Earthfall (Novella): The Remains of Yesterday

  THE REMAINS OF YESTERDAY

  by

  Stephen Knight

  © 2018 by Stephen Knight

  1

  “They look so cute together,” Kelly Jordello said as she looked over the sandwich she held in her hands.

  Mike Andrews glanced up from his own lunch, then turned to take in what had caught Kelly’s attention. Sitting several tables away in the Commons Area, he saw his executive officer, Leona Eklund, sitting down and enjoying her own lunch. Across from her was the hulk and bulk of Command Sergeant Major Scott Mulligan. She was a slender, tall girl of mixed parentage, blessed with a dusky skin that hadn’t paled one iota since Harmony Base had been sealed off over a decade ago. He was a virtual giant, standing in at six inches over six feet and with the mass to match, his brown hair going gray at the temples. There was at least a thirty-five-year gap in their ages, but their differences were much deeper than merely chronological or physical. Leona possessed an almost regal air about her that simply oozed intellect. Mulligan, on the other hand, was about as stately as a bloody broadsword. It was a circumstance of night and day personified. Both simply sat across from each other, eating their lunches, on break from mission planning. They didn’t look at each other, and didn’t talk. To Andrews, it was almost as if two strangers were sharing the same table.

  “What’s so cute about them?” he asked, turning back to Kelly.

  She frowned at him and brushed a stray strand of blonde hair out of her eyes. “Dude, you’re such a guy. Take another look.”

  Andrews sighed and examined the mismatched duo once more. They merely ate and sat, concentrating on what was on the trays before them. He started to shrug and get back to his own meal when he saw it: Leona had her foot snuggled up against one of Mulligan’s boots. There was no way the big sergeant major couldn’t have known it, and he hadn’t pulled away from the contact.

  Andrews snorted. “I see it. A couple of smooth operators.”

  “I don’t know why they’re not more open about it,” Kelly said. “Everyone knows they’re sleeping together.”

  “Lee doesn’t like attention. And I’m pretty damned sure Mulligan doesn’t dig it, either,” Andrews said. “Not that kind of attention, anyway. They’re pretty private people.”

  “I hope they have kids. Could you imagine? Mulligan’s brawn and Leona’s brains? It’d be, like, the beginning of a new super race.”

  “Yeah, well. I’m not sure we could handle that,” Andrews said, returning to his lunch.

  “I think it’s great they found each other,” Kelly said. “They fit, in a really odd way. But it works. Never thought the Old Guard and New Guard would click like that.”

  “Kelly? Stop staring. The last thing you want to do is rile up Mulligan.”

  She waved the notion aside. “Pshaw, how could he still be one hundred percent badass when he’s with Leona?”

  “You make it sound like he’s spending his off-hours knitting doilies. He’s been kicking our asses for the past four months with small unit tactical training, and you think he’s not still a hundred percent badass? Weren’t you the one who started puking all over the place after he made you run five miles?”

  Kelly frowned. “Okay. Ninety-five percent badass, maybe.” She took another bite of her sandwich. “So hey, I hear you guys are leaving the base tomorrow—I see Four’s on the deployment chart. Isn’t the rig designated for the Northwest run? I thought you finished all the shakedowns.”

  “Yeah, we did.”

  “Okay. So?”

  Andrews fidgeted a bit in his chair. “It’s just a little run. An outing. Something the command group wants to keep under the radar.”

  Kelly chuckled. “Yeah, like that’s even possible. The HBT is probably already fired up over it. What’s the mission?” HBT was the informal acronym for Harmony Base Telegraph, which was the local rumor mill. In an isolated, subterranean fortress like Harmony, rumors and gossip were one of the lubricants that kept things running. People needed a distraction from the monotonous existence the base provided, and the HBT was one of the best ways to add a little sparkle into an otherwise repetitious way of life.

  “I’m not really supposed to talk about it,” Andrews said, though he knew that would hardly put her off. If anything, it would be like tossing a tasty steak in front of a starving Rottweiler and telling the dog not to eat it.

