Time Bomb

by R. M. Olson

  “I didn’t finish wiring up the guns,” said Ysbel, “but I did get all the components in. We won’t be able to get into the gun tower, obviously, but I think I may be able to rig something up so we can fire them from here. Or if not, at least put in some mods for some of the front guns. They aren’t the guns you used to take down the wall cannons in prison, but they should still be able to do a substantial amount of damage.”

  “See Ysbel? I knew there was a reason I liked you so much,” said Jez, grinning. “Any woman who can blow things up like you can can’t help but be hot.”

  Both Tanya and Ysbel turned to glare at her, and she snickered.

  Still—

  There was something strange in her expression. Something a little bit wistful, and a little bit sad, and she was trying very hard to make sure no one saw it.

  “You said you got the hyperdrive back online?” asked Tae again.

  “Yep. There was a piece of shrapnel lodged in the floor that was blocking the shaft from spinning.”

  He frowned. The pressure on that would have been immense. “How did you release it?”

  She shrugged. “Melted the shrapnel down with a heat-torch.”

  “What?” He stared at her. “You—you just—”

  “Yep.” She was smirking.

  “You—how are you still alive? That amount of pressure—”

  She shrugged. “I’m good at ducking.”

  “It should have torn itself apart!”

  She shrugged again. “Slowed it down with some cord. And a crowbar.”

  “You—” he stared at her for a moment, speechless.

  “You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it first.”

  He couldn’t formulate a response, so he just stood there, shaking his head in a sort of awe.

  “Well then,” said Masha briskly, “we may have more going for us than we thought.”

  “I—suppose I should go back into the cockpit and check, then,” Tae murmured.

  Jez grinned. “Don’t worry, tech-head, I’ll come with. Probably could use a hand. You know, someone who’s actually good at tech.”

  “Jez, you’re not—” He gave up.

  When he reached the cockpit, he crouched down in front of the paneling, and Jez slid into the pilot’s seat. There was still a trace of old anguish in her expression as she ran her fingers over the lifeless control panel. Then she turned to him with a sort of forced cheerfulness.

  “Well?” she said. “You want to check how much of a genius I am?” She paused. “I mean, we all know I’m brilliant, but still—”

  He shook his head with a faint smile, and ducked his head inside the compartment.

  He’d spent hours, fiddling with the burnt wiring, replacing the tiny components, until he felt as if he’d rebuilt the entire control panel of the ship from the ground up. His legs were cramped from crouching, and the burns on his hands, even through the bandages, throbbed.

  But if this worked …

  He squeezed his tired eyes shut for a moment.

  “Here,” said Lev from behind him, and his com light illuminated the small space. Tae glanced up at him gratefully, then gingerly followed the path of the wiring.

  “OK Jez,” he said softly. “I’m going to reconnect the wiring to the power core. You’ll have to be delicate with it, but now that the tracker’s gone we should be able to pull it back online without another meltdown.”

  Technically.

  “Ready when you are,” Jez murmured, her voice serious for once. He took a deep breath and connected the wires, then flipped the switch to allow power flow.

  “Alright,” he said, glancing up.

  Jez’s eyes were half-closed, as if she was trying to listen to the ship through her fingertips. Gently, gently, she tugged back on the lever that would pull the ship online.

  Below him, he could feel the faint hum of a ship powering up. It was jerky and unsteady—only to be expected, since after the meltdown they had maybe a fraction of the power the ship needed to stay alive—but it was there.

  She pulled the stick back further, and the humming grew. The ship trembled slightly, and Jez froze. And then, gently, she pulled it that last few centimetres, and it clicked into place.

  He didn’t dare move for a moment, hardly dared breathe as he waited for the shaking, the ominous racing of an unstable power core on the verge of meltdown.

  But there was nothing.

  He blew out a long breath, his shoulders slumping in relief. Jez turned to him and grinned, and something glistened in the corners of her eyes.

