April 2: Down to Earth

by Mackey Chandler

  The few people seated in the waiting area were looking back and forth, between them and the group back at the com booth. Some concerned, some fascinated at the public display. Then she noticed the fellow sitting with his video camera down on the seat beside him, with his hand resting on it. He had panned the thing under his hand to follow her. He must be running it through his spex, trying not to be too obvious. He didn't look worried at all over the disturbance, he looked delighted. April had learned when a camera had a big lens on front like that, it was probably a professional model. He must be some sort of reporter. Oh well, she thought, with a little luck he got the whole thing from the start and it wouldn't reflect badly on them at all. After all, she could have shot them. Probably should have.

  She looked square at the camera and gave him the biggest grin she could and a wicked wink. He looked startled to be caught out, but didn't look over at the com booth. That was an even better sign, if he was trying not to be noticed by security. Perhaps they would confiscate his gear if they knew he was recording. Good. Maybe he would even make a fair presentation of their side, instead of favoring the cops.

  She satisfied herself they still weren't being followed and jumped to join Don, but she kept her gun in her hand just in case. The scanning technician was used to folks from Home, but looked a bit flustered to see her weapon out in her hand. She offered her ID card to him and he scanned her out of the public cubic.

  "What about your friend with no ID?" the techie asked. "He shows at least five prohibited items on scan and a half dozen other probable violations. I have to cover my butt you understand. Even though station security is standing over there letting you go." He was wearing the same sort of Public Eye camera on his shoulder security had.

  "This is Don Adams. He just became a Home citizen standing over there a couple minutes ago. They have it on vid. We'll put in a request next visit for an alien card for him. If they give you any hassle tell them I threatened the station and you had no choice for the sake of public safety. In fact I'll make it easy. Click?" she said into her spex, "you following this?" She kept checking over her shoulder, as did Don.

  "Sure April. Thanks for keeping the feed open. I haven't said anything because you didn't need your elbow juggled. But it's been entertaining."

  "Well let's make sure they have reason to not change their mind. Power the Happy up and activate all weapons systems. Sweep the neighborhood with targeting Lidar and tell local control you may undock unannounced and engage any vessels impeding your exit. If you lose the feed from my spex and we don't make it back to the ship safe, assume we're lost and standoff and put a missile up their butt here and engage any USNA boats you see in range. Got that?"

  Aye, Aye Ma'am. Just as soon as I sign the bill for your Champagne. I have the call on the speaker and I think the delivery guy is suddenly anxious to get off our dock," he laughed.

  "There you go," She told the scanner tech with a smile. "I'm sure that is sufficient duress, don't you think?"

  "Whatever you say," the fellow agreed, satisfied, but surprisingly unruffled to hear talk of someone putting a missile into the station. "Be safe out there," he added the customary goodbye. He seemed to mean it, which struck her slightly strange given the adversarial circumstances. Perhaps he didn't care for these Security thugs anymore than she did.

  They cleared the outgoing portal with a glance back at the far com booths. The four they had left were still bunched there, watching them go. They seemed to be engaged in some animated conversation and the elder cop had his hand, not on his Taser, but on his belt right behind it. She hoped the NA thugs wouldn't try anything with him, because he didn't deserve the hassle. But if they did, her money was on him to take the other two, even without his younger partner as a backup. She decided she should mention him to Jon Davis, as a possible recruit for Home. He had the sort of calm professionalism Jon searched for.

  The corridor changed quite a bit when they passed out of public cubic. Things were no longer oriented to one side, as if it were a deck for Earthie sensibilities and the decorative designs and carpet, were replaced by sound absorbing panels of a tweedy material, held down with visible fasteners. The traffic guiding strips opposite each other were a grit impregnated and textured plastic runner, with a hand rail on each side. On both sides bare pipes and conduits ran parallel to their path on industrial clamps and stand-offs, starkly labeled with what fluid or current they carried in English. A few wrapped in puffy insulation covered by a foil jacket held on by cable ties. The Japanese symbols April was so used to seeing were absent. The lighting was adequate, but housed in safety fixtures and not the recessed indirect sort in the public cubic of NLV. Most of them had the small box of a backup power supply beside the fixture.

