Building New Canaan - The Complete Series - A Colonization and Exploration Space Adventure
Page 24
“If you’re thinking whether or not we might have found Nathan Hart, then the answer’s yes.”
ESCAPE
STELLAR DATE: 12.07.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Thracian elevator site, Island of Cyprus
REGION: Carthage, 3rd Planet in the New Canaan System
What was left of Nathan Hart sailed desperately toward the gas plumes. He knew his attempt to escape the pinnaces was hopelessly futile, but he had to try. He was so close. He’d stolen the picotech right from under the noses of all the troops guarding it. The plan had worked so well.
If only that engineer hadn’t seen him at the last minute, he would have gotten away. He would be safely on his way to a hiding place to await the arrival of Myrrdan’s agent, while the stupid Marines scratched their bony skulls and wondered what had happened.
He mustn’t give up hope. All he had to do was to get to the gas plumes. Under their cover, the pursuing pinnaces wouldn’t find him. The device Myrrdan’s agent had planted in him would make him invisible to their scanners, and they would be relying on their visuals, and he would be hidden.
But the pinnaces were close, and the plumes looked so far away. In his night vision, they roiled and swirled, as if tantalizing him.
As what seemed might be the last seconds of his life ticked away, Nathan recalled the long a-grav climb to the Hercules Platform. He’d been forced to go up during daylight and so began his climb from some distance away over uninhabited land. He couldn't risk someone noticing his odd form flying upward into the sky.
Up and up he’d glided. His mechanized components had no problem with the increasing cold and lack of oxygen, but his remaining organic parts—what he dismally clung to as him—began to suffer as his altitude increased. The air became freezing, and though his blood seemed to have been supplemented with some kind of anti-freezing agent, it did not prevent his remaining nerves from sending pain signals to his brain.
Cold, they screamed. Torment. Leave this place. Leave here now.
But Nathan was forced to continue on. The landmass below him shrunk beneath his ponderous feet. The sky grew paler, and then it began to turn a deeper blue as he flew nearer to space. Finally, even Nathan’s modified body couldn't cope with the lack of oxygen. He began to grow dizzy and faint. He opened the oxygen tank that he’d stolen, and held the mask to his face. His senses returned.
He had to be careful with his oxygen use. He had a limited amount, and it had to last him while he waited on the platform and during his descent. If he used it all up too soon, he would die. Perhaps he would float away into space until Carthage’s gravity drew him in, and he became a brilliant, burning shooting star. Or if he died during his descent, he might tumble gracelessly to the space elevator site, his remains shameful evidence of his defeat.
The theft also had to be timed precisely. After he’d sent the armored vehicle in as a distraction, he would have to wait, hovering high in the air, for the moment when all attention was diverted from the module, then swoop in at top speed to snatch it. If Nathan had still possessed his meat heart, it would have raced, but instead the pump that had replaced it beat steadily on. At that moment, he was grateful for the mechanical heart that kept his oxygen use to a minimum.
The wait on the platform had been tortuous. It dragged on and on, past the time the picotech should have been delivered to the site. Peering down through Carthage’s atmosphere, he knew he should be able to see the device carrying the leading edge of the nanotube strands rising, but he stared in vain. There had been some kind of delay.
Nathan had watched his oxygen gauge and waited. The icy temperatures of space bit deeply into his organic core. His mechanized systems only barely kept him alive. But worse than all the physical discomfort was the terrifying loneliness. Surrounded by the deep black of space, far distant from the jewel-like green and blue of Carthage, fading as night fell, the diamond glint of starlight, and the radioactive glare of Canaan Prime had been the only things to keep him company. Nathan’s solitude had been an aching chasm.
Then, finally, his augmented vision could make out a shuttle setting down near the construction site. The picotech fabricator had arrived, and the process of creating the nanotubes had begun. Though his oxygen was perilously low, Nathan was thankful for the turn of events because it had worked in his favor. It meant he would be acting under the cover of darkness.
