Heaven's Shadow (30 page)

“What a lot of fucking bullshit.”

“You want out?”

“I don’t quit in the middle of a job.” He knew Weldon wouldn’t have allowed that in any case. “But I want you to know, since none of your other little friends seems to get this, that the smart way to play this is to assume those people up there are who they say they are.”

“Those people. These Revenants?”

“Call them whatever you want, Shane. They are living, breathing proof that the universe is a shitload weirder than we know, and there are creatures out there who can operate its machinery better than we can. Which should be no fucking surprise, really. So why do you want to poke them with a stick? It’s only going to backfire.”

Weldon closed his eyes. Harley knew the man didn’t disagree. But Weldon’s greatest professional strength happened also to be his biggest personal weakness: He did whatever those above him asked, and usually better than they could have imagined. “What do you want me to do, Harls? This is the White House and the Pentagon at work.”

“Remember one of those little sayings you mentioned when I was an ASCAN?” Weldon, as a senior flight director, had been on the panel that interviewed Harley when he first applied to become an astronaut candidate. “‘ We’re looking for people who understand the importance of making decisions they can’t take back.’” Harley pointed down the hall, at the group waiting impatiently for Weldon.

“I’m going back to wrangle the geniuses, and I’ll keep your guidance in mind. But when you get back to mission control, don’t let them make a decision we can’t take back.”

Although communication between Bangalore and Korolev mission control centers and the
Brahma
spacecraft is temporarily unavailable, all signs indicate that the mission is proceeding as planned. It is believed that
Brahma
crew member Natalia Yorkina, citizen of Russia, was the first to enter the Keanu interior and has performed the bulk of the scientific survey.

ITAR-TASS REPORT, 23 AUGUST 2019

“I’m going out,” Dennis said.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You heard the message.” The cosmonaut was already in motion, heading toward the
Venture
airlock and his EVA suit.

Yvonne couldn’t have stopped him. Even in low gravity, the pain and swelling in her leg made movement difficult. “Dennis, the man is dead!”

“It’s better for all of us that he is met—out there.” He tapped the nearest bulkhead. “Not in here.”

Yvonne had spent a terrifying half hour. The only thing she could compare it to was being flung across the surface of Keanu yesterday—frightening as that had been, it had lasted only a few minutes.

Her life on Keanu had now become a long nightmare from which there was no awakening. . . .

It had begun with a radio call, “
Venture
,
Venture
, come in.” At first Yvonne had been happy, believing she was back in direct contact with Zack and Tea.

But the moment she answered—“This is
Venture
. Hey, welcome back!”—she heard a voice that gave her chills.

“This is Downey and I need assistance.”

She had looked at Dennis at that moment. The Russian cosmonaut’s eyes, normally sleepy-looking even in midday, went wide with alarm. He had torn the headset off her, silencing the exchange. “Don’t answer!”

“Okay,” she had said, “that will be good for two minutes. Then what?” She held her hand out. Dennis returned the headset.

“We should call Bangalore.”

“You do that. But I’m not taking orders from them.”

“We can’t deal with this alone!”

“Houston will be over the horizon in two hours. Maybe I can stall him until then—”

But the voice from Vesuvius Vent returned. “
Venture
, Downey. Do you copy?”

“How the fuck can this be happening?” Yvonne said. “Didn’t you say he was dead?”

“Yes. There was no doubt. I saw the footage of the body. There was much discussion while you were unconscious.”

“But here he is.”

“As with Zachary’s wife and the others. Yes, apparently Downey is restored.”

“Okay, then what? Do I help the guy? He’s one of the crew.”

“You don’t know what he is, what any of them are. Bad enough that our friends are dealing with them . . . we cannot let one of these creatures reach our ships.”

“Well, we’re locked in here. What about
Brahma
?”

“It’s not just access I worry about. It’s also potential damage. Suppose this being is hostile.”

“He can’t hurt us in here.”

Then Dennis had decided. “No, I have to meet him.”

