Doomsday Warrior 14 - American Death Orbit

by Ryder Stacy

  And even as Rajat pressed the video zoom, and the camera magnified the scene a hundredfold, all three men seated at the controls gasped simultaneously. For a spacesuited human figure was hanging onto the side of the garbage sphere, waving the white flag for all he was worth.

  Twenty-One

  “I’m getting a radio frequency pick-up. Low level,” Connors said, turning some dials in front of his unit. “Yeah—it’s from the guy with the flag—gotta be. Really low power, like they’re running a comm unit on old batteries.”

  “Boost it,” Rock said urgently, taking his hand away from the trigger.

  “Allo, sil vous plais, non firez pas. Non boom boom.” A voice crackled over the speaker system in the command console like the scratchy recording of some old record.

  “What the hell is—” Rockson began.

  “It’s French,” Rajat replied before Rock could finish his question. “A mixed-up French, anyway. Let me try—I’ve matched the frequency band they’re using. Let’s see if—”

  “Nous sont le—CRACKLE—Dynasoar. Et vous?” The voice on the other end grew excited and began yelling. “Je t’aime! Je vous amie! Mon cher! Sacre bleu! Non, non, mais, please ne pas fire les boom booms. Les enfants and men are livez in them! Tu connais?”

  The voice was hysterical and Rock could see that simultaneously the man lost hold of the white flag. It broke free from his hand and floated off spinning slightly sideways as it headed off toward the Perseus Quasars, twelve quadrillion zillion miles away.

  “Tres bien, we ne firez pas les missiles,” Rajat replied over the microphone. “Ne firez pas.” That seemed to cool the gesticulating spacesuited fellow at least for a moment. Suddenly he began jabbering away again and after a few moments Rajat turned to Rockson.

  “He wants permission to come aboard,” the Asian youth said.

  “Granted, as long as it’s just him,” Rock said. “I want to find out what the hell’s going on out there. This sure as hell is mystifying—unless he’s from the Wheel.”

  “Le Captain desire for vous visitez le spaceship, Dynasoar. Comprendez-vous?” Rajat was pretty good in languages, too!

  “Oui, oui, absolutement,” the French-speaking space man shouted back, so that his voice turned to pure static for a few seconds. But as the Dynasoar matched speed with the string of space garbage balls and closed to about two hundred yards, the guy suddenly pushed himself from the lead sphere. Taking a can from a utility bag at his side, he began spraying it so that it propelled him along. He made the distance separating the two ships in under a minute and the Frenchie was banging at an airlock along one side. Rajat opened the thing automatically, letting him come inside and then recompressed the chamber.

  The inner door slid open and they were staring at what could only be described as a space bum. The guy’s spacesuit looked like the vehicles he had been hitching a ride on—a piece of conglomerate junk composed of numerous disparate and not-quite-fitting elements. He wore what looked like an old ocean-diving helmet over it, and beneath a thick rubber wet suit with tubes and junk all over. Plus thick plastic magnetic-bottomed boots that came to his knees. It was not your typical spacesuit.

  “Enchante,” the man said as he walked inside and spotted the three of them. He rushed over and Rock started to reach for his shotpistol. But the fellow was just being effusive in his wanting to show them all that no harm was meant by him. He hugged each of them long and hard. Then he stood up straight, removed his bizarre headgear and looked at them.

  The Frenchman had penetrating blue eyes set in the middle of a bearded grease-covered face that looked like that of a chimney sweep of olde England, so filthy and dirt-streaked was it.

  “Who ze hellez sont vous, askez, may I?” the man said in a strange exaggerated Franglais accent that drew out the vowels as if he were reading for a Shakespearean play.

  “Nous sont Americans from downez under,” Rajat said, pointing with his thumb in a downwards direction. “Et vous?”

  “Nous are les Astro Frenchies,” the man said with a friendly smile. He took in a few deep breaths of air from within the ship and got a big smile on his filthy face. “Le air sont vunderful. Tastez like le perfume.”

