Chapter Thirteen

Aaron

When Aaron walks opens the door into the briefing room, everyone else is already there, and waiting for him. He feels like an ass for being late. Sy is sitting at the end of the table, with Vaun and Mikel on each side of him. Down from the two of them is Valerie, in her lab coat, and a tall older man in a bomber jacket that he remembers from the night they were all captured out at the farm. Across from the remaining seat left for him is one of the female guards. The group has already been talking and are finishing up their introductions.

The older man, with the long white moustache and well-kept beard, who was the pilot, sets one of his boots up over his other knee and takes another gulp from his large coffee mug. “Hey Aaron, Nice to see you under better circumstances this time. I’m Don Wood, the third leg of this operation. I handle all the launches, or pretty much anything that flies.”

The woman across from him has a nametag with Lamphier on it. He’s seen Alexis palling around with her from time to time. She’s pretty much been mimicking everything the woman does since they’ve gotten there, and for good reason. This woman is one of the most respected guards for sure. She and Alexis are always wearing the same things, a black tank top, issued armor vest, black tactical pants, and duty boots. She has a big long blonde braid and is playing with the end of it while sitting quietly. She waves to him with the end of it and only gives her name.

“Becky.”

“Hey Becky, good to see you this morning. Sorry about being late everyone. I was charging, and… I don’t know.”

Aaron’s own lingering mood is still holding him back from being at-all social, and he can’t help his sour expression. He hopes it at least makes him look serious about the mission. Valerie does her best to not look his way. She just looks down at the table. She looks like she’s simply trying to stay upright. When he gives Sy a long and serious look-over, Sy does the same thing right back at him. Neither of them are accusing one another of anything, but more so trying to read what the other’s next move is going to be.

When he’s had enough of Sy’s face, he looks back over at Don to introduce himself. “I’m the killer robot thing that thinks he’s a dead guy.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Valerie’s face suddenly look up. Sy knows it was a jab at her, but does a perfect job of not showing any notice. Becky seems to get it. She has no problem raising her eyebrows at Valerie. He didn’t show up to make quips at Valerie, so he cups his hands together and sits down.

He turns to Sy and Don, since they seem to be running the show. “What can I kill for you fine folks today?”

Valerie’s cheeks puff out for a second when she almost loses her lunch. Vaun shrugs his shoulders when he looks at Sy, and then stands up from his chair. He taps on the holograph projector display buttons a couple of times and shifts over towards its display. It shows a very busy orbital field of satellites and stations all around the planet. All the red dots and orbits seem to be in a distinct layout, all except for one which is lit up yellow.

Vaun gets right to the details of what they’ll be doing, as if it’s all pretty basic stuff. It isn’t what he was expecting, but they’re clearly looking at a space mission. He immediately starts to get nervous, but Vaun’s monotone rundown is already taking all of the excitement out of it. He’s clearly in no mood to make his and Mikel’s first mission special.

Vaun either needs some caffeine, or somehow, this job is beneath him. Sy is probably making him go along to babysit the two of them. After letting Vaun go over the mission details for a little while, Mikel is predictably the first one to make himself sound stupid.

“Hey, what about zero gravity training and all that. I got like, no training for any space stuff at all.”

Sy obscures his eyes by brimming them with his hand, and then quietly sighs. Becky snorts out a laugh and then shields her eyes too. She can’t stop smiling. When Mikel looks at her as if she’s being a jerk, she can’t help herself.

“Did you at least get potty trained?”

Mikel looks like they’re picking on him now. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Don looks at both her and Mikel in a punitive way to get them to quit acting childish, but then his face turns red and laughs too. “But seriously. There’s NO shitting in your combat suit.” That gets everyone to laugh. To make it worse, he has to poke fun at him too. “Aaron doesn’t have like… robot shits or anything like that right? He’s just a robot?” Even he laughs, but that all dies when the others look at Valerie. She is alarmingly pale.

Vaun does his best to ignore all of them and continues to push through with his briefing. He points at the rogue satellite in yellow again. “Now, our local contractors have been pushing hard on this new Mars colony attempt, and they’ve been a little tight on budget over it. That’s understandable, but they knew the risks.”

