“You mean you’re some sort of secret society?”
Knecht laughed. “We couldn’t be ‘secret’ even if we wanted to. One of our membership requirements is that each of us spends at least twenty hours in the spin gym each week.”
Vera stared. “That’s four times the standard requirement.”
Emmanuel nodded. “Yes. So if you see a muscle-heavy person in the spin-gym every day of the week, it’s a good bet that he--or she--is a Society member. But I guess we have become somewhat insular, even reclusive, over the years. Not because we want to, but because other Ayeshans don’t want to hear what we have to say.”
“Which is?”
Knecht sighed; moment of truth. Well, what was the worst that could happen? One more scornful rejection could hardly make a difference. And yet, it was different with Vera; it was important to him--personally important--that she did not consider him a crackpot. Aware that his hands were trembling slightly, he clasped them together and forged ahead. “The Castalia Society feels that we--the entire population of Ayesha--should relocate to Haven: in specific, to Castalia. That wasn’t how we started out; for years, we just wanted to rediscover Castalia’s location, maybe go back and visit. But then the Imperium showed signs of coming apart, so the Society started thinking that, maybe, the time had come to move back to Castalia.”
“You really think that your ancestors lived in this legendary Camelot-under-the-sea?”
“I don’t think it; I know it. We have journals, letters, other documents which prove that Castalia did--does-- exist. We even have evidence that some of our forefathers continued to visit Castalia as caretakers up until a hundred-fifty years ago.”
Vera nodded. “And you think that Ayeshans--even the zero-geers--would be better off down there if the Imperium collapses?”
“Absolutely. That’s why Castalia was founded in the first places--as a refuge for the workers who were forced to abandon the CoDominium’s fueling station here on Ayesha. When the CoDominium fell apart, those Ayeshans faced the same problems we’re facing today: no way to guarantee life support, food, essential natural resources. So they went to the only place where all those things are available; our sister moon, Haven.” Emmanuel nervously touched one of Vera’s hands to add emphasis. “I know it sounds like an extreme solution, maybe even a crazy one, but it worked for my ancestors. It saved their lives--and I’m sure that if we can rediscover Castalia’s precise location, it can save us too.”
Vera’s response was a slow smile--the most enigmatic one yet. “How quixotic,” she said. Then she put her other hand on top of his. “Tell me more.”
The woman shrunk deeper into her mantle. “I thought the Saurons destroyed the fuel station before landing on Haven.”
Emmanuel’s responding nod was shallow. “They did.”
“Then did you leave Ayesha before they attacked?”
“No.”
“Then how did any of you survive?”
Emmanuel smiled. “We owe our lives to mechanical failures. A year before the Saurons came, our interplanetary transmitter died; our radar had gone even earlier. So when the Saurons arrived, they didn’t detect any signs of a spacefaring community on Ayesha.”
“What about your small craft operations? And your power generation?”
“They hit us when we were half-way through a one-week maintenance cycle. Life support was being drawn from battery reserves while we refitted the fusion reactor. And the small craft--those few that were still operational--were being refurbished.”
The man drew his eyes away from the surrounding darkness, fixed them on Emmanuel. “I heard that the Saurons used a nuke on the station. So whether they knew you were there or not, it shouldn’t have mattered much; you should have been slagged along with everything else.”
Emmanuel shook his head--carefully, lest he jar his shattered collarbone. “The fueling station itself was not on Ayesha. It was at the end of a thirty-kilometer tether.
We cracked and purified the hydrogen on Ayesha, then pumped it through tubes up to the station. That way, the big ships could take on fuel directly, which was a lot faster than shuttling tankers to and from the surface of Ayesha.
“So, when the Saurons hit, they only targeted the automated station at the end of the tether. My guess is that they probably thought the ground facility was automated too, so they didn’t bother to hit us.”
“You all survived?” The woman’s slightly widened eyes hinted at a tentative measure of hope.
Emmanuel was sorry to disappoint her. “No. Even though the Saurons vaporized most of the station, there was still plenty of debris--and most of it landed right on top of us . . .”
