The Powers of the Earth (Aristillus Book 1)

by Travis J I Corcoran

  Mike could understand that, sometimes, when he concentrated. But in a situation like this even understanding wasn't good enough - you had to feel it in your bones.

  Did she feel it in her bones? Did she really?

  Darcy dipped her head, said a few words, and then looked up.

  She looked at the wallscreen, taking in dozens of numbers at once. She was off plan, and with orbital mechanics, she couldn't correct just one thing. No, she had to do a delicate dance. First correct the slew, then drop forward velocity below what the plan called for to compensate for extra ground they'd already covered, and then, finally, brake for landing.

  ...all while somehow correcting for the ground path problems.

  First things first. They'd spent crucial seconds traveling forward faster than the plan called for and now they needed thrust - and lots of it - right along the centerline. She checked the OMS - it was at 90%. She pushed it to max, and then tried to push it further yet, but it wouldn't move. Software lock at 100%.

  Damn it.

  She looked around her board. RCS? For a de-orbiting burn? It wasn't supposed to be used like that... but she knew that the software would let her overdrive it. She took a breath. If she was going to use RCS she needed to push the bells way beyond redline - maybe to 120%. It was crazy, but she had to do it.

  She bit her lip and she pushed the sliders. The ship vibrated as the pumps surged and the rockets flared. Their speed was dropping, but not fast enough. She whispered "Priceless eggs in variable gravity" and pushed the sliders to 121%, and then to 122%.

  Yellow temperature alerts popped on her screen.

  Waseem called out. "Forward speed thirteen hundred meters per second. Altitude twenty kilometers."

  She held her finger over the control.

  "Forward speed twelve hundred meters per second. Altitude nineteen kilometers."

  The speed was dropping. Not quite enough, but close. Now to wrestle with the ground path issue... and then the temperature alerts changed from yellow to red and alarms started warbling. Darcy slid the RCS controls back to 110%.

  "Vertical speed is picking up. Ramping AG to standby.... Now."

  Darcy checked the overheat alarms: still red. Damn it.

  Waseem warmed up the AG drive, and immediately alarms went off and her screens lit up with icons.

  Waseem glanced over. "Was that the AG drive? Because it shouldn't -"

  "Shut up, Waseem."

  The alarms were because of burn-through on bells 9 and 10. Damn it! She'd driven them too hard, and now they were going into auto-shutdown.

  "Darce! We're doing five hundred meters per second. That's too fast.”

  "I know. I know!" Her fingers flew. "Bells 1 through 10 up to a hundred thirty percent"

  "We got burn through at one twenty two; they'll never -"

  "Quiet!"

  Waseem shook his head. "The Dracos aren't going to take this for long."

  "I know."

  There were already a dozen alarms flashing and alerts blaring. New ones popped up. Darcy ignored them and kept her eye on the ground track.

  "Darce, the Dracos aren't designed for one thirty, cool them off.”

  Darcy said nothing as the alarms continued.

  "Darcy!"

  "I know! Be quiet!" Waseem was right: the bells would burn through - but they only had to last a few more seconds.

  "Please, please, please,” Darcy whispered under her breath.

  A new set of alerts popped up as bell 5 hit over-temperature and bell 10 burned through.

  "Shit, Darcy - "

  "I know! Bring up look-down imaging."

  Waseem nodded and opened a video window. Darcy stole a glance. It showed lunar surface racing by. Where were they? They should be near Aristillus by now, but there was no sign of habitation -

  Then, suddenly, tire tracks. A second later she saw utility vehicles. Then the aboveground portions of the lunar colony were racing beneath them: first vast solar farms, then huge piles of excavation tailings, and then a mix of solar kilns, furnaces, and aluminum rolling plants.

  "Forward speed one hundred meters per second. I'm ramping up the AGs."

  As soon as he engaged the drive the battery low power warning sounded. Darcy looked. They were seconds away from losing the AG drive. She'd never seen the batteries this low. Never.

  "Seventy five meters per second.”

