“Such a pessimist. If we end up dangling behind it, we can reel ourselves in. No problem.”
James simply snorted in response.
“Look, James, Phobos should be in range in less than ten minutes. Look!” he repeated, pointing. “There’s the navigation warning lights blinking on the observatory.”
“Are you sure we’re going to reach Phobos in ten minutes? It still looks a long way off.”
“It is a long way off, but we’re getting closer every minute. Trust me.”
“Daniel, I have faith in the Man Upstairs. I’m not so sure about your calculations.”
* * * *
Ramirez pushed through the door leading into the control room holding the knife in one hand and Kim’s wrist in the other. Kim was struck by the whiteness of the room. The floors consisted of polished white raised panels, the prefab walls were white, and even the chairs and instrument consoles were made of a white composite. When she finally noticed the room’s sole occupant, she had to stop herself from tittering nervously.
Martin Ferré ran a hand through his longish white hair. “Now that you’re here, what is it you want, Ramirez?”
“So you did know we were coming. I guess that’ll save some explanation. Get Mason on the radio. It’s time we talked.”
“No need. You can talk to her face to face in a minute. Her shuttle just docked.”
“Okay, then. Lock the door.”
“As I told Mason earlier, the door doesn’t have a lock.”
“Fine. Then barricade the door.”
“With what? Look around you. The only things that aren’t bolted down are the chairs, and they’re on wheels.”
“Oh, for crying out— Sit on the floor then, with your back against the door so they can’t push it open. Miss…?”
“Kim. My name’s Kim.”
“Kim. Go to the communications console and let me know where the security party is.”
She walked over to the console and flipped through the security cams. “They’re in the main hallway, maybe thirty seconds from here.”
“Can you put the image up on the screen here?” He gestured upwards with the knife toward the holoscreen on the wall to the left of the door.
“Sure. Just a second.” Kim found the right menu option and the image flickered to life on the designated screen.”
Ferré looked aghast. “Kim! Whose side are you on here? Are you actually helping this terrorist?”
She glanced over at him. “I’m on the side of staying alive, Dr. Ferré. You should be, too. And I don’t believe he’s a terrorist; just a scared man trying to figure out what to do.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Kim,” Ramirez said. “Can you pipe my voice through the internal comm system?”
“Sure. Just a sec. Okay, you’re live.”
“Chandra Mason! Stop where you are. I have you on camera in the main hallway. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I will. Don’t take another step or I’ll be forced to do something we’ll all regret.”
He watched as Mason looked all around for the camera. “It’s right in front of you and to your left, up by the ceiling. Yes, right there. If you speak up, I should be able to hear you. But not another step! Tell all your people to stop right where they are.” One of the men in the back of the party attempted to slip back out of camera range. “Mason, tell that man to move up with the rest of the group, or else! And I mean now!”
The image of Mason gestured and the man returned to where the other five stood.
“That’s better. Now put all your weapons on the deck and kick them out of reach.”
“We don’t have any weapons, Ramirez. We’re unarmed.”
“How stupid do you think I am, Mason? You expect me to think you came all this way to subdue a suspected mass murderer, with no weapons whatsoever? Get serious! Kick your weapons away or a hostage gets hurt.”
“How do we even know you still have any hostages, or that you haven’t killed anyone?”
“I’ll let them speak for themselves.” He turned to Kim. “You first, miss. Identify yourself.”
Kim spoke up. “This is Kimberly Cappelletti. I’m okay. He hasn’t hurt anyone.”
“Now you, professor.” Ramirez gestured with the knife toward the holo image.
“This is Dr. Martin Ferré. We’re fine at the moment.”
Ramirez’s voice hardened. “Now that we’ve gotten the introductions out of the way, Mason, do what I said. Kick your weapons down the hall.” When no one moved, he spoke up again. “Now, Mason, or I start cutting off ears!”
Kim’s eyes went wide at his words; she involuntarily put her left hand up to her ear, as if to check that it was still in place.
“Okay, okay. Men, do as he says.” Each of the sextet placed a stunner and a tranq gun on the floor and kicked them away. “Happy, Ramirez?”
“Ecstatic. Now, what do you want, Mason?”
“What do you think, Ramirez? Give yourself up and release the hostages unharmed and you’ll be treated fairly. Hurt anyone else and it could go badly for you.”
“That’s not going to happen, Mason. I don’t expect you to believe me, but I didn’t kill those people on the elevator car. Someone else did. I just want to get out of here. You can have your hostages back if you get me a ship. Not a shuttle; a real ship, fully fueled, with a pilot.”
“A ship? What’s the point, Ramirez? You can’t escape. If you head back to Earth, there’ll be police waiting for you no matter which ODF you try to dock at. Don’t expect any better treatment if you run out to the asteroid mines. Radio signals travel a lot faster than an in-system ship.”
“I just need time to think. We’ve got plenty of food and drink in here, and I’m prepared to wait as long as necessary. Call Barsoom about a ship. If any of you try to go anywhere, I’ll see it on the camera and I’ll kill the hostages, so help me!” He looked to Kim and calmly made a throat-cutting gesture.
