The Voyage of the Iron Dragon

by Robert Kroese

  “No,” said a voice behind him. O’Brien turned to see Reyes coming down the road toward them. She was unarmed and alone.

  “Another spaceman?” the Cho-ta’an asked. “I am indeed honored.”

  “Carolyn Reyes. I’m the commander of this mission and the head of the Pleiades Project.”

  “Are there more of you?”

  “IDL? No. It’s just me and O’Brien now. How many Cho-ta’an are on Earth?”

  “I believe I am the last. My comrade Gurryek was captured by soldiers in Burgundy. I have not heard from him for more than fifty years.”

  “Then this war has grown very small.”

  “Indeed it has. We can end it here, the three of us.”

  “You’re asking me to surrender.”

  “I’m asking you to let history take its course.”

  Reyes shrugged. “Our historian is dead,” she said. “I’m an engineer. I see a problem and I fix it. It’s what I’ve always done.”

  As she spoke, they heard a roar from behind them. Turning, they saw fire pouring from the thrusters at the base of the rocket. Steam billowed into the air as the scaffolding fell away and the rocket began to rise into the sky. The wind continued to blow, but the clouds had begun to part, revealing cracks of blue sky. O’Brien could hardly believe it: they’d finally gotten their launch window.

  Tharres shouted something, but he couldn’t make himself heard over the roar of the thrusters. He was pointing at the rocket, screaming frantically at the Indian riflemen. All it would take was one well-aimed bullet to tear a hole in one of those propellant tanks and it was all over. But the Indians stood dumbfounded, staring at the Iron Dragon, their rifles dangling at their sides. They squinted against the blinding glare, and many of them dropped their rifles and clamped their hands over their ears. Waves of intense heat washed over them, and O’Brien shielded his face and turned away.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tharres scrambling to get to one of the dropped rifles. The alien picked it up and took aim at the rocket. O’Brien lunged toward him, hoping to knock the rifle away, but he was too far away. There was no way he could get to the Cho-ta’an before he got a shot off.

  He’d nearly reached Tharres when the alien’s head jerked back as if he’d been struck. A hole had appeared in the Tharres’s forehead. The alien sank to its knees and then fell face-first onto the asphalt. O’Brien turned to see Helena holding a rifle to her shoulder. Seeing that the alien was dead, she turned to watch the rocket stream into the sky.

  The Titan was now over a hundred yards up and gathering speed quickly. Anyone trying to shoot it down now was going to have to be a hell of a shot. As he glanced around, though, he saw there was little danger of that: the Indians remained transfixed by the sight of the rocket. Many of the Eidejelans had come out from behind the buildings as well. For now, at least, a truce seemed to hold.

  The roar of the boosters had waned, and the rocket began to arc, indicating it had begun its lateral acceleration. There were still a million things that could go wrong, but they had done it: against all odds, they’d launched a manned craft on a mission to rendezvous with a spaceship in orbit. Suddenly overcome by dizziness, O’Brien stumbled and fell on top of the dead Cho-ta’an.

  When he regained consciousness, Helena was kneeling over him. “O’Brien!” she yelled. “Get up!” He blinked in the sunlight. Overhead was a fuzzy arc of white smoke that disappeared into a patch of clear blue sky. They’d done it, he thought. They’d really done it. They were done. Why wouldn’t Helena let him rest?

  As she helped him to his feet, he realized why: they were surrounded by several hundred hostile Indians who might at any moment recover from the shock of having seen their first rocket launch. Whether they would continue their assault without Tharres was uncertain, but O’Brien wouldn’t bet on them just throwing down their weapons and going home. He was ready to die, but that wasn’t a luxury he could allow himself quite yet: until the Iron Dragon rendezvoused with the Cho-ta’an ship, it would be dependent on guidance from the ground. The command center was a concrete building with solid steel doors, but sufficiently determined men could get inside within a few hours. They needed to rally whatever riflemen they could to defend the command center as long as they could. As Reyes barked orders to the defenders, he and Helena made their way across the tarmac.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  The Gemini capsule carrying Thorvald and Freya attained its initial orbit twelve minutes after launch. Once the Titan had cleared the rough weather at the launch site, everything had proceeded nominally: Alma’s team at mission control had directed the rocket onto a near-optimal trajectory, and the first stage separation had gone smoothly. Seven minutes later, when the rocket was 87 miles above the Earth and traveling nearly 20,000 miles per hour, the second stage separated and the capsule’s thrusters fired.

