Hammerhead Resurrection Read online

  He ran out of cable.

  That last moment would have been rough, but as long as the airlock’s frame hadn’t been damaged, the people inside might be okay as they would have already shifted to the far end with the initial acceleration.

  Out the side window, Europa crowded in on them, the cracks in the ice blurring. Marco’s shift in trajectory had put them on a collision course. There would be no time to orbit around to the dark side now.

  “Horace and Adanna, be ready. I’m guessing we’re gonna have company,” she shouted into the dead air of her helmet. Powered down, they might not hear her, but Horace turned and gave her a thumbs up. Adanna appeared to be messing with her seat harness. Her left shoulder strap went loose, tight, and loose again.

  What the hell’s going on?

  The lights flickered on, and the cabin went crystalline in Stacy’s visor as Marco fired up the systems. The moon now ran as a wall of blurring ice.

  Marco said, “Hang tight folks. I have to hit the throttle pretty hard here.”

  Adanna said, a hint of panic in her tone, “Wait, there’s something wrong with my harness.”

  “There’s nothing I can do, Adanna,” Marco said. “I either hit it now, or we crash. Hold on as best you can.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  When the ship lurched, the straps on Stacy’s shoulders and hips hauled on her. She felt as though she were strapped to a ceiling. As Marco accelerated harder, the G’s felt as though they were trying to rip her from her seat. Marco must have been approaching ten G’s, which meant Stacy would have the equivalent of 630 kilos hauling on her harness. Fortunately, her armor distributed the pressure evenly across her torso.

  Adanna’s arms went wide as her harness gave way. She fell, slamming into the back wall, where she lay motionless in a C shape. At ten G’s, those twenty feet would be equivalent to falling two hundred on Earth. Stacy could only hope Adanna’s armor had protected her enough from the impact.

  “Marco,” Stacy said, growling with the effort of holding her head up enough to see Adanna, “I need you to let off for a moment so I can secure Adanna and take over the gunnery seat.”

  “What’s going on with Adanna?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just don’t let the throttle off all the way.”

  “I’ll take you down to half a G in twenty seconds. But get strapped in fast, we have company.”

  Stacy could see nothing in the darkness beside the blurring surface of Europa. She looked to Horace, who had his focus fully on Adanna.

  “Horace,” Stacy said.

  He didn’t respond… exactly the kind of freeze Stacy didn’t need right now.

  “Horace, look at me.”

  The ruby mirror of his visor turned to her.

  “Forget Adanna. We have to get out of this to help her. You got that?”

  He gave no acknowledgement.

  “Specialist Sixtro, confirm my order.”

  At that, his voice came over her intercom, “Yes, O.C. Forget Specialist Hammersmith.”

  “Good, now when the throttle comes off, I’ll get Hammersmith secured. You keep your ass in that gunnery seat.”

  “Aye O.C. When the throttle’s off, I stay in the seat.”

  Okay… he’s back.

  Stacy watched Adanna for signs of life, but her collapsed shape remained motionless.

  Come on Marco, you gotta let off. Just a moment.

  Her massive weight faded to perhaps less than a fifth of a G, what it would be on Earth’s moon. She felt like she’d been set free from iron weights, which had been hung from her arms, legs and the top of her head. Slapping off her five-point harness, she let herself free fall toward the back of the cabin. The transparent back wall came up at her, and she sucked in a breath as her instincts told her she’d pass right through it and be left to fall to the moon’s icy surface. But her boots hit the solid wall. Grabbing Adanna, who was limp and unresponsive, Stacy strapped her into a rear jump seat before climbing back up the deck to the gunner’s seat and pulling the harnesses around her shoulders. Closing the center buckle, she found the left-shoulder latch wouldn’t lock.

  As she came to understand what had happened to Adanna, Stacy found herself in the same situation.

  “Give me the green when you’re ready,” Marco said.

  Saying anything might be confused for permission, so she let him have silence as she fought the clip a moment longer. Moving to a side jump seat was an option, but that would leave one side of the ship exposed with no gunner.

  “Any day O.C.” Marco said.

