Moon Dreams

by M.A. Harris

Recovery

  The bare Paaly Stack was a metal and ceramic rendition of a Dagwood sandwich gone berserk with thick pads of diamond coated nickel magnetic elements and multiple slices of silicon, repeated ten times in this array. Then there were the thousands of fine wires cascading out of it. Each set of seven hundred and fifty wires interfaced to a ring of multiplexers. The muxs fed fast digital signal processors feeding fiber optic lines, sixty in all, that went into a card cage with an array of processors providing the equivalent of a supercomputer.

  Paul was pretty sure the whole thing was wired right but he wouldn’t know until he dropped the Stack into a chamber with low-pressure argon and fed the sixty optic fibers out to the card cage. He had another ten hours of work before he could test it.

  Cooper had stamped off earlier, tired and querulous. Paul figured he was drowsing in the garden tearoom in the dome down the way. There was big flat panel display there playing several satellite service programs. It was nice now that they were not quite so cut off; they had a laser link set up so they had the equivalent of a broad band internet connection to Earth. This uplink included the major commercial and news networks.

  Janice Jones looked around the door, “Coop? Oh hello Paul,” she looked tired.

  “Hey Janice, Cooper’s probably at the tea shop.”

  “Oh, good at least he’s sitting down and relaxing.”

  “Probably napping, he usually gets a cup then goes and drowses in the corner unless one of his friends drops by to chat.”

  Janice had stepped into the lab, she viewed the bare Stack with a fair amount of skepticism, “That thing you and Coop are working on looks like a tech nightmare. What’s it supposed to do?”

  “We’re trying to see if the spin rings react to outside disturbances in a detectable way. One of Coop’s mathematical models says they do, and it probably causes a noticeable decrease in efficiency.” It wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t the whole truth, he’d gotten used to that in the past month and a half.

  Janice was only half listening anyway, “I hope you keep the old reprobate away from the heavy and sharp bits, a wound or a break at his stage…” she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “The medication makes him clumsy and his strength is all but gone, he knows that so he lets me and the techs worry about the detail, he spends his time puttering about with the controller and his theoretical models.” Paul said quietly. He stepped over and gave Janice a hug. She was not a big woman and she was no longer young. She felt a little fragile, “You spending enough time in the gym Janice?”

  “Like I have time to spend time pumping iron for an hour a day?” She fended him off.

  “It’s pumping springs, and yes you do. You’re the village nurse, the doc’s a great guy but you get out and about more, you need to set a good example.” Paul gently scolded her.

  “So you are going to do your civic duty and stand for Mayor like everyone, except you, says you should?” she hit back acerbically.

  Paul frowned, “Look I’m just an engineer, washed up pilot and businessman, what do I know about running a city?”

  “I’m not getting into that discussion, Conti and Sally have gone over it enough with you, you know damned well that those are very good attributes for the mayor of the first city on the moon.”

  There was a commotion outside, the buzz of a fast moving electric-cart and a couple of yells about slowing down. There was a squeak of brakes and then door was wrenched open to reveal Arkan Olarik. He saw Paul and Janice and stopped, he looked at Paul, “Mr. Richards, Doctor Jones, good to see you. Mr. Richards I need you to come with me, immediately!”

  Paul almost snapped a refusal but bit down on his hostility instead and nodded, “Right with you General.”

  Janice patted his arm, “I’ll go join Cooper in the tea room, I need a cuppa anyway.”

  The little electric cart outside was a four seat version, the slim ‘assistant’ Paul had met a few times at Arkan’s office was in the driver’s seat, Arkan waved Paul to the back seat next to him. The cart accelerated smoothly, Arkan looked across at Paul, “I need your help Mr. Richards.” He sighed, “I must admit that I resisted coming to you. I do not need to have you wave your finger under my nose and tell me you told me so.”

  “So Micah killed himself and his crew?” Paul asked flatly.

  “No, but the MoonBeam was damaged fairly badly, first by auto cannon fire and then a heavy landing.”

  “How badly damaged?”

