Back to the Moon (37 page)

Penny plugged into a comm jack. “Mr. Starbuck, this is Penny High Eagle. We're on a peaceful mission here. I assure you that's all it is.”

Farside Control

Starbuck frowned. Puckett had told him the spacejackers had murdered the Indian princess.

“Want me to go in, Exalted Leader?” BEM Lead asked.

“Just check the nozzles for us, please,” he heard “Jack” call down. Starbuck nodded. BEM Lead eased the joystick forward. The BEM fussed, darted, and then slowed, grumbling.

letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego letmego

Starbuck studied the screen. “We've got our nose in your crack,
Columbia,
and all looks A-OK. Now, listen up, here's what I want you to do....”

Columbia

Jack stabbed Big Dog's execution button. “Go, baby!”

Big Dog awoke, pulsing for a half second. In the middeck Paco was jarred awake and found himself catapulted into midair. His banshee moan came from below.

Farside Control

Starbuck whipped off his headset and stood. Where a second before there had been a view of the inside of one of the exhaust nozzles, there was now nothing but snow on the panel. For a microsecond he thought there had been a flash of yellow-white light....

He sat down. “We've been had,” he said grimly. He studied the blank screen. He wasn't angry. He was impressed. “This guy is good, very, very good,” he mused, rubbing his jaw. “How long to bring in another BEM?”

“We can catch them in one hour, thirty-two minutes, six seconds, O Exalted Leader.”

“Make it so,” Starbuck said resolutely. He switched on Puckett's comm, listened to his ranting for a moment, and then replied, “No, Mr. Puckett. We didn't get them. But we will. This battle's just started.”

BATTLE IN SPACE (2)

Columbia

Virgil was happy to put on an EMU suit and get away from the bickering couple inside
Columbia.
“They ought to be married,” he grumbled to himself. “They sure fight enough to qualify.”

Virgil's EVA was to prepare the landing craft (LC or “Elsie” as the MEC engineers had dubbed it). Jack stopped arguing with Penny long enough to maneuver the shuttle arm and its Little Dog payload until it was positioned over a circular aluminum base plate with a thick sheath of cabling and interface plugs. Working quickly and following the color coding, Virgil attached them to the matching plate on Little Dog and tested them, then pushed the plates together, carefully stuffing the cables into precut recesses. Spring tabs tightly clamped the two plates together.

The next step was to inflate the dome. Two compressed air tanks, each about the size of a standard eighty-cubic-foot scuba tank, were sufficient for that. Virgil attached one to an exterior pressure port and the white dome began to fill until it was about twelve feet in diameter, its exterior dotted with flaps, black lettering underneath indicating their function. S-band and VHF antennas were attached to the exterior at the indicated ports.

An airlock protruded from the base of Elsie. Virgil unzipped its inner and outer flap, and entered with an armful of plastic tubing to form an interior geodesic-shaped lattice. A simple rendezvous radar, a console with a radar altimeter and communications rig, and a set of locked-down nickel-hydrogen batteries went in next, followed by packages of food and water, three big bottles of emergency oxygen, and a set of battery spares. A small emergency solar panel was also Velcroed to the interior in case all the batteries failed.

The next setup included an optical rendezvous sight, a joystick rig for attitude control, and an air-conditioning unit that was not much more than a fan to stir the air around. The last thing in was a console for controlling the throttle on Little Dog. View ports were located below, in front, and above the console to give the pilot a view of the lunar surface.

Virgil finished by attaching attitude control jets to interfaces on the dome. He was just starting to come in, pleased with his work and the condition of Elsie, when two BEMs came rushing over
Columbia
's tail like maddened hornets. Virgil saw them and was afraid.

Farside Control

“Give me a wide turn on two-four-six!” Starbuck ordered. From his Exalted Leader pedestal he peered at the split-screen panel, which gave him a view from the noses of the two BEMs, XJ-246 and XJ-247. The port panel showed a representation of
Columbia
and the two attacking devices.

