by Mierau,John
“You possess genius Doctor Beacham, however your improving on my design remains unlikely,” Daisy called out, with obvious humor and skepticism.
Beacham ignored the interruption. “So since we’re up against it,” he waved his hand in the direction of the Thorn. “I had her send me the program interfaces she designed to control The Betty, improved ‘em a little, and showed her where on Six to stick a copy of herself.”
Lou gripped the arms of her chair, eyes widening.
“You injected an alien computer virus in our systems?” gasped Okoro.
“Essentially correct, Nav Officer Rose Okoro, Employee ID October-228653.” Daisy replied, while Beacham floated there nodding, now looking even more smug. “Interfacing with your systems directly has increased the odds of a successful dock and turning maneuver to eighty-seven percent.”
“Gave her the keys to the kingdom,” Beacham crowed. “Pretty goddamn impressive hack!”
The C&C was utterly silent.
Until Lou laughed.
Beacham frowned. “What? It was pretty goddamn impressive!”
“And after we dock and execute the course change?” Okoro snapped out at the man. “How do we, uh, weed her out?”
“You’re welcome,” Beacham called petulantly out to Okoro. “And, we don’t remove Daisy. We can’t. Well, we can ask her to leave, but she’s already rewritten half the systems on board. For the better, might I add?” He shrugged. “If she doesn’t want to leave, we won’t get her out.”
Lou laughed harder. She gasped for breath, waving Okoro silent.
“He’s right, Nav. We’re all in. We better hope we’re philosophically compatible with our neighbours on the Betty, because we’re just about getting married to haul ass get out of this ugly thing’s gravity.” She waved back and up, toward the Thorn.
Lou snorted again, just as Arnel Villanueva's voice sounded in the air. “First officer to C&C. Now en route with Officer Taggart.” His breath pushed air explosively as the man leaned too close to his suit mic. “Sanders cleared Taggart for active duty. Officer Pruett will escort Burkov and Dr. Sanders to the Cellar.”
Taggart could be heard on the line, muttering “Yeah, just as soon as the doc decides on the best meds for VP Crazy Pant—“. The line clicked off, muted from the far side.
Montagne almost laughed again. She liked hearing that resilience in Taggart’s voice. She still didn’t understand how, but ‘the lights’ did something to him: now, he could see things, know things the rest of them couldn’t, and it had messed him up.
He sounded like Taggart again, even knowing more than he should.
Her gut instinct said to trust Taggart, trust Captain Travis and trust whatever the hell Daisy was.
Why not? She’d trusted Beacham. That’s why they were still alive.
Speaking of which, she turned to Beacham, where he floated quite capably, pirouetting between two work stations to maximize his screen area.
She shook her head. The good doctor seemed to forget what a klutz he was, once he was absorbed in a task - or two, as he was now, recalibrating his light show and monitoring their trajectory. Or, she wondered, was that now, monitoring Daisy, monitoring trajectory.
Thinking of Beacham’s physical and mental acrobatics brought Lou’s head back around to the crisis at hand, and she swiped and tapped on her screen, calling up Travis and Gruber and ‘throwing’ their signal to the fisheye monitor in the centre of C&C.
A fisheye view of the Betty’s bridge appeared on several monitors ringing the C&C.
“Captain Travis, Engineer Gruber, your transmission is being displayed to my senior command staff, and they’re all up to speed.”
The scarred but handsome Captain nodded. “Hello C&C,” he called out. Gruber laughed and scratched at his ragged white beard. “They’re babies! Well, except for the injun.”
Beacham stiffened and turned. “How many degrees do you have, old man?” he shouted back.
Gruber laughed harder. “Yeah. Babies!”
Lou waved Beacham down. “Dirty hippy santa claus,” he muttered, then just glared.
“What can you tell us about these ‘Boomer’ ships?” she asked.
Captain Travis opened his mouth to answer, but Daisy’s voice cut him off - both the version on Betty and the version on Six.
