FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter six

Space is big- very, very, very big. So voluminous is space, in fact, that if one views the night sky, they are actually seeing the light of stars hundreds to thousands to billions of light years away- they are consequently seeing light which is hundreds to thousands to billions of years old. If Catherine looked back at Earth, she wouldn't see Weir's gentle features; she wouldn't see Chinese and United Nations troops slaughtering one another with lasers and cannons and swords; nor would she see Miles' parents tending to their vineyard and eagerly awaiting their son's return. She, instead, would gaze upon an early Milky Way in a period of its evolution long before the Sun existed. Earth and Mars and Jupiter and Neptune would remain unformed; their prior constituents would remain scattered among the early galaxy in the form of stellar dust.

She had to really digest that simple fact when she dwelled on it: She was billions of light years away from Earth in a completely foreign region of the universe, in an alien galaxy. And to think that she was even in the core of such an alien galaxy only bewildered her further. Should this galaxy become humanity's new dwelling, people would require serious adjustment to their daily routines. Everything in their lives would revolve around resource management and maintaining the well-being of others; perhaps it would be a positive thing? Regardless, however, people would certainly have to change their sleeping habits. The stars in this galaxy were plentiful and extremely bright- she supposed that on all of these planets, the night sky glowed like a city. Some of the stars were bright enough to cause her eyes some discomfort after gazing at them for too long. Considering their location, however- in the core of a galaxy- it was unsurprising that so many active, powerful stars orbited Asgard as they did, even if it was from several light years away.

Upon exiting the wormhole, they reengaged the Tour de Force's gravity while the sensors performed analysis of the alien star system they had found themselves in. They met in the bridge to discuss their findings.

“We were able to receive the data," Lareau began. “Though only some of it."

“Why?" Harper asked.

“Besides the emissions from Asgard's accretion disk, the black hole is orbited by a pulsar called Yggdrasil. Together, they emit solar wind with such intensity that it garbles most transmissions from inside the system; we only just got close enough to receive any from the probes. All three planets are pinging ready to go- my world, Rodney's World, and Weir's World."

After the probes were sent through the wormhole, an unofficial rule proliferated through NASA: Whoever sifted through the data and discovered a planet in the Asgard system was able to name the planet. Lareau had found the first; Rodney the second; Weir the third.

Catherine was clutching a tablet in her hands, viewing the data of the system. “Your planet is by far the closest, Lareau- though its orbit concerns me."

Miles sipped a vacuum pouch of nutrient-infused juice, though midway he glared at her with a What do you mean? look. To address his concerns she tapped a few keys on the screen and projected the image along the electronic screen mounted on the wall. The image was a computer simulation of Lareau's World's orbit, with the planet orbiting the pulsar which then orbited tightly around Asgard.

“Your planet," the collie said, “Orbits Yggdrasil much closer than the initial data suggested. Asgard emits little harmful radiation, though the same can't be said of the pulsar. Spectroscopic data suggests that your planet is directly in the plane of rotation of Yggdrasil. At that range, the planet is probably bathed in radiation."

“I wouldn't be so sure," Harper replied, viewing the quantitative data to the left of the simulation. “The probe hasn't sent much, but its initial findings include water and ozone detection in the stratosphere. If the radiation was that intense, then those compounds couldn't exist in the atmosphere."

“That means an oxygen and water cycle," Miles said.

“Exactly; the ozone density suggests that the radiation may be at habitable levels once you get below the stratosphere, at least at night. During the day, the radiation might still be high enough to cook the planet's surface. But we would be stupid to ignore this opportunity."

Catherine's ears perked up, though she still remained doubtful. Stupid? “So we can only approach on the night side? How will we get into orbit without getting irradiated?"

“We stay in the planet's shadow," Miles offered, pointing to the simulation. “If we put the Tour de Force back here-" his finger tapped the space behind the planet- “And we take the Aurora down, we get in and out and snag the probe's data cache before the sun comes up."

“What about fuel?" Catherine asked concernedly. “With the pulsar so close, we have to stay in the planet's shadow, so we can't attempt geosynchronous orbit. We'll have to expend an uncomfortable amount of fuel just to stay within the planet's shadow."

“The other worlds are too far," Lareau said. “Rodney's is months away, and Weir's is twice that. Right now, my world is the best prospect for exploration."

The dog brought a hand up to her muzzle uncertainly. “I suppose."

“Let's get the ship into position," Miles said. “I'll take Aurora One down, get the probe, look around a bit, get some samples, and get back; it'll take maybe two hours, tops."

“I'll go with you," Harper said; as the ship's biologist, it was the logical choice.

“As will I," Catherine added; as a physicist, she probably had more use observing the black hole from a distance rather than aiding in retrieving a probe, but for some strange reason she felt that she should be present. She had learned to trust her instincts when they seemed right; they could be fooled, of course, though intuition was never something to disregard.

Harper scoffed, though he offered little in the way of rebuttal. Why was that damn dog going anyway?

“Good," the pilot returned. “Lareau?"

“I'll stay behind with Phillip," she said.

“You don't want to see the surface of your own planet, doctor?" the robot asked.

“Someone's got to keep you company," she replied with a smile. The robot gave her a curious turn of the head.

One would expect Lareau's World to be nearly pitch black on the night side, though that was true only to a degree. Bright flashes of white light constantly flickered on in the blackness, illuminating thick patches of mottled clouds in the black of the planet's night. Asgard floated along quite distantly, though it did still take up a small portion of the view from the Aurora- a massive black sphere surrounded by a distorted white-orange accretion disk of anaemic plasma. At just over two astronomical units in diameter, it was far, far larger than the Sun, though at its sizable distance away it appeared as though it were only a few centimetres across. The light from the accretion disk was still enough to cast plentiful sunlight on the planet's day side; the pulsar was only a few kilometres across, and though the planet orbited extremely closely, its light was hardly noticeable. As for its ionising radiation levels at the surface, well, that was an unknown.