  “Badly enough that the crew cannot repair her - and unfortunately she is in a very rough part of the world. We need to get temporary repairs made so we can bring her back to the moon for final repairs. I think we will accelerate the move of the shipbuilding and repair facilities up here. We will have to sacrifice the new garden dome at the end of the first string. I’ve already given Conti the orders to deflate the dome and bulldoze the interior. The modified dome will come up on the next flight of the ‘Dream.”

  Paul sat digesting this for a few moments, alternately irritated, happy and angry. Irritated at Arkan and his neothugs for getting into this mess, happy at the acceleration of the move to bring the shipbuilding facility up since it meant the Alexis could be worked on in the same facility, angry at the arrogant commandeering of city resources to fix a problem the military side had created.

  He tramped on his anger fueled impulse to let Olarik go hang, he sighed, “Talk to Conti about it, make sure we can get some of the big digging equipment in somehow, the garage isn’t big enough for the trenchers and they will need work in the next few months.”

  Arkan looked at Paul with a frown and then shook his head, “Fine, and a good idea. Do you ever stop thinking about this place, relax, and enjoy life?”

  Paul shrugged, “I enjoy thinking about what I can do to improve this place, or how to fix a problem I’ve run into in my research. That’s how I relax; I get jittery if I have too much time to do nothing.”

  Arkan sighed, “Amazing, a pure bred American workaholic in the wild. It’s also amazing how easily you pull me off topic almost at will. I need you to get ready to lead a crew to rescue the MoonBeam. You’ll fly the Alexis down as soon as you can with the people and equipment necessary and you’ll get the MoonBeam up and out.”

  “It’s what I had assumed you needed Colonel, I want Raoul, Patsy, Charlie Harper, and Stevie Tran.”

  Olarik protested, “Tran is no technician, he’s one of the heavy construction riggers?”

  “Olarik, unless there is some reason you’ve overloaded the MoonBeam and can’t offload her I can simply lift the ‘Beam out with the Alexis like we did the excavators. It won’t be pretty but it’s not that difficult, there are even lifting eyes on the top of the shell that we can attach to.”

  The big Kazakh’s face darkened for a moment at the tone of Paul’s voice then he relaxed and laughed, “Good, good, I had forgotten and you are right. In fact, why don’t we plan on doing it that way?”

  “I do, but I’ll do a quick check to make sure that there isn’t something simple we can do to get the ‘Beam out under her own thrust. The shackle lift’s not any fun.” Paul’s patience was gone, “I know you’ve been working on those modified F104 Star Fighters, are you going to send some down to fly cover?”

  Arkan froze then dropped his head into his hand, “God save me from intelligent men. Yes there are four of them flying cover already. There are some problems though. There’s a peacekeeping force nearby and you’ll be flying in during the day. Things could get very tight.”

  “Wonderful, just goddamned wonderful!”

  The rest of the trip to the airlock complex was made in silence.

  -o-

  Paul felt his stomach flip flop as thrust fell away, leaving him in freefall; he was waiting for an all clear. Arkan’s military people were making sure he was going to be alone when he let down. It was day in the ‘Stan, fortunately it was a very cloudy day, but above the clouds that wasn’t going
to provide any cover.

  They were a hundred miles above the ‘Beam falling almost straight down, if they didn’t get the all clear soon he’d brake the Alexis to a complete stop and hover. They would have to hope that the ship’s stealth was good enough to keep the various radar and optical tracking systems from locking onto him.

  A green light appeared on the comm panel, “All clear heavy lift one,” a woman’s voice, strongly accented, but not Helena. He tapped his mic button, “Heavy lift one descending.”

  Patsy, in the copilot’s seat, saw his nod, rolled the ship upside down and applied thrust, the world was suddenly a vast blue, white and brown ceiling bulging down above them. They were pushed into their seats by three g’s of acceleration and the Alexis’ tired frame creaked. A few seconds later she zeroed the thrust and rolled them back ‘upright.’ Paul’s stomach flip-flopped a couple more times.