  The next step was to execute the Hohmann transfer, which would put the capsule in the same location and orbit as the Cho-ta’an ship. The transfer had to be executed within a very narrow time window. Fortunately, the Cho-ta’an ship’s orbital period was so short that although the launch had been delayed by several hours, they were still able to synchronize it with the passing of the ship overhead. They now had about five minutes between achieving orbit and beginning their maneuvers for the transfer. If they missed their opportunity, they wouldn’t have another for nearly twenty-four hours—and judging by the last transmission they’d received from mission control, they didn’t have that much time.

  At precisely the right moment, Thorvald fired the Gemini’s thrusters, accelerating it enough to bring it into an elliptical orbit that intersected the orbit of the Cho-ta’an ship. Once this was done, he used the attitude jets to change the direction the capsule was pointing. After again waiting for a precise moment, he fired the thrusters to accelerate to match the circular orbit of the Cho-ta’an ship. It was a maneuver he had practiced a thousand times, and he was better at it than anybody else on Earth. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite good enough.

  The Gemini capsule nearly matched the Cho-ta’an ship’s orbit, but there was a gap of nearly two miles between them. In astronomical terms, he’d done the equivalent of hitting a bullet in flight with another bullet, but in human terms, there were still two miles of space they somehow had to cross. Worse, the capsule’s orbit was slightly higher than that of the Cho-ta’an ship. He expended all the capsule’s fuel trying to match the Cho-ta’an ship’s orbit, but a gap of nearly a mile remained between the two spacecraft. Because of the remaining difference in their orbits, the gap was increasing by several feet a minute. The longer they waited, the worse their chances were.

  “Fuel is at zero,” Thorvald said. “We’ve got a gap of over a thousand yards and growing.”

  “Copy that,” said Nestor over the radio. “Can you close it with an EVA?”

  “We don’t have a lot of other options, as I see it,” Thorvald said. “How are things on the ground?”

  “We’ve got a couple thousand Indians trying to break in to the command center, but don’t worry about that. We’ll have enough time to guide you through an EVA.”

  “Copy that. Preparing for EVA.”

  Thorvald and Freya pressurized their suits and then opened the hatches over their heads.

  “Exiting the capsule,” Thorvald said.

  “Copy that,” Nestor said. “Godspeed.”

  They climbed outside the capsule and Thorvald snapped the end of an extensible tether into a hook on Freya’s suit. The other end was already attached to his own suit. They wouldn’t bother to attach to the capsule, as they wouldn’t be sticking around for long.

  Freya gasped as she caught sight of the Earth below them. For nearly a minute, they both clung to the capsule, peering down the sides of the capsule at the vast blue and white sphere.

  “We need to get moving,” Freya said at last.

  “A few minutes won’t make a difference,” Thorvald said. “Acclimate yourself.” They’d trained f
or spacewalks in a neutral buoyancy pool on at Camp Aldrin, and one thing they’d learned was that trying to rush things in space was a recipe for disaster. The key was to keep a cool head and use slow, precise, deliberate movements. Drifting away from the Cho-ta’an ship was a concern, but a bigger danger was panic. One ill-considered movement could send one of them flying into space on a trajectory from which they’d never recover.

  Still holding the edge of the Gemini’s hatch, Thorvald hung in space, watching the Earth slide by beneath him. He concentrated on his breathing, trying to lower his racing heartrate. No one had ever seen this before, he thought. From the spacemen’s perspective, the first spacewalk was ancient history, but in purely chronological terms, he and Freya were the first. There would be no record of their accomplishment, and they might very well die in the process, but they had done it. He smiled as he glanced at Freya staring at awe at the Earth. It was worth it.