  They drifted along toward the docks but April went backwards, keeping an eye on their rear and her pistol in her hand. That was not unnoticed by some of the folks they were passing, but she still felt worried the agents might follow or have someone else to call ahead. A possibility she mentioned to Dan so he was keeping a keen watch ahead too, so they didn't get cut off.

  They passed several dock stations loading freight and got greeted by a number of acquaintances both station personnel and crew members. When they were almost to their dockage they looked up and there were the French crewmen John and Paul chatting with an older man, all gripping a single grab bar oriented the same way and watching their crew and some ship chandlers load them up with provisions. Her new friend John spoke with some alarm.

  "April! You are looking over your shoulder with a drawn weapon. Is there trouble following you my friend?" The older fellow with them looked taken aback by his familiarity.

  "I don't think so John but I couldn't be sure. This is my friend Don Adams off ISSII. USNA security was keeping him from coming to Home. We owe him a huge debt of honor and they tried to arrest him and drew weapons to threaten him. Station security seemed to be holding them when we left, but I can't count on that, or discount there may be more of them."

  "Your friend Don seems equipped to offer some objection himself," Paul noted nodding at the two heavy pistol grips sticking out of his work coverall at the waist.

  "Oh, those aren't his. Well, I guess they are now," she corrected. She reluctantly slid her laser in the holster, seeing no pursuit down the long open corridor. "We sort of disarmed them, to lessen the chances of trouble following," she admitted. "Don had to renounce his citizenship, to get them to let him through security armed though."

  "Would you at least offer me an introduction to your friend, gentlemen?" the older fellow reminded the younger two. The tone was mildly reproving. He had three rows of piping on his collar and cuffs of his functional ship's suit, compared to John's double stripe and the bare suit of the newbie Paul.

  "Excuse me Sir. Miss Lewis, may I present my superior Msr. Gial DeCuir commanding L'Arch de Ciel? This is April Lewis, Master of the Happy Lewis out of Home." Gial surprised her by taking her hand instead of simply touching as spacers do and lightly touching his lips to her knuckles. That was only the second time the custom had been extended to her. It seemed to require a certain amount of maturity, to bring it off without looking silly and he pulled it off.

  "Your ship's reputation precedes you," Gial assured her. She noticed that was a rather neutral sort of assessment, neither good nor bad, but simply acknowledging their notoriety.

  "I enjoyed a luncheon with your crewmen. They were pleasant and proud of their service with you. Please excuse me for not lingering. My crew is at an alert and charged with acting if I don't make it back to my ship. Be safe out there," she offered seriously, with eye contact and he nodded goodbye.

  When she disappeared down the dock he regarded his junior officers. "Let's take a look at this vessel as it leaves and see how it compares to the dated images our intelligence service collected. Perhaps we will see something new. Especially if she leaves dock in a mode ready for combat. We are only two ports down from them and our nose is towards them, so we can view the
m as well as recording with the camera. If we can send some fresh information home it can only enhance our reputation." He quickly led the way in.

  Chapter 9

  April and Don made their own hatch without anyone else stopping them. Her spex were still connected to Click, so she was not worried about him misinterpreting her stop. Click had been out on the dock and to Customs, but as was their custom a crewman had remained behind inside the ship, undisclosed to the station personnel. They never left an empty ship at dock, since the war.

  As they entered the forward hatch they passed through a privacy curtain and Don was surprised to see a compact fellow of dead serious demeanor, in a pressure suit clipped against the bulkhead opposite the lock. He cradled an odd shotgun of some sort, pointed slightly aside of the hatch. It had the biggest bore he had ever seen. Perhaps it was a grenade launcher instead, but who would use that to guard a hatch? There was a rotary magazine hanging under it and the man had ballistic panels incorporated on the front of his soft suit. His faceplate was up, but he had his helmet secured on the suit. There was an unfamiliar sort of big dagger on the fellows belt too, that seemed archaic beside the gun. Don had never seen an Arkansas toothpick. For the first time since he left ISSII Don felt sure the USNA wasn't going to snatch him away to some cell. Not past this fellow they weren't.

