“You could've given me some warning.”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“It might change everything.”
“How so, Colonel?” Garson frowned up at him.
“We don't know what will draw the aliens to us. Could be something as unobtrusive as a thruster jet.”
“It was a chance I had to take. We’re heading into the outer edges of the debris field now.”
“Can we clear it?”
“Not without adding days to our passage. We’d have to make a significant course correction, meaning we’d have to use the main engines.”
“Can we cut across it without hitting anything?”
“If we use the main engines we can dodge the big ones easy enough. The ones too small to pick up on sensors, well, that’s another matter.”
“Give me some odds.”
“Realistically, less than one-thousandth of one percent that one will actually hit us. The ion shielding should protect us, but, if we get nailed by anything bigger than a golf ball, we might have a problem or two.”
“You game?”
“Sure, Colonel. Can't live forever.” Garson smiled ruefully. “I mean, we stand a better chance of surviving the asteroids than we do the aliens.”
“Is the field moving in the right direction?”
“Somewhat. We can hang out in the outer fringe and make our way across, then divert when we’re clear.”
“Do what you have to, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
O’Brien turned to the sensor con. With the illumination dimmed to reduce their energy signature, shadows filled the corners. Light from outside ebbed and brightened, though very little reached far inside the cabin. He keyed on the display. It swept clockwise about the ship’s axis. Every four seconds, the star pattern repeated.
He thought of the others, assessed their strengths and weaknesses, their technical skills and emotional stability. Except for Doomes, who was working in the hold, the others were asleep. Clapton had just finished spelling Garson at the helm and was folding down a bunk. The muffled hum of one fission reactor idling at minimum did little to conceal Tammer’s fitful snoring, nor the distant clinks and taps of tools and parts. The helm con beeped various tones as O’Brien swept for anomalies and made a minor course correction. There was nothing out there except space, empty space for millions of miles.
*****
An insistent warning bleep jarred O’Brien from his reverie. An anomaly had formed nine thousand kilometers to port. He silenced the alarm and keyed the intercom. “Garson, you’d better get up here.” He received a muted reply.
Shortly, Garson pushed up through the hatch. His eyes were bleary and a noticeable puffiness swelled his face. He had excused himself for a nap less than an hour before. Using the light gravity, he pushed himself off, tucked his legs, tumbled once and dropped with a whump into the chair beside O’Brien. A puzzled expression replaced his infectious exuberance as he locked in and faced O’Brien. “Colonel?”
“They’re back.”
“Blazes. Trade places with me, Colonel. I’ll get us deeper into the debris field. We may be able to lose them, but I’d get that piss-ant cannon ready just the same.”
O’Brien keyed his com, then traded places with Garson, ducking low as Garson hefted himself over and into the pilot seat. “Clapton. We need you up here. The rest of you, lock down. Our UFO is back.”
With a sharp snap, Garson secured. He reached for the con, then hesitated and rechecked the harness. Apparently satisfied, he keyed up the drive display and brought the twin reactors online. The sudden increase in the drive’s resonant frequency created an audible hum and a subtle vibration, sensed more than felt.
Inputting sequences, O’Brien powered up the remaining command functions. “Full sensor sweep initiated.” Nearly a mirror image of what lay beyond the viewport, the main vid glowed with the light of millions of stars, improving the command deck illumination.
“There.” Clapton pointed to the lower right side of the vid as he slipped into a chair beside them. “To port at three o’clock.” A blurred patch against the black field of bright points was still too distant for them to see any more than that.
“Cannon online.” Though outwardly dispassionate, O’Brien felt anything but calm. The enemy’s technical advantages were largely unknown, but they definitely had the power to destroy the Mars Explorer. Still, he couldn’t see giving up without a fight. More than likely, the end result would be the same. An irregular pattern of beeps and computer generated verbal warnings filled the cabin while the three men prepared their tiny ship for war.
“Odds pretty long, Colonel?”
“Who...” O’Brien turned about. “uh...hello, Tammer. Think you can be of help?”
