What? No! I didn't stuff the timeline, you stuffed the timeline! No I haven't gone back and made tiny changes so Harry didn't wind up on Pandora before Jake ever left Earth. You crazy!
Also: SQUEEEEE! 1000 comments! First ever in my whole life!
I wrote most of this chapter shortly after posting the last one and then got stuck for ages. The solution? Keep writing from the perspective of someone you will never see again.
Pandora
"Knock knock."
The door above his head opened with a loud hiss, his bed sliding out before he could really process the muffled words. Harry blinked aching eyes at a very fuzzy blob that seemed backlit by pure pain.
"Hub, lights'ff." He muttered, blinking again. His eyes felt dry, prompting more blinking, but blinking hurt. His body, moving gently through the air, bounced back as it reached the limit of the straps still holding him down. He remembered where he was just as his stomach objected to being there.
"I'm gonna be sick." He gasped, the thin cloth tying him down suddenly an unbearable restraint. His inner ear was telling him to get upright, right bloody now. His sense of imminent public humiliation was demanding a bathroom. Neither was possible.
Michael made quick work of his straps, but sitting up didn't feel like he'd done it, not inside his body or by what his eyes could see - people were being woken up on every wall above and below his own pod, twisting in mid-air like they all had their own personal sense of which was was up. He felt like he was inside a washing machine, the world and his stomach spinning around as his body stayed still.
He swallowed tightly, desperately focusing on the rest of his misery to keep his nausea at bay. His bones felt literally frozen, heavy and radiating cold. Every bit of skin felt brittle and stung like a thousand needles had been poking him as he slept. His inner flesh was the only thing that felt half-warm and he knew it was because part of the thaw procedure involved machines warming and cycling his blood. Even now, a drop of blood floated up past his eyes from where Mike was carefully sliding needles out of his body.
Right. Vomiting it was then.
"I gotchya," Mike smooth the medical patch down and abandoned the needle - no need to worry about it falling or floating away in zero-grav - and held a small bag up by his mouth. Harry caught a glimpse of something like a long sock with a fuzzy micro-tentacular interior before it was pressed against his skin and he was introducing the contents of his stomach to it. A hand awkwardly thumped his back.
"Yeah, the wake-up call ain't so great. Go on and get it outta your system. You'll feel better once you're done."
The sound of it was horrible but the bag at least did a good job of preventing any smell - and most of the splash-back. That'd be what the little tentacles were for presumably. Whenever he pulled away to gasp for breath Mike was quick to tuck the bag closed and pull open a fresh section like the old paper fortune tellers kids used to make in primary school.
"That's it. Almost done." Mike encouraged quietly after the last heave was completely dry. "And you ain't alone - I can see four other guys going for it from here. In fact… I'm pretty sure one of 'em's crying."
Harry sputtered a laugh. His mouth tasted foul but his stomach was already feeling miles better. He spat as best he could and pulled back. Mike tucked the bag into itself then stashed it into a small storage unit built into the wall. A second later and he was holding out a wipe and small bag of water. Harry took them both, drained the water in seconds and watched the bag twirl weightlessly away as he scrubbed at his face with the cloth.
"Cheers." He said, tucking the wipe away.
Mike shrugged and reached - movements slow and careful - to pinch the water bag out of the air and bin it.
"Eh, knew it was coming. You get used to it. Just wake up, puke, roll over and start on a crossword."
Harry chuckled a little, even more so when Mike tugged a half-completed one out of his tac-vest with a raised eyebrow.
"Alright, you feelin' good?" Mike checked, hand briefly checking his pulse at the ankle then wrist. "I'll get a medic to sign off and then we're gonna wanna get moving before the rush, get the good seats."
"Oh yes? In the shuttle with no windows?"
"Shut up, smart ass."
Harry smothered a grin and looked around. As a medic floated over and ran him through a practiced checklist, he snuck glances at everyone else. It seemed like he'd been one of the first to be woken, but already several men were stripping out of their sleeping clothes - genitals floating in a way he hadn't needed to see, thanks - and getting suited up in combat gear. He looked, in vain, for any lady soldiers.
"You're good." The medic assured him with a friendly clap to the shoulder. Harry nodded and started shucking his own clothes. He was just pulling a new shirt on when someone came close to have a hissed conversation with his bodyguard. He tucked the shirt in and shrugged on a light waterproof jacket (that floated, crinkled and stiff-looking in mid-air) as Mike frowned darkly and the messenger pulled himself away.
"Trouble?" He asked, somehow not surprised.
