Sage

CHAPTER 1 - WELCOME HOME

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

My inner monologue is interrupted by a modulated voice that echoes through the spaceship’s cargo hold to where I stare through a magnetic seal to the planet below. “Approaching departure zone. Ready to jump in t-minus twenty minutes. Satellite data incomplete. Weather uncertain below mesosphere. Best estimate of surface wind speed is zero to thirty kilometers per hour.”

We’re hitching a ride on an old Euro-Alliance exo-atmospheric drop rig, so the Universal Communications program uses the metric system. I fumble with the conversion. Somewhere between nothing and eighteen miles per hour? Not exact science, but it’s the best even the most advanced satellite technology can provide.

“Alright boys and girls. Gear your sorry asses up!” Harmon Barnes, Commander of Recon Exo-Jump Team Delta, bellows so hard spittle flies from his mouth.

Sergeant “Anvil” Barnes has led his specialized jump team, code named Falcons, for more than two decades and fits his nickname like he was born to be battered by a hammer. He’s a short, barrel-chested man whose solid, square body retains its width from shoulders to feet. Behind his stony, flat face lives an iron will as hard and unyielding as his corded musculature.

Anvil’s small company roars in return. Part grunt, part shout, it’s not quite the Marine “oohrah!” or the Air/Space Force “hooyah!”, but a mashup of them all. Fitting given that exo-atmospheric jump teams pull from traditional military branches but operate outside of normal command channels.

The soldiers stand with calm balance despite the turbulence shaking the hold. Military jump uniforms include magnetic boot soles for outer-atmospheric operations. As a civilian asset, I’m not equipped with next-gen gear, so I remain seated, pinching and pulling at my skintight jumpsuit.

“Ready to jump in t-minus fifteen minutes. Satellite data incomplete. Weather uncertain below mesosphere. Countdown beginning...”

“Check gear!” Anvil begins an individual inspection of his team.

He walks down the line of five soldiers, slapping the top of their helmet and blaring out their nickname when he’s satisfied. An exospheric jump is never safe, but the equipment won’t be to blame for any failure under the Master Sergeant’s watch.

“Jazz!” Corporal Miles Donovan is Anvil’s right hand. His baritone voice belies his thin build and is as smooth as his midnight skin. He’s named after an iconic musician from antiquity, and he’s as fearless in a pinch as Miles Davis was with a trumpet on his lips. There are few people I’d rather have at my back than Jazz Donovan.

“Voodoo!” Corporal Jack-Saint Herbert, pronounced hey bear, traces his family lineage to the long-gone bayou of old Louisiana. And has the Cajun drawl to prove it. Humanity has come far enough to explore and colonize part of our moon and solar system, but this guy still wears a gris-gris around his neck like it provides an extra layer of safety.

“Ghost!” Lance Corporal Ahmya Aoki cut her teeth as an undercover cyber terrorism agent with top level assassination clearance. She may be the deadliest person I’ve ever met. I’ve seen her take down a target I could barely see with a single spring rifle shot, but she confided once that she likes the up-close-and-personal feel of a knife kill better than anything at a distance. She’s a silent, secretive type; pale as ice and cold as snowfall.

“Preacher!” Lance Corporal Matthew Greene is an ordained minister of the United Protestant Church. His jumpsuit, like the man inside, is throwback to the ancient Crusades with a cross painted on the chest as pale as his face and cornsilk hair.

“Angel!” Private First-Class MaryBeth Meriweather is a monstrosity of a woman. All ripped muscle, scarred face, and shaved head, she’s at least two hands taller than my own six feet. Her nickname is obvious from the way Anvil’s hand lingers too long on side of her helmet, as is the unspoken tension that tells me they will find each other’s bed after the jump.

Barnes approaches me with a scowl as familiar to me as a handshake. He checks the oxygen levels held in the fibers of my suit. We’re jumping from the edge of the planet’s atmosphere and won’t be able to breathe without assistance for about twenty minutes.

I spread my arms. Jumping from this altitude, through questionable weather, means I’ll need the bat-like wings to adjust course. Anvil turns me around to check my exo-chute. The lightweight parachute is made of a thin, nearly weightless material designed to slow my fall even if I have to wait until I’m dangerously close to the ground.

I turn myself back to stare face to face with Barnes. It’s the first time we’ve been this close in half a decade. He’s taken out his robotic left eye and placed a patch over the hole. He’ll have to get the patch hand-stapled in place after we land, which tells you all you need to know about what a tough son-of-a-bitch Anvil is.

He looks me up and down before giving me the slightest of nods. “At least you remember how to prep a jumpsuit. Good to have you back.”

“Happy to be here, sir.”

“How long’s it been?”

It takes me a minute to gather myself in the face of that question. “Five years, sir.”

“I was debriefed regarding the circumstances of your wife contracting the Green Plague.” His voice catches. It’s just a brief scratch, but a reminder that even someone as hard as Anvil Barnes fears the place were going. “If this is your way to join her, say it now. I won’t waste time or energy protecting you.”

“You know me better than that, sir.”

“I did. Five years ago. You’ll need to prove you’re the same man.”

“Looking forward to doing just that, sir”

“Ready to jump in thirty seconds. Satellite data incomplete. Weather uncertain under mesosphere. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. Twenty-seven…”

Anvil slaps my headgear. It’s his way of accepting my assurance that this isn’t a suicide attempt.

