Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) (68 page)

“Yes Joshua, we’ll bring back the bodies,” Colton was saying. “And while we’re at it, I suppose you want us to bring back any salvageable parts, too?” Sarcasm also revealed that they were definitely not on friendly terms.

Turning to put some distance between him and the discussion, he heard Colton call his name.
Damn, too late.
“Yes sir?” he responded, spinning.

“Joshua wants a report from you,” Cole said. “You can use my station here, or I can set you up with a console in one of the cabins. I’m going to suit up in a few minutes and see if I can help get some of the larger fragments of the station opened up.”

“I’m sure this will be fine,” the commander said, nodding. “But I’d like to go with you.”

“Of course, I’ll get you a fresh suit.” Cole slid past him and pointed to the seat. “It’s all yours.”

Once he’d disappeared, Scott settled into the chair. Its serpentine back gripped his spine and pulled him into its resilient foam. Unnervingly intimate, he thought, as Joshua stared at him through the small screen.

“We’ve got a lot of people here who’d given up hope Scott,” the Director said. “If these folks hadn’t come in from left field—“

“We’d all be dead up here.” Scott said, near exhaustion, his emotions driving a little more edge into his voice than he’d have wanted. “Fortunately it didn’t come to that."

“Yeah,” Lange said, looking off to the side for a moment at someone sitting beyond the camera view. “With what you know up there, are we all dead down here?”

“Right now, I’d have to say it’s a total loss.” Scott looked through the windows to see an astronaut in a strange colored suit go flitting quickly towards the Russian Science Module. “I don’t know if there’s any hope of rebuilding. I’d estimate eighty-percent of the station’s intact, but since it got hit hard enough to blow the seals, I’d guess there are no connections that are undamaged. I don’t even know if we could restore an atmosphere.”

“Shit,” the Director hissed. “What kind of timeframe would it take to get it back online?”

“Did you miss what I said?” Scott’s voice dripped frustrated sarcasm. “The station is dead. We don’t have the manpower to rebuild it, and even if we did, it’d take years to get the pieces up here. Alpha has to be considered a total loss.”

“I see,” Joshua said, resignation hanging in his tone. “I’ll tell the President that we’re screwed for finishing Hammerthrow.”

“We were fucked before we started,” Scott snarled.

***

Mobile Prospector Lab, Sinus Iridum, Luna:

Ever since they’d first heard about the ISS, Susan had felt trapped. Trapped by the sheer oppressive distance she had yet to travel. And by the slowness of the MPL. And by the fact that, other than the Chinese, she was now sitting squarely on the front line. Right out front.

At a blistering eleven point three kilometers per hour.

Listening to the reports, sketchy as they’d been for the first several hours after the collision, she was piecing together what they must be dealing with, both with the loss of the station, and with the much bigger concern over the loss of Hammerthrow. Scott had survived. And Sergei, and apparently Hiroko Tamami, who was for some reason still at Alpha. Everyone else there had been new arrivals and only three were from NASA’s Astronaut Corps, the ones that the
Reliant
had been sent to pick up. They were probably dead too.

She shuddered, thinking first about them and how they must have died, and then about Randy, who was scheduled to rendezvous with Alpha and pick up consumables. Things they needed desperately at the LRS. Food, air, and water.

She cursed the slowness of the MPL again, glaring at the engine power meters. 105%. She was pushing the lab harder than she should, but she had to get back so they could make the tough decisions. Now more than ever, they needed to move forward with the New Hope Colony, but the first thing she had to do was figure out how to hang on until someone could send help.

Twenty-two agonizingly long hours until she got home.

***

Stormhaven:

“It looks like they’re backing off a bit,” Viki said into the comlink. Cole had moved into a cargo handler’s workstation in the main hull, and was floating at an odd angle on her screen.

“Have they indicated if they’re going to lift the blockade?” he asked.

“We’re not sure yet, but I haven’t seen a fighter for about an hour and a half.” She walked over to the windows and stared up at the afternoon sky. “Why?”

“We’re going to need to fly Tom out to Florida so he’s there when we land,” Cole said. “I think it might be good to have him on hand in case they try to keep us grounded there.” His face showed a sudden flash of emotion that she couldn’t follow. A snapshot of pain and then back to his focused self-control.

“You think they might try to steal the ships?” she asked.

“It isn’t worth the risk,” he said. “If nothing else, they’re going to come to the table for some serious negotiation. I want Tom there when we get to that point.”

“Possibly,” she agreed. “I’ll get Daryl to fly him out in the Citation tonight.”

“Viki, Daryl’s dead,” Cole said, his face again contorting in a battle with his emotions.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“He took out two missiles that were headed for the barn. I watched it happen.” Cole’s grimace deepened until it looked like he was on the edge of tears.

Staring blankly at him for a second, she started laughing.

“What the hell’s so funny?” he said, shocked by her reaction.

“Mica, is Daryl still in the medical center?” she asked.

“He is about to be released,” the computer answered. “Would you like me to patch him in to the comlink?”

Viki nodded, and the image of Cole on the wall split into two sections. The left one was filled with an image of a bruised and bandaged, but otherwise relatively intact Dr. Creswell. “Hey Cole,” he said, managing a crooked smile. “How goes the rescue?”

Blinking hard against the sudden counterswing of emotion, Cole snorted. “I thought you were … I mean how did you ...” His voice failed under the tug-o-war of strain and relief.

“Mica stole my damn mini.” Daryl explained. “Dumped my fat ass out on the ground when she took off. Lucky for me, I was only a few feet off the floor when she did it."