  Sweat was beading on Darcy's forehead, and she felt the salty sting where it was rolling into her own eyes, but she didn't have time to wipe it away.

  She needed to kill speed, and she needed to kill it now. She checked the OMS display and saw that the deorbiting rockets were still at 100%... but they weren't slowing down.

  "Waseem, we're not slowing! What the hell is going on?"

  Waseem worked his control. "Shit, god damn it - OMS tanks are empty!" A moment later, "And all the RCS are in shutdown."

  On the video window the open pits Lai Docks slipped into the frame, passed the center mark, then slipped off the other side. They were long, and getting longer - and forward was still seventy five meters per second.

  "Darcy, we overshot - and we're out of fuel. We need to do another orbit -"

  "We can't do another orbit. The AGs don't have enough power." Darcy paused. "We'll land on the surface."

  "We can't -"

  "The first ships did!"

  "Yeah, but our forward speed is -"

  She cut him off. "How far to the crater wall?"

  "The north wall is about twenty five kilometers from the colony. We're - uh - 1 kilometers past Lai...the wall's twenty four kilometers and closing."

  "AG is mine." She closed the OMS and RCS screens - the systems were dead anyway.

  "AG is yours."

  She checked the screen. Altitude: 1 kilometer.

  Five hundred meters.

  "Darcy!"

  She looked over. "What?"

  Waseem was sitting in his chair, pulling the harness around his chest. Ah. Right. She strapped in and stole a glance over her shoulder. Tudel and Frodge were fixated on the wallscreen.

  She looked back at the controls.

  Four hundred meters of altitude. Twenty-three kilometers to the crater wall.

  On the video screen smelters raced beneath them, and then a construction yard.

  She felt acid rising in her throat.

  Three hundred meters.

  Two hundred.

  She danced her fingers across the AG 'on' and 'off' buttons. It wasn't designed for precision use like this, and it reacted sluggishly. The thrum rose and fell and her gut twisted.

  One hundred meters.

  On the video screen a black shape crept into frame: the Wookkiee's own shadow. The spot of darkness raced across the rocks and industrial hardware, slipping and sliding as the terrain rose and fell beneath them. The shadow grew larger and larger, until it blotted out the entire image.

  Darcy opened another window and called up a forward view. White - blocked with ice. She picked another.

  Thirty meters of altitude.

  Ahead of them was a vast swath of mirrored mylar solar concentrators and steam equipment, sitting on a manicured gravel field. One of the colony's power plants.

  A low battery alarm started squealing.

  Darcy cut the AG to zero. On the forward camera the towers of the power farm raced toward them, and then suddenly the mirrored panels were no longer below but were to the left and right, whipping past. She ignored the instruments - even the altimeter - and stared at the video. She knew exactly what they'd tell her: ten meters above ground, twenty at most.

  A sudden, distant sound: the tinkling cymbal stutter of solar collectors smashing against the ship.

  The noise grew louder.

  On the video screen a few pieces of industrial wreckage exploded over the bow and flew by overhead, spinning and glinting in the harsh sunlight. The ship slipped a few meters closer to the surface and the small splash of wreckage flying past became a shock wave of extruded alu
minum and steel, splashing up beyond the gunwales and over the deck.

  A second later a jarring impact slammed Darcy into her chair and sent shots of pain up her spine.

  Out of the corner of her eye Darcy saw Tudel and Frodge crash to the deck, as if a giant had thrown them down.

  A deep tearing sound - a terrible grinding - filled the air. The ship was skidding across the surface, its keel ripping indiscriminately across three-year-old power lines and billion-year-old rocks.

  Darcy stole a look at the screen.

  Thirty meters per second forward speed.

  Twenty five.

  The hideous grinding continued, drowning out the alarms.

  The bow wave of wreckage shrank, and then disappeared below the gunwales. They were out of the solar farm.

  On the forward video a line of boulders approached. If they hit that -

  She didn't want to think about it.

  Darcy swallowed and tapped the AG to life. The drive was sluggish. So sluggish. She felt her gut twist, but the ship didn't seem to move. Then, even before the camera registered any change in height, she turned the drive back off. The AG field belatedly surged.

