The Powers of the Earth (Aristillus Book 1)

by Travis J I Corcoran

  The ship was taking off, and he and his men were going with it unless he got inside and held a gun to someone's head. How long did he have? How long until the air got thin enough to kill them? Five minutes? Thirty seconds? He had no idea.

  He scanned the bridge tower. The bridge should be covered with windows but from here he could see that they'd been welded over with steel plate. Fuck.

  Tudel bellowed over his mike, "Squad one - blow the door!"

  As soon as he said it, he knew it was the wrong move - if he blew the door, and they couldn't get the ship's drive shut off in time, the ship would launch. And then, instead of being trapped outside on the deck, exposed to vacuum, they'd be inside - and they'd die just the same.

  "Belay that! Squad one - circle left, find another door. Squad two - circle right!"

  The thrumming was overlaid with another note now, and suddenly the force of gravity increased - he staggered as if a squat bar had been dropped across his shoulders. Soldiers around him fell. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Antoine, his least favorite AAS, trip and fall face first into a large metal stanchion welded to the deck. In any other circumstance he'd pause to enjoy the man's twitching - at least if no one was watching him - but he didn’t have time.

  He was going to survive; he had to. And discipline was the tool that was going to keep him alive while these idiots around him were falling and dying. He braced himself with one hand and carefully followed squad two as they circled the tower. Ahead, two of the men were tugging at another door. Locked, like the first two.

  The wind was picking up, and he realized with a start that it was coming down from straight overhead. Shit. Was the ship already flying? It must be. How high were they? A meter? A kilometer? He spared a brief glance at the blackness of the horizon and saw nothing.

  The wind was loud. Tudel yelled over it, "Fuck it - blow the door!" If they took out the door they might not be able to keep the air in, but once they were inside, they'd shoot who they had to shoot, get the drive turned off. Somehow.

  The point man nodded at the order and reached into his pack. Faster, God damn it! The wind was roaring now, and the air was thinning. And then the breaching charge was assembled and on the door.

  Over his radio he heard a call, "Captain! First Platoon here - can we come forward?" He turned. Shit! He'd entirely forgotten about first platoon, still a few hundred meters away at the bow. First platoon's AASes weren't going to make it. Damn it - even if he survived he was going to take at least 25% losses on this operation. That was going to look bad on his promotion board. Really bad. He keyed his mike. "Yes, move."

  The wind buffeted him and between it and the extra weight he staggered.

  The soldier with the breaching charge called out. "Fire in the hole! Three! Two!" Tudel braced himself. The explosive tech yelled "Fire!" just as squad one turned the corner.

  The explosion scythed down half the men in squad one - blood and gore covered the deck in front of the now gaping hatch. The door, torn from its hinges, lay across two men. Two corpses. And then, with a groan, the door started to slide across the deck, dragging the mutilated bodies of the soldiers with it. Two other troops tried to scramble out of the way - and then the door hit them. They screamed as it crushed their ankles and knocked them flat - and then screamed more as they, the door, and the corpses slid in a pile of steel and blood toward the gunwale. A crash as they hit the railing and tore through it - and then they were all gone.

  And then, as if a bubble had popped, Tudel tore his attention away from it. He and his men raced for the gaping hatch. In his headset, a call from the AASes of First Platoon. The voice yelled over tornado. "Captain - we're not - "

  Tudel ignored it as he lurched forward. And then he and his men were in. They were in a short dark hallway. He panted in the thin air. Hatches to the left and right, welded shut. Hooks on walls and on them - spacesuits?. He fought for breath. His ears felt like someone was driving knives into them. Ahead there was another steel hatch. A shout, and then several of his men were leaning into it. The door cracked open and light spilled out through the crack. This was it! He threw himself against their backs, adding his force to theirs.

  The wind roared around them.

  His vision was starting to neck down, graying out at the margins, and his lungs hurt. Push. Push. Push!

  And then the door was open and they fell through. Men lay on the floor, panting. But the job wasn't done yet. He pushed himself to his knees, and then to his feet. Discipline. Discipline would let them survive. "Shut the door! Now!" He coughed from the effort of yelling in the thin air.