  “She’s back,” she whispered, almost reverently. She swallowed hard. “I mean, I know she’s not going to be able to—we won’t be able to—But—” She swallowed again. “Even just for a few minutes,” she said almost to herself, voice soft. Her hands were spread on the control panel, as if she wanted to catch every movement, every hum, as if she was trying to memorize them, even weak and sick as they were. Like he’d imagine you’d memorize a loved one’s face as they lay dying.

  He took a long, steadying breath, blinking back his own tears.

  The Ungovernable had been a good ship. She’d been more than a good ship, and even though he didn’t go completely off his head for ships the way Jez did—losing her hurt more than he’d expected it to.

  But maybe, just maybe, she’d save their lives one last time.

  “Alright,” he said after a moment. “I’m going to try to pull the shields online. Hold tight, and watch the power. If she starts to run away, shut her down.”

  Jez gave a brief nod, and, carefully, Tae re-connected the shields, wire by wire.

  “Try it,” he whispered, and Jez eased back on the shielding controls.

  The shield section of the control panel lit up, and on the ship’s holo screen, a faint blue glow appeared surrounding the dot that was their ship.

  Tae couldn’t fight a relieved smile.

  “Don’t have all of them online, and the ones we do have don’t have much power. But might be enough to hold us together until Lena shows up.” Jez was grinning again, a weak sort of a grin, but still a grin.

  They pulled the weapons online next. Finally, he looked at Jez.

  “Ready to try the hyperdrive?” he asked.

  Her shoulders were tense, her whole posture tight, but she gave a shallow nod.

  He re-connected it, and gingerly, she pulled it online.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then an entire section of the control panel lit up, and the ship’s hum steadied slightly.

  Jez turned to him, her grin almost as wide as her face. “Told you I was good with tech.”

  He shook his head, but he was smiling.

  “So,” said Ysbel from behind them. “Does this mean we might live through this after all?”

  “We might,” he said softly. “It will take a few hours to get the hyperdrive powered up, but … as long as it powers up before Lena gets here, it’s just possible that we might.”

  It took him and Jez a few more minutes to pull the weapons online. They were able to power them up, but Ysbel had been right—the gunner tower wasn’t going to come back online, and even if it did, they had no way to reach the tower and actually use the guns. They’d be limited to what she could do from the cockpit controls. Still, the fact that the weapons system was functional again was an almost dizzying relief.

  “Alight, Ysbel,” said Lev quietly. “This is your expertise. What do you need from the rest of us?”

  “I’ll need someone to go out again to work on the external parts while I work from in here,” Ysbel said tersely, without looking at Lev.

  There was a sudden tension in Lev’s posture, and then, as if with an effort, he relaxed slightly.

  “I’ll go,” he said, his voice quiet.

  “You’ll go out there again over my dead body, genius,” Jez said, her grin turning dangerous.

  “Jez—” Lev turned to her with some irritation. “I’m not—”

  “There’s a lot of th
ings you’re not,” she snapped, “and one of them is going out that damn airlock one more time.”

  Tae smiled slightly to himself and shook his head.

  Who knew Jez was the protective type?

  “Jez,” Lev tried again in a pained voice. “I’m no more likely to get hurt out there than anyone else.”

  Tae noticed that, as he spoke, he cast a quick glance at Ysbel, and he frowned slightly.

  Ysbel wouldn’t. Would she?

  But the thing was, she could have. If she’d wanted to.

  And despite the fact that everyone on this damn crew was going to leave him once they were able to get back planet-side, the thought hurt.

  “Look,” said Jez in a strained voice. “I almost watched you die out there once, OK? I’m not doing it again, not right now. Got it?”

  “Anyways,” said Ysbel grudgingly, “Tae is probably going to need you in here, to get the ship ready for when Lena arrives. So Jez is right.”

  Lev turned to look at Ysbel. He studied her for a long moment, expression a mixture of caution and curiosity, but finally he nodded. “Very well.”

