"Then trust me. I'm working on this."
"I don't see you working on this."
"Just because you're my advisor doesn't mean you know everything - you know that. Sometimes plans have to remain secret." He paused. "And besides, I already talked to Reggie last week. He started recruiting more security three days ago."
"That's good, but it's not enough -"
Darren raised an eyebrow. "Arnold, I'm on this."
Arnold pursed his lips, clearly not convinced. "Darren, the war is coming. It's almost here."
Darren sighed. "I think you're right."
Chapter 54
2064: bridge of AFS The Wookkiee, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
Larry Prince pushed Darcy into the bridge and pulled the massive hatch. It was closing, but the sheer mass of it made it slow. Behind him he heard Ige yell into his microphone, "Blow the e-lock!"
Damn it! The hatch wasn't locked yet. Larry leaned into the door. With a clang the hatch finally slammed shut and Larry pulled the locking handle.
From below he heard an explosion. He wanted to swear at Ige for jumping the gun but didn't have time; instead he slapped the control on the side of his helmet and the visor snapped down.
Almost immediately the wind tugged at him. Larry looked around the passageway for a handhold. There - a pipe. He grabbed it with one gloved hand and fumbled at his belt.
Over the wind he heard more rifle fire.
The wind accelerated, pulling at him. Larry reached down with his free hand, found his carabiner, and snapped himself to the pipe. He checked and saw that the other two members of his fire team were also lashed in. Good.
The wind howled, sucking the air from the corridors, down the stairwells, and out the emergency mining airlock that they'd flash-welded to the hull of the ship. The tornado pulled at Bello, but his line was secure.
A few more shots sounded but the noise was thin, and the rate of fire slowed and then stopped.
Larry had a thought, smiled, and shared it with Ige and Brown over the comlink. "Never bring shirt sleeves to a spacesuit fight." He heard chuckles in return.
The pressurized interior of the Wookkiee was huge, but the emergency airlock that they'd welded onto the side of the ship was sized to handle two men in armored suits and a third on a stretcher. Blow the doors on that, and the ship should vent quickly. It shouldn't take too much longer until -
An alarm beeped in Bello's helmet and he looked at his display. 0.05 bars of pressure. He unclipped himself. "Let's see if we can take any of them alive."
* * *
Larry stepped through the ragged hole cut in the side of the Wookkiee's hull, through the open inner doors and into the e-lock. He shifted the burden on his shoulder. The outer door was open, blown from its hinges by explosive charges, and bright lunar sunlight streamed in. As his filter adjusted to cut the glare, the scene outside came into view. Two meters away from the blown outer door the mining ambulance had its own airlock open.
Larry shrugged the load off his shoulder, catching the PK - unconscious, bloody, and clad only in a dark grey camo - in his arms. The suited EMT inside the ambulance nodded and Larry awkwardly tossed the PK across the gap. The EMT caught the body, staggered from the mass, and then lowered him to the floor. Larry stepped back and made room for Ige, who stepped forward, and then tossed his own PK across the gap. The EMT caught him and then slapped a button. The ambulance's outer airlock door snapped shut.
Larry turned and went back into the Wookkiee to look for more survivors. Behind them the EMT broadcast to their departing backs, "It's been four minutes - you might as well give up." Larry ignored him and followed Ige back into the Wookkiee. Yeah, anyone still in the vacuum was probably dead. But probably wasn't definitely, and they still hadn't found any officers.
* * *
Mike stood on the deck of the Wookkiee, leaned forward, and rested his gloved hands on the gunwales.
He looked out on the scene before him, and it was good.
Just beyond the shadow cast by the Wookkiee, members of his rifle club were standing around, firearms slung over their shoulders, joking amongst themselves after a job well done.
Further away the mining ambulances were rolling across the surface toward the airlocks with their load of PK prisoners.
And then, beyond the ambulances, the surface infrastructure of the city spread across the plain: furnaces, solar plants, manufacturing facilities.
