Bastion Saturn (13 page)

Lawrence Boetiger’s voice came over the
Wang Fat One
’s PA with a breathlessness that sounded like an effort was being made to stifle it. “Mr. Wang, greetings. We can see that you’re near here. Forgives for, uh, for not being able to talk F to F.” Shouts could be heard in the background and the sound of something heavy falling was followed by a scream. “We are hard at work. Last minute preps to celebs your arrival.”

Henry Lo raised an eyebrow and said, “How about you take a quick break, Larry? I hate voice only.”

“Um. Sorry. My hands are full. Lot still coming together.”

“While appreciated, I’m not sure that such effort is necessary. Why, may I ask, are you warming up the engines on your ships?”

There was a long pause. Finally, Lawrence said, “Mr. Wang. May I ask why you have police escort?”

It was Henry Lo’s turn to pause. He had a stock answer, but he had a feeling that somehow the cat was out of the bag. Why waste words? He let his lips gently flap as he blew out a breath, then went with the stock answer anyway. “The police have reason to believe that you have been manufacturing drugs other than what you claim on the contract. They are here just to confirm the facts of the transaction. Consider it a formality.”

Lawrence mumbled something about a lot of heat for a formality and then clearly stated, “Our, uh, ships here are part of the overall equip, and therefore subs to the merger. We’re simply making sure that you see that evs in working order.”

It was a reasonable answer. Henry Lo chose to leave it. “That’s thoughtful. We are fifty-nine minutes out. Looking forward to finally shaking hands with you and your partners.”

“Uh, us, too. See you in an hour. Boetiger out.”

Henry Lo turned slightly to Zheng and again addressed his second without looking him in the eye. “You will, of course, consult with Sergeant Gunderson about their ships warming up.”

“Of course, sir.”

Caleb shoved his way forward until he saw Bert near a junction, politely standing aside for people. The robot’s arms were fully loaded with exosuits, his brilliant white head poking out, making him appear like some alien hydra. Caleb got close enough to yell at him while pointing at his own feet. “Bert! Here! Now!” Bert offered a smile that was programed for reassurance. Caleb interpreted it as a grimace.

Bert said, “Hello, sir. Quite a bit of activity, sir.”

“Just follow me, snowflake.” Without reducing the robot’s burden, Caleb spun on his heel and pressed back toward the storage hanger.

“You’ll pardon my delay, sir. I had to politely remind several people that these suits did not belong to them. I’m afraid I had to use more strength than is usually considered deferential.”

Caleb shoved a man aside and kept plowing forward. When they finally got back to the Princess Belle, it appeared that nothing had changed. Jennifer stood on the top step of a ladder with a portable welder, her head hidden beneath the open cowling. Spruck, wiped greasy fingers on his coverall while staring at a pile of parts on a bench. Natalie and Saanvi screamed over each other at three other women who demanded that they drop the food stock tubes the girls had under each arm. Caleb stepped between the women with his back to Natalie and Saanvi and spoke the near immortal words of the father of the system, Bez Hanson: “If they want to die of wishful thinking, it’s not your job to tell them otherwise! Now back off!” It was close enough to the great man’s mantra that it touched the souls of the three lady pioneers, and they did just that. Caleb looked at Spruck. “And? How’s it going?”

Spruck moved two parts next to each other, but otherwise continued to stare.

“Spruck!”

“Huh?”

“Are we going to die of wishful thinking?”

Spruck picked up the pieces and slipped them together with a satisfied smile. “Probably. But not today. Could use your help.”

Bert continued to stand with the armload of exosuits. “Sir? May I inquire as to where you would like me to deposit these?”

Caleb pointed at the Princess Belle’s airlock. “The prep room, dummy.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Jennifer stuck her head out of the cowling. “You should try being nicer to him. We can all hear your tone.”

Caleb gave her a double take while allowing Spruck to heap greasy parts into his arms. “What’re we working on?”

Spruck said, “Air mixture regulator manifold, cabin heat exchanger, and something I’m forgetting, but it’ll come to me.” He pulled a shiny stainless steel gadget out of a box. “Finally got this last week. Can’t wait to see if it fits.” He looked at Bert struggling to get through the
Belle
’s narrow airlock door. “Good. You got suits.”

