"Slowly Fades the Dawn" by C. Andrew Hessler, 09MAY2020

Oh, God! The crushing pain! Light seeping into the slits of my eyes. And the angry hammer slamming inside my head. The pounding won’t stop. I try to gasp for breath and realize there’s no air to breathe. It’s not clear how I know this. But it’s that feeling you have when you’re stuck underwater and you know you can’t make it back up to the surface before you run out of air. Ahhh! My lungs burn. The ache, the desire to open my lungs to the void. I don’t understand. There’s blackness all above me and light all below me. And I’m not floating. I’m lying on a hard surface. Oh, but the pounding keeps going and going. My mind is all clutter and pain. Slowly I continue to open my eyes further. Going from slits to half orbs. And the light overtakes the darkness. It blinds me and causes even more disorientation. I can’t hold my breath much longer. Tears flow out my ducts and cover my eyes in hazing over any view I was about to achieve. Slowly the haze fades and the liquid runs briefly down my cheek. I’m lying on my side. And the view makes no sense at all. What I see is a plane of grey. A silver sheet below me and a black sky above me. And I know this will be the last thing I see. The searing pain to open my lungs can’t be held off any longer. I feel the black around me merging with a swell of black from within as I begin to return to unconsciousness and my death for sure. The burning…oh the burning. I want to give into it... I want to release it. But, my mind says not to. And, I can’t fight either force. The blackness creeps over my vision. The pain becomes unbearable and…

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Ehud has never been this far out into the void. In fact, no one has, at least on record. But, there have been decades of signals leaking out of this inky darkness. He and his team are strapped into the fastest machine ever constructed. Sure, it was a bit of a hack job getting the Gayle prepped for a mission she was never designed for. But, when the Tri-World Core Government wants something done..there’s surprisingly little that anyone can do to slow them down. No mission details were given. Ehud and his team of 6 other marines were woken from their sleep at their respective locations and more or less strapped to the rocket the next day. The briefing consisted of, “Locate the source of the signal. And, bring it back”. Apparently, the preparations had been going on for two years in secrete. No one knew of the Gayle’s existence…because it was built in plain sight as the Zeus IV colony ship, the sister ship to the Hera. But, while the Hera was being outfitted with all of the standard colony ship equipment, the Zeus IV was being modified from the inside out with the latest generation fusion engines. Truly a work of genius. The twin set of supplies would seemingly be installed…and then miraculously be shuttered away out of sight never to be seen again. The logicians that made the swap possible must have been great fun to have at parties…assuming their sleight of hand also applied to up-close ‘magic”. Ehud had to marvel at the ingenuity of it all. Here he was, a low ranking Ensign promoted to Lieutenant Commander overnight to lead an assortment of the most deadly men the Tri-Worlds could dig up.

The dropship landed three clicks off in the distance to where the signal was emanating from. “Gear up men”, grunted Ehud through his com. “Caleb. You all set with the sat relay link to OPS?”

“Yes sir. Copy that. OPS is receiving our video and audio feeds IRT through the subspace relay.”

“Excellent. Then let’s go get whatever’s out there and then hit the high road home”. The imagery hadn’t revealed much on the first and second passes over the site the signal emanated from. There were boulders the size of small houses and craters just littering the landscape. The squad of marines had landed on Nix, the 3rd moon in the Pluto-Charon binary planet system. They weren’t the first humans to reach that distant system. But, they were the first in a generation. There had been two successful expeditions to Pluto back decades ago. Basic mapping and sampling missions. And, as fate would have it…these were the only successful missions to Pluto…as the next two missions both ended with unimaginable disasters…leaving one crew a bright red spot on Charon and the other crew in a crippled ship in orbit of the planet. No word ever made it back to the Sol system’s center about their final fate. One would presume they took the cyanide pills they were prescribed to take in such an event. But, it’s hard to name a high school after planetary explorers that pop a pill to avid starvation in deep space. If a transmission made it back to the three worlds, its contents were never leaked to the public.