From his great distance, he started up the armored vehicle and sent it in. It was programmed to follow the road to the site and not stop until it was made to stop, which the Marines would do without hesitation, Nathan had no doubt. He prepared to let go of the platform, happy that his dreadful ordeal was about to come to an end, one way or another.
When his vid feed told him that the armored vehicle had neared the site and that the Marines were about to shoot, it had been with great relief that he began his descent. He had been holding onto a protrusion on the underside of the platform to prevent himself from floating away in the microgravity. He released his grip and fired his booster to move himself downward. Carthage’s gravity would take its hold soon enough, but until then, he had to give it a helping hand. He was finally moving one step closer to being brought into the presence of Myrrdan, and in some strange, twisted way he would be among humankind again.
Passing the device that lifted the carbon nanotube strands in the a-grav column, Nathan had continued to speed downward. Below, the Marines were shooting the armored vehicle to pieces. In a minute they would stop after meeting no resistance. Their curiosity would drive them out to inspect the wreckage.
Carthage loomed closer, filling his vision as the island of Cyprus grew wider, black in the night, points of light etching the inhabited areas. Nathan could make out the space elevator construction site. He killed his jets and set his a-grav to zero as gravity took its hold. He was no longer flying down, but falling.
He saw the tiny dots of the Marines creeping closer to the wreckage of the vehicle. Nathan could even make out the barrels of their weapons. They were entirely distracted. Now was his moment. He prepared to activate his a-grav. The ground flew up at him, its detail defined in the artificial light of the site’s lamps. The picotech module was there. It was ready. It was waiting for him.
Like a hawk diving down on its prey, Nathan swept down and snatched the module, twisting it deftly to unseat it from the fabricator. He turned his a-grav to full and sped upward.
I’ve done it!
But no. A moment later, Nathan heard a hiss like an angry snake, and sensed the odor of seared metal. He’d been hit. Someone had shot at him. He’d been seen. Looking down, he spotted his assailant. It was the engineer.
Of all the people who might have seen him, of all the Marines and site workers, it had been the woman who had first defeated him. He should have drowned her when he had the chance. He should have broken her neck before escaping into the ocean.
Lights were turned on him. He hadn’t been able to fly upward any faster; his a-grav was at maximum capacity. More shots hit him. They were hitting his legs.
Nathan clung to the picotech module fiercely, agony lancing through him as the shots penetrated his metal carapace. He screamed, but he heard only a modulated ‘Aggghhh’ from his mechanized voice. The pain was unbearable.
The weapons fire cut through his lower leg. It fell away, and as his bulk lightened, he flew up faster. All Nathan’s concentration was now focused on not dropping the picotech module. He could not drop the module. He had come so far. He had suffered so much.
The shots bit into his other leg until it too was severed. Beam and projectile impacts were striking up and down his back. He flew faster. I have to get away. He could do it. Escape lay within his reach.
A flare shot out at the edge of his field of vision…a pinnace had launched. He had forgotten about the pinnaces. Their scanners wouldn’t get a lock on him. The same device that made him invisible to the satellites would prevent that. But as soon as a pilot had a visual….
I’m never going to make it.
Before despair overcame him, however, Nathan’s feverishly working brain dragged a desperate alternative to death at the hands of the pinnace’s pilot. The gas plumes! He had seen how close they were to the site while he waited on the platform. With the aid of his night vision he could see them now. If he could just reach the gaseous clouds, he could hide within them. He could remain there, flying along them until he was out of sight of the pinnaces.
Another light flared. Another ship had launched. If he could reach the plumes and the disruption caused by the a-grav towers in time, he would be safe. But he had only seconds. Even in the dark of night, the pilots would soon see his body—glowing hotly from the weapons impacts and straining a-grav system—with their infrared vision.
Picotech module gripped hard against his metallic chest, Nathan angled himself toward the plumes. Freed of the weight of his legs, he was flying faster than ever. He might make it. He was almost there.
Light burst to his left, and agony ripped through his side. He’d lost his left arm. Only his right remained to hold onto the module. A shot had passed him so closely, its heat had burned and melted him. One of the pinnace pilots could see him. He had to get to the cloud. He had no time left.