An hour passed and the small group was so busy prepping Spruck’s ship that they hadn’t really noticed the storage hangar emptied out of people. Spruck and Caleb were deep in the workings of the life-support system inside the ship, while Jennifer put the final touches on the last weld. Natalie and Saanvi had not only reloaded and primed the food printer, but had also dug up and loaded various personal hygiene items, meds, and first aid, and, most importantly, topped up the liquid oxygen and hydrogen.

Bert received the welding kit from Jennifer as she stepped down the ladder, slamming the cowling closed as she went. At the same moment the cowling closed, a vibration shook the station all around them. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up, listening. Another vibration shook dust from the rocky ceiling, followed by the sound of a distant explosion.

Dust continued to rain down from the high ceiling, and the sounds of conflict echoed throughout the chamber. Inside the Princess Belle, Jennifer, Natalie, Saanvi, and Bert were standing over Caleb and Spruck. The two men had much of the ship’s midsection floor and wall paneling open and were deep in the ship’s guts. Natalie looked at Jennifer with wide eyes filled with worry. “You good to go?”

“Good to go.”

“Spruck, Jennifer is good to go. Are you good to go?”

“I am not good to go.”

“How long until, Baby?”

“Not sure.”

Caleb stuck his head up. “We’ve done everything on his list, but he swears he’s forgetting something important.”

“What are you forgetting, Baby?”

Spruck stuck his head up. “Really?”

“Well, is it something that prevents us from breathing if we fly the ship outside? Cause it seems like the bad guys are here.”

“I’m pretty sure it does.” They all waited, feeling useless as Spruck scanned the ship’s diagnostics in his safety glasses. “Ha!”

“What?” asked Caleb.

Spruck opened an empty storage locker. “The spare CO2 scrubbers. I sent them to be reconditioned when I first pulled this baby in here. They should still be down a level in engineering. In fact, I know they are. I can see them now, strapped to the North Pole wall. I’ve been passing them every day for months. Funny, I kind of forgot about them. Part of the canvas so to speak.”

“How many are there?” ask Caleb.

“Ten, no, twelve. With this many passengers, each good for roughly a week.”

Caleb pointed at the end of a canister filling a hole labeled CO2 scrubber. “But there’s one right there.”

“Yes. Good for a week. There is no place around here that takes less than a week to get to. Oh, and I can’t speak for that one. It’s just to keep the socket primed.”

Caleb frowned. “That’s some pretty old tech.”

Jennifer pointed outside. “There must be more out there, no?”

Spruck climbed up to the deck and began marching to the exit. “Nope. The only ones that will fit are the originals. Can I borrow your bot?”

“Sure. Bert, go with Spruck.”

“Yes, Jennifer,” said Bert, obediently following Spruck.

“Why don’t we all go?” asked Saanvi.

“It’ll be quicker with just me and the bot.”

Another muffled explosion shook the ship. They all stopped where they stood and listened. After a beat, Caleb looked at Spruck and Bert. “Go! Hurry the fuck up!”

Henry Lo was furious. The ships that were part of the Albiorix co-op were indeed his or Wang Fat’s, anyway, and here they were blowing the things up the moment they tried to lift off. For the operation to succeed, there could be no survivors. They were jamming any transmission that might be sent from the moon, but that didn’t stop Henry from trying and failing to reach Larry. No amount of warnings was stopping the ships from lifting, a ghastly sight. Bodies and ship parts floated like chaff around the moon.
On the other hand
, he thought,
it makes the most unpleasant nature of the operation a little easier
. Rounding up a colony of more than a hundred men women and children and shoving them out the airlocks was a deeply tedious prospect, though certainly a lower cost alternative.

There was another flashing explosion above the surface. Zheng said, “That was the last one.”

One screen showed that the tunneled moon still had movement inside, but it was spare. Henry Lo said, “OK. Easy mop-up.” He glanced at the screen displaying his shuttle bay. The doors were opening to release the four ships it held. “The boys and girls are going to be sad that they didn’t get to shoot as many as they were expecting.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Wang Fat forces, like the police escorting them, owned a reputation for their deep desire to experience killing, while also harboring a reluctance to break the law, or more accurately, to do such a deed unsanctioned by some authority. As there was no central government in the Saturn System, Wang Fat was as good an authority as any.