  One of the big displays showed the tactical situation. The green square indicating the ‘Beam was offset from the center so that the cluster of symbols to the south and west of the Moonship’s location could be accommodated. The orange circles and ellipses of the ‘friendly’ locals clustered near the ship’s position to the north. Angry red blips and blobs were further to the north and west of the ship, mostly, with one or two near and south. The purple circles, ellipses and, most worryingly the triangles, to the south and west designated the US and European peace keeping garrison located around a town a hundred miles away. The triangles indicated airborne targets and at least one of them was a high altitude surveillance drone. Four green triangles circled to the north, outside the huge dashed purple circle that delineated the surveillance systems supposed observation zone. Unfortunately the ‘Beam’s position was twenty miles inside that zone.

  The Alexis was falling down from the north at a steep slant, theoretically the ship’s stealthing would prevent the radar picking them up as a track and they’d only be in its field of view for a minute or so. If they were lucky the drone would never see them.

  Two of the purple triangles were moving perceptibly if slowly to the north, towards the cluster of red circles and ellipses. The green comm light came on again, “Heavy lift one, be warned we have transport helicopters moving across our field of operation. Keep to your plotted course vector.” The light snapped off. Patsy and Paul exchanged exasperated looks but made no other reply.

  The Alexis shivered and shifted faintly; the atmosphere was making itself felt. Patsy rolled the ship slightly and applied thrust peaking at three gravities again and then bringing it back to just over one. From now on they would have to control and slow their descent.

  Raoul spoke up, “we’re getting hits from the surveillance radar boss, no way of telling if it sees us or not, I’d guess not, but who am I to say?”

  “You have the threshold gate set on the scanner?”

  “Yes boss.” Raoul’s tone was long suffering.

  Suddenly the two helicopters moving to the north developed yellow domes, “Damn,” muttered Paul, “looks like those choppers went high to get above the cloud deck.” The domes covered the ‘Beams position and the Alexis’ inbound track.

  “We make a sudden change in vector right now boss and the surveillance radar might well make a trace on us.” Raoul’s voice was tense.

  “You have anything on the US comm channels?”

  “Digital garbage, I don’t even have their hop pattern and even if I did we have no decrypt gear Paul.” Raoul pointed out.

  Paul tapped his mic button, “Cover lead, the helos are high and clear right now but I’m more likely to get spotted if I change vector, you getting anything on the military channels?”

  “Nothing beyond regular traffic, heavy one, we will monitor.”

  “Thanks.”

  The green light went out.

  The sky outside was deep blue and the ultra white of the cloud deck was developing details rapidly. Paul panned a camera across the southern horizon, then to the north, looking first for the US choppers and then the Luna Haven Fighters. Nothing obvious appeared on the screen.

  “Uh, boss, don’t do that, the dirigible camera housings aren’t well shielded.”

  “Shit, sorry Raoul,” Paul tapped the button that stored the camera, shaking his head at his own stupidity.

  The green light flicked on, “Heavy one, some traffic from base to the helos. It appears as if something tickled the radar drone.”

  Paul gritted his teeth in fury at his slip up, “Roger cover lead.”

  “Just a watch warning so far.” The green light flicked off.

  Raoul spoke softly, “We’re a minute from the cloud deck. I think we’re going to be lucky.”

  Patsy chimed in for the first time, “We’re a flying black pyramid for crying out loud, they’re bound to see us.”

  Raoul whistled softly in relief, “We’re below the drone’s radar horizon now.”

  The cloud deck was below and then it was around them, pure white wisps of cotton candy, with gray below, then it was gray and getting dark. The Alexis was buffeted slightly.

  The green light lit up, “Heavy one, the helos saw something! At the last second, must have been when you were silhouetted against the clouds. They’re not sure what they saw, or if it was real.”

  Paul watched the display intently, the helo icons didn’t change course, “Cover lead, looks like they’re still going about their business though.”

  “Got a meeting with a local chieftain about breaking the peace, but there’s some chatter about the sighting.”

  Patsy spoke softly, “Ten thousand feet folks, get ready for landing.”

  Paul reset his comm channel, “MoonBeam this is Alexis Aurora, do you copy?”

  “We’ve been tracking your descent Alexis.” Micah’s voice was flatly hostile.