  “Which leaves me and Masha,” said Jez, her dangerous grin returning. “And since Masha’s a useless bastard—”

  “Useless bastard or not, I’m going to need two people out there if you’re going to do what I need you to do,” Ysbel broke in, “so you may as well save your breath, pilot-girl.”

  Jez smirked at her. “Don’t worry, Ysbel. I have plenty of breath to go around.”

  “Yes, well you’d better start using it to get your suit and helmet on.” Ysbel glanced down at her com. “We only have about seven hours left.”

  “Seven hours left before what?” asked Olya in a small voice, and Tae glanced over at her. She seemed to have recovered somewhat from her ordeal in the lockdown, but her face was still paler than usual.

  Jez grinned. “Seven hours until your mama shows you what it looks like when smuggler ships get shot down.” She pushed herself painfully out of the pilot’s seat. “Anyways, guess Ysbel’s right. No point in wasting time. Going to need some weapons to hold her off until—” she broke off abruptly, grin faltering for just a moment, and Tae frowned, watching her. “Until we can get the hell out of here,” she finished at last.

  He watched her as she left the room, her gait somehow jaunty even with her limp. Masha was watching her too. Then she turned and followed the pilot out of the room, and Tae sighed and turned back to the control panels.

  It was still a basic problem of timing. The missiles were going to get here in seven hours, and Lena was going to get here in eight, and the hyperdrive would take at least seven and a half to fully power up, maybe more. With the hyperdrive fixed, it was just possible that they’d be able to get away, and with the shields and weapons repaired it was just possible they’d survive long enough to make a jump, even without the thrusters online. But if they did, it would be a very, very close thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Impact minus 6.5 hours, Jez

  Jez glanced over her shoulder at Masha as they pulled on their suits.

  Thankfully, the blast doors between the airlock and the cockpit hadn’t shut down in the power outage, but the only suits they had were the ones hung in the airlock itself. Which meant Jez was pulling on a suit that was noticeably too small, while Masha’s suit hung on her slightly, making her look like a kid trying on her parents’ clothing.

  The comparison worked until you actually looked at her. And then you realized that there was no situation in which Masha would not look competent, pleasant, and damn scary.

  Jez took a deep breath. The others would be in here soon, and she only had a minute, but somehow the words were hard to say anyways.

  “Hey. Masha,” she said finally. Masha raised an eyebrow and turned to look at her.

  “Yes, Jez?”

  Jez blew out a long breath. “Um. Listen. You—know how to work the hyperdrive, right?”

  “Yes, I believe I do,” said Masha, still studying her. “I haven’t flown with it, but I believe I understand it well enough.”

  “Good.” Jez paused. “I—OK, look, if something—if I—anyways, I thought it might be good if we had someone who could fly the ship out. Someone else, I mean.”

  Masha gave a slow nod, but her eyes were sharp. “I see.”

  “So listen. If you’re going to make a hyperdrive jump without thrusters, it’s going to be a bit complicated. Ship isn’t going to survive it, but I guess we knew that already. And it’s going to take some time to power up, especially with the power core damaged like it is. So what you’re going to need to do is, take everything offline for a minute—leave the oxygen and the air pressure on, but even cut the gravity. Pull the weapons and the shields offline. And then, once everything’s offline, you’ll have to jam it in hard. You’ll be able to feel it. It should jump, and you should get all the way through, not like last time when we were skimming on the edge of a jump. Hyperdrive will burn out after a couple minutes, so get Lev to plot you a course as close to a planet as you can make it. Figure once you get out of the jump, you probably won’t have any sort of power left, because when the hyperdrive burns out, it will probably take out whatever’s left of the power core. The hyperdrive will divert all the energy, so it shouldn’t melt down, but it’s not going to be functional. Get everyone in helmets before you go, and get the emergency oxygen tank as full as you can. You might still have enough backup power to run the life supports, but I don’t know. But as long as you can get to shallow space, reach a busy shipping lane, you should be fine. You’ll still have communications, I’m pretty sure, and someone should be willing to tow you, or at least pull you off the ship.” She paused, and swallowed back the lump rising in her throat. “It—probably won’t even be worth towing her in at that point,” she finished softly. “Don’t think there’ll be much left of her after a cold hyper jump.”