Mikel asks an important question that the others have forgotten isn’t common knowledge to outsiders. “What risks?”

Sy’s eyebrows pinch together as he leans forward and puts his elbows on the table. “Well, for one, if you remember, everyone who’s not an American wants them dead. We already took the moon by force, and have no plans on sharing. Now we’re about to do the same thing with Mars. Not these colonists specifically, but yes, that’s the general plan. Let’s just say it won’t be a surprise if anyone tries to stop them.”

They all look to the holograph at once. Vaun’s expression is now as serious as he’s ever seen it. “Apparently, this little hunk of shit here, which came from our Smekov friends up north, is another of what we estimated to have been a dozen or so of these… mystery packages that have been sent up this year. They’ve been slowly drifting farther and farther out to god knows where, without any obvious destinations, until now. Yesterday, the folks down the street here, have brought it to our attention that these things have finally made it all the way out to the accumulation site. So that’s great.”

Mikel shines once again. “What’s that, where all the space garbage gets pushed to?” There are small smiles and shaking heads around the room again.

Before Becky can make fun of him again, Don does his best to help Mikel along with at least some dignity. “No Mikel, it’s not that, but good guess. It’s technically one of the Lagrange points, kind of corner to us and the Moon, specifically, the L-four location. It’s where stuff can float in a sort of gravity equilibrium and stay there for a long time pretty easily. The contractors have been accumulating all of their payloads for the Mars colony out there on this huge dock that was left over from the old world. It’s probably where the original military installation launched from. Everything from rocket engines to camp supplies are being staged out there.”

Aarons head snaps towards Don’s direction. Any mention of old world stuff gets his attention right away. “Original military installation on Mars?”

Vaun leans forward, spreading his hands out wide across the table, with a glare. He even gives Don a look for opening his mouth about such a thing. “Never repeat that to anyone, ever.” He looks all the way around the table. “There is no military installation on Mars. Understood? That is EXTREMELY sensitive information.”

Sy lets out a deep breath and runs both of his hands through is blonde hair. He’s definitely frustrated with what’s going on. “Anyway, it’s like our colonists have literally walked out to the end of the rifle range, pulled their pants down, and bent over.”

Now Mikel is concerned. “Well what are these things that are floating around out there then? Fukin bombs? My first gig is to go and see if something is a bomb? Shouldn’t we, uh, send a robot up there for something like that?”

Now all eyes are on him, and all he can do is shrug his shoulders. “I’d be more than happy to go alone, but I don’t know how to fly a shuttle. All I know how to do right now is tear shit apart or maybe fill it full of holes. I guess you could strap my as to a rocket or something. See if I care.”

Vaun raises his eyebrows as he looks around the room, disappointed in the lack of enthusiasm. Becky is looking like she hasn’t even been paying attention the whole time. “That’s what we do here Mikel. Getting shot at is kind of the normal. That’s kind of one of the things we can at least count on.” He shrugs his shoulders and lifts his palms up. “Assume it’s a trap, and keep your guard up.”

Don puts his hands up before Mikel has a chance to get all defensive. “Now, none of you get your panties all twisted up before we even start, ok. It’s not gonna be a bomb! No one even does that. It takes MILLIONS, often billions, to send stuff up there. Everything up there is important, usable, and very expensive stuff. No one wants to blow it up, trust me. If anything, they want to steal it. It’s already up there, that’s like ninety-nine percent of the work.” He lowers his hand slowly before continuing. “Before we get carried away, keep in mind, this is just a li’ll fifty-mil job. A look and see. All it’ll cost us is a few fuel stacks to orbit and then we’ll see what’s what from there. We’re only going after the closest one anyway.”

He’s not all that impressed himself, with how nonchalantly the others act about what they’re doing. Mikel does have valid concerns, so he finally speaks up too. “So there’s what, a dozen of these things the bad-guys have sent up and no one knows what they are, and now they’re messing with American stuff? How does that even happen?”

Becky knows why. “Oh, yeah, that’s because, this one time, these three American dudes murdered a bunch of other nationals and took over the moon. So no one else really shares what they’re doing with us anymore. It’s not like there’s a world space association. Well… there kind of is, but just not with us in it.”

