Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) (2 page)

She nodded, saying nothing, thinking about how apt his assessment was. Storing up for winter. A hundred years of winter.

“Tom told me I should take you out for a spin since I’m out of the command rotation for a few days,” he said, grinning at her sideways in a way that looked oddly like Cole’s famous crooked smile.

“You mean they gave you a day off?” she asked, aware it had been almost a month since the last time she’d been able to see him for more than an hour or two during offloading. “I thought they’d be working you round the clock from here on.”

“They decided my tan was getting a little too dark.” He nodded, rolling his jumpsuit sleeve up to show her where his skin had burnt to a deep brown. “The radiation of zooming through the belts is starting to take its toll, I guess.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered, startled to recognize signs of what looked like old age in his face. His complexion had shifted from olive to the fine patina of dry leather. She’d been so busy taking care of things in the colony she’d not noticed the condition of his skin. “That can’t be good.” She touched his arm, feeling its strange coarseness for the first time.

“Hey, we all gotta do what we gotta do.” He shrugged it off, but it would someday be cancer, and she could tell they both knew it.

In the colony they were safe, beyond the concentrating force of the Earth’s magnetosphere and buried under feet of packed regolith to protect them from the occasional solar storm. But the pilots and crews who ran the transports back and forth, sometimes several times a day, were in trouble. She was surprised she hadn't thought about it.

“Come on, don’t go getting cerebral on me,” he said, grabbing her arm and tugging her toward the stairwell. “It’s not worth getting bent.”

“I’ve got a mini logged out,” he said, “and we’ve got to get you out of here for a while.” He refused to let go of her arm as she tried to pull away. “Don’t give me any of that, ‘I’m indispensable’ crap either,” he growled in mock anger. “I get enough of that from Cole.”

She snorted and then laughed, realizing he was right. The robots would still continue to unload, and the ships would still be flying, whether she was here or not. After all, PAPA was almost as smart as Mica now, and in a real emergency it could find her anywhere they might go. “Ok, I give up,” she said, not minding the idea of letting someone else make a decision for a change.

***

Stormhaven:

Phoenix had, for some reason, stayed relatively calm since the President made her announcement that Antu was coming, though it had its spasms of violence in the first months afterward. Even though the Valley was the fourth largest city in the country, like many of the smaller towns, it was almost unaffected by the hysteria that flashed and sizzled everywhere else. For a while the world had gone insane, but now it was more like leprosy, spots of ugliness that spread like rotting flesh, and then died out leaving burned patches to lie around and stink.

Tom had spent the last several days in Phoenix, negotiating with the airport management at Sky Harbor to increase the facilities dedicated to Stormhaven’s cargo handling. Stormhaven had been a huge multinational manufacturing operation before the crisis, and had established cargo hubs at dozens of airports to support their growing lunar operation. The nationwide state of emergency had curtailed commercial air travel, so there was ample underutilized space at the airport.

Tom had spent more time in the
Citation
in the last year than Cole had in the dozen years before, and when he landed at the field outside Stormhaven, he felt relief. Not relief at being home, but at being safe. The world had become something of a nightmare, and the demons that ran wild through it, hung vividly in his mind whenever he was outside.

Douglas Shapiro met him at the airstrip. Although he had been permanently assigned as an observer of Stormhaven’s operations, he’d almost become a member of the community. He reported to William Worthington, but he
lived
in Stormhaven. This time when he met Tom, he was not there as the
Secret
Service
Agent,
he was just Doug.

“I think you’ve got a problem coming at you. You’re going to need to get Colton to do something about it,” he said.

“So why didn’t you talk to him yourself?” Tom asked. “He doesn’t bite.”

“Not anymore I suppose,” Shapiro said. “I tried to get him to look at it but he’s not interested in dealing with these things.” Tom had noticed Cole had become withdrawn, but he’d been so busy he hadn’t had time to poke his nose into his friend’s problem. He also knew sometimes it was just the way Colton operated.

“So what are we looking at?” Tom asked, climbing into the mini and smiling. Shapiro had become rather proficient as a pilot since he’d been with them, and it was no surprise he’d checked out one of their rigs to come pick him up.

Doug tossed him an epad as he took off for the rear doors of the Fabrication Center. He had to gain altitude to skim over the half-dozen carriers that sat clustered on the open field behind the shop. Tom watched the video in silence, backing it up and watching it again. Finally, as they settled up against a catwalk in the fabrication barn Tom said, “Shit, that was nearly a mess.”

“Yeah, the FAA wants blood,” Doug said. “They’re calling your ships an
attractive nuisance.”

“Of course,” Tom said. “So what are they wanting us to do?”

“Post guards on them,” he said. “They want you to keep a high profile armed perimeter whenever they’re in a commercial facility. They’re afraid if one of these
‘episodes’
happens when you’ve got a ship on the ground, we might be facing a hijacking.”

“Can’t happen,” Tom said. “Mica sits in the copilot’s seat and she never sleeps. Even if someone were to get aboard, she’d be able to pull the plug.”

“You guys are famous for your deadman switches, but I don’t think they’re buying it,” Doug said. “The problem is, if you don’t put your own people on them as guards, they’re going to put our people in. Or they’re going to cut off your access to public facilities.”

“Fine, I’ll talk to him, but he’s going to say no,” Tom said.

“So make the call yourself,” he said. “Aren’t you the one that said it’s always easier to get forgiveness than permission?”

“Damn, I keep forgetting you’ve got access to everything we’ve ever said in public,” Tom said. “Anybody ever tell you guys you’re scary sometimes?”

“Like you’ve got room to talk,” Doug said, heading back to his office.

