Closer, and she could see Gregor VII's imposing form. The robot stood rigid next to the airlock, atomic torch still clutched in one pincer. A circling pass showed the Sokol's port side, with large sections of the hull patched.
"It looks like he's finished repairs," she said, bringing the Dnieper around again to line up with the hangar. "Doctor Schmidt, can you contact him?"
"A moment." Schmidt bowed his head. "He says the Sokol is fully functional."
Lev chuckled. "I'll be the judge of that."
The Dnieper slowed to a crawl as Nadezhda eased it into the hangar bay. She killed power to the engines, and the little craft settled onto support clamps with a pneumatic sigh.
"If the ship's really spaceworthy," she said, cracking open the canopy, "then we're prepping for immediate departure."
"We're abandoning the mission?" Lev said.
"My call. I'm not risking any further escalation with the Americans. And I don't want us planet-side when those cobalt bombs go off."
There were no objections.
They crawled out, closed the hangar doors, and filed into the cargo hold. Marina's body-bag lay where they'd left it. Nadezhda fought a lump down her throat and helped Schmidt bring the robot aboard.
"I want you to run a check on all systems," she told Lev, "especially for deuterium leakage. We're blasting off as soon as you give the OK."
"Aye, Kapitan." Lev activated the rad counter attached to his wrist.
"Doctor Schmidt, come with me. And don't take that helmet off."
"You're going to keep me suited the entire trip?"
"Until I'm convinced you're not infectious, yes. We'll figure out some kind of quarantine once we're in space."
She climbed aft to the Fire Control station, where the Sokol's atomic turrets could be operated manually. Radar showed no contacts. "You see anything on an approach vector," she told Schmidt, "open fire with both guns. I'll take full responsibility."
"What're you going to do?"
"Send a coded message to Luna Control concerning our American friends. The rest of the civilized world needs to know their plans. And Doctor—once we're underway, you and I are going to have a long talk about that string of 'coincidences' during our escape. I know you know more than you're telling. And I'm not buying any more excuses about headaches, either."
Schmidt folded his hands. "We'll have plenty of time to talk, Kapitan."
She went fore and entered the command module. After a few moments contemplation, she punched out her message on a card. The com in her helmet buzzed. It was line Beta, normally only used in emergencies. She switched over.
"Are you alone?" came Lev's voice, breathless.
"What's going on?"
"I found something in the cargo hold you need to see. Without Schmidt."
"On my way." She pushed the card into a receiving slot and hit SEND. Schmidt didn't look up from his fire control board as she hurried past. A quick descent, and she was back in the hold.
"Now what's all this about?"
Lev crouched alongside the rack of scientific probes, waving his rad counter. It made a series of staccato clicks. "That's why Schmidt was so fussy, when we landed. He knew the casings might've been damaged …"
"What're you talking about, Lev?"
"These 'probes.' Take a look."
She squatted down next to him. Lev slid back the outer shell on one of the cylinders. It bore the yellow and black flower of an atomic device.
"So the probe has a nuclear battery," she said. "So what?"
"It's not a battery, Nadia. It's a bomb. Wired for orbital detonation, just like the Americans'."
She remained crouched, rocking on her heels. His words built up a silent pressure in her skull. She wanted to ask 'why?', but cold logic had already supplied the answer.
Just like the Americans.
"Moscow must've known about the Thorium," she said at last. "And for some reason, didn't see fit to tell us. One more secret Schmidt and the Party was keeping from—"
Beneath them, the Sokol's hull began to vibrate. Fuel pumps throbbed, to be drowned out seconds later by the thunder of engines firing. The whole of the cargo bay tilted back at a violent angle, sending Nadezhda and Lev sprawling against the rear bulkhead. An unsecured toolbox almost brained her. She tried to move, but the invisible hand of gravity slapped down. They were blasting off, without the benefit of an acceleration couch.
"It's Schmidt …" Multiple G's squeezed the voice from Nadezhda's lungs. Beside her, Lev wasn't faring any better. The flesh of his face curled back in ripples. Schmidt must have opened the throttle to full burn.
Her chest didn't want to raise, just move down, down, like everything else. Scarlet flashed at the corners of her vision. She tried to suck in air, surreptitiously, so gravity wouldn't notice. No luck.
And still, that unseen hand kept pressing.
She blacked out.