Sy’s tries to not let her pick at that truth too much, and immediately changes the subject back. His eyebrows suddenly raise optimistically. “Oh, and if you can, try’n steal the thing.” He kind of mocks Don by nipping at an imaginary coin in his teeth. “Yaarrr. Could be worth millions!”

Vaun sighs in embarrassment and lets him and Mikel know what they usually do in this situation. “We’ll probly just ransom it back to whoever owns the stupid thing. I could go into more details of what we’re all going to be doing up there, but I don’t really feel like it.”

Sy doesn’t object. “K folks, I’ll see you in the hanger before you all jam on out.”

After Vaun, Sy, Valerie, and Don step out, Becky hangs back with him and Mikel. “Don’t worry guys. It’ll be pretty straight forward. As long as you pay attention, you’ll pick up on the rest no problem. Oh, and I’m definitely not gonna be your mother up there, so just don’t.”

Down in the main underground hanger area, the five of them stage what tactical gear they want in the shuttle. Everything else has already been taken care of by the techs. They’re taking the medium sized vehicle, which is more for utility use than the others. Even though it’s completely blacked out with that crazy finish, and difficult to even look at, it’s smoothed over body and blunt little wings make it look rather mild compared to most everything else SSS has.

When they’re done, and give the floor crew the clear, they fat bodied ship is pulled forward across the floor on its landing skids with the huge cargo elevator winch, until its square on the platform. Sy and Valerie wave to them from the living quarter’s balcony as they ascend with the shuttle up to the main hanger. Mikel is the only one who waves back.

When they get to the main floor, Alexis has the flatbed hauler already parked in the loading dock at their platform. Vaun walks onto the back of the truck, snaps the bed winch hook to a loop on the rear of the shuttle, and reels it into the back of the truck all the same. It feels like an awful crude way to handle such a craft, but the thing is treated just as ruggedly as it’s made. After all, it’s made for combat. Becky was originally tasked with driving, but at the last minute, she changes her mind and tosses him the keys.

“Since you like driving it so much.”

The shuttle looked a lot bigger when it was inside the building. Its thick high molecular weight boron loaded polyethylene body gives it a lot of bulk compared to how little room is inside. Now that it’s in the back of the hauler, it looks a little smaller than when it did inside. It’s about the size of a shipping container, without its wings.

Don is covering the tall stick shifter with his hand, waiting for him when he climbs in. “Don’t drive like an ass. You’ve got a few million bucks in the back, not to mention that it’s supposed to keep us alive through some real serious shit.” He scoots back over to the middle of the bench seat, slips down till his knees touch the dash, and pulls his western hat down over his eyes. “Oh, and don’t run anyone over, ok.”

While cramming his way through town in the behemoth truck, errant thoughts of Valerie start trying to demanding attention from him. Luckily, concentrating on not accidentally running over any other cars is holding him back from really dwelling on her. After Vaun directs him out onto the southbound freeway, in a direction he rarely ever ventures, it dawns on him that they’ve been heading in the wrong direction the whole time. The commercial launch pads are on the complete other side of town. He figures he’ll just have to wait and see. He doesn’t need to ask questions about everything he doesn’t know.

As soon as it’s easy-going out on the open road, Valerie immediately claws her way back into this thoughts. It really upsets him that she doesn’t believe he ever came back. No one told him that it was Arma and the others that brought him back either. He wonders if Marco would’ve ever told him. He realizes he never did tell her that he wanted to be like Five and Arma. He only ever admitted that to Arma. It makes him wonder if Valerie would’ve even saved him if it were her arms he had died in.

He remembers the look on Arma’s face when he took his last breath that night. Her want for him has picked up strong lately, but now he can see that she’s actually been closing in on him from the start. She lost someone she truly loved when he died. He feels awful for not standing with her like he could’ve been. He didn’t know, and she’s been so alone this whole time.

Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Don has slid his hat over to the side and is watching him. He’s probably noticed the foul look on his face. He imagines the others have probably told Don that he’ll snap one day. When he turns his head to look down at him, Don immediately faces forward, knowing he’s been caught staring. He could give a shit, and he certainly doesn’t want to make anything out of it right now, so he puts his eyes back on the road and continues driving.

When he considers how truly close he was to being lost to the empty nothing of death, forever, it makes him smirk. Thanks to Arma, he’s done it. He’s beaten death and been given a nearly limitless mechanical existence. Whether Valerie loves him or not doesn’t matter anymore. He has to think about the bigger picture more, and what he’ll do with many the lifetimes he has to come. One thing’s for sure, he’ll have to learn to live with himself first.

There isn’t much he can do about Valerie right now. She’s still very much human, and he simply is not. He’d always be willing to wait, but to her, her days will always be ticking away. It makes him consider how Marco and Gabriel said Paul felt about the program. He was only willing to bring back people he was prepared to live with for the rest of forever. It’s why he and the board kept it so secret. Valerie may be over him right now, but if she’s ever brought back, will expect him to come back to her? She’d see the truth or herself and have to live with how she gave up on him.

Even if he explains himself to her, and explains that he’s gotten ahold of himself, he’ll still never be what she really needs. He knew things would be different, but he wasn’t being realistic about it. He thought that it’d be nice to not have to be constantly eating, shitting, sleeping, keeping his body in shape, and all that. He could never get sick, or hurt in a way that couldn’t be completely fixed.

Still, he finds himself missing some of those things. Sometimes, hungry or not, it’d be nice to stuff himself to the gills with clam-dip and pass out on the couch again. Now, he can’t even smell or taste anything. He doesn’t feel refreshed after sleeping, or tired after a long day either. His life has no rhythm to it anymore. It used to be that his racing mind would only keep him up at night, but now it’s overclocking every waking moment. What he needs to do, is what Arma told him to. One way or another, he’ll be forced to forget about the old, and focus on what’s ahead of him. The thought of her skin on his crosses his mind. She’s going to get him in trouble.

Remembering to keep control of where his mind leads him, he considers where he is now, driving down the road in a huge truck with a shuttle on the back of it, and smiles again. He’s going to space! It’s a far-off fantasy he’s only ever dreamt of. It still hasn’t truly sunk in that he’s actually doing it.

Either way, Valerie may be over him, but she’s still his friend. They’ll always be there for each other when it counts. Even in the worst times, he has so much more now than he ever had in his past life. He won’t ever be so bored out of his mind he’ll have to wander down the streets for something to do. Anything can happen, and without him looking for it.

Don finally looks over at him again. “Take the next exit.”

He cranes his neck to look out the passenger window, but doesn’t see any kind of development anywhere, only the base of the southern mountains. They aren’t as steep or rocky as the ones to the north, but are softer, and not a forested. Not far down the road off the exit, he takes another turn off the road again and stops at a big heavy duty automatic gate. It has the big SSS logo on it with Space Security Services titled underneath.

Don reaches up over his head and hits the button on the gate transponder clipped to the visor. The big gate rolls across the steel track in the pavement and slides behind the thick concrete wall bordering the frontage of the property. About a quarter mile up the driveway, he pulls the truck around in front of a big concrete bunker jutting out from the mountainside, out front of one of the big overhead bay doors.

The even bigger flatbed transport truck is already backed up the other bay, along with a few personnel trucks. That truck is already twice the size of the one he’s driving, but now it looks even more ridiculous. The poor thing looks like it’s being crushed under the monstrous rocket engines loaded in the back of it. All eight of its tires, each taller than himself, are squatting under the load.

When he puts the truck in reverse, Don hits the transponder again, opening the bay door behind them. He backs into a loading dock that looks the same as the one back at home base, stopping when he feels it gently bump against the end stops. When they all get out, someone in a red and black jumpsuit hurriedly drags another winch cable out from inside the building, and clips it to the nose of the shuttle, dragging it inside onto a staging platform. Next to them, the huge overhead crane inside rumbles on its rails as it rolls overhead of the engines to unload them.

