Ken looked down at the tool. “This? It’s for mining at close quarters. No idea.”
“But will it put out a strong enough beam to do more than blind someone at long range?”
“Again, I don’t know, but it cuts through rock like butter so I imagine it’s got some oomph in vacuum. I’m sure counting on it to kill whoever is going to come down that hall.”
Jennifer noted Caleb looking once more at the exosuits mounts. “Really? After Phoebe you’re going to ride on the outside again?”
Caleb looked to the crowd and pointed at the double doors. “Weld that door shut. Kill the pass switch. Pile as much heavy crap against it as you can.” He looked at Ken. “You want to use that thing?” He pointed a thumb at the exosuits. “How about a little ride on the outside with me?” He turned to Spruck. “Assuming that’s okay with you.”
Spruck said, “Sounds nuts. Sure. Why not?”
“Dad!” wined the kid with Ken.
“It’s going to be okay, Brian.”
“No it’s not! You can’t ride on the outside of a spaceship!”
“Actually, you can,” said Caleb, who then turned back to the crowd. “We pile in this thing and . . . what’s your name again?”
“Ken.”
“Rock cutter Ken and I turn it into a battleship. We hopefully kill or scare off the orbiter, land and transfer to the shuttle, like Jennifer said.”
“That’s nuts,” said Alice.
A man in greasy coveralls had been keeping watch outside the door. “Hey! They’re—”
A laser beam hit him square in the right eye, burned through his head in a blink, and briefly flared the wall behind him as he dropped.
“William!” screamed a woman wore the same color coveralls.
Two men stumbled over each other pulling the man’s corpse inside and out of the way, while one of them hit the door-close button on the first of two doors that created an airlock for the bay.
Ken stepped over with the rock cutter and blasted the keypad just as a man wearing antilaser gear stepped up to the observation window.
Jennifer ran to the door carrying the portable welder and began welding the seam.
The woman who had screamed for William, loudly swore over and over as she rifled through a tool box, producing a tube of gel. She slapped on a pair of thick rubber gloves as she ran to the door and gently pushed Jennifer’s torch away, squeezing the contents of the tube along the seam. “Don’t touch it. You’ll never get unstuck.” Then she turned and knelt next to William, who still had a thin wisp of smoke curling up out of his burned out eye socket.
Natalie grabbed a can of orange marking paint, casually stepped to the door, and painted out the window while holding her middle finger up to the man on the other side.
As Henry Lo walked the halls of his new acquisition, he chewed a fresh stick of cinnamon gum and felt a certain sympathy for his troops. They and their police escort were expecting a firefight, itching for a firefight. But for a few stragglers (fools who thought they could talk their way into a new position with the company), the gang hadn’t been able to melt down a nervous system or put a laser beam through hardly anyone. Then there was this tall lanky black woman with an afro giving them the finger as she painted out an airlock window. Henry Lo stopped at the scene and offered what he hoped was an optimistic smile to Sergeant Gunderson. “There you go, Sergeant. Some resistance finally, eh?”
They could hear the inner airlock door thud shut. Gunderson pulled off his helmet. “Tricky one, that, Mister Wang. Being an airlock and all. You’ll note that that they are sealing it with Keck Gel. That stuff will instantly grow the door to the frame. Not going to be like cracking a safe. Sealing the inner door, too, I expect. We’ll have to drill the wall.”
“What about the outside? The surface-side doors?”
“Same, I expect.”
Henry Lo offered a
hmmm
, then shrugged. “It’s a shipping and receiving dock. It’s not critical for now. I suppose we could just let them starve.” The eagerness of the men around him slightly deflated.
Gunderson’s posture became even more ramrod in response. “Might be a fair amount of food in there. Months, maybe longer. Can’t leave loose ends like that, sir.”
Henry Lo scrunched his nose. “No, I suppose not.” He turned to his second standing next to him. “Zheng, ask the fellows who are securing the maintenance shafts and ductwork to keep an eye out for a drill rig.” He turned back to Gunderson. “Chances are that the drilling for this place was contracted out and wrapped up long ago, but you never know. Probe the surface side for any weaknesses. If we have to blow the surface door, so be it.”
Gunderson began to salute, then nodded. “Sir,” and waved a squad to follow him.
Henry Lo patted his stomach. “I’m feeling a tad peckish.” He turned back to Zheng. “Have Hu check out the kitchen and whip something up.” Then he held up a hand. “No wait. These Albiorix fools were setting up a spread. Chances are there’s a welcome party going to waste. Have Hu check the cafeteria.” He called after Gunderson, “When you’ve got your plan in order, sergeant, have your men get some food as well.”