Now he had his suit open—on the
Brahma
suits, the backpack was the dorsal side, and opened, giving access. Dennis had his feet in the legs of his suit and was wriggling his arms into the arms and gloves. In spite of the tension, Yvonne had to admire the man’s skill at this procedure. Of course, he had been doing it for twenty-five years. Had helped design the suit, in fact.

“What about me? Have you looked at my leg lately?”

She had, and she didn’t at all like what she saw . . . the dark signs of blood poisoning.

“My absence will have no immediate effect on your condition.”

“But there’s a chance I could be incapacitated. And if you somehow wind up incapacitated, both vehicles are untended, and I think that’s a bad idea.”

By now Dennis had his head through the neck ring into his bubble helmet and was sealing his backpack. He had to shout to be heard. “It is a worse idea to do nothing.”

He began opening cabinets inside the airlock. “What are you looking for?”

“A tool.”

Yvonne wasn’t buying it. “You mean a weapon.”

“Fine. A weapon.”

“So that’s your big plan? Knock him on the head? Either you’ll crack his helmet and kill him, or you won’t do anything. Seems like a waste of time.”

“I’d rather face that decision with a weapon than not have one if I need it.”

Yvonne considered this. No point wishing for Houston to come on the line and tell her what to do. She was on her own . . . and she agreed in principle that this “Downey” creature should not be allowed into
Venture
—not yet.

“Okay, the utensils we use are all plastic. Flashlights, pens, all of that stuff is lightweight.”

“I remember.” That was right, Dennis had lived on the International Space Station for almost a year. He knew what kind of gear you’d find in a NASA space cabin.

“The toolbox outside, though. There should be a torque wrench.”

Dennis considered this. Through the faceplate of his helmet, already fogging with each exhalation, he smiled. “Thank you. You should seal this and evacuate the chamber. Keep it that way.”

As Yvonne returned to the main cabin, dogging the hatch behind her, she felt dizzy and afraid.

As she entered the commands to bleed air from the
Venture
lock, allowing Dennis to exit, her eye caught the silver case holding the Item. “What the hell are you looking at?”

Q: What is the one thing you do better than anything?

DOWNEY: Well . . . break things and kill people, I guess.

ASTRONAUT CANDIDATE INTERVIEW WITH LT. COL. PATRICK DOWNEY, USAF,
MAY 11, 2011

Right up to the time he found himself staring up the vertical side of Vesuvius Vent, the Revenant formerly known as Pogo Downey had a warm memory of the radical maneuver Zack had chosen to get people and machines to the bottom.
Yeah, just throw everything overboard.
The assumption was that astronauts could be hauled up by rope—and the rover abandoned.

That made sense, as long as you had a fellow astronaut at the top of the slope with a line.

At the moment, Pogo was alone . . . and searching in the darkness for the ramp Zack had suggested as a backup return route.

It had been easier to see in glowworm light. When he emerged from the passage between the membrane and the vent floor, he found that the glowworms had shut down! There was no light but the beams from his helmet lamps . . . and faint starlight.

Making matters more challenging, he was cramping. EVA suits were not tailored to individual astronauts, but they came in three sizes: Pogo had worn large while Zack Stewart used medium.

He had also not been able to perform any system checks.

The critical driver now was oxygen. There was less than ninety minutes left in his tanks. If he’d had time and been alone, he would have recharged them at the rover . . . but he had been able to slip into the camp for only a few moments.

“Pogo, do you read me?” Chertok’s voice had a strange, distant sound. Probably bounced all the way to Earth, then to Keanu.

But at least someone had answered.

Downey’s response was, “Five by,” a callback to flight tests of three generations earlier.
Five by five. Clear.
“Where are you?”

“On Vesuvius rim.”

Downey looked up the cliff face in the general direction of
Brahma
. “I don’t see you. Too dark.”
And those Brahma suits are blue.

Another lag. The signal was definitely being routed, probably through Bangalore. Which meant that everyone knew what had happened to Patrick Downey.

