Aces

by Alanson, Craig

  “Hmm. I didn’t see that. I’ll play it back.” Seth ran the brief recording back and forth, then looked up in horror. “They fired a second missile-“

  Schroeder finished the thought. “Down at our shuttle. We need to warn them right away.”

  “How?” Gina said, her voice a dry croak. “Power’s out, radio’s down.” She clasped her right hand to her face in sudden shock. “Oh, no.”

  “What?” Schroeder inquired.

  Gina was stricken with guilt. “Captain, before, just before the missile hit, we lost our hypercomm, I couldn’t pick up the hypercomm beacon. I thought it was a problem with our gear, but...”

  Schroeder nodded grimly. “They were silently jamming our hypercomm. Which means we can’t call the Navy for help. Gina, this is absolutely not your fault. Even if you’d warned me, there was no time to do anything about it.” Schroeder looked over to the communications console, which only had a few lights glowing. “Hopefully they don’t feel any need to jam ordinary radio signals, we need to warn the shuttle quickly. We need to find a way to restore power to the radio, and fast.”

  “How much longer?” Kaylee asked, bored with staring at a blinking dot on the video screen.

  “Less than a minute.” Manny answered without checking his watch. “See the counter at the top left of the screen? It says ROS 0:54? That means fifty four seconds to Reacquisition Of Signal, until the shuttle can use its radio again. It’s an estimate, really.”

  “Oh.” When did her little brother learn technical details like that?

  Manny pointed out other items displayed on the screen. “See the numbers down the left side? The top one is the shuttle’s true airspeed, the one below that is-“

  The cabin heaved beneath them and the lights went out, accompanied by loud booming and shrieking noises. Kaylee was flung onto her back, she sprawled across the mattress, frantically grabbing onto the comforter and a pillow, anything she could get her hands on. Manny was knocked onto his right side, one of his sister’s feet hit him in the face. Someone screamed, Manny realized it was both of them. The cabin stopped moving as Kaylee slid off the side of the bed to land on her butt with a thump. There was a brief wave of nausea as the artificial gravity system fluctuated, then steadied. The cabin stopped moving, and red emergency lights snapped on.

  “What-“ Kaylee started to say, when the cabin moved again. She clung to the bed as best she could as she felt the floor vibrate in a series of pulses. This time, there was no booming or shrieking, instead the sound was fainter popping and creaking.

  “That’s the ship’s thrusters!” Manny shouted. The thrusters were a familiar sound then the ship was in normal space, though never so loud or so sustained. What Manny was used to hearing was a bare whisper, this was almost a roar. The cabin moved several times, back and forth over the course of about twenty seconds while the children hung onto the bed as tightly as they could. Then the motion stopped, and the popping sound was gone, but the creaking continued, intermittently.

  “Kaylee, what’s going on?” Manny asked, hanging onto the headboard of the bed in case the cabin moved again. Suddenly, he was again the little brother, looking up to his big sister in a crisis.

  “I don’t know.” Her own voice was shaky. “Computer, what happened?”

  There was no answer. The ship’s artificial intelligence computer always responded immediately, no matter what time of the day or night. Not now. The regular lighting flickered on and off, then came back on steadily. The video screen remained dark. Kaylee stood up shakily, picked up the phone from the night stand, and held it to her ear. “The phone’s dead. Hello? Hello? Anyone?”

  “Kaylee, if the phone is dead-“

  “I can’t hear anything, that doesn’t mean no one can hear us.” She insisted. “I’ll keep trying.”

  The second missile, guided by Nightengale’s radar at first, quickly acquired its target after launch, the shuttle was hard to miss, as it was glowing hot from its passage through the atmosphere. The shuttle was almost directly below, the landing had been planned so that Ace would be above, to provide radar tracking and advice if anything went wrong. The missile’s small computer brain performed a quick calculation, determining it actually needed to slow down first, in order to avoid overshooting the target. It swung around, and ignited the solid rocket motor, pointing backwards to slow down enough to drop out of orbit, then it turned again, to point nearly straight down, accelerating at four hundred times the force of Earth’s gravity. It bored heedlessly into the thin atmosphere, not caring that tremendous heat was building up on the nose. The nose was covered in a ceramic material that was designed to ablate away, to flake off as the air heated it. The ceramic began to peel off in layers, and the missile had to adjust its course as each piece broke away. Inside the nose, the warhead and electronics were growing hot. It didn’t matter. Before the heat fried the computers, the missile would reach the target. Nothing could stop it.

