Apollo's Outcasts

by Allen Steele

  Once again, Gordie was flying the Pegasus I was in. No surprise; I didn't think he would have wanted to sit this one out. After lift-off from Apollo, he headed due south from Ptolemaeus on a high-altitude trajectory. He could have gone suborbital and cut the travel time in half, but this was the way long-range transports flew when they carried water tanks back and forth from Cabeus Station. With luck, anyone aboard the Duke who might be watching for unusual activity on the Moon might mistake our Pegasus for a routine resupply mission.

  Because we didn't want our adversaries to determine our defense strategy, my team was observing strict radio silence: no contact with Apollo unless absolutely necessary. But the silence wasn't restricted to satellite communications. It was quiet in the Pegasus, too. Twelve men and women sat across from each other in the personnel module, and I don't think any of us spoke more than a few words during the three and a half hours it took to travel 1,300 miles. We'd pressurized the module and opened our helmets, yet no one was in the mood for conversation.

  Let's be honest: we were scared.

  I was learning that fear can be a good thing. It keeps you alert and wary, ready for whatever may come your way. But it can also immobilize you, make you afraid to do whatever needs to be done in order to stay alive. If Mr. Garcia had been with us, he might have given us a good pep talk, or at least told us to relax until we got to where we were going. He'd put Mikel in charge of our team, though, and he was handling the job with typical Russian stoicism. That pretty much left each of us alone with our thoughts.

  Mine were about Hannah. She'd been scared, too...for me. And like an idiot, I'd said the wrong things, even given back a good-luck charm that she'd clearly wanted me to keep. I shouldn't have been so fatalistic. I should have kept the medallion and told her not to worry, I'd return soon. What I'd done instead was practically tell her that I didn't think I was coming back. That was even worse than giving her the impression that I no longer wanted to take her out on a date. To a girl who was still getting over losing her father and didn't know where her mother was, this was...well, I could have handled it better.

  So I stared out the window beside me and watched the shadows grow longer upon the battered moonscape, and tried not to think too hard about what we were about to get ourselves into. And around the same time that it seemed as if I could no longer see anything except the highest mountain peaks, the transport's bow tilted forward and I felt the VTOL engines surge to life beneath the deck plates.

  "Coming in for landing," Gordie said, his voice a muted murmur within my helmet. "We'll be on the ground in five minutes. Close your helmets, I'm beginning depressurization."

  "Roger that," Mikel said from the other end of the module. "You heard him, guys. We're going on comlink now. Channel Three."

  I reached up to shut my faceplate. "Pressurize suit, please, Arthur," I said once my helmet was airtight. "Switch comlink to the emergency freak."

  "Yes, Jamey." A second later I heard the thin hiss of air entering my suit. "You'll pardon me for saying so, but I'm registering a seven percent increase in your cardiac rate. You need to calm down a little."

  I started taking long, slow breaths. That usually helped settle my nerves, but this time it didn't. Across the aisle, I could see Logan doing the same thing. We looked at each other, and he managed a wry grin. By then, everyone had switched their comlinks to the seldom-used UHF channel reserved to Lunar Search and Rescue for emergency transmissions. With luck, enemy forces wouldn't figure out that we were on this particular frequency. I could hear scattered comments from the others, which meant that they'd be able to hear what Logan and I said, too.

  "So," Logan asked, "who do you think is going to the state championship this year?"

  I couldn't help myself; I laughed out loud. "Burtonsville, of course. You should know that. We..."

  "What the hell are you two talking about?" Nicole was seated next to Logan. She'd just closed her helmet, and she stared at us from the other side of her faceplate.

  "Just swim team stuff," Logan said, as if this was still something that mattered to us. I hadn't thought about it in months. "Jamey's got more school spirit than I do. Our team hasn't been the state champs in years."

  "Yeah, maybe so," I replied, "but that doesn't mean we can't..."

  "Okay, knock it off, you two," Greg said. "We've got more important things to worry about."

