April 3: The Middle of Nowhere

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April 3: The Middle of Nowhere Page 24

by Mackey Chandler


  "Carrier signal dropping off. Happy out."

  * * *

  "Jeff, watch the computer work through the maneuver and give me a verbal count when we come up on our burn to climb out. I don't like talking with it like you kids do."

  "What marks Happy?"

  "Thirty seconds, fifteen seconds and five."

  "Aye, aye."

  Happy looked at him to see if he was being cute, but he looked serious.

  They were traveling tail first and there was a long hard shove at their back and then the ship flipped over on autopilot, belly to the sky and looking forward again. The lunar landscape flowed under them seeming faster as they got lower and it was obvious they were aimed at a point below the horizon. That horizon line was close enough they seemed doomed to crash. Some sharp peaks flashed under them frighteningly close and they were so low they couldn't see clear sky anymore unless they rolled back over. At the end of a plain they could see the tiny shapes of manmade structures right where they were aimed.

  "Thirty seconds - mark," Jeff called off.

  Happy zoomed in on his biggest screen and the fat shape of a transport was sitting on jacks away from the buildings. He designated it with a stylus and selected the smaller Russian styled missile they carried by keying the numeral one. Before he could release it the screen overlaid a yellow symbol on the nearest dome shaped building indicating it was painting them with millimeter range radar. The sort used for target acquisition and missile guidance. He designated it as target two and was about to assign another small missile when the ship gave a shuddering lurch and their cabin air exited with a explosive >POOM< that hurt their ears. Most of the bank of circuit breakers above them suddenly popped up as one and turned from green to red. It had to be a laser breach. A missile strike would have left them an expanding debris field.

  Happy slapped his face shield home hard against the air gushing out of his suit and heard the valve roar full open to refill it. He took the time to turn his head to see for sure Jeff had sealed his too. The ship was spinning so it was hard to turn his head back and harder yet to force his hand back in the brace to the key pad and stab the key for two that designated the bigger weapon for the radar source instead of his original intent. Being fired on had stripped any restraint he'd had away.

  He thumbed ENTER just as Jeff called "Fifteen seconds!" The lurch of the missiles leaving the pylon was barely felt before the auto pilot overrode the auto rotate program which had responded to a laser attack. They were so close that the flare of the ten kiloton weapon impacting the landing field control dome filled their windows with white glare before the ship had even fully checked it's rotation.

  The smaller and faster missile must have reached the ship sitting on the field first. But if it had the much smaller flash was lost in the wild spinning and struggle to key in the final commands. They'd check the video later. They should be safe to hold attitude for burn. He didn't think their laser would have any fire control left after a ten kiloton weapon struck their radar.

  "Five seconds," Jeff called off calmly as the Happy stopped belly down again and rolled her nose up for a vertical burn away from the approaching surface. When the five G burn kicked them in the butt nothing had ever felt so good. The ship's fall carried it below a kilometer before it's thrust started it back up for the sky.

  I'm too old for this, Happy thought, struggling to breathe against the push.

  As they climbed out there was a brief rattle of debris against the hull as they flew through the fringe of dirt blown high by the bigger missile. It wasn't heard with cabin pressure blown but they felt it like taking a ground car over a gravel patch. Nothing was big enough to take any systems down.

  When the pressure finally let off he told Jeff, "You did a hell of a job."

  "I just counted them off like you wanted," Jeff seemed surprised at the praise.

  "Yeah, with the ship spinning and taking fire, blowing pressure, and weapons detonating out the front view. You have any idea how many people would have been too busy screaming – 'We're all going to dieeee!' to do a count?"

  "Gee, I'd feel terrible if I did that," Jeff said, unbelieving.

  Happy was glad his helmet hid his smile. "Why don't you go back and see what they hit," he suggested. "It must not have been too bad or we would have broken up under that much acceleration."

  After the kid was gone he had a nice case of delayed shakes and got it under control before Jeff came back.

