by Ryder Stacy
The next ball of junk was weapons—or what looked like weapons anyway. Everything from rifles to hand-held lasers, long spears made of satellite antennas nearly a hundred feet long that could only be operated in the weightlessness of space, cannons made of rocket tubes. Whether this stuff could fire or not Rockson doubted. Louis XIV pointed to it all and laughed.
“Got own boom-boom, makez bad when time comez, pour les Nazis!”
“I think he means, they’ve been saving it all up until the time is right,” Rajat said, “to exterminate the Nazis.”
Can they do it? Rock wondered.
The Frenchie, anxious to show all, led them on to two more of the balls. Rockson saw that it was more of the same. These guys must have scavenged through the ring of orbiting debris. Space rats, extraordinaire.
“All right,” Rockson said, “let’s stop right here. We’ve seen enough of their stuff. He’s convinced me they’re for real. I want to know just what the hell is going on. Instead of all this Paris-pigeon talk, why don’t you talk with him, Rajat, find out the whole story. What’s their raison d’etre?”
The whiz kid began asking Louis XIV in fast pigeon French. And the guy answered back just as fast. Rock could only catch portions of the conversation and again felt like a moron but after about five minutes they both stopped and Rajat looked at Rock.
“Well, it’s a long and insane story—but here goes: He and his people are descendents of the Frenchmen who had been sent up to mark France’s 200th Centennial. They were space construction men, making a floating space monument for all the world to see—as it would have floated around the Earth—showing what was great about the French. They were caught up here when Nuke war broke out, men and women. And their progency have stayed ever since, somehow learning to use all of the equipment up here in ways that nobody back on Earth ever dreamed of. That box for example that they put McCaughlin in—keeps them all healthy. None of them, as dirty as they appear, ever gets sick—or dies. They’re only killed by accidents, Louis claims, of which apparently there are plenty out here, as you can imagine. They’re junk fisherman, go out in higher orbits and gather the things that still work. Even after a hundred years, there’s still plenty of fuel, oxygen tanks . . .”
“How many are there?” Chen asked.
“Hundreds, thousands, maybe. They’re spread out all around the junk belt, which extends completely around the Earth. Over twenty million pieces of useable junk in it, or so they estimate. Another one hundred million or so small fragments. They developed a genetically altered rust bacterium which actually digests metal and turns the resulting waste product into a kind of raw glucose—pure energy food—which they then process into breads, and cakes—even rust souffles! Their air supply comes from combining hydrogen and oxygen from leftover cannisters. Many early spacecraft used the gases in their operation.”
“What about the Wheel?” Rock asked impatiently. He didn’t know how much time they had. But his lip was twitching madly.
“Ah, the Wheel. They hate them, call them les astro betes. The space beasts. They’re ruthless, have been raiding the Astro Frenchies for supplies that they’ve already collected—and for people, too. Mostly young women are taken away. Never come back when they’re taken. But they said that for the whole hundred years they’ve been up here, the Wheel was never more than a quarter completed. Then suddenly about six months ago the space Nazis started to suddenly expand, started building on it, started coming out in much larger raiding parties—this time looking for whole units of the space junkers so they could take everything they had, kill all the inhabitants.
“Already many of the Astro Frenchie ships have been destroyed by the Wheelman, Space Nazis they also refer to them as. They come out in these tugs they got armed to the teeth and rip through the isolated colonies. Says they’re run by a guy who calls himself the Führer, Führer Glock.”
Suddenly a man, this one wrapped totally in clear plastic, so his arms came out from underneath plastic folds came down one of the sphere-joining conduit tubes and popped into their sphere rolling onto the floor. He looked like he had been living in a coal chute for the past fifty years, his face so coated with a charcoal-type substance that many of his features were hidden. Clearly they had little water to spare for bathing—and so it had gone out of style.
The man was screaming out reams of something about “Le Wheel,” but Rockson couldn’t catch it. When they spoke fast around here it turned to Greek.
