Chapter 4

It was 2145 hours local time, 119 minutes past the late summer sunset, when an AVTOL-60 from CVS flew over the ruins of Sacramento at an altitude of five hundred meters and a speed of eighty meters per second. Inside were the ten marines of fire team C of second platoon, commanded by Sergeant Ixican Vladco, or Ix, as he was known. With the marines were two mechanical engineers, two electrical engineers, and, because CVS protocol dictated that a medic be attached to an assignment of this caliber, Gath. All were armed and armored, as was the case whenever anyone left the safety of the base. None were particularly happy with the assignment they had been given. They would be operating uncomfortably close to a dense population of homebodies.

The hover was passing south of what had been the city center of Sacramento in the pre-collapse days. Sitting against the left wall of the aircraft, as he always did when deploying, Gath had a panoramic view of what remained of the once teeming heart of a major metropolitan area. There were dozens of high rise buildings, most in the thirty to fifty floor range, a few stretching into the sixty to eighty range, and one behemoth that rose more than a hundred. All were in ruins, with windows open to the air and most of the siding stripped away. Where there was siding, however, he could see the white, steady glow of electric lighting shining forth.

The electricity was courtesy of fusion plant HOME-717, built and operated by the Human Space Fleet. Located in a difficult to access part of the coastal hills outside the ruins of a city that had been called San Jose, it sat at the center of a vast spider’s web of underground semiconducting cables that supplied electricity to every city center in CVS’s area of responsibility. The original idea was that the electricity would then be distributed from the city centers to each city’s periphery by above ground lines for use of every homebody. This had never worked out in practice. The various factions that ruled each collection of homebodies in this part of the homeland did not want their subjects to have access to unlimited electrical power and, as such, had arranged to have the transmission wires ripped down whenever they were put up. Eventually, long before the eldest of this current generation of caretakers to the homebodies was even born, the effort was abandoned as futile, leaving tens of thousands of empty carbon fiber power poles dotting the landscape and allowing only the elite of the inner cities with access to unlimited electrical power.

Gath had been told that these elite homebodies—the ruling class and upper echelon of the merchant class—used the power to provide light for themselves, to physically torture political rivals and criminals, and to power petty little conveniences like refrigeration, heating, and mechanical lifts that allowed them to live in the tops of the ruined high rises instead of on the lower floors. They also used it to charge up the lithium carbonate batteries—also provided by the Fleet—that the lesser homebodies used to power their work tools, cutting lasers, and small electric motors. That the merchants and rulers charged a fee for this service went without saying; even though they themselves received the electricity and the charging equipment free.

“Okay,” said Ix, who was sitting in the right hand seat of the cockpit, operating the scanning and weapons panel. “Coming over the target area now. Let’s see if all the homers have pulled back.”

Gath looked at the target area in question. The ruins of Sacramento came to an abrupt end at the eastern bank of the Sacramento River, which meandered its way north to south below. Their target for this evening’s mission was the riverfront docks on the Sacramento side of the river, specifically the hydraulic gantry crane that that the homebodies used to unload food and supply containers from the barges that had travelled upriver from the larger, oceangoing port in San Francisco Bay.

This gantry crane was the sixth one that had been installed in this particular place by Fleet personnel since the collapse of the homebody civilization more than a thousand years before and it was nearing the end of its useful service life. Operated by the homebodies themselves—as were the river barges, though those too were supplied and repaired by the Fleet—whenever something went wrong with the crane one of the homebodies would push the help button located in the cab. This button was large, circular, colored red, and had a graphic of a wrench and screwdriver imprinted on it. When pushed, it would activate a self-diagnostic program that would examine for problems and then send a detailed report out over a satellite link to Fleet headquarters at Homeport Ground which would then forward the report to NAWM, who would then forward it to the engineering department at CVS.