  Stacy extended the strap, slid it around the buckle, wrapped it around itself in a half-hitch, tucked the tail of the strap in, and pulled it tight. After testing the hold, she looked to Horace, who gave her a thumbs up.

  She said, “Marco, we’re green. Go. Go. Go.”

  The throttle came on even harder than before. Adanna’s head snapped back and cracked against the wall.

  Thank God for that helmet.

  Stacy held her gun controls to keep her arms from falling toward the back of the ship as Marco throttled on harder. She rested her head into her suit’s neck bracing as it became too heavy to hold up.

  How many damn G’s is he pulling?

  The top turret began to fire. X was engaging.

  The moon’s surface began to pull away.

  “I’m going to throttle down.” Marco said. “There’s no way we’re going to outrun these guys in the Warthog. You’ll have to gun them down. Here’s your HUD O.C.”

  The interior of the ship vanished leaving only an outline of her hands and the gun controls. A laser-thin, yellow crosshair appeared ten feet in front of her. She went lighter as Marco let off the throttle, and while her head still felt like a bowling ball being dragged to the side, she could lift it. Reaching up with her leaden arm, she grabbed the gunnery controls. The chair turned with the cannon. Behind them, two near-invisible black shapes, outlined in glowing green, closed fast.

  As tracers from X’s conventional rounds lanced at them, the ships hooked and coiled around the shots.

  “If they get to us we’re dead,” Horace said, “These guys are one shot one kill.”

  X’s voice came over the Intercom, “I can’t land anything on them. It’s like they’re reading my damn mind.”

  Horace said, “The pulse-nukes are rigged to the left trigger O.C.”

  “Hold your fire,” X said. “I need to reel the airlock in the rest of the way. Marco, get back on the throttle to preserve some distance while I bring them in.”

  Stacy felt the G’s increase. The com remained silent for a moment before X said, “Back off about two G’s, the winch can’t take the load.”

  Her weight reduced slightly.

  A moment later, X said, his tone still calm, “About one more G.”

  The ships were coming on fast as the airlock drew in. Stacy tried to bring the crosshairs to the ship, but the G’s were too powerful to move her head smoothly, so she relented, waiting as the alien fighters closed in. Europa continued falling away, turning from a wall of white to a huge sphere, and then diminishing.

  The two alien fighters had to be nearing weapons range. Perhaps they would play cat and mouse. Maybe, in arrogance, they would see the Warthog as a fat, low-tech ship to play with and kill, which if the pulse nukes didn’t work, was exactly how it would play out.

  The airlock, wrapped in netting, drew closer. A ragged section of the base’s exterior wall hung from it.

  Marco said, “Our range to fire without flooding us and the airlock with radiation is closing. You have to fire. The moment you do, we’ll go dark. Throttling down… now.”

  The G’s lessened, and Stacy grabbed the gun controls, brought the crosshairs to bear on the right ship, assuming Horace would go for the left, and pulled her left trigger. Her lower rail gun flickered with sparks as the torpedo-shaped nuke rushed away, vanishing into the void. Horace’s cannon fired. It had no radar signature to speak of. If she couldn’t see
it, she hoped they couldn’t see it. If so, they wouldn’t be able to target it. Jupiter’s radiation and magnetic fields might help as well, confusing their radar systems. She considered the high-energy electrons and ions coursing from the massive planet. The Warthog had extensive shielding to protect them, and while the airlock had similar shielding, the side that had been attached to the base troubled her. Were the people inside suffering fatal exposure even as they saved them?

  A brilliant-white light sparked in the darkness near the outlines of the alien fighters followed by a second.

  Her exterior view vanished, leaving her once again in the darkness of the cabin as Marco shut the ship down before the electromagnetic pulse passed them, invisible in the darkness.

  When the cabin lights clacked on, Marco said, “Our bogeys are dead in the water. You want me to decelerate and take them out?”

  Stacy asked, “What’s their trajectory?”

  “They’re in orbital degradation with the planet.”

  “You think they’ve gone permanently dark?”

  “Depends on how close those blasts came and how insulated they are,” Marco said, “but they look pretty dead on my scopes.”