***

New Hope Colony, Plato:

Sitting on a rock ledge in the shadow of the Monk, an odd shaped boulder perched above the floor of Plato, Susan Winslow frowned. Her reflection, visible on the inside of her helmet visor, glared back at her. An angry friend’s face, uncomfortable in the claustrophobic confines of her suit.

“What are you glaring at?” she asked herself, thinking to check her com switch. “Good. No embarrassing questions today,” she said, again out loud, and again into the hollow vault of her helmet.

Hiding in the shadow of the Monk gave her two advantages: first, she could see the vista of the colony spread out toward the near horizon in all its stark contrasts; and second, she couldn’t easily be seen by someone looking for her. It had become her secret hideaway in plain sight, camouflaged by contrast.

It had taken her about ten minutes to ride the electroquad up here. If she’d just hiked it straight up, she’d have been able to walk the distance in about the same time, but she took the quad, because she could.

“Being the Governor of the colony has its privileges, damn it,” she said defiantly, to the interior of her bubble.

She leaned back against the smooth surface of the boulder and sighed, sorting her thoughts while she studied the activity below. Another inflatable was rising straight in front of her, the largest so far and supposed to be the first full-scale greenhouse. Right now though, it looked like a half-flattened children’s bounce castle, in a carnival of the absurd.

If she wanted to eavesdrop on the construction crew setting it up, she could tune to their com frequency and listen like she was standing in the middle of them. The repeaters that gave them this flawless communication within the rim of the crater stood in the distance, a pair of impossibly high, thin antennas that reflected the light like rods of neon pointing toward the heavens. Around their base the rest of the communications shops were clustered, a collection of dishes and domes, looking like salad bowls tossed into a random pile by some careless giant.

Her focus was even further into the distance, the real reason they were here. Placed far out on the floor of the crater, on a slight rise because of their need to cover the widest possible arc of the sky, were the Guns of Prometheus. Giant particle cannons that looked like props stolen right out of a science fiction movie. Polished silver tubes almost a hundred feet long, surrounded by concentric rings of gold and silver, they were mounted in cradles that could swivel them with minute precision. The back quarter of each of these monstrous weapons was an array of shielded cables, connecting to six lunar-crete domed reactors and their accompanying heat sinks and radiators.

The Guns of Prometheus pointed skyward, aiming nuclear fury at an unseen enemy untold millions of miles away. Of course, they were still only an empty promise.

She’d been told in this morning’s meeting with Dr. Anthony it was still at least four weeks before they could be test fired. Four weeks of waiting to find out if there was a chance. Everyone had high hopes, but even through the uplink from Earth, she’d caught subtle signs of doubt in Danielson’s voice. Signs that made her stomach ache, sending her up to this perch in a foul mood.

He’d called it theoretically possible.
Theoretically
. She’d have felt a lot better if they’d had more than a theory behind all this effort.

***

Stormhaven:

“Cole, you’ve got to pay attention here,” Tom growled in frustration, slapping his hand on the table in front of him. “If we don’t do something we’re going to be in real trouble.”

“Stormhaven’s not a fortress,” Cole said, his eyes focused on a distant place inside himself. It was an expression that seemed to be a constant companion to the eccentric inventor for the last few months.

“I understand how you feel.” Tom sighed, trying to muster his best conciliatory tone. “None of us envisioned this type of eventuality, but now that it’s here we’ve got to do something about it.”

A flash of expression rolled across Cole’s face. A moment when he seemed to be kick-starting his intellect, only to shut it down again. The lights flickered, but never came on. No one was home. Or maybe he was, but he just didn’t feel the need to answer the door.

“Ok. So I don’t understand how you feel.” Tom played the spark for all it was worth, hoping to rekindle a little connection. “But someone’s got to look at the daily stuff.”

“I know that,” Cole said, locking eyes with Tom for the first time, and sending a load of emotional intensity across the connection so powerful that he shivered and looked down. “So what are you suggesting?”

Progress,
Tom thought, jumping at the opportunity. “A simple fence, here and here,” he said, pointing at a diagram Mica called up on the table display. The computer had become very sophisticated at anticipating and delivering appropriate support illustrations, a split second before they were requested. This ability had been developing so gradually almost no one noticed it anymore, but Tom grinned in spite of himself. The fence, although mostly a diversion to get Cole talking, was downplayed in the diagram, minimizing the effect it would have on Cole’s resistance.

Mica’d heard the difficulty, and correctly understood how to sell it. Good job, he thought, knowing the computer would explain it away as merely logical.

If only Viki were here, she’d be having a field day with that cyber-psych study she’d wanted to conduct.
And she’d have been a valuable insight into what was tearing at Cole.

Tom sat back and gave his friend a few minutes to look over the plan, watching emotions playing out in almost visible ripples of expression, disturbances deep down in his mind. Like boulders creating waves in the surface of a river, they were so deeply submerged as to be invisible to the casual observer.

“Fine,” Cole said. “We’ve got about a hundred or so refugees that are too close to the launch platform anyway.” Cole pointed to the apron outside the Fabrication Barn. There were a couple groups camping next to the facility, and they’d had to move them away several times in the last month. “See if Doug can give us a hand in getting them back.”

“Is that it?” Cole said, pushing away from the table to leave.

“No,” Tom shook his head. “Shapiro says we’ve got the same problem developing at every airport where we’ve got ships operating. We need to get security on the ground in those places too.”

“You’re talking about the FAA’s problem. We can’t provide security like that.” Cole frowned but stayed at the table.

“We could deploy a small contingent with each crew,” Mica offered, sparing Tom the dirty work of suggesting it. “It would be a minimal drain of resources, and should decrease the likelihood of a vehicle being overrun during loading.”