Portal-eARC (38 page)

“Indeed. And we are no longer encumbered by Mr. Fitzgerald’s presence.” He looked at Madeline, who was strapped in nearby. “Speaking of the quite unlamented Mr. Fitzgerald, are we prepared for our approach in-system and an encounter with his presumed superiors?”

“I believe so, General. A.J., Mia, Horst, and Brett, with some added input from myself, have gone over every system of significance very carefully.” She nodded to Horst.

“Your codes were invaluable, sir,” Horst said. “There were a
lot
of backdoors into the code placed there by whoever set up the system in the first place, and it was very adaptable code; all Fitzgerald had to do was download something sent to him from back home and it would be accepted into the system with top priority. But A.J. and I, we are quite sure we have…neutered, I think would be the right word…all of this code.”

“Right,” said A.J. “It will
seem
to act, and we can send back dummy signals that will make it appear to whoever’s doing it that
Thor
is responding—thank Brett for that, he’ll be able to simulate the response just fine. We can even see what they expect and decide if we want to go along with it for a while.”

He felt a grim warmth.
All is prepared.
“Very good. I will of course remain invisible until the…denouement, yes?”

“That is indeed the plan,” Maddie said cheerfully. “Either they’ll act or they won’t; if they don’t, your appearance will
still
be the nail in their coffins. If they
do
act, you’ll have something new as well as something old to talk about.”

Hohenheim nodded. “And when, exactly, do you think they will make their attempt?”

“Honestly? I don’t think they really will. No matter
how
they do it, having
Mjolnir
crash at the end of the trip will look suspicious, and they can’t be a hundred percent certain that we haven’t sent sufficient evidence somewhere they can’t reach. If they
do
attempt it…Whenever we’re near the inner system and in the midst of some delicate maneuver. Their intent, remember, will have to be to cause a fatal, preferably utterly catastrophic, accident which wipes out any trace of the whole debacle. Earth orbital insertion would be my guess.”

“Yes,” Anthony concurred. “There it will be easy to make the orbit go wrong, send us into re-entry. A landing through Earth’s atmosphere, that will not be so survivable.”

“And they could get a lot more people killed,” Joe said darkly.

A.J. shrugged. “They
could
, but if they do it at all they’ll be controlling that part of the show, or they would if we didn’t cut them off at the pass. They’re stupid in some ways, but they have no reason to kill anyone they don’t have to. Calculate the
way
you want the orbit to go wrong and you can determine our crash-landing spot pretty easily.”

“One minute, General,” Jackie said. “Everyone strapped in?”

“All locked down,” Larry said. Everyone was gathered in
Mjölnir
’s control room to watch.

Once more, Jupiter loomed up in all his incomprehensible vastness, no longer a rounded giant moon-shape but a cream and brown
wall
that seemed to rise from the infinite depths and recede above back into unbounded space. They were nearly as low down as
Nebula Storm
had been on her pass, as low as they dared fly the cobbled-together vessel, and this time they were calculating the maneuver to increase their speed in a particular vector, one that would take them
in
-system with tremendous velocity. The Nebula Drive would be kept to a minimum for some time, then re-deployed to guide and slow them in their final approach in-system.

“Twenty seconds. Main nuclear drive reports all ready.” Mia gave her own smile. “And this time it will
work
, General.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Madeline took up the final count. “And…five. Four. Three. Two. One. Z—”

The deep-thunder roar of the nuclear rocket vibrated the control room with absolute power, erasing Madeline’s voice, sending bone-deep vibration through Hohenheim’s bones like the drone of a billion giant bees.
We are practically on
top
of the rocket here; I had forgotten what it
sounded
like.

Mjölnir
lunged forward, dumping mass at high speed, exchanging it for even more velocity, screaming around the largest of the planets at a speed so great that even mighty Jove could not stop it. The thunder went on and on, water ejected in hundred-ton lots behind the combined IRI-EU vessel and giving
Mjölnir
the greatest speed of any human-crewed vessel ever constructed.

And then the rocket cut off, and the stillness rather than the rocket was silently deafening.

“Anthony, report. How is our course?”

There was a pause, and then the French astronomer grinned. “It is perfect. We are precisely on course, to the limit of what I can measure.” He turned his chair to face the others. “My friends, we are truly on our way
home
!”

