Bit less rough cut, still editing (uncounted dozenthgo).
21
Endurance-
…T minus 7 minutes, and counting…
Once again negotiating the rocks and sandbars of shit-creek. No paddles; hell, no raft.
If life ever slowed down enough to allow it, he meant to have a few beers and do some thinking. In the meantime, though (sudden splitting headache and all) John took advantage of Pete's departure and Linda's hand-up to kiss her cold cheek.
They stood aft, in the short passageway between Engine Maintenance Access and the 'tool room'. A second hatch branched to corridors leading up and forward. Around them, the awakening ship quivered and growled, metal surfaces creaking as her temperature flared.
Roger Thorpe slumped against a nearby bulkhead, grayish-pale beneath his swarthy tan. His wounds had been temporarily plugged by the hard suit, which had some limited emergency capabilities. The Marine didn't look well, but John, too, had seen better sols. He rose with Linda's help, still reeling from explosion, cave-in, raid and… something else. Something to do with a broken ladder, and a very long fall.
She was speaking to him, struggling to maintain a tone ofdiagnostic reserve, her brown eyes wide and serious. Seeing him as a collection of injured tissues in need of swift repair, she asked,
"Will that leg hold for a few minutes?"
...and gestured at the battered, twisted armor clamped around his broken limb.
"I can wrestle you to the med lab one at a time, but if you two can manage to brace each other and limp, we'll get situated faster."
Iffy, but 'Better dead than look bad', so John nodded assent.
Then, as though hatch- side professionalism only stretched so far, she moved nearer, embracing his grubby, hard-suited form.
"You made it," she whispered against the chest plate, fierce and low. "You came back."
"Well," he said, disentangling himself to take hold of Thorpe, "I had standing orders to kiss the bride."
"Afraid to risk court martial?" Dr. Bennett quipped, once more in control of herself. One hand at each man's back, she guided their slow, dragging withdrawal to the med lab.
"No," John answered. "Bucking... for promotion. Acquire one wife... advance to nearest unoccupied square."
It was (he somehow thought) an old joke between them, one she should have slapped him for, then laughed at. But Linda shot him a swift, puzzled glance and only smiled. Weird.
At the ship's med lab, she processed Roger first, stabilizing the badly injured Marine with a few quick injections, and then fastening him to a treatment harness. The hard suit stayed on. No time to remove it, and the thing was doing a pretty fair job of controlling shock and blood loss. Besides, with his helmet, the hard suit provided another layer of vital protection, should anything else go wrong.
"Roger," Dr. Bennett called out, lightly slapping the Marine's face plate, "I need you to stay awake through lift-off. You hear me? Any number of things could be happening, soon, and a conscious man can react to most of them. Got it?"
"Uh-huh," the Marine replied blurrily. "Awake till orbit. Got it. S' good day to die."
"None of that, Mister. You've got a job to do."
Linda gave him a quick, bracing smile. (Not much time left…) Then, she turned to her other patient. John had managed to tighten a few of the harness straps about his own arms and chest, but he wasn't well able to bend, and those behind were unreachable. Properly fastened and rigged, the treatment harness resembled a 3-D spider's web of tubes, strapping, backboards and wires. Cumbersome, but necessary, for in zero-gravity beds weren't an option. Like the launch couches, though, the harness was designed to provide a measure of crash protection while maintaining med-support.
(Quick look at the clock… reduce that to very little time, indeed.)
Sheprovided a dose ofstrong-tasting, heavy-duty analgesic, then finished trussing her new husband for launch. Wanted to do and say more,but Endurance had begun to shudder, and McCord to bellow orders and obscenities.
Rather nervously, Linda reached up to brush some of the lank blond hair away from John's face. Something was different…
"Luck, Sunshine. Try not to tense up during launch; you'll worsen the fracture."
Tip-toeing to reach his cheek, Linda returned his earlier kiss. "I'll be back the second we're off-planet, I promise. I…"
Too early, maybe, to complete that thought aloud, but the emotion was becoming realer with every tick of the countdown clock.
"…I'll see you soon."
"Okay." He sounded a little drunk. "You better go, before Pete bursts a damn blood vessel… Strap in tight, and take care."
John had a ferocious headache and questions beyond numbering, but the one thing that felt stubbornly right about all this was Linda and the baby and his crewmates; all alive, if not entirely functional.
…That and the constant, warm pulse at the back of his left wrist.
With a twisting motion and click-lock, Linda fastened a spare helmet to the pilot's hard suit, insulating him from disaster as well as humanly possible. Then a last word or two, and she was on her way forward, without donning a suit of her own.
…29… 28… 27…
…Go for auto sequence start…
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Thunderbird 3, a cramped and quiet hold-
How to fully explain the threat, without alerting their enemy? Fermat abruptly changed tack, raising his voice to speak with the projected image of his adored father.
"W- We followed the…signal t- to help with a rescue, Dad… but ended up in… another u- universe and ran into… trouble. Anyway, though… I was th- thinking on the w- way back about calling John f- for help with a… micro-biology project Mr. Kruppa assigned."