  “Enjoying the view?” asked Nestor over the radio. The edge in his voice was unmistakable. Thorvald wondered how much longer it would be until the Indians broke into the command center.

  “Just taking a minute to collect ourselves,” Thorvald said.

  “Take as long as you need,” Nestor said. “We’re about to lose radio contact though. Hopefully we’ll still be here when you come around again. If not—” Nestor’s last words were garbled, and Thorvald didn’t ask him to repeat them. The truth was, Nestor, Alma and the others on the ground had done everything they could do. It was now up to Thorvald and Freya to see the mission through, and he was grateful that mission control would not be in contact if they failed.

  “Ready?” he asked, looking at Freya, who was now peering toward the horizon, where the surface of the hull was just visible above the curve of the Earth. The sun was behind them, showering the capsule and the Cho-ta’an ship with blinding white light. Soon they would be enshrouded in near-total darkness, as they passed to the other side of the Earth. The plan was to use the jets on their suits to accelerate toward the Cho-ta’an ship and then drift in freefall until they could see again, at which point they would assess their location and trajectory and then attempt another thrust. The danger was that if they miscalculated the initial thrust, they would find themselves even farther from the Cho-ta’an ship when they came into the sunlight.

  “We’re going to need every bit of thrust we can muster,” Thorvald said. “Climb onto the nose of the capsule.”

  “There’s nothing to hold onto.”

  “I’ll pull the tether tight when you’re on the other side.”

  “Roger that.” Freya gripped the edge of the hatch and gave herself a slight push, causing her body to drift forward along the capsule. When she reached the capsule’s nose, she put her hands on it and pulled toward herself, vaulting her body over the nose. Thorvald slowly pulled the tether taut, arresting Freya’s forward motion and causing her to spin to the left. Her right hand hit the hull and bounced away, and for a moment it seemed that the tether was going to pull her right over the top. Thorvald let the line go slack and Freya managed to contact the hull with the toe of her left boot, though, dragging it along the surface to arrest her motion. For a moment they hung there in space, panting, neither of them daring to move. Then Freya slowly pulled her boot forward, pushing her body back down the side of the capsule. Soon she was straddling the nose, on the opposite side of the capsule from Thorvald. Unable to apply enough friction to hold herself in place, she began to drift backwards, away from the capsule.

  “I’m in position,” she gasped, out of breath from the exertion. “Pull the tether taut.”

  Thorvald pulled, and soon she was pinned against the hull.

  “Well, that was fun,” she panted.

  “No time to rest,” Thorvald said, realizing he’d cut the maneuver closer than he’d intended. Already the sun was disappearing behind the Earth behind them. In a few seconds, the Cho-ta’an ship would be lost in shadow.

  “I’m ready,” Freya said. “What’s next?”

  “I’m going to pull myself over the nose, but I won’t have anybody to hold me, so I’m going to just keep going. Get in a crouch. When I say go, I need you to jump as hard as you can, straight down. That is, perpendicular with the horizon.”

  “Straight down? But we’ll—”

  “You have to trust me, Freya.”

  There was a momentary pause. “Roger that.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Line is going slack in five seconds. Four. Three. Two.” Thorvald took a deep breath and then mimicked the maneuver Freya had just executed, pulling himself along the hull and then vaulting over the nose of the capsule in the direction of the Cho-ta’an ship. He’d unlocked the winch, allowing the tether to extend to its full length of twenty yards. When he’d cleared the nose, he said, “Go!”

  Chapter Fifty-two

  The Indians quickly regrouped and continued their advance across the island, in search of whatever riches Tharres had promised them. As the defending riflemen were overrun, Reyes led the survivors to the command center. The last man inside slammed the massive steel door shut seconds before the building was swarmed by attackers. Helena helped O’Brien to a chair while Reyes tried to determine just how bad the situation was outside.

