“Son-of-a-bitch…”
“What?” she looked up and over her shoulder at him.
“That third line under ‘Plasma Modules’, it says ‘Plasmic Output’. Hit that.” Aidele did as instructed and the menu grew again. The words ‘Plasmic Output Initiate’ popped into existence. “Tap that.”
As she tapped the line command, the vehicle shuddered and rose up off its charger as a shield enveloped them and pressed outward growing in size. The display on the monitor showed this action as red lines glowed along interface points on the vessel’s hull. The craft gained power and height. The shield itself was nearly invisible, but a ripple of purple energy pulsated sporadically all across the newly encapsulating sphere. It was fairly unsettling as they hovered there above the charge station like a bubble with nowhere to float. All the sound around them and outside the bubble field ceased to exist. It was like finding themselves in a sound booth.
“Look at that,” Durante said in nervous awe. The icons on the monitor shifted as the blue sphere graphic pushed the charge indicator to the lower left of the displays. The circle became purple, taking on the form of the shield, and diagnostic displays filled up the sphere. “Plasmic discharge, oxygen reserves—really important to keep an eye on those—energy output, velocity, thrust, gyro balance, core integrity, vertical alignment… and the last indicator there seems to be… yes, kinetic variance.”
What’s that?”
“It’s…” Durante paused trying to think how to explain. “It’s the kinetic force the outer shielding contends with versus interior atmospheric pressure. It’s what regulates self-contained mass in contention with external gravitational exertion. Essentially, what we experience gravity wise is what the core produces while simultaneously eliminating planetary g-force influence on us.”
Aidele looked over her shoulder at him. “That’s… incredible. So, we’re floating because the Plasma Shielding has literally become anti-gravity?”
“A bit primitive as a description for it, but essentially true. More accurately, it utilizes gravitation already available and redistributes it for thrust, rotation, motion, and artificial environment generation.”
“I… wow. And the gravitic core powers the shields, and the batteries power the electronics of the waverider?”
Durante nodded. “That’s pretty on point, yes.”
“And the battery has roughly two-hundred flight hours of charge?”
“Right again.”
She was silent for a long moment, and then, “As such, does that mean the core itself is… well… unlimited in its charge?”
“That I don’t know. However, I’m willing to go out on a limb and suggest its half-life is probably pretty stellar.”
“Holy… Alright. Enough of that. Let’s get our doggies rollin’! Er, flyin’!” Aidele reached for the right handlegrip.
“Wait! Wait! We can’t just go flying off! We’ll end up bouncing all over the place! We’re just supposed to be solving the interfaces right now!” Durante threw his arms up looking around. “Before we start doing any actual controlling, I’d like to make sure we have atmosuits on, the garage depressurized, and to determine where the exit leads!”
“Oh, cool your jets! I’m not intending to take it out yet! I just want to get a feel for how she handles!” Aidele twisted the handle back towards her and the vessel darted forward colliding with shelves and they rolled along a wall, managing to stay upright. The shelves buckled and collapsed under the shield as Durante saw the view shifting from wall to garage to wall again as they rolled horizontally, purple energy flickering in front of them. Aidele grinned broadly as Durante let loose a high-pitched howl. Looking around, they saw that the walls didn’t have a scratch from the impact. The shelves, however, were tattered and flattened. “Well, twisting it back makes it move forward!”
“Remember when I said I didn’t want to wind up as a wall pastry!?”
“Oh, will you settle down? The shield absorbed all the kinetic force, just like you said it would.”
“That doesn’t mean trash the garage!”
Aidele ignored him as her smile broadened. “If back is forward, it stands to reason forward must be—”
She twisted forward as Durante howled, “No, wait! Don’t—”
“Back!” she barked a laugh as they careened backwards away from the wall they were facing, a trail of destruction left in their wake. They didn’t roll along the wall this time as she held the handlebars straight and even. A low whining buzz filled the interior of their lightly shimmering bubble. Durante was howling again and she sat there staring out through the transparent sphere interrupted only occasionally by that rippling purple energy. “Really hard to concentrate with you wailing in my ears.”
