Chapter 11: Sheer Lunarcy

"I'm soaring, free falling, with all emotions roaring

Like lightning, like thunder, I'll rip the world asunder"

--Judas Priest

I'd been looking over the outpost plans. Located on the dark side of the moon, not a lot of real science happened there any more and the place was reduced to a skeleton crew. An engineer or two to keep life support and their little work pods running, a resident grad student or two doing internships by looking after the sensor packages and lab experiments that scientists would send up for installation from time to time, and one person in charge of security. Maybe four, five people down there. It was even remote enough not to have a colony springing up around the outpost entrance, the small population living inside the facility. Easy enough. In theory. I was still trying to shake off the want to hurt and maim, but just thinking of all the robots we hadn't destroyed trying to evacuate when the reactor started melting down around them--and being speared with munitions if they made it to the surface--gave me enough reason to smile.

Soon enough I felt Jerome settle into my cockpit again, like a warm hug, and I wasted no time shutting the cockpit and projecting myself atop the two main monitors, shaking a teasing finger at him as he carefully put on and fastened his helmet.

"What, no kiss goodbye to your biggest supporter here?"

"The only thing I want to kiss is this place goodbye. I suppose you're somewhere on the list too, below 'wasp' and above 'wet paint'."

"What happened to being fastidious? Did you lick yourself once and decide you'd already permanently soiled your lips by it?"

The bolsters were inflated and we were ready to go. I flexed my muscles and stretched one way and another. I still felt limber, which meant everything was responding right, but it never hurt to make sure. Unbidden, I spun the vulcan barrels once, loading every one with a slug of depleted uranium. A trickle of power to the lasers, not to the excitation level, but enough to check for continuity...all the missiles icons in Jerome's projected display winked from safed green to a more reassuring armed red.

"You're accusing yourself of having bad taste by that same metric, you know."

"Since when did I ever taste bad? Hah, I know I have bad taste, look at who I decided to fall for and what it got me. And you won't let me go on a single rampage."

I draped my projected image in his display across the bottom of the field of view in a 1930s-style cheesecake pose, pouting and blowing him a kiss. For grins I projected an even tinier city lying in ruins beneath my figure like I'd just got done trampling it.

"It might still happen if we have to go that deep into the pods. Besides, what do you call ripping the M out of PTMC? A Sunday jaunt? Gimme a reticle."

Across the bay I could see the Hamster Ball's control surfaces wiggling. Not that we'd be dealing with atmospheric flight except to get out of the hangar, but neverthless, a full preflight was just that. The last two technicians were dragging a skid of testing equipment and the empty packaging of the minedropper away from the back of the shuttle and it looked like Hannah was just a little behind our run-up, despite her head start. I took next to no time to get ready and always looked good. With a grin I had my little image reach down her cleavage--adjusted to be more impressive than my slight breasts had ever managed--and throw a green reticle upward into his field of view. He glanced left, right, up and down--and I could feel the tug on my fingers in response. I could sense the optics shifting minutely in their mounting too, and the swivel of the turret, but that wasn't nearly as natural.

"Give me a distance check too, I want to see the harmonization status."

I could of course do it all independently--something he didn't see or didn't aim at, I could shoot to bits anyway--he had no absolute overrides over me by our mutual plan--but we worked best as a team. Unless I had a good reason or we needed really exceptional precision, he'd just see something he wanted to shoot, fire the appropriate amount of ordinance, and I'd make sure it arrived on target if his glance was off, harmonized as needed. I felt the laser cannon muzzles pivot toward each other a few degrees then back out again as he stared at something across the hangar, then right under the nose. Unurged, my fingers spread apart and contracted. Looked fine from here.

"QX. Attitude check!"

He knew the silly little drill quite well.

"We're fucked!"

"Positive attitude check?"

"We're positively fucked!"

Occasionally it was a pitch check, which was singing in harmony.

"Negative attitude check?"

"Fuckit!"

Or a yaw check, which was a back and forth exchange of Texas-speak.

"Sounds appropriately despairing. Right. We're good. Incoming transmission from Hannah."

"Hamster Ball to II-JNY-02, what's taking you so long over there, Mister Whiskers?"

