The Ides of Matt 2017

Chapter 5

Chapter FiveOh my god, you’ve totally lost it!” Brody looked at the shift in the projection. It broke a hundred safety rules. Maybe two hundred. He’d never have thought of that in a million years. The stress factors on the Mod18’s structure began rolling up the screen: a lot of yellow but, surprisingly, no red. Even factoring in her present condition, it should be okay.

“But that’s…” he ran out of words. It was elegant. Risky, wild, and wholly unorthodox, but there was a beauty to it that told him it would work. There was no time to decide, but he didn’t need any. If Karina said it was good—

He rammed his thumb down and print-authorized the course change into the flight computer.

“Hang on! We’re—” his warnings to Vetch and Warwick in the rear were chopped off by the hard burn.

A muttered curse was all that came over the intercom.

Maybe he should have given them a little more warning. It didn’t really matter; the intercept wasn’t the hard part. It was the escape that was going to get interesting.

They caught up with the Lifters over the remains of Canmerica East. The Melt had drowned most of the coastal cities, except New York which had built a skyscraper-high dike wall. Then in a final fit of isolationist paranoia, they’d dropped an asteroid on the Isthmus of Panama to cut apart the two continents—as if nations in South America didn’t have a navy or a space force.

Brazil had collapsed early on, which hadn’t surprised anyone. But Argentina and Chile had joined together and retaliated with a line of meteor strikes from Quebec to Atlanta. Canmerica East had no longer existed by the time of The Exodus.

He and Karina caught up to the Lifter halfway through their second orbit.

“That was beautiful, Karina.”

“Thanks,” she kept her head down, studying the controls.

Brody temporarily cleared the nav projection and looked right at her over the much simpler docking control layout they’d need in a few minutes. “Seriously, Karina. I wouldn’t have come up with that in a decade.”

“Actually, Brody, you already did. Last semester of flight school, Advanced Orbital Mechanics. There was a problem in the seventh chapter I couldn’t get.”

He vaguely remembered her tracking him down one night with a flight problem. It was the one time she’d come to his room—which was what he really remembered.

“I was so afraid I was going to flunk out if I missed it.”

“It was only one problem, Karina. You always worried too much. You were the top of the entire class. And the way you flew, there wasn’t a chance of them failing you.”

“I’d spent two days on it. You said you hadn’t looked at it yet, but you cracked it in under an hour.”

Impressing Karina Rostov had been plenty of motivation. He didn’t even remember the problem now. But he could picture her electric smile the moment she’d understood his approach on it. Her kiss had been no mere peck of thanks. It hadn’t been romantic either, but it had sizzled in his mind for all of the years since. His “one big moment” with her—how utterly pitiful.

A squawk from the computer forced him to focus on the docking procedure. Mating up with the old Ariane rockets was always a challenge. They’d never been engineered for human transport, so the fabricated ship-mating collars were often a challenge. More than one Lifter hadn’t thought it through beforehand. Open-space transfer without spacesuits had a very low survival rate. One Lifter ship hadn’t had a hatch at all and there’d been no way to cut one in time before they fell and burned up during reentry. That one had been hardest—their radio had worked most of the way down.

Thankfully, these people had installed a universal docking collar on the side of the instrument delivery shell. He let Karina bring the ships together. Letting his hands ride on their linked controls, he could feel the incredible subtlety of skill she achieved as if it was second nature.

There was a hard clang as the hulls came together, but the connection showed all green and was holding pressure. He left the problem of station-keeping to hold the ships together with the flight computer.

“Come on,” he signaled Karina to unbuckle as he did the same. “This can be the hard part, but it can also be so good. And just in case…” he tapped his sidearm.

Karina checked her own then nodded her understanding.

They floated back to the belly hatch where Warwick waited. Vetch had the medical station warmed up.

“Do it,” he gave the command to proceed.