“Boomers are attack vessels. Essentially barbell-shaped torpedoes, the craft possess heavy shielding at either end to withstand the kinetic energy released by thermonuclear pellets which are ignited immediately behind or in front of a heat shield. Utilizing atomics to quickly achieve and brake from very high velocity, a small crew housed in the middle is kept safe from the effects of the velocity inside a nearly incompressible liquid environment.”
“The boomer crews’ lungs are filled with liquid so they’re not smeared into paste by acceleration or deceleration,” Travis explainednb. His face was dark. “The trip still messes them up, but they’re fed a cocktail of drugs to keep them functioning until they accomplish their mission.”
Lou opened her mouth to ask, but Gruber anticipated her question.
“It’s a one way trip,” the old engineer said. “They’re kamikazes. Their nestmates will be elevated in rank, social status, food allotment, mating order.”
Captain Travis cleared his throat. “They’re a blunt object, but effective. They keep most ships they reach from escaping until the rest of the Guard can arrive. They’ll decimate a crew, sabotage engines, but leave most of the tech intact.”
Lou saw the logic in it. She already understood that this place, wherever they were, was resource poor. Killing the crews was probably just cost-effective for this ‘Guard’. She had a sick feeling there was nothing like the Geneva convention around these parts .
“What the hell’s gonna come out of that pod?” Stan asked.
Lou turned to quiet Stan…and saw Rose slip a hand over his where he held onto her screen mount. He looked down, read her face, and fell silent.
Travis and Gruber both stepped back, and behind them Lou could see a cylinder of light, inside which shapes were coalescing. She felt one eyebrow rise, betraying her surprise. It was a hologram tank. Easily the best resolution she’d ever seen and over ten meters wide.
“I’m also transmitting this to your pilot Rodriguez out at the tram. I hope she’s receiving, but eight minutes ago backscatter from several satellites dropped by the boomers began to interrupt our tight beam transmission. The crew can tell her all of this, anyways.”
“Just watch,” Gruber said, uncharacteristically softly.
in the holo an image of a room full of cylindrical cargo containers appeared. A blue light flared rhythmically. There was no sound. A human, and two other figures -something like upright, eight foot tall lobsters- all wearing what appeared to be bulky black armor and holding long poles took up kneeling positions facing the wall behind the cargo. Two more humans and two more things that looked like mannequins made up of bark, leaves and vines, took up position just below the camera angled high up on a wall, facing the cargo.
“A boomer can contain up to six troops,” Captain Travis replied, as the cargo in the hologram shook, and piles collapsed into rubble. Something hard had just hit the wall.
“Initial scans now show we had nine incoming.” Gruber interrupted. “Three exploded en route. No surprise there, they’re powered by nukes for god’s sake. Usually only half make it to the target.” His voice got quiet. “That’s usually enough.”
Lou leaned forward in her seat. The door hissed and Arnel and Taggart coasted in. Both men watched the monitors silently, as red outlines appeared on the wall. The air seemed to waver with intense heat. Several of the cargo pods exploded, and white steam obscured the view.
Behind the cloud there was an explosion. Metal hurled through the steam, leveling half the defenders.
Something long and thick, like a boa snake, whipped through the white mist.
“They’re loaded up with anti-rads, of course, but also strength maxi
mizers, and microscopic machines to repair damage and keep them moving,” Gruber said casually. “It’s an ugly kind of nano tech, does more harm to a body than good over time, but in the short term it creates…”
Several more tentacles appeared through the fog. Then a massive black shape pushed through. Whipping black tentacles larger than a man. Ugly mouth full of glassy fangs like cruel knives.
More bodies fell as the creatures fed.
“Monsters,” Lou gasped.
41
“Our cargo bay doors are fully retracted, Haskam.” Captain Sam Travis said to the air as he and Gruber loped into the the elevator in engineering, headed back down to the rear cargo airlock.
“The Betty hasn’t seen atmo in a century, so I had no problem jettisoning panels off her belly,” Gruber muttered. “She looks like an old lady after liposuction surgery, but there’s room enough in front of the cargo hold for your adjacent tanks to fit. No promises they won’t get squeezed a bit. Or ever be airtight again.”
Gruber flashed him a look. Or ever come out in one piece again, Sam thought to himself, completing his engineer’s thought.