  He was right, of course. All the same, it helped me remember, if only for a few seconds, where Logan and I had come from. We grinned at each other, sharing a private joke only the two of us understood. Of course our swim team never went to the state championships. It was a well-known fact that Burtonsville High had the worst team in Maryland. But it never stopped us from trying...and I was glad that Logan and I were able to talk about that kind of stuff again.

  There was a mild jolt as the Pegasus touched down. The transport had barely settled upon its landing gear when Mikel stood up. "Let's go, Rangers!" he snapped as he cranked open the main hatch. "Grab your gear and move out!"

  I pulled out my gun from where I'd stashed it beneath my seat, then followed Logan and Nicole as they joined the line of Rangers exiting the Pegasus. We tramped down the ramp and stood within the glow of the spacecraft's floodlights. I asked Arthur to switch on my helmet lamp, then paused to look around.

  Cabeus was smaller than Ptolemaeus, about sixty-one miles in diameter, but much deeper, surrounded by sheer walls two and half miles high. At this latitude, the crater's depth was significant; sunlight never reached its floor, so its power supply came entirely from a fusion tokamok near the dome-shaped distillation facility. The rest of the station was a collection of modules and sheds, visible only by the wan illumination of red and blue beacons set up around its perimeter.

  Nothing moved. We were the only people here.

  "Okay, look sharp." Mikel bunny-hopped away from the Pegasus until he stopped to face the rest of the squad. "We've got only a little while before the Marines show up, and we need to be ready and in position when they arrive. Is everyone locked and loaded?"

  I checked my carbine, making sure that its ammo drum was firmly attached. "Yes, sir," I replied, joining the chorus from those around me.

  "Good. Excellent." Mikel pointed to the mule that had followed us from the Pegasus. "There's more ammo over there. Everyone take two spare drums and carry them with you. It's also carrying spare air tanks, which will be distributed once the fire teams have taken their positions. Now, we need to...Rogers, what do you think you're doing?"

  Turning around, I looked back at the Pegasus. Gordie had opened the cockpit hatch and was climbing down from the transport, his copilot right behind him. "Coming to join you guys, that's what," he said.

  "Like hell you are!" Mikel sounded angry. "Get back in that thing and..."

  "And do what? Be a couple of sitting ducks?" Gordie bounded toward us. "Sam and I talked it over, and we want to be in on this. Fourteen is better than twelve, don't you think?"

  He had a point. If he and Sam remained in the Pegasus, they'd be nothing more than targets if the Marines decided to take out the transport. And if there was a firefight, we could use all the help we could get. But neither of them were wearing Ranger moonsuits; instead they wore standard-issue skinsuits that offered zero protection in a combat situation.

  "Sorry, but no," Mikel said. "I want you to take the Pegasus over to the other side of the crater, turn off the lights, and await further orders. I don't want to give the Marines an easy target, and we're going to need to keep the transport safe until we're ready to pull out."

  Gordie grumbled something under his breath that I didn't quite catch, but he didn't argue with the squad leader. Mikel turned to the rest of us. "All right, then...here's the plan," he said, then bent down to scratch a diagram in the grey dust at his feet. "I want six fire teams, two people each, spread out in a semicircle around the station. We'll keep the station at our backs, and count on the crater wall to provide protection at our rear."

 
"What if they come at us from that direction?" Logan asked.

  "They won't." Mikel pointed toward the distillation facility and the crater wall looming above it. "They'll most likely land here, where we're standing, and advance on the station from this direction. The top of the wall is too far away to give them much advantage...and if they do decide to use it, we can redeploy our teams to cover the rear."

  "We hope." This from Toji Kanaku, another Ranger First Class.

  Mikel ignored him. "We'll use the station as our base of operations," he went on. "We'll eat, sleep, and recharge our packs in there. Between now and then, I want to build up our defenses. That means finding whatever we can use...robots, empty tanks, anything we can get our hands on...and placing them so that they can provide protection for us. We'll send the mule around to distribute the spare air tanks once we've established our firing positions."

