Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [3]
“It’s really something, Chief,” Sanders breathed in awe, floating nearby, the tiny transmitter and earpiece rendering his voice with remarkable clarity. “Kinda takes your breath away.”
“Sure does, Enswine,” Ruiz replied gruffly. “Now, are you ready to get to work?”
“Just tell me what to do,” Sanders said cheerfully.
Good answer, Ruiz thought, still mildly disgruntled.
But it was hard to hold on to his anger out here, in this infinite playground. The two men remained tethered to the station as they drifted free of it. The training module that was their destination was a sphere located on a boom extending some hundred meters away from the air lock. Sanders activated his IMS, and Ruiz watched critically as the officer guided himself along, the thin line of his tether trailing behind. The fellow seemed to know what he was doing; he needed only a tiny adjustment to keep himself on a straight course toward the training module.
Once he reached it, Sanders took hold of a hand grip and turned around to watch Ruiz coming after him. The ensign’s eyes immediately widened.
“Hey, Chief—take a look at that!”
Sanders’s voice was as excited as a schoolboy’s, and Ruiz sighed silently, pivoting to look at whatever had attracted the young officer’s attention. And then he, too, whistled in amazement.
“That would be the Pegasus, sir,” he remarked laconically even as the spectacle of the approaching spaceship almost took his breath away.
The USSS Pegasus (Frigate, Light, Space) was the first spacefaring vessel in the nearly three-hundred-year history of the United States Navy, and she was gorgeous. Silver and sleek, she approached SATSTAR1 slowly, with immense grace. The triple engines arrayed symmetrically around the hull were dark and silent as the pilot used only his small auxiliary maneuver rockets to draw near the station’s dock.
Two single-barreled rail gun turrets, the guns retracted and lying flat against the hull, gave her a menacing look. A pair of missile launchers was enclosed in pods along the hull; the hatches were currently closed, but Ruiz knew the power of the lethal rockets waiting there. The big United States flag emblazoned on her side was lit up by the direct rays of the sun, and Ruiz had never seen Old Glory looking so impressive.
Gradually the ship vanished behind the station, and the two SEALS stopped gawking and returned to their training mission. Sanders demonstrated the agility of a monkey in moving around the training module. He released his tether and floated out and back again under the power of his IMS.
The only glitch occurred when Ruiz was about to follow him around the module. As was standard procedure, he checked his IMS before releasing his tether, and he cursed privately when the first twist on the dial sent him cartwheeling away. Quickly he shut the device off and took a firm grip on the line to pull himself under control.
“My damned IMS is malfunctioning again, Enswine,” he growled. “I’m gonna have to check you out with my line attached.”
There was a pause. It was a moment of truth for the ensign. Technically, standard operating procedure called for Ruiz and Sanders to scrub the training session and take Ruiz’s suit in for repair. If Sanders was an uptight, by-the-book prick, he’d order them back into the station immediately. Of course, real life rarely followed SOP, and Ruiz didn’t feel like doing this all over again.
“Gotcha, Chief,” Sanders said. “Guess I get to have all the fun today.”
Maybe there was hope for Sanders, and he did look like he was having fun. After maneuvering himself for a full circuit around the training module, the ensign embarked on the second task: using the tools on his belt to break into the module’s air lock.
Ruiz drifted out, keeping tension on his line so that he could watch the young officer work. The chief was floating on the far side of the module, facing the station, with only the vastness of space behind him. Sanders had reattached his tether (SOP when not floating free) and was holding