Breacher: A Prequel to Timberwolf Page 3
“Hold your breath. You’ve got what’s in your suit, which is a good 15 minutes. Run through the emergency start.”
Gray heard something he didn’t expect, a frustrated grunting from Timberwolf. “Sir, not sure how to say this. My arm is still trapped. My suit is dark and it’s not magnetic. My arm is trapped on a handhold here.”
“It’s not your day is it? Do your restart.”
Timberwolf went through the sequence in his heads-up. He tried it three times and got nothing. “Still dark sir.” Cairo Sunrise lurched again; still dropping to the moon below. “Cairo’s dropping fast.”
“I see that.”
“I’m a hundred yards out. I can grab him!” Solandro offered.
“Hold Solandro!”
“Mike, this is my show. I’m going down with this wreck solo.” Timberwolf snapped. “Sir, pull everyone back and push the button. Let’s not let a good nuke go to waste.”
“Silent on the comm!” Gray barked. Just then one of the towers on Cairo Sunrise twisted over and pulled from the superstructure, dragging along the side of the freighter. That was it for Gray. “Solandro, pickets pull back to Bessie.”
Instantly, the pickets fell back; last man first with quick thruster bursts from their suits. All except Solandro, who held his position. “Mike? Mike!?” Gray demanded. Gray watched the speck that was Solandro still hanging in his position at a hundred yards out. He knew what must have been going through the man’s head. The unbearable urge to help one’s brother in arms. “Mike, I’ve got no time to argue with you. You get to Bessie.”
The loose tower spun around, grinding in to the vessel just fifty yards from Timberwolf’s position. “I have to do this.” And with the precision emblematic of his top-rating, Solandro made a perfect dive to Cairo Sunrise reaching Timberwolf’s location in seconds. He contacted deftly next to him, debris of plastic, foam and metal washing over them. Almost instantly he bent the handhold and freed Timberwolf. Hooking on to him with a cable, he fired off a burn and rocketed off the superstructure, hauling Timberwolf’s dead weight.
“You’re a stupid ass, Solandro.” Timberwolf barked. Just then a wall of crystallized water ejected from Enceladus overtook them. It turned the pair over, blinding and disoriented Solandro, his visor freezing over immediately. He couldn’t see, but his instruments told him he was thrusting towards the world below.
“Orient to one-seven-five and punch it!” Gray ordered.
“Roger!” Solandro oriented himself to Gray’s position and blindly ignited his thrusters. A hunk of something thumped off his helmet, but he couldn’t tell what. Still unable to see, Solandro and Timberwolf were whipped by a half dozen brutal gravity waves. After what seemed like much too long, Solandro’s heaters kicked in and the ice melted off his visor. In front of him, he made out the glorious open back plank of Bessie.
He slammed on the brakes, and the other squad mates, grabbed them both and hustled them in to Bessie. “Plank up! Pressurize now!” Gray commanded. Timberwolf’s suit was still dark and his eyes were closed inside his helmet. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” Finally the life-support monitor in the cabin glowed green and Gray popped open Timberwolf’s helmet.
For a few seconds, Timberwolf’s face was placid; holding the solemn frozen beauty of a man in a casket. Then, like he was rousing out of an unexpected nap his eyes flickered open. The team roared and whooped and Gray clasped him. “I was trying to conserve O-two. I’m fine.” Timberwolf said.
“Right, glad you didn’t ride that piece of crap down!” Gray said.
“It would have been a hell of a way to go.”
The pilot came over the intercom, her soft voice seeming to be from a different universe. “I’ll back us out and drop the rad shields for the show?”
“Let’s do that!” Gray confirmed.
The Grateful Day
Timberwolf’s suit wouldn’t come back on and the squad had to pry him out of it with titanium wrenches. He huddled for warmth in his underwear against the rifle charger in the cabin. Cairo Sunrise was still holding its orbit when Bessie got thirty-one miles out. The squad crowded around the monitors as the pilot got in to final position.
