The Last Hercules

by Ron Bender

  This station, just like a gun, it’s really efficient at its task.

  And just like a gun it’ll work for anyone who’s holding it. And that’s our problem.

  An anti-corporate terrorist group occupied the station just over four hours ago. They’ve realigned the stations orbit and lobed a highspeed cargo pod at a nearby orbital observation platform.

  A bunch of scientists, engineers, technicians, and all of their families worked and lived there.

  Our briefing started with that footage. There’s nothing to rebuild, no salvage, no one to save. Bodies will be tumbling in with the debris and scrap, burning up in atmosphere for days.

  My gut reaction is like any young man’s; blow the cargo transfer station to flaming hell with a dozen rocket salvos. But command knows better; the dollar per kilo on all that cargo is high and there’s no guarantee the reactor core that powered the launcher wouldn’t survive reentry and hit someplace populated….

  We’re ordered to recover the asset.

  So here we are.

  I can see the station ahead of us. It’s pointed straight down, aimed planet side, the rest of the station rotating around the muzzle.

  If we didn’t get it right, everything was forfeit, even us. The Russians already forwarded a warning and issued a time line. When the clock ran down, they’d fire the rockets like I wanted, and damn the price.

  The launcher burps out a chain of three pods. I watch the ultimate ‘death from above’ ramming downward into the Earth’s atmosphere. A direct strike on a city would be devastating.

  Helpless to stop them, all we can do is hope that our interceptors and missiles systems can destroy those pods at a high enough altitude to matter.

  I channel my anger into intent: protect my country, secure our interests, maintain our superiority, and see justice done.

  Everyone in the unit feels the same outrage that I do. I glance along the line of us, a ribbon of matt-black suits against the blackness of the universe. Avenging angels streaking from the edge of heaven to claim the lives of those whom God will never forgive.

  Control has planned our approach with the sun at our backs. Visually we’re clean, any leaked infrared is masked by the glowing ball of gas behind us.

  I dial my visor all the way to max. Two orange outlines spring up, hidden in and amongst the station’s structure. Since they took the place over, they’ve put two men outside at a time, rotating in forty-minute shifts, watching for inbound craft. Whatever sensor gear they have is what we need to overcome as quickly as possible.

  “Control has range. Resolving fire.” The com feeds straight through to me. The shipboard computer has calculated the vectors and velocities of each man in the squad, the station, and the moving men on its skin. “Resolved. Weapons team, brace for outbound fire.”

  Light glows on my display. I relax and let my suit do what it needs to. All of my joints lock up and my spine becomes a plank as the system takes over. The weapon I’m carrying is literally a spinal mount: powerful, fast and hyper-accurate.

  Control whispers into my ear, “Firing now.”

  We become the sniper rifles under the control of a computerized sharpshooter program.

  The firing jolt is heavy. My helmet visor drops glowing tracers for me to follow. We accelerate to our targets as our nearly invisible rounds streak ahead of us.

  The two men hidden on the outer skin of the station, the ones who are supposed to be watching for us, die.

  Everything has been timed against when these men came on watch and made their first report. In ten minutes they’re supposed to report again to their buddy’s inside the station. The captain gets acknowledgment from Control and a countdown clock scrolls in one corner of my visor. Our timetable starts now.

  My helmet sounds a warning ping, and all of us flip from a head-in dive to a boots-in deceleration for our approach. Control has us lined up to descend onto the slowest rotating part of the launcher module.

  I lock onto the station right next to the man my weapon system killed. His lifeless corpse is stuck to the station by his magboots. Boiled-out bodily fluids hang in a slowly trailing cloud around the wreckage of his helmet. A jet of vacuum-frozen granules finishes a thinning spew up from the blown off stump of his neck.

  We fan out in our teams and conduct a quick recon. We confirm intel from Control; the attackers have chem-welded the manual overrides on all the airlocks except one, and it’s in the least useful location for an incursion.