“Yes sir, Mister Wang.”
Shipping and receiving had a low-energy orbital slingshot system that could handle packages as small as a baseball and as big as a city bus (or a spaceship the size of the
Belle
). The system was designed to put packages out into the moon’s orbit so that fuel wasn’t wasted on the shipping side of the equation. There were three different slingshots, each more heavy-duty than the next, all with sophisticated weight programming so that each package was sent perfectly into a close orbit for pick-up by an awaiting delivery ship.
Spruck was at the controls of a crane that traversed the ceiling. They had the
Belle
hitched up and dangling over the receiver for the heavy-duty slingshot when the power was cut off in the entire bay. The sudden pitch black was replaced by the emergency lights blinking on, but the crane was dead, the
Belle
swinging slowly back and forth over its target. “Bastards,” swore Spruck.
“It’s only gotta drop about a foot,” said Caleb. “Can you release it?”
“Nope. That requires electricity, too. The fall’s no biggy. The gear can handle that, but the release is electric. So’s the slingshot. Maglev and all. Heck, so’s the elephant door.”
The floor suddenly started vibrating and a low pitched hum came from beyond the airlock door to the base hallway. Ken said, “They found the tunneling drill.”
“How long until they’re through?” asked Caleb.
“Uh . . . Wall’s about three meters thick—_
Ken’s son Brian interrupted him. “About, let’s see, half an hour, Dad.”
Ken nodded. “Yup, that’s about right. If the laser cutters are working on it. They were acting up when we cut the tunnel for the expanded sleeping quarters.”
Spruck lightly hopped down from the crane-control-box, saying, “Uh, okay. We, uh . . . the
Belle
. . . We, uh, we hot-wire what we need off her fuel cells. They’re built to supplement an outpost.”
Caleb, Jennifer, and Saanvi could do nothing else but stand back and watch as the Albiorix team got to work pulling cable to the Belle while simultaneously breaking into the crane, elephant door, and slingshot wiring harnesses. The floor continued to vibrate and dust fell steadily from above. They would have to do it all in sequence: Crane first, then door, and then slingshot. The only way to do each step was to do it manually, which meant that the big elephant door had to be opened by someone wearing an exosuit. Caleb, of course, volunteered.
The moment the ship was settled on the slingshot, Spruck ran inside through the airlock and gave a thumbs up to Caleb who stood next to the elephant door controls wearing his exosuit. He gave a thumbs up in return. With his back to the wall that was being drilled, he didn’t notice the rock starting to crumble behind him, but Spruck did. He said, “It’s now! Gotta go now!”
The Albiorix folks were piled inside the
Belle
. Without enough seating for everyone, most sat on the floor, legs spread so the person in front could snug up their back to a chest. Shipping foam blocks were squeezed in-between each body and the person in back of the line had double the foam behind him. They were lined up from biggest to smallest in two columns. It didn’t take a lot of energy to launch a box of pills into orbit. The diminutive Albiorix didn’t offer much resistance. Launching the mass of a fully loaded Princess Belle was a different kettle of fish. Chances were the humans inside would be so compacted at launch as to likely crush the lungs of the big folks in the back. They just didn’t have time to come up with something safer. Bert was placed as the end receiver in the heavier of the two lines.
Ken gave his son a gentle squeeze as he set him in front of one of the lines between Saanvi’s leg, when Spruck ran past, commanding urgently, “They’re in! Get in your suit, Ken.”
Saanvi put her arms around the boy and tried to give him a reassuring squeeze while they watched Ken scramble into the entry hatch for the other exterior exosuit.
A dim light inside the exosuit chamber automatically turned on as Ken sealed the door behind him. The suit was a one-size-fits-all model, and he felt it expand to adjust to his feet. A small person like his son would still get lost in the thing, he thought. He slipped his arms into the sleeves, wiggled his fingers, and found the rock cutter that he had leaned against the outside of the glove. Sensory feedback gave him the impression that he was holding the tool, his hand covered with no more than a thin latex glove. He said, “Communicate,” and a speaker icon without a slash across it flashed in a corner of his heads-up. “Ken checking in. Caleb, do you see them?” Ken wouldn’t be able to see anything until they were in orbit and he could open the protective canopy that covered the suit. Claustrophobia was a given.