  “Then get us out of here. We’ve achieved our objective and have an injured team member.”

  “Yes, O.C.”

  The acceleration started more slowly this time, but grew and grew until Stacy was hanging from her seat straps again. She gripped her harness to keep her arms from hanging out.

  “How long will you have to burn like this Marco?”

  “Another thirty seconds. I want to gain another 20,000 klicks per hour on those ships.”

  With the acceleration hauling her against her harness, she stilled her thoughts. There would be time to attend to Adanna. Time to analyze the fighters. Now was the time to be still, to reload. Her thoughts trailed back to where they often did when she needed rest, a cove on a distant, unpopulated island in the South Pacific. In her mind’s eye, she waded into the clear water, its bending surface warping the sunlight into tendrils, which played along the white sand. In that memory, she’d found respite from the loss of her father and deliverance from the stress of the career she’d chosen. It had brought her through the grief of her closest teammate dying in a pressure-lock blowout during a training exercise. The memory of her time in the Tongan Islands with Leif and Jeffrey was hers as much as the scar across her cheek was hers. It did not give her strength. It brought her something she needed far more… peace. In that peace, fears faded.

  She hung from the harness of the gunnery chair, racing across the shoulder of Jupiter, imagining herself standing with warm water lapping around her thighs, and she breathed deeply of the sea-scented air.

  Chapter Eight

  The acceleration waned and vanished, leaving Stacy once again with a weightless, flipping sensation in her belly and shoulders.

  “There we have it.” Marco said.

  Stacy untied her left shoulder strap before unbuckling the rest of the harness. Horace was already making his way to Adanna, her head at an angle and arms floating away from her as though she were a marionette. Jacqueline unstrapped and kicked off toward her as well.

  As Stacy aimed herself at the rear airlock and kicked off, she asked, “How long until we have to begin our deceleration burn Marco?”

  “About twenty minutes O.C. Any longer, and I won’t have the power to match orbit with the Rhadamanthus. If so, we’ll overshoot Io and have to slingshot Titan to gain orbit again.”

  “Understood.”

  Horace was helping Jacqueline strap Adanna down to the emergency medical outline on the floor. Jacqueline, who had already pulled straps over her own thighs, securing herself in a kneeling position to the floor, leaned over Adanna.

  As X unstrapped from the rear gunner seat, Stacy motioned for him to follow her and said, “Horace, help us get this airlock docked.”

  Without argument, Horace shoved away from Adanna and Jacqueline. He stopped himself on a hand hold with the expertise of someone who’d spent a career in zero G. Stacy looked at the blank mirror of his face shield. The snub-nosed jaw of his helmet gave him a furious countenance.

  “You’re doing well Horace. She’ll get the best care from Jacqueline.”

  “Aye aye O.C.”

  X activated the airlock manipulator controls. Beyond the porthole, long, spiderlike arms cut away the tangled netting. After cutting it free, he turned the airlock around to what would have been the outside end, aligned it, and flipped a switch. A loud clack-clack came through the hull as the holding clamps set into the locking ring. The view ports for the Warthog’s airlock and the survivor’s airlock were now aligned. Looking through them, Stacy could see two cocoon-like bags floating inside.

  “Do we still have heart signature?” She asked.

  Marco said, “Yes. Slow and steady.”

  Stacy looked over to Jacqueline. She’d taken Adanna’s helmet and gloves off, and had her fingers on Adanna’s wrist. Stacy resisted the urge to ask about Adanna’s status. That had nothing to do with her responsibility. Jacqueline had it covered as best as it could be.

  Stacy said to X and Horace. “Keep your helmets on. The air will be more than two-hundred degrees below zero in there. Keep your gloves on as well folks.”

  X and Horace both gave her a thumbs up.

  “Breach it,” she said.

  X threw the lever, and the warthog’s airlock irised open, exposing the base’s. A hoar of frost grew across the metal as the ship’s warm air contacted it.

  Stacy asked X, “What pressure do you have?”

  X said, “.89 atmos.”

  “Repressurize it to one full.”

  “Check-check O.C.” He typed on the control panel. Air hissed beyond the thick metal.