  “I have a site map; I plan on setting down a hundred feet northwest of you, a little uphill on a shallow slope. Any suggestions?”

  “Slope checks out as stable to walk on Alexis.”

  “Roger, we’ll be down in a couple of minutes.” The green light snapped out in reply. Paul shook his head. “Ingrates.”

  “And you expected what?” Patsy asked sarcastically.

  The clouds suddenly pulled away and they were looking at their underside, spread out below them a rolling gray green plain that faded into the misty gloom. The black square of the MoonBeam was harder to see against this background than Paul had expected, even knowing it’s location by the map display his eye had a hard time catching its shape. The land rose up, and suddenly they were in the landscape, the low hills rising around them. The stranded ship was in a wide gully in the side of a shallow valley, it didn’t look deep on the topo map but as they slowly descended the last few dozen feet Paul realized that it didn’t take much to hide even something as big as the Moonship.

  The deck tilted under him faintly, Patsy spoke, “Ready for touchdown,” an instant later the ship shivered faintly, settled, shifted ever so slightly and then was still. Patsy’s fingers flew over switches and display pads as her eyes swept the instruments, “I’ll keep the Stacks cycling so we’re at five minute ready, it’ll let me chill the coolant tanks some.”

  Paul patted her shoulder as he climbed out of his seat, “Good, keep your eyes on the threat receiver, our cover should warn us but you never know.”

  Raoul was unstrapping as well, “I’ll go get Stevie and Charlie, meet you down on the ground.

  Paul nodded, he stopped in the crew cabin, he was wearing one of the ‘military’ overalls, it felt odd, heavy and bulky but the extra protection was comforting. This version had a camouflage pattern of grays and browns. He picked up the helmet on the clothes rack by the hatch into the service module. It was oddly medieval looking, the main shell a shallow dome, it had a stiffened Kevlar fabric fringe to cover the neck and a nose bar designed to support night goggles as well as the built in eye display.

  With a sigh he settled it on his head and h
eaded down.

  When he reached the cargo deck the main hatch was open. Patsy had aligned the ship so that he was looking at the ‘Beam. The camouflage nets explained why he had had such a hard time spotting her earlier. From this distance it was impossible to see any damage. Paul took a moment to scan the area. He realized that a hillock downhill from their location was a well camouflaged armored car. Another careful check showed another anomaly on the rim of the gully uphill from their location. A small vehicle of some kind under netting, near that second vehicle the ground was torn up and something that might be the barrel of a gun stuck forlornly up into the sky.

  “Ready to rock boss?” Raoul asked from behind.

  Paul turned to note that all three of the other men were dressed in the camouflaged space suits and helmets. “Let’s go, you know your jobs, Stevie get on top and check the lifting eyes, then get back here and start prepping the cables, Charlie you spot Stevie while he’s getting ready, Raoul and I will check the engine room, we’ll call you in if it looks like we can do some good in there.” As he spoke he swung the ladder out and swung onto it.

  There was a click in his ear as he stepped onto the ground, “Glad to see you’re finally moving out, do you have a plan of action Richards?” Micah’s voice came over the short range radio built into the helmet.

  “You got the brief I hope? I got your damage report; you took hits in the service module and the engineering compartment. We’ve reviewed the pictures you sent up and the damage reports, anything else you want to report? There’s a good chance we’ll be able get the ‘Beam up and out of here under her own power. But if we can’t we’ll rig you for a sling lift and pull you out.”

  “Fine, fine just get a move on. Don’t know how they spotted you but now something’s going on at the peacekeepers garrison, looks like they’re getting ready to send out a recon force of some type.”

  Paul swore under his breath.

  In ten minutes he was in the ‘Beam’s engine room, there had been two penetrating hits by 35mm cannon shells. One had been a direct hit on a Stack; it had passed through the hull and the disaster sleeve around one of the Stacks and detonated in the plumbing. The result was a mangled ruin of flame singed metal, the thin stainless steel had been shredded and the Stack inside cracked. The hydrogen had burnt but only the gas in the chamber since the emergency valve had shut out the rest.

