by Alex Deva
Attaching the velcro straps to his space suit, he powered up the ship's systems and started the pre-flight checks.
He was only thirty-two years old.
You couldn't go out in space straight after college; you needed at least two degrees and five years of practical experience before you even applied. Gaines had studied astrophysics at Cornell, and then went through the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs.
He'd held command of the Kennedy for seven months. He'd been given it about a year into the war, and he was damn proud of it. With an auxiliary complement of twelve Wings, the USS Kennedy was definitely a force to be reckoned with. He had never lost a battle in those seven months, and had the war medals to prove it.
The Moon War. A curse and a blessing. A USAF admiral once told Gaines that, if he only kept his record the way it was, at the end of the war he could have any job he wanted. And Gaines knew what he wanted. What he wanted was to destroy the Eurasian fleet, finish the war as a winner and become Fleet Admiral.
And that was exactly what he'd been working on, up until the moment that damn ship popped out of nowhere.
It had to be Eurasian. There was no other explanation for it. The two men who surrendered from it were decidedly English. One of them had the military file to prove it, and the other had the accent, even if Gaines thought it sounded more Scottish -- but still, clearly European.
The dates in the file were a wrinkle. A big wrinkle. Twenty-first century men in a starship that even twenty-fourth technology could not explain. And unarmed.
Under his smooth control, the crate cleared the cylindrical body of the Kennedy and was soon under way towards the strange, black ship marked Doi, whose airlock was still open. The on-board laser navigational aids in the crate's forward section computed and displayed the decreasing distance, as Gaines prepared his approach.
It could spell trouble, this strange, black ship. It could spell doom. If the Eurasians had gravity and inertial control technology, it would undoubtedly win them the war.
And end his career. Or even get him killed.
But on the other hand, it could spell fortune. If he was to be the one to capture this technology from the Queens, coupled with superior American technology and sheer force, it would doubtlessly win him the war. On behalf of the United States, of course. It would be the tipping weight, a professional parry and a masterful counter. The US would be decades, if not centuries, more advanced if they had that technology. They would rule the Earth and the Moon -- again.
Hell, they would rule the whole solar system!
It was a high stakes game. He could win everything, or lose everything. And, he felt, it all hung on how well he could think on his feet, once he got in contact with the Eurasian crew.
They had to know there was no alternative. No choice but to talk, negotiate. The United States had entered the war with a clear view to win it, and were truly committed to detonating the nuke in their airlock. He alone had the disarming codes.
In all fairness, Gaines didn't really have any solid idea of what exactly he was going to do, once in contact with the people inside the black ship. He only knew what he stood to profit from it, and what he stood to lose from the alternative.
But he knew that he was an ambitious and resourceful man.
* * *
Aram hit him without warning, a vicious, semi-circular blow right into his kidney. Mark's breathing stopped and his vision blurred. He hadn't had any chance to prepare. Even through the modern, hardened space suit, the blow hurt like hell. He tried to say something, but couldn't. Seeing red spots, he clutched his left side and grimaced in pain.
The Dacian peeled himself out of the velcro on the wall, then grabbed Mark by the collar and forced him off, too. He didn't offer any resistance. In the near-weightlessness of the brig, Aram steadied himself, gave a sharp yell, and threw Mark across the cell, then threw himself after him.
Mark flew like a rag, hitting both the ceiling and the far wall, and hung there, dazed, all the kinetic energy expended inside his bones and muscle. He watched Aram coming at him like an enraged bull and barely had time to think, oh, bollocks! before the impact.
All air was driven out of him again, as the other's much bigger mass crashed into his thorax. He desperately grabbed Aram, who went straight for his throat and started to squeeze. He flailed his legs, searching for the support that one needs in order to deliver a kick in low-g, but the Dacian had him completely immobilised.
"You fuck!" screamed Aram. "You cheating, lying fuck!"
Mark was too stunned to answer. He had expected resentment, but maybe not quite of this magnitude. Then, just when he thought his brain was beginning to give up to hypoxia, Aram, displaying a formidable grimace, leaned towards his ear and whispered, without moving his lips:
"Can they see us? Kick if yes."
* * *
He engaged the navigation system's autotracking, which automatically fired the crate's nav thrusters to keep it stable relative to the black ship, just above its airlock. Down inside, he could see the big, white suitcase which contained one of the cruiser's two nuclear warheads.
He got up, cycled the crate's airlock and was soon in open space. Then, with a well-calculated kick, not even using the suit's jets, he was soon on a trajectory between the crate and the black ship's airlock.
As soon as he got inside, with minimal manoeuvring, he turned right-side up and his boots touched the floor.
He found himself in a cylindrical room, whose outer opening was a gaping, big missing disk in its ceiling. There seemed to be no mechanism to close it, no buttons, no levers, no displays, nothing. It did not respond to touch, and he knew it couldn't respond to voice commands since it was open to space. That only left radio commands, or remote operation from the inside.