During his trek through the membrane, down the long passage and then across the floor of the vent, Pogo had made major changes in his plans.

At first, realizing he was alive again, he had wanted to get back in touch with Zack and the others. But three events had convinced him that was a bad idea: The first was finding the body of another Revenant, a sign that Pogo’s former colleagues were prepared to be violent.

Second was the sight of Zack and the other crew members in complete disarray, suits discarded, in the company of other humans, among them two members of the untrustworthy Coalition crew.

Third was finding his own body . . . seeing his own bloodied face frozen in final agony—

He needed an advantage. High ground. Leverage.

He was also determined to contact Linda and the kids.

Surely they had been told of the earlier accident—strange to think of the words, his earlier death. The thought of their pain and uncertainty triggered blinding tears.

All he wanted in life was to be able to take that away, to make it better, to hold them again.
No, it was all a mistake. I’m alive!

He could reach his family—and gain needed leverage—only by going outside the chamber and back to
Venture
.

So he had stolen a suit and helmet.

All during this time he had been bombarded with strange pseudo-memories. Images of structures and landscapes somewhere deeper inside Keanu. One was dark, glowing, burned. Another was filled with greenish fog and strange floating shapes. There was a recurring image of a large, multilimbed creature dressed in garments that were a kind of shiny armor.

He knew their names. Garudas Scaptors. Architects. The fact that there were several factions of Architects, each with its own agenda.

And the stupid Sentry, which wasn’t a Sentry at all, but simply another life-form. If it had a more accurate name, it would be
candidate
. For what, Pogo didn’t know.

There was so much more . . . concepts that lurked at the borders of memory, like lessons in computer science studied twenty years back: the idea that entities, organic or not, had a greater footprint in the universe than suggested by visual borders or physical limits, that they left quantum “wakes” or “clouds” that could be detected—and manipulated—years after death or destruction.

The dizzying confusion of it, the lack of words to fit concepts, his frustration with his own inability to understand how, why—it made him physically ill. Yet as he reached the rim of Vesuvius—spotting Dennis, who had switched on his helmet lights—he suddenly knew what his mission was.

Not just to go home, to return to Linda and Daniel and Kerry.

To punish the Architects for their cruel and ill-planned contact with the human race.

Then
go home.

As he passed through the Beehive, he had flung rocks at as many cells as he could. The destruction was minimal, but likely significant.

“Where’s the ramp from your twenty?” he radioed to Dennis. As he waited, he looked at the rocks and ice around him. His hands felt empty. What he needed was a stick, something to steady himself. Deep in the shadows, under a cleft, were several items that, in a terrestrial cave, would have been called stalactites.

Pogo wondered briefly if it was possible for a human to break ice that had been hardened for ten thousand years. The answer was yes—

“To my left, your right . . . two hundred meters.”

Downey was in motion before Dennis finished telling him, slipping and sliding, bracing against the vent wall with one free hand, the other using the ice shard as a cane.

He felt faint—probably stressing the suit’s oxygen flow, which was not designed for cross-country hikes—and the momentary lightness reminded him all too much of the circumstances of his own death. Just how had that happened? Clearly Lucas had spooked the Sentry, but what kind of creature responded to a simple flash of light with a killing blow?

Unless that creature was so strong and fast that it was merely intending to grab and hold him—

There was the ramp, its terminus littered with small rocks mixed with snow. Clearly no one had tried to use it in centuries or longer.

But he could pick his way across the rubble, using his “cane.” And once he got past the debris at the base, the ramp proved to be relatively clean, though strangely broad. You could have driven two rovers up this thing, side by side.

A good thing, too. The low gravity meant little traction. Every other step resulted in a skid . . . and though he knew, intellectually, that he could survive a fall, he had no wish to return to the vent floor and start the climb again.

He was running out of time.

A bobbing light played across the irregular vent walls. Dennis making rendezvous. “I see you.”