Catherine gave Miles the go-ahead on the system check. She, like usual, was strapped into the co-pilot seat while Miles was at the pilot's; Harper sat in the seat behind her. All three donned their spacesuits.

“We're all good for entry," she said, giving the pilot the thumbs up.

“Roger," he replied. “Prepare for detachment in three, two, one…" He pulled the lever down on the control panel above his head and the spidery latches of the airlock disconnected. The shuttle fell away from the Tour de Force and hurtled towards Lareau's World. Within only minutes they began to encounter the expected resistance from atmospheric entry and the craft began to shake, a thin veil of heated plasma skimming across the bow of the spacecraft's hull.

They breached the upper bound of the stratosphere when the lightning began flashing around them. A few bolts impacted the craft, though with the graphene heatshield mounted along the outer, insulated hull they had little effect.

“We only have a two hour window to complete this," Miles said over the crashes of thunder and the vibratory motions of the craft. “We have to avoid the radiation, and we'll need to minimise fuel consumption if we want to make it back to Earth."

“R-roger," Harper said over the loud shaking of the cockpit. Through the gentle light of the cockpit, as well as the lightning flashes brightly illuminating it, they could see raindrops spattering across the nanoglass viewscreens.

“There's water!" Catherine said excitedly.

“Just like home," the pilot responded, flicking a series of controls at the dashboard to prime the RCS thrusters for firing. As they breached the stratosphere, the craft's shakiness grew and the lightning only became more intense. As the wind howled outside the hull, the occupants were increasingly jostled in their seats. It reminded her of the journey through the wormhole only days before. Trepidatiously, she glanced at the violently oscillating dashboard and discovered that the ship was off course.

“Miles!" she said. “Adjust your heading, or we won't land near the beacon!"

“I know," he shouted over the gale, turning the craft in the direction of the winds to minimise strain on the hull. The computer suddenly echoed a piercing klaxon alarm and the engine readouts flashed red. The craft decelerated massively and they were thrown forward in their seats.

“Lee?" Harper asked nervously. “Engines are reading zero!"

“Flooded with rain!" he replied. “Oh, fuck. Okay, okay, think, think!"

“Cut the power to the main engines before they rupture!" Catherine shouted. They were twenty-one kilometres from the surface.

“A-alright! I'm using RCS to VTOL us in, everybody hang on!" Though the exhaust nozzles for the main engines were flooded, the fusion reactors were still operational, as was the reaction control system thrusters. The Aurora could normally land like an aircraft when travelling at terrestrial speeds; at this speed, however, the RCS thrusters were required to decelerate lest they crash. Miles primed the ignition system. “Firing!"

They were ten kilometres from the surface. Catherine lurched forwards as the thrusters fired, and for a few seconds she was certain the egregious turbulence would sunder the craft far before they would ever reach the surface. The last crash echoed through the frame as they passed through the bottom of the troposphere, only a kilometre from the surface, and the storm clouds seemed to yield below that altitude. Through the dim light reaching the night side via Asgard's accretion disk, she could finally see the choppy sea beneath them. Miles extended the landing gear and the ship slowly lowered itself onto what appeared to be a flat, muddy beach. The thud as the ship landed was surprisingly gentle, likely being cushioned by the mud.

“There we go," he sighed as he shut down the reactors. “We made it."

“What about the engines?" Catherine asked.

“They'll drain within-" he glanced at the readouts- “Forty eight minutes. That gives us almost an hour to get the beacon before the sun comes over the horizon; let's go."

Harper begrudgingly unstrapped himself and walked towards the airlock, joining Catherine. Can you try not to kill us next time? he thought while looking towards the dog. If I drop something, I don't want it running off to play fetch. Catherine punched in the controls for the airlock- she almost shivered when the saw the docking mechanism adjacent to it, remembering their anxious initial dock- and pulled down the lever. The bay doors parted open and a rush of sea spray burst into the cabin. Catherine used the rungs built into the open airlock to descend from it, her digitigrade boots finally making a wet squelch as they pressed into the soil.

Land! she thought. Nearly two years had passed since she had touched the stuff (though during most of that time she was in cryogenic suspension), even if it was intermediated by a spacesuit. She had little desire to ponder on their arrival back on Earth… if there even was to be one.

Sure enough, they had landed on a sort of beach, though as she looked farther ahead she could see that the beach was in fact an island. No other land masses were visible. The island had several jagged crystalline boulders scattered along its shorelines, and its surface was composed of what appeared to be a sort of sandy alluvium, though with the light rain it was clearly wet to the touch.

The night side of the planet was perhaps more appropriately referred to as the “dusk" side- Asgard's accretion disk still took up a small portion of the sky across the horizon, and its intense light and size cast a dim glow on the “dusk" side of the planet. If this was to be humanity's home, sleep schedules would definitely have to be reprogrammed. The sky above them was still replete with storm clouds, though it appeared much calmer above them than it did around them. Far off in the distance, seemingly in a circle around their position, thick black clouds enclosed them for as far as the eye could see. Beneath that distant veil of dark clouds were sheets of rain obscuring the horizon; perhaps they had just gotten lucky and avoided the worst of it.

A stark crack of thunder above her reminded Catherine that they were running on borrowed time. “Here," she heard Miles say, “I'm projecting VR markers of the beacon." On her viewscreen a green dot appeared at the other side of the small island, what the computer identified as being three hundred metres distant.