“Harrison!” He shouts my last name, turns about-face, and stalks to the front of the jump ship’s hold.

One by one, the Falcons leap through a blurred opening that looks out over a planet informally called Sage for its grey-green color. You can always tell a magnetic seal because it’s like looking out a window when it’s raining.

I’m the last in line besides the Sergeant. I nod to him and slide my exo-mask down until it locks into place with an audible click and the suit’s oxygen kicks in. The helmet muffles sound, so I’m forced to yell. “See you planet-side, sir. If we make it, first round’s on me.”

Static electricity tingles my hair as I pass through the magnetic seal. Then I’m plummeting toward the planet’s surface. Below and around me, I see the phosphorescent glows of the jump team’s suits. Preacher’s cross lights up the thermosphere’s darkness almost as much as the lightning that arcs around us.

The suits are designed to absorb and transfer out three lightning strikes, but that’s pushing it. When the hair raises along my arms from the first bolt, I squeeze my arms to my side and close my legs to gain speed.

The thermosphere is by far the largest part of a planet’s atmosphere. It’s also the hottest thanks to the way it absorbs solar radiation. Exo-suits are engineered to protect you from temperatures up to fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Make a jump at the wrong time or stay in the upper levels too long, and you’ll cook in heat more than double that.

The mesosphere’s chill pinches me as I plummet out of the thermosphere. This is the coldest part of any planet’s atmosphere, and it’s the worst part of any jump because it gets colder as you fall. Without my exo-suit, I’d freeze in temperatures that drop below minus two hundred degrees. Thankfully, the mesosphere is small.

A cloudless, clear warmth welcomes me into the stratosphere. Looking down, I can finally make out some of the planet I’m headed toward, its surface over-grown by a voracious, plant-like organism.

No, I remind myself. Organisms. Hundreds, maybe thousands of species of planet-choking weeds.

A blast of wind whips me sideways, and I chastise myself for forgetting the danger lurking behind the stratosphere’s beauty. Wind speeds up here reach three hundred miles per hour. I’m momentarily helpless in the gale’s grip and find myself off course. I spread my arms and engage the wings, angling toward the drop path.

Jazz zips by me, flying headfirst to gain as much velocity as he can. His arms are forward like Superman, but I don’t remember the Man of Steel ever flipping anyone off in the copies we have of those ancient comic books. Voodoo’s right behind Jazz, the remaining Falcons following suit. They’ve made this jump enough times to know the longer you’re in the air, the more likely death becomes.

I smile and lean into the fall. After wallowing in depression and therapy for the better part of half a decade, what better way to spit in Fate’s face than diving headlong into the most dangerous place known to humankind.

I follow the jump team into the troposphere and find I was wrong about the Euro-Alliance’s technology. It’s a calm, sunny day in the lowest part of the planet’s atmosphere. From here, it’s pretty safe unless you forget yourself amid the beauty of the jump. Falling always feels like flying until you hit the ground.

I’m rusty from my hiatus and pull my exo-chute’s rip chords off-kilter. The releases yank unevenly, jerking my left shoulder out of its socket. I gasp and hope nothing’s torn. The sharp pain dulls to an ache as we float into the massive, planet-smothering foliage that is the final part of our descent. We’re close enough to the planet’s surface to breathe normally, so I unlock by exo-mask and enjoy the blast of fresh air.

Vines reach up thousands of feet into the sky with tentacle-like outgrowths thicker than my waist. They’re small compared to the larger ones at the surface, near the taproots. Underneath the massive tangle, smaller vines in varied, mutated forms grow. Some look beautiful with colorful flowers and tempting fruit. Some appear almost predatory with sharp thorns or, but almost all are deadly if disturbed. It’s like this over the entire planetary surface, where green covers nearly all forms of land and water.

Gaps between larger outgrowths are wide enough for us to maneuver through, but it’s all by sight and sound. We descend under the final canopy, and I’m struck by the pristine beauty of what was once an industrial powerhouse of a planet. Save ruins and other remnants, that’s gone now, the old civilization overrun by unstoppable overgrowth.

I smell woodsmoke before I see our destination in the distance - a two-story high wall of thick tree boughs, concrete, and rebar. Inside the protective ring, the frontier village of Port Royal hides from the hostile world surrounding it. The small city is land-locked but naming it after a famous pirate haven from history was so fitting it stuck. It’s a rough place. But despite its hard edges, Port Royal operates under a strict code of honor amongst thieves, and there are severe penalties for anyone who upsets its delicate balance.

As I glide over the wall and down to the short landing strip, I’m reminded of the power and perseverance of human will. There’s zero technology inside the planet’s atmosphere thanks to an unknown type of electro-magnetic radiation continually emitted from the alien plant forms. Port Royal was built by hand and hammer, with zero robotic or mechanical, all the while fighting against nature, mutations, and worse – the Green Plague.

I land harder than expected and nearly tumble onto my face, catching my balance and saving my dignity at the last moment. The others are ahead of me and already cramming their exo-chutes back in their jumpsuits. Angel notices me favoring my arm and walks up. Without so much as a nod, she grasps my shoulder with hands that dwarf my own and pops the joint back into the socket.

I grunt at the sudden stab of pain. “Damn it! Maybe a warning next time?”

“Stop being a little bitch, Lucky.” Angel flips me off and grins. It’s a disconcertingly sweet smile given her rough, tattooed visage. “Glad to see the nickname still fits. Welcome back to Earth. Welcome home.”