Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  “Patriot Station, Sundowner, do you copy, over?”

  Silence.

  “Alex, this is Nicole, you gonna be sulky to the end, or what?”

  “Seems like,” said Sallinger.

  “Patriot Station, this is Sundowner, over.”

  “This is nothing to do with you, Nicole,” came an answer finally, “go away.”

  “Hey, chum, even if I thought you were right, you’ve no call dragging Colonel Kinsella into your private scrap. Or the folks on the ground put at risk by this reentry.”

  “Just add it to the profile of the mad killer who almost wiped the President.”

  “This isn’t funny, Alex.”

  “Keep coming, Nicole, you’ll get added to the list. I don’t want that, but I won’t be stopped.”

  “There’s no need, Alex, C’mon, man, cut yourself some slack. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

  Again, silence.

  “Alex!” Her voice was harsher, growing from deep in her gut, the kind of cry that would reach across a boat against the wind of a howling gale, booming loud in the confined space of her helmet.

  “Stupid stupid stupid,” she muttered over and over.

  “You or him,” Sallinger asked.

  “Take your pick, it’s probably a toss-up. Why the hell won’t he listen?”

  “Probably because he’s scared he actually will.”

  “Excuse, Shea-Pilot,” and Nicole started slightly as Tscadi loomed over her like a living wave, reaching past to tap a code into her Command Keypad. A new screen—previously blank—popped to life, the schematic diagram on its face replicated in a heads-up display floating ahead of her just inside the canopy. A targeting grid flanked by a weaponry status scheme.

  “What the hell,” Sallinger exclaimed.

  “What is this?”

  “What it appears to be, Shea-Pilot.”

  “This critter’s armed?”

  “There was no mention of this on any of the reports my office received.” Sallinger wasn’t bothering to hide his anger, he felt blindsided the same way he had when it was revealed that Matai was the Speaker and not Kymri.

  “Because, Sallinger-Commander, there was no need. This is my own improvisation, an adaptation of the ranging-communication laser system. It will register to the Cobri-Child’s sensors as a much more powerful beam of energy.”

  “He’ll know it’s a con when he sees nothing happen.”

  “Maybe, Colonel,” Nicole said, “but for those first few seconds he’s going to be scared stiff, especially with his internals going totally haywire.” She was nodding, putting the pieces together on the fly. “And remember, he’s never done this before, not for real. That’s going to make a difference. Maybe a critical one.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She let out a solid exhalation. “What I said, he’s never done this before, for real. He’s not acting through remotes, he’s not sitting safe and secure in his Command Nest while his toys take the hits. His own ass is on the line.”

  “The man’s on a path to commit certain suicide, Lieutenant.”

  “Doesn’t mean he won’t be scared, especially of elements that disrupt his program. He’s a creature of habit, Colonel, his life is a carefully collected and nurtured network of patterns. He isn’t good at handling the unexpected, especially when it’s in his face. It hits at his control of the situation. Christ, boss, the whole family’s nothing but control freaks. In Virtual, Alex defines reality, and that definition makes him safe. Same goes when he flies his remotes—they’re simply extensions of his Virtual environment—the same applies here. Essentially, he’s turned his dad’s spaceplane into one of those remotes. But we’re outside those operating parameters, we’re beyond his control. Intellectually, he may know how to cope. Emotionally and physically though”—she shook her head—“I’m not sure he can.”

  “Suppose he comes at us with a remote?”

  “Cobri-Child knows everything of our systems we have taught him,” Tscadi said with a dangerous smile, “but that is not everything we know. He might surmise a great deal but there will be no certainty. This vehicle may lack aggressive weaponry, but it carries a full complement of electronics warfare systems. Any remote vehicle sent against us can be jammed.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Nicole said. “We’re getting a flash from Sutherland; something’s launching from Patriot.”

  “Missile?” Sallinger asked as Tscadi returned to her station and Nicole gave a tug on her shoulder harness to pull it snug about her.

