April 3: The Middle of Nowhere (33 page)

Johnson just smiled at the compliment, unusually restrained.

"I won't ask if you will shoot," Katia said, "not after I saw you use the missiles. But I helped assemble your gun. I
think
we did a good job, but before you trust your life to it I wish you'd test it."

"That's a good idea. I'll do that before we need it."

"When you are satisfied it's safe, use your own judgment and lift the
Happy
for Home," she instructed Charles. "There are only three seats but anybody that wants to bug out with him... First come, first served. Now we have to get some sleep before we go out."

* * *

Katia was waiting for Heather after her too brief nap. It made her wonder if the woman had slept at all. The real surprise was she wanted to come along.

"I thought you didn't want to be identified with us outlaws?"

"I'm stuck here for who knows how long and you aren't complaining. I doubt if the French or anybody else will fly in here if there may be hostilities. Can I really not return your hospitality? I'm thinking I should safe guard Dima's interest in his land too. You might have trouble with the rover away from base and I'm the best tech here for it. Besides I have as much curiosity as anyone, as to what we are going to find out there."

* * *

They headed west making the first part of a dog-leg around the mountains to the northwest that was the only route from Armstrong. When they were thirty kilometers away the peaks were well above the horizon to their right on radar. The ragged boundary where no stars were visible betrayed them also.

"Time to test the gun as you suggested," Heather reminded Katia. "Faceplates sealed and test integrity. We're going to pump down to 50% of norm. Johnson, park and lock it ninety degrees to the north and set shocks for maximum stiffness and a one stroke recovery for recoil. How do we look for navigation? Are they still giving us an accurate feed off the LPS sats?" One fear they had was the Americans would not cut off the navigational sats but spoof the signal so they had a false location. Apparently they still needed the feed themselves. So far they had been checking their progress against details on a chart on their biggest screen.

"We passed a distinctive set of micro-craters two kilometers back. So far we are dead on," Johnson assured her. A micro-crater was any that didn't show on the older set of charts with a ten meter resolution. The newest they were using had a half meter resolution and they had to zoom in tight to pick out details they could see out the ports.

"I'm cranking the first shot back to six hundred meters per second to ease the recoil," Heather explained. "We'll shoot a high trajectory at one peak and then drop the tube and put another round into the neighboring mountain with direct fire at a thousand meters a second. The camera will laser check the range and record the shot. We're spacing them for time on target."

"Suspension is set," Johnson reported.

"Write these setting in as standard for firing the cannon sitting still. We should have a single hot key to set it and a warning on the screen if we engage the cannon to fire without setting the suspension."

Heather set the ports for minimum transmission so the area lit by their driving lights disappeared. She cut the lights and reminded everybody. "Set helmets for maximum tint. Between the two we should get four ten thousandths transmission. I don't want flash blobbies or a chance I'd damage my retina."

"Sounds smart," Johnson agreed. "I'm ready."

Happy and Katia called out ready too.

The first shot was more like hitting a sharp bump rolling and there was not so much a boom as a loud mechanical noise of the action cycling. The rail around the gun deck had expanded metal for the first half meter from the bottom so they heard the empty casing hit and roll on the deck above. While it was still rolling they felt the servos swing the tube down and transverse to the second target. The screen showed solid black with a contrasting reticle and a momentary dot of light as the range finder worked.

This time the angle of fire didn't push them down, it rocked them sideways hard. Hard enough to yank their heads uncomfortably on the end of their neck and tilt the rover a good three or four degrees on the suspension. By the time it stopped moving she looked at the ballistic computer and it displayed eight seconds since the direct fire. They all watched until twenty seconds and then looked up at the edge of the port. Heather resisted the urge to blink, not wanting to miss it.

The points of light were still pretty bright just for an instant and still slightly visible for maybe a half second. They appeared as close to simultaneous as human senses could tell. By the time she cleared the port and her helmet of the tint the fireballs were dimming through orange. In the weak gravity and vacuum the fireballs didn't lift noticeably, instead expanding in a dome against the mountain sides illuminating the slope around it and then in not much more than a second no longer illuminated the mountain sides and they were a jagged black silhouette against the stars again. There were two slight blobs on their vision but not as bad as a camera flash.

"That will probably show up on the seismic instruments,"  Katia remarked.

"Yeah, Johnson thought about that too. Those are the ten kiloton loads. But the shock coming from two points kilometers apart may make them think it is natural. We're more concerned there is a sat watch for comet impacts. Even tiny ones make a pretty good flash. No way they will believe it is natural if somebody puts both data sets together."

"Too bad you don't have any of the normal shells with just conventional explosive," Katia said. "They would be small enough to go undetected."

"Oh, we have a couple dozen of those loaded in the back in a spare magazine," Heather explained. "We wanted them along in case we need to use the cannon for direct fire like a tank. If they figure out all the fuss is us shooting maybe the idiots will have a little respect. We'll have to come back in the day and look, but I bet that left a mark on the mountain plain to see. Even with no atmosphere to transmit concussion how close do you want to be to an explosion like that?"

"Honestly?" Katia thought about it carefully. "I'd want a half kilometer with the view ports shuttered or turned away from the blast and everybody inside sealed up in their suits. Being pumped down like you just did for us would be very prudent too. You know, now that you made me think about it I'd suggest the shells be fuzed for impact. That way the primary fragments from the rock will damage rovers way past the thermal effects or plasma shock wave."

"We're ahead of you there. That's how all the unguided shells in the one magazine are programmed."

"And I feel a lot safer in a good Russian rover," Katia added, reaching out to thump the bulkhead with a gloved fist. The sound was muted with the low pressure and sealed suits. "The American ones are built like a beer can," she sneered.

