Chapter 15

It took a few hours under ion drive, and we took an extra orbit around the moon to slow down as much as we could, but eventually, I had the Space Command ship on course and I broke the tether so they could glide in and stop without risk to my ship. This was a maneuver we had practiced a few times after I had described the fear of getting crushed when I had rescued the women.

Surprisingly, it went smoothly, and we orbited the moon once more before landing at home.

It was not time to rest, however. Karen and I went in and grabbed dinner and a bathroom break. Then I loaded up in my ship, which only had space for one, and headed back out to try to skim those rockets.

It took a bit of time to find the rockets. The first three were near the Lagrange point between the moon and the earth. As such they were going to slowly settle into the gravity well there, unless they had enough momentum to break the hold.

Once I had located them and calculated an approach, I donned my EVA suit and headed out. I wanted to run my Geiger counter over them to ensure that there was no radioactivity in them.

I also wanted to ensure that they were in fact dead. The EMP appeared to have fried them, and they were drifting, but the State was wily and had shown that they liked to sabotage rescue and recovery operations.

I was eventually able to access the control panels on both of the fried rockets. The circuit boards were indeed toast, and so I worked to get them strapped securely on my craft before climbing inside and starting to make my way back home.

I would need to come back for the remains of the rocket that had exploded, but tracking those pieces was going to take some time and computing power. Some were headed out into deep space and were likely gone forever. It was only those that had managed to stay in orbit that I would try to get.

I had the computer working on the best course, given the increased mass we now had. I would need to make a couple of lunar orbits to get as slow as possible before heading in to land. The computer showed we were in the green for landing, but with this much mass, I double checked the calculations.

I would also update them after firing up the ion drive. The rate of change in my ship when the engines fired would give me a more accurate estimate of mass, and I could update the projections.

Eventually, I was lining up my approach and skidding to a stop on my skid pad. As soon as I popped the hatch, I was met by three women in EVA suits who were eager to see me. Between the fatigue from the multiple flights and the momentum of three women running into me, we quickly found ourselves on the ground in a large pile.

It took a few minutes to sort ourselves out and I noticed that all three women were crying even though I had seen them a little more than a day ago.

I eventually got them to help me get the rockets unloaded and moved off the landing pad. I would work on breaking them down later and then salvaging any parts and materials from them. I did check the fuel tanks and it did appear as though there was some liquid oxygen still in one of the tanks. If there was methane in the other tank, we could certainly use that as well.

We then headed inside the habitat and worked to rid ourselves of lunar dust before removing our suits and heading further into the living area.

While we undressed, the mood was somber and no one was speaking. It was clear that the women had something to say, and they suspected I wasn’t going to like it.

Once we got settled in the kitchen, Mary served up my dinner and I waited to see who was going to bring up whatever it was that was bothering them. As I suspected, it was Karen who started.

“Master, we wanted to let you know that the USF fired nuclear mussels at targets held by the State. Tehran, Baghdad, Riyadh, Kabul, Islamabad, Dubai, Sana’a and Doha are all totally destroyed and multiple other cities were fired upon as well. Most of the Middle East is now a nuclear wasteland and the nuclear fallout is expected to affect the entire planet.”

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A man, nearly broken by loss, lives a solitary existence off planet earth in a small habitat he has constructed on the moon.

Skimmer

Lorn Skye

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