Apollo's Outcasts (40 page)

Indeed, the shelter was filled with a spirit of a comradeship as its inhabitants figured out they'd need to rely on each other to get through. To my surprise, no one exemplified this spirit better than Melissa. Something happened to my sister when she saw how Eddie sacrificed his life to save Nina's. Almost overnight, MeeMee vanished, to be replaced by someone who was no longer vain and selfish. Never once did I hear her complain about the lack of privacy, not being able to bathe, or having to wear the same clothes day after day. She spent a lot of time with Nina, comforting her as best she could, and she also helped Ms. Lagler in the breadline, doling out soup and sandwiches with a smile on her face. For the first time, I became proud of my sister.

Nonetheless, we were living under siege conditions. Just outside was a small yet well-armed force, and although they couldn't get to us, that didn't mean that they had given up trying. Every day, I put on my moonsuit, picked up my gun, and went on patrol with five other Rangers, making sure that our airlocks remained sealed and that the enemy hadn't found another way in. Nothing happened while I was outside, but there was the occasional skirmish when another patrol would come under attack and would have to return fire.

Only once were we seriously threatened...yet that incident was probably the worst of all.

The third night of the siege, I was about to go on duty when the patrol that was already out there came under attack near the North Field Road entrance ramp. A Ball North squad opened fire on them from behind a rover they'd stolen from the depot, and the Rangers took refuge behind the reflector ring supports and returned fire. I was still getting into my moonsuit when I heard another report over my
headset: the mercs were giving up the attack, and instead were piling into the rover and taking off again.

This was weird. There didn't seem to be any point behind the attack. After all, the garage doors were shut tight; there was no way the bad guys could have gotten through. But one of the Rangers who'd fought off the attackers noticed that the assault team consisted of only a half-dozen mercenaries, and that made someone in MainOps wonder where the rest of the goons were.

So MainOps quickly scanned the periphery, checking all the external cameras one at a time...and sure enough, they picked up thermal images of nine other mercenaries trying to hide within the shadows of large boulders near Apollo's southern end. They weren't moving, but instead seemed to be waiting for something.

I was about to close my suit when Mr. Garcia's voice came over my headset:
"Barlowe, Tate...head down to the south airlocks and check them from the inside. I want to make sure they're secure."

"Copy," I said, and looked over at Billy. "Suit or no suit?"

Billy was about to climb into his moonsuit. He thought about it a moment, then grabbed the bar above his head. "No suits," he replied, doing a chin-up while withdrawing his legs from his outfit. "We can move faster that way."

My thoughts exactly. Moonsuits would be unnecessary if we were going to remain within Apollo's underground levels, and wearing them would only slow us down. So, I had a tech come by to help me out of my suit, then I picked up my carbine and joined Billy at the ready-room door. We took a few seconds to grab a couple of headsets from a locker and do a quick radio check with MainOps, then we set out for the south end.

Once we were past the shelter, we entered the point in Apollo's subsurface labyrinth where the corridors had been blacked out to preserve power during the siege. I found a couple of flashlights in an emergency locker, though, and once we switched them on, we were able to locate the stenciled wall signs pointing the way to Airlocks 1
through 4. Unfortunately, we didn't also find one of the electric carts used by maintenance crews to move through the base; apparently they had been parked somewhere else. We would have to make our way on foot. I was glad we'd left our moonsuits behind; they would have been cumbersome in the narrow corridors.

Billy and I said little to each other as we headed for the south end. It had been a long time since we'd been foes, but we hadn't really become friends either. I owed him for getting me through Ranger training, but I hadn't forgotten the way he'd treated me and the other outcasts--particularly Eddie--when we'd first arrived on the Moon. Nor had Billy ever apologized for the things he'd said and done back then; he stopped acting a jerk, but that didn't mean he wasn't still one. So, while I was willing to work with him in the Rangers, I hadn't yet figured out whether I could trust him.

The air became colder as we moved away from the inhabited areas of the underground, and every now and then we'd come to a pair of pressure doors which had been shut. One of us would quickly check the adjacent wall gauge to make sure that there was pressure on the other side, then we'd use our wristbands to unlock the doors. We did this six times before we reached the corridor leading to Airlocks 1 through 4, and when the final pair of doors quietly slid back into the walls, we immediately realized that we were no longer alone.

Until then, the only illumination we'd seen had been wall gauge readouts or the beams of our flashlights. When the doors parted, Billy and I saw something new: about fifty feet down the corridor, a glowing rectangle seemed to hover in midair. As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was: the window of an inner door leading to an airlock ready-room.

Someone was in there, all right.

Billy and I glanced at each other. Neither of us spoke, but instead we raised our guns and switched off our lights. Then we crept down the corridor, passing Airlock 4 as we carefully approached Airlock 3.

Upon reaching the airlock, we discovered that the inner door was shut. I inched closer to the window, ducked down low, then slowly
raised my head to peer through the window. The ready room was vacant, but the door leading to the airlock was half-open. I checked the wall gauge next to me; neither room had been depressurized. Or at least not yet; a quick glance at the suit racks, and I saw that one of the moonsuits was missing.

I looked at Billy and nodded. He nodded back, then grasped the door handle with his free hand. The door came open, but not without a faint creak of hinges that, in the silence of the darkened corridor, sounded as loud as a rusted cogwheel. I winced and Billy swore under his breath, and we both froze, but nothing moved on the other side of the airlock inner door.

