The Floating Palace (1) (622 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.68 on 27 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2008-02-15 16:08:42 EST
There was blood on the North edgewall. Before it froze it had pooled so deep on the rubber-coated metal of the footpath that it made a slip-proof surface slippery. Streamers of it ran down the wall and coated the balustrade. There were now broad patches of aspirated blood-ice on the wall and slender twisted stalactites of blood hanging from the railing. Fine droplets adhered to the shredded remains of the safety netting.
Aeronaut Enderly looked at the chest-high wall and the torn safety netting above. For the first time since being posted to the Floating Palace, he was afraid.
In the last two months, four people had gone missing. Those in charge, both the military and civilian leaders of the joint Sky High Initiative, had put it down to sky sickness. Sometimes people who stayed up too long became depressed, and jumped. The civilian head doctors and analysts had an endless supply of complex terminology to explain why some people did what they did up here. The CAAF cut through all that. The Combined American Aerial Force brass told their men and women that people working this far above the Earth could sometimes suffer from the Pull. The Pull was a foe just as real as an enemy soldier. The Pull wanted to kill. You had to fight the Pull once it had you.
Enderly had never been grabbed by the Pull. Like all first-timers, he had raised his mask and spit over the side of an edgewall within hours of stepping off the shuttle. Like all male aeronauts and a few ballsy females, Enderly had pissed over the side of a balcony by the end of his first week. His dick got so cold so fast it felt like it was burning. He had heard a rumor that someone had taken a dump over the side, and he knew for a fact that more than one aeronaut who had knocked back too many beers in the mess the night before had been tempted to launch a streamer of puke over the side while on duty the next day. They didn't. Like every other liquid exposed to the atmosphere, falling puke froze this high up in the sky.
The balconies were a decorative touch, and if you were assigned to patrol the walkways along the edgewalls you carried your own oxygen and wore your warmgear and UV protection.
It was too high and too cold and the air was too thin to screw around. Besides, if Sergeant Wash caught you, you were in deep shit.
"I don't mind spitting and pissing," Sergeant Wash had told his aeronauts more than once. "You want to get frostbite on your joint, that's your business. The winds in the troposphere below us will break up a pissicle. If you gotta puke, puke in your mask if you have to, but do not puke over the side. If we were over China I wouldn't mind, but we are over the United States of America, and those big props are gonna keep us here, and the last thing I want to hear from Lieutenant Celisi is that some poor shmuck farmer in Iowa got impaled by a puke-ice javelin while he was letting the cows out to graze."
Wash wasn't kidding. It could happen. And it wouldn't take long for a DNA analysis of the puke to bring up an aeronaut's name since every soldier in every branch of the service was printed and coded.
The latest disappearance put to rest any speculation that the Floating Place had lost and another person to the pull. For starters the dead woman wasn't completely missing. Her head was gone, true, but the rest of her had been found by an aeronaut doing a routine security sweep and walking one small segment of the three miles of footpaths on the edges of the Floating Palace.
Another indication that the dead woman had not suffered the mind fuck of the Pull and somehow decapitated herself on purpose instead of getting with the program and jumping like all the other pullets before her was the fact that her head appeared to have been torn off.
"CMO says the head was chewed. Chewed and pulled off."
Enderly had heard this whispered in the mess hall. It was the latest rumor passing from aeronaut to aeronaut.
Enderly looked at the sky above and below him. For the first time the wild blue yonder didn't seem so friendly.
*
Sergeant Wash sat in a chair in the Lieutenant's office, struggling to stay cool. He was never a patient man and the last thing he wanted to be doing at a time like this was sitting with his back to the wall and watching Celisi quietly turn pages in the thin file laid out on her desk.
The chair was a single chrome tube bent into a double S, with strips of canvas for his butt and back. It gave a little creak whenever he sat in it.
The first time he'd ever been called in to Celisi's office he had mumbled nice chairs. He knew they were new. His boys and girls did all of the grunt work in the Floating Palace, including the loading and unloading of shuttles to and from below.
"We all have room in our lives for a little art, Sergeant," Celisi had replied.
Wash had responded with a snappy nod. He had already decided he hated the chairs.
He still hated them.
There were six chairs set in a row along one wall of Celisi's office. The chairs were five paces from the desk. Wash figured Celisi had a problem with people coming too close. He also figured that with a few good bounces, he could break the chair.
He wanted to break the fucking chair.
He couldn't break the chair.
The General who had recommended him for this posting had told him, "This is a dream post, Wash, a career maker... or breaker. It's too high-profile to fuck up. Make me proud."
The Sergeant had to bite back a crack about a posting in the sky being high-profile indeed.