  Kelly’s eyes widened. “You’re going on a classified mission? There’s something more important than the Northwest run?”

  “It’s not classified. It’s just, ah... sensitive.”

  Kelly put down her sandwich and faced him, putting an elbow on the table. “Mike, what’s going on? Who’s on the mission, your entire crew?”

  “Me. Lee. Mulligan. And KC, because she needs more field time.”

  “What about the others? Josh, Marco, Marguerite, Nancy? They haven’t gotten a lot of rig time since—wait a minute, did you say Mulligan?”

  “Yeah, that might’ve slipped out.”

  “Is this related to the Northwest mission?”

  “It is not.”

  “Then why is he going?”

  Andrews clasped his hands in front of him and just looked at her. For several seconds, she stared back at him before a perplexed expression suddenly broke out across her face. She raised a hand to her mouth.

  “Oh my God... Scott City? They’re letting him do it?”

  Andrews’s only response was a subtle shrug.

  Kelly turned and looked back at Leona and Mulligan, still sitting at their table, finishing up their lunch. She looked suddenly sad.

  “It’ll kill him,” she said.

  “Let’s not be too dramatic here, Kell.”

  “But he has everything now,” she said. “If he does it, he won’t come back the same. He’ll lose everything. It’ll be like before San Jose, only worse this time. He’ll wind up eating his gun.”

  “I don’t disagree, but we both know Mulligan. He has to do it,” Andrews said. “No man could just leave them out there, and certainly not a guy like him. He has to do it.”

  “I can’t believe Benchley approved it,” Kelly said softly.

  “Well, he did.” Andrews paused for a long moment, dithering over his lunch before committing to a course best left uncharted. “There’s a catch. And that’s what makes the mission sensitive.”

  Kelly looked at him. “What?” When he didn’t respond, she reached out and punched his shoulder, and not in a playful manner—Andrews actually winced at the sudden strike. “Damn it, Mike, don’t lead me on like this!”

  “Benchley’s going, too.”

  “What? The Old Man’s leaving the base?”

  Andrews held up a hand. “Yeah, hey. Keep your voice down. Get yourself squared away, Lieutenant.”

  Kelly looked around, then leaned toward him. Her voice was a nearly conspiratorial whisper when she spoke. “Why is Benchley going out into the field? Isn’t it enough for the senior NCO to be doing that?”

  “I asked the same question. Benchley’s words were, ‘It’s an Old Guard thing, Andrews. That’s all you need to know.’ In other words, shut the fuck up, boy, and drive me to wherever I tell you I want to go. I heard Baxter was the last holdout, but if she couldn’t change the Old Man’s mind, then no one could.”

  Kelly looked back at Mulligan and Leona again for a long moment. “We just think of them as a general and a sergeant major, but they’re friends. That’s why he’s not going to let Mulligan go by himself. He needs to be there with him. I get it.”

  “Yeah, well, you need to keep this to yourself. At least until after we hit the vehicle lift,” Andrews said. “Don’t ev
en mention it to Jim.” Jim Laird was Kelly’s immediate superior, though he didn’t have much of a command at the moment. Since Self-Contained Exploration Vehicle Five was destroyed almost a year ago, he and the rest of that rig’s crew had been filling in on other missions. In fact, Laird and Jordello had both made the return journey to San Jose to begin sustainment operations of the small group of survivors that remained there. Unsurprisingly, the survivors had welcomed the assistance Harmony Base could provide. All it took for that to happen was for Andrews to kill their violent, paranoid leader Law. It hadn’t been easy thing to accomplish. Law managed to kill two of his top crewmembers and demolished SCEV Four, though enough of the rig had remained to repair and rebuild. It had taken months, and Andrews had to oversee the entire operation.

  “I won’t tell anyone, dude. Seriously,” Kelly said. She gazed back at Mulligan and Leona. “I hope she doesn’t get hurt. He might not be the only casualty.”

