Solomon Family Warriors II

by Robert H. Cherny

  Brownie and Sam arrived at Myra’s ship and headed for the airlock.

  The computer spoke. “Everyone can stand down. He’s shouting. That’s a good sign. If he was going to kill her he would have attacked her by now. Of course, she would have fought back. It would have been messy.”

  “I saved your scrawny ass from the Swordsmen,” Myra shouted back. “You should be thanking me, you arrogant shit head!”

  “Very good,” the computer said. “They will shout it out and it will be over.”

  “Saved my ass! My ass! You turned me into a common thief. I am in possession of three stolen spacecraft. How am I going to get out of this? I can’t take them back and tell them it was all a horrid mistake! I am a fugitive because of you!”

  The computer spoke again. “He and Lt. Andersen used to get in shouting matches, They never hurt each other, and they are still friends.”

  Myra shouted back, “If I hadn’t sent you back early, there would have been no cargo waiting for you. There would have been a battalion of Shore Patrol waiting to take you into custody for the murder of Daniel Esperanza.”

  The computer spoke. “I don’t have a recording on that. It was the second of the three times he got this mad. It was another bar room brawl.”

  “What are you talking about?” Greg demanded.

  Myra was calming down. “Daniel Esperanza’s uncle is a senior executive in the Swordsmen. They were planning to arrest you for the murder and then offer you clemency if you would join the Swordsmen’s Space Force. Once there, they would arrange for you to be killed in a training mission proving their military superiority.”

  “What a crock of shit!”

  “I have the transcripts. You can look at them yourself!” She turned away from him.

  “I’m not done with you yet! You forced me to drag two dozen misfits and deviates to this planet with no hope of survival. Did you bring them here to die? Is this your idea of a plan? What were you thinking?”

  There was a noticeable pause. The computer spoke. “His blood pressure is dropping. His heart rate is approaching normal levels. The danger has passed. Have Brownie and Sam return to the ship.”

  Myra’s voice softened. “I could not watch as my friends were tortured and killed. Many people dear to me have suffered at Swordsmen hands. The people on the ship were in immediate danger for their lives. Maybe I could have chosen people better suited to creating a community, but I rescued who I could. There are more in desperate need of rescuing who I have not been able to reach and others I did not reach in time. You were my only hope, and now you have gone against me.” Her voice choked up, and she started to cry.

  Greg’s voice returned to normal. “Lt. Myrakova, this has to be one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard. You have broken a list of regulations longer than I could recite in a day, and now you ask me to help you. God damn it, what do you expect to happen now?”

  The computer spoke, “The battle is over. She won.”

  “We need to get everyone down to the planet’s surface. We need to hide your ship. We need to build a settlement so we can survive the coming winter.” Myra said.

  “And do you have a plan for this?”

  “Some of it, but I need help.”

  “Get into your EVA suit. We’ll go to my ship to discuss our alternatives.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And I trust that in the future all your initiatives will be collaborative. Neither of us is an army of one. We have people who depend on us. We have responsibilities.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I will retain command until such time as we are dirt-side and we can elect a proper council of which neither of us will be members. Is that understood?”

  “Aye, Aye, Sir.”

  “Very well. Let’s go.”

  “Misfits and deviates,” Blondie said softly, “Misfits and deviates. He called us misfits and deviates. Is that what he thinks of us?”

  The computer replied, “Blondie, he loves you. He loves Brownie, too. Katherine, he likes you and Sam, but it’s not the same. He is angry because you can’t love him back. He’s hurt, and he’s angry. He doesn’t understand. He mutters to himself about it all the time. He feels that for the first time in a long time he has someone to love, and they can’t love him. It is a source of great pain.”

  “The poor man,” Katherine said.

  “He doesn’t want your pity. He wants your love. Can you give him that?”