"Trouble." Mike confirmed.
Pandora
"The ISV Venture Star left a message on the orbital hub."
The captain of the ISV Another One (presumably they ran out of good names at some point) was standing at the head of a vaguely oblong table normally used only by the ship's staff - the only ones who stayed awake for the full six year trip. It was the closest thing the ship had to a briefing room.
"For those who don't know, the orbital hub is a dedicated satellite that acts as a point of orientation for the ISVs' guidance systems as well as a weather platform for the moon below. It's not uncommon for it to be used as a kind of message board - priority cargo needs and such."
The Captain looked around at the gathered men and women, making eye contact with each. There were three higher-ranked soldiers. Two nervous-looking scientists. The head engineer. Two RDA people of unclear purpose and finally Harry himself. A representative from the Japanese colonisation expedition was notably absent.
"On final approach to Pandora we did a standard check and what we found… was very non standard. Watch."
The captain tapped a section of the table. Tiny nodes spun light into the air to display a three-dimensional image of a sweat-shiny, exhausted man.
"This is Parker Selfridge, Head of Administration at the Pandora base: Hell's Gate. I am, ah, recording this as a warning to the ships still en route." His head ducked for a moment, one hand coming up to tug at his open collar.
"Hell's Gate has been… breached. Conflict between the natives and our guys escalated beyond… anyone's prediction. Over 80% of all active military forces have been killed. The Avatar drivers and several key members of the science staff betrayed us, led by the Marine Jacob Sully. They're all still down there and they ain't friendly." A faint voice from the side tipped Selfridge's head for a moment before he nodded and turned back to the camera.
"Right, uh, be aware that the Natives have banded together. Thousands of 'em, from multiple clans. And they seemed to somehow be able to direct the goddamn animals at us as well. My remaining military staff want to make it clear that recovering the base isn't feasible by a relief shipment of troops alone." The man sighed deeply and straighted.
"So, as my last act of authority, I am ordering the recipients of this message to turn around and head back to Earth. Any troops who make the fall will almost certainly be killed upon landing. There is no safe harbor here. Any ship receiving this: stop waking people up, turn around and go back the way you came. Selfridge out."
The hologram switched off.
"Go back?!" One solider repeated immediately. "What, and get strung up for desertion?"
"I'm not any happier than you." The Captain responded sharply. "Loss of cargo comes out of our pay. What do you think the RDA will do to us for coming back completely empty?"
"I don't know," Bit out one of the scientists, a woman with long dark hair in a loose braid. "is it worse than being killed by the natives? Fuck. I knew Augustine was a hippie but my god…"
"What's that supposed to mean?" One of the soldiers barked - the highest ranking one judging by the way the others deferred to him. What was his name again? Barker? Baker? "You knew there was a traitor?"
"No." The woman backpedaled. "Not like that. Not like she'd lose her fucking mind. It's just-"
"We don't know if she was involved at all." The second scientist snapped with a scowl for his superior. "Dr Augustine-"
"Is dead." The Captain interrupted flatly. "A full list of survivors above and below will be made available later but that's not important right now. Unless you think you know someone who'd listen to reason down there."
Both scientists subsided.
"Why did they attack?"
Harry didn't realise he'd spoken until every eye was on him. If he were younger, he might have shied away from the attention. These days, it emboldened him.
"Do we know?"
"What does it matter?" Barker-maybe-Baker demanded. Harry slid him a hard look.
"It matters." He said flatly. "Was it because of a bunch of small stuff, or something major? Did we break something we could fix? Did someone call their Goddess fat? Was it something we could apologise for?"
"Apologise?!" A few people sputtered incredulously, but the military leader just eyed him thoughtfully.
"We don't need to retake the base." He pressed his point, sensing someone with potentially enough sense to back him up. "We don't need to re-establish whatever we had before. All we need to do, is get our gate built."
"He's right." The Engineer piped up. A strip on his jumpsuit said 'Pastel'. "If the gate actually works, the entirety of the RDA's armed forces will be right on the other side. Re-taking Hell's Gate at that point won't be an issue. And if it doesn't? Well, we can make nice until the next batch of troops are sent out. Soften them up. And while we're working on the gate… we may be able to hide some foothold barracks in the mountain right next to it."
Baker-maybe-Barker nodded slowly.
"That's how we'll run it then." He decided, a glance at one of the RDA people netting him silent agreement. "Minimal force," he ordered his two underlings "just a batch of token grunts running protection. Big money and admirers from Earth sending a good-will gift that came a little too late."
