Rock Killer

by S. Evan Townsend

  ***

  Naguchi worked her computer and turned to look at the slaved screen occasionally. She ignored the warning of a new launch. The rock agonizingly slowly changed pitch and the numbers changed digit by slow digit. Normally she’d have the computer calculate a combination of pitch, yaw, and roll, called the Euler Angle, to bring the asteroid to the attitude needed. But since she was trying to line it up with a moving target (which she assumed to be the stolen Rock Skipper), she had to do it manually. She was helped by the fact the Rock Skipper had yet to change heading. Another missile hit and again the control room vibrated and the floor tilted. A fine touch on the controls and she had the rock stabilized. She now had to change yaw. She gave the port yaw Masuka drive full power. Then, with a practiced hand, she used the starboard drive to start slowing the rock’s swing.

  “Another launch,” she heard Manna say.

  The ship’s yaw was slowing. She stopped it when the ‘X’ number was 179.7 and ‘Y’ read 180.1. Close enough.

  “Got it, Alex.”

  Chun smiled grimly. “Mass driver, full thrust now!”

  ***

  “We’re directly behind them,” Knecht barked as a warning.

  “Launch again,” Griffin ordered. “It should go right up their ass.”

  The ship shuddered for the fourth time.

  “Do you want to change heading?” Knecht asked urgently.

  “What for?”

  “The mass driver,” she said emphatically.

  “What about it?”

  “If they—” Knecht started, then noticed Griffin was enthralled by watching the missile and not listening. She turned to her controls. The ship pitched 90 degrees. She slammed on the drive.

  “What the hell?” Griffin yelled as the asteroid swung from above his head to in front of him. He turned to Knecht but the full 1.5 gee acceleration of the ship grabbed at him.

  Unprepared, he was slapped to the floor. He stood and looked at Knecht.

  “What the hell?” he screamed at her.

  “The mass driver,” she yelled back. Griffin turned to look out the window in time to see the mass driver start up. But, just behind the photons that brought that information, the dust-like reaction mass smote the ship with the powerful kinetic punch its incredible speed gave it.

  ***

  The missile the Rock Killer had just launched was just outside the angle the mass driver threw its exhaust and therefore escaped its fury. It was locked on the center of the profile its radar eye saw. Gyros changed its heading so that it headed straight for the profile’s center. That happened to be where the base of the mass driver was connected to the asteroid.

  ***

  “Control room, this is Manna. The acquisition radar is gone. There’s still guidance radar.”

  “Damn,” Chun said. “We got the ship but the missile is still coming. It’s coming almost right up our tail pipe.”

  “Why doesn’t the mass driver—”

  The gravity momentarily grew greater. Then the air pressure and the gravity started dropping alarmingly fast.

  “Mass driver,” Chun said. There was no answer. Chun felt himself start to float. “Diane?” he yelled at the intercom.

  Again nothing. “Bente, give us some thrust.”

  Naguchi worked her computer. “I’ve no response from the rear Masuka drive or the mass driver.”

  “Chun, this is Thorne,” came over the intercom. His voice seemed subdued.

  “Go ahead.”

  “The missile took out the mass driver. We’re losing air. I don’t know how soon we can patch it up. It blew out the emergency door. If they hit us there again...” He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  Chun bowed his head. There were five people in the mass driver section, including his friends and Thorne’s lover.

  “Alex?” Thorne’s voice came.

  “I’m sorry,” Alex whispered.

  “If they hit us again,” Thorne repeated.

  “The ship is gone,” Chun said with voice void of any emotion.

  “How do you know?”

  “Its radar is gone.”

  “They may have just turned it off, Alex.”

  Alex shook his head berating himself. “Damn, you’re right.” I must be getting stupid, he thought. Again he was letting his personal feelings interfere with what his duty demanded. He noticed Thorne had remained professional. The asteroid didn’t have any rear-facing radar so there was no way to use machinery to check on the fate of the Rock Skipper. Alex could only think of one solution: “Send someone out to eyeball it and let me know.”