Tammer took a seat behind O’Brien and secured. “Sadly...no, Colonel. I leave such matters in the hands of those most capable. I’m merely an observer. This is history in the making, is it not?” He offered a self-deprecating nod as if to lend weight to his words.
O’Brien stared over his shoulder at the journalist, holding the look longer than he had intended. “Just keep quiet, okay?” Point made, he went to turn back, but a subtle movement caught his eye. Tammer’s vidmate. O’Brien snorted and went back to work.
“I have no intention of interfering, Colonel.” Unnatural for him as it was, Tammer’s words were softly spoken, laced with worry.
“Good. Keep it that way.” His hands poised over the con, O'Brien looked to Garson, anticipating the officer’s next move.
“Count down to main engine firing...three...two...one...ignition.” Garson said.
“Roger. Measuring even burn on both engines at one hundred and two percent. Reactor flow steady, heat dissipation nominal.”
The thunderous rumble of the main engines reverberated. Rotation slowed, then ceased, depriving them of gravity. With Garson maintaining level flight, the thrusters nudged the ship to port. They made for the protection of the comet trail, their velocity increasing a thousand kilometers a second. Except for a chunk of ice-encrusted debris hurtling by at some distance, the visual from the viewport and the vid remained unchanged: billions of motionless points of light amid an all-consuming blackness.
O’Brien leaned toward Garson to be heard without raising his voice. “You got any ideas?”
“I thought we’d hide in the particle wake of one of the big boys. Worst case, land on one.” Garson’s eyes sought O’Brien’s. “At the least it may give us a fleeting chance of escape.”
“Pretty tricky stuff.” For the first time in years, O’Brien questioned his ability to make the right choices under these extraordinary circumstances. Riding in the particle wake would be problematic, but attempting an asteroid landing was akin to jumping off a tall bridge in hopes the water would break your fall gently. It was O’Brien’s call.
“Ain’t technology wonderful?” A cryptic smile creased Garson’s face. He gave the impression of being reasonably confident, but O’Brien sensed the Captain had his doubts too. Still, it was the only tactic that offered the slightest probability of escape. He looked Garson square in the eye, his brows pushed together. “My piloting skills aren’t what they used to be, but I’ll wager you’ve got the moxie to pull it off. Either way, we crash into the asteroid or the aliens get us, we’re dead. You’ve got the helm.”
Garson’s smile faded. His features hardened. He nodded and immersed himself in the task at hand. With quick, fluid motions, he entered the command sequences and took hold of the stubby joystick on the right side of the con. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“You really think we can pull it off?” Clapton whispered.
“I have every confidence.”
“If you would,” Garson interrupted, “keep an eye on our alien out there. I need to know how much maneuvering room I have.”
“Sure.” O’Brien keyed on his vid and a display rose from the console before him. On the screen, magnified a thousand-fold, was the alien shi
p: a dark, irregularly shaped rectangle delineated by the way it blocked out the stars. Dozens of faint red and white glow points were scattered about its hull. Distance readings in kilometers and telemetry data scrolled across the bottom. He scaled the alien vessel. Forty meters high, a hundred wide and easily three hundred and fifty meters long. Compared to Earth's largest spaceships, it was gigantic. David and Goliath.
“Clapton.”
“Yes, Colonel?”
“Man the weapons con.”
Friends and colleagues for many years, their eyes met for the briefest of moments. It was sufficient for O’Brien to read Clapton’s thoughts. The major was certain their actions would not change the outcome of the encounter. His jaws were set and his face shone with perspiration.
“Yes, sir.” The standard operations menu before Clapton changed to a series of squares and circles. At the top, duplicate readings to those on O’Brien’s screen were laid out in small green rectangles. “Range...forty-three hundred kilometers...closing at five kps.”
“Damn...damn...damn.”
“Captain?”
“Not enough time, Colonel. It’ll take twice that long to reach the nearest asteroid, then another minute to reach that big fat one in the middle.”