Wash had a big mouth, and it always got him in trouble. When the shit hit the fan, the men at the top wanted a guy like Wash beside them. When the medals were handed out afterward, the men at the top wanted to be as far way from a guy like Wash as possible.
Wash wasn't intentionally belligerent. He just thought finesse and political correctness were a waste of his time.
When the general had been a lieutenant and Wash had been a private chauffeuring the brass across Iraq from one location to another, their armored personnel carrier had become stuck in a hole in the road, a crater made by an IED that took out the APC ahead of them. Insurgents with weapons, including three rocket-propelled grenades, had burst out of the ruins of a nearby house and started running toward the disabled vehicle. In that war now twenty years past, Wash had pulled the lieutenant's fat out of the fire.
The APC had slammed to a halt and canted forward and to one side. While the lieutenant was screaming about IEDs Wash had raised the top hatch and gone to work with the fifty caliber machine gun mounted on the vehicle, flashing back on the time when he was six years old and about to get his ass kicked by some older kids at the edge of the school playground.
Wash was never one for prolonged internal debate. As a kid he had opened up on the bigger kids with wildly thrown stones. As a private in Iraq he had opened up on the insurgents with the 50 caliber, saving the life of the man who would in turn pull Wash's fat out of the fire every time the outspoken Sergeant put his foot in his mouth.
Now, as then, Wash wanted to act, not sit and wait. To hell with what the civvies said, something was attacking people out there and he wanted to strike back, or at least go on high alert.
Sixty more seconds, Wash thought, rocking in the chair and hearing it creak, knowing exactly where the smooth chrome tubes would weaken. One more minute of this shit and I break this fucking—
"Sergeant?"
Wash looked up. Celisi was closing the file, lacing her fingers together, resting her hands on her desk.
"My apologies. I was just catching up on the latest round of memos regarding the proper nomenclature of this... facility."
Wash forced out a chuckle.
Jesus, that argument again.
There were endless debates on the ground and in the air concerning the name of the facility Wash served. Some preferred Air Base 1. Some hated the militaristic implications of the name. Some, including the civilian scientists on board, preferred Air Station 1. Wash was US Army, and as much as he hated siding with the Air Force and Navy boys in this joint venture, he had to agree with their preference. Airship 1.
He'd gotten into it with Celisi a number of times.
"It is a science platform where people live and work and eat and sleep," she had said. "It is a station in the sky... a floating base of operations. We don't flit around."
"Hogwash," Wash had replied. "It is a mobile platform bigger than an aircraft carrier but a ship is still a ship. We can go anywhere. That's what the big props fore and aft are for. We are in a geosynchronous holding pattern over Kansas, but that could change at any time."
His jaw was tight. His jaw was always tight when he was around Celisi. Hell, it was tight when he thought about her. Sometimes the muscles in his jaw ached from tensing and relaxing. Another few months of this and he'd have jaws like a pit bull. Be able to crack open walnuts with my teeth, he thought.
Celisi looked sort of like that actress from the middle of the last century. The cool blonde, Grace Kelly. Of course, Celisi wore no makeup and had her hair in a bun so tight she probably squeaked when she wound it each morning, but put her in a silky gown and slap on some makeup and she's be a dead ringer for Princess Grace. Wash only knew this because he had loved the old-time black and white western High Noon when he was a kid. The movie was an antique, but the way Gary Cooper stood up to those bad guys all by himself... there were worse role models in life. Not that Wash would ever admit to that.
"Sergeant?" Celisi's voice was a bit warmer this time. Concerned.
Wash blinked. "Lieutenant?"
"I thought I lost you for a moment."
"Just thinking, Lieutenant."
"Let me do the thinking," she said.
She gave him a smile, and Wash was pretty sure she had intended it as a joke, but she hadn't been the first officer to look at the tic-tac-toe grid of scars on the left side of his face and the calluses on his hands and assume that a college education trumped a shitload of common sense.
If she had been with the civilian science team working here he would have hit on her long ago. Her first name was Charlotte. Charlotte Celisi. Her nickname was probably CC. Or Cece. How could a girl nicknamed Cece not look good naked? She was a few years younger than he was, and very pretty despite the stern mask she often wore.
As it was he couldn't stand being in the same room with her.
Life had a way of dicking with you like that, he thought.
"Now," Celisi said. She raised her folded hands, resting her elbows on the edge of her desk.
This is her concerned look, Wash thought.
