Not With A Whimper: Survivors

by D. A. Boulter

  Fulton, on the other hand, wasn’t laughing. She ran her tongue over her upper teeth, just touching her lip, and gave him what she must have considered a smouldering look.

  “So, we’re locked in, together?”

  “Standing orders. If something, like a small rock, should breach our shields during drop, and hole the lifeboat, the ship won’t take vacuum damage as well. Only we shall perish.” That should put her mind on to more suitable thoughts. “And, if you want to roll out the telescope, you’d better get ready.”

  She straightened up, eyes brightening at the prospect. “I do. So, you said that the Yrdens wanted everyone to think that they’d found new, faster routes. That means that they didn’t?”

  Carson nodded. Angela Fulton had a head on her shoulders. “That’s right – or at least I think that’s right.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Jaswinder...” he waited.

  “... damn and blast her...” Fulton giggled.

  “...Saroya happened. Exactly.” Carson grinned at her. He hadn’t had such fun in a long time. Maybe he wouldn’t open his bottle after all. Perhaps he’d just go and enjoy his off shift with Lil, like he’d intended before she’d laughed at him in public. Hell, what did one day’s PMI duty mean, anyway?

  “Yeah, the witch turned out to be a hyperspace physicist. She found a way to get a ship to travel faster in hyperspace. No one knows exactly how. Perhaps it’s the way they enter it; maybe she even found a new level. Hell, we believed the ‘new routes’ story for years. We’re still not sure that they didn’t find some.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you hate her.”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t.” He didn’t want to talk about it any more. He wanted to keep the good feelings. “I’ll make it short. Soon after they ‘found’ the new routes, Matt Yrden, head of the Line, began recruiting others into his ‘Family Trading League’. The Paxton line joined first, and soon they began using those amazing new routes, too. The Trans-Planetary Corporations, like Amalgamated, couldn’t compete. Rumour has it that we sent in spies to try to get our hands on these new routes. Some were caught and tossed off the Family ships. No one came back with the info we needed. And that’s why you and I are screwed. You’re doubly screwed.”

  “Me?”

  “They’re now exceptionally paranoid. They won’t hire anyone who has worked for the TPCs. Not only have you hired on to Amalgamated, but your father is an officer in the company. That’s why you’re doubly screwed. They’d never let you near one of their piloting boards. So, they get the good shipments, like the higher-paid, time-sensitive ones, and leave us with the garbage runs – like this one to African Nations. Nobody takes the direct route there from Earth – except us with dedicated cargo. The money lies in the inter-planetary trade, which the Yrdens opened up. Their pilots get the good wages, the fast ships, the exciting itineraries. We’ll never get better than the garbage runs. Mostly just Sol system stuff. I’m a little surprised we even got this one. But the Zulus are doing a population push for their colony on the African Nations planet.”

  The Bridge cut into the lifeboat’s comm. “Drop to Earth-African Nations Waypoint 2 in thirty seconds.”

  “That’s our cue.” Carson strapped in, then made sure that Fulton had made a good job of her own straps. Pilot restraints differed from those she had become used to on the passenger decks. Then he opened the shields, and together they looked out into the empty, swirling greys of hyperspace.

  The countdown on the piloting board’s chrono hit ‘2’ when she reached out and placed her hand on his. They went through the rush of drop linked. A blur of colours surrounded the ship, the starfarer’s equivalent of the old-time sailor’s St. Elmo’s Fire.

  Novelists and holo-vid writers included a similar scene in every romantic work they put out. And all of them had the couple linked physically during the drop. Superstition held that linking during drop created an unbreakable bond between the pair. In truth, Carson had found that while it did increase the rush of the drop, and that although one could lie to oneself and say it portended more than it did, no unbreakable link occurred. He didn’t lie to himself.

  It irritated him that she had done this, and had almost pulled his hand away, with sharp words ready to follow. Then he had changed his mind. Let the girl dream. Let her believe. At least let her have the pleasure of the drop uncontaminated by his surliness.

  “Well, was it worth it?” he asked gently.

  “You’re not mad, are you?” So, not as sure of herself as the sudden physical contact would have him believe.

  “No,” he said, “not mad. However, time for you to begin rolling out the telescope – if you still intend to.”

  “Oh, yes!”

  He called up the instructions on the reader, and handed it to her. “No hurry at all. We have several minutes before they begin the breaking burn, then we have a two hour wait before we change course and do the acceleration burn. Take your time.”

