Europa Strike(63)
“Hey, thanks for the sympathy.”
“Don’t mention it.”
He chuckled, thinking about that night at the V-berg squad bay, when BJ had gotten her handle, and Sherm Nodell had gotten a mouthful of cement. He looked around at the frigid, makeshift OP and wished they were back in California, hitting the bars and the VR palaces and the good restaurants and the—
“Uh-oh,” BJ said.
“What?”
“Incoming.” She was tapping on the touchscreen of her rali monitor with a clumsy, gloved hand. “Damn working in this suit! Yeah…looks like a bogie coming over the horizon. Bearing…two-five-one. Altitude five kilometers.”
“Low.”
“And fast. And on a trajectory headed straight for Zebra.”
He rose to a crouch, turned, and molded the camocloth aside. At extreme low temperatures, the stuff became stiff and could be folded back like a sheet of clay.
“Where you goin’, Downer?”
“Outside. For a look with the old Mark I eyeballs.”
He stepped into harsh, cold light. The sun was emerging now from behind Jupiter, visible as a silver-white crescent sharp and brilliant against the eastern sky. He oriented himself quickly, turning to face the southwest. Compasses didn’t work on Europa, of course. Even if the icy moon had had a magnetic field of its own, it would have been overwhelmed by the far more powerful magnetic field of Jupiter close by. However, giant Jupiter was always in the same place in the sky, and his suit could work off of that. If that was east, then that was north and that was west and…
There it was: a silvery pinpoint of light climbing rapidly out of the southwest. In seconds, it had reached the high point in its trajectory just south of the zenith, and was descending again into the northeast. He lost it for a second against the glare of the Sun…then saw it again, falling toward the horizon.
Campanelli burst from behind the cloth, hugging the rali monitor and computer. “Let’s go, Downer! Get your ass in gear!”
He was already tugging down the cloth.
“Screw that,” Campanelli said, climbing the ladder up one of the lobber’s splayed landing legs. “No time!”
“Okay.” He scrambled up after her, swinging into the copilot’s position.
Six-ton VT-5 lobbers like this one had very few amenities, such as hulls. Essentially, it was two side-by-side seats and some simple controls perched on an open platform above a hydrogen-oxygen-burning rocket engine. It had been designed for light transport duty on the moon, where the airless environment did not require streamlining, but it had been used since on Mars as well. It was ideal as a surface excursion vehicle for the scientific team on Europa—and now for the Marines as well.
“Ready?” BJ demanded.
“Set,” he replied, strapping in.
“I’m taking her up at forty-five degrees. That gives us our best compromise of getting closer to the base and being able to beam a warning over the horizon to Zebra as quickly as possible. Then we’ll cut power and fall straight in. Checklist!”
“Right. Fuel pressure, H2.”
“One-eight. Go.”
“Fuel pressure, O2.”
“One-five. Go.”
“Computer.”
“Booted. Up and running.”
Swiftly, they ran through the abbreviated checklist, then BJ fired the engines without the dignity of a countdown. “Hang on to your stomach!” was her only warning as she mashed her thumb down on the engine ignite button. Duane felt the hard, sharp kick in the seat of his suit as the lobber arrowed straight up, climbing rapidly in Europa’s light gravity. White vapor and glistening crystals swirled out from the lift-off site, along with the torn-away sheets of camo material, rippling slowly in the ghostly, silent jetblast.
They would have to climb to nearly one hundred kilometers to clear the radio horizon with Ice Station Zebra. They left the rali unit in place on its ridge top OP; there was no time to recover it.
Corporal Duane Niemeyer clung to the edges of his acceleration seat, unable to watch the dizzying panorama as Europa’s billiard-ball-smooth surface dropped away beneath him, and unable to close his eyes for fear he would miss something. When he looked up, the baleful eye of Jupiter, now a scimitar-curved slit silver beneath a shrunken sun, glared back. Below, the horizon canted alarmingly as BJ put the ungainly little craft into an unpleasantly tilted attitude, the engine still silently rumbling beneath him. He’d always hated amusement park rides as a kid, and this was as wild as any theme park.
He concentrated hard on not being sick inside his helmet.
Squad Bay
E-DARES Facility, Cadmus Linea
Europa
1538 hours Zulu