Star Road (15 page)

Annie did a mental countdown, taking one hand off the wheel and adjusting her seat harness. As tight as could be.

For a moment, she lost sight of the troop ship. It was gone in an instant, and she feared the worst, but then it reappeared, wavering in and out of view.

She had the thought:
Never saw one this big before,
but saying that to Jordan wouldn’t help.

How can he remain so calm?

“Here we go,” she said.

Jordan said nothing.

The SRV entered the cloud.

~ * ~

A noise filled the passengers’ cabin like a deluge in a rain forest pelting down on a metal roof.

Ivan shifted in his seat.

Swirls of particles roiled around outside. A tornado-like spiral encircled the Road like a snake.

The Road itself didn’t react at all.

As if immune...

Whatever the particles did ... they couldn’t affect the Road itself. Maybe this was even good for the Road. Resurfaced it.

But whatever traveled on the Road?

Different story.

“It’s so loud!” Ruth said, blocking her ears with the palms of both hands.

Nearly sobbing.

People are gonna lose it if this keeps up for long,
he thought.

It sounded like boulders, now, raining down on the SRV.

Ivan himself felt immobilized. Nothing he could do but sit there and, like the others, listen to the terrible noise of the storm enveloping the ship.

~ * ~

“The troop ship ... it just—” Jordan left the rest of his sentence unfinished, because now Annie could look ahead and see.

The ship’s enormous size seemed to have attracted massive diaphanous billows of particles as it entered a swirling tunnel made of the cloud.

The intermittent sparks that had flown off before now turned constant. Bright streamers of light sizzled and crackled, the sounds faint but growing louder inside the SRV.

Then: She couldn’t believe her eyes.

A giant piece of the ship flew away.

Just...
peeled
away from the ship, lifting off like a tin roof blown away by a hurricane and disappearing into the empty space off the Road.

Annie hit a commlink button.

“Lahti? Commander Lahti? Can you—?”

Nothing but a wash of static.

Subatomic particles washed across the shield, forming a vibrating, fiery screen. The SRV’s cockpit windshield was designed to resist this kind of impact, but could it really stand up to such a pounding?

At this rate?

Not for long.

Annie saw that the troop ship was pulling away, Lahti making a run for it at top speed through the storm.

No way she could keep up.

But Annie pushed the SRV as hard as she could while still making sure she had enough control to navigate on the Road, which had started swerving and swaying as well.

Just what I need,
she thought.

And then, when she thought that she absolutely didn’t need anything more to handle other than the screaming noise of the storm outside, the road curving wildly, her hands on the wheel—two things happened.

Ahead, the troop ship—now careening on the Road, its bulk making the high-speed navigation even more difficult for its pilot—took a curve in the road.

Giant chunks of material began peeling off its sides. Explosions of blue and white sparks sprayed the area around it.

One chunk went flying back, inches away from smashing into SRV-66.

Then: the troop ship ...
vanished.

The ion cloud grew so thick and dark, so relentless in its battering of the ship, that the troop ship disappeared under the assault and then exploded into thousands of pieces that immediately turned into dust, swept up into the cloud.

Gone ...just like that.

“Jordan. I think we’re going to—”

He reached out. Touched her right arm locked on the wheel.

“Steady, Captain. Just keep it going as fast as you can.”

But as soon as he said those words, the SRV lurched as if it had hit something in the Road.

The vehicle shuddered, and then:
no!

Slowing.

Jordan looked at her. A question? Or a hint of panic in his eyes?

“What was
that?”

Annie scanned the dials, the monitors, the screens as the SRV shook so hard its frame vibrated as it slowed even more.

Slow ... slower ... and finally coming to an almost complete stop.

“The deflection panels,” Annie said, pointing to a small readout. “Something’s wrong. They’re not working. Engine needs to shut down, or it’ll explode.”

The SRV, with the cloud outside seeming to grow in intensity, slowed even more.

They couldn’t stop now. Road Bugs would come and finish off what the ion storm had started.

Annie knew what she had to do, and she didn’t like it. She was sure they didn’t have enough time.

~ * ~

15

McGOWAN

Sinjira turned around.

“The troop ship’s gone!”

Normally she’d be so excited.

Imagine a whole troop ship
vanishing.
And she had seen it... recorded it.

But the noise outside the vehicle had grown so terrible, the particles— whatever the hell they were—constantly battering the ship. She imagined people, hundreds of people, outside the SRV, pounding on it to get inside.

The old miner in the front looked out his porthole and asked, “Where in hell’d the troop ship go?”

None of the others could answer that. But Sinjira had seen so clearly how it had simply shattered into pieces, and how those pieces themselves had disappeared. Reduced to atoms in a flash.

If you blinked, you would have missed it.

“What the hell—?”

McGowan suddenly making a lot of noise.

“You’re right. It’s ...
gone!”

“Why won’t the captain tell us what’s going on?” Ruth Corso asked. “We have a right to know what’s happening!”

Sinjira guessed that Captain Scott had her hands full right about now.

And what would she say?

We lost our escort.