“Then stop running into the walls!” he replied about ready to leap off, but stopped himself as an image of a hamster floundering around the bottom of a clear ball popped into mind.
“There isn’t any structural damage. Sure, the shelves are a loss, but the labs are obviously made of a very strong metal. Interesting that we couldn’t hear anything, though.”
“Yeah, I’ll wager it was a real cacophony of noise out there! The shielding cancels sound. We won’t hear anything out there, just like no one out there would hear anything in here. Although, it makes me wonder if the shielding can be modulated to change that fact…”
“You mean use the shields like some sort of… microphone?”
“Yeah. Or a megaphone. Hmmm, might even be able to project imagery, too…”
“That would be cool.”
“Yeah, cool, listen, can we land now before you wreak the whole place?”
Aidele didn’t answer as she furrowed her brows thinking. Then, after nearly ten seconds, said, “…We didn’t get tossed off…”
“Of course, we didn’t. Remember the whole bit about being in a self-contained gravitational field?”
“Right. Nothing beyond will affect us.”
“Correct.”
“And you said we needed to keep an eye on the oxygen reserves because we’re isolated.”
“Rather important indicator to observe, without a doubt.”
She sat in thought for a moment longer, hands resting on her thighs. She nodded and reached for the handgrips again wondering just how fast the vehicle could move. Dozens of other icons were scattered across the interface display and the feeling of being overwhelmed returned. It was a lot to take in. But she wasn’t afraid. They needed to learn as much about the waverider as they could because the trepidation of earlier, of time just about being up, had returned to her gut.
Twisting the handgrip, she slowly brought the vessel back to the center of the room and released the grip. Momentum ceased the second she let go.
“All right. How do I move it up and down? Side to side? An educated guess.”
“I would say some combination of those pedals and the handgrips. Going slow enough, it looks like the shields counter inertia. However, I wouldn’t bank on that being true in all circumstances, so I’d say one of those pedals is also a brake.”
Aidele looked to the pedals and readjusted her feet from the footrest and went to testing each one. it only took a few seconds to discover that the large right pedal was the brake. The other pedals were a little trickier.
“What do you think the right combination is?”
“You’re just going to have to play around with them. They must control the X, Y, and Z axes. Just pushing them does nothing.”
“But if I use the handgrips in coordination with them… Yet, I’m getting nothing when I do so…”
She twisted the right grip again and pushed the pedals to no effect. Durante watched her twisting the right grip as she had been doing so far. He glanced at the left grip which, so far, seemed immovable. Then he sighed.
“Wait, what’s that behind the left grip? The right has one too but it’s in a forward position.”
Aidele looked at what seemed to be a thick switch. Testing it, she found it
could be moved forward. They heard a small click.
“Thumb-lock…” they said in unison and Aidele went back to testing the pedals. This time she used the left grip. The vehicle lurched sideways to their left and slammed into a wall, crumpling another shelf like paper.
“Will you stop doing that!”
“Can’t learn anything if you’re not willing to break shit.”
“I learned a lot when a student and I never busted anything up!”
“Uh huhn. Never?”
“Not before learning it. …Afterwards was another story, though.”
Aidele chuckled and turned the grip upward. “That was left, show me right.”
Once more they shot across the room. Durante sighed but held his tongue. Aidele let loose a laugh.
“You are just too much fun, Durante! Gotta take you to an amusement park sometime!”
“Right. Right. Providing we survive this ordeal, sure, why not.”
“We’ll be alright. Now,” she brought the vehicle back to the center of the room, “let’s see if we can find up and down.”
“You know, we might actually need some of this equipment later.”
