| home | directory | archive | weblinks | help! | mission | contrib/s | subscribe | contacts | SEARCH |
|
|
news muse zine - compiled for alt. world scenario fans by INFOmaniac
|
"Get me a suit and a blowpipe," cuts in the grizzled giant, "I'm going outside." Colgate and the M-cop fall silent. It's obvious they don't have a plan of their own, so they yield to anyone who can break the standoff. Jon 'Cheyenne' Blackhills comes from the Badlands Res of South Dakota. He's proud of his Amerindian heritage, yet eager to dispel his near-mythical reputation as a post-millennial Indian 'brave' out here on the high frontier. That rep though is fearsome nevertheless, and instils a fierce respect in such workaday warriors as the MarsPol lieutenant who helps Blackhills into an atmosphere suit, strapping on belts of shield-armour, and loading the technically-illegal 'blowpipe' weapon for close-range use. I stand with Director Colgate behind a protective screen as the west airlock cycles Blackhills into vacuum, and gut-wrenching loss of the Yeltsin's half-gee pull. In the controller's booth, pale-faced Koreans huddle over their situation-boards. Nobody even dares to take a breath of the stale air - its stuffy carbon taste resulting from fire-damage to the station wing's recycling plant, as Blackhills slowly edges his way around the outer hull towards the emergency exit, a metre wide circle built into the hanger's massive hydraulic doors. Down below in the bay, the crazy guy is getting evermore impatient. Again, he threatens to "nuke" the girl and her already seriously injured relative. "You gotta be fa'kin' kiddin' me!" exclaims an overly tense Asian tech, as a stray shot bounces off the Ob-deck's transparent aluminium window. The madman, it appears, knows something is going down, and obviously fears it may be him. Glancing at the console displays, I deduce our spacewalker has manoeuvred into a position beyond the explosive-bolted hatch, and a jumpy console operator quickly silences proximity alarms. Then, as the guy with the gun throws yet another tantrum, we hold our air and wait. After what seems like a minor ice age, a standby signal beeps, lighting rows of amber indicators across the monitor plates. At a grim nod from Colgate, the young lieutenant whispers orders to a senior Korean. I only catch the ominously pitched word 'blackout'. Not privy to the snappy dialogue between Blackhills and the M-cop, I grit my perfect teeth and anticipate the worst. It all happens very quickly, and surprisingly perhaps, doesn't look like much... We don't hear the outer hatch blow, but I felt a barely perceptible shudder through the deck. The frantic Korean flips switches, stabs buttons and generally makes like a jazz pianist on amphetamines. All lights down in the bay are out, but for an irregular, disorientating red strobe. A dull roar, felt more than heard because of the booth's soundproofing, sets my already frayed nerves afire. I grab onto Director Colgate's arm in (undue) alarm, as down in the hanger, the loony's laser flashes briefly. Then, everyone but me breathes a sigh of immense relief as a muffled baritone sounds from the main speakers: "Target dead. All clear." The shuttle bay's brutes flicker back on and, squinting into the sudden brilliance, I spot a bulky, white-suited figure bending over something crumpled and vaguely human. A dark pool of liquid spreads out evenly to touch the feet of the frightened girl nearby, now retching helplessly over her motionless uncle...
So why is this Midwest farmer's boy out chasing bad guys, freelance, after cutting short a promising career with the regular Martian Police Force? He offers drawled spacer's jive about "omnipresent mafia groups, renegade mandroids, asteroid pirates," and "terrorist splinter sects..." I lean back and give him my best bullshit-proof stare. And, just as he's rolling out weary clichés about "blurred jurisdictions, borderlands rife with corruption," and "overstretched enforcement lines where the bounty hunter thrives," he tunes back into this 'sooth for a local reality check. For a rim-skimming hero who, just last year, picked up the Grissom medal for saving the pearly skin of incumbent Martian President Ivana Brooks - from "scum-sucking" (as the star cops called them) 7th Column activists - this Blackhills jock can be slow to catch on. Needing little prompting, he tells me about his privateer, Heinlein X, and its unique 'passenger' accommodation. His prisoners go into deep freeze, locked in the cruiser's cryo-capsule belly, "which keeps 'em outta my face, and fresh for trial when we get back to MarsPort," he explains. But isn't the practice of putting captured fugitives into hibernation against their will just a teensy bit illegal, I chide? He grins - a trifle sheepishly, almost a smirk, seeming to take pleasure from skating the periphery of space law on belligerence, as laid down by the Interplanetary Circuit Courts. I begin to wonder if he's really one of those end-justifies-the-means mercs, despite all the media-acclaimed heroism. What about the 1 that got away? Blackhills frowns, ever so slightly, clearly not wanting to drag up those particular bad memories... The siege of L5 colony, Sterling, where not even the 2-metre-tall bruiser sitting opposite me could kick or trick a way through without forcing a tragedy. "I didn't kill those families," he reminds me, a mite too defensively. Was that the reason you quit the regular service though? - I jump in, it being a matter of public record that he did resign, 2 months after the "Sterling slaughter" - as the event was dubbed by FAX 21. The pained expression tells more about the man's burden of grief and regret than his terse reply, citing, "too many constrictive procedures." Doesn't like red tape, I note. Who the hell does? It's pretty clear, though, that Blackhills isn't averse to reports - what the department used to call 'paperwork', before paper got outlawed as too expensive to produce. I spent a furtive 200 minutes waiting for those jaw-wagging MarsPol interrogators and Prelim Judgment AIs to finish grilling him about that lone gunman splattered all over the deck of s-bay 3. In the end, the big guy actually came out smiling! Guess the Martian authorities couldn't complain. Blackhills gets their dirty jobs done for them - so the station gossips whisper, when asked...
Blackhills clams up on that point, an 'access denied' backward tilt of the head and a blank, unreadable look to those broad radiation-scarred features that probably wouldn't alter even if I pulled all his heavily calloused fingers off. No way he's willing to comment on, or acknowledge, the rumours of his all-seeing communications monitoring. A comtech cop I spoke to later politely informed me Blackhills was "quite obviously psychic." Yeah, either that or he's personally setup half of the 'cases' that he's handled - especially crimes MarsPol simply cannot cope with - in the past 5 years. What of the suggestions that bits of you come from Japanese factories? I inquire. A good-natured if somewhat lopsided leer breaks out on his face, snarling up the big guy's usual stiffness. "We can get a cabin in the Waldrop Quarter if you wanna see my mechanism," he offers. Hmm... I smile, but make a show of closing up my jacket. Should have known this Pierre Duplex outfit was too racy for Mars. |
Jet smash, 3 dead
by Bruce Cooke Sydney, Australia Sub-orbital flight 905 out of London had reached the apogee of its arc around the world. It was on time and on target for its final destination down under. Mecha co-pilot 'Duck' Bodges-7 was about to initiate the thrust manoeuvre that would turn the space plane for its glide back to Earth... when disaster struck. An uncharted and unidentified piece of orbiting space junk, thought to be metallic detritus from 1 of the previous century's unsuccessful attempts to construct a permanently manned space platform, smashed into the plane's forward section, killing both human members of #905's flight crew, instantly.
This is the first major incident to involve an intercontinental AstroJet, a mass transport of revolutionary design, built by the Euro Air & Space vehicles Corp (EARS), with only 14 planes currently in regular service. The accidental collision has resulted in an immediate grounding of the entire AJ fleet, and further calls into question the whole future of such high-altitude commercial flights.
But if flight #905 was hit only by small debris, why was the plane's cockpit so badly damaged?
An aircraft insurance broker later told this reporter: "It's a heavy blow, but under the present circumstances, all existing US polices for sub-orbital flights may be null and void. The industry's underwriting wizards will have to recalculate the odds against this happening again." EARS Corp PR gonks declined to comment when asked if or when AstroJet commercial flights would resume their normal twice-daily schedule.
Oddvert
WARNING! - profits may go down as well as up, so do not risk all your savings on off-world plans
main pictures by Jason Chapman
|
|
|