  The second shell had passed between two Stacks to detonate near the center of the space. The burst of shrapnel had shredded the sleeves on four Stacks and ricocheting splinters had torn up the main hydrogen control station, primary control center and secondary power distribution panel.

  Looking at the wreckage in person Paul felt a little sick but also proud. The system had worked instead of simply failing, leaving the ‘Beam to plummet to its doom. It had fallen back into a disaster mode and kept operating, if at a degraded level until turned off.

  The loss of six Stacks and the reduced output of the rest had left Micah without enough power to slow his heavily laden ships fall in time and the ‘Beam had come down hard enough to rupture the shock absorbers on two landing pads. That shock had knocked three other Stacks off line immediately. Then the engineer had shut the whole power and propulsion system off before coming up here to check the damage. Now three quarters of the surviving Stacks wouldn’t restart. Currently none of the Stacks on the side where the ‘Beam had been hit would start, they had to get at least four survivors up on that side or the ship would be unflyable.

  Paul had been surprised, and irritated, to find none of Micah’s four man crew was known to him, he had been stunned to see that the bridge had been totally reconfigured. To start with it now took up half the central compartment. Micah’s slightly raised seat had been moved to a position behind the pilot and copilot positions, next to the engineering station, or what had been the engineering station, with a fourth workstation behind his right shoulder. The brief glance Paul had gotten into the compartment didn’t really tell him much about the functions of the stations, but he had to assume that the two additional positions had something to do with the weapons systems.

  The slim bald man with an unhealthy pallor and wide wet gray eyes stood next to Paul surveying the mess. He said his name was Rik, with a heavy European accent, he also claimed to be the engineer and Raoul obviously knew him, and just as obviously, didn’t like him. Rik pointed at the most damaged Stack, “The fire, it started here and burnt hot, hot so the extinguisher head melted, failed.”

  “But the sleeve didn’t catch fire and the fire remained local for the few seconds it burnt.”

  “Maybe, flashover I think fried the control junction box there.” He pointed at a box on the ceiling with its cover off and cables hanging out.

  “You pulled the cover?” asked Paul.

  “Yah, no good though, a component must have overheated, the control board looks good but does not synch.”

  Paul glanced at Raoul who rolled his eyes; the synch function was resident in the Stack electronics, not the distributed junction nodes.

  Raoul spoke, “Rik, put that back together. Then could you go get the diesel generators started, we’ll need to take all the Stacks offline for a few minutes and I’d hate to have to string a cable over from the Alexis to start her up again.”

  A sharp nod, “Shur.” The pale man turned and left.

  Raoul checked his comm status and looked back at Paul, “He’s a good button pusher.” Meaning that the other man didn’t really understand the system he was controlling, he just knew how to operate it.

  With a shrug Paul waved at the four modules scarred by the near miss. “I think these four need to be taken out of the grid completely. I don’t like how badly banged up the contactor boxes are.”

  “Agreed, any ideas on where to start?” He pulled his tool kit off his shoulder and moved towards the closest unit as Paul did the same to the next one.

  Paul was silent as he picked out the tools. Thinking, “You know what bugs me? The fact that the system continued to work until it was shut down so they could come and put the fires out and have a look. You saw the recordings; the power bus wasn’t fluctuating at all after the first few seconds?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You remember those problems we had early on with converters not synching up right because of a software load up problem?”

  “Sure! But they were synched just fine till shut down.”

  “They rode through the hit just fine, stayed synched. But then they were shut down and now they won’t start, probably because they won’t synch. We solved our original problem with a software update, but the updates not hard coded in the older converters, it’s a patch in the flash memory section. The flash gets wiped at shutdown and reloaded on startup. The control bus is redundant but if one of the two lines is broken in just one place the software won’t upload because it can’t complete an integrity check.”

  “But there would be a red light on the bus integrity monitor, and another one on the system startup test.”

  “I know, I’m wondering if something went wrong with the bus integrity monitor somehow?” With a grunt Paul disconnected the power bus from the ceiling conduit and got down to start on the next unit. Raoul was almost done with his second one.