Aidele shook her head. “I get the feeling that when we leave, we won’t be back. At least for a long while.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Just a hunch,” she said looking at a pedal just above her left foot. She rested her boot on it, saw that it was designed in such a way that her heel was on the pedal just beneath it, while her toe could adjust the pressure on the top pedal. “I wonder…”
She gently pressed her toe forward until the upper pedal went down as far as it would go, then twisted the left grip. The vessel rose upward and she depressed the brake as they neared the ceiling. She released the pedal and they hovered there looking down to the floor.
“I’m impressed,” Durante said. “You learn very fast.”
“It’s starting to feel like I can get the hang of this, after all. Isn’t it?”
Aidele pressed the upper pedal again and brought the waverider back to the floor.
They spent the next twenty minutes acclimating Aidele to the controls and then parked the craft back on the charging pedestal that had, miraculously to Durante, survived her rampage of education. When they dismounted, he almost fell to his knees. Yet still had a wide grin on his face. Aidele braced her fists on her hips and affixed him with her gaze.
“Oh now, come on! My driving isn’t that bad you gotta grin like a monkey at seeing the ground again!”
He looked around and laughed. “Get a good look at the garage lately? Not sure there’s much we’ll be able to salvage.”
She shook her head and started for the ramp. “I wouldn’t get my knickers in a bunch over that. My gut’s tellin’ me we’ll be tearing outta here all too soon.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. Berricks can’t possibly know where we’re at.”
“When I get these feelings, it’s a foregone conclusion shit’s about to hit the fan. Think we’ll have enough room for the duffle-bag and your backpack?”
“The cubbies aren’t big, but I imagine we can make it work.”
“Good. Let’s get packing.”
“You think we need to leave now?”
“Yes.” Aidele started up the ramp and he followed. “I do.”
“Fantastic. So, next stop, Aquila Mons to warn the Council?”
“You got it. And you wanted ta contact the Union president, too. Right?”
“Uh… yeah… yeah. Where are we going to park this thing?”
“They’ve got shuttle bays, don’t they?”
Durante paused as they passed the labs. “Yeah. Dozens of docking ports you can rent. I just mean, you’re comfortable leaving it there for a bit?”
“How many people are going to be lookin’ ta steal a waverider of all things out of a port?”
“Huhn. Good point,” Durante huffed. “Do you think the Council will listen? What do we do if they’re not concerned about the general?”
“With everything we’ve been through and everything I’ve lost, they’re damn well going to listen,” a scowl crept over her face. “The Wastelands has become the staging grounds for an invasion of Hinon. We can’t let Berricks sink his claws in any deeper even if I’ve got to go up to whatever ship he’s sittin’ pretty in and kick his ass back ta Earth mahself!”
“You don’t lack for confidence, I’ll give you that.”
“You know what kinda ship it is?”
They rounded the final bend into laundry and sanitation as he responded. “Yeah. Capital class dreadnought. The ‘Invicta’. Flagship of Eighth Fleet. I was stationed to it last year. Really expected a tour-of-duty out to Venus or Mercury. Very surprised when suddenly we’re testing the Pylons out past Hinon and towards the Pheyton Range. I would have thought testing the Pylons Project out near Sol itself would’ve resulted in better energy levels. However, guess we know now that was just fluff so that the general could get ahold of the professor’s work. Still don’t know how he found out about it.”
They came into laundry and she glanced back at him. “No longer than an hour. Then we leave. Lucky for you, my mom had several dusters in her closet to replace the wreck you left for me.”
He raised his hands defensively. “Hey, I apologized for that. Who knew washing leather in a machine and then drying it in a dryer was a bad idea?”
She laughed. “Everyone, Durante. Everyone. Now get a move on or I’m leaving without you.”
She marched onward towards her parents’ room. He stopped and gawped after her. “Would you really leave without me? Because of a coat?”
“Don’t test me if you don’t want an answer to that,” she called over her shoulder.