The freighter was small like a postage stamp at this distance and looked more like a dark crumbling cloud than a spacefaring vessel. Gray projected the feed in the cabin and zoomed in. Cairo Sunrise was bending along its axis and looked like it might snap in half. More bursts of crystal ice from Enceladus swept over the hulk. Gray input the detonation command in to his smart-device and the big juicy red graphic glowed. He looked down to the men, so eager and proud. Thinking of what needed to be done, he handed the detonator to Solandro, motioned for him to press the button. Solandro proudly accepted. “Thank you, sir!”
With a brief burst of nuclear fire, Cairo Sunrise burst and its two halves cartwheeled away leaving a small nub spinning rapidly. Its forward momentum gone, the larger front part of the hulk hung for a moment. Then over forty-five hundred yards of metal and plastic dropped in just a few seconds to the surface of Enceladus.
The wreck pancaked, splitting open the surface of the moon. The liquid water innards burst out like Enceladus had been punched in the nose. A broad and chaotic rush of crystallized water spread out as the surface rippled and chain reactions all over the moon sent geysers off from pole to pole. The men cheered and embraced each other clumsily in their combat suits. Gray looked over to Solandro, his face aglow and cheering. He was a good man and had saved a better man than himself today. For that Gray was grateful.
It’s all men that make up the world
Once back at Fort Chancellor, Gray sent Timberwolf to medical to make sure his brief lack of oxygen hadn’t harmed him. He called Solandro in to his office. The man stood at attention, straighter than you’d think a man could stand. Gray asked him to sit. “You thought about something bigger than yourself today.”
“Sir, I did what anyone would do.” Solandro feigned humility, but his pride beamed through. “Velez was down there and someone…”
“Michael!” Gray practically barked at him, then he calmed. “Lieutenant Solandro, I had given orders that you were to hold in your position. Then you were to fall back with the picket line.”
Solandro fumbled for words. “Sir, Cairo Sunrise was… was breaking apart. Velez was going down with her. If I had to do it again, I would.”
Gray stood and walked to the small window that looked over the quad. In the middle of it a decommissioned drop-lifter was frozen in mid blast-off. He tapped on the window pain with his academy ring. “I thank you for what you did today, but I can’t have men in my squad who don’t follow orders.”
Solandro shuffled, “Sir with all due respect, if I didn’t save him who would have?”
Gray turned and grit his teeth. “I would have! That’s why I was calling you back to Bessie. I needed you out of the way so I could grab him.” Gray paused, looking daggers through Solandro. “But that doesn’t matter. The Phaelon can teach us something. They wound our men so their comrades come to their aid. They hurt us once, kill us twice.”
“Sir?”
“The squad is more important than the man! We have to learn that.” Gray handed Solandro a tablet computer. “I need you to drop, Michael. You can’t be a Breacher.”
Solandro held the tablet so tightly that his hands glowed bright red. “Sir, no. I can’t do this!”
“Michael – you’re a good man. I’ll send you back to your old unit. I’ll make sure you get a bump in pay and…”
“The hell with this!” Solandro glared at him and Gray glared back.
“I told you my voice was that of the almighty out there and you chose to disobey me! You chose to override MY judgment?”
“No sir, I did what I had to when the situation went out of control.”
“Out of control? Really? You think Cairo’ just spun up on its own? You fail engineering? You didn’t think I had something to do with that? That was the drill, Michael!”
Soland
ro stood dumfounded, a bitter embarrassment taking the color from his face. “Sir I…”
Gray didn’t let him argue. “You put yourself and everyone else in danger. If you’d gotten stuck down there, you think Chan or Arrowlind would have held? I’d have come back in a god-damned empty lifter! Be glad you got to press the button once, because you are out son!” Gray pointed to the door, his arm straight as a pipe.
“I’m not going back to my unit. I quit then. I’m out of the corps.”
“Whatever you want.”
Solandro slammed the tablet down on the desk and grabbed the stylus pen from Gray’s hand. He scribbled his name, practically stabbing through the desk. “When Velez was out there I could tell in your voice you were scared. He’s special to you. Your judgment waivers with him. You wanted some miracle to pull him out of there. That was me.”
