Bastion Saturn

by C. Chase Harwood

  Spruck texted back. Roger that. Stand by to open the cover in ten, nine, eight—

  She looked up and murmured, “Oh Lord Jesus, tell me you’re not just an Earthbound god and that you’re out here, too.” She grabbed the release switch.

  Four, three, two, one. Open.

  She opened the hatch and nearly leaped out of the suit in surprise at how close the ground was and how fast they were moving.

  Spruck texted, Release exosuit lock and jump in five, four—

  Jennifer took a deep breath and unlocked the suit from the ship. She felt a distinct thump through her feet and lower back. Her body unexpectedly shifted and she felt her groin muscles tighten. The Belle slowed like a train coming into the station as it passed over the lip of a crater.

  Two, one, jump!

  She jumped. “Sheeeeeeiiiiiiiittttt!”

  At the same moment, Caleb threw his ship into erratic maneuvers to create a diversion. His defense computer flashed warnings of imminent death, and he righted the ship while jumping onto the channel that they had all agreed to monitor, yelling, “Hold fire! Hold fire! I fell asleep. The ship was reacting to a dream, uh, nightmare. All good. I’m awake.” It had been distracting enough so that the killers that surrounded him hadn’t noticed the Princess Belle’s maneuver and Jennifer’s jump into the same crater that he had leaped down into.

  Jennifer had intended to roll, but tripped and splayed out in a spread-eagle belly flop that had her bouncing like a Raggedy Ann, knocking the wind out of her, the glass of her helmet plowing across the ground.

  She hadn’t had the wind knocked from her since she had been a kid while training with her merciless mother. Her chest felt tight and empty, cramping with the effort to restart, her mouth agape, feeling like a fish dropped on a dock. Finally, she sucked in a huge gulp only to cough violently with the effort. She pulled herself into a clumsy fetal position, the exosuit too bulky. When she lifted her head, her view was obscured by fine dust and grit. She could just make out the shadow of the crater getting longer fast. In minutes it would be dark. That was her window. Gotta move.

  As she struggled to sit up, a hand landed on her shoulder. She screamed and twisted away, rolling onto her back and kicking wildly in the direction of the touch. A man’s voice using the local area suit channel said, “Hey, man. You’re a crab. Wow. A freakin’ space crab.”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Jook held up his hands in supplication. “A talking freakin space crab? I won’t touch you, space crab.”

  Jennifer gathered her wits and took in the man in the dirty exosuit. “Are you high?”

  “Sooo freakin’ high, space crab. On walkabout till the air runs out. Didn’t expect to meet no freakin’ space crabs though.”

  “So you can’t tell that I am a human woman?”

  “Sure, crab. I can see that.”

  “OK, why not? I’m a crab. I’m a little turned around. I’m guessing you came out from where I want to go in.”

  “Oh. You don’t want to go in there, crab. Place full of assholes.”

  “That’s true. Can you point out which way to the walkabout door?”

  Jook pointed over the lip of the crater. “Hansel and Gretel crumbs is what I call it. Previous asshole who ran this place put UV reflectors on the ground. Just follow them to the door. But beware the witch.” He started to giggle, which turned into a full-blown belly laugh and Jennifer watched him fall over on the ground.

  “Are you . . . are you going to be all right?”

  “Go away now, space crab human. You’re bumming my high.”

  When she reached the top of the lip, Jennifer turned on the UV helmet light . . . and saw nothing. The light wouldn’t be picked up by her own eyes, but they should have highlighted the reflectors. She took some tentative steps in the dark, scanned around, and still saw nothing. She voice-texted Caleb:

  I’m not seeing crap out here. Ran into a stoner who pointed the way. My night vision shows the base. No reflectors.

  I met that guy. Run a diagnostic on the helmet.

  She sat in the dark and let the helmet check itself out. A fault flashed an error in the UV and full light spectrum torches. “Damn.” She told the helmet to reboot and continued to sit in the dark while the thing shut down everything but life support and started up again. The sun would be coming up again soon, and Saturn was rising as well. Her dark window was almost gone. The helmet rebooted, and another diagnostic told the same tale. Something must have jarred loose when her helmet smashed across the surface.

