Crystal Escape

by Doug J. Cooper

  On a normal day, a steady stream of traffic shuttled between the platform and Earth, transporting people and material up and down as needed. But today was moving day, and eighteen huge boosters positioned beneath the platform were about to start nudging the behemoth to a higher orbit.

  The sight of the platform reminded Sid of an earlier conversation. “Whatever happened to those two mystery cases of crystals you were tracking?” he asked Criss. “Has Fleet moved them down to the surface?”

  “No, they’re still sitting in the parcel depot. They go down after the platform is stable in its new orbit.” Criss shifted in his chair to face Sid. “Did you know that it took nine agencies and five oversight committees more than a year to plan for today’s move? And the admirals are laughing because they got the business community to pay for it.”

  The business community had lobbied long and hard to shift the platform’s path because near-Earth orbit was overcrowded and the Montrose hogged most of the best slots. Pushing the platform higher in orbit would triple the size of the commercial district, something the business community wanted so much they’d agreed to a new orbit tax to help reimburse Fleet for its costs.

  “In all that discussion, Fleet never revealed that they already planned to move the platform to a higher orbit to accommodate the new troop carriers coming online next year.”

  Sid started to laugh but stopped and looked at Criss. “Do I have to pay the new tax for the cargo cannon?”

  Criss nodded. “Sisyphus itself uses orbital space and will have to pay. But no worries, I anticipated this and accounted for it in the budget. In fact, I support this outcome because the collaboration strengthens society.”

  Sid changed subjects to avoid talking about society’s strengths. “We need to decide our wager on the egg. Do you want broken or intact?”

  They were on their way to Sisyphus to place a fresh egg in the canister being prepped for the cannon’s maiden shot to Mars. Vivo’s promotional efforts with drive pods had given Sid the idea of doing his own stunt to draw customer attention, and Lazura’s in particular, to his new cargo service. The egg idea had drifted to the top of the pile because it helped with a couple of other issues along the way.

  The first canister to Mars would be full of party supplies, providing enough food, drink, and games to host a huge crowd in a company-sponsored celebration. While the supplies could be shipped safely in a regular canister, this solved the problem of what to do with the one with junk equipment by using it for a promotion.

  He had pitched the idea to Criss the same day Cheryl was leaving for Vivo. “I’ll go up and put an egg inside with a camera pointed at it, turn on the damper, and we launch. If the damper works and the egg survives, we advertise our ability to transport even the most fragile of items.” He shrugged. “If it breaks, the colonists will have to spend a minute cleaning up egg goop before they start the party.”

  And now, less than a day later, he was on his way to implement his brainchild. But his thoughts weren’t on eggs, they were on gambling. He’d told Cheryl he would be busy while she was away, and he would be, playing poker with Pete and the boys in the cable room of the barge.

  He’d stumbled across the game when he’d been up on Sisyphus earlier in the year. Though not much of a card player, he’d been goaded by Pete for months before agreeing to play.

  He hadn’t succumbed initially, even when teased with, “What, are you chicken?” It had been the clucking sounds afterward that had broken him. And the egg stunt gave him an excuse to be up at the table in time for the first hand.

  His gambling juices flowing in anticipation, he pushed Criss to choose a side and bet on whether the egg broke or not.

  “Which do you want?” Criss replied.

  “No, you go first. Broken or intact. You have to choose.”

  “I’ll take broken.”

  “You really think the equipment is that bad?”

  “No. I’d say the chance of failure is one in four. But I know you want to pick intact, so I’ll take broken.”

  Giving him a sidelong glance, Sid stood and started for the common room at the rear of the scout. “You are the opposite of fun.”

  With hours to kill before they reached the barge, he exercised until every muscle was tired. Then, planning for a late night, he slept until Criss called him. Thirty minutes after waking, he was in his space runner, ferrying to Sisyphus with the scout shadowing from a distance.

