Katie smiled, then leaned up and kissed her tentatively on the cheek, wincing at the stab of shame in her neck. Then she searched Penny’s eyes and found comfort there.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Carter
“Incoming transmission from Malevolent, secure channel, sir.” Quigg, having retaken his post at the comms station, nodded at the red-lettered message header from Captain Russo.
“Put it on the main screen.”
Quigg punched a tab on the dash and Malevolent’s gloomy, confined bridge appeared. Carter smiled when Laura came into view, took her seat in the captain’s chair and faced him. He hadn’t seen her in person for almost two years. The only officer in his fleet tall enough to look him straight in the eye.
“Laura, you seem well. What’s up?”
Captain Russo tugged on her flight suit and glanced at the data pad on the chair’s arm. “I’m afraid it’s not great news, Clayton. We’re still a ways from Luna, and the Volmar continues to maintain her distance, but there’s a new development you should be aware of if your own sensors haven’t picked it up yet.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ve got two more Prussian heavy cruisers en route from the Martian sector at full burn, heading your way.”
Carter glanced at Jenson with a questioning look and said, “We’re not picking up those birds, Laura. Full burn you say?” He eyed the co-pilot again, who opened her palms and shook her head.
“That’s not all, Clayton. They’re running dark. No response to any hails. Transponder data is suppressed, which is why you don’t see them.”
Carter furrowed his brow. He’d prepped the Echo for a possible conflict and felt confident she’d hold her own in a confrontation with a cruiser just through speed and maneuverability. But two? “How are you tracking their movements?”
Captain Russo twisted her lips. She was all business, and Carter couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather have out there watching his back.
“We have countermeasures for this situation. Prussian cruisers leave signatures in their burns, but you have to look for them specifically. Here,” she paused and pointed to one of her crew, “I’ll get Lopez to send the filter coordinates.”
“Much appreciated.”
Jenson and Captain Powell turned to a panel on the dash. She toggled a switch and the tracking viewer blinked. Two cruisers appeared.
“Can you confirm heading, Jenson?”
“Yes, sir. Luna.”
“ETA?”
“An hour, give or take.”
“And ours?”
Jenson checked the view finder. “Another thirty minutes, sir.”
Carter worked his jaw and seethed, muttering under his breath. Then he turned to the Malevolent’s captain again.
“How far away from Luna are you, Laura?”
“Still another seventy-five minutes. If the Prussians are bent on conflict, we won’t be much help.”
“I guess we’ll have to take our chances.”
Russo leaned in closer to the viewer, concern straining her face. “Those ships are built for combat, Clayton. Not only do they possess formidable defensive weapons, including conventional nukes, but they also train their crews for this sort of conflict.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve seen them in action, Clay. One, the Henrik, ripped a Brazilian freighter apart in seconds . . . seconds!”
Carter remembered the incident on the Saturn run several years ago. Many resource companies, including Titanius, suspected the Bolivar did more than haul ore and ice from Saturn’s moons. Free-floating calypso mines scattered along the route and around Rhea and Dione attacked and disabled numerous freighters. Diplomatic efforts proved useless, and threats of taking complaints to the United Nations rang hollow with no concrete evidence. Then, a Prussian cruiser—the Henrik—opened fire on the Bolivar without warning, annihilating it, and after that, the calypsos mysteriously vanished.
“Laura, is the Malevolent in any danger against one of these cruisers?”
She smiled that frosty smile again. “We can hold our own against any boat out here. My concern is what they could do to the Echo before we rendezvous at Luna.”
Captain Powell stared at him grimly.
Carter sniffed. “We’ve got speed and size on our side, and I’m not looking to beat my chest with the Prussians. It’s possible our stranded crew up there is still alive, so once we arrive at Luna in a half an hour, we’ll rescue them and salvage the remains of the lab before those cruisers know what the hell’s going on.”
“Understood. We’ll continue on course for Luna.”
Then he had a thought. “Stand by one, Malevolent.”