  It was Jook’s turn to be startled when Jennifer laid a hand on his shoulder. “Shit, man! Why would you do a brother like that?”

  “I need you to show me how to get through the walkabout entrance.”

  “Not going back there, high-bummer.”

  “Just show me the way. Please. I’m not asking you to go in.”

  “You don’t even look like a crab anymore.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Lady, you suck. I came out here to commune with everything. I was having a perfectly pleasant time speaking with a bunch of angels who are waiting on my shit. I got to laugh at a fallen space crab, and you’re focusing my beam on your narrow little ass.”

  “Sorry. Can you just show me to the door? I’m not asking you to go inside. On the other hand, I’m hoping to blast off this rock and you can come too if you help . . . Though, why I would want help from a tripped out blinker like you—”

  “You have a ship?”

  “I will.”

  “Well, come on. I’m on fumes here, man. My CO2 light is screaming like a broken Vegas-hooker-bot.”

  Just as Bert had predicted, nobody was watching the back door. The long tunnel to the central nexus was empty. Jennifer and Jook lifted their faceplates up to breathe in the dry base air and to hear better.

  Jook said, “Bozos.”

  “Huh?”

  “Bozos. Clowns.”

  “I know what a Bozo is.”

  “Their security is for shit. They’ve got the cops working for them even.”

  Jennifer gave him a look that asked, And?

  “I was head of security here.”

  “You’re one to talk, then.”

  “I wasn’t the one to fake everyone into bailing out. That was all Larry. You can see the debris still coming down outside from all the folks here getting blasted. God, Larry was an asshole.”

  A voice came over a loudspeaker in the ceiling. “Halt! Stay right where you are.”

  Jook said, “See. Bozos.” He started to run. Only with the light gravity it was more of a leaping bound. “Come on, man!”

  Jennifer bounded, too. Jook had long legs, and she lost her footing and glanced off the walls as she tried to keep up. As they entered the landing nexus, they careened into a guy wearing full antilaser kit. Jennifer bounced away, skidding across the floor. She watched in surprise as Jook snatched at the guy. In one fluid motion, Jook flipped the man’s faceplate up, jammed a pair of fingers into the flailing and screaming fellow’s eyes, and cut off the scream with a vicious punch to the throat. As Jennifer picked herself up off the floor, she saw what looked like a whole platoon of guys in antilaser gear efficiently bounding toward them from an adjacent hall.

  Jook heaved the decimated guy up and used him as a shield as a half a dozen laser blasts came his way. He yelled, “Central! Protocol 65LN!”

  A male computer voice reminiscent of a 1968 hippie came through the PA. “Yes, my brother.” The doors surrounding the nexus came slamming down, one chopping the lead Wang Fat guy in half, sending a grisly spray of bodily fluid and entrails into the room.

  Jennifer just stared at Jook wide-eyed.

  Jook wiped some spatter from his face and grinned. “Emergency protocol. Seals off the landing nexus in the event of an undetected airlock breach. Shit, I’m still stoned. The blood on the walls isn’t really forming into words, right?”

  Jennifer looked around. “It’s not, but what do you see?”


  “It says, She prefers to be naked.”

  Jennifer gave him a double take and chalked it up to extreme coincidence. “Can we get to the shuttle with all of the doors shut?”

  “Of course. Why couldn’t we do that?”

  Jennifer decided to leave it alone. Instead she lowered her visor and voice-texted Caleb.

  You won’t believe it, but I’m in, and the stoner I met outside is helping me.

  Are you in the shuttle?

  Almost.

  Getting hairball out here. One of the cops just landed and—

  A bright red warning flashed across her heads-up. Signal jam. She tried sending another text but got the same warning. She lifted her visor and said to Jook, “So gotta go.”

  He held his hand out to the doors like a game show host. “OK. Which bay?”

  She spun in a circle. “Crap, I don’t remember.”

