A final pull, then a hard push with motorized legs.
I curled.
My proxy hit them like a bowling ball.
The “pins” burst apart.
I had the neutralizer in my hand, and—lacking anything of sufficient toughness—slammed it across one knee. The sensors complained and I winced as the feedback hit me, but the neutralizer was in pieces, which I hurled away from me as I regrouped with my Marine battle buddy.
“Still too many,” Chesty said, breathing heavily. Though the proxies were doing all the work, the fight was as visceral as anything either of us had experienced on Earth. We’d been japing around in our booths—Operator-style—since the moment the attack began. And even being in good condition didn’t prevent a man—or a woman—from getting winded at that frenetic pace.
“I’d pay good money for a vacuum-tested .50-calibre machine gun right now,” I said, watching to either side as the Chinese troops pulled themselves back towards us on their tethers. What little of their faces I could see, appeared rather displeased. And I was suddenly very grateful to not be facing them in person.
Their tethers waggled as they drew near.
Wait.
Tethers…?
“We’ll never beat them like this,” I said. “We have to give them a new problem to solve.”
Before Chesty could ask what I meant, I pulled myself over to one of the enemy tethers which was bound to the solar panel boom. Flexing my forearm, I deployed my proxy’s cutting tool and bent low, applying it to the tether’s base. Steel cable resisted, and then snapped as my cutting tool bit through the tightly-wound metal.
I grabbed the free end of the broken tether and yanked yard, then cast it away. The attached troop flailed and groped at nothing as he shot up and over me. I ducked. Were they smart enough to have configured their armored suits with miniature reaction control thrusters? I hadn’t seen a lot of extra hardware on them when they’d first emerged.
Chesty hooted her approval and set to work on another tether.
Suddenly, Grissom Platform lurched.
Cones of mist sprayed from the much-larger RCS system installed at mathematically-determined points along Grissom Platform’s architecture. The two Chinese who’d managed to get inside had obviously done their work quickly. They had control of the Platform’s systems now, which was very bad news indeed.
“Someone has to get inside and stop them!” Chesty yelled.
Indeed.
“Do what you can,” said a third voice. It was Valkyrie.
She’d plugged into the Operator frequency with a normal headset.
“Can you give us a SITREP, boss?” I asked.
“All the other Operators are blacked out right now. The EMP did its work well. There is no help available at this point. It would be hours before we could attempt to bring other proxies—being Operated on other Platforms. And by then it will be too late.”
“Aren’t the Chinese worried about how this will affect the diplomatic situation?” I said.
“Obviously not,” Valkyrie replied. “I think it’s a test—to see how ready we are to resist them in an open contest for orbital space. And since the European Union is sitting it out as a ‘neutral’ party, we’re left to defend our turf the old fashioned way.”
• • •
Chesty and I sat at the bar of the little wings’n’brew joint we’d found not far outside the west gate of Hill Air Force Base. Being none too familiar with the local denizens, we kept to ourselves—though it seemed obvious the staff were plenty used to military folk coming in for a drink and a meal. The man behind the bar was a friendly chap. Retired, I guessed, based mainly on his crisp high-and-tight haircut and the tattoo on his muscular arm—a half-naked woman that peaked out from under his rolled-up sleeve as he moved around and served customers.
“And here I thought you were going to be a joker,” Chesty said, twirling the ice in her glass with a thin straw.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” I said. “Eight weeks ago you didn’t know me. But now? Now, you don’t have that excuse.”
“True,” she said. “But I get the feeling I’m not the only one who’s had to correct himself on his assumptions.”
“Right,” I said, smiling slightly at her, before taking a slow sip of my root beer and putting the glass mug back on its foam coaster. ODIS rules were: no alcohol under any circumstances, any time. It somehow messed with the tuning of the proxy control suits. A nervous system thing?
A flatscreen TV behind and above the bar was playing the evening news. An earnest-looking reporter in a crisp suit was carrying on about something, though the sound had been turned down so we couldn’t hear about what. When an image of a Chinese orbital booster was layered in behind the news anchor’s head, with the words “PRC RESOLVES TO MATCH AMERICA IN ORBIT” blown up under the anchor’s chin, I pointed at the set and asked the man behind the bar to turn it up.
The anchor’s voice suddenly cut in, mid-sentence, “…for the last four years, and Beijing has promised that if the United States does not cease its military activities in low earth orbit, the Peoples Republic of China will be forced to declare the United States in violation of treaty.”
The news anchor vanished, to be replaced by a slim, fit looking Chinese man in a blue business suit—Mao suits being something you didn’t see much of in the new era of streamlined, bourgeoisie Chinese international relations.
“We consider the actions of the United States Department of Defense to be inexcusable,” said the Chinese man, “and we would remind the United States President that the territories of Earth orbit, as well as the moon, belong to all people. Not just America’s capitalist exploiters.”
I snorted.
“You think they’re bluffing?” Chesty said.