  With four minutes on the clock, I jet to our team’s target zone outside the launcher control room.

  As soon as we get our gear in place Control will cut the power while making it look like everything is still fine inside.

  Prentice and Redux remove a segment of layered and casehardened Whipple plate. The Lt. tags locations along the three meters of exposed semi-soft skin where we’re mounting the insurgent taps. I prep the taps and hand them out.

  When we’re ready, we line up and set them in place. The captain pips to Control, and the robotic computer taps start their insertion sequence. The unit in my hand seals itself on and gently pushes a high-pressure blade through the skin of the hull. It’s like watching a mechanical hand push a long chrome stiletto into a piece of enormous white skin.

  The taps are completely silent to anyone inside the station. The blades will fan open on the inside of the incision. Internal arms and guided wires would fold out, questing for specific command and control systems, hook themselves in, and hack them.

  It helped that our hat, Arturo, is one of the world’s best hackers. “Confirmation. Hat One has access.”

  There’s a section of the launch control room that blueprints confirm is a short space of unobstructed wall. I place the breach charge. We don’t wait long before the captain looks for unit confirmation. “Positions?” The rest of the squad is waiting; waiting for the word to go. I nod and Lee sends confirmation.

  The word comes. It is a happening.

  Hat One seizes the internals. No communications, no lights, no more power to the gun capacitors, internal bulkheads close and lock. It’s instantaneous.

  The breaching charge slices silently through the soft-shell of the hull and into the control room with a rolling rush of outward air.

  A tissue-thin layer of flame jets out, swirls and folds in on itself, before being smothered in the vacuum of space. The shorn section of hull, insulation, and coating material billow into a drifting cloud.

  The men inside have over pressurized the cabin. Our openings have the undesired affect of pushing the station into a slow flat spin.

  Redux shoves his way into the curling debris cluttered hole. He dies before his feet are even inside. The round that kills him silently erupts from a pump action shotgun. It’s a close-range execution, straight through his helmet visor.

  Both Lee and Prentice throw sticky foam grenades. The cylinders rupture and tumble forward spewing expanding material as they go. The guy with the shotgun tries to dodge. The foam envelops his head and shoulders and starts to vacuum harden.

  It buys time. Lee goes in firing at a second hostile near the control panel.

  Our standard weapon is a power-wound, full-auto, inverted double crossbow. The bolts are fire and forget. They’ll puncture the Kevlar layers of most vacuum-suits. Lee uses his liberally on the second man.

  Prentice pulls Redux’s body to one side of the room and tethers it to the wall.

  I get to my task of checking the status of the launcher control panel.

  “Control, I’m at the panel.” The front of it is mangled, controls are epoxied over, others are smashed.

  “Acknowledged,” Control replies, I know they can see everything that I do through my visor. An augmented image overlay glows across my view.

  It’s supposed to be a quick once over and then onto my next task. That’s all it’s supposed to be. The captain and the other teams are already reporting, objectives getting clicked off the list. Secure launcher controls, my job, is the only on
e still blinking.

  My gut drops as I recognize patterns on the display screen that match my mission training.

  Control sees it the same instant I do. The launcher is at full charge and jammed partway through its firing sequence.

  “I got a situation here.” I look at Prentice and Lee. “The launcher’s been loaded, primed, and fired.”

  Control cuts in. “Get to a porthole and get us a visual.”

  I push off the console and move closer to the viewport that looks out on the magnetic loops and the pod feeder. “There’s a pod hung up in the autoloader.” I taste a bitterness in my mouth. My visor zooms in. The robotic clamping arm has a partially grasped pod partway into the primary accelerator coil.

  “Hung up?” the captain asks over my com-link.

  “That launcher’s got a full charge in it. The trigger’s already been pulled,” I say. “The pod’s stuck right in the primary acceleration hoop. It must’ve happened when the cabin evacuated atmo…”

  “Find the emergency energy discharge system,” Lee says quietly. “Prentice, try that wall panel.”

