The Stars That Beckon

by Kevin J Simington

  “Leave him here; we’ll keep an eye on him. Gather your team and get going.”

  “Will do.”

  Zac started snoring gently.

  11

  Kit ran from the cafeteria, down a corridor beside the kitchen marked ‘Staff Only’. She entered the flight crew ready room, quickly ditched her civvies and donned her flight suit. There was no sign of Bane, so hopefully he was already on his way to the shuttle. She figured that their pre-flight check would have to be quick. As she ran back through the cafeteria area, she noted the prevailing atmosphere of general panic. People were falling over, struggling with the low gravity, shouting instructions, calling out to friends and loved ones. She noticed a very overweight but well-dressed man with an old-fashioned Texas drawl abusing the female waiter who had previously spilled coffee on Kit. The Texan was yelling, “This is a disgrace! I only just got here yesterday! What sort of security do you guys have that you can’t even keep a small base like this safe? I want to speak to someone in charge!”

  Kit skidded to a halt beside the pair. She grabbed the Texan by his collar and spun him around in the low gravity, throwing him off-balance so that he ended up sitting on his largely proportioned backside on the ground. “Listen, cowboy,” she said. “Your money bought you a ticket to the moon, but it didn’t buy you the right to be an arsehole! This waitress is just doing her job, and she doesn’t need an arrogant bonehead like you abusing her! I’m the captain of the shuttle that’s supposed to fly your sorry arse out of here. I’m not sure how we’re gonna fit everyone on, and right now I’m putting you at the back of the queue!”

  She winked at the waitress, who mouthed a silent thank you. Kit spun around and continued running towards the tunnel leading to the main terminal chamber. As she did, the worry that had been nibbling away at the edge of her consciousness burst to the surface. How are we going to fit everyone on the shuttle? As far as she knew, her shuttle, FTL-1, was the only one on the base. Perhaps other shuttles were on their way from Kepler station, but even with all four, they could only extricate 200 people. As far as she knew, there were nearly 1,200 people on the base. How were they all going to be evacuated?

  However, she didn’t have time to worry about the problem any further, because as she came to the airlock for the terminal tunnel, half a dozen DANSA personnel came through the doorway and immediately blocked her path. “Whoa! Where do you think you’re going?” asked a no-nonsense-looking female who was clearly in charge. This must be Natasha Martinez, Kit thought. She had a small nose ring, several ear piercings and jet-black hair in a short back and sides style, with a floppy fringe half covering one eye. Kit, who knew she exuded a tomboy aura herself, felt positively feminine and dainty standing next to Martinez.

  “I’m Kit Tyler, the shuttle pilot. Just on my way to ready it for launch.”

  Martinez looked her up and down, took hold of her left wrist and scanned her biochip. “OK, you’re good to go. I’ll be bringing a load of passengers down the tunnel in about ten.”

  Kit started to move through the still-open airlock, then turned and asked, “How are we gonna evacuate everyone? There’s only one shuttle here.”

  “Control tells me there are two more about to land,” answered Martinez, already starting to move off.

  “Yeh, but there are 1,200 people to evacuate,” said Kit.

  “Not anymore, there aren’t,” answered Martinez as she walked away.

  Kit’s heart sank as the import of those words sank in. “How many ...?” she started to say, but Martinez was gone. She turned and ran through the airlock, which had both doors wide open as a result of the emergency evacuation code one of the security team had entered into the keypad. At least we won’t have to waste time cycling small numbers of people through the airlock one group at a time, she thought to herself. She ran down the tunnel using long loping strides best suited for low gravity and came to the central cavern. She punched the button for the lift and a minute later exited the lift into the small terminal above ground. She was already running through her pre-flight checklist in her mind and was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she didn’t immediately register what she was seeing through the viewing portal. Or rather, what she wasn’t seeing.

  The shuttle was gone.

  12

  Comm officer Michael Gates frowned as he looked at the screen in front of him. “Dr Wisecroft, my radar screen is showing that the shuttle has just lifted off.”