  Panicked radio communications from the squad leaders indicated that the main settlement to the east had been completely overrun, and the remaining defenders had taken refuge inside the buildings to the west of the launch pad. Except for the command center, all of these were flimsy wood frame or sheet metal buildings; it wouldn’t take long for the Indians to get inside. Muffled gunshots and shouts sounded outside, and one by one, the squad leaders’ radios went silent. After another ten minutes, the only sound was the pounding on the steel doors of the command center.

  The news from the Gemini crew was not good either: Alma reported that Thorvald’s attempt at a Hohmann transfer had failed, and he and Freya were now attempting to rendezvous using their suit jets. They wouldn’t know whether the rendezvous had worked until radio communication was re-established in about an hour, but the odds didn’t look good. The thirty technicians sitting at consoles in a semicircle in the command center fidgeted or re-checked calculations while they waited. Everything was now up to Thorvald and Freya.

  While Helena cleaned and bandaged O’Brien’s shoulder, Alma pulled Reyes aside. The two retreated into a conference room and Reyes took a seat next to Alma’s wheelchair.

  “There’s nothing more you can do here,” Alma said.

  “I’m not running away,” Reyes said. “We make our stand here, together.”

  Alma shook her head. “That’s a nice sentiment, but it’s also idiotic. There’s no reason for you to stay, and when the command center is overrun, Thorvald and Freya will need you.”

  “The crew in Bermuda—”

  “Chief, I think you know I’m not the sentimental type, but that’s your granddaughter up there. Whatever happens with the rendezvous, she’s going to need you.”

  Reyes didn’t reply. She’d gotten so used to disregarding her own personal feelings in the interest of Pleiades that she’d momentarily forgotten that someone might need her—not as an engineer, manager or leader, but as a human being. Everything now depended on Thorvald and Freya. She doubted she could do anything for them, but she owed it to them to stay alive as long as she could.

  When they first arrived at Antillia, twenty-five years earlier, they had put in place an escape plan that would allow Pleiades to continue in case Camp Aldrin’s survival was threatened by invaders or a hurricane. A knar, called Stjörnubát, was suspended ten feet over the water by a crane that extended over the cliff on the far western end of the island. Stjörnubát’s hold contained their entire technical library, as well as twenty rifles, a hundred pounds of gold, and a three-week supply of fresh water and dried and canned food. It also carried a radio that they could use to communicate with the Gemini crew. A system of tunnels had been dug under th
e western side of the island, allowing escapees to travel underground from any of several buildings to a hidden hatch in the side of the cliff that opened directly onto Stjörnubát.

  Only the Committee, those involved in the escape route’s construction, and the crews who sailed past the western end of the island knew about it. In an emergency, an alarm would sound, and the Committee, key engineers, and handpicked crew members would head to Stjörnubát through one of the tunnels that ran under the island. As the project advanced and the spacemen aged, the idea of a skeleton crew leaving Antillia and restarting the project elsewhere began to seem untenable, but the escape route was left in place. Until Alma mentioned it, Reyes had not even considered using it.

  “I’d need a crew,” Reyes said.

  “O’Brien can sail,” Alma said. “Take him and Helena, and the rest of the riflemen.” About twenty riflemen had come with them to the command center—just enough to crew Stjörnubát.

  “What about you and your technicians?”

  “I’m not getting on board a ship in this thing,” Alma said, patting the arm of her wheelchair. “And I don’t think you could drag my technicians away. They’ll see this thing through.”

  Reyes nodded. Alma’s team had prepared for this moment for years. There was probably nothing any of them could do for Thorvald or Freya at this point, but they weren’t going to abandon their posts. Every one of them was as dedicated to Pleiades as Reyes was.

  “Thank you, Alma. We couldn’t have gotten this far without you.”

  “No, you couldn’t have,” Alma said with a smile. “Now get out of here while you still can.”