She hurried to the bedroom and went to work stuffing her duffel-bag. Pants, shirts, underwear, bras, socks, and several photos of her family she didn’t want to leave behind she shoved into the bag’s depths, then went to the closet, chose a dark red duster of a slightly different design (this one had some nifty shoulder drapes that hung down to the chest and over the back), and grabbed another red Grey Lance down off the shelf. She took some time just looking around, making sure there was nothing else she wanted (well, she wanted it all, but there was just no more room in the bag and they needed to get going).
We’ll get through this just fine, she thought, checking her Irons to ensure they were still in good condition, the howling in her gut fiercer than ever. When all is said and done, I’ll come back and gather up more. Maybe I can get a place in Aquila Mons? Certainly, can’t go back to the ranch now. She sighed and pulled on her holster, clasped it, and lowered her revolvers into their cradles. It was starting to look like she was being displaced from all her homes.
The hour was just about up, so she slung her duffel over her shoulder and headed towards the rec room. She hoped Durante didn’t take her too seriously about being left behind. There was no way she was going to do that to him, of course. Not after all of this. She smiled. That man’s too easy, I tell you what.
She entered the rec room and saw Durante in the kitchen gathering up some food. She headed across to him. As she closed in on him, her smile faded. Durante saw her and gave a semi-wave. A look of concern crossed his face as he saw her knitted brows.
“What’s wrong?”
She didn’t reply, only pointed out the window behind him. Durante turned around and immediately dropped his bag. There were two shuttles entering the shuttle bay. He knew who it was without even having to guess. Shuttles from the Invicta. They’d been found. Durante turned to her fear etched deep in his expression.
Aidele knew then and there that it was too late. If they expected to survive, they were going to have to fight their way out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: SHOWDOWN
IT WAS AS if their lives no longer belonged to them, Asta reflected sourly. Slaves to the masters of power. Any wrong move, any wrong step on their part, would cost them not just their lives, but the
lives of their grown children as well. She turned the rifle over in her hands, examining her work. Not for the first time, she wished their captors had been foolish enough to leave behind even a little ammunition.
This’s jus’ busy work. Ain’ no way rifles would be useful ‘gainst Aidele in close quarters. She stored it in a box with racks where the shining weapons could be slid inward, muzzle first. Looking over to Drevan, she saw him finishing up an automatic Pacemaker, vicious handhelds that could fire electrically charged bullets that exploded on impact. Neither of them had been permitted to speak to one another, the two armored guards at the tent entrance glaring menacingly at them had made sure of that. Not so certain escape is lookin’ very likely here… Fine. Maybe goin’ down in a blaze o’glory would be the best thing. Nielson would hafta leave mah kids alone then.
The tent flaps fluttered open as Lieutenant Thompson entered, glared down at where they sat, then turned to the guards, “Get them up. We’re packing it up. Mission starts in ten.”
Asta began to say something, but Thompson had already left.
“You heard him,” one of the guards said, brushing aside his duster with the butt of his rifle. “Get to your feet. We’re done here.”
“Kent git a glass o’water, first, ken ah?” Asta asked.
“Move it,” the guard replied.
Asta looked to Drevan as they stood and were ushered out and towards a flurry of activity. Tents dropped and the shuttles were loaded as all of the soldiers scurried in a rush to get everything up and stowed. Entering a clearing, they saw Thompson at the onramp to one of the shuttles giving orders to a small group of soldiers. Drevan’s eyes affixed Asta’s. They knew each other’s thoughts without speaking, and a fearful trepidation filled Asta’s gut. They were about to storm the labs. This meant, either they were about to die, or they’d manage to gain freedom long enough to get word to the kids to escape. One moment is all we’ll git. God, please, if’n yer lissenin’, help us git ta the kids bafer Nielson…
“Struts up in eight. I want the whole camp packed up and loaded in five. No more,” Thompson commanded. “We’re making good progress, but remind your teams that this is a zero-error mission. The targets will not go without a fight. The quicker we get in there and secure the premises, the better. Take them alive if you can, put them down fast if you must.”
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