Termination Shock [calibre 4.99.4]

Which raised the question: What then? If bad guys with guns were chasing him, then there wasn’t much they could do. But there didn’t seem to be any of those. Only drones. Where might they take shelter from a drone attack?

The answer was obvious: the steel cylinder that occupied the entire five-meter diameter of the shaft below Level Zero, all the way down to Minus Six. There were two access hatches, massive as bank vault doors, cut into the side of it. Saskia had stepped through both of them during her tour last September.

The one at the very bottom, Minus Six, provided access to the part of the cylinder below the piston, known as the combustion chamber, where a natural gas/air mix was ignited to drive the piston upward on a column of fire. The hatch at Minus Four was above the piston, at least when the gun wasn’t operating. It provided access to the so-called pump chamber, normally full of hydrogen, that got pressurized by the piston when it shot upward.

During normal operation, both combustion and pump chambers were hell on earth. But the gun hadn’t fired for almost twelve hours. Cooling water had been circulating that whole time through a jacket surrounding both chambers. They were now down to ambient temperature. They had been purged with plain old atmospheric air to remove all traces of anything flammable or toxic.

They could, in other words, simply open those hatches and step into the combustion chamber or the pump chamber and just hang out there in comfort and safety. If they stayed for too long the air would get stale, but they could always simply open a hatch and let in fresh air. And as a backup plan they had a supply of respirators, each with an air tank.

So after a lot of discussion and talking through of scenarios, they agreed that Jules would go up for a look-see. But as a precaution T.R. and Saskia would station themselves at Minus Six, next to the open hatch. They had pre-stocked the combustion chamber with water, snacks, lights, respirators, and a bucket to pee in. Above, on Minus Four, similar preparations had been made in the pump chamber. Conor would hang out up there. When Jules went topside, he’d be carrying a plastic water bottle. If he saw anything bad, he’d simply drop it down the shaft. A few seconds later it would slam into something near Level Zero and burst open, a signal they could not fail to notice. T.R. and Saskia would immediately take refuge in the combustion chamber. Conor would wait a bit to give Jules a chance to come down the rope, whereupon they’d seal themselves up in the pump chamber.

So after seemingly hours of dithering and preparation, that is how they set it all up.

And after all that it seemed almost anticlimactic when, ten or so minutes after Jules had begun his ascent, the water bottle hurtled down and exploded.

The road got better, but still not good, as it drew closer to Bunkhouse. That place seemed sure to be one big humming swarm of drones and so Rufus gave it a wide berth and then swung round to angle across the open stretch that separated it from the gun complex. This was the area where the Flying S Ranch Model Rocketry Club had held its launch months ago, just before T.R.’s big gun had gone into action for the first time. Since then much of the open ground had filled up with shipping containers, heavy equipment, and cargo pallets. These had been arranged in a grid of lanes wide enough that trucks and forklifts could maneuver among them. Nets had been stretched over some of the area to catch sabots and to cast shade. The area immediately next to Bunkhouse, where they had set up the bleachers and launched the little rockets last year, had been kept as open space. This was a considerate gesture for those hobbyists but a problem for Rufus. He’d been thinking about those drones and how to get from where he was now to the gun complex without getting surrounded by those things and picked off. And it was clear to him based on his own experience flying drones that they were going to be at a disadvantage in the cluttered environment of the depot. But to reach that he had to cross this few hundred meters of open ground where they could come at him from all directions. There was nothing for it but to take it at a dead gallop, so he pointed Pegleg’s head at the closest corner of the depot and spurred him on.

He might have just imagined it, but he thought he heard whooping and cheering from Bunkhouse. Which was real nice and everything, but if the hostages penned there could see him, so could the drones. He unslung the shotgun from his shoulder, thumbed the safety off, and pumped the forearm to chamber a round. Didn’t need it just yet, so he yanked a shell from the strap and shoved it into the magazine to replace the one he’d just chambered. These shells were birdshot, like you’d use for going after pheasant or small game. He’d fitted the weapon with a choke to improve its range. He heard the screech of an eagle above and off to his right and turned his head back to see Genghis pounce on a drone and smash it to the ground. The birds all looked the same to him, but he could tell them apart by their gauntlets, which he’d printed up using different colors of plastic.

Some more eagle-related action happened on his left but on the galloping horse he couldn’t track everything. He had to focus on what he could deal with himself and leave the eagles to their work. If there were drones behind him, there might be drones ahead of him. He raised the shotgun and sighted along the top of its barrel. No point seeing anything he couldn’t shoot. The damned things were so small. A whirring mote swam into his vision and he pulled the trigger, pumped the forearm to load another shell, swung the barrel toward another veering, humming phantom, fired again. A shell casing tumbled from the target, gleaming in the sun, as his blast struck it and turned it into a cloud of carbon fiber. The thing had taken a shot at him! He pumped and swung the barrel the other way and almost committed a friendly-fire mistake: it was Nimrod grabbing another gun drone in one of her talons.