Johnson limbered the suspension back to normal and turned back to their heading. They hadn't gone a kilometer before they stopped and Heather went out and climbed the ladder to the deck above. Otherwise, the noise of the two empty shell casings rolling back and forth and banging against the rails was going to drive them insane. After that they let the pressure back to normal so they could lift their faceplates.

Another hour saw them with open plain to their right as far as they could see by starlight when they halted and shut down the driving lights. The driving lights gave a sense of depth that couldn't be matched with night vision. They didn't have goggles, but the forward camera could be cranked up until the gain let Johnson drive using the monitor instead of looking out the view port. Trying to drive with it though had resulted in being banged around by bumps and dips that he could see and avoid using the lamps. The monitor however was the only way to see out past the glare of the lamps.

The mountains were mostly over the horizon behind on their right. A few peaks to the northwest defined the extreme Easterly straight  line from Armstrong that the coming Americans could take. The column of rovers should appear somewhere between them and the horizon and execute a left turn to follow approximately along the track they'd come. They stopped and several used the toilet with the rover no longer pitching and rolling. They took the opportunity to set some lunch out. Then they waited.

"Johnson, do you think you could find something to park behind?"

"What do you have in mind?" he asked Heather.

"Something like a small crater or a rock sticking up we can be behind to shield us from direct fire and leave less of our outline sticking up to see."

Johnson looked at the sat maps and ran the topo profiles on the screen. He zoomed in on a couple likely features and pulled detail out of the database.

"How about a dip? I have a dip that is three meters lower in the center than for two hundred meters in every direction. We can pull up the far side until we can see and then when anything shows back in until just the turret shows and watch through the gun sight."

"Sounds good. Do it."

Chapter 21

Johnson maneuvered a few hundred meters to the southwest and stopped flipping the lights off.

"We're at the bottom now," he explained showing them on the map. They looked up a slight slope to the front and could only see about three hundred yards. It was smooth ground with nothing sticking up bigger than a suit helmet. "Watch what happens when I pull forward."

They pulled forward about two hundred yards. The view suddenly extended out on the low light monitor as they climbed the slope. A few new stars also came into view as the close false horizon dropped. The already dim cabin lights Heather adjusted down all the way dark.

About twenty minutes later Heather announced, "I think I saw something move." She pivoted the gun mount around and zoomed in so they were looking at maybe fifteen degrees of the horizon with the sighting camera. After a few seconds a spot of light moved below the horizon and she adjusted and zoomed in better.

They watched three trains of vehicles climb a slight rise and fall away from sight again. They were too far away to see details. There was glare off their sides from the lights of the rovers following but no details behind the flare of headlights.

"They're aimed just a hair to our left," Johnson pointed out on the screen. "That means they are dead on the track that we plotted back at the huts." He added that line in red on the map and it passed ahead of them about two kilometers out.

"This is the rise we saw the lead elements on," Johnson pointed out on the map. "They should make closest approach to us if they don't turn in twelve minutes."

"Johnson, back down in your hollow. Katia, I'd like you to help him as soon as he stops and change the left magazine. They're in the locker marked '3'. I don't think we are going to need the guided shells for anti-orbital work, or they would have been back at us with another bombing run by now. I'd like the conventional shells mounted to replace the left magazine. The other ones are just too powerful for direct fire if we pull up close to talk to each other."

Johnson had backed up briskly and had it stopped almost as soon as Heather was done talking.

"I think we can both fit the lock if we lie opposite from each other," Katia suggested. "I hate to waste air and we don't have time to pump down."

They could hear the two bumping around to fit. "That got it." Johnson said. "Just reach around me and give the hatch a tug. It's within a centimeter of closing and our suits will give that much."

"OK I have a green light for seal. I'll pump it down for two minutes. One of those magazines can be changed in a minute in Lunar gravity. We have lots of time."

It was a long two minutes. Finally they heard the outer hatch open and footsteps faintly on the ladder. The sounds of the locker opening were loud, but the latches and magazine change on the gun itself were a whisper. When they got back in the lock was harder to close with their suits puffed out more. Eight minutes had passed before Johnson was back in his seat frost condensing on his suit. They could hear him in the audio channel breathing hard.

"Sit easy," Heather told him. "Catch your breath. I can pull it forward now and we'll see how they are doing."

Heather left the lamps off and eased forward in the dark. They'd backed up straight and she just pulled forward in the dark trusting the ground was flat enough from their inspection. Almost back to their previous position the pools of light in front of the lead rover were easily visible by eyeball and two more off to the right behind him. They watched him pass dead ahead and then when he was past a few hundred meters he turned left and took a course that would pass on to their rear.

"You going to hail him?" Johnson asked.

"Give them a minute and let's have as many in sight as possible before we reveal ourselves." The rovers cooperated, the lead units slowing down to make a wide turn. They could see the reason as the trailers behind were spaced out with long links between them and it didn't look like the front wheels were free to turn with the tow tongue, so they would resist making a very sharp turn.

In fact the trains bunched up beside each other, going much slower. They appeared to want to stay close until all of them had completed the awkward maneuver. Heather checked the scanner searching the radio spectrum and found the frequency on which they were chatting, setting her own radio to it.

"I had a little shuddering there. I think you guys further back should cut a bigger radius even. How about you Ted?" some stranger transmitted.

"It started to chatter on me a little and I gave it a bit more power. I think too slow might be worse than too fast. I just don't want to tip a wagon over out here finding out for sure. You want me to take lead for awhile?"

"Yeah, my eyes are tired. Ease ahead and I'd like to watch the turn until everybody is through it. Swing wide outside our tracks and keep it down under ten kilometers an hour when you turn folks. We're a bit more than an hour out from Central's territory. Another hour should put us in radio range of their offices."