  “Understood.”

  “Director, this is Manna in communications.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “We just got a message from Security Head Mitchel.”

  “Send it to my computer.”

  “Roger.”

  ***

  “Damn it!” Charlie swore. She’d grabbed the wrong ammunition. The KS-900 used nine millimeter caseless. In her haste she’d picked up a box of 9x19mm parabellum rounds used in older pistols and submachine guns. With no ammo, the weapon was about as useful as a rock.

  “What is happening?” the woman asked handing her a housecoat.

  “Long story,” Charlie answered putting on the paisley thing. It was too short yet too big, but it covered the essentials.

  Sirens cut off the woman before she could ask another question. Soon there was a pounding on the door. Charlie opened it with the chain on. Two LAPD officers, one male, one female, stood on the porch in their flack uniforms. Charlie let them in.

  “What’s the problem?” the woman asked. The male spotted the weapon and bullets Charlie had left on the woman’s couch.

  “What the hell’s that?” he said pointing and his hand went to his pistol.

  “Listen,” Charlie said, keeping her hands in sight, “my name is Charlene Jones. If you’ll contact special agent Gordon Freeman of the FBI in Washington he’ll explain everything. That weapon and this chip,” she held it up, “are evidence in the murder of Space Resources personnel on the Moon.”

  The two cops looked at each other. The female looked at the old woman and asked her a question in Spanish. This brought forth a rapid stream of the lady’s native language. The police officer occasionally asked short questions. Eventually she turned to her partner. “The lady, Mrs. Cortez, says that this woman came to her door almost naked and carrying that weapon. She said a man from the house next door tried to come into the house after her. She said she thinks the house next door is a smash house or something.”

  “Maybe we’d better check it out,” the male said.

  Charlie shook her head. “That house is national headquarters of the Gaia Alliance, the terrorist group. You’d better get some help.”

  The cops looked at her in disbelief. “Damn,” the female whispered. “Okay,” she said. “You’re coming with us.”

  “With pleasure,” Charlie said. She turned to the lady.

  “Thank you, Gracias.”

  Mrs. Cortez smiled and nodded. Charlie made a mental note to see that SRI thanked her more substantially.

  The male cop talked into the radio attached to his cheek. “This is delta five-three, requesting back-up and a sergeant at—”

  The explosion blew the front door apart in a shower of splinters. The male cop’s fractured body careened into his partner.

  The spitting sound of automatic weapons fire crackled through the night. The doorframe was burning and through the smoke and flames Charlie saw the muzzle flash from a weapon being held at hip level. She pulled the old lady to the floor.

  The female cop pushed the gory mess off of her and returned fire with her service pistol while yelling into her radio, “Officer needs assistance, officer down.”

  Charlie crawled over to the dead cop and took his pistol from its holster. The female stopped firing to see what Charlie was doing and a burst of fire made mincemeat of her face.

  Charlie fired twice at the door. Sh
e saw the profile of a man falling.

  The carpet was on fire and the flames were rolling against the dead bodies of the cops. Charlie took the female cop’s weapon and emptied its magazine toward the door and yelled at Mrs. Cortez. “Out the back door, now!”

  ***

  “We’re losing a hell of a lot of air, sir,” Security Man Perez said, pushing himself up the corridor from the remains of the emergency door that led to the mass driver. The door had been blown off its hinges.

  Thorne nodded, then, remembering they were both in pressure suits, said, “I know.”

  “The DC foam,” Perez continued, “is being sucked out the cracks before it hardens. If we don’t get a new door in here we’re all going to be trying to suck down vacuum.” Damage control foam was designed for little breaches cause by micro-meteors or accidents, not battle damage.

  “The miners are working on it,” Thorne said turning to see where, behind him, miners were installing a new emergency door. It was a race to see who would finish first. Thorne didn’t care, but Perez was right. Their life was being sucked out the hole where the door had been.

  “I’m going in,” Thorne said.

  “By yourself?” Perez queried.