When the brief but heartfelt cheers subsided, Hohenheim nodded. “And our E.T.A. at Earth?”

“As we calculated—one hundred eighty-two days, almost exactly six months. Which, I must assure you, is incredibly fast.”

“Fast?” A.J. said, wrinkling his brow. “We went from a zero standing start at Ceres and caught you in less than half of that.”

“Ha! Yes, very fast. Ceres was much closer, in the asteroid belt, and you could accelerate all the way, as could we. In this case, we cannot accelerate any more, all we can do is coast, and then use your Nebula Drive to slow us
down
at the end, with
Mjölnir
using the last of its main drive to do the final matching burn.”

“Still,” Madeline said, “don’t be too impatient. We have plenty of supplies to last, and with the delays in construction, we may
still
get home before the ship that was supposed to rescue us gets out of drydock!”

A.J. seemed satisfied with the reply, and Hohenheim nodded slowly. “Yes. I would like that very much. We have saved ourselves,and to get home this way…it is a fitting tribute, in a way, to those who could not finish the mission. We have joined together, and we return what we can…home.”

Chapter 49.

“God above—wherever ‘above’ is out here,” A.J. moaned theatrically. “I ache
all
over.” He glared, not terribly seriously, at Petra Masters. “You
enjoy
our suffering, don’t you?”

Dr. Masters smiled thinly. “If so, Mr. Baker, I must also be a masochist. One point two gravities is a bit much, but we spent far too long in microgravity. Now most of us can stay in higher gravity for significant periods, and after only two and a half weeks I am already seeing a noticeable improvement in bone density.” She pointed. “Are you going to get in on this tournament, or not?”

A.J. tagged in and the 3-D display shimmered to show the
Ryu-Chi Warriors
tournament matches.

Helen looked on in bemusement. “A.J. and Joe I knew about, and I suppose Mia and Brett aren’t a great surprise but I must confess I didn’t expect
you
two to be…into these sorts of games.”

Petra Masters raised an eyebrow as A.J. chuckled. “Do you mean that an English doctor can’t enjoy breaking a few virtual bones? I assure you, there are a few patients that make it a quite cathartic release.”

“And I realize it may seem beneath my dignity,” Hohenheim said, “but such games were, I must confess, a staple of my youth. When I wasn’t outdoors doing something more active, that is.” He glanced over. “Ah. I see it is you first, Mia.”

“At least I get a chance to cause
you
some virtual pain with some virtual gravity,” A.J. said to Petra.

“Don’t get too ahead of yourself, Mr. Baker. You have yet to reach the finals, which is where we shall meet.”

A.J. tried not to snort too loudly. “I seem to recall
you
were the one insisting we set the difficulty level at ‘novice,’” he pointed out. Looking up at Madeline, who seemed satisfied to observe on the sidelines, he went on, “Now, if it was our Supergirl, I’d concede.”

Maddie shook her head. “Oh, no, I think you’d probably beat me. That’s a pretty specialized kind of game, and I’ve only played them a couple of times.”

Privately, A.J. suspected she only played “a couple of times” because that’s all it took for her to master them. Instead, however, he said, “Have you gotten any info back from Nick since we left?”

“Just a little while ago, in fact. He said to let everyone know that the proper reception is arranged and we’re to dock at
Meru
.”

A.J. couldn’t keep a rather sharklike grin from his face, and he saw it echoed on several of the others. “Proper reception arranged” meant that they were ready to move against Osterhoudt and his immediate allies, and that the press conference had been arranged according to specifications. “Eeeexcellent,” he said, steepling his fingers.

The virtual ring echoed to shouts and grunts as Mia, playing the hulking powerhouse Vargas, tried to land a solid punch on her opponent; the computer, being somewhat clever even in novice mode, had put her up against Calamet, a combat dancer who used speed and stealth moves. Finally, though, Mia figured out that broad sweep attacks could brush Calamet’s defenses aside and put him off-balance momentarily, which allowed Vargas to hammer his opponent. “Nice!” he said approvingly. Mia clearly hadn’t played these games very often, but she’d approached the problem like an engineer, and taken her opponent apart.

“So, Doc Petra,” he said, “what about the drugs? Did you get results on them? I know you were testing us with light doses.”