Lights mounted to the exterior of the ship lit the moon’s surface in that same inefficient manner a car’s headlights lit up the road. You could just see where the light fell and nothing more. Their target happened to be on the dark side of Nix. This would change in about twenty-one hours as the moon completed its rotation from night today. The hydraulic ramp lowered from the rear of the dropship without the familiar and faint hiss the marines were used to. Ehud shrugged mentally as the thought passed through his mind. “I guess no one will be able to write up how I screamed like a little girl as I died in the vacuum of space.” Nix was too small to have any sort of atmosphere. It was actually quite a bit smaller than some of the asteroids that Earth dropped on Mars during the first few years of the First War of the Worlds. Lieutenant Commander Ehud led his team down the ramp in silence. An astute observer might have even noticed the slight right to left shaking of his head and minute eye roll as he left the ship and entered the hard vacuum of space. “Damn Martians. They’ll never come to their senses.”

Nix, being so ridiculously small, had no gravity of its own to speak of, of course. This was a spacewalk for all intents and purposes. A spacewalk on an oddly spinning orb of various ices. But, a spacewalk none the less. The moon’s gyrations weren’t so extreme to make life any more difficult than usual when one is out for a stroll in deep space 50 AU from home. The other five marines followed Ehud down the ramp. Each was armed with an assortment of weapons. And each floated out of the ship using their propulsion packs with a trained grace few ever really master. Their grace belied their sheer deadliness, though. It was like the grace of an owl flittering between branches in the twilight of evening hunting its evening meal. Deadly and quiet. “Com check”, Ehud requested. Each member of the squad replied in their affirmations in turn. The lack of environmental noise was off-putting. Other than the small wine of the suit’s power and life support systems, you were locked into that helmet with just your own breathing sounds and heartbeat. The squad “flew” over the surface. An onlooker would have been struck by the sight likening it to a flight of pelicans skimming the water. No motion other than forward motion. Just a silent glide over a gently scared ice surface. After a few moments, they arrived at the boulder field that shrouded their target. “Ok, fan out as planned”, Ehud barked into his com. The squad paired off with Ehud maintaining a cover path in line with their ship. Corporals Rex and Grant circled clockwise toward their target while Bartak and Murphy circled around to the right. The boulder field was looking more and more like an impact crater. There were chunks of debris that you’d get from shattered glass. And, in and around these chunks, the ice had melted and refrozen in some of the most impossible shapes. The field they were entering definitely encountered some sort of blast event that sent chunks out radially and left smooth glassy areas draped in a melted candle wax pattern. Rock mixed with ice in some of the boulders given the area a peppered coating reminiscent of the snow piles that were left to sit and melt in the old strip mall parking lots of the northern latitudes of Earth decades ago. As they moved closer to the signal source the scene took on more of an impact crater shape. The ground came to a sharp edge and then sloped like a funnel to a center point. And, in that center, though still shrouded by mixed debris, was a glint of what looked like metal. Just enough of an exposed surface to reflect back some of the starlight and their suit lights to their eyes. Metal…and something else.