She blanched. Then, realizing he wasn’t threatening her, she cut the audio pickup. “If by that you meant for me to cut the audio feed, you’re offline.”
He nodded.
“What was that about lots of food and drink? We didn’t pick up any on the way here.”
“Yeah; pretty dumb on my part. But I couldn’t let them know that if they just waited a few hours I’d have to give up for lack of something to drink.”
“So now what?”
“We wait, and hope they produce a ship.”
“And what if they don’t? What are you going to do with us?”
“I dunno yet.”
Kim was left to ponder just how desperate Ramirez might become.
* * * *
“That moon’s looking awfully big, Daniel, and it’s coming at us awfully fast.”
“Actually, it’s running away from us. We’re just gaining on it quickly from behind.”
“Oh, well, thanks for clarifying that. So we’ll kill ourselves on the back end of it, instead of the front end.”
Daniel sighed. “Relax, James. We shouldn’t be going all that fast, relatively speaking, when we reach it. By overtaking it from a rear quarter, we’re canceling out a lot of our speed.”
“We’re still approaching awfully fast. Are you sure we’re not going to crash into it?”
“Not according to my—”
“If you say ‘calculations’ one more time, I’m gonna slug you!”
“Okay, okay. Let’s just say that I don’t think we’re going to hit.”
“You don’t ‘think’ we’re gonna hit? Well, that’s reassuring!”
“Hey, what do you want, a guarantee signed in blood?”
“Now that you mention it….”
Daniel chuckled. “Sorry, I’m fresh out.”
“Of guarantees, or blood?” James didn’t wait for a reply, “So, how much longer?”
“I figure we’ll be within range of the grapplers in about three minutes.”
“Good. That gives me just enough time to make out my w
ill.”
“Pessimist.”
* * * *
“Well, Mason? Where’s my ship?”
“It’s coming, Ramirez. These things take time.”
“The hell it does! How hard is it to commandeer a ship and fly it over here?”
“Hey! You didn’t exactly give us a lot of warning. We not only have to find a ship and refuel it, we have to find a pilot willing to volunteer for what might be a one-way trip. Pilots aren’t exactly lining up for the opportunity.”
“What you really mean is you’re trying to find a security officer who can pose as a pilot long enough to overpower me once I get aboard the ship, isn’t it? Or maybe you’re trying to see how many security officers you can stow away on the ship? Remember, I have hostages here, and I’m not afraid to kill them if that’s what it takes.” Ramirez had begun to sweat again, despite the comfortable temperature in the control room.
“Look, Ramirez, you don’t have to keep reminding me of your willingness to take lives. You’ve already amply demonstrated that with the elevator car. We’re not playing games here. It just takes time to get everything worked out. Liability issues, insurance, paperwork to sign, and so on.”
“That’s not my problem. You’ve got thirty minutes. Get a move on it, or else.”
“I’m doing the best I can, Ramirez. Not everything is under my control. The private shipping companies aren’t being cooperative.”
“Thirty minutes, Mason! I mean it!” He made the throat-cutting gesture again. The fear was back in his eyes. He began pacing between Kim and Dr. Ferré, never straying by more than a couple of meters from one or the other. “I’ve got to think. Got to think!” He smacked the heel of his left hand against his forehead over and over again, while the hand holding the knife swung at his side as he walked.
Kim found her mouth too dry to swallow. He’s starting to get erratic. How much longer can he hold it together?
For the first time in hours, she was seriously concerned for her safety.
Even good men can do stupid, rash things under stress.
* * * *
“Now, Daniel?” Phobos was getting really close, and really big.
“A few more seconds, according to my chrono.”
“Daniel, I think I can reach out and grab a crater with my bare hands already!”
“Quit exaggerating! We’re still several hundred meters away.”
“Maybe so, but it’s going past pretty quickly. What if we miss it entirely?”
“That’s not going to happen. Besides, we have to wait until it’s almost past us, so we don’t slam into it. Just be patient.”
“Patience isn’t one of my strong suits.”
“Maybe not, James; but if we fire our grapples too soon, we won’t hit anything and then we will miss Phobos altogether.”
“Okay, okay. You made your point. How much longer?”
“What, are you five years old? ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’”
“How…much…longer?”
Daniel sighed. “Eighteen seconds. Are you happy now?”
“Deliriously. Who fires first?”
“Since you’re in such a hurry, you can go first. But not before I give you the go-ahead. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m not five years old, after all.”
“Fine. Get ready. And make sure you hold the gun between us. We don’t want the burst of compressed air to start us spinning. And don’t forget to clip the gun’s tether to your belt. We don’t want the gun getting ripped out of your hand when the grapple hooks something.”
“Yes, daddy. You’ll recall that I took the same zero-gee training you did.”
“It didn’t stop you from forgetting about the SPS, did it? Okay, on zero. Three…two…one…zero!”
On command, James fired. The grapple shot out the front end of the gun and headed straight for the small moon. They were using the type of grapple gun normally employed by miners to string guide wires across a dig site to help get around on asteroids in microgravity conditions. If the grapple struck directly, and hard enough, a small explosive charge would fire and embed the head of the grapple in the rock, much the way a climber hammers a piton into a cliff face. A weaker or indirect hit would simply extend the spines of the grapple.