  “Too big.” The Hybrid’s computer was already analyzing the return, tapping into the PortaComp’s memory for confirmation before reporting it as a Jeep. A general-purpose local ops spacecraft.

  “Gunship,” from Sallinger.

  “Got to assume.” The real question was whether it was a dedicated combat craft or something Alex managed to cobble together. Wanderer carried two, cram-jammed full of fire-and-forget missiles (nuclear capable if necessary) plus an antimissile laser plus, for close-in work when things got personally nasty, a rapid-fire Gatling gun that fired a mixture of armor-piercing depleted uranium slugs and explosive seeker shells. As they closed on Patriot, the Hybrid’s own systems augmented the data relayed from Sutherland—a hundred klicks above them but almost a thousand down range, its far more powerful and extensive scanners limited by the distance and extreme angle—painting a picture that pretty much convinced Nicole what they faced wasn’t the real thing. For which she was supremely grateful. Now it was simply a matter of determining what Alex had aboard and how best to keep from being killed by it.

  They were racing along the downward arc of their parabola, positive delta-V giving them about a half-G acceleration, with the sun full at their back. Even with shades, Nicole figured Alex would have a hard time spotting them. Probably wouldn’t even be trying, he’d be trusting his instruments.

  “Live or remote, Tscadi,” she called.

  “I believe live, Shea-Pilot.”

  “He’s coming out to meet us.”

  “Prime the motors,” Nicole said.

  “What,” cried Sallinger.

  “Hold on to your seats, folks,” she said, priming the ignition sequence on her chair arm and firing all four mains as soon as the engineer gave her a green light. Instantly, she was hammered in the chest as the Hybrid went from zero to full launch thrust in a matter of seconds, hurled forward by the same amount of power it would use to burst free of the atmosphere below. And just as quickly, her helmet filled with the clang and whoop and honk of various alarms, all telling her what she already knew, that she was pushing the spacecraft dangerously close to its design tolerances, that she was risking a potentially catastrophic loss of course control, and most importantly, she was on a collision course with the Jeep, and Patriot beyond.

  “What the devil,” Sallinger again.

  “I know what I’m doing, boss,” she said. “Trust, me. Tscadi,” she yelled, a reflex made unnecessary really by the fact that her mike would transmit the smallest whisper clear as could be, “disengage the flight control net, the damn computer’s trying to take over!”

  “The computer is merely responding to your attempt to operate the vehicle beyond its limitations.”

  “You and I both know the vehicle’s limitations, Tscadi-Engineer, and we’re nowhere near. And if this bloody machine shuts us down right now all we’ll be is dust.”

  “You have full control, Shea-Pilot,” but it was clear from the engineer’s voice that while she bought Nicole’s argument she didn’t at all like it. Neither did Sallinger, who was already setting up a breakaway course that would swing them past the station and off the roof of the atmosphere. Be hell getting home, probability was they’d need an intercept from Sutherland with either fuel or a tow, but they’d survive.

  “C’mon, Alex boy, now’s the time to show your stuff”—Sallinger gaped at the ComBoard, then at Nicole beside him; she was transmitting—“gonna play us a little game of chicken.”
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  “Lieutenant,” he snapped, “I’m relieving you.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, sir.”

  “Yield your stick. You’re as crazy as he is.”

  “Quite possibly. Certainly as scared. He’s fired.”

  A new telltale flashing its frantic warning, reticules on the HUD isolating a pair of brilliant flashes barely visible against the night-shadowed Earth, the display screen below pumping relevant schematics.

  “Zero the mains,” Nicole told Tscadi and the engines were as quickly shut down. “Leave them primed,” she continued, “to refire on my mark, Max Launch.”

  “I have a redline warning on thruster three, Shea-Pilot.”

