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The Oregon Trail is ready to fly. The crew had not yet managed to leave for the Ceres Portal. One thing after another but now many major projects were making good headway with the principals locally available to make decisions and do project management. The decision to buy five more semi-subs was one of the biggest roadblocks. The clandestine nature of the deal slowed everything even when cash was offered. Wells had to be finished, material had to be offloaded and derricks laid down. Finally, the day arrived. All the rigs were being pulled toward supposed new projects by underpowered tugs that had also been bought by shell companies and manned by the Motu One boys. The rigs were empty and cleaned of loose debris.
The lifting frame arrived under the first semi-sub and the tow harness was dropped from the tug. The frame was essentially a barge overstuffed with grav panels. Al guided it neatly between the legs and slowly lifted the giant up and out of the water. Then with an easy acceleration, he took it up to fifteen hundred km and gave it enough forward motion to keep it in orbit for several months or a space tug could drag it over to the original semi-sub shipyard.
This repeated three more times with no problems but on the final lift, things got hairy. Off the coast of India on the route that was for a Persian Gulf destination, a Chinese destroyer showed up out of its base in Sri Lanka and started radioing to give up the frame or the tug would be sunk with its men. The harness had already been released and Al had the semi-sub half out of the water.
“Al, slowly lower it back into the water. I want it to look like we are complying.” Ariel who was on overwatch in the Winchester called the boys on the tug. “I want your crew to get in a life raft and set the tug on auto-pilot toward that destroyer.”
“Promise you will pick us up?”
“No jokes now, be quick about it. And don’t leave personal articles. I want that tug vanilla and I don’t want that destroyer to get machine gun range on you all.”
“Al as soon as they are off and the tug is running, lift the rig right on out. These guys have a lesson to learn.” Ariel said.
“Chinese warship Nanchang, this is the private warship Winchester 73. Come in”
“Winchester 73 this is the Nanchang, we have you on radar lock with surface to air Best missile. Relinquish your lifter or we will destroy it and sink your tug.”
“Nanchang, we have recorded your demands and consider you a pirate. This is your only warning. Abandon ship to save your men. You will be sunk in five minutes. If you fire your armaments, you will be sunk immediately.”
The Nanchang then ripple fired six SAMs which ran into a gravity gradient of twenty Gee at one thousand meters altitude. They twisted apart.
“Winchester, Winchester, please wait. We are abandoning ship.”
It took a full twenty minutes to get them all off and into rafts. By then the tug was very close. Al shut down the tug engines two hundred meters away. Ariel punched twenty holes in the top of the line destroyer, and it was underwater in three minutes. The Winchester slowly moved over to the Motu One boy’s raft, lowered the cargo ramp, and scooped them up.
“Why did you give them our boat?” the tug Captain asked upon arriving at the cockpit.
“They left their base in the most advanced stealth warship China owns. They will return in a, sorry Captain, piece of shit tug. The loss of face will be horrific. They need to stop this shit.” Ariel explained the method to her madness.
“Vampire, vampire, vampire. Missile lock. Missile away. Time to target, thirty seconds. MiG 29 from the north.” Al warned.
“Back to work, excuse me for a second,” Ariel said, then swatted down the MiG and its missile.
“I’m tired of sitting in shitty tugs. Please teach me to pilot one of these.”
“You saw what I just did?”
“More or less.”
“That was your first lesson. Welcome aboard”
With the oil rigs in orbit getting the Boring machines from Elton was simplicity itself. They were driven onto the frame and welded down.
Then someone got a bright idea. One of the drill rigs should be taken to Mars. Mars Colony Shipyard and Foundry.
∞
Alicia always wanted to be an astronaut but struggled through her Electrical Engineering school. If you were not at the top of your class, NASA had no interest. Marine ROTC did get her pilot’s position. Right after certifying on the F-35, the Marines sent her to the South China Sea a year before hostilities began.
“Gen. Frank is the only one allowed to tell this story since he was there,” Alicia clarified to Marco and Ariel during the interview for a place in the ASS.
Gen. Frank began one of his favorite stories, “Operations had been non-stop in the battle for Fiery Cross. Alicia had just finished flying combat air patrol over her amphibious assault task force and landed right behind a flight of Apache gunships. They were getting priority on servicing, so Alicia’s F-35 remained topside. She was told she had one hour until it got refueled, still had her air to air missiles mounted. Time enough for a quick shower and a bite to eat. There are shower facilities by the pilot ready room on the flight deck island and she was in there when the ballistic missile punched through to the middle decks. The explosion knocked her silly, but the tight enclosure of the shower stall saved her from broken bones.”
“It was my twenty-fifth birthday, so I deserved a shower,” Alicia added.
“Knocked me down too. I was in the air ops tower looking down at the flight deck thinking about how to abandon ship when this woman, naked except for shower sandals runs out of the island, titties flopping, and jumps into an F-35. She takes off just as the ship has started it’s long roll to capsize.”
“My titties were not flopping. They are a rock-hard C-cup. Your eyes were bouncing looking at my perfect nipples. I wouldn’t have had on even those sandals if I weren’t already wearing them. Saved my plane anyway. LaShawn was my crew chief and was waiting with the ladder and my helmet to strap me in. I think he looked at my pussy once but it was clamped as tight as my asshole so there was nothing to see. It was a true pucker moment,” she said laughing a little now.
“And shot down three J-20s that were following up on the missile strike. Probably saved at least one maybe two other ships, while naked,” Gen. Frank added.
“We lost over two thousand sailors that day. I was not embarrassed.”
“The first thing she did when she landed on Fiery Cross was to walk to the beach and go for a swim. Still naked.”
“My hair was still full of shampoo. He likes to keep saying ‘while naked’. There are plenty of stories from other wars where some jarhead was firing a machine gun or something with his junk in the breeze.”
“Yea but they didn’t have a perfect set of nipples. Your words,” Gen. Frank said.
“So that is my story of Fiery Cross. I heard you and Ariel had some fun there too,” Alicia said redirecting the thread of conversation.
“Not much fun until after and then it was a lot of fun. So much fun she married me,” Marco said. “When can you be released by the Marines? We need people we can expect loyalty from, that means recommendations by people such as the general.”
“I am through with my obligations. Tomorrow if there is a reason.”
“Let’s not put your commander in a bind, but as soon as possible,” Ariel amplified.
“And I can go to space?” Alicia asked full of hope.
“Yes, that is the whole idea,” Marco replied.
“I’ll resign tomorrow. We haven’t had flight hours available in a long time and my boss could give mine to some of the newer pilots. He will be ok with that. Give me a week or so to visit my family and I’m good to go.”
“You didn’t ask about pay,” Gen. Frank pointed out.
“If I get to be an astronaut, just feed me and give me a corner to sleep in,” Alicia was now truly enthused.
“It won’t be NASA. No spam in a can with a side dish of hero worship. We are regular folks who live and work in space,” Ariel clarified.
“I can go tonight. I’ll email my boss,” Alicia now stoked.
“Take your week, see your family. We sometimes are out a long time. Like sea duty. Keep Al up to date on your plans to make the pickup convenient. He will also send you some manuals to get you qualified more quickly, but an F-35 pilot will have no problems,” Marco said.