Three more technicians scurry out from somewhere in the back and start getting to work. The sound of big hydraulic pumps drown out most everything else while everyone around them gets to work. Though he isn’t all that versed on rocket science, he can tell that the engines aren’t the cryogenic liquid type, and look a little small for hauling even their smaller shuttle.

He already knows the SSS technicians are all a very particular bunch, and are very protective of their responsibilities. When three of them find him poking about on his own, they approach him a little assertively. They act like he’s just another stupid grunt. Even after introducing themselves, they still don’t catch on that he’s not human. He hasn’t seen any of them before, and they probably haven’t been too privy to all the rumors yet. One of the more wiry looking guys stands a little closer, looking up at him.

“You’re new aren’t you? Are you going on the launch, or just wandering around? You can’t be down here while we’re running the platforms. We’re moving heavy some shit.”

They’re even a little confrontational with him, so he naturally postures and bocks at their attitudes. “Yeah, I’m going on the launch, and I’m not just along for the ride either.”

“Why are you still in your tac gear? The others are already putting on their suits. You’ve gotta get a move on it dude.” He taps on his combat com, pointing at the time. “We’re on a schedule.”

After a double-take, one of them notices something is off with him, and reaches up to touch his face. Just for fun, he shouts “Yaah” when they do, making them all nearly fall down. He laughs at them pretty hard. “Hey, c’mon, I was just kidding, I’m not gonna hurt ya.” Regardless, they scamper off back to their work. They never take their eyes off him though. He wonders if maybe they already have been told about him.

Feeling a little awkward about it, he goes ahead and finds the others in the changing room, putting on their red linings and black suits. Not needing a suit of his own, he stands there patiently waiting. “So what exactly is going on here anyway? Where’s the launch tower and all that?”

Don is hunched over, sitting on the bench, tightening the external clips on his boots. “We use a launch assist. It’s a rail, to help out with the cheaper engines we use.” He points in the direction of the big machine room they came in through. “It’s a tunnel that goes east, up the mountain.”

“Cheap engines?” He doesn’t like the way he made that sound.”

“Yeah, since we’re kind of… on call, we need our own launch site. For the same reason, we can’t really rely too much on last minute cryogenic problems, and the crew would rather not mess with hypergolics. The big engines you saw out there are the main hybrids, with star-core paraffin magnesium hydride fuel cells. The smaller add-ons are solids, to really get the party started. The launch rail gives us that extra little oomph we need to make up for our poor weight ratio. As you might understand, we tend to build our stuff a little on the stout side.

Outside the room, the sound of heavy things being moved keeps him looking towards the room. “I thought Launch rails were never going to be a thing.”

“Not normally, but our stuff can punch through the lower atmosphere a lot more aggressively than most.”

One of the techs steps in, interrupting them. “We’re ready. Time to load up.”

When Don leads them all out, and across the main bay towards the shuttle, everyone on the staging platform watches them from their stations with very intent eyes. The fun part is apparently over. The rest of the prep crew that hadn’t met him, all watch in confusion as he boards without a suit on.

Don climbs in through the back airlock of the shuttle first, and heads all the way to the front to sit in the main flight seat while Vaun takes copilot right behind him. Becky and Mikel take the next two that are side by side, leaving him to take one in the last row by himself. It’s basically a jump seat compared to theirs, next to the cabinets all the way in the back. Everything inside is nearly as black as outside. He can’t fathom why. He can hardly see a damn thing.

When the rear hatch is closed, it leaves them all in almost complete darkness, all except for a couple dim status lights on the control panels up front. After the clicking of some switches up front, the canopy windows up front turn on. It’s incredible. He knows there were never windows in the shuttle, but it looks like they’re under the bubble window of a fighter. He can’t tell the difference between whether he’s looking through glass or not.

Ahead of the shuttle, they all watch the huge circular bulkhead covering the tunnel entrance, twenty feet overhead of them, unlock and slide aside. Inside, there’s a set of shiny rails leading deep up into the tunnel, farther than he can see. He was expecting a sled style launch assist, but it’s nothing like what he’s read about. He’s a little underwhelmed, thinking back on how Don had used the word “cheap”. Their system is clearly not a huge mag-lev commercial setup.

