Patreon or PayPal Me keeps this site and its author alive. Thank you. |
Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 15: Cooper 77
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 255
“Angle, hold my feet, brace yourself.” This accomplished, Cooper drew his sword. Aiming it at the curved wall of the reactor room, he heard Angle object.
“That won’t cut it.”
“If God wills it, it will.”
“Deus Vult, then,” Angle said and Cooper agreed.
“God wills, indeed.” He pushed the point of the blade into the rusty iron wall, and began to slice through it. Angle gasped in shock, and mumbled something in a different language than Cooper had ever heard. It was probably some version of his native Lunarian. Pushing harder, the blade continued to cut. It was not as easy as the chain link fence in Yellowstone City, but this was solid iron a quarter inch thick. He pushed, and cut.
Banging sounds and then a cheer outside were followed by a bellow.
“We got one bolt out. Two more to go. Let us in now, and we won’t hurt you much.”
“Don’t listen to them. They will kill us. We made them mad.”
“I wasn’t planning on it, Angle,” Cooper said. He had a fair idea of the very poor moral quality of the enemies he was facing. Reaching for it, he enhanced his strength, and for a second, he felt terribly weak, as if his bones had turned to water, but then he was strong again, and stronger than normal. This ability of the Sword drained his endurance, but right now he needed to cut and cut fast.
Rounding the first corner, he pushed on, blinded by sweat dripping in his eyes. But he did not need to see to know what to do. He sawed and stabbed with his angelic blade against the crude iron of the inner hull of the spaceship. Arms burning, he made the next corner just in time to hear a second clunk from beyond the hatch as a second hinge was hammered free. It bounced off the wall of the room outside.
“Can you hold for a minute? Take a break. I have a plan,” Angle asked, worry in his tone. Cooper gladly took the break for his arms, but in his head he wanted to push on. Closing his eyes he drifted off for a bit. Suddenly he was startled by a jerk on his legs, and he quickly began to work more. The third corner came, and he was halfway to the last when the third hinge dropped, and hollers of vengeful victory were heard through the iron wall.
Cooper turned to fight, but Angle yelled to go faster. So Cooper did. Snaps and bangs behind him were mixed with clearer voices screaming profanities in interspersed seconds before the hatch closed shut again. Somehow Angle had jammed the door, he knew, and with that knowledge his arms loosened, and he pushed through the last of the door cutout. Even as he did, his arms convulsed, and his Sword dropped from his fingers. Angle caught it, and began shoving him, with one bounce, two, and then three bounces into the space between the inner and outer hull.
Without the Sword in hand, the remnants of his god-given strength faded, and he was just a man. That is, a man who had pushed himself past normal limits for nearly thirty minutes, and whose arms were locked into the tender embraces of charlie horses while sweat stung his temporarily blinded eyes. He heard a whumph, and smelled some acrid scent, and heard a thump.
“What?”
“Shhhh,” Angle said, and Cooper restrained his ever present curiosity as Angle shoved him further down the foot-wide space between the hulls. Remembering how he had healed himself by patting his own arms and praying, he tried to do likewise. Nothing happened. Deus Vult, he reminded himself. Instead, he tried to stretch out his fingers to get relief from the charlie horses.
Bumping softly into a bracket between the hulls, he heard Angle turn about.
“Far enough for now.”
“What did you do?”
“I rigged some wire to tie to the hatch, and to the control rods. They’re trying to lift at least two thousand pounds of mass, and they might wreck the reactor too. About a month ago, I had an idea to escape so I made myself a chemical smoke bomb. It would fill the whole room with blinding smoke.”
“Clever.”
“That’s us. Lunarians. We’re clever, but weak.” The boy’s voice was bitter.
“I’d tell you to give up that nonsense,” Cooper said gently, “but right now I need your help. My eyes are sweat blinded, and my forearms need pulling to get out the charlie horses.”
“Oh. I thought that was easy for you. You never stopped except once,” Angle said admiringly even as he pulled out the mast, and used a ready-rag to wipe off Cooper’s face. Now able to see without blinking painfully, Cooper mustered a smile on his dark tan face.
“A horde of murderous pirates is a great incentive plan for maximizing productivity.”
“I don’t understand,” Angle said as he began to pull on Cooper’s forearms with both hands while bracing himself to a bracket with his legs.
“Just something that the corporate types, the ones who don’t have to actually do the work, would say to those who have to do the work.”
“Oh, we say something like that too. Easy to make stupid rules; hard to follow them.”
“Yes, that’s it. My arms are good enough for now.” They still hurt and twitched, but he could use them now. And he was aware from Angle’s description that the hatch would soon be bypassed. After that, the fog in the room would give them a couple minutes. Twenty seconds after that, the hatch would be found, and the hunt would truly be on. Which meant they needed to move now.
“Ready?”
“Yes, Terri, let us flee.” With that, they pushed off, gliding in zero gravity between the two hulls with a clearance of a few inches on top and bottom. There were lights of a sort–clear crystals which let the light from the inner spaces into the hull spaces were embedded every ten feet.
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 #525: Character Battles. 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:
