Then, finally, they were all inside. He pushed his duffel bags to one side and checked the two men he'd tased and tranked. One hadn't yet gotten the full dose of the drug and was groggily protesting, but the other was out. Dewitt patted them both down quickly and efficiently. Neither was armed. One had a keyfob. Dewitt inspected it. Was it for the truck outside? It must be. He pocketed it, turned away from the men, and got down to business. His slate connected to the airlock's controller and the two devices did their public key / private key dance. The slate pinged - the lock was now in override mode. That would stop anyone from shutting it down remotely.
Dewitt checked the time - T minus 60 minutes.
There was nothing to do now but wait. Wait, and think.
He didn't worry. The plan was solid. At least, as solid as any plan ever is. His biggest fear was that the incompetence of the PK troops might fuck it up. If this worked, civilian casualties would be minimal - but if someone started disobeying orders or ad hoc-ing shit, there'd be dead civilians. Maybe even lots of them.
That sort of thing didn't bother the average officer all that much, but it mattered to him.
He sat down on one of his duffel bags, pulled out a snack, and scanned the news boards on his slate as he waited.
Nothing.
Exactly as it should be.
His timer beeped. T minus thirty.
Shit was about to get real, and he needed to be ready.
He stood, crumpled the wrapper of the energy bar and pushed it inside the empty sports drink bottle, and then unzipped his fly and urinated into the container before sealing it. He checked the two airlock techs again. Both were breathing placidly.
Twenty-nine minutes to go.
Dewitt opened his duffel bags and took out the rented spacesuit, the rifle, and the equipment.
He reached into the duffel bag and pulled out the velcro patches. It would have been stupid to bring these with from Earth, and too dangerous to have them custom made here in Aristillus, so they'd bought blank patches and painted the words on to them.
He took the largest "PK" patch and stuck it across his chest, and then applied the smaller ones to either arm.
He checked his timer.
Twenty-eight minutes.
Chapter 116
2064: Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, Earth
Lieutenant Chilton looked at the fuzzy image. "Sir, the target is slowing. It's almost at Aristillus now. If we want to take it out, we should -"
Captain Small shook his head. "No. Too risky with the invasion fleet almost there."
Chilton turned and looked at his boss. "Captain, the lead elements of the fleet are tens of thousands of klicks away. This expat ship is well outside the exclusion zone and the imaging from our lunar sats is crisp. There's absolutely no chance that we'll hit them."
Captain Small looked at the screen. Crap. Chilton was right - the expat ship was ten thousand klicks outside the zone, and not ten as he'd first read. He should probably authorize Chilton to fire.
...But he'd already made a decision, and if he changed his mind just because Lieutenant Chilton had objected, he might look weak.
On the other hand, if he didn't authorize the shot, it might come back to bite him later.
Crap.
"Can you get me better imaging?"
Chilton zoomed.
"What is that? It looks like three cargo containers."
"I don't know, sir; it doesn't match the profile of any of the expat cargo ships or even their small hoppers."
Captain Small rubbed his chin. Crap.
Chapter 117
2064: Eiffong Engineering, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
Mike pulled his motorcycle helmet off and was immediately assaulted by noise. To his left a shower of sparks announced a worker cleaning up a flange on one of the yellow Caterpillars. As soon as the grinding wheel slowed, the sound was replaced by the banging of a man-sized pneumatic hammer. Mike turned right and saw a different worker leaning into the chain-supported tool as he drove drift pins out of a wheel loader.
Mike put his fingers in his ears and looked around for Tony - and there he was, striding toward him. Tony was wearing a greasy set of overalls and, crucially, a pair of headphones snapped across his shiny black dome of a head. An outstretched hand held an extra pair. Mike took them gratefully.
Tony Eiffong pointed past the nearby Cats, to a different group of machines further away. He shouted, "Those are yours."
Mike looked at the five vehicles lined up against the far side of the tunnel warehouse. Even without the logos on the side he knew the fleet serial numbers painted along their flanks.
Tony turned and strode toward the machines and he followed. Mike remembered this batch of earthmovers: he'd purchased them through a cutout company in Africa. Africa might be a crap basket thanks to the PK occupation and their constant brushfire wars, but at least the continent didn't have the CJPA, which meant that job site automation tools were legal. Even if he could figure a way to smuggle equipment out of Europe or North America he wouldn't bother - he'd just have to retrofit them once they got here.
They reached the machines. "Your message said you'd found the problem?"
Tony pointed to drive wheels inside the treads. "This model has cylindrical packed bearing clusters, sealed against mud, right? But let's slide underneath and look -"
"Tony, I don't have a lot of time. The boardroom is meeting -"
"Give me two minutes."
Mike considered. The boardroom group was going to be nothing but more boring shit. Budgets, disagreements, factions. And here was something he could put his hands on: cold steel, thick grease. Something real.
He nodded. "Show me."
Tony dropped to the oil-stained concrete and slithered under the earth mover. Mike squirmed in next to him.
Tony used a small flashlight to point up between two idler wheels. "There. I took off the inside wheels to take some measurements. Do you see it?"