  Andrews regarded the remains of his lunch and found he was no longer hungry. He pushed the tray away from him. “I know,” he said.

  2

  It wasn’t possible, but the base always seemed to be darker, more forbidding during the nighttime hours. Despite the fact the installation was buried over a hundred feet beneath the planet’s surface, Leona Eklund sometimes felt a particular gloom settled about the place during the hours when the sun wasn’t up. Not that she saw either day or night with any regularity, and physically, the time of day made no difference to the quality of life in Harmony Base. Lights still shined as brightly as before, CO2 scrubbers and oxygen distribution systems hummed, and water pumps chugged while the geothermal-powered turbines in the Core continued to wail their screeching song. Leona knew the effect was entirely psychological. Though it had rarely been a consideration in years past, she was suddenly aware of it tonight. Clinically, she understood it was just part of the effect of living in an underground redoubt. Human psychology needed open spaces and bright light that wasn’t artificial.

  Tonight, she felt it, and in full force.

  Beside her, Mulligan stirred in his sleep. It was only a slight twitch of his arm, as if some vague spasm shot through it. It was almost unnoticeable, but in her alert state it caught her attention despite the virtual pitch-black darkness of the bedroom. Leona touched him softly, her fingertips barely making contact with his skin as she gently stroked his arm. The twitching subsided almost instantly, but she continued her ministration, letting him know even through the heavy veil of sleep that he wasn’t alone. That she was with him. In the beginning stages of their relationship, Mulligan twitched and jerked and moaned in his sleep several times every night, as if his rest was populated by nightmares and horrible dreamscapes. Waking him did no good, for as soon as he fell back to sleep, the tremors would befall him again. Leona found through experimentation that her touch alone soothed him; it was as if her gentle, soft contact was enough to calm the twitching beast. And it must have worked, because over the ensuing months, Scott Mulligan essentially slept with the stillness of the dead.

  But over the past couple of weeks, the tremors and twitches and small moans returned. Her fingertips could still them, but not for long. They returned with greater frequency, and it took some time for her to discover why. She knew better than to push him. Instinctively, she understood a man like Mulligan couldn’t be badgered into sharing something he wanted to keep private, and she was also aware that if she tried, all it would earn her would be contempt. So she approached him as she would any other experiment, by breaking it down into stages and processes that she could manage one at a time. Even though she was generally inexperienced with romantic relationships, she had a keen understanding about what Mulligan needed. He needed a friend, and he needed someone he could just exist with, someone who wouldn’t make demands or try to hem him in. Their relationship was at once unique and fragile. Unique in that he had no issue allowing her to be who she was, which was likely a product of his age. At fifty-two, he had seen almost everything life had to offer, and he knew when something needed to be changed. And it was fragile in the sense that both of them were almost complete polar opposites in their professional and personal lives. While each had built up walls to insulate them from the close quarters living in Harmony Base afforded, she was reclusive, and he was—or at least had been—outgoing and engaging. After returning from San Jose and managing to more or less expiate his guilt in facilitating the death of Rachel Andrews’s parents, Mulligan had been groping his way back toward what he had been before the war. But there was always something holding him back, something that retarded his full personal restoration. Leona knew that the reemergence of his troubled sleep meant he was again wrestling with old demons that would not lie still.

  In halting tones one night, he informed her that his past was about to become his present once again, if for only one day. She knew what that was about, but when he finally told her what he was going to do, it was still a shock.

  More than a decade later, Scott Mulligan was going home to his family.

