Chapter Thirty Five

Aaron

When Aaron pulls off the highway and turns the flatbed, with the new shuttle on it, up the narrow road to the mountainside launch tube, he can see the yellow glow of light from the open bay doors waiting for them up ahead. It looks like it’s nearly night out, but when he looks at his battle com, it’s not even noon yet. The thunderhead above has all of Welan blanketed in darkness.

Everyone is ready and waiting for them when he pulls the truck around to back it up to the dock. It’s only the second time he’s even been there, but it already feels old-hat to him now. Having Arma there with him seems to be keeping him calm and feeling ready. No matter what happens, he’ll have her with him, and nothing in the world has anything over them. When the bed of the truck bumps into the dock, he can hear and feel the crew hooking onto their ship and to drag it out of the back. He and Arma share a glance. Their time has come, and it’s the real deal.

Suddenly, there’s a loud racket, like the sound of gravel being poured on the roof of the cab. All around them, the rain is crushing down, blanketing their world in a glistening wet that shines in the yellow light around them. The windows of the truck are running like a waterfall, and Arma’s eyes have gone about as wide as they can. He grins at the sight of her in such wonderment. She’s never seen a storm like this before.

Everything around them turns bright white, as if the clouds have suddenly vanished and the sun come out, but only for a second. He puts his hand on her shoulder, for when she jumps. “Wait for it.” An incredible thunderous boom rocks the truck like a bomb going off. Her eyes dart about, trying to see what is happening outside. He can’t help but laugh. “You’ll want to see it when we go outside. It’ll do it again.”

While no one can see them, he grabs ahold of her inner thigh as far up as he can fit his hand, and kisses her in a way that picks both of them up into high gear. She has her flight suit on, but the front is still unzipped all the way down. All riled up, she swings her leg over his and sets herself right down in his lap. Her long amber hair whips around behind her as she spreads her knees out impossibly wide and pushes him down hard into his seat with her pelvis. She crosses her arms over his shoulders and kisses him deep again, while he grabs at her hips with so much want.

When someone bangs on the passenger side door from outside, she lets up off of him and grabs the handle of his door, pushing it open just enough to not let water pour in on them. “We better take care of business up there real quick then, so we can get back to this, hmm?”

He exhales hard, all amped up now, then digs into the little front pocket on his vest, pulling out the flash drive with the launch parameters on it. He hands it to her and gives her one more quick smooch in the middle of her chest. “You’re up front?” He can’t see much of her in the dark cab, the way her skin blends into the dark, but he can see her big white smile well enough.

“Of course. I’m a better pilot than you anyway.”

While the launch crew, all dressed in their red jumpsuits, handles getting the shuttle onto the staging platform, he and Arma get dressed in the prep room. They keep their regular flight suits on underneath, but take their tactical vests and equipment off and dump it on the floor. Their space suits already have everything outfitted on them. To camouflage themselves outside the ship, their suits are made of that crazy black too. Even in the brightly lit prep room, it’s difficult to focus on them. They have to do a little bit of feeling around to find all their pockets, belt loops, and whatnot.

He can’t seem to take his eyes off of her while she dawns all of her weapons again. He remembers what she had done with his old knife, back when Valerie had been abducted, like it was yesterday. Seeing her armed to the teeth, and with that new knife on her thigh, only makes him more sure she’s the right woman for him. She gets a laugh out of him when she hops up and spins around, doing a hilarious kung-Fu move. Her two dimensional black figure looks like some kind of computer generated trick.

It feels weird being the one to walk her through everything, especially since it’s only his second time ever doing it himself. He remembers everything Don and the others did, as well as if it were written down, but he still feels odd taking the lead. Having to wear the big bulky suit makes him feel a little more human, for once. Even though they don’t need them to survive, they do need them for their protection. Those creepy huge robot bug things aren’t the only things they’ll need protection from.

They may be robots, and not made from semiconductors, they both know very well that they aren’t immune to radiation. If they get exposed, they can’t heal from even small amounts, like a person can. All of their exposure will eventually add up. Losing their minds to the dementia-like effects of brain damage is not a road they want to go down. They’re already remakes of their original selves, but the inevitability of becoming copies of older copies is not something they want to face sooner than later.

He thinks about what it was like to be outside the shuttle last time, in nothing but his tactical gear. “We’ll need to keep our helmets on too, so we can use the coms in them. If the shuttle loses atmosphere, we won’t be able to hear each other without them.”

Arma is pretty sure this is the third time he’s told her this, but she doesn’t make anything out of it. She can tell he’s starting to get nervous again. Whenever he’s nervous, he goes over things multiple times like this. “What if I lose the atmosphere in my suit too, like if I get shot?”

He considers it for a second. “You should have at least enough time to warn me. Try to fix it, but if you don’t have time, just do what you’ve gotta do. I’ll be able to see you and everything you’re doing from my seat. We can still type each other messages on our battle coms too.”

Even though the gloves of their suits aren’t all that bulky, Arma is still far less than excited about them. They’ll need to be more deliberate, and probably slower with what they’re doing on their controls. They never did any of the simulations with full suits on. It has her a little worried. He gets a kick out of the face she makes when she wriggles her fingers around in them. She makes it look like someone farted or something.

Outside, he hears the heavy clunk of the loading platform tilting into position. It’s time for them to load up. “Alright, you got everything? Flash drive?”

Arma pats herself down, looks down at the bench, and around herself. “Yep.” She holds the flash drive up in her hand. “Let’s go tear some shit up.”

