Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) (3 page)

“Are you suggesting armed guards in the ships?” Cole asked. “I don’t think we’d get away with it, and I’m sure we’re still safe inside the fences at the fields we’re using.”

A video screen came on along the wall, and Tom pointed to it to get Cole’s attention. It was the image file he’d seen on Shapiro’s epad. “That’s from a security monitor at Burbank Airport,” he explained. “Watch.” The camera showed a picture of the airport perimeter. In the background several hundred people pressed up against a chain-link fence. On the ground, almost out of the field of view, sat one of their carriers. One cargo box was loaded and the other was being hoisted into position under its truss. Several more of the containers sat waiting to be hauled from a holding station nearby.

“They’re full of inflatable mod pieces,” Tom explained. “What you need to watch is the crowd.” The video continued until the box was loaded and then, without warning, the fence collapsed and people started rushing toward the ship like ants chasing after a bit of food, surging recklessly across the runway toward the ship.

The ship leapt upward about thirty feet. “If Mica hadn’t been watching the situation, we’d have had a problem there,” Tom said. “The crew was still involved in securing the container and no one was on the bridge.”

“If you watch,” Mica interjected, “you will see the shadow of a commercial airliner pass over the crowd.” The computer paused just as the shadow streaked right through the middle of the surging mass. “We were nearly responsible for a catastrophic loss of life. The FAA has fined Stormhaven $500,000 for leaving the tarmac without clearance, and they are discussing the idea that our operations are an attractive nuisance that jeopardizes normal operations of their facilities.”

“It’s not about the fines, or the loss of access to commercial airfields,” Tom said. “It’s about the idea that we might have gotten a bunch of people killed. If that pilot had come in a little short ...” He let the thought hang.

“I don’t see how a few guards could keep that from happening,” Cole said.

“Sophie’s designed a portable gravity laser that she thinks we could use for security.” Tom watched another image come up on the table display. “We know the hold in place capability of the beam scrambles a person’s nervous system, so it can be used as a non-lethal defense weapon.”

Cole furrowed his brow in deep thought. “But won’t the FAA cut this one off at the knees? Homeland Security’s a bit touchy about having handguns in a secured airport.”

“In fact, the FAA suggested it,” Tom said.

“Why don’t we just put the beams on the ship and have it protect itself?” Cole asked. “It would reduce the exposure of personnel.”

“And have armed ships flying through airspace all over the world?”

“I guess we don’t have much choice then,” he said, getting up and walking out before Tom had a chance to say anything else.

***

Above the rim of Plato, Luna:

Lying prone in a spacesuit was no easy task, even in the light lunar gravity. Lying still was even harder. Especially when the soil around you threatened to give way at any second. But that’s exactly what Lieutenant Teng had to do; lie motionless, holding the ultra high-resolution sensor in front of his face, while the scanner gathered data.

He was a special operations soldier, and a surveillance specialist. The only one in Chang Er who had the skills for the job. So even though he had little experience on the surface, and only a little more in a spacesuit, he’d volunteered for the mission.

He’d landed his skimmer almost four kilometers beyond the ridge, in a dark bottomed crater. The sun was still low to the east, and he hoped the darkness of the tiny crater’s floor would hide its position from any casual observer. The route he’d taken to get to Plato had been planned by the General himself, and he knew this was going to be a tough mission no matter how he approached it.

The hike through the steep ejecta wall had winded him more than he would have expected given the ease with which he had been able to bounce over the obstacles, but he’d learned the different muscles used in walking here had a strange way of showing up in fatigue.

That has to be it,
he reassured himself as he pushed the last few hundred meters over the summit of the rim.

Yet lying on this narrow ledge, he struggled to steady his hands enough to get a good reading. He watched sand cascade down around him in a dustless stream of gray, while concentrating on his body. Oddly tight and painful, his heart pounded in his chest.

He looked down at his oxygen readout, its luminous display obscured by a layer of dirt that had built up on it. He flicked at it with the tip of a gloved finger, but couldn’t clear the dust. Rolling onto his side, he capped the sensor, setting it down on a rock.

Sweat had begun to build up on his skin, and he knew something had to be wrong.
A suit malfunction?
he thought, shaking his head to clear the fog. His mind was drifting. The voices of the stars called to him, echoing in his mind with a thousand distinct voices.

“No,” he shouted, clinging to the edges of his tenuous sanity. His voice roared back at him from the empty interior of his helmet.

He thought about turning on his transmitter, to scream for help, but remembered the General’s orders; “Be seen, or heard, by no one.”

His finger danced away from the mic switch, flitting back to the display of his suit life support controls. Dirt still obscured the readout. “What is happening?” he gasped, trying to think through the twisting maze of confusion.

In his mind, he retraced the last few meters of his hike, scrambling down onto this narrow perch. Tumbling slowly toward the ledge, a scraping sound on the base of his helmet.

Had it cracked?
he wondered, but lucidity forced itself into his awareness.
No, if I had broken a seal, the visor would have frosted up with condensation in the decompression.

Struggling to his feet with his chest feeling like it was about to explode, he twisted his arm up to the connections on the back of his head. “The supply lines,” he choked out into the darkness, feeling only the sealed valves where hoses should have been.

The ground spun crazily around him, and the regolith crumbled under his boot. He jerked back from the edge, slamming against the boulder that had formed the ledge. Ricocheting away, he dropped without a sound through the swirling debris, recovering enough balance to execute a nearly flawless swan dive into the abyss.