  Lance leaned over his shoulder, punched a comm button and said, “Martinez, this is control, do you read?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Have you already loaded passengers onto a shuttle?”

  “Not even close. We’re still mustering. There’s a lot of panic going on here. It’s like herding cats.”

  Lance turned to Wisecroft, who was standing beside him. “What the hell?” As he spoke, the comm came to life and an unfamiliar voice addressed them.

  “Hello Control, can anyone hear me?”

  Lance leaned forward. “You’re speaking to Lance Catrell, in the Control Centre. Who’s this?”

  “This is Kit Tyler in the terminal building. I’m the pilot of the shuttle, at least I’m meant to be, but right now I’m looking out at an empty tarmac. Do you mind telling me what you’ve done with my shuttle?”

  Lance responded, “Our radar shows it accelerating away from the surface. Do you know who is flying it?”

  “I guess that would be my co-pilot, Bane Kalawaia. Are you saying you didn’t give him clearance to take off?”

  “That’s correct.”

  There was a pause in the conversation as both parties processed the information.

  Wisecroft spoke up. “We have to assume hostile intent. Lance, what’s the most likely scenario here?”

  Catrell considered for a moment. “The shuttle has no weapons, so I can’t see how ...”

  “The shuttle IS a weapon,” interrupted Kit over the comm. “It’s a high-velocity projectile with substantial mass.”

  “She’s right,” said Wisecroft to Lance. “Where is the most likely target?”

  “The most vulnerable place is where Kit is right now, the terminal building. The cavern underneath is the closest part of the base to the surface; only 10 metres or so. If the shuttle impacted there, it would penetrate the central chamber below, resulting in explosive decompression of what remains of the tunnel system.” He looked again at his radar screen and swore.

  “The shuttle has reversed its ascent! It is accelerating back towards the base!”

  “Kit! Get out of there now!” yelled Wisecroft.

  Kit didn’t need a written invitation. The lift was already open, and she dived in and pressed the button for Sub-Level 1. The door closed agonisingly slowly, and the lift descended with equal deliberateness. “Come on, come on, come on,” she muttered. An eternity later the door opened, and Kit shot out of it. As she sprinted down the tunnel back towards the habitation zone, she saw the first passengers starting to file through the open airlock. As she neared the airlock she started screaming, “Get back! Get back! Decompression! Get back! Close the airlock!” The passengers froze, with puzzled expressions on their faces. Natasha Martinez, however, was trained to react quickly. She was standing in the doorway in the hab-side of the airlock, and grabbed the nearest passenger and hurled him backwards into the hab. Kit noticed that the fat Texan had somehow managed to worm his way to the front of the queue and was the first passenger through the doorway, standing just inside the tunnel. Kit didn’t slow down. With a certain degree of satisfaction, she dropped her shoulder and charged into the big man. He let out a loud “Oomf” as he flew backwards in the low gravity, knocking over two people behind him in the process and landing on top of one of them. The irate Texan opened his mouth to protest, but whatever he said was drowned out by the sound of a loud explosion in the central chamber, followed immediately by a tremendous wind howling through the airlock towards the now fractured chamber.

  Kit was not
a heavyweight. At 55 kilos and 162 cm, she’d often been referred to by friends as a pocket rocket. Now, for the first time in her life, she looked like she was about to achieve lift-off. The gale-force wind held her horizontal to the ground as she clung grimly to the outer lip of the airlock. The wind shrieked and howled around her, and debris hurtled past at frightening speed. Inside the cafeteria area, people were sliding towards the airlock. Anything not tied down became airborne, battering those inside the airlock before being sucked down the tunnel and ejected into the vacuum of space through the gaping hole in the top of the central cavern.

  Kit’s fingers began to slip, and she knew she only had seconds left. As her grip was about to fail, a hand with a swirling tattoo attached itself to her wrist and started pulling her in. Kit looked up into the steely green eyes of Natasha Martinez and saw the veins pop out in her neck as she strained against the wind’s vicious pull. Another security officer grabbed her other wrist, and together they hauled Kit into the airlock as the door was closed.