He motioned to Quigg to cut the audio. Jenson’s eyes widened, and she gazed sheepishly at Captain Powell.
Time for a diversion.
Carter took charge. “Jenson, stay focused. Are any of those terran ships following us of Prussian registration?”
She swallowed hard, paused a moment, then scanned her monitors, checking ship transponder data from the tracking icons. “Yes, sir, three of them. A science vessel, a mining shuttle, and a decades’ old corvette.”
Carter flexed his fingers. “Which is the most important to the Consortium, Jenson? The science craft?”
“Negative, sir. I’d say the corvette. Even though she’s old, she’s likely got weapons and military spy capability.”
“Captain Powell, your thoughts?”
“I agree. There’s a reason she’s still in service.”
“All right, then.” He turned to Quigg and nodded. “Open the channel again.”
Quigg toggled the audio and Captain Russo looked up in anticipation.
Carter stroked his chin and grinned. “Laura, I’ve got a slight change of plan.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I’d like you to lay in an intercept course for one of the Prussian ships following us from Earth. She’s a corvette called—”
He glanced at Jenson, who answered, “The Nachtfalke, sir.”
“Get that, Laura?”
“Plotting an intercept course now.”
“Good. Target that sewage bucket and bring weapons to bear on her as soon as you’re in range, but don’t fire. Just make sure every living creature in the solar system knows you’ve got that ship in your sites. Let’s give those cruisers something else to think about.”
“Acknowledged. Intercept course plotted and,” she nodded to Lopez, “engaged. Malevolent out.”
Jenson exhaled and leaned back in the co-pilot chair, clearly shaken and nervous. Captain Powell stood and motioned to Carter to meet off the bridge. When they’d found a quiet spot out of earshot, he placed his hand on Carter’s shoulder. “You don’t have to worry about Elin Jenson. She’s a solid pilot and quick on her feet, just a little skittish in the face of those cruisers.”
“I’m not concerned in the least, John. You’re the best crew ever assembled and I’m confident we’ll emerge from this unscathed. Remember, that little corvette out will soon realize she’s got a galactic cruiser bearing down on her, weapons drawn, like a high-speed truck on a collision course with a single-seat hovercar.”
Powell’s face suddenly flinched.
“Come, John, let’s see what those cruisers do now.”
Kate
The blur of grey, white and black moonscape merged with the gentle thrum of the LunaScoota, creating a hypnotic effect that lulled Kate into that half-state of consciousness. She fought desperately against the powerful urge to sleep. Her mind replayed images of the Spacer Training Center, young Martin, the drugs and alcohol on pass days once she’d shipped out to the danger zones with her unit, the intense loneliness that pierced not only her heart but the skin of her soul.
Tracy was right, or maybe he simply parroted the trainers when he said, “Survival was a sequence of small steps.” Either way, slogan or truth, those words had kept her going during this nightmare.
She cycled through their bio-signs on her visor and noted Mary had ent
ered beta sleep. Soon, she’d have to wake her. The crater zone loomed ahead, and they’d have to reduce speed—at least to 75%—to pass over it safely.
Above the horizon, like a warning, a beacon, perhaps even an omen as Mary had quipped, the eerie blue light glowed, guiding the way to the alien ship on the outskirts of the Mare Marginis.
Twenty minutes before we hit the crater zone.
Kate set an on-dash timer, rose to eight meters, checked Mary’s position behind her one last time, and yielded to the thick shadow of fatigue that penetrated the marrow of her bones and gripped her in a vice-like hold.
I need to speak with Jim . . .
She surrendered to the black.
When the bone-jarring shudder came, Kate was in the depths of a dream where she’d been dumped into the passenger hold of a republican shuttlecraft orbiting Eros, dazed from lack of oxygen, thankful for being rescued from NDU pod-thrusters. She squeezed her eyes into focus as a man approached from above. When she resolved the face, Dr. Marshall Whitt kneeled beside her and whispered, “Welcome home, Katie,” his voice trailing off in an infinite echo. . .