* * *
It couldn't have been longer than a few seconds. When she came to, the crushing pressure had lessened, but the floor was lurching, tilting forward instead of back. She took a skin-diver's gasping breath as she and Lev slid towards the rack holding the probes. Out of reflex, she wrapped arms and legs around the metal struts. Lev did the same. The Sokol executed a slow roll; floor became ceiling, and they dangled upside-down.
"Either the gyroscopes are out," Lev shouted, "or Schmidt can't fly this thing."
"He was never cleared as a pilot," Nadezhda shouted back. And flying the Sokol with only one pair of hands took monumental skill.
"He'll crash us for sure."
But the ship righted itself. The floor leveled out, and the engines cut back to a low roar. Schmidt had managed to put them on a stable trajectory, at least. She waited a moment, expecting the hold to rear and plunge again. It remained still.
"What now?" Lev said, rubbing a red welt at the back of his head.
"Get the guns."
They'd put their weapons down after entering through the hangar; the automatic now lay close to where Gregor VII had been secured, and the submachine gun a couple meters from that. Nadezhda wobbled to her feet feeling nauseous and bruised all over. She stooped to snatch up the pistol.
Servos whirred. Cold titanium closed around her wrist in a vise-grip. Gregor had grabbed her from behind, and now it hauled her captured arm high. A second pincer reached around to menace her neck.
"Drop it, Mirov," echoed Schmidt's voice from the hatch above. "Or I'll kill her."
Lev had just picked up his gun. He let it clatter against the deck without hesitation.
"Now take several steps to your right. Excellent."
Schmidt climbed down into the hold one-handed, a submachine gun crooked against his elbow. He'd removed his helmet, and his pus-colored face registered no emotion as he pointed the barrel at Lev.
"Almost killed us with the blast-off," Nadezhda said, ignoring the pain in her stretched limb. "You must've realized you need us for something, didn't you?"
Schmidt said nothing. His eyes were blank.
Lev tried a grin. "If this is about the disguised bombs, we're prepared to forgive and forget."
"It's not about the bombs," Schmidt said.
Nadezhda tested the hold on her wrist. Implacable. "The fungus has damaged your brain, Konrad. You need medical attention."
"Damaged?" Animation entered the science officer's features; his eyes lit. "The correct term would be 'expanded.' I'm part of a larger consciousness now, a gestalt of all the other minds the fungus has touched. It's the real intelligence on this planet, Kapitan Gura. Telepathic, of course. That's how it first controlled me. As a sensitive, I was vulnerable. Oh, if I'd only understood … Communism is nothing, next to the experience of a true collective. What one part knows, all the others know. And feel. Even now, my brethren among the salamen are dismantling Macready's bombs. I can see their webbed hands, pulling the correct wires. The knowledge came from Polk, an engineer. His body is gone, burned, but his memories are part of the sum
. He lives on. Do you understand now, what our presence here threatens? We were about to annihilate vast pieces of the collective, just to lay hands on fissionables. I can't allow that."
Nadezhda didn't believe his wild ranting, but there was no denying the gun in his hands. Or Gregor's cold grip. "You're saying the cobalt bombs are being dismantled? Then the threat to your 'collective' is over."
"No. Not over. There will be more expeditions like this one. Like the Americans'."
"There's nothing we can do about that now," Nadezhda said.
"You're wrong. There's much we can do."
"You want to infect people on Earth, is that it?"
"I told you, I'm not contagious. Only the puffballs can pass on the spores."
Lev shook his head. "He's talking about our payload. With the Sokol's clearance, we could fly back into Earth airspace. Above the U.S.S.R., anyway. At forty kilometers up, he'd explode every one of these bombs, seeding the atmosphere with fallout. It'd take years to recover."
"Years for the collective to prepare new defenses," Nadezhda said. "That's why you didn't kill us just now with the takeoff. You need us to help fly the ship."
Schmidt's hands tightened on the gun. "The Party had psychological profiles generated for each of you. Marina as well. You were all identified as idealists. Too idealistic to trust with a genocidal mission, hence the need for deception. I appeal to that sense of conscience now. Join me, in defending another intelligent species."
Nadezhda's trapped arm was beginning to tingle. "Have Gregor loosen his grip a little, at least. I can't think with my circulation cut off."
Schmidt nodded. The pincer's hold lessened by degrees.
"You're not offering us much of a choice," Lev said. "Save one species by killing off half our own?"
"It's your only choice. Otherwise you both die here, and I take my chances piloting the ship back to Earth."