The enemy was routed. His men were heroes. Darcy and the rest of the crew were safe in the bridge, and would be out in a few minutes.
And below him, the city - his city - was healthy, happy, and safe. He didn't own it all - not remotely. But he'd built it. Some of it literally, most of it just figuratively. The solar cells, the solar refining smelters, the piles of tailings - even the distant hints of movement from Darren Hollins' mining operation on the cluster of peaks just north of the city. All of it. It was here because he had -
Something moved. There - on the surface, the black shadow cast by the Wookkiee moved.
Ah - the Wookkiee's crane #2 was moving. He turned and watched the boom swing out over the edge of the derelict ship. The roughnecks had gotten the ship-mounted cargo lifter connected to the APU vehicles parked on the surface below.
The crane stopped rotating and the yellow-painted spreader at its tip descended. Mike tracked it as it descended. For a moment it was level with him, and then it passed below and Mike leaned forward over the gunwales to follow it. On the surface below a transporter was already in position, an e-lock ready on its cargo deck. Good. Darcy and the others in the bridge should have enough air for an hour or two yet, but the sooner the e-lock was in position, the sooner they'd be out.
And speaking of Darcy, he should call her and tell her that the airlock was almost there. He brought up the phone interface in his screen. Below him the crane spreader stopped. A rigger below called out to Bert, the crane operator, and asked him to move a meter left and two meters further out. A moment later Bert made the correction. Mike ignored the open phone interface and smiled. That very crane had offloaded his first A-series TBM so many years ago. And ten years later, the crane was still running, even with the ship below her dead. "You've aged well, old girl."
Over the radio Bert called, "What's that, Mike?"
Mike coughed. "Ah, nothing. Everything going OK with the lift?"
He waiting for a response. "Bert? You hear me? The lift OK?"
Still no response. What was going on? He looked down at the surface crew near the transporter to see if anyone was waving the crane off, but no one was. Instead everyone - transporter crew, rifle club members, a few stray medics, were all standing, frozen, looking at him.
Wait.
Not at him.
Past him.
Mike turned.
Behind and above the Wookkiee a second ship floated over the moon's surface.
...and at the nearside railing several dozen troops in space suits stood and pointed rifles at him and the others.
The PKs had seized more than one ship.
Chapter 55
2064: deck of AFS The Wookkiee, lunar surface, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
Mike's helmet pinged with a broadcast. "Everyone - put your guns on the ground, step away from them, and lie face-down."
Mike looked at the floating ship. There were a lot of armed men along the rails. More than a dozen - maybe twenty, maybe more.
He considered his chances.
The distance, the difficulty of shooting while wearing a suit, the AG field that would distort their aim - all of these made it unlikely that a single rifleman there could hit him. But if they all fired at once, he ran a very real risk that one of them would get a lucky shot.
No, it would be stupid to run for it. The safe thing would be to surrender.
But he'd be damned if he was going to give up. Not for anyone, and especially not for these bastards.
Mike stared at the PKs. The muzzles of their guns pointed at him, and he
knew how foolish this was. Truly foolish. There was no way he was going to get out of this.
He took a deep breath, pivoted, and ran.
Or tried to run. He was slow - too slow. Damn it!
The suit fought him. The cables that ran through the arms and legs tightened and loosened at a speed perfectly timed to fight ballooning and assist in normal walking, but entirely wrong for a sprint.
Shit, God damn it!
The hatch to the bridge was dozens of meters away. Behind him, he knew, the PKs were raising their rifles, aiming them. He leaned forward, pushing against the sluggish suit. He saw a splash of motion on the deck ahead, then another. They were shooting at him.
Fuck! Just a few more meters.
Another splash on the deck, and then a tug at his elbow. He was hit. A moment later an alarm tone told him what he already knew. He leaned further forward, trying like hell to stay low. If he hopped high he was dead.
More bullets hit around him as he ran.