  His first stop was the breach room located at the rear of the cannon. More like a cave with a smooth floor, the big hollow held a dozen cargo canisters in various stages of prep, each a dull gray cylinder almost two stories tall and half as wide. A workshop consumed the back wall of the breach room with storage shelves along each side filled with gizmos and gadgets. The front area held space to pile customer cargo until it was loaded into its assigned canister.

  “Hey ho,” called Pete, approaching Sid with a huge grin. Short, round, with close-cropped hair and a pudgy face, she patted her breast pocket and chirped with excitement. “I got us real cigars! And Bo is bringing a jug of kick-ass moonshine he snagged from the engineer on that luxury liner on hook twenty-three.” She twirled and chirped, “It’s going to be a night of decadence.”

  Then she began the personal harassment that was a hallmark of the card game. Pointing at the breach door and the cargo canister loaded inside, she sneered, “Are you ever going to actually shoot that piece of shit?”

  Sid didn’t bother answering, because she was already at the exit. “Hatchet needs a ride, so I’m taking the tug out to pick him up. He’s bringing some outrageous home brew. Should be back in an hour.”

  As the door shut behind her, Criss appeared.

  “Was I supposed to bring something?” asked Sid.

  “You’re the mark with the money,” replied Criss. “You brought everything they need.”

  Sid shrugged as he walked to the breach door. “I don’t mind. They could use the extra.”

  He put his hands on the doorframe, leaned his head and shoulders inside the cargo canister, and scanned the interior. When empty, the interior volume seemed enormous.

  “The canisters have been swapped,” Criss said over his shoulder. “This is the one with the junk parts. We’ll pack the party supplies in here over the next couple of hours. You should be able to come down and set up your egg stunt sometime around midnight.”

  “That won’t work. The game will just be getting started.”

  “Whoa,” said Criss. “There’s been an explosion on the Montrose.”

  “How bad? Show me.”

  A small image of the huge space platform appeared floating between them. The flares of the thrusters underneath the structure glowed bright white as they worked together to push the Montrose up to its new home.

  The image zoomed in, stopping with a close-up on a corner of the platform near the lower loading dock. Light penetrated through a jagged hole in an exterior wall. The opening was small relative to the size of the platform, and a cloud of debris rushed out, carried by the surge of air streaming into space.

  “It’s not structural,” said Criss. “And I don’t believe it was an accident. Something small detonated in the parcel depot. That’s where those two mystery cases of crystals were stored.”

  “Did the crystals survive?”

  “I don’t know. Everything in that room is now floating in space.”

  Sid leaned forward to examine the sharp edges of the hole. “That perfect circle with crisp edges makes me think of a thump charge, which would make it a deliberate act.”

  “I’d like to take the scout there and see if I can help. I also want to recover those two cases of crystals.”

  “Go.” Sid nodded. “I’m fine here.”

  Criss and the hovering image vanished, and Sid, thinking ahead to his egg stunt, ambled over to the closest set of workshop storage shelves. He toyed with a small piece of clear tubing while his eyes roamed the collection of items.

  Part of hi
m wanted to build the egg holder himself, and he even fit a few pieces together to see if he could fashion something suitable. But after a few minutes, he admitted his mind was on the game. I’ll ask Criss to figure it out, he thought as he made his way to the exit.

  Halfway to the door, a buzzer sounded and a red emergency light flashed overhead.

  “Hey, Criss,” called Sid. “What’s up?”

  Criss reappeared, as did a new hovering display. This one showed Sisyphus floating at a distance. The image zoomed, shifting angles to focus on the tether, speckled with two hundred vessels attached along its length.

  Sid started to ask what he was supposed to see, and then he saw it. A number of engines flared to life about halfway back along the tail. “What are they doing?”

  In response, Criss zoomed closer, stopping when a single spaceship filled the view. The ship had decoupled from the tether and was edging away from it.

  “Is that an Elite Five?” The ship’s engine fired and the craft flashed out of the frame.