Rajat suddenly turned to Rockson and his brown eyes looked dazed and his face sweating. “Rock, he’s telling him—telling—”
“Spit it out, lad,” Rock exclaimed, grabbing his shoulder.
“The Wheel—they’ve completed it. And it’s moving out of high orbit. And Rock—it’s shooting down at the Earth. Shooting lasers.
“They’ve already begun to destroy the Earth. A Col. Killov is demanding the surrender of the entire planet.”
“Killov,” Rock spat out. “I knew that little KGB bastard was in on this.”
And the knowledge that the KGB Colonel was at the controls of so much destructive power made Rockson wish he was back in C. C. with Rona, and that this was all just a bad dream. But it wasn’t.
Twenty-Three
It was a bizarre meeting to say the least. The Rock team plus the heads of all the colonies of French sphere-ships. Each Frenchman was a commander—make that a scavenger warlord—in his own right.
They gathered in an immense single spoke of what was to have been a small cylindrical space station, this one built by a European consortium for manufacturing purposes—until the war stopped it all in its tracks. Still, it was huge enough, nearly three hundred feet long and fifty wide.
They came in their Pearl Ships, as they called them because they felt that they resembled strings of pearls, the way they floated along. Rock would have called them something else. The ships gathered until there were hundreds of them, some with up to two dozen junk spheres trailing along. Not all of them were the same shape, some were almost squares, others more triangularly shaped. All the far flung French had developed their own subtle changes to a basic theme.
And the insane collection of suits and helmets they wore . . . Rock wished he had a camera so he could take pics back to C. C. The things were beyond belief. Men with television sets on their heads as make-shift helmets, and suits made of garbage bags, insulated with aluminum foil and fur.
Others were outfitted with helmets fashioned from Cuisanart blenders, or aquariums that had once held experimental fish breeding tanks, glass hamster pens, curved sections of a rocket cockpit window glued together, you name it.
And as many odd suits of new design made from rubber, plastic, even just countless layers of foil that they had managed to snag an abundance of. He still couldn’t really believe the suits were spaceworthy, but they sure as hell seemed to get around all right. They all wore magnetic boots, apparently one of the precursors to getting anything done out here where they often had to stand on pieces of floating space junk, or move around the sides of their ships. Rock was still having trouble with the footing situation, but the others walked around like they were all on terra firma, standing on “floors,” “ceilings,” and “walls” that were really interchangeable.
At last Louis XIV began the meeting. He was apparently well known among all the Pearl Ship chiefs—and respected by all as well. No mean accomplishment Rock could see, taking in the rough stubborn faces of the Franco Astronaut race. And Louis had discovered Rock’s Dynasoar.
They all looked like they’d been working on a chain gang for the last fifty years. Life was even tougher up here than it was for the Freefighters down in the wastelands below, it seemed. At least there was sun and wind and birds, and flowers—sometimes—down there. This was another level of torture altogether. And yet—because they had known only space—they seemed to take their lives as a given commodity, and did the best they could.
Louis XIV went through his rap, relating Rockson’s arrival, te
lling about the awesome Dynasoar spacecraft. Plus he spoke of the movement of the Wheel, with many interruptions from the crowd and much shouting back and forth in the pigeon French language, spoken so fast that even Rajat had a hard time getting it.
“Maintenant les Astro Frenchies will listen a vous,” Louis XIV said as he turned toward Rockson, who hadn’t quite realized until then that he was going to address the unruly crowd.
“Speakez!”
As Rock stood up on a box that was the speaker’s podium the Frenchie spacelords quieted, a sign of respect for him, or more likely of fear of the unknown. All eyes burned at him as stood there. Somehow he had to get them on his side. There was no way he could go up against the Wheel alone.
“Mes amis,” Rock said and coughed. “Je parle of le threat de le Wheel. Un threat for vous et for le Earth totale. Il est bad newsment.” He groaned, but continued, “Avec le Wheel in operation, avec all its weapons systemez—vous are tout finis, dead, kaput, bye-bye.”
He went on to tell how the Freefighters had risked their lives to be sent up here for the Freefighting men and women below—to combat the threat of the great Wheel.
