John held on to the railing while his container pendulumed as it strained against its anchor. After a moment the swaying died out. "Blue, I'm going to go one notch higher."
"No, hang on - you're moving."
John leaned over the railing and looked down. From this angle he couldn't tell if the bottom container, where Blue was standing on a small balcony like his own, was flat on the deck or above it. Blue answered his unasked question. "It's just a small gap. Half a meter. Almost a full meter now. OK, we've cleared the railings!"
John saw movement near the bottom container in the stack. Damn it, it was Duncan - on the deck of the ship, where he shouldn't be, and standing far too close, where he really shouldn't be.
"Duncan! Get the hell out of there!" Duncan looked up, and scampered out of the way.
Blue said. "Ready to maneuver?"
"Ready."
Blue gave the command to the maneuvering unit. There was a flare from three rocket bells along one side of the bottom container, and the stack of containers pendulumed again, but this time it was the bottom of the pendulum that swung, not the top. Blue's container slid gently to one side. Slowly, slowly, the upper two units followed it.
It took a half hour to get the stack directly over the raked-smooth construction yard they'd cleared, and a full hour and several attempts to lower the stack to the ground and land the containers just centimeters away from each other.
And then, finally, it was done. John gave the command to the AG drive and the unit cycled through its shutdown sequence before falling entirely silent. The container settled solidly onto the ground.
Blue asked, "We were in the air longer than we expected. What was our power consumption?"
John checked. "The dial hasn't moved at all. We should have more than enough to get back Aristillus."
"You still think this is going to work?"
"I know it's going to work, Blue."
"Can we call it a day? I'd like to eat dinner and then sleep."
John unclipped his suit from the container and stepped over the railing. "We can take a break, but we can't sleep long - we've got to get to Aristillus before the PKs do."
Chapter 113
2064: outside Goldwater vault, level four, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
Matthew Dewitt stood on the work platform of the rented cherry picker and drove it down the tunnel. He looked up and saw the box on the ceiling ahead. He turned on the cherry picker's hazard lights and slowed to a stop. An automated delivery skid approached at speed and he tensed, but the other vehicle detected the obstruction and switched lanes before racing past.
Dewitt worked the controls and the cherry picker's arm swung up smoothly. The ceiling light panels and other infrastructure rushed toward him, then slowed. In the residential sections of the city there were sky projections, cleverly hidden microwind fans, and more, but here in an industrial tunnel the ceiling and the equipment bolted to it were undisguised. Some of it was painted in stark colors: olive green for the potable water lines, safety red for the sprinkler pipes, black and yellow for chemical conduits. And right here, among the brackets, light panels, sprinklers, and other equipment, was the fake electrical supply box he'd installed a week ago. He jogged the controls on the cherry picker. He was two meters away, then one, and then right under it.
Dewitt looked around one last time. On the tunnel floor below an automated cargo sled approached his parked vehicle and swung past. He looked to the left and right and saw no human-driven vehicles.
He unlocked the door on the overhead box and let it swing open in the light gravity. Inside everything looked just as he left it.
He bent down, opened his tool bag, and carefully extracted a detonator.
Chapter 114
2064: just west of Zhukovskiy Crater, Lunar Nearside
John put down the welder and leaned back. As he stretched, he took a chance to look around. Max was on top of the containers using the welder from the second mule. Blue was sorting through their supplies. Where was Duncan? He scanned left and right but didn't see him. "Duncan, how's the checklist going?"
"I'm working on it."
"Well, hurry up. We need to move. The attack on Aristillus could come at any time."
Duncan, normally happy-go-lucky, was defensive. "John, I know. Blue told me to cut railings from the PK ship and load them onto the mule. And that's what I'm doing."
John turned - and there was Duncan on the PK ship, holding an armful of railings.
"Sorry, Duncan."
Duncan all but sniffed. "It's all right."