Dr. Hackenbacker's head tilted. He was wise enough to realize that Fermat had shifted to code. All at once, his arms folded across his thin chest, and he nodded briefly.
"G- Go on, Son."
Choosing his words very carefully, the brilliant boy continued.
"I d- decided to… study p- parasites, Dad, and I… r- read of a micro-organism that in- infects ants as… p- part of its life cycle. It will f- force an ant to… c- climb to the top of a… g- grass blade and… w- wait there to be c- consumed by a grazing c- cow. The ant dies, f- freeing the parasite to c- continue its… l- life cycle inside th- the cow's digestive t- tract. Weird, huh? H- how a p- possessing organism c- can control… the behavior of its h- host? Almost like a worm in your computer."
Brains shifted his stance, pushing his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose, a gesture which Fermat unconsciously mirrored.
"F- fascinating," the engineer agreed. "Not an a- area I've, ah… I've devoted m- much time to researching, b- but an important and relevant one, n- nevertheless. And so you, ah… you th- think that John would b- be interested, Son?"
Tough one. According to what he'd learned from 7, once upon a vanished timeline John Tracy had created a subtle and sentient computer. That wasn't the problem. Somehow, the Ares III mission had awakened a deeply hostile intelligence on Mars, and John's deleteded construct had tried to combat it. Altering past and present, she'd nearly succeeded. Then the Martian Intelligence retaliated, from a parallel universe.
In a moment when the AI's power was stretched thin, the invader had pushed her into near non-existence, usurping her place by sparking the creation of Braman… then possessing the new computer for its own ends. Limited only by its housing, the latent infection was here on Earth, and ready to act. John Tracy had been singled out as its first victim because he might yet design and build the invader's nemesis, this 'Five'.
Logically, the parasitized computer could assure its existence by eliminating all possibility of a terrestrial AI. It had to destroy John Tracy. Only then would the way be cleared for the rest of its vicious life cycle. Fermat took a deep breath, and plunged on.
"He m- might be interested, Dad, but… I'm s- sure he's… g- got a lot… being th- thrown at h- him, right now, what w- with computers, and M- Mars and ET viruses. M- maybe you… c- could help?"
Virgil looked utterly mystified, as did Mr. Tracy, Scott, Alan's mom and Kyrano. Not Grandma, though, or Brains. Hands at his hips, chewing thoughtfully on his lower lip, Hackenbacker nodded again.
"In- indeed. Computer w- worms and viruses are, ah… m- much more my f- field of, ah… of parasitology."
Message delivered. Brains had several strings to his bow, the most potent being a time machine, and a virulent program: omega/ null. He built nothing, ever, without including a way to pull the plug.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Endurance-
15… 14… 13… 12… 11… 10…
…Go for main engine start…
No time for a rolling take off. No time for anything but straightforward thrust. With a quick button press, the lower rockets roared to shrieking life. Beneath nose, wings and tail assembly, great columns of white-hot flame began boosting Endurance skyward. Below her, the runway cracked; melting and running like molten sugar. The hoarse thunder of take-off bounced from rock to hill to cliff side, waking a million banshee echoes. Clouds of flaring steam and churned-up sand fogged the pinkish sky, bringing sudden twilight.
Seconds later, the blast-weakened tunnel collapsed entirely, the ground under Endurance caving into a massive bowl, its sides fired glassy by the spaceship's rockets. She juddered and bucked, then righted herself; a pearl-grey dragon riding thermals of white flame.
Inside, at the 'hang on and pray' stage, all was rumble, vibration and jaw-clenching pressure. Up front, Commander McCord kept his eyes on the instruments, muttering his way through the launch checklist like a holy litany. Whatever happened next, the boys back at Johnson could use the data… provided nothing ugly followed Endurance home.
Kim Cho monitored telemetry, deeply saddened as Mars dropped away beneath them. To herself she thought, watching a growing sinkhole consume the colony's greenhouse and hangar,
'There goes the neighborhood.'
Linda Bennett simply clutched at her armrests, eyes closed tight while she willed the tiny life within her to remain safe. Just a few more minutes…
In the med lab, strapped into harnesses and wracked with pain, Roger Thorpe and John Tracy came perilously close to blacking out. The spaceship's wild shaking had re-opened cuts and weakened stress fractures, outlining each bloody injury in fresh and searing fire.
John gritted his teeth, hearing through engine roar and hull-rattle Roger's hoarse, grunting screams. Had he been able, he'd have ripped out of the harness and gone to his friend, safety be damned, but he was stuck fast, able to do nothing but shout worthless encouragement. Stupid crap, all of it… but sometimes a voice could be a lifeline.
Once again, John Tracy endured hell; not a burning reactor this time, but the worst, most helpless ride of his life. Blessedly then, while pain and unconsciousness tore at him like dogs fighting for part of a cornered fox, stillness fell. MECO: main engine cut-off, and weightlessness.
'Bout damn time... no 'ffense...'
Blackness, incidentally, won the battle, leaving agony with nothing but a mouthful of bloody fur.