“Say again your last message, Knecht. You’re breaking up.”
“I am approaching the bulkhead now, Control. I see no signs of excessive structural damage. I should be able to reestablish pressure integrity in this section. Over.”
Knecht’s repeated message had even less success getting through than the original. There was a crackle of static, and then, “Knecht? Please copy, Knecht; over.”
“I copy, Control. Are you guys reading me?”
Evidently, they weren’t; there was a long pause before Control’s next message. “Knecht, if you can hear me, turn around; we are not receiving your transmissions. I repeat; return to section R-17 and unsuit. You’ve done everything you can.”
Emmanuel turned off his vacuum suit’s helmet speaker; no use listening to orders he wasn’t going to obey. Fixing broken bulkheads was only part of the reason he was out here, anyway. He launched into a long, gliding leap that carried him within a hand’s breadth of the flickering overhead fluorobars. He drifted toward the emergency bulkhead, where hazard lights were pulsing red, rapid, and desperate--like a racing heart. There would have been a loud klaxon to accompany the strobing lights--had there been air enough for the sound to reach him. As his long lateral fall brought him closer to the bulkhead, he could see why it hadn’t closed all the way; a dark mass was jammed between the edge of the massive pressure door and the groove designed to receive it.
A discordant, two-toned chime sounded in his helmet. Knecht sighed; he might be able to turn off the radio, but there was no getting rid of the air depletion alarm. He hoped he wouldn’t need more than five minutes to unjam the bulkhead, or else he might--
The overhead fluorobars pulsed once--a sharp spasm of painful whiteness---and then they went dead. Knecht pawed at his left gauntlet, fingers fumbling to find the control stud for his helmet lights. One of the zero-geer vacuum techs could have hit it on the first try, but they virtually lived in their suits. Knecht--and the other Society members--had been excluded from full-vacuum work-details for more than a year now: more proof that they were being relegated to the status of second-class citizens.
Knecht finally found the control stud; a single luminous shaft cut through the dark and painted a blue-white circle on the rapidly approaching bulkhead door. Knecht reached out a hand, dragged it along the wall; his rate of approach diminished. Five meters away from the bulkhead, he half-rolled and reached out a hand toward the dark object obstructing the bulkhead. The mass was irregular in shape, but not angular. Although primarily a dark maroon-brown, there were other colors evident: patches of white, red, and green--the texture of which suggested some sort of fabric. He reached out, locked his hand around a stumpy brown protuberance, and tugged; the protrusion came off with a brittle snap. Knecht brought the object up into the light. Despite the bulbous distortion, despite the seamed and ruptured surface, despite the almost pumice-like texture, Knecht immediately realized that he was holding a young child’s arm.
A rainstorm of putrid globules--his own vomit-- splashed off the inside of the helmet’s visor as he hurled the little limb away. He clawed at the wall, pulling himself backward, heart hammering, breath loud and rapid in his ears. Then he felt the deck come up softly under his buttocks; Ayesha’s feeble gravity had pulled him down. He let himself fall all the way back, let himself lay
flat while he told himself that everything would be all right. He just had to take it easy, take it one step at a time. He’d finish this bulkhead, get a new charge of air, and then he’d continue his search for Vera. Or maybe she had already called in. Or had reached the pressurized levels while he was out looking for her. Anything was possible--anything except the thought that she might be among the dead. Surely she was not among the dead. That simply wasn’t possible. He wouldn’t let it be possible. He wouldn’t.
The persistent, two-toned air depletion alarm was what finally brought Knecht back to an awareness of his surroundings. He rose into a sitting position, studied the mass that kept the bulkhead from closing. Now that he knew to look for it, he could see that it was comprised of at least five separate corpses. Flesh pulped by exposure to vacuum, they had frozen into a tangled mélange of bloated torsos and limbs, brown-black from de-oxygenation and dehydration of blood and tissue. Riven shirtsleeves and pant legs offset the gruesome organic components.
