by A. F. Allen
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The Last Rocket
by A.F. Allen
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Science Fiction
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Mystic Moon Press
www.mysticmoonpress.com
Copyright ©
NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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CONTENTS
Dedication
About the Author
* * * *
* * *
The Last Rocket
By: A.F. Allen
All rights reserved
Copyright © Apr. 2009, A.F. Allen
Cover Art Copyright © Apr. 2009, Dawné Dominique
Mystic Moon Press, LLC
Santa Fe, NM 87507
www.mysticmoonpress.com
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.
No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Mystic Moon Press, LLC
Special Note: This book contains UK Spellings
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Dedication
Above all to my wife for putting up with me as I go from angst to anxiety to triumph and back again as I write. Her support and her belief in me make it more than just worthwhile.
Thanks also to Jen and Kris at MMP for their confidence in me and my work.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
“Gentlemen that concludes my presentation, now are there any questions?”
Professor Bringham looked up at his audience having spent the last hour and a half talking, almost non stop. The seven senior scientists, the ruling council, were staring at him, their faces impenetrable masks. Finally the committee chairman spoke up.
“Are you sure you can pull this off?”
“Absolutely sir.”
“You think there is enough metal left?”
“In this particular area, yes sir.”
“That rocket will take thousands of tons of metal, and you cannot hope to keep a project of this scale a secret.”
“I know, sir. That's why we'll build a secure facility and use the troops for security the way I laid it out.”
“Allowing their wives onto the rocket as a way of securing their loyalty is a good concept, there especially the genetics bit. What about the construction workers? How will you select the crew from them?”
“By lot sir, green tickets will be selected by lottery.”
The seven scientists looked at each other. Bringham could see their lips moving but the privacy screens had dropped, disconnecting him from their discussions. They'd forgotten he was an excellent lip reader. He smiled, he could already sense the decision was going to go his way.
* * * *
Three years later...
“There was another incursion in sector nine last night.”
“Oh, bad?”
“Yeah, quite bad, seventeen security bods, and twenty-one workers.”
Hope flared in Bob's mind.
“Any of them green tickets?”
Tony shook his head, “Nope, not one. How come you didn't hear it?”
“I was down in the rocket pit helping Professor Bringham; we were testing the auxiliary pod motors.”
“Ah. I thought that's what the rumble was. I think the pops tried to coincide their attack with that.”
“Suppose it makes sense, I never heard a thing.”
The lunch line moved slowly forward. Finally the two of them were able to take their metal plates loaded with bread and cheese together with a tin beaker of coffee flavoured water and they headed to sit on the grass outside. Most of the workers stayed inside the mess hall but Tony loved the outdoors and Bob usually kept him company.
Suddenly the public address system barked into life.
Now hear this, now hear this. The populace attempted an incursion last night in sector nine. Although there were casualties the break was rectified and the fence patched. There is no cause for alarm.
“See, told you.”
“Yeah right, but the people out there are going to become more desperate as time goes on now. Surely they can see the rocket is finished.”
Tony shrugged in response.
“What can they do?”
“What can't they do? There must be a hundred thousand out there and everyone thinks they have a right to be on that last rocket out of here.”
“They haven't earned it.”
“You think that bothers them?”
The barracks complex they occupied was close to the crown of the second highest hill in the complex. From the grassy slope they could see all the way down past the lower barracks to the twin fences that marked the edge of the compound, over two miles away.
“They certainly look rather mad out there today.”
“Yep. I think they had a leader last night who had a good plan. Trouble is we had a better one.”
The pops were surging backward and forward outside of the second fence. The security guards were very much in evidence patrolling the dead ground between the two fences in armoured Hummers and the occasional Abram.
“You sure they didn't get any green ticket holders last night?”
“Nope.”
“Damn! Might have had a chance at one if they had.”
“Why do you think the green ticket holders are in the central barracks? They're not going to take chances. Still there might be a hope.”
“Oh, what?”
“I hear they've got a mass problem. A lot of the green tickets have been working too hard. Most of them have lost a bit of weight. There's a rumour they might issue a couple of extra tickets to make up the mass.”
“Fingers crossed.”
“Yeah. Fingers crossed bud.”
* * * *
Professor Bringham looked over the top of his specs as he raised his eyes form the printout.
“You are sure these figures are accurate?”
“Yes. We are about two hundred and seventy pounds down on total mass for the steerage passengers.”
“So what do you propose?”
“Well we could hold a raffle for two extra tickets.”
“And if two big men win, bigger than the hundred and thirty-five average we need?”
“We'd have a problem.”