“Mica did a roll when she took control of his tool sled.” Viki clarified. “In the process she unloaded everything, including Daryl, all over the floor. I think they’re still trying to pick up the mess back there.”

Daryl grinned again. “They’re telling me I dislocated a shoulder and sprained my left wrist pretty badly, but otherwise I’m ok.”

“That’ll be a relief up here,” Cole said. “We thought you’d made yourself into a hero.” He floated out of the screen for a second, and the mic picked up a loud honking sound. “So, can you fly?” he asked, returning to the screen, all business again.

“Sure, the X flies itself,” he said. “I wouldn’t let Doc Winston give me anything for the pain. When do I need to be wheels-up?”

“As soon as you can,” Cole said. “I need Tom at Cape Canaveral before I get there. We’ve got another couple hours to finish up the recovery operations and then I’ll be bringing the
Aquila
directly to Florida.”

“I’ll get together with Tom, and we’ll be there before you get down.” Pulling his shirt up over his shoulder, Daryl winced in pain. “Are they going to let me land at Canaveral?” he asked as an afterthought.

“Right now they’d let you land on the White House lawn,” Cole said, laughing.

***

Chang Er Prefecture, Tycho:

Becki sat watching over Lin-Tzu’s shoulder as she showed her how the various pieces of equipment worked. With the exception of the tight-beam laser transmitter used for important communications, there was nothing complex enough to present a problem, at least not to anyone who had ever played a video game. Twist a knob, tweak a joystick and push a button. The computers did the rest.

The spotting telescope was almost as easy. They used it to find several of the brighter nebula, strikingly beautiful even with the relatively low-power imaging scope. Lin-Tzu stepped back and let Becki get a feel for the focus and zoom controls. It was easy enough, but the Prefect’s wife had led a sheltered life, and even these simple things seemed to give her pleasure.

Czao himself had given permission for his wife to be trained as a stand-by Communications Officer. Her skill in English gave her a decided advantage the next time some American decided to call one of their astronauts a cork-sacker. At first, the idea of training Becki had intimidated Lin-Tzu, but after spending sixteen hours over the course of two days, they felt as close as sisters, gabbing away in their secret code language.

“Your English is very good,” Becki said, spinning the knobs and sighting another celestial object from its coordinates.

“Thank you, but it could be better,” she said, watching as she transposed two numbers and came up looking at the wrong region of the sky. She’d seen her do it but had kept quiet to see if she could figure out her mistake.

“Do you ever listen to American television broadcasts?” she asked, reentering the coordinates correctly this time and smiling when Mars appeared in the center of the screen.

“I assume I could, but their sense of humor escapes me. I do have several of our national channels programmed into the receiver,” she said, punching in a command and watching CCTV 2 appear on a side monitor. “I can get CCTV 9 too. It’s an English broadcast.” She switched the channel and the screen showed a very serious looking commentator standing in front of an image of Alpha. The sound was down, but even without words she could tell something was wrong.

“Your English won’t get better if you listen to people whose command of the language is no better than your own,” Becki said, ignoring the screen. “You must hear people speak passionately in their native tongue to really develop a passion for it.”

“Shhh,” Lin-Tzu said, turning up the volume.

“
... no official comment from Washington on the apparent disastrous explosion at the orbital facility, but rogue online broadcasts originating from somewhere inside the United States continue to show what appear to be reliable pictures of the damage.”
The background image switched to a view of the Space Station hanging above the Earth. One of the main solar wings looked like a set of shattered window frames, and even on the small screen it was clear that at least one of the modules had twisted loose from its connections.

“If this is true, it is a serious situation for the entire world,” Becki said. “I heard that the US mitigation project was based there. But it has to be a hoax,” she added. “Look how good the pictures are. It looks like a movie.”

“Please let me have my seat. I need to use the telescope,” Lin-Tzu said. She sat down and looked up the position of the ISS in her astronomical catalog. She punched in the coordinates and set the magnification to maximum. “It should be coming up over the horizon any minute.”

“You can see it from here?” Becki asked.

“Not well, but perhaps enough to see if what they say is true,” she said, gasping as it came into view. There were several pieces of debris visible around it, and at least one of the solar wings looked to be gone. Beside the station, two odd shaped
things
floated. They weren’t like anything she’d ever seen before, and they seemed to be moving randomly around the station, dodging and weaving as she watched. One of the objects shot off, arcing away from the planet as it disappeared from the field of view. It had to be a vehicle, but where was it going?

“I need to call my husband,” Becki said. “He should know what’s happening.”

“He needs to see it with his own eyes,” Lin-Tzu said. “Can you ask him to come here?”

***

All the Cards

TLS Reliant, Inbound, Earth-Transit:

Randy floated in the small cabin of the lunar shuttle, listening to the chatter on the com channels, wondering if they’d forgotten about him. It’d be easy enough to do considering everything they had on their minds now, but once the chaos had cleared, he was sure that they’d figure out what to do with him. After all, he was still fourteen hours from Earth orbit.

Checking the readouts, he knew he had enough air for almost two weeks, but fuel was going to be a problem. The shuttle fuel cache had almost certainly been damaged, and that meant he was going to be in trouble unless they hauled up a load from Earth on the next shuttle flight.

So he was waiting. Not concerned for himself, but aware that he was going to be the next issue on their plates.

“
Draco
to
Reliant
.” A voice cut in on the chatter, clear and sharp. “
Draco
to
Reliant
, do you copy?”

Startled, Randy pulled himself toward the view port, punching in to the communications link with a headset. “This is
Reliant
, who is this?”