April 4: A Different Perspective (45 page)

* * *

"I have one messy corpse, bagged up, the weapon," he'd almost said murder weapon, but hesitated at the last second, unsure. "I cut the station computer out. Didn't unplug it or even try to unbolt it. It's still sitting on a chunk of bulkhead. There are a few printed manuals and a bunch of them on disk. I burned the lock off the lieutenant's locker and stuffed his personal gear in a bag for him. You want one of the projectiles this railgun throws?"

"No, it's pretty mature tech. Any other weapons, besides the one just used?"

"There's one strapped to the Captain's leg. I pulled its teeth and made sure the chamber was empty and left it in his holster. It's just standard issue. I don't see an arms locker. May I ask if we have leave to take personal prizes?"

"I don't see what it would hurt," Lu allowed. "As long as it isn't an object of official interest. There is a long history of taking trophies from the battlefield, weapons of course, but coin or jewelry, if they were of high enough station to have them. It's all going to be vaporized anyway."

"Thanks, I didn't think to check this guy for a wallet, but his locker had a full bottle of single malt Scotch, some chocolate bars and a couple kilo of Jamaica estate coffee. I'm going to lift those, since he has no further need of them. Nothing else looked worth taking. The food all looks to have military markings. I don't think any of us are that desperate."

"Better keep that stuff in a pressure container," Lu advised. "Come on back and we'll put a missile in that puppy and go home."

"Ah yes, pillage and burn. My Viking ancestors would be proud."

The flare was tiny but intense from fifty kilometers away. A brief, bright, pearl of plasma expanded above the night filled crescent of the Earth and was gone.

* * *

"Jeff, President Wiggen called me on a sat phone and asked if we could help her get to Home. Is there any way your new shuttle could pick her up? She has her Head of Security with her too," April added.

"Do you really
owe
her a lift to Home?" Jeff asked. "Is it worth risking our shuttle, that is a substantial fraction of our worth and provoking the Patriot Party that seems to be taking over?"

"Is it part mine then?" April wondered. "Gunny asked me, but I never got around to asking."

"It is, but consider that it affects Heather and I both."

"I think it's worth doing," April said with conviction."There's no point in talking about provoking the Patriots, they hate our guts and want to kill us, no matter
what
we do. Wiggen has been more reasonable to deal with than anybody else was willing to be. Surely that's worth
something
. There's all kinds of chatter to indicate people are not accepting the coup graciously. They've had to impose curfews some places and some glory hound tried to push up to the CIA building with a main battle tank. Whatever they did
melted
it, about fifteen-hundred meters out. Seems like anything we could do to keep resistance going against the Patriot Party is smart," she insisted.

Jeff sighed. "You have a rescue complex, you know?"

"I can think of a lot worse things you could say about me."

"When is she supposed to call back?"

"She said about six hours. They need to move to a different place, with hills around them like they just called from and set up pointing at a French satellite that services the Caribbean."

"Let me call Dave and see how close he is to having the
Chariot
back together and Jon to see if there is anything the militia can offer to do at all."

* * *

"How could you sleep not knowing what might happen?" Lindsy asked. His mother didn't ask anything, but was distant and cold. He hoped she stayed that way, instead of hot and vocal.

"How does it help to be sleepy if something does happen?" Eric checked the com screen for news and messages. "Wow, we're going out past the moon. Have you read this? That's how most space nuts define deep space work, translunar. I guess we'll be part of a very exclusive club."

That didn't seem to impress his sister or his mother and he ignored their silence and got the buckle release tool, to stretch the suit limbs back to full length and roll it up. He laid down and went through the reverse process of donning the suit.

"Doesn't that have to be recertified, even if you didn't seal it up?" his sister asked.

"Probably, but I need it. They said to keep it handy and take it with you if you go out. I bet at least half the people on Home rolled theirs out, ready to put on or actually put it on like me. How long do you think it will take them to go through and recertify, a thousand or two thousand suits? They're going to have to cut some slack on that standard. We did a pretty good job rolling up our sleeping mats when we went camping. I bet I can roll this back tight enough to slip in the carrier bag, so I can take it along to breakfast."