...And then he was in the gloom of the airlock, safe from the PK infantry. For a moment, at least. Behind him the outer door was gone, melted stumps of hinges hinting at how the PKs had forced themselves aboard. The airlock's overhead light was dead, and so was the control panel. He needed to patch his suit, but not yet - first he needed to put steel between himself and the peakers. Mike turned on his helmet light and found the emergency hand-wheel. Next to it there was a splash of something - dried blood? He ignored it and spun the wheel a dozen times then pushed against the inner door.
The door swung open and Mike stepped through, and then closed it behind him. His helmet light illuminated the gloom of the ship's interior. Even the red emergency lights were out now, their batteries drained.
The bubbling suit alarm turned to a shriek and Mike reached into a belt pouch, pulled out a patch, and slapped it over the tear. The alarm silenced.
He looked around. Now what?
A moment ago he'd had everything figured out; now he was on the run, hiding from a ship full of PKs.
His helmet pinged with another broadcast. "Listen you idiots, you're outnumbered. We've shot four of you and we can kill the rest of you before you can get back into your city. So put down your firearms and we'll let you live. And you, inside the ship - come out with your hands up."
Fuck.
They'd killed members of the rifle club - and they were about to take the rest hostage.
But the problem was worse - much worse - than that.
He'd thought that the PK hijacking of the Wookkiee was a one-off, but it wasn't. If they had two ships, they might have four - or a dozen. Which meant that they had the AG drive.
His blood ran cold.
He'd known the war was coming, and coming soon. He'd told people - and even his friends had called him paranoid for saying it was coming in five years, not the ten or fifteen that everyone else thought.
Five years would have been bad enough. Five years was barely enough time to grow the population, barely enough time to arm, barely enough time to prepare.
But the war wasn't five years away. It was happening. Now.
Fuck. Fuck! How could they possibly win this?
Mike caught himself. There'd be time for thinking about strategy later - now he had to think tactics.
OK. Think. What was going on outside? He needed to know.
The bridge: could he access cameras there? Yes - wait, no. The bridge was pressurized and he couldn't get in. And besides, without power -
Wait. The crane - the crane had power from the external APU. Mike turned and raced to the stairs, and then up a flight. The hatch to the cargo handler's room was open and light spilled out into the dark corridor. Mike reached the door. Inside, Bert Anciaux sat in his suit at the cargo control interface.
"Bert, anything on the cameras?"
Bert started and spun in his chair. "Jesus! Mike! I didn't hear you! Uh - most of the cameras were frozen over when I sat down, but the ones in sun are clear now. I've got the other ship on 12." He pointed. Mike leaned forward, putting one suited hand on the back of Bert's chair as he stared at the monitors.
The second ship - annotated in the display as "RTFM/Fifth Ring Shipping" - had settled onto the ground next to the Wookkiee. Bert switched to a different camera - and Mike saw the ground between the two ships.
Members of the excavation team and the rifle club were on their knees in the lunar dust, arranged in long lines. Behind them a dozen men - each marked with a green rag tied around one bicep - stood and pointed rifles at them. As Mike watched the RTFM's crane lowered a man-basket.
Mike swore. The PKs had hostages - and meant to keep them.
"What can we do to stop them?"
Bert looked over his shoulder. "We're sitting in an unarmed derelict without power. We can't do anything."
Damn it!
There must be something he could do. Something. He called up his phone interface, saw his uncompleted call to Darcy, and cleared it. He needed to talk to Wam. Wam could get more members of the rifle club -
No. That would take too long.
What about the Wookkiee's AG drive? If he pulsed it, could that -
No. Even if the AG drive was still working after the crash, the APU powering the cranes didn't have remotely enough juice for that. And besides, the AG controls were in the bridge, and here in the cargo control room all they had were the cranes.
The cranes! "Bert - can we grab the RTFM, and stop them from lifting off?"
Bert shook his head. "We've got the spreader on, so the only thing we could grab would be gunwales or something. And even if that worked, if the RTFM lifts, our cables would snap like rubber bands."
