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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 96: Cooper 104
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 287
Shoving himself down the ladder in the low gravity as the rising rocktosser storm howled outside the tall rocket-shaped ship, Cooper caught his breath. As he did, he surveyed the iron fission reactor. It was in near idle mode, just enough power to provide the lights for The Energetic. He began to push the control bars into the activation position, but then stopped.
A smooth startup would take ten or even really twenty minutes to warm everything up. Listening to a crash outside the two-inch thick outer hull, where some heavy rock ripped at the Mercurian hardpan of the mid-equator dark side spaceport, he did not think they had twenty or even ten minutes. Zait, the senior reactor ironman, had drummed data into Barrelmaster’s head, including emergency procedures.
Barrelmaster began shoving the control bars into their position, not waiting for one to warm up before dropping the next iron ingot into position. He had just cleaned these ingots the other day, getting rust off them which interfered with the fissile reaction. Right now he was very grateful he was meticulous in his labors. Every tiny bit would count. Wiping sweat from his dark forehead, he slammed the next control bar down even as it resisted his effort (a matter of design as the makers did not want what he was doing to be done by accident).
The lights flickered, and surges of power hummed in the walls with sparks showering above him in the ship as men piled into their hope for safety. “Oh, save us in our hour of distress, Mighty Lord,” Cooper prayed, and shoved the next bar while half dropping back an earlier one before shoving them both down.
He paused, waiting to see if the nuclear reaction held stable and caught, or if he had tossed too many ingots into the fire, cooling it and stifling the reaction. It thrummed, shook, and the whole several-hundred-foot long rocket shook as one, too, but then it thrummed solidly. Brian permitted a smile to spread on his concerned face before he heard a wailing noise from up above heading down. The shake had ripped a sailor free from the ladders, and he was now plummeting straight down. He would crash into the reactor at an angle of its heavy mass and the reactor corner would rip him apart. Brian had no time to pray so he just flung up his left arm, in what he was sure was a futile effort to knock the sailor aside and slow his descent.
His glove hummed, and a flat plane of force appeared on the back side of his left hand with some sort of force clothing his arm and going down his back, pressing against his spine. The sailor hit with a cracking sound, and holding him up was surprisingly easy. Fearing the worst, Barrelmaster lowered his arm while carefully keeping it level to keep Afo from sliding off. The groaning sailor dragged himself with his legs to his knees, along with Cooper’s help. Both of Afo’s arms were broken, the right in two different spots. Yet he forced a grin, for he was alive.
“Do we have power to lift, ironman?” The intercom blared with the Captain’s clear and firm voice. Even fearful he held fear at bay, providing an example for others. Barrelmaster looked over the dials, and then sent a message back.
“Aye, Captain, Sailor Cooper here,” because he wanted the Captain to know it was not the vastly experienced Zait with his thirty years of experience saying it, but the newbie Cooper. In response, the drive surged on, and The Energetic hopped on its tail, up, down, bounce, and up and away even as stones rattled off the hull.
“Thank the Shining Light, the Cosmic X, Solaris Primus, the Desert Walker, the Cross God, Blessed Fortuna, and the Shadow Snake,” Afo murmured, kissing each of the symbols hanging from his bracelet. Afo, at the moment, had forgotten that the Desert Walker and the Cross God were the same.
Cooper flared with unexpected rage for a second, but then sighed.
“Perhaps we could avoid thanking the Shadow Snake or Satan for our survival.” As far as he could tell, the Shadow Snake was the local manifestation of infernal power. Thankfully, unlike Derek, he had never met such an entity, although he had enjoyed his very short chat with the angelic fire wheel.
“Right, right, we are in Sovereign Hands.” Afo added, “No offense intended.” He said that last as a prayer to the gods. Afo was a syncretist which was not a sin-cretist, Cooper thought feeling a bit lightheaded at their so-far survival. But as he fell upward, he realized that the ship was falling backwards even as the thrust went to a higher roar. There were screams as the ship flipped head for tail, and hopefully tail for head or otherwise they were powering straight down at emergency thrust into Mercury. Faintly, Cooper realized that he was one of those screaming even as he held Afo who with broken arms could not hold himself.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #531: Versers Roam. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