  The shuttle had come out of the communications blackout a few minutes before, and was lining up for final approach to a landing at the mining settlement. The expected call from above had never come. “Atlas Challenger, respond, please! What, are they deaf? I must have called them ten times.” Nelson turned to Sam. “How sure are you that the radio antenna made it through the entry intact?”

  Before Sam could answer, there was a burst of static from the radio, then Seth’s voice, weak and distorted. “Shuttle, this is Ace! You have a missile on your tail! Repeat: you have a missile on your tail. Set down now-now-now!”

  A disgusted look flashed across Nelson’s face. “Seth, if this is a practical joke, I’m coming back up there to kick your-“

  “No joke! No joke! The ship has been attacked, the command section split from the ship, and they fired a missile down after-“ Seth’s voice was drowned out by static, as Nightengale jammed the transmission.

  “Seth! Seth, come in! Seth! Dammit!”

  Rick called out, forgetting Nelson’s rule that passengers never speak, his voice slightly squeaky. “Can we look for a missile? We have radar, right?”

  “We have navigational radar, which points down and forward, not up. But you have a good point, professor. Hang on tight.” Nelson hauled back on the stick, and the shuttle grabbed the thin air, standing on its tail. He fed power to the engines, continuing the climb, until the shuttle had completed the turn, and was now upside down and flying in the opposite direction. If you couldn’t steer the radar, then steer the ship it’s attached to. “Sam, you see anything?”

  “Hold on, the radar is still set on close-range mode. Huh. I don’t see any- Oh, God! There it is! Nelson, set us down now! I mean NOW!” Sam’s face had gone pale.

  Nelson didn’t hesitate, he had glanced the incoming blip on the scope. It was still far away, but moving extremely fast. This had to be the real deal, military issue, not some probe modified to carry a warhead. Nelson didn’t stop to think, or wonder why, he simply reacted, and hauled back on the stick again, pointing the shuttle’s nose straight down, slamming the throttle full open. As the acceleration kicked him back in the seat and the rusty red surface of the planet rushed at him, he shouted “Sam, Rick, as soon as we touch down, grab your spare O2 bottle and run like hell! Shuttle, once everyone is clear, lift off and circle this area at twenty clicks! And I don’t care if you are damaged, you get out of here, no excuses!”

  “Lift off and wait for your signal, acknowledged.”

  The ground was coming up scarily fast, and they were still accelerating. Rick’s view between the pilot seats out the windshield was terrifying, it seemed like there was no way the shuttle could avoid boring a deep hole in the red surface of the planet below. Nelson pulled the stick back once again to flatten out their vertical dive, and felt the whole craft shudder violently with the strain, it was vibrating so badly he could barely see the instruments in front of him. Warning lights flashed on, he ignored them. He was doing everything you were NOT supposed to do with a big, fat, clunky cargo hauling
shuttle owned by Universal Transport. The company could deduct it from his pay for all he cared, as long as he survived. For a gut-wrenching moment he was afraid that he had misjudged the dive, not sure they could pull out before they smacked into the surface hard, but the shuttle’s belly cleared a ridge with a meter to spare, and he banked to the left, where there was a flat area to land. He chopped the throttle, kicked in the belly jets, and fired the nose retro rockets in a blur of motion. The retros came on full power, jerking him forward in his seat against the webbing of the harness, the straps digging into his waist and shoulders. Once their forward motion had halted, he lowered the shuttle fast, too fast, on the belly jets. “Sam! Pop both the doors, don’t wait for it to depressurize, override the safeties!”