  Ten minutes later they had the disaster sleeves of all twenty Stacks up. Power to the ship was coming from the surviving diesel generator; all of the Stacks were shut down. Raoul came around the walkway from the backup control panel. “No go Paul, the bus integrity is good to all the units.”

  Paul looked up and grinned, “Saw that. Did you look at the memory board?”

  “Glanced at it, looked fine, why?”

  “It’s got to be broken or unseated, the request for update is going out but I’m getting a null return so the system is using the original firmware.”

  Raoul swore and turned around.

  A double click, “This is Charlie, Stevie and I are off the roof, the lift
ing eyes are fine, we’ve got them prepped, Stevie’s heading back to the Alexis to get the harness cables started. Want me to go with him?”

  “Hold for a minute Charlie, I’ll let you know.”

  Suddenly the screen on his little test set flickered and instead of a null he saw the confirmation of a firmware update. “Got it Raoul!” and he punched in another identifier and got confirmation that other Stacks had the update. “Restart number ten.” He called out.

  The Stack next to him started up, the rising whine accompanied by the soft roar of moving gas and the hum of electronics. The Stack was still warm enough for a safe power up, the voltage meter snapped to the correct reading and the power meter came off zero.

  Paul smiled in satisfaction, “Stack twelve if you please?” The other Stack also came up, and automatically synchronized with the first one. He sighed in relief, “Let’s warm up the others.”

  The comm unit clicked twice, Micah’s voice was querulous, “What are you doing up there? Rik thinks you’re going to blow something up?” There was protesting yip in the background.

  “Wait a few minutes and I’ll let you know Micah.” He tapped the comm to another channel, “Charlie, head back to the Alexis and help Stevie, but don’t bust a gut, I think we’re going to be out of here real soon.” He tapped the comm off.

  “Rik kept the heaters on one through five; they’re about ready to go on line.” Raoul said quietly over his shoulder.

  Looking at the screen of his portable tool panel Paul could see that. He pulled his equipment back out of the way and started to unfasten the ties holding the disaster sleeve for number twelve on the ceiling. Raoul grinned and did the same thing on ten.

  There was a faint whine from nearby, then another, and another until five more units were producing power. Paul and Raoul exchanged grins, Paul tapped his comm, “I’m returning control to Rik, you’re back up with five Stacks, and you should have fifteen in about twenty minutes.”

  There was silence on the other end then a heavy, “Thank you,” and a click.

  Another click, Patsy spoke quietly, “Paul we have inbound bogeys, probably attack choppers.”

  Paul winced, “Thanks,” he tapped the comm to another channel, “Charlie, Stevie, don’t unstrap anything, the ‘Beam’s operational again and we may have to bug out soon.”

  He tapped again, “Micah what’s your plan?”

  “They don’t have a firm location, they are a hundred and fifty kilometers away and it is two hours to full dark, they will not spend much time looking before they turn around and go home. It is unlikely they will spot us, so we sit tight, if they get too close they will get a warm reception and we will be gone before the peacekeepers can decide what to do.” There was a considerable amount of arrogance and disdain in the Israeli’s voice.

  “You’re the expert; we’re heading back to the Alexis unless there’s something else?”

  “My crew has dealt with the other damage, at least as best we can until we can get to a proper repair facility.”

  As they walked across the ground to the Alexis Paul glanced back at the MoonBeam and then over at Raoul, “I thought she was armored?”

  “She is Paul, against anything up to older 25mm ammo, you saw the report, she was hit by an old single barrel 35mm cannon. We talked about heavier armor but a really effective outfit would have made her almost useless as a cargo ship. When we worked on the…uh…well we thought it was unlikely she’d have to face anything more than machineguns.”

  “Micah was unlucky I guess, someone must have talked about the cargo drop off…Shit.” He reached down and tapped a button, “Micah, how did the bad guys bushwhack you?”

  “I assume that someone must have told them about our planned….” Micah’s strangled curse was cut off by the click of the comm termination.

  Paul trotted the last few feet to the Alexis, Raoul came up behind him, “The other side may have given the peacekeepers this location?”

  “That would be my guess; I would say that they put a bunch of little bits of data together and came up with a number bigger than zero - and have sent some people to investigate.”