Then swirling vapor enveloped him.
I made it!
The gases that spewed from Carthage’s still-cooling mantle welcomed him. For a brief moment, Nathan relaxed. He was safe and he had the picotech. The gases that hid him were warm and comforting.
But they were not warm. They were hot. Too hot. He was burning, and he could not breathe. He choked. He reached for his oxygen. Where’s the tank? Gone. The near-hit from the pinnace had blasted it from his side. Nathan heaved and choked. He was safe from the pinnaces and he had the module, but he was succumbing to the gases. He was suffocating, burning, dying.
As his life ebbed away, the gases lifted him. Higher he rose, borne upward on the searing cloud and its a-grav columns. Consciousness fading, he saw the cloud begin to thin as he soared on the hot vapors. Through the translucent veil of gas, the terrible lonely glint of the stars greeted him.
As blackness gathered from the edges of his vision, Nathan’s remaining limb weakened. The picotech module slipped from his grasp. The sight of it tumbling down, away from him, was the last thing he saw.
Myrrdan! Myrrdan, forgive me.
DEPARTURE
STELLAR DATE: 12.07.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Thracian elevator site, Island of Cyprus
REGION: Carthage, 3rd Planet in the New Canaan System
Her heart heavy, Erin left the elevator’s construction site. Major Usef would deal with the wreckage of the armored car. No doubt he would have it investigated for anything that might give them more information on Hart. The DNA analysis had confirmed that the strange automaton-human hybrid had indeed been him.
Erin wished she could be sure of what had happened to the traitor. He’d almost certainly met his death in the gas plumes. The pinnace pilot had reported that he’d winged him. In the searing heat of the volcanic gases, surely Hart could not have survived, no matter what physical augmentations he had? But without a body to identify, there would always be doubt.
What procedures had he undergone to bring him to his semi-automaton state? Who had performed them on him?
Up until the moment Erin had seen Hart’s altered body, she’d assumed he’d been acting alone. But now it was obvious that he had at least one accomplice, or that there was someone else who knew what he was trying to do. The events of the evening had left questions upon questions to be answered, and she didn’t know where to start. Maybe Tanis would have some ideas when she returned. She was due back any moment.
At least the picotech module would soon be safe and sound. Major Usef had revealed that they tagged it with a delayed transmitter. The screening device that Hart had carried to make himself invisible to satellites and scanners had also screened out the signal, but now they were receiving it loud and clear. The module was floating in the Adriatic, and Usef had sent out a team to retrieve it.
Erin took the maglev to the air and spaceport, and then a shuttle flight back to her apartment in Landfall. All the way back, her mood never improved.
During the long hours while waiting to set up the trap for Hart, Erin had realized the only solution to the problem in her personal life, and she didn’t like it one bit.
Erin didn’t like the implication of Walter’s ‘at last’, but he was right. She’d put off communicating with Isa for far too long. The woman had probably given up on her entirely; she wouldn’t blame her.
Erin didn’t really understand how Walter’s suggestion could work out, but he’d proven himself a good, if sometimes unwelcome, advisor. She’d been hoping to see Isa and Martin separately, but after her chat with her AI, she decided to speak to them together.
She contacted Isa first.
Erin asked Isa to suggest
a place, then they agreed on a time. After saying goodbye, Erin contacted Martin.
She told him the time and place, then made a reservation, in case the restaurant was busy.
She had an hour or so to kill, so she began to pack her things. Carthage’s infrastructure projects were back up to speed, and Hart had been dealt with—though not particularly to her satisfaction. She couldn't see any reason why she might need to stay on Carthage. There were shipyards needed at the outer reaches of New Canaan, and someone had to build them. Erin wondered how MacCarthy and Linch had been getting along in her absence.
When she was packed, she got ready to go and meet Isa and Martin. Seeing them together might be a little awkward at first, but they were all adults. They could talk things over and be mature about it.
When she thought about it, however, she didn’t know exactly what she was going to say. She would just have to figure it out when she got there.
As she was preparing to leave, she was contacted over the Link.