“Roger," Harper replied. His voice was surprisingly cordial. “This way, Alex." The full Alexeyevna was a little rough on the tongue, so it would seem. Miles followed behind.

“It seems strange the storm would've just died down so suddenly," he said. “One minute we go through hell; the next, we're all in the clear."

“Well," Harper said, “This planet rotates four times faster than Earth. The weather systems are probably much more localised." They were only two hundred metres away now.

“True." He noticed the clouds were indeed moving much faster than they did on Earth, and the sheets of rain ahead of them seemed to be moving farther away. How strange that the weather could change so dramatically. “At least the gravity seems a little nicer to us." At point nine gees, the gravity was a bit more comfortable than on the Tour de Force or even on Earth. Perhaps he could adjust to this planet.

One hundred metres.

There was a large hill of sand to their left, probably about forty or so metres high. Its high, gentle slope obscured much of the island from their view, though at this point all their concern was simply getting to the beacon in time. Catherine looked at the chronometer in her viewscreen- forty five minutes until the sun would come up. They still had time to extract the data cache.

Ahead of them lay a small sandbar, and vividly contrasting with the darkened alluvium she could see the distinctly artificial white prongs of a relay probe protruding from the ground. “Got it," she said, pointing to the spacecraft. The blue NASA logo was visible along the side of the Sputnik-esque probe, its thin thermal paint blackened and scratched by the heat of atmospheric entry and the collision of surface impact.

The probe's data cache was located on the interior of its shell. Normally, the metal thing would be far too heavy for a team of three to grasp; with their nanofabric spacesuits, however, their strength was more than doubled. Catherine, Miles and Harper each grasped one of the triple white prongs and pulled mercilessly, though the damned thing wouldn't budge.

“Come… on!" Harper grunted with frustration.

Finding her reserves quickly depleted, Catherine yielded in little time and released her grip on the prong. “I have an idea. Here." She tapped on the electronic screen on her left forearm and primed the jets mounted along her arms. Their suits possessed a small fusion reactor mounted in the backpack- four tiny jets, two mounted on the arms and two on the legs, allowed them to vent small bursts of ions and manoeuvre through space or in a gravity field. They were quite powerful, though they did not allow for sustained flight lest the nozzles overheat. “Use the RCS jets on your arms. Fire them backwards so we can get more force behind our pull."

They primed their own respective jets and positioned them to fire ahead of them. They grasped the prongs again and dug their boots into the mud. As with nearly all of their spacesuit components, it could be controlled via a brain-computer interface mounted within their helmets- with a simple thought the thrusters could be triggered into firing.

“Mark," Miles said, and immediately they began pulling, their RCS jets firing and thrusting them backwards. There was no dramatic flare of plasma as was present when the Aurora's engines engaged; instead, only a cyan glow of high-velocity ions escaped the nozzles, though it was more than sufficient to vault them backwards, taking the probe with them. With a wet squelch, the probe finally exited the muddy hole it found itself in moments prior, and they deactivated their fusion thrusters with a thought. The central orb was covered with mud and dented from the impact. As Miles bent down to inspect the computer bank, he quickly sighed as he made contact with the twisted metal: “Shit."

“What's the matter?" Catherine asked consolingly. She noticed that the rain had grown more intense and the wind and lightning had become much more prominent.

“The latches are smashed in; they were probably broken on impact." He put a hand up to his chin- his helmet, for that matter- and thought aloud. “It won't fit on the Aurora, and I doubt we're strong enough to carry it."

“There's an ion torch in the cargo hold," Harper offered with a shrug. “We can cut the latches out and grab the data cache. How much time do we have, Lee?"

He glanced at the bottom right corner of his viewscreen. “Thirty-two minutes."

“I'll go get it," Catherine offered. “Five minutes."

“Thanks," Miles said with a smile. Man's best friend, huh? he thought. Smart, funny, and kind- Catherine was quite the charmer. That wasn't wrong to think about a dog, was it? Unnatural?

Harper remained indifferent. She was a dog designed to be loyal since birth. Her courtesy wasn't anything particularly special, nor was it surprising. He sighed. Wasn't that pessimism the same thing that drove his ex-wife away?

She turned around and began walking back towards the parked Aurora; though from her location the forty metre hill was blocking her view of the ship. She would also have to walk around the entire damned thing to get back to the spacecraft. The rain had become egregious and she frequently had to wipe her viewscreen to clear it of the offensive liquid. The sky above her crackled with lightning, and the wind began to howl like it did during atmospheric entry.

I need to hurry.

She primed her thrusters and, with a swift thought, fired them and performed a twenty metre leap onto the hill's side. It was exhilarating as the thrusters fired and she soared into the air, the butterflies in her stomach quickly replaced with the shaking impact of her hands and paws alighting on the soil. Smiling, the collie readied herself and fired again, thrusting up to the very top of the hill. Down below she could see the Aurora on the beach. But as her eyes turned skyward, her muzzle fell agape and her ears splayed. The exhilaration she received from the rocket jumps swiftly mutated to ice in her stomach.

On the opposite end of the island, not more than two kilometres away, the impenetrable wall of clouds had descended upon them. It reached all the way from the top of the sky to the ground, and it was rotating rapidly, flashes of lightning flaring up inside the cyclone. She looked up around her and noticed the entire skyline consisted of black clouds in a cylindrical formation, with the sky above her relatively clear- she thought nothing of it when they first landed.

A tornado. They were inside the eye of a hurricane and a tornado had come with it. That's why the weather had calmed so suddenly after their arrival.