Several long seconds later and already unconscious, the visor of his helmet did indeed frost up, along with the rest of his suddenly overexposed skin.

***

Chapter Two:

Questionable Motives

Very Low Lunar Orbit:

The transparent monomolecular carbon window was one of the features that had been built into the new generation of mini for use in the colony. It was a flawless sheet of crystal clear carbon that had been formed as a single molecule. Inflexible and impervious, it would have become Daryl’s material of choice, except there was almost no way to work with it. They’d outfitted the
Dancing Star
with the non-transparent version of the mono-carbon sheeting, but still hadn’t figured out a practical way to work with it. Nothing would adhere to the perfectly smooth surface, and if not for the design of the mini itself, it would have been difficult to mount as a window. They were starting to retrofit the carriers with this mono-carbon, but it would be a while until they had any efficiency with installing it.

For now, its only impact on Viki was it served to create the unsettling effect of being overexposed to space. She’d been outside the domes of Sentinel a few times in the last several months, but had never raced over the surface for any appreciable distance. The comforting closeness of the dirt ridges of the colony had made her much less aware of how different the moon felt.

Now, even though she’d been living here for most of the last year, she was aware of its pervasive and overwhelming alien feel. Spreading out in silver and gray five miles below them, she watched it roll by in a blistering scroll of abject sameness. Ridges giving way to ridges, craters swooping into craters, and boulders the size of apartment buildings, all scattered endlessly across its surface.

Dave smiled at her, watching her stare at the surface. “It’s really amazing,” he whispered, reaching a hand out to touch her. They both wore the utility suits necessary for crossing short distances between buildings and vehicles in Sentinel Colony. Not quite a space suit, but more than a flight suit. Their helmets hung from the hooks on the back wall of the cabin, gloves stuffed into them.

His skin felt alien to her too, she realized. Distant, unreal and burnt to a crisp, like the blasted wasteland below her. She struggled to enjoy his presence, but even though she longed for his touch, it took an act of will to hold her hand still when his fingers slid against her skin. He was being sucked dry by the soulless presence of space. Stealing the life from her love. She shuddered at the thought and stared at the passing terrain.

“What’s that crater?” she asked, knowing the AI could answer any factual question she had.

“Goldschmidt,” it answered, its voice as empty as the space around her.

“What’s got you so edgy?” Dave asked, his voice sounding lush against the dry backdrop.

“Don’t you ever resent being asked to give up everything for this?” She looked down as she spoke.

“Everything?” He sounded confused. Sliding his fingers across the console, he banked the mini to the left over a majestic ridge that had to be another crater rim. They weren’t really in orbit at this altitude, although they were traveling at a speed that would have qualified.

“Anaxagoras,” the AI offered, identifying the object.

“Yeah. I mean, I never even dreamed about really leaving everything behind and being out here in this ...” emotion clogged her voice.

“But we’ve got to do it,” he said, squeezing his leather flesh against her hand. “We’re living the greatest adventure—"

“Bullshit. We’re hiding in the dark. A billion miles from fricking nowhere, like scared children. Praying the God of the Universe doesn’t pull some sick joke on us all.” She covered her face with her hands. “I want to go home,” she said through sobs, unraveling as she said it.

He sat in silence, steering the ship upward in a graceful swoop that carried them over the terraced inner rim of the crater. “Geez, Vik, where the hell did that come from?” he asked. He sat and watched her.

She shook, holding her shoulders in a hug of self-support. “But I can’t. I’ve been here too long to go back now.”

“That’s not true,” he said, trying to comfort her. “There are cosmonauts who went more than a year in zero-G and still were ok back on Earth.”

They banked to the south above the vast expanse of Mare Frigoris and toward Plato. Over the ridges and down the slope of the upland they flew in silence toward the US colony project. With an act of will she pulled herself together and shook her head.

“No, I can’t go back to Earth. I have nothing there to go back to. Everything I had is gone now, or will be before long. I just don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for letting Cole send me here.” She drew in a deep breath and turned away to look at the landscape rolling by below her.

“Wow,” he said. “I never knew you didn’t want to be here.” He slowed their flight and settled toward the ground once the terrain opened up into the vast mare. “Did you tell Cole you didn’t want it?”

“Sure.” She shrugged. “But try to tell that bastard something he doesn’t want to hear and see what happens.” She shot him a sideways glance. “He doesn’t have the word
no
in his vocabulary. He doesn’t understand that someone can have a different opinion, a different goal of their own. It’s just so ...” She stopped again, her voice tight and controlled. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here for the duration.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation,” he offered, “I don’t think Cole wants to be where he is either.” He let the remark hang as they climbed again toward the north rim of Plato.

“Here, I thought you’d want to see the guns,” he said, easing them over the edge of the crater. “They’re quite an amazing engineering effort, considering they’re still using old equipment to build them.”

“They are?” she asked, confused. “We gave them the
Aquila
. Why the hell haven’t they put it into use? It could haul in a day what they’ll take a month to ship up here.”

“That’s not entirely true,” he said. “They’ve got fourteen or fifteen launch facilities putting up resources.”

He slowed almost to a stop, and hovered just high enough above the crater floor to allow her to see the tops of the gun towers. They were well over the horizon and barely visible, but enormous even at this distance.

“They’ve also got a shuttle transfer facility up in low orbit. A very clever assortment of balloons and air processing equipment that allows them to put up crews for transfer without having to match schedules.”

“What have they done with the
Aquila
then?” she asked, her innate curiosity pushing through her personal frustration.