Chapter Three

Gray finished suiting up and the two men ran down the check list making sure their suits were in order and all necessary preparations were made. They inflated their suits and found no leaks, tested communications devices, and double checked their inventory. Rations, water, hand-held ionic diffusers with 4 ion cartridges apiece, portable oxygen, various electronic override tools, and of course the ever-present cyanide pill should things go awry. The two men exchanged non-humorous glances after checking off the last item on the inventory list, and headed down the corridor to where they would board the shuttle to the hangar. They boarded the high-speed shuttle which was clamped in place with long u-shaped magnetic side bars running the length of the craft. As they secured their helmets and packs in the cabin area of the shuttle, and strapped themselves in for the brief journey to the hangar, a familiar voice came streaming over the intercom system.

“Welcome aboard Gray - Warner. I haven’t seen the two of you down in these parts for what, six months now?” The voice belonged to Scoffield, a semi-retired agent who now just ran the shuttle system. He was a lithe, gray-haired gentleman who had a bit of a raspy voice and a reputation around the hangar for having a generous and friendly demeanor – a bit like a grandfather.

Gray switched the communication button on and peered through the glass between them into the front compartment.

“Scoffield, are you still running this trolley? When are you going to retire from all this madness and take your wife through the Caribbean, like you always talk about?”

“That’s funny you should ask, because I just finished restoring my sailboat. I’m having it transported to the coast of south Florida next month.” Scoffield had a certain musical quality about his voice. He had been an agent in the World Space Agency since before Warner was born, and Gray had heard the stories of countless missions he’d completed despite overwhelming odds and adversity since the day he graduated the academy. Although he didn’t look like much of a physical specimen, Scoffield was quite a legend in the WSA.

“When are you going to have that wife of yours bake us some of her peanut butter cookies again?” asked Warner winking at Gray and grinning widely.

“You boys make it back from the station in one piece, and I’ll see to it that you get your cookies before we leave,” answered Scoffield with a chuckle as he began flipping switches in preparation for their departure.

“Now you boys strap in tight. There was some polarity interference on my last trip which made things a little bumpy. I don’t want you rookies turning green before you even get to the hangar.”

Gray and Warner exchanged nervous glances and cinched their straps a little tighter across their chests.

With a loud clank the magnetic side bars disengaged and the shuttle raised a couple of inches, hovering in its magnetic field over the tracks. A whirring sound began to emanate from the rear of the craft and the three men began their 15 mile journey to the hangar. Although the craft traveled at a top speed of over 150 miles per hour, the fact that it floated above the tracks on a reversed-polarity magnetic field meant that the journey was remarkably smooth. The only thing indicating how fast they were going was the tunnel lights as they shot by the small exterior windows regularly on either side.

Gray turned to Warner as the two men tried to relax before their journey to the space station.

“You know, Warner, Linda is really quite a woman.”

“Gray, I know you’re not going to give me another lecture about Linda now,” said Warner half joking, but with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“No, I’m not going to give you a lecture, Warner. I just think it’s a shame that the two of you just won’t …”

Suddenly, Gray was cut short by a loud blast followed by the shuttle lurching forward, pitching its occupants’ weight ferociously against their safety harnesses. From below their feet they could hear and feel the twisting and grinding of metal on metal as the floor heated up beneath their boots. The whining metallic grinding sound grew louder as the weight of the rear engine pitched first to one side, and then the other. Bright orange sparks began to fly up around the sides of the shuttle obscuring the view from the observation windows.

Scoffield’s voice sounded alarmed as it came over the intercom almost immediately saying, “Hang on men, we’ve lost our magnetic polarity field. I’m going to grind her to a halt but this may be a little uncomfortable.”

There was a panic in his voice which alone disturbed the agents more than the craft careening out of control itself. Scoffield was never one to get rattled.

After several seconds of skidding down the tracks at over a hundred miles an hour, which seemed to Gray and Warner more like several minutes, red warning lights enveloped the shuttles interior and smoke began to rise as the smell of burning metal and plastic filled the small rear cabin.

At last, the shuttle grinded to a halt and the door slid open. Warning lights and buzzers filled the air and the pungent smoke obscured their vision.