“We cannot devalue the green ticket system by issuing a ticket and then not honouring it. The chance of a green ticket kept this project on track for three years. Drawing them a month ago was against my better judgement, but I was overruled. We'll issue two more but we must pre-select the candidates.”
His secretary nodded, nervously.”
“How many men do we have who match the one hundred thirty-five averages?”
“Only four sir, Bob Hancock your assistant is one.”
“Good, we'll take him. Who are the others?”
“There's his sidekick Tony Mortimer, who works on the attitude jets.”
“That's settled then. Issue them both with green ticket passes today. Tell them it's as a result of a computer glitch. We launch tomorrow. They'll be glad to be onboard.”
The two white ticket men shared
a tiny smile and then moved onto the next item on the agenda.
* * * *
“Take your rifle and ammunition. Join your squad and cover your assigned sector.”
The line shuffled forward.
“Take your rifle and ammunition. Join your squad and cover your assigned sector.”
Finally Bob and Tony were at the front of the line.
“Take your rifle and ammunition. Join your squad and...”
“Excuse me sergeant?”
“What?”
“We're the newbie green tickets. We haven't been assigned to a squad or a sector.”
The armoury sergeant, a blue ticket holder himself glowered at the two men.
“Jesus! They don't tell me nothing! Go wait over there. I don't have time Whites are boarding in ten minutes.”
He turned to the next men behind them.
“Take your rifle and ammunition...”
“This is it Bob, we're on the crew.”
Bob shrugged at his friend's enthusiasm. He felt the same.
“Not exactly crew Tony, steerage passengers are not exactly part of the crew.”
“Yeah, but we got a ticket off this planet on the last rocket and that's what counts.”
The tangy blared.
Now hear this, now hear this. Whites to boarding stations immediately. Blues to pre-boarding stations, greens to defensive stations. Pops have breached the perimeter and the security troops have pulled back to the first line of barracks on the eastern side. All white tickets to boarding immediately.
“You guys!”
The armoury sergeant was thrusting two rifles into their hands.
“Come with me.”
* * * *
Twenty minutes later they found themselves standing at attention as the line of yellow ticket women filed past the detector screens and security guys on the north ramp.
“Single file, have your boarding passes ready.”
The long line of obviously pregnant women filed past, a poignant mixture of anxiety and relief on their faces. Once through the security line their step lightened and they began to smile. They had passed the final hurdle and they were on their way off planet.
The crackle of small arms fire in the distance was quite clear now although still some distance away. Some of the women were beginning to cry and look back over their shoulders. Bon knew, as did they, that out there their husbands were giving their lives to buy them the time to take this chance. The only women allowed on board had to satisfy two criteria. They had to be fertile and carrying a white ticket's baby. Secondly their husbands paid for the wife's passage by holding the pops back. Bob had to admit the system was brutal but effective.
Finally the line of women had passed and there was a brief pause on the gangway as the access ramp was reconfigured for the next phase of boarding.
Blue tickets boarding. Blue tickets boarding.
The public address system could hardly be heard over the now incessant crackle of small arms fire. The heavier thud of the cannon on the tanks could be occasionally heard but against a mob it wasn't the Abram's best weapon. The ripping sound of the machine guns added a counterpoint of the sounds of combat further out.
* * * *
The bulk of the blue tickets had finished boarding and now finally it was the turn of the greens. The few guard and security commanders with blue tickets were the only ones, other than the steerage passengers not yet boarded. Already the whole yard vibrated as the massive rocket motors were bought on line one by one and tested for the final time.
Green tickets boarding. Green tickets boarding.
The few white ticket holders had strolled up the ramps, the yellow and blue ticket holders had queued in an orderly fashion. The bulk of the passengers, the green ticket holders, all men, were a mob. The security cordon was closer now, much closer and every so often a bullet would whistle across the open access way.
Bob grabbed Tony and the two of them hustled and pushed their way through to the front of the mob and as such were almost the first to spill into the huge steerage way hold of the ship. Everyone had seen the schematics but most of the steel workers who had built the huge hollow cylinder hadn't been among the lucky green ticket winners. For Bob it was the first time he'd been inside it.
“Wow! Will you look at that?”
He craned his neck back to stare up inside the several hundred feet high cylinder. A blue ticket worker waved them forward and pointed them toward the central spiral staircase that ran all the way up to the top of the three hundred foot space.
“Go; go ... come on, up. Climb to the top.”