“Lee!" she shouted over the comm-line. “Harper! Get back here now!"

Catherine didn't wait for a response. The dog flicked her thrusters outwards and rocketed off the ground, staying afloat with short bursts of ions and using the weak gravity of the planet to descend quicker. Six metres above the ground a terrestrial gust of wind impacted her and threw her off course, and she promptly slammed into the ground on her chest, mud spattering around the impact site. The air was knocked out of her lungs and she gasped desperately for oxygen.

“Catherine!" Miles said. “What's wrong?"

She gulped in a breath of air; the spacesuit's oxygen was so purified as to be nauseating. “T-t-tornado..."

“Say again?"

She ignored the pain and pushed herself off the wet dirt, the rain and wind immediately carrying away any residual mud on her spacesuit. She sprinted towards the Aurora and emphatically rocketed into the airlock. “We're in the eye of a hurricane! The other eyewall is coming!"

Catherine leapt into the cockpit and began priming the reactors, hearing the whine of the engines spool up; she didn't care if the rainwater damaged the engines. She flicked on the RCS controls and the engines finally read green. The cyclone was only a kilometre distant.

“We need the data cache!" Harper shouted over the line, the howling winds distorting his voice. The tornado was close enough that he could see the monstrous thing looming over the hill; it had to be at least three kilometres across. Miles was torn between the beacon and the Aurora. Humanity needed the data- but he needed survival. He remembered Maria laying there against that tub, the revolver clutched in her cold hand, half her head blown off by the impact. He remembered the void he felt when she left him behind, the misery, the anguish, the survivor's guilt.

He knew what happened when someone accepted death as the only solution.

He sprinted towards the Aurora.

The Aurora was shaking abysmally as the wind grew stronger. Catherine turned around and saw Miles running towards her, his speed encumbered by the egregious wind pushing against him. His silhouette was barely visible against the slight glow of Asgard hanging in the night sky, the impenetrable sheets of rain and incessant darkness plaguing her vision. But she only saw one silhouette.

Twenty nine minutes until sunrise.

“Harper!" she screamed over the comm, “Get your ass back to the ship right now!"

“I-" he fumbled over the line, punching the probe with a metallically gloved fist. “I can't get to the damn recorder!"

“Fuck the recorder! We need to leave!"

Harper glanced back over the hill ahead of him and arrived at an overwhelming desire to run. He gave one last look at the probe, and a part of him wanted to kick it, but with the eyewall looming over him the astronaut ultimately decided to flee. He hurriedly extended his rocket thrusters and, with a thought composed of mixed terror and indecisive volition, activated them and vaulted over the hill.

Miles placed a foot on the rung of the airlock, but his boot was slick with mud and slipped, and he promptly fell two metres onto his back, the wind leaving his body in an exasperated wheeze and cough of spray. He got back on his feet and reattempted the procedure. Catherine offered her hand and he accepted the gesture, swiftly being pulled inside the spacecraft. As he regained his posture, Harper stood uncertainly on the precipice of the hill, mesmerised by the cyclone's power and speed. How could it have just come down on them so rapidly? It was unlike anything he had ever seen in his life, almost as awe-inspiring as the traversal of the wormhole. More so, perhaps.

“Harper!" Miles said. “Come on! You can make it!"

No, he couldn't- at least not normally. He would have to rocket into the Aurora in order to escape in time, though the winds were so erratic that it was nearly impossible to maintain a straight trajectory.

“Come on!" he continued. “Come on!" He held out his hand from the airlock, though Harper was at least a hundred metres away. He glanced behind to look at the cyclone's proximity.

It was virtually atop them. The dim glow of night had been replaced by overwhelming blackness, water pelting and slamming against the hull and titanic flares of lightning overwhelming them in white light. It was now or never. Harper braced himself and fired his thrusters, aiming squarely for the airlock. He was at least twenty metres above the ground, extending both his arms out to the sides to try to gain some balance. All he had to do was fly into the open airlock and he'd be home free, just-

A gust of wind overtook the astronaut and nosed him downwards sharply. He screamed into the comm-line as his ragdoll body careened powerlessly towards a jagged crystalline rock protruding from the ground only a few metres ahead of the Aurora. He landed supinely on the rock and was horizontally bisected by the impact. As his back was smashed along the crystal's jagged, razor-sharp edge, his torso was cut in half along the site of the impact. Blood and intestines and black coolant gel from the spacesuit spattered outwards, and his gory, bisected body was quickly blown backwards by the rainy gale and into the adjacent sea of choppy waves. The crashes of lightning and thunder in the sky above outperformed his brief cry of agony before his ruptured lungs fell short of air.

That piercing scream was the last sound Harper ever made.

Miles stood with his mouth agape, his empty hand still extended for Harper to grab. Tempestuous torrents of rain drenched his spacesuit and lightning cracked in the clouds all around him, though he remained transfixed upon the astronaut's tumbling corpse.

“Manual airlock override received," the computer spoke aloud, and the inner hatch sealed itself.

“Miles, get down!" she screamed. The wind grew to a full shriek. He could barely register her voice before it was outperformed by the gale.

The sky was black. Lightning lit up the cockpit with blinding white light and the ship was hoisted up from the beach by a colossal impact of wind. It was like the wormhole only days before- a colossal field of infinite blackness overwhelming them, blinding them with flashes of white light, assaulting them with unrelenting force-

Catherine held onto the pilot's seat with a death grip as the Aurora was violently thrown into the air, rolling around and around mercilessly. Miles was sent tumbling through the cockpit and collided with her, slamming both of them against the dashboard. The purgatorial crashes around the cockpit began to erode any sense of connection to time after the third or fourth crash. Catherine thought it would continue forever.

