Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (24 page)

Cole hit the icon to retract the landing gear and they were off. By about six inches.

“Let’s see if you can get this houseboat through the doors and get us some play room.” Cole pulled his chair up to the navigator’s station and activated several displays from camera positions around the floor of the shop. The video would give them a comprehensive location assessment for maneuvering inside the building.

Sliding his hand forward on the controls, Dave slipped the gargantuan ship out into the morning light. The door had appeared huge before they tried to squeeze the
Dancing
Star
through, but as Cole watched the engine housings miss the edges of the opening by what felt like inches, he swore under his breath.

“I didn’t even scrape the paint,” Dave said, winking.

Cole nodded. “I didn’t think it was going to be that tight.”

“It was tight? I didn’t notice.” He knew if Cole had asked him to stand up at that moment, the sweat that had soaked the back of his coveralls would have made a liar out of him.

Cole laughed. “Spoken like a jet-jock.”

“Moi?” Dave feigned innocence. “Where to, Captain Kirk? And if you say ‘engage’ even once, I’m going to push you out the door."

“Excuse me, Mr. Taylor,” Mica interrupted. “I have a message from Agent Shapiro. He is requesting to meet with you at your earliest possible convenience.”

“Is he holding?” Cole asked.

“No. I told him you were unavailable.”

“Oh well, what do you say we go over and check out the neighbors?” Cole grinned, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “You can drop me there, and I’ll have a chat with him."

“Yeah. I’m sure they’ve noticed us by now,” Dave said, punching in a forward view on his heads up screen. “Let’s see if we can find out.” The image swung around and locked in on the tents. They were almost visible over the roof of the Biome.

“Hell. We’re too low. Can you bring us up a little?” They zoomed in on the camp and spotted Agent Shapiro sitting on the hood of his truck. He appeared to be making notes on his epad with his back towards them. The perspective shifted as Dave brought the ship up a few feet.

“How’s it flying?” Sophie broke in on their peeping.

“One-hundred percent,” Dave answered, glancing up at her workstation. “I think we’re going to be neighborly and visit the Government Camp out front."

“Let Viki know to stand by,” Cole said. “The press is about to get an eyeful.”

“What?” she asked. “You were kidding, weren’t you?”

“Of course not,” Cole replied. “You think we can get to their camp before they see us?” He sounded like a kid making a dare.

“We could always try to sneak up,” Dave said, “but I like the idea of seeing how fast we can jump across. The question is, how good are the brakes on this thing?"

Cole shrugged. “I know that it’ll stop as quickly as it’ll start. A couple-G would be a safe bet. I wonder if we can get there before the guys with guns can react."

“Wait a minute, did you say ‘guys with guns?’” Sophia said, standing up and looking around her console at the two of them.

“Yeah, but as long as we stay inside we’re ok. The hull’s probably bulletproof.” Cole grinned up at her. “Just sit down and hang on, we’re going to do a two-G sprint."

Dave nodded, juggling a quick calculation in his head. He punched in the flight specifications. “I’m going to let the autopilot fly it. I don’t want to miscalculate and come up ten feet too long. It would be messy.” He grimaced.

“If they’re a half mile away,” he said, hitting the laser range finder to confirm the exact distance. “We should be able to make the flight in about eight seconds, give or take.”

“If they haven’t spotted us yet, we might be on the ground before they know we’re coming.” Cole laughed. “I like it. Go for it.”

“Ok hold on to your hat.” Dave said, punching in the command.

“Holy Shit!” Sophia grunted as they slammed back into their seats.

***

Camp Kryptonite:

Agent Shapiro sat on the hood of his truck watching the Guardsmen finish detailing the camp and trying to organize his thoughts. Two more truck loads of supplies were scheduled to arrive from the Field Support Center in Pueblo, so DeMarko and Schimmel were busy planning the unloading.

The camp was shaping up now that they were done with the heavy part of the set-up. The tents were placed where they needed to be to have an optimal vantage point on Stormhaven. At this point most of the Guard were involved with stringing cables from the communication uplink and generator trailers.

Eriksson ran a tight ship, so when several soldiers along the far side of the camp started shouting, Shapiro glanced up. He couldn’t tell what the issue was, but they sounded pretty hot.

He stood up to check out the problem and was almost knocked to the ground by a blast of wind. Dust and small rocks pelted his back as a shadow blocked out the morning sun. Diving behind his truck, he closed his eyes to protect them from the flying debris.

Looking up as the wind died down he saw,
a wall hanging over him.
His mind reeled, trying to comprehend what it was. A dozen Guardsmen who’d been running toward him stood, frozen into inaction and staring up at the thing. None had drawn their weapons.

A quiet hissing noise, like air valves operating, drew his attention to a forest of tree-trunk sized landing gear slowly extending from the craft. The nearest of them less than twenty feet from him. Once fully extended, they dangled less than a foot in the air. After several seconds it settled in silence onto the ground.

Running from the main tent, Eriksson was barking orders, trying to get his men to draw a cordon around the thing. Only after grabbing the closest soldier to get his attention, did they begin to fall into formation. The shock of seeing this ship appear out of virtually nowhere, was slowly replaced by the discipline of their training.

Eriksson shouted to Shapiro, “Come on man. Get out of there.” The Major was inching away, unwilling to stay close to the craft any longer than absolutely essential to get his troops out from under it.

Trying to appear composed, the agent shook his head. “I’m ok. Let me get my stuff.” In reality, Shapiro was stalling because he wasn’t sure he could move, his heart still pounding wildly and his hands shaking to the point where he couldn’t even hold on to his epad. By sheer force of will he gathered his things and walked, with what he hoped appeared to be confidence, toward the ring of soldiers.

Eriksson headed around the troops to where Shapiro stood, “What the fuck is it?”

