Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) (21 page)

Finally they’d rigged a set of opposing gravity lasers to squeeze his legs while they pulled him out from under the weight. He’d been unconscious for the last two hours of the effort, but his suit reported that he was still alive when they pulled him free.

There’d been no arguing where they should take him, only whether the US Colony could do without their doctor while he accompanied Carter to Sentinel. Finally Susan had agreed, when Dave pointed out if they had another attack or any other emergency, they could have him back to New Hope in under ten minutes. He’d also offered to leave the volunteer fighters and two of the minies to help stand guard until they could handle their own security.

Tom and Viki had signed off on his idea to leave some help at New Hope, and they took off to Sentinel with two minies and the
Draco
in close formation. Until they knew what the Chinese were thinking, Dave took no chances. Even the colony had its gravity lasers manned and on alert. Dave caught them tracking the ships as they approached the landing docks. They put down next to the converted cargo module that served as a pressurized hangar for their fleet of minies. The door stood open, waiting for the small carrier that had been used to transport Dr. Anthony.

Dave put on a light suit and sprinted into the hangar just as the pressure doors were closing, and the mini settled to the floor. He’d left transferring the
Draco
to its usual parking berth to his pilot. He wanted to be inside when they got Carter unloaded. Although he’d never met the man before, he felt a strange connection to the astronomer because of the intimacy that developed as they worked to extricate him. And maybe in some part because of his working so closely with Dani before she had been grounded. He respected her as one of the best pilots in the Stormhaven fleet, and he knew how much she respected Carter.

Dani stood waiting just beyond the pressure door with a team of nurses and another doctor. They loaded Carter and his pressure clamps on a float-gurney and had him ready to move when the computer announced they’d equalized pressure. The door flew open and Danielle sprinted out onto the hangar floor.

Dr. Cochrane carefully undid Carter’s helmet and his eyes fluttered open. He looked around vaguely, having trouble focusing. It was amazing that he was aware he was still alive, but his eyes found Danielle and he almost smiled. His lips moved slightly like he was trying to say something, but no sound came out. Then he faded back into unconsciousness.

“Is he going to be ok?” she asked the Doctor, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“We’ve got to get him into surgery,” Cochrane said. “I can’t tell you anything until we get in there and see what other injuries he’s got.”

“He’s lucky to be alive,” Dave said, putting his arm around her and easing her out of the way of the medical team. “But he’s got one hell of a will to live. He never let go out there.”

She nodded, letting Dave walk her along the corridor, following the float-gurney through the half-mile of hallways to the hospital.

***

Unity Colony, Eastern Mare Frigoris:

Jonathon Merrill was a plainspoken man. But even his vocabulary, and he had a great many colorful metaphors to choose from, failed when he heard about what had happened at New Hope. He was ready to assemble an army and do to the Chinese what they’d done to the Americans. Even after a day, his rage had not boiled down to a simmer. He was still sporting for a fight.

“I’ve got three hundred volunteers,” he said to the committee.

Mito, Schmidt, and Sidra all sat passively shaking their heads in unison. “We cannot do this,” Takao said. “The fight is between the US and the Chinese, and President Hutton has already decided that there should be no more action against the Chinese.”

“But those bastards have destroyed the best chance we had to save the Earth,” he said. “This wasn’t a bleeding border skirmish. This was an attack against all of us. If we don’t show some backbone, then the next time the Chinese get a wild hair, they’re gonna be aiming at us, mate. We can’t let this go unanswered.”

“The United States has already responded militarily against the Chinese,” Wilhelm said. “They destroyed the Chinese main space complex. They killed almost seventy thousand people. I say that is enough of a response.”

“Down there,” he said. “Up here things are much different.”

“Jonathon, you must calm down and think about it,” Mito said. “You cannot risk that many people in a conflict which does not need to happen.”

“Put yourself in our place,” Merrill said. “The Chinese obviously have a military contingent up here. We’ve got nothing. You can bet on the fact they’re digging in, and the longer we wait to respond, the stronger they’ll be. If we don’t get in there now and kick their asses, we might as well be building this colony for them. We’re sitting here with a very vulnerable base that’s only half-done. They could come in and take it from us.”

“That sounds a bit paranoid,” Sidra said. “The Chinese issued a statement that they were protecting their
Zhen-Long
missile from the US weapon. Their objective was strictly a matter of defending their interests and not in starting a war. They carefully executed their attack to minimize casualties in the US colony. Apparently there were only two American deaths and one injury. This is not sounding to me like they intended to make war.”

“If we throw ourselves into this,” Schmidt said, “we can guarantee it will become a war. And as you said, our base is vulnerable.”

“Trust me, my crew knows how fragile our dome is,” Merrill said. “That’s probably the biggest reason we’re wanting to reduce the Chinese threat. If you will not agree to a preemptive attack, then we need to, at the very minimum, consider defensive fortifications.”

“We cannot retaliate against Chang Er,” Mito said. “As to your other idea, perhaps there is prudence in developing a small security force.”

Schmidt nodded, but Sidra looked unconvinced. “Would not such an action send a message to the Chinese that we are expecting confrontation?”

“Maybe it would tell them that we aren’t going to take their bullshit lying down,” Jonathon said. “We don’t have to leave ourselves as a target of opportunity. All we have to do is show them we’re serious about not getting caught with our pants down, like the Americans did.”

“Agreed,” Fahmi said reluctantly.

“Then we will assemble a Peacekeeping unit and get them into the supply rotation immediately,” Mito said. “It is sad that this has become necessary. I had so hoped the Lunar surface could avoid being turned into an armed territory.”

