Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3)

by Scott Rhine

  Sonrisa said, “I’d start latitudes at zero where he’s standing. The river wobbles too much for a longitude marker; however, that big lake on the other side has a single island in it. We can put the prime meridian through the middle of that island, just like England.”

  Red complained, “I wanted to name it Wizard Island, like in Crater Lake.”

  “First person who reaches a place earns naming rights, but I reserve the right to veto anything too irreverent,” Zeiss decreed.

  “So I get to name a swamp?” Herk complained. He took several minutes of splashing and grumbling in his EVA suit before picking the landing point for everyone else. He said, “I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure I saw some fish.”

  Finally, Herk planted a beacon the size of a tent stake.

  “Mark,” said Park as he made adjustments. “Stand back.”

  ****

  An hour later, all the campers had reached the bottom along with the first wave of crates. “We’ll be back tomorrow for another load, once we find a camp site.”

  “This is paradise,” muttered Toby. “Admit it, when we signed up for this space program, this is the kind of thing we dreamed about. I’ve never seen this type of algae before.”

  Yvette smiled at his boyish enthusiasm. “I spotted a crawfish on the replay of Herk’s tape, and I make a mean étouffée.”

  Several of the men expressed appreciation for the idea.

  “Since there’s aquaculture, there may be insects or predators,” Toby warned. “Let us know if you get bitten or stung. Don’t be a hero.”

  Rachael consulted the infrared aerial map they made on the way down. “I haven’t seen any large birds. The creek leads here, puddles, and where the bog touches the umbilical, vapor is released. I assume the fog helps water all the plants. We’re still collecting data. We should be able to follow the creek banks the whole way back to the source.”

  “It’ll be less risky than tramping through strange undergrowth,” Yvette agreed.

  Toby examined the plants surrounding them in the shallows. “This looks like wild rice.”

  Rachael said, “That stuff rims almost every lake in this hemisphere. If this is edible, someone planned years ahead for us.”

  “Maybe the aliens tried to reproduce everything around the farm where they landed,” Yvette suggested.

  “The rice is from a different biome,” Toby noted. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  “Voice log everything,” Zeiss reminded.

  “Don’t worry,” said Nadia. “I have the IR camera with the new buckyball battery pack. We’ll capture every bumbling twig snap and Polish curse for posterity.”

  “Hide under the mountain at the far end of the ship, if you can,” Zeiss encouraged.

  When the intrepid explorers were gone, Red took her turn under the helmet. Park watched from his narrow control bed but said nothing. Zeiss split his attention between his ambitious wife, Red, and the display bubble. At first, nothing happened.

  When Mercy linked in tandem, the helix interface appeared.

  Red suggested, “Maybe we have to pull up the landing gear first.”

  Zeiss hit the reset button for them, returning the dominoes to their saucer-hugging position. Then Mercy was able to summon a map of the solar system in order to demonstrate tricks like rotating the view to the ecliptic, adding gravity funnels in blue, and drawing solar winds in orange. Red practiced as her husband took audio notes and cheered her on. Much less verbal than Mercy, Red breezed through the basics and moved on to lens positioning. When she drew a straight line from the current location to one in high orbit around moon base, the interface gleeped.

  “Try curve splines like we do for flight paths,” Park admonished. Although his specialty was star drives, he’d worked hard with the team to optimize orbital approaches.

  Red calculated minimum energy paths in her head and sketched them in. The computer refined the model after she finished.

  “The space debris is moving in this image,” Mercy observed. “The path is updating in real time.”

  Park said, “Let me try something.” Putting out his arms as if to push a boulder, he gave a slow, steady thrust.

  All the side doors to the control room closed. Zeiss said, “Caution signs are flashing on several panels now. The indicator is moving along your selected route.”

  “The lens is moving,” Red said with excitement as she watched the picture in the overhead dome change.

  Sojiro pointed down. “The shadow on the floor changed positions. The whole ship is moving.”

  Hearing this, Park pulled his arms back until the motion stopped. He slid out of the couch, pale. “I could’ve killed us all!”