"I'm very concerned about the disappearance of personnel from this facility," Celisi said. "Don't think for a moment that I take such a matter lightly. Yet your suggestion that we lock down a facility with such a large civilian population leaves me uneasy. The operation of this facility is very much in the public eye, and since the war all of the armed forces have had no choice but to present their best, most productive, most reassuring face to the public, and I am uneasy with the fallout that could result if we were to restrict American citizens from—"
"How uneasy do think Jennifer Jelinski was?" Wash asked quietly. "In those last few moments?"
"Who's..." Celisi drew a blank for a moment.
Christ, lady, Wash thought. You're in charge, you've got me and my boys and girls doing the scut work, the least you can do is keep up on personnel.
"Oh," Celisi said. "Ms. Jelinski is the one who... the most recent decedent."
Wash shook his head. "Jennifer Jelinski was the twenty-three year old civilian hydroponics engineer who grew up in Ames, Iowa and grew the best god-damned hothouse tomatoes I've ever tasted. The two things she was most worried about downway were her cat, named Ed, go figure, and the 1969 Camaro she restored with her dad and left in the care of her younger brother Jeffrey. It was the high point of her life, no pun intended, when she got posted upway. Jennifer Jelinski had her head chewed off by... something out there. In the sky. And if you aren't going to do something to ensure the safety of the soldiers and the civilians on this airship—"
"Air station," Celisi said, her voice faltering when she realized how she sounded.
"—this fucking skyboat, then you are going to have to deal with the consequences." Wash stood up. "And believe me, lieutenant; something is in the wind, so to speak. Whatever is happening isn't over yet, and that means there will be serious consequences for the CO, and that's you. I'm in charge of security on this platform and I say lock this ship down."
"You are in charge of implementing security policies," Celisi said, an icy edge to her voice, "But you are not the one who makes policy. That is the responsibility of the Sky High Initiative—"
Oh Christ, Wash thought, not that fucking acronym again!
"—Task Force, and when we agree on policy, you carry it out, to the letter—"
Stay angry, Wash thought, even as an immature part of him wanted to burst out laughing as he imagined an action figure in a plastic display box, a box holding a little Celisi dressed in her tight blue skirt and blouse with a phone in one hand and a pen in the other, and above her was a stylized logo printed in metallic foil that said SHITFORCE!
"—as ordered! Do I make myself understood, Sergeant Wash?"
Celisi's face was as white as the porcelain cups and saucers in the Officer's mess. Wash knew he'd pushed as far as he could for now. He flashed a salute and buttoned his lip. He put on his sunglasses and stepped out of the office.
*
Wash liked to walk the edgewall footpaths when he was stressed out. A lot of the civilians and aeronauts did the same. Clearing their heads. Enjoying the view. Getting outside. He had taken part in many idle conversations over headgear radios with soldiers and engineers and medical techs and civilian hydroponics engineers. Wash wanted to get to know everyone on the platform because he felt responsible for all of them.
He stood under blue sky, more sky than you could ever see downway. He was wondering if analysis of the imagery from the clusterfuck of cameras installed everywhere on the platform had shown anything that could account for the deaths of personnel under his wing and was considering finding a place to grab a smoke when he heard the sharp zizzleZAT of a pulse rifle. The sound was muffled by the plastic dome that protected him from the thin air and bitter cold and ultraviolet radiation.
The pulse rifle was fired again, somewhere to the west, to port. He ran to a dome hatch and opened a storage locker, grabbing an emergency breather and a Mylar/fleece hooded pullover. He punched a perimeter alarm and then stepped into the simple airlock. A moment later he was running along the west edgewall.
An aeronaut was on his knees on an edgewall path, holding a pulse rifle, his entire body shaking. There was a tear in the shoulder of his warmgear and frost was creping across his faceplate. There was also a large tear in the safety netting overhead.
Wash opened his mouth to hail the soldier and saw the barrel of the rifle swing his way. He heard the deep thrum indicating that another pulse was building up, and leaped aside. The air where he had been standing wavered like heat shimmer over hot asphalt.
The electromagnetic pulse hit the dome and dissipated. The rifles were tuned so they could not harm the electronically enhanced bubble over the platform.
Wash grabbed the barrel and powered down the rifle before the aeronaut could fire again.
"Grabbed me," the young man said. "Grabbed me GRABBED ME it grabbed me!"
Wash peered through the frost on the faceplate. "Hennes, is that you? We gotta get you inside, son. You're not too handsome to begin with and frostbite isn't going to help your looks any."
He helped Hennes stand. The young man grabbed his arm.
"I shot it, Sarge. I couldn't see it but I felt it, I felt its wake, and I felt it bite me. I FELT IT BITE ME!"
Wash helped the aeronaut to the airlock. He glanced at the young man's shoulder. Under the torn fabric of the warmgear Wash could see blood.