He doesn’t want to accuse them of cutting corners, but now he’s a little concerned. “Uh, is that it? Was this like an abandoned mine or something?”

Becky, looks back at him scornfully, being rather defensive about it. “You don’t need a billion dollars and super magnet bullshit just to make something skate, you know. It’s just a rail.” Her look turns smug. “It’s coated in Aluminum magnesium boride, which is damn near as hard as diamond. The shuttle skids have titanium boride on the bottoms of em. They slide on each other with less friction than ice. No need for stupid magnets. But yes, it still uses a big ass linear motor. That’s what the huge centrifugal batteries are for.”

Mikel turns to her, as if now starting to listen. “The what?”

Those huge rotors down in the pits. The one’s that looked like the alternators out of a hydroelectric dam. They’ve been spooling up all day. Heh, those things’ll get us started. You’ll see.”

“Started? Then what?”

She and Vaun chuckle. “Then we start the engines duh.”

“What, like while we’re still in the tube?”

“Yep.” By the way she talks, it sounds like it was her idea.

While Don talks on his com to one of the operators outside, there’s some more heavy clunking and then something going on underneath the shuttle. Suddenly, the whole shuttle tilts way back, like some kind of simulator. The mechanical platform they’re on points them up to the tunnel and starts guiding their shuttle up into it. It feels like they’re being winched to the top of a rollercoaster ride.

After the shuttle is loaded into the tube, he listens to what is going on over the coms, but also to what he can feel around him. The vibrations and sound coming from the platform’s hydraulic systems is from a much heavier load this time. With a big bump from behind, the crew slides the engines in behind them, pushing them farther up into the tunnel. He can feel them clamp to the engines when Don reaches up and toggles the system.

As soon as Don gets all green lights on his checks, he calls back on the com. “Hats on everyone, we’re getting ready to wind down.”

On the other end, someone answers him. “Centrifugal batteries are ready. Zero to mach-jesus, on your mark boss.” A lot of the indicator lights in the cab turn off, leaving only the important ones green.

There are no count downs or any more half-assed formal system checks over the radio. Vaun and Becky both tightly wrap their hands around their harnesses at the shoulders. Mikel notices and does the same. He holds on real tight. Without hesitating any longer, Don hits the big red button on his control stick. He was wondering what Don meant when he said “wind down” but now he knows. He can hear and feel the hum of the huge rotors below them trying to pull to a stop as the linear motor puts them all in their seats. The only thing left said over the coms is the “holy shit” coming from Mikel.

As smooth as glass, the shuttle is careened through the tunnel at a quickly increasing speed. The passing tunnel lights turn from quick flashes into single white traces. When the solid rockets kick in, they crush them all back in their seats even harder. A load status bar on Vaun’s monitor starts creeping up into the yellow while he hovers his finger over some kind of kill switch.

Just before the force of acceleration becomes structurally dangerous, they slam into the open atmosphere outside of the tunnel. The front windows of the shuttle abruptly filled with the outside sunlight, and there’s nothing but clear sky in front of them. He was expecting a lot of shaking, like on the TV, but it’s really only a marginal vibration. It doesn’t make him feel any better though. He can feel every bit of the millions of horsepower underneath them.

What takes a lot longer than what he expected, is how long it takes to get to orbital velocity. By the time the main engine stops burning, it feels like they’ve been riding a bomb for a whole twenty minutes. It’s only actually been about ten, but it’s a long time to be waiting for something to go wrong. He couldn’t help but imagine them all being blown apart into nothing but burning dust the whole time.

When things finally start to calm down, Becky explains, that they’re not simply going to go out and chase the renegade satellite down. Instead, they’ll go dark, remain at a slower speed, and wait for it to catch up to them on the same path. She turns one of her screens toward herself and turns it to a tracking map of all the satellites around them. She, Vaun, and Don are all doing the same thing, and very diligently. They’re watching for any and everything that might move.

After a few hours of waiting, she gets out of her seat to let him and Mikel know it’s time to have some fun. Don chuckles too when he and Vaun look back at them. Mikel feels an initiation coming on, and he’s right. The others have planned to unload the entire daunting task on the two of them.