The winds were louder than the engines. The constant barrage of rain on the hull sounded like a theatre of war. Each pellet of rain a bullet; each lightning bolt a discharge from a laser cannon; each crack of thunder the indelible shockwaves of a rocket.

The Aurora's upward vault had slowed arbitrarily. Miles and Catherine found themselves floating in the air, the water and spray on the floor spontaneously hoisting itself into a state of microgravity. Her inner ear told her that she was motionless relative to the Aurora.

Shit.

In horror, the collie glanced out the viewscreens. There were clouds all around the ship, the lightning around them oddly ceasing. The ocean lay seemingly miles below, a distant blue sea of choppy waves and displacement currents. The ship's frame creaked with the stress of free fall.

“Oh, shit," Catherine whispered quietly.

“Hang on!" Miles screamed. He tightly embraced her with an iron grip as they were thrown into the ceiling. The ship careened from the lower atmosphere on an unpowered trajectory back to the surface.

The ship fell suddenly and slammed into the ocean, and a massive displacement wave of water echoed away from the Aurora. There was a blunt crack as the graphene and ceramic armour of Catherine and Miles' spacesuits collided. They were smashed to the floor by the force of the impact, and again her breath left her. She didn't realise she was sobbing until the tears spattered on her helmet's viewscreen.

The ship suddenly stopped shaking, and for a moment she thought she was dead. Light poked through into the cockpit- the dim whitish light of Asgard. The wind all but ceased and the rain abated to a light patter on the viewscreens. Her adrenaline instantly convalescing her, the dog, with heavy gasps and pants of air, desperately rose to her paws and assumed the position in the pilot's seat. She was nowhere near as experienced as Miles, but in the haze of adrenaline she remembered enough from training to get them the hell out of this mess. As she glanced through the viewports she discovered that they did indeed land somewhere in this planet's ocean. The storm had abruptly tumbled away from this part of the planetary ocean for whatever reason, though she cared little.

Miles arose from the floor and coughed thickly. He disconnected the seals to his helmet and ripped the damned thing away from his head. At least this planet had breathable air- thick, salty air, but it was air.

“Are you okay?" she asked.

“Harper's gone," the man replied flatly, his voice wheezing and crackling. “What the hell happened?"

She found herself tearing up. “The pulsar rotates at fifty thousand RPM, and this planet's day only lasts six hours. I'm… I'm guessing its extreme orbit and rotation speed make the atmosphere unstable. We landed inside the eye of a hurricane."

“Oh, god," he groaned. He pulled his hair tightly, and he wanted to strike himself. “How the hell did it just sneak up on us like that, huh?"

“The rotation speed makes very small and very fast cyclones in the atmosphere. It- it formed during entry; it's probably already dissipated now." She found her voice failing her. An alarm beeped inside her helmet and she glanced at the source. The timer on her viewscreen showed 03:00… 02:59… 02:58…

She shook her head and sniffled; no time for emotions here. “Three minutes until sunrise. We need to go." The radiation metre on the dashboard began to rise ever so slightly as the timer ticked down- her suspicions were confirmed. Even though the 'sun' the planet orbited was so small as to be invisible, its radiation was as lethal as suspected. This planet was worthless.

Miles dejectedly strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat. “What about the engines?"

“I'm going to vent the pressure into the reactor chamber," and she primed the RCS thrusters. “Get ready."

She curled her fingers around the throttle and nosed it forwards. The thrusters fired and bellows of steam gushed from the main engines as the ship ascended from the ocean's surface. The engines sputtered and the Aurora kicked forwards unsteadily, prompting Catherine to redirect the pressure through the reactor chamber. Upon doing so, a tremendous flare of fiery plasma burst forth from the fusion reactors and the ship leapt forwards quickly.

“Engines at full!" she barked.

The engines returned a satisfying whine of power, and the readouts shot up to one hundred percent across the dashboard. She grabbed the centre-stick and nosed the craft upwards, its engines flaring and thrusting the craft into the sky.

As the Aurora rocketed up into the atmosphere, Miles turned and gazed out the side viewport. He could see the towering wall of clouds rotating distantly, thick sheets of rain draping the ocean in further darkness. He thought he could see a fleck of alabaster among the choppy waves of the sea, and tears began to fill his eyes. He didn't want to think about what it was- who it was.

He turned away from the glass.

At the beach, the upper half of Harper's lifeless body had washed onto the shore, his face looking towards the sky. His severed trunk remained drifting along the sea as flotsam, taken far, far away by the cyclone's colossal gale. The NASA logo on his chest was obscured by blood and his helmet was ruptured, a small puddle of rainwater pooling around his head. Floating along in the pool was a small photograph of Rebecca, his estranged wife, removed from its cubby in the helmet after the rupture. She was donned in a sanguine floral dress and had a glass of wine in her hand- Lee's, her favourite brand. Rebecca, summer of '99 was written in red ink on the corner.

Though the salty water led to the ink's slow diaspora from the photo, the woman had a smile on her face.

The airlock pneumatically hissed and slowly rotated open. Lareau stood on the other side, her arms crossed and her red hair somewhat unkempt. She didn't believe the radio report. Harper's death had to be some sort of joke, some sort of misinterpretation of the radio transmission, some sort of cruel vision of her imagination.

Which is why, when the airlock opened, she could no longer resist the urge to cry. She saw Miles and Catherine standing in the open doorway, their hydrophobic suits covered with occasional beads of water and spots of wet sand. Their faces were grim and solemn, and they avoided her gaze. Two astronauts.