"But I got it," Hennes hissed in a conspiratorial whisper. "I nailed it, Sarge. I FUCKIN NAILED THAT THING AND HEARD IT GRUNT! UNHHH! JUST LIKE THAT!"
Armed aeronauts and a medical team were already coming through the airlock as Hennes began to laugh in high whoops that sounded like screams.
When Hennes was back inside the dome and Wash was being covered by two aeronauts with pulse rifles primed and held high, the Sergeant went back to where Hennes had been cowering. He'd just take a quick look. He wasn't dressed properly for screwing around outside the dome.
Something must have been wrong with the kid's air supply, Wash thought. The kid was hallucinating. Thought he saw something. Shot the hole in the safety netting.
Wash took another step and almost fell, his boot coming down on something rubbery and slick. He looked down. Nothing there. He got down on one knee, and brushed at the rubberized walkway with the pads of his gloved fingers like a man in an old movie trying to find a contact lens.
He felt... something. Something that wasn't there. He picked it up. It weighed about two pounds. It was slick, like trying to hold a glob of the colored gelatin they sometimes served for dessert in the mess. And it was pliable, nowhere near frozen. He turned his hand this way and that, and at one point he thought he saw a vague lumpy outline.
Wash returned to the airlock and put a call through to the Chief Medical Officer.
While he waited for the CMO to arrive Wash hefted the invisible thing in his hand. He could not see it. He held it under his nose. He could not smell it. Nor could he —and this would have undoubtedly made the Chief Medical Officer shit had the CMO witnessed it— taste it with the tip of his tongue.
It was simply a fleshy dead weight in his hand.
User Reviews
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2008-02-22 08:48:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Good stuff. I hope I remember to read future installments.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2008-02-19 01:12:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
NICHOLAS SEAFORT SAYS HI
Submitted by BlazinBull (user info) at 2008-02-18 15:53:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This could be cool.
Submitted by loopdeloo (user info) at 2008-02-18 09:55:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by supadupapupa (user info) at 2008-02-18 00:43:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
hurry, hurry, with the next installment!
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2008-02-16 12:55:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by HellRazer (user info) at 2008-02-16 09:40:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Most excellent. Reminds me of Heinlen.
Submitted by mordor666 (user info) at 2008-02-16 00:42:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
fuck yeah.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-02-15 21:21:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2008-02-15 19:18:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
YOu are a faggot...i didn't read this shit.
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2008-02-15 19:17:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2008-02-15 18:35:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Good stuff here. Keep it going. There's a predictable line I really hope you don't follow.
Submitted by hairycoo (user info) at 2008-02-15 17:27:51 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
oh dear, I feel guilty that I couldnt be arsed reading this
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-02-15 17:17:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Want a fun read, GC?
Find the 1918 tale 'The Horror of the Heights' by Arthur Conan Doyle. It's a short story and it is the REAL inspiration for this story.
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2008-02-15 17:15:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
of course, but it's been a lot longer since i read that, than watched "sky captain"
and the blonde of course.
Current reading list:
"Ysabel" Guy Gavriel Kay (you'd love "Tigana" by him, I think)
"Spook Country" William Gibson
"A Feast For Crows" George R.R. Martin (just finished it)
I'll have to pull Wells back off the shelf.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-02-15 17:05:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:47:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
someone went and watched Paltrow and Jolie in "Sky Captain" didn't they?
--
I should think it is quite obvious I am ripping off The Shape of Things to Come, by H.G. Wells, which inspired Things to come, which inspired Sky Captain.
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:47:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
someone went and watched Paltrow and Jolie in "Sky Captain" didn't they?
Submitted by Yozz (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:41:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm not reading all that right now. You can have a +2 if you promise to remind me to come back and read this later.
Submitted by FALLEN (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:40:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
oops, sorry just one "L" in helicarrier.
http://home.gate.net/~furyofshield/shield/weapons/helicarrier.html
Submitted by Rhymenocerous (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:39:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:34:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wicked.
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:34:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wicked.
Submitted by FALLEN (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:31:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Hellicarrier?
Submitted by forensicgirl3 (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:26:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Jesus Jack, I leave work in 6 minutes. I can't read this and properly reflect on it in that amount of time.
I'd do it after work but that would defeat the purpose of using Uber to fuck off on the job.
In the future, please remember that not all of us are on Pacific time.
Inconsiderate bastard.
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:24:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:13:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Have a good weekend, brother!
Submitted by SkullBiter (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:11:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I wonder if anyone sells Polish furniture polish?
Cool story hanzel.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:10:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Hope everyone has a good weekend. Couple more hours and I'm gone.