…
When Leif came to, he felt weightless, which wasn’t right. The gravity of Europa was light requiring frequent exercise and bone density training, but not this… not nothing.
A hand gripped him, turned him. Leif found himself facing Phillip, his face full with weightlessness.
Leif gripped the tough outer fabric of Phillip’s parka. “What happened? Was there an explosion in the lab?”
His mind searched for where Sarah would have been. She was on the other side of the installation. At least five pressure doors stood between her and them. She’s fine.
Phillip shook his head. “Not the lab.”
Leif, dizzy from the weightlessness and a possible concussion, reached for a wall handle to turn himself. Before he could grip it, Phillip snatched Leif’s bare hand away and slid a glove over it.
“Thanks.”
Phillip nodded.
Gripping the handle, Leif felt coldness coming through the glove as he pulled himself to the viewport he’d stood on the other side of a few moments before. It should have been glowing with lab lights, but he saw only a black wall filled with stars and something glittering.
Pulling himself closer, he peered through the port. To the right, almost out of view, hung Europa, several miles away and shrinking. They were in orbit. As the airlock rotated, the moon’s icy surface slid out of view to the right. In the new darkness, thousands of pieces of twisted metal glinted among chunks of ice ranging in size from pebbles to high-rise buildings. The viewport gradually rotated away from the wreckage. The distant spark of the sun drifted by followed by the hulk of Jupiter, its broad and dominating bands filling the port. It seemed impossible they wouldn’t simply fall into it. When Europa came back into view, what Leif saw caused his jaw to go slack.
The surface had a long gash in it. At the end of the gash, a long, black ship with sleekly bladed lines shot a dazzling-green beam into Europa’s ice. The impact of the beam sent up billowing clouds of vaporized water. Melting and boiling in the vacuum, it refroze in an crystalline fog, which caught the faint sunlight in glittering rainbows. The ship, the shape of a scimitar turned blade up, seemed a dark, faceless thing with no visible bridge nor windows.
“What is that?”
But even as the question escaped him, he knew the answer.
As the moon moved to the right in the viewport, Leif saw small ships begin to emerge from the front third of the large ship. Swooping around, they caught chunks of ice with mandible-like hooks and drew the blocks back toward the large ship.
He looked to Phillip. “They’re mining ice?”
“What?” Phillip shoved him aside and looked out the port. “Yeah, it looks that way.”
Leif’s eyes scanned along the ice to where the base had been anchored. The only evidence of it having been there was a single rover, lying overturned beside the dark, seemingly bottomless canyon.
As the airlock turned away from Europa, Leif’s view passed again over the field of wreckage. His gaze caught the roofline of the analysis lab where he’d seen Sarah walk by Dennis MacAlpine’s camera. As it turned, the internal ceiling, tiles missing in a haphazard checkerboard, came into view. He understood with absolute finality that his quick glimpse of her over Dennis’ shoulder had been his last. He closed his eyes and tried to remember every detail, the slight curve of her neck where it met her jaw, the delicate arc of her chin, her hair coming off the back of her head and caressing the lab coat between her shoulders. Grief rose up in him and, knowing it would be too much to face, shoved it down. The terror at having lost her bored itself into his chest, cutting his heart in half as he swallowed it down.
“There’s one, blinking light,” Phillip said. “It’s a survival pod.”
Leif opened his eyes, scanned the wreckage, and caught the red pulse at the far side of the field. The base had housed 106 scientists. The odds of the pod holding Sarah were remote, but he found himself staring at the strobing light with a will. It would be sending out an assistance signal. Help might reach it. Ships must be nearby.
The airlock viewport rotated away from the wreckage again, passed the sun, Jupiter, and back to Europa. Two additional monstrous ships, the same as the first, had come to fly to the right and left of the first. They had begun cutting their own canyons in the ice. Three great canyons, as if gouged by monstrous claws, grew across the surface. They would scar the moon’s ice for millennia. As the bright curve of the moon slid away, the debris field came into view again along with the red flashing light of the survival pod. Something dark arced through the wreckage toward the pod. His eyes caught one… now two… and three small ships.