Another voice. “I can keep HHL-6 spaceworthy, you just get us out of this gravity well.”
Travis and Gruber raised their eyebrows at each other. Beacham’s voice was haughty, even when it wasn’t trying to be. “Confident prick,” Gruber mouthed.
Whish appeared on the line then, not with something to say, but just popping and hissing and farting nervously. “Say something, gasbag!” Gruber roared, “Or blow his nose, or wipe your ass, or close the circuit.”
“Can’t wipe my ass in this suit,” Whish grumbled, his usually high pitched voice much lower than usual. “I wish us luck. I wish I had something to do while waiting for our two ships to bump uglies.”
Travis laughed a little. Manta never did do well, crammed in space suits.
“Ow!” Whish groaned, and Travis heard him bounce off something on the bridge. Manta suits only has chem thrusters to push their occupants around. That was a big step down from wings, lighter than air gas bodies and fart propulsion.
“Feels like he’s wearing cement overshoes,” the Manta almost cried.
“I’ll be glad to fit you with a pair himself, if the you don’t make sure the air’s all pumped out of the Betty before we do this thing!”
“Already down to thirty percent,” Whish supplied, seeming comforted by Gruber’s foul tone. Travis knew why: If Ben Gruber had been any nicer, the Manta would have been even more afraid.
As the elevator doors opened onto the hallway leading to the cargo hold’s airlock, Beacham sounded off on the line. “HHL-6 doesn’t have the capacity to pump out that fast. We might need to borrow a cup of air after all this is over.”
“We got plenty,” Gruber snorted. “Just ask polite. Takes me time to warm up to strangers.”
Travis laughed. “He still hasn’t warmed up to me.” He sobered up. “Commander Montagne and crew, one last time, I thank you for the trust. Maybe I shouldn’t say so right now, but that kind of trust is rare out here. We’ll honor it.”
“Truly,” Gruber said. “Pax, Haskam.”
Travis felt he was at the center of something in the silence on the line that followed. Something momentous. he heard breathing against microphones and the rustle of skin and fabric in suits, as the crew of HHL-6 were making their way to the tank that would squeeze inside the Betty’s cargo hold.
A long tone, then a new voice rumbled in Sam’s ear. “This is Pilot Kyle Nishioka aboard EVA craft ‘Short Round’. We are on final approach, Betty. Should be ready to knock on the door in T-minus thirty.”
“You’re running slow,” Haskam’s Doctor Beacham said suddenly on the line. “At full burn your craft should almost be there by now.”
Pilot Nishioka gave a chuckle. “We’re carrying extra crew and lines.”
“What extra—“ Commander Montagne asked, but another voice piled over hers. A man’s voice, young, a little high-pitched with excitement.
“Cargo Specialist Patel, with Cargo Specialist Barrowman, C&C!”
“Patel! I thought you and Barrowman were in Cellar One,” Montagne called out.
A deeper voice replied. “Barrowman here, Commander. Raj and I didn’t see our mech suits doing much good in the Cellar.”
Raj Patel’s higher voice chimed in again. “Sure, that was it, Murray. Man, I had to buy you off with nicotine patches to get your lazy ass out here!”
Montagne again, sounding amused. “I don’t mind you playing hooky, Specialists. I wondered how Nishioka was hauling four cables.”
“Ma’am, I’ve never ran ‘Short Round’ under power with any cable lines unspooling before. We’re doing everything we can but I stringy advise you have crew standing by to cut loose the cables if something goes wrong.”
Gruber turned, just ahead of Travis, as he triggered open the outer door to the cargo airlock. “Betty to, uh, ‘Short Round’?”
“This is Kyle Nishioka on Short Round, receiving, Engineer Gruber.”
Gruber shook his head. “You can ease off the regs, ‘Kyle’. If you don’t and those boys you’ve got suited up and carrying cable don’t stick the landing first try, we can’t crank that tin-can skyscraper in fast enough. That happens, nobody’s gonna be writing any notes for your performance review.”
“Jesus, the old man’s cranky,” Raj Patel whispered.
“Open circuit, Raj,” Murray Barrowman intoned.
