8
“All hands. Now leaving Earth orbit. Last shot of Earth on the viewscreens, now.”
“Gotta watch this,” Everette said, keying the TV in the compartment on with his implant. As they watched, the Earth started to fall away from the view. Then the image changed to a rear camera view and the planet slowly started to shrink.
“I’m not sure if this is scary or just really cool,” Mimi said. “I think both.”
“I agree, honey chile,” Julia said.
“I think it’s cool,” Miriam said as the planet got smaller and smaller. “And if you don’t have much to do until we reach a planet, I don’t have anything to do unless we find aliens. Except talk to Tchar.”
“I thought I saw an Adar,” Mimi said. “Where is he?”
“Engineering,” Miriam replied. “We’re not allowed in there. He bunks in Section D, aft. That’s right by the entrance to the missile compartment and the shortest distance to engineering. He has a real problem moving around the boat cause he’s so big.”
“Where are we allowed?” Mimi asked.
“This area,” Everette answered. “That is, the entire mission section, but I’d say you should steer clear of security in general. The sick bay, which is just off of this section to starboard. And the away pod, which is on top of the boat.”
“Stand by for warp entry,” the 1-MC proclaimed.
“This is so cool,” Miriam said as the camera shot changed to a wide angle apparently out of the front of the sub. The stars, which had been pinpoints, suddenly began to lengthen and brighten, shifting into long strands, red towards the front and shading to blue. Then they snapped back to normal, but they were now, appreciably, moving.
“You can see out?” Mimi asked. “I thought we were in an alternate universe? At least, that’s the math.”
“The drive automatically cycles,” Everette said. “We’re actually jumping very short distances, then dropping back into normal space. But each cycle is in nanoseconds, just enough time, in fact, for certain wavelengths of light to pass the barrier. So it looks as if we’re in normal space. None of the wavelengths, interestingly enough, are useful militarily. You can’t make a high energy laser out of any of them. And the cycling is too high for cosmic rays to penetrate. But we can still see out. It’s a very neat system.”
“Something’s happening,” Miriam said, pointing at the TV.
The view was slewing and suddenly it zoomed.
“Mars,” Everette said, nodding. “I guess we’re going close enough it was worth a look.”
“No chance of landing and taking a couple more samples?” Julia asked.
“Not this trip.”
“More samples?” Mimi asked.
“We’ve had five shakedown trips,” Julia said.
“We’ve landed on Mars, the moon and Titan, one of the moons of Jupiter,” Captain MacDonald said. “The last two were damned cold. You could feel it right through the Wyvern armor. Next, I think you need to meet the rest of the security team. That is still shaking down.”
“Marines and Special Forces?” Miller said, grinning. “I can imagine.”
“You guys haven’t got anything better to do than clean weapons?” Master Sergeant Steve Runner asked.
Steve was a sixteen-year veteran of the Special Forces and had come to the conclusion that he needed his head examined for volunteering for this mission. With medium build, brown hair and brown eyes, he’d fit in well in Afghanistan once upon a time. But the hammering the Islamics had taken from the Dreen had pretty much taken the juice out of the World-Wide Jihad. Frankly, there weren’t many wars worth fighting on Earth anymore.
He’d picked up a bachelors in geology through the Army, mostly using it to bank on his retirement. The “suggestion” that he volunteer for this mission had come out of the blue. But, hey, going to space. How bad could it be? So he had to baby-sit some doctorate types. They hadn’t told him he was going to have to deal with jarheads.
“At least we’re not playing nursemaid to a bunch of eggheads,” Jaenisch replied.
“Nope, you’re going to be out on point playing red shirt,” Runner said, grinning. “Better make sure them M10s are dialed in.”
The M10 was a .308 version of the venerable M-16 series of weapons. During the brief war with the Dreen, it had become apparent that fighting them took something with more stopping power than the 5.56 mm rounds the M-16 series fired. The ammo weight went way up for the same number of rounds, but then again being able to stop a charging howler butt-cold was worth it. For that matter, they’d proven in Africa that it could kill a leopard pretty cleanly or a lion if you pumped enough rounds into the things. But one team member, who had been medically retired, also learned that they weren’t worth a damn on Cape Buffalo.
“Me, I’ve got a date with a probe,” Runner continued as he exited the mess. “Don’t miss the Saturn fly-by. It’s gonna be good.”
“You can’t walk on it, you can’t breathe it and you can’t shoot it,” Hattelstad said. “Besides, we’ve seen it.” The short, slim red-headed gunner clicked together the pieces of his Squad Support Weapon and jacked the grenade launcher. “What the grapp do we care about Saturn?”
“I’d rather see Mars,” Berg said, reassembling his M10. “Glad we caught it on the fly-by.”
“What’s so special about Mars?” Hattelstad asked.
“Saturn was the god of partying,” Bergstresser said, jacking back the bolt of the rifle and then letting it fly forward. “Mars was the god of War. God of the Marines.”
“Doctor Dean,” Runner said, nodding at the scientist. “You sent word you needed a hand?”
It had taken nearly ten minutes to make his way from the mission specialists’ quarters to the torpedo room where the probes were maintained. Clearly Dr. Dean was unhappy about the time.
“You’re finally here,” Dean said. “Set the oscilloscope up and make certain that the output of the ACP is following design spec. And then I need a readout on the GCMS instrument heater output. This thing wasn’t quite complete when we got it from APL.”
“Uh, ACP?” Runner looked around the room thinking he should recognize the acronym.
“Damnit boy, the Aerosol Collector and Pyrolyser needs to be checked out. Then check the wiring connections for the heater on the Gas Chromatograph and Mass Spectrometer!” Dr. Dean said, scowling.
“Yes, Doctor,” Runner said, trying, as always, not to say it with a German accent. Runner didn’t mind getting maulk: He was SF, he ate maulk for breakfast. But condescending maulk was another matter all together. He bit his tongue and set about the task of connecting the ACP and GCMS modules to the probe.
After nearly an hour of last-second modifications and unapproved preflight checkouts Dr. Dean proclaimed the probe ready for service. Flight readiness review teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory or at Johns Hopkins would have had a conniption fit and probably fallen over dead from the fact that a high level Ph.D. and a Special Forces NCO prepped the spacecraft for flight. Russian counterparts on the other hand, would have smiled, patted them on the back, and started shooting cognac at a job well done. The Blade was breaking through multiple paradigms of America’s views of space exploration.
“Is there anything else, Doctor?” Runner asked as the probe slid into the tube.