We waited another moment or two, then slowly stepped into the ready-room, walking on tiptoes with our carbines raised to firing position. Step by careful step, we made our way to the airlock. We'd almost reached the inner door when we heard a quiet voice from the other side:

"Mole Man to Beta Team...Beta Team, this is Mole Man...standing by for insertion...do you copy? Over."

"Aw, dammit!" Billy snarled, so loudly that he could just as well have used a bullhorn. Before I could stop him, he slammed the door the rest of the way open and barged straight into the airlock, pointing his carbine at the figure standing near the outer door.

"Uncle Don," he yelled, "what the hell are you doing?"

Caught by surprise, Donald Hawthorne turned around so fast that he almost tripped over his own feet. He wore the missing moonsuit, although he hadn't closed his helmet faceplate, and in his left hand was a small unit that could have only been an encrypted short-wave transceiver. He stood within hand's reach of the airlock control panel, and propped against the wall was the cane he was still using to get around.

"Billy." Hawthorne stared at his nephew, his eyes wide with...I wasn't sure what. Astonishment? Fear? Maybe just a bit of shame? "What are you...?"

"You know damn well why I'm here." Billy's voice was taut with anger. He didn't even notice that I'd come up beside him, my own gun raised as well. "And it's pretty obvious why you're here, too."

"No, Billy." Hawthorne slowly shook his head. "This isn't what it looks like. I'm just..."

"Checking the airlock to make sure it's shut?" I couldn't help myself; I was almost as mad as Billy. "There's a Ball North squad waiting just outside. Tell me you didn't know that."

Hawthorne gave me a mean look, but didn't bother with any more denials. He knew that we knew why he was there. And although he could have punched the E
MER
. E
VAC
. button which would have jettisoned the outer doors and instantly voided the airlock, I knew he wouldn't. Doing so would have killed me, but also his nephew as well. He was wearing a moonsuit; we weren't.

Instead, he turned his gaze toward Billy.

"You know what to do." His voice was low and menacing. "Put this little twit down."

Hearing this, it felt as if every nerve in my body had suddenly turned to ice. My gun was pointed at Mr. Hawthorne and so was Billy's...but I'd seen Billy play moonball, and I knew how quick he could be. In an instant, he could turn his gun on me and blow my head clean off my neck. And sure enough, his eyes twitched in my direction, as if calculating the distance between the two of us.

I'll never know what thoughts ran through his mind in that moment. But in those seconds that seemed much longer, he came to a decision that probably haunted him for the rest of his life.

"Jamey," he said, so quietly that I barely heard him, "call MainOps and tell the Chief we've found someone down here trying to open the door."

Mr. Hawthorne stared at him. "Billy, don't do this..."

"Shut up." Billy's gun remained leveled at his uncle. "Just back away from the airlock and drop the radio."

Donald Hawthorne didn't respond. He regarded his nephew with eyes that seemed to burn. When I was sure that Billy wasn't going to obey his uncle, I raised my hand to my headset. "MainOps, this is Ranger Barlowe," I said. "We've...we've got a situation in Airlock 3. Please send a backup team. Over."

The Chief's voice came over:
"Copy that, Jamey. What's going on down there?"

I couldn't bring myself to explain. "Just hurry up and send someone." I left the mike open, though, so that he could hear what I was saying. "Mr. Hawthorne, drop the radio and get away from the hatch."

The radio fell from Mr. Hawthorne's hand. It broke apart as it hit the mooncrete floor, but he didn't seem to notice. "Billy," he said, raising his hands unnecessarily, "I cannot believe that you'd ever stoop to treason."

"I'm not a traitor," Billy replied. "I'm a Ranger."

Billy and I held Mr. Hawthorne at gunpoint until two Rangers in moonsuits arrived at Airlock 2. Accompanying them were Mr. Garcia and--much to my surprise--Mr. Porter. By then, Billy's uncle was a broken man, his anger replaced by humiliation, unable to look his nephew in the eye. I had no sympathy for Mr. Hawthorne, yet I couldn't help but feel sorry for Billy. Of all the people to catch his uncle, it was sadly ironic that he'd have to be the one.

In hindsight, it wasn't surprising that Mr. Hawthorne had done this. He'd always been opposed to both the embargo and the refusal to surrender Apollo, claiming that it was treason against the United States. When Mr. Porter questioned him, he confessed that he'd swiped the transceiver from the mining crew; once he'd used it to get in touch with Ball North, they coordinated a sneak attack in hopes of taking control of Apollo.

Mr. Porter and Mr. Garcia stepped away from us and spoke quietly for a couple of minutes. Then they came back to Mr. Hawthorne and gave him a choice: he could leave Apollo right then and there, or he could stay and face everyone whom he'd betrayed. Donald Hawthorne quickly made up his mind. Borrowing my headset, he contacted his pals waiting outside and told them that he was coming out alone. Then Mr. Garcia got on the line and told the Ball North strike leader that they were opening the airlock, but that several Rangers would be standing just inside and that they'd shoot anyone they happened to see.

The goons got the message. No shots were fired when Airlock 2 was opened. Mr. Hawthorne left Apollo without a final word to anyone, not even Billy. The last we saw of him, he was hobbling on his cane back to the
Duke
with the Ball North team.

I tried to talk to Billy, but he didn't want to discuss the matter. He walked back to the shelter in silence.

That was Ball North's last attempt to take over Apollo. For the next six hours, nothing moved outside the city. No more mercenaries came our way. Then, suddenly and with no further communication, the
Duke
lifted off from beyond the hills east of the colony. MainOps tracked the freighter as it ascended to low orbit; it swung once around the Moon, then its main engine fired and it headed back to Earth.

Just like that, the siege came to end.