As soon as they get out of their seats, she shoos them aside on her way to the back. “You’re gonna go out there and catch this thing by hand. And don’t fuck this up.”

He’s definitely nervous having all this put on him, but Mikel’s face has gone completely white. While Becky breaks down what they’re supposed to do, she pulls what equipment they need out of the cargo lockers. She hands what looks like an extra big shiny assorted popcorn tin to him, and a big bag with some kind of lanyard in it to Mikel. She points out the trigger switch on the end of Mikel’s rope and shows him how to use it. Apparently, it deploys whatever is inside of his can.

As she crowds them back against the rear airlock, she continues to explain things. “When the door opens, clip your leashes onto the railing on the back. We do not want to have to go out of our lane to go and get you. Think of it as crossing a busy freeway out there. If you get hit by something, you’re definitely not going to survive it.

Vaun laughs when he sees Mikel’s face. “Well, Aaron might, but you won’t Mikel”

Don is a little more serious but also supportive over the com. “Ok, so Vaun and I’ll let you know when and where the thing will be coming in. We don’t know what it is, so we kind of need to make it a quick surprise snatch and grab. It’s going to be fast, so we need you to stay crisp. Mikel, you’ll be responsible for connecting the stretchy cord to the shuttle and running the trigger. Aaron, you’ll be throwing the net can out in front of the satellite when it approaches. After it lands in the net, wait for it to reach the maximum length of the cord. Absolutely make sure to separate the elastic right when it starts to reel back in towards us. That’d be the red clip. Do not let the satellite sling back and hit us!”

Quietly, Becky talks them through everything a couple more times. “Be careful with that elastic line. It’s really strong. Don’t let it snag you, or snap you in the cock.” She hands him another big metal can. “This is a reentry buoy. We can’t transport it back with us, so it’ll have to go down on its own. This is basically a big inflatable refractory shield that’ll keep it safe as it goes down.”

As he and Mikel cram into the small four foot wide hockey puck shaped airlock, she promises them it won’t be that bad, and that Vaun will still be walking them through the whole thing. Before she closes the door on them, she remembers one more thing, one of the standard rifles. “I know you have you’re pistols, but never go outside without one of these.”

He never figured that one day, he would be the big spoon, wrapped around Mikel. She’s got both of them packed in there tight, like cheap meat in a can. Even he’s a little nervous about opening the second door to outside. He really has no idea what could happen to his body in a vacuum. Gabriel and Valerie were positive he’ll be fine, but nothing is for certain with those two.

They changed his battery out for a normal one, but his heatsink won’t really be doing anything without any air going through it. It’s not him getting too cold that they were worried about. Instead, there’s a chance he could cook something if he pushes himself too hard.

While the chamber pressure is slowly released, the water that was in his mouth and on his eyes feels very strange as it boils off. He knew it would happen, so it doesn’t alarm him. Once it’s gone, he feels pretty much the same. There’s a tiny amount of puffiness to his skin, but not much. He can feel Mikel’s suit stiffen up with the pressure inside of it. It feels like he’s a water bed. When Don opens the rear door for them, they slowly slinks around out of the door to the back of the shuttle, always keeping a hold on one another till they get clipped to the rail on the back.

Even after a little while, Mikel still looks to be fairly agitated outside. His movements are rigid and abrupt, as if he were walking on ice, and trying to not fall down. Once the two of them get situated up on the top of the shuttle, Vaun updates them on the Satellite’s approach. They have another ten minutes till it should be visible to them.

As soon as Mikel appears to be ready, he grabs him and throws him fifty feet out to the end of his lanyard, just for fun. He just couldn’t resist. There is so much shouting and screaming coming from Mikel, Don has to lower the volume of his feed into the com system. Everyone but Mikel is laughing their asses off. He’s at least a good enough of a sport to not lash out when he reels him back in. He lets everyone have their laughs and doesn’t make anything of it, getting right back on focus with what they’re supposed to be doing. It still takes a little while for his breathing to slow though.

