surface. Whisps of atmosphere tug at them; slight trail around boards. Lead dust mote falls into centre of shaft. Beam of sunlight extends before them. Carbon dioxide atmosphere thickens deeper into shaft; board glows warmer; dust mote slows.

+ + +

Henk saw the rim of the shaft racing towards him. He and Amoyo had jumped too late. It was going to be close. He could feel the caress of the atmosphere on the board. Puffs of thrust tilted the board forwards. The shaft's gaping maw crept closer. Was it enough? Urgently he held the thrust trigger down, trying to jet across the rim and into the safety of the shaft. He might just-

He saw Amoyo drifting past him, ahead and below, just over the lip of the shaft, his foot almost grazing the sharp edge.

Then the ground rushed up at him. Impact.

+ + +

It's almost like the sim, thought Tylane, as he saw the walls of the shaft rush by. Now, instead of bare volcanic rock, they were a blur of heavy plant, piping, projections, openings, perhaps windows. He had jettisoned the board. With the batsuit stretched out, he was circling, following not far from the inside edge of the massive tube that the Trans machines had bored into the planet's crust. At one point he was forced to dodge through a latticework of beams and antennas. Air pressure was rising as he fell. The suit stretched his limbs out tightly.

The sun's radiance burned on the distant floor of the shaft like molten steel. Something in the deep cylinder's atmosphere or in his faceplate refracted the light into sharp colours. It was like falling into a well of rainbows. Spread-eagled. A memory flashed across his vision: walking into a Polish Orthodox church with Natalie and her aging mother. Tall darkness, echoing whispers, scents of damp stone, incense, burning wax. Natalie's hand soft and warm in his. Saints in multicoloured windows  – tapestries in blue and crimson – forests of candles – and a figure stretched on a cross, all of it carved from dark mahogany. Something about atoning for sins. Maybe that's what I'm doing, he thought. Then the memory evaporated.

A figure swooped alongside, braking with outstretched wing-arms. It was Amoyo. Tylane knew he was grinning, even with the mask and helmet on. Where was Henk? Ah, there. Another shape, not far beyond.

He glanced at the HUD. Almost time to pop the chutes. And break radio silence. "Amoyo, you pop first, then Henk. I'll lead you down."

Amoyo: "Henk didn't make it."

"Then who-?"

An unmistakeable voice like an angry bear: "Gerone here. Looks like your plan had something going for it. But you're still a deserter, who left good men to die."

"Stripes? What the…" Tylane scowled. He had to concentrate on the HUD. "Why?"

"Like you said, the mission's all about saving the sorry behinds of some civvies. Procyon. Whatever it takes. Gotta get to the prisoner or else the Trans can wipe that colony."

Tylane shook his head in disbelief. Gerone, discovering a conscience? But the HUD air pressure reading beckoned. "Amoyo! Pop!"

Amoyo's form sprouted and fled upwards. Then Gerone, then Tylane himself. Then they were floating down like dandelion seeds towards a tunnel mouth that their briefing had insisted would be there. The floor of the shaft was still some two thousand metres below. Its top lip was a small bright disc, thirty kilometres or more above their heads. They fell slowly in the half-Earth gravity.

+ + +

As soon as Tylane's feet hit the floor of the unlit tunnel he saw the sentinel, a biodrone, five metres away, turning towards him. It held a phased meson projector and loomed as large as an ox standing on two legs. Radiance from the main shaft lit up the walls a short way into the tunnel.

Training took over, and he ran forward even as he slapped the chute release. Synthetic muscles sprung him up to the roof and forwards, flipped him, brought him down on the sentinel's back. Slippery cable-like fronds sprouted from the rear of the sentinel's smoothly armoured head and ran into its spinal column. Its free hand, razor-edged, swung up towards him. He took a double handful of the fronds and leaped away from the hand, off the sentinel's back, his full weight on the fronds. They tore free of the sentinel's head and it collapsed towards him as he hit the ground, winded. An instant before it crushed him, he managed to roll aside.

Then he was up on his feet, prying the PMP weapon free of the sentinel's dead grip. He would need all four fingers to squeeze the massive trigger, but they'd all trained on captured PMPs. In his peripheral vision he saw a figure touching down at the mouth of the tunnel and jettisoning the chute. But now another sentinel emerged from the shadows, firing as it came. Tylane was already diving, rolling behind the first sentinel's bulk, snapping off a shot. Missed! Behind the sentinel, half of the tunnel's roof crashed down at the PMP's scything action.

His second shot cut the sentinel in two, and it collapsed amid a welter of dark fluid.

When he pushed himself to his feet, there was Stripes Gerone, striding towards him with something held in his right fist. He kicked the weapon out of Tylane's hand and trained the plastic handcannon at his head. "Good work, soldier, but this is the end of the road for you."

Tylane stood frozen in shock. Amoyo? He didn't make it. But I should have seen through Gerone's act!

Stripes Gerone cocked the weapon. "The only good deserter is a dead one," he growled.

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Author's Note: Obviously a cliff-hanger. The story begs to be finished. I might try to do so if I get enough feedback.