John grimaced. He was picking fights without meaning to. He was short on sleep - they all were. The four of them had been racing against the clock for two days now and the stress was getting to them. John touched his toes and felt his back pop. When he got back to Aristillus he was going to take a long hot shower and then sleep for a week. But that was in the future. Now? He sighed, dropped to one knee in the dust and went back to welding.
Two hours later John finished the last bead, put the abused welder down next to the mound of drained batteries, and stepped back to admire his handiwork. The three containers were butted nose-to-tail, the junctions reinforced with lengths of deck railing salvaged from the PK ship. Weld beads stitched the whole thing into one rigid body. He craned his head to look at the top of the containers -
- and noticed blemishes in his field of view. He keyed the electrostatic cleaning cycle and waited as his helmet buzzed, but the spots persisted. That was weird - the cleaning should have floated the dust off. He ran a gloved hand over his faceplate and felt bumps.
What the - ? John blinked. Weld spatter must have splashed up and melted into his faceplate. He felt a chill and his breath shuddered out of him. Jesus - the danger he'd been in. Or was still in. How deep in the faceplate was the spatter? Should he get a new helmet?
He looked to his left, far across the floor of c-177, where the nearest PK bodies were. Should he take the time to go salvage another helmet?
It was the smart move, but there wasn't time. A catastrophic blowout was a risk he'd have to take. And if his faceplate blew out, there was always the quick sealing foam. Although it was a fool who did something stupid just because he had a seatbelt on.
Well, today he'd have to be that fool. Racing against the clock was always dangerous. They'd been cutting corners for two days now, and they were running risks because of it.
And the biggest risk of all? These three cargo containers they'd been working on. They were building a God-damned spaceship out of parts salvaged from a nuked wreck. But what other option did they have? There were PK satellites overhead, an invasion fleet on the way from Earth, and no way to communicate with friends or allies.
They had to do this.
A window popped up on his helmet overlay and showed a spreadsheet - their construction task list.
John blinked with eyes made crusty from sleep-deprivation and anxiety. Wait. Was this right? Was the ship really finished?
"Blue, you're done with the railings up top?"
"Yeah."
"And the chairs?"
"Hours ago. I've been loading."
John looked up and saw Blue on top of the container, and then turned. The pile of supplies was gone: batteries, the mules, the tent - the space behind him was empty. Hopefully they'd land exactly at Aristillus, but if anything went wrong, they were bringing all of their supplies with them.
John went back to his helmet display and scanned the list. Yes, they were really 100% done with the construction.
So. This was it. He blinked and tried to feel something, but he was too tired - the only thing he felt was a burning desire to sit down.
There was nothing else to do, was there?
He took a step toward the rungs on the side of the cargo container and realized he was still carrying the welder. For a second he was tempted to drop it in the dust, but if they were preparing for the worst, he wouldn't.
John grabbed a rung on the side of the improvis
ed ship and climbed with one arm. When he reached the top Blue took the welder from him and secured it. John turned sideways and shimmied past the lashed-down pile of cargo. As he shuffled past it he grabbed one of the steel cables and gave it it a tug. The pile of tent, spare tent, mules, air tanks scavenged from dead PKs, and batteries taken from Gamma's rovers was an unwieldy heap but Max had done a good job - nothing shifted. Good. He smiled.
John moved further around the pile - and saw the golden solar shield wrapped around its precious cargo. Rex, in his burial shroud. John's smiled slipped. Rex was dead - but he'd be buried among friends, not left on Farside under the cold stars and surrounded by the corpses of enemies.
John nodded in a silent salute and made his way to the front of the lifeboat. Max and Duncan occupied two of the seats. Blue slid past John and sat and John took his place and clipped in.
Max looked at him. "We're on checklist three."
"Don't let me stop you."
Max nodded. "Checklist three, bullet twenty-three: maneuvering system propellant?"
Duncan said, "Pressurized. Check."
"Checklist three, bullet twenty-four: maneuvering system bells prewarmed?"
"One hundred twenty degrees C. Check."