The launch crew is much more orderly this time around. When the two of them start heading up to the launch prep stage, everyone is watching them with war-time determination. It stacks on the pressure for him to live up to so much expectation, but also gives him the confidence that the he is everything he’s been talked up to be. No one is showing any skepticism.

When the two of them climb into the back of their shuttle, it feels quite a bit smaller than when it was on the bay floor, back underground at home. It might be because it looks small compared to the engines waiting in the racks alongside it, or the huge mechanical platform that it’s on. The crew has been hustling to get their shuttle ready, so they do the same getting in their seats and all strapped in. As if she were a veteran, Arma gives the crew the clear to load them into the tunnel while all their systems boot up.

With a slow heavy ratcheting sound coming from outside, the shuttle tilts up and slowly feeds onto the rail and then into the tunnel in front of them. It feels like his chest gets tighter every minute that passes, and at every new noise that comes from behind them. When the engines bump in behind their small ship, and Arma latches the clamps, he takes a couple deep breaths. They don’t even have their lithium air batteries installed, but breathing is no less of a habit.

There’s nothing he can really help out with from the back seat yet, but he still feels like an extra wheel while Arma takes over the entire launch. While his nerves start getting the best of him, he sits in the dark of the cab and randomly looks around at all the dim little red, green, and yellow lights scattered about on the ceiling. He has to force himself to mentally name what every single one is, and what it means. It helps him get back on track and to focus. As soon as she gives the crew the ok to close the breach, he reaches her on their own private com.

“Been a while since Gabriel’s botched neurotransmitters have stressed me out like this. How you doing up there?” On the other end, he can hear her very slowly inhale a full breath.

“I kind of feel like I’m going through the motions, trying to not to let it get the best of me, you know. But yeah, I’m getting there.”

He chuckles, “Well, after a full ten minutes of holy shit, here real soon, the rest should feel pretty easy.”

All the same as in the simulation, they hear the voice of one of the techs ask for launch confirmation one last time. She gives the command again, relaxes her head back against the seat, and initiates the launch on her controller. A green light on the console lights up, then a yellow one, and last a red one. At first, the shuttle accelerates forward moderately, then when the engines kick in behind them, it pushes them into their seats with eye-opening aggression. Even through the insulation of the shuttle and their suits, the thunder of the engines is frightening. Being a lighter ship, these engines feel like they’ve got a bit more oomph to them this time.

All of the small distantly spaced lamps in the tunnel start to fly by faster and faster until they turn into a single band of light towards the end of the tunnel. The low-vacuum cap at the end swings out of the way at the last second, flooding the tunnel with light. Branches of lightning stretch across the sky on their simulated windows for a second. Patches of turbulence push the rocket around a little, keeping him grasping onto his shoulder harnesses. While the rocket’s automated controls follow the preset launch, Arma has a death grip on her pendant in case she has to take over.

When they break through the anvil of the storm, there is nothing but bright blue sky above. The atmosphere smooths out pretty quickly, but then the engines ramp up to full thrust, never giving them any peace of mind. As if he could hear Don’s voice in his head, reminding him to, he watches his screen to make sure they’re gaining a good two thousand miles per hour for every minute the engines burn. He tries to keep his technical mind from thinking about the real danger they’re in, like being torn apart at any second.

To Arma, the launch is pure terror. The others had made it sound fun, but it’s not. The immense power behind them is clearly doing its damnest to kill them. The shuttle it still pouring heat off of its skin from pushing hard through the atmosphere, and now they’re accelerating even harder. She’s really regretting watching all those videos of shuttles exploding on the internet. She imagines the whole rocket and shuttle getting ripped apart across the sky for the world to see. There would be nothing left of them larger than a dime, and it would be on fire at that.

She can do nothing but grip her little controller and watch the power bars on the engine load monitor as the shuttle automatically steers itself. Every time a number jumps on the screen, it spikes her nerves just as high. Aaron used to describe death to her, as being something out there, looking for them. It wouldn’t take much for it to take them back into its clutches right now, even if for only a little while out of spite.

When she thinks about it, the weight on her and Aaron’s shoulders is not even all that bad compared to the others protecting the other rocket. One asshole with a long range rifle and a few tracer rounds could turn the entire launch site into a parking lot for cost of about two dollars and fifty cents. As much as she hates to admit it, she figures most people, by far, have to be good in order for the world around them to even exist.

When the engines suddenly cut back, and turn off, it takes her by surprise. She’s been so worked up, she hasn’t been paying attention like she should. She’s been watching everything, but not really watching it. When she looks at the screen of Aaron behind her, she can see he’s fully focused on all of his monitors. He looks back and forth between his view of her as much as the others though.

“I’ll go ahead and dump the engines. We’re over the zone. Good?”

She looks down at the path screen, where it’s prompting them to do it. “Yeah, go for it.” She can’t believe she was too distracted to see it blinking at her. “I’ve got the controls from here.”

When the clamps release, and the engines are pushed away, she only has to make a small adjustment to keep them straight. She lets out the breath she’s been holding nearly the entire time. The flying is all up to her now. In the back of her mind, she can hear Don saying how he would have liked to have gone on missions with them. It was never his own life that he was worried about on the job. What scared him most about being the captain, was the thought of losing anyone under his watch. He never really go to enjoy himself.

When Aaron looks up in his screen at her again, she remembers what’s next. She smiles at him and gives him a little nod. “You ready?”