The Rhine Read online

  She turned from the windows and walked to her desk and sat down. Her purse set on the side of the desk, she dug her handcomm out and called Adam. It was a few moments before he answered and when he did her suspicions were confirmed. He was in his den-office, at his drafting table.

  "Hi hon," he said.

  Adam was a couple years her senior with thick dark hair and green eyes. And a calm voice. Even his clipped 'hi hon'— I'm busy— sounded nice.

  Alexandria smiled. "Oh, you're busy."

  He shook his head and frowned at something off screen. "No, not really. Just something Rich wanted me to take a look at."

  Adam was a retired architect. His old boss, Richard Fuller, sometimes threw work his way out of pity. Adam liked to stay busy, but with Alexandria spending most of her time running her family's business he thought someone should be around for Jason. Fuller's firm was just a few blocks away, as it happened.

  "I called to ask if Maria was cooking tonight? Remember, I leave for Paris in a few hours."

  "Hmm. That's this week? You'll be back in time for Jason's birthday, right?"

  "Of course." It was the big one. Her little boy would be sixteen, and if she missed this one he would disown her. No matter what make-up gift she got him. "Is he around? I wanted to tell him I was leaving."

  "He's at a friend's house. You'll have to call him."

  Alexandria felt her mouth go dry. She asked slowly, keeping her voice level, "A friend? Which one?"

  Adam's eyes flicked directly to the handcomm's camera. He gave her a wan smile and said, "The Keller's boy, Jody."

  Inside her chest loosened and she let out a silent breath she didn't realize she was holding. The Kellers lived a block away from the house. Within walking distance.

  "Okay," she said. "What do you want to do about eating?" Because while Adam could design skyscrapers he couldn't make toast, even with modern cooking appliances.

  "Whatever Maria makes will be fine."

  If Jason stayed the night at the Kellers then Maria, a former cruise ship chef, would probably make Adam a sandwich and he would eat it while he worked on whatever Fuller had given him.

  "Alright. I have to get back to playing CEO of a large mining company."

  "Umm-huh, love you too."

  The connection closed and the handcomm flipped back to its default screen. She set it down for a moment and rubbed her shoulders with both hands, turning her neck first one way and then another. Then she picked up the handcomm again and flipped through the newsfeeds, scanning the segments until she found the piece about the Moon that was broadcast earlier today.

  "Harmony was supposed to be the United Nation's great experiment." A gray haired man in a tweed jacket and with a German accent was saying from his seat next to the newscaster.

  Alexandria set the handcomm aside and let it play while she pulled up financial reports on her desk's surface.

  "If you go back and listen to what was said in the media a hundred and fifty years ago you would hear it in the interviews with UN Council members. Words like peace, unity, multiculturalism, tolerance."

  "And, what has it become today, Doctor Schrodinger?"

  "I'm not sure what it is today, but I know what it will become."

  "What is that, doctor?"

  "A place of violence."

  "You mean the protests?"

  "Yes, exactly."

  The screen flickered as the image changed and Alexandria paused in her reading to look at it.

  Ludwick Chaserman was a man she knew well. A former plant foreman turned worker party union rep. He was in his mid-fifties, craggy faced, and the Irish in him had turned his short hair completely white. He was standing in his old Apex coveralls, with the logo missing, in front of the access tunnel that led from Harmony to the plant, a few klicks to the south outside the dome. Behind him were the protestors, a group of plant workers in their hardhats and coveralls, waving signs that read 'Safety First' and 'Strike' in English. UNSEC soldiers were standing a few meters away, dressed in assault gear with their rifles unslung and pointing at the pavement. This must have brightened their day.

  A newscaster on site began asking Chaserman questions, but he ignored her and started leading a chant, "An injury to one is an injury to all ... an injury to one is an injury to all ..." The others joined in.

  An actual strike would never happen. There were too many people needing jobs. Those masses down on the streets below were leaving Earth and heading to the domes, all the time, for a chance to work in the plants and refiners.

