A Dark World: The Complete SpaceMan Chronicles (Books 1-3)

by Tom Abrahams

  Bert was huffing. “I’ve got your feet hooked under a rung,” he said through heavy breaths. “I’m leaning on your legs. Can you do a sit-up?”

  A sit-up? Clayton thought to himself. What a weird question.

  He looked to his right. Chandra was holding him with one hand and the ladder’s side rail with the other. One of his legs was wrapped around the rail and tucked underneath a rung.

  “Can you do a sit-up?” Bert repeated. “If you can, with Chandra’s help we can get you upright.”

  Clayton got it. “Yes,” he said. With every ounce of energy left in his body, he tightened his abdomen, flexed his neck and lower back, and heaved himself free of Chandra’s grasp.

  Straining, he willed himself up and forward. He stretched his arms as far as he could, his fingers tensing until they found the rough metal of the rung even with Bert’s shoulder. Bent in half, he held himself upright until Bert let go and maneuvered along the outside of the side rail to a position several rungs higher.

  He carefully wiggled his feet free of the rungs and lowered them. Chandra clung to the edge of the ladder, giving Clayton enough space to center himself.

  Bert sucked in a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “I don’t know what you were doing there, but you almost killed all of us.”

  “I was trying to save you,” Clayton responded. “I didn’t want you to save me.”

  Bert smirked. “That wasn’t going to happen.” He climbed the remaining distance to where he’d been before Clayton’s fall.

  Clayton inched upward deliberately, moving hand by hand and foot by foot. There was a fiery stinging sensation along the right side of his face to go along with the other aches and pains. He couldn’t account for all of the injuries he’d sustained. There were too many.

  He stopped a rung short of where he’d been when Bert’s boot had smacked him. He tightened his hold on the ladder and waited while the Australian stretched himself to open the access panel to the control space.

  Bert shimmied to the edge of the ladder and somehow bridged the distance to the wall. He pulled himself inside the control space and then poked his head out. He waved his hand, motioning Clayton and Chandra to the top of the ladder.

  “C’mon up,” he said. “I’ll help you across.”

  Clayton finished his climb and, with Bert’s help, crossed from the edge of the ladder into the opening. Chandra followed him. The three of them were crowded in the dark space for no more than ten seconds when the lights came back on and blue light cast a dim glow in the six-by-six room.

  “Where’s your pad?” Chandra asked, still struggling to catch his breath. “Turn off the system. Hurry.”

  Bert reached around to his back to find his pad then searched the floor. His eyes widened. “I…I must have dropped it.”

  Clayton offered Bert his DiaTab, which had somehow not fallen from his back pocket. “Can you shut off the system with mine?”

  Bert shook his head.

  Chandra wiped his forehead and rubbed his hands on his shirt. “So they can see us?”

  “No,” Bert replied, “not at the moment. When we leave this space, they could see us. There are cameras in the supply room and the garage.”

  “Supply room?” Clayton asked. “I don’t remember seeing a supply room on the schematics.”

  “It’s technically part of the garage,” said Bert. “They added it after they finished the electronic mapping.”

  Chandra tugged at his collar. “So what do we do?”

  “We make a run for it,” said Clayton. “There’s nothing else we can do.”

  The men agreed and Bert led them out the opposite side of the controller space and into a corner of the garage. Colder air met Clayton as he emerged, sending a chill along his spine. He shivered.

  “This is the garage?” he asked.

  “It is,” said Bert. “Stay here for a moment. We’re out of their view in this spot. Once we leave, there are multiple wall- and ceiling-mounted cameras. This is a critical spot for them.”

  “So what’s the plan?” asked Clayton.

  “My suggestion is that we cross the garage to the supply room. They’ve got uniforms, jackets, helmets, that sort of thing. We can suit up and blend in.”

  “Good idea,” said Chandra. “Then we run out of here?”

  “We drive out of here,” Clayton corrected.

  “Oh, okay,” said Chandra. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “Let’s go,” said Bert. “No time like the present.”