The ships curved around the section of roof where Sarah had worked, their nose cones and fuselages bristling with blasts from directional jets as they changed positions. Their main engines, glowing redly, faded to deep blue as they slowed in their approach of the pod. Blazing-white blasts struck out from under the nose cones of each ship. The pod blew apart in a magnesium-white flare, which snuffed out immediately in the vacuum of space.
Leif closed his eyes.
Phillip, who’d been peering over his shoulder, said, “They can’t see us because we don’t have a power source. That’ll save us.”
“Yeah, but without a power source, we have no air, no heat.” He looked at the thermometer on the wall. “It’s already negative fifty degrees Fahrenheit and dropping fast.”
“Good thing I got these coats and gloves,” Phillip said as he pulled the thick hood over his head.
“Those won’t do us any good at negative three hundred and fifty, Phillip,” Leif said as he pulled his own hood on. The skin of his face felt brittle, and his nostril hairs froze together as he inhaled. When he drew air through his mouth, ice crystals formed on the roof of his palate, and his molars ached. With only lab-duty scrub pants on his legs, the cold etched its way into the flesh of his thighs, cooling his groin.
“What should we do?” Phillip asked, sincere worry in his voice. “We’ll be out of air in a few hours.”
“We’re going to be all right, Phillip,” Leif said as he pushed off the wall. He didn’t for a moment believe that everything was going to be all right, but he wasn’t about to let the younger man become frantic. Drifting over to a panel with the word HEATED stenciled across it, Leif unlatched it and drew out two candy-green cylinders with O2 written in large white letters on their sides. The bottles still held the warmth of the insulated compartment. He looked into the compartment. Six more bottles.
“Emergency supplies,” he said to Phillip as he pushed one of the bottles over to him. Pulling open another panel, he found four bottles of water. “We have water.” He floated one of the liter bottles over to Phillip. “Put that under your coat right now, so it won’t freeze.”
“What’s the point?” Phillip asked. “We’ll be frozen in a few more minutes.” He held up the water bottle Leif had tossed to him. “It’s already crystallizing, look.”
Tendrils of ice crawled across the inside of the Lexan bottle.
“Get it under your coat.”
“What’s the damn point Leif?”
Leif pushed away and caught Phillip by the front of his coat. His face a few inches from Phillip’s, he said in a calm voice, “Phillip, here’s the point. We can simply let ourselves die, or we can try to live. If we try, we might succeed… or not. Would you rather die trying or die giving up?”
“Dead is dead.”
Leif brought a sternness to his voice he didn’t honestly feel. “Think of everything you’ve ever done in your life, every meal you’ve eaten, every heartbeat. This might be the last moment of your life. How do you want to live it?”
Phillip looked at the bottle for a moment, nodded, and stuck it up under his coat, wincing with the coldness of it.
Leif reached deeper into the cabinet and felt soft nylon. He pulled out the dark-red bundle of a cold-temp survival bag. The rush of success brought Sarah to mind as though his subconscious wanted to dash his hopes.
“Don’t think about her,” he said to himself. “Not right now.”
“What?”
“Nothing, just get into this.” Leif pushed the survival bag over to Phillip. Half folded and weightless, it twirled end over end to Phillip, who caught it, and pulled it open—its mirrored interior crinkling. He slid his legs into the long, pillowed sheath. Leif pushed a second water bottle over to him, and four of the eight bottles of oxygen. Phillip took each one. As Leif breathed in, the ice crystals on the roof of his mouth no longer melted fully with his exhalations, and his fingers felt stiff in the gloves. His groin ached with the cold, and the skin of his legs had gone numb. The airlock temperature now showed below negative seventy, the needle sliding quickly downwards. Dizziness fuzzed his thoughts, and he understood the oxygen in the room was already running low.