  They felt the momentum change as the ship turned about, preparing for the breaking burn. The P.A. came to life. “Breaking burn in one minute.”

  The burn pushed them back in their seats. Fulton struggled against the force to begin rolling out the scope. Carson allowed her this, didn’t mention that it would be almost as fast to wait until the burn completed, then to follow the steps unencumbered by acceleration.

  The deceleration burn ended. Carson unstrapped. Fulton ran through the steps, bringing the telescope on-line.

  “I have a rather dirty PMI below decks. I’ll return in time to observe you getting our readings,” Carson told her. He made two steps toward the door when the comm chimed.

  “Lifeboat-3, Bridge.”

  For half a second Carson thought that the bridge intended to razz him about the drop with Fulton, but the tense voice of the captain killed that thought half-born.

  “Bridge, Boat 3. Captain?”

  “Wen. We have pirates in-system. They’re on a maximum burn towards us.”

  “I’m on my way up.” He should have been there.

  “Negative. My god, they’ve fired missiles! We’re going to immediate burn. Stay strapped in, Wen.”

  Carson threw himself back into his seat, and strapped in just as the burn began. This time, however, the ship changed course as well, pushing him to the side.

  Missiles? It made sense, he guessed, though the few rumoured survivors of pirate attacks had never reported missile fire. A missile strike would collapse their meteor shields and would likely damage field nodes, precluding a return to the safety of hyperspace. However, a missile strike could also rip a ship wide open, spilling and damaging its valuable cargo, making it a nightmare for the pirates to pick up in anything like a reasonable amount of time.

  All thought of PMIs gone, Wen Carson began preparing the lifeboat for its primary mission, bringing the boards to readiness. He closed the shields, depriving them of the stars.

  “Fulton,” he looked at her anxious face. “We might need to embark passengers. You’ll be in charge of that. Can you remember your training?”

  She nodded, some of the panic fading from her face.

  “Good girl. They’ll be scared to death. You have to look like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Just get them into the passenger cabin and strapped in. Pretend it’s just a drill. Other crew may reach us first, or they may not.”

  Missiles. My God! Then his face lost all colour. Lil.

  The collision alarm began to blare. The ship lurched. They felt and heard a grating rumble through the solid connection between the ship and the boat. It lurched again, this time accompanied by a second alarm, this one from the lifeboat’s board.

  “We’re holed,” Carson gasped, looking to the red flashing lights. “The passenger cabin.”

  “Are we going to die?”

  “No. Boat’s systems automatically sealed off the compartment.” He checked for other damage, and winced. The boat’s shield nodes had also suffered damage. Thou
gh minimal, they would protect from small bits of space dust, or lower velocity debris. No longer.

  “Bridge, Boat 3.”

  “Bridge.” Carson heard the horror in the captain’s voice.

  “Passenger cabin holed. We can’t embark more than a few.”

  “You can’t embark any. The embarkation passage is open to space.” Sullivan paused for a moment. “Wen, listen to me carefully. The missiles damaged too many field nodes. We can’t jump again, and all reports indicate that they don’t take prisoners; they just want our cargo. I don’t intend to make it easy for them. I’ve opened Cargo Hold Number One to space, and am ejecting content. It may make a difference, but I doubt it. I’m going to launch you. Go dark – they may think you’re just debris or jettisoned cargo. I’ll continue accelerating; draw them away. Get to the beacon. If we survive, we’ll come back for you.”

  “Captain ... Red ... no!”

  “Wen, get word to my family, if you can. Tell them I love them. I’m launching you now. Go dark, Wen, go dark. Bridge out.”

  “No!”

  The lifeboat shuddered as the captain fired the explosive bolts, ejecting the lifeboat from the ship. Wen, obedient to his captain’s last order, began to shut everything down except the radio receiver and the air circulators. They dared make no electronic noise that the pirates might pick up.

  Released from the ship, no longer under acceleration, Carson and Fulton floated in zero-g against the straps that held them to their seats. Carson unbuckled, and began to float off.

  “Where are you going?” Hysteria tinged Fulton’s words.

  “To the telescope. I want to see.”

  “Don’t leave me!”

  “I’ll be back. Sit tight. Anyway, there’s only room for one.”

  He floated to the hatch, opened it to the crew space beyond. From here, the crew would prepare meals for the passengers, and plan any strategies they might need. Given the worst-case scenario, they could lock the passengers out if they went mad or mutinied. The crew space even had a small bedroom, not much more than two meters by one meter, where they could take sleep shifts.