  The men fell to the task, pushing the door closed - and then the thick steel hatch's ponderous movement accelerated in a blur as the wind caught it. There was a scream, and a splash of red. But the door? Yes, the door was shut.

  Tudel took stock. One man was down, and another stood, holding the shredded wreckage of his wrist as he screamed.

  But the door was shut.

  The door was shut.

  Over the radio a voice gasped, "Captain. Wait. I'm still -"

  First platoon. Tudel looked at the door and knew it wasn't opening again. He pushed a button on his headset, disconnecting the call.

  He turned to his troops and was shocked by how few there were. Ten? Less?

  Jesus. How many troops had he lost? He took a moment to figure it out. All of First Platoon. The AASes from both platoons. What about the others on the assault boats? He had no idea.

  He blinked, and then took stock more carefully. There were an even dozen men inside. One was unconscious. One was missing a hand. Of the other ten, only six still had their carbines.

  Jesus fuck.

  Around them the roar of air over the ship quieted and then died off. Did that mean they were in space?

  Whatever. It didn't matter.

  He had a job to do.

  Chapter 29

  2064: bridge of AFS The Wookkiee, between Earth and the Moon

  Captain Tudel looked around the bridge. The twisting sensation in his gut made it hard to concentrate, but it was still clear that this place was an ungainly pile of shit. There were server racks, arrays of bolt-together extruded aluminum, dozens of cheap Vietnamese displays and cables running everywhere. Everything looked improvised, nothing purpose-built. The was the best the God damned expats had to offer: a pile of home-made junk.

  And, of course, his "pile of shit" judgment applied to the expats themselves. He looked down at them. Bound. Gagged. Pathetic.

  Tudel cracked his knuckles. Only two of the bridge crew had been armed - and even they had surrendered immediately. Not a bit of fight in any of them. These losers played at being rebels, but they didn't have a gram of warrior in them. Even their clothes - a motley mix of jeans, sweatshirts, sweaters, hiking boots - showed their lack of seriousness.

  Revolutionaries?

  Poseurs would be a better word.

  Tudel looked around the rest of the bridge. Six of his men stood guard over the captives. Maybe it was dumb luck or maybe the assault had winnowed out the weak, but the men he had left looked like an actual fighting force. Fit. Uniformed. Proud. These six were decent men, and so were the other four off searching the ship.

  Not that there weren't problems. He'd lost fifty men in just ten minutes. Of the twelve left, one was fucked ; Sergeant Campanella had only stopped screaming after they'd wrapped his stump in a clot-bandage and sedated him. All of which added up to one big thing: his career was fucked. Fucked.

  Unless.

  Unless he got this ship landed and handed over an intact AG drive.

  So, first things first: land the ship. He needed information, which meant he needed someone to interrogate. He looked over the captives. The blond cunt with the pony tail? No, he wanted to save her for later. The old man? Yes. He looked soft, but he also looked like he knew how shit worked.

  Tudell raised his chin to get the attention of Sergeant Armando, and inclined his head toward the old guy. Armando removed the gag
and Tudel addressed the captive. "Who runs this ship?"

  The old man was slow to answer, trying to spit the taste of the standard-issue gag out of his mouth, but finally: "I'm the captain."

  "How do we get back down?" As he said it the AG field twisted and Tudel staggered before catching himself on a grab bar. Damn it - that stumble had made him look foolish. Was the expat laughing at him? Tudel stared at his face but didn't see a hint of it.

  He'd better not be laughing.

  The captain answered sullenly. "We can ramp down the field, and the drive stops pushing against the Earth. Earth's gravity slows us down, then we start falling. At some point, we ramp the drive back up to slow ourselves down for a soft landing."

  "If I untie you, can you get us back down to our boat?"

  "No." He licked his lips. "I can't-"

  Tudel stared at him, letting a hint of danger creep into his glare. "You can, and you will - and you'll address me by my rank - Captain."