Mike cursed. "Damn it. Wait - we've got the spreader. Can we grab their drive?"
"No, the AG drive containers are buried deep in the cargo stack."
"Buried under what?"
"It's the usual setup: AG on the bottom, and OMS and RCS containers on top of them."
Mike froze, then a smile spread across his face. "OK, here's the plan -"
* * *
Mike watched the monitor as crane #1 on the Wookkiee rotated toward the RTFM. Mike checked another screen. The PKs on the ground were pushing prisoners around. Good; the longer they failed to notice, the better.
Bert moved his hands over the console and swore. "God damned gloves! I-."
"You can do it, Bert. Nice and easy."
Bert jabbed at the keyboard again. Mike watched the screen. A camera at the tip of the crane showed the RTFM swing into view. The crane slowed, then stopped. Below the crane a cargo container sat on the RTFM's deck. Close to the center of the screen - but not directly there.
Bert jogged the controls and the view swung two meters left, then one meter forward, and the cargo container moved closer to the crosshairs. Mike saw that Bert had called it exactly: the odd vents and circles embedded in the containers surface told a trained eye that it was an OMS unit.
Another tap on the controls and the crosshairs blinked green.
"Yes!"
The spreader descended and the view zoomed in a dizzying rush until the screen went black. The crosshairs blinked once and the word "twistlocked" appeared.
Mike clapped Bert on the back. He'd done it!
Bert looked over his shoulder. "Should I lift?"
Mike shook his head. "Not yet - but grab another one with crane 3."
"You got it boss." Bert nodded, and bent to the task.
Mike paged through the menu on his helmet display. Coms. Phone. Broadcast. He punched it, then cleared his throat. "Attention hijackers - we've secured your ship. If you try to launch, we'll tear your OMS off." On the screen Mike saw that crane 3 was now rotating. "You will immediately release all your hostages."
On the wallscreen crane 3's camera centered over another cargo container, and then the view began to zoom.
The crosshairs went green and 'twistlocked' appeared.
Mike waited for the PKs to respond.
* * *
A
minute later Mike's phone rang.
"Yes?"
"You the one who just broadcast the threat?"
"Yes."
"Who are you?"
"Mike Martin."
The line went dead for a moment, then the voice returned. "OK, Martin, we know you. Get your crane off our ship, and release the troops you seized. Now."
"We don't have any troops," Mike bluffed. "All the Wookkiee hijackers died when we blew the airlock. Now I'm repeating my demand: free all of your hostages or we rip off your OMS."
Another pause. "Our captives are smugglers and terrorist combatants found in possession of illegal military weapons. They're lawful prisoners. You've got thirty seconds to take your cranes off the ship."
Mike smiled. The peaker had believed his bluff that he had no PK captives himself. This was working - he'd won half the battle, now he just needed to get the RTFM hostages. "Thirty seconds? Or what?"
"Or we start executing terrorists."
Mike scoffed. "Right."
"Twenty seconds."
"You do realize what the OMS do? If I rip those off, your ship can lift straight up and down, but you won't be able to maneuver. You'll never get back to Earth."
"Ten seconds."
"Stop bluffing. You've played a nice game, but it's time to -"
On the wallscreen one of the PKs shouldered his rifle and shot one of the kneeling mining engineers in the back of the helmet. The faceplate of the helmet exploded and blood and ichor sprayed out into the lunar dust.
"What the fuck!?"
"I've just done a targeted assassination of a designated illegal combatant. Now I'm going to be generous. You've got another thirty seconds to get your cranes off our ship."
Mike's stomach felt like it had fallen through the floor. His vision narrowed. Had they really just killed a man in cold blood? He shook his head. Why? Why?
"Twenty seconds."
Mike swallowed. "Bert - Crane 3. Rip off the OMS."
Bert looked at him. "Mike - are you sure? They're -"
"DO IT!"
The Powers of the Earth (Aristillus Book 1) Page 21