Earthfall (2 page)

“He’s not doing shit, I’m the one who doesn’t want to be out here in this storm,” Spencer said. “You see the size of it? That thing’ll last for a week before it blows out, and frankly, this thing smells like a can of farts. And I want out.”

“The fart smell would be mostly
your
fault, Spencer,” Leona Eklund said, her voice carrying to the cockpit over the roar of the rig’s engines and the various creaks, groans, and scrapes caused by the vehicle’s transit over the rough terrain. Andrews had to grin. It was true; one of the biggest drawbacks to crewing with Todd Spencer was the fact he emitted an exceptionally vile amount of swamp gas, no matter what he ate, and no matter what medication had been prescribed to prevent it. Whatever foulness lurked inside him, Spencer’s body tried valiantly to eject it through his sphincter.

“Yeah, yeah, too bad all of us can’t fart potpourri like you do, princess,” Spencer said. “Captain, I’ve raised the threshold on number one, but listen, you’ve got maybe three, four minutes until it fails. Keep that in mind.”

“Roger that, Spence. Thanks.”

An alarm went off then, sharp and strident—the lightning strike indicator flashed in the corner of one primary display as the storm behind them fired off great discharges of electrostatic energy, one of the things that made the great sandstorms that plagued the former Midwestern United States such a terror for the SCEV teams to deal with. Not only did they pack hurricane-force winds, they also cast off powerful cyclones and great bolts of lightning that homed in on virtually anything metallic. Despite the vast amount of advanced technology that went into insulating the SCEVs, they were still comprised of a good deal of metal.

Brilliant light flared outside, and for an instant Andrews saw the SCEV’s shadow grow remarkably long before the pulsing illumination. The lightning strike indicator blared again, and then the lights inside the rig dimmed momentarily. Andrews thought he saw whiplashes of the electrical discharge roll across the SCEV’s blunted nose like St. Elmo’s fire, spectral and wraithlike. The cockpit displays fluttered for a moment as they reset themselves from the pulsing effects of the charge, but it was the sudden
BANG!
and the sound of the number one engine winding down that held Andrews’s undivided attention.

“Talk to me, somebody,” he said. “I’ve got power falling off up here. Spencer, did that particle separator finally fail and take the engine with it?”

“Negative, it’s better than that. Looks like that lightning bolt invoked a compressor stall in the same engine,” the crew chief reported. “I’m looking into it. Choi, reset the ignition switches and secure the generator. I’ll run the restart from back here.”

Choi reached up to the overhead panel and did what Spencer asked. He missed a switch combination because the vehicle was rocking hard over uneven ground, but he managed to get it right on the second shot. Outside the viewports, thick dust began to swirl. The rig’s speed was dropping past fifty miles per hour, and the storm was catching up to them. Andrews kept the sidearm controller fully forward, but the SCEV was delivering only as much speed as her remaining engine could generate.

“Spencer, talk to me,” he said.

“Working on it.”

“We’re in max commo range,” Choi said. “Maybe we ought to let the base know we’re coming?”

“Spencer?”

“Still working on it,” Spencer said. “Call Harmony, Captain. Spend some time chatting up someone else—I’m busy.”

Andrews pressed the red transmit button. “Harmony Base, this is SCEV Four. We’re inbound on a course of three-three-five magnetic. We’re on a storm run, and we’ll require immediate entry by north lift. Over.”

Over static broken only by cracks and the whistling, sporadic pops that synchronized perfectly with the flashes of lightning outside, Andrews heard a tinny voice in his headset.

“SCEV Four, this is Harmony Base. Roger your SITREP. You’re cleared for north lift. Over.”

“Roger that, Harmony. Make sure it’s lit up like a Christmas tree. Visibility’s going to suck substantially by the time we get there. Over.”

“SCEV Four, Harmony. Lift is on its way, and it will be fully illuminated. Over.”

“Harmony, roger.”

Andrews turned to Spencer. “I’m not seeing any torque increase on number one up here, Spence. No pressure, but that storm’s right on our ass and we’ll be losing the beacon pretty soon. After that, it’s up to my Mark One Eyeballs and a compass to get us to the lift.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Spencer said. “Keep your shirt on.”

“Come on, man! Get that damn engine started!” Tilly Rodgers called from the back.

“Yeah, get it squared away!” Leona added.

“Blow me, both of you! I’m working on it!”

Choi paged through the system’s status pages on the multifunctional display. “Engine’s too hot, man. The computer’s sitting on it like an eight hundred pound gorilla.”