I could see Jerome's grin curl upward so far his teeth were showing. Oh, this ought to be fun.

"Go ahead, dear, if she wants to be informal let's have some fun."

The words I'd been aching to hear. I filtered my reply to his helmet as well. Damned if I was going to use my tail number or MD-1032 as a callsign. Time to break out the name of our company, taking the old Institute nickname from my blue hair and his slate eyes and putting it to good use.

"Uncivil War to Rodent Nuts, just waiting for you to test every single switch. Be a good little escort ship and we'll do our best to not embarrass you in front of your gerbil friends here, over. Insertion trajectory follows."

I sent a slug of data over the channel, the path that would give us the best line in. I didn't get to talk to people often as anything other than a phantom secretary. It was kind of fun. A quick glance around, no obstacles. Jerome twitched his fingers at me and I leapt into the air, hovering halfway to the roof of the huge room on balanced thrust alone. He couldn't hold it like that, too many precision adjustments, but I sure as hell could and a little showing off didn't hurt.

"Ball copies, Uncivilized, once you shoot your load I'll take you into custody and down per flight plan. Commencing initial exfil. Try not to get lost."

She sounded amused as the Ball rose on a pillar of pale blue hydrogen flame and wobbled its way out of the bay, accelerating quickly back into her former patrol pattern. Jerome had no idea what was going on, but he was watching intently with a faint grin still. He always looked forward to my surprises, even if he didn't necessarily like them.

"Hang on, this may be a little rough. Ordinance and manuevering on me."

He nodded and tensed up. I ignored his control inputs then and concentrated for a moment. It would be tricky. A leap forward, fans suddenly at full power, and a twist and somersault just so....I could hear him grunt as the thrusters spiked me end-over-end and nearly upside down, still facing forward, as I shot across the field and into space. Quicker than thought, as the vectors and paths lined up, I punched forward with one hand and jerked my wrist muscles with the other. One of our scarce guided missiles came to life in the pod and hurtled out into the blackness, accelerating hard and looking like it was aimed at nothing in particular. Its trajectory would bring it back and around and down into lunar orbit, going low-altitude near the mountains where the science outpost was and only diving into it from a shallow angle opposite the one we'd be approaching from. I could feel the power surge as I cut the fans and activated all Vulcan firing circuits...every barrel spat its deadly slug in unison down toward the horizon, still not at the mine but--coincidentally--aimed such that gravity plus velocity would bend them down to impact the outpost's communication dish in just a few seconds. Dravis had claimed that they'd not been communicating but I wasn't taking chances. With any luck, it would appear to observers that the shock of crossing the air barrier in a show-offy move had caused the pilot's finger to accidentally discharge ordinance.

We tumbled through space with the residual velocity and spin while I started up the bubble and slowly began to stablize our orientation. Slow--easy on the fuel--and in small increments, the way a miner would. Right on cue, the Hamster Ball came shooting back around the curve of the station, squawking on the public channels.

"PTMC Security to unidentified ship, you are in violation of ordinance laws, we observe multiple discharges, shut off all mining and defensive devices immediately and proceed to lunar surface for detention and formal charges to be filed---noncompliance will be met with lethal force."

She made it sound impressive, and the lasers were hot and keeping us in their sights. Not that those lasers would do much more than melt a bit of the surface of my armor unless she could keep us in her sights for a lot longer than I suspected was physically possible, but it sure sounded good. Jerome nodded to me and I let him answer.

"Uh, MV0001734 to PTMC Security, I stuffed the takeoff pretty good, swear I didn't mean to fire...just the impact shock. Can you cut me a break?"

That was Thomas's old registry number for the mining ship he used to fly. It was a GOOD way to start off. I went ahead and cut power to the Vulcan after another spin for cooling and for loading all barrels and pulled the hatch to the missile pod closed.

"Negative, MV0001734, telemetry shows possible impact. This is an enhanced security zone, you are violating flight restrictions, and I am cutting you a break by not immediately shooting you for suspected terrorist activity. Proceed under escort for IMMEDIATE landing. Out."