“Tell that to the Chinese,” Merrill said, relieved they’d finally understood the reality of the situation.

***

Washington:

President Hutton sat behind her desk in the oval office. Home at last. She’d agreed to keep the Kevlar drapes pulled in a small concession to Secretary Worthington’s paranoia. It made the light and airy office a trifle gloomy, but her spirits were better just knowing behind the dark curtain there was sunlight.

She hated videoconferencing before her exile to Mount Weather, but now it was something she couldn’t tolerate. She promised to hold every meeting with her pseudo War Cabinet informally, and face-to-face, in the Oval Office now that she was back. She liked the humanity of it.

John, Dick, and William sat in three chairs facing her, each showing their stress more than they ever would have across a monitor. She read them, their body language clear and open. It was something that she’d missed for a long time.

“So, we’re all riding in the Chinese boat now,” she said. “What does that mean to us?”

“That we’d better have a bucket to bail, just in case they start sinking,” Dick said. “I think we need to cut through the crap and start pushing everything we can into the New Hope Colony.”

“I hate to admit it, but he’s right,” John said, the pain at that realization written across the lines of his face in a strong clear font.

“We’re not having to feed the maw of development,” the Vice President said. “If we focus on the Colony with the same single-minded determination we put into the guns, we’re doing a lot better than hedging our bets.”

“I also think we should start building a carrier, based on the Stormhaven technology,” she said. “We don’t need to dissect them clear down to their elemental components to know they work. Stormhaven’s built the biggest colony up there, and they haven’t even come close to expending what we have just on our colony alone. The time has long since passed when we should have thrown caution to the wind and gotten on with the program.”

John smiled, a trifle sadly perhaps, but a smile nonetheless. “I agree,” he said. “I’m so tired of having them pull our asses out of the fire. We should have figured this out a long time ago and joined their Alliance. Did you know the Unity Colony is ahead of us, in spite of having lost half their original structure to that quake?”

“I didn’t, but it’s not surprising,” she poured another cup of coffee from the urn on the corner of her desk. “Of course, it’s always easy to second guess your past actions when you’re looking at them through the lens of present awareness.” She shrugged.

“So, where do we stand today gentlemen,” she asked, opening the meeting as formally as she was likely to do.

“The rioting last night has already ended,” Worthington said. “It looks like the public is pretty much worn out and given up the idea they need to blow things up to protest. Now it’s mostly down to sign waving and chanting.”

“That’s a relief,” Dick said.

“China though is just starting to get wound up,” he said. “They’ve called out their entire army to put down the protests there. They were pretty quiet for the last year, so they’ve got plenty of energy pent up. We’ve got operatives over there that are reporting a riot in Beijing that killed almost ten thousand people before the army moved in.”

Jesus,” John said, “that’s horrible.”

“Better them than us,” Worthington said.

“No argument there,” Dick said, grabbing the coffee pot himself.

“Excuse me Madam President,” Janice interrupted over the intercom, “Joshua Lange and Warren McDermott are holding.”

“Did they say what they wanted?” she asked.

“No ma’am, just that they had something important to discuss with you,” she said.

“Ok. Connect them through,” she said. She watched the two faces appear on her screen in separate windows. They were obviously not together. Joshua sat in his office, and Commander McDermott sat on the bridge of the
Eagle
. “Good morning, gentlemen. What can I do for you?”

“Good morning ma’am,” Lange said. “I believe you know Commander McDermott?” she nodded, and he continued. “Warren and I were just discussing the idea of a final last-ditch effort to deflect Antu.”

She glanced at Dick and John, who both looked as shocked as she was. “I thought we were out of options?” she said.

“Not entirely,” Joshua said. “Commander McDermott has volunteered to lead a mission to the asteroid to manually place a string of warheads in its path. The idea would be to go back to Dr. Anthony’s original deflection scheme with the incremental detonation sequence.”

“Would that be possible?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am,” McDermott said. “We could fly the
Eagle
out there in under seven days of flight time. Given the capabilities of this ship, it would be feasible.”

She sat back in her chair, not knowing how to react. Joshua apparently read her confusion. “We could load the ship with existing warheads from our arsenal and drop them manually along Antu’s trajectory. We’d detonate them by remote control from the bridge of the
Eagle
. It would be easily within the technological capacity of the existing hardware. And we could begin provisioning for the mission immediately.”

“Have you talked to anyone else about this? Carter Anthony for example?” she asked.

“Dr. Anthony is in recovery at the Sentinel Colony,” Joshua said. “We ran it past Dr. Jacoby and Secretary Reynolds, and they both agreed that it sounded viable.”

“So what do you need from me?” she said.

“Approval,” he said. “We’ve already got all the hardware we need, and Warren has assembled a volunteer crew of astronauts for the mission, if you give it the green light.”

“And you think you can fly the
Eagle
out there and then get back alive?” she said, looking at Commander McDermott’s face.

“Yes ma’am,” he said without hesitation.

“Then good luck, Commander,” she said.

***

Stormhaven:

Colton stood on the catwalk looking out the back doors of the Fabrication Center, his mind a million miles away. Tom walked up beside him, saying nothing until he was noticed. Lately Cole had developed the habit of becoming irritated when someone, or something, intruded on his thoughts.

“Yes?” Cole asked, not looking away from where he was focused.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “Have you got a minute?”

“Sure,” Cole said, pulling himself back from the distance. He turned and leaned against the railing, studying his friend’s face. Tom felt like he was being strip-searched mentally. After several seconds Cole said, “You’re wanting to move us up to the lunar surface, aren’t you?”