  The screen switched to an interview with Chaserman, where he was talking and not yelling. He went on about medical benefits, safety regulations, and basic human rights. Arguments that existed since the dawn of civilization. Alexandria turned back to the reports she was reading. Chaserman's cause would never be realized. Never.

  Alexandria didn't realize how much time had passed when a notice flashed on her desk. Her eyes felt strained. She turned the newsfeed off and tapped the notice button. "Yes?"

  "Mister Stockerman is here," her secretary said, a bubble with her face in it appearing on the desk's surface.

  Ah, good. She needed a break, and it would be nice to see a friendly face. "Please send him in, Denise."

  The connection closed and Alexandria leaned back in her seat, squeezing her eyes shut for a second and taking a breath. The words bureaucratic necessity came to mind for some reason. It was the financial reports. She always tried to understand more of what wasn't there, rather than what was. Especially if she was reading something Charles wrote. His job was making things look pretty, and his talent for it had a way of creeping into internal documents that came from his office. These reports were written by Martha's staff, but the old woman knew how to hide the trail of her personal greed well.

  There was a single knock at the door and then it opened and Greg Stockerman entered.

  Greg was a few years younger than she, about one point eight meters tall with a muscular build, black hair, and a thin goatee and mustache. In private her father had told her he was the family hound. Very loyal. And after all he should be. Her father had found him at an orphanage during a fundraiser and had taken the then directionless, hollow chested boy under his wing and raised him as a sort of son. Never legally adopting him, but visiting him often, taking him to ball games, and paying for his business degree and license as a security specialist. Greg had his own security company, completely usable by Apex, and by extension Alexandria.

  The man himself, though, belonged strictly to her.

  "Pour us a drink, then tell me how your trip went," she told him.

  He nodded and walked to the sidebar behind and to the side of her desk. She heard the clink of tumblers made in eighteenth century Italy as he poured whiskey from the bottle that normally sat on the counter.

  Greg moved to the side of her desk and offered her the tumbler with its two fingers of golden liquid. She smiled and accepted it. "Thank you." Then after she took a sip and let the fire crawl down her throat, she asked, "So how was it?"

  He took a breath, then a sip of whiskey. Studying the tumbler in his hand he said, "It went well. Our intel was right about Shultz and Jung. There will be no way to know the timing, but it was a success."

  Alexandria smiled again. Something was bothering him. She had known the man most of her life. And briefly, during her teens, as a wished-for-lover. When her father had noticed her mooning over him he had put a stop to it immediately, explaining that the family's relationship with Greg was business, and should never be more. She was heartbroken then, but age has a way of making you see reason. Greg was too valuable to the family— to her— as he was, without complicated emotions.

  "You have reservations?" She asked.

  He nodded. "Some. This is a big step. I just wonder if it's necessary."

  She considered how to respond. Against the wall opposite her desk sat a glass case containing a World War Two U.S. Army service jacket and a Model 1913 Cavalry Saber, unsheathed a
nd gleaming on its bed of purple velvet. Above it hung a framed, enlarged black and white photograph of the U.S. Third Army's 5th Infantry crossing the Rhine. The men in their rough uniforms and rounded helmets were hunched down in a boat of some kind, their rifles sticking up. In the background the sky was dirty with smoke. Alexandria had over a hundred similar photos in storage, and all of them the photographer unknown. Whoever he was he had certainly been in the boat with the men ... experiencing the same fear, desperation, and partaking of the same will. It was to that image that her eyes were drawn and she contemplated on.

  Her gaze still on the picture she asked, "Did you know we have a war hero in our ancestry?"

  He took another sip of his whiskey and shook his head. "No."

  After a moment she said, "'Crossing the Rhine is never easy, but it has to be done in order to effect change. You were with my father for a long time, Greg. Trust that he left me in charge for a reason."

  She raised her tumbler to him with an arched eyebrow, and he obediently clinked it with his own. They both finished off their whiskeys.