One empty seat.

“Is he...?" she whispered.

“Yes," Miles replied. “He's gone."

She put a hand up to her mouth and swallowed. She could see Harper sitting right there alongside her in the Aurora, that happy smile on his face as they rocketed past Earth's tyrannical gravity. He was one of the first humans to go beyond the solar system and into interstellar space, in this strange alien galaxy. He was also the first to die there.

The explosion rocked him to the skeleton. The luminous cyan inferno of plasma singed the hair on his forearms and sent spot in his eyes, the concussive blast throwing him into the dirt wall of the trench. A burst of sparks and charred dirt exploded above his head as he fell onto the ground- a laser beam only centimetres away from his last position. The ringing in his ears disoriented him greatly. In the dark, smoky skies above him, the Vietnamese sun was just beginning to dwindle beneath the horizon. It would be gone in a matter of minutes, plunging the battlefield into the inky darkness of night.

“Clear!" Hong shouted in Mandarin, and he threw a grenade over the edge of the trench. A moment later another bone-jarring explosion rocked the locality, and from what little of it registered in his ears, he could tell the ringing was dissipating. Hong peered over the edge with his laser rifle pointed outwards, his eye gazing into the infrared TAG scope to watch for any enemy units. Upon completing his scan of the area, he proffered a satisfactory gruff.

“All clear." He peered down at the shellshocked soldier. “You hurt?"

“No," Private Chen Wei returned. “I- I'm fine." Hong offered him a hand- dirty, bloody, charred- and pulled him up. He patted him on the shoulder.

“Good," he said. “Call for reinforcements."

Wei reluctantly agreed; he thought of protesting but made no move to against Lieutenant Hong. They were the last two men of the trench, and the call for reinforcements had already been placed just minutes ago to little avail. Once again Wei tapped the display on his left forearm and brought up the radio transmitter.

“Dove one-one to Alpha Actual," he spoke in Mandarin, “Request call for reinforcements at Dove positon actual. Please respond. Over."

As he transmitted, Hong called him over. The lieutenant handed him the laser rifle- a sleek machine of curvaceous black metal- and pointed outwards to the opposing jungle a few hundred metres away from the trench. “Look at the TAG," he requested. Wei put his eye up to the infrared scope and did so, and reflexively he felt his heart nearly cease its dutiful beating in his chest. On the TAG scope, there were five mottled shapes of white standing out in a bluish-red background, all of which were huddled in a group and rapidly approaching. Occasionally a fleck of red would appear inside one of the shapes before rapidly dissipating into the background. It was an all too familiar sight from training.

“Hunter-killers," Hong spoke. “A five man squad."

Hunter-killers were legends within the PRC Armed Forces. Elite United Nations troops, they were clad in metamaterial mimetic armour which rendered them all but invisible to the naked eye when activated. In addition, they were armed with hypergolic flamethrowers and laser pistols designed to root enemy troops out of trenches and other enclosed spaces. Though extremely effective at concealment, their armour was notoriously weak, a side effect from the use of light-bending metamaterials. The light-bending effects also only functioned on wavelengths smaller than approximately five hundred nanometres, making the troops quite visible to high-infrared wavelengths and below. But their prismatic properties would ensure that the laser beams emitted by Hong's rifle, which had a wavelength of thirty two nanometres, would pass through the UN troops uninterruptedly, as though they were absent. Their ballistic pistols had already run depleted of ammunition.

Hong unsheathed the vibro-sword lying at his hip. “We wait," he said, drawing the weapon. The graphene blade was a metre long, razor-sharp, and equipped with a series of ultra-high frequency vibration generators concealed within the hilt. When unpowered the sword was deadly; powered, it could cleave armoured men in half upon a single stroke of the blade.

Chen nodded reluctantly. He displaced the fetid corpses of privates Tsou and Tung and hid behind them, his own vibro-sword drawn. At his side lay a crate of fragmentation grenades. Hong lay crouched on the opposite side of the trench with his sword drawn outwards. Over the few occasional bursts of distant gunfire, Chen's sensitive ears could hear footsteps approaching, softly crunching in the leaves of the Vietnamese grassland. Hong nodded once.

Chen's thoughts returned to his daughter. What he would do to be with her- what he would do to be out of this war- extended to any possible task. President Zhao called the United Nations a “confederation of imperialistic globalists"; he had a difficult time imagining the People's Republic to be on any higher moral standing, what with their extreme regulation and permission of few personal liberties. Desertion would lead to execution, however. He had little choice in who he could and could not hate.

The footsteps stopped directly above Hong. Through the dim light of the sun, Chen could see a slight optical distortion mere metres before him, like looking into a mottled window. Hong's eyes went wide. The next thing Chen saw was a blinding beam of violet light dive into the lieutenant's head, followed immediately by a buzzed crackle and a liquid pop of vaporising blood and brain matter. With a flaming, smoking hole between his eyes, the lieutenant fell lifelessly onto the dirt.

The Hunter-killer trooper leapt down and landed in the trench, briefly surveying Hong's corpse. “Kill confirmed," the trooper said in an English female voice. She performed a brief sweep of the trench, prompting Chen to huddle underneath his fellow infantrymen's bodies. The footsteps encroached on the dry dirt. They stopped directly before the bodies. Mere centimetres ahead, he could see the faint optical distortions of a pair of electromagnetically-camouflaged boots. Footprints were visible under them, through them, but their creator remained camouflaged in her mimetic armour. He had no idea as to the location of the four other Hunter-killers, though he cared little. The trooper nudged the corpses with her foot to ascertain their deaths. Satisfied with the lack of a reflexive response, she sighed somewhat depressively and holstered her laser pistol, opting instead for the back-mounted flamethrower. Just in case, she thought. She hated the flamethrower, thinking it a cruel, agonising weapon, though she had little choice as to her armament in this environment. Even she couldn't deny its effectiveness in rooting out entrenched troops.