"Do we know a reason for the attack?" Harry asked again, directing it at the Captain this time. The large man flipped through some files on a flexible tablet before flicking one to the table's holo-projectors.
A blue-tinted image of a gigantic tree, burning hot as it collapsed onto a carpet of smaller trees. Tiny digital people scattered before it, many unable to escape its bulk in time.
"The natives built their home on top of a gigantic deposit of unobtanium." The Captain reported without any apparent care. "Attempts were made to purchase the location, without success. Diplomacy broke down, the report said the natives had two Avatars strung up like sacrifices and launched unprovoked attacks on RDA mining equipment. The security force moved in, to suppress and rescue, as humanely as they could. Gas rounds dispersed the crowd and a controlled demolition - something that Corporal Sully was supposed to explain to the natives long before - was triggered to remove the tree in question. Apparently, the natives took offence."
"It was an attack on their home." Sniped the male scientist.
"It was a tree." His co-worker sneered. "Unlike our equipment they destroy, there's tens of thousands of more trees."
"Not the point." Harry slashed his hand through the air, surreptitiously bracing himself against the wall as the motion tried to propel him sideways.
"If we want a chance of getting in without a fight, we need to go in with horror and apologies and condemnation for the people who came before us. Especially if we want to be allowed to operate the same equipment they've apparently been trying to - and are capable of - destroying."
"And be allowed to keep mining." One of the RDA people who looked like he'd been raised to be an accountant pointed out. "We'll need unobtanium to build the gate if nothing else."
"And if they decide not to let us come down and carry on mining while carving out a mountain?" The woman scientist turned on him. The shift brought her breast pocket ID into view - Samantha Li. "If they say 'no, leave or die?'"
Harry glanced to the side. There were no windows in this module but he could feel, like radiant heat, a presence in the void. Something at the fringe of reality. Pandora.
"Then I go down, and you go home." He decided. A world so full of energy that he could convert could surely not provide any threat that he couldn't overwhelm. Unless Pandora had hidden wizards like Earth once had, he just needed to not be shot long enough to set up some protections.
"You think you can build the gate without us?" The engineer had his eyebrows lifted, amusement curling the edge of his mouth.
Yes, Harry didn't say. Could he use their machinery to construct a mathematically perfect example? No. Could he use his magic to convert, levitate, hollow and activate? Absolutely.
"I think I have to try." He replied diplomatically. "Although of course, if you wanted to stay in orbit and offer your expertise…"
"Orbit nothin'" The engineer snorted. "I didn't come all the way out here just to miss my grandkids grow up for no payoff. I don't care if I'm out there with a wooden scaffold and a hammer and chisel. If you go, I go. That gate is getting built."
"Making landfall with nowhere to go is a death sentence." Li pointed out, taut with frustration. "We could take a shuttle for shelter and air-gen, but it won't do crap against the first rad storm, let along the larger fauna."
"We could stay in one of the campsites. All modules are shielded." Her argumentative coworker.. Argued. Harry tilted his head slightly to see his name past the glare on his ID badge. Sam Johnson-Johnson. "Not to mention, most are kitted out with micro-fusion reactors plus water and air purifiers."
"The same modules designed for teams of six or less?" Li's sneer had more than a little fear lacing it, like she was the only sane person on a boat charging headfirst towards an iceberg. "Assuming they're fully stocked with rations, we still wouldn't last more than a fortnight."
"Some of them were dedicated to botanical studies." Johnson countered, pulled his own flexible tablet from a pocket and twisting the screen until it crackled and became fixed. Transparent as it was, the rest of them could see the various locations he was swiping through.
"Here-" He flicked a couple to the holo-projectors. "Site 12. They were studying the bansheba. For safety, all in-house samples were de-barbed and their seeds - being highly nutritious - used to get shipped to Hell's Gate to supplement the base's food supply. They'd even make and ship their own flour from native cycads. And, here - site 41."
The image showed a camp suspended high above the ground, wires and pipes bracing large H-shaped metal structures between the very tops of gigantic trees.
"Established early on to harvest local fruit for use in trade with the Na'vi and to supplement the base's food supply-"
"That's good." Baker/Barker interrupted. "Alright. Put together a list: those that can be used to produce food and their production rates and those that are for shelter only. McKay." One of the soldiers at his side pushed forward. "Once you have that list, work out which camps need to be relocated. Consolidate what you can. If we have more than we need, stack 'em for the rad protection but bear in mind the fuel constraints of the shuttle. Last thing we need is to run it dry and end up stranded dirtside."