Caleb turned and looked at the crumbling wall behind him. “Oh crap! Opening the door!” He looked at the cable snaking from the belly of the
Belle
to the power box in front of him and said a quick prayer before punching the open button. Nothing happened. “Spruck! It’s not working!” Rock scattered across the floor at his feet.
Spruck frantically glanced around the cockpit. Natalie, strapped in next to him, reviewed a power layout from the fuel cell. “I’m only seeing the crane and slingshot feeds.”
Spruck said, “Must have come loose!”
Caleb yelled, “No time like the present, Spruck!”
Jennifer, who was strapped into a jumpseat behind, Spruck said, “Darn. I should have peed before I got all strapped in.”
Spruck yelled at Caleb, “You gotta check the connection under the ship! Under! We’re not seeing it connected!”
Caleb ran toward the ship.
“Motherfuckingcocksuckingmotherfuckersuckyfuckyfuckingshit!” He dove under the belly, reached up into the fuel cell access hatch, and pushed in on all three cables.
Spruck yelled, “That did it!”
Caleb ran back. “Christ on a crutch Jesus to hell, motherfucker!” He punched the switch just as the light from the hall outside started to bleed through the cracks in the wall. An alarm blared and yellow flashing strobes lit up the room accompanied by the sound of a huge volume of air being sucked out of the space. Then the elephant door slowly began to slide open. Caleb ran for the exosuit hatch on the closer side of the
Belle
and leaped onto the platform, slamming his back up against the automatic dock. As he hit the button to close the protective cover, he saw the tunneling drill bust through. This was immediately followed by red flashing lights and a whole new set of klaxons, far more urgent than the first. He said to himself, “Now that’s a real decompression.”
In the
Belle
’s cockpit Spruck grew alarmed. The elephant door had just finished opening when the red lights started flashing, causing the door to reverse course. Spruck said, “Gotta go!” and touched the slingshot button on the control glass in front of him, simultaneously screaming, “Hang on!”
To the utter surprise of the two cops walking up to check on the exterior of the shipping and receiving door, the door was retracting, revealing the blunt nose of the Princess Belle in the weak sunlight.
“Elvis has left the building!” yelled Spruck as the slingshot fired.
One of the cops lost his footing and fell right into the path of one of the
Belle
’s passing landing skids and got his life-support package ripped clean off his back leaving him exposed to the elements. Coincidentally, the
Belle
’s contact with the policeman bled off just enough energy so that the ship came up short on orbit.
In the main cabin, Bert calculated the weight pressing against him and judged that several if not all of the passengers seated in front of him would have felt significant discomfort. Then the weight shifted to nothing. Two people almost instantly vomited, causing a cascade of sympathy-retching and gagging among the rest.
Spruck hit the ignite buttons on the two rocket engines, only to have the screen in front of him blare red: FAULT. FAULT. FAULT.
Natalie blurted, “Spruck? Fault?”
He ignored her as the ship’s climb decelerated and slowed to a stop. He yelled, “Diagnostics, Belle, diagnostics!”
A detached female voice said, “Analyzing.”
Outside, Caleb and Ken had retracted their protective canopies. Ken was the first to spot the police ship that they had expected. The machine was backlit by Saturn and could have been mistaken for one of its moons—except it started moving. His heads-up told him the ship was 2.73 kilometers away. “I got, I got, I got! Shit, I got a ship here.” He lifted his rock cutter. The tool was nearly weightless, but it had a lot of mass. He lifted it so hard at first, that the momentum carried it right into his face plate.
Caleb could hear the man hyperventilating. A scan of the sky around him showed nothing. Then he saw movement on the ground. Another cop ship was lifting off. He said to Ken, “Steady your breathing. We’ve got another one coming from the ground.” He brought up his own rock cutter and hoped for the best. The tool’s tip glowed and a stream of laser shot out. He missed by a mile, but he could see a spot on the ground where the light hit. He might as well have been using a laser pointer. He adjusted his aim, eventually bringing the light to bear on the windshield of the rising ship. The ship turned as if to avoid the light. There wasn’t any obvious damage, but the pilot was severely overreacting, turning and hitting the retro rockets at the same time. Like a bottle rocket with its guiding stick snapped off, the sudden acceleration and turn twisted the trajectory. The machine flipped and smashed into the ground. The resulting explosion was huge, sending debris and a shockwave out in a near perfect dome shape. Caleb briefly cheered and then swallowed it as his eyes grew wider taking in the approaching shockwave. There was no evading it. He barked out, “Brace everyone!” and hit the button to close his canopy. Then things went topsy-turvy.