He inspected the round walls and immediately noticed three rectangular contours, at one hundred and twenty degrees from each other. He touched them, pressed them, pushed them, even banged in them, but nothing happened.
Inspecting every corner, he looked for the optics of a video camera, but he couldn't even see a tiny lens anywhere. Of course, they could be almost microscopic, as he well knew. It made complete sense to install a video feed in an airlock. So he simply assumed that he was being watched.
He sat on the nuclear warhead, and got an idea.
* * *
"Fuck's happening!" said Porter, watching the video feed from the inner brig compartment.
"Shit, they're at each other, and bad," said the other, whose name was Willard.
"Should we do something?"
"Nah, let 'em soften each other up," said Willard. "They're doing us a favour."
Porter watched the screen intently. The blond man was strangling the shorter man, who barely managed to wedge his knee in between, followed by an elbow, to fight the other one's deadly grip. He kicked forward with his knee, and they both went tumbling through the room again, in the near-zero gravity. He kicked again, and finally the blond had to let go with one hand. Gasping for air, the other pushed himself away towards the video surveillance camera.
He stopped when he hit the wall, his helmet barely missing the small, swivelling device, which was mounted inside a transparent dome, just under the ceiling.
Aram also floated in the opposite direction, but he regained control of his position in mid-air, turned himself with his feet towards the wall, and as soon as he reached it, pushed himself back, coming towards Mark, and screaming at the top of his lungs.
The latter, still gasping for air, discovered that he had nowhere to go, and seemed to have no option but try to evade at the last moment.
In the next instant, the blond man was on top of him, and threw a direct, massive, devastating punch. He had grabbed the inside of his helmet, and was actually using it as a large, rigid boxing glove.
Mark pushed with his shoulder into the back wall, and eschewed swiftly. The other's helmet missed him by a hair, and completely smashed both the helmet and the surveillance camera dome.
"Oh, no, no, no, no," said Porter from the anteroom, as their screen went black.
"Damn, did you see that?" Willard was excited.
"Come on, let's squeeze 'em."
"Why? Just 'cause they roughed the brig a bit? We'll replace the camera later. Come on, Danny, that's the guy who messed you up back on their ship. To hell with those Queens. Let 'em fight if they wanna."
Porter did remember, because his side still hurt where Mark had kicked him. In fact, all his bones hurt, a reminder of the sudden gravity shifts that'd thrown him every which way, unable to put up a decent fight.
"Fine," he agreed. "Let's give 'em another minute."
* * *
Doina floated in Room One, barefooted in her artificial, jet black suit, circling the three-dimensional projection of the airlock. There was a man inside the airlock, sitting on the bomb. He had come with the same type of ship that had taken Mark and Aram away.
She knew he was a man because he had a moustache. He seemed older than Aram, but maybe younger than Mark, had blue eyes and, in general, rather nice features. And that was all she could make out through his helmet visor.
She could also see that, unlike the previous intruders, he didn't seem to be armed.
Of course, not counting the bomb he was sitting on.
He had inspected the airlock and knocked on the three panel doors. She had physically felt the knocks, just as she felt pretty much everything that happened with the ship, at one level or another. But she did not allow the man to get past the airlock.
He opened a pocket and, moving slowly, pulled out a thin, rectangular object, about as large as both his hands. He showed it around, to nobody in particular, demonstrating that he knew he was being watched. Then, he started dragging his fingers across the shiny surface for a few seconds. He stopped, looked at his work, and, like an afterthought, started again; when he was finally done, he inspected the object one last time and raised it at chest level, again showing it around.
It had writing on it. Two words, one above the other. Doina couldn't really write or read, and certainly not in English -- a language that she had not intentionally learned, and could only master in speech, anyway. She recognised some of the letters, but had no idea what the two words meant. The ship would be no help, because when it came to human culture, it only knew what she knew. She frowned, trying to guess what the unknown scribbling meant. Could it be a threat? Or any useful information? Something important? She knew that literacy was common in Mark's time, but she didn't feel guilty. Back in year 1111, only a handful of clergymen had any command of letters.
But, whatever the words meant, it was obvious that the man was trying to communicate. She knew, at a level that wasn't entirely rational, that sound couldn't carry in the voided airlock. She could even tell, if asked, how fast it did carry if there was any air to carry it, even though speed of sound was a notion that would never have occurred to her only a few weeks before. And there could be no air in the airlock, if it was still opened.
They had discussed shutting the airlock, before Mark and Aram left, and Mark had said that, since the ship was so good at shielding, maybe keeping a direct line of sight between it and whatever kept the bomb in one piece was a good idea.
She sighed and, for the hundredth time, wished that the two men were still with her.
* * *
Deep thuds carried through the interior wall of the cruiser's brig compartment. The two soldiers, unable to see what was going on, listened intently.
"What if they get hurt?" asked Porter.
"What if?" shrugged Willard.
"I think we're meant to deliver them home intact."
"Hell, I'm sure they'll get tired soon."
But the thuds went on. After another minute, Porter asked again:
"What if they kill each other?"
