East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Chapter Twenty-Two

The crew quarters at the Penan reactor were old but in far better shape than the training facility. They had been made nearly two thousand years before, back when the Wolf Lake nuclear power plant was converted to fusion, and the plascrete was crumbling in places. But new beds had been installed in the crew bay and Herzer lay in one of them, cradling his head with his right hand while idly clicking his prosthetic.

“Would you please quit that?” Megan suddenly snapped, pausing in her pacing.

“What?” Herzer said, then flinched. “Sorry. Bad habit.”

“Not normally,” Megan said with a sigh. “I’m sorry, but how can you just… sit there?”

“Nothing else to do,” Herzer pointed out. “All the teams are dispersed, the shuttles are on the way. All we can do is wait.”

“I hate waiting,” Megan said. “I got used to hating it. Waiting is a bad thing for me,” she added unhappily.

“It’s not exactly easy for anyone,” Joie pointed out. “But I know what you mean about it being particularly bad,” she added, sighing. “All I wanted to be was free to spend my time as I wished. And now I’m back… waiting.”

“We could play a game,” Evan said, looking up from a schematic. “Charades?”

“I don’t think so,” Megan said, starting her pacing again.

“Twenty questions,” Herzer said. “I’m thinking of something on the ship.”

“Herzer, don’t start,” Megan sighed. “No more drills, okay?”

“Animal, vegetable or mineral?” Courtney asked.

“Animal.”

“Orcs,” Layne Crismon grunted. The tall, heavy-set sergeant was stretched out on his bunk, much like Herzer, and had appeared to be sleeping.

“Got it in two,” Herzer said with a grin.

One of the Blood Lord reinforcement team stuck his head in the barracks and looked around.

“Commander, the reactor has lock on from shuttle four.”

“Crap,” Herzer said, getting to his feet. The shuttle was at the far end of the ship from Maintenance. “Any word from the other teams?”

“Wait,” Megan said, holding up her hand. As she did, an avatar of the unworldly Ishtar appeared, folded in a lotus and apparently floating in midair. The councilwoman was Changed in strange ways, body lengthened and limbs so hyperextended that they appeared more like the legs of a spider.

“Commander Herrick,” the council member said, nodding, “Megan. The Alabad reactor has lock from shuttle five. However, Taurania appears to have been skipped.” Alabad was Team Graff, the Blood Lord pure team, while Taurania was Team Massa. If he didn’t adjust they’d be left behind.

“Bloody hell,” Herzer muttered, glancing at the world map. “Could you set up a portal to move…”

“More,” Megan said, looking up as Ungphakorn appeared.

“Issshtar, Megan, Commander Herrick.” The council member was a five-meter feathered serpent with functional wings that were folded back along his body. He appeared to be curled on a complex couch. “We have lock on from ssshuttle ssseven for the Limosss reactor.” That was Van Krief’s team.

“Aikawa has sent a message,” Ishtar put in. “Yanzay has lock from shuttle twelve.”

“Finally some good news,” Herzer said, frowning. Twelve was one of the two shuttles that would debouch almost directly to the maintenance area. Yanzay was Cruz, which would put his Blood Lord heavy team, and Geo, right by Maintenance. “Megan?”

“Sylania is three,” Megan said shaking her head as her eyes looked into the distance. He’d left Bus in Sylania.

“We’re heavy to the front,” Herzer said, frowning. “Five, though…” His eyes unfocused again.

“There isss a problem?” Ungphakorn asked, tilting his leonine head quizzically.

“We are receiving only five shuttles,” Ishtar said.

“That’s not the only problem,” Herzer said, coming out of his trance. “One of the shuttles we’re getting is going to be surrounded by New Destiny’s troops. I have to decide if the team can make it out or if they’ll be overwhelmed. But we’re looking at a twenty-two hour turnaround on the shuttles. If I leave a team on the ground, we’re going to be without them for twenty-two hours and we’ll already be outnumbered. And, bottom line, I need the pilot, badly. But I need techs, too.” He frowned and closed his eyes, aware that more than half of the Freedom Coalition Council was awaiting his decision.

“Damned if you do, honey,” Megan said. “Kick it up?”

“No, my teams, my decision,” Herzer sighed. “Councilwoman Ishtar, could you please portal Team Massa to the Alabad reactor and have them board shuttle five?”

