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 ^{(it's beta!)}

"Hey boss, you ever think what we're doing up here is wrong? I mean like, morally?" Ellowitz broke the effective silence the FM radio might as well have broadcast.

"What?" Doral said, confused, and inattentive, rousing from his monitor scrollings.

"Do you think this is morally okay? I mean, we sit up here, in low orbit, and we don't really fire the damn thing, but we keep it from not firing, and, it's not like there's really a chance of it missing or seeking cover from it, I mean, hell, most people don't even know we're up here. It used to be you could take cover from bullets, or you at least knew if someone blew you up there was a bomb that was traceable, but us? A slight buzzing, a tingling sensation, and all the autopsy might show is a few burn marks and a mildly higher radiation level."

"Well..." Doral began "first, if you're really that concerned, there's a chaplain surface side I can dial..."

"Nah, I'm asking you."

"Oh. Well the way I see it, when I joined, I was a mechanic. As far as I'm concerned, I am now a highly specialized, paid, covert, mechanic. But I'm still a mechanic. Mechanics fix things. If I fixed a car, and the driver then used that car to ram a school bus, that isn't my fault. As far as I'm concerned, this might as well just be another car."

Ellowitz paused for thought. "Well yeah, but this is an orbital cannon. Your analogy only works if the car has a big sign on the hood that reads "invisible school bus rammer.".

"The school bus kids are all commies anyway."

Ellowitz laughed. The radio fizzled, a high pitched whine spun up in the various devices behind them, a series of diagnostic information popped up on Doral's screen. Doral squinted at it as the whine crescendoed, fell to a hum, and sighed to silence. The FM radio began playing it's disposable background noise again.

"I'd say the degauss capacitor pack is good for another two or three shots, we'll change it in a bit..." Doral stated "but yeah, you really just have to trust the guys at firing control know what they're doing. I mean, once you join up, you have to convince yourself that even if we aren't the good guys, we're at least shooting other bad guys."

"You ever ride the school bus Doral?" Ellowitz asked.

"Actually I went to boarding school." Doral replied.

"Oh.. cause on my school bus, they were anarchists, and they sucked at it too." Ellowitz said. "... cept the school driver. I think every other driver I had was like, an ex marine."

"Marines are bullet sponges anyway." Doral muttered, still reading the diagnostic report.

"True." Ellowitz declared. "Yeah I guess, I mean, it'd be kind of an inefficient way of killing anyone that wasn't a high priority threat, and really you're dead before you know it anyway. And at best, we sit in the trunk of the invisible school bus rammer to chance the tires and check the oil."

Doral turned to face Ellowitz in his seat "You check the oil and change the tires. I figure out what the check engine light means when our school bus ram plows in head on and commie gunk gets in the air filter. If it makes you feel better, I've only seen the array align on the contiguous 48 once or twice. To be honest, I think they were diagnostic shoots. G.P.S. data for this unit was aimed for shit kick Nevada. The last half dozen we've had have been in South America."

"Doral..." Ellowitz looked annoyed "I grew up in shit kick Nevada."

"Yeah, I know."

Ellowitz cursed. Doral pointed and laughed.

The radio shifted out of the broadcast range of it's current station as the orbital cannon shifted geosynchronous orbital positions partly to align itself for the next shot, partly to confuse anyone who might be tracking the microwave bursts the cannon fired. If either Doral or Ellowitz spoke Portugease, they might have grown suspicious at the sudden high pitched whine of turbines spinning, electricity buzzing, and static overload on their radio as the equivalent of "space based triangulation microwave weapon" was mentioned. But really all either of them thought was "Two shots this close together probably just ruined that capacitor pack for good."

As the radio came back, neither could understand the hosts confused dead silence at the end of the blast even if they were paying attention. Instead, as the transmission resumed, Ellowitz merely asked "The capacitor pack just got blown to hell, didn't it?"

"Take your gloves. It's probably leaking that weird acid, and hurry too, that shit ruins everything it touches." Doral replied, keying in an 'OUT OF SERVICE' message to firing control.

The radio droned on. Doral thought that maybe he picked up a few words in the not-quite-spanish language he recognized as "cocaine", "death," and "strange", but could just have easily been "very big goatsucker". He dismissed it.

As he leaned back in his chair, he stared out of the view port at Brazil, Earths horizon, open space, then at Ellowitz empty chair, the seat belt strap still floating in zero gravity. He chuckled to himself as the remembered the test fire actually had been aimed at dummies on a moving school bus. The driver (a marine) hadn't even noticed until he smelled the burning plastic. Ellowitz interrupted his thoughts on the intercom.

"Boss, the capacitors leaked. It's not much, but it's floated onto the magnetic casing. It's corroded. The whole thing'll have to be replaced. 6 hours to do it right."

"Bah! No ramming for us then. I'll be down to help soon. Contain the leak." Doral unbuckled himself and floated through hatches down through the myriad of service and maintenance tubes. He found Ellowitz vacuuming globs of battery acid out of the air.

"I'm almost done sir, but uh... I suppose I should show you something. Ellowitz held up a paper back red book. "I found it after trying to move the magnetic casing. One of the techs must of left it here during construction."

Doral floated close enough to read the title: Manual Operation and Firing of the Triangulating Microwave Orbital Cannon Array. Doral frowned. "Oh... Crap."

"Sir, there's instructions in here on how to commandeer two other array units and fire them..."

Doral looked at Ellowitz. "El, I want you to take that book, and suck it into the vacuum with the battery acid." Doral spoke slowly and deliberately.

"Doral, we have every bit as much right to play god as firing control. If not more so, we run the machine. If we so chose, we could even target the rest of the array and become the sole instrument of the array."

"El, you may be a murderer, but I really am just a mechanic. In addition to treason, you're talking about tampering with... with, with alot of things! And for how many shots? How many before the other two cannons go offline? Before their crews turn their dishes on you? Up here, it'd only take one blast with no atmosphere to protect us to turn us both to burritos!"

"How do you know we never actually did turn a bunch of school kids into pop tarts Doral? Reds or otherwise! All we get is a G.P.S. target log!"

"Because Ellowitz," Doral spoke calmly "We're the good guys."

"You honestly believe that?"

"You don't?"

Ellowitz slumped in mid air. He meekly tossed the manual at Doral. It slowly spiraled into Dorals hands. "Boss, don't get rid of it. I'm gonna put in to transfer back home. You may actually be a good man. Hell, I'd say you're damn near a guardian angel. I want you to hid that book somewhere neither I, or my relief'll find it. And promise me, if the world ever goes pear shaped, if you ever learn the array starts shootin school kids, if anyone gets it in their heads mutually assured destruction is okay odds, and firing control isn't the good guys after all, you'll do your damn best to shoot first."

Doral floated for a bit. He looked at the cover of the book, checked the back, which was blank, tucked it into his side pocket of his jumpsuit. "Ellowitz, part of being a good guy is knowing your place in the world. My place is gear monkey, not angel of vengeance..."

"The only person I could trust, anyone could trust, is someone who didn't want the job. That book is the kill switch to the end of the world. If you're really a good guy, you'll know when to flip, but more importantly, you won't do so before then." Ellowitz said.

Doran cursed. "Fine, I'll take your damn book, and we will never speak of it again, and damn you, and damn your moral imperatives, and fix that damn pack. Whole damn array is junk anyway." Doran stormed off to hide the book.

Ellowitz turned back to his vacuuming. "Hmpf, like I'd ever actually ride a school bus."