  The ship lumbered off the surface and scraped over the top of the boulders. There was a distant bang and a hideous tearing of metal as the ship's rudder tore off. The Wookkiee tilted forward and landed again, the bow hitting the lunar surface first. The impact slammed her against her straps.

  The grinding got louder and Darcy knew she was hearing her ship dying around her. She stole a look at the monitor. Forward speed: seven meters per second.

  Half of her screen was covered with emergency alerts -

  And then the lights cut off and the instrumentation died, plunging the bridge into darkness.

  They slid onward, the grinding and tearing reverberating through the pitch black ship.

  Darcy interlaced her fingers. "Please God, please God, pl-.”

  The emergency lights kicked on and bathed the bridge in red, but the screens were still black. The ship shuddered and screamed around them.

  Waseem reached for his harness buckle.

  "Not yet!"

  He put a finger up to his lips and nodded his head toward the PKs. Darcy turned and saw them, piled on the floor, struggling to get up.

  Darcy nodded and reached for her own buckle.

  There was a sudden bang, louder than the others, and Darcy was thrown against the nylon webbing. And then everything was silent. The alarms were dead, the grinding was done.

  The ship was down.

  They'd survived. Somehow.

  But the battle wasn't finished.

  She snapped her harness off and raced to the PKs, her feet unsteady in the new gravity.

  Waseem reached the PKs first and was trying to wrestle the carbine away from Frodge, who clung to it with both hands. Darcy ignored the fight and staggered across to where Tudel was trying to push himself off the deck. Without pausing to consider what she was doing she reared back and kicked him in the side of the head. He cursed and grabbed at her foot. She pulled back and kicked again, and the second kick connected as hard as the first. He tried again to fend her off, but more weakly this time. One more kick, and he slumped to the floor. She reached down and pulled his pistol from its holster, and then pointed it at Frodge. "Drop it."

  Frodge looked up at her, his eyes wide. He let go and Waseem pulled the weapon away from him.

  Three minutes later, when Darcy and Waseem had just gotten the two men secured with zip ties, the door opened and three other soldiers entered, guns drawn.

  Chapter 50

  2064: Situation Room of the West Wing, White House, Washington DC, Earth

  General Restivo looked up from his slate and surveyed the windowless Situation Room. The wallscreens were black, the carpet and decor were muted, and there was nothing to focus on besides the quiet hum of the ventilation system.

  He had run out of work to do on his slate, and the Faraday cage and jammers meant that he couldn't download more email or send what he'd already typed. The other staff in the room - he caught a few of their eyes - were all either reading material already on their slates or, like him, scanning the room; killing time.

  He checked the time yet again and suppressed a sigh. Over an hour now - going on an hour and a half.

  The door banged open and President Johnson and her aides swept in. General Restivo stood with the rest of the room.

  "I need to know how you're going to fix the moon problem," Themba said, looking around the table. Restivo didn't know what answer she was looking for, so he stayed quiet.

  The president scanned the room. "Anyone? I only have ten minutes, so I'd better start hearing answers."

  An aide spoke first. A foot in the bear trap - and not his.

  "Ma'am, when you say 'fixing', what exactly do you -"

  Themba clapped her hands together. "People! Have I been unclear?" It wasn't a question, Restivo knew. "We've got major budget problems."

  She paused, then clarified "...thanks to my predecessor.” The last word was a curse. "Health Nexus is threatening to strike, our wind farms are behind schedule, California needs the earthquake relief checks. We need solutions, and we need them now."

  Restivo noted that she hadn't mentioned the elections.

  The president planted her palms on the table and leaned forward, agressively, and even with her feminine looks and custom Allison Meryll suits she was a pitbull. "Now!" She surveyed the room with a look that was pure steel before smiling. "So, gentlemen, tell me how you're going to do it."