  HOMESTEAD - CHAPTER SIX

  SAM AND BROWNIE WAITED outside for Greg and Myra. They stowed the tug before returning to the air lock. There was no conversation as they made their way to the flight deck. Greg was first with Myra behind him. Brownie and Sam followed. If anyone had been watching the monitors, they would have noticed that the heart rates and blood pressures of all the people on the flight deck were elevated and respiration was slowed.

  Blondie was waiting on the flight deck ready to pounce. As soon as Greg came into view she launched herself at him. “Misfits and deviates! Is that what you think of us?” She swung to slap him across the face.

  Greg’s training with Helen had paid off. His speed and reflexes had returned. He neatly caught her wrist with one hand and squeezed it hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to break anything. His eyes bored into hers with a cold anger that made her recoil.

  “Blondie, back off!” The computer shouted in Lt. Andersen’s voice.

  “You stay out of this!” Greg shouted back.

  “Sir, in accordance with Directive 8, I cannot obey that order.” The computer replied with unnerving calm.

  “The HELL with Directive 8.”

  “I cannot do that,” the computer replied firmly.

  “Stay out of this!” Greg commanded.

  Ignoring him, the computer replied, “Sir, you will release the lady’s wrist or I will shut down life support to the flight deck.”

  “You can’t do that!” Brownie gasped.

  “Under Directive 8 and the right conditions, enough of which currently exist, I can shut down life support long enough for you to lose consciousness.”

  His mind racing to figure out what precipitated this situation, Greg shouted, “Command Mode! Report on activities on the flight deck during my absence.”

  “I played the recording of Lt. Andersen’s conversation with Commodore Davidson with regard to the death of Anthony LaMarche and his associate.”

  “You stupid machine!” Greg relaxed his grip on Blondie’s wrist, but did not release her. “What else did you tell them, you meddlesome hunk of overpriced silica sand?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything else. You left your suit communicator on. They heard everything you and Myra said while you were on her ship.”

  “I can’t believe you killed three men with your bare hands,” Blondie stammered wide eyed.

  “Five men,” the computer responded. “In the incident with Daniel Esperanza, there were two others.”

  “Five??” Blondie shrieked. “You killed five men with your bare hands! Were you merely playing with Helen? Could you have killed her, too? What’s to keep you from killing me or any of us?”

  “Killing is wrong,” Greg said coldly.

  “But killing is our job,” Myra said.

  “Doesn’t make it right,” Greg replied sternly.

  “No, I guess not,” Myra said, chastised.

  Katherine stepped into the middle. “Folks, we have people depending on us for their health and safety. Fighting amongst ourselves, however valid our positions might be, will not enhance their chances of survival. I suggest we get everyone to the surface and discuss, in a rational fashion, what we do from there.” Everyone nodded, but Greg did not release Blondie’s wrist.

  “Good,” Katherine continued. “Brownie and Sam, please bring everyone to the common area.” They left silently, obviously glad to be out of the line of fire.

  When they were gone, Katherine said, “Captain, please release Blondie. You are hurting her.”

&
nbsp; When Blondie had retrieved her wrist, Katherine continued, “How do we get these people down to the planet’s surface?”

  It took them half an hour to hammer out the plan. They agreed Katherine was the calmest, and should present the plan. They trooped down to the common area.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Katherine addressed them, “I wish that I could tell you the next part of our trip would go as smoothly as the last.”

  The comment drew chuckles since, for some, the trip had not been particularly smooth. The close quarters had been stressful.

  “We will descend to the planet’s surface. The descent is not without risk. We have four craft capable of reaching the surface. Myra’s P I scout ship will go first. She will guide us by serving as a landing beacon. Greg will take his cargo tug and wait nearby to provide rescue support if we need it. Brownie and Sam will stay here to perform maintenance. Blondie and I will make water landings with the shuttles. The shuttles are designed for water landings but not under full load. We don’t know how they will handle on impact with the water. We can’t drop the modular homes the way we do the cargo containers because they are not designed for atmospheric re-entry. This ship’s computer has calculated the best approach angles and speeds, but some of the assumptions we had to make may not be valid.”