  Henry Lo’s voice came over a ceiling loud speaker. “Open the doors Mister Dukemejian, and we won’t flay your skin off, beginning with your feet.”

  Jook sneered at a ceiling mount camera and bent down to the upper half of the Wang guy lifting the corpse’s laser gun out of its death grip, mumbling, “Wish these things would shoot at more than flesh.” He looked back up to the camera. “Flay already means take the skin off, you redundant moron!”

  There was a long pause and Henry Lo’s voice came over again. “Mister Dukemejian, not only will we flay you, but we will do it over a period of days. During each day, we will expose your exposed nerves to a variety of stimuli that I promise will be simply horrific in its agony, but not so much as to kill you. Oh, and we will remove your man parts one testicle at a time.”

  “There you go again, moron. You’re going to expose my exposed nerves. Why not say it with more panache? Something like, we will introduce your exposed nerves to a verity of unpleasantness.” He turned to Jennifer and said in a low voice, “Seriously. Which door? It’s only a matter of time before someone pulls up the base manual and overrides the doors. Anybody can access it. It’s not like we kept it classified.” He cocked his head. “OK, now the blood on the walls is spelling out door number 3” He pointed at three. “Ring a bell?”

  “Three sounds right.”

  “Central?”

  “Yes, my brother.”

  Jook’s cadence became serious. “Protocol 12 LN3.”

  Door 3 unsealed itself and rose. Jook said, “Central. Protocol Fahrenheit 451, system wide. Exclude flight bay 3.”

  The computer voice echoed off the walls. “Jook, my man. I detect no fires in the base during this current space time.”

  “Override protocol—679’er XK1. Apply base wide Protocol Fahrenheit 451, extended suppression.”

  “Override 679XK1 accepted. Peace out.”

  As Jook closed the door to the launch tunnel behind them, a torrent of halon fire-suppressant came shooting down from the ceiling into the nexus, turning the space into a solid bank of fog.

  “Wow,” said Jennifer. “That’s happening base-wide?”

  “Everywhere but right here, sister.” He spoke to the airlock door. “Security Commander Dukemejian to enter.” A quick biometric scan of his vitals popped the door. Jook pointed behind him with his thumb. “Depending on how tight the quarters, the extended suppression will knock some of the bastards out. Every one of them’s going to feel a bit intoxicated.” He waved Jennifer into the ship dock tunnel with a gentlemanly gesture. “After you.”

  Henry Lo wasn’t coughing so much as wheezing. He and Zheng stood almost brushing shoulders in the cramped above-ground flight-control room. One moment he was watching one of his cops land and the next the halon system was discharging massive quantities of white gas into the room. He could just make out the woman sitting at the console before him as she slumped and then slowly fell to the floor. He felt Zheng pull him to the floor as well, as if there was more air to breathe down low. Not a chance—the gas expanded into everything. When the system finally shut off, he woozily noted that the air cleared pretty quickly, then everything went black.

  As Jennifer and Jook climbed into the shuttle cockpit, she asked, “You wouldn’t know how to fly one of these would you? I’m only asking because the last time I flew something I crashed.”

  “Nope. Sister, you couldn’t possibly get me to wire my head to anything, even if it isn’t networked.”

  “Yeah, well manual ain’t no great shakes if you’re clueless. Last time I went manual, bam!”

  “Reason they pay pilots the big bucks. Happy to talk to a computer. Not a chance I let one in my head.”

  “Oh, darn.”

  “What?”

  Jennifer pointed out the window. A cop in an exosuit had jumped off his ship’s platform and was walking straight toward them. He was carrying a toss rocket. It was a simple device. Look at what you want to blow to smithereens, toss the rocket in the air, and watch it light up and smack into what you were looking at. The cop’s voice came over the loudspeakers in the cockpit. “This is Officer Lawrence Lanoff. You will desist from any further activity. You will remove yourselves from that shuttle and return to the base. If you make any effort to light up an engine,” he warned hefting up the toss rocket, “I will add you to this moon’s dust.”