  He breathed in again, like he was in some wonderful mountain range. It tasted okay to Rock and the whiz kids, too, but nothing to write home about. If anything the cabin air was too compressed and dry. Then the Frenchie looked at them with a suddenly suspicious gleam and around at the control module. He seemed to think for a few seconds and then made up his mind about something, relaxing noticeably as he continued to breathe hard like he wanted to take in all he could like a squirrel storing up nuts for the winter.

  “Nous livez in dem space balles, vous see out tere. Je suis Louis XIV, le leader de les Astro Frenchies, a votre service! We bin here pour le century, livez among le debris.”

  “Impossible,” Rock scoffed. “There’s no way you couldez have livez up here for tout that time,” he said trying to get into the discussion with the smattering of French he had taken in C.C. high school for six months, before flunking it miserably.

  “Mais oui, mais oui,” Louis XIV laughed. “Je suis le proof, n’est pa? We sont les descendents de Francais astronauts who buildez les Eiffel Tower en orbit pour commemorate l’anniversary de la independence de la France—Le war horrible breakez oute et nous stayez up ’ere. Livez on le junk, le garbage de space. Ancestors learn breakez downe le metal pour makez nutrients.”

  “Are you saying you can eat metal?” Rajat asked in amazement as he turned full around in his seat. The ship was on full auto now, moving right alongside the garbage barge.

  “Breakez downez, taste tres bien,” Louis XIV smiled, patting his stomach. “Why vous have arrivez en our orbite?” he asked looking a little concerned. “Non havez pas des guests pour un hundred years.”

  “We comez pour investigatez the Wheel,” Rock said, deciding to level with the guy. The weird French junk astronaut seemed to have nothing to do with the Wheel structure, and his mutant sixth sense told him the man was a decent sort, if a bit wigged-out. There was no time to do in-depth investigations, to say the least. At the word Wheel, the man’s whole backbone stiffened.

  “Le Wheel is tres evil,” he said, shaking his head from side to side and making all kinds of weird signs around his body in some kind of supernatural finger-hexing. “Zey are les Space Nazis—killez tous les men who comez pour investigatez. Boom-boom our ships. Takez les femmes. Le Wheeiies sont bad, sont merde.” He made an obscene gesture—finger up—and scowled.

  “Well, nous havez our feelings, exactément,” Rock said, a little grin flashing across his face that he was able to comunciatre with the Astro Frenchie as well as Rajat had, it seemed. At least he wasn’t a total moron, which he had begun feeling a little being with these two.

  “Well, we’ve comez to pay a little visitez to your wheelies buddies there, I mean labas,” Rock said, slapping the guy on the shoulders so that dust rose up, so unwashed and unlaundered was the man. But then they probably didn’t have laundries out here in space, Rock mused. Or did they?

  “Rock,” Rajat said, “I traced this guy’s vapor emissions back to some ramshackle spaceship!”

  “We could sure use whatever info these guys have about the Wheel,” Rock mused, “and about whatever is going on over there.”

  Rajat said, “What do you think of one of us—me—going over to their ship or whatever it is there, and really have a powwow with them?”

  “I think I would be the most likely candidate, as I know the questions to ask.”

  Before Rock could ask for the invite, Louis XIV was heading out of the command module and down into the guts of the Dynasoar spaceship.

  “I’d better keep tabs on our curious tourist, before he gets his buns burnt,” Rock said, getting up. This time he was able to walk, as he had found a pair of magnetic boots that sat in one of the supply closets. By the time he caught up with the space-Frenchie he was already back trading jokes—or some
thing—with the Strike Force, and had apparently made pals. The men were exchanging all kinds of handshakes, high fives, slow fives with the Frenchie. The guy seemed to know them all.

  “What wrongez avec him?” Louis XIV asked walking over to McCaughlin, who he saw lying on the seat not moving.

  “Bad boom-boom on le belly,” Rock said, groaning at the simplification as he pulled back the sheet to reveal the wretched wound along the Scotsman’s side.

  It didn’t seem to be healing, if anything it looked more swollen, more infected than the last time Rockson had looked at it. Some of the other men shuddered as well. It was clear McCaughlin didn’t have long for this world, or this orbit.

  “Fixez!” Louis XIV said firmly. “We fixez.” He looked at Rockson. “Vous bringez to mon shippe—Je fixe wounds tres, tres bien!”

  The men all looked at each other and then at Rockson, who again made an instant decision. He was going to have to trust all to his sixth sense, it seemed.

  “Okay. I mean—oui,” Rock said. “We’ll suit him up—me, too—and accompanyez vous back and seez just what the hellez you’re parlezing about.” It seemed impossible that they could have any advanced medical technology in that messy junk heap that could aid McCaughlin, but Rockson owed it to the huge bastard to give him any chance whatsoever.

  It took nearly half an hour to get the huge body of an inert McCaughlin suited, then Rock did the same. They had found a whole closet of spacesuits, with tanks of oxygen for nearly five hours and small jet packs on the backs.

  Louis XIV looked at it all with slobbering hungry glances. It was clear that working equipment of any kind was like gold up here. Rockson reluctantly let Rajat come with him. He needed someone who could really understand what they were saying, not just a smattering of it. And Chen, too, just in case. He put Connors and Detroit in charge of the ship. Then they were off.

  They loaded up into the airlock and within seconds there was a whooshing sound and they were staring out at space itself.

  Louis XIV made the first move, pulling his rusty thrust-can from a pack in his side. Rock was amazed to see the ancient aerosal can from the twentieth century with the writing “Acrylic Spray Paint” still visible on the faded sides. The Frenchie sprayed a quick little burst of white paint from the nozzle and it pushed him straight out and away from the Dynasoar and toward his own string of space debris ships.

  Rock and Chen got McCaughlin between them and pushed the switches on their mini-back-rockets. They went shooting out from the Dynasoar way too fast. Rock fired the reverse thrust mounted on the chest of his suit. Which only sent them revolving around like a top. It took nearly five minutes to learn how to use the things so that they were able to get alongside the first of the twelve space junk balls that followed one another, like the ugly little ducklings of the solar system, towards the mama of the garbage line—the main junkship of the French Space Navy.

  Louis XIV knocked when he arrived at the lead sphere, actually a rough metal sphere with odd arms, slamming it with a metal knife he carried at his side. After a few seconds there were great clanking sounds which Rock could hear as he was touching the ship, the sound vibrations ran up through his suit and bones.

  A filthy television set—which was apparently a sealed space helmet with a man’s face inside it—appeared at the door and a voice screamed out something in French. Something that clearly had to do with Louis XIV’s dubious ancestors, for allowing these “foreigners” to be allowed here.

  But their host clearly had more power, for he barked back a few sharp words and the man stiffened and pulled the creaking door wide open. Rock stared in at a reddish tinted dimness with steam rising here and there and wondered if he really wanted to go inside.

  He didn’t want to go inside, he decided. But he did.

  Twenty-Two

  It was dark and filthy inside. Rock could see that right away as he helped Chen maneuver McCaughlin’s floating body inside. Once they had the room that passed for the main airlock closed behind them, Louis XIV let air fill in, then opened up into a much larger chamber.

  Rockson saw the whole inside of the ancient space ball with its dozen or so levels running like balconies around its inner circumference. Just as it looked from the outside—the whole thing was made of junk, bits and pieces of satellites, rockets, comm units—all wired and welded together into a mishmash of steel. But somehow it seemed to all hold together and keep the coldness and vacuum of space out. They removed their helmets and got a whiff of the horrid air. “Stinkez, mais tres safe,” Louis said, “Followez moi.” Louis XIV led them up to the fifth level. Rockson could see as they floated up, holding onto an old electric steel cable, that the inhabitants who sat around the various levels of the junk ship looked like filthy barbarians.

  They sat around in filthy plastic robes and/or aluminum foil garments wrapped around them like saris. They sat on the floors, men and women, sleeping, or cooking a foul-smelling gruel inside pots, sending little jolts of electricity through them by holding raw cable lines up at each side. They had technology at their disposal but of the most primitive jury-rigged kind. A strange culture, Rock could see that—to say the least—instantly. And he wished he had one of the anthropology experts from Century City to help him decipher these weirdos, and fast.

