The Trophany – Part 4
If you missed part 3, click here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 1 is here.
An hour later, the group
met in the rover garage. The Trophany and Cisneros had departed before Bergen
and Marielle could stop them. While Doug, Cyn and Cassi checked out the two
remaining rovers, Bergen, Quinn and Marielle brought Steve up to date.
“I have an automated hail
going out every five minutes,” Steve said, defensively. “I’ll get a ping on my
phone if anyone answers. I was hungry.”
Quinn held up a hand to
stem the flow of excuses. “Great. Just keep sending. Make sure the response is
monitored at all times. We don’t want to miss a chance at rescue because you’re
in the bathroom. Get one of the ladies to help you. I’m sure you can train them.”
Steve stared at her as if
she’d grown a second head. “But…they’re civilians.”
“So are you, Steve.” Quinn
patted his arm. “At this point, it doesn’t really matter. If we don’t get off
this rock, we’ll become the tail of some comet.”
Steve blanched.
“Try not to think about
it,” Bergen said. “But if you get them to send a shuttle, you’ll be a hero.”
Steve grinned then frowned.
“Oh, by the way, you got a message from some guy named Hoover.”
“What? Why didn’t you say
so? What is it?” Quinn clenched her fists trying not to strangle Steve.
“It said—” He patted
several pockets, then pulled out a scrap of paper. “L.T. Sorry. XO threatened
court martial. I’ll try to get a message out.”
Quinn closed her eyes. No
help from the Elrond, then. “Thanks, Steve. Get those ladies trained,
OK?” Just in case. Plus, it would keep Steve out of her hair.
Steve squared his
shoulders, saluted, and strode away.
Marielle rolled her eyes.
“Bad news,” Cassi called as
she crossed the garage. “It looks like Cisneros wanted to make sure we didn’t
follow them.”
Quinn felt her shoulders
tighten even more. “What did he do?”
“Come and see.” Cassi led
them across the room and under the boxy vehicle. She pointed upwards, where
Doug and Cyn hung on their backs between open panels on the underside of the
rover. Their personal grav lifters whined when they shifted position, as they
threaded some kind of tubing into the vehicle.
“He didn’t try very hard,”
Cyn called down as she worked. “He cut the life support connections. But I
guess he forgot this is a rover garage. Lots of spare parts waiting to be used.
We’ll have this one up and running in a few minutes.”
“Could this be subterfuge?”
Bergen asked. “Very obvious damage so we overlook something more subtle until
it’s too late? They’ve made it clear they aren’t worried about collateral
damage.”
“Good thought,” Doug said.
“I suggest we take the time to run thorough diagnostics before we leave.”
“How long will that take?”
Quinn asked. “They’ve already got an hour head-start. Of course, they plan to
load all that gold, and possibly pick up more along the way. Plus, they’d need
to recommission the shuttle. We need to get there before they can launch it.”
Doug and Cyn muttered to
each other for a few minutes. “I wish we knew more about the shuttle’s current
status. Reactivating it could take minutes or days,” Cyn groused.
Bergen cleared his throat.
“Based on what I found in the files, it’s almost ready to launch. It looks like
they expected to need it at any time.”
“Can you send those files
to my profile?” Cyn asked. “I can work up a more accurate estimate.”
The short man looked away,
twitching his shirt cuffs. “Sure,” he said after a moment. “I’ll run back to
the Control Center and see if I can send you the link.”
Quinn watched him go, wondering
what was bothering him. Didn’t he trust Cyn and Doug? She’d known him for a
couple years, and he’d always been upfront and helpful. Something felt off.
With a shrug, she turned to
Marielle and Cassi. “Cassi, can all six of us go in the rover? Or would it be
faster with fewer people?”
Cassi shook her head.
“These things aren’t fast. They were designed to carry heavy loads of ore. The
military-grade, like these, use that capacity for weapons. It can take one or
dozens of us.”
“Great. Pull anything you
think we might need from the third rover—spare parts, extra fuel, suits if
there are any. Anything we could possibly require—move it to this one. Just in
case Cisneros did something we don’t detect.” She turned to Marielle. “Get into
the armory. Break in if you have to. We need weapons if we’re going to take
that shuttle away from Cisneros and The Trophany. I’m going to talk to the
troops.”