  The admission filled her with fear and sadness. Fear that what he would find might be his final undoing, for on at least a clinical level, she understood the stress he’d been under, knowing that his family had perished only a few miles away despite his best attempts to rescue them. Finally verifying their end state would be a staggering thing that no man or woman could walk away from intact. And sadness that the cost of such a discovery would forever change him, and in that, change them. Leona had never been emotionally involved with anyone before. She’d had friends, yes, and had even had two clandestine lovers. But she’d never invested herself so fully in another person as she had with Mulligan, and the possibility that he might not survive the trauma of this last reunion filled her with a kind of misery she’d never felt before. While his reputation around the base was that he was some kind of Green Beret superman, the truth of the matter was that he was a middle-aged guy who had lost everything and had continued to exist through sheer force of will alone. Over the past several months after returning from San Jose, he’d punched through the wall of guilt and remorse he’d hidden behind and started to become a whole person again instead of a simple caricature. For her, the metamorphosis was fascinating to observe. While their interactions before the San Jose run had never been particularly remarkable, Leona had always had an interest in Mulligan as a person. And it was during that run out to California that she’d been able to detect what everyone else at Harmony had overlooked. That Mulligan was a man in deep, deep mourning, and he couldn’t shake the grief that stalked him relentlessly like some deranged ninja assassin.

  She convinced herself that she had to help him, because she felt she was the only person who could see his true condition. And she had, bit by bit, as both friend and lover. It was ironic to her that her help had possibly contributed to what might be his eventual downfall. Mulligan finally had the strength and means to execute his final mission.

  Leona knew he would need her more than ever.

  “I’ll go with you,” she’d told him.

  “Not necessary. You stay here. I’ve got this.”

  “You don’t have shit, and you know it. You go out there by yourself, you’re not coming back.”

  Mulligan shook his head at the assertion. “Come on, Lee. I won’t be alone.”

  “Maybe not physically,” she said, “but how many people here know the real you? Who else has been able to help you like I have? Anyone?”

  Mulligan didn’t have much to say to that, so Leona knew she’d won that fight. And in record time, too. She would go, and see him through whatever it was he faced.

  But the fear and the sadness remained.

  3

  The vehicle bay was already active as Andrews walked across the flat deck. The hulking mass of SCEV 4 stood in the departure circle, its airlock doors open. Lights gleamed from inside the doors and through the cockpit windows. He was thirty minutes early, but from the telltale signs of preparation, he had been beaten to t
he punch by KC Winters, the rig’s new crew chief. He had no doubt the young mechanic had been at it for the better part of an hour, doing all the requisite pre-start checks that were a mile long and half as wide. She also knew she had big shoes to fill—Andrews’s former crew chief, Todd Spencer, had known the rig as well as Andrews knew his wife. To make up for this perceived shortfall, KC started early and worked late. She’d been invaluable during the rig’s repair and refit, and had acquitted herself well. While Spencer had been assertive and acted like an occasional clown, KC was steadfast and reliable. Andrews had no worries. He knew he was lucky to have her assigned to his rig.

  Just the same, he did a full walk around, opening compartments, checking the tires and suspension system, the intakes for the turboshaft engines, and all the fluid sight-fills. The rig’s drab paint was still fresh and mostly unmarred since it had only spent twenty-one hours in the field after being returned to duty. Most of that was shakeout time, where Andrews and the rest of the crew took the SCEV out for a few laps to ensure nothing was going to fall off. The rest of it was recertification time, where the crew set about rebuilding skills that had eroded during their idle time. Andrews was the one who had the most to worry about; while he’d been busy overseeing the SCEV’s reconstruction, the remaining members of his original crew had the opportunity to rotate in and out of duties on other rigs. Andrews hadn’t had that option, and his fear was that his proficiency had suffered. And the first few jaunts in the field had shown that to be true. Not only did he have to break in what was for all intents and purposes a new vehicle, he had to refamiliarize himself with operational control of a multimillion-dollar Self-Contained Exploration Vehicle. It wasn’t like hopping on a bike after a yearlong absence. SCEVs were complex pieces of machinery overseen by a layer of intricate technology. A guy sometimes forgot things that had once been second nature, and Andrews found himself occasionally reaching for a switch that he couldn’t immediately find, or getting lost while navigating through a menu on a multifunction display. Sometimes, his crew had helped him over the rough spots; other times, they’d chided him for his forgetfulness. Even though the ribbing wasn’t mean-spirited, it still made Andrews feel self-conscious and a little foolish.