  “Surely Micah won’t shoot them down, he’ll warn them off, right?” Raoul sounded very unconvinced.

  “Micah’s not likely to play knight errant and give them the first hit. He will shoot them out of the sky as soon as they get in range.” Paul stated flatly. His stomach was churning with the realization that he was at least partially responsible.

  Climbing the ladder up to the cockpit he got the glimmer of a plan and stopped to tap the comm button on his armband, “Micah, have one or more of the fighters get in close. If the choppers look like they’re coming straight here have them fly out of here in formation, if they stay far enough away to stay out of IR sensor range they’ll look like some kind of biggish cargo aircraft, they might be able to lead the choppers away long enough for night to fall so we can get out of here.”

  There was silence, then, “A good idea Paul, one problem is that the radar surveillance drone is moving closer to us, but that does not negate the idea.” There was a pause.

  Paul spoke again, “I had thought about doing the same sort of thing with the Alexis but I’m not sure I can fly her fast enough sideways to avoid getting caught, also, with the poor visibility we might fly into the side of a hill or something.”

  “That would be a shame, I must admit I had debated that course myself, given the chase is not going to be of long duration.” Micah sounded almost friendly.

  “I’m willing to try just about anything if it’ll stop innocents getting killed.”

  “They are soldiers; it is a risk we take when we come to this career.” Micah’s voice was cold and distant again but the comm did not click closed.

  “Agreed but they aren’t in combat and they aren’t our enemies Micah, at the worst we can lift out and go back to Luna. I thought that was the plan all along?”

  “I have my orders Paul; I’ll let you know what you are to do, out.” The comm clicked.

  Paul sighed and then continued his climb.

  -o-

  The ShadowHawk shivered faintly under Stan as it powered through the bottom of the cloud deck. His hands were light on the stick and collective but the big slab-sided combat chopper was really flying herself, given the weather that was probably safer. He just hoped the Alliance realized by now how bad an idea it was to fire at US Army aircraft. Not that their chances of hitting the Shadow were very high, the stealth technology version of the venerable UH-60 Blackhawk was a tough target for any weapon system.

  Stan, formally Major Stanley Brightman, glanced over his shoulder, the other two aircraft in this flight flickered in and out of visibility as they raced through the streamers of cloud at three thousand feet. No rain and little wind thankfully, just a thick, moderately low hanging cloud deck.

  Next to him, his copilot, First Lieutenant Monica Bradley, was carefully checking the moving map display, “We’re near where Stotin said they had set up their ambush Major. If his map and references were right, they’re about four miles ahead.”

  “Right - and we’re right in the area of RedRobin flight’s sighting, and the radar ghost.”

  “Roger that major. Things look calm enough, shall I transmit the plan Alfa commit?”

  “Do it,” in his helmet-mounted display the red A appeared and the symbols shifted to point down. They were going to spread out and go in low, with their rotor head radars active, and weapons hot, something was going on here.

  “Damn, I mean sir...” Monica yelped, as the microwave targeting radar came on it showed a target moving across their front, flying low and slow, hugging the ground.

  “I see it, they saw us coming damnit.”

  “I can’t see anything on the IR sir, too far away in this weather.”

  “Let’s see if we can catch up shall we,” Stan dived to gain speed while adding power.

  The radar said the flushed bog
ey was flying at only about a hundred and fifty miles an hour. With gear and weapons stowed behind radar absorbent composite panels the Shadow was well able to sustain almost two hundred, they pounded through the heavy, rough air of the thickening dusk.

  Seconds stretched to minutes, the target was flickering in and out of the radar’s sight, moving faster now, and directly away. “I still don’t have an IR track sir and we should be seeing something, as big and slow as the radar target is.” Monica’s concern was obvious, even through the distortion of her microphone.

  Stan agreed, “Yeah and he turned up then turned away awfully fortuitously if you ask me.” He was suddenly worried, had they been suckered? Was this some kind of trap? He had a sick image of the scout squad in the back of his aircraft and the other two. Almost without thinking he pulled back on the throttle and collective, “Break…”

  A warning howl, “Scree, Scree, Scree, WHUMP,” Stan’s world was spinning, full of sound and fury, as he lost control. From aft he could hear the scream of an unloaded shaft mixed with the yells and screams of the soldiers. He disengaged the turbines and turned into the spin, fighting for control. The ground was far too close, he pulled the collective up, fighting to get into an autogyro and stop their death plunge.