“Come on, come on!” James whispered with fierce intensity.
The fine wire fed from the spool as the grapple closed in on Phobos. Then just before reaching an outcropping of rock, the grapple snapped back and drifted to one side, well short of the surface. Phobos, the Greek god of terror, continued on his way, ignoring the two humans so desperately trying to make his acquaintance.
“Crap! Too short. I’m sorry I rushed you Daniel. You were right; we weren’t close enough.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t have let you shoot unless I thought we were already in range. Apparently my calculations were slightly off after all.”
“That’s reassuring. Why didn’t you use the SPS to determine the distance for you, instead of relying on your calculations?”
Daniel was silent for a moment. “Damn. You’re right.”
“You’re not increasing my faith in your plan, Daniel.”
Daniel shrugged inside his suit, unnoticed by James. “Hey, I did what I could in the limited time I had to work out this plan. I’ve gotten us this far, haven’t I?”
“I wouldn’t brag too much about the fact that we’re out here in the middle of nowhere, possibly about to sail right past Phobos and die of asphyxiation in a matter of minutes.”
“Pessimist.”
“We don’t have time for this now. When do we fire the next grapple?”
“Let me check the SPS,” Daniel growled through clenched teeth. “Okay, I’ll wait four more seconds and then take the next shot.”
“Roger.”
The next few seconds seemed to drag on forever. All the while, Phobos continued to rush up to meet the two men.
“Uh, Daniel? Now would be good.”
“Okay, here goes.” With that, he triggered his first grapple. It burst forth from the front of his gun and flew true as an arrow to the crater wall he’d selected as his target. It hit near the top of the wall and skittered over, dragging and bouncing along the ground, without hooking anything.
“Damn! The spines didn’t extend. There’s no way for it to grab onto the rocks. All right, it’s your turn, James. The horizon’s getting close. Phobos will be past us in less than twenty seconds.”
“This whole idea of yours is looking more insane by the minute. Why do I let you talk me into things?”
“James! Focus. Take your shot.”
“Okay, okay. Here goes.” He fired his second and last grapple. It hit the surface near a pile of boulders, bounced and hooked one of the smaller rocks. The cable clipped to James’ belt fed out all the way, then snapped taut. The two men swung as if at the end of a pendulum, down toward the surface.
“Too fast! Too fast! Cut the line.”
“What?”
“Cut the line or we’ll be killed. Now, James!”
James hit the release and the cable detached from his belt. “Now what?”
“I’m sorry, but we had to do it. We’ve still got one more shot. But we have to be closer to the trailing end of the moon so we can swing behind it and not come crashing down into it.”
“I sure hope you know what you’re doing. We were securely hooked on before. There’s no guarantee the next one will catch anything.”
“I know, I know. But we didn’t have any choice. All right; get ready. I’ve got to take the next shot pretty soon. A few more seconds and we’ll miss Phobos entirely.”
“Look! There’s a radio antenna or something. See if you can snag that. It has enough projections that the grapple should be able to grab onto something.”
“Good idea. Cross your fingers.” He let fly their last grapple.
James said a silent prayer, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.
“Damn! I missed. That’s it then; it’s
all over.”
James opened his eyes to see their final hope rebound off a rock into space. A moment later, they cleared the trailing edge of Phobos.
Ahead of them lay infinity.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” Daniel said. “I guess this wasn’t such a smart idea after all. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this. All we can do now is signal a mayday and hope someone is close enough to get us before our air runs out in the next few minutes.”
“Hey, you didn’t exactly twist my arm. I came of my own free will. I—” Whatever else he was going to say was forgotten as the duo was jerked around and swung sharply down toward the surface of Phobos. “What the hell?”
One of the cables attached to Daniel’s belt extended straight back to the radio tower.
“I don’t understand,” Daniel began. “We fired all four grapples. They all missed, except for the one we cut loose.”
“It must have been your first one! The one that failed to open. All that bouncing around must have finally triggered the spines to extend.”
The ground rushed up to meet them.
“Whatever it was, we’re going to hit. Brace yourself!”
Phobos might as well have been a giant club wielded by Mars, the Roman god of war. He used it to bludgeon the two men, and a darkness blacker than the cosmos enveloped them.
CHAPTER 9
Engineering Marvels: Relocating the Moons of Mars—Before the first space elevator could be built on Mars, its moons had to be relocated. ODF BARSOOM was designed to orbit at 37,714 kilometers above the planet; however, if left alone, PHOBOS (at an orbital radius of 9,378 km), and DEIMOS (at 23,400 km) would have collided with the elevator ribbon cables. Thus it was necessary to move the moons to higher orbits, well beyond that of the ODF. In 2112, two torch drive engines were affixed to Deimos and used to boost it to an orbit of 42,378 km above the equator. The following year, six engines were installed on Phobos. They in turn boosted Phobos to an orbit of 45,413 km. (The engines remain in place on both moons, to be used should the moons ever need to be relocated again.)
The Imperative Chronicles, Books One and Two: The Mars Imperative & The Tesserene Imperative Page 12