  “You didn’t. You made another discovery. Let’s mix you some juice.” Zeiss helped Park to the dining room. The Korean drive specialist was clearly drained from the exertion.

  When the door to the mess hall opened, Auckland was already inside, strapped to the back wall. Zeiss asked, “What happened?”

  “Gel-lined recesses were revealed when the hatch slammed shut. I was investigating the alcoves when a force slapped me into the wall face-first,” Auckland said, unwrapping his makeshift webbing job. “I managed to turn and secure myself.” As he stood, the physician said, “I don’t suppose anyone brought anything stronger than tea with glucose powder?”

  “Maybe Herk, but you’ll have to ask him when I’m not around. I think he brought some brewer’s yeast,” Zeiss confided. A buzz on his headset told him someone was trying to contact him on channel two. “Speak of the devil. What’s happening groundside, Herk?”

  “It’s a good thing this dirt is soft—”

  The men heard Red say the word ‘faster’ before the dining room hatch sealed itself again. “Brace!” Zeiss warned.

  Auckland leapt back into his cushioned wall unit. Zeiss slapped the woozy Korean against one gel pack while he tumbled toward another. As he struggled to strap in, he could hear his wife’s typical fighter-pilot trash talk. He switched channels with a click sound and squeezed out the words, “Lower acceleration.”

  Red heard him over the headset, and when he could bear the weight, Zeiss said, “Better. Forces are dampened for you in the center, but not for everyone else.”

  Mercy whispered, “I told you not to override.” More loudly, she said, “We’ll coast in gently at this rate. You can plan the deceleration curve for your practice.”

  “Roger.” Flipping to channel two again, Zeiss heard cursing from several sources. “I hear you, campers. A few of us flew across the dining commons. The good news is that Park and Red have found the thrusters. Now we just have to figure out the brakes.”

  There was grumbling until he added, “That will be my lesson.” He heard laughter and relief. “Everyone okay?”

  Herk complained, “I have a new gash on my forehead, but it shouldn’t scar . . . too badly. Yvette twisted her ankle and maybe her knee. Until we can carve a branch off one of those fruit trees for a crutch, one of the men will need to help her walk. We’ll have to leave another crate behind.”

  “Roger. People first. We have years to get your part right, but only a few days to figure our end. That will involve a few mistakes. Over.”

  “Just warn us next time. Campers out.”

  Despite his boasts, Zeiss’ efforts were clumsy, and each manipulation took several tries. After the braking maneuver was programmed in, he only lasted ten minutes. Using the control helmet was like mountain climbing in thin air. Auckland ended the session when Z’s medical readouts entered ‘dodgy territory.’

  Zeiss stood, admiring his crude sketch of the galactic arm on the bubble overhead while he sipped tea.

  “Maybe it’s because we were born with page knowledge and played with alien tech since we were little,” Mercy said to salve his ego.

  Red shook her head. “Don’t coddle him. He’ll find his own groove. The machine will adapt to his methods. Z may be slow and methodical, but he’s like a snowplow. Once he sets
his mind to it, he’ll blaze a path for all of us. I’d get us there fast, but most of the team would be paste. We balance each other.”

  The arm Zeiss had around his wife wasn’t obvious until his wristwatch beeped. Then, he said, “Red, you show Lou the interface while I watch moon base from the lens. Things should be getting hot there about now. Can you zoom the image in on them?”

  Sounding weary, Mercy pointed at the ceiling bubble. “Snowflake, zoom on that location, factor of four.”

  The bubble image obeyed.

  Zeiss raised an eyebrow.

  Mercy explained, “It’s best to preface commands with a name so it doesn’t confuse other conversations or swearing with orders.”

  “You’ve named the most powerful computer in the solar system Snowflake?”

  “We all know who I’m talking about.”

  Lou rolled his eyes. “Why not rainbow unicorn?”

  Sojiro raised a hand. “No one’s asking how she’s controlling the ship from outside the helmet.”

  We’ve become like the Greek demigods, thought Zeiss. Each of us with our own domain and powers far above humans.