  The shuttle doors were an airlock, designed to have the inner door, or the outer door, open at any time, but never both doors at the same time. Sam engaged the emergency override system to force the doors open while the shuttle’s cabin was still full of air, and while the shuttle was still flying. The shuttle jerked to the left as the air rushed out to starboard door, and there was an instant mist of red dust swirling crazily in the cabin. Without being prompted, Sam lowered the landing skids and locked them in position. “Hang on!” Nelson shouted as he gave the belly jets one last burst, then cut them off. The shuttle hit hard, bounced, almost rolled over on its starboard side, then settled on the landing skids. “Get out!”

  Rick didn’t wait for an engraved invitation, all he could think of was whether his family was safe, yet somehow he had the presence of mind to reach under the seat, grab the spare oxygen bottle, unbuckle the seat harness, reach under the seat next to him and grab that oxygen bottle also. Then he leapt out of his seat and was the first out the door. Sam was right behind him, followed by Nelson, they were so close together that the three collided, and sprawled face down in the red dust. With the wind knocked out of his lungs, Nelson managed to gasp “Shuttle! Go!”

  There was another intense cloud of red dust as the shuttle’s belly jets roared back to life, the craft wobbled toward the sky, unsteady due to damage from the hard landing. The three men were pelted with pebbles, and would have been blinded, except for the dust-repellant magnetic field which coated the faceplates of their helmets. Nelson turned to lie on his back, watching the shuttle climb, trailing smoke from the damaged starboard wing. The right rear landing skid had partly collapsed when the shuttle hit, Nelson figured he wouldn’t be able to fly the shuttle back into orbit even if the missile somehow missed the shuttle. As he watched, the shuttle’s main engines fired, and the craft began to move forward and pitch the nose up. He was about to say something to Sam and Rick, when his peripheral vision caught a bright streak of light coming in from the north, and the shuttle exploded in a fireball. His helmet’s faceplate automatically darkened, but not soon enough to prevent him from seeing spots in his vision. A piece of high-speed debris from the explosion hit the top of Sam’s helmet and punctured a hole in the hard material, Sam felt a searing pain as the hot chunk of metal came to rest inside the helmet at the back of his neck.

  “Nelson! I’m hit! Ahhh!” The inside of his faceplate fogged up quickly as the air vented out, in just a few seconds, Sam couldn’t see anything.

  Nelson, with spots still swimming in his vision and his faceplate still darkened, crawled over to Sam. “Where are you hit? Are you losing air?”

  “Top of my helmet!” Sam gasped, his lungs struggling to take in enough of the remaining air to breathe. “Quick!”

  Nelson fumbled with the suit controls, trying to get the faceplate to become completely opaque again so he could see. “Hold on a sec, buddy, I’m-“

  Rick slapped a patch from his suit repair kit onto the hole in Sam’s helmet, and held it firmly in place. “I got it! I got it! Try to breathe normally, Sam. Are you bleeding?”

  Sam took a deep breath, and opened his eyes a crack, now that the helmet was filling up with sweet air again. “I don’t know.” Now that the chunk of metal had cooled, he couldn’t feel anything. “Give me a minute here.”

  Nelson held out his hand to Rick. “That was fast, professor, you’re a handy guy to have around.”

  Rick shook Nelson’s hand and said “I was looking in the other direction when the missile hit, so my vision is fine. Nelson, what the hell is going on?” He made no attempt to disguise the fear her felt, for himself and his family in orbit.

  “I think I’m OK.” Sam said, and pushed himself to his feet with a helping hand from Rick. “Thanks, professor. I owe you one.”

  “Great, call me Rick. Nelson, can we contact the ship? My family is up there.”

  Nelson toggled his suit radio on. “Ace, this is Nelson, we got out of the shuttle in time, thanks for the warning. What the hell is going on up there, over?” He turned to Rick. “Their radio sounded busted up, I don’t know if they can pick up a signal from our low-powered suit radios. Ace, do you read? This is Nelson, respond, please. I’ll set the message to repeat until we get an answer. We may have to wait a while for a response, if they’re dealing with their own problems up there.”

  “What is going on?” Rick asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’ll bet that medical research ship has something to do with it.” Nelson said angrily. “When I get back up there. I’m-“

  Sam interrupted. “Hey, man, I don’t want to spoil the party, but nobody’s going back up there. Our shuttle is gone, it blew into a million pieces. So, unless you figure out how to fly shuttle pieces, we’re stuck here. And we’re gonna run out of air some time.”