Scoffield came over the intercom with the sound of urgency in his voice.

“Grab your packs, men, and get away from this thing before the engine catches fire!”

Gray and Warner unfastened their safety harnesses and snatched their packs. The shuttle had come to rest rolled over slightly on the side of the exit door which left them only a small space to exit through. Through the thick smoke the two men crawled through the small opening and clamored up the side of the twisted heap of metal and off of the tracks.

Scoffield had already escaped and helped each man up from the tracks onto the small walkway that ran parallel to the tracks.

The three men gained their feet and ran quickly down the tracks until they had reached a distance of about 50 yards.

Just then, as Warner turned to look back, a blast of heat washed over his face. The engine burst into flames and the force of the blast knocked all three men off their feet.

Several seconds passed as the three men struggled to sit up. Each of them looked themselves over checking for signs of injury.

“What happened?” asked Warner, his face covered in sweat and grit.

“Well, if I had to guess, I’d say someone doesn’t want you to make your flight. Did you feel that explosion? It knocked out our magnetic polarity field. It was all I could do to bring the craft to a halt without killing all of us,” said Scoffield, who was breathing heavily, but not as heavily as one might have expected given his age and the circumstances. There was actually an expression of excitement on his face a bit like a kid at Christmas time just before opening his gifts.

Gray brushed off the dust on his space suit examining it for tears or punctures.

“Scoffield, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were enjoying this,” he said noting the expression on Scoffield’s face.

“Gray, I may be near retirement, but I’m not dead yet. Are you two alright?”

“It seems like we’re intact. Did you say explosion?” asked Warner, who seemed more on edge than the other two after the ordeal.

“Yes, I did,” answered Scoffield. “The blast came from right above the polarity magnets. Whoever put it there knew it would wreck the shuttle. It looks like our trip has been sabotaged.”

“How far do you think we are from the hangar?” asked Gray peering down into the depths of the tunnel in the direction they were traveling.

“It’s hard to say for sure, but it can’t be more than a mile or two. Does anyone’s com device work down here in the tunnel? If not, it looks like we’ll be walking out,” said Scoffield as he pulled a hand-help plasma blaster from a holster on his hip and loaded it.

The three men tried their communication devices in vain, and then decided to set out on foot down the long corridor in front of them leaving the wreckage of the shuttle burning behind them. The cold wind blew lightly down the corridor making a barely audible moaning noise as the three walked in succession pulling themselves over the boulders and crevices that made up the landing on either side of the tracks.

The tunnel had been carved decades earlier out of the underground rock between headquarters and the hangar. It was about 50 feet in diameter and stretched as far as they could see in both directions.

Lights dotted the walls of the cave every 50 yards or so illuminating the walls in a strange orange incandescence and casting eerie shadows over their rugged path. As the three men walked closely together, Scoffield began to speak quietly.

“Gray, did anyone outside headquarters know that you would be taking that shuttle?”

“Not that I know of, but we have had some concerns about infiltration in our network. Do you suspect this is the work of the resistance?”

“It could be. That shuttle had just been examined before we left. I wonder how it passed inspection with that explosive on there. We better watch our step on the way to the hangar. If whoever put that explosive on there knows we’re out here, we could have our hands full.”

The three men walked in silence for the better part of a half an hour. Scoffield walked first, Warner in the middle, and Gray brought up the rear. Several times Gray had thought he’d heard footsteps behind him. Each time he would stop, suddenly, peering into the shadows of the cave behind them, but hearing only the wind moving gently over the rocks.

“It looks like the hangar is up ahead,” said Scoffield as the edge of the cave before them began to open up slightly.

“It’s still a few hundred yards, but I think that’s the edge of the hangar.”

He was standing on top of a large boulder, peering out in front of them.

Just as Warner and Gray began to pull themselves up onto the boulder on which Scoffield was standing, a large blast sent the three men tumbling down the rocky ridge and onto the tracks.

“We’ve got company,” said Scoffield pulling himself up to his feet. He whipped around to face the direction from which the blast had come and pointed his plasma blaster.