Some of the non-owners who had been abandoned on the moon started to trickle back into the storage room. A woman named Alice took the lead with five then six people marching behind her toward tThe Princess Belle. Caleb stood was standing on the ramp keeping watch while Jennifer, Natalie, and Saanvi searched for any other sundry items that they might have overlooked for the journey.

Alice said to Caleb, “You there? Spruck got this thing working?”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t play dumb, stranger. If anyone is getting off this rock on that ship, it’s us. We’re the ones who know Spruck.” Her small group backed her up as she stopped and planted her legs square, hands on hips.

Caleb cocked an eyebrow, figuring he should have expected this, frankly surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. “Well, that’s a shame for you. This thing will hold six. We have five, plus a beloved bot. So even if you talked Spruck into kicking us off, he’s got his friend Natalie, which means three of you aren’t going anywhere anyway.”

This threw the group into a fit of mumbling. Jennifer stepped up to the ship, laying her goods on the work bench and stood next to Caleb. Natalie and Saanvi did the same. Caleb continued to the newcomers, “But, that’s neither here nor there. The ship’s broken for now.”

A man came rushing into the room, ripping off his breather. “They’re shooting people! All the ships are blown away. Shock troops landing.”

Caleb felt his stomach drop. So soon? Where the hell
is
was Spruck? He needed a weapon; at the very least, so he could hold off the people standing in front of him. This was going to get ugly fast.

Another man, holding a crying little boy, ran in wild-eyed, saying, “Rock cutters. Are there any rock cutters left in here?”

Natalie said, “A crate of them over there, Ken. Fuel cells on ’em should be fine.”

Ken set the boy down and angled for the crate. “Everyone grab one. It’s only good for close quarters, but the laser will cut a man in two. They’re not safetied like laser guns.”

“That’s a curious oversight,” said Caleb launching himself toward the crate.

A few more people ran in, eyeballing Spruck’s ship. Then Spruck came in, Bert behind him carrying the bulk of the CO2 filters. Spruck quickly assessed the situation, saying, “I don’t know if it will start. I can only take six and I already picked those six. Sorry.”

Ken held up a rock cutter saying, “I don’t think you want to go anywhere out there. They blew away every ship as it took off. The stakeholders are space dust. We have one choice: we cause so many casualties for them that they rethink the whole thing.”

Alice said, “Ken, you’re a fool if you think we can fight these folks off.” She raised her voice even louder. “They land and Spruck flies. I say we hold a lottery. Five winners.”

Bert said to Spruck, “Forgive me for interrupting, but why don’t we and these people just leave on the ship that we arrived on?”

Caleb said, “What did you say, snowflake?”

“The ship we arrived on, sir. It can hold all of us.”

Ken said, “No, no. Larry took it. It’s a floating debris field out there.”

“I highly doubt that, sir. I locked it when I left. Standard protocol upon leaving a ship unoccupied.”

“Why you beautiful bald bastard.” Caleb stepped over to the to the bright white machine and snatched his face, giving Bert a kiss on the forehead.

Ken said, “Jesus, people. There are four hundred meters of invading forces between us and the landing bays.”

Alice said, “They’re clogged with pipes and cable, but we could go through the fiscal plant ducts. We get in there all the time for maintenance. Not too hard crawling through in low grav.”

“That’s the first place they’re going to look,” said Spruck.

Jennifer asked, “Is this all of you?” Nineteen people looked at one another. It was likely that none of them had taken a census on non-owner personnel.

Natalie said, “Most, I think. Tim and Gary at the launch-prep aren’t here.”

“Not likely coming,” said Ken.

Jennifer pointed at Spruck’s ship. “I say we go around them. We all pile in, launch and land at the shuttle. Transfer folks right there.”

Caleb said, “You’re forgetting about whoever is orbiting up there. Take it from one who has been there, they’ve got a cop with a laser cannon and missiles waiting for just such a launch.” He glanced at Spruck’s ship. Like most smaller ships, it had exosuit mounts on the exterior, in this case, two of them, one on each side. He looked at Ken, who was tightly grasping the rock cutter. “What’s the range on that?”