Apollo's Outcasts (33 page)

That meant Cabeus was an oasis, a large source of water--nearly a billion gallons, it was eventually learned--in a place where H
₂
O was hard to come by. The Chinese would later discover another ice deposit about a hundred miles to the east in Scott Crater, but by then the ISC was making plans to exploit the Cabeus ice field as a primary source of drinking water for future lunar colonists.

Cabeus Station had been manned for only as long as it took to build a semiautomatic mining facility at the bottom of the crater; it was much too remote for anyone to live there for long, and helium-3 deposits were sparse in the polar regions. Instead, robots teleoperated by controllers in Apollo prowled the crater floor, using diamond-head drills to sink narrow shafts into the ground wherever their spectroscopes detected ice crystals. The robots extracted the ice-laden regolith and carried it back to the station's main facility, where a fusion furnace melted the ice and processors distilled pure water from the heavy metals within the sediment. The water would then be stored in tanks to await pickup by a Pegasus.

Sure, the loonies could extract H
₂
O from the regolith mined closer
to the colony, but not nearly in the same amounts as from Cabeus. Moon Dragon had its own lunar ice mine at Scott, and they were welcome to it. So long as both the ISC and the PSU exercised water conservation at their separate colonies, there was enough ice to keep everyone happy for years to come. No one had ever seriously thought that Cabeus Station would need to be defended...until now.

From the passenger compartment windows of the Pegasus, I could see the terrain over which we flying. The lunar South Pole was a wilderness of dust and stone, its ragged mountains and deep craters shrouded by an endless twilight. The landscape was nothing like the basalt oceans of the equator. This was one of the Moon's most treacherous regions, harsh and unyielding, where Earth barely peeped above the horizon and the Sun was almost a stranger.

Once again, Gordie was flying the Pegasus I was in. No surprise; I didn't think he would have wanted to sit this one out. After lift-off from Apollo, he headed due south from Ptolemaeus on a high-altitude trajectory. He could have gone suborbital and cut the travel time in half, but this was the way long-range transports flew when they carried water tanks back and forth from Cabeus Station. With luck, anyone aboard the
Duke
who might be watching for unusual activity on the Moon might mistake our Pegasus for a routine resupply mission.

Because we didn't want our adversaries to determine our defense strategy, my team was observing strict radio silence: no contact with Apollo unless absolutely necessary. But the silence wasn't restricted to satellite communications. It was quiet in the Pegasus, too. Twelve men and women sat across from each other in the personnel module, and I don't think any of us spoke more than a few words during the three and a half hours it took to travel 1,300 miles. We'd pressurized the module and opened our helmets, yet no one was in the mood for conversation.

Let's be honest: we were scared.

I was learning that fear can be a good thing. It keeps you alert
and wary, ready for whatever may come your way. But it can also immobilize you, make you afraid to do whatever needs to be done in order to stay alive. If Mr. Garcia had been with us, he might have given us a good pep talk, or at least told us to relax until we got to where we were going. He'd put Mikel in charge of our team, though, and he was handling the job with typical Russian stoicism. That pretty much left each of us alone with our thoughts.

Mine were about Hannah. She'd been scared, too...for me. And like an idiot, I'd said the wrong things, even given back a good-luck charm that she'd clearly wanted me to keep. I shouldn't have been so fatalistic. I should have kept the medallion and told her not to worry, I'd return soon. What I'd done instead was practically tell her that I didn't think I was coming back. That was even worse than giving her the impression that I no longer wanted to take her out on a date. To a girl who was still getting over losing her father and didn't know where her mother was, this was...well, I could have handled it better.

So I stared out the window beside me and watched the shadows grow longer upon the battered moonscape, and tried not to think too hard about what we were about to get ourselves into. And around the same time that it seemed as if I could no longer see anything except the highest mountain peaks, the transport's bow tilted forward and I felt the VTOL engines surge to life beneath the deck plates.

"Coming in for landing,"
Gordie said, his voice a muted murmur within my helmet.
"We'll be on the ground in five minutes. Close your helmets, I'm beginning depressurization."

"Roger that," Mikel said from the other end of the module. "You heard him, guys. We're going on comlink now. Channel Three."

I reached up to shut my faceplate. "Pressurize suit, please, Arthur," I said once my helmet was airtight. "Switch comlink to the emergency freak."

"Yes, Jamey."
A second later I heard the thin hiss of air entering my suit.
"You'll pardon me for saying so, but I'm registering a seven percent increase in your cardiac rate. You need to calm down a little."

I started taking long, slow breaths. That usually helped settle my nerves, but this time it didn't. Across the aisle, I could see Logan doing the same thing. We looked at each other, and he managed a wry grin. By then, everyone had switched their comlinks to the seldom-used UHF channel reserved to Lunar Search and Rescue for emergency transmissions. With luck, enemy forces wouldn't figure out that we were on this particular frequency. I could hear scattered comments from the others, which meant that they'd be able to hear what Logan and I said, too.

"So,"
Logan asked,
"who do you think is going to the state championship this year?"

I couldn't help myself; I laughed out loud. "Burtonsville, of course. You should know that. We..."

"What the hell are you two talking about?"
Nicole was seated next to Logan. She'd just closed her helmet, and she stared at us from the other side of her faceplate.

"Just swim team stuff,"
Logan said, as if this was still something that mattered to us. I hadn't thought about it in months.
"Jamey's got more school spirit than I do. Our team hasn't been the state champs in years."

"Yeah, maybe so," I replied, "but that doesn't mean we can't..."

"Okay, knock it off, you two
," Greg said. "
We've got more important things to worry about."

