April

by Mackey Chandler

  She centered the cross hairs at the base of their laser mast and held the fire button down so hard she hurt her fingers, jiggling the joy stick in her other hand with a circular motion. Her heart was pounding like she was at the end of a long hard run, but she concentrated on her task and resisted the urge to ask Easy and Eddie what the hell they were doing, since she couldn't see any fire from the lock.

  "Shuttle Happy Lewis this is the USNA Space Plane James Kelly. Your are ordered to cease all acceleration and stand idle to be boarded..."

  Over the radio channel upon which the Kelly was ordering them to heave to, there was a huge thump and the shriek of escaping air which cut off the surrender demand.

  On the James Kelly the thump and tearing sound shook the whole plane. Their ears popped which is always a very bad sign on a space ship and rows and rows of green status lights turned amber or red on the right seat boards. Then the decompression alarm went off.

  "Helmets closed, go to suit oxygen," captain Buckley ordered his crew.

  * * *

  When Easy got to the open lock he clipped a safety line on and eased in the wider middle of the coffin lock. He just stopped and looked in shock for a wasted moment. He had never seen so much debris floating in open space. The drive had heated the whole front of the Jade until it vaporized away much of the surface layers. It immediately condensed back as a metal grit floating like a fog around the ships. There were thousands and thousands of bigger scraps of material peeled off, which showed as bright points tumbling every which way like a snowstorm or a ticker tape parade.

  The Jade loomed only a hundred meters away, half what they had aimed for and the Kelly three times as far. They'd cut it too close to a collision. The laser was already reaching out to the Kelly through the dust. April had severed the laser mast which was tumbling away and there was already an ugly ulcer cut in the roof of the space plane with a hot sprays of fading metal droplets being thrown off where the strange square beam continued to eat deeper into the top of the vessel. It was encouraging. He slipped in further beside Eddie and cocked the action on the big machine gun.

  "Laser down, Sir," the voice they knew as Harold explained calmly on the American space plane.

  "Shoot a missile," their captain demanded. I don't care if it can't arm. A ram is better than nothing!"

  "Yes sir, targeting radar down. I'll see if I can turn us to acquire it with lidar," Harold promised. "Thrusters red on the board," he lamented. "No response."

  Eddie had not wasted as much time as Easy had staring and the smoky puff of the expelling charge swirled around them briefly in the lock, as Eddie launched his first shot. The engine lit and made a short burn about ten meters out and he glanced over and saw Eddie drop the launcher off his shoulder and stare after the anti-tank missile, before he looked back at it himself. The throttled back engine looked like an insignificant spark which would just bounce off the huge white wedge.

  He just had time to let loose one long burst of forty or so rounds, marked by six tracers across the cockpit of the big plane, aiming well away from the glow of the missile's idling engine, least he shoot Eddie's coasting war shot from behind. His rounds passing the missile since it had not throttled up again, saving fuel for the chase, or corrective maneuvers it would never need to make. The fact it didn't fall off course or slow down in zero G, seemed to confuse and inhibit the guidance designed for an earth environment, from bringing the engine back up to full power. No matter – the initial boost would carry it there in seconds.

  The hammering recoil of the big machine gun shook their little ship with unexpected violence. It vibrated like a rung bell where his suit touched it, for several seconds after he let off the trigger.

  The James Kelly was yelling in the clear on several radio channels, telling their Earthside control they were under attack. On the channel they were listening to, the drumming of the machine gun rounds penetrating, was loud over the decompression alarm and ripping shriek of laser fire tearing bulkheads open to vacuum. The impression through the open microphone was one of chaos.

  The last desperate shout over the radio from Joe Buckley was, "Inbound, inbound, missile attack!" Then bright point of the missile's idling motor disappeared into the fuselage right in the middle, where Easy told him to aim. It was so small he couldn't see a hole where it had penetrated. For a terrible heart beat nothing happened and then the whole middle of the white shape seemed to expand like it was flexible, before it blew in half and the ragged ends tumbled away from each other.

  Easy didn't fire again. There was nothing left worth shooting at. Eddie was looking at him, thoroughly shocked at the violence he had done. "Uh, Easy. I don't think I need to waste this last one on the Chinese do I?" They both looked at the warped shape of the Jade, nose bent to one side, with its insides exposed in a gouge down that side, where the shielding had failed under more than mere reentry temperatures, that their drive inflicted.

  "No Eddie. You were right to hold the second shot. You did just fine."

  "Thanks."

  "I want to move away from here right away," Easy called out, unclipping his safety line unstowed and pulling himself back to his seat. "April, stow the laser arm. Bring up the program for transfer to an orbit we can circularize just inside the, Geostationary orbit level and start it running on a short clock and call it out. We'll wait until the burn is over to stow everything away and inspect outside for damage, before we close it up and put it under pressure."

  He latched on and belted himself in the seat and looked his boards over. He felt several sharp impacts of small debris from the wrecks expanding off their nose. They were felt first through his feet. One of them a shred of twisted sheet metal which glanced off their forward ports visibly deforming on impact and made him wince. Then there were several solid thumps felt through the seat back, which seemed like they came up from the other direction. "What's all the bumping around back there? We're coming up on burn in about thirty seconds. Get secure."

