Rock Killer (36 page)

He shined his light around the room looking for survivors. “Anybody hear me?” he asked over the emergency frequency. He flashed his beam into every nook and cranny.

“Help,” he heard. It was so soft he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

“Where are you?” Perez asked.

“Help. I’m hurt.” It was sounding more feminine.

“Okay,” Perez said. “Stay calm. Where are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you see my light?” Perez asked, sweeping it back and forth.

“Yeah, I see it.”

Perez stopped moving his light. “Is the light near you?”

“No.”

“Tell me when it’s close.” He began moving the white spot slowly around the chamber.

“There,” the voice said as it passed over a jumble of smashed equipment.

Perez pushed himself over while changing frequency.

“Control room, I’ve got a survivor in the mass driver section.”

Alex, Thorne, and Tsuji went through the surrogate airlock formed by the two emergency doors. Because there was no pump to remove the air each trip through lost them the volume of air trapped between the two doors. Air they could ill afford to lose.

Dr. Ibrahim Jubair was shaking his head while bending over the wreckage. He saw the director coming and signaled he wanted to change frequencies.

Alex said, “How’s it look?” when he had switched.

“Not good, sir,” the doctor said. “She is pinned between massive pieces of equipment.”

Alex realized the problem wasn’t the weight of the wreckage but the mass and the entanglements.

Tsuji had been looking over the mess. “It’ll take a while to cut through all this.”

“Yes,” Jubair said. “You must be very careful. But there is a complication.”

“What?” Alex asked.

“Her leg was crushed between a beam and the stone of the asteroid. It amputated it. But the pressure of the beam is keeping her suit sealed. If we move that beam her suit will decompress and she’ll die.”

Alex let out a long breath. “Okay,” he said. “Get everyone off the rock to the
Kyushu
except—oh, hell, who do you think we’ll need?” Alex was tired of making decisions that could have fatal consequences.

“I do not know, sir,” Jubair said.

“Everyone go to command freq,” Alex said. He switched. “Banda, you in the net?”

“Yes, sir,” the AD reported.

“Good,” Alex said. “Tsuji?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get who you need in here and get the rest off this rock. Thorne, I want two security in here to help look for other survivors; get everyone else off. Banda?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re in charge of getting everyone off the rock to the
Kyushu
.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir?” Jubair said.

“Yes?”

“I’ll need two of my assistants.”

“Okay, get them down here. Taylor?”

“Yes?”

“How’s the air?”

“Getting thin.”

“How’s everyone’s suits?”

Everyone was fine.

Perez chimed in, “She’s only got half an hour.” No one had to ask who “she” was.

“Then I guess we’ll have to hurry,” Alex said. “Anybody got any ideas how to get her out of there alive?”

The net was silent.

***

McConnell looked over Charlie’s prone figure and laughed.

Charlie looked up at him then looked for her chair. It was about a meter away on its side.

“Well, Shari,” McConnell said. “Nice to see you again.”

“Fuck you,” Charlie replied, still lying on the carpet.

“No thanks. Already did.”

“What’s your problem, Whaltham?”

“I don’t have a problem.”

“Yes, you do,” Charlie said trying to move to sit up. If she could get him talking, defending his position, it might buy her enough time for Moeller and Rod to get in the room and save her.

McConnell pushed her over with his foot.

“Do you hate people in general,” she continued from the floor, “or do you just want power for yourself?”

“I want to save the—”

“Bull shit,” Charlie cut him off. “If you cared about the environment more than you care about political power you’d support technology, not attack it.”

“Technology is the enemy of all living things. If SRI is allowed to continue to take asteroids from the belt it could destabilize the entire system, causing asteroids to rain down on the Earth.”

Charlie looked at him. “Do you believe that?” she asked incredulously. “Or can one get a psychology degree in the United States without studying freshman physics, Dr. McConnell?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with—”

Charlie cut him off again. If she kept him off balance, maybe she’d get a chance to do something, anything. “Then you’d know that Jupiter affects the asteroids more than anything humans can do; you’d know how to calculate the forces involved. You’d know enough not to accept the theories of every so-called scientist promoting grandiose theories to compete for grant money.” She’d slowly sat up. He was watching her but if she got him mad enough he might lower his physical guard to erect a mental barrier.

“There’s more to this than the asteroids. SRI is raping space for profit,” he said.

“SRI is providing natural resources from space so they don’t have to be taken from the Earth. Resources needed—”

“Needed for what?” he yelled at her. “Faster cars, bigger houses. Humankind must live a simpler lifestyle.”

“Why, when the resources are there to live as we wish?”

“Because technology is de-humanizing and life destroying.”

“So we have to become subsistence farmers to be human?” Charlie asked. She scooted toward him. If she could pull his legs out from underneath him. “Or is the plow too much technology for you? Do we have to be hunters and gatherers?”

She was almost close enough. “Or maybe we should abandon the club, and fire. We can sit in caves shivering and huddling and hoping nature doesn’t kill us. Then, living like animals, we’ll be human?” She poised, ready for him to make a mistake.

“Maybe so,” he said. “It’s better than choking in our own wastes.”

“Oh, like the unprocessed human waste that polluted rivers alongside cities before technology cured that problem? Like the fossil fuel waste that polluted the air before technology made it practical to use hydrogen? Like the nuclear waste that was dangerous for 20,000 years until technology made it possible to transmute it to short-lived forms?”

“All those problems were caused by technology. You expect technology to fix them. Technological ‘solutions’ are only temporary and leave us worse off in the end.”