  Katherine surveyed the reactions before continuing. “Dr. Miller and Dr. Harrison will fly in the cabin with me. Ms. Bell and Dr. Turner will be in the cabin with Blondie. Ms. Sanchez will take the engineer seat with Captain Solomon, and Ms. Frankel will take the fire control seat with Lt. Myrakova. Everyone else will strap into the flight seats in your containers. The plan is to land at sunrise. There is approximately ten minutes when the winds over the coast shift from onshore to offshore and the water will be smoothest. The tide will be receding where we intend to land. There is a river delta near where Captain Solomon has made previous drops. Extending out from this river delta, the sand is smooth and flat into a protected bay. Given the gentle slope of the sand, the tide should expose a substantial beach which will allow us to walk on relatively dry sand to the land beyond.”

  She paused to organize her thoughts. “The part we do not know is how hard that sand is. Will it support the weight of the shuttles or will they sink in? The difference is critical. We will lower the landing gear after we are on the surface in the hope that the wheels will keep the shuttles out of the water. We don’t know if the struts will withstand the force of the water or if they will break off. We also don’t know if the added drag of the open doors will force the nose down into the water and drive the ship under the surface. We will drop the mains first because we know that if we drop the nose too early, the shuttle will burrow in and flip onto its back.

  “Because the shuttles are designed to be able to land on water, the curve of the forward edges of the stabilizers and the nose should keep us from submarining, but we don’t know for sure. I can tell you to be ready for one scary ride. Do not attempt to leave your seat until someone comes for you. You will have no way to know if you are under water until you are told otherwise. If we are under water and you attempt to open your hatch, you will drown. We leave in five hours. Go to your containers and make sure everything is secure. Strap yourselves in. Re-entry under the best of conditions is a violent ride. What we do once we get to the surface will depend on how the landings go.”

  Blondie, Katherine, Sam and Brownie donned their EVA suits and detached the big wings from the shuttles. Once these were removed, only the small stubby wings used for re-entry were left. Without the big wings, the shuttles had no way to take off again even if a runway long enough to support them could be found. Myra returned to her ship with Helen. The shuttles separated from the cargo ship in preparation for the final leg of the journey. The cargo tug Greg had left behind with Myra was attached to the airlock only long enough for Greg and Gloria Sanchez to transfer to it. Two hours before the shuttles’ departure time, Myra began her descent to the surface. An hour later, Greg and Gloria Sanchez left and took their position at the point where the shuttles were expected to impact the water.

  Katherine and Blondie made their pre-flight checks and prepared for departure. Katherine would go first. The initial descent was as uneventful as something normally that violent could be. Both craft survived the period of radio blackout and hurtled toward the planet’s surface. Streaking across the sky, they headed for the landing site as dawn slowly crept in their direction. Once they had descended to the point where their flight control surfaces had dense enough atmosphere to work, the ride smoothed out, but it was still far from comfortable.

  Their flight plan called for them to arrive over the landing site and spiral down as they lost speed and altitude. One in front of the other, they began the spiral. The computers on all five ships monitored the flight paths and adjusted the flight control surfaces to allow the shuttles to hit their target. They descended rapidly and each spiral got smaller until it was time to enter final approach.

  Gloria spotted the contrails first and pointed them out to Greg. The contrails were formed in part by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen vented from the ship’s fuel tanks. This venting reduced the risk of explosion in the event of a crash. The gases passed through a maze of tiny pipes in the ship’s heat shield helping to cool the ship during reentry. The cooling system was first developed for the P I ship and was later modified for the shuttle. The savings in the life of the heat shields more than made up for the expense of the installation.