The call and response ran for five more minutes and then Max turned to John. "That's it for list three. We're ready."
John straightened. This might be the time for a Saint Crispin's Day speech, or at least a few words. But he was tired. Tired and uninspired. It was time to get back to Aristillus. Time to get out of the cold and the loneliness. Time to give Mike a warning.
John turned as far in his seat as he could and looked at Blue and Duncan. "Let's go home." He paused. "And remember one thing: no matter how this works, we had a great trip. It was worth doing."
There was a murmur of assent from Blue and Max, and a quick bark from Duncan.
John said, "OK, let's do it."
He called up the list in his display. "Checklist four, bullet one. AG to three. Slowly, please."
Blue operated the controls from his suit display and John's stomach twisted. A moment later the landscape shifted incrementally as the front of the lifeboat tilted. Around them dust blew. After several long seconds Blue said, "Bullet one - check."
John nodded. "Checklist four, bullet two. AG to 'four.’”
The gut-twisting sensation increased and the lifeboat tilted more - and pulled free of the ground.
"Bullet two - check."
Fifty meters to their left the hull of the PK ship Oswaldo Aranha seemed to sink. A moment later John and the Dogs rose past its gunwales - and kept rising. The bridge tower of the PK ship slipped downward. And then the wrecked ship was eclipsed from view.
John turned away from the PK ship and checked the lifeboat system screen in his helmet display. Power was fine. They were rotating slightly as they rose, but it wasn't a problem. The center of gravity was good.
Max called out, "Look at Zhukovskiy."
John minimized his screen. The lifeboat wasn't just rising, it was slowly accelerating, and as he'd been checking his display they'd been falling into the sky. The ship was already above the walls of c-177, and ahead of them the shield wall of Zhukovskiy was dropping away. They were almost level with the top, and then the boat rose past it. At first he could just see the far crater wall twenty kilometers away, but as they rose further the floor of the crater started to come into view.
Now he could see the devastation inside, and it was as bad as he'd imagined. The first PK ship, the one Gamma had shot down, had fallen near one edge of Gamma's facility, and when it had exploded it had gouged a new crater right in the heart of Zhukovskiy. The crater didn't remotely match the scale of Zhukovskiy, but it was big - hundreds of meters across. Around it the devastation was absolute: for perhaps half a kilometer around the detonation point there was nothing left of Gamma's infrastructure but blackened shards of metal. Further from the center the destruction was still severe, but larger pieces of machinery survived, and a hint of the original layout of the facility showed through the wreckage.
The lifeboat kept climbing.
John flipped back to his helmet display. "We're at five klicks. Blue, checklist four, bullet three: orientation."
"We need twenty-two degrees. Programmed in. I'm starting rotation sequence...now." John felt rather than saw the pulses from rocket bells recessed into the sides of the rearmost cargo container. The boat began to spin slightly as it rose.
It also began to roll.
"Blue, we've got roll -"
"I know. It's ten degrees. It's under control."
The roll increased. "Blue."
"I've got it."
John grabbed the jury-rigged railing as the boat listed sickeningly. "Blue!"
"Nineteen degrees. Stopping rotation...now." The lifeboat shuddered a second time as flame again spurted from rocket bells.
The rotation slowed and stopped, and with it the list.
Their altitude, though, continued to increase. Zhukovskiy was even further below and the horizon was distinctly curved. There was no mistaking that they were far above a small spherical world.
John checked the altitude and saw that they were at six kilometers. "Bullet four: forw-"
Blue didn't wait for him to finish. "Forward acceleration - now."
John felt the seat push hard into his back. The maneuvering unit was a clone of the ones on the Aristillus ships. It was designed to control pitch, roll and yaw. It didn't have nearly enough thrust to accelerate a big ship. On this small lifeboat, though, it was more than enough.
