by M. D. Cooper
“On what?”
Geoff smiled as he stared out the window at the unmoving hunk of metal in front of them. He lined up the edge of the window with the end of a scorch mark on the side of the hull. Mal said they were slightly drifting, and he was curious if the movement was noticeable. It was at least something to keep him busy while they waited for rescue.
“Right, which was when we stopped the ship and attempted to focus on the area.”
Geoff stopped eating, concentrating on Mal’s words.
“Why?”
Mal sounded deadly serious, and Geoff could feel his intent over the link.
“Like someone sabotaged the ship?”
A million scenarios ran through his mind as he put down his snack. None of them made sense. It was most likely that this had been an oversight in the rush to get spaceworthy vessels out in the black to help control the damage from the battle. An exhausted engineer performing an inspection was more plausible than a nefarious person out to disable a tug.
Mal was quick to put his thoughts to rest.
That was an angle Geoff had not considered. Granted, there had been some intense fighting in the area, but it was long over.
“Impossible. There isn’t anyone out here to ambush us.”
“OK.”
Geoff got comfortable again, knowing this may take Mal a while. He checked his scorch mark and thought it might have moved. It could also be that his head was a little more to the left than when he’d set this up. He slowly began to see the flaws in his little experiment.
“It’s just ISF ships here. They don’t send us in to recover anything near an OG ship.”
Geoff thought back to the scan data from their initial approach into the area. The nearest OG ships had been a few thousand kilometers away.
“That could be due to any number of reasons. This is an old ship. It’s possible something tripped or shut down that is above my level of expertise. Maybe that was the ozone I smelled in the engineering areas.”
“EMP was my first thought as well, but after the suit came online, I figured that wasn’t possible. Could it be that some ship nearby lost containment, and we got hit with a pulse blast?”
“But you were focused on the debris, trying to figure out that contact.”
“Starting to sound complicated.”
“How?”
“We are on the wrong side of this ship for Recovery One to be able to pick up us visually.”
“Small power source, rotating so the debris blocked its signal. I could see how that would appear intermittent.”
“Not all the electronics. My suit is still functioning.”
“Shit.” Geoff sighed. “What, you think some OG crew is out here watching us? Trying to take one last ship down?”
“That command module was a mess of debris that could have weakened the sensor returns, forcing us to take a closer look at the area. Plus, there would be a lot of good hiding spots in there.”
Geoff’s eyes popped open as he had a realization.
“I don’t think this is just the regular crew of a ship. This is their equivalent of at least a Marine strike team. They have the skills to identify critical areas of a ship, and the ability to navigate long assault drops. The most likely case is some kind of special operations group. Hell, maybe they were over here attempting to breach one of our AI-controlled ships in order to get our tech.”
“All of this takes some serious tactical knowledge and some genius level planning to pull off in such a short amount of time. Maybe that’s why they fucked it up.”
“We got hit with an EMP. Whatever they set off for their trap completely killed the ship. Plus, this ship can’t enter the dark layer; it’s just an insystem tug. Seems like a pretty big fuck-up to me.”
“Bait.”
A PLAN
STELLAR DATE 04.06.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS SO211A
REGION: Orion Guard Debris Field, New Canaan System
The scorch mark Geoff had been watching s
uddenly moved a few degrees to starboard at the same time he heard a loud bang from the hull.
“What the fuck was that?”
He let the last of his snack drift away.
Geoff began cycling through all his available sensor feeds. Everything was looking just as it had a few seconds before, with one change.
“OK, I see it. Looks like a chunk of hull plating nicked us. Probably just aft of the cockpit; at least that’s what I think, based on the rotation we picked up.”
“Why, what’s up?” He began removing the sensor box from the bulkhead where he’d ‘mounted’ it earlier. He hadn’t done that good of a job, so he wasn’t surprised when he was easily able to take it down.
Geoff went back to the area around his seat, only slightly embarrassed at the amount of litter floating around the area. He stayed low to the deck and angled the sensor suite so it was looking out of the window. From this different vantage point, he could see the bottom of the command section.
He could also see someone moving on it.
“Yeah, I saw him too. Big dude, armor, setting up some kind of crew served weapon.”
Geoff knew Mal’s earlier words made sense, but it was only just now that the gravity of the situation hit him. Mal was right, they were being set up as bait.
“How? Everything is fried! Short of going outside and screaming, I am out of options.” Geoff realized as he said this that he wasn’t helping the situation.
Mal was already starting to show signs of panic, and Geoff probably wasn’t all that far behind him. Sure, he’d spent a long time in various military organizations, but only as a shuttle pilot, and even then, usually just ship to ship. It wasn’t the most exciting career in the military, but it kept him safe and allowed him to fly every day.