“Spence, what’s the problem?” Andrews asked.

“It’s too hot! The computer won’t let it torque up enough to turn over,” Spencer said, frustration evident in his voice.

“Point for me,” Choi said.

“Spence, you said you could raise the thermal threshold so that it would keep on running.”

“And I did, but the engine’s got its own onboard computer, and it’s getting in the way. The only way that’s going to change is if I rip up the floor and yank the module from the side of the engine, but that means we’ll have to stop.” The SCEVs had been designed to allow even major repair work to be conducted from the inside, so that its crew wouldn’t have to step outside into extremely hazardous conditions to replace a transaxle or computer chip. But that meant pulling up the deck, and doing so would invoke safety overrides that prevented the machine from moving. Either way, the storm would overtake them.

“Just do whatever you can do,” Andrews said. “Including getting out and pushing. Choi, give me the numbers?”

“Electromag interferometer’s pegged at two thousand volts. Distance from leading edge is one thousand meters, rate of closure one hundred thirty-four klicks per hour. It’ll take us down in less than three minutes.”

“All right, you guys, hang on back there. It’s not going to get any smoother.” Andrews patted the SCEV’s instrument panel once again. “Come on, baby, come on …”

“Four, this is Harmony. Lift is up and illuminated. Over.”

“Much obliged, Harmony. We’ll be coming in hot. Over.”

“Roger that, Four.”

Daylight ebbed outside the viewports. Swirling dust blew across the thick glass, and Andrews glanced down at the infrared picture in the upper left corner of the functional display. The dust was thick enough to mute infrared images, which meant they would soon be blind.

So I guess this means all we’ll have left is a compass.

An alarm chirped, and engine one suddenly came to life, its growling whine slowly building to a crescendo. As soon as it began delivering power to the rig’s transmissions, the SCEV suddenly felt more nimble—or as nimble as a forty-ton vehicle could.

“Spencer, you’re the
man!
” Andrews said. “How’d you manage to get it started?”

“Busted into the engine’s integrated computer and shut down the thermal module,” Spencer said. “I did that because I’m brilliant and all, in case anyone was wondering.”

From the back came a chorus of jeers. Andrews toned them out as he raised his voice.

“Listen, folks, sorry, but I’m segmenting the vehicle,” he said. “Embrace the suck.” As he spoke, the two pressure doors that separated the rig’s three compartments slid closed. Andrews and Choi were sealed off in the cockpit.

“So how’re we doing this?” Choi asked as the big SCEV swayed from side to side. The leading edge of the storm had caught up to it, and the winds were battering the slab-sided vehicle.

“We run like hell and hope we can make it to the lift before the storm shuts us out,” Andrews said. “But if we screw it up and drive right into the side of the lift, then at least we won’t be around to listen to Walleyes.”

“If ‘we’ screw it up? Who is this ‘we’ you’re talking about, white man?”

“Attaboy, Choi, back me up all the way.”

The SCEV had lost too much ground to the storm.

Even as it accelerated forward, bumping and crashing over the dry landscape, the storm’s leading edge enveloped the vehicle, shrouding it beneath a shifting, inky darkness that made Andrews think the rig had just been swallowed whole by some sort of land-borne leviathan. Choi activated the rig’s infrared systems, but it was of little help; the swirling dust reduced the amount of heat that could be read by the high-tech device’s super-chilled planar array, rendering it as effective as Andrews’s eyeballs.

“The suck has arrived,” Choi said.

“We’re still on course, and the GPS says we should be at the lift in a minute or so,” Andrews told him. “Keep your eyes open.”

As he drove, Andrews flipped on the SCEV’s array of high-intensity floodlights. They gave him an additional twenty or thirty feet visibility now that the sunlight was being pared down by the storm, but he still couldn’t see comfortably. All he had to go by were the instruments, and even the military-grade GPS satellites that had been launched prior to the war were accurate only to within ten feet. If visibility was reduced much more, they could drive right past the lift without anyone noticing it.

“There!” Choi said a moment later, pointing out the diamond-matrix viewport. “Right there, I see the strobe! You got it?”

Andrews leaned forward. The straps of his four-point harness dug into his shoulders as he looked at the heads-up display. Sure enough, there was a very faint winking in the darkness ahead. Bands of dust would obscure it entirely, then lessen for just an instant to allow him to perceive more light. He compared the flashing with the GPS location on the multifunction display. If it was right, then he was nearly on top of the box-shaped lift.