Gray and Warner scrambled to take cover and arm themselves as Scoffield let fly a couple of plasma blasts.

“Reminds me of when I was your age, Warner,” shouted Scoffield as he sent a couple more plasma blasts in the direction of their attacker. He was shooting from behind a large boulder at the edge of the ravine cut out for the shuttle tracks.

Blasts came back at the three men huddled behind the rocks sending rubble and debris down on them from above.

Through the dense cloud of dust and debris, Gray struggled to make out where the blasts were coming from.

“Scoffield, can you see where they’re coming from?” he shouted.

“Yeah, I can see him. He’s behind that outcrop,” he said pointing to a large outcrop toward the top of the tunnel on the other side of the tracks.

“Warner, make your way up that ridge and take cover behind that line of rocks,” shouted Gray.

Warner began to scramble up the rocky ledge trying to keep his body covered by a small ridge running diagonally up the side.

Gray dove behind the rock that Warner had just vacated, just as another blast sent rubble down over his and Scoffield’s heads. Scoffield and Gray were now only a few feet away, and Gray could see that Scoffield was wincing after the last blast.

Gray returned fire with his ionic diffuser, and shouted over the blasts at Scoffield, “Are you OK?”

Scoffield’s face was red with strain and he had a small trickle of blood which had started to ooze from an abrasion wound on his right temple.

He shouted back at Gray, “You need to get up that ridge.”

Gray shook his head letting another blast go, “You’re coming too!”

“It’s no good,” Scoffield shouted pointing at his leg. It was lodged under a sizable rock which had fallen in the last blast.

“My leg is stuck, and I think it’s broken too! Get up that ridge and I’ll hold him off as long as I can,” he shouted at Gray firing his plasma blaster at their attacker.

Warner, from his vantage point on the hill, had located their enemy. An abnormally tall and lanky figure clad in black armed with a shoulder mounted plasma cannon. He fired on his enemy with his thin ionic beam, but could not hit him as embedded as he was in the rock.

He shouted down to Gray, “You two have got to get out of there. I can’t hit him from here.”

Just as Warner shouted this down, their adversary launched another blast at the space of rock between him and Gray sending more rubble down on the two pinned beneath.

Through the dust and rock debris Gray continued to urge Scoffield.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he pleaded.

Scoffield looked at him simultaneously with excitement and sadness.

“You forget, Gray, I live for this too,” he said with a level of flatness that took Gray aback amidst the chaos.

“Now get up there. You must complete your mission.” He said with a calmness that did not match the situation at hand.

Gray turned and scrambled up the short ridge separating him and Warner as Scoffield sent another barrage of plasma blasts. Gray had just reached to top of the ledge when a blast ripped through a large chunk of the rock at his feet launching him in an arc through the air. He landed with a thud on his side and shoulder, slightly stunned.

He turned to look back at Scoffield who was now mostly covered with debris. Weakly, he heard Scoffield shout at him through a mouthful of dirt.

“Gray,” he said as Gray strained to hear his raspy voice, “Tell … my … wife …”

Gray couldn’t make out anything else as he peered down at his friend’s face now covered with blast material. Scoffield lay motionless and silent.

Gray scrambled to his feet and jumped over a small outcrop from behind which Warner was now calling to him.

“Gray, come on, we have to get out of here!” he shouted.

For a moment Gray was lost in the confusion. The wreck, the attack, watching his friend die, it was all too much for his mind to wrap itself around. Scoffield’s words ‘Tell my wife’ washed over him like a standing eight count does a boxer who has just been concussed.

Suddenly his mind snapped to and the horror of the situation at hand ripped him from his dream world.

Warner let fly a couple more ion pulses and grabbed Gray by a hook on the front of his suit pulling him as he ran down the back side of the rubble pile.

The two men reached stride and made their way down the long corridor to the shuttle landing where the launch site personnel had heard the fire fight and were now coming to their aid.

Warner reached the landing first, and just moments later, Gray heaved himself up onto the landing.

Both men were panting heavily having just sprinted the last several hundred yards of the tunnel to the hangar.

“Blast … the … cave,” Gray managed between breaths.