  "Click, contact NLV local and ask for a clearance to their control limit and then indicate we will be leaving on an unannounced vector, as we fear possible interception. Advise local traffic we will clear their neighborhood as soon as possible, so if there is any problem it will be away from here, but we will declare an emergency rather than accept a hold from anyone. I'm going forward Don. You take a seat here with Edwards and we'll keep you informed and feed you sound and visuals at your station." In the background Click was already talking to local control. "I'm switching weapons to my side of the board." April told him. "You take her out and pick a descending vector for a polar orbit, that anything with less delta V will have a hard time following."

  "Do you really think anyone will try to stop us?" Click inquired.

  "I don't know for sure, but they didn't want Don here to make a connection to Home and I don't want to be surprised in close to the station. This is the first time in a year we have failed to give them a flight profile, so they may be just a bit nervous. Last time we had to do that at ISSII we shot the station up before leaving and they may be thinking about that. The extra fuel and time is well worth expending, if they expect us to shape back to Home straight away and are already moving to have someone intercept."

  Click got his clearance for a straight burn away from the station and acknowledged.

  "Maneuvering in forty seconds," he announced to the back. "Secure for hard and variable thrust, until told otherwise."

  Don looked around and found that while he was strapping himself in the acceleration couch, Edwards had stowed not only the shotgun, but his piece of luggage. He took the two bigger pistols and a few other heavy pieces out of his pockets and stuffed them in the small locker beside his station.

  "Thanks Edwards. I'm Don Adams." he introduced himself. " I appreciate your taking the bag. Too bad I didn't have time to get into my p-suit. Do you have a first name you go by too?"

  "Nope. Edwards suits me just fine. Hang on friend. Dope yourself up if you need to. When Click says it'll be a hard push, that usually means you can expect some bruises before we're done."

  "Take her out on just thrusters," April instructed, "until we hit the half klick radius and then when our tail is pointed off the station, open her up and cut the thrusters when the drive is at full power. I need a double roll to look each way and then a look back over our shoulder at as much of the sky as is showing behind the station before the drive kicks in. Not our habit showing them what we got this close but I'm going to let everything hang out," she informed him.

  "Aye, aye." was all he replied.

  In the control cabin of the French ship, The Commander Gial and John took the flight seats and Paul floated behind with a hand on each seat back, so he could share the view out the forward ports, as well as the camera view on the computer screens. Gial brought a pic of the Happy Lewis on one screen, that was almost a year old. It had the bells of two conventional rockets on the rear and a fuzzy coat all over the hull of some dark radar absorbing material. In the pic there was a frail looking camera arm hanging out, with four small boxes clustered around the camera. He zoomed in on the ship two berths down from them. The vessel in between obscured some of their view, even with their camera extended as far as possible, but he set the camera to auto-track the Happy Lewis as it moved away from dock.

  "April we have a camera hanging way out on an arm, from the second ship down. Do you want to burn it off before we pull out, so it can't gather any information on us?"

  She considered it briefly. "No Click. Those are the French and they have been our nominal allies. They did recognize us early on when we declared independence. In a few weeks we'll have Eddie's two new ships in service and the data on the Happy Lewis or the Home Boy won't mean much because they will be obsolete for all practical purposes. Let them get an eyeful. In fact, give ‘em a show and when they hear about the Home Again and Eddie's Scooter it will make them worry how much better they must be than the Happy."

  "Do you think we should turn on our radar?" John asked his superior.

  "Miss Lewis announced to local she is concerned about hostility," Gial reminded him. "I'd say she would ignore a navigational radar, but do not activate anything that could be interpreted as a targeting radar, or the Lidar. I fear she may have her weapons set for auto release if they detect such emissions. I'd hate to be shot at anyway, but attracting fire to a USNA station while we are docked, might be more excitement than our service would appreciate." John acknowledged that, flipping the switches up for the lower frequency long range radar.