Geoff moved Mal back to his original position, looking out of the main window. He tried to secure the AI using the same tape as before, but was having limited success.
The way Mal said ‘now’ let Geoff know he needed to move, and quickly.
“What am I doing in here?” he yelled when he got to the closet.
“What’s the plan, here?”
He already had panels off the bulkhead and was yanking cable out of the run, glancing back every now and again to make sure none of the lights on the NSAI node went out.
While Geoff was pulling cables, Mal was running calculations to determine the best way to build a makeshift antenna. He was also calculating their rate of rotation and desperately looking for a way to get this off the ship without the Orion Guard soldiers seeing them. If they did, it could have disastrous consequences for Geoff and himself.
“Sounds great, but aren’t we missing something? You know, like an antenna and a working radio.”
Geoff had a sufficiently large pile of cable next to him. He was no engineer, but he knew enough to read the cabling diagrams on each access panel—it was basic knowledge all pilots had in order to make emergency repairs. This time, though, he made especially sure to pull cable from only non-critical systems.
“It’s better than sitting here waiting for this shit to go down and doing nothing. Where do I start?”
Mal rushed Geoff through the construction of the antenna and receiver. While he was instructing the pilot on what to do, he was also reprogramming the NSAI to send the message, composing the message itself, and calculating various launch angles and rates of departure. He had quite a few variables in his plan, and he needed to get a few more measurements before making his final adjustments.
Geoff finished assembling the device while Mal was still reprogramming the NSAI. Like most of his work, it left a lot to be desired, but it was functional. A few hundred feet of cable had been tightly wound to form a rudimentary antenna, and the batteries had been spliced into the NSAI’s power supply. All of the pieces were held together by a liberal application of bonding paste. Mal admitted that the signal may not be completely readable, but if anyone looked at the direction it was coming from, hopefully they would realize sentients were still in the area and had not reported in yet.
Geoff had his suit fully sealed and was in the rescue airlock looking at the sealed outer door in front of him. Mal’s plan didn’t sound too solid to him; it seemed like it counted on a lot of guesswork.
“Mal, I’m in position.” He looked over his shoulder at Mal’s only working sensor, currently wedged in between some conduit.
“Still sitting exactly where I left it.” With the artificial gravity out, all Geoff had to do was place the device exactly in the middle of the inner door, and there it stayed. “You sure this is going to work?”
He wasn’t entirely sure himself. There were too many random factors at work here. He gave this plan a fifty-fifty shot of even getting the transmitter out of the airlock.
“I’m ready. You just say the word.”
Geoff grabbed the emergency release lever, ready to yank it down at a moment’s notice.
As soon as Geoff hit the release, he saw the transmitter fly by, straight out the center of the airlock, just as Mal had predicted.
“Transmitter is away, looks like it flew straight out.”
Geoff leaned out the side of the craft, as far as his safety tether would allow. He grabbed the edge of the outer airlock door and swung it back into place. Once it was seated, he re-engaged the manual locks.
“Got it! Outer door is sealed. I’m going to hit the emergency release on the inner door. You sure this isn’t going to damage your sensors? They won’t get dislodged when the airlock pressurizes?”
Geoff knew there was going to be a rush of air into the compartment when he opened the door. He was just glad the manual releases for the door were well out of the way and wouldn’t swing into him.
“I’m more worried about your smudgy case. When I hooked everything up, I threw some bonding tape on the connection. That extension cable isn’t coming off you without a fight, and I don’t want it to yank you off your pedestal.”
Geoff again hit a manual release, and the door violently swung in as the atmosphere exploded into the room. He felt, more
then heard, a loud pop as the layers of the EVA suit compressed as air rushed into the chamber. Violently recompressing a chamber like that is not something he would ever want to do without protection.
“No chance of the OGs seeing what we did?”
Geoff was looking out the windows, craning his neck to see all the angles. He didn’t see anyone out there, but that didn’t mean they did not see him.
“You think they would really do something to us if they saw what we did?”
The shadows on the side of the ship in front of them changed slightly and lightened, making them appear less threatening for a split second.
“You sure it wasn’t the device exploding? That wiring job I did wasn’t up to any type of code,” Geoff said, before lowering and deepening his voice to a gruff whisper, “whatsoever.”
Geoff maneuvered through the small bridge, making his way to the window.
Before all this, he would have characterized the bridge as cozy and peaceful, but now it just felt small and oppressive. He wouldn’t admit it to Mal, but he wanted to get out of here in the worst way.
“How long will it take the signal to reach Recovery One?”
“You sure about that?”