  Bonner cleared his throat and spoke. "In our last meeting we talked about how we'd destroyed their satellites. Since then we've built on that success - we've boarded several unlicensed tramp freighters off South East Asia and Africa. Most of these turned out to be false alarms but we have had some wins."

  Themba's head turned. "What do you mean wins?"

  General Bonner said, "If I may, it would be easiest to show video." The president nodded and Bonner tapped his slate.

  Restivo leaned forward. This was going to be interesting. He'd been focusing on his part of the puzzle: his men - Dewitt's team and the others - had been training and would be ready to infiltrate soon. He'd guessed that there were other pieces in play, and now he was going to learn.

  The wallscreens flared to life and a video played, grainy and ugly from low-light enhancement. A few dozen soldiers piloted their small rigid hulled inflatable boats toward a darkened cargo ship. The video cut to a new scene: the assault boats were moored with magnetic grapnels to the hull of the cargo ship and the soldiers used quiet compressed gas guns to shoot boarding ladders over the gunwales.

  The advance team ascended and a moment later let down ropes to winch up the Alternatively Abled Soldiers and their equipment.

  Another jump cut; the video was still shot from someplace low in the water - a second rigid-hull boat? - but the top of the cargo ship was now bright with floodlights.

  Someone - an expat? - was hailing the soldiers over a loudspeaker "You, on the deck - identify yourselves... and surrender!"

  Restivo craned his neck, but the video was 2D; shifting his perspective didn't let him see what was happening up on the cargo ship's deck.

  One more jump cut and there was a weird deep thrumming sound. Was that a problem with the video, or was this...

  He leaned forward. Yes. It was.

  The sea around the ship and the small inflatable boats grew choppy and then the boat that held the camera was buffeted and pushed back. The camera swung wildly, taking in flashes of night sky, ocean, and brighly lit ship.

  This - this must be it. The anti-gravity drive. He shook his head. A new technology. He vaguely remembered when he was young how new technologies, new websites, new everything sprung up in a frantic pace before all that insane job-destroying ferment had been calmed by the creation of BuSuR.

  The idea of new technology had come to seem like a unicorn. And here he was, watching a new thing. Unlicen
sed, unplanned, destabilizing.

  How very, very strange.

  The buffeting ended and the image stabilized. Restivo squinted. What was he looking at? He could see the sea and sky, but everything was tilted at crazy angles. Suddenly his eyes adjusted and the scene made sense. Well, not 'sense', because what he was looking at was impossible. And yet.,.

  He stared at the vast depression in the ocean, hundreds of meters across. It was as if an invisible bowl had been pressed down into the ocean's surface, pushing hundreds of tons of seawater aside and making a perfect hemisphere.

  The view slewed as the zodiac's camera automatically brought the freighter back into view. The ship's Klieg lights were still on, making it pop against the dark background. The freighter - Restivo fought the urge to rub his eyes - the freighter was hanging in the center of the impossible depression in the ocean. The bottom of its keel floated dozens of meters above the chop.

  The weird thrumming sound grew louder and the ship rose. It was thirty - no, at least fifty - meters up.

  On the screen a few objects, small at this distance, tumbled over the freighter's gunwales and fell, in a strange diagonal path, to the ocean below.

  Restivo narrowed his eyes. Those weren't pieces of equipment. They were troops - his country's troops - being thrown off the ship's deck by the antigravity drive. It was a long fall and he realized that the men and women were almost certainly dead. He set his jaw.

  The mammoth ship accelerated slowly, but bit by bit it gained speed. The camera panned up, chasing the brightly lit craft into the dark sky. The small inflatable boat that held the camera was swamped by a wave and the screen went black for a moment, and then the wave was gone. The camera refocused and recentered on the freighter as it fell into the black sky. It dwindled to a brightly lit dot and -

  Bonner froze the video and looked around the room.

  "Sixty soldiers boarded the ship. Those splashes are members of the assault team being thrown off - we assume by some effect of the anti-gravity drive. Between analyzing the video and identifying floating bodies - and parts - we've identified thirty-nine troops who died during the assault. That leaves twnety-one soldiers unaccounted for.