by Gus Flory
Diego set the Moon Runner at full power. They rocketed away from the gunship and from Titan.
Saturn’s slim crescent loomed large in their forward screen. Most of the gas giant was black in the darkness.
“Drone fighters on our tail,” Diego said. “Five of them.”
“We can lose them in the rings,” Pristina said.
Diego punched at the control panel, setting their heading for Saturn. The little ship shot through the darkness of space. Behind them five T-FORCE tactical drone fighters were in hot pursuit.
“We’ve got a good lead on them, but those are X-652s,” Diego said. “They’ll run us down if we don’t shake them quick. We’ll have to outmaneuver them in the rings.”
Massive Saturn filled the forward screen as they came around into the sunlight. Tiny Mimas was a white dot just beyond the rings.
Diego dove for Mimas, which grew larger as they rocketed toward it. The small pock-marked moon was dominated by its giant crater Herschel, almost a third the diameter of the moon. Mimas looked like a dark eye floating in space, watching them.
Diego rocketed down toward the moon and skimmed its rocky surface. He flew around the back of it, then rocketed up from the surface, putting the moon between their ship and the fighters.
They reached Saturn’s rings.
“We didn’t lose the fighters, Zanger,” Sonny said. “They’re closing in.”
Diego skimmed the surface of the rings. He dove through the Encke Gap and shot under the rings, zooming just beneath them. The fighters followed.
“They’re coming within laser cannon range,” Sonny said. “They’re going to get a lock.”
“Do something, Diego,” Tupo said.
Their ship skimmed beneath a kilometer-thick section of the rings made up of ice and rock particles. The ring suddenly became thinner.
“They’re closing in, Diego,” Pristina said.
Diego pulled hard on the yoke and punched straight upward into the ring. Their ship punched through a 10-meter thick section of ice particles that peppered the forward screen. They burst through the ring and skimmed over the top it.
“Are you crazy, Zanger?” Sonny yelled.
“I think we lost them,” Diego said.
Three fighters punched through the ring behind them.
“Maybe not,” Diego said.
“We’ve gained some distance on them but they’re closing in again,” Pristina said.
Their ship skimmed the rings until zooming over the edge of the disk. They flew through the empty space between Saturn and its rings. Diego dove straight for the planet’s banded clouds.
“We can lose them in that storm,” he said.
“The winds are too strong,” Sonny said. “A lightning strike could destroy us.”
Their ship dove down into white and blue clouds. They zoomed down between swirling thunderheads as big as moons. Lighting flashed and crashed between the thunderheads.
Winds reaching speeds of 2,000 kilometers per hour seized the ship, sweeping it along in a powerful jet stream.
Alarms sounded in the cockpit. Diego struggled to control the yoke as the ship vibrated violently, flipping end over end in the windstorm.
Diego wrestled the yoke, pulling hard as he fired the rockets at full power. He flew with the wind, letting it carry the ship with it. They zoomed between massive white and blue clouds. Enormous fingers of lightning zapped and crackled from cloud to cloud. They were being pulled into a great storm larger than Earth.
Diego rode the winds, pulling up, easing the ship above the clouds, until the violent vibrating eased.
“Any sign of the fighters?” he asked.
Sonny appeared shell-shocked staring forward through the screen. Tupo gripped her armrest tightly, her hair a mess.
“No sign,” Pristina said.
Diego flew out of Saturn’s atmosphere. He orbited the planet searching for the fighters.
“Looks like you lost them,” Pristina said.
Tupo looked over at him. “You fly like a lunatic.”
“I’m a soldier, not a pilot. Cut me some slack.”
Diego flew out of orbit and under Saturn’s rings.
“We lost them,” Diego said.
“We did it,” Sonny said. “One thing about the Federation, they’re not so bright.”
“We should never underestimate them, Sonny,” Tupo said. “We’ve always looked down on them and held our own aptitudes in too high regard. That’s what got us into trouble.”
“They’re morons. That’s a scientific fact. The only reason they beat us is because there’s too many of them.”
Tupo looked at Diego. “That’s the hubris that made us think we could take on the Federation.”
“What do you mean it’s a scientific fact?” Diego asked.
“The average IQ of spacers is 130,” Sonny said. “The average IQ on Earth is 85. The average on Titan is 140.”
“That’s because we’re the descendants of engineers, scientists, pilots and doctors,” Tupo said. “We’re a self-selected population that must be technically proficient to survive. Earth has different selective pressures. That’s been our disconnect with the Federation. We expect them to think like us. We see things, and we think they’re obvious, and it’s surprising to us that they can’t see them. We think we’re so smart, but in our interactions with them we need to understand that they can’t always see what we see, or can’t always reach conclusions as quickly as we can, or see things from our point of view.”
“You must understand this, Diego,” Pristina said. “You’re from Mars.”
Diego nodded. “Yeah, we joke about how dumb Earthers are, especially the new arrivals. But the dumbs ones usually don’t last long. They get in trouble with the law, or fail to maintain their equipment properly, get trapped in airlocks, get lost and run out of oxygen. They do all kinds of stupid things on Mars.”