He pulled himself into the bag, clumsily holding the wall and took his two bottles of water and four oxygen bottles with him.
“What do we do if we have to pee?” Phillip asked through his oxygen mask, only his face exposed now.
“No matter what you do Phillip, do not open this bag. If you let your heat out, you’re dead.”
“But what if no one comes?”
“Someone will come.”
“How do you know?”
“The only thing that’s going to keep us alive is hope, Phillip,” Leif said as he slid his oxygen mask over his face and zipped the bag up, leaving only his face exposed. “You think any other way and you’re already gone. You understand me?”
Phillip nodded and zipped himself into the dark-red cocoon of pillowed nylon. Leif could hear the young man breathing through his oxygen mask in slow draws. Leif took one last look at the thermometer, negative eighty now, and pulled the zipper of the bag closed. The efficient insulation immediately began to warm with his body heat. The air in the darkness became quickly stagnant, and he felt his mind dulling, as if falling into a dream-state. Pulling the gloves from his hands, he followed the tube from his mask down to the cylinders tucked around his legs and twisted the valve open just enough to keep him alive. As he breathed in the dry air, clarity came to his mind.
Floating in darkness, castaway in orbit around the Jovian system, he finally allowed thoughts of his wife to well up and haunt him.
Chapter Two
Navy Special Warfare Commander Stacy Zack approached the war room in a wonderful mood. Her team had completed a week-long training maneuver with perfect scores. She’d never worked with as skilled and dedicated a group and understood she was probably living in the days she would later consider the pinnacle of her military career. The pressure sensitive electromagnetic plates in her zero-G boots clicked as they locked down and released from the decking. The carbon fiber calf supports kept her legs slightly bent allowing her to push herself forward into the next step.
When she entered the war room, Commander Adam Roth nodded to her and pointed to Captain Sharon Driskgill, who stood with her arms crossed scowling at the Navigation-Control console. On the Nav-Con’s four-foot, circular base, lay the holographic crown of Europa, the image as clear as though the moon had been scaled-down and mounted in the floor. Three razor-thin scars grew across it.
Stacy came to attention a few feet away from Captain Driskgill, whom she had yet to meet in person as the captain had taken command of the Rhadamanthus only five days earlier.
After several minutes of silence, Driskgill, who wore her blonde hair as strictly short as her reputation, looked to Stacy with ice-blue eyes.
“Commander Zack?”
Stacy saluted. “Yes, sir.”
Driskgill’s almost soulless eyes searched Stacy’s face as the Captain, fulfilling her reputation, said, “You don’t have the appearance of an effective war commander Zack. Your frame is too slight, and,” her tone became somewhat mocking, “those pretty, auburn eyes will distract the men.”
Stacy drew a slow, temper-cooling breath.
Another captain, another chance to prove someone wrong.
Still, she’d grown tired of the seemingly endless need to prove people wrong.
“The men on my team know if they get distracted by anything, I’ll kick their ass, sir.”
A hint of a smile pulled a crease into the corner of Driskgill’s mouth. She looked back to the image of Europa. “We have a situation I need your thoughts on commander.”
Only then did the fact Driskgill had said war commander strike her.
Sweeping her hand into the holographic image, Driskgill moved the moon aside. The space above the obsidian black disk of the Nav-Con filled with glittering debris. Driskgill tapped her index finger into the dark space, and the image retracted. Now Stacy could see the debris field in relation to the moon.
“What is that debris from?”
“That is what remains of Europa base.”
A cold shock ran through Stacy’s shoulders to the small of her back. “What the hell caused it?”
Captain Driskgill swept her hand again. Europa rushed forward, the image centering on the end of the long claw marks. Three dark shapes hung over the moon, throwing long shadows. Brilliant-green energy beams lanced from under the ships’ prows into the ice. Where the beams touched down, great plumes of pulverized ice and freezing vapor exploded upward. Small ships arced around collecting larger icebergs.