And we’re next.

Sinjira fingered the button of her chip recorder. Thinking:
This is too much. I should shut it off.

Nobody would want to see this, to experience this.

But she left it running.

As she felt what everyone else in the compartment had to be feeling.

The SRV bumping, then slowing.

Now—almost stopping.

Even she knew they couldn’t stop on the Road ... not for long.

So ... whatever just happened, it could get worse.

~ * ~

Annie undid her safety harness and took one look at the console.

“Okay, you stay on the Road. Watch for the bugs.”

Jordan looked at her. “We’ve got some already.”

He indicated the right portal where, through the storm, Annie could see several indistinct shapes, pacing along beside the SRV.

“Shit,” she whispered. She shook her head and added, “We’re gonna have to clear those deflectors before we stop entirely”

“Or go anywhere. How you plan to do it?”

“I’m no expert, but I can run the SRV’s engine with their safeties off.”

Jordan shook his head.

“Maybe ... and maybe not. You don’t know how bad the damage is.”

She saw him undo his harness straps and start to stand up.

“Stay here,” she said. “Keep her as steady as you can. And shoot any bugs that get too close.”

“If it’s more target practice, I’ll take the main gun.”

“No. I need you up here to watch the screens. And ...”

“What?”

“I’m going to ask Gage to take the other gun.”

“What makes you think he can?”

“That’s an order, Jordan.”

He sat down and rebuckled his harness.

And Annie raced down the stairs to the passenger compartment.

~ * ~

Straight to Gage.

McGowan touched her as she passed.

“What’s going on? Why the
hell
are we slowing down?”

The sleepy miner’s voice was commanding now, booming in the compartment.

But Annie didn’t stop.

Until she stood beside the man they had rescued.

“Can you operate a turret gun?”

Gage looked at her, but only for a moment. Then he nodded.

“It’s aft. Jordan’s on the forward guns. Stay in contact with him.”

Gage got up and started down the aisle to the back of the SRV.

And only then did Annie turn to the passengers.

All eyes on her.

“The storm particles have damaged our heat deflectors. Not sure how much. The monitors are out. But the engines can’t run without ‘em.”

“What are you going to do?” Nahara asked. He sounded more defeated than scared.

Annie hesitated.

False confidence? Or the truth?

“I don’t know. I—”

She heard the snap of a seat harness being undone.

McGowan grumbled as he stood up.

“Mr. McGowan. You need to sit
down.
I can’t predict what we may have to do—”

But McGowan, burly, filling the center aisle, walked toward her.

And faced Annie.

“You ain’t sure what to do, is that it?” he asked

“I know what I have to do—I’m just not sure—”

“If you had your vehicle back at a way station, in a service bay, you could do the repairs no sweat, right?”

A curt nod from Annie. She couldn’t stop wondering how long before the bugs decided they were moving slow enough and removed her vehicle from the Road, piece by piece.

“Only one thing we can do,” McGowan said, his eyes steely, boring into her.

She knew what he was going to say.

“Someone’s gotta clean them damn ion deflectors before the bugs get to us.”

“And how, exactly, can we—”

“Someone’s gotta EVA.” A pause. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get on my mining rig and go out. We don’t have much time just to stand around gabbin’.”

Annie thought. But only for a second. Then another quick nod.

A bit of hope.

The old miner in his suit... out there? Removing ion particles from the deflectors? That’s close to a suicide mission.

But it just might work. Like he said: Back on good ole
terra firma?
No problem.

Out here?

Not so much.

The big question was: Can the suit stand up to the steady blast of ionized particles?

And with the bugs already here ... what else could McGowan do?

All pointless questions when McGowan’s offer was the only option they had.

“I ain’t a flight jockey,” McGowan said, “so you’ll have to talk me through it.”

“I’ll be in your ear.”

McGowan nodded and grinned at that.

Then Annie stood aside. But before McGowan started to the rear of the cabin, Sinjira nabbed him by the crook of the elbow.

“Wanna be famous?” Her eyes were bright when she asked.

“What are you asking?”

“Chip up. Record it. It’d make a helluva chip.”

Annie watched as she held out a small recording device with two adhesive nodes.

“For posterity? Think about it. The brave rescue attempt.”

“Emphasis on the word ‘attempt.’ “

We don’t have time for this,
Annie thought, watching as McGowan took a breath.

“What the hell...”

He took the chip recorder and pasted the two electrodes to his left temple just below the hairline. Then he slid the recording device into his jumpsuit pocket.

“Let’s go,” Annie said, and she followed McGowan to the back of the SRV where she opened the utility hatch, and stepped aside so he could climb down into the hold.

“I’ll help you suit up.”

She wondered if her voice betrayed her doubts. He looked like he didn’t care one way or another.

Just doing what he had to do.

~ * ~

Ivan settled into the gun turret, letting his fingers slide over the dull metal and worn plastic of the controls.

Like coming home.

The hissing sound of particles hitting the exposed ship was much louder here. It dulled when he slipped on the headset.

“You there, Jordan?”

Ivan adjusted the volume.