  Masha was still watching her. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked at last. Jez shrugged irritably.

  “Told you, you bastard. Because as much of a damn plaguer as you are, Lev certainly isn’t going to be flying this ship.”

  “And nor are you?” the woman asked quietly. Jez shrugged again.

  “Never know what might happen. Figured it was better to have a backup plan.”

  She turned away to finish pulling on the too-tight suit, but she could feel Masha’s eyes on her.

  Tanya and Lev arrived with the oxygen tanks a few moments later, and Tae followed them into the room.

  “I checked the tanks this time,” he said. “There’s no leaks in these ones, at least none I could find.” His face was creased in concern. Lev said nothing, but he was watching her, and there was sharp worry on his face. She tried to grin at him.

  A space walk sure as hell wasn’t going to kill her.

  He managed a small smile in return, and for some reason she remembered the feeling of his arms around her, the warmth of his body against hers, and a small, pleasant shiver ran through her body.

  Which was completely stupid, because first, falling for someone like Lev was probably the stupidest thing she’d ever contemplated doing, and she’d contemplated doing a lot of stupid things in her time. And second—

  Well, second, she was going back to face Lena. And after Lena was finished with her, she was pretty sure that anything else would be irrelevant.

  She shrugged into her oxygen tank. Lev stood behind her, lifting it, and once she’d strapped it on, his hands rested on her shoulders for a brief moment, almost brief enough to have been an accident. She took a deep breath and cast a quick glance over her shoulder. His eyes were filled with concern, but he managed a small smile.

  “Good luck,” he said through his com. She nodded.

  She wasn’t nervous about the space walk. She’d done this about a million times.

  But she was suddenly sure that leaving this damn soft-boy behind was going to be almost as hard as leaving this ship.

  She a
nd Masha stepped into the airlock, and Tae sealed the doors. She grabbed for the ladder as the gravity cut.

  “You ready?” asked Tae through the com. She glanced at Masha, who was holding on below her.

  “Got it, tech-head. You can open up.”

  “Alright. I haven’t had time to work on the coms, so once you get out, you may or may not have communication. Three tugs on the line means you need to come in. But hopefully it was just a malfunction in Lev’s helmet.”

  “Yep. We’re good.” She hit her com off, and a moment later there was a soft puff of pressure releasing, and the outer doors slid open.

  She held onto the ladder until the pressure had equalized, and then she clipped her mag boots to the ladder rungs and began to climb.

  Once out on the hull of the ship, she stood and stretched, glancing around. It had been a while since she’d done a walk, and even now, even with her ship lying cold and dead, there was something achingly beautiful about the vast black expanse surrounding them. Far off to one side she could see the faint green glow of a distant nebula, a swirling of colours and patterns too far off to make out, the fierce glow of distant stars and suns pricking tiny holes in the cold, endless black.

  She sighed and turned. They’d have to go around to the underside of the cockpit, Ysbel had said, and moving with mag boots on took longer than you’d think.

  “Jez.” Masha’s voice came through her earpiece, on the single channel.

  She stiffened. “What?”

  “You aren’t planning on being there when we make the jump, are you?”

  For a minute Jez didn’t answer, just focused on moving her heavy mag boots across the ship’s surface.

  “Look,” she said at last. “Don’t know if Tae told you this, but it’s going to be a timing thing. Missiles hit us in six hours or so. Hyperdrive takes about seven more hours to fully power up, maybe a bit more. Lena gets here right around the same time if we’re lucky, and a little too soon if we’re not. But I’m pretty sure I can keep her busy for a while, if I have to. OK?”

  There was a moment of silence. At last Masha said, “While I appreciate the sentiment, Jez, you realize that she’s not just after you.”