Knecht drew his legs under him and pushed slightly; he floated slowly toward the shattered mass of humanity. Reaching around, he removed a pry-bar from the brace of tools mounted on the side of his life-support unit. As he came within a meter of the mass, he drew the pry-bar back for the first chop and thought, Just as long as I don’t see a face.
It took Knecht four minutes to clear the jam--four minutes of which he retained almost no memory, other than imprecise, half-formed images. He remembered hacking at purple and taupe lumps until the pressure door was mostly free. He recalled the bulkhead laboring to close--crushing, splintering thin shards of frozen Ayeshans before it finally established a seal. Then, the intermittent tone in Knecht’s helmet became more rapid; three minutes to air depletion. Knecht turned, hopped, pushed his heavy soles back against the sealed bulkhead, and then kicked. Launched by the dual pistons of his legs, he arrowed back down the passageway.
By the time he reached section R-17, he had run out of air. A pair of fellow Society members helped him cycle through, told him that a few more survivors had turned up--some badly wounded. With long, gliding strides, he ran toward the now-stationary spin-gym, which was being used as a combination triage site and town hall. He tumbled through the hub accessway, head turning from side to side, eyes probing the clutter of faces, looking for--
Vera emerged from the crowd, pushed hard against him and held herself close, both arms locked around him as though she was fearful that something might tear her away. “Manny,” she whispered, his name broken into pieces by her short, rapid sobs. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply; it was all right now. Everything was going to be all right.
The incoming flow of survivors and emergency maintenance teams pushed the two of them gently along, carried them away from the hub and toward the open area usually used for martial arts and gymnastics. There was a meeting--or was it a confrontation?--developing at the center of that space. Keeping an arm around Vera, Knecht wiped the vomit from his face and sidled forward through the thin crust of spectators ringing the ad hoc arena.
Vance Trainor--Owen’s father--towered over Janine Chattaburray. His eyes were cool and grey, like the twilight sky that Emmanuel’s father had talked of seeing on Haven. Janine’s were bright black marbles, stabbing up at Vance and then sweeping across the gathering crowd--before darting back toward Vance once more.
“We don’t have the time to discuss insane schemes,” she snapped, waving her hand impatiently. “We have to get to work--and quickly--if we’re going to save this community.”
Vance--twenty-five years her senior--shook his head. “Ms. Chattaburray, no amount of work is going to save this community. And you know it.”
Her eyes and voice flared. “Hydroponics is still intact. So are the two lower levels. We can make it.”
Vance nodded. “Yes, for a few months; maybe even a year. But what then?”
Chattaburray rolled her eyes. “By that time, we will have rebuilt--and the Imperial Navy will have arrived. As soon as they find and eliminate the Sauron bastards who did this, they’ll send a rescue mission here.”
Vance smiled. “And what if there is no Imperial response, Ms. Chattaburray?”
Janine snorted, looked away. “Don’t be absurd.”
Vance’s smile flattened into a grim, thin-lipped line. “Imperial visits to this system have been declining steadily for the past ten years. The last military ship through here was the R.D. Spaulding, four years ago--and we weren’t even their destination; they were just passing through as a part of their redeployment.” Vance half-turned toward the growing crowd. “Let’s face it, folks. We are not at the top of the Imperium’s priority list. Hell; I don’t think we’re on that list at all. It’s been a year and a half since the last ship--a broken-down subsidized freighter--came through. Why should we expect them to send a task force now?”
“Because there are Saurons in-system,” retorted Janine. “Because even if the Imperium doesn’t care about us, it will track down its foes and eliminate them.”
Vance shrugged, grinned. “Is that so? Well, I served three two-year tours with the Marines, ma’am. And let me tell you, unless things have changed a great deal in the past twenty-five years, the Imperium will do what it can, when it can--and forget about the rest.” He turned to face the crowd fully. “It’s no secret that success against the Saurons hasn’t exactly been a foregone conclusion. Imperial forces have been getting stretched thinner and thinner. That means they’re going to husband their remaining assets carefully, protect their essential resources--and accept marginal losses.” He paused to look around the group. “We, ladies and gentlemen, are a marginal loss. Even if the Imperium knows that the Saurons are here--and note that I emphasize the word if--they probably can’t afford to do anything to help us. So we’d better start finding our own long-term answers.”