“I will do so,” Ishtar said, fading.

“I ssshall go asss well,” Ungphakorn said. “Good luck, Icarusss.”

“Thank you, sir,” Herzer replied. “Megan, do you have enough power to connect me to Mike?”

“Easy,” Megan said, closing her eyes. In a moment a hologram of the team leader appeared.

“Mike,” Herzer said, nodding.

“Hey, boss,” Massa replied, frowning. “We don’t have a shuttle!”

“I know,” the commander said. “Look, it’s a bit worse than that. You’re going to be portaled to Alabad for shuttle five. The problem is, you’re going to be surrounded by ND forces. They’re going to have one, two, six, nine and ten.”

Massa frowned and worked his jaw for a moment, then turned to look at a layout of the ship.

“Crap,” he muttered after a moment. “You were serious when you said surrounded.”

“When you hit, have Nicole pull the injectors and EVA,” Herzer said. “Just get the hell out. At the very least, pull the injectors and try to EVA the pilot and techs.”

“Die or drop time?” Massa said, shaking his head. “Thanks for the mission.”

“Short answer,” Herzer replied, his face hard. “I need Josten. I want Nicole and Manuel. I desire you, Arje, Feng fu and Rashid. That is your priority. Is that clear?”

“Clear,” Mike said, his jaw working. “Anything else?”

“Meet me in Maintenance,” Herzer said, nodding.

“Will do,” Mike said. “Bye, Herzer.”

“Bye, Mike,” Herzer replied. “Cut it, please, Megan. Bus’s got three, we’ve got four, Van Krief’s got seven and Cruz has got twelve. Not good, but not as bad as it could be.” He stopped and shook his head unhappily. “Not as bad.”

“What was that all about?” Courtney said, looking from Herzer’s hard visage to Megan’s stricken expression.

“He just sacrificed most of Team Massa,” Layne replied, rolling to his feet. “Get it on, boss?”

“What do you mean he just sacrificed them?” Joie asked, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Shuttle five is going to have shuttles full of New Destiny troops on every side of it,” Megan said, staring at her lover as if he were a stranger. “They’ll want to take us out if they can do it and not take too many casualties. They’ll know that Mike’s team is cut off and they’ll close in on the shuttle, right?”

“Probably,” Herzer said, blowing out a breath. “They might just ignore them, but that’s a low-order probability as Geo would put it.” His jaw worked for a moment and he shrugged. “I needed Josten and Nicole.”

“So you just sent them into the middle of a swarm of New Destiny orcs?” Joie asked, angrily. “How is that going to get them to you?”

“Mike and the Lords will hold the docking doors long enough for them to EVA, if it comes to it,” Layne said, opening up his locker and looking unhappily at his space suit. “So, do we get it on?”

“Twenty minutes,” Herzer said, distantly. “It will take an hour for the shuttle to pump out, when it lands. We start getting it on when it lands.”

“So that’s it?” Courtney said, her eyes wide. “You just throw away half the team to get two or three members. Maybe?”

“Yes, that’s it, Courtney,” Megan said, finally letting out a sigh. “Now leave him alone.”

“Leave him alone?” Courtney shouted. “He just threw away people we’ve been training with for weeks! Those are my friends!”

“They’re his friends, too,” Megan said, grabbing the redhead by the arm and shaking her. “So shut up!”

“You can’t just throw them away!” Courtney yelled. “Who are you going to throw away next? Me? Megan?”

“If it comes to that,” Herzer replied coldly, still looking into some unknown distance. “If the mission dictates that you have to die, Courtney, then you will have to die. That is what this is all about. Something that Mike understood, as do Arje and Feng fu and Rashid.

“They will try to keep the orcs off of the rest until they can EVA and hopefully escape on the surface. I very much hope that none of this comes to fruition. However, if all I get is Josten, I’ll consider it a win. Josten and Nicole will make it a very good choice. Manuel would be a great benefit but, frankly, we’re more short on good hands-on engineers, like Nicole, than we are computer techs. And we have more need for them with pulling the injectors.