“You can be stupid and survive on Earth,” Sonny said. “But not out here.”
“Yes,” Tupo said. “We find the average Earther frustratingly obtuse, but the people in charge of the Federation are drawn from a population of billions. The people in charge are just as smart as we are, and more cunning.”
“Nobody’s as smart as Russ, though,” Sonny said.
“Who’s Russ?” Diego asked.
“Russ Belfrey,” Tupo said. “The man we’re going to meet.”
They shot out from under the rings toward Enceladus.
The white orb of Enceladus grew larger in their forward screen. Pristina punched coordinates into the ship’s computer.
They flew down toward the icy moon. Craters came into view. Plumes of ice spewed from geysers. The ship flew low over smooth plains of ice cut through by massive fissures.
Curtains of ice erupted upward from the cracks.
“Set down in that crater,” Pristina said.
Diego turned and circled a crater in the ice. He pulled back on the yoke and fired the retro rockets, easing their ship inside. He extended the skeds and found a smooth section to land.
The ship crunched down onto the ice and slid for about a hundred meters before coming to a stop.
“Now what?” Diego said.
“We’ll need the pressurized space suits,” Pristina said. “They’re in the cargo hold.”
They unlatched from their seats and made their way down to the ship’s hold. Space suits were stored in a container secured to the floor.
Sonny handed out the suits.
They stripped down to their thermals and helped each other into the suits.
Diego held Pristina as she pulled her long legs into the tight-fitting trousers.
“That was some wild flying back there,” she said.
“Maybe I missed my true calling.”
“I’d stick to your day job.”
“Too late for that.”
They put on their helmets and stepped into the airlock, then out onto the ice. The white surface amplified the light from the distant
sun. The jagged ice ridge of the crater starkly contrasted against the starry blackness of space.
Pristina bounded in the low gravity across the flat surface of the crater. Each bound was several meters in height and distance. They bounded after her.
She stopped at a large escarpment of white ice.
Diego, Sonny and Tupo huddled around her. She scraped at the ice with her glove, revealing a panel. She punched in a code. The ice fell away, and a door slid open.
They stepped inside an airlock. She removed her helmet shaking free her black hair. The airlock opened into an enormous hangar carved into the ice. Robots were busily constructing a huge black ship. Sparks shot up from the tips of giant robot arms and ran in rivers down the hull of the ship.
“What is it?” Diego asked.
“This is our project,” Pristina answered. “It’s how we’re going to defeat T-FORCE.”
Diego walked toward the giant ship, as big as the Diversity Bell, but sleeker. This was a warship.
“It’s called the Wardenclyffe,” Sonny said. “It has an energy gun that can take out those gunships from outside their range. Once the ship is completed, we’re going to break through the ice, destroy the gunships and then bombard Camp Hammersteel from orbit.”
Diego walked beneath the hull of the monstrous warship.
“It looks formidable. But I don’t think you’ve thought this through. You destroy the gunships and Camp Hammersteel, but then what? You’ll have about a year until the Federation responds. They’ll attack Titan with ships twice this size with ten times the number of troops on Titan now.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling them,” Tupo said. “But they don’t listen to me, Diego. They want their revenge on T-FORCE.”
“The time for compromise is over, Tupo,” Sonny said. “We either die on our feet or on our knees. The Noer have chosen to fight. This ship tips the balance in our favor.”
12. Marko
“Come, Diego,” Pristina said. “I’ll introduce you to our engineer.”
He followed Pristina under the hull of the giant ship to the opposite wall of the hangar. She entered a door that led down a hallway and then up a flight of stairs. They entered a control room with a large glass window that looked out onto the enormity of the ship and the swarm of industrial robots that were constructing it under cascades of sparks.
Several people were sitting in chairs in front of computer screens monitoring the progress.
“Hello, Russell,” Pristina said.
A young man spun around in his chair. He grinned a broad gap-toothed smile.
“Pristina.”
His black hair was slicked back in oily waves. Goggles covered his eyes. His pot belly protruded from blue coveralls.
“Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the eternal.”
“Is that Shakespeare?”
“Dante.”
Pristina leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. He blushed bright red, smiling happily.
“No quote for me?” Tupo asked.
“To me, fair friend, you never can be old. For as you were when first your eye I eyed. Such seems your beauty still.”
“I don’t know whether to kiss you, or slap you.”
“A kiss, fair lady, if you please.”
Tupo pecked him on the cheek and his face flushed red again.
“Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast, yet love breaks through and picks them all at last.”
“Will you knock it off with the flattery?” Sonny said.
“There is flattery in friendship.”
The goggled man stood and shook Sonny’s hand. Sonny pulled him in and clapped him on the back.
“Good to see you, man,” Sonny said.
Pristina turned to Diego.
“This is Russ Belfrey, the smartest man from Titan.”
“And Enceladus,” he said. He turned to Diego. “She’s not just humoring me. I got the highest IQ score for all students ever tested by the Titan Unified School District.”
“He scored a 230.”
“Technically, it was 229.”
“Russell, this is Major Diego Zanger. He defected to our side. He’s the one who warned us about a raid on our meeting in Cassini City.”