  "There's been a change of command," said an unfamiliar voice. "Abort the burn."

  Easy and April twisted around in their chairs and there was a big figure in a grey armored space suit, floating behind them with a short ugly machine pistol pointed in their general direction. He was anchored on the back of April's seat with his other hand, feet free. His face was Oriental, but his English quite flawless. On his suit shoulder was clipped a badge of rank for the Chinese military, with the requisite Red Star.

  "Burn Aborted." Easy acknowledged, punching the proper button. "Damn it. My Mama always told me to stop leaving the door hanging open," he quipped. He had fleetingly considered hitting the actuate button instead, to throw the man to the back of the cabin at high G. But he'd probably crush a passenger under him.

  "You, Big Guy, move out of the seat and strap down with the others in back," he instructed. There was another bump felt through the deck, like the man had made coming in through the narrow lock and he started to turn his head, but gave a surprised little grunt, "Unghh," They all three looked where the machine pistol still held in his armored glove was slowly turning over, disconnected from his arm.

  The red foam boiling out of the wrist as his suit blew out, ripped his grip loose and twisted him around with his back turned to the pilots. Burgundy bubbles and streamers of dried blood were blown all about the cabin in spurts, as he struggled with his left hand to pry up a pull tab behind the cut, which would inflate a tourniquet ring in the military armor. Then he gave a jerk as someone hit him from the other side and legs appeared around his waist. They still heard a gasp sucked in on his radio, even over the roar of escaping air. The shiny point of April's short sword materialized, sticking out of his back right through the black armor shell. Dr. Singh looked around the now limp figure, with a terrifying snarl still painted on his face. "You OK?" he asked.

  "Man - Ajay!" Easy let out a long sigh. "How did a little guy like you ever push that sucker through two layers of armor?"

  "He was a threat to my new br
ide," Ajay said, with more Indian accent than usual in his excitement. "As I've heard you say in colorful idiom...He pissed me off."

  "Well thanks. I'm real happy you took exception to it. Let's shove this pig out the lock, before anybody else wanders in."

  "Not with my sword stuck in him!" April protested.

  Ajay tried pulling it out alone. To no joy. Easy and Ajay both ended up with their feet on the man's chest and all four hands around the long handle. It was jammed all the way to the end of the cutting edge. They strained and got nothing. "I still can't believe this Ajay. You must have had an adrenaline high to beat anything. How about whipping up a little juice to get the thing out? Huh? On three. One - Two - Three! It gave all at once. They both went across the cabin and bounced off the overhead. "Watch the edge! Watch the edge!" Easy let himself hit limp on purpose and didn't rebound much. Ajay hit with his legs tucked up and holding the blade carefully at arm's length. He pulled himself back to the coffin lock and slide the blade home in the saya which was still attached to the padded rib with cable ties. The soldier was a close fit to push through the coffin lock, even sideways with the armor on. Ajay had to go outside and tug on an arm and leg alternately to pull him through, while they pushed from the inside. His bulky armor wouldn't have fit turned flat in the lock in the gruesomely real manner of a coffin. No wonder he had bumped around squeezing through.

  As they wiggled him back outside Easy unsnapped the badge which was the man's symbol of rank and removed a funny little snap holster and hard box for the ammunition. After he helped the Indian gentleman back in by pulling on his safety tether he offered them. "Here ya go Ajay, your honorable trophy of battle. You won it fair and square. Knife against a machine pistol. Which took some guts buddy."

  "Give it to Miss Lewis," Ajay suggested indifferently. "It was her foresight to bring her sword and I don't really collect such things."

  Easy carefully safed the machine pistol and tossed the gloved hand out the lock. It still felt against all his training to throw something out to be orbital debris, even if it was already a floating junk yard outside.

  "April. Wanna try this again? Easy asked going back forward. "You can start the computer on the next tick and call the count to us." Easy slid back in the command couch. "There's a trophy from Ajay, pistol with ammo and an officer's badge, in the tool locker for you."

  April acknowledged with a nod. "We will have a burn in two minutes from my mark........MARK. Please be prepared for a moderate plasma burn. It will only be two G."

  "When we finish the burn." Easy told her. "I want to clean as much of this off as we can." he waved, indicating the black fog of blood. We'll waste a little air blowing the cabin out while it is freeze dried. Won't take much. Just enough air to carry loose stuff out the lock. We'll burn the attitude jets just before so anything loose is free to move goes over to the lock side of the cabin before we flush."

  "I want to make sure we haven't picked up any damage outside, so I'm going to do a fly around untethered. It will take me awhile, because I don't intend to use much suit juice, go very fast, or mess up the wool. I don't want to use a line because I'm afraid of knocking off wool. If for some reason I don't come back though, please look around and see if I have gotten myself in trouble."

  "I'll have my radio on and keep some chatter going but you never know....something could happen to the radio, or I could not be able to use it. It would be better if you don't do what I'm going to do - untethered - until you have a lot of hours in a suit. I'd like one of you to shake out our dirty suit liners in the vacuum also. It's almost as good as dry cleaning or sonic. And I'm really ripe again."