I’m not dead. The realization is coming to me through a thick fog. The image of myself is not whole. Around me, in my mind, the fog swirls. And bits and pieces of the pain flit into my present only to disappear again. Was the pain real? The ache had to be real. I was suffocating. The crush. The despair was unbearable. But, I can feel. I can feel my legs. I can feel my fingers. I can feel the hard ground under my back as I lay flat out on it. I can feel my arm. And, that thought chills me. Because I can only feel one arm. There is no sensation on my left side. And the dread sweeps over me again. I start to panic. The darkness reaches up to my eyes again and mixes with the fog to pull me back down. I breathe. Faster and faster I pump my lungs. I can feel the pumping in my chest. And before the veil is brought up over my face again, before the void catches me again, I fight it back down. My eyes open. They open slowly. And my thoughts return just as slowly. I can see. Dark beneath me. Dark above me. With a force of will, I turn my head to look at my left side. To see what I can’t feel. To gaze on my arm. Sparks! My God! Sparks are shooting from my just below my shoulder where my arm used to be. And the memory of the pain rushes back in. And in that rush the utter confusion. How can there be sparks! Little flecks of fire shooting out of me like some kind of electrical short circuit. I’ve seen these sparks before. I know what they are. They’re the arcing of electrical wires and the oxidizing particles of metal being blasted off from this stump of an arm. I can almost smell the ozone in the air. Almost. It’s thought that lingers in my mind for a moment. Why almost? Why don’t I smell anything? And the pain is vanishing, being replaced with confusion. I roll my head to the right with a grunt. Look over at my other arm for reassurance. Bend my fingers. Flex my arm slightly. Then swivel myself onto my right side to push myself into a sitting position. I bring my arm up to my eyes and wiggle my fingers in front of my face. My silvery chrome-like fingers. And the light of a billion stars glitters against them in the darkness. “Seven Seconds!” The thought paralyzes me. The weight of it is palpable. The thought presses down on me as if I’m being crushed in a human-sized vice. I begin to laugh. My head tilts back. A smile forms on my face…and I laugh out loud at the thought. I say it once quietly as if to myself. “Eternity is only seven seconds long!” I say it once more. And then again. And then I shout it. “Seven seconds”! And not a sound is made. I shout it again. And again…and again... I am in utter silence.

Bartak and Murphy move in first. They opt for splitting up a bit. Murphy launches above the target while Bartak glides in low and slow. Both train their weapons on the reflective object they see. Even as they move over the shattered pieces of rock and ice their weapons never waiver from being locked dead on the target. Their laser scope beams look like fixed red dots where they are aimed.

“Report”, calls Ehud to the duo. 

“Target sighted, sir. You seeing this Murph?”

“Yeah, I’ve got eyes on the target.”, replies Murphy.

“Threat assessment?” , Ehud asks. He can see through their video feeds exactly what they’re both seeing and he’s both surprised and mildly annoyed.

Bartak completes his arc over the target and rolls into a tight summersault reversing is orientation. He fires his thrusters delicately and comes to a near-standstill above, but not directly above the target. “Object does not appear to be active.”

Rex and Grant get into position effectively surrounding the target. All four of them painting it with their laser scopes. 4 bright red dots from 4 extremely dangerous plasma riffles.

Ehud feeds the scans from all four marines into his cortex interface. He’s seeing a synthesized image pieced together from the 4 feeds. It’s an immersive experience. God-like almost. He brings his thoughts into focus once again and cannot believe what he is seeing.

The silence on the com causes Rex to speak out first. “Sir? What are your orders?”

Pure professionalism. A squad of marines that have never seen actual space combat stare down at a relic their grandfathers would be more familiar with than them. They just want their orders.

Hg489-7Y lies there in front of them. The stuff of legend. The stuff of myth. QSI, Quick Silver Industries’ only humanoid avatar. Made under secret contract through back channels and questionable hidden slush funds. QSI was contracted to build this particular unit for Avatar, Inc. When word was eventually leaked that the preeminent builder of Avatars in the solar system had subcontracted its most important project, it nearly destroyed the conglomerate. “Do you know how long it takes to fall from Trinity Towers?” That was a joke across the system every adolescent child knew. “Aster Cox knows!”. The CEO of one of the most prestigious corporations in the Three-Worlds Union chose to end the embarrassment for himself by taking a flying leap from the garden level of Trinity Towers. Normally any such fall would naturally be fatal. Anything above 30 feet is guaranteed to cause death…albeit a slow death reports show. But Aster Cox chose his corporate factory to take his leap. A factory that floated 155 miles from the surface of the world most often termed “Hell”. But, Venus’ hell was populated by vast floating cities and factory complexes. Aster Cox probably died of a heart attack from the sheer terror of falling. But, kids often speculated, to their parents' horror that he was either crushed like a kitten under a car tire by the planet’s enormous atmospheric pressure. Or, he was melted painfully and slowly as he traversed kilometers of sulfuric acid clouds. In any event. Everyone agreed that he was quite dead at the end of the day.