  “All right, all right.” What to do now, Nelson asked himself? Rely on his training, in this case, his Navy training was more useful for this type of situation. “How much air do we have? I’ve got a full tank in the suit, and I grabbed a spare O2 bottle.” Nelson held up a bottle that was already coated with red dust.

  “Me too.” Sam added.

  Rick held up the two bottles he had carried out of the shuttle. “I got two spare bottles.”

  “Hey, you’re the man!” Sam shouted, and pointed at Rick.

  “How much time does that buy us?” Rick asked grimly.

  Nelson held up his hand while he thought. “Uh, the suits partially recycle the air, so each bottle lasts six hours. A spare gives us another twelve hours, and if we share your extra bottle, that’s another, uh, two, maybe? So, fourteen hours total. Battery power-“ Nelson checked the indicator on his right wrist. “Fully charged, so we’ve got more power than we’ve got air.”

  Sam looked around at the desolate, unforgiving, empty landscape that surrounded them. “Hey, Rick, man, I’m sorry I got you into this mess.” He said in apology.

  “Huh? Why? This isn’t your fault, Sam.”

  “Yeah, but if I hadn’t told the captain I needed your help down here-“

  Rick cut him off. “Then I would be in trouble up there, instead of in trouble down here. I volunteered, remember? Let’s keep focused on getting ourselves out of this mess. Nelson, how far is the mining camp?” Rick asked.

  Nelson thought for a moment. “Let’s see, we were on final approach, real close, less than twenty klicks, before we had to dodge that missile, we went in the opposite direction. Maybe thirty klicks? We can walk that.”

  “Yeah, except, remember, the reason we’re down here is their life support is running out.” Sam reminded them.

  “No it’s not.” Rick snorted derisively into his suit microphone. “I’ll bet that whoever fired the missile at us faked the whole emergency at the mining camp. The distress call was a ploy to get the ship here.” Rick said emphatically.

  “I think he’s right, Sam.” Nelson agreed, after a minute of thinking about it.

  “Why? What for? We’ve got a ship full of junk upstairs! None of it is worth stealing!” Sam protested.

  “The only thing I care about on that ship is my family. No response yet, Nelson?” Rick asked anxiously.

  Nelson answered. “No, not yet. That might not m
ean anything, on their last transmission, the signal was weak. You guys ready? We should get going, the mining camp is in, oh, hell.” He looked around. The land was pretty much the same in all directions. Red, jumbled rocks. Red sand. His skills as a navigator applied to orbital mechanics and hyperspace flight, not to walking across arid, dried-out, lifeless, sun-blasted red oxide dust. He pulled out a compass, let it settle down to find the local north magnetic pole. Ares had neither the population, nor the money, nor the need for global positioning satellites, so the miners found their way around by radio beacons scattered across the surface. Radio beacons that were now shut down, leaving Nelson to make his best guess. He pointed to the southwest, “This direction.”

  “Nelson?” Rick asked. “You got any lights? It looks like it will be dark soon.” He shaded his eyes with a hand and tried to gauge how close the star was to the horizon.

  “Oh, darn. No. The lights attach to the side of the helmet, or the wrist, I didn’t bring any out of the shuttle. Sam?”

  “No, man, I got out as fast as I could.”

  Rick opened the bag he was using as a toolkit. “Wait, I got a light in here. Just one, and it’s small. Let’s see what else I got.” He rummaged around, and found, among other things, Kaylee’s holo projector. He remembered putting it in the bag, intending to review the programs on it, and delete the Us4U holo, then he’d forgotten about it. Seeing it now, with his daughter possibly in danger above him, caused a lump in his throat. “Uh, I’ve got, um, a power cell, fully charged, and a bunch of tools. Nothing much useful right now.”

  “At least one of us was using his head, Rick, you hold onto that bag, never can tell what we might need.” Nelson said admiringly, increasingly impressed by the archeologist's coolness under pressure. “Now, the big question is, do we try to contact the mining camp by radio? They could come out here in a crawler, and pick us up.”