I shook my head. “Hard to say. After the Party put down those big pro-democracy riots in the Chinese interior cities a couple of years ago, the Beijing government has been working double-time to plaster on a nice face at the United Nations. Given the fact that so many countries are up to their necks in debt to Chinese interests, nobody’s going to mess with China. But maybe it’s all part of a scheme to provoke the US? Make us look like the warmongering bad guys half the world seems ready and willing to believe we are.”
I said the last with a bitter frown, and took a long draft of root beer.
“And you’re sure they aren’t right?” she said.
I nearly choked.
“What kind of talk is that for a Marine?”
“I’m just thinking that as much as we like to think we’re always the good guys, events of the last few decades have occasionally cast that into doubt. I’m not stupid. I know a bit about history and I know more than a bit about our overcommitments in the Middle Eastern and African theaters. If it were up to me I’d bring every last one of us home and let the world fend for itself for fifty years. But then I’m not the President, so I don’t get to make that call. She does.”
I pushed my drink aside and faced Chesty squarely.
“Well, surprise, surprise. I wouldn’t have figured you for a political thinker. Then again, we haven’t had a chance to talk much—about real stuff. Only about work.”
“No we haven’t,” she said, waiting for me to continue.
“So riddle me this, Marine, if the answer to America’s bad image abroad is to close the bases and bring the troops home, what are we doing constructing military space stations for the purpose of putting military personnel in orbit? And if you really feel the way you say you feel, what are you doing tied up in a project like this? ODIS being the thing on everyone’s minds lately, as the Platforms approach completion and the Chinese eat up the international news cycles with threats and rhetoric.”
She looked down at her drink—the ice tinkling in her glass—and sighed.
“I always wanted to be an astronaut,” she said. “But life got in the way. Twenty years went by in a flash, along with two kids, a mean divorce, and too many deployments. I wa
s in Kuwait when I read about ODIS in an e-mail from a friend, and I decided it was the closest I might ever get to fulfilling my dream—even if I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the political cloud that surrounded the program.”
“The first sortie is coming up,” I said. “are you sad like me that we won’t be going up on a rocket ourselves?”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly, looking directly into my eyes. “Don’t get me wrong. I know I beat long odds to be here, just like you. And I am glad I did this. But it won’t be the same—not being able to float outside the spacecraft and see my own real-live hand against the backdrop of the earth as it passes beneath my feet. Like Ed White. Do you know who Ed White is?”
“No,” I said.
“Look him up on the internet tonight,” she said. “When I was a little girl, I used to love the color photos of Ed White.”
• • •
“They’ve sealed the air lock,” I said.
“Use your proxy’s key card,” Valkyrie ordered.
“I did. It’s no good. However they’ve hot-wired it, I can’t get in.”
Grissom Platform was still thrusting with its RCS. The Earth was swinging away and to the right. I heard Chesty cursing as she struggled with the Chinese who’d resumed their attempts to subdue her. Unable to get in and stop the ones who’d gone inside and activated the Platform’s attitude controls, I debated between helping Chesty, and figuring out some other way to stop the Chinese.
“Now I’m wishing we had an auto-destruct sequence,” I mused sarcastically.
“You think this is a TV show?” Valkyrie said. “No can do, Chopper. No reactor overload. No explosives lining the hull. That’s movie theater stuff. And if you can’t stop the Chinese, then it’s basically game over. I’ll have to report to my bosses at the Pentagon that ODIS let the Chinese commit orbital theft of US military property.”
I stared—via proxy eyes—at the space around me. The layout of the station. The unfinished spars and beams poking out at different angles. Then my eyes hit something I’d not considered before. And as I watched the limb of the Earth drop away and disappear, I suddenly realized what I had to do.
• • •
After training was over, it took Chesty and I few sorties to really get the hang of things. Even with the many, many hours logged in simulation, the real thing took just that much more adjustment, before we began to feel proficient. After that, it was very much a lunch bucket job.
“They used to make people with Doctorates do this,” I said to no one in particular as Chesty and I—our proxies—maneuver a collapsible strut out of the yawning cargo bay of a Centurion rocket’s third stage. Our feet were identical to our hands, and we “walked” our way up and down the slowly-growing superstructure of Ride Platform.
“Did they get paid any better?” said one of the team, a Navy chief petty officer designated as Skips.
“I dunno,” I said. “But it just seems hilarious to me. This is hard-hat stuff. We’re a construction crew, y’all.”
“If anyone ever saw a construction crew in robot form,” Chesty said.
“Quick, someone scratch his robot crotch.”
“Is it break time yet?”
“I forgot my lunch box!”
“How about a beer instead?”
“No beer in space.”
“No beer? I want to talk to the union!”
The one-liners continued to reel from all lips, and pretty soon we’d all been reduced to painful laughter, our proxies emulating us as we hunched, our torsos and heads bobbing—letting it out.
“Okay kids,” Valkyrie’s firm, maternal voice said in our ears. “Play time is over. That will do. You’ve still got a lot of stuff to unload from that Centurion before the sortie is over. And your batteries are draining every second you waste hamming it up.”
The lot of us yesma’ammed and shut up, though snickers could still be heard here and there.