As Stacy leaned over the image, she did her best to keep the stark fear she felt from her voice. “Please tell me that’s not them.”
“Unfortunately, as far as we can tell… it is. They match the descriptions from the war. Analysts at the time had assumed the energy beams used to break Demos in half, had been a weapon. Now we might be looking at mining.”
“Mining.”
Stacy hadn’t intended it to be a question, but still Captain Driskgill said, “Yes.”
“Are you suggesting we’re not considering them hostile?”
“Not at all commander. Our guests have clearly hostile intentions.” Driskgill drew her finger across the open air above the Nav-Con, pulling a video frame with it. She tapped it, and the video went live. It was of an escape pod rolling end over end. As the pod rotated a red light pulsed at one end along with the sound of the emergency transponder’s pinging radio frequency. Small black shapes came through the wreckage, bearing down on the pod. With a flare of light, the pod scattered into indistinguishable flack.
“Was there anyone in that pod?”
“Three distinct heart signals.”
Stacy forced away the intense reaction that brought on by centering her mind on her job. “How do you imagine my team helping in this situation?”
“I need you to do a recovery.”
Stacy stared at the blackness where the pod had been. “If they’re dead, what’s our recovery?”
“We’ve detected two more heart signals in the wreckage.”
“Another survival pod?”
“Fortunately for them, no.” Driskgill swept the video frame aside. She tapped the debris field, zooming the image in on a cigar-shaped structure, ragged at one end with a section of wall still hanging from it.
Stacy leaned forward, squinting, “What is that?”
“That, Commander, is an airlock.”
“An airlock?”
“Yes. That’s the source of the heart signals. These two must have been in the airlock at the time of destruction.”
“They sealed themselves in.”
“Europa base schematics suggest the airlock was stocked with emergency supplies, which explains why they haven’t frozen to death or run out of air. Even so, they can’t have much time left. We need to get to them quickly.”
“I’m assuming this isn’t just altruism.”
“Not at all. We wouldn’t risk your team and an unknown reaction for two lives.” She pointed at the airlock. “However, we need to know what they know, specifically what happened in the moments before the attack. That makes them worth saving.”
Stacy leaned in on the image again, “May I?”
&
nbsp; The Captain held out her open palm as permission.
Stacy pulled the image back over to the alien ships.
She said to herself, “Three large cruisers, with support transports and fighters. May I see the video of the attack on the life pod again?”
Driskgill brought up the video.
As Stacy watched it, she said, “Fast and precise, but they haven’t reacted to the two heart signals in the airlock.”
“No. Either they don’t care about the heart signals, or they’re unable to sense them. I’m assuming, based on the aggression of the life pod attack, they cannot sense them.”
“But a heart monitor is a basic instrument.”
Driskgill shrugged, “Technologies develop differently.”
“So the only way to go in,” Stacy said, “is dark. We hook them up with a sling or a harpoon…”
“You can’t risk piercing the airlock.”
“Then we use a recovery net. Scoop it out of orbit. We have to carry enough momentum to come from the dark side there,” she pointed beyond the curve of Europa, “orbit past the airlock, securing it as we pass, and freefall back around to the dark side before powering up and leaving.”
Captain Driskgill smiled. “This is precisely why I asked for you, commander.”
Stacy let the compliment fall unacknowledged. Whether the captain believed in her or whether she was capable or not did not enter in. For the first time in her career, she was facing war. She’d give it everything she had. “May I begin preparations?”
“Yes, what is your ETD?”
“15 minutes, sir,” Stacy said as she walked away.
Captain Driskgill asked after her, “Is there anything specific you need from us?”
Stacy stopped at the hatch. “My team? No. What we all need is for someone to contact Jeffrey Holt.”
“Jeffrey Holt?” Driskgill asked. “Who the hell is that?”
Hammerhead Resurrection Page 2