  “Yes, I don’t want to risk more than one man.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  And, thought Thorne, if I cry, no one will see me.

  ***

  Mitchel sat in his office overlooking Tokyo. As the evening progressed the lights became more garish and glaring, even from this height.

  Mitchel knew that in sections of Tokyo and Yokohama there were places one could purchase almost whatever one wanted. Right now he wanted a message from Alexander Chun worse than anything else. The broadcast from the Rock Killer had made the news a while ago and still not one bit had been broadcast from SRI-1961.

  The computer beeped.

  “Yes?” Mitchel yelled at the machine.

  “Incoming message” the computer said in its soothing voice.

  Mitchel smiled broadly. “Display.”

  Two icons appeared on the screen indicating the message was encoded and high priority.

  Elisa Morgan’s face appeared. She looked worried.

  Mitchel felt his emotions sag like a sapling under a heavy snow.

  “Yes, Elisa?” Mitchel asked.

  “Mitch,” she said, apparently not noticing Mitchel’s disappointment. “I’m with Mr. Zvi Patai of the Mossad. He has come to me with a concern.” The view widened to show a middle-aged man. Mitchel could tell he was a disciplined, serious person just from the determination in his tanned face.

  “Mr. Mitchel,” Patai said, “we have a concern.”

  “Yes?” Mitchel asked. He knew this would lead to something important. Elisa wouldn’t waste his time during a crisis. “We have reports out of the Baathist States that there is the possibility of a coup d’etat soon. One man, an advisor to the president of Syria that we know only as ‘Faruq,’ has support from the Party and elements of the military.”

  “This is very interesting but what,” Mitchel said, “does it have to do with SRI?”

  “Mitch,” Elisa said, “Mr. Patai came to me just after the announcement of the attack on the asteroid. We shared information. We knew of the Syrian support for the Gaia Alliance, the Mossad knew of the planned coup. It seems the usurper Mr. Patai is concerned about is the same Faruq we’ve been investigating; the one that authorized the purchase of the Pumas for the GA.”

  “It seems,” Patai continued, “that this man plans to use this attack to his political advantage.”

  “Are you saying this Faruq acted without authorization?”

  “No,” Patai replied. “He may have over-stepped his bounds, though. But what’s important is that this man must not reach power.”

  “Why?”

  “We believe he would use Syria’s nuclear missiles for a preemptive strike on Israel. Of course, we will retaliate as best we can. But still, Mr. Mitchel, millions of lives will be lost.”

  “Also,” Elisa said, “This man is almost solely responsible for the GA having the resources to attack SRI-1961.”

  Mitchel looked at the faces on the screen. Patai displayed no emotion but Morgan was so untypically distraught it visibly showed.

  “This man must be stopped,” Patai stated firmly.

  “What about your people?”

  Patai’s fortitude seemed to falter. “We have political considerations,” he said sardonically. “The ruling party has placed many restrictions on the activities of the Mossad. It is hoped that SRI could do something.”

  “Such as?” Mitchel asked.

  “I do not know,” Patai admitted. “But something, anything.”

  Wonderful, Mitchel thought, nuclear war in the Middle East. Now, not only do we have to save our own people from terrorists, but stop Armageddon.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “We can save them.”

  The cops’ bodies were making an effective firebreak, halting the advance of the flames across the rug. The front of the house was an inferno and the smoke and heat were a mixed blessing. No one was shooting at Charlie or trying to come into the house, but Charlie knew she couldn’t stay put much longer.

  She checked the stamp on the slide of the cop’s weapon; it was a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson. Again, her box of 9mm was useless. She thought that between herself and the female cop the other gun emptied in eleven or twelve rounds. That meant she had nine or ten to go in the male cop’s gun.

  She waited until she thought the old lady had enough time to escape the house. Then she ran in a low crouch to avoid the smoke, putting her back to the flames.

  As she got away from the roar of the fire, she could hear bullets impacting the exterior of the house. Glass shattered behind Charlie as she slipped into the backyard. From the fire or the bullets, she didn’t know.