John looked backward over his shoulder to see if he could see flame from the rockets, but the pile of cargo amidship blocked his view. He turned his attention forward. The mountains and crater walls drifted past. As the thrusters continued their burn the speed increased - and kept increasing. Max and Duncan panted with excitement.
John looked at the checklist. "Bullet five. Jackson highlands coming up in 100 klicks. Adjust AG-"
"AG to four point five."
Zhukovskiy was behind them, and as they accelerated, other craters slid by faster and faster. They were eight kilometers high now and the moon was a huge ball beneath them.
"Bullet six. We're near peak velocity. Cut thrust in four."
Blue took the count. "Three. Two. One. Cut"
The acceleration ended but the moon continued to rush past below. Duncan howled in excitement.
Max barked back, and then yelled "Welcome to the first flight of the SS 'Holy-Crap-I-Hope-This-Works.’”
Duncan snickered. "No, no! The AFS Pile Of Crap!"
"Wait, I've got it. It's the Forget-about-the-low-bidder-this-is-the-no-bidder."
As the two traded joking names for the boat John let himself sink into his chair and relax for the first time in what felt like forever. They were on course, and he had absolutely no responsibilities for more than an hour. When they got to Aristillus there'd be more work: a tricky landing, telling Mike and others that an invasion was a week or two away, and a thousand headaches he couldn't yet imagine that would certainly come from that. Right now, though, there was nothing he had to do. Actually, there was nothing he could do. Other than sit back.
John listened to the common channel where the Dogs were debating ship names. After a few minutes he joined in with his own suggestion but none of the Dogs thought that "HMS Beagle" was funny. He sighed.
He dropped out of the conversation and sat back...and then something caught his eye. There, over the bow of the lifeboat, the blue rim of the Earth was rising over the horizon ahead. Blue must have seen it too - over the coms link he said "woah." A moment later Max and Duncan also stopped talking as they too saw the planet come into view.
God. How long had it been since he'd seen Earth?
It was beautiful.
The blues, the whites, the greens. Every single bit of it - even the browns of the African deserts - tugged at him and he felt his breath catch. There was something deep, deep in the human so
ul that knew that those were the colors of home. The colors of life.
And yet, for all that racial memory, he knew that somewhere down there, men were prepping a mission to come here to kill or enslave everyone he knew and loved.
His stomach twisted, and it wasn't just the AG drive.
Chapter 115
2064: near lock #912, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
The taxi stopped two meters shy of the huge airlock door. Dewitt stepped down and pulled his two overstuffed duffel bags after him. The taxi chimed once, did an expert K-turn, and accelerated smoothly away on the far side of the double yellow line.
Dewitt looked around. He was alone at the end of the tunnel. The huge airlock door, painted in black and yellow stripes, dominated the end of the tunnel. A pallet of pipes was stacked against one side wall, and next to it was parked a panel truck with a "Double Door" logo on the side. Dewitt put down his bags, pulled out a perimeter bug and pushed it into the end of one of the pipes, and then turned and -
A man-sized door to one side of the airlock opened. Dewitt froze. Two men wearing jumpsuits and hardhats walked out. One was looking at his slate. "Pumps are fine, but the grit filter -"
The second airlock tech noticed Dewitt. He pushed his white hardhat back. "Going out? We were just about to take this one offline." He weighed his options for a second. "You can go through now if you want, but we're going to be an hour, so if you want to come back inside before then you'll probably want to use 913." He scratched his head under his hardhat. "Actually, you probably want to use 913, either way. It's got a man-sized lock, so it won't be as expensive as thi-"
Dewitt's first shot took the tech in the chest; his next shot hit his coworker a fraction of a second later. Then Dewitt was on them, zip-tying their wrists, and slapping a sedative patch on each. Only after they were secured did he pull the taser rounds out of their chests with gloved fingers.
That done, he dragged the first tech into the utility room he'd just come out of. A moment later he dragged the second tech in, and then returned for his duffel bags. Only then did he close the door.
The Powers of the Earth (Aristillus Book 1) Page 50