Free Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) by Stephen Moss

go in there given what has just happened?” said Neal, but Jim was already busily taking notes.
    Ayala: ‘yes, neal. you are. ¿what is the point of all this if we do not get what we came here for?’
    Neal looked from one to the other, but received only determined looks. Jesus, he thought.
    Then Jim took his arm and led him to the door which Minnie was already opening for them to step through. Ayala and the big avatar exchanged a glance as the two men entered the room, and no doubt a great deal more, and then the wizened security chief turned to follow her assistant and her two disenfranchised prisoners.
    She needed answers from at least one of them. Her face set with cold purpose as she walked away.

Chapter 7: Saddle and Break
     
    The original passage of New Moon One had been meteoric, quite literally. But now their work required less haste, even if it would call for infinitely more power.
    They had approached Asteroid 1979va through its own wake, sneaking up on it from behind before quite rudely flipping themselves and showing it their rear, as they repurposed the engines that had brought them here into brakes.
    Their approach had been delicate if, by design, rushed, for they had a tight schedule to keep and still could not know just how the process of attaching would actually go.
    But touchdown had gone smoothly, or as smoothly as could be hoped, and even now they were completing the process of attaching the first of their eight huge engines to the asteroid itself.
    Captain Harkness looked upon his ship from the outside even though he was in fact still inside it, cradled in machine slumber, piloting one of the ten lumbering Remote Construction Robots that his ship had been equipped with, or wreckers, as their acronym had inevitably led them to be called.
    It was an alarming process, when he thought about it. His crew was busily dismantling New Moon One, not quite the burning of the ships, perhaps, but still they were pulling her limb from limb so they could achieve the lofty mission they had been set.
    Samuel: ‘that’s it, remy, bring her in. two degrees port.’
    Remy Diaz responded, and the big ship above Sam’s head belched vapor, tweaking her leviathan body’s movements in minuscule steps as they worked to bring Engine One into contact with the framework of nanotube cables and anchors they had spent the last two days drilling into the asteroid’s surface.
    He stood at the junction of three of those cables as they came together at one point of the triangular base they had fastened to the two-million-ton rock.
    Remedios: ‘here she comes, captain. ¿charles, my good fellow, how are those pulse-outs going?’
    Charlie Kern contained his ire at her mockery of his English heritage.
    Charles: ‘they are aligned, remedy-osss.’
    Remedios: ‘re me dios, re me dios. ay dios mio. ¿why can’t you get it right?’
    He laughed, even as his mind remained absorbed with the pulse-outs. He sent out an abridged version of their status to supplement the steady flow of data he pumped into the net for the many that were monitoring the geyser-like eruptions. He told her of the anticipated flow of energy as he balanced the fonts into an antagonistic neutrality.
    He was managing the cyclical pulse of their engines which had to, every five seconds or so, expend the massive power they even now generated. Dormancy was not an option for these great beasts. They had three settings: first they were off, then they were alive, and then they were dead, pretty much permanently, certainly as far as they were concerned at more than four million miles from Earth.
    It meant that no one, mechanical or otherwise, could be directly in front of or behind them, well, not unless they wished to be vaporized, anyway. And it made Remy’s job as pilot in these delicate maneuvers akin to manhandling a sleeping bull, a sleeping bull who was dreaming of something either very pleasant or very unpleasant as every few moments it kicked and bucked with