"I see the ends of bearing clusters. And I see that you've pulled one out."
"Look closer. These bearings should be sealed, but they're not. That's why they failed."
"So the factory installed the wrong version?"
Tony shook his head and the flashlight beam danced. "Uh uh. There is no wrong part. This bearing isn't even made without a seal. And, even if it was, the outside end is sealed properly."
Mike squinted. This didn't make sense. "So what's going on? Some after-market replacement?"
"No." Tony moved the flashlight a hand's breadth to the right. "Now look at this, where I removed the shaft packing. See the damage to the shaft? It's not wear, it's not galling - someone took these apart after they left the factory and did damage. They machined these thinner."
Mike peered at the parts. "Machined? You're saying that this was on purpose? What is this - economic sabotage?"
Tony shrugged. "All I know is someone trashed these machines. And I know it was just before you bought them, because if they'd operated them like this back in Nigeria for even an hour, they wouldn't have been able to drive them into the cargo containers to be shipped here."
"What the fuck?" He turned and looked at Tony in the cramped space under the machine. "That makes no sense. The Earth governments are simultaneously trying to kill us - and slightly annoy us? Which is it?"
Tony levered himself up under the earth-mover on one elbow and shook his head. "Who knows? If your American government is anything like our Nigerian government -"
"It's not my American government."
"You know what I mean. My point is that governments are so huge that you've probably got one ministry trying to kill you, one trying to ruin your earth movers, and a third one trying to make educational videos so your workers don't catch malaria."
Mike smiled at the joke - and then realized that for all he knew there was some arm of the government that was even now preparing anti-malarial videos for lunar distribution.
Fucking idiots.
Mike's p
hone rang. It was probably a reminder from Wam about the meeting. He reached down and silenced it. "So the bearings are shot and we think the Earth governments are behind it. Where does that leave us?"
"You've got three options -"
The phone rang again, this time in high priority mode. Damn it, Wam. He reached down and silenced it again.
"Go on."
"The first option is to buy new bearings. We're out of stock, so we need to either import them or find someone to fab that. That will take a while, but -"
The phone rang for the third time - this time with Darcy's ring tone. Mike reached for it - then paused. Darcy? That made no sense - the Poyekhali should be in the South China sea by now and she knew better than to route calls through Earth infrastructure.
This was weird. "Hang on Tony, let me take this." He turned the phone on. "Darcy?"
Gamma's voice answered him. "No, Michael."
"Gamma?" Mike sat up - and banged his head on the bottom of the earth mover. He grabbed his head with one hand as he rolled onto his side. "Fuck! Shit."
"Michael, I needed to talk to you."
Mike rubbed his head. "And you had to impersonate a call from Darcy?"
"You did not answer when I called as myself."
Damn it, his head HURT. "OK, what is it?"
"There is an object inbound over the north lunar pole."
The pain in Mike's forehead receded. "An object? What is it?"
"I cannot say."
"Wait a second - have you succeeded in restoring your satellite network?"
"No."
"So how can you see something over the pole?"
"I am in the process of setting up a surface-based point-to-point laser relay system to contact... other installations. A rover at one of these other sites saw something."
Mike blinked. "Other installations? What are you talking about?"
"I do not have time to explain. The important thing is that the inbound object appears to be heading toward the vicinity of Aristillus. Wait - I now have a second data point and have refined my estimations of trajectory and speed. The object is headed directly at Aristillus and will be there in eight minutes."
"Object?"
"The item I'm tracking doesn't match any ship silhouette. As best I can tell it is approximately the size and shape of three cargo containers."
Mike froze and the pain from his bruised forehead was forgotten. Ever since Baltimore the mention of cargo containers caused everyone old enough to remember the Flash to have at least a moment of heightened alertness.
"Gamma, are you saying it could be a nuke?"
Tony to his left yelled, "A nuke? What are you -.”
Mike waved him to silence.
Gamma responded, "Further information is not available."
"What does that mean? Gamma -.”
"There's - please wait. Mike, I'm getting more data. Mike, some rovers on Farside have - "
"You've got rovers on FARSIDE? Jesus, how many rovers do you -"
Tony interrupted again. "Mike, what's going on?"
"Tony, shut up!"
Gamma said, "Mike, please listen! I've done a query and some rovers on Farside have encountered heightened levels of strontium 91 and 92 and zirconium 95. This suggests that there was a nuclear detonation on the Farside sometime in the past few days, and -"
Mike scrambled out from under the earth mover and stood. "Jesus! How big of a nuke is in the cargo container?"
"We do not have enough data to know for sure that this is a nucl -"
"Guess!"
"There hasn't been public disclosure of a new nuclear bomb design in the West since the 2023, but the open literature suggests that the current use W-105 warhead is 400 kilotons."
Mike stared up at the arched rock ceiling of the warehouse. "Kilotons, not megatons? Are we safe down here?"
"An air burst would mostly spare everything except the surface installations -"
"That's good-"
"- but the W-105 was designed during the Korean Escalation and is usually packaged with a hardened perpetrator which -"
Mike knew the geography of Aristillus. Basalt, plagioclase, pyroxene. A bit of pumice, but not much. If a nuke - even one much smaller than 400 kilotons - penetrated into the rock here and exploded a dozen meters below ground, almost all of the energy would couple to the rock. The shattering effect of typical mining charges like ANFO or RDX would be nothing like that of a nuke.
He had an image of a shock wave racing outward through the rock at thousands of meters per second, shattering everything in its path. He saw the ceilings of the A and B class tunnels closest to the surface cracking. The power lines would shear and the lights would go out. Then the whistling would start, as air began leaking out. The city would lose cubic kilometers of air in minutes - the e-p-door project wasn't remotely far enough along.
And then the cave-ins would happen.
Mike felt ill.
"Gamma, I need your help. We've got to evacuate everyone from the tunnels in levels one and two. Everyone. Can you alert -"
"Michael, I've got a call -"
"Not now! Listen, we don't have an evac plan. I need you to call every phone with your high priority -"
"Michael -"
"Fuck, Gamma, listen to me!"
"Michael!"
Mike blinked.
"What?"
"I have more data. It's not a nuclear weapon."
The stress receded, but Mike didn't feel better - instead he felt suddenly light-headed. He reached one hand out behind him and found the cold steel of the Cat's tread. He lowered himself to the concrete floor and sat then leaned back against the tread. He was chilly, and yet his armpits were dripping in sweat. He rubbed a hand across his forehead and it all but slipped across the sweeaty skin.
Around him the shop had fallen silent. Mike looked up and saw that Tony and a few dozen members of his crew were standing around, tools down, staring and listening.
"Gamma, how - how do you know it's not a nuke?"
"I've received radio contact from the object. It's a small spaceship containing John and his Dog companions."
Mike swallowed and tried to speak. He tried again - and couldn't.
"Michael, I am sorry for that false alarm." A pause. "Michael, are you there?"
Mike sat on the floor, silent, his face pale.
He stared at the phone and heard Gamma's voice coming from it, as if from a thousand kilometers away. Then he looked up at the tunnel ceiling and imagined the shockwave, the ceiling cracking, the lights failing.
He licked his lips.
Chapter 118
2064: Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, Earth
Captain Small shook his head a second time. "No."
"But it's so far away from the fleet that -"
"I know it's safe, but it's not about that. What about the promotion boards? Solomon wants that slot as badly as I do, and if he found out about us taking the shot - and he would - do you know how he'd spin it? He'd get the ear of some colonel or general, and start talking about how we risked lives." He paused. "And it wouldn't just be my career that'd be at risk. You'd be vulnerable too, you know. Look, I don't know what they teach you in ROTC, but you've got a lot to learn about how the real Air Force works."
"Captain, we -"
"No, forget it, Chilton. No shot."
Lieutenant Chilton sighed and turned to his console. With the tap of a button the cross hairs centered over the small grainy image of the cargo container spaceship switched from red to green and the stats panel confirmed that the capacitor bank on ABM sat #17 was discharging back to standby levels.
Damn. It would have been fun to shoot it. Not just because Jim on #15 had shot two more lunar sats than he had, but because Captain Small was right - Captain Solomon DID want that promotion badly...and Solomon had a reputation as someone who remembered who his friends were.
Shit.
Well, maybe there was something else he could do to get into Solomon's good
graces.
Chapter 119
2064: 40 kilometers above Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
John held his breath as the north wall of the Aristillus crater slid majestically beneath them. The colony itself was still 30 kilometers ahead, but even from this distance it was unmistakable. Glittering solar farms spread across the surface. Vast piles of mine tailings were stacked to the south and west. At one edge he thought he saw a TBM racking yard, and even from this distance he thought he could make out the open pits of Lai Docks near the center.
He was coming home.
Blue said, "Bullet forty-three. Altitude 40 klicks. Ramping down the AG."
"Excellent." John checked his list. Two more minutes till the next step.
Past the city John could even see a small bit of Sinus Lunicus, just over the far wall of Aristillus. Suddenly something occurred to him. "Gamma, can you hear me?"
"John, is that you?"
John laughed. "Yes, it's me!"
"You survived."
"And so did you."
"Part of me. John, I have an important question - did you get my last message? Did you get to Zhukovskiy Crater?"
Blue, on a separate channel, gave a status update. "Altitude 20 klicks."
"Noted. I'm talking to Gamma. I'll be back with you in a moment."
John turned back to Gamma. "Yes, we got to Zhukovskiy, but -"
"How is the installation there?"
"The installation? You mean your installation?"
"Yes."
"Uh - it's destroyed. A PK ship nuked it."
"I see. Good."
"Good? Gamma, what are you - actually, let's talk about this later. I need to call Mike Martin and patch me through to him."
"I'm sorry, I can't let you do that."
John was taken aback. "What do you mean 'can't'? Gamma, this is important. I'm hanging up. I'll talk to you -"
"John, if you had any communication with the Zhukovskiy facility, it is possible that your suit software is corrupted. I cannot risk direct data communications between you and anyone or anything at Aristillus."
The Powers of the Earth (Aristillus Book 1) Page 51