She began walking out of the trench. Chen's heart rate slowly descended, the pounding in his ears steadily levelling out as the trooper left the trench. His forearm radio crackled with static, the ramblings of Mandarin on the other end unintelligible due to the UN jamming signal interfering with his radio. The trooper paused and turned about face. She flicked a trigger on her flamethrower and a minute pilot flame flickered to life at the end of the barrel, followed by a hiss of compressed air.

“Wait one," she said into the comm-line. She slowly stepped back into the trench. Chen furiously shut the damn thing off, though it was too late. She had heard, and there was no going back from there. He gave one last thought to his daughter before activating the power switch on his vibro-sword's hilt. It radiated a satisfying hum in his hands.

The trooper was gazing at Hong's corpse as Chen threw the bodies off of him and directed his sword to the trooper, sprinting towards her and roaring a piercing battle cry. He was running almost blind on her position- she still had the electromagnetic camouflage activated, rendering her no more visible than a diffuse cloud of steam- but he aimed for that little orange pilot flame. She registered his rapidly sprinting footsteps and furious cry and turned to face the source of the noise, her finger clamping down on the trigger and bellowing a thick burst of liquid heat.

The sword cleaved through her armour with a single charge, piercing her spine and emerging from the small of her back. Chen barely registered the agony of the liquid flame encompassing his tired, worn body. As he drove the sword in her to the hilt, her malfunctioning mimetic armour spasmodically rippling with electronic static, the searing touch of the fluidic inferno licked past the crate of undetonated fragmentation grenades.

That was the last thing they ever experienced.

“Damn it!" Zhao shouted in Mandarin, furiously catapulting the electronic tablet across the room. The overt crack of its shattering glass instilled decided discomfort within the Senior Advisor.

“Read me the casualty reports." She caressed her temples in an effort to relieve her inconsolable migraine.

Kaku coughed uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “Platoons Alpha to Lima exhibit ninety-nine point four percent casualty rate."

“What about the point six percent?"

“MIA," Kaku returned. “Presumed captured."

Zhao brought up a holographic graph of PRC soldiers versus United Nations troops. The numbers were disappointing, to say the least on the matter.

“How will this impact us, Kaku?" she asked.

“Assuming conservative projections," he said nervously, “We- we'll lose Vietnam within the month."

The president sighed angrily. “That's the problem, Senior Advisor. We can't let these UN fuckers think we're weak. Begin fuelling the bombers; prepare the other platoons to fortify the Vietnamese border. We need those ICBM sites intact and under our control. Do you understand?"

“I- uh, yes, madam president!" he nervously responded, proffering a shaky salute.

“Get to it, Kaku."

The Senior Advisor swiftly vacated the premises. Zhao sighed as she read the reports. The PRC was losing the war, on this front at least. Badly. How long could she keep this up?

“We had no idea what we were walking into," Lareau declared with a sombre tone. In the communications room she produced a display of the Tour de Force's fuel reserves.

“We have ninety-two percent of our fuel remaining. At our current orbit around Asgard, we can slingshot around my world to Rodney's world using fourteen percent, assuming we decelerate to a stable orbit around the world. But it's a little more complicated than that."

“Care to elaborate?" Miles asked. He didn't mean to sound so gruff; the man was hardly in the best of spirits. Phillip gave him a curious twist of the head, confused at his temperament.

Lareau sighed. “Rodney's world orbits far closer to Asgard than the probes previously indicated."

“I'm quite certain our thrusters are more than powerful enough to resist the black hole's gravity well," Phillip said.

“No, Phillip," Lareau protested, “That's not our problem. Time is. Time on that planet will be vastly slower compared to Earth's."

“How?" Miles asked.

“Gravity," Catherine said. “The gravitational potential around that planet is vastly more powerful than the Sun's is on Earth. We won't notice any gradient, but spacetime within that world's vicinity will be extremely distorted."

“How badly?"

Lareau cleared her throat. “Every year on that planet- every 365.25 days- is 52,596 years back on Earth. Every hour on that world is six years back home."

“Christ…" Miles whispered.

“Well we can't just go down there," Catherine objected.

“No," he replied flatly. “You can't just think about your friends, your family, and your loved ones. You've got to think beyond just that."

Her face expressed hurt and her ears sank.

“I am thinking about my friends and my… loved ones," the collie replied with a quiet anger building in her voice; she had no leg to stand on should she have mentioned her non-existent family. “Nor can I disregard billions of other friends and loved ones on our home. If everyone on Earth is dead by the time we finish this, what's the point?" Lareau gazed at the black hole dejectedly through the viewports.

“The point," Miles continued, “Is human preservation. We have to think of the species. Thinking of ourselves is irrelevant across these scales. And selfish."

“Humans will survive, then," the dog murmured bitterly. “Humanity won't."

“Alright, alright," Lareau interjected. “Let's keep this objective. Going down there is going to be costly, big time. Passing it up leaves us relying solely on Weir's world; if that doesn't turn out to be fruitful, we'll either have to hobble home or try to set up a colony on the world already within our reach. If we slingshot and arrive there in about two months from our current orbit, we can try to lose as little time as we can."

Everyone was silent for some time.

“I have an idea," Phillip spoke.

“Speak your mind," Catherine returned.

