The Cairo Saga, book 4: Operation Chindit
Part 13: Eye of the storm
The Kuiper Belt
Sol
Despite being made up of millions of objects raging in size from specks of dust to moonlets, the Kuiper Belt is mainly made up of space, something that surprised Cairo as he looked out of the shuttles small view port. The other shuttle was lost somewhere against the endless sea of space, the security of the mission forbidding either running lights or beacons.
This deep into Word of Blake territory, and detection meant instant death.
"Pluto should be coming into visual range any minuet now." The pilot reported, her hushed voice sounding like a thunderclap in the silence of the cabin, "Charon is in eclipse from our approach vector."
"Suck it in people!" Major Akuma turned to her people, "Stay sharp and remember the golden rule: you're hit, you're dead. We can't afford to stop for anything."
Cairo didn't look up as he checked his weapons before looking at the seals on the suit of the man next to him in the age-old buddy system. Of all hostile environments man had encountered since leaving Terra over a thousand years before, none was less forgiving than deep space, were the temperature was only a few degrees above absolute zero.
"And there she is…" The pilot pointed out of the view port as the slender crescent of Pluto finally came into view, "Ninth planet of the Sol system, although it is generally considered to be a Kuiper Belt Object, Pluto was named after the ancient Roman god of the underworld. 2,390-km in diameter, with a surface gravity of 0.059-G's and an escape velocity of only 1.2km/s. the surface temperature is a balmy 44K, dropping to 33k in the shade."
"Basically, don't press down to hard when you walk or your reach escape velocity, and we don't have the fuel to look for you." Akuma warned, "Remember, we won't be running any long-range communications: we have to leave the smallest possible electromagnetic footprint. As it is, we're lucky the Spirit Sight has such a small emergence signal, or we'd have god knows what crawling all over us."
"Also try and avoid being seen by any passive or active monitoring equipment that may be on the surface." Cairo looked round, "There is the possibility that Word of Blake either discovered or was told about Station-X and took it down themselves. If that's true, they must have known that someone would be sent to try and repair it, so their could be all kinds of booby traps. Any damage to your suit can be fatal. Try and remember that the Spirit Sight is two days away at full burn."
"Coming in for orbital insertion." The pilot flipped the shuttle end over end before firing the main engines in a controlled burn that robbed the ship of most of its forward momentum. With Pluto's thin atmosphere all but frozen to the surface, the shuttle was able to make a steeper than average decent to the surface.
"60-seconds people!" Cairo warned as he looked at the flight controls, "Express elevator to hell, going down!"
The shuttle shook violently as it dropped like a stone, falling towards the planet below. The sudden change in direction would have thrown people all over the cabin if not for their restraints. A faint corona wisped past the view ports as the shuttle passed through what little ionosphere Pluto had.
"Hold on tight, 'cause this ones really going to hurt!" The pilot warned just seconds before she activated main drive, slowing the spheroid ships descent to a survivable speed. There was a high pitched whine as the landing struts extended and locked into place with a thud just moments before the ship touched down.
There was a heart-stopping lurch to the side, but the hydraulics compensated, righting the ship on an even keel. The pilot checked the gages one by one before giving the thumbs up that it was safe to move about.
The micro-gravity environment made movement difficult. It wasn't quite zero-G, and it wasn't like being on a planet or accelerating ship: the slightest movement could send you to the ceiling, only to slowly fall back down. It was easy in such situations to forget about inertia, but it was always there, ready to trick the unwary.
Once everyone had checked and rechecked their suits and equipment, the airlock was opened and the first commandos made their way out onto the frozen surface. Everyone, without exception, looked at the distant, dim light of Sol with a sense of awe. Many then tried to find Terra amid the myriad of stars.
"Don't waste your time." The pilot's voice was hushed over the short-range encrypted communications system, "You'd need one hell of a telescope, and Terra's to close to Sol to be seen from here."
Turning their backs on the view, the tech's opened the cargo bay and started to assemble the micro-gravity sled that they would need to travel the distance to Station-X. Cairo could just make out the other shuttle in the distance, its crew doing the exact same thing. Both ships carried the equipment and personnel needed to repair the automated station, so that if anything had happened to one of the shuttles, the mission would not be crippled.
Two of the commandos scouted ahead, using specially adapted thrusters packs to glide across the landscape. The powered sled worked on the same general principal, bit it had room for the rest of the team and the equipment. Two commandoes stayed behind with the pilot to secure the shuttle.
Cairo found moving across the surface of Pluto, the silence only broken by the sound of his breathing and the constant, reassuring sound of the breathing system, was rather surreal. He had to reputably stop himself from daydreaming as they hovered across the nearly featureless surface.
After an hours travelling at a snails pace, the tech manning the controls set the sled down with the slightest of jolts, the entire assembly bouncing once before stopping. The commandoes moved to securer the parameter while the tech's carefully made their way over to the camouflaged listing post. The low ferocreat mound was painted to match the surrounding ice, but close up it was possible to see the access panel built into the side.
The lead tech looked everything over visually before allowing anyone to move close. Move intensive electronic scans failed to detect any tampering, so they prepaired to activate the remote control that would open the access panel. Everyone crouched down on the ground, taking what little cover they could find as the code was entered.
The access panel slid open without any fuss, revealing the complex circuitry inside. Taking a portable terminal from the sled, the senior tech jacked into the listing post's internal computer and ran a complete and in-depth diagnostic of every system.
"There is a fault in the connection between the buffers and the transmitter." The tech reported after what felt like an ice age, "All the information is still intact, but it has been unable to transmit."
"I take it we can fix it?" Cairo asked, nervously eyeing the gage that displayed his remaining air supply.
"It should be a case of just replacing a few relays and resetting the system. Shouldn't take more than an hour."
"Do it in less; we only have two hours of air left before we have to cut into our emergency supplies."
Time moved at a crawl, the tech's seeming to take their time on what they considered a routine repair job. Cairo kept scanning the sky apprehensively, expecting to see the deadly shape of a DropShip appear overhead at any moment. The commandoes were also getting fidgety, always scanning the horizon with their weapons, fingers resting on the trigger.
"Done." The senior tech reported after an eon, "Running good as new. I even set up a backup system in case the same fault appears again."
"Ok people, let's pack up and get out of here." Cairo checked the level of his air tank, "We're going to be cutting it fine as it is."
Everyone returned to the sled, one or two attaching airline from the reserve tanks it carried to his or her suit. The tech at the controls looked round to make sure that everyone was onboard before powering up and setting a new speed record for the tip back to the waiting shuttle.
TBC…