  X said, “Whoever’s in there just felt their ears pop—if they’re conscious that is.”

  “Crack the door,” she said.

  “Aye, opening the airlock inner door.” He opened the main release cover, twisted the yellow and black lever below it, and the airlock door rotated open like a large, armored camera lens. She felt the cold wash over her even through her armor. In the space where the air of the Warthog and the airlock met, a fog formed. With no gravity to cause the heavier, cold air to drop low, the mist hung veil-like in the opening.

  “Holy hell that’s cold,” Horace said.

  “Blow it out,” she said.

  Fans fired up, and the fog rushed over them dissipating into the Warthog’s cabin.

  Marco said over the intercom, “Our overall cabin temp has dropped by twenty degrees.”

  As Stacy pulled herself into the airlock, her gloved hand brushed one of the tubes to her left, and she felt the cold immediately leach the heat from her. She did her best to avoid any further contact. As she gripped the nearest cocoon, a sheet of dusted frost lifted away from it. In the doorway, X held a square-toothed clamp attached to a spool of cord. With a flick of his wrist he sent the clamp floating down the airlock to her, the cord coiling away behind.

  Catching the clamp, she attached it to the bag. Horace took hold of the cord, braced his legs on the airlock hatch, and pulled on the rope, drawing the survival bag out. As the clamp pulled the bag taught, Stacy could see the form of the person inside and wondered what that person was going through. Were they even aware they were being rescued?

  As Horace gripped the bag, more condensed frost floated away. He drew it through the hatch. Stacy took hold of the second bag. The body inside moved, startling her.

  Pressing the external com on her helmet, she said, “If you can hear me, stay calm. We have you. You’re safe. Just a minute more. Please do not attempt to exit your bag until we have you secured.” She heard a muffled response but couldn’t make it out.

  “O.C.”

  She turned to find X ready with the clamp. He tossed it to her. Catching it, she attached it to the bag. Horace dragged it out. She kicked off the end of the airlock, drifting after the bag.

 
When Stacy twisted the yellow and black lever, the airlock apertures curled shut. She left the airlock attached to the Warthog’s locks. One didn’t want to release an object until it was time to move definitively away from it. No need to go bumping along with it at a quarter million klicks an hour.

  The survival bags floated in the center of the cabin, Jacqueline hovering beside one with a scanner.

  “Jacqueline, what’s Adanna’s status?” Stacy asked.

  Her eyes stayed on the scanner. “She’s unconscious, but stable. I’ve done everything I can for her right now. She most likely has a fairly serious concussion. I have monitors on her.”

  Stacy nodded as she checked the temperature display. Holding up her hand, she said, “Give it a moment. The bag’s exterior might not be safe yet.”

  “How’s the heart signal Marco?”

  “Strong in one, a bit weak in the other, but nothing I’m worried about.”

  “What do you mean by weak?”

  “It’s slow,” Jacqueline said. “The occupant is unconscious.”

  “We’ll open that first…”

  Stacy asked, “What’s the air temp in here now?”

  Marco said, “Cabin temp is 63 degrees and rising.”

  Stacy nodded to herself and removed her helmet. The cool air hit her face, welcome after the intensity of the moment. She attached her helmet to a wall strap.

  Jacqueline asked, “Permission to remove protective gear?”

  “Granted,” Stacy said.

  The team removed their helmets.

  “Temp?” Stacy called to the front.

  Now Marco’s voice came not intimately close through the speakers in her helmet, but far away, through the cockpit corridor. “64 degrees and rising.”

  When Stacy saw the frost, which had formed across the surface of the thermal bags, begin to go damp at the peaks of the quilting, she said, “Jacqueline, pull the unconscious occupant. I’ll pull the one with the stronger heart signal.”

  Jacqueline unzipped the chrysalis-like bag, exposing the slightly blue face of a young man with tousled, brown hair. With eyes closed, he wore a clear rubberized mask over his nose and mouth. When Jacqueline pulled the mask from his face, a rosy color flushed through him, but he did not rouse. She unzipped the bag the rest of the way, and several oxygen bottles floated free. Drawing the bottle attached to the mask near, she inspected the gage.