Gray was silent a moment. He thought of a dozen arguments to shoot back at Solandro, but he was right. Timberwolf was special to Gray. A true beast like no one Gray had ever known. Cold and mechanical and driven. He’d have let Solandro die ten times for Timberwolf. Was that a weakness? Gray didn’t think so.
“Michael, I thank you for what you did today. Someday you will forgive me for what I just did to you.”
“That all?”
“That’s all.”
Solandro left Gray’s office, letting the door slam against the wall on the way out. In the hall, Timberwolf stood. He watched Solandro stomp by and raised an eyebrow.
For a few long moments, Gray just sat at his desk and stared at his lap. “Come in, Velez.” He finally beckoned.
“What was that?”
“Michael’s shipping out. Needs a new perspective.”
Timberwolf stared at Gray, both of them knew that was a lie. “I’m healthy sir.”
“Fine. Good.” Gray narrowed his eyes. “You cocked up out there real good. Suit gets stuck to the hull? Jesus, can’t scan for metal?”
“I was slammed in to the hull when Cairo starting moving, sir.”
“You should have been scanning for metal the whole time! That thing was a seventy-five year old wreck! You have to expect what you can’t even imagine.”
“Yes sir.” Timberwolf said without inflection. Gray could sense his pride smoldering. That he was chastising himself for losing control of the situation. It was just what Gray wanted. There’d be a punishment for Timberwolf, but it wouldn’t matter. He’d work harder now than he ever had just to keep up with his own expectations.
Gray began going over administrative work on his tablet, ignoring Timberwolf. “Thirty laps a day. Double time in the labs for the next three weeks. Basic rations. No coffee, stims, etc. and damned if you’ll be planting anytime soon.” Gray scribbled with a stylus. A few seconds later he looked up. “You’re here? Why are you still here?”
Without a word, Timberwolf shuffled out, shutting the door. Gray found himself looking out the window at the old drop-lifter again. There was a plaque out there in front of it with a quote from an old dead General. It’s just men that make up the world. Some bad men, then good men and then better men. Gray had never thought about until now. “Solandro’s a good man, Timberwolf’s a better man and I guess that makes me…”
Gray caught his reflection in a photo hanging on his wall, felt the titanium in his jaw. He worked to be a good man, worked as hard as he could. He always thought the plaque had referred to bad men as those that let others carry the load for them. But no, it referred to people who were much worse. Those that wished to take things apart; tear them down and stand on top of others to get what they wanted. Good men and better men were the ramparts that held them back.
Gray smiled. He wasn’t uncomfortable with his ambition or his desire to do what he thought was right. It had taken him so long to get this command and so many lesser people had stood in his way. “It’s all men that make up the world.” He said quietly. Then he repeated it louder, and louder still. “It’s all men that make up the world!” He smashed a glass paperweight from his desk against the wall and the shards sprayed the room. Gray felt a sting on his cheek and a dribble of blood came down on to his knuckle. He turned his hand over, holding the red drop up to the light.
“It’s all men that make up the world.”
The adventure continues!
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Some want peace, some want war… he just wants the damned spider out of his head!
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Tom Julian
Author Bio
Tom Julian works days at pharmaceutical company, helping to support research in to new cancer drugs, and nights and weekends as an author. He enjoys traveling, long-distance cycling, and waking up early to brew the perfect cup of coffee. He’s an unabashed beer snob and native of Trenton, New Jersey. Tom’s first novel, Timberwolf, is a military science fiction story originally envisioned as a film. The author worked hard to transfer its cinematic qualities to the page and hopes that Twolf is the best science-fiction movie you'll ever read! Tom is the father of Izzy and Liam and husband to the lovely Brenda-Lea. He writes while warming his feet under his Bernese mountain dog, Maggie May. Favorite movie/book/food = O Brother, Where Art Thou?/The Sirens of Titan/Trenton-style tomato pie.