Nadezhda opened her mouth to tell him yes, they'd help. Two months provided ample time to figure some way of overpowering the lunatic, or at least getting a warning message to Moscow. But before she could speak, a jolt of violent turbulence rocked the Sokol. Lev and Schmidt both pitched to the deck, the former landing atop his submachine gun. He made a grab for it.
"No," Nadezhda said.
Schmidt fired prone. A flurry of lead caught the big Georgian point-blank, stitching bloodied holes across his vacc suit. He groaned and slumped forward.
Nadezhda yanked down hard on her captured wrist. Skin tore loose, but she dropped free to the deck. It quaked beneath her.
She lunged for the automatic, grasped it, and snapped off a round in Schmidt's direction. The wild shot ricocheted. Schmidt went leaping for cover behind a rack of geological equipment.
"Lev—"
A single glance told her he was done for. The flight engineer lay face-down in a spreading pool.
Servos whined again; Gregor's legs strained against their restraints, snapping them like twine. Schmidt must've been controlling the robot from behind cover. Nadezhda steadied her automatic with both hands and fired. Bullets went screeching off titanium plate. She emptied the clip into Gregor's chest panel to no discernable effect. It swung a pincer towards her. She rolled under the metal limb, and bumped against something yielding. Marina's body bag.
"You can still live," Schmidt's voice rang over the turbulence. "Mirov acted hastily, but that doesn't mean you have to share his fate."
"What're your terms?" she said. Not to parley; to keep him talking.
"As before. Help me fly the ship back to Earth orbit. You can escape detonation of the bombs in the Dnieper, if you wish."
Nadezhda wasn't listening, recalling instead the last moments of Marina's death. She unzipped the body bag and thrust her hand inside. There. Marina's Topchev, still holstered. She drew it forth and switched the gun's setting to 'cutting beam.' A pencil-thin shaft of crimson leapt from the barrel, missing Gregor, but striking the section of floor beneath its feet.
The robot lurched towards her. She groped for the nearby ladder and curled an arm through the rungs. Her other hand kept firing, playing the beam in a broad circle. The hold's floor glowed red where it struck.
Gregor VII's massive weight did the rest.
A buckling sound, the hiss of escaping air, and the robot fell through a hole into black Venerian sky.
The Sokol must've reached the stratosphere. Pressure difference sucked at the hold and its contents. Marina's body went first, half torn from the bag. Then Lev's. The toolbox that had nearly struck Nadezhda followed. Anything unsecured went flying for the howling space.
Including Schmidt. He grabbed at the floor, tried to claw his way over to where Nadezhda clung.
The Topchev flashed once more. Schmidt had time to gape at the cauterized stumps where his hands had been. Then he, too, was pulled away into nothingness.
Nadezhda dropped the pistol. Teeth grit, she began to haul herself up towards the open hatch. Cold, gasping wind, growing thinner with each breath, threatened to rip the vacc suit from her shoulders. The distance was only three meters, but it felt like a mountain climb. Her wrist throbbed from where she'd torn it, and her fingers ached. She put all her effort into pushing up with her booted feet. One rung at a time.
She made it.
The metal of the upper deck felt like sanctuary as she crawled out and slammed the hatch shut behind her. Airtight seals hissed. But she didn't see the snug confines of the habitation area. Behind her eyes, she watched Lev's body do its ragdoll-dance as the bullets struck. His passing had been quick, at least. Like Marina's.
No time to mourn. Up, on stiff muscles, up on her feet, and she climbed again into the command module. Vaporous white clouds whirled past the viewing portals. Her skilled fingers and eyes moved of their own accord, checking altimeter, engine pressure, adjusting throttles. Satisfied with the ship's ascent, she turned to the radio transmitter.
Her first message was still awaiting reply. Hands trembling, she punched:
MAYDAY. MAYDAY. KAPITAN GURA LAST SURVIVOR OF THE SOKOL CREW. ATTEMPTING RETURN VOYAGE WITH HULL BREACH AND NO ASTROGATION. REPEAT NO ASTROGATION. LUNA CONTROL PREPARE TO RECEIVE COORDINATES AND ASSIST WITH COURSE PLOTTING. GURA OUT.
She sent the message.
The Sokol roared its way up through the last milky-white wisps, out among the cold glitter of stars.
†
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Garnett Elliott lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. He's had stories appear in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Reloaded (Both Barrels 2), Uncle B's Drive-In Fiction, Blood and Tacos, Battling Boxing Stories, and numerous online magazines and print anthologies. You can follow him on Twitter @TonyAmtrak.
Also by GARNETT ELLIOTT
from BEAT to a PULP books
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