Emergency alarms filled her helmet and Kate’s eyes fluttered open. For a moment, she had no idea where she was, the image of that asshole Whitt burned into her visor and his arrogant voice resonating through her brain. Then, the familiar surroundings hit her. Luna. Fully conscious, she realized the scooter flew at an awkward angle. She grabbed the controls to correct the roll, but the craft wouldn’t respond.
“Mary.”
A vast field of rock, volcanic cones and craters surrounded her as the craft screamed at a horrifying list toward a massive outcrop. Her altitude leveled out at a meter and a half, and Kate pulled on the throttle to climb higher, but the controls were dead in her hands. Velocity registered 320 km/h. The scooter had lost a stabilizing thruster, hitting something along the way, and vibrated under the strain. A huge boulder slashed by on her right, but part of the cargo hold clipped it and sent the machine spinning like a top.
“Mares, wake up, damn it!”
She shifted her weight as far back in the flight seat as she could to pull the scooter up, but the craft continued twisting on its course through the rock and debris field. Kate considered releasing the safety harness and taking her chances by jumping off the stern. Given the lunar gravity, she might get lucky and not be completely eviscerated on contact.
Her helmet comms crackled. “Kate, where are you?”
The G forces crushed her into the harness and flung her around. She pulled her eyes open but saw nothing but a kaleidoscope of black, grey and white, and washed out rocks and impact zones, against a flashing veil of red warning visor lights.
Her lower left rib caved first under the violent crush of the scooter’s malfunction. She struggled to reach the harness release pad on her chest, but the thrust of forces snapped her brittle arm at the wrist, and she screamed in pain.
Another jolt shook the craft and its nose lurched up, leveled out, and regained the horizon. Kate’s head felt like it would explode as blood sloshed through her body. Her dangling right hand looked surreal, adrenaline masking the pain so far. That strange sound she kept hearing in her helmet was her own desperate moan.
Her reprieve ended just as abruptly. The scooter rolled on its side again and had lost its course. Kate shook her head to maintain consciousness and pounded the harness release. It remained fixed. She hit it again, and again, losing her breath each time. Nothing happened.
Mary’s scratchy transmission broke through in a rush of static.
“Kate?”
“Mary, I need help!”
No reply came.
The scooter’s nose dipped under the horizon again and the craft lost altitude. She monitored elevation as sparks and blue lightning spilled from the undercarriage.
The alert in her helmet sounded. Three meters.
She rocketed over a small impact crater. Directly ahead, a wall of rock and debris rose out of the ground.
Two meters.
The scooter wouldn’t come close to clearing that. Her only hope of survival depended on whether the craft nosed down into the soft dust before smashing into the rock wall. Either way, it would be over in seconds.
“60 CCs of pseudophine.”
The powerful painkiller hissed into her helmet.
One meter.
If the nose touched down first, she’d be squeezed through her harness like spuds in a potato masher, or sent tumbling into the rock. Kate hammered at the release pad again, sending a fresh wave of pain and nausea from her ribcage.
Milliseconds before the scooter slammed into the dust, the restraint snapped open and she instinctively pushed up and away from the machine. Her momentum carried her toward the wall but somehow, she cleared it enough to avoid a deadly collision. In her peripheral vision, she saw the LunaScoota disintegrate on contact with the lunar surface.
Kate tumbled through the space toward the debris field. Despite her broken wrist and crushed ribs, she pulled herself tightly together and braced for impact. When she hit the rock-strewn moonscape, she careened into the void again, fell, then bounced for several hundred meters before coming to rest on her back.
She gulped, catching shallow breaths. The integrity of her envirosuit remained intact although her visor display had grown dark. Waves of nausea rose, and black spots filled her vision. She coughed once, choking down vomit, then just before drifting into unconsciousness, the image of Jim Atteberry holding young Mary in her rubber boots on his lap appeared, that night when the Mount Sutro Tower crashed to the ground.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Mary
“Kate, come in!”