When Quinn reached the
break room, Steve had the remaining six refugees gathered in a circle. “If the
phone rings, answer it. The only one who can call us is someone on this rock or
the Admiral’s ship. I’ve got the signal going to all your phones, so if someone
else answers first, that’s OK. But whatever you do, don’t let it go to
voicemail.”
A slender man raised his
hand. “My phone is set to ‘Do not disturb’. Should I change that setting?”
Quinn closed her eyes, and
took a deep breath, willing her face to remain passive. Thank all the stars
this lot would be staying here on base. She rolled her shoulders and tried to
consciously relax her neck. With another deep breath, she cleared her throat.
“Thank you all for
assisting Steve in this important mission.” Quinn made eye contact with each of
the men and women gathered around Steve. “I know none of you have been on
active duty, and this could be a trying experience for you. But we have a plan
in place to get us back to the Elrond as quickly as possible.”
“Where’s Tiffany?” A mousy
woman—Kaiden Armitage—demanded. “She said the shuttle is coming back for us.”
“Yeah, Tiffany said you and
that Burger guy were causing trouble,” Fabron Mathews grumbled.
Dev Singh glowered at her.
“What kind of scheme are you trying to pull?”
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
Quinn raised her voice to a parade-ground bellow. “Please, take a seat and
allow me to explain our current situation.”
The men and women grumbled
but pulled chairs from the sharing circle into a small clump.
“Let’s hear it,” Dev said.
“Better be good.”
“As you know,” Quinn began,
feeling her way through the web of truth and fiction, “we were delayed to allow
a ‘re-balancing’ of the shuttles. Unfortunately, due to the Elrond’s
current location and the, er, changing situation on the front, they will not be
able to send a shuttle back for us.” A shout went up. She held up a hand,
waiting for the outburst to end.
“We are working remotely
with SFS personnel to reactivate a shuttle that is currently in storage here at
Sumpter. We are fortunate to have two retired shuttle mechanics and an EVA
specialist at our disposal. I will be taking a small crew across the Serpian
Crater to get the shuttle running. We’ll land it here to take the rest of you
on board and depart for the Elrond.” She looked around the small group.
Less information was probably better in this situation. “Any questions?”
“Where’s Tiffany?” Kaiden
asked again.
“Yeah, where’s Tiffany? And
that Cisneros guy?” Fabron demanded. “Tiff said he’s in charge because he’s the
highest ranking.”
Quinn held up a hand again
to stop the surge of questions. “One at a time. Tiffany and Colonel Cisneros
have already proceeded to the shuttle to begin, uh, initial reactivation tasks.
The group I am leading will join them to complete those tasks. Starting up a
shuttle is not a fast and easy project. It requires the skills of many
technicians. Fortunately, we have people with those skills.”
She hoped.
“Who put you in charge?”
Dev Singh shouted as he leapt to his feet.
Quinn smiled. “The
Federation Space Force did. I was a senior grade Lieutenant before I became a
dependent. When Colonel Cisneros left the base, I became the senior ranking
officer.”
Except she wasn’t. She was
just a spouse with military experience. But the only people who really knew
that were busy following her orders to get the rover working. Sometimes
ignorance was bliss. Or at least helpful.
Singh sat down. “Fine. What
are we supposed to do?
“Just stay calm and answer
the phone,” Quinn replied. “We’ll be back to get you in a few hours.”
* * *
“I hope Steve can hold it
together back there.” Quinn watched the rear camera view as they trundled away
from the base.
“They’ll be fine,” Bergen
said. “None of them has the gumption to pull anything, and we’ll only be gone a
few hours.”
“We hope,” Marielle
muttered.
“If we’re gone longer,
we’re all dead,” Bergen said with a fatalistic shrug.
“Hey, Tony.” Quinn leaned
close to Bergen and lowered her voice. “Who’s going to fly the shuttle once we
get it up and running? I’m not a pilot, and I don’t think any of these good
folks has any stick time, either.”
Bergen smiled. “I was
wondering when someone would ask that. As it happens, I have twelve hundred
hours of flight time, including several hops in this exact model.”
“Good.” Quinn let out a
breath. “I was afraid we’d have to coerce Cisneros into flying it for us. But I
thought you were a money guy. When did you do all that flying?”
Bergen shrugged. “I was a
transport pilot before I got into finance. Got tired of hauling cargo, so I got
my degree and upgraded jobs.”
“Huh.” Quinn sat back in
her seat. “You really are a jack of all trades.”
Come back tomorrow to read more.
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