  "They took us right through the crapper."

  "How bad?"

  "Oh about one by two but real ragged,"

  "Well better the toilet than a fusion generator," Happy pointed out. It's more ragged than he thinks, or he missed some other holes, Happy thought privately, maybe out the opposite side too. The cabin lost its pressure in no more than two seconds. It must be at least a five centimeter hole to bleed down that fast. But he refrained from scolding the boy, or sending him back to check the opposite side. "OK, see if the camera arms will still deploy like they were programmed."

  Jeff checked out the ports visually to see the telescopes seemed to be unfolded properly and checked the data stream to see something was going in memory at the right rate. Then he isolated a single frame and made sure it looked clear and in focus. Everything seemed to be working well and he reported to Happy.

  "Good. We'll run the cameras right up until we need to fold the 'scopes in to brake for Central. That will still cover most of the route. I don't want to stress the ship by running a higher thrust than we already have. This old guy doesn't need any more stress either."

  The orbit was quickly boring, the cameras working away, the ship maintaining its own attitude. Happy leaned back and his pose said he didn't want any chatter. Jeff got a satellite feed and looked at the news services.

  Keywords lunar and Armstrong yielded nothing but a three day old notice that Fairbanks Aviation won a bid for detachable pressurized storage containers for lunar deployment.

  A fourth grader in Mississippi was taken into DHS custody at school for asserting that President Wiggen was indeed, a "poopy head".

  A junior at Jefferson High School in Montpelier Vermont was expelled when she refused to cover her naturally red hair which the administrators deemed a distraction.

  Inner city high school students in New York City staged a strike over wages. They remained in class and took instruction, but turned in all state standardized tests unmarked.

  Nothing interested Jeff much, so he put on a music feed, careful not to send it to Happy.

  The terminator had passed across Central while they were gone and they folded their telescope arms in, flipped tail first and made a long three G burn that took them down into the lunar night. Happy and Jeff both watched the program run down smoothly until they reached a hover fifty meters from the ground. Happy let it fall a full thirty meters before he gave a sharp blast from the main engine, then a smaller burst , a pause, one last small cough and he shut the main down entirely and let it sink against the small attitude thrusters until it squatted on the rear jacks compressing them. When he cut the thrusters it rebounded slightly on the suspension. Time from the autopilot cut out to touch down - less than thirty seconds. Jeff was impressed.

  The 'A' Rover was there and pulled up closer, its floods illuminating the landing pad. Two suited figures rushed a wheeled dolly out of sight on their belly side.

  "Go ahead and tip her over on the cart Happy," Johnson called on local com. "We have the guys standing back with a line on the thing and if you tip a little off the line they will pull it centered when you go down."

  Happy eased the attitude jets joystick-forward until the nose dipped off vertical, then quickly eased off as it tipped past the balance point and started the slow fall in a sixth G. When it was past about fifty degrees he pulled back until the fall slowed and then, when the hills came into view in their ports, pulled harder until somewhere around ten degrees from horizontal he stopped the fall entirely and had to ease off and back on a few tim
es. The nose settled the last little bit in jerks until they heard the belly contact the cart and felt it move differently rocking across the pivot point. It seesawed twice slowly in the low gravity and settled with both ends sticking out supported in the middle on the wheeled stand.

  "Not bad," Johnson admitted. "You didn't bend it in the middle."

  "Next time I'll just rotate from a hover to horizontal as I come in and skip this silly landing on the rear jacks and tipping it over," Happy threatened. "We're not under pressure, so we'll open the lock and come straight out. We have some battle damage port side and I'd like to go around the side and see it in the floods from your rover."

  "I'll join you and Julie will move the rover," Johnson offered.