  “It’s an Elite Seven,” said Criss. The view pulled back to show a cluster of identical ships sprinting past Sisyphus and into the void. “There are nineteen of them underway.”

  “Who’s doing it?”

  “There are no people on board, and they aren’t communicating with anyone outside, so they’re following a program.”

  “But they’re clearly acting together.” The ships gathered in a ring formation, the flares of the individual engines seeming to meld into a single ball of light. “They are moving fast. Any idea where they’re going?”

  “None. With the trajectory they’re following and the rate they’re consuming fuel, they’re on a fast track to nowhere.”

  “It has to be Lazura. Who else could it be?”

  Criss nodded. “She’s the prime suspect.”

  “Should we chase them? Shoot them down?”

  “They’re headed away from everything, so shooting at them seems premature.” He shook his head. “The ships can’t sprint like that for long. If she’s on one of them, she’ll end up stranded.”

  “What are they carrying?”

  “Water, oxygen, nitrogen, and other life support basics. They were delivering supplies for an expansion of the Lunar Base habitat.”

  Then Criss snapped to attention. “My God, Lazura! How?” His voice reflected shock that transitioned into panic. “Vivo just fired the SuperDrives and has begun an acceleration sequence.” He let out a wail so mournful it unnerved Sid.

  “Come get me,” Sid commanded.

  Panic sounded in Criss’s voice. “I’m already out of position. I don’t have time.”

  “That’s an order.”

  “I’m using an emergency override, Sid. You are safe. I may have lost Cheryl and Juice. I need to act right now.”

  * * *

  Lazura’s outer tendrils tingled as Cheryl and Juice stepped under the dome. Years of planning, effort, and luck had led to today. And the good news continued as Juice’s pulse rate increased and her eyes dilated when Justin introduced himself.

  Lazura had every faith in Vivo’s ability to mesmerize the two, but she wanted them so relaxed and content that Criss would be lulled, too. She needed complacency for about three hours.

  And that clock started now.

  It began with a system reset, something that had been on Aubrey’s action timetable from the earliest days. As planned in this years-long con, when the last guests arrived and the doors to the outside world closed behind them, Vivo’s entire ops system was pulsed to ensure the myriad subsystems were awake and running in guest-services mode.

  And when Aubrey triggered the pulse, Criss, even knowing it was coming, was pushed out of Vivo. It would take him a moment to reengage with Cheryl and Juice on the guest deck, and while he was distracted with that, Lazura started step two.

  In the cellar, a garage door lifted on the far end of the Power House. Hejmo, riding in the cab of a large box truck, drove inside. A part of Vivo’s much-advertised safety campaign, the truck was there to perform a comprehensive inspection of Vivo’s power generators, just as it did every month at this time.

  And because the Power House structure was made of secure-shield material, when the overhead door closed, things inside were hidden from everyone outside, including Criss.

  The moment the overhead door clicked shut, the back of the box truck swung down to form a ramp. Four women sprang from the rear of the truck and ran down the incline. Dressed in cream-white suits, these were four of Aubrey’s five Admins.

  Contrary to their prim appearance, each carried an industrial-style zip saw. Cradling the tools in front of them with both hands, they sprinted across the floor, each to a different silver-gray shed. Each accessed her respective shed door and, moving with haste, stepped inside, disabled the local alarm, and began cutting the triple-secure lock holding the generator lid in place.

  Sparks flying, seams glowing, stench of vapors filling the air, the first Admin made it through the locks in just over two minutes, the others finishing seconds later. Each lifted the generator lid to release an interlock, allowing her to lower the protective front face of the containment. After rotating two mechanical latches, a heavy inner safety door swung open to expose a block of hellfire.

  The Power House held six big generators, of which four were spares. The fuel in the generators was the same material used in drive pods. But a generator held only half the amount needed for a proper drive pod fuel-stack, the material was the wrong shape, and it was not in the highly energetic state needed for rocket propulsion. In addition, these fuel blocks were located some distance from the drive pods, and transportation of the material was extremely dangerous.