  The three men, sticking close to one another, scurried from the corner of the garage, crossing a wide, shiny expanse to the opposite side of the garage. They skirted past a half-dozen large military vehicles that looked similar to Humvees, but angrier. They had higher profiles, appeared larger than Humvees, and looked more like sleek tanks.

  They crossed the space and found the secured door for the supply room. Bert closed his eyes and mumbled to himself. Then he slid open a wall-mounted keypad beside the door and punched in a series of numbers. The panel turned green and the door clicked open.

  “Yes!” said Bert, holding open the door for Clayton and Chandra. “I was hoping I’d remember the code. I wasn’t certain.”

  “Good thing,” said Clayton. He smiled at Bert and then took in his surroundings. They were in what looked like a large military-themed walk-in closet. There were racks of hanging jackets, shelves full of uniforms and boots, all of it arranged by style and size.

  “Get shopping,” said Bert. “We need to hurry.”

  The men hurriedly disrobed and found the proper-sized clothing. The digital camouflage would help them blend in with both the outdoor surroundings and the people holding them hostage. It might, as Bert had suggested, make escaping a little less daunting. The only distinguishing absence on the uniforms was a lack of rank and name tapes. But with the field jackets on, hardly anyone would notice.

  Clayton finished lacing his desert combat boots. Chandra was adjusting his pants. Bert was zipping up a field jacket. None of the men said anything as they readied themselves for the final leg of their escape mission.

  “Once we’re in one of those JLTVs out there,” said Clayton, “how do we open the bay door?”

  Chandra tugged on the bottom of his shirt. “JLTV?”

  “Joint Light Tactical Vehicle,” said Clayton. “Replaced the unarmored Humvee a couple of years ago. Rode around in one during training for the ISS mission. It looked like all of the trucks out there were JLTVs.”

  Bert moved to the door. “Yeah, they are. There are pressure plates in the floor. When the truck moves forward, the plate activates and the bay door opens.”

  “That’s it?” asked Clayton. “No additional security?”

  “We didn’t exactly consider the possibility someone would get into the garage unseen and steal a vehicle.”

  “All right then,” said Clayton. “Let’s go. The longer we stand here, the more time we give them to find us.”

  Bert grabbed the door handle, swung it inward, and motioned with his head. Clayton took a deep breath and led Chandra into the garage. Running as fast as he could, he skidded to a stop at the first JLTV he reached. He grabbed the handle of the passenger’s side, pulled it, and climbed into the cab.

  The cab was spacious with two tan fabric command seats set far apart. Clayton scooted across the passenger’s side, squeezing between the seat and a large flat-panel display, and plopped into the driver’s seat.

  Chandra was right behind him. He ducked into a rear seat behind Clayton. Bert jumped in the front passenger’s seat and slammed the door shut behind him.

  The keys were already in the ignition. Clayton turned them to the start position then pressed the large START/STOP button to the right of the steering wheel. The engine coughed and rumbled to life. The gauges on the dash glowed. The battery and fuel gauges indicated they were full. Another light told him the gas pressure system had the vehicle in the low position and the tire management gauge showed the pressure was
set to high.

  Clayton’s eyes danced across the different indicators and settled back on the fuel gauge. “We’ve got a problem,” he said. “We’re going to need more fuel than what’s in the tank. And this is a diesel hybrid.”

  Chandra leaned forward between the two seats. “What do we do?”

  “Get fuel,” said Bert. “There are large diesel tanks on the edge of the property. They’ve got gravity pumps there.”

  “All right,” said Clayton, shifting the vehicle into gear, “get me there.”

  He depressed the accelerator and the beast of a truck lurched forward. He pulled to within a couple of feet of the bay door. A circular green light on a post near the door flashed several times before becoming solid. A loud hum echoed in the garage and the door laboriously lifted.

  Clayton reached above his head and pulled down a headset. “Put these on. If I remember correctly, this thing gets loud.”