  3 - Mat

  Haydon was a few years younger than Mat but his time as a UN soldier had done something to him, something to make him look older. His face was smooth, but his eyes ... there was something behind those eyes that added to his years. Haunted was the word that came to mind.

  The mechanic had a preoccupation with the Sadie's small gym, and that, along with the meds they all took to keep muscle tone made him solid. Having Haydon walking beside him in a crowded ore drop-off station made Mat feel a little safer. Now, one strong hand pulled him from the airlock.

  Haydon undid his helmet and said, "You should go to Medical."

  "Not now, get me to a crash couch."

  Haydon frowned but pulled him along to the foam and gel couch against the bulkhead. It was easier without activating the magboots, he could just float.

  "We can't trust them," Haydon said, as he buckled Mat in and pulled the straps tight. "If you give them the canisters they'll kill us so we can't tell anyone else."

  "I know. I've got a plan." Half of one, anyway.

  Haydon buckled in beside him and signaled Yuri to flip the ship.

  Mat gritted his teeth as the Sadie's main thruster suddenly went dead and Yuri spun her backwards, then the thruster fired again. Vibration set in the bulkhead and something was rattling in the tool cabinet. Deceleration was as bad as acceleration, and it took just as long. Yuri was a pilot's pilot but even he couldn't best Newton and Einstein. Gravity pulled one way, then another— one moment they were hanging upside down then the next they were pressed down in to the couch.

  When their relative velocity dropped to just below a g Haydon helped him out of the couch.

  "Yuri," he said into the suit's mic, and pushed himself to the access tube. "What'r they doing?"

  "Braking ... they just sent course data."

  "Follow it, we're on our way up."

  "Copy that."

  Mat used the handholds on the ladder and pulled himself into the tube, but Haydon grabbed his leg.

  "What?"

  Haydon was looking up at him, "Medical's on the way to the Flight deck."

  Mat started pulling himself up again, but nodded.

  The Sadie's Medical cabin was a four meter by four meter closet with a medbed, screens, a single-seat crash chair that folded down in front of the medbed, and a stand up cabinet that was bolted to the bulkhead. Yuri sometimes stimmed after a hard binge, so the cabinet was locked. Only he and Haydon could get in to it.

  When Mat stripped down to his waist and strapped in the medbed Haydon applied a sticky sheet of gel over his right side. The screens highlighted three cracked ribs to go along with the obvious bruising across his chest. The ribs would hurt worse tomorrow, the bruising hurt now.

  Haydon held up a stim-pen and Mat nodded. He would need it. After Haydon stuck the pen to his arm and stepped back he undid the straps and pulled his coveralls up.

  On the Flight deck Yuri sat in the cockpit, one hand on the control column and his eyes scanning his screens. His gray coveralls looked like he slept in them ... which was normal.

  Mat pulled himself the rest of the way out of the tube hatch and shoved toward the plot terminal in the center of the deck. The pain was ebbing away, but his chest felt tight and pulling himself around was becoming more strenuous than walking, but it was faster. Haydon came out of the tube after him.

  Yuri glanced at him and said, "I hope you have a plan. We will rendezvous in about twenty minutes. They will expect us to drop the canisters."

  "I do," Mat replied, setting his magboots on the deck in front of the terminal and activating them. He moved the Sadie's course data to the side of the terminal screen and enlarged an image of the ship chasing them. "But no one's going to like it."

  Mining tugs were ugly. It was facing them, its large front bumper looking like a giant metal shield. And that's essentially what it was. The tug was surrounded by those bumpers, with a massive thruster assembly sticking out behind it. There were no markings, and except for the dorsal and ventral turret mounts the design was a common one.

  Haydon was standing beside the terminal with one hand in his coverall pocket. It was faux calm. "What are we going to do?" He asked, simply.