  “Push it anyway, we’ll need all we’ve got.” While Nicole was speaking both hands operated independently of each other, one locking the lasers on Alex’s Jeep, the other twisting the handle on her sidestick, cycling it over to control of the attitude thrusters. Twin beams flashed from below the nose, their progress shown more clearly on the HUD and its slaved display screen as the laser’s coherent light splashed violently across the other spacecraft. It was an impressively dramatic display, a most classic example of sound and fury signifying nothing, and she hoped she’d scared him shitless, because if they’d been the MainForce Pulse Rifles mounted aboard Range Guide, the Jeep would have been reduced to instant slag. At the same time, she ignited all the vertical thrusters banked along the Hybrid’s belly, Sallinger crying out as the ship shuddered upward, rising with elephantine slowness above their flight path.

  “Missiles still locked and closing,” he reported when he found his voice, only to lose it again as quickly and completely as Nicole fired nose and tail in sequence, pitching the spacecraft literally end over end, ascribing a sweeping arc that took them high over the top of Cobri’s Jeep and started them on an inverted path straight for Patriot.

  “Tscadi,” Nicole called.

  “Countermeasures against the missiles effective. They lost our track and have detonated upon exhaustion of propellant. No active response from the hostile vehicle.”

  “Probably can’t believe his eyes.”

  “That, Shea, makes two of us. He also probably figures we’ll splatter ourselves all over Patriot and do his damn job for him.”

  “Have faith, Colonel. I need the thrust now, Tscadi-Engineer.”

  “As you command, Shea-Pilot.” And the anger in her tone was leavened just a bit by grudging respect. “I also believe the hostile may have an operational failure of his scan systems. I can detect no active emanations.”

  “Break for us. If he’s well and truly blind—even if only temporarily—he may not twig to what we’ve done ’til it’s too late.”

  Again, they were pressed deep into their chairs, as the great engines applied braking thrust to slow their headlong descent. The Hybrid was shuddering violently, so much so that all the crew could do was to hold on—they dared not try to operate any of the controls, all they’d do was make a botch of it—until Tscadi’s hoarse cry penetrated Nicole’s aching, shaking consciousness.

  “Number three, we are losing—!”

  And there was a bang from behind of a kind Nicole remembered only too well—only the last such occasion had been the simulator run that had almost washed her out of the Astronaut Corps. Now, as then, her reactions were fast and sure: a grab for the garishly outlined EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN handle on the ceiling panel, a check to see how badly they were hurt, some fast and furious play with the attitude jets to keep the venting gas from the explosion from throwing them off their track. A swallow of sick relief as a glance at the displays told her things weren’t as bad as they could have been. Tscadi had evidently started the shutdown from her panel a split second before the combustion chamber ruptured, limiting the severity of the blast and the extent of the damage. One motor was down but the other three were still solid and the Hybrid itself was still intact. With a word of warning, Tscadi pulled the plug on the other engines and an air of relative calm returned to the flight deck.

  “I take it back,” Sallinger said slowly, “you’re insane.”

  And Nicole had to concede the nod. She wasn’t really paying attention to the Colonel, though, she had her head back, craning her neck and body—as much as she could in the restrictive confines of her seat—for a better view out the topside windows.

  In the confusion, their attitude had slipped so that in relation to the Earth, their tail was up, their nose down. And of course, the whole spacecraft was flying backward, and upside-down.

  Close enough, it seemed, to touch, Patriot Station was drifting slowly past, right outside the windows. That view was fortunately deceptive because even as they watched—Nicole playing with the attitude thrusters to match velocities with the derelict—the tinker-toy assemblage slipped past in a slow, majestic roll, end over spoked end.

  “It can’t handle those stresses,” Sallinger said.

  Patriot was built outward from a central stalk, with docking modules at each end—the Cobri spaceplane mounted on one. Radiating outward from a coupling just in-board of those modules was a network of five spokes, linked halfway along their length by transit tubes, allowing for passage from one to the other without returning to the core, the spokes at one end half the size of those at the other. The larger were the research elements, the smaller reserved for power and maintenance. The hub was where everyone lived. As time went on, the station was designed to expand according to need, growing a little like Topsy into a permanent habitat intended to support a resident community and serve as the primary staging platform for humanity’s exploration of the Solar System. But it had never gotten beyond that initial stage. And now, way ahead of schedule, it was returning home.