The avatar, Hg489-7Y, was built for a single purpose. It too had been sent to locate a signal. But, the avatar, piloted by none other than Dane Knight, the “Deliver of New India”, never made it to the intercept point. The signal it was chasing, though present and closing in on the Sol system for at least a decade that the public knew about, seemed to disappear in an instant. Life went on. Dane and his avatar were forgotten. He became a legend of sorts…along the lines of Yeager and Richthofen. Hg489-7Y went silent and blinked out of existence too it had seemed. No transmission ever made it back to HQ. Not even a radar ghost was seen of the humanoid form or the ship it had been launched in.

“Order, Sir?” Rex spoke again. This time slightly more impatient than before.

Ehud snapped out of his revere letting the nostalgia slide out of mind. The fantasticness of what he was seeing was beyond words. And as he tried to form some meaningful way of articulating what he was feeling the dream washed away abruptly.

“Ehud.”

He heard his name over the com…but didn’t instantly recognize the voice. He struggled for a millisecond then composed himself to respond. “Yes, Admiral Gates”.

“Focus son. You were sent here for a specific task. We suspected you’d find Dane’s avatar.”

“Suspected?” Ehud thought. Apparently, he thought that out loud because his squad all turned their helmets towards him. He could almost read their puzzled expressions behind their visors.

“Yes, this is why you were dispatched so abruptly. Time is short Lieutenant. Murphy has a small handheld reader in his suit’s storage compartment. Place the reader next to the avatar and wait for further instructions”.

Ehud retrieved the reader from Murphy and did as instructed. He knelt down beside the lifeless avatar in front of him in somewhat of a hesitant reverence. Dane was a marine. He never received the honors due him as a fallen soldier. The information did leak over time. Freedom of Information Act requests eventually revealed the loss of Dane and his avatar. But, details were all blacked out. It didn’t matter to most people. Yes, Dane has done some heroic things in the First War of the Worlds. But, that memory was lost among a clutter of events and wars. Some marines never forgot, though. And Dane’s heroism was preserved in their own lore.

Ehud read the screen as the words popped up. Datalink established. Internal power reserves depleted. Charge commencing. Charge complete. Then a small circle appeared on the screen with a little text on it. Transfer data? Ehud swiped the circle to the right and was rewarded with a new screen. Transfer complete.

“Ehud. Well done.” Admiral Gates said over the com. 

The team exchanged silent nods to each other and holstered their weapons finally.

“Return to the dropship with your squat Lieutenant”.

“What about Hg489-7Y?”, Ehud asked. If he could have scratched his head he would have. “Should we bring the avatar with us, Sir?”

“Negative, Lieutenant”, said Gates. A self-destruct signal will be sent when you’re clear. 

Puzzlement read across Ehud’s face. Fortunately, while most everything else was monitored in space marine suits…their faces were not.

He shrugged as best as he could in his suit. The expression lacked a certain authenticity as it tried to make its way through the fabric. But, the feeling was genuine. Orders were orders, though.

The squad radioed back to Caleb that they were returning.

Five minutes later the dropship lifted off the icy moon and arced its path back to the Gayle. And just as it oriented its vector the dropship exploded in spectacular fashion.

Data file 8933001:aaTnw

Audio only.

I’m sitting on an icy moon, Nix it appears. My internal start maps seem to indicate this. They also seem to indicate that I’ve been here for twenty-one years. I find this hard to believe. But, the stars don’t lie. I’m sending this transmission in the hopes that I can be rescued…and because the Four-Worlds Commission needs to know what’s coming. We’re not alone. What I’ve learned can’t be summed up in any sort of report. I spent seven seconds linked with an AI from another system. It was a low-level AI apparently. And in those seven seconds, I experienced the entirety of a civilization we’ve never even dreamt of. Those memories are fused with the processors of this avitar. There is no way to extract them. It seems, that I’m also now fused with those circuits. I have lost all connections to my body…wherever that may be. My avatar is severely damaged. (The audio breaks up at this point). You need to know… we’re not alone. The Destroyer is coming. The Destroyer of Suns. This is my fault… (More audio disruption.)

Transmission ends.