  Yuki shrugged. “The computer can read the nanochips in her fingernails and the broadcast from her headset. She transferred some of the minor controls to fingers and voice.”

  “Cool. Why?” asked Sojiro.

  Mercy looked at Red, who told them, “Z took so long on his intro lesson that she had to get up and splash her face. It’s her third session in a row, and she’s seeing spots. I told her it was okay to rest as long as she could help out when you asked questions.”

  Further discussion was cut short by flashes of light on the screen.

  Chapter 11 – Space Marines

  At T plus 7 hours, 45 minutes, Seraph limped back to UN moon base with its cargo from the artifact. Amid a flurry of activity, Mission Control directed them to bay six, the least damaged landing pad. The shuttle crew unloaded the Ascension recorder and Crandall as Professor Horvath directed the repair crews around them. “We need this ship spaceworthy in two hours. Patch the biggest holes first.”

  “It’s all holes,” complained one worker.

  Horvath ordered, “Swap out the entire life-support unit in section three. Remote diagnostics say it’s flaky. Do we have a spare drive unit?”

  A technician shook his head. “Only one of the new ones, for the Tetra prototype. Even if they had a decent mount point left, we couldn’t synchronize a mismatch like this. Ms. Smith might try it, but I wouldn’t dare.”

  The crew shoved the armored Crandall out of the ship first. “Anything wrong with him?” Horvath asked, accompanying the only returnee from the alien expedition.

  Clooney, the captain of the Seraph, said, “Radiation count was a little high, but other than that, he’s just depressed.”

  Horvath saluted the man in the golden armor. Crandall waved her away. “I trained for five years and got tossed aside after a couple hours on the mission.”

  “Stop your bellyaching,” Clooney said, emptying the suit’s waste by connecting a hose from the airlock wall to his side. “My ship systems haven’t worked right since I rushed to Ascension’s rescue. I might have just enough time to eat a hot meal and fix the CD player before heading out again. They’re going to throw you a freaking parade.”

  “Ha. I’ll be lucky to avoid the brig,” Crandall said. “Why is the airlock taking so long to cycle?”

  “Low power, low air, low everything,” Horvath explained. “Things here are holding together with chewing gum, and we have to pass the gum around. Have you been debriefed?”

  The marine nodded to Clooney. “First pass, at least. He grilled me the whole flight in. I drew pictures. We put a copy of my interview on the data recorder.”

  “Good. I don’t want to be accused of influencing you,” Horvath said. “The base commander has already accepted my confession. You should be absolved.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I made my choices.”

  “They’ll claim Red used her empathy talents to sway the crew.”

  “That wasn’t it either. I explained on the recording how Z recruited me. See, every grunt I’ve ever met who’s seen action asks himself the same question: why are we here? They never find a good answer. Up here, life’s just as hard, but we all know the why. I think every jack one of them would rather die in space trying to make things better for everyone.”

  “Let’s hope it’s a trial by your peers.”

  In a whisper, he added, “The recorder shows an alien treatment for cancer and a whole bunch of other diseases. I had to bring it back, professor.”

  She patted his massive shoulder. “You did your duty . . . to everyone.”

  The air compressor chugged for the last time, and the interior door hissed open. Horvath had barely taken a step into the hall before the lights flickered and they all felt a rumble through the walls.

  Glancing at her helmet display, Horvath said, “Something’s triggered the perimeter mines.”

  The other men peppered her with questions. “Robots?”

  “Chinese?”

  “Orbital drops?”

  “What does Cherub say?”

  Horvath held up a hand while she processed several streams of data simultaneously. “Drone buggies. Academy folks with signal guns and masers are heading out to stop them.”

  “It’s just a prelude to an attack,” Crandall insisted. “They want the artifact data.”

  “And you, probably,” Horvath agreed, scanning the incoming feeds. “The command bunker is reporting shoulder-mounted rockets impacting all over the perimeter. Whoever’s shooting doesn’t leave footprints behind, but the thermal camouflage disrupts when they fire. Intelligence is guessing men in specialized space armor, dozens of them.” She drew back from a particularly grisly image. “Our perimeter fence just went down.”

