Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (25 page)

Mercy
handed the baby to an eager Oleander, who rubbed noses and traded smiles with
the child gleefully. “You look so big. Is Mommy sneaking rice into your milk
yet?”

“That’s
not until the six-month mark,” Yvette insisted. When the nurse put on the heavy
lab coat, she seemed puzzled, but Mercy urged her husband to a light jog as
they fled the prison with the white, picket fence. Lou needed little
encouragement. The faster they arrived in the meadow, the more time they would
have for serious picnicking.

“That’s
his bunny,” Oleander explained, barely audible.

“No
the other thing,” Yvette asked.

As
Lou and Mercy left the Hollow, he proclaimed, “Freedom!”

Giggling,
Mercy knew that, as the primary scout, Oleander would explain exactly how the
heavy little box could be used in relation to Magi camouflage materials. She
also knew her new dress might have a green streak like one of the pandas if Lou
didn’t let her get the blanket out first.

When
the couple returned, their spirits and the lab coat were both lighter.

Though they needed a
thunderstorm in order to approach the planet without native witnesses, the
magnitude and eddies of the wind shook the shuttle so much that they couldn’t
get near the mesa. Toby was terrified. If anything went wrong, they would end
up in the river below. He barely survived the crash simulator in a swimming
pool and still had nightmares about drowning. In full gear in a high-gravity
environment, he’d be dragged through the rapids with no chance of escape. The
door between the cockpit and passenger sections was open, clogged with bulky
equipment for delivery. If Toby focused on the drama in the cockpit, he could
imagine it was a view screen. He could pretend he was safe in his cell. No one
saw him wrap both arms through wall straps because the Herkemers were doing the
same thing. Sometimes scared shitless was the right response.

Red
said, “There should be enough shelter in the lee of that rock formation.” She
jerked the vessel down into the sheltered zone.

Toby
burped queasily but didn’t dare complain because everyone else on the team,
including Yvette, was watching this monumental event from Olympus.

As
they approached from below, Zeiss said, “Up close, this reminds me of the
air-tram ride up the side of Gibraltar.”

For
a moment, looking up through the window, awe overcame Toby’s fear. Green trees
and vines clung to the mesa’s sides wherever the rock wasn’t vertical, spilling
off the edge like foam off the top of a beer—over four kilometers wide. The
green on the canyon walls to each side stopped at cloud level, as if it were
the ring on a giant bathtub.

Mercy’s
voice warned over the radio, “Don’t feed the monkeys. They bite and steal
anything that’s not tied down.”

Only
Zeiss laughed, as he was the only other crew member to have visited the tourist
site. “Well I don’t sense any high-order mammals on the mesa or nearby. Proceed
with the next phase.” He radiated confidence in Red’s piloting skills, which
calmed the others enough to attempt their assigned tasks in the bumpy chaos.

Nadia
fired bursts of the COIL a few times and cursed. “There’s too much airborne
dust to level the area effectively. We can burn off the vegetation and melt a
little sand, but the dust will prevent us from cutting a proper foundation for
the spaceport.”

“Do
what you can, and we’ll land the shuttle when it’s clear,” Zeiss said.
“Concentrate on the bigger rubble. The last thing we need is a dent in the
undercarriage.”

“Without
a deep bore, we won’t have windproof housing or easy access to the caves,” Herk
complained. They theorized that the caverns in question had been caused by
water droplets seeping through cracks in the mesa over thousands of years. Sand
and limestone eroded as the water sought exit. Yuki had mapped the system of
caves and tunnels, and the landing team had voted unanimously on this location
as a first base.

Lou’s
voice came over the radio. “How deep below the surface do we need to dig?”

“Less
than eight meters.”

“In addition to the COIL, we have a
prototype missile,” Lou reminded the others. “If I remember the specifications,
the projectile is molten metal, self-forging, and can penetrate almost
anything.”

“The most convenient location for a
hole would be up against the outcropping where the shuttle needs to land,” Herk
suggested.

Lou mused, “For maximum impact
you’ll need to be a good kilometer up. Any higher and the accuracy of the shot
drifts. I’m not sure a girl will be able to hold it steady enough at that
distance.”

“Bite me,” Red replied.

