“I don’t know what to say Steve. We’ve seen a lot of water under the bridges.”
“How about, we’ll see each other topside? But if not, I’ll see you on the other side”, with that I reached out and shook his hand. Not in the way that most people used to shake hands, but a good firm grip that told you that you could trust the man who had a hold of your hand. We did it with a grip that would pull you up if you were falling or hold you if you were dying. I didn’t think that there was anything else I could say. Charlie and I had been through a lot together in those long few months in Iraq, and even more in the few days that we were back here.
With that I turned to Russell, “You dumbass”, was all I said. I reached out and took his hand.
“You’d be here if I wasn’t and you know it Steve.” He was right. I didn’t want to go back up to moonbase. I wanted to stay here and hunt deer, raise kids and if need be kill those son of a bitches that wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do. I nodded and said “Good luck son” even though he was only a few years younger than I was.
Robert was standing there with a solemn look on his face. For the first time since I had known him, I saw him for what he really was, a kid who knew that he was a man way too early. He knew that there should be schools, recesses, football and baseball, but he also knew that it was up to him to make sure that his kids got that and that he never would.
I reached for his hand and he put his out like a man, “You make me proud”, I said. “I’m glad to have known you because you will shape the future of this world.”
You could see his chest swell and if you weren’t paying too much attention you wouldn’t have noticed the moisture in his eyes, but I noticed, and pretended not to.
I turned and started walking back to Prometheus where Thomas and Mike were waiting. It wasn’t a very long walk, less than a hundred feet, but it gave me a few seconds to think. I was trying to think about another way to get this crap done, but I was coming up short. I didn’t want to go up, at least not without Mike.
Thomas met me halfway. “She knows, you know” he said as he walked with me. I glared at him, “knows what, that I love her? That I don’t want to do this? That I would rather die than leave her down here?”
“Yes”, he said. “She knows all of that. She also knows that you are trying to figure out another way to get this done. She’s told me so. She’s also said that she knows of no other way and that she hopes that you won’t make this anymore painful that it already is.” With that he put out his hand, as I gripped it he said “You are a good man Steven Ray. A much better man than you give yourself credit for. It was men like you who built this country and hopefully, between you and I, we have imparted enough on the young men here that they will build a better country than we have done.”
“I don’t know what I’ve done to help make them better”, I mumbled.
“Nonsense, I’ve taught them how to survive and how to live. In the few days that you have been here you have taught them how to value others above their own life. How to look death in the eye and not fear the consequences, because what you did was beyond your own life. That is what you taught them in the few short days that you were here. Regardless of whether you live or die in this attempt today, these young men will always remember and always tell the tale of the man who wouldn’t quit and that sir, is what you have taught them. For that I am proud that I have known you.”
With that he released my hand and turned to walk away. He made a circling motion in the air with his hand and one of the trucks came over to pick him up.
I hadn’t noticed that we were almost to Prometheus as he walked away. Mike was standing just a few feet away. I didn’t know how much of that she had heard but she looked at me and said “Thomas not all that bright. He mistake stupidity for bravery!”
I had to laugh. That was the Mike that I knew, the Mike that was my friend, the one that could dislocate a shoulder in zero G. I couldn’t help it. I reached out and pulled her to me and kissed her, hard. A week ago that would have gotten my arm broken or at the very least a black eye, but today she just melted into my arms for a few seconds, before she pushed away and said “can’t now. I make it up to you when we get back topside.” With that it was over. She became my superior officer in less time than it took to let go of her.
She turned up climbed the ladder into Prometheus. The basic idea was that she would help to keep me from running over things on the ground until we got her to the taxiway and at that point she would disembark. After that if I couldn’t get her pointed straight down the runway then it wouldn’t matter. I didn’t need to be flying her anyway.
Mike insisted that I suit up prior to movement. It took a less than a minute to get into it but I wanted to leave my helmet off until I got on the runway so as to leave my field of vision clear. That didn’t matter to her. She told me to shut up and listen, that the helmet wouldn’t make a difference in my field of vision. She went through the same check off list that NASA would have gone through on the suit. I didn’t remind her that it didn’t matter. That if I needed the suit and it failed, then Prometheus would already be beyond atmosphere and the mission would have been accomplished, that the suit probably wouldn’t save my life in the event of an emergency anyway. Anything that I could do or put up with that would make her more at ease was worth it. Or maybe it was me that wanted to feel at ease. It didn’t matter.
She buckled into the co-pilot’s seat and I flashed the external flood lights, the pre-arranged signal that we were ready to go.
I could see the cables tighten but couldn’t sense any movement. I was beginning to get nervous when Mike pointed out the starboard side. She had noticed what I had missed. The support beams of the hanger were slowly sliding past, not very fast, not even as fast as a man could walk, but we were moving.
At that point I started to concentrate on the taillights of the Humvees in front of me. I had my hands on the thruster controls on each side. I was watching the taillights.