  They shut the power down and went back with a hand torch and opened both doors of the coffin lock. When they rolled out Johnson was there to give them a hand out and help them stand without catching on anything. They walked to the nose in the bright flood lamps of the rover, then when Julie backed away and her lights swung away. Happy turned his flashlight back on and they walked carefully three abreast back down the other side of the ship, shining the light down on the landing pad that was still cluttered with debris from the attack. When they got to the dolly he flicked off his lamp. Julie had come around in a wide circle and the bright head lamps and flood lamps on the roof swung in and filled the darkness.

  Happy stood staring, but his brain couldn't jump from what he expected to what he was seeing. The hole was ragged as Jeff had said. It had charred curls of corrugated carbon fiber and sheet metal vaporized away and the condensed vapor was a shiny smear down the outside of the ship. It was about one by two, but meters instead of the centimeters he assumed. The toilet and holding tank, storage cabinets, tool locker and galley, along with the whole left missile pylon were all gone in a black void that opened the whole side of the ship from one frame rail to the next. Melted ends of control cables dangled in the hole where what they served was gone – vaporized. The gentle gravity let Jeff and Johnson catch Happy as he fainted and slowly collapsed forward without a word.

  "What's the matter? Was he hurt?" Johnson asked desperately checking his suit pressure and bio readouts that all read fine.

  "I don't know," Jeff admitted. "He's pretty old. Maybe the stress of it all just caught up with him. Let's get him inside the moon huts and let them check him out."

  Chapter 20

  When Happy woke up it was not to a white hospital room with antiseptic smell. He was laying on a hard table with a corrugated metal ceiling arched overhead, the nasty taste and gunpowder smell of gritty lunar dust that rode in on equipment no matter how carefully you cleaned things, mixed with the sharp smell of vinegar and garlic. He turned his head and Julie was sitting holding an over-stuffed sandwich and taking another bite of a huge dill pickle. She shouldn't do that, he thought. Her suit will smell like garlic in a few days. But damn, it smelled good, flooding his mouth with a rush of saliva.

  "Well, welcome back to reality such as it is," she said when she managed to swallow. "You OK? You need a barf bag or anything?" she asked at the look on his face. "I was told to watch the monitor they put on you," she explained.

  "Where is Jeff?" Happy croaked, dry mouthed. "I need to kill him," he said matter-of-factly.

  "Uh...Maybe you'd like to talk to Heather first? she suggested. "Looking around and realizing she was alone with this old lunatic.

  "That's OK," he said sitting up and snatching the pickle out of her hand. "I don't need any help for one witless teenager." He took a big bite and it was just as good as it smelled and masked the nasty dust taste. He offered it back but she waved it away and checked she had a free line of retreat to the door. He was still in his suit with the helmet and gloves off. There was a stick on sensor on the back of his hand and he could feel one under his ear. He peeled them off carefully.

  "I thought I heard you," Johnson called from the door. "You gave us a scare. What happened? Have you fainted like this before?"

  "No, but I've never had a hole blown in my space craft half its width. The idiot child told me cheerfully that there was a hole blown through the toilet 'one by two' and didn't specify any blessed unit of size! I went back expecting a hole I couldn't put my fist through and there was a chasm I could jump clean through. No way that thing should have flown. It should have busted in two like a rotten stick. I can't believe there were enough connections whole to control it," he explained.

  "We made all the control circuits triply redundant," Jeff reminded him from the doorway.

  The pickle sailed right through the space where his head had been before he ducked and ran.

  "Damn it Happy we don't have much in the way of supplies and you think you can start a food fight?" Julie yelled at him. "I'm going to go get that pickle and wash it off. We have no idea when anybody is going to bring in more food with our neighbors dropping cluster bombs on our field. In the mean time - grow up!" she said in a tone that made both Happy and Johnson cringe back from her. Then she stormed out to rescue the pickle.

  "Umm... sorry if I was a little moody," Happy allowed. It wasn't often as the oldest person around anyone reamed him out. He especially hated it when they were right. "Have I missed anything?" he finally asked the embarrassed silence.