In this particular case, the report had explained that two of the wheel bearings on the overhead hoist had failed, making it impossible for the crane to move the containers from the surface of the barge to shore once they were hoisted into the air. This was the fourth time in the last two local years that this particular problem had manifested itself. The engineers said it was the fault of the slider clamps and the lubrication pumps, both of which were older than any homebody currently living on planet Earth, but that there were no spare parts to replace those bigger components. And so, every cycle or so a team would have to fly out in the dead of the night, climb to the top of the overhead gantry beam that the hoist slid upon, and make the repair. Such was the life of a fleet engineer assigned to the Sol.

“How we looking, Ix?” asked Corporal Vivi—Viv to those who knew her. She would be leading the overwatch team at the crane site.

“An awful lot of homers down there,” said Ix, his voice more than a little concerned. “More than a thousand of them in the square kilometer stretching east from the river, I’d say. Most are in the buildings. I can’t get an exact count of those inside, just bio signatures on the scanner, but it’s pretty dense.”

“What about outside the buildings?” Viv asked.

“The usual bunch gathered about half a klick north of the crane along the levee wall and on the mid floors of that ruined building overlooking the water. The count is showing ninety-four of them, bunched mostly in groups of five to ten. Every single one that I can see is holding a tubular object that is undoubtedly a chemical projectile weapon.”

“Demonic,” Viv grunted, clearly unhappy with this news, but also unsurprised by it.

“Why are they gathered there?” asked Gath. “Are they going to try to interfere with the mission?”

“Probably not,” said Ix. “They do this every time there’s a repair scheduled to the crane or to any of the other equipment that has a help button in it. Word passes among them that the button was pushed. They know that if the button gets pushed a repair team with show up the following night to fix what’s broke. I guess it’s curiosity more than anything. Remember, they think we’re space aliens or demons who have been commanded by the Watcher to take care of them. I think maybe they feel like they’re seeing the Watcher’s will being done by observing us fix those torked up bearings on that piece of slag gantry crane.”

“How close will they get to us?” Gath asked.

“They usually keep their distance, for the most part staying where they are now,” Ix replied. “If they do decide to stroll toward us, we let them get no closer than two hundred meters. Any closer than that and we start paining them.”

“Has that ever happened?” Gath asked.

“Not in my time here,” Ix said. “You never know what those homer torks are gonna do though.”

The hover passed over the river, which formed an abrupt boundary to what remained of the city of Sacramento. On the west side of the water was a small area of crumbled ruins that dated to before the use of carbon fiber construction material and was now uninhabitable. Beyond that was a vast, empty plain where annual flood waters were shunted by a system of levees and weirs.

“No human life detectable west of the river,” Ix reported after the hover made two passes.

“What about the track crossing?” asked Viv, referring to the carbon fiber magna-track bridge that had once carried trains into and out of the city in the pre-collapse days. The structure still stood a little over a kilometer north of the loading docks and the gantry crane. And though it would be a perilous walk along an unprotected magna rail less than a meter wide and sitting seventy meters above the surface of the water, it was theoretically possible that some of the homebodies could cross the river in this manner and catch the flank of the staging area.

“The crossing is clear,” said Ix. “No one is on the structure itself or within two hundred meters of the eastern end. And if any of the homers do decide to make the crossing we would spot them immediately. It wouldn’t be too hard to drive them back.”

“What about flotation devices?” asked Gigi, one of the engineers. “If we have to pull back across the river, can they follow us?”

“They’ve never been observed to employ flotation devices,” said Ix. “If they did, they would be quite easy to hit with painers, either from the air or from our rafts.”

“Sitting aquabirds,” Gath said, causing everyone to turn and look at him.

“Aquabirds?” Viv said. “What the tork are you talking about, Gath?”

“A groundie expression,” he said, chuckling. “It means it’s easy to shoot aquabirds that are sitting on the surface of the water.”

“Why would you want to shoot an aquabird?” Ix asked. “I don’t get it.”

“They’re not big enough to hurt anyone, are they?” put in Gigi.

“The noises they make are actually kind of demonic,” said Viv.

“I’m not saying I want to shoot an aquabird,” Gath said. “It’s a really old groundborn expression, dating back to when people actually ate the birds.”

“Oh, now that’s truly disgusting!” said Burner, one of the marine privates.