  Mat brought the course data back on the screen. The tug was a red blip tagged unknown, following a straight red line that intersected with the Sadie's own blue line about twenty minutes out. He looked at Haydon, then said, "You said they wouldn't shoot the canisters."

  Haydon nodded. "They're profit, as long as we have them they won't fire on the ship. If we refuse to drop them they'll try and board us."

  "I say we keep the cans and let them chase us all the way back in-system," Yuri said.

  "That won't work. I would get pissed and shoot us," Haydon said. "Even if we kept the canisters. If I was a pirate, I mean." The way he said it made Mat think he had experience with pirates— or was one, before Mat hired him. He didn't have the details on Haydon's time as a soldier for the UN, and that fact suddenly seemed very relevant.

  "Then we'll give them the canisters ... or one of them." Mat said. Then he told them his plan, and they didn't like it. But, in the end it came down to running and antagonizing the pirates in to shooting them, or give up the canisters— their livelihood— and getting shot anyway. Or, Mat's plan.

  "Hard brake in eight minutes, rendezvous in twelve. If we are going to do this we need to start now," Yuri said, his eyes intent on the cockpit screens. Haydon clicked his heels together, deactivating his magboots, then turned and grabbing a railing he shoved toward the tube hatch. His frown disappeared as he pushed himself down the ladder and closed the hatch over his head. He would be needed in Engineering.

  Watching him go, Mat remembered someone once saying that good captains commanded by reason and fear— in that order. His plan wasn't reasonable, and the fear was down in his own gut. He pulled himself into a seat at the command station terminal and mirrored Yuri's screens to his. There was some math involved in what he wanted to do and he set to it, using the Sadie's nav computer to make the calculations far faster than he could with brain power alone.

  The plan was simple enough, but the math was important. He was going to use mass and velocity against the pirate tug. At these speeds maneuvering was a delicate process, calculated in decimal points of degrees. If he could put something in their path quick enough ... something big ... then physics would take care of the rest. The canisters were the only thing he had to throw at them, and they were big, twice the size of the tug's frame and decks. The metal bumpers were what gave the tug its bulk. They allowed it to muscle its way into an asteroid field, or push rocks. But they wouldn't save the tug from a direct collision at these speeds.

  Yuri tapped his screen and said, "Braking in thirty seconds." A counter appeared beside the blip that was the Sadie on the screen.

  Haydon's image popped up in the lower corner of the screen. Strapped in the crash couch h
e was using his handcomm. "Ready."

  The counter ticked down. Yuri kept one hand on his terminal, even though it was the nav computer doing the calculations of thrust and velocity. When all the numbers of the counter reached zero the Sadie shuddered hard and Mat gritted his teeth as the seat straps pulled at his chest. The medbed said his lungs were fine but at that moment he disagreed. Another counter appeared on the screen and began the slow process of ticking off one minute. When it was over they flipped again, the ship's nosecone now facing the direction they were traveling.

  On his screen the lines of both ship's courses were about to intersect. The pirate tug would pull alongside and they would brake to a stop. They had four minutes to loose the number one canister and get it in to position. On his screen he saw a warning pop up, down in Engineering Haydon had released the first clamp.

  "Yuri, maintain velocity, roll ten degrees starboard," Mat said.

  Mat sent a signal test to each of the thruster packs on the canister. They were normally used to guide the canister on and off the ship's hull, in this case he was going to use them to turn the canister in to a giant missile.

  More warnings popped up on his screen, Haydon releasing the clamps.

  "Two minutes thirty to rendezvous," Yuri announced.

  Each thruster on the canister reported active, signal was stable. When Haydon released the last clamps the canister immediately began to lose velocity relative to the ship, if only in digits measurable by a computer. Saturn's gravity would pull at it, slow it, but it would take hours for the distance between it and the Sadie's hull to become meaningful to the human eye. Mat needed the canister to move away now— he activated the thruster packs and the canister became a separate blip on his screen.

  "They are messaging us," Yuri told him. "They want to know what we are doing."