Space Above and Beyond 2 - Demolition Winter - Peter Telep

by Peter Telep

  Wang released the balloon and used the Short Range Radar to track its progress. He handed Shane the T-140 radio's cordless receiver, then he gave her a nod once the com balloon had reached the proper height.

  "Silver Bullet One to Bright Eagle, copy?"

  After a remarkably short pause, a communications officer replied, "Stand by, Silver Bullet One. Routing signal to Wolfpack Six."

  "Guess McQueen's already back from Jewelgo. He probably pissed somebody off there," Shane told everyone.

  "Wolfpack Six here," McQueen answered. "What's your status?"

  "Have located one survivor of the twenty-first squadron. Others dead. Aqueduct is also a POW camp. Repeat, aqueduct is also a POW camp. Estimated that five hundred Earth Forces personnel are being held there." Then, in as dark and cynical a tone as Nathan had ever heard Shane muster, she added, "Awaiting orders."

  McQueen stammered, and Nathan imagined the colonel standing slack-jawed as he said, "Uh, stand by."

  Nathan exchanged looks with everyone else, who appeared as anxious as he felt. He wondered if Ross and McQueen were as cunning as the brass. Had they known about the POWs? Perhaps McQueen had hesitated because he knew about the prisoners and was surprised the five-eight had discovered them.

  But then again, the squadron had been ordered to get inside the duct to destroy it. Wouldn't Ross and McQueen have realized that the secret couldn't be kept? Wouldn't the brass have realized the same thing? There was a piece of the mission missing, a valuable piece that perhaps no one but Lieutenant General Osborne or the old man knew about.

  Commodore Ross's deep drawl came over the radio. "Silver Bullet One, this is Bright Eagle."

  "Copy you, Bright Eagle," Shane responded. "Awaiting orders."

  "You will proceed with mission Alpha Zulu Bravo Niner as planned."

  Nathan stiffened and looked around. Everyone save for Teddy wore masks of disbelief. The silicate listened unaffectedly, motivated by programming instead of morals.

  "Sir. Aqueduct is also a POW camp. Five hundred Earth Forces personnel inside. The execution of the mission will result in their deaths."

  "Fifteen seconds left," Wang said, referring to the cutoff time for communications.

  "Execute the mission, Silver Bullet One," Ross said resolutely. Nathan had heard that tone before; there would be no breaking the man. But was it the commodore who had actually been speaking, or was he just the brass's puppet?

  "Aye-aye, sir. Silver Bullet One out."

  A strange grin came over Shane's face, a grin that in a way suggested that she had quite completely lost her mind. She regarded Nathan with that crazed smile and said, "We ain't doing it. We're stealing a couple fighters and getting the hell out of here."

  "It's about time," Cooper said through a deep sigh. "Let 'em bring us up on charges. I'll take this one to the media first. G.I. Geequed uncovers Marine Corps war crime."

  "Captain Vansen," the silicate called. "There may never be another mission here. We are the only hope those prisoners have. We should attempt to rescue them."

  "Teddy, you shake a chip loose or what?" Cooper asked incredulously. "There are over five hundred prisoners. It's not like we can pack 'em into fighters and fly 'em out of here."

  "You're correct. Enemy fighters will accommodate a maximum of four humans."

  A chill shot down Nathan's spine as an idea came to him. "Wait a minute. What about those tankers?"

  "What about them?" Wang asked. "The crew compartment in them can't be a hell of a lot bigger than a fighter's."

  "But the cargo holds are massive," Nathan pointed out.

  Damphousse shook her head. "But they're being filled with the fluid."

  "So we empty the fluid," Nathan said. "Gotta be a storage tank. Probably one under the airfield."

  "Still doesn't mean the tankers' holds have life support," Shane said. "But we might be able to Scotch-tape and coat-hanger 'em the same way we did that bomber."

  "I have complete schematics of both the fighters and tankers," Teddy reported. "And I can convert them to digital images."