“I had three choices. I could choose to ignore the shuttle, let it go up empty. That would leave the team on the ground for the majority of the projected mission time and it would leave the shuttle untouched. I could send up the Blood Lord pure team. They might be able to pull the injector and maybe not; it’s not a straightforward procedure. That would still leave the techs I needed on the surface but, assuming they could survive, and that’s a major assumption, the fighters might be useful. I don’t intend to fight if I can avoid it, but it might come to it. Or I could send the team. There are a few possibilities. Their shuttle might dock early and they can then run for the crew passages and evade into areas we have a tighter lock on. The New Destiny forces might avoid them and just make for the control room, assuming that the big battle will be for it. Or they could be trapped in battle in a very small place. In the latter case I trust Mike Massa to hold the damned door until most of the techs can EVA. It will then be up to them to make their way to Maintenance. As you might have noticed I had a very short time to make up my mind about all of this. I chose the latter path. And, again, if I get just Josten and Nicole I will consider it a win.”

“What if it had been our shuttle?” Joie asked, curiously.

“I would have switched with another team,” Herzer said. “By necessity it would have been Team Van Buskirk, something I thought about in advance. Sacrificing Megan is a very last choice. Somewhat after me, assuming that Cruz or Van Buskirk are still alive.”

“How can you be so cold about it?” Courtney asked, amazed.

“It’s his job,” Megan snapped.

“Yes, it is,” Herzer said, chuckling blackly and finally looking at Courtney and Joie. “It is my job to determine who is to be put in harm’s way. That’s the commander’s job, being the chooser of the slain.” His jaw worked for a moment and then he shrugged. “That’s why I get paid the big bucks.” He paused and frowned for a moment. “And what happened to the other shuttle?”

“We’ll be able to find out when we get up to the ship,” Megan pointed out.

“Hey, you might want to take a look at this,” Yetta said, getting to her feet, her eyes fixed on the window by her bunk. She’d been looking out the window and studiously ignoring the argument.

“Oh, cool,” Layne said, glancing outside, then darting to the door and throwing it open.

The ship dropping out of the low-hanging clouds should have been impossible. It seemed to stretch for miles but was, in fact, less than three hundred meters long. Three hundred meters of ceramic and steel was still one hell of a sight, as it settled to the ground with hardly a thump. The ship was a long cigar shape, the rear apparently blunt with a rounded nose. There were no wings or vanes or portholes, just smooth ceramic hull that settled onto the pad on three broad skids.

As they watched, massive metal hoses trundled out of the side of the reactor and headed for the ship as portions of the hull slid back and sideways to reveal attachment points. In moments the massive ship was discharging its long awaited cargo into the tanks of the hungry reactor.

“That’s it,” Herzer said. “Now we start getting it on. Megan, I need all team leaders.”

“Coming up,” she said, smiling faintly. “Boss.”

“We only have five shuttles,” Herzer said to the team leaders. “That means Team Graff won’t be shuttling up in the first load. We have three, four, five, seven and twelve. That means we have four to port and only one to starboard. Team Massa is going to be cut off in shuttle five, starboard. All the rest of the shuttles on that side can be assumed to be New Destiny. They will attempt to EVA after disabling the shuttle. Lieutenant Cruz.”

“Go,” Cruz said, his handsome face cold.

“You’re twelve. Go for Maintenance and secure it as best you can; don’t bother disabling your ship. Have Geo secure the injectors as fast as possible and keep them secure. Hide them if you’re hit, destroy them if you think you’re going to lose them. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Captain Van Buskirk,” Herzer continued. “Your team and mine will rendezvous in section A, port and proceed to link up with Team Van Krief at the personnel lock of shuttle seven. Assure that your ship is disabled before egressing. Ditto Van Krief but secure your doors and await our arrival. New Destiny should have eight and eleven but they bracket the control room; they should head there if they act as we expect. We will attempt to slip past them to Maintenance. If we are unable to screen past them I’ll make the decision whether to EVA or try to force past at the time. Do not engage New Destiny forces if you can avoid it.”

“We’re going to be down to slim chance on fighters,” Cruz said unhappily. “No joke we don’t want to engage.”

“If there is time and opportunity in the movement we will disable ships as we pass,” Herzer continued. “With the exception of eleven and twelve. If we can get more fighters up before New Destiny reacts to our plans, we’ll enable nine and ten. But as soon as we’re assembled, we start hitting the ships and taking them down.”

“You guys have fun,” Mike said, thinly.

“I’ll see you all in Maintenance,” Herzer said, nodding.