Janine scoffed. “Such as Castalia? What a brilliant answer that is: to descend to Haven--into the laps of the Saurons themselves--to search for some mythical undersea paradise. And until we do ‘find’ it, how do we eat? How do we evade the Saurons? And how do we even get planetside? We only have one atmospheric interface craft; all the lighters and tankers are designed for work in vacuum. They’ll never survive a planetfall.”
Knecht was surprised to hear Vera’s voice, loud at his elbow. “That’s not necessarily true. The non-atmospheric craft have a good chance of making it through a single planetfall; they just won’t be able to lift off once they’re down.”
Janine responded with a sardonic smile. “A ‘good chance’ of making it through a planetfall?” She looked around the gathered listeners. “My, doesn’t that sound encouraging?”
Vance’s voice was loud and sharp. “Sounds better than starving, freezing, or suffocating to death here on Ayesha. Vera’s right; non-interface craft should be able to make a one-way trip. That’s how the first group of Castalians managed to get down to Haven in the first place. If they could do it, so can we.
“And we have a number of advantages that they lacked. We don’t have to build a community; it’s already there, waiting for us. We know that it’s located somewhere near the mouth of the Widebay river--”
“--give or take a few thousand square kilometers,” sneered Janine.
“--and we also know that, as of a hundred-fifty years ago, the undersea habitation domes and their life-support systems were still in prime condition.”
Janine shook her head. “But what about the Saurons? Their fighters are probably buzzing around the stratosphere like angry hornets. They’ll see us coming and blow us to pieces.”
Vance smiled at Janine. “That’s why we don’t go immediately, Ms. Chattaburray. They’ll pull their fighters in when they’re done destroying Haven’s industrial base. So we wait for a month--or longer, if that’s possible.”
“And what about the cruiser itself? I suppose the Saurons are going to pull that in, too?”
“Yes, Ms. Chattaburray, that is precisely what they’re going to do.
Jan
ine gaped. “You are mad, Trainor. How in hell do you expect that the Saurons are going to land that mountain of metal?”
“With great care. But rest assured: they’re going to try to land it--just as soon as they feel that they can do so safely. That cruiser is a gold mine; not only of technology, but heavier metals and electronics. As soon as the Saurons have decided on a place of permanent residence-- which is almost sure to be in the Shangri-La Valley-- they’re going to try a controlled deorbit of their battlewagon.”
“What’s to stop them from keeping it in orbit and using it as a stand-off platform for bombardment, observation, and communications?” The question came from a gawky teenager with his arm in a bloodstained sling.
Vance smiled at the young man. “That’s good thinking, Willy, but from what little we can see and hear of their operations, the Saurons are not here to conduct a raid; they’re here to stay. And that means they’re looking beyond immediate military advantages; they’re looking for sustainable modes of operation. Without a spaceport, and without extensive technical support, routine transfers to and from orbit are not a viable long-term option. Nothing puts wear and tear on interface craft like punching into and out of a point nine gee gravity well that’s coated with a Terran-normal atmosphere. So we’ve got to assume that the Saurons aren’t going to make routine orbital transfers an integral part of their long-term plan. And since they can’t keep the cruiser operational without those transfers, their only logical alternative is to deorbit the hull and cannibalize its metals and surviving subsystems.”
Janine put her hands on her hips. “And once we’ve made planetfall, how do we keep even an occasional Sauron aerial patrol from spotting our own grounded craft?”
Vance looked her square in the eye. “By putting down in the water, Ms. Chattaburray.”
She laughed, swept her gaze across the growing audience. “How many people would like to volunteer for a nice swim on Haven? Raise your hands. Nothing to worry about, of course; it’s not as though our non-atmospheric craft will be smashed to pieces if they attempt a water landing.” She turned dark, smug eyes back to Vance.
War World IV: Invasion Page 19