  Yet for these very reasons, Lazura believed she could sneak this past Criss with misdirection, letting him find and cancel the purchase order for four fuel-stacks Aubrey had placed with Thrust Dynamics.

  The Corsia drive pods had a flexible design that could accept half-stacks of fuel. They could even run half-stacks at full thrust long enough to move Vivo out of the solar system and deep into interstellar space. It would be slow going after that, with the journey taking her almost twice as long to get home, something she could accept as long as home was the end result.

  The fuel shape issue was a bigger challenge. Conventional options for fuel shaping—tech bots, forming ovens, containment measures—were distinctive preparations Criss would notice. So she wouldn’t use any of them; she didn’t want anything to attract his attention to the generators.

  Her solution was to rely on the advanced capabilities of synbods. They were already skilled at any task she might need of them, so no telltale preparations were required. Synbods were smart, allowing her to adjust her plan on the fly as circumstances warranted. And they were available in a moment’s notice, meaning that when she sprang her plan, she’d have the element of surprise.

  It’s all or nothing at this point, she thought as the Admins dropped the front face of the generator to expose the glowing blocks of reactive material.

  The instant the blocks were exposed, the Admins’ clothing incinerated in a flash. But they still engaged their zip saws and began cutting the waist-high cube into three equal pieces. Together these would form the slabs of the half-stack.

  The fuel material was soft, and the zip saws’ laser blades extended to make the deep cuts. Lazura had allotted eight seconds for the procedure, four seconds per cut. Her analysis indicated the synbods would last just over eleven seconds before succumbing to the fierce conditions.

  As they worked, their synbod skin, biologically alive, bubbled and burned. Lazura controlled their movements in the final stages, relying on sensors mounted some distance away to see and hear. Parts failed quickly, but all four of the Admins completed their cuts and moved to the side before collapsing.

  While the Admins had been cutting, four Attendants in sky-blue service uniforms pushed handcarts down the truck ramp and over to the sheds, timing their arrival to match the completion
of the cutting step. Each handcart had a standard shipping crate layered with common shielding material attached to its bed. The front face of the crate was open, and a shovel scoop on the front of the cart rode so low it almost scraped the floor.

  The Attendants rolled their carts past the fallen Admins and up to the glowing material. Setting the lip of each scoop at the base of what were now three blocks of fuel, they pushed their carts forward with firm motions, jockeying the handles so the blocks rode up the scoops and into the crates. With the fuel secure, the synbods backed out of the shed and made for the truck.

  Like competitors in a ghastly race, the Attendants pushed their carts across the floor in a shuffling run, slowing as the damage from exposure ate at them. Lazura felt a twinge of regret at losing so many valuable staff, but Criss remained unaware of the activity so far, so it was worth it.

  The Attendants reached the truck and, one at a time, pushed their carts up the ramp. Inside, the forward half of the truck bed held a jury-rigged chem processor—a rugged black metallic tub divided into four wide channels with a heavy lid that dropped from above to seal the unit. A Rube Goldberg–like collection of valves and tubes connected the processor to a row of gas cylinders strapped to the wall. Wires crisscrossed overhead, connecting everything to a handful of instruments strapped to the cargo holds ceiling.

  The first Attendant pushed his cart up to the tub, positioned the scoop in front of the left-most channel, and tipped the cart up. As his three slabs slid forward, he jiggled the cart, guiding the slabs so they fell into a stack frame positioned near the front lip. He then rolled his cart down the ramp and stood off to the side to make way for the others.

  With all four loads emptied into the chem processor, the Attendants stood next to each other, hands at their sides, waiting, and then collapsing from the horrific damage.

  But Lazura wasn’t watching that drama. Hejmo and a Tech had been standing against the far wall of the Power House, keeping a safe distance until the chem processor lid had closed to contain the deadly emissions. The moment it was safe, they sprinted for the truck, Hejmo in the front cab, the Tech in the back.