“Yes, I’ve heard all about you. I’ve been monitoring you on the Titan Police surveillance network.”
Diego shook his hand. It was cold and sweaty.
“We have accommodations here on Enceladus for you and Tupo. But you won’t have to stay here long. The Tesla Project will soon be complete. Once we launch the ship, we’ll destroy the gunships and Titan will be free again.”
Diego looked out the window at the ship below them in the hangar. “What kind of firepower does she have?”
Belfrey sat in his chair and spun around. He pulled up the ship’s specifications on his monitor.
“Her Tesla Wave Cannon can destroy a Space Force Class 1 Gunship at standoff distance. They won’t stand a chance against her. She uses a fusion helix reactor to power the beam.”
“You’ve built a fusion helix reactor?”
“Yes. The cannon is already constructed and operational. We just need to complete the engines and some cosmetic work to the ship’s interior, but she’ll be ready for launch before Titan emerges from the dark side of Saturn.”
Diego checked the time. “That’s only eight hours from now.”
“Yes.”
“What’s the battle plan?”
“We launch as soon as she’s mission capable. We’ll take out the gunships one by one. Then we bombard Camp Hammersteel from orbit. We’re going to give the Federation a taste of its own medicine.”
Diego’s exterior remained calm and in control, but his heart was pounding. He noticed Pristina studying him.
He had to warn Col. Butcher. In his mind, he was already formulating a plan to escape to the Moon Runner, launch off Enceladus and contact T-FORCE. But first, he needed to remain cool.
“You may have friends down there,” Pristina said. “Perhaps your emotions are conflicted.”
“No,” Diego said. “My loyalties are with you now. Especially after all I’ve learned.”
She took his hand. “Come, let’s clean up. We should get some rest before the launch.”
Diego followed Pristina out of the control room. He followed her down a hallway carved in the ice. They walked atop a metal grate to a series of containers embedded in the ice wall, stacked one atop the other.
She opened the door to one of the containers and stepped inside.
“Come,” she said.
He followed her into a large comfortable living space with couches around a flat screen, a kitchen, dining area and a bedroom.
She ran her hands through her silky hair. Then she unclamped her chest plate and slid her arms out of her spacesuit. She dropped the bulky top onto the floor. Her black thermals clung tightly to her torso.
She unlatched the spacesuit bottom and sat on the couch. “Help me out of this thing, would you?”
Diego walked to her and kneeled in front of her. He unbuckled her boots and pulled them off her feet, then eased her out of her heavy trousers.
“Much better,” she said, stretching her arms behind her.
She sat on the couch in front of him in her skin-tight thermal underwear. For a moment, a thought crossed his mind. He could strangle her and make a run for the ship, fly off Enceladus and warn T-FORCE.
His heart thumped in his chest as he looked at her.
She sat up, leaned toward him and unclamped his chest plate. Her face was close to his as she helped him out of his top. Her soft hair brushed against his cheek.
“You seem tense.”
“Tell me. Is Robodan here?”
“Robodan? Don’t be silly.”
She patted the couch for him to sit next to her.
He sat next to her and she kneeled in front of him and unbuckled his boots. She pulled them off his feet.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she
said.
“Do you?”
“You’re conflicted.”
“Conflicted about what?”
“About being here with me. About what you might do.”
“You see right through me.”
She smiled. She put her hands on his hips and pulled off his heavy trousers.
“What should I do, Pristina?”
“You should see things for what they are. Do what you can. Endure and bear what you must.”
As she kneeled in front of him, she put her hands on his knees, sitting silently, looking at him with her bright blue eyes, her hair falling in strands over them. She lightly traced her finger over the inside of his knee.
“I need a drink,” she said.
She stood pushing up off his knees and walked to the kitchen.
“There’s a full bar back here. What would you like?”
“A club soda.”
“With a lime?”
“Roger.”
She made drinks and walked back to him and handed him his drink. She stood in front of him in her tight-fitting thermals looking down at him with those brilliant, blue eyes.
“Don’t think too much, Diego. All the pieces are falling into place.” She took a sip of her drink and smiled. “I’m going to clean up.”
She handed him her drink, turned and walked into the bathroom.
Diego heard the rush of water from the showerhead and the click of the shower booth door closing.
He pointed the remote control and turned on the flat screen. The Titan News Network was on. The news was about some parliamentary scandal on Earth. Something about an Assembly representative from Mars who was having an affair with the Minister of Education’s daughter. Salacious details were being relayed by pundits in a sensationalist manner.
The bathroom door was half open. Diego stood and walked over to the door and stood in front of it.
He could see her figure behind the steamed glass. She ran her hands through her wet hair as she stood under the showerhead. A powerful urge came over him. He saw himself stripping off his thermals and stepping into the booth with her. Embracing her. Kissing her.
He backed away from the bathroom door and walked back into the living room. He turned up the volume on the flat screen. The screen now depicted an S.S.F. outpost on Callisto being overrun. Grainy, unstable helmet cam footage showed swarms of Neo-Fascist guerillas breaching defenses and gunning down S.S.F. soldiers.