“How long till we can land
afterward?” Zeiss asked.

“No radiation or fire expected—as
long as the roof doesn’t cave in. I’m not really sure how big the explosion
will be. We just need to wait for the dust to clear,” Lou judged.

“How much more fuel will we burn?”

Red replied, “Firing the missile
will lighten our load considerably. It’s what’s been making this bird
front-heavy. We were planning to hover for a while with the COIL, so this won’t
cost much more. If we can hold the off-load time to under ten minutes and keep
the engines hot, we should be good. Long term, it will actually improve our
numbers.”

“I could even use the extra metal
for base construction,” Risa said.

“Sounds
unanimous,” Zeiss said. “Authorized.”

Lou
said, “The missile is a little finicky. You have to warm her up in the right
sequence, or she’ll freeze up on you.” He talked Nadia through a series of
steps and then recited a code sequence that she keyed in.

Following
that, Zeiss added his cryptographic approval.

Building
up energy to activate the weapon took over ten minutes and dimmed the lights in
the shuttle. When Nadia was finally able to lock in the target and squeeze the
red trigger, the entire ship bucked. A loud clap of thunder resounded through
the sky of Labyrinth, and Nadia’s face lit with satisfaction as a new,
ring-shaped cloud formed on the mesa. “That was impressive. I wish we had more
of those.”

Red
chuckled. “Right. Smoke your cigarette later. Prepare to disembark. Everybody
carries cargo, even Z. We lift off the moment you have the portable shelter deployed.”

“Roger,”
each person on the shuttle echoed as they checked their helmets and seals.

“You
missed your calling, Nadia,” Lou said over the comm. “You should have been in weapon
design.”

“I
took all the same classes,” the Russian power expert admitted, “but we can’t
set the really big bombs off on Earth anymore—too dangerous. Space was my only
chance to see massive release.”

Lou
laughed but didn’t block the channel with an obscene retort.

Zeiss
read the instruments. “
Mein Gott
, the missile blasted clear through the
cavern and pancaked into the floor, making a crater inside, too.”

“Brace
for landing in five . . . four . . .” Red counted down. Between two and one,
the engines whined and struts smashed into rock. “Go!”

As
the person in combat armor, Herk had the honor of being the first human to set
foot on the new planet. His helmet camera recorded the event casually as he ran
toward cover and shrugged a fifty-meter coil of rope to the ground.

“Any
words on this solemn occasion?” Zeiss prompted.

Focused
on his mission, Herk had been caught off guard and forgot his prepared speech.
Instead he recited the motto of the rescue corps. “No limits. Fellow Homo
sapiens, we made it.”

With
that benediction, he sank hooked pitons in along the perimeter and looped the
ropes through, providing a guide in the low visibility and high winds. “Stay
close to the rock face. It’s like walking in a sandblaster. My suit held, but
yours are more fragile.” Then he leveled the ground under the belly of the
shuttle with the equivalent of a push broom. “Cargo drop zone clear.”

Red
flicked switches that caused the cargo section in the belly to lower to the
ground. Once motion halted, Red signaled the groups of people waiting in the
two airlocks. “Commence Fire Drill. We’re behind schedule already. You have
thirty-one minutes remaining.”

The
crew in spacesuits hauled everything already in their hands toward the
rendezvous point. Once there, Risa began to anchor the corners of the emergency
shelter. “Take the generator next so we can power the air compressor,” she told
her husband.

Herk
ran to grab the next crate himself while all the others lifted in male-female
pairs. Zeiss and Nadia worked in synchronization without wasted motion;
however, Toby lagged behind, causing Oleander to complain. “You didn’t lift the
weights, did you?”

People
could hear him panting apologies over the comm channel as the pale
nanobiologist struggled in the higher gravity.

“Save
your breath and move,” Oleander urged.

The
other teams passed them with their second crates as Oleander and Toby jogged
back to the shuttle. He was putting them even further behind.

When
Zeiss and Nadia passed them with the third crate, he said, “Risa, you take over
as Oleander’s partner. Toby, you arrange the crates as a windbreak around the
shelter.”

Despite
the wounded pride evident on Toby’s face and Risa’s frustration at the
interruption to her task, both chorused, “Yes, sir.”