“Since you're so concerned with time, maybe we should treat it as one of our resources, like fuel or food. If we go in orbit of Rodney's world, we can use a slow-burn on our thrusters to maintain an efficient orbit, but we'll lose a lot of time, correct?"

A universal nod was the crew's reply.

“Okay," the robot continued. He wirelessly entered the computer display of the communications centre and projected an image of Asgard and Rodney's world analogously to the solar system. “But if we take the Tour de Force out on a wider orbit past here-" he electronically drew a red circle around the circumference of Rodney's world's orbit- “we can stay out of the bulk of the gravitational potential. We'll lose a few minutes of Earth time out here versus a few decades down there."

“Hmm," Lareau pondered, a curious hand on her chin.

“That could work," Catherine said excitedly. “Get in, get out with the Aurora while we leave the Tour de Force hanging far away; lose a little fuel, but save decades of time."

“Exactly," Phillip said.

Miles smiled. “I think we can pull that off. But we'll need everyone on board the shuttle, with someone back here to guide the ship." He turned to Phillip's blocky body. “That means you're staying here, big guy. Calculate the minimum orbit to stay outside of the time shift; a few minutes of time dilation is fine, but no more. Keep up with any communications we might receive from Earth. Minimise thrusting, but stay within range of Rodney's world so we can get our butts out quickly. You got all that?"

“It was my idea to begin with, wasn't it?" Phillip replied. He turned towards Catherine and shook his blocky head. “Humans these days, am I right?"

The collie stifled a disingenuous laugh.

Insomnia racked her brain upon her return to bed several hours later. She should have known about the planet's chaotic weather. She should have known that the radiation from the pulsar would have sterilised the world, despite what the atmospheric sensors initially revealed. She should have simply gone with her gut instinct and refuted Harper's insistence to drop to the surface. And now, due to her disregard of precious intuition, a man was dead. But instincts lacked the algorithmic discipline of science; they could be fooled, and their fallacious beliefs could have fatal consequences. What was the better side of her mind to listen to, the human, or the animal? The deductive, or the instinctual?

Had she taken heed to the considerations of the latter, Harper would still be here.

It wasn't difficult to guess the password for Harper's profile on the Tour de Force's communications computer: Simon&Garfunkel_1. His favourite musical group- a very well-aged one at that- as she recalled from their many conversations before and after the trip through the wormhole. After four attempts, with all imperfections due to trivial capitalisation errors, she had entered his profile smoothly and without trouble. She quickly navigated through his account and discovered what she was looking for. Catherine took in a sharp breath of air and steeled herself for the transmission. Her paw pad hesitantly clicked the record button.

“Hello, Mrs. Jameson," she said to the console, using the ex-wife's surname- or, at least, the one Harper mentioned to her before his bisection. “My name is Catherine Alexeyevna. I am one of your ex-husband's crew. Today, I regret to inform you that Jonathan Harper… is dead. His passing was quick, and he felt no pain…"

She drew out that last word with a Russian-accented whine of despair and furtively averted the camera's gaze, filing a nervous paw through her jaw-length silver hair. It was an audacious lie. His death was decidedly not lacking in pain, as evidenced by the piercing scream that still haunted her. Was it not preferable to hide that ugly truth from her, even if they had divorced years earlier?

“I am sorry for your loss," she managed to wheeze. Before she had a chance to second-guess her decision, she quickly pressed the transmit button and broadcasted the message. From their current position the transmission would enter the wormhole and traverse the billions of kilometres of empty space between them and Earth, arriving about five hours later. She immediately broke down in tears, chastising herself for her jovial disregard of intuition. It was her duty to scan the planet, even if the pulsar's radiation did scramble the sensory equipment. It was her duty to ensure the probe's smooth deconstruction and analysis. It was her fault that Harper died. She couldn't help herself from bawling into the collar of her grey sweater.

Beneath the halo of the desk lamp, she turned her collar to the cold and damp. Hearing without listening, she hardly noticed the footsteps gradually encroaching on the cold, gunmetal deck behind her- nor did she pay the breaks in the stillsilence any particular attention. Silence like a cancer grows.

Not until she felt a hand gently press against her merle fur, softly caressing her shoulder and instilling much-needed warmth in contrast to the bitter cold air of the starship. Salinized and dilated when she finally opened them, her eyes were stabbed by the flash of the neon stars outside the viewport as they split the night of space.

“What's bothering you?" Miles asked her softly.

“Harper," she murmured furtively. “I let him die."

He sighed sombrely. “No, you didn't, Catherine."

“It was my job to monitor the atmospheric sensors."

“The radiation scrambled them, made their measurements inaccurate. There was no way you could have known."

“I had a feeling that world was troublesome," she wheezed. “I just- I knew something bad would happen. I knew it, and I did nothing about it."

“Your beliefs aren't always right, you know? You didn't know- you just thought. And it turned out to be right."

“I know, but…" She arrived at a loss of words. “If I had listened to that part of me that said, 'No,' then none of this would have happened."

“You can't always trust your instincts," he countered. “You did the right thing."

She strongly doubted that. Was that part of her instincts, too?

“Here," he added, and took her hand. On shaky digitigrade legs she slowly rose out of the chair and into his arms. He radiated a gentle warmth. His scent was light, and his firm touch was safe and comforting. She felt few inhibitions to utterly bawl, quickly proceeding to dampen his dark blue shirt. The catharsis was oddly comforting, as was his hand gently stroking through her short silver hair. She felt safe with him- far safer than the Augment had ever felt on Earth.

In space, the Tour de Force continued its meagre acceleration towards Rodney's world. The white snowflake spun around continuously, an infinitesimal white fleck in comparison to the infinite black silence of space.