  "I mean I can't. It's physically impossible."

  Tudel prompted him, "Captain."

  "Yes?"

  Tudel felt his jaw clench. Did this guy think he was joking? "My rank. Captain."

  The captive said nothing. The man was playing games, he was sure of it. He needed to be taught respect - but information first. Tudel turned his head. "Sergeant Armando - grab this one and follow me. Sergeant Dwight - stay here with your men and guard the rest. If any of them touches anything, or tries to talk, break a finger." Dwight snapped a salute.

  Tudel led the sergeant and the captive out through the open bridge hatch, down a corridor, and into a storage room he'd noticed earlier. "Drop him there, and close the door behind you."

  Tudel turned to the expat. "Tell me again that you won't bring this ship back down to my boat."

  "It's not that I won't - it's that I can't. It doesn't work that way."

  Tudel closed his eyes for a moment. With most subjects he'd deliver a quick punch to the face ... but he'd been told by one of the mission briefers that the techies on the ship were likely to be introverted nerd types - the kind of folks who would have been designing circuits or software or whatever back when that was a thing. The missions briefer's theory was the best way to get information from introverts was by asking them questions, and pretending to be impressed by their knowledge.

  Tudel's theory was that that theory was bullshit.

  He smiled at the ship captain briefly, then snapped a rock solid jab to the bridge of the captain's nose, which cracked satisfyingly. The captain yelled in surprise and pain. A moment later blood streamed out, spilling over the captain's mouth and down his chin. Tudel smiled.

  Introverted nerd types would break just as easily as anyone else - maybe easier - once they realized that they weren't playing some video game.

  The man sputtered, spraying a small mist of blood. "What the hell? I answered your question!"

  Lip. Tudel punched him again, straight on his now-broken nose. The expat screamed again, but he was learning already - there was no more backtalk. The glower of hatred in his eyes grew, but Tudel didn't care. Let him hate - the weak always hated and resented the strong. "Now give me a useful answer. Why can't you bring the ship down where I asked you to?"

  The ship captain spit blood. In the weird twisting gravity the stream slipped sideways and hit the floor to one side. His mouth clear, the captain answered carefully. "The drive lifts us straight up, but the planet is turning under us. If we turned the drive on for a minute, then came back down again, we'd land a few miles to the west of where we started. We've been under drive for a while now - if we turn it off now, we'd come down in China."

  Tudel weighed this. It sounded plausible, but...

  The ship captain looked past Tudel, at something behind him.

  "Actually -" Then he trailed off.

  "Finish."

  "No, I - nothing."

  What the fuck was going on? Tudel turned and looked over his shoulder. What had the captain been looking at? The fire extinguisher? The clock? It could be the clock. Why? Tudel keyed his mike. "Fire team one - are the prisoners OK?"

  A click. "Yeah, they're quiet."

  "Fire team two - find anything else in the ship?"

  A click. "Still searching - nothing to report".

  Tudel keyed the mike again to ask where team two was - and then realized that something had changed. Something was wrong. What -

  The constant thrumming noise was gone. Had it stopped just now? The weird twisting feeling in his gut was slipping away - and he felt lighter. His boots left the floor. Jesus! He was floating. He reached for a pipe or stanchion to grab and found nothing.

  And then a blur of motion.

  The captain, his wrists still bound behind him exploded from his sitting position, kicking off against the deck, head tucked, skull aimed straight at Tudel's chin.

  Tudel threw a hand out and -

  A sudden impact. A quick taste of iron.

  The world went dark.

  Chapter 30

  2064: south of the Moscow Sea, Lunar Farside

  John brought up a map on his display and sent copies to the Dogs. "When we started the hike we swung by the Luna 2 impact site and then the Apollo 15 lander. We've hit seven Soviet and American sites so far."

  He paused. All the Dogs were looking at him expectantly but Duncan was wagging his tail hard enough that entire rear end of his suit was wiggling. John grinned. He wasn't surprised - Duncan was the biggest tourist of the group.