Her last garbled message disappeared in a crash of static, then the link died. After she’d roused from a nap and realized Kate was in trouble, Mary slammed her scooter to a full stop and immediately scanned the area. Sharp rocks and impact craters surrounded her; the bleak moonscape stretching beyond the horizon. When Kate no longer transmitted, she circled back, and retraced her path.
She nosed the scooter up until it whined at 12 meters above surface and cruised at an agonizing 20 km/h over the jet trail carved in the patchy dust. The limited scanning function on the scooter’s dash revealed nothing. No other vessel in the area. No debris. Too much interference from the rough terrain, perhaps? On her visor, she cycled through the infrared filter but that, too, proved futile, so her only reasonable course of action depended on following a slow, methodical search protocol: retrace her path until Kate’s trail appeared, then track that.
Twenty minutes passed before Mary spied the missing scooter’s pattern off her port side. She nudged the throttle and powered away, following the rough line over the rocky field. After several kilometers of steady flying, the trail suddenly veered to the southeast. She slowed and surveyed the area. Still no sign of Kate or the other craft.
Her scooter must have malfunctioned and flown off-course. But why didn’t she adjust?
If Kate had been dozing, she may not have noticed the change in direction. The lack of sleep from the past few days now affected her mind, so perhaps she hallucinated too. Mary lowered her altitude to five meters and followed the trail over rocks and through the craters. In a few moments, she saw evidence of the scooter hitting a massive outcrop, altering its course again. One of the machine’s rear stabilizers jutted out of the surface dust, surrounded by fresh rock debris and puffs of suspended particles.
“Kate, can you hear me?”
The trail became harder to follow as the rocky zone grew more dense, and more dangerous. In those short patches of smooth surface that appeared, the missing scooter’s path looked like a series of overcast stitches sewn in the surface with their distinctive on-off pattern.
How the hell did her machine manage that?
Mary reasoned the engine must have been sputtering at that point, but the regular scar pattern suggested they weren’t caused by a malfunctioning nacelle; rather, the scooter was spinning on its roll-axis.
She followed this new trail through the zone, losing it sometimes where the rocks and outcrops dominated the surface, picking it up again over dust-filled craters and pockets. Judging by the distance between the stitches, Mary concluded Kate’s machine had been running almost full throttle, but she dared not attempt covering the area too quickly for fear of missing something.
Several more precious minutes passed, each one spent looking for Kate meant one less searching for safety in the Rossian vessel. The whisper of an idea breathed into her thoughts: she should abandon this search and save herself. But she shook her head and dismissed it.
When Mary looked up, her jaw dropped at the sight of a massive outcrop stretching from the horizon into the black sky. The wounded scooter’s trail headed directly for it. Icy panic crept up her spine and buried itself in her head. She gained altitude and pushed her own machine toward the looming rock wall.
As she approached the huge outcrop, the path revealed that Kate had somehow wrested control over the craft’s roll as the jet trail on the surface straightened out.
The dash scanner blinked as mangled bits and pieces of the destroyed scooter rose out of the dust and rock at the base of the wall. When she arrived there, nothing remained of the machine except slivers. More importantly, no one could have survived that impact. Mary’s heart sank.
After reining in her emotions, she discovered the pilot’s seat nestled against an outcrop, and searched for Kate’s body. That’s when she noticed the harness had released, possibly jarred loose from the crash itself, or perhaps because she freed herself from the craft before it crashed.
She could be anywhere . . . and alive.
“Kate, are you there?”
She flew in a pattern of ever-expanding circles, beginning from the empty pilot’s seat. Soon, she bumped up against the rock wall and, rather than continuing with her search path, she explored the base of the massive outcrop. A small vee-shaped opening cut across a chunk of the wall and Mary followed, reasoning that if Kate had been thrown from the machine, her momentum would have taken her into the wall, and possibly over it or through this cut.
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