McKay saluted and floated over to the busily working Johnson-Johnson.
"We're going?" Li asked, half incredulous and half whining.
"We're going." Baker/Barker ordered.
Pandora
"Is it Baker or Barker?" Harry asked his guard as they made their way to the shuttle that would take them down.
"Baker." Mike assured him. "First name Chef."
"Oh, bullshit."
Pandora
Norm trudged into the operations room with a thermos full of increasingly precious coffee. The base had a pretty good supply but, even as few as they were, they were all scientists and they didn't have anyone breathing down their neck about rations anymore.
He was going to miss coffee.
The operations room was mostly dark with just the pink light of dawn catching the dust on various stations. The weather-hub was scrolling updates in sedate blues and greens and except for a small flashing screen, everything was the same as… as every… every other…
He slumped into a seat that hadn't been sat on for almost eight months. Most of the consoles had the same basic designs but this was one everyone got basic training on.
Communications. And someone or something was trying to communicate with them.
"MAAAAAAAAAX!" He called, coffee forgotten as he bolted out of the room. "MAX!"
Pandora
"This is Ess Ess Tee Oh Nightmare confirming ready for departure."
"Roger Nightmare, you are cleared to release maglocks. Drift vector 33.1.01 confirm."
"33.1.01 confirmed. Releasing maglocks… now."
A faint tremble was felt in the cockpit as the shuttlecraft's internal mechanism radiated throughout the frame. Here in the dead of space, main engine offline to prevent damage to the ISV, the slightest movement was felt by all.
The automated detachment system fired micro-thrusters, tiny and diffused, pushing the shuttle away from its host and precisely angling it towards planetfall.
"Annnnd we're clear." His co-pilot reported, eyes sharp on both her readouts and the visuals on-screen. System errors were one-in-a-billion but nobody wanted to be That Guy who rammed a million-dollar shuttlecraft into a billion-dollar intergalactic ISV because they didn't bother to look out the window.
"Roger that, switching to IFR." He flipped the switches that shifted navigation for re-entry to purely machine-controlled. The ship began to slow their descent and once it hit atmo it could make micro-second adjustments far beyond any human pilot's ability. Most of the system was automated these days, with humans acting mostly as 'the human element', only checking for input and software errors 98% of the time.
Nobody smart wanted that number to go down. Most humans only ever piloted manually when their bird went FUBAR.
"Ellis, double check the weapons system. I don't want anything automated kicking in at the wrong time."
"You're kidding me," his 2IC eyeballed him "you're really gonna switch them off? They're pea-shooters!"
"Sure, but the Gate's ground-to-air missiles ain't. Switch 'em off."
Ellis grumbled but obeyed.
He understood her feelings on the matter. Hell, he agreed. It wasn't common for big rigs like the Nightmare to get attacked on Pandora - certainly not seriously - but even an accidental in-air collision could cause enough damage to render the ship unsafe for intra-atmos operation. The shuttle's tiny guns were meant to discourage and disperse. They certainly weren't powerful enough to do any real damage to an installation like Hell's Gate but the bunch of jumpy, usurping hippies on the surface had made complete shutdown of all weapons a requirement of their landing. Paranoid bastards were putting their lives at risk - and it wasn't like the RDA wouldn't just bomb them from orbit in 5-6 years anyway.
"Weapons hold." Ellis reported dully. "Entering atmos in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…"
The shuttle rocked, like a giant cat was batting at every side at once. The visiscreen lit up with fiery plasma and various digital readouts jumped and skittered as internal monitoring systems kept close watch of their balance, speed, angle and spot-heating. The two pilots were slammed back and forth in their seats. A short seven minutes later and the ride smoothed out considerably.
"Descent on-track, no red flags." He reeled off. "Switching to turbo-"HOLY SHIT!"-je"
It happened too fast to think. A terrible noise, a wrenching scream of air tearing his skin from his face and hands, a swirl of colour and movement as his sophisticated console all but fell away and the terrible expanse of sky and distant land replaced it.
The ship. Ellis. Something had happened. He flipped, end over end, the Nightmare ripping apart in stop-motion devastation.
He could see. Bodies. Whole sections of seats falling away, limbs trailing them. Beyond them, a cruelty of winged colour. Fire. Black smoke.
He groped at his side but this wasn't his old Earth-side jet - there were no seat chutes on a shuttlecraft. There was nothing but death.