He was right, of course. All the same, it helped me remember, if only for a few seconds, where Logan and I had come from. We grinned at each other, sharing a private joke only the two of us understood. Of course our swim team never went to the state championships. It was a well-known fact that Burtonsville High had the worst team in Maryland. But it never stopped us from trying...and I was glad that Logan and I were able to talk about that kind of stuff again.

There was a mild jolt as the Pegasus touched down. The transport had barely settled upon its landing gear when Mikel stood up.
"Let's go, Rangers!"
he snapped as he cranked open the main hatch.
"Grab your gear and move out!"

I pulled out my gun from where I'd stashed it beneath my seat, then followed Logan and Nicole as they joined the line of Rangers exiting the Pegasus. We tramped down the ramp and stood within the glow of the spacecraft's floodlights. I asked Arthur to switch on my helmet lamp, then paused to look around.

Cabeus was smaller than Ptolemaeus, about sixty-one miles in diameter, but much deeper, surrounded by sheer walls two and half miles high. At this latitude, the crater's depth was significant; sunlight never reached its floor, so its power supply came entirely from a fusion tokamok near the dome-shaped distillation facility. The rest of the station was a collection of modules and sheds, visible only by the wan illumination of red and blue beacons set up around its perimeter.

Nothing moved. We were the only people here.

"Okay, look sharp."
Mikel bunny-hopped away from the Pegasus until he stopped to face the rest of the squad.
"We've got only a little while before the Marines show up, and we need to be ready and in position when they arrive. Is everyone locked and loaded?"

I checked my carbine, making sure that its ammo drum was firmly attached. "Yes, sir," I replied, joining the chorus from those around me.

"Good. Excellent."
Mikel pointed to the mule that had followed us from the Pegasus.
"There's more ammo over there. Everyone take two spare drums and carry them with you. It's also carrying spare air tanks, which will be distributed once the fire teams have taken their positions. Now, we need to...Rogers, what do you think you're doing?"

Turning around, I looked back at the Pegasus. Gordie had opened the cockpit hatch and was climbing down from the transport, his copilot right behind him.
"Coming to join you guys, that's what,"
he said.

"Like hell you are!
" Mikel sounded angry. "
Get back in that thing and..."

"And do what? Be a couple of sitting ducks?"
Gordie bounded toward us.
"Sam and I talked it over, and we want to be in on this. Fourteen is better than twelve, don't you think?"

He had a point. If he and Sam remained in the Pegasus, they'd be nothing more than targets if the Marines decided to take out the transport. And if there was a firefight, we could use all the help we could get. But neither of them were wearing Ranger moonsuits; instead they wore standard-issue skinsuits that offered zero protection in a combat situation.

"Sorry, but no,"
Mikel said.
"I want you to take the Pegasus over to the other side of the crater, turn off the lights, and await further orders. I don't want to give the Marines an easy target, and we're going to need to keep the transport safe until we're ready to pull out."

Gordie grumbled something under his breath that I didn't quite catch, but he didn't argue with the squad leader. Mikel turned to the rest of us. "All right, then...here's the plan," he said, then bent down to scratch a diagram in the grey dust at his feet.
"I want six fire teams, two people each, spread out in a semicircle around the station. We'll keep the station at our backs, and count on the crater wall to provide protection at our rear."

"What if they come at us from that direction?"
Logan asked.

"They won't."
Mikel pointed toward the distillation facility and the crater wall looming above it.
"They'll most likely land here, where we're standing, and advance on the station from this direction. The top of the wall is too far away to give them much advantage...and if they do decide to use it, we can redeploy our teams to cover the rear."

"We hope."
This from Toji Kanaku, another Ranger First Class.

Mikel ignored him.
"We'll use the station as our base of operations,"
he went on.
"We'll eat, sleep, and recharge our packs in there. Between now and then, I want to build up our defenses. That means finding whatever we can use...robots, empty tanks, anything we can get our hands on...and placing them so that they can provide protection for us. We'll send the mule around to distribute the spare air tanks once we've established our firing positions."

"We're going to try to ambush them?"
Nicole asked.

"No. We're going to make it as hard as possible for them to know where we are or how many people we have. If they believe we got them outnumbered, maybe they'll think twice about trying to take the station. With luck, we may even be able to talk them down."

That sounded a little too much like wishful thinking. I didn't say so, but instead asked a question. "What if we're outnumbered and they get us boxed in? What then?"

"If that happens, we'll fall back to the operations center. There's an airlock on the west side. If I call for retreat, go there as fast as you can. We can hole up inside and wait them out...."

"Or they can wait us out,"
Gordie murmured.

"We have approximately fifteen hours to get ready,"
Mikel continued,
"so use your time wisely. Nap and eat in shifts when you're in the station. At 0700, fourteen hours from now, I want everyone in their suits and on the firing line. Once everyone is in position, switch off your helmet lamps and observe radio silence unless it's absolutely necessary. Any questions?"

"Just one
," Gordie said. "
Do you seriously believe US Marines will back down from a fight just because we bluff them into thinking they're outnumbered?"

This time, Mikel didn't ignore him.
"I don't...but I'm under orders to avoid a fight if at all possible."
He paused.
"Look, I realize that the Americans among you aren't eager to engage our own people. But you have to remember that you're defending this place from an enemy that would use it to force Apollo to surrender. We can't let that happen. So I'm going to try to reason with them, if and when they land here, but I'm going to do that with my finger on the trigger, and I expect everyone here to back me up. Can you do that for me?"

Everyone murmured in the affirmative.
"All right, then,"
Mikel said.
"Let's get to work."