  With his headset on, the ambient noise was deeply muted, as if he were underwater. He adjusted the cups around his ears and tapped the mic close to his mouth. The garage door was open enough to move past it. Clayton shifted gears, took his foot off the brake, and accelerated into the daylight. Blinded by the brightness of the sun off the white concrete, he couldn’t see where he was headed at first. His eyes adjusted and he swung the wheel to the right, accelerating as fast as he could away from the bunker.

  “Look,” said Chandra, “the airport. We must have walked a pretty good distance.”

  Clayton glanced to his right. The airport was a couple of hundred yards from them. The paved surface ended and the truck bounced onto the frozen dirt. The ride, however, was smooth. The JLTV was designed with four independent wheels that each absorbed the shock of uneven terrain. Clayton pressed the accelerator and shifted into a higher gear.

  “How fast will this go?” asked Chandra.

  “I don’t know,” said Clayton. “We’re going to find out.”

  Bert’s voice filled Clayton’s headset. “I don’t get it. They’re not coming after us.”

  “Could be they don’t know we’re gone,” said Chandra. “Maybe your trick with the Li-Fi worked.”

  “No way,” said Bert. “There are too many alarms blaring right now.”

  Chandra leaned forward, his voice pitched with worry. “Do we have time to stop for gas?”

  “We don’t have a choice,” said Bert. “We need extra fuel. The only place we know we can get it is here. They’ve got containers too. It’s our only option.”

  The speedometer told Clayton he was traveling at seventy miles per hour. Not bad considering the size and weight of the truck. Ahead and to his left, peeking over a sloping grassy hill, was a collection of high-rise cylinders.

  “Those the tanks?” Clayton asked.

  Bert jabbed his finger toward the tanks, his head on a swivel. “Yes.”

  The JLTV rambled across the open field toward the miniature tank farm. Clayton kept his foot pressed hard on the accelerator as he hit what amounted to a mogul. The large wheels absorbed the shock, the truck whined, and it powered ahead.

  “C’mon,” urged Bert. “Get there, get there.”

  Clayton side-eyed the Aussie. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

  Clayton maneuvered to the left onto a dirt road that led to the tanks. He looked straight ahead at the large white structures. There were six of them rising into the sky, silver, unpainted pumper trucks reflecting the sunlight.

  “Isn’t all of this jet fuel?” Clayton asked as they drew closer. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Not all of it,” said Bert. “Two of those tanks are diesel. They connect to twenty-eight miles of pipe that crisscross the property. The diesel can power the bunkers and the vehicles.”

  “Won’t they run out?” asked Chandra. “I mean, depending on diesel? Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

  “No,” Bert replied. “There are collapsible solar arrays all over the place. They provide the primary source of power. Remember, everything down there is hydro-cooled and the lights are low-power LEDs. Even the communication system is powered through solar. It’s seriously efficient. The security grid is beyond state of the art. It’s bleeding-edge technology. Each of those tanks holds nearly three million gallons of diesel,” said Bert. “As a backup, it’s more than enough.”

  Clayton cleared a rise and saw the dirt road ended at a chain-link fence that surrounded the perimeter of the tank farm. He looked over at Bert, who nodded. Clayton pressed the accelerator to the floorboard and wrapped his fingers tightly around the steering wheel. Without slowing down, he powered the truck through the fence, driving through it as if it weren’t there at all, and then decelerated to a roll.

  “Look for the tanks that are labeled 1-3-0,” said Bert. “It’s the low-sulphur highway diesel. The jet fuel will be 1-2-0.”

  They searched the tanks until Chandra pointed out a diesel tank at the far end of the farm. They navigated the narrow drive to the tank. Clayton kept the engine running.

  “You said they had containers?” he asked. “Where are they?”

  “Right next to the tanks in little sheds,” said Bert. “We had to test the key panels on the sheds.”

  The men hopped out of the JLTV. Clayton’s boots crunched on the gravel as he moved around the front of the monster of a truck. The front tire came up to his waist.

  Bert had already unlocked the door and dragged out one of the large plastic fuel containers when Clayton reached the shed. Chandra emerged with a second.

  “This thing has a range of three hundred miles if I remember correctly,” said Clayton. “We’re going to need enough to fill up at least twice.”