He fell, the stench of Pandoran air rushing up his nose and souring his tongue. Somewhere in the terror of falling to death, he felt a snatch of relief that he'd pass out first.
Please he begged, not able to pull together anything more coherent. He'd never been a religious man but now- Please. God, please.
Something gripped him. No, gripped his seat. It jerked to a stop and swung him around with brutal ragdoll force, his straps barely keeping him attached. He gasped with it, light-headed, vision going dark. He had a half-formed thought that a banshee had snatched his chair, would drive vicious teeth into his soft underbelly, tear his intestines from his still living body-
He passed out. Or maybe he didn't? It seemed like he only blinked and suddenly he was back in the ship - but the console was still gone. He gripped his chair with white knuckles as the floor seemed to fill in beneath his feet and a trailing scream became loud and sharp - he wrenched his stiff neck to the side just in time to see Ellis fall backwards into the cockpit with him, her seat rejoining the floor like it had never left. The walls were swift to follow her. The ceiling closed over their heads and twinkling shards of glass and plastic swam through the air to condense into switches and screens.
Then he was in the cockpit, sealed and undamaged, living a nightmare in reverse. The ship seemed fine-but they were still falling, uncontrolled now, only the breadth of their vessel and Pandora's low gravity preventing them from falling faster.
Every screen was dead. No power. Not even the orbit-to-atmo battery system.
"Cold start!" He shouted, voice shaking as much as his hands. One dove for the emergency checklist. "Take manual - VFR - level us out! Maximise drag!"
"Roger!" Ellis shouted back, hands on the manual controls and wrenching them into line. "We're too fast to deploy flaps!"
"Roger!" He paged frantically through the slim red binder. Emergency cold-start was just an emergency re-start taken from mid-way, right? Right.
"'Manual position of thrusters' he muttered frantically, hands turning smooth as they reached for controls he knew better than his wife. "'Descent angle'-" he squinted at the tiny manual instrument tucked away at the bottom of the central console and adjusted the manual spinners until each jet engine was angled appropriately. "-vents, half, and, ignition start!"
He thumbed the starter button. Nothing happened. He pressed it again, harder, then hammered it. Nothing. It ran off a separate fucking battery-was it gone? Was the rest of the fucking ship gone? No, Ellis was steering something. Think.
"Altitude, speed for windmill start-"
"Fuck the speed!" Ellis barked.
"-vents open full-"
He waited. They both waited, hearts in their throats, not daring to hope.
Please. Please.
Nothing.
A small kick. A thrum of sound.
A tiny white light switching on next to engine #3.
"One engine start!" He reported joy and dread in equal parts. One engine alone still might not be enough. It certainly wasn't enough to fly by. He forced himself to wait the requisite ten seconds for the power from one engine to spread just enough and then-
"Ignition start!"
Like a miracle, golden and glorious, the APU responded. Electrical motors began automated re-ignition and in barely more than a handful of heartbeats, all four jets were burning hot.
"Thrust full!" He ordered, his and Ellis' hands both on the central throttle. They weren't flying a shuttle anymore - they were in an ancient Soyuz, burning fuel in a last ditch attempt to escape the sudden stop at the end of a long fall.
"Approaching stationary position." Ellis voice wept relief even as she ran sharp eyes over their instruments. They'd need to time a scale-down of thrust very, very carefully…
They pulled back almost as one, barely hearing themselves call readings and responses back and forth. Slowly, a bare 2000 feet above-ground, the Nightmare came to a sedate hover. They'd burned well over half their fuel to get her there.
"Setting auto-pilot to hover" He rattled off like a hot drink after a freezing storm. "Systems check."
"Systems check." Ellis echoed, grabbing for another binder. In near-hysterical hindsight, he noted that whatever force had pulled the ship together again (it must have been a hallucination caused by a breach in oxygen… right? But then how had it gotten better without masks?) had also replaced the binders neatly inside their velcro restraints.
While Ellis began to read-off systems, he took a quick moment to finish something important of his own.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Pandora
Harry: 'No probs, bruh'.
I'm curious what you think happened to the shuttle. I have put in a clue… did you see it?
Also: a few more people have poked me about AO3. I'm still a bit reluctant (and lazy) so I put up a poll about it. If you have feelings about cross-posting one way or the other, please use that to let me know.
If it ends up being strongly in favour, I'll clean up the older chapters (most are edited after posting thanks to comments) and pop them up on AO3. I also added an option for it to just be the junk/snippet stuff normally found on my blog. If there's not much interest, I'll just stay as I am now.