  I get back to the controls. Control dictates instructions in my ear with a calmness I don’t share.

  The energy bleed system has been locked out and epoxied over. As soon as the pod becomes unstuck, the launcher will auto-fire.

  Spinning as we are, we have no idea where the pod will hit. Our interceptor systems would have next to no effect. With nine and a half billion people on the surface below, either someone will be hit, or the bio-plague would be in the wild.

  Control comes through to all of us. “Station stabilization underway, we’re going to retarget the barrel into open space. Gyroscope desaturation in progress, preparing control thruster sequence.”

  They’re trying to slow our off-axis spin and point the launcher into a harmless zone of space.

  “Wait,” Lee yells over the com-link, too late.

  I turn to look at him. Except he’s not inside the hull with us, he’s outside, jetting toward the acceleration hoop assembly.

  The terrorists must have loaded explosive charges into the chemical thruster engines. The engine bells detonate with a wild vibration through my boots. Torsion from the explosion and the fuel tanks venting unchecked tears at parts of the station. The opposite wall and part of the ceiling become the new floor.

  The damage is done.

  I can see Lee clinging to part of the structure near the primary accelerator ring. The pod drops free of the robotic loader.

  Lee yells again, “It’s gonna fire.”

  I’m struggling to get back to the control panel even though I know it’ll be useless.

  Lee is all action. He jumps upward, using his thruster pack on full burn. Catalyzed hydrogen peroxide leaves a widening cloud.

  His tuck and roll is right out of training. He lands feet first and ends in a full squat, absorbing energy. He’s inverted to me. Standing upside-down inside the lip of the ring. The pod is floating freely behind him. His hand has already pulled free his ceramic boarding ax. The pod locks into the launcher and a row of lights blaze across the panel in front of me, showing the flow of power. Lee’s yelling incoherently, boarding ax swinging over and over at the power cable conduit.

  Prentice has bailed through our breach, but I’m glued to the panel and looking out at Lee. The pod rams forward with Lee’s last swing. There’s a brilliant flash of arc-white light and a fading glow as the conduit bursts. The pod drifts forward, tumbling Lee’s body along with sickening bounces. The rest of the accelerator hoops are unpowered now.

  I scramble out, and as I jet toward Lee, Prentice lashes two magnetic grapples to the pod. It spins and hammers into the next hoop. More of the squad join in.

  As I push Lee into a medical evacuation ball, I can see the damage, part of the energy discharge went through him. I don’t hold out hope, but I have to try. I seal the ball and watch it inflate.

  The captain is calling repeatedly for immediate medical evacuation.

  It’s the last time I see Lee for years.

  ˜˜˜

  “Well son, you really got yourself screwed into a tight spot, don’t you?” I look at the young man lying in the medical support bed. He’s finally out of controlled comas, awake and alert for the first time. It’s been months and approval for partial reconstructive cloning has been pushed through. I’ve called in a favor from the President himself to wrangle it.

  “Yes, sir.” His answer is muted.

  “I’ve been speaking to everyone in the ward about you.” I push a bit of enthusiasm into my voice just to see what I get. I get what I should have expected.

  “What am I supposed to say to that?” His eyes, under thick lenses, light with fire. “Sorry, sir. It’s just that …” He falls silent, turning his face away.

  “I understand son. Where you’re at is a place no one would wish on their enemies.” I soften my tone a little. I need him to stay the course. “I’ll be blunt son, it’s depressing as hell just looking at you. I know it doesn’t count one bit for me to say your condition hurts me, because you’ll just reply that I can still just walk out of the ward. And you’d be right.”

  I stand at his bedside for a moment in awkward silence before I continue. “But buck up son. I’m not here to gloat or brag about my condition over yours. Or to offer you pity. I am here to offer you a future.”

  “Again, sir, I’m sorry, but I’m not seeing much of a future.” His tone is brutal and bitter. “I don’t have arms, partial legs, and my optic nerves are almost cooked out. The doctors still aren’t sure if I’ll ever recover all of my memories or even what I lost.” The effort to say the words he’s chosen brings tears to his eyes.