  The captain of the Seraph hit the close button inside the airlock, and Crandall jumped back inside with him before the door sealed. “The COIL weapon is the one thing that works perfectly on my ship. Stay here; you’d just be extra mass.”

  Crandall hit the emergency decompression button used by rescue personnel. The air that had taken minutes to fill exploded out into space in seconds. “Who says I’m going back in your sardine can? This is the first time we’ve ever had a real ground battle on the moon. What we do here is going to make history. I’ll be lecturing at military colleges for life.”

  “You don’t have any weapons,” complained Horvath over the radio as she searched for an alternate airlock.

  Chuckling, Crandall helped himself to a sharp section of twisted landing-gear pipe that a welder had just chopped off. “So I’ll kill one of the enemies and use his. Transmit that data to Earth. We’ll hold them off.”

  Horvath looked down at the massive flight recorder. She couldn’t help with the battle until it was safe. Damn. She grabbed a hand truck and belted the recorder on. She made it halfway to the command center before she felt the vibration of Seraph’s takeoff.

  ****

  The ground battle progressed faster than Crandall thought possible. The base’s long-range antenna died first, destroyed by mortars. There would be no transmitting secrets to Earth in the next couple hours, and no calls for help. Moon base could only converse with the shuttles when they were within a few kilometers. He gathered stragglers to stop the enemy before they reached the tunnels.

  The presumed-Chinese contingent was masked from aerial view, so the shuttles had to rely on explosions and radio traffic to track them. Cherub noticed the dust plumes first and dumped a lot of watts into the area, firing their lasers in side-by-side wide bursts instead of in serial. The space armor glowed but the dust didn’t. Cherub’s captain shouted, “Holy crap, those mortars just hit us with something that went right through our force field. Talk about turbulence. Density readings say it’s depleted uranium shells. Is that what took out your rear engine, Seraph?”

  “Roger,” Seraph replied. “We’ve also been bounce
d around by ice-vapor clouds they’re creating. Don’t get too close. We were two klicks high before we could swap ends and slow down. Did I mention that we’re out of countermeasures?”

  Working together, the shuttles eliminated each pocket of attackers they detected. With the two zap guns imported from L1, the UN team would disable enough of the enemy tech to make them appear on scanners. Then the air power would sweep in.

  “Are you sure it’s the Chinese?” asked Ophan.

  Seraph replied, “My navigator just ran time-lapse and regression analysis on the dust clouds we spotted on our flight in. We’re 90 percent certain. If you fellows can finish these guys off, we’ll do the recon to make it an even 100.”

  “Why camouflaged troops?” asked the colonel from the deep bunker.

  “They’re trying to avoid all-out war,” Horvath muttered. “They want what we have. If they can steal it before the missiles reach us, the evidence of this theft will be long gone.”

  “Any other evil ideas from the jailbird experts?”

  “They can kidnap anyone they want and deny it. After they torture the captives at their leisure, the hostage could be traded for technology or other spies. I’m in the main data center, duplicating the information in as many places as I can, including the shuttle memory, in case they’re the only ones left alive.”

  Crandall was certain everyone heard him gulp. He activated the self-destruct fail-safe on his suit. If his vital signs flat-lined or he said the trigger word, a built-in explosive would prevent the suit and its occupant from being captured.

  His ragtag band of defenders formed an arc around the datacenter dome. The field of solar panels gave them partial cover as they fought. He was shocked to find that a man in dust-colored armor had snuck past them and was in the process of etching a circle on the base of the dome with a laser cutter. They could only see the invader when the laser torch flared.

  Crandall couldn’t run and tackle the way he might have on Earth. Out here, Newton was king and the vacuum was his unforgiving queen. Instead, the modified and amplified marine picked up a sharp-edged solar panel and threw it like a Frisbee toward the sapper. Injured, the sapper was an easy target for the repair crews and technicians who made up the majority of the defensive line.