“Now we get it on?” Megan asked.

“Now we get it on,” Herzer agreed, walking to his locker and pulling it open. The females had gotten adjusted to disrobing in front of the men and, truth to tell, nobody had much interest in looking or even bitching. The room was silent except for the occasional grunt of effort from pulling on the skin-tight suits or a groan as a catheter was inserted. Even the normally voluble Courtney was subdued.

“We’re going to be really short on fighters,” Megan said, finally, breaking the silence.

“That we are,” Herzer said. “We’re not going to have Team Graff and I was counting on them. But I think we need Nicole and Josten more than we’ll need fighters. If I’ve completely miscalculated, though, we’re not going to win or even stalemate. Losing a shuttle has pushed us really close to Go-To-Hell-Plan and I’m tempted to use it.”

“Pure Blood Lords?” Megan asked. There was a backup team at each reactor for just such a choice.

“But that would mean we probably couldn’t take the shuttles out of operation,” Herzer said. “That would put just me up there who has a clue how to do it, much less put them back once they’re broke. And no computer techs so we couldn’t shut down systems or even monitor what they were doing. All we could do is go for the orcs and hope to win with no way to be sure we had any reinforcements. Not my idea of a good plan.”

“Stick with Plan A, then?” Megan said, smiling faintly.

“Oh, no,” Herzer pointed out, finally getting the suit all the way on and standing up. “Zip me? This is, oh, Plan L at least. Plan A assumed that we’d either be close together or, best of all, all close to Maintenance and Engineering. Stick Graff in the most cut-off shuttle and assume they could hold the doors until the orcs gave up and headed for Control. As it is…” He frowned and shrugged as she finished zipping and sealing him up and turned to be sealed as well. “We’ll still get it done. But it’s going to be ugly. I knew this would be a cluster fisk. Christ this thing’s hot.”

“That it is,” Megan said, chuckling. “But the shuttle’s got environmental plug-ins.”

“I’m dialing mine all the way down,” Courtney said, picking up her helmet and wiping at sweat that was already forming on her brow.

“We still need to rig our armor,” Herzer said. “There won’t be room in the shuttle.”

That took another fifteen minutes but finally the last strap was buckled and tightened.

“Right, let’s waddle out,” Herzer shouted through his helmet, opening the door. “Evan?”

“Yeah?” the engineer grunted.

“Next time we do this, we need some sort of cooler pack for the ground portion.” The hand-cranked system on the suits would recirculate the air but didn’t run the cooling system.

“We’re only going to do this once, right?” Evan said, puzzled.

“He was joking,” Megan yelled. The field was empty except for the members of the Blood Lord backup team who were scattered around the ladder that led to the belly of the beast. It was a long two-hundred-meter walk from the crew quarters to the ship.

“I’ve seen pictures from the early days of space flight,” Evan panted. “They used to line up to watch the pilots and mission specialists go out to the ship. There was always somebody helping them along and, yeah, come to think of it, they had ground packs. They even had somebody to carry the pack for them.”

“We need that job,” Layne said with a chuckle.

“What, the pilot?” Joie asked, puzzled.

“No, the guy carrying his gear,” Layne replied. “Hell of a lot better than what we’re going to do.”

When they reached the ladder, Herzer waved Evan forward. “You first, Evan.”

“Right.” Evan grunted, putting his foot on the bottom rung. He lifted himself up and swayed backwards from the weight of the environment pack on his back. “This was one training portion we forgot. Next time, right?”

“Just climb, Evan,” Herzer said, chuckling. “Courtney, Layne, Yetta, Megan, me, Joie.”

Herzer waited until Evan was most of the way up, then waved Courtney up. Finally it was his turn to go and he looked at Joie. “Follow me when I’m through the lower hatch.”

“Got it,” Joie said, looking up at the ship unhappily. “I’d rather be free-flying, you know? And this suit is folding my primaries. It’s going to take me forever to get them all fixed.”

“If we get the ship, Megan will be able to fix them in a heartbeat,” Herzer said with a grim frown. “And if we don’t, you won’t be keeping them for long.” Part of the New Destiny manifesto was to remove all Changed from Earth. It was just par for the course that their legions were made up of Changed.