They were a skeptical and hostile bunch—on the other hand Rock had had plenty of sessions back in the Century City council where he had faced stormier crowds than this.
All in all, they listened, and when he was all through Rock stepped down and let Louis XIV take over.
There was more loud yelling and debate. And then a vote was taken. Rock liked that. Democracy even here in space. These were men he could work with in spite of their odd appearance and life-styles. They were Freefighters in their hearts even up here in junk orbit.
“They will fightez,” Louis XIV said with a deep sigh as he turned toward Rock with a new look of respect in his eyes. “Mais only if vous leadez them. They no trustez each, each commandant fearez le other will takez tout his power, tout his petite domain en le cosmo-junkpile. Vous knowez how it is—when vous havez le nothing—it becomez tres importante. You, le stranger are le neutral.”
“Well, I’m willing to take that rolez,” Rock said with a gulp, as he tried to look leaderly for the hundreds of eyes that were resting on him. There was total silence now as well. And that unnerved him a hell of a lot more then when they had all been yelling.
“All rightez,” Rock said, slamming his fist in to his hand so it created a smacking sound. He was totally losing his command of pigeon French. “First we’ve got to gettez an ideament de firepower and number de Nazi spaceships.”
He had them yell out their general armaments and numbers as Rajat wrote it all down on a pad. Then he assigned each of them a number, so it would be easier to break into groups in space, rather than having to yell out whole names—the Francois de Mauffoint, the De Gaulles, the La Petains, the Jean D’Arcs . . .
There was some more grumbling at this momentary losing of their identities which out here in space was about all they had. They were clearly proud and arrogant men. But so it went. Men always sacrificed when they went into war. Often the ultimate sacrifice was pride.
When the list was complete, Rock asked Louis XIV if there was anything else, any other Frenchie firepower out here.
“Veil, zere is un thing,” he answered almost reluctantly. “Zee Tower Eiffel. Je suis afraide de speake of le Eiffel because is la taboo. Es our god, our temple pour worshippez the God Eiffel. But es grande, formidable—Et je comprend—could be un weapon. Les legends de le past speakez de le time le eiffiel would be usez for le Grand Battle. Le battle final en les heavens. Ze time has comez.”
As the others returned to their various ships awaiting further combat orders, Louis XIV took Rock and the others back to his pearl ship where they got into what looked like a Renualt-sized chunk of pressed steel garbage, and it detached from the mother ship.
The Astro Frenchie flew it into what looked like a solid sheet of the orbiting junk. But somehow he managed to avoid every chunk and housesized piece—like a lucky drunk driver going down a highway.
They rode through the band of twisted space junk, a monument to all that had been bright and good—and mad—in mankind. After about twenty minutes they came around a dense section of small metal pieces floating around like locusts. Rock’s heart jumped into his throat—
My God it was the Eiffel Tower. Or what looked like its exact clone, from all the pictures he’d seen of it. Just floating there in the middle of a whole pile of orbiting space junk, so it was hidden unless you came up from just the right angle.
But even floating within the darkness of the junk cocoon it was beautiful, shimmering, catching starlight along her arches and the webbing of interconnected steel beams from base to pointed nose, which probed ahead like a spear.
“It lookez like le real thing,” Rock spoke into his helmet mike. “Il est tres magnifiqué.”
“Le Eiffel was designez to specifications exactemundo,” Louis XIV said proudly. “Mon great-grandpapa in chargez de le crew. They finishez le project le day that le war go boom-boom. But is still tres beautiful—n’est pas?”
“Oui, oui,” Rock said, as they flew around it like a tourist bus around an unusual landmark. He whistled as he saw how strong it looked, how it still shined like it had just been completed minutes before and polished with high gloss wax. But then nothing faded up here, just got constantly cleaned by the cosmic rays and the micro dots of meteoric space debris rubbing, polishing, like steel wool.
“I’m getting a crazy idea,” Rock said as he turned to Chen and then to Louis. “Can this thing be moved, driven? Does it havez le motor?”