  "We're going to try to ambush them?" Nicole asked.

  "No. We're going to make it as hard as possible for them to know where we are or how many people we have. If they believe we got them outnumbered, maybe they'll think twice about trying to take the station. With luck, we may even be able to talk them down."

  That sounded a little too much like wishful thinking. I didn't say so, but instead asked a question. "What if we're outnumbered and they get us boxed in? What then?"

  "If that happens, we'll fall back to the operations center. There's an airlock on the west side. If I call for retreat, go there as fast as you can. We can hole up inside and wait them out...."

  "Or they can wait us out," Gordie murmured.

  "We have approximately fifteen hours to get ready," Mikel continued, "so use your time wisely. Nap and eat in shifts when you're in the station. At 0700, fourteen hours from now, I want everyone in their suits and on the firing line. Once everyone is in position, switch off your helmet lamps and observe radio silence unless it's absolutely necessary. Any questions?"

  "Just one," Gordie said. "Do you seriously believe US Marines will back down from a fight just because we bluff them into thinking they're outnumbered?"

  This time, Mikel didn't ignore him. "I don't...but I'm under orders to avoid a fight if at all possible." He paused. "Look, I realize that the Americans among you aren't eager to engage our own people. But you have to remember that you're defending this place from an enemy that would use it to force Apollo to surrender. We can't let that happen. So I'm going to try to reason with them, if and when they land here, but I'm going to do that with my finger on the trigger, and I expect everyone here to back me up. Can you do that for me?"

  Everyone murmured in the affirmative. "All right, then," Mikel said. "Let's get to work."

  The next thirteen hours were among the busiest of my life. Cabeus Station was never meant to be a fortress, but we did our best to turn it into one.

  The first thing we did was enter its seldom-visited operations center, a pair of pressurized modules adjacent to the furnace dome, and shut down all the mining equipment except for the robots, which we reverted to local control. The robots were huge, flat-bed tractors with barrel-shaped horizontal drills mounted on one end and cylindrical collection tanks at the other; there were six in all, scattered across the crater floor. One of the Rangers had been to Cabeus before and knew how to operate them, so Mikel put him in charge of moving the 'bots until they were repositioned in a semicircular ring around the dome.

  The robots were big enough for two people to easily hide behind, but they were only part of the barrier we set up. There were also several empty tanks stacked nearby, insulated cylinders with a 200 gallon capacity each. We rolled them into place between the robots, then added stuff we found in a storage shed--replacement bulkhead panels, spare rolls of electrical cable, an old airlock hatch that had been discarded--and lugged them over to the fortifications. By the time we were through, we'd built a makeshift stockade that, while not solid, would provide some measure of protection.

  Greg pointed out that we might be able to use the crater's perpetual night to our advantage, so Mikel had him enter the operations center and shut down the beacons. Once this was done, the crater was plunged into darkness. Our carbines were equipped with ultraviolet night-vision rangefinders and our helmet faceplates could be filtered to see the same, so we'd be able to make out one another in the dark; nonetheless, we'd have to be careful not to accidentally target each other during a firefight.

  The operations module was small, but at least it had its own airlock and ready-room, and adjacent to them was a bunkhouse with a few collapsible cots and a small galley. It was meant to be used by the maintenance crews that periodically visited the station; there wasn't enough room for all of us at once, but we were able to visit it four at a time. I took the second shift, once I was done shoving water tanks into place. It was a relief to climb out of my suit for a few hours and get a bite to eat, but I can't say that I slept well. I stared at the ceiling for a long time, and it felt as if I'd just closed my eyes for a few minutes when another Ranger shook me awake and told me that it was his turn to nap. I chugged a cup of coffee, visited the toilet, then climbed back into my suit.

