Heaven's Fall (6 page)

Not that he was an explorer at heart. His wanderings had been forced. So now he lurked, he skulked. He had—no doubt about it—spent far too much time alone.

But now, today, this moment, he was back among . . . people.

And their unique environment.

They’re here! The outbound Keanu vessel we’ve been expecting entered Earth’s atmosphere early this morning, Perth time, and appears to have landed in southern India . . . likely Bangalore.

We, which is to say Colin, were actually able to track them on approach—a bright streak across the sky, like a meteoroid.

We were unable to intercept any useful telemetry (they may not have been transmitting it or, if so, only in a direct beam to Keanu) or voice, only bursts of what was clearly communication, but likely scrambled.

Of course, this means other parties were surely able to track them, too. And there are indications that someone—guess who?—took a shot at them during final approach.

But none of our eyes and ears in Bangalore reported any crash. And the total blackout of Keanu-related news—and the sudden disappearance of General Radhakrishnan and Director Remilla of ISRO—suggests that the Keanu folks made it, and are safe.

Of course, none of us are truly safe.

But this may be the first step.

ENCRYPTED MESSAGE TO THE KETTERING GROUP,
APRIL 13, 2040

Taj Radhakrishnan ran out of Yelahanka’s operations center, intending to leave his wife behind. “No, you don’t,” she shouted, “not without me!” And she followed him.

Taj was too concerned with what had just happened north of the Yelahanka runway to really care about his wife’s actions. She was not a member of the official welcoming committee and should not have been in the air base operations center at all.

But Taj and the other committee members had allowed it, given that Mrs. Radhakrishnan, the former Tea Nowinski, was a space professional and a NASA astronaut—in fact, the commander of the first piloted lunar landing mission of the twenty-first century back in 2016. She may not have worked in the field for twenty years, but, then, neither had Taj.

Perhaps it was that layoff that contributed to his wife’s loss of operational discipline—the urge that allowed her to race for Taj’s Jeep as it and several similar vehicles started heading for the landing site.

“I want to see them!” she said.

“Get in.” She had a right, after all. Taj had wanted Tea with him from the beginning but had run into a bureaucratic barrier: If the welcoming committee had no room for a long list of local politicians, ISRO certainly didn’t want Taj making room for Tea Nowinski Radhakrishnan, even if she was stepmother to one of the
Adventure
crew . . . and former quasi-stepmom to a second.

The driver gunned the Jeep with purpose, violently flinging Taj, Tea, and the fourth party, Wing Commander Kaushal, side to side. “Careful!” Kaushal snapped. He was a round little man—short and so fat that Taj wondered how he passed the annual fitness exams. But then, Kaushal was known to be politically savvy if not especially skilled as a pilot. He was, in Taj’s view, a navigator, in all senses of the word.

And, as the commandant of Yelahanka, a necessary addition to the welcoming committee.

The convoy consisted of two Jeeps, an ambulance and rescue unit, and a cherry picker. They rolled toward the spacecraft without waiting for an order.

As the convoy turned onto the runway, Tea looked stricken, so he said, before she could ask, “Rachel and Pav are fine. There is one serious injury, a man we don’t know.”

“Oh, God. Taj, it crashed!”

“It could have been worse.”

“Tell me how!” This was an argument they had repeated all through their two decades of married life. Taj was a glass-half-full sort, she often said. Whereas Tea’s type was
I didn’t order your stupid glass
.

“They could have left a smoking crater,” he said, unnecessarily.

“Jesus Christ,” she snapped. Then she turned on the driver. “Can’t we go faster?”

Taj had fought to keep the
Adventure
receiving party small, and he had succeeded—if one neglected to count Tea and the hundreds of Indian Air Force officers and enlisted men and their families and friends crowding the base, lurking, it seemed to Taj, behind every window or outside every fence.

In the official dozen were five from the staff of ISRO Bangalore, including the center’s director, Mrs. Melani Remilla; the deputy mayor of the city, Suresh Kateel, representing the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagra Palike; also a member of the staff of the governor of Kanatka State and two agents from the Research and Analysis Wing in addition to the commandant of Yelahanka and his director of operations.

Taj was the twelfth.

But no reporters so far. The Signals Intelligence Directorate had frozen or silenced all networks and was transmitting blocking material on broadcast frequencies that originated from or were received at Yelahanka.

Or so they believed. Taj was skeptical.

Nevertheless, as much as it was possible in the mid-twenty-first century, the landing of this alien vessel carrying refugees from Earth was a private affair.

They cleared the buildings lining the runway, passing a plaque commemorating Taj’s illfated
Brahma
mission to Keanu. He had been stationed at Yelahanka when selected for space training in 2005, so the base had more or less claimed him. He had driven past the plaque half a dozen times in the last week, each time feeling a pang of regret and shame.

This time, however, he barely glanced at it, as if finally leaving it, and the
Brahma
experience, in the rearview mirror.

Looking ahead, their view still blocked by buildings, Taj wondered what he and Tea and the others would find at the landing site. They had heard the disturbing final exchanges . . . with no knowledge of the type of vehicle
Adventure
was, Taj was no judge of its terminal phase, though it did seem to be falling rather fast, not perfectly controlled. In the last few seconds, when
Adventure
more or less hovered over the runway, he could see that one of its four tail fins was clearly damaged. There was a hole in it big enough to see through.