When the bright silhouette of the target satellite becomes visible in the light of the sun, the two of them poise themselves with footholds in the bracket handles on the roof. The thing is moving much quicker than they were told it would be, and it doesn’t look anything like what they were expecting. It looks like a bad omen if anything. All it is, is a big tan colored rectangular block with diagonal seams all over it. It’s not a satellite at all.

Things in space are very fast. Even though it looks like it is coming in below them, from the distance it’s at, Vaun tells them that it will be coming in over overhead. Since he isn’t wearing a suit with air in it, he can’t speak to Mikel or any of the others. They were able to make him a special earpiece so he can still hear them, but they haven’t figured out the voice part yet. They were considering using some kind of gas canister to flow through his vocal cords, but it never got made.

As soon as he can judge the proper distance for his throw, he tosses the net can up above himself and turns to watch Mikel. Right on time, Mikel presses the switch on the lanyard, blasting the net into a huge hundred foot wide spread out front of the incoming box. If they manage to still miss the satellite with it, they will surely look like idiots.

Whatever the satellite is, it clearly didn’t like them throwing the net at it. As the net starts to reel itself back together, engulfing the thing, all of the seams on the box quickly start coming apart. The sides all unfold as sharp angular parts of the thing, and it looks like some kind of giant nasty bug, squirming its way inside out. None of them have ever seen anything like it in their lives, and it is creepy as hell. Don is losing his shit over the com. “Cut it loose! Cut it loose!”

In a panic he automatically shoulders his rifle first thing. The second he does that, a big Gatling gun on the things back pops out, but it can’t get it pointed at them because the net has it all bound up. Long, shiny, sharp spider legs start poking out through the net everywhere, trying to claw itself free. Instead of his brains kicking in, his training automatically takes over. He unloads a full magazine into the freaky thing before it gets the chance to shoot first. Every single shot hits its mark.

Mikel was supposed to handle the lanyard, but when the thing reached the end of the line too quickly, it jerked hard on the shuttle, yanking him away from the line. Now the thing is slinging back at them with good speed, and it’s still very much alive. When Mikel finally grabs ahold of the line, the netted robot has already slung back around to the other side of the shuttle and is trying to use its own little boosters to get away. It ends up flying all the way around them, wrapping the line around the hull.

He can’t place any shots on the thing while it’s flying around their shuttle. When he turns to catch it come around the other side, he finds that while Mikel was trying to release the lanyard, his arm ended up getting wrapped underneath the cord against the hull. By the time he gets to Mikel, The robot and line has made another loop around the shuttle. Cutting the elastic won’t do anything for them, and the line is tough as hell, even for Mikel’s knife. As it circles back around the hull again, the line gets even shorter, making it close in ever faster.

All of a sudden, the thing swings in overhead and lands nearly on top of them. Everyone in tha cab yells “Holy fuck!” When it’s six legs spread out across the hull and start going for Mikel, he slams another magazine in the rifle and bucks out another twenty rounds at the thing nearly point-blank. With the thing standing right over him, Mikel grabs the net leash close to it and starts wildly slashing at it again with his dagger.

Completely blown all to hell, the nasty robot finally collapses and stops moving. Without giving it a single thought, he boots the thing off the top of the shuttle as if it were the neighbor’s asshole dog picking on his cat. Luckily the thing slides off right down in the direction of the atmosphere.

After the pandemonium over the coms has subsided, he and Mikel coil up what’s left of the retrieval bungee and give the shuttle a good look over, to make sure nothing was damaged. Nothing shows up on the shuttle’s diagnostics, but they could’ve still missed something during all of the panic. When everything checks out ok, Mikel heads back in first, leaving him behind. Vaun wants him stay out for a little while with the rifle, to make damn sure they’re in the clear while they finish their lap back over the landing zone.

Even though he’s on high alert, he still enjoys the spare time he’s getting outside, watching the surface of the planet gently flow by underneath the shuttle. When it’s time for them to drop out of orbit, he hastily gets back in the airlock. It still feels like the thing could still be out there in the dark. While he’s alone in the confined space, he visualizes the thing that attacked them, replaying in his mind how it squirmed. The feeling he gets reminds him of what it was once like to be afraid of the dark.