  "Conventional radar coming up on the French vessel," Click warned, as the side thrusters came on to kick them away from the station.

  "Send on local band the following, by voice. The Armed Merchant Happy Lewis, to the ship of the Republic Arch de Ciel. We'd have given you a souvenir photo if you'd just asked. We're friends after all, but don't attribute it."

  As the Home vessel turned stern to the station and the small conventional engines kicked it away at a half G, Gial smiled at the message on the radio. After a few seconds the burn stopped and the side thrusters rolled it violently in a circle perpendicular to its course. As it started the tumble a shorter style arm much heavier than the camera arm in the old picture, deployed from both the top and bottom of the vessel. The fact that it could deploy, it while spinning the ship hard end over end showed how strong it was. That was obviously the improved laser weapons, as it looked much like other systems they were familiar with. At the same time the hump behind the control cabin split open, revealing a squat cylinder of machinery on pivoting mounts like a telescope.

  "I believe we are the first to see what Home's mystery weapon looks like gentleman," Gial expressed with some surprise.

  That was not the only surprise, as on the nose a complex flat assembly of thin struts and lines unfolded like a flower, opening into a huge flat disc, that was braced by a cone shaped group of gossamer lines to the center mast projecting beyond the nose. When it was open it was a full eight meters across, with no perceivable thickness. So insubstantial it was just a cloud of glints and reflections, that the stars shone right through.

  Meanwhile on the side, the pebbled dark surface that had replaced the fuzzy material on the historic pic, split open on each side. A pylon unfolded on each side, with a half dozen missiles racked. Three smaller missiles no bigger than a coffee flask and three fatter cylinders that had a bulging white head on the front, that spoke to a complex sensor suite for guidance built in the weapon itself. Gial remember the terribly tiny missile like a child's toy rocket that had been shown in a BBC video a year ago, blowing a USNA space plane clean in two. So if he did not underestimat
e the smaller weapon, he positively shuddered to think what the nature of the bigger one was.

  "The thing on the nose must be a radar, but why is it flat instead of a dish?" Paul wondered aloud from behind them. "And why is it braced with so many fine lines?" The engines at the rear looked very different and there was an entire extra freight module, inserted behind the cabin shown in the older picture. That made the ship a good three meters longer by itself. As the Happy rolled, there were a couple flashes of static on their screens. In particular the radar display dissolved twice, in a flare of static that was not normal.

  Inside the Happy Lewis, Don was completely disoriented in the rear, as Click rolled the ship in two axis at once and scanned the sky with their radar in a full circle out as far as lunar orbit. The restraints bit into him as he was twisted first one way, then a new direction before the old settled. He was forced to choke down his breakfast that was trying to come up his throat in a lump. Finally Click rolled the nose back to the station and looked behind it with radar as much as he could.

  As the nose came back to the station the Frenchmen saw a faint violet glow of discharge flicker across the surface of the radar disk on the front of the Happy Lewis, as the trace of gas from her thrusters blew through the gossamer disk on the nose of the vessel. The radar display in the French ship gave a final bright flash and then the system breakers behind them all popped out with a flurry of snaps and the radio gave out an electronic raspberry of overload before it died too.

  They only had time for a quick exclamation of surprise however, because then as the nose rolled past them, toward the South pole of the planet under them all, the thrusters stopped it's roll and a terrible white plume of plasma drew a line as far as they could see the opposite way. Paul behind them, was resetting the breakers as quickly as possible and the radar flickered and rebooted, painting a new screen within seconds. The icon on the radar screen was already kilometers away and as they watched, numbers in a bracket beside the blip showed the acceleration eased off, from nine and a half G to a more moderate eight. "They cut off the conventional thrusters and eased off the main a bit once they saw no pursuit," John said. "I've never seen a ship move like that. It looked more like a missile launch than a manned vessel."