“Ready…set…go!” BJ shouted, launching herself from the seat. Downer closed his eyes and jumped in the other direction.
It took a long time to fall, and when he hit it felt as though someone had smashed him hard in the legs with a hard-swung baseball bat. Fortunately, the ice wasn’t as hard as it looked. When he hit, the surface gave way a bit, and he found himself sliding feet first down the crumbly, broken surface in a small avalanche of broken ice.
Several Chinese soldiers were running past, stumbling up the slope. He realized that his laser rifle was gone, lost in the jump and the impact that followed. He lay still and watched them pass.
“BJ! BJ, where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay!” was her reply. “Had the wind knocked out of me, a bit.”
He found that he could stand, though pain shot through his left ankle. He started back up the slope, limping heavily. Well, if he could walk, it wasn’t busted.
Downer found BJ sitting on the ice, slowly getting to her feet. “Looks like the bad guys are on the run,” he told her. From here, atop the crater rim, he could see several dozen men streaming back across the ice plain toward the Chinese lander. Two surviving robot tanks backed slowly away, covering the retreat.
“I think,” she said, a bit unsteadily, “I think we won!”
“Damn!” he replied. “And we missed it!”
“Don’t sound so disappointed, son,” the major’s voice said over his radio. “They will be back, you know!”
FOURTEEN
18 OCTOBER 2067
CO’s Office, E-DARES Facility
Ice Station Zebra, Europa
1120 hours Zulu
Jeff had designated a small room off of the compartment now employed as C-3 as his office. There was a folding cot in there—comfortable enough in.13 G—so that he could sleep close to the command center without having to take the elevator all the way down from the sleeping quarters in an emergency.
It also gave him a place to talk to people in private. “My God, Frank! Do you really think this will work?”
Kaminski tugged at his long nose. “Ought to, sir. The physics work out right. I’ve been going over these figures with Lieutenant Walthers, and he’s convinced it’ll work.”
“And we have all the materials to build it?”
“Oh, that’s no problem. I got the idea looking at that fallen microwave antenna. That’s the hardest part. And we have enough superconductor cable. The only question is how many shots we’ll get before the Xing Shan arrives and spoils the party.” He pointed at the schematic showing on Jeff’s PAD. “We won’t be able to hide the damned thing, or move it. But considering that it might not survive even one shot, that’s not a big drawback.”
“Well, the other question is whether one shot would do us any good.”
“Well, normally we’d need to fire for effect, but as Lieutenant Walthers pointed out, we have what you might call an ideal situation here. No atmosphere. That means no friction. No drag. No windage. Nothing but gravity, mass, acceleration, and speed. We know the first two to enough accuracy that we can be very precise with placement. We can control the third, which gives us the fourth. My guess, Major, is that we’ll be accurate to within, say, a hundred meters.”
“That’s still one hell of a big bull’s-eye, Sergeant Major. I wonder if we’d be better advised—yes?”
He looked up as Sergeant Matthews knocked on the office door, then stepped inside. “Uh, excuse me, Major. Dr. Ishiwara is here. He said you’d agreed to see him.”
Jeff glanced at the time readout on his PAD. Damn. He was falling behind sched.
“Very well. Tell him just a moment.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“I’m sorry, Frank. Ishiwara has been trying to see me since reveille this morning.”
“Not a problem, sir.”
“I’d say…let’s go with this idea. It’ll give our people something to stay busy with. Keep up morale.”
“Ay-firmative, Major. They’re pretty high right now. Nothing like beating off a sneak attack to boost morale. But the losses will hit ’em pretty soon, and then they’ll start thinking about why they’re here. Why them. It’ll be good to have them working at a project this complex.”
“See to it, then, Frank. Keep me posted.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“One more thing.”
“Sir?”
“In the inventory of stuff we brought down on the bug…might there have been an American flag?”
“I always have an American flag, Major. You know that! Tradition.”
Jeff knew how seriously Kaminski took that particular tradition. During the mission on Mars twenty-five years earlier, Kaminski had happened to have a small American flag with him…and that flag had been raised above the Cydonian base when the Marines captured it back from UN forces. A photograph of the raising, a space-suited analogue of the famous flag-raising over Suribachi in 1945, had become enormously popular, both within the Corps and outside.