The Ball flew close enough above us that I could feel the sting of the peroxide maneuvering propellant on my armor. Maybe it'd clean away some of the carbon blacking atmosphere descents tended to accumulate. So far so good. With the ship now stable, I let Jerome suggest a course correction to match the shuttle. I adjusted for his relatively clumsy inputs for direction, shaping the bubble to let us drift alongside the Ball on its way down while I let the reactor run at full power for a while to refill the particles that had been ablated away by that maneuvering jet.

No telemetry from the missile just yet. Patience. Patience. I quivered with suppressed eagerness to go hunting, and I could even pick up subconscious toe-tapping from Jerome. We were getting closer and closer toward the surface, Hannah on a course that would take her past the outpost on the way toward the nearest lunar colony. Any second now. Wait for it...the missile should be entering the outpost in just a few seconds. I shot "GO" to the shuttle on the private channel and was immediately rewarded by what looked pretty convincingly like a thruster nozzle blowing out. Looked like she'd slammed it shut before touching off an atmosphere-only propellant mix, then irised it open again so it blew the control mechanism right out the aperture in an impressive fireball but otherwise did no damage.

"PTMC security to station LN-001 and MV0001734, negative flight controls, thruster malfunction... Declaring in-flight emergency, will attempt landing at PTMC outpost OS-001. MV, follow me in, do not attempt breakaway or deadly force will be used."

The Hamster Ball was going in hot. Jerome frowned but played along, matching course and accelerating. I felt a laser suddenly paint my skin and start modulating frantically...it was the downlink station the guided missile had fired into the rock at the entrance to the outpost, making contact where I'd told it I would be. The missile had a link to the downlink station and I shot the message laser back to the station, receiving the results of the flythrough as quickly as they were transmitted. The way Hannah was bringing the shuttle in was dramatic, lots of wasted propellant billowing out in clouds, it looked like frantic attempts to slow her previously rapid descent but accomplished little other than keeping the same descent speed and rotating for a better touchdown. I tilted to the side a little to get more distance from the volatile ice crystals, didn't want to get a fireball inside the shield bubble. The first bit of good news--the comm dish was trashed, I'd done one better than fry the antenna can at the focus point, the slugs had smashed through that and severed the spindly arms holding its framework to the motors. Not only was it ruined on the rocks but it was also completely removed from anything that could tilt the wreckage back into place. I decided I'd take credit for the positive result, and flashed a slightly-blurry still image of it up on Jerome's vision, a brief flash of my hand alongside in a thumbs-up gesture before letting him see the outside again.

"PTMC security shuttle Hamster Ball to Outpost OS-001, requesting emergency personnel for potential crash landing. Please respond."

I had the feeling Hannah was enjoying playing her part to the hilt. Wasn't often you got to squawk panic on official channels. Tawny was on another official channel asking Hannah what her likely return time would be and if she needed an admin shuttle scrambled to assist, Hannah blew her off to focus on landing. They were both playing along so well that it was giving me bigger ideas for a master plan for escorts on later missions, but it wouldn't play well with the military.

"Aha! Look, here they are..."

I took over the long glide down, filling his display with a quick wireframe snapshot of the mine and blinking dots to represent the mine personnel located. It wasn't good. There were only two dots. Maybe that was within acceptable parameters...one scientist, one engineer? One student, one security? I couldn't pull any information from Shiva about current assignments, it was probably buried in so many layers of irrelevance that nobody knew what it was even filed under any more. I could see Jerome's feral grin now as his hands tightened around the sticks.

"Open wide, here comes the surgeon...."

He whispered. Beneath us, the rugged lunar surface was looming fast now and I could see the outpost entrance, a darkened naked tunnel into the rock that I brought our nose around to point straight at. The telemetry stopped, the last view being the missile's running into a sheer rock wall and shattering, and I could hear a roar of interference across all communication channels as Hannah jammed her throttles to the stops, maximum thrust blasting divots out of the dusty plain and beginning to lift the ship from her touch-and-go, but there was no time to wait for her. Jerome's eyes were slitted in concentration, my bubble was at full shielding effect, all pods were open, lasers hot,the Vulcan loaded and ready... And with Hannah just behind us, we shot into the uncertain mouth of Hell itself. Time to punch the clock.

TO BE CONTINUED?