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After chow, Sergeant Rudolph escorted the recruits to hangar 20 and left them at the threshold of an open door that was, Caleb estimated, 5 stories high. That was arguably the biggest hangar on the base. Indeed, as he'd suspected earlier, a Tammuzian launch vehicle could be housed within the structure. It seemed nearly a kilometer to the hangar's rear, and cargo trucks and support vehicles raced into and out of the place. A division of landing troops marched inside and filed into an APC that was a hybrid of jet car and tank. The armored personnel carrier rolled out of the hangar and up the ramp of at least twelve gigantic Inter-Stellar Troop Transports. The ISTTs, Caleb had found out, required just half the fuel of a colonial launch vehicle to make orbit; they utilized some kind of new technology that combined fusion with zero-grav principles.
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Since they were on a training mission, the IDF wasn't going to waste vital space aboard an ISTT for the squadron. Instead, the recruits were, as Steinberger had mentioned, going to hitch a ride on an MHLV, the commuter bus of the military. The short-winged rocket was at least 20 years old and sat nestled on a launch platform even older.
As they rode in a little transport toward the vehicle, Cross remarked, "We're going in that thing? I think not."
"It'll get us there," Berkson assured her.
"What makes you so sure?" she shot back.
"My luck."
Caleb hissed. Yeah, and mine, to be stuck with the likes of you!
They reached the platform, caught the elevator, then were led by two MPs to the main airlock.
The passenger compartment of the MHLV was no colonial launch vehicle. The seats were worn and torn; the walls scuffed where equipment and personnel had dragged along them, and more than half of the overhead lights had burned out. A cursory look at the consoles told Caleb the redundancies went back three instead of the usual six. A main failure, say in the compartment's pressurization systems, and that would be that. There wasn't much technology standing between the soldiers and a vacuum that had a nasty habit of turning purple into red and gray mush.
"Thank you for flying IDF. Now bend over and kiss your ass goodbye," Counter instructed, not even trying to make a joke. He found a seat and fell into it.
"All right. Everybody tale a chill pill. She doesn't look like fun, but she'll get us to Mars," Caleb said.
Laura looked him straight in the eye. "You sure?"
He shook his head no. "But I feel better saying she will. Confessing it, I guess."
Berkson fell asleep during the countdown. Caleb wondered if the tank were just trying to prove something, or if he just was so tired that even a rocket launch wouldn't wake him up.
At 6 seconds, the engines ignited. At three seconds, tons of thrust and flames created billowy clouds that were visible through a porthole. At one second to go, Caleb did, in fact, feel the urge to follow Counter's earlier instructions.
She was a temperamental rocket and, though a veteran, still anxious and unsure of herself. She trembled through the atmosphere, the temperature around her decreasing at a rate of about 1 and a half degrees Celsius for every 416 meters she climbed. Once the 16 or so kilometers of troposphere were cleared, she punctured the stratosphere, then the mesosphere, and, at about the 755-kilometer mark, she smoothed out into the ionosphere.
Her pilots were good, that was for sure.
"I'm thinkin' a martini would work right about now," said Counter.
Berkson stirred, then his eyelids flickered open. "Are we there yet?"
"Obviously not," Cross answered.
"Hey, hasn't it dawned on any of you? Batra asked.
Laura gave him a quizzical look.
The young soldier answered himself. "We're going to Mars."
Berkson yawned, one of the few talents he had. "So?"
Batra looked at Caleb. "Haven't you ever been to another planet?"
"Accused of being on another planet, yeah, but literally, no. Tammuz was going..." He cut himself offl.
Laura looked at him. "Tammuz?"
He had trouble meeting her gaze. "Nothing. Don't worry about it."
"And you, Laura?"
"Well...."
"Well, what?" the tank asked, furrowing his brow.
Laura looked at her knees. "I was very little. During the war my parents were stationed on Mars for a short time. I don't remember much. "
"Okay," Batra said, brushing off the strain in Laura's voice. "At least we've got someone with experience among us."
"Don't look to me," Laura corrected. "Like I said, it's all a blur."
The overhead link buzzed, then the pilot spoke. "Now in Earth orbit. ETA to Space Station Makor-3: seven minutes."
Through the porthole, Caleb saw the convex Earth arcing across the top of his view, giving him a brief flash of vertigo. Europe was a broken smudge with clouds pasted on it as if by a preschooler. The white spiral of a hurricane tore a hole in the middle of the Atlantic. Beneath the planet, hanging by an imaginary thread, was a gleaming, expanding, silver-and-ivory dot. Soon, the station was in sharp relief, a lone, angular lifeboat floating in a night where straight lines were imposed by man.
Makor-3 was the result of 25 years of Israeli and American funding. The largest orbital platform ever built by so small a nation; the station had fourteen individual and diverse habitats, and 16 research facilities within a university that rivaled Hebrew University accommodations were not very glamorous, but anyone who wasn't assigned to Makor-3 never spent more than a day or two there. As it was, Caleb figured they'd be lucky to have an hour touring the place.
Once the MHLV docked with the station, they were joined by four other recruits. Eva Spitzer was a tall blonde whose feet, Caleb guessed, would have been more comfortable on Jaffa Beach than in a pair of standard issue IDF boots. Ozzie Jacobs was a black-haired young man totally awed by his surroundings but trying desperately---and unsuccessfully----to conceal that fact. Ezekiel Abebaw, a tall Ethiopian Jew who, in street clothes probably still looked like an Israeli soldier, made it a point to shake hands with everybody, a handshake that augured the power contained within that muscular arm. What Safala Rimal lacked in height, she made up for in charm. The graceful young Nepalese woman spoke in a captivating lilt, and, for a moment, Caleb felt ashamed of himself for staring at her.