“Two and a half minutes.” O’Brien glanced over at Clapton. “The cannon’s range is less than five kilometers. To be effective enough to cause any real damage, wait until the target is at, say five hundred meters, then give them a couple of five second bursts. It’ll take eight or ten seconds to recharge the magnetos between bursts.”
“Got it.”
Each time Garson nudged the stick, minute adjustments occurred in the positioning of the motor nozzles, allowing him to make subtle changes in the ship’s trajectory. On the main vid, the asteroid field coalesced, revealing its true nature: a jumble of dark rocks, some as small as homes, others several kilometers across, tumbling through the heavens at thousands of kilometers per hour. Most appeared as mere flecks of light blinking in and out.
“That ship is closing fast,” O’Brien announced, “Range, two-hundred-twenty-seven kilometers. Hold, Clapton. Hold until they’re right on top of us.”
“They might not wait for us to take the first punch.” Worry edged Clapton’s words, but his eyes were hard and cold, his hands steady.
“They might not,” O’Brien agreed.
“We’ll be in the field in less than a minute.” Garson nudged the stick and the nearest asteroid gradually centered on the main vid. The image grew painfully slow. O’Brien estimated the nearest rock was a dozen kilometers across, but now several more were clearly visible. One, much larger and twice as far, left a trail of crystallized moisture. Reflecting the distant rays of the sun, the thin white veil sparkled.
“Closing fast,” Clapton intoned. “Twenty-three kilometers. They’ll be here in seconds.”
“Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, Colonel.”
“Garson?”
“We won’t make it.”
“Aim for the rock with the tail. That might throw them off.”
“They’ll have us square by then, Colonel.”
“Two kilometers...one kilometer,” Clapton intoned.
The hum of the magnetos grew. With a depleting whine, the laser fired. For five seconds a thin yellow beam connected the two vessels, cutting into the alien ship as it positioned itself over their tiny craft. The beam abruptly ended and again the magnetos hummed, recharging. O’Brien counted to eight and felt the laser fire anew. The narrow beam impacted the same spot on the alien hull. A pale white puff burst forth. With surprising speed, the vessel pulled away.
“Kudos! Kudos!”
“Shut up, Tammer.”
“My apologies, Colonel.”
“Fire again?” Clapton asked.
“They’re out of range. Five kilometers, ten. Holding steady at ten kilometers.”
Clapton leaned back and looked sideways at O’Brien, his cool demeanor amended to a self-satisfied smirk. “Guess they didn’t expect to get bit.”
“It was just a nibble. We didn’t hurt them enough to make a difference.”
“Ah, that’s true, but now they know we have teeth. They may react more cautiously the next time they mess with us.”
“The next time will most likely be the last.”
Garson drew their attention to the vid. “We’re entering the asteroid field.”
Far too close, a rock the size of a small house hurtled past the viewport. On O’Brien’s screen, the alien ship’s image remained steady.
“Matching the field’s trajectory and acceleration,” Garson guided the ship smoothly to starboard, angling towards the silver trail of the target asteroid.
Nearly concealed by the noise of the engines, a tinny thunk rang out. Below, Myer screamed.
Decompression imminent. The computer warned. Twenty one minutes forty-eight seconds to complete decompression.
O’Brien swiveled to face the hatch. “What’s happening down there?”
A timorous voice responded. “We have a hole in the hull. The guys are fixing it.”
“Paider?” O’Brien hollered.
“Under control, Colonel. We put on a patch.”
Decompression halted. Pressurization normalizing.
The image of the alien ship on O’Brien’s vid gave way to a fuzzy white bath of crystallized particles. He tried to convince himself that this was a tricky, but doable maneuver, but the mild turmoil in his belly was hard to refute. The risks were daunting: an attempted landing on an asteroid had never been tried with a manned space vehicle before.
“Approaching asteroid.” Steady and reassuring, Garson focused on the con, but darted occasional looks at the overhead vid while they slipped into the asteroid’s trail. “Landing struts extended. Brace for impact. This is going to be a hard one.”
“Secure below!” O’Brien’s heartbeat quickened. Unconsciously, he held his breath and stiffened.
