Doomsday Warrior 14 - American Death Orbit (15 page)

“Five, four, three,” Connors said, looking up at realtime digiclock set to one side. “Two,
one.”

They all tensed up and suddenly the steel supership quivered like it was alive with an even louder blast that made them all think it had exploded.

“BLASTOFF.”

The X-7 Dynasoar shot forward down the tube like a shell fired from a cannon. Rock could feel the gees of the acceleration instantly, as his whole body was pushed back into the bucket seat, as his tongue searched for his throat to hide in.

The smoke cleared as the rocket picked up speed, leaving the long pressured spume of boiling rocket exhaust behind them in the rail tube. Suddenly there was a loud
whomp
and all their hearts jumped as they thought the ship had malfunctioned. But they had just reached the place where the tube changed to a steeper angle. Now it slowly curved up and already they could see daylight ahead.

The doorway was open.

Rock relaxed just a fraction as he saw that at least they weren’t going to smash into the steel door of the exit. But even as he felt the ship picking up speed, seeing the meter hit 650, then 890 as he watched, Rock saw that there was something in the opening—a whole shitload of the barbarian fighters rushing in waving rifles, machetes, and every damned thing. And as they closed in on them, for just a fraction of a second Rockson could see their leader—Garr himself, with his wide nargahide-jacketed frame. But if the warlord was thinking he was going to stop a ten-thousand-ton spaceship moving with the momentum of ten million horsepower he was
mistaken.

Rock didn’t even feel the infinitesimal jarring of the ship as it splattered twenty men into red liquid that dripped down the sides of the stainless steel tube and bubbled away in the exhaust flames.

Then they were through the opening, Rock’s eyes were suddenly flooded with daylight and he squinted. The instant they exited the opened door, a whole other level of rocket power clicked on behind them. For if the ship had seemed fast at the 890 mph which it left the tunnel at—felt like it was suddenly hitting warp speed as it went from 950 to 2,000 mph in the space of about two seconds. It was a feeling Rockson hoped he would never experience again. The gee force on his body was so powerful that he felt himself pressed back into the 45-degree-angled chair like a short order cook pressing down a slab of sizzling bacon with an iron. His cheeks were climbing up on his earlobes, his chest felt like someone had piled barbell weights upon it.

He could see the sky coming in on them, the puffy clouds just suddenly melting all around them. And on the video screen dead ahead just to the side of the curved forward view window, he could see the reverse view as well, the ground disappearing behind them, everything growing small so fast it was like being in a dream.

Whole forests and lakes suddenly became little splotches—and then disappeared completely. And even as they rose the Dynasoar continued to accelerate. The power of the spacecraft was just unbelievable, shaking every bone in his body, making his teeth vibrate so fast together he wondered if they’d tapdance right out of his mouth, making him strain to suck in every labored breath.

Then they were up and through the clouds and there was suddenly another tremendous roar and the whole ship jerked from side to side for a few seconds.

Rock again snapped his eyes shut expecting a blast of fire to singe him into overdone dog, hold the mustard. But when he opened them he found that he was still alive. On the video monitor he saw a huge booster, it looked like nearly half the length of the ship, falling away and spiralling back down to Earth far below.

But the Dynasoar kept rising, faster, like it was late for a very important date.

The pressure on Rock’s face and body was now unbearable. He felt like he was being crushed, every part of him just laid out and squashed like a bug beneath a boot. His lips were pulled far back over his teeth as his eyelids bulged over the side of his eyes. There was no way the whiz kids could be moving, Rock knew that for damned sure. He prayed this thing was on autostop or they were just going to keep going forever, or until the fuel gave out.

Then they were up past the highest clouds and Rock could see the sky turn purple, then jet black, with stars now spreading out above them in all directions. Suddenly the rocket engine went dead, just like that. One second it was roaring out its screaming mega-power, the next it was quiet as a stone, the flaming tail on the video vanished, the trail of smoke disappearing far below.

And the sensation of all the gees vanished as well. He could hear again and move. The command module was alive with lights and electronic beeps. Rock knew enough to keep his mouth shut as Rajat and Connors madly scanned the panel readouts to make sure everything was functioning, and hit various cut-off switches.