“Do you believe that lie or just parrot it for political gain?”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” McConnell stated. He turned away from her.

“Truth hurts?” Charlie grabbed his ankle and yanked. Since his weight was low she easily pulled him off balance. His mass flopped to the floor. Charlie jumped at him but he moved surprisingly fast and had turned around to meet her assault. He used his massive arms to push her aside and she landed on the floor. Hot pain grabbed at her back and stunned her for a moment. McConnell’s fist pounded her face until he picked her up and threw her across the room.

“Fuck you,” McConnell said.

“No thanks,” she said, grimacing with pain. “I already have and frankly, I’d rather die.”

“That can be arranged.” Silently McConnell went to the emergency closet and pulled out an emergency suit. He pulled it on as if he’d practiced just as the notice on the door suggested.

Charlie tried to get up but every time he’d push her over. She noticed her back was sticky-wet. It wasn’t sweat.

When McConnell had the suit on and sealed he picked up a small wooden table. The use of wood indicated the luxury of the Selene Hotel. And, since it was a hard wood such as oak, it made an excellent, albeit small, battering ram. McConnell moved to the window and began pounding on the edge of the Crysteel.

Charlie knew he’d never break the high-tech, transparent material, but he could loosen it in its frame enough to depressurize the room. And there was no way he’d let her get into a suit. Rod, she screamed mentally, get in here and save me!

Chapter Eighteen

“I will not risk the wrath of such an adversary.”

Faruq looked up in surprise when the presidential bodyguards burst into his office with their pistols in their hands.

One was loyal to him; or had been.

“What is the meaning of this?” Faruq demanded. “When the president—”

“The president orders you to appear before him,” the guard that had been his accomplice said.

Faruq gave the man a questioning look but his face was carefully neutral. Faruq stood and walked out of his office.

The guards followed.

What had gone wrong? Faruq wondered. Who talked?

In the president’s massive office General Zuabi was sitting in a chair. All eyes were on the large computer screen but it was blank. Faruq tried to get a clue from the soldier but he averted his eyes.

“Ah, Faruq,
sadiqi
,” the president said sardonically. “Please sit.” He indicated a chair facing the screen.

“What is this about,
aqid
?” Faruq asked trying to sound calm despite the sirocco blowing through his guts.

“This,” the president said, “was on the Western news media about half an hour ago.”

One of the guards spoke English to the computer. The screen lit up with a display of a typical high-tech newsroom.

The female anchor (immodestly dressed as usual) said, “The growing problem of ‘space junk’ became all too apparent today when Space Resources Incorporated announced that a collision between the jettisoned reactor of an old Soviet spy satellite and a discarded booster rocket resulted in the reactor debris entering a decaying orbit.

“For details we go to SRI headquarters in Tokyo.”

A reporter was standing in the SRI auditorium that had been seen so much in the news recently.

“An SRI spokesperson just briefed the press,” the reporter said. “We have a recording of that briefing.”

The scene was the same but a woman was standing at the podium.

“From 1970 to 1988,” the woman said, “the Soviet Union deployed 31 spy satellites that were nuclear powered. When the satellites’ orbits decayed the reactors were boosted into a ‘parking orbit.’

“The orbit,” she continued, “was meant to keep the reactors in space for several hundred years. By the time one entered the atmosphere its radioactivity was to have decayed significantly. Unfortunately, a discarded booster rocket of unidentified origin collided with one of the 28 reactors still in orbit. Our information indicates the reactor, mostly intact, and its radioactive nuclear fuel will impact the Earth somewhere in the Middle East, Syria probably.”

The image froze. Faruq needed to take a long breath but couldn’t because of the tightening of his chest.

“I personally,” the president said, “contacted SRI. A man named Mitchel told me it will impact in or near the Omar oil field. This is the same kind of reactor that impacted Canada in 1978. But, Mr. Mitchel said that, unlike that incident, the debris would be spread over only a few square miles, contaminating our oil fields. Do you realize what this will do to our oil production?”

“No,” Faruq said.

“No one will buy our oil unless we spend billions of pounds and years decontaminating.”

“It is a tragic accident,
habibi
,” Faruq said.

“No,” the president bellowed. “It is not.”

“It isn’t?” Faruq asked.

“No,” the president yelled, hitting his desk with a fist. “Mr. Mitchel told me that this is revenge for Syria’s role in the asteroid incident. Our entanglement with that Gaia Alliance was your doing! This is your responsibility, Faruq!”

Faruq gaped like a man in vacuum.

“Now SRI is taking revenge and there is nothing we can do about it,” the president concluded.

Faruq saw a last chance. “Nothing? We can put a bomb in their headquarters or in the archology they are building. We can arrange an explosive decompression in their Low Earth Orbit Facility or on the Moon. There are groups that would help us.”

“And next time they drop a small asteroid on Damascus?” the president asked. “This, Mr. Mitchel said, was their other option. No. I will not risk the wrath of such an adversary. Such a power we should make our friend, not our enemy.”

Silence was long and thick.

“Take him away,” the president said with a dismissive wave of the hand.

“But,” Faruq started as the guards lifted him from the chair.

“
Ma’salamah
,” the president said without feeling. God be with you.

Faruq pulled his arms from the guards and walked out the door. The president was glad his friend would die with dignity.

General Zuabi looked at the president. “I must be getting on with my duties, sir.”

The president dismissed him with a grunt.

“
Ma’salamah
,” the general said. “I will report to you from Tyre.”