  Jook sneered as he watched the cop.

  Jennifer asked Jook, “Any magic words for Central?”

  Jook slowly shook his head. “I believe the threat of that dude offering to flay me. I’m sure the offer still stands and will be acted upon. He stood and turned to leave the cockpit.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Outside. I’m going to beat the shit out of that pig. Feel free to power up once I’ve got his full attention. If you can take off, sister, you should. I was already psyched up to roll the final credits anyway.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t power up until I have his full attention, and he has to choose where to aim that rocket. It’s fifty-fifty after that. I’m counting on him looking at me as the bigger threat.”

  Jook closed the cockpit door on his way out. Jennifer checked to see if her connection to Caleb was available . . . maybe Spruck, but her heads-up still read, Signal jam. An attempt to use the ship’s communications offered the same response. She felt the vibration of the secondary airlock opening and closing, then Jook strolled out from under the nose of the shuttle with the erect posture of a man on a mission. He was carrying a large wrench, and she absently thought that she wouldn’t have known where the toolbox was.

  Chapter Fifteen: Plan C

  Caleb watched a person, he guessed a man, exit the shuttle and walk toward the cop. All communication was blocked. He couldn’t reach Spruck, couldn’t bring up Jennifer. All he got was the same statement on his heads-up: Signal jam. His ship was still screaming warnings about missile lock, and now the douche in the base who had made all sorts of threats, including flaying him alive, wasn’t talking, either. He was starting to break into a full-blown panic when suddenly the man outside the shuttle took two huge leaping bounds and heaved some kind of tool at the cop.

  Jook had never been a traditional athlete in the sense of showing any skill as a jock. As a devoted stoner and master of the C grade, he had been dared by the track coach to do something, anything, that resembled exercise. Coach Anton had passed Jook and his buds every day as they toked up outside the cafeteria at lunch before taking off to go surfing. One fine spring day, the coach had finally stopped while walking by, and to their surprise, asked for a hit. Pretty soon they were all laughing, laughing their asses off over why the hell knew what, and Coach Anton lifted Jook’s lanky long arm and challenged him to chuck a spear (technically a javelin) across the length of the soccer field. Jook, as it turned out, was a hell of a chucker of javelins and just about anything else. He was particularly proficient with a tomahawk; something his mother would not abide in the backyard. So he simply walked into the woods down the street and practiced until he could hit a donut-size target with reliability at fifty paces out.
The tomahawk had been a gift from his grandpa who said that his grandpappy had given it to him, and that old timer had in turn inherited the tool from his father who had been one of the last free-to-be-me American Indians (though no one knew which tribe). The tale was spoiled when he had buried the hatchet so deep in a tree that he snapped the hickory handle off trying to get it out. A stamp inside the head revealed the manufacturer as Sears & Roebuck. The discovery didn’t bother him. The thing was still really old. A new and better-balanced handle made him all the more proficient. He also became a track star of sorts, choosing to stick with the javelin only. By being that one guy on the team who could be counted on to bring home gold, he was held in great esteem throughout the school. That didn’t stop him from being a C maker at everything else—except getting high. All to say that the pig in front of him was almost completely taken off guard as the wrench pierced his faceplate and pushed his nose and eyes into the cushy gray pillow that was his brain. In a delayed reaction, the cop’s nervous system activated his trigger finger, setting off the toss rocket, and as he spun backward in instant death, the rocket dropped from the cop’s hand. It ignited and simultaneously got caught in his weapon’s bandolier. The corpse was dragged, bouncing across the surface like a rag doll strapped to a bottle rocket.

  Jook had a split second to run. The only option was forward, right at the bouncing cop. The rocket had a proximity fuse. Jook jumped over the passing explosive, and it blew up ten meters behind him. As the shrapnel pierced his suit, he felt a hard punch in his right kidney. Immediately, the atmosphere warnings went off in his helmet as air blasted out of the holes. He fell in a twisting motion and found himself skidding along the surface while looking up at a bunch of missile launches high in the space above him. Then his vision began to tunnel.