  "Nah - if you feel steady enough, come on in the other hut," Johnson invited. "They're just looking at the camera run you guys made. You were only out a few minutes."

  Happy followed through the tunnel connecting to the moon hut that would be their clinic when they really had one to the administrative hut. There was no lock between them, only a pressure partition that could be sealed. Heather and Jeff were sitting in the fragile looking frame and cloth sling chairs that were designed for lunar gravity. The big screen hanging on the wall behind them had several video frames isolated and displayed already.

  Heather looked over her shoulder at them. "You scared the crap out of us Happy. Glad to see you vertical. We have enough other problems right here," she looked at the screen and the cursor drew a circle around one of the frames.

  "What am I looking at?" Happy asked. Nothing jumped into any familiar pattern.

  "These," she pointed at several elongated dark shapes, "are rovers, well, the shadows from them actually. However we can't imagine why they would send more than one or two if they were sending a military team to run us off. This would be most of their vehicles and it would mean they stopped exploration and most of the scientific work at Armstrong that needs these vehicles. It looks like they are rolling in columns but Jeff here thinks they are towing a line of trailers or something and only the front vehicle is a rover."

  "That's still seven rovers," Happy pointed out, looking at the shadows.

  "Yeah." Katia considered it thoughtfully. "I go to Armstrong all the time," she explained. "They number their rovers and paint it on the top and smaller on each side. I pretty sure I've seen mid-twenties. Twenty-five or twenty-six, so this would be a quarter or a third of their fleet. Plus stuff like tank trucks, shuttle tow tractors, freight tractors to unload the shuttles and recovery vehicles that aren't numbered because they don't go out in virgin territory. They stick right around the base. I don't think that they would be stupid enough to send all their rovers off in one expedition. If they lost them all they'd be in big trouble."

  "What would they need big trailers to haul?" Julie wondered.

  "I don't know. Trailers are not that common. They have a few to carry bulky items off a supply shuttle, but most freight that needs pressure comes in containerized and they carry the container on a flatbed to a supply dome and hook it right up to pressure and power. Just like docking a ship. It's like adding a room to the warehouse and they don't have to unload by hand. Some of the living quarters are the same way. Like a travel trailer. They dock it on a common hallway, jack it level and that's it - no hazardous construction work to do in a suit."

  "Heather, have you finished looking along the whole track we photographed for you, or did you stop whe
n you found this group?" Happy asked.

  "We just started at the near end and worked back. This bunch has been rolling for about sixteen hours if they have gone the same speed from the start."

  "So they started well before they launched to take out our landing field?"

  "Well, sure. But what are you thinking?"

  "Humor me please and continue scanning the photo corridor all the way back until we started."

  "OK." Heather broke the remaining recording into three time tracks and scrolled them in three windows beside each other. Near the end of the last track they stopped it. If it had been any closer to Armstrong they would have overflown them before the cameras were activated. There were the same indistinct shapes but throwing long dark shadows. Their discipline was obviously different. None of them were in columns so it was obvious each had to be a separate powered vehicle.

  Charles, their other pilot, stepped forward from the bunch hanging back and looked closely at the screen.

  "I've seen a formation like that before," he informed Heather. "I used to fly anti-armor fan platforms for the USNA. Somebody from Armstrong knows how to disperse an armored column across a plain so they are not bunched up or in any pattern that makes hitting them from the air easy. That's a bunch of vehicles arrayed for battle whatever they are."

  "That's nine," Katia counted. "They're nuts to send so many. It didn't leave the base much for just basic housekeeping."

  "And how far behind the others are they?" Heather asked.

  Jeff noted the time slots and distances. "The first bunch are sixteen hours out and have a bit more than twelve hours to get here. The second group, by checking the first and last frame to determine speed, are about six hours out of Armstrong. They are going a lot faster but will not catch up to the first group until they are well out of the hills on our plain. I'm thinking they are in pursuit. Is that what you are thinking Happy?"

 

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