I needn’t have worried. They cables slowly pulled tight and you could see the Humvees set down, but they were able to move us along, albeit, at a slow pace, but no slower than the crawler that moved Nemesis to the runway so many years ago.
We were moving at a leisurely three klicks an hour, which meant that we had almost forty minutes to get into position before I had to part with Mike. We spent the first five minutes or so in silence, before I spoke up. “I love you, you know.”
She nodded, “Love you too Steve. But I need you to concentrate on mission at hand, not be mooning over some girl in a long gone port.”
I knew what she meant. Distractions could get us killed. It would be best to forget about who we were and concentrate on what we were. What we were was two of the best trained shuttle pilots in the universe. Of course there were only seven of us, but if wouldn’t have mattered if there were seven hundred. Every shuttle jockey thought that he or she was the best or very damn close to it. So instead of getting caught up in personal matters we did what we did best. We concentrated on the details. The military had taught us that if you get the details right the rest of the big picture will come together on its own. So that’s what we did.
Mike had me checking readings, flaps, pressure indicators, absolutely anything that could be checked from the cockpit got checked in those forty minutes and then I saw the cables start to go slack and I knew that she was leaving me. I wanted to get up but I was strapped to that damn acceleration couch. I wanted to kiss her but I had the fucking helmet on. I think that she planned it that way. She didn’t want any difficult partings. She leaned down and put her forehead against my helmet, the same way that she would have done if she were suited up and said “God speed, Steve.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say other than “keep your ruskie ass out of trouble, I don’t want anything happening to you.” I could see the tears in her eyes as she nodded. With that she was out the hatch.
The sound of that hatch sealing was the loneliest sound in the
world. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to go back up. Most of all I didn’t want to leave Mike. But you’ve heard all this before.
I watched as they unhooked the cables from the Humvees and Mike climbed in with Charlie and Russell. I flashed the exterior floodlights in goodbye and lit up the thrusters to move Prometheus into position. Once I got her moving it was old hat. She was a little more responsive than I had remembered and I over-corrected a couple of times but within minutes I was on that runway facing the future and I had a two hour wait before it began.
Chapter 20
The wait was excruciating. It was just past 5:30am local time or 11:30 GMT. Of course the idea of local time was pretty outdated. The natives quit using things like Central Standard or Central Daylight time almost twenty years ago. Instead they were using dawn, high noon and dusk as a way to tell time, but I still watched the clock. I was hoping to hear Mike contact Moonbase at about 13:15 GMT. I knew there was a long way to go before I heard her voice, but I had the radio on and the volume turned up.
I spent the time running through the checklists several times. It was about 12:50 GMT when I heard Moonbase reaching out for me. “Prometheus, this is Moonbase, please respond.” I hesitated. I knew that they would want to know why I was still sitting there with my finger up my ass.
They weren’t worried about these folks down here, they were only worried about the piece of hardware that I was sitting on.
I put it off for almost six full minutes before I responded “Moonbase, this is Prometheus, I copy.”
“Prometheus why the delay, it appears that you have good weather. You are cleared for takeoff.”
“Please hold tight. I’ve got a few things down here that I have to wrap up before I get airborne.” I didn’t really lie, but it didn’t matter. What were they going do, fire me? I was one of seven guys in the Solar System that could do this. Hell, they didn’t even pick me for this mission. I was picked by Mike, I didn’t owe them anything that I wasn’t going to repay. The important thing was to give Mike time to get off the ground.
It was almost eleven minutes later before I heard a familiar voice on the radio. It wasn’t the voice I wanted to hear, “Prometheus, this is Admiral Roberts, can you give me the exact nature of your delay?”
I didn’t want to appear too eager to answer, I wanted to give him every opportunity to believe that there was real reason why I hadn’t hit the switch on this one. I don’t think that he would have me shot, but I didn’t want to take too many chances.
“Trying to make sure that the cockpit is secure sir. The last thing that I need is to catch a piece of loose metal in the head.”
“Mr. Ray, I understand. I know what you are doing and why and I feel for you. But I want you to understand me and I want you to do it now. If you don’t launch in the next three minutes then I am going to personally come down there myself and kick your ass. Do you understand me Commander Ray, I mean three minutes from now!”
I wasn’t convinced that I was going to light her up before hearing from Mike, but I did start counting down the three minutes and running through the final checklist. One hundred eighty seconds. In a pitched firefight that was an eternity, but it seemed way too short now.
I ran through all the pre-launch checks that Mike and I ran down earlier. That countdown clock was under thirty seconds when I heard the voice of an angel on the other end “Steve, what the hell you doing? Light that baby up!”
“Roger, Commander Nikolaevna, time, T minus ten seconds!” I didn’t bother counting down the rest of it. I hit the thrusters and nudged the boosters at the same time.
It was no different than the takeoff that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of airport passengers had felt over the years. The difference was that I wouldn’t level off after ten minutes. I would keep this up for a couple of hours until I got high enough that I could turn her nose down and skim through atmosphere fast enough to enter LEO, or low earth orbit. Once I was at LEO, I would gradually boost until I was in the lunar planetary plane and let her orbit meet me as opposed to me meeting her.