It was early morning; the runway at Yelahanka ran almost directly east–west. Taj and team had instructed
Adventure
to aim for any of three helicopter pads to the north and west of the runway. Thanks to its problems,
Adventure
hit on the grass apron at the extreme eastern edge of the runway.

Which meant that, as they drove toward
Adventure
, Taj and team were looking directly into the morning sun. The big fat shape of
Adventure
—it reminded Taj of the famous London Pickle—was nothing but a two-dimensional shadow until the convoy managed to come up on its southern side.

Then he got a clear view of the patchwork quilt of thermal tiles, much like the old space shuttle, many of them scarred from the heat of reentry. “Oh my God, Taj! Look at that piece of crap,” Tea said. “How could they fly that from Keanu?”

Even though it was uttered by his wife, whom he loved, Taj bristled at the comment; any vehicle capable of crossing half a million kilometers was not a piece of crap.

Yet, with its tilt and damaged fin, it did look “hobo,” to use a phrase Taj had picked up from space station Americans. Nevertheless, even half-crumpled the fin was still strong enough to keep the vehicle from toppling.

Up close
Adventure
proved to be as tall as a five-story building . . . almost as tall as Taj’s long-lost
Brahma
. The medical unit and the cherry picker were at its base. One of the med techs waved and signaled that there were no toxics. All Taj and Tea could do now was wait, and wonder what the crew’s medical need was.

Before the basket of the cherry picker reached it, the hatch opened, flopping downward to provide an egress platform. Stepping out onto it was a figure from years of Taj’s nightmares . . . a Sentry! Taller than a human, multi-armed, deadly.

“Oh my God, Taj—!” Tea grabbed his arm. She had not seen any Sentries face-to-face, but she had seen their work.

“General,” Kaushal said, using a rank Taj had long since relinquished, “is that what we expected?” He sounded as nervous as any military man would, when surprised.

But this Sentry was carrying a wounded man. From where Taj stood, nothing more could be seen, certainly not the extent of the man’s injuries or even his identity—Taj prayed that it was not Pav even as he wondered if he would recognize his son.

With two techs aboard, the cherry picker basket reached the hatch level. The techs took the wounded man from the alien, then began to descend.

Taj’s Jeep stopped fifty meters from the base of the craft. “Wait here,” Taj told Tea. To his surprise, she did as ordered.

He and Kaushal hurried toward
Adventure
now. What they saw was devastating—a young barefoot Hindi in what would have been normal street attire (white shirt and slacks) a generation back, with a severe head wound, as if the left half of his face had been bashed in. “Get him to the infirmary,” Kaushal ordered.

Taj shaded his eyes and looked up at the Sentry, a figure from his past, shouting, “Are there other injuries?”

To his surprise, the creature shook its head and waved its upper arms in a very humanlike set of gestures. “No!” Its voice was muffled by its suit, of course, but could easily have been any of the welcoming party.

Then the Sentry was joined on the platform by four others, all in street clothes. (Taj had expected flight suits of some kind.) A heavyset black man—likely the partner named Toutant. A teenaged girl in shorts and a loose yellow blouse—Yahvi.

A tall man who looked much as Taj once had. “Papa!” He waved. Pav! Lord, he was grown up! Handsome in spite of the day’s ordeal.

And with him, a dark-haired woman in her thirties. “It’s Rachel, hi!” For a moment, Taj felt confused . . . it was as if he were looking at Megan Stewart, Rachel’s mother . . . the same woman he had last seen, alive, on Keanu twenty years ago.

Before this thought could bedevil him further, there was a shriek from behind him—Tea. Waving her hand, moving as she had not moved in a decade, she ran toward the base of
Adventure
.

Rachel was hopping up and down like an excited teenager, which was what she had been during her last meeting with Tea. It was clear that she wanted to scream, and just as clear that, given the wounded man’s condition, she could not.

And so Taj Radhakrishnan was reunited with his son and introduced to his now-extended family.

There were hugs and tears all around as the
Adventure
crew descended. Tea and Rachel were linked so completely and for so long that an objective observer might have judged them to be a single organism. There was a special bond between the two, of course. Rachel’s mother, Megan, had been killed in 2016 in an accident that cost Zack Stewart command of the
Destiny-5
lunar mission . . . which had then gone to Tea!

A year or so later, Zack Stewart began dating Tea . . . who then became a surrogate mother to fourteen-year-old Rachel. They had apparently gotten along well—it was Taj’s impression that at the time, Rachel might have had the edge in maturity.

And if so, it appeared that his granddaughter, who had been standing silently and politely for several minutes, shared her mother’s prodigal serenity. Of course, Yahvi’s silence could also be caused by sullenness—or, to be entirely fair, the stress of her recent experiences.

Rachel finally turned Tea toward Pav. “Hello, Pav,” Tea said, “it’s so nice to finally meet you.” Then she turned to Taj. “Do you tell him or do I?”

Pav looked at his father with his familiar, quizzical expression. “Tea is my wife,” Taj said.

Rachel squealed and hugged Tea again. Pav was more dutiful—understandably. “I guess, then,” he said, taking Yahvi by the hand and drawing her forward, “this is your granddaughter, of sorts.”