  I choose to not wipe them for him. He’s still a soldier.

  Drawing a deep breath, I say, “While you’ve been in here there was another attempt at a coup in Moscow.”

  “I don’t get news in here sir.” He’s turned sullen.

  The iron isn’t going to strike itself. “Well this news I’ll share with you. Some of the soldiers of the losing side have been coming out of mother Russia looking for amnesty. And the gear they are coming with is something that interests all of us.” I pause. “But it will be of particular interest to you.”

  “Why’s that sir?” At least he’s looking at me while I’m speaking.

  “These boys have mechanical arms and legs. We got a hold of some of them and our guys are reverse engineering them.” I lean forward for emphasis. “Our boys figure we can do better’n them.”

  “I don’t know, sir. Prosthetics are good for a civilian.”

  I can see he wants to get back into the fight. He’s just unsure.

  “We’ve seen suits in the field before. But for what I was trained for…” His breath shudders. “At least what I can remember how to do, a suit isn’t going to work. Otherwise we’d be using them already.”

  “It’s not a suit son.” I give him a terse grim smile. “It’s functionally grafted on cybernetics. It’s actually part of the living soldier. It becomes a part of him, and he of it.

  He stares at me for a long time. I’m not sure if he thinks I’m insane or if I’m just giving him a line. “I get that you’re unsure. I’ll plug this vidstick in for you to look over. Don’t lose it though,” I say with some irony, “It’d be my hide.”

  He nods and I get a weak smile for my effort at humor.

  “Just promise me you’ll look it over as best you can.” I straighten my jacket. “I’ll be back in three days to hear what you have to say.”

  “Thank you, sir.” His voice is barely a whisper.

  “Work on getting better Lee, that’s all I can ask for at this time.” I pat my jacket hoping to look absentminded, for the sake of his psychological profile. “Oh that’s right.” I reach into my pocket. “I have this for you as well.” I open the box and set the medal on the edge of his table. “Maybe one of those nice-looking nurses will help you out with that.”

  “Thank you, sir.
” His voice is firm, but not angry. I’m hopeful but until I hear for certain, I’m not counting chickens.

  “It’s a hell of a thing you did out there, son. Saved a lot of people, most of whom never even knew they were in the line of fire. You’ve proven yourself the nations sword, and you sure as hell were its shield…. Good work.” I pause in the doorway and look at the wreckage of a young man who months ago had a shining future in front of him. He’s a bigger hero then anyone will ever know. Some computer someplace calculated the trajectories. The round he stopped would have sailed past our interceptors and landed in the San Angeles Metroplex. Eighty million people under threat.

  I turn and make my way to the elevator. He doesn’t need to hear about that right now. He just needs to know that Space Command values his past contributions and expects him to continue to contribute in the future.

  The damage to his torso might be too great for the grafting process but he was the first one that came to mind when the DD came forward with the proposal.

  ˜˜˜

  Three days later I walk back into Lee’s room. A nurse has given him a shave and put a uniform shirt onto him. His new medal is pinned with his other two.

  His momma, if she’d been alive, would’ve been proud to see him. His head comes up sharp.

  “At ease son,” I say. “Have you looked at the vidstick I left you?”

  “Yes, sir, I have.” It’s still plugged into his monitor.

  I pull the vidstick out and turn it over in my hands. “This would give you capability beyond a regular soldier. It would give you an opportunity to move on your own and continue to serve the Command.”

  “I understand, sir.” He pauses. “The graft success rate’s not very high. But that number will improve as doctors perform the procedure more often. To help other Airmen who come after me…for that reason alone I’d do it. But I want to serve, sir. So where do I sign?”

  He’s a damn good airman.

  “The basic installation is going to take months and even longer for us to get it good enough to use. Lee, I won’t lie, even then this isn’t going to be perfect.”