Rock stared out of the front of the control module, through the cosmic ray shielded glass. The whole fucking universe was right out there.

And suddenly he felt a sense of tremendous awe. To just be floating among it all. And he also felt the presence of something else. Of a force, an energy that permeated it all. It was as if it were somehow all much clearer up here, away from the polluting mind-mists of earth, clear of the mental barriers that existed everywhere. Here, as he let his body settle into a slower breathing rate, Rock with his semi-telepathic abilities absorbed the pure burning energies of the cosmos like a healing fluid into his soul.

“We’re all right, all right,” Rajat yelled out, breaking Rock’s spell. “We’re exactly where we should be, entering a 1,092-mile high orbit. All systems are functioning perfectly as far as we can tell, according to the inboard faultcheck—except for a toilet in the main lavatory which popped a gasket during take-off.”

“Well, we can doubtless find a way around that if we’ve come this far,” Rock grinned, wondering if it was possible for a man to crap right into space. “You two were unbelievable. I gotta tell you that,” Rock said as the two gleamed with toothy smiles. “You’re going to be nominated by me as soon as we get back to C.C. for the Citizen’s Medal.”

They knew what that meant. It was the highest award that could be bestowed on a Freefighter anywhere in America. Most of them were awarded posthumously. And still could be.

Rock undid his seatbelts and started to rise only to suddenly find himself floating up into the air. For a second he didn’t know what the hell was going on and sputtered and gasped, grabbing at the air like a fish out of water. The two pilots laughed as they undid their belts.

“Forgot to tell you, Rock,” Rajat said as he flipped a few more buttons. “There’s no gravity up here, once we cut acceleration! Watch where you go, cause you’ll keep going in any direction you head. You know—law of action/reaction, all that.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Rock said as he reached the “ceiling” and pushed off of it with his hands. Again he used too much force and the motion sent him twisting back down toward the steel floor. It took him another minute to get himself moving with slow enough taps and light finger pushes to start guiding himself back out of the pilot module.

“There should be magnetic boots and spacesuits, all kinds of junk, somewhere behind all those doors back there,” Connors said as he called up the schematics of the place on a screen. But Rockson was already pushing himself back through the spaceship in slow, even moves, now he was starting to get the hang of it.

It was like swimming but with even more of a sense of complete weightlessness. Like a dream, a dream of flying among clouds, of soaring like a bird. And even as Rockson propelled himself along he felt all sorts of childhood fantasies that had been long-buried pop up in little currents through his brain.

The men were already floating all over the place by the time he got to the main crew quarters. They were laughing and having a good time. And they needed it. God only knew what emotions they had all gone through in the last few minutes. The men were bouncing back and forth from wall to wall, mock wrestling and sending each other flying. Archer was the biggest kid of all, spinning himself around and around in a crazy kind of out of control spiral with his huge arms and legs poking out all over the place. In spite of himself Rockson couldn’t help but join in the ridiculous merriment. God only knew it wouldn’t last very long.

Twenty

M
cCaughlin was still as motionless as a mummy in a tomb. But he was hanging on. The space ride didn’t seem to have hurt him any. He just lay there strapped down to his horizontal seat so he wouldn’t float off. The rest of the men tried to relax, even take a nap, as they hadn’t slept for days now. But it was hard to sleep when you’re floating a thousand miles above the earth for the first time in your life.

“Everything still putting?” Rock asked as he made his way back to the command module.

“As far as we can see, everything is A-OK,” Rajat answered, his eyes still turning everywhere as Connors did the same a few feet away, taking in the reams of data. How they could even keep track of a tenth of it was beyond Rockson’s comprehension. He had had trouble in basic N-space non-linear algebra back in C.C. High. “We need to test some of the mini-rocket systems for actual maneuvering now that we’re up here. This ship is way beyond a satellite—it’s an actual rocketship, designed to maneuver in space with speed and accuracy.”

“Or so the manual says,” Connors laughed, giving Rajat a playful punch on the arm from his seat. “We don’t know if this ship has all systems.”

“Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” the Asian said, blushing under his dark skin. “But truly, Rock, from what we’ve read, this bird really is qualitatively different from anything before. For example—” He looked at Connors who nodded and they both pushed buttons simultaneously. Apparently there were numerous fail-safe systems—back-ups and accident avoidance modes so that for many critical operations the two had to operate controls simultaneously. As Rock watched up on the video monitor the outside cameras swept up and down along the sides of the craft, and he saw four huge delta wings grow out on each side, with little nozzles all over them front and big.

Rajat pressed something and nozzles on two wings fired for a split second. As light as if she didn’t weigh countless tons, the huge Dynasoar, like an elephant doing ice ballet, started smoothly gliding forward. Rock felt a slight tug and grabbed a seat.

“All right,” Rajat exclaimed, raising a fist in exuberance. “It means the ship’s maneuver controls are workable.” The two youths exchanged high fives and Rock shook his head. He kept forgetting how young they were. It blew his mind.

“Well Capt.
Kirk,”
Rajat said, saluting Rockson as he turned in his chair, referring to the Star Trek television series that the search men of Century City had been lucky enough to find an entire crate of ancient video tapes of in a ruined TV studio in Denver. Every schoolkid in the city knew the jargon from old TV. It was like they hadn’t been away a day, as if there wasn’t over a hundred years of death and mutation separating the two cultures.

“Whoa, I’m not the captain on this particular part of the trip,” Rock said. “You two are. I’ll make military decisions—but you’re the flyers, both of you. I wouldn’t begin to try to pilot her. But I suggest that we test the ship’s flight capabilities
and
her weapons systems. If we’re actually going to tackle this Space Wheel, we’d sure as hell better have guns that fire, and steering that turns. You sure you’re not star-patterned mutants?” Rock asked. “I don’t think I was quite so self-assured when I was sixteen or twenty. In fact I was an anti-social, foul-mouthed, bitter teenager, let me tell you.”

“Dr. Shecter tested both of us,” Rajat said, “and we both tested negative. I think we’re just plain old homo sapiens who have some aptitude for this kind of junk,” the Asian said, self-effacingly.

“Have you plotted our orbit? How near is the Wheel?” Rock asked.

“We’re about a thousand miles below their orbit and are on the far side of the Earth. That is—they can’t even see us right now—but we know where they are by process of elimination. It’s hard to explain but—”

“I’ll take your word for it, believe me,” Rock laughed. “So we can just cruise this bird toward them whenever we want?”

“Well, that’s one of the things we should test along with the weapons systems,” Rajat replied as he flicked some switches and the screen in front of Rockson suddenly was filled with concentric grids as beeps rang out insistently.

“It’s calling you,” Connors said mockingly.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Rockson asked.

“You’re the gunner, Rock. Neither of us would dare usurp that position. The controls are right in front of you. Handles like a machine gun according to the specs.”

Rockson looked down at the almost gallery-arcade-looking set of plastic toggle controls in front of him.

“You’ve got to be kidding. I’ve never fired a space cannon in my life,” Rock said with a strange look on his face. He hadn’t realized somehow that this was part of the bargain.

“Well, Simmons was supposed to be the gunner, but he got killed by the Vampyres. Claustein was the back-up. He didn’t make it out of the avalanche. That leaves
you
, Rock. You’ve had the most experience with weapons of any man here. We know how to turn it on and aim it. So you’ll just have to play around.”

“Right,” Rockson said, reaching down and gripping the twin handles of the curved plastic controls. “Well, there’s no time like the present,” the Doomsday Warrior muttered as he slid down in his seat getting into the most comfortable position.

“You don’t have to know what it all means in front of you,” Rajat said, “although there is a schematic available. But see that button in front of you that lists different modes? Press Full Manual.”

Rock did so and after a series of gurglings and beepings from within the gun handle, it suddenly loosened from its locked position so he could move it around freely. The video screen in front of him had split into six screens, each one showing (he realized after a few seconds of confusion) all six possible views from the ship. Video cameras were inset all over the thing and different portions of the sky—galaxies, nebulae—filled the six split screens.