by Adriaan Brae
Fortunately, the old outer hatches appeared to be holding, for now. The volume of the inner cabin was large compared to the small gap between the inner and outer hulls, so the initial pressure drop was not severe. However, the cabin would continue to lose pressure as air leaked out through the vacuum-hardened seals in the outer hull. I could hear the fans go into overdrive, pushing more air into the cabin in an attempt to make up for the pressure drop. That would keep me breathing but it would also use up the reserve oxygen supplies at a ferocious rate.
Having cut through the rest of the outer skin, I used the screen light from my handcomp to check around the inter-hull cavity for the conduit. We'd been in full sunlight for much of the journey, so even though there'd been a momentary chill from the drop in cabin pressure, the outer hull was reasonably warm. The occasional gritty drip of melting frost hit the back of my neck or cheek as I searched around for the conduit, trying to avoid the sharp edges of the hole. The D-5 still held some of the old-freighter aroma that I remembered. It made me feel young again.
Then I spotted an armored conduit bulging from the outside of the inner hull and my heart skipped a few beats. Of course, they would have armored the entire cable run, but before I gave in completely to despair, my feeble light illuminated a loop of standard conduit crammed between the two hulls.
I chuckled grimly. The armored conduit ended precisely where the D-5's junction box should have been, if you were to look at the original plans, but most of these ships had been built by old-school Martian engineers who felt quite comfortable getting creative if the right part wasn’t available.
On this ship the junction box had been moved about a meter forward and down 10 or 15 centimeters. Not able to easily cut the armored conduit, the Earther yard dogs had simply worked up some standard conduit to join the two.
"Good old Martian cussedness!" I realized I was grinning like mad when my cheeks began to ache. Those muscles hadn't seen much use lately.
Cutting the control cables required that I half-crawl into the inter-hull space. Head down, cutting the cables, I realized I was starting to feel light-headed and groggy. I pushed on until I'd cut through most of the control fibers and dreamily pulled myself out though the ragged hole. Only my years of familiarity with low-oxy conditions kept me focused on my task. If I lost it now, I'd certainly die, and take lots more with me.
Fumbling my way across the cabin, I ripped the flat plastic cover off the bod-pod pack, stood to one side, and hit the inset activation switch. The bright red pod unfolded from its flattened storage state like an origami caterpillar. By the time I'd fumbled some plastic tubing and the remains of the tape out of the first-aid kit, it was fully extended and waiting forlornly for its occupant. Sticking my hand through the folds of the bag, I located the inflation cord by feel and yanked it. I pulled my arm out quickly before the stiffening end panels pinched closed.
My vision started to tunnel. I sliced a small hole in the bod-pod's plastic skin and gathered the slippery stuff around one end of the skinny tube. Holding the bag firmly around the tube, I wrapped it tight with tape. The high-oxy air escaping from the tear revived me a little, but sucking it directly from the tube felt as glorious as the first sip of sweet wine and cleared my head like a morning-after detox.
I just sat there breathing for a few minutes. Glancing over, I noticed that several portions of the navcomp display had gone completely blank. A quick position check with my handcomp showed that we had just passed the closest approach to the ring and were now outbound. We'd roughly followed the course I'd expected and were still, as close as I could figure, on target for the hab.
Damn-it. I'd hoped to gain control before we left the ring's influence, but it looked like we'd be out of its range before I could make any course adjustments. Feeling somewhat refreshed by the oxygen, I shook myself out of my lethargy and went back to work.
* * *
I pulled the remote data plug from my handcomp and crawled back in the hole. It looked like I'd finished severing all but one of the control fibers before I'd had to take care of my air supply. I sagged a bit with relief. Presumably, I'd at least managed to prevent the cargo pod separation.
I finished off the last fiber, then cut back more of the conduit and pulled the strands out to where I could see them. I hoped that the Earthers had used some reasonably sane color scheme and plugged all the fiber ends into the appropriate ports on my data plug.
Easing myself out of the hole again just as I started to grey-out, I grabbed the air hose and took a few deep drags. Revived, I re-crimped it, took up my handcomp, and ran my old diagnostic programs to test the links. Some of them were bad of course, so I was in and out of the hole a couple more times, swapping fibers until they all checked out.
With the link hardware confirmed, and my heart pounding, I tried connecting to the console. I had no idea what they might have done at the D-5 level. I'd put some not-so legal cracking programs on my comp for this trip but if they'd used even the most basic security precautions it could take, literally, the rest of my life to break in. I took it as a good sign when the console spat out the familiar D-5 preamble followed by the login prompt.
My luck continued to hold. "Better late than never," I chuckled to myself.
The yard techs were supposed to change the D-5's default passwords during installation but they must have just plugged it in, because when I tried the old factory default password, I was put right through to the main admin page.
Elated, I forced the stiff panels of the bod-pod aside and struggled in as quickly as possible with the precious fresh air rushing past my body. By the time I re-sealed it from the inside, the pod was depressingly flat but I could still hear a faint hiss from the air unit so I guessed I'd be able to breathe for a while yet. Tenting the pod wall up on my head and tilting the handcomp so I could see it, I dove into the D-5's command line interface like a fish returning to water.
* * *
I set the engine power a couple of points lower and the disturbing rattle slowly eased out of the ship's frame. There was some slight misalignment of injection pumps making it impossible to balance the plasma flows beyond about 1.43 MJ/ml. The port engine had just about shaken itself off its mounts with the uneven power flow. From the way the bod-pod was slowly inflating, it looked like the rattling had done for one or more of the outer hull seals, but I'd managed to get the two engines stable at just over 116% of their max rated output.
All this power was working to push the ship along almost the same vector as its original course, but with almost twice the acceleration. Rather than curving down Earth's gravity well and intersecting the NorAm hab's orbit, I had gained enough speed to miss the planet, and its fuzz of commercial and residential stations in low orbit. We'd curve around and head back out towards lunar orbit. It felt good to pilot again.
I still couldn't access the net, though I was, finally, able to successfully turn on my emergency strobes and push out the standard emergency/rescue signal on all frequencies. Unfortunately, my high-velocity course meant that any rescue ships would be unlikely to catch up with me before I ran out of oxygen. On the bright side, since the kind of people who had arranged this incident would not have any trouble removing one old Martian, I hadn't expected to survive a rescue anyway.
All I can do is write up a brief account of what happened, with the D-5's sensor and diagnostic logs attached, and store it in the spare data space on the ephemeris chip in my ring. I'd really like to see the bastards behind this brought to justice. It's ironic, isn't it, that this is the first time in a long while I've had something to live for?
* * * *
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About the Author
Adriaan Brae is a software developer and tech-geek, with a passion for languages and martial arts.
Go to www.braevitae.com for more information about the author and links to his other writing, connect with him on Facebook, or send an email with c
omments to [email protected].
Chaos Bound (Mist Warden #1)
Chaos Bound, the first book in the Mist Warden series.
When the going gets weird, the tough are useless. You need a geek.
Jessica Clarke is no superhero, and though she believes being smart, curious, and compassionate should be considered qualifications, society has yet to agree.
Her life in Coldwater is low-key and predictable, just the way she likes it. Her biggest worries are staying at the top of her classes and avoiding the popular crowd, but a change that will shake the world is already taking hold in her small town.
The death of a classmate kicks her out of her safe routine. Stalked by the supernatural killer, she’ll need to embrace the chaos in order to survive: Lying, stealing, invoking barely understood magic, and even crashing the popular crowd’s house party.
Abandoned by her friends and labeled a troublemaker, she’s determined to find a way to stop the killer, but at what cost?