  “Base, this is BlueLook, Laser, Laser, Laser, combat laser hit, we’re going down.” Monica’s yell into the microphone was filled with despair, rage and shock. No one but the US was supposed to have deployed combat lasers, the only reason they even knew the warning tone was that the training command insisted on training for even the most unlikely events.

  The trees were above them, the ground was near, the end came with a rending crash, he was flung forward and the world went black.

  -o-

  The world was dark; a hand touched his shoulder, “Major, can you hear me?”

  A feminine voice, not his wife, she never called him major, who then? It was Lieutenant Bradley he realized, as the recent past came back. As the last memories fitted into place he tried to jerk upright and almost blacked out again, pain filled his world.

  A hand pressing him down, “Lie still Major, you’re hurt, I think your shoulder’s broken as well as an arm and a leg.” There was a gratifying amount of concern in her voice.

  He wondered why it was so dark, and then realized with astonishment that it was because his eyes were closed. It took some effort to open them; it was at that point that he realized that he’d been given a considerable amount of painkiller at some point while he was out.

  The world was dark anyway, he realized some of that was the open sided tent he was lying under but he could see around the edge as well. “How long?”

  “You’ve been out about an hour Major.” The voice wasn’t Monica’s instead it was Harry Chalker’s, the captain who was his second in command; he’d been aboard the BlueLook three.

  Stan decided it was too much effort to keep his eyes open, “what’s the Sit Harry, you tag the bastard?”

  A sigh, a hand on his shoulder, heavier, Harry’s, “Whoever they were they got all three of us almost simultaneously Stan. Two went down pretty hard; Lieutenant Aleph and his copilot Sergeant Davis are dead, the squads banged up but nothing more than a broken arm. I was lucky to find a smooth patch; my bird could probably fly, except the tail fan’s scrap.”

  “What about my people?”

  Monica’s voice came from his other side. “Fine sir, we hit hard on a slope, your side of the cockpit took the brunt of it, and absorbed the shock, I’m a bit bruised but the squad made it without a scratch.”

  Stan’s mind was muzzy, full of anger at himself and others, he wanted to cry, he hoped that was the pain killers, because his dad had brought him up tougher than that. An odd thing Harry had said floated up, “You said they, was it some kind of ambush?”

  Harry sighed, “At the last second, as I saw you pull up, begin to break off the pursuit, the target broke in two. Then they turned like they were a couple of Super Apaches, next thing Bill’s yelling that Two’s spinning and you’re going down too and then my warning receiver goes nuts. Can’t believe they tagged all three of our fantrons like that, but they did.”

  “Who the hell were they?” Something painful and angry filled his chest, “Could it have been some of the black hats?” The Army had recently reinstated the Stetson as its headgear; it was more American than the old berets - as one might have expected, Special Ops had decided on black. If this had all been part of a busted Special Ops play it would explain the laser and the fact that they weren’t all dead, it would have been easier for the bogeys to destroy the main rotor head instead of going for tail fans.

  “Ah, Special Ops would have radioed us to back off Stan, not shot us down. Even they aren’t that nuts.”

  The world was closing around him again, he was very tired, “When’s pickup?”

  Monica replied, “About an hour sir.” There was a roar overhead that silenced her for a moment, “The fast movers are here already, they blitzed the ravine Stotin fingered but didn’t get any return fire or secondary explosions.”

  Harry spoke from a distance, “The surveillance drone went down about the time we got tagged, we think whoever was here made their escape during the panic all that caused. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. We’re going to be crawling with Colonels, Generals and Assistant Secretaries in a few hours. WNN’s already going live from the base, no other active disasters in the world I guess.”

  Stan was floating away as Harry spoke; things were, relatively, in control, he was very tired, focusing on the world was very, very hard. He slipped over the boundary into sleep.