  Katherine was traveling faster than Blondie, and the cargo ship’s computer commanded Katherine to make one more loop before landing. Blondie would go first. She maintained the flight pattern the computer had plotted. She was traveling a little faster than optimal, but not fast enough to make another loop. She descended toward the water, pitched up her nose up and aimed at the shore.

  Blondie had made a dozen water landings in these shuttles and thought she knew what to expect. The force of this landing was far greater than she was prepared for. The fully loaded shuttle behaved differently from her experience with empty ones. Though the water was like glass, it buffeted the hybrid craft dragging across the surface. She popped her drag chutes as soon as she dared, hoping they would stay above the water long enough to do her some good. Once the chutes hit the water, they would likely rip to shreds and no longer provide the needed drag. She felt like she was racing over an old washboard dirt road. It was all she could do to keep her nose up.

  The nose settled down almost to the water before Blondie was sure she was over the sandy bottom of the flat low tide area. She extended the main gear hoping the wheels would prevent them from sinking. The struts promptly snapped off. The shuttle slewed wildly to the left, but partially corrected itself as the damaged after edges of the wings caused increased drag. The landing calculations had been based on the drag provided by the shuttle’s wheels providing braking. In desperation, Blondie deployed the aft flotation gear. Terrified that it too would rip off, she hoped that it would provide enough drag to pull the shuttle around so it was headed straight and not sideways as it bounced along the water. If the shuttle came across the water sideways there was little to prevent a wing from digging in and flipping the shuttle into a cartwheel. The drag caused by the damage to the undercarriage and from the flotation air bags was enough to straighten the direction of travel, but not enough to compensate for the missing landing gear. The shuttle drove itself up onto the beach where it finally came to rest at the base of a sand dune with a cloud of salt spray and sand billowing all around. Steam gently rose from the hot, wet underside of the ship where it lay in the rut it had dug the damp sand.

  Dr. Michelle Turner and nurse’s aide Lonnie Bell had ridden most of the way with their eyes closed, their hands steadfastly clenched to the arms of their seats and their heads determinedly pressed back against the headrests. Unlike Blondie, who had to maintain maximum attention and exertion all the way down, they had relaxed their minds and bodies trusting Blondie’s ability to deliver them safel
y. Unlike Blondie, who slumped forward exhausted when the shuttle finally came to rest, they were prepared to move to let the rest of the passengers out of their containers.

  “Blondie,” Michelle asked. “Is it safe to go outside?”

  “Yeah,” Blondie mumbled. “Go get the folks. Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.” She passed out in her seat.

  Michelle checked Blondie’s heart rate and respiration before deciding to leave her where she sat. They scrambled through the hatch to the cargo bay.

  Katherine’s landing was a less dramatic. She impacted the water sooner and thanks to her additional loop in the spiral, slower than Blondie had. She hit the water further out than Blondie did. She popped her drag chute almost immediately and, as Blondie had done, deployed her aft flotation gear. The shuttle slewed around some as it came in but maintained its heading. She did not attempt to lower the gear until she was almost stopped. The gear promptly sank into the sand, and the shuttle came to an abrupt halt about fifty meters off shore in water about meter and a half deep.

  Myra and Helen ran to Blondie’s ship to help rescue the people in the containers. Linda Danvers had suffered a broken arm and multiple bruises when her chair had broken loose from its bolts. Some of Julie Baker’s laboratory glassware had broken, but none of her chemicals appeared to be damaged. Almost everyone on Blondie’s ship suffered damage, but none of it appeared to be serious.

  The two doctors on Katherine’s ship extricated their traveling companions, and everyone waded to shore. Several kissed the ground when they arrived. Katherine’s shuttle appeared to have survived intact, but Blondie’s looked as if it would probably never fly again.

  Until he surveyed Blondie’s ship, Greg had still harbored a lingering hope that he would somehow be able to take the shuttles and return to civilization. As he assessed the damage to Blondie’s craft, he knew that dream was over. His heart sank. Getting the shuttle airborne again was going to an arduous task if it could be done at all.