“That, Major, is proof that Stormhaven wasn’t bluffing,” Shapiro said. “I think they said it was named the
Dancing Star
.”

Schimmel and DeMarko came running up. “That’s what it says on the nose,” Schimmel said, pointing up at the wedged front of the ship.

“Well then, I guess they just came by to say hello,” Shapiro said, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out slowly in an effort to release some tension.

DeMarko nudged the senior agent, saying, “The guns?” He nodded at the soldiers who had formed up with their rifles un-slung and ready to fire.

“Ah.” He turned to the Major. “Please have your men stand-down. This is probably a social call and we don’t want to appear, inhospitable.”

“Are you kidding?” he stared at the agent like he was brain damaged. “Anyone who could build a ship like that—“

“Could have flattened us all before we saw them coming,” Shapiro interrupted. “If they’d intended to make this a confrontation, we wouldn’t be here debating it. Now have your men stand-down.”

The Major gave a short whistle and swung his hand in a small circle over his head, pointing to a spot several hundred yards away. His men pulled back and waited. Eriksson stayed.

“Thank you.” Colton’s voice boomed from the ship. “I heard you wanted to talk. Is there anything you need?”

“A ship like that,” Eriksson said under his breath, drawing a sharp glare from Shapiro.

“Actually, we wanted to call for an opening round of negotiations. Would you care to come out to discuss the details?” Shapiro said, loudly enough to be heard no matter where the microphone might be.

Directly beneath the bridge, a section of the hull folded in on itself dropping a narrow ramp from a hatch. Colton stood in the doorway, staring at the troops to make sure none of them were going to open fire.

Even after he’d descended to the ground, Major Eriksson looked like he wasn’t sure whether the man who approached wasn’t going to be some strange alien pretending to be human. He rested his hand on his sidearm until Agent Shapiro introduced them.

“THE Colton Taylor?” Eriksson asked, shaking the man’s hand.

“I’m sure I have a fairly common name,” he grinned, “but I might be the one you’ve heard of. My reputation does tend to get me in trouble."

“I’m an engineer when I’m not playing soldier,” the Major said. “I’ve read some of your technical papers, but nothing that’d explain this.”

“Yeah well, we do have a few toys that we don’t talk about.” He turned, glancing over his shoulder and said, “The man standing in the door up there is Davis Randall. He’s the Director of our Space Corps.”

“Excuse me?” Eriksson asked. “Space Corps?”

Cole nodded. “Yeah, we’re planning to start providing commercial space transportation services. He’s coordinating our astronaut training program."

Shapiro tried not to glare at Cole while he explained aspects of the situation to a person who had no business knowing. His tendency to discuss everything openly was obviously going to make it difficult to keep control of the information.

“Well Major, you do need to be getting your troops back on task,” Shapiro said, dismissing the Guard Commander from the conversation.

“Oh sorry,” Cole said, apologizing once Eriksson had walked away. “I never thought that this would be a need-to-know issue. Especially since the press has been showing up for days.”

“That’s one of the things we need to discuss,” Shapiro said. “I have to say I think your announcement is a bit premature.”

“Actually, I’ve found putting a deadline on a negotiation like this makes it much more productive,” Cole said, regarding the agent levelly.

“Perhaps that’s true, but it needs to be realistic,” DeMarko added.

“This is realistic. I’m sure you’ve been given the authority to do whatever needs to be done to resolve the problem.” He nodded towards the tents. “Obviously they’ve given you plenty of horsepower. So let’s put it to good use, shall we?"

He turned and said to Dave, without raising his voice even though the distance was too far for his voice to carry naturally, “You two do a shake down, but stick close to home. I’m going to stay and chat. Please send Tom over, and let him know it’s urgent.”

“Eriksson,” Shapiro yelled to the Guard Commander, “can you escort Mr. Taylor into my office.” Then lowering his voice he added, “I’ve got to get my stuff and I’ll meet you there."

As soon as Colton was out of earshot, Shapiro said to DeMarko and Schimmel, “Did anyone else shit their pants when that thing appeared?”

“No.” DeMarko said, “I was far enough away that I saw it coming, but it must have covered the distance in under ten seconds. The turbulence alone damn near blew down the main tent.”

“Yeah. It was a trifle startling,” Shapiro said. The two agents laughed at his sarcasm.

“You don’t think he keeps rattling us to gain an advantage in the negotiations?” Schimmel asked.

“Gee. I don’t know. Maybe he just does it because he likes fucking around with people.” Shapiro headed off to gather his things, leaving the two of them to watch the ship float into the sky and pivot back the way it had come.

“By the way,” he shouted from the distance, “next time they pull a stunt like that I want some warning."

***

Chang Er Base, Tycho Crater:

Yao Lin-Tzu often sat alone in the communications room staring into the empty sky. As a junior officer in the PRC Space Program, she was responsible for nothing more than keeping the communications and telescope tracking equipment operational. A gifted engineer, she was capable of handling much more than the assigned routine monitoring and maintenance tasks that this post required, but she didn’t mind.

For her it was a blessing to be here, no matter the drudgery of the assignment. Born and raised in Beijing, she’d never known silence until she had arrived on the moon. One of only a couple dozen inhabitants here, for the first time in her life she knew that beyond the door,
was nothing.
No people, no crime, no noise. She’d discovered that she liked it that way. The solitude alone was worth enduring the boredom of her duty.

She stared at the screen, trying to catch a glimpse of the departing American TLS. Ordinarily a US transfer would be something that had been announced weeks in advance, but for some reason they were making an unscheduled run. One of the radar technicians had recorded their lunar lander making a rendezvous with the TLS and had alerted her. The oddity of the unscheduled mission required the details of their departure be recorded in her log.