“Shit.” Patel hissed.
Travis and Gruber were through and the airlock was closing behind them. Lights were flickering own automatically, sensing their presence. Even in the half dark and strobe, they crossed quickly through the room filled with space suits and crew lockers, toward the inner airlock and the cargo hold beyond.
“He’s right, Nishioka,” Montange said. Travis could hear the smile in her voice. “But you’re not going to tangle your lines, and you’re men are going to, ah, stick the landing. Right, pilot?”
Travis felt his own lips twitch upwards and the calm, confident, dulcet tones coming out of Commander Montagne’s mouth. The woman knew how to motivate.
A moment’s silence. Then Nishioka’s voice again. “No sir, no tangled lines, and the mech’s landing will score tens from the Russian judge.” He shouted out the names of his two other mech pilots, then Patel and Barrowman’s names, confirming their plans.
Four mechanized suits, with massive cable spools bolted to their backs, and short-range thruster rigs bolted to their stomachs, would race ahead of the ‘Short Round’ and find their targets - anchor bolts inside the cargo hold Travis and Gruber had painted with light to help the men find their marks.
“There’s netting around the anchor bolts to catch you up when you get here,” Travis said as the inner airlock door slid opened. He felt only a gentle pull forward from the diminished atmosphere, and he let himself rush ahead with it. “They should help you keep from bouncing free. You get the bolts secured, then get free of the nets and push your way to the top of the cargo hold.”
He and Gruber were inside and closing the door. He stepped close to the release for the inner door. “We’ll be there,” he said, and slammed open the inner door. A long narrow channel lay ahead. He fiddled with the console beside the airlock and a rumbling filtered through the floor and up his legs.
Light appeared in a crack on the floor of the long, narrow space ahead. This modified airlock ran the length of the massive cargo hold, but only eight meters wide, designed for quick ingress and egress of workers in the hold.
“Gruber met him at the door, they each ran a hand along the sides of the airlock. “Daisy’s ready to yank you in by those lines, hard.”
“We’re already in position,” Travis said, and pushed his hand outside the airlock, reaching around for a handle, as Gruber did the same across from him. “You have a power main ready, and we’ll have a hot line from your reactor to our engines, and then we can start this little joy ride.”
Travis smiled.
Ben cackled. Gruber cackled. “I really like her!”
Both men stepped across the threshold into the long space ahead.
As he did so, Sam let his breath and and relaxed his body. Even ready, even knowing what to expect, he felt his muscles twitch in surprise, and his neck cracked as he moved out of the airlock, and out of the artificial gravity of the Betty.
Light streamed in from the cargo hold as the crack widened, and the floor retracted into either wall.
“Only time I ever feel old is when I step out of a room with gravity,” Gruber said, his voice annoyed.
They tied off to thin cables on either side of the airlock and floated down into the cargo hold, originally designed to hold tanks full of mined ore and regolith almost exactly the size of the tanks making up the bulk of HHL-6.
“This will work, people,” Travis said aloud.
He said a silent prayer that his crew on the tram would still be there when they got the engines online and boosted up and out to them.
Squares appear on the inside of Travis’s helmet, A small window exploded inside his helmet showing him Nishioka’s approaching EVA craft.
“We have you on visual, ‘Short Round’. When we get out of here, the first round’s on me!” Travis said.
“Ha!” Gruber shouted. “If we get out of here, I’ll string up the banjo and start us up a party!”
“You play?” Asked the quieter of the two mech pilots that had spoken earlier.
“Yeah, uh, Barrowman izzat?”
“I play fiddle.”
Grubber slapped his thigh -and then grunted to right the spin he’d started his body into. “Damn, boy! We’re gon’ put us on a barn party!”
“I’ll play drums!” Whish called out.
“It aint’ drums, it’s you farting with rythym!” Gruber complained.
Travis smiled, but it was short-lived. Now that he was in place for this phase of their escape, his mind was on to the next.
“When the boomers get here, they’re going to shake us hard,” he told all ears on the circuit. “They’ll orient the explosions they use to bleed off their speed so as not to destroy our ships, but it’ll be like god’s own fist coming down on us.”