“Your people are torkin’ insane, Gath,” said Vix

“Says the people who invented the process of recycling their own urine and feces for drinking water and fertilizer,” Gath said.

“What’s wrong with that?” asked Gigi. “It beats the purg out of starving to death or dying of thirst, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Gath agreed. “I’m just saying that at the time the process was perfected, it was considered quite disgusting by many people. Disgusting is in the eye of the beholder, is it not?”

“I’ll agree with that,” said Gigi. “I just don’t see what it has to do with murdering poor aquabirds.”

Gath let the subject drop. He had been at CVS for a half a cycle now—five metric weeks—and had, for the most part, earned the respect of his peers and the marines they served with. Most of the time people seemed to forget he was a groundborn despite the fact that his accent marked him as one as reliably as skin color had once marked the differing ethnic groups. It was only when he called attention to his heritage—as happened when he used ground-based analogies, or violated some aspect of spaceborn etiquette—that they remembered he was a member of a group they considered to be generally less intelligent, lazy, and lacking in sophistication.

“Things are about as good as they’re likely to get down there,” said Ix after they made one more circle around the empty side of the river. “Let’s get feet on the ground and get this slag over with.”

“Sounds good, Ix,” said Viv. “Engineering team, are you ready?”

“We’re ready,” answered Gigi, who was in charge of them.

“Team Angle, are you ready?” Viv asked the five marines she would be commanding to protect the engineers while they did their work.

All agreed that they were ready.

“Let’s take this machine down then,” Ix said. “Gath, what are you going to do? Protocol says you can stay aboard the hover with me and the reserve team.”

“I’ll deploy with Angle if that’s okay with you, sarge,” Gath told her. “If I’m here to help a wounded marine then I might as well be with the marines that are most likely to be wounded, right?”

“Sound logic as far as I’m concerned,” agreed Ix. “You okay with that, Viv?”

“Glad to have him,” Viv said.

“Approved then. Gath is with Angle.”

“Why don’t you give me one of the inflatables to carry, Viv,” Gath suggested. “That’ll keep one of the weaponeers light-footed.”

“Good idea,” Viv replied. “Ziggy, go ahead and pass that inflatable to Gath.”

“Gladly,” said Private Zigorski, who had one of the two inflatable rafts between his feet. It was a cylindrical package, half a meter in diameter and one meter wide, equipped with two shoulder harnesses for slinging onto a marine’s back. It was not terribly heavy—it only weighed fifteen kilos—but it was bulky and hampered arm movements to some degree; a situation that no marine on a mission in potentially hostile territory cared for. “Thanks, Gath,” he said, pushing it over.

“Anything to help,” Gath said, expressing the philosophy that was responsible for the respect he now enjoyed. Whenever he went out on a deployment he always asked to directly accompany the active team. If granted permission to do so, he always did whatever he could do to help them with their primary mission. He lugged supplies for them, kept overwatch positions for them, served as a runner for them. It only took a few missions before he stopped being that annoying “groundie” or “ting” and started being “Gath”, welcomed asset to whatever the mission was.

Corporal Gulliver—Gull—brought the VTOL into hover mode and lowered it gently to the ground on the west side of the river, just south of the ruined concrete buildings and about three hundred meters from the riverbank. She idled the engines before lowering the back ramp, allowing the six marines, four engineers, and one medic to exit the aircraft on their feet, in relatively calm air free of flying debris and dust. Gath was the last out the door, the fifteen kilo inflatable raft resting over his twenty kilo medic pack. The marines spread out to the sides, their Z-55s out and set for pain mode, while the engineers, each carrying their own twenty to thirty kilo pack full of tools and replacement parts, took position just behind them.

“Gath, you good with rear guard back there?” asked Viv.

“I am,” Gath replied, pulling his own Z-55 from his leg pocket and putting it to active.

Behind them, the hover lifted off once again, climbing into the night sky to circle above and provide air support and/or rapid evacuation if needed. The ground team trekked slowly to the bank of the river, infrared and ultraviolet enhanced eyes looking everywhere for danger but seeing nothing but rodents, bats, and a few wild cats slinking about. Across the river, however, they could plainly see the figures of dozens of curious homebodies sitting atop the levee wall, peering into the darkness to catch glimpses of the ‘overseers’ they had just heard land to make the repair.

“Why don’t we go chameleon for missions like this?” Gath asked. “At night, with Luna not up yet, they wouldn’t have any idea where we were or how many of us there were.”

“We’ll go to chameleon if they show hostile intent,” Viv replied. “Until then, however, it’s best if we remain visible to them. That way they won’t come blundering in on us while we’re working and they’ll know exactly how many painers will be sweeping them if they decide to make a move.”

Gath thought that over for a moment and then decided it made sense, more or less anyway.

“Gath, Fletch,” Viv said once everyone was at the riverbank. “Head down and get those inflatables up and ready. We’ll keep watch from up here.”

Gath and Private Fletchall scrambled down the steep, mud covered riverbank until they reached the water’s edge. The ground beneath their feet was soft, squishing mud that stuck to the bottoms of their armored boots. The river was just a bit over one hundred meters wide, the water calm and murky with a steady but gentle current moving left to right from their perspective at a speed of perhaps half a meter per second. Directly across from them was the loading dock; an L-shaped carbon fiber pier that was attached to a hinged ramp that protruded from the levee wall, thus allowing it to rise and fall freely with the seasonal changes in the Sacramento River’s water level. A transport barge, fifty meters long by thirty wide—big enough to accommodate four of the standard cargo containers—was tied up inside the L. The two rear containers still sat in place on the deck. One of the forward containers was missing, either unloaded before the malfunction or not shipped at all. The other forward container was suspended ten meters above the deck, dangling from the cable attached to the broken gantry crane. Tag lines, meant to steady the load as it was lifted and placed ashore, dangled free while the container spun gently back and forth in the breeze.

“Why in the tork didn’t they tie the tag lines to the barge?” asked one of the engineers over the tactical frequency.

“Because they’re torkin’ homers,” someone replied. “They’re not even smart enough to clean their shit holes after they take a slag.”

“Gigi,” said Viv. “What’s the likelihood of that thing dropping while we’re underneath it?”

“Unlikely at best,” Gigi replied. “The container, the attachment points, and the cable are all rated for about five times the weight that could possibly be stuffed into one of those things. The crane itself is designed to lock everything in place when it malfunctions.”

“What about material fatigue from twisting in the wind for the last five hours?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Gigi said. “Carbon fiber is subject to material fatigue but it takes decades, centuries even, before even the most delicate of parts will start to approach the failure point.”

“Those cargo containers are more than a century old,” said Ix, who was listening in from the circling hover. “In fact, I don’t think they’ve brought any new ones to Sol system in at least a century and a half.”

“Ahh,” said Gigi, “in that case, maybe it would be best if we planned our ingress so that we don’t approach any closer than ten meters to where that thing would hit if it fell.”

“I concur,” said Viv. “Gath, Fletch, make landfall on the south side of the pier. There’s a ladder over there we can used to climb up. From there, we can just walk up the attachment ramp to the levee wall.”

“How strong is that torkin’ ladder?” asked someone nervously.

“Probably stable,” replied Viv. “And if it isn’t, the worst thing that happens is you fall in the water. You won’t have a Whoever damned cargo carrier squash you like a bug.”

The question asker accepted this answer, but Gath knew he did not really like it. Spaceborn hated and feared large volumes of water, as they were not typically found aboard space environments. Most spacies did not even know how to swim, secure in the knowledge that they could live their entire lives without ever accidentally becoming submerged. Members of the marine corps, of course, could not rely on avoiding water throughout their careers—as this mission went to prove—and, as such, basic swimming skills were taught early in corps training. Even so, it was a rare spaceborn member of the Fleet who lost his primordial fear of water with a depth of more than a meter. And the thought of falling into a moving river of the liquid in the dark of night while dressed in full armor—despite the fact that the armor had automatic flotation pockets in the arms and helmet—would be enough to put even the bravest and best of the swimmers into a cold sweat.

“Let’s get these things inflated,” said Fletch. “The sooner we get on the water, the sooner we can finish up and get back.”

“Right,” said Gath, pulling the bundle that was the raft off of his shoulders and setting it down at the water’s edge. Arrows on the bundle pointed forward, showing him which direction to orient it. The inflation command required the systematic pushing of three tabs in a particular sequence. This was not so much for security as it was to keep from accidentally inflating the vessel during the march to the water’s edge, or, even worse, in the aircraft on the way to the landing zone. Two pushes on the right tab, one push on the center, two on the left, in exactly that order. Once that was done, a yellow light illuminated on the tiny panel, telling Gath the sequence was complete. He then pushed all three buttons simultaneously and the tiny computer sent a signal to a valve and a cylinder of compressed nitrogen gas. In less than five seconds the raft inflated, going from a small cylindrical bundle to a vessel five meters long, capable of carrying ten fully armored people.

“Inflated,” Gath reported. “Checking integrity now.”

Beside him, Fletch reported the same. The simple computers of both vessels accessed embedded sensors that monitored stretch points on the interior and exterior of the material and gas pressure within. Everything was found to be within parameters and holding steady on both rafts. The word was given and the marines started down the bank, dividing into two groups.

The engineers and Private Zigorski climbed into Gath’s raft while everyone else climbed into Fletch’s. The two raft-bearers pushed their respective vessels off the bank and into the current, climbing into the back as they started to drift downstream. Once they were several meters offshore, the small but powerful electric jet drive engines were activated. Gath took the lead, throttling up and steering his raft via a pressure sensitive pad on the right rear corner of the vessel.

“How deep is this water, you think?” Gigi asked nervously as they approached the middle.

“It’s probably pretty shallow,” Gath said. “No more than ten meters at most.”

“That’s your definition of shallow?” Gigi responded.

“Sure,” Gath said. “You can free dive down ten meters. I used to do it all the time in the Diphen River on Brittany.”

“Free dive?” Fletch asked. “You mean ... with no equipment? No compressed air? No flotation assistance?”

“That’s right,” Gath said. “We’d dive down in the middle and pick up a rock or something to show we made it all the way down.”

This even got Ix’s attention. “What in the name of Whoever was the purpose of doing that?” he asked from his perch high above.

“Just to show we could,” Gath said. “We used to swing out on rope swings too.”

“Rope swings?” asked Viv.

“That was really demonic,” he said, his voice full of nostalgia. “We’d tie a rope up to an overhanging branch, usually fifteen meters up or so, and then we’d swing out over the river and let go at the top of the rope’s arc. Sometimes you’d get ten meters in the air and ten meters out over the water before you splashed down.”

“You’re making this slag up, aren’t you, Gath?” demanded Ziggy, who actually sounded a bit ill at the thought.

“Not at all,” Gath said. “It’s perpetually warm in Diphen and the days are really long. Playing in the river is something that every kid does there.”

“Insane,” said Viv, and you could almost hear her shaking her head. “You groundies are torkin’ insane, Gath.”

“We sometimes think the same about you spacies,” he replied with a chuckle.

Fletch’s raft reached the ladder first. The marines aboard it climbed up the twenty some-odd rungs one by one to secure the dock. The ladder did not fail and there were no homebodies hiding on the dock or on the barge tied up next to it. Once all his passengers were out of the raft, Fletch used a short length of flex-twine to secure it up to the pillar that held the ladder. He then climbed up himself, clearing the way for Gath, Ziggy and the engineers. Once they were all up, Gath secured his own raft to the pillar and climbed up himself.

“Okay,” said Viv, once everyone was on the dock. “Let’s get established here so we can let Gigi’s team get the job done. If the slag hits the intake, we retreat back down to the rafts and head downriver as fast as we can. Once we’re past the ruins of that old bridge a klick downstream there are no more permanent human settlements along the water and not many places they would be able to engage us from.

“Gath, you and Fletch stay down here and hold the dock. It’s our primary avenue of retreat if such a thing becomes necessary.”

“Oorah,” said Gath and Fletch in unison.

“Worst case, if we’re under mortar fire or cannon fire, everyone just jump into the river from wherever you can do it. Land on your bellies and the armor will absorb the kinetic energy of impact. Your floaters will inflate and we can all just go chameleon and drift downstream until out of contact. That includes you and your team, Gigi. Make your way out along the overhead of the crane and jump in if you have to.”

“Oorah,” said Gigi, quite clearly terrified of the very idea.

“Ziggy, you and Bloop go up first and move about thirty meters upriver along the base of the levee wall. Set up overlapping fields of fire capable of sweeping one hundred degrees from the wall. Get behind cover but make sure the homers see you doing it.”

“Oorah,” said Ziggy and Private Bloopsing Moostrum.

“Once you’re in place, I’ll take Gigi and team to the base of the crane. I’ll hold position on the ground there for rear guard and protection of the right flank. Any questions?”

There were none, as indicated by the silence on the frequency.

“All right then,” Viv said. “Let’s do it.”

They did it, Ziggy and Bloop trotting up the ramp and disappearing from direct view but not from the tactical display on the map floating in the upper right hand corner of everyone’s vision. While they were doing that, Gath and Fletch took their positions at the bend of the L, where they could watch all portions of the dock, the levee wall, and the upstream portion of the river. Once Ziggy reported in position, Viv led the engineers and their equipment up the walkway and onto the shore. After one last check of the area, both by the ground assets and by Ix in the air above, the area was deemed as secure as they were going to get it with the assets on hand. Viv gave the order and the engineers started climbing the ladder to the overhead of the crane. They reached the top and began to work without incident.

Nothing continued to happen. From his position on the dock, Gath could hear the occasional whine of an electric tool or the banging of a hammer drifting down from atop the crane overhead. The clusters of homebodies on the levee wall three hundred to four hundred meters away remained where they were, all of them plainly with long barreled weapons attached to holsters on their waists, but none making any moves that could be considered threatening. On the tactical frequency, all was quiet as taking up the airwaves at such times was frowned upon. This did not, however, preclude personal conversations between team members close enough to hear each other without the use of the communications frequency. Gath and Fletch were close enough and engaged in small talk related to the subject that everyone at CVS was discussing: the data dump that had come in—finally!—in the early hours of the morning local time, bringing eight metric weeks of news and communications from home with it.

“It’s the first dump since I’ve been here,” Gath told his companion. “There were almost a hundred messages from my family, some of them more than a cycle old. I was only able to work my way through about fifteen of them before I had to start mission prep.”

“Ration them,” Fletch advised. “Look at only two or three a day and hopefully they’ll last until it’s almost time for the next dump to come in.”

“Are you kidding?” Gath asked. “I haven’t heard what’s been going on since we left the Calaveras system about a week out from AZ. I need to know if my little sister finally settled her backside down so my parents could split up and start their second families.”

This caused Fletch to actually take his eyes off the cluster of homebodies and turn toward Gath. “You’re actually... hoping your parents are divorcing?”

“Yes,” Gath said. “It’s their time ... it’s overdue in fact. And we don’t call it ‘divorcing’. That’s the word we use in the same context as the spacies. Divorce means a marriage did not work out and was dissolved prematurely.”

“But prematurely doesn’t mean before death with you groundies, right?” Fletch said. “I heard this about you people, but I always thought it was ... you know ... ratslag.”

“We call it ‘the parting,’” Gath said. “And it’s not a cause for sadness, it’s a cause for celebration. My firstparents fulfilled the vows of their marriage. They successfully raised the children it produced to adulthood and now they can go find partners for a second marriage and raise their second children. I’ll finally get some new secondparents and some half-sibs.”

“This is such a bizarre concept to me,” Fletch said. “How will your ... firstparents? Is that what you call them?”

“Right. Firstmom and firstdad, or firstmother and firstfather if talking formally. Firstparents is the collective term until one of them marries another. When that happens, it will be Firstmom and Seconddad or Firstdad and Secondmom. This is all assuming everyone is an op, of course, as my firstparents are, although I’ve heard my mom mention that she has a little both inclination in her and that maybe she’ll try out the nome thing for her second.”