  "Burn in ten." April said in case he was going to say more.

  "OK." He agreed and the drive jolted on, but was gentler at the peak this time. As they cleared the area, there were little raps from striking debris, in the expanding field they created. A few tiny but shiny pieces, even visibly bounced off the forward ports like bugs on a ground car screen and made Easy duck a little each time. Then very quickly they were past the wave front and outrunning the expanding sphere of junk.

  April watched the program work through the lines on the screen. When they were finished and everything looked good, she asked Easy if he was ready to clean up. There was no reply. She asked again - "Easy?" She said softly into her mic to no reply. "He fell asleep," she said for the others. "I'm whipped too. Everybody Okay with taking a nap before we try to clean up and pressurize?" She got a couple soft OK's and turned down the cabin lights and powered her seat back flat.

  Chapter 26

  The President listened to the report from his Security Director with irritation. "Make clear to them this is not a USNA spacecraft. And don't match their heightened state of alert with anything of our own. I want to know who this belongs to. It must be falsely registered as a subterfuge. Obviously it is a major warship, to engage two modern armed vessels at once and destroy them. Perhaps the Japanese have been so quiet about any claims because they were planning on expressing their displeasure more directly. No matter who it serves, I want this ship destroyed, quickly!"

  "And indicate to the Chinese it is a problem we will take care of on our own. The Pretty as Jade would not have been in harm's way, if they had kept their nose out of our business and waited for us to make the arrest," he rationalized. "Now, it seems we should speed up securing this asteroid, before we are in the position of recovering it from someone instead. What's being done there Roger?"

  "Sir, we are preparing to launch the HS Cincinnati with a load of special troops for the station. They will take control of it and through control of the station effectively control the asteroid when it matches orbit in a few weeks. We won't say anything publicly until the World Court decision is out, to show respect for the court. But we will let the Court know privately that we have control of it. I'm calling station security today, to put the company director and any of the crew of the Happy Lewis under arrest."

  "We'll put my civilian administrator in, supported by the troops until everyone is satisfied things are stable and let Mitsubishi decide if they will go along and use him, or if they want a man of their own as company manager, but without civil authority. I already have a man there groomed for the job, who is familiar with the station. He'll step in immediately. Allowing it to be run as a corporate structure, with no political supervision on site, had to end eventually anyway. It should have been corrected once there was more than a construction crew on board. We'd have avoided all this trouble."

  "Good. Sounds like you have a handle on it."

  * * *

  In Colorado, deep under a famous mountain, in a vaulted command center secretly remodeled and reactivated, a technician watched the strange light of the Happy Lewis from a satellite with optical tracking and correlated it with the return off its plasma plume, from the Alaskan antimissile radars. The numbers were more believable this time, but the fact they still had any Delta-V was disturbing.

  The older man looking over his shoulder was gray headed, with stars on his collar and he looked very tired and sad.

  "They're still not painting anything off this ship?"

  "No Sir. Not off the hull. I have to say it's just as stealthy as any war bird. But we can calculate its position from the return off the ionized exhaust plume."

  The General raised an eyebrow. "Can we? We thought so when we vectored the James Kelly in to intercept her. And believe me, the Pretty as Jade was nothing to mess with either. They had ground support and search radar equal to ours. This outruns, out shoots and hides from full military vessels of the two major powers. It's not like anything. It is a war bird no matter how it is flagged. Better than anything we have. I asked up the chain of command what kind of drive this is and they told me it's classified and they can't talk to me about it. Isn't that just helpful?" he asked sarcastically.

  "It was tracked on radar and then when it's intercepted it's simply not there. They look around and nothing to be found. I already knew there was no way it was
inboard the Jade like they thought immediately. Her class needs extra fuel in that volume to orbit so high. What kind of electronics spoofs location so convincingly? Nothing we have. We painted a solid false radar return where it had long vacated. And why didn't we see it going away on its great flaming drive? And was it hiding to escape? Oh no."

  "After spoofing its location it suddenly appears and runs in from kilometers away and simultaneously attacks two multi-billion dollar vessels of separate super-powers. The Kelly reported being engaged with at least four separate weapon systems, before she was lost. They didn't stand off scared of those two, but dove in and opened up with everything at point blank range and blew the both of them to hell and gone. All of which tells me they are either brave to the point of foolishness, or they have defensive systems equal to their offensive gear."

  "The Kelly was engaging the Jade . But the Lewis started its run in to hit them well before they started exchanging fire. And she destroyed the Jade completely before turning to the undamaged Kelly. We see a debris field expanding from where they both were on radar. It was a bald faced ambush. He was sitting waiting for them to get sucked into his bag, after they went hunting him."

  "And the worst part is, we and the Chinese both threatened the pilot first yesterday, when all he was asking was free passage. He just wanted to go home and we refused and bullied him and after we pushed him in a corner he told us plainly not to cross his path. We each sent a ship to die, because we could not imagine anyone having the gall to oppose us. Well, we have a problem now. And I doubt our esteemed leaders are capable of getting it."