"Will the cafeteria be open in an emergency?" his mom asked. Apparently she was still freaked out. It was getting tiresome.

"I didn't see any closing notices on the M3 site, but I bet they have a com code. Why don't you call and ask?" Eric suggested.

"You still got a smart mouth," his mom snipped.

"That's just," he was at a loss for what to say for a few seconds. "It was a serious suggestion. Could I have said
anything,
that wouldn't made you unhappy?" he asked. He left without speaking again. He'd probably just get abuse, if he spoke at all.

* * *

Jeff was hoping Dave would tell him the shuttle's guts were spread out on the deck and it couldn't fly. Instead he assured him it would be closed back up in two hours and given another half hour to fuel and top off other systems, it could fly.

It still didn't have a coffee maker, the first aid kit and the custom tool kit wasn't packed and installed. They couldn't actively fly it remotely yet, but Dave had three pilots rated for ground landings checked out on the simulator, eager to fly paid hours. Four couches were in and as a bonus they all had acceleration compensation, the basic instruments and the navigational radar. It didn't have a weapons load and the ladder for vertical access was a temporary affair you hung out the outer lock door. But it would land and it would fly.

Dave explained he'd altered the pattern of ribs on the drive housing from a square grid to a honeycomb, also he'd added another two standard airlock size vacuum pumps, for evacuating the drive chamber after it shut down in atmosphere.

"Dave, we want to do a run where we may need to do a really fast turnaround. Do you have any sort of spare pressure vessel there you can strap down in the hold and pipe into the line for the current vacuum tank? Just temporary for this mission."

"I have a couple eighty liter tanks for another project and I'd be happy to loan you one. But with the new pumps I added it will be ready to lift again in about four minutes. You'd only improve it to maybe three minutes.'

"Do it please. A minute might be the difference between lifting safely, or being a smoking crater in the pavement."

Chapter 36

"We have a shuttle now that can land anywhere there is a flat spot. A small parking lot by apartments or stores, or even a pasture. It doesn't need a runway or refueling. Try to pick someplace away from a big city, so there isn't a big police response and we'll meet you and pick you up. The militia talked it over and doesn't want to be identified with you, or any other Earth politician. But they will offer surveillance services. Jeff is going to create a diversion that should help. Is there some place you have in mind we can meet?" April asked. Jeff was leaning in from the side to be on camera.

"Anybody looking for us, is going to be looking for us going
away
from DC," Mel theorized. "I will double back into Virginia. There's a truck stop I know, here are the coordinates," he said, marked a location on a map and named a time. "Are either of you going to be on the shuttle?"

"No, neither of us are rated for ground landings. Our ship fabricator has several guys qualified. Once you stop there, don't look in the sky or toward the east, there's going to be a big flash. Enough to dazzle you."

"You aren't going to bombard DC to cover us lifting are you? I wouldn't want to be responsible for that," Wiggen said quickly. "I can't trade myself for all those innocent people."

"Not at all. I'm going to set one off out over the ocean, really high. They aren't configured for EMP either, so it should tie the response nets up trying to figure what the heck happened, but it won't so much as break a window on the ground."

"Alright, I just remember China," Wiggen said grimly.

"Which was not anything I did with joy."

She just gave an acknowledging nod.

"I'll contact you when we are in place. This seems to be working well. We haven't seen any activity stirred up by our calls."

"We'll be in contact with the shuttle coming in. Until tomorrow then," April said.

"Tomorrow," Mel agreed and shut the phone down.

"Let's move and observe this site," he said right away. "See if anything responds."

* * *

"Mr. Lewis, can you authorize the release of some water from stocks on M3?" Jeff asked. "People are viewing our move and the uncertainty in North America and they are reluctant to sell any volume of water. If they will, they are asking higher prices for it. I hate to throw away money, even if you authorized it. I also think if I refuse those prices and they see I didn't go elsewhere and pay high, it will encourage prices not to run away in a panic."

"Sure, but don't your plasma drives use metal?"

"They do, but you can use water as a thrust booster to stretch it. Fortunately I bought substantially all the calcium coming out of the Rock cheap for, uh, another project."