I had just informed Moonbase of liftoff when Mike came back through my headset. “Moonbase we are commencing countdown now and hope to be airborne shortly. We have activity on the ground several hundred meters south of us that appear to be hostile forces. Due to the fact that our flight recorder will never be recoverable in the case of an incident, we will transmit all commands in the open for the duration of take off and until such a time that we are out of the woods. Suggest that Prometheus and Moonbase open sideband communications now.”
That wasn’t good. The open command frequency, meant that Mike was in deeper shit than she was saying. The several hundred meters was probably several hundred feet. I reached out and opened the lower and upper sideband frequencies of the radio, knowing that Mike would have these open on listen also.
I remember thinking to myself that she needed to forget about being a hero and the fact that she need to get that bitch lit and headed down that stretch of interstate as fast as she could. I must have been talking out loud and the voice activated mike was picking it up because Admiral Roberts interrupted my thinking with “I agree with you son, but leave her alone and let her do what she needs to do.”
With that, I shut up and made damn sure that my mind knew when my mouth was closed and when it was open.
I could hear Mike and Charlie throwing readings back and forth across the main frequency. I also heard Charlie when he said “Shit, they’re coming out of the fucking woodwork!”
“Hit the air cannons that should give us some breathing room”, Mike barked.
I heard the compressed air release through the radio. I was also imagining what those many pounds of gravel that had been retro fitted to those cannons were doing to anyone who was attacking Nemesis. I hoped it was ripping them to shreds. I wanted, no, I needed Mike to get her off the ground, to come back alive. Any other result wasn’t something that I could envision.
“It’s not stopping them skipper…. Look at that shit, OH MAN! I think that they’re going to try to ram us with that thing…”
“…hit the Napalm Charlie, …only chance we got…..” And then static………...
I waited a few seconds hoping to hear something, anything to tell me that Mike as still alive. Finally I couldn’t help it any more.
“Prometheus to Nemesis, do you copy……”
Silence….
“Prometheus to Nemesis, do you copy……”
Just the slight static of dead air, no response, my heart sank to the ground. I tried to put my hand to my eyes but the fucking helmet was in my way. I wanted to be there, I either wanted to do something or die trying. I wanted to turn this son of a bitch around and go back to get her.
But even though my heart wanted to do that, my mind knew it was too late. Either the New Americans had succeeded in blowing Nemesis up or the Napalm was too unstable to work the way they had hoped.
I was numb, I don’t know how much time went by before the voice on the radio caught my attention. “Prometheus, Commander Ray, Please respond. Please respond.”
“Moonbase this is Prometheus. I will be …..” Hell I didn’t know what I would be doing so I just stopped there.
“Steve, this is Admiral Roberts. Moonbase is below planet and can’t hear you, I’m talking to you from Bravo. Son, I need you to get your shit together. I need you to pull your head out of your ass and point that shuttle in the right direction so that you can meet up with Moonbase when the time comes. So quit feeling sorry for yourself. Mike wouldn’t have wanted you to and neither do I.”
“Fuck you”, was the only response that I could think of. It didn’t matter, but Mike wouldn’t have wanted me to go out lying down. It wasn’t the way that she went out. She went out doing what she thought was the right thing.
So I hit the flaps until I got here pointed back towards the earth’s horizon. This wasn’t rocket science the way it was in the eighties and nineties. I just neede
d to clear the planet and hit the boosters.
Chapter 21
For the several hours before Moonbase came within radio reach, my radio had remained silent. I didn’t try to hail them first, I waited until they called for me before I answered them. I think that Admiral Roberts must have had a conversation with them because their demeanor was muted. They spent the time talking me in. No small talk. Just azimuth, distance and elevation, they could have turned on the transponders and I wouldn’t have had to do anything except set her on auto, but I don’t think they were comfortable with that yet. The big deal was to get her down and see how she was built so the rest of the fleet could be modified to do this. They had lost two pilots today. Mike was gone and I was not sure that I was ever going to fly another mission for those bastards. For that matter after my response to Roberts, I wasn’t sure that they would want me to.
I came in on a wheels down approach to the moon. There wasn’t any atmosphere to slow me down, but it would allow me to brake with both thrusters and wheels and didn’t actually use as much fuel as a tail down approach.
Once I had gotten her down and stopped I had to wait for the moonbase crawler to pull me inside. That meant that I had a full thirty minutes before I could get out of this bitch.
I felt wooden, I didn’t want to move. What I really wanted to do was die. I kept thinking about what I could have done to make things turn out different. Why did Mike have to die? Why couldn’t I have gone with her while Charlie flew this beast?
The worst part of it was that I knew. I knew that our only real chance of getting Prometheus back up here was with me at the stick. She was different than the others and I had been trained on her. I also knew that they were going to expect me to train the new round of pilots. I wasn’t sure that I was up to that.
The End of the Beginning Page 16
