Weekly Drabble #397: Today

This prompt comes from EBB with 'not today', bringing us back to the Beyond the Wall setting. Enjoy!

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Today:

“We see you, Starseeker.” Fortuneseeker Actual’s voice was cracked with relief, shock and overwhelming excitement. “We see you.”

It was those words, the confirmation of their return, that broke the tension within Starseeker’s cockpit. Caleb unbuckled from his seat, rising to his feet and pumped his fists in the air. Kat leapt at him, screaming with giddiness, kissing him in a sloppy frenzy and leaving dark red lipstick all over his mouth and cheeks. Max was pounding on his back in congratulations like a bartender trying to help a choking customer. Samnang’s cheers on the intercom were even louder than the shouts and cries from the three cockpit crew.

The shields had held. The repulsor grids had worked exactly to spec. The thrusters had worked inside the Wall. The hull hadn’t buckled. Their reactor had stayed in the green. Nothing had gone wrong. It was as flawless a first flight as you could hope for. Years of design, months of brutal testing and modifications had all paid off.

“We’re back,” Caleb breathed in between Kat’s kisses and Max’s hearty, thumping accolades. “We’re back.”

They’d done it. They’d actually done it. It was only ten seconds and a hundred meters under the Wall – okay, yes a few kilometers if you counted the corona, but that included only EM fields, radiation and gravitational gradients, not true, honest-to-God hypermatter – but that was something no one else had ever done. Sure, by accident or intent, a few lucky bastards had passed through the corona, but to actually go into the Wall and come back out? No one. Never. Never, ever in a thousand years.

Not until today. Not until Starseeker. This was it. This was the first step, the first chance for humanity had had in ten centuries to see the stars again. After today, everything was going to be different.

And then... then it all went sideways.

Franklin was closest to the Wall, the science ship running scans and analyses of the conditions. They’d been confirming everything Starseeker had done, providing unbiased proof of their accomplishments or, as many had expected, documentation of their their grisly ends. Right now, Franklin’s sensors were looking at localized fluctuations and micro scale changes in the Wall caused by Starseeker’s entry and exit. In order to get clearer readings, they’d approached a bit closer than normal. They were well outside the upper ‘atmosphere’ of the Wall, at what was still considered a safe distance.

Safe until the Wall decided to remind the tiny little gnats around it that nothing came without a cost, and the price it demanded for the victory today was Franklin and every soul aboard her.

There was precious little time to react as warning klaxons aboard Starseeker shrieked like damned souls. Caleb was first to react, pushing Kat away and dropping back into the pilot’s chair and pulling up sensors. His eyes widened. Oh God.

Kat, already back in her station, raised her head towards Caleb, colour draining from her face. “Storm surge,” she whispered, the terror in her soft words cutting the atmosphere on the cutter’s deck deeper than any scream. Everyone aboard Starseeker knew what those words meant.

On the viewer, they watched it happen. A massive section of the Wall receded like how an ocean tide would pull back before the arrival of a tsunami, only instead of the length of a beach, it was across planetary diameters. The collapse looked so, so, so slow but in reality it was anything but, collapsing faster than any starship could move. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of kilometers fell away, widening the distance between the Wall and Franklin but there was no sense of safety here.

Franklin knew as well as Starseeker what would come next. It came about like it was stuck in molasses, though aboard the science ship alarms were wailing and inertial dampeners were being pushed to their limits by the speed of its turn. There was a pause, an instant where it looked like it might be able to get away... and then the surge came.

No longer receding, a section of the Wall larger than Sol swelled with churning hypermatter. Franklin was more than two million kilometers from the nearest borders of the barrier, but it made no difference. It was tiny, an insignificant speck clawing for distance from the doom that had just coalesced before it with only enough warning for the science ship’s crew to realize that they were about to die.

Like a dying star bulging out to swallow the planets it had once nurtured, the storm surge burst outwards, gravitic surges buffeting Starseeker, Canopy of Night, the SIF frigate and the SAR cutter, radiation counts spiking and electromagnetic activity overloading their sensors. A tiny, insignificant sliver of a starship raced to escape the roiling tide. It took forever, but yet no time at all for the surge to wash over Franklin, severing its distress cry instantly.

No escape pods had been launched. They’d have had even less chance of surviving than the ship itself. Then, like it had been sated by the tiny morsel it had consumed, the surge began to collapse back towards the Wall.

“Kat,” Caleb said, his mouth dry. “Kat.”

Her head snapped towards him. “Yes?”

“Do we have eyes on Franklin?” The other vessels would be blind save what visual sensors could see, but Starseeker’s sensors were designed to penetrate the Wall and peer through its veils of radiation cascades, energy waves, EM bursts and the reality distortions of hypermatter.

“I...” she checked her instruments. “Yes. Readings are fuzzy through the surge, but we have eyes.”

“Is it still intact?” There was every chance it wouldn’t be, that it would have been torn asunder when the surge took it, but there was a chance, a slim chance that-

“Yes,” Kat confirmed. “She’s intact. I can’t get a good scan, but the main hull looks like it’s still in one piece.”

“Then there’s a good chance the crew are still alive,” Caleb said. He pressed his lips together. “Everyone, strap in.” He didn’t wait for them to confirm before he spun Starseeker around.

“What are you doing?” Max demanded.

“There are a hundred and thirty-seven people aboard Franklin,” he replied. “I’m not going to let them die.”

“They’re already dead.” That was a thousand years of doctrine talking.

“Not if the ship’s still together.” Some of the wrecks that the Wall vomited back out were still intact, their crews dead from starvation, thirst, lack of air... or in some cases, from their own hands as the reality of their situation drove them mad and caused them to turn upon each other. “This is our only chance. If that surge collapses back into the Wall, the eddies will either rip Franklin apart or drag it in so deep we’ll lose contact.” He paused, looking at both of his crewmates on the bridge. “This is what we built Starseeker for. We can do this. Even if we don’t make it, everyone in Sol is watching. They know it’s possible to go into the Wall now. They just have to see that someone is willing to take a chance, and if we won’t do it to save someone else-” he pointed to the collapsing bolus of hypermatter, “-then what are we doing this for?” He wet his lips. “Nobody else can do this. It’s us here and now, or we write off more than a hundred lives and we throw away everything we just accomplished.”

“Oh, Hell,” Max muttered, swinging back to his co-pilot’s station. “Let’s do it.”

“Samnang?” Caleb asked.

“You are the pilot and mission lead,” the engineer pointed out. “You fly the ship, I’ll keep her running.”

The last person Caleb looked to was Kat. Now more than ever he wished she wasn’t here... and he was so grateful that she was. She looked back at him, afraid but ready. She gave him a nod. Caleb gave one to her in turn, then took hold of Starseeker’s helm controls and sent her flying towards the wrath of a jealous god. There might be a price for everything, but today it wouldn’t be counted in innocent lives. Today, the Wall wouldn’t get to keep what it took.

Today, humanity would take something back.