  Bert dragged another yellow five-gallon jerry can from the shed. “What’s the capacity?”

  “Hang on.” Clayton found a fueling port and checked the stenciling on the truck. “There are two tanks. Each is about twenty-two gallons.”

  “Four-four divided by five…” said Bert.

  “Eight point eight,” said Chandra. “We’ll need nine tanks.”

  “Are there nine in there?”

  Bert ducked back into the shed. He carried out two empty cans and set them on the gravel. Clayton picked them up and carried them a short distance to a gravity pump adjacent to the large white tank. It looked almost exactly like the one he and Steve Kremer had used in Canada. He drew the pump handle, opened a valve on its side, the cap on the yellow jerry can, and started pumping the diesel.

  Bert marched over to Clayton with a can in each hand and one under each arm. “This is going to take forever. We don’t have forever.”

  “What do you want to do?” asked Clayton. “We can’t leave without enough diesel.”

  “We can’t leave if they stop us,” said Bert. “I’m going to the other diesel tank. That’ll double our pace.”

  Bert walked across the gravel to a pump catty-corner to the one from which Clayton was drawing diesel. He uncapped a can and started the gravity pump.

  They’d both filled three cans each, with Chandra running the full cans from the pumps to the back of the JLTV, when the distant rumble of an engine and a cloud of dust caught Clayton’s attention.

  “Bert!” he called, pointing toward the dust.

  Bert craned his neck. His eyes widened and he bit his lip. “We’re done!” he yelled. “Let’s go with what we’ve got!”

  Clayton stopped the pump and capped the can. He reached the back of the JLTV and heaved the can next to the others.

  “Somebody’s coming,” Clayton said at Chandra’s look of concern. “We’ve gotta go.”

  Bert shoved his last can into the back, shut the rear door, and hustled into the passenger’s seat. He then climbed back to the turret position between the rear seats and where they’d stored the diesel. Clayton shifted into gear, yanked the wheel, and sped toward the exit they’d created on their way onto the tank farm.

  Parked outside the mess of warped chain-link fence and concertina wire was a pair of matching
JLTVs. There was a woman standing in front of them. Her arms were folded across her chest. Her strawberry blond hair blew across her face. A uniformed guard stood beside her, an M4 pulled tight to his shoulder and leveled at her head.

  Clayton slammed on the brake and the truck slid to a stop. Chandra poked his head between the seats. “Sally?”

  “You know her?” asked Clayton.

  “Yeah,” said Chandra. Without saying anything else, he slid to the front passenger seat and exited the truck. He walked to the front of the JLTV, keeping his distance from Sally and the man threatening to kill her.

  Clayton kept the engine running but set the emergency brake and hopped from his seat onto the gravel. He stepped around a fragment of chain link and stood in front of the open driver’s door.

  “Are you okay?” Chandra asked. “Did they hurt you?”

  Sally swiped her hair from her eyes, revealing a bruised cheek and a cut under one eye. “I’m fine,” she said. “But you need to come back.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Chandra. “What happened?”

  Sally looked at her feet and rubbed the backs of her arms with her hands. “I…I didn’t want to tell them what I knew, what you told me about leaving.”

  Chandra took a tentative step forward, reaching out for her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

  “We need you to step away from the vehicle,” came a voice over a loudspeaker mounted to one of the JLTVs. “All three of you. Otherwise, things will get uncomfortable for all of you.”

  Clayton peered through the darkened windshield of the JLTV to Sally’s left. It was Chip Treadgold.

  “Vihaan,” said Treadgold, his voice hollow over the electronic amplification, “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in you. I trusted you.”

  “Chip?” asked Chandra.

  The passenger door swung open and Treadgold emerged. He stepped confidently toward the front of the vehicle, pointing his finger at Clayton. “And you, spaceman. You couldn’t leave well enough alone, accept your destiny. You had to push and pull and create a problem for everyone. That’s not the NASA way, is it? Asking too many questions? Disagreeing with authority? I think the good folks at Mission Control would be so disappointed in you if they knew.”