  Nicole made a chicking noise with her tongue. “Each rotation,” she said, pointing at the station as it swept past, “the longer arms catch the fringes of the upper atmosphere.” Only a comparatively few—and far between—molecules at this altitude but enough to create drag in an orbiting body, especially once the station swept out into dayside where the Sun’s radiance caused normal atmospheric expansion. “But the short arms don’t,” she continued, “so with each turn, the spin gets more skewed, the short side flipping over faster and faster. Nothing you’d really notice at first... ”

  “But before long,” Sallinger picked up her thought, “a vicious enough torque to bend the hub in half.”

  “And then,” Nicole finished, “won’t things be a lovely, lovely mess. Tscadi, the hostile?”

  “I do not think he perceives us, Shea-Pilot. His control is not steady.”

  “He’s losing it a little.”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  Nicole smiled. “We have time, boss, but only a little. Only one way to get what we came for.”

  “Someone has to go over there and bring them out, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You?”

  “Forgive me, Colonel, there’s qualified and there’s qualified. You’re flying right seat because you pulled rank and I guess because you didn’t trust me with anyone else—and for that I think I’m flattered—but that doesn’t mean you can handle an EVA, especially into that zoo. Tscadi’s needed to help get this baby home. That leaves me.”

  “As you say, Lieutenant, there’s qualified... ”

  “You’re the boss, sir.”

  “Did you know it would come to this when I asked you on the ground?”

  “I don’t really know anything anymore, sir.”

  “I hate these frigging suits, how the hell can you tell anything about anyone, it’s like talking to them from another room, trying to shove your face through some stupid, small window.”

  “No argument, sir.”

  “Be quick, Shea.”

  “Like a bunny, boss.”

  The words were jaunty, and they stuck in her throat like spiked molasses, going down oh so slowly and ripping her to shreds along the way. She stood in the airlock, without even the security blanket of a M
anned Maneuvering Unit—she couldn’t risk the bulk or afford the time it would take to toss it off once she reached the station and pull it on again when it came time to leave—just a hand thruster and a backpack, with a spare bottle on her thigh. This was a freefall EVA, the station’s spin made it impossible to establish a tether linking it with the Hybrid; she’d have to find Cobri and Kinsella—praying with all her heart they had suits because if they didn’t they were royally screwed—tie the three of them together and push out the most convenient doorway in what she hoped was the right direction.

  “Sundowner-Prime, Sundowner-Remote, how copy?”

  “Five-by, Remote,” Sallinger said as casually as if she were heading out for her morning jog. “No significant change of status of our hostile.”

  “Praise the Lord for small favors.”

  “You okay, Shea? I’m monitoring some spikes on your MedBoard.”

  I want to piss my pants, she thought, and had to force herself once more to stand stock-still and take a slow, steady series of breaths, a gentle sequence of in-out, in-out that shifted into a subvocalized hum whose tone and intensity built to an equally calm crescendo, her mind’s eye flashing to the Nantucket shore with big combers thundering in from a storm that was raging far beyond the visible horizon, whose fury didn’t touch the island in the slightest save through the water that surrounded it. Be like the sea, she told herself, follow the rhythm, become the strength. Fear isn’t important, it’s what you do with it.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Yah, Colonel, sorry, my mind wandered.”

  “You were singing.”

  “Hope it wasn’t too awful, sir.”

  “Don’t quit your day job, Shea.” His concern was evident, but so was the subtext that demanded a decision, either go or stay.

  So she pushed out into space.

  She floated at first, telling herself she was taking stock of the situation, evaluating the risks, seeking out the best approach. But she was scared. Filling her mind were images of destruction, the miscue that bounced her off the station hull, smashing her helmet or rupturing her suit. A body tumbling outward into the dark or the other direction, a candle burning oh so briefly, oh so bright as friction turned her into a falling torch.