  Gordie and Sam stayed at the station for as long as they could, working alongside the Rangers, but twelve hours after we arrived at Cabeus, they reluctantly climbed back into the Pegasus and lifted off. I watched the transport as it rose from the landing pad, its formation lights the sole source of illumination within the crater. It ascended to about 500 feet, then turned south and headed for the other side of the crater. I knew Gordie didn't want to leave; if he could have, he would've rigged the Pegasus with mortar rockets and provided air support. But the transports were never meant to be gunships, and his craft would've been an easy target for any Marine with an RPG and a good eye.

  After that, there was nothing left to do but take our positions.

  I was partnered with Greg, and we'd put ourselves behind a mining robot. Mikel and Toji hid behind a water tank about fifty feet away to our left; Logan and Nicole were concealed behind another robot about forty feet to our right. There was an extra oxygen tank on the ground between Greg and me, along with four ammo drums. The other six Rangers were in pairs to either side of us. When I switched on my night-vision, I could make out the others as vague, green-hued silhouettes, featureless and ghostly.

  Mikel had us sound off, answering verbally and raising our hands when he called each of our names, so that we'd all know where everyone was. Then we went radio silent, continuing to monitor all channels but using Channel Three only if necessary. That may have been the most tense time of all: standing in the pitch darkness, barely able to see anything at all, not hearing much except the hiss of respirators, watching the starlit sky above Cabeus and wondering when...and even if...the Marines would land.

  We waited. And waited. And waited.

  And just as I was beginning to seriously wonder whether the Chief had made a serious mistake by sending us down here, that was when they came.

  I happened to be looking up at the sky when I spotted a bright point of light moving among the stars. At first I thought it was a satellite, until I realized that it was going in the wrong direction, from north to south, away from the equator.

  I reached over to Greg, prodded his elbow. Within the dim backglow of his helmet visor, I could see his face; he nodded, yes, he'd seen it, too. We watched as the light disappeared beyond the south crater wall, only to reappear a few seconds later, brighter this time and lower to the ground. As it came closer, the light quickly assumed shape, becoming a tiny, comet-like flare that waxed and waned. Engine exhaust. A spacecraft coming in for a landing.

  The vessel slowed as it approached us, RCRs winking every now and then, until it was hovering a couple of thousand feet above the crater. Then it slowly began to descend. It was blacked-out save for its cockpit lights and exhaust flare, but it soon became apparent that it was a ferry much like the one that had rendezvoused with the LTV that had brought me from Earth. Although I couldn't see it clearly, it didn
't look quite the same; instead of passenger modules, it appeared to be carrying six upright cylinders, mounted in a ring around its control turret.

  The ferry didn't use the landing pad. It came down about a mile away from the station, closer to the crater's center. We couldn't hear anything, of course, but we knew that it had landed when its exhaust flare abruptly vanished, a sign that the pilot had cut its main engine.

  All we could see was the distant glow of its cockpit lights, then those disappeared as well.

  Mikel's voice came over the comlink: "Stand by."

  That was all he said, and it was an unnecessary order. Everyone had seen the ferry land, and I had little doubt that the others had figured out the same thing that I had. The pilot had put his craft down at that distance to give his passengers a chance to disembark before being fired upon. This could only mean one thing: they were expecting the station to be defended.

  The Marines had landed. And they were looking for trouble.

  "Ready carbine, Arthur," I said, keeping my voice low. I didn't need to whisper; it just seemed right. "Activate UV targeting system."

  "Yes, Jamey." A green bar appeared across the top of the faceplate; it was marked twenty at its left margin, the number of rounds I had in reserve. I raised my carbine and pointed it the direction of the freighter, and the translucent red crosshairs of the virtual gunsight appeared in the center of my faceplate.

  The night-vision didn't show me anything except an indistinct black object approximately a mile away, a few tiny dots moving around it. As I watched, though, the dots began to move toward us...and then they began to hop, leaping up into the air and coming down again a few dozen yards closer than they'd been before, like fleas travelling across a black dog's fur.