  John waited another second: the hook was baited and he had their full attention. "It turns out that we've been using an old dataset. A while back I found a newer one." He heard panting over the channel. He looked at Duncan - yes, he was so excited that he was actually fogging up the bulbous faceplate of his canine suit. The hook wasn't just baited - it was set. "The newer data set has some interesting stuff. If we alter our path just a bit there's a Chinese lander two days from here."

  There was an excited babble - at least half of it from Duncan - and then John delivered his finale. "And while I stand by the 'no looting American artifacts' rule, Wikipedia says that the Chinese lander has a cache of gold coins."

  At this Duncan began to whine in excitement.

  Blue, ever the voice of pragmatism, asked, "Is it wise to change our route given that without sats we can't tell Darcy where we're going?"

  Duncan said, "The sats are coming back in a few days. We've got a month of supplies. What could go wrong?"

  Blue tilted his head and then nodded.

  John asked, "Do we need to call a vote?"

  They didn't.

  The hike began. With the sats gone and the positioning system down the suits fell back to onboard navigation tools. John led the way, striking off to the south east into the unmarked dust.

  John had been a late convert to Rex's augmented reality overlays, but the New England overlay had whetted his appetite. Out of curiosity he flipped through others: a beaten horse trail across the American south west. A glowing crystal path through a forest of mushrooms. A highway filled with the wreckage of weird post-apocalyptic vehicles in a red dirt desert.

  Maybe some other time. He switched back to the forest and scanned the audio channels. Duncan was chatting with Rex about their collectibles. Apparently Duncan's favorite memento from the trip so far was an explosive-singed stainless steel pentagon with a Soviet crest from Luna 2, while Rex was arguing strenuously that his favorite was a plaster cast he'd made of Harrison Schmitt's boot print.

  John smiled, switched his audio back to random play, and leaned forward.

  Chapter 31

  2064: near Konstantinov Crater, Lunar Farside

  John paused in the long uphill climb and looked back over his shoulder. The four Dogs and the four mules were spread out over the dusty gray slope behind him. Behind them the sun was low on the horizon. It was almost night, and yet there was no dusk, no warm orange glow. The sun was as piercingly bright and yellow-white as ever.

  They'
d covered less ground since breakfast than usual; the slope as they climbed toward the Konstantinov had slowed them down. They'd be to the top soon. Well, not the top-top, but a low spot where the wall of the massive crater had been beaten down by a smaller, more recent impact.

  'Recent.' John turned the word over in his head, and then called up some notes. A few minutes later, after a brief digression into articles on Renaissance era lens grinding, he learned that in this case 'recent' meant around 20 million years. He shook his head. Species rose and fell in less time than it took for the moon to suffer even minor erosion. Back in Aristillus the expats complained that technological progress had been halted for half a century. Half a century? What was that compared to twenty million years? John looked around. The biggest change this side of the moon had seen in the last few thousand years was probably was the braid of boot prints he and the Dogs were leaving behind them, tracing all the way back to Aristillus.

  And what of near side? If you considered the millions of boot prints back at Aristillus, not to mention the sprawl of tread marks, open strip mines, solar cell farms, and all the other above-surface excrescences of the colony, the moon's surface had easily changed more in the last decade than it had in the several million before.

  Suddenly Duncan raced past.

  "Duncan! What are you -"

  And then a quick excited bark. Duncan had his front legs up on a boulder and was looking ahead, and down. Ah. Had they reached the crater lip already?

  Then Rex and Max raced past to join Duncan.

  John looked at Blue and raised one eyebrow, and got a toothy grin in response. They broke into a trot simultaneously, eager to catch up to the pack of goofballs and share the view. The four mules labored on behind them.

  A minute later, John and Blue reached the other three Dogs at the crater lip and peered down. John whistled slowly at the sight. The sun was low on the horizon behind them, which cast almost all of the crater floor into pitch-black darkness. Just a small strip of the crater floor at the far side was lit, and above it, sheer cliffs of the far side loomed like a wall out of some fantasy painting or ancient myth, cutting the world in half.