He yanked back on the sidearm controller and stomped on the brakes. The SCEV slewed crazily as its wheels locked up, sending it skidding across the dry, sandy ground.

It came to a rest only feet away from the lift’s open entrance. The lights inside the large cubicle gleamed dully, their tepid illumination no challenge to the storm’s all-encompassing darkness.

“Yeah, I got it,” Andrews said.

“Could you have stopped a little more, you know, artfully?” Choi asked.

Andrews released a long sigh. “Probably, but why make it easy?”

He coaxed the SCEV into the waiting lift. The vehicle bumped slightly as it crossed the threshold, its array of high-intensity fog lights illuminating the big cubicle’s interior. A layer of dust already coated the floor, masking the yellow positioning circle painted on the elevator’s flat floor. Andrews pulled the SCEV into position by memory and triple-clicked the TRANSMIT button on the sidearm controller. The pulses from the rig’s radio were read by the receiver inside the lift, and the elevator’s thick, double-pocket pressure doors slid closed, shutting out the dark, seething fury of the storm as it reached full force. Yellow strobes flashed outside the rig’s viewports as the atmospheric scrubbers came on, venting radioactive dust and other airborne particulates from the air inside the elevator. After a few moments, an alarm sounded over the radio, three strident tones. At the same time, the strobes outside turned from yellow to red. The SCEV bounced on its stiff suspension for a moment as the elevator commenced its descent.

“Bay Control, this is SCEV Four. We’re secure and on our way down for an in-and-out. Over,” Andrews said over the radio.

“Roger that, SCEV Four. Welcome back to Harmony Base. Over.”

“Roger that, Harmony,” Andrew replied. “It’s good to be back.” With that, he and Choi finally relaxed, sinking back into the padding of their seats. Through the pressure door behind them, they could hear the rest of the crew applauding. It was good to be home—even if home was a windowless, subterranean fortress buried over a hundred feet below the Earth’s surface.

***

The SCEV Decontamination Center was their first stop after the elevator doors opened. The chamber was large and well-lit, the floor comprised of thick grating that creaked slightly beneath the vehicle’s weight as it trundled out of the lift. Andrews brought the rig to a halt inside a painted circle in the middle of the room and, once again, yellow strobes flashed. On the way down, Choi had opened the shield doors that separated them from the rest of the crew, and Spencer entered the tight cockpit and crouched between the seats. He examined the instrument panel critically, even though the displays were shown on his own station directly aft of the cockpit.

“Is there a problem?” Andrews asked the engineer as he looked out the side viewport and verified the rig was dead center in the circle. “Left side, check.”

“Right side, check,” Choi responded, verifying the SCEV’s position from the right side.

“Had a few tweaks on one of the differentials,” Spencer said, paging through the system situation display in the center of the console. “I just want to verify it from up here. You mind?”

“So long as you don’t fart,” Choi said.

“No sweat, I’m saving it for later.” Spencer paged through the display menus. “Yeah, it registered on this station, too. Looks like I’m going to be tearing this baby apart for the next couple of weeks.”

“Knock yourself out, little brother,” Andrews said. “We’re not going anywhere soon.”

“SCEV Four, Bay Control,” a voice said over the radio. “Stand by for external decon. Over.”

“Light us up, Bay Control. Over. Spencer, any reason we can’t start the recovery checklist, or is there something else you need to do?”

“Negative, I’m good. Let’s get on the checklists.” Spencer retreated to his station as the strobe lights outside turned from yellow to red. Several robotic arms descended from the decon center’s ceiling, each equipped with a large nozzle. The SCEV crew began their arrival checklists, and the arms sprayed the vehicle with thick streams of detergent-laden water. They weaved about the rig in a complex pattern, hitting it from every angle and blasting away the hazardous dirt and grime the vehicle had accumulated during its run. As Choi read off the checklist items and Spencer verified settings and switch positions, Andrews looked out the viewports, watching as filthy water cascaded down the rig’s sloped nose. SCEV Four was being sprayed with more water than it had encountered in over a month of field time. The thought depressed him. In fact, the entire act of returning to Harmony empty-handed left him feeling hollow. Everyone in the base had been counting on them to return with some good news, with reports that, over a decade after the Sixty Minute War, humanity was flourishing somewhere in what had once been the United States of America. Failing that, people wanted some evidence that Harmony Base wasn’t humanity’s last outpost.