Chapter 5

A.D. 2013 - 2014

"Steady as you go, not too fast..." Captain Armand LeBlanc whispered into his helmet mike, as if the aliens inside the shifting, rainbow hued hull of the huge vessel could hear his voice through the vacuum of space. With the umbilical still attached, his voice was routed through the shuttle's intercom circuits to its pilots, so there was little danger of the signal being intercepted. Nonetheless, the mammoth bulk of the alien vessel was enough to inspire awe and caution in even the hardiest of individuals.

"Why the hell we gotta take orders from a Frog?" Private First Class Pete Reyes asked, standing in the shuttle's open cargo bay with the rest of the combined task force, his helmet touching that of Sgt. Marcia McDonald so no one else could hear.

"Cuz the friggin' Euros had the fuel we needed to complete our mission, dumbass!" McDonald replied. "The suits in Washington worked it all out, now shut the hell up!"

The group in the bay, wearing vacuum suits, was evenly divided between Europeans and Americans. It was probably a one way mission, but until their countries got more shuttles into orbit, they were on their own.

Better to complete the mission with a mixed bag of troops, I guess, Reyes thought, than to sit and wait for help that might never come.

A red light came on at the end of the articulated arm which had been extended to make room in the cargo bay for the soldiers. They had rigged a light at its end to ensure that it was mounted where everyone could see it. Space suited figures on both sides of the bay made last minute checks of their equipment. Squad leaders passed thumbs up signals to their platoon leaders who passed them up to Captain LeBlanc. LeBlanc said "All go" into his mike, listened to the acknowledgement, then unhooked and carefully stowed the umbilical.

The Shuttle rolled so that the cargo bay was aimed at the enemy vessel, and then fired steering rockets that slowed its motion relative to the alien ship, while continuing to match its speed. The suited soldiers, anchored to nothing but each other, continued on the shuttle's former trajectory, straight toward the coruscating rainbow colored hulk that blotted out the stars in front of them.

A boot clipped the edge of the bay and one of the European soldiers began a slow spin, his motion gradually dragging his squad off the vector traveled by the others. The squad leader, not understanding the vector mechanics involved, tried to use his gas-jet steering gun to force his squad back toward the main group. Instead, he managed to impart angular momentum to the string-of-beads formation, setting the clipped-together squad spinning like a propeller.

McDonald, a veteran spacer, unclipped her safety line without waiting for permission. With radio silence in effect, it would take too long. Working the inertia of her arms and legs against each other, she got twisted around to face the errant group. With judicious squirts from her own steering gun, she took off on an intercept course.

By the time she reached the pinwheel of soldiers, they had separated from the main group by at least a hundred yards, and if not reeled in, would hit the hull more than a kilometer from the rest of the assault force. She hit the line in the middle, decelerating with her steering gun, and pulled herself along the still spinning string to the squad leader's position.

Wrenching the squad leader's steering gun from his gloved hand, she alternated blasts from both guns to stop the spin and stabilize the chain of soldiers, then adjusted the line until it was pointed in the right direction. She allowed the idiot at the end of the line, whose boot had caught on the shuttle bay, to keep spinning. His momentum was keeping the line stretched out, which would keep them from tangling each other up until they hit the hull.

Clipping onto the squad leader, she started the errant squad on a course that, instead of bringing them back to main group, which would have disrupted the entire formation, would land them about ten yards away by the time both groups reached the hull. The entire squad would pile up on top of the squad leader, but no real damage would be done, and as far as the American was concerned, he deserved it for being such an incompetent spacer. If they were lucky, the Americans would complete the mission before the Euros finished untangling themselves.

Unclipping from the European squad leader, McDonald took both steering pistols to keep the Euro squad leader from screwing up again, and headed back toward the main group. As if it was a maneuver she performed all the time, she smoothly decelerated into her former position in the formation, accepting the proffered end of the safety line from her neighbor, Reyes.

The shuttle pilot and co-pilot watched in hope and anxiety as the suited figures, starkly outlined against the colorful hull, drifted toward the alien vessel. Major Sanford Carlson blinked his dry eyes inside his vacuum suit as his ship drifted away from its precious cargo. When he opened them again, the drifting spacesuits were gone! Was this a trick of the light and shadow of space? If it was, it was fooling the video cameras, as well!

He turned, dumbfounded, to stare at his German co-pilot. "What the hell happened?"

"I do not know!" Captain Helmut Richter answered. "They were there. Now they are not! It is astounding!"

President Wang, at the head of the conference table stared dumbfounded at the video screen at the far end of the room and echoed the Pilot's sentiment. "What the hell just happened? Where are our troops?"

The stunned faces around the table told him that none of the others knew any more than he. Suddenly the room was a flurry of activity as everyone around the table reached for a phone.

Technicians scrambled to get test equipment hooked up to the video feed, while frantic voices demanded answers. The phone in front of General Horton was the first to blink with an incoming call. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff answered and listened, a stony expression on his face.

"Goddamnit! Even on star Trek it takes a few seconds to 'beam' somebody up! How the hell do two platoons of soldiers simply vanish in the blink of an eye?" No one answered as President Wang shot his gaze fiercely around the room.

Finally, he slumped in his chair. "All right, keep working on it. How're the plans for the joint launch coming?"

"Not too well, sir," Neal Porter, Secretary of State answered. "I'm beginning to think the politicians should step back and just let the engineers figure it out. There's so much wrangling over prestige and privilege that actual progress is minimal. I'm beginning to think we're going to need some sort of enforcement clause in the treaty if we're going to get anything..."