The BEMs were looking at
Columbia
's cargo bay. Starbuck could see a big dome hanging off the port sill.
What the hell was that?
There was also someone in a spacesuit frantically going hand over hand along a wire tether that ran the length of the bay.

“Want me to let two-four-six go?” BEM Leader called. “It's locked on the power pallet.”

“Negative, drop down in front of the suited subject. Keep him away from the airlock.”

“Roger that!”

BEM Lead pushed the joystick ahead and then down, BEM XJ-246 grumbling in its software all the way. It had a positive lock on something. It was supposed to kill that, not go dawdling off.

Starbuck sent XJ-247 flying out for a long-range view. He called up the UHF frequency. “
Columbia,
any last words?”

Columbia

Jack heard Virgil yelling. The BEM was right in front of him, looking itchy.

Jack pulled on his EMU suit. “Hang on, Virgil, I'm on my way!”

“Medaris, you haven't prebreathed!” Penny protested at the airlock porthole.

“No time!” Jack mouthed as he climbed into the hard upper torso.

Penny snatched a headset. “Bug-eyed monster, this is Dr. High Eagle. We're on a peaceful mission!”

“Tell me another one, Pocahontas,” Starbuck's voice crackled.

Jack came out of the airlock behind the new BEM. Apparently it didn't sense him, since it kept its eyes on Virgil. “Get some cover, Virgil,” he ordered. He ripped away the insulating material from the forward bulkhead and rammed his left arm underneath to give him some stability. He raised Virgil's .45 pistol, took aim, and fired. The BEM jerked spasmodically from the impact of the big slug. Then, another of the bullets apparently hit its cold nitrogen propellant tank. With a gush of high pressure gas the BEM started spinning like a maddened pinwheel.

Farside Control

“Dammit!” Starbuck saw XJ-246's crazy dance. He decided to send XJ-247 plowing into the dome thing. If there was a nuke on board, that was probably it. He rotated the stick but overmaneuvered, the BEM sweeping past the dome to the vertical stabilizer. He adjusted, the dome coming back into view.

“I can release it!” BEM Lead called, meaning the software hold on XJ-247.

“Negative! He's all mine!” Starbuck jammed the joystick forward, the dome right in his crosshairs.

Columbia

Jack saw the other BEM turn toward Elsie. He raised the pistol and fired.

Farside Control

“Damn!” BEM Lead yelled. “Two-four-seven just dropped off-line!”

“No!” Starbuck screamed, disbelieving. “I had the nuke!”

Columbia

“Holy mother of—” Virgil clutched his tether. A BEM had slammed into the cargo bay sill and catapulted out into space. He looked up and saw the other BEM suddenly change direction, narrowly missing Elsie and speeding down the cargo bay past Jack. Jack kept pumping lead until it zipped out of sight.

Space

BEM XJ-247 stood off
Columbia
as if trying to catch its breath. It had not been hit. It had broken off the attack because of a power loss in a microcircuit, weakened over months of alternately freezing and frying in space. Sensing the spike, its software pointer had directed it to get away from all harm and then reboot. The reboot took thirty seconds. When it was finally ready, it was no longer under manual control, a glitch in its software dropping it into automatic mode. It began to scan its surroundings. When a movement caught its visual sensor, it went after it.

Columbia

Jack braced himself, the BEM coming at him as if it were sliding down a guy wire attached to his chest. One of his rounds hit one of its silvery eyes, another caroming off its snout. The BEM suddenly turned away, shot straight up, and then stopped. Jack had no way of knowing it, but its heat sensor had latched on to the power pallet. The BEM started a kamikaze run. When it struck, a silent geyser of fluid and debris erupted. Jack saw Elsie shake from hits. Behind him, on board
Columbia,
the lights flickered, then died.

Jack went after Virgil. He looked into his helmet. The big man was shaken, his eyes popping. Sweat bubbled off his forehead, clouding his faceplate. Jack could only hope his cooling system could keep up. “Take it easy, Virg,” he said. “We're all right now.”

“Sir, we got to give in. They're going to kill us!”

“I told you we're okay. We beat them this time and if they try again, we'll beat them again. Now get hold of yourself.”