"How about two tons, two thousand kilos? Is that enough to be of help?"

Jeff looked at him goggle eyed, like he hadn't heard right. When he finally got self control he allowed that was indeed, useful. Robert managed to keep a straight face. "They are setting up a drive again on the Rock. They intend to bring it out with us, but they intend to park it at L1 for now. Assuming the Earthies don't see us leaving as an opportunity to steal it. Of course their experience with stealing your ship may be fresh enough in mind, that we get some benefit from it."

"I'm glad to hear that. My family has an interest too and there are several things I really need supplied from the Rock. I probably have a notice about the move buried here somewhere, but I'm running behind on reading messages and everything else."

"Me too, still, call if you need anything else," Robert offered, before he disconnected.

* * *

"Aren't you going to work?" Lindsy asked.

"Who's going to go to a nightclub in the middle of running for our lives?" her mom asked, like she was crazy.

"Everything was open, people are going around doing everything just like normal. They just have their suits with them. You should at least call them, if you're not going in. I shouldn't have brought you breakfast back. It just let you hole up here. There isn't any reason not to go have breakfast, well lunch pretty soon. But if I hadn't brought it back, you'd have had to go see yourself. That was really unkind to yell at Eric for not bringing us food back. I have no idea where he went off to. I'm kind of worried about him."

"Why aren't you worried about
me
?" Linda asked.

"I guess you forgot. You're supposed to be the adult," Lindsy said, angrily, but it wasn't the old petty peevishness she draped over everything. She took her bag and went out too and she didn't say where she was going. That never happened.

* * *

"This is how you keep prisoners?" Lieutenant Moore asked. Commander Lu was checking him into the Holiday Inn. He set his chop on the guest sheet to guarantee the charges and put his hanko back in a sealed pocket, but he did print on the tab: On behalf of Home Militia.

"Don't bitch, or I'll take you to the Radisson," he threatened. "We don't have a jail. Hope to God we never do. But they asked me to bring you back. Personally, I'd have just shot you in the head like your buddy, but hey, I knew two of the people your war shot killed."

The prisoner looked at him sharply. It was obvious he didn't know whether to believe him.

He stuck the card in a door and let them in, sitting on the bed right away. Moore settled in a chair, apparently relaxed. Lu had filled the other chair with a bag in passing.

"You didn't know what you were shooting at?" Lu asked, that questioning look in the lobby still eating at him.

"We key the numbers in they give us. Nobody tells us what we're shooting at."

"That means you've had fire missions before. Interesting. Why isn't there a crap load of your shot flying around LEO bumping into everything?"

"In training, they said you take your time and set up a shot so it carries the target debris along and dumps in the atmosphere. But I wasn't very good at that, too slow at the math and got bumped to weapon maintenance. The targeting guys are on Earth and go home every night."

"What did the Captain do then?"

"He talked to Earth a lot, with his earphones on so I couldn't hear one side. Sometimes he'd text, if I shouldn't hear his side. I'd load him up a shot and check the rails for wear after and do all the maintenance and scut work. Change the filters and scrub the head, while he lay in his bunk, listening to music and didn't share his booze."

"You didn't shoot?"

"I'm trained how. I was supposed to be the back-up, if he had a heart attack or something. I've done it in sims, but never real life."

There was a tap at the door, instead of using the intercom. "Open," Lu instructed.

"Good evening Master Lu," the slight fellow who entered said, with a dip of the head that was more than a nod and less than a bow.

"Thank you, Chen. I'll be going. I appreciate you coming on short notice. This is Lieutenant Moore, of the USNA Space Forces. I'm not sure if he is a prisoner of war, a criminal suspect, or a victim of kidnapping. I'm sure he is a damned nuisance. I'll have some relief for you in twelve hours. We want you to baby-sit him. Keep him from communicating with any official USNA agency. Do not allow him to buy, or otherwise acquire weapons, feed him as needed and take him to the clinic if he has a health complaint, even if it is not a visible problem," he added. "If you take him in the corridors or cafeteria be alert to protect him. There may be some who would figure out who he is and want to harm him."