“Good preliminary ones, A.J.; I believe that is partly why we are seeing good progress now. The side effects—though we obviously have a very limited group here—seem relatively minor, except for Dan who had an obvious sensitivity, possibly actual allergic reaction and who has thus not been taking them. It does appear his progress is significantly slower than the rest of you. Because of that, by the way,” she looked to both Hohenheim and Madeline, “I wish to have Mr. Ritter permanently assigned to one of the acceleration cabins. This is the only way I can think of to hopefully get him to match us; since we all have to—pardon the pun—rotate in and out of the cabins, and he will not, this will give him a significantly longer time in high-gravity.”

Hohenheim shrugged. “I see no reason why not, as long as the constant exposure will do him no harm—and as you are the medical officer, that is of course your judgment to make.” A.J. saw Maddie give an assenting nod as well.

At that point Joe’s fighter, the reptilian Orochi, was kicked violently out of the ring. “Ouch! Too bad, Joe. I guess you’ll have to wait for the next round.”

“Or maybe Maddie and I will just head out for a walk by ourselves,” Joe said with an easy grin. Maddie took his hand as he floated over to her. “Well, after the first round is over, anyway,” he corrected himself. “I want to see if YOU make it past the first.”

“Well, well,” A.J. said, ignoring his friend’s feeble barb, “it’s
your
first round, Doc Masters. Good luck.”

Masters fumbled slightly with the control gestures, but Shun Hashimura, the bishonen martial artist she’d chosen, walked onto the ring with only minimal clumsiness. “Oh, blast,” she said. “I’m up against Ruyken. He’s
such
a bastard.”

A.J. knew she wasn’t just referring to his personality—though the game backstory certainly made the word fit. He was also one of the best fighters in the game and getting him in your first round was…unlucky.

The two squared off against each other and the refereeing master raised an arm, then let it drop.

Shun Hashimura spun low, long black hair whipping out, twining around Ryuken’s legs before he’d so much as taken half a step; the long-haired boy then did a handspring-kick to Ryuken’s face, landed on his feet and whipped his head about, yanking the hapless virtual warrior around and hurling him so high into the air he disappeared in a twinkle of light. “Perfection in Beauty,” the judge said, with a bow to the assembled watchers. “Victory, Shun Hashimura.”

A.J. slowly transferred his gaze to Petra, whose smile was failing to hide her self-satisfaction. “’Tis true, Mr. Baker, that I insisted on the novice setting,” she said, and her voice was almost a
purr
, “but I don’t recall in the least that I said it was for
me
.”

He burst out laughing. “Okay, fine, you had me fooled. Good! See you in the finals—if Brett or the General don’t beat us there.”

“Unlike the good doctor,” Hohenheim said, “I am quite rusty. But I will try to put up a good fight.”

It was Hohenheim’s turn next. A.J. leaned back. “Good thing I didn’t decide to actually go for a bet. I would’ve bet you wouldn’t get past the first match. OUCH.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I’m glad you’ve got good data.”

“Excellent data, and I’ve already written most of two papers I’ll be wanting to present. How about you—Oh,
good
one, General!”

“Oh, he’ll be feeling
that
in the morning,” A.J. agreed, watching Onikami trying to drag itself to its feet before the General’s Tankero closed the distance. “Me? Well, I’m not the research and publish type, but I’ve been working with Helen to help put together some of her reports. Joe, too.”

Now it was
her
turn to look at him with a raised eyebrow. “For a man who isn’t the publication type, you have quite a large set of publications. Two hundred, last I looked.”

He shrugged, a bit embarrassed. “Eh. Yeah, my name is on that many, but in a lot of them I’m just giving people better eyes, I didn’t do a significant bit of the
real
work.”

“You’re up, A.J.,” Helen said, nudging him.

“Are you reminding me because you want to see me humiliated?”

She laughed and gave him a quick kiss, which was of course what he’d hoped for. “No, not really. I’m glad just to see how we can all just
relax
for the most part now.”

“Same here,” A.J. said.
Okay, Zellie Tenjou
,
let’s show ’em what you’ve got
.

“Yep, I told you,” Joe said as the tiny girl in her pink and powder-blue stepped into the ring, “he
always
picks the harmless looking cute ones.” He looked pointedly at Zellie’s short skirt. “The ones that kick REALLY high.”