  “Comez, comez,” Louis XIV shouted as he kicked various sleeping bodies out of the way. Sullen faces in the darkness looked up at them and grumbled curses, but didn’t get all that riled up. They were used to it. God, they must have been through a lot up here, Rock thought. He shuddered. He sure as hell wouldn’t want to have spent his life in these meager, greasy, and foul-smelling surroundings.

  “Ici, ici, puttez your ami ici,” Louis XIV said when they reached the fifth balcony and floated over. He pointed at a table which he scraped some crud-infested junk off of. Chen and Rock guided the big Freefighter’s inert body over so it was resting on the table, and the Astro Frenchie threw a lever. A blue electric surge went over the whole table and through McCaughlin himself; it seemed to anchor him with pulsing electromagnetic energy. Rajat gasped and Chen started forward thinking they were cremating the Scotsman or something equally horrible. But Louis XIV just held his arms up and nodded his head.

  “Et workez, Je swear. Usez tous les time sur mon people. We stupide uppez here—mais aussi tres intellgente. Inventez many les gadgets from le junk.”

  Rock and Chen looked at each other wondering whether they should let the space maniac do his thing. But one more look at the Scotsman’s ugly wound convinced them there was no choice.

  “Do it, go,” Rock said sharply, raising his hands in a resigned way. Whatever strange device the space Frenchies had, at least they seemed to be trying to help him. Louis XIV pulled down a large square metal box which fitted right over the prone body of the Freefighter, like a toaster cooker closing on itself. He clicked the thing shut. Then pressed a whole row of buttons on it, so the entire unit vibrated and gave off a pinkish glow that seeped from within.

  “Givez un douzin hours dans there.”

  “He says at least twelve hours,” Rajat said, not sure if Rock got the accented word.

  “Sounds like he’s cooking the bastard,” Rock muttered, wondering if he was doing the right thing. He felt confused. Out here in space his sixth sense, his intuition, didn’t seem to be working right. Everything was in a state of gravityless flux inside him as well as all around him.

  “Followez,” Louis XIV said, slapping his chest with pride. “Moi showez vous tout le shippe.” Chen, Rock, and Rajat followed the man as he went back down the cable and then led them along a filth-strewn passageway. People were everywhere, the place was absolutely packed with them. He had to be careful not to step on a hand, or a foot. They just grunted and pulled the pained appendage back. They all seemed really spaced out. Too spaced out, to have survived up here in the hostile environment of space, without help, Rock thought. Maybe they weren’t enemies of these so-called Nazis on the wheel after all!

 
Louis XIV lead them to the other end of the junk sphere and opened a hatchway. There was a long tunnel made of clear plastic. What had looked like connecting cables seen from the Dynasoar were actually narrow pathways through which you could crawl, as that was what the Frenchie immediately did, throwing himself inside it and barreling along. Rock followed, then Rajat, then Chen taking up the rear, keeping a sharp eye on everything around him. He felt nervous, too, out of place. Rock hoped they all could keep their cookies down in this upside-down, foul-smelling gravityless world.

  It was pretty strange shimmying along through the plastitube with all of space floating around them like it was ready to tear them apart. Rockson would have preferred an opaque color so he couldn’t see outside. But he gulped hard and kept right on after the man. It took several minutes to get across the hundred feet to the next metal junk ball, and once there Louis XIV led them around this sphere as well.

  And now Rock saw how they in fact might have survived all this time. For this sphere was filled with supplies, row after row, shelf after shelf of junk, of pieces of metal and plastic all sorted by size and shape; slabs of whole sides of ships, steering wheels, wiring, motors, magnets . . . And in the next junk ball which he led them to—more of the same. And the next was a food processing plant, one with the strangest set-up any of them had ever seen. They were farming metal.

  The Frenchies had somehow gotten bacteria or acid to grow on the stuff. Four huge vats of steel were sitting there bubbling away. And coming out of tubes at their bases was a dark paste which flowed into smaller vats. Here men were taste-testing the product, taking occasional licks of it. Then they either filled the vats and sealed them for later use—or sent the stuff back into the “cooking pot” for more fermentation.

  “Le bacteria,” Louis XIV said proudly. “Makez for mangez,” he made eating motions with his hands and mouth. Rock nodded, but the tour of the string of space spheres so far didn’t make any of it a hell of lot more comprehensible.