  "Do so, immediately," Shane ordered. "And print out your digital photographs of the duct while you're at it."

  "Hold on a moment," Kyoko said with a wave. "This is moving way too fast. Even if we think we can fly the prisoners out of here in one or two of those tankers, we still don't know how to get our hands on them."

  "That's what you're going to figure out," Shane said. 'You strike me as a smart girl. Go for it."

  Kyoko smirked mildly, then she looked at Nathan.

  He shrugged.

  twenty-two

  Shane sat on the ledge, staring at the digital photograph of the hatch built into the airfield, but the image wasn't registering. In her mind's eye she saw ten flickering candles set into a homemade birthday cake. "Happy Birthday, honey," Mom said. "Now you're a really big girl. How do you feel?" She had told her mother that she didn't want to be a really big girl yet. Just a big girl. Grandma was a really big girl. And she remembered how, after she had blown out the candles, the smoke had rushed up her nose and made her cough.

  She could still smell that smoke, still hear the giggling of her friends. It had happened yesterday. And she had felt free then. The ugly feeling had yet to coil around her soul.

  Was she just afraid of growing older? Was that it? A simple fear of her own mortality? That's probably what the shrinks would tell me, she thought. But she knew, somehow she knew that that wasn't true. She sensed that remembering the old birthday put her closer to identifying what was wrong with her. She thought about the little girls and boys who had attended.

  While some people managed the amazing feat of staying in touch with childhood friends throughout their lives, being a Marine Corps brat had taught Shane to resist becoming too close with her friends. But there had been a few occasions when she had succumbed to the temptation, only to have her heart broken when it was time to move away. She remembered those last waves good-bye, her friends standing on the sidewalk, she with her hand pressed against the car door's window.

  Over the years she had learned to protect her heart from those breaks, but that protection came at a price she was still paying.

  "Captain Vansen?"

  Jarred from her introspection, she looked up at Teddy, who sat across from her, holding the rest of the index-card-sized digital photographs and schematics. "Sorry. What?"

  "I asked you what you thought about that hatch. Lieutenant Hawkes and I believe it leads to a subsurface tunnel that runs into the mountain and up into the aqueduct,"

  "Eyes in the sky would be able to confirm that," Shane said. "But I'll buy that even without confirmation."

  "There are also automatic hatches located on either end of the bridgeway. Apparently the Chigs are able to transport equipment and supplies faster by doing it outside the duct, which reveals that, despite its size, there may not be a lot of maneuvering room inside. With five hundred people to move, that is going to pose a problem."

  "We'll deal with that when the time comes. What about knocking out the power?"

  He shuffled through the stack of photographs, found two and handed them to her, saying, "These thermal images reveal the location of both the primary and secondary generators. They utilize the extreme heat of the liquid being mined as a fuel source. It's an ingenious system."

  "Don't admire it too much," Shane said, lifting a brow and returning the photos to him. "We'll be blowing them up first."

  "Assuming that the prisoners are being held in energy field cells, cutting both generators should free them. The only variable here is that we don't know their physical condition. Many of them may be injured and unable to move."

  "Or they could be drugged or the Chig's could've been experimenting on them," Cooper tossed in, taking a seat next to Mister 404 and drawing his legs up into his chest.

  "That's also something we'll have to deal with when the time comes," Shane answered.

  "You know, Shane. Maybe you were right when yo
u said we should just get the hell out of here," Wang said. He had been sitting on the far side of the ledge, talking quietly with Damphousse. Now he rose and stepped toward her. "Saving those prisoners. It's the right thing to do. But we don't know what we're walking into. Ten seconds into it we could get whacked."

  "In which case you won't know what hit you anyway. So just play along," Shane said. "What do you and 'Phousse got on their outer defenses?"

  Wang looked back at Damphousse, who took another look at the photographs in her hand, then said, "It's a pretty standard array. Although we don't have very good images of the north side of the duct. We're assuming they have the same defenses on both sides."

  Shane didn't know why, but she noticed that Mister 404 looked at Cooper, who returned a hard look.

