The Last Run: A Novella by Stephen Knight Page A

narrowed.
    Strapped into the driver’s seat, Captain Mike Andrews kept his eyes rooted on the desert landscape outside the thick viewports. His left hand kept the rig’s control column pushed fully forward, and the system’s drive-by-wire technology translated the action into full power to the rig’s large, knobbed tires. The ride was far from comfortable, of course. Even though the SCEV had been designed to withstand harsh punishment in the field for months at a time, there was a limit to what suspension technology could dampen. Hurtling along at old highway speeds across broken terrain was one of the things it couldn’t handle.
    “Hey, listen, the temperature’s going through the roof on number one,” Choi said, squirming slightly in the copilot’s seat beside Andrews. He was a few years younger than the vehicle commander, but his even temper and genuine likeability made him an asset in the field during the long reconnaissance runs they made four times a year. Now, though, Choi was obviously agitated, and not just from the SCEV’s violent progress over the landscape that had once been western Kansas. It wasn’t the close proximity of the storm causing him discomfort, either. Andrews knew the chance the vehicle might be forced to spend days waiting out the storm within only a few miles of Harmony Base was getting to Choi. Hell, it was getting to him as well. After thirty-three days in the field, all Andrews wanted was to get back to Harmony and soak in the small bathtub in his quarters. The SCEV’s accommodations were fairly excellent, but confining eight people inside a vehicle that had less than four hundred square feet of living space for a month was enough to make anyone long for privacy.
    Choi pointed out the temperature tape on the multifunction display set in the instrument panel between the two men. Andrews only glanced at it, but he could see the number one engine’s temperature had spiked dramatically over the past few minutes.
    “Listen, if you don’t back off soon, you’re going to blow number one,” Choi said.
    “Like hell, Tony. The computer’ll shut it down first. But so what? That’s why we have two engines in these things.” Andrews patted the lip of the SCEV’s gray instrument panel. “Hang in there, babe. Almost home, just hang in there.”
    “Yeah, that’s gonna work.”
    Andrews looked at the weather radar display. “It’d better, man. That storm’s a hot one, and if it catches us, we’ll lose the base’s homing beacon. No way I’m backing off now—this is our only shot.”
    “So what are we going to do if number one shuts down? The storm’ll catch us for sure.”
    “Spencer!” Andrews shouted.
    “What up?” A small, squat man appeared in the door that separated the SCEV’s cramped cockpit from the not-so-cramped work area in the center of the vehicle. By regulations, the pressure doors separating the three compartments were supposed to be closed, but with the vehicle lurching and bucking across the terrain, Andrews just didn’t have it in him to make what already felt like a coffin even smaller. If he was in the back, he’d have a tough time not blowing chow all over the place.
    “One’s getting close to thermal shutdown, but I need it,” Andrews told the crew chief. “What can I do about it?”
    Spencer looked at the multifunction display, then tabbed through the couple of screens. He grunted and returned the display to the main situation page. “Particle separator’s shitting the bed, which means the engine’s taking in dirty air. I can suppress the alert and raise the shutdown threshold, but the engine’s gonna fry. Walleyes won’t be happy about that,” Spencer added, referring to the commanding officer of the base’s vehicle section by his informal—and completely impolite—nickname.
    Andrews considered his options. So far in his career, he’d been able to steer clear of Colonel Larry Walters’s wrath, which he had visited upon every other SCEV