Having affixed our collapsed strut to its designated hard point, Chesty and I went back to the Centurion and began taking out another.
I noticed there was a rudimentary control board up near the nose cone, tucked just inside the cowling.
“Mind if I take this thing for a test drive, boss?”
If Valkyrie couldn’t see what I saw, she at least inferred what I meant.
“Sure,” she said. “There’s plenty of orbital burn fuel in the tanks, if you want to use it. Take the nose cone off and the third stage has a hard dock that allows us to mate it with the Platforms and boost their orbits, when it’s necessary. Usually we run it from ground, but the Centurion has a manual backup system—just in case.”
“Just in case,” I said, thinking how fun it would be to get behind the “wheel” of a rocket ship in orbit.
• • •
The Chinese had all but ignored the Centurion.
Its clamshell bay doors hung open, inviting.
“Chesty,” I said. “One of us has to get to the third stage. If we can’t take the Platform away from them, maybe we can take it down with them still aboard.”
“What?” Chesty said, breathing heavily. “I’m a little damned busy right now, Chopper.”
“Hold them off—I’m going for it!”
“Chopper—” but Valkyrie’s words were swept from my ears as I sprang across the Platform, covering meters with every move. I think the Chinese might have suddenly figured me out, because Chesty announced that they’d turned her loose. She was coming up after them as they came up after me.
I made it to the Centurion’s open bay, found the manual control panel, and began pushing buttons.
After the first time I saw the manual controls—while working on Ride Platform—I got curious, and pleaded with Valkyrie to let me see the Centurion’s operational specs. No sense holding back. Otherwise what was the exchange officer program for? I wanted the full skinny, nuts and bolts and nozzles and gears.
She had reluctantly agreed.
And now I believed this knowledge was our best, last hope.
The control panel lit up and announced via flashing LCD screen that the fuel pumps were being primed. Precious seconds ticked away as the Chinese came on. Wherever they thought they were taking the Grissom Platform via its own RCS, I was about to ruin their day.
Just when the Chinese—and Chesty—had almost reached me, I stabbed at the cheerful orange IGNITE button, and latched onto the control panel’s protective rails with both hands and feet.
The Platform lurched and shoved, the sudden thrust from the Centurion causing it to begin spinning on a new axis as the Platform’s own RCS went out of whack. Chesty just barely had time to grab hold of a support beam before the Chinese tumbled away and hung like cat toys on the ends of spongy strings. They flailed and kicked, but it was no good. The torque was too much for them.
But my proxy held fast, and I—safely on the ground—felt none of the deleterious effects of the spin.
“What are you doing??” Valkyrie demanded.
“I’m taking the Platform out,” I said.
“By whose authorization, Chopper?”
“Ma’am,” I said, “if I can’t have an auto-destruct, it’s up to me to effect a manual destruct. I’m going to try and push us down into the atmosphere. The Platform, the proxies, the Chinese, all of us.”
Silence.
I suddenly imagined my boss being the chief witness at my court-martial.
“It’s the only way,” I said.
“He’s probably right,” Chesty said, agreeing. “We don’t have any weapons, and the proxy batteries will run out sooner or later. And then the Platform belongs to the Chinese. Would you rather tell your bosses at the Pentagon we sank the ship and took the enemy with us? Or let them have it without a serious struggle?”
More silence.
Then, with a reluctant sigh, “Go.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
The manual controls were difficult to finagle, with the Platform’s own RCS mucking up the trajector
y. But I could already tell it was working. We were spiraling in. Faster and faster. And while the proxy had what it took to withstand the centripetal gee, I could tell just by looking that the Chinese were in no position to stop me.
The Earth grew steadily larger as we went down, the Centurion’s fuel gradually bleeding to fumes.
“Got any last words, Marine?” I said to my partner.
“I regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” she said, half-mocking.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
I began to wonder what it would be like to re-enter in proxy form.
• • •
The news called it an unfortunate accident. The fireball had streaked across the skies of one ocean and two continents, before what remained splashed down a hundred miles off the Hawaiian coast.
The Chinese never said a word, other than to offer some back-handed condolences for the loss of the hardware.
Chesty and me?
Well, we didn’t get court-martialed.
Valkyrie did have to report to the Pentagon and she did have to do some rather extensive explaining—thank goodness for the proxy recordings giving the generals a front-row seat to the action—but in the end, the spiking of the Grissom Platform was deemed not only necessary, but valorous.
Though, Chesty and I both felt a bit sheepish receiving awards for a thing which had not, technically, placed either of our lives in danger.
But then, war had become more and more like that. The machines were doing the fighting, as well as the labor. I wondered what someone like Kipling might have thought of that? And decided I wasn’t entirely sure.
When the dust ultimately settled, Valkyrie put us back to work.
“You broke it,” she told us. “You build another one in its place.”
Our exchange officer tours were extended.
The work was, well, work. But satisfying work. And the Chinese didn’t try another stunt on our watch, so thank goodness for small miracles.
The true surprise showed up six months after Chesty and I left Hill.
Lights in the Deep Page 16