Willard considered. "Well, that'd be bad, I guess."
"Yeah, and I'm pretty sure it'd be our asses."
Willard considered again.
"Fine," he said. "Squeeze 'em, and let's go inside."
Porter keyed in the necessary access codes on the computer console in front of him, remotely accessing the suits of the two prisoners. Then, simultaneously, he sent in a command that caused the powered suits to compress in key body areas, just as they would do for a high-g manoeuvre, but at an intensity and frequency that had been specially designed to quickly incapacitate their occupants.
He watched the screen as a set of digits timed the punishment, and as they reached a half minute, he said:
"OK, they should be all soft and squishy by now, let's go in."
Grabbing their flechette guns and covering each other, they took positions in front of the inner door, and Willard opened it.
The inside of the inner brig was pitch black.
* * *
"AIR," he had scribbled on the tablet. And, then, underneath: "PLEASE".
He showed it around. Nothing happened for a long couple of minutes, and he was beginning to resign himself that the crew was ignoring him; time to consider his alternatives.
He felt sure he was being watched; it was pure common sense. And he knew that whoever was on board would understand English. After all, English was one of the damn thousands of languages that they spoke in Eurasia, and the two prisoners back on the Kennedy were proficient in it.
He had considered, for a moment, writing in Italian, just in case his comms officer had heard correctly. He couldn't speak Italian, but the tablet had a dictionary. But then he thought to keep that knowledge as an ace in his sleeve, so he just used English.
Wearing his best friendly face and a genial smile that looked accurate to a thousandth of a inch, he slowly turned around, showing the tablet to the smooth, round walls.
He had completed the ninth circuit when he noticed a change in the shade. Looking up, he saw the airlock opening close, like an iris that appeared out of nowhere. It only took a second or so, and his crate was completely hidden from sight; then, the ceiling left no sign that there ever was an opening in it, except for a large, black circle.
He stopped and waited.
Discrete finger movements inside his glove, captured by forearm muscle sensors on the inside of his suit sleeve, reconfigured his visor display to show outside sensors. Temperature was consistent with lunar night, pressure was zero, radiation level bearable. Then, all of a sudden, temperature and pressure started going up, while radiation went down. The constantly opened radio channels that his suit maintained with the crate above were severed; he guessed that the iris above was stopping radio waves, together with all the other types of radiation. That worried him a little, but it wasn't entirely unexpected.
What he didn't expect, though, was for the outside pressure to reach a natural 14.7 psi so quickly. It was as if air filled the airlock instantly, and he could see no openings for any sort of gas exchange, nor could he feel turbulence through his suit. The temperature, as well, jumped straight to seventy as if the air came in already warmed and static. The airlocks on the Kennedy, or any other airlocks he'd ever seen, took at least one full minute to equalise. How the Queens had managed to improve on that, he had no idea, but he was sure the ONI would be very interested indeed to improve on the waiting time for EVAs. Especially during a battle, extra-vehicular activities had to happen as quickly as possible, and long waiting times in airlocks had always been problematic.
As he considered all that, his suit's microphones captured a female voice, coming from all around him, and speaking to him in European English.
"What do you want?" the voice asked.
* * *
Their helmet lights came on automatically, and they immediately brought their guns to bear. Two long, dark shapes were floating in the middle of the brig, not moving, pulsing visibly as the restraint program was still running through its full minute of VIP treatment.
"Oh, boy," whispered Porter. "They're way out of it."
"And that's fine by me," said Willard.
Debris w
as floating everywhere in the room. Tiny pieces of metal or plastic and shards of glass floated everywhere, from the broken lighting fixtures and the pulverised surveillance camera, and they had to constantly wave them out of their way.
"What the hell happened here?!"
"It's like there was a war."
"How could they do so much damage?"
"Fuckin' fanatics," said Willard.
"You think they didn't know we'd squeeze them?"
"What else would they think we were gonna do? Bring them each a two-by-four and grab us some popcorn?"
As they slowly approached the unmoving bodies, they noticed that they weren't looking quite right. In the darkness of the room, and with light reflected by the debris everywhere, they suddenly felt that something was wrong.
It took them two seconds to realise what it was:
The two pulsating suits were empty.
They instantly turned, pushing themselves to opposite corners, as they'd been trained to do, trying to cover each other.
"Wher--"
* * *
"Hello," said Gaines, smiling to nobody in particular, just to buy some time.
"What do you want?" asked the voice again.
The voice was unmistakably feminine. And, Gaines thought, it sounded rather young. A young woman, maybe a fresh recruit. He wasn't an expert in Eurasian accents, but the accent seemed British... but not quite. Italian, however, it was not.
He decided to play for time.
"Where are you? Who's this?" he asked, tentatively.
The voice hesitated, then said:
"You first!"
What the hell? thought Gaines. What is this, some kind of game?
"I came with the crate above," he avoided the answer.
"The what?"
"The transport ship above," he said. You don't know what a crate is? he thought.