Red
kept announcing the time left. Once the final crates were unloaded, she
announced, “Four minutes until wheels up.”

“Everyone
grab part of the fuel distillery and heave it past the ropes,” Zeiss barked.
“Don’t bother to assemble it.”

The
fabricator they had employed to manufacture rocket fuel on the asteroids took
up a large portion of the cargo area. Herk single-handedly dragged the main
chemical tanks across the sand, like a highlander about to toss the caber.

As
Zeiss reopened the airlock, they found that Red had moved the remainder of the
parts inside, resting atop a variation of Mercy’s floating wheelchair. A pile
of six antigravity planks rested beside the unwieldy device, with no room to
spare for people. “Nadia, lay a single-width track toward that ditch. Oleander,
help me build the ramp two panels wide.” Together, the three cajoled the
massive load toward safety.

“One
minute.”

Over
the jackhammer assault compressor noise, Toby announced, “Inflating shelter
now.” He was hung up on something and couldn’t take the final step toward the
tent. The storm made it impossible for him to see the cause.
I can’t screw
this up, too.
Desperate, he yanked his safety line with all his strength
and tripped Herk.

Ironically,
this part Toby could do. He was first on the scene, checking for broken bones
because a fall in this environment could be disastrous.

Risa
sprinted to her husband’s side, examining the suit for hole. “No breach.”

“He
has a mild sprain in his ankle,” Toby reported, “and the main tanks are
scratched.”

The
color drained from Zeiss’ face as his group pushed the final piece across the
finish line. Zeiss had been the only one to stand by him through the trial.
Disappointing him was worse than the shuttle ride down.

Before
anyone could accuse him or complain, Toby volunteered. “Request permission to
stay behind to fix the mess I made, sir.”

“Time
to go,” Red broadcast. Oleander and Nadia ran for the airlock.

Looking
at Herk, Zeiss asked, “Can you still do this, or do we scrub?”

Herk
replied, “We’ll make it work. Go!”

Zeiss
bolted for the shuttle, and Oleander helped him aboard. The moment Nadia closed
the airlock door, Red gunned the throttle. While
Ascension
shot skyward,
Yuki read off the revised speeds and positions needed for Red to catch up to
the lens of
Sanctuary
as it streaked by the mesa base.

Once
the shuttle was clear, Risa finished assembling the shelter, refusing to look
at the man responsible for her husband’s injury.

Herk
limped over and planted an explosive on top of the tanks. “
Gilligan’s Island
rules,” the head of security explained. “Nothing permanent is allowed anywhere
on our island. It all has to be made of native materials like clay, bamboo, and
vines. We have to have a way to destroy anything modern by the end of the
episode. Anything below the summit can only be what the aborigines know or tech
we give them via pages. We don’t have the stealth suit yet, so we can’t travel
anywhere or do anything that would be visible to the natives nearby.”

Someone
had stenciled
S S Minnow
on the base of the survival tent.

Herk
continued. “Once this storm slows, Risa and I will build the walls to the
spaceport. You can construct a shed for the distillery.”

Toby
shook his head. “No. Anything I built would collapse. I’ll ease your load by
dropping the rope ladder down the hole and start hauling gear into the cave. I
can even do that while the sand is flying, and I fit better than a Goliath like
you.”

“You’re
going to be exhausted,” warned the large man in armor.

“If
I don’t pump up my muscle mass from day one, I’m no good to any of you. Your
wife bench-presses more with her legs than I do.”

“Everything
is going to take us more effort than anticipated. Even the gardens will need to
be covered by a greenhouse so the sandstorms don’t kill them.”

Risa
wouldn’t shake his hand, no woman would, but she seemed sincere as she said,
“Welcome to the team, Doc.”

Toby
was glad no one had called him Gilligan.

The
moment the wind died down, he checked every millimeter of the distillery
exterior for damage. Finding nothing significant, he opened up the maintenance
hatch to run an internal systems check on the electronics. That’s when he found
the note from Plato about Magi secrets in Meteoropolis. His presence here
wasn’t an accident. Fate had offered him a way to regain Yvette. If he could
uncover what the Magi were hiding, she would consider him her dearest ally. He
hid the note in his bio-sample collection pouch.