  Damphousse continued. "Though there's absolutely no way to detect it, we believe a field of buzz beams lies below the duct, and according to Nathan and Kyoko, there's electronic concertina wire looping around both mountains, although the location of the northeast line is still not known."

  "Suggestions for approach?" Shane asked.

  "We have two," Wang said. "We move along the west mountain, where there's a lot more scree and talus. Some of that larger debris will give us good cover as we come under the duct. But there's still about a seventy-five-yard gap between the end of the talus and the hatch. The Chigs will have sharpshooters posted along the bridgeway. They'll pick us off as we make the dash, so one of us will have to take them out first." He looked at Cooper, the best shot in the squad.

  A cocky grin formed on Cooper lips. He winked, then fired an air rifle to demonstrate his prowess.

  "And the second approach?"

  Damphousse grimaced slightly. "This one we don't like as much. Nathan already shot up the EC wire on the east mountain, so we could climb beyond it and come in from that side. We already know the area's not mined. But there's a much bigger gap between the mountain and the hatch."

  "That's true," Kyoko jumped in, holding up a finger. "But that approach would put a team much closer to the tankers."

  "Speaking of which, what do you got on them?" Shane asked.

  "The crew compartment is not at all like a Chig fighter, but it's very similar to a Chig bomber, which Nathan tells me you've already flown. Each tanker requires a pilot, co-pilot, and a navigator slash weapons operator, which leaves us a Marine to spare. But if more than one of us doesn't make it out of there, one tanker's not lifting off."

  "Unless one of the prisoners is willing to help," Nathan added, then took a long swig from his canteen. "Or we could fly that one by Egghead."

  Shane narrowed her gaze on Kyoko. "What about the holds?"

  "That's where the problems begin. We can certainly fit two hundred and fifty people into each of them, but no matter how much we reconfigure the life support system, it won't provide enough 02."

  "Even if the pilots rely solely on rebreathers?"

  "That would help, but what we're basically faced with is having the prisoners breath unrecycled air until it runs out. Which means we gotta get them back to the Saratoga ASAP."

  Shane looked at Mister 404. "When you get a chance, do the math here, factoring in the Saratoga's perigee and the maximum speed of the tankers."

  "There are sixteen other variables," the silicate corrected. "With exactly two hundred and fifty individuals in the hold, the tanker would be able to reach the Saratoga with remaining oxygen for fifty-seven seconds of flight."

  "Oh, man," Cooper sighed. "That's a tight window."

  "Something else has been bothering me," Kyoko said. "Thermal scans confirm Nathan's guess that there's a holding tank beneath the airfield, and I'm fairly certain I can reverse the flow and empty the ships. But there might be fumes or a residue in the tankers' holds that will be harmful to the prisoners. Also, the stuff is extremely hot when they extract it. The hold could be superheated as well."

  "Good point," Shane said. "We don't want our getaway car to have a flat tire, so to speak."

  "Which is why Kyoko and I have decided to go down there and check out the tankers first," Nathan said.

  Shane nodded, then gazed solemnly at everyone else. "And if we can't use them to evac the prisoners, then we have no choice but to grab a couple of fighters or a tanker and go."

  "At least we would have tried," Wang said.

  "Okay. Listen up. We got three teams. Kyoko and Nathan are tanker team." She pointed at Cooper. "Hawkes, you're going mountain climbing. I want you to drop every Chig and silicate on that bridgeway. Then you gotta get onto it and set diversionary charges. After that, you take out a few of the Chig fighters." She turned away from everyone to rub her eyes. "404, Wang, Damphousse, and me are third team. We're going into the duct."

  "Captain. There are about one hundred Chigs operating this facility, aided by approximately thirty to forty silicates, according to our intel," Mister 404 reported. "We could turn those thirty or forty silicates into allies of sorts."

  Shane saw that she wasn't the only one frowning at him. "How?"