Bob followed Tony as they ran to the stairs and began the laborious climb to the top. The three hundred foot climb took several minutes and they were both blowing hard by the time they reached the top tier. Every seven feet they had passed a tier like this one. Each floor was simple grillwork walled off from the stairs with only a narrow doorway. The bare enclosures contained no comforts of any type.
“Come on, come on.”
The blue holding the door open for them and literally shoving the panting men through the doorway was none other than the armoury sergeant they'd met earlier.
“Move around, move around and fill the gaps.”
“Sergeant?”
“What now? Oh it's you two newbies again. Get in there!”
“Where's the acceleration couches?”
The man laughed.
“They weigh too much for the likes of you and me lad. Stand close together and link arms. Only whites and yellows get couches. You all get each other. Now get in there.
The two friends moved into the space looking down through the maze of tiny holes in the gratings.
“This is something, isn't it?”
Bob grinned back at his friend.
Already the blue on the landing below was diverting the men still coming up into the tier below. As the level of crowding reached its peak the door clanged shut and Bob watched the sergeant snap the deadbolts into place. He nodded to himself, that made sense, after all if someone fell down those stairs as the rocket lifted off it would be very messy.
He looked down but all he could see was the heads of the men on the tier just below his feet. The noise of the locking doors was receding down the cylinder. A steady stream of blues headed past him to the hatch in the deck just above them. That deck looked very thick and the hatch was obviously armoured as well. Bob manoeuvred himself till he was facing the stairwell, looking out through the mesh as the last few guards ran past.
The hatch just above his head clanged shut with a terrible finality and the thousands of green ticket passengers were now on their own. Bob watched dumbfounded as the stair treads withdrew in sequence into the central spine eventually leaving a hollow tube three hundred feet high through the centre of the well. The whole design reminded him of something but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Tony jostled his elbow.
“We're on the way, sunshine. We've made it aboard the last rocket to leave Earth. I told you we'd get lucky!”
Several metal sounding booms echoed up the chamber, probably the final grapples letting go, any minute now the engines would fire and the rocket would be on its way.
* * * *
On the flight deck hundreds of feet higher up the metal tower, not far below the nose cone itself the colonel in charge of the rocket systems for lift on turned his head within the confines of his acceleration couch and looked at Professor Bringham.
“All systems ready sir. The last guard station reports they will be overrun within five minutes at the most. They can buy us no more time. We have to go.”
The silver aired professor nodded.
“Launch when ready.”
“Aye sir.”
The colonel reached for the public address microphone.
Now hear this, now hear this. All hands brace for launch. We go in sixty seconds. All hands brace for lift off.
* * * *
The lights dimmed as the power was routed
elsewhere in the ship. Dimly over the hum of conversation around him Bob could hear the tannoy continuing to count down
Thirty-seven, thirty-six, thirty-five.
Tony slapped him on the back he half turned to smile at his friend's exuberance and was distracted by a movement on the smooth metal of the central shaft.
Twenty-nine, twenty-eight.
Directly on his eye level a small round hole, only an inch or so in diameter had opened up, he glanced down to see another one about nine inches below that, then another and another. Lifting his eyes back up he could see there was another row about nine inches further around. As his eyes snapped into focus he could see the grid pattern of holes repeated all the way around the spine from the top as far down as he could crane his neck to see.
Twenty-one, twenty, nineteen.
The countdown continued remorselessly and finally when it reached fifteen two things happened simultaneously. The lights went out and a fine mist was propelled from what could only be the central spine of the rocket ship.
Thirteen, twelve, eleven
The atomised liquid coated every part of Bob and his clothing in a split second. Luckily his mouth had been shut and he'd instinctively blinked his eyes shut too before any of the noxious liquid hit the sensitive membranes.
Adrenalin coursed through his veins as the elusive thought about the design of the steerage compartment sprang into tight focus in his mind. The smell of the liquid was dreadfully familiar to him from his work on the auxiliary engines.
Seven, six, five
He turned his head to shout to Tony but couldn't see his friend in the darkness. The mesh in front of his hands was slippery from the fluid, as was the mesh beneath his feet. He slipped and fell to his knees.
Four, three, two
There were screams echoing through the entire compartment now as other men too reached the same conclusion he had. Someone nearby was screaming at the top of his voice. It took barely a heartbeat to realise it was himself.
One, zero
The flash of light at the bottom of the huge cylindrical chamber was intense and travelled rapidly up toward him. Now he knew why the two of them had been given green tickets at the last minute. There was only one place in the rocket where the total mass had to be a minimum rather than a maximum. They were not about to travel into space as steerage passengers at all. Steerage wasn't for passengers. Steerage had another meaning. They were not passengers in any sense of the word.
