The Descent

The Descent (The Original SciFi Challenge Story)

"Looks that way. Here are the new coordinates." The map zoomed out and back in. Denton felt the color of his face drain.

"The Olympic Stadium."

"That's right. I'm just not sure what the connection is. Why would anyone want to land in the desert anyway?"

A preview of the upcoming event suddenly caught Denton's attention. It showed the Descent pods leaving their stations in space, rushing towards Proxima b and their desert destination. The desert. It was the Descent pod destination.

Tanner, who had continued to talk suddenly realized Denton was not paying attention. "Hey, you still with me?"

Denton nodded. "Yes, hang on a sec." He pulled up the map of the Descent track and compared it to the desert coordinates. They were the same.

"I've got it," he said as he turned his attention back to Tanner. "The desert destination, it's the landing zone for the Descent pods."

"The Descent pods? Really? I didn't know they were out in the desert. "

"For safety reasons. If anything happens, a high-speed impact would cause massive damage."

"Wait a second," Tanner said, his mouth agape.

"Right, it's now aimed right for the crowds. It'll be a disaster. I need to get over there right away."

Denton stood up, grabbed his uniform jacket, portable communicator and then left his office behind. He headed straight for the transportation hub.

"Tanner, listen to me. I need to know which pod the patch is for. We've got to stop it."

"Alright, alright, hang on." Tanner scanned through the documents as Denton ran to the closest transport shuttle. "Ok, ok, I've got something here. Vanquisher? Does that ring a bell."

Vanquisher. Denton felt a chill run down his spine as he dove into an open shuttle and overrode the controls with his credentials. The Vanquisher was the premier pod of the planet, the pod most likely to win the descent from space. Whoever had created the malicious patch was planning on killing the people in the stands with it.

"Tanner, where did this patch come from?"

Tanner looked at Denton, a confused look on his face. "They didn't tell you? It was a diplomatic intercept."

"A diplomatic intercept? Since when does the Orbital Security Service look at diplomatic traffic?"

"With the Olympics, we look at everything. It helps that officially, you know, we don't exist."

"Right. Tanner, connect me with the tech lead of the Vanquisher."

The shuttle moved towards the descent hub silently. As Denton waited for the call to go through, he had a priceless view of the planet. Traveling along the spine of the habitable zone of Proxima b. It always gave him a chill to see the contrast between the southern desert zone, always facing Proxima itself, and the northern hemisphere, frozen and isolated from the life-giving rays of the sun. As the shuttle traveled further up the orbital ring, mountain ranges, rivers and other geographical features that he was all too familiar with came into view. Interspersed throughout the landscape were the cities big and small. He smiled. It was beautiful. It was his home.

"Tanner, how are you coming along? Can you patch me through?"

"There's something wrong with the comms channel over to the descent hub. I'm getting nothing."

Denton looked out the window of the shuttle. The descent hub was in the distance, getting closer by the minute. Everything seemed to be in order.

"Tanner, you said the patch was a diplomatic intercept?"