He mounted the ladder and made his way up through the hatches. There was an outer and inner hatch for a small, one person, airlock. The inner hatch swung inward and the outer the reverse. Herzer knew the design of the hatches as well as anyone in the world but at the moment what was most in his mind was that they couldn’t be sealed against entry. The locking bar lifted outwards, then swiveled to undog the hatch. From both sides. There was no specific way to secure it against use. It was an old safety system designed to permit ground crews to rescue a trapped crew. On the current mission it was anything but a safety feature. If orcs tried to board one of the shuttles they’d be pulling against the bar with the defenders trying to hold it down. It simply wasn’t going to happen.

The hatch was in a small open area between the pilot’s seat and the crew chairs. There was a double line of conformal acceleration chairs in the small compartment and he took the starboard forward couch, across from Megan and with one foot actually resting on the hatch. As he settled in the couch it adjusted to receive the armor and support pack. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was better than sitting in a regular chair. He propped his helmet on his lap and reached back to plug in the environmental controls. The dwarves had included a plug that would attach the shuttle’s own cooling system to the vascular cooling system in the suits.

Unlike the suits, the shuttle’s systems were exempt from several of the power protocols so the system was working. However, it required feedback from the suit to keep the user at an optimum temperature. The team’s suits had no such feedback system. Herzer carefully brought up the setting for direct temperature control and set it to 25 C. In a moment it was as if a blast of cool water was spreading across his skin from under his right armpit. Too cool. In a moment he was shivering. He quickly dialed the temperature up and after some adjustment found a temperature that would cool him down but not freeze him out.

By the time he’d fiddled with that Joie was in her seat and making adjustments.

“You going to fit?” Herzer asked.

“It’s tight,” the elongated bird-woman said. “But, yes, I’ll fit. The mock-up of the controls was perfect, by the way,” she added, touching a control. The screen in front of her, which had been black, suddenly lit up with a view of the outside.

“When do I switch over control?” Megan asked.

“We can’t until they dock with the ship,” Herzer said. “I don’t want to screw with the refueling and take-off, anyway. We’ll be headed in the right direction, that’s all that matters.”

“Bit of a race, huh?” Megan said, then frowned. “Hang on…” She closed her eyes for a moment and then nodded her head. “Okay.”

“You talking to me?” Herzer asked. Megan just held up a hand for silence and nodded her head again. Finally she looked up.

“That was T,” she said, avoiding referring to the head of the intelligence service as her father in the hearing of others. “He has reports from three of New Destiny’s reactors. Dura has shuttles eight and one at it. Only one can dump at a time, so one of the shuttles will be late. One of the shuttles in view took on three nonfighter Changed and four orcs. The second had all Durgar. The third had six Durgar and a Ropasan orc. Each of them also boarded three scorpions.”

“Going to be crowded in there,” Herzer commented. “And they’re going really light on techs.”

“The Durgar and the Ropasan orc were wearing the diving suits,” Megan continued, looking off at nothing. “The nonfighters were in cloth suits, not like ours, different. More bulky. No sign of Reyes or a Dark One.”

“That just means Reyes is at one of the other reactors,” Herzer said, grunting. “Why did Dura get two shuttles?”

“Very low on fuel?” Evan suggested. “There’s been some indication that New Destiny has been hot-running its reactors. You can tweak them up a bit. We don’t because you don’t get a lot more power and your fuel consumption goes way up. It also decreases the lifespan of some parts that are hard to replace even with kenning. Not a good idea in the long-term.”

“We probably should have done it anyway,” Herzer said, nodding. “We could use the power and if we don’t win there won’t be a long-term.”

“Whups,” Joie said, suddenly. “Here we go.” She switched the screen to a downward external view as the ladder started to retract and the hatches closed with a beeped warning. There was no sensation of movement but as soon as the hatches closed the ground began to fall away on the screen.

“Are we really moving?” Courtney asked. “I don’t feel it.”

“Inertial compensation,” Evan said, leaning his chair back and reaching up for the VR headset. “We’re going to be pulling up to twenty gravities on this run. It would be a rather unpleasant experience if there wasn’t inertial compensation.”

Herzer leaned back and pulled his own headset down, then paused.

“Troops? We’re going to be working on minimum sleep when we get to the ship. No more than four hours on VR and then set it to sleep mode.”

“I’m going right to sleep mode,” Megan said, pulling down her headset. “I’ve had all the waiting I can take.”