“No, no motor,” Louis XIV answered. “But we movez. Movez seize times, since le tower suis enfant. Because le Wheel people. We usez pearl ships like le tugboats de olde. Nous can movez on le dime.” He grinned at Rock hoping he had gotten the American slang right. “Comprenez?”
“Oui! What if we attachez les explosives—whole shitloadez of them from your ship—plusez our extro ammo, tous over le top de that goddamnez relic, and sendez it into le Wheel?”
“You mean commes des giant spear?” Chen asked, not a little incredulously through his mike. His almond eyes looked at Rock as if he were mad, maybe had breathed in too much space dust, maybe hearing all the smashed French language had blown one of his circuits.
“Yeah, just like a giant spear that you would use to get a lion. Only this spear will be filled with so much boom-boom, if we’re lucky, we’ll blow the Wheel’s metal balls all the way to Alpha Centauri.”
“C’est le destiny des le gran Eiffel,” Louis said, awe in his voice. “C’est tout le raison d’etre.”
Twenty-Four
The junk ships gathered around the Grand Eiffel Tower as it floated serenely in its hidden orbit. No longer so serenely, Rockson mused, as he watched them tie up alongside it. The long strings of junk balls that made up each of their ship colonies were tethered to the great monument like horses to a pole.
Once they were firmly secured, men in spacesuits began carrying out loads of explosives from their storehouses. And there were a hell of a lot. Explosives had been used in boosters for separating them, used in space construction for driving home welds and brackets, for fusing them together. And like the pack rats that they were, the Frenchies had managed to gather quite a load of boom boom over the last century.
Rock added a few smart bombs of his own, set in strategic places around the top fifty feet of the tower, so he could aim and set off the whole pie when the time came by radio command. They added another ton or two down near the base, figuring a whole secondary set of explosions couldn’t hurt any. It took almost five hours and by then they were getting reports back that the Wheel was already wreaking heavy damage to Earth, though it wasn’t yet clear just who it was shooting at.
Also, nearly thirty of the Space Nazis heavily armed space tugs were taking up battle formation on each side of the Wheel with much coded radio contact between them. Whatever the hell was happening—it sounded real bad. Rock hoped there w
ould yet be time to stop Killov’s madness once again. And kill the bastard better this time.
“Let’s movez, baby,” Rock said slapping Louis XIV on his suited shoulder. “We’ve got le guerre to fightez.”
“Ah, at last,” the Astro Frenchie said, raising his arms toward the Eiffel and half-bowing to it. “Zee prophecy comes true. Vous are truly le Napoleon. Zee Earth warrior who flyez up to savez tous the men et les femmes who livez in le miserable, en le despaire pour so long.”
“I’m no fucking Napoleon,” Rockson laughed. “I don’t have a trace of French blood in me. But when it comes to kicking butt—it don’t matter what color, race, or religion you are.”
“Sacre bleu,” Louis laughed, “vous are un egalitarian especiale. Vive le liberté. Et la vie. Allons enfants de la patrie!”
“Well, whatever that means—the same to you and morez.” Rock grinned through his helmet. He pulled a flair gun he had found in storage and fired it. It went off about five hundred feet from the top of the antenna of the Eiffel.
“Attencion, attencion,” Louis XIV announced over his headmike. “Returnez to les garbage ships. Nous attackez maintenant.”
A great shout went up from all the Frenchies as they raised their arms. The time had come, at last the time had come to rid themselves of the godlike sceptre that had been haunting them their entire lifetimes up here. They propelled themselves back to their respective sphere ships, which floated everywhere around the tower. Rock looked down at the huge crescent blue and white Earth. There were red boils on it. Huge cities afire.
Back at the Dynasoar, Rajat had more bad news. The Wheel was sending out probe X-rays and radar scans of the junk ring, searching no doubt for any thing living, anything that could oppose.
“It looks like they’re getting ready to take us all out soon, as a precaution. I don’t think they know what we’re up to, they just want to consolidate their power up here so nothing can oppose them.”