“Asteroid rotation at three revolutions per minute. Impact in five seconds.” Though he sounded assured, Garson’s knuckles whitened on the joystick. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
The vid dissolved into sparkling white. An unnatural quiet invaded the ship. O'Brien braced himself. With a horrific splintering and rending, the Mars Explorer slammed into the asteroid. It teetered precariously, eliciting a fearful cry from Myer, then settled solidly on its precarious perch.
“Engines offline.”
The rumble of the engines faded beneath the quiet hum of the reactors and the normal sounds arising from the cons. Tammer breathed a sigh of relief, while Garson continued with the post-landing sequence as if it were an exercise.
Since the immediate threat, an uncontrolled collision with the asteroid, had been avoided, O’Brien relaxed a notch. He released, the harsh snap of the clasp, jarring, and pushed himself up. “I’m going below to check on the hull breach.”
“Roger, Colonel,” Garson replied. “I’ll do an external scan. See what condition we’re in.”
“I’ll do a sensor sweep.” Relieved, Clapton reached over his con and keyed up the proper display.
”No!” Face flushed, Tammer clutched the chair arms as if unwilling to admit that, for the moment, they were safe. “I...I mean, that wouldn’t be such a good idea...would it? If they can...”
“Tammer’s right.” Floating past him, O’Brien gripped Tammer’s shoulder. “The asteroid cloud may muddle our signature, but it won’t block it completely. For now, I suggest we limit sensory output. Internal and external. Shut down everything except life support and basic functions...make them think we crashed.”
“Not a problem, Colonel. Not a problem.” Garson offered a wan smile, but his eyes revealed little warmth. They were in a perilous situation, blinded by the asteroid’s wake and held to a rocky ice ball by a tenuous gravity of unknown strength. Time was not on their side and they all knew it. The alien ship was still out there, waiting.
Chapter Five
18:05 Hours, July 12, 2386 - Earth
Surprised, yet oddly calm, George locked eyes with the man looming over him. Broad shouldered and half a head shorter, the leader ’s ruggedly handsome face, what could be seen in the flickering light of a battered oil lantern, sported thick, uneven patches of mottled brown stubble. Straight dark hair tumbled in oily clumps over his thick fur collar.
“Who are you?” George growled.
“Weuns be askin’ da quessions. Ya jus shuts up.” The man slung a battered Marlin 30-30 over his shoulder, dropped to a crouch, then whipped out a bone-handle hunting knife and pressed it to George's chest, pricking the jacket. Lamplight glinted off the polished blade. He jerked his head.
Another gunman stepped into the feeble light and jammed a short-barreled shotgun in Baider’s belly, eliciting a grunt. Coldly proficient, he pushed the barrel up Baider’s chest until it rested in the hollow below the seaman’s jaw, then searched and disarmed him.
“Set yews down ‘til we git da youngun doctored up. Set.”
Granite-faced with barely repressed anger, Baider slid to a squat against the wall. Neck muscles taut, arms low and away from his body, he looked ready to spring.
Another gunman, his true size concealed by layers of fur and cloth, stuck a sixteen gauge Remington pump shotgun in Baider’s face. “Set!”
Baider slid his feet from under him and sat on the cold, mold encrusted polycrete without further protest. More men appeared in the dim circle of light, their odd assortment of weapons trained on the prisoners. Their long-guns were hunting rifles: a Winchester .22, Colt 30-06, a pair of .44 caliber German carbines and a sawed-off Remington 410 shotgun. No military weapons. They expertly frisked and disarmed Wendell and George then motioned with their guns and shoved them toward Baider.
“Yews. All-a-ya. Set ‘side um, 'cept da docta."
Subtle sounds indicated there were more gunmen outside, but within the ruin were seven rough looking men and a woman, though she was hardly recognizable as such: weather beaten features glimpsed beneath a thick fur hood. Like the others, she wore baggy, coarse-woven wool pants and dyed-black coats or patchwork furs to their knees. Their attire was at odds with their compact, richly tanned leather backpacks and mid-calf boots.
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