  The old woman was stooped on the lawn, praying in Spanish. Charlie grabbed her arm and pulled her with her. “¡Vamanos!” Charlie yelled hoping that meant what she thought it did.

  She half led, half dragged the poor lady across the meticulously cared-for grass. They came to a waist-high chain link fence just as someone ran around the far corner of the burning house. Charlie literally threw the woman over the barrier then turned and fired at the man. He was looking in the wrong direction and never saw what hit him. Nine rounds left.

  Charlie jumped the fence as Beatty appeared from behind the house where the body of the man Charlie had just killed lay. The old woman was trotting amazingly fast for her age toward the back door of the house next door.

  Beatty yelled and fired a long burst. Stupid, Charlie thought. He didn’t control the weapon and missed her completely.

  Charlie turned and squeezed off two rounds and Beatty ducked behind the corner. Seven rounds left, or maybe six.

  The woman was pounding on the back door and yelling in Spanish. Charlie was going to be real surprised if anyone was foolish or brave enough to open it.

  Charlie heard sirens as she saw Beatty look around the house corner and fire wildly. The flames were reaching the back of the house and Charlie suspected Beatty was starting to panic as he faced burning or risked getting shot by Charlie. She fired, driving Beatty around the corner again, closer to the inferno.

  Six rounds left. She walked backwards, watching both corners of the old lady’s house. Flames were showing in the back windows and the entire scene was lit with the macabre orange light that cast dancing shadows. A movement near the street caught her eye and she turned to see a GA member, the man in the duo whose coupling had kept Charlie awake, bring up a weapon. Charlie fired two rounds at him and he took cover behind a parked car. Four rounds. Beatty discharged a fusillade at Charlie, still missing. She shot back at him. Three. The man behind the car rose and Charlie fired at him, shattering a windshield. Two, or maybe one round left.

  Beatty released another burst and Charlie shot at him. The slide locked back; the magazine was empty. Charlie turned and ran. She heard
both Beatty’s and the other man’s weapons split the air as each fired a long volley at her. The bullets hit her from behind and threw her forward, face down. She could smell dirt and grass and felt wet warmth cover her back.

  Sirens screamed at her and stopped suddenly. She heard almost incessant gunfire: both bursts and single shots. A helicopter was overhead. She could feel heat from the conflagration that was the woman’s house; she smelled smoke and cordite. The reports from weapons slowed and finally stopped.

  Someone touched her and said, “Ohmigod,” as Charlie lost consciousness.

  ***

  In his pressure suit, Thorne moved through the mass driver section, pulling himself along handholds and equipment. Some machinery was damaged and some was, incongruously, still running.

  He shut off what he could.

  The lights were off and he used his helmet light to survey the damage. The beam passed through a cloud of silvery snow.

  The equipment and rock walls were coated in frozen water. A water pipe had burst and the water flash froze as it boiled out.

  It looked to Thorne as if a lot had been lost before life support shut off the water supply.

  He found one body wedged in a supporting framework. It was Diana. Under a sheath of bubble-laced ice, black blood matted her long hair and her face was a swollen horror.

  Thorne clamped his throat shut. Vomiting in a pressure suit in free fall was not only messy but potentially lethal. He moved away, toward the hole in the base of the rock where the missile hit.

  He used a rope to secure himself to a handhold and then swung into the jagged hole. The sky was like black felt someone had spilled sugar on. Thorne looked at the base of the mass driver. It was still secured to the rock. To the limit of his vision its lactic-like structure was undamaged. But the missile had hit some of the Masuka drives.

  Lastly, Thorne surveyed the sky. He would look at a point watching for any “star” that moved. He repeated this for all the space he could see. He didn’t find anything to indicate the Rock Skipper was still out there.

  He pulled himself back into the relative security of the asteroid.

  ***

  The control room crew was donning emergency pressure suits. The air was breathably thick but slightly cooler, about like being on a high mountain; but safety demanded that precaution.