  None of those features interested Carson at the moment. Instead, he opened a hatch to a small cylinder, built for the navigator. He sealed it behind him, just in case. Stupid, stupid. If the outer observatory bubble had taken damage, it could shatter when he opened the ceiling hatch, killing him. As yet, the indicator showed atmosphere on the other side.

  He opened the hatch, which swung down. Had vacuum existed on the other side, he’d never have had the strength to open it. He pulled himself gently up, and completed the manual unshipping of the telescope. He could see the burn of poor Amalgamated 684 ahead, and focused the telescope on it, lowest power.

  The captain had continued with his hold dump – a clever move. With constant acceleration, each piece of ejected cargo would have a different velocity, and would continue to spread. The pirates would have a long, tough job ahead of them, retrieving it. Mostly, they wanted to transship the cargo, one hold to another. Also, with the loss of mass, 684’s engines could generate greater acceleration, perhaps enough to outrun the pirate.

  He turned on the radio repeater.

  Captain Sullivan had ordered a broadcast on all channels, but the pirates had jammed the ones that the waypoint buoy accepted. They had not, however, jammed the ship’s company frequencies, and Wen heard it all; the boat receiver recorded it all – including detector data on one channel. Comm Tech Sandra Paulson, a tight hysteria in her voice, gave a running commentary, rising in pitch when she reported a second flight of missiles. The pirates, denied their easy pickings, had reacted to the cargo dump with anger.

  Wen increased magnification as he got a lock on 684. She continued to shrink with distance. Wen urged her on, then shuddered as missiles impacted, tearing the ship apart. Lil!

  Eighty-four crew and five hundred passengers – all dead. Who could have done this? He began scanning space in the direction from which the missiles had come. Nothing. Then he saw a faint glint as a ship did a deceleration burn near where Amalgamated 684’s debris sailed on through space.

  “Got you, you bastard,” he growled. He increased magnification and, in direct contravention of his dead captain’s order, engaged one more small circuit. Surely they couldn’t detect it at that range. The telescope’s recorder began gathering evidence. He went to maximum mag. A flare came from the debris as the pirate used its beam, probably to destroy a lifeboat. It lit the pirate momentarily. Carson gasped. Then the pirate began another burn, possibly to match velocity with a piece of cargo, perhaps to leave the system. The distance between them continued to widen. Carson watched until the flare disappeared. The pirate had ended its acceleration.

  Without detectors, he wouldn’t know if the pirate jumped; with detectors, the pirate might discover him, and come back.

  Carson turned, stopped the recorder, transferred a copy of the files to a data stick, then erased the original. He closed the upper hatch, opened the hatch to the crew room, and floated himself back to the piloting chamber. Fulton took one look at his expression, and her face crumpled.

  “They’re gone, aren’t they?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Tears started forming at the corners of her eyes. She blinked, and a teardrop floated away. Carson pulled himself back into his seat, and strapped himself in. He reached in a pocket, and handed her a cloth.

  She dabbed at her eyes. “You’re not going to tell me not to cry?”

  “No. I might join you.” And, thinking about Lil, he realized that he told no lie.

  “What now?” she asked, voice quavering.

  “Now we wait. I don’t want to do anything to bring the pirate back. After that, we’ll head for the beacon. Fortunately, Waypoint 2 has one. Try to get some rest.”

  He doubted she would. Mostly, he wanted to stop talking. He didn’t want to have to think. A terrible hole opened up in his stomach. He’d lost everything.

  Three hours later, Fulton could stand it no longer. She began moving restlessly. Carson realized that the waiting ate at her.

  “OK,” he said, and she jumped. They hadn’t waited long enough, but she needed to do something, and he didn’t really care about anything any longer. Besides, though superbly insulated, the temperature in the lifeboat had started to drop. “First thing, Fulton, we run through the start-up checklist.”

  He turned on the initialization program, and the lights flickered on the screen.

  “Read the steps off to me, Fulton.”

  “Angela. Please.”

  It didn’t matter any longer. “Read the steps off to me, Angela.”

  He bypassed the turning on of the beacon, comm, and detector. He could have gone through the steps in his sleep, and Angela’s reading of the checklist merely slowed him down. It didn’t matter. They had all the time in the world, and she needed something to focus on.

  “You’re doing wonderfully, Angela,” he told her, using her name deliberately. She needed that, