ΔV Pt. 09

To call the past week surreal would have been the understatement of several lifetimes. Vidya had been there when Captain DuPont -- for reasons that still baffled her -- split the research team into two divisions. One, the larger, would be sent down to the surface of Arcadia, to continue researching magic in safe environment. This had struck her as odd. While she could see that it would be safer to experiment far away from the Enterprise -- which was, at the end of the day, a lightly armored mass of pressurized tin-cans surrounded by vacuum and strapped to a several gigawatt nuclear reactor -- she couldn't help but notice that experimenting with magic on an alien planet surrounded by an alien culture that seemed to run entirely on promotion by assassination was just as dangerous.

But this only came to Vidya's mind as the week wore on and the surrealism became mundane.

When the fact that she could see and sometimes even speak to her dead husband's ghost had become...not unremarkable, but rather, something she began to take for granted. It shocked her how fast the turnaround came. She had spent weeks marveling at the fact that humanity had blown a portal between dimensions -- then days stunned at the fact that the two dimensions were nearly identical physically. Then, hours, shocked at the existence of aliens that were roughly analogous to folk-stories of elves and orcs and dragons.

It felt as if she had barely had minutes to be shocked at the existence of ghosts. For the second half of the research team was set to studying Sukhdeep and his manifestations. The questions that they asked -- what can you see? Where are you? Are you aware of the area around us? Can you move? - had been answered only fitfully. Sometimes, Sukhdeep was able to move objects or cause strange electrical disturbances on computer screens. Other times, he felt so intangible that she was sure she was imagining that she could see something, hear something.

On the seventh day, Vidya was in the rec room with Mohammad. Mohammad had always been somewhat formal -- though he had drawn closer after Sukhdeep's death. Now that Sukhdeep was a ghost, he had drawn back again, further than he ever had been on the Sparrowhawk. Vidya didn't want to think about that. Instead, she regarded the situation reports that were played on the internal video system, the screens mounted on the walls in the rec rooms showing the telescopy that was coming in on the Russian drone carrier that was accelerating towards the Janus Portal. The figures running along the bottom showed that it was now the fastest object that humanity had ever launched.

"Here's to polynomials," Vidya muttered.

"Hm?" Mohammad glanced up from his tablet, where he was studying results that were coming in from the ground survey team.

"Oh, nothing," Vidya said.

The long, awkward silence that followed was broken only by the murmur of conversation from the other crewmen.

"Do you know how much of this is being reported back home?" Vidya asked.

Mohammad's thumb buzzed around the edge of the tablet, seeking out the news feeds. He pursed his lips. "Our news checks are behind schedule -- the com traffic is so limited through the JP." He sighed. "But it's not entirely bringing the human race together in peace and harmony."

Vidya sighed, then sipped her tea. "Hit me."

"Mass demonstrations from Muslims in India, China, Europe," he said, shrugging. "There's a huge push to begin immigration to Arcadia immediately. They don't even know it is populated. They just know it is an identical copy of Earth -- perfect and whole. Half of them want to rebuild Mecca, half think it's already here. And they're only the largest group of people." He tapped his finger. "We have Ecoist cells in North America, a Catholic sect in South America, even a representative from the New Ghost Dance Party in Canada." He made a face, then set his tablet down. "And the New Mars project has had its funding quartered. Why terraform when we have a whole new planet?"

"You sound mad," Vidya said.

"I am not..." Mohammad sighed. Then he placed his fingers against his temple. "No. No, I am mad. I have friends who trained their whole careers on New Mars -- they broke their backs doing comet chasing and plant seeding -- and now we're going to just let the whole thing drop?" He shook his head, frowning. "I know, a sunk cost fallacy doesn't mean we should throw good money after bad, but New Mars wasn't bad. It was working, by-" He trailed off, seeing Vidya's expression.

"Do you think that magic could help?" she asked, sounding wondering.

Mohammad blinked. "I...I don't see why not..." He brought up the group information file that they had been creating. "There is a circle of nature magic -- some call it Wood magic. Creating, shaping, sustaining life..." He sighed. "I feel like I have been dropped into a video game."

The two of them didn't mention ghosts. The afterlife. What that meant.

"So, maybe we'll only need a quarter of the funding," Vidya said, trying to sound cheerful. Mohammad smiled back. Vidya felt an urge to reach out and pet his mustache -- an urge that had struck her many times before. But where it was one thing to do so when one was a widow, it felt entirely different when one knew the ghost of your husband was floating around. Knew it, measured it, and had people corroborating it with scientific instruments.

The hair on the back of Vidya's neck rose. She sat up, wondering if thinking about ghosts and Sukhdeep had summoned him. She felt his fingers caressing her for a moment and then he began to glow faintly, shimmering into visibility -- a trick he had figured out for himself over the week of the study. He floated before her and his hand pointed at Mohammad's tablet. Mohammad, seeing him, held the tablet out immediately. The text on the screen, currently a news feed on the demonstrations in London, buzzed and rippled, beginning to shift around. The picture of men in nice suits and women in headscarves distorted.

Letters began to glow and grow larger.

"I...A...M..." Vidya muttered. Mohammad, leading over, patted at his pockets, then found a piece of paper. He started to scribble on it with one of the American's very fine space pens. Soon, the words had been penned out and Vidya and he both looked down at it, trying to puzzle out what on Earth...what on...Earths that Sukhdeep could have meant.

I AM BEING PULLED.

"Sukhdeep?" Vidya asked, lifting her eyes. But as she looked at the glowing form, she saw crackling purple vines forming from nowhere. They coiled from his shoulders, around his forearms, up from his legs. They hooked on his knees and around his throat and around the vague shape of his head. Despite not seeing his features, despite not hearing his voice directly, Vidya swore that she could see pain in his features. She sprang to her feet. "Sukhdeep!"

The vines pulled.

Suhkdeep slammed into the air as if it was a wall, then vanished, tugged through a pinprick that shimmered in the air, wreathed in purple.

Vidya gaped after it. She looked at Mohammad, who was clutching the tablet to his chest. She looked back at the tiny pinprick and watched as it winked out, like an ember flitting through the air.

"We have to talk to a necromancer," Vidya whispered.

***

Kaleb, Cinder, Captain Markova, and several of her bridge officers stood in the small, cramped shuttle bay of the drone carrier. Kaleb still had no idea how its proper name was pronounced, and the spell that Cinder had cast hadn't yet come up with a translation that made sense to him. Sea-General Victory Of The People Blacksmith? Who named a ship something that was such a mouthful? The shuttle bay itself was filled with the movement of humans and their curious automaton helpers, each of them working to check the shuttle over. Some of them were even painting it.

Markova turned to Cinder, her voice firm. "We shall be landing in Bakonur- quite near to your old homes, in fact," she said, nodding slightly. "The cosmodrome there is actually one of the first constructed by the human race. The USSR built it in the 1950s. That would be two hundred years ago, roughly."

"Interesting," Cinder said. She looked at the shuttle -- and Kaleb couldn't blame her for the nerves that she had to be feeling. He could remember the horrible, crushing weight of being in the shuttle.

"It will be more gentle," Markova said. "The shuttle simply needs to glide."

"Ah." Cinder looked even less convinced.

Kaleb and Cinder were both strapped in by cheerful members of the ship's crew, their buckles tightening and holding them fast despite Markova's claims that this would be more gentle. Markova took the seat ahead of them, and the bridge crew took the other positions. A pilot at the front was speaking softly into their headset. The half the conversation that Kaleb heard and had translated by Cinder's magics only left him more confused. "This is shuttle 9081, we're logging our cislunar transfer. We shall be flying over flight zones Ce-9 and Ce-8. Check." She paused. "Ah, Colin, I see you are back, you Limey bastard. Clearance code." She paused again, then tapped in a series of buttons on her console. "Did you get that? Resending." She tapped it again.

Seeing his look, Makrova nodded. "Our flight will be taking us over hostile airspace. Earth is a off limits to space warfare -- so any and all orbital movements need to be cleared or else it will be a rather bad day downstairs."

Kaleb nodded slightly.

Cinder, for some reason, looked terrified half to death. Kaleb remembered seeing her returning from one of her many conversations with the chief engineer looking similarly terrified. Kaleb frowned. The humans had so many strange devices, so many horrifying weapons. He decided to just assume that whatever he could imagine when it came to military devastation, humans could match, then double, then double it again.

Then all thought vanished in the terrifying cacophony that came from the shuttle launching. Clangs. Bangs. Thumps. Crunches. Then, finally, the chuff and the hammering sound for the reaction-jets bringing them around to angle properly. A light pressure pushed Kaleb down into his seat as the engine came on, the pilot calmly swinging them around. Through the forward screens, he could see the massive curve of Stark swinging around. The familiarity paired with the strangeness of human civilization struck him again as they crossed over the terminator and a brilliant spill of sunlight filled the forward cameras. Cinder wined and hissed, then patted around on her vest, pulling out the goggles that the chief had gotten for her when she mentioned her light sensitivity.

Then they struck the atmosphere. Despite her claims of gentleness, Kaleb still clutched to the straps that held him into his chair as the wings of the shuttle strained and the entire fuselage started to quiver and shake. This wasn't like the acceleration that came from launching. This was as if a great wind was catching it and flowing around it. It was like being in a storm, but worse. Kaleb closed his eyes, refusing to look through the forward screen. He didn't want to give it the satisfaction.

"Deceleration curve looks all right. Breaking the atmosphere," the pilot said, her calm voice something to anchor too. The shuttle filled with a roaring sound -- a roaring sound of a different, deeper timber from the rockets that had taken them to orbit around Arcadia what felt like a lifetime ago. Kaleb breathed in a steady, slow pattern and repeated to himself: I have faced cannons and magic. I can handle this.

His stomach tried to prove him a liar by crawling up and to the edge of his throat.

But then the roar faded -- growing softer and softer by the minutes until, at last, everything felt smooth as butter. He opened one eye and saw Cinder was beaming. She looked through the forward screens, her goggles fastened tight around her face. She looked at him and laughed -- and Kaleb saw the view that was spreading below them. They were soaring over a vast, glittering ocean. A broad coastline was growing ahead of them. Kaleb couldn't recognize it. "What is that?" He bellowed over the still omnipresent whine of the ramjet engines.

"That's the coast of Europe," Markova said. "What you know as the Faelands."

Kaleb whistled softly.

The flight, now that it had settled into smoothness, allowed Kaleb to relax into his chair, to admire the view as it slowly rotated by under the cameras. The pilot, seeing his and Cinder's attention, tapped at a few buttons, then flicked her finger against a switch, changing the view that they saw on the front screens to a view from the belly of the shuttle, so that they could look 'down' at the landscape flying under them directly. Kaleb rather wished that she wouldn't. Looking forward to see down made him feel as if he was constantly about to plunge forward through the glass. But Cinder looked happy enough -- slipping her goggles tentatively off her eyes. It seemed no longer looking directly into the sun was helping.

Then-

"What the..." The pilot paused. "Uh, captain, radar is picking up something strange ahead."

"Strange as in-"

"As in the EUAF looks like they're launching jets!" The pilot gripped onto the controls, and the front screens shifted to a display that was all green wires and dots, harsh and stark. Kaleb looked on uncomprehending as Markova tapped at her wrist, then lifted it to her mouth. Her head was turned so that all Kaleb could see was her scar.

"This is Captain Markova on band two, what is going on down there?"

Whatever was said, Kaleb didn't hear it. The pilot, though, was beginning to flip more switches -- and then what seemed to be hundreds of dots appeared in the air. The pilot yelped. "The devil's uncle!" And Cinder hissed viciously. Her knuckles whitened to a light gray as she gripped onto her straps.

"What is it?" Kaleb hissed.

"I don't-"

"Captain Markova!" The pilot shouted. "I- brace for maneuvering."

The shuttle's entire frame groaned and shuddered. Kaleb felt his head being tugged back, then snapped to the side. The restraints inflated, so providing support, but also mashing his cheek so hard that he nearly cut himself on his own tusks. Alerts filled the console and the pilot began to swear so constantly that it became one long strand of unbroken words. "We're not being targeted -- they're coming in too close! That...that's impossible!"

Dots were swarming around the center of the screen.

The pilot tapped a finger and a screen within a screen opened -- a secondary view, so that they could keep the display of the radar and the forward view from the cameras both online. Hundreds of other vehicles were in the sky that had been formerly clear and empty. They flew like a great flock of birds -- and they were peeling off in all directions. They moved slowly, gracefully, and two dozen of them were heading for the shuttle. Markova, her eyes narrowing, barked out: "You have permission to fire, Lieutenant!"

"Aye captain!"

The shuttle shuddered. White lines fanned outwards, each traced by a glowing star. They rushed towards the oncoming vehicles -- rushed towards them, then through them. "They're illusions!" Kaleb shouted.

"No. They're not." Cinder's voice was grim. She sounded queasy. Kaleb looked at her -- and saw that her eyes were hollowed out.

The planes flying towards them began to wink and flash. Their wings spat flames. And the shuttle shuddered as impacts rang across the surface. The front screens cracked open and the pilot, in an instant, was turned into a red ruin. Blood splashed across Kaleb's face and when he snapped his head to the side, he saw that the seat holding one of the bridge officers to his right had a ruined horror that had been a man. But then the shuttle began to wheel and tumble from the sky. Markova bellowed orders, but Kaleb couldn't hear her over the screaming wind.

Cinder spoke a single word that echoed through Kaleb's mind, despite the roar. Magic flared around her body and he felt the tug of a fishhook on his heart -- his life ebbing. He looked to her and felt the entire shuttle beginning to slow. Cinder looked at him, her eyes filled with a growing sense of despair. Kaleb nodded.

She spoke again.

The ground came towards them -- but slower.

Kaleb felt his body burning up.

And then the shuttle struck. It struck the soft green of well tended fields. Crops. The air filled with roaring, screaming, and whining. Metal gave under pressure and Kabel felt his ribs trying to crack as the shuttle bounced and jounced. But then it came to a stop and Cinder sagged, gasping heavily. Markova came to her feet first, unstrapping and hurrying back. She swept her gaze over the ruin of her bridge officers, then looked to Kaleb. Her one good eye widened in shock. "Heavens," she whispered.

Kaleb grinned at her weakly, feeling punch drunk. "Its fine..." He mumbled.

Makrova cut him free, jerking the knife from her boot. Kaleb stood and felt pains exploding along his back, his joints. He stumbled forward, his eyes unfocused. The whole world seemed blurry. Cinder scrambled after him -- and the two of them stepped onto the ground of Stark. Kaleb looked around himself. At the burning trail that the shuttle had left in the fields. At the humans jogging towards them, clearly wondering why a shuttle had come down on their field. But his knees hurt. They hurt so much. Kaleb looked down at himself.

At first, he thought that he was fine.

But then he saw his hands.

Gnarled and knobby like poorly carved wood. He lifted his hand -- and he saw that his finger was wrinkled and spotted. Black marks -- liver spots -- made him look closer in coloration to the t'row than to an orc. He put his hands to his face and felt his jowls, wagging and wobbling. He realized that the world had attained the faint blurs and smears of color that surrounded everything not because Stark was so much harder to see than his home...

But because his eyes had aged.

"Kaleb," Cinder whispered.

"We have more important things to worry about," Markova said. Her voice was grim.

Kaleb heard the droning sounds now -- they reached his ear faintly. The flying machines. They were soaring by overhead and the screeching roar of something else mixed in. A flight of five, far faster machines flew forward. One of them began to tumble from the air, drawing a smear of smoke and flames so thick and so bright that even Kaleb's weakened eyes could see it.

"What are those things?" Kaleb asked -- and found that his voice had the wizened rasp of an aged orc now. Like his grandfather. He wasn't even thirty yet.

Markova frowned. Her scar twisted as she looked at him. Then at Cinder. "You know what they are. Don't you?" she asked.

"Yes," Cinder whispered.

***

The only thing that wrecked the history steeped in the sand and hills of Normandy's beaches were the seawalls. Constructed by a part of the United Nations Emergency Cabinet historical preservation unit, the seawalls had kept rising waters from washing away sand that thousands of American, British and Canadian men had bled for. The fact that this beach, this single beach in northern France, had been earmarked a significant chunk of a percentile of the immense UNEC budget where, say, the Himalayan Buddhist temples and the Indonesian cultural sites of even greater age and beauty were given significantly smaller chunks of a percentile...

Well.

It had been contentious.

People who supported the seawalls and the preservation on this particular beach in Normandy pointed out the fact that the technology and techniques were used to protect literally hundreds, if not thousands, of other beaches around the world. They had been tested and proved here. How convincing one found this argument varied.