  "I can convert the T-140 into a wireless modem which I can then hardwire to myself. Once in contact with the other silicates, I can create a diversion of my own, luring them outside the facility where Lieutenant Hawkes can terminate them."

  With pursed lips, Shane shook her head. "I've already given you too much of my trust. This is where I draw the line."

  "But aren't you listening to him?" Cooper asked. "He's talking about making it easier for me to grease the silicates, and he's a silicate himself. Doesn't that tell you where his loyalty lies?"

  "All he has to do is get on that modem and tell them we're coming," Shane growled. "And they'll be waiting for us."

  "They may already be waiting for us," Cooper said, then he held up four fingers. "There are gonna be four of you against over a hundred of them inside the aqueduct. You telling me you like those odds?"

  "This conversation is over, Lieutenant."

  He threw up his hands. "Fine. Die in there without help." He turned away and began muttering to himself. "Least I'll be outside. Maybe I can steal a fighter on my own."

  "Another point to make," Kyoko said. "Timing, as usual, is everything. We have three ticking clocks against us, two of which we can anticipate. We know how much time we have to get the prisoners to the Saratoga and we know when the Saratoga will hit the perigee of its orbit and how long it will remain there. What we don't know is when those tankers are scheduled to lift off. They could already be doing pre-flight checks."

  Cooper swung around to face Shane. "That's something Teddy could find out right now."

  "That's something I already know," the silicate said. "Based on their arrival time and the fueling and cargo loading times as determined through thermal scans and photographs, the tankers should be full in approximately seven hours. Existing intel on pre-flight checks reports them at twenty-two minutes."

  Shane eyed all of them. "You got an hour to sleep and fifteen minutes to prep. All three details will stand ready to depart at 1920 hours." The squadron prepared to synchronize then watch phones. "Ready, ready, hack."

  All Shane wanted to do at the moment was take herself up on that hour of rest she had mentioned. She had barely slept since coming to Bulldog's Belly, and, with the strange calm that sometimes accompanies fatigue, she settled down to rest. She let her head sink farther into her environment suit, tucked her gloved hands under her armpits, then closed her eyes. A barely audible conversation between Nathan and Kyoko was in progress, and for a moment she pricked up her ears in an attempt to eavesdrop. But then Cooper began disassembling his M-590, creating a racket that drowned out even the frequent whistling of the wind.

  Trying again and again to purge her mind, to focus only on the freckled darkness, she grew tense and found herself staring out through safety glass smudged with fingerprints. Beyond the glass, standing at the curb in front of her house, were Nathan, Paul, Vanessa, Cooper, and Colonel McQueen. They wore somber expressions as they waved good
-bye to her. The car pulled away. And Shane refused to wave back.

  twenty-three

  Cooper wholeheartedly believed the Severed Thumbs's lead singer, who sang in his digitally enhanced tenor that it was "never gonna be all right." It might be all right if Shane would let Teddy communicate with the silicates inside the aqueduct, but she had to be an idiot about things, as usual.

  With his M-590 rifle cleaned, lubricated, and reassembled, Cooper strapped the weapon onto his rucksack, sealed all of the open pouches on the pack, then settled back and rested his head on his rolled-up sleeping bag. He adjusted his headphones, keyed the volume up a notch on his CD player, and closed his eyes. Indeed, it was never gonna be all right.

  He had decided to use the CD player even though when Shane awoke she was sure to reprimand him. He didn't care anymore. If he was going to go out there and probably buy it, the least he could do for himself was crank up the jams. He called it a going-away-forever present to himself.

  But then the music abruptly cut off. He opened his eyes to find Teddy seated beside him and removing finger from the CD player's STOP button. The silicate glanced sidelong at Shane, who was on the opposite of the ledge about twenty-five feet away, then he said, "Lieutenant Hawkes. I told you that I would not disobey Captain Vansen's orders. And I know that we made a deal to avoid telling her about the possibility of other entrances into the aqueduct. But that possibility combined with the fact that she will not permit me to mislead the silicates makes the odds for success—"