Virgil blinked, nodded, and Jack released him and headed aft, working his way past the tethered satellite payload and Elsie. He inspected the power pallet. A fuel cell had been cracked wide open by the BEM. There was nothing he could do about that, so he pulled himself back to the dome. To his relief, it didn't look as if there had been any penetration, just three small tears in the fabric. They wouldn't need to inflate the spare dome just yet. He inspected Little Dog, and found only a nick on the aluminum collar that circled the baseplate.

He thought again of Virgil, looked down the cargo bay, but couldn't see him. “High Eagle, is Virgil in yet?”

There was no reply. He worked his way forward, noting that the aft flight deck view ports were dark. Power was off. As he came down off the ATESS, he saw the lights come back on. “High Eagle, you there?”

“Here, Jack.” He felt a twinge of surprise. It was the first time she had ever called him by his first name. “I turned off all the heaters on the pallet and then turned the cells off too.”

Jack marveled at how quickly she'd learned. He had only spent a few minutes with her on the pallet controls. “Well done. Is Virgil in?”

“He's in the airlock. I brought up fuel cell number two to take up the slack and that seems to be enough. I had a main bus undervolt light but it's out now. Almost every circuit breaker got tripped. I reset them, one at a time just like you showed me.”

Jack was astonished at how much she had absorbed during his lessons. “You did good, Penny.” He had returned her favor, using her first name too. He turned around and saw that the mist from the pallet was diminishing. “Looks like the cell that got hit is running out of fuel. Any cautions on the pressure control system?”

“Negative. Air pressure is good, oxygen and nitrogen partial pressures on the money.” She paused. “Jack, you were right to try to destroy them. What did they do to us?”

“We were in fat city with three weeks of power, air, and water consumables. That just got cut at least in half. We should still have plenty if we can get back to earth in five days. No sweat, that's well within the timeline.”

Jack paused at the door, making certain no more BEMs were in sight, and then entered the airlock and closed the hatch behind him. He hit the pressurization switch and slowly the airlock filled with air, air that now needed watching very closely. One more damn thing he had to do....

Farside Control

Starbuck pored over the logic tree. “Damn, it's a mess,” he groaned.

BEM Lead stabbed a routine on the screen. “Your boy really loaded his program up with glitches before he got himself killed.”

“He was in a hurry,” Starbuck said defensively. “We were all in a hurry. For a test vehicle it's not doing too bad, but for a war machine it ain't ready.”

He sighed, turned on Puckett's audio. Puckett came on immediately. “Did you get it, Starbuck? Tell me you did.”

“Maybe,” Starbuck answered indifferently. He leaned over, patted BEM Lead on his shoulder. “Bring in our last two monsters.”

“What do you mean by maybe?” Puckett asked.

Starbuck sighed. “We hit it, yeah.”

“Well?”

Starbuck had not liked Puckett from the moment he had met him and that distaste had been cranked up several notches since. Still, he was paying the bills. “I don't know, Carl,” he said politely. “The BEMs don't have warheads. I think we struck the power pallet in the aft cargo bay. That could have caused anything, including a rather large explosion. But I just don't know.”

“You only hit it with one BEM?” Puckett snarled.

Starbuck smiled grimly. “You won't believe this, Carl, but one of your terrorists climbed out into the bay and started blasting at us with a pistol.” He shook his head. “Those boys got grit, I'll tell you that. Dr. High Eagle asked us not to attack, by the way.”

“I told you Dr. High Eagle is dead,” Puckett said.

“It sure sounded like her. I called a disc jock friend of mine at the local rock station and asked him to play a recording of her during a news conference. It was a damn right-on impersonation, I can tell you that.”

“Well, don't worry about it,” Puckett grumbled. “If she's not dead, she's joined them. In any case, just get it done. And, by the way, what the hell's the idea of lock—”

Starbuck grinned at his troops. He had pulled the audio plug on Puckett again. “I love doing that,” he said.

Columbia

“Jack, they've got us!” Virgil yelled, panic-stricken, grabbing him as soon as Jack climbed out of the airlock. “We've got to get the hell out of here!”