  The silence after the shrieking gale was eerie, except for the occasional cries and whimpers of those who were either in shock or injured. Kit looked at Martinez and said, “Thanks for that. Thought I was in a bit of trouble there.”

  “No problem. There’s not much of you. On the other hand, if it had been Tubby over here,” she said, indicating the overweight Texan still lying on his back behind them, “I would have let him go. He could have plugged the hole for us.”

  They both shared a smile, and then Martinez cocked her head to the side and said, “You’d better get that sewn up.”

  “What?” said Kit. She put her hand to her face, and it came away wet. She looked down and saw that the left side of her flight suit was soaked in blood.

  “Your cheek is sliced wide open,” said Martinez. “You’ve got yourself a second mouth on the side of your face.”

  Martinez stood to her feet and stepped out of the airlock into the cafeteria. There were people lying everywhere. It looked like a war zone, which, in reality, it was. “OK, people, listen up,” she yelled. Her words had no effect. People were crying out and whimpering. She sensed a rising level of hysteria and knew she had to get on top of it quickly. “I said, quiet!!!” she yelled. This time, she got the desired effect. “If you can hear me, it means you’re alive, so be thankful and stop panicking; you’re not helping anyone, and it only uses up valuable energy. We’re safe now, and I promise you we are going to get you out of here. For the moment, let’s deal with the immediate issues. Is anyone injured? Please raise your hand.” Several hands went up. “Anything life-threatening that can’t wait for five minutes?” No one responded. “OK, good.” She looked around the room. “At the risk of using a cliché, is there a doctor in the house?” She paused, and no one responded. “Do we have a doctor here?” Again, there was no response. “OK, anyone with medical training at all?” A tentative hand went up. It was the waitress who had tipped coffee all over Kit.

  “Yes. I’m training to be a doctor. But I’m only halfway through my third year. I’m on student vacation at the moment.”

  “Congratulations,” said Martinez. “You just graduated. Grab a med kit from the kitchen and set yourself up on those tables over there.” She looked back over her shoulder towards Kit. “Supergirl, you’re up first.”

  Kit plonked herself down at a table as the waitress came back from the kitchen with a substantial-looking med kit. “We seem destined to bump into each other,” said Kit.

  “Yeh. Thanks for what you did earlier. I’m not always as assertive as I should be.”

  “No problem. I’m Kit, by the way.”

  “Jasmine, but my friends call me Jaz.”

  Kit looked closely at her for the first time. Maybe 168 cm tall, shoulder-length red hair, with a smattering of freckles across a dainty nose. She had the kind of natural good looks that didn’t need cosmetics to turn heads. “So, you’re a med student? You look a bit older than the typical student.”

  “I’m a late bloomer,” she said with a smile. “I spent five years working with an aid organisation in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I reached the point where I wanted to do more. I was volunteering at the local hospital, because they were short of nurses. In the end I enrolled in medicine at DANSA Academy, in Macapá.”

  “Wow! The Academy? I heard they only took geniuses.”

  “I managed to pass the entrance exam,” Jaz said modestly.

  “That explains how you managed to land this cushy vacation job.”

  “Yes. Academy students get placed at DANSA facilities during vacation breaks. It’s good money and we get to see some interesting facilities.”

  Jaz had been cleaning Kit’s wound and now began suturing the nasty gash.

  “Have you done this before?” asked Kit.

  “Plenty of times in Bolivia. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. You’ll have a bit of a scar for a while, until you get some skin rejuve done.”

  “I’m not worried,” said Kit. “The boys aren’t exactly lining up to ask me out. I think I intimidate them.”

  “After watching you deal with that man earlier, I can understand why,” responded Jaz. She worked silently for a few more moments. As she tied the sutures off, Jaz looked at Kit and asked, “Tell me honestly. Are we going to get out of here?”

  Kit looked up at Jaz’s calm, intelligent face and answered truthfully, “I really don’t know.”

  13

  “What’s the damage?” Wisecroft asked Lance.

  “Sensors indicate that the central chamber is completely compromised. But the perimeter tunnel between us and the hab is still open.”

  Wisecroft turned to his head of nuclear physics, Francis Leibman, who was continuing to monitor the escalating fusion reaction. “How long until it blows, Frank?” he asked.

  “It’s accelerating faster than I expected. At this rate, we’ve got about 70 minutes until it goes critical.”

  Wisecroft leaned over Gates’ desk and punched a comm button. “Martinez, do you read me?”

  “Yep.”

  “How many people have you got there?”

  “We’ve got 158 survivors here in the caff.”

  “Is that all? Are you sure?”

  “Yep. Counted them twice. There were a lot of civvies in the casino and in the observatory when the bombs went off. I gotta tell you, there are some very frightened people in front of me right now.”

  “We can’t do anything about their feelings right now; we’ve got to focus on getting them all safely out of there. I need you to bring them all through to the research facility, as fast as you can. We’re going to use Genesis to evacuate everyone now. The tunnel through to here is intact and the airlock doors to the facility are open. We’ll have personnel on this side take everyone through to Genesis. Make it fast, Martinez. We don’t have much time.”

  “Roger.”

  Wisecroft said to Gates, “Michael, patch me through to George.” A moment later he had his security chief on the line. “George, how’s the search on board Genesis going?”

  “Nothing yet. But we’re looking for a needle in a haystack here. Genesis is 700 metres long and 150 metres wide, and I’ve only got a handful of people searching. We’re checking all the obvious places, using EM and radiation detectors. Engineering are checking life support and drive systems, but nothing has shown up yet.”

  “OK. Keep looking.”

  Wisecroft ran his hand through his hair and turned to Lance, his control room coordinator. “It doesn’t make sense. I can’t believe they would sabotage the base but leave Genesis untouched.”

  “Maybe it’s just the base they wanted to destroy,” answered Lance.

  “No,” said Wisecroft. “I don’t believe that. Genesis represents everything the Caliphate stands against. They believe that Earth is humanity’s only home and that it is an affront to Allah to try to leave it. A starship capable of travelling to another solar system and colonising another planet is anathema to them. They would do everythi
ng in their power to neutralise Genesis.”

  Michael Gates spoke up, “Um ... guys, I think I might know how they’re going to try to do that.”

  “How?” asked Lance.

  “I’m tracking the trajectory of the two inbound shuttles. They should be slowing their descent by now, but instead they are both accelerating towards the base. The computer projects that the point of impact will be directly over the Genesis chamber.”

  “How long till impact?” asked Wisecroft.

  “Less than a minute.”

  “Warn everyone in the chamber to take cover—get inside Genesis if they can!” said Wisecroft.

  As Gates communicated the warning to those in the chamber, Wisecroft spoke to Lance.

  “Will the shuttles be able to penetrate?”

  “Depends where they hit. The cavern is over a kilometre long. At this end it is 300 metres below ground level, but where it exits in the side of the crater, the cavern roof is only 150 metres thick. My guess is that even at that point, the roof could take a single hit and remain intact. But two shuttles impacting the exact same spot, one after the other, could bring the roof down and block the exit.”

  “That must be their plan,” said Wisecroft.

  Gates had barely finished issuing the warning before they heard and felt the first impact, followed about ten seconds later by the second. The ground shook beneath their feet and a few items fell off desks and consoles, but the explosions were not as severe as the previous detonations the base had experienced.

  “That’s two less terrorists using up our oxygen,” muttered Gates.

  A moment later the comm channel came to life. “Hey! Does someone wanna tell me what the hell that was!”

  Gates turned to the others and said, “It’s Grizzle, the chamber supervisor. I guess that means the chamber’s still intact.” Gus Grizole, who had always made a point of emphasising the pronunciation, Griz-o-ley, was, at 68, the oldest person on the base. He had no formal qualifications and had the sunny disposition of a piece of sandpaper, but he had been on the base for 50 years and had earned the respect of everyone.