They were ordered to report immediately to the Internal Solar System Cargo Vehicle's boarding platform, gate seven, flight number 19801. No time for touring.
As the ten soldiers walked in line through the tunnel that led to the ship, Counter complained, "Not even five minutes for that martini. Damn!"
"I hear the in-flight movie is one of those old science-fiction classics. Some moth-eaten American thing called Alien," Counter said.
"That was back when they used real actors, wasn't it?" Spitzer asked.
"Yeah," Jacobs replied. "I think so."
One by one the squadron members stepped through the airlock into the cylindrical troop transport. Caleb was last in line, and before he entered the craft, he stole a look through a large, rectangular, slightly convex viewport. On his left, the ISSCV's troop cylinder jogged straight out into space. The gray hull of the craft had been repaired too many times and was impaled by rotating dishes and antennas of various sizes. Caleb thought that the engineers who'd designed the troop carrier must have been fond of Italian food: the craft was like a tube of manicotti, but it was being stuffed with Israeli soldiers instead of chopped ham and ricotta cheese.
Caleb went inside and a tech sealed the hatch behind him. There were no seats in the cylinder. He and the others strapped themselves to the wall and stood waiting for launch. When it came, it was soundless and pleasant, the anti-grav units dampening nearly all of the force.
"We moving?" Rimal asked.
Caleb pointed to the porthole. "Take a look."
Makor-3 shrank with shocking speed. While the others joined Rimal as she took in the view, Caleb unfastened his straps. "Listen up. They've done it for us already, but let's meet up in the supply room and double-check our gear."
"Yeah, right. Never trust cargo techs," someone muttered.
The 10 soldiers barely fit in the small, square cabin at the end of the troop cylinder. Shelves weighted down with allotted supplies covered 3 of its walls.
Caleb suggested that each soldier gather and report on his or her water and air tank status, suit and helmet integrity, and personal supply of U.S.-made Meals Ready to Eat (MREs).
While Caleb was hunched over, amid the shifting and clattering of personnel, something hit him on the side of the neck and stuck. He slid off the rubber, diaper-like part of the Urine and Fecal Collection Device, held it up, then looked to the end of the cabin.
Berkson stood in the threshold, a cocksure grin plastered on his face. "Think that one's yours. How 'bout a demo?"
Rimal, Abebaw, and Jacobs broke into laughter. Laura, Batra, Counter, and Cross knew better and stifled their guffawing. Spitzer hadn't been paying attention.
"I'm not as full of it as you are," Caleb retorted, then resumed going over his gear.
Once all supplies were accounted for, they changed into their olive-drab skivvies then unfolded their bunks from the walls. Less than 1 meter separated the top from the bottom bunk, and the aisle down the middle of the tube was narrowed so considerably that passing meant getting intimate.
From his bunk on the top, Caleb couldn't help but wonder why Laura stood next to hers, apparently reluctant to climb onto the mattress. Sweat beaded her forehead as she gazed with dread to and from the bunk to her palm.
"Laura. Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah. Just give me a minute."
"Are you getting space-sick on me?"
"More like claustrophobic."
"I think we got something for that in the medi-kit," Cross said, sitting up in her top bunk, two down from Caleb's. "Let me check." She climbed down and headed towards the supply room, but Laura snagged her arm.
"I'm all right, Trystan. Don't worry about it."
"Sure?"
"Yeah."
With a doubtful expression, Cross returned to her bunk. After one false start, Laura disappeared beneath Caleb's bunk.
Stretched out on his mattress and leaning on an elbow, Jacobs addressed the group. "Heay, I heard they had an army of 6 million."248Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6UV1mVPS97
Spitzer, pounding some softness into her pillow, stopped to look at Jacobs. "They can't know that, can they?"
Jacobs shrugged.
Caleb rolled over and now he had a view of Counter, who couldn't get comfortable in his bunk. The soldier tossed and turned as if lying on an ant bed. Finally, he settled down and turned to Abebaw, who bunked across from him. "You think they got better planes than we do?"
Abebaw nodded. "They gotta be more advanced."
Caleb repressed a chill, and he guessed he wasn't the only one moved by Abebaw's assessment.
"I knew we couldn't have been alone," Cross chipped in. "But now that we're not, I don't know what's scarier, being alone, or"----she cut herself off, shuddering visibly, then eyed Counter. "Do you think you'd be scared if you saw one?"
"Only if it looked like Sergeant Steinberger."
Batra, bunking below and two across from Cross, half-grinned, then his gaze went distant. "I'll never forget when I was a kid. The first time I saw a Bionic man."
"What did you think?" Laura asked, sounding more than just casually irritated.
He pursed his lips. "It was scary..... he was ten times stronger than an ordinary human, and he didn't mind showing that off to me."
"I was scared too when I saw my first Ao Prime," Cross said, then put a hand to her mouth and looked down at Berkson, who lay a few bunks away, cupping his head in his hands. "I didn't mean anything by that, Berk."
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Taking a long breath through his nose, then rubbing his eyes, Caleb told nobody in particular. "Hit the sack. When the time comes to face them, we'll all hack it fine." he folded his pillow the way he liked it and was about to shut his eyes when he heard Laura's bunk creak, and then saw her stand. She kneaded her palm with the thumb of her other hand.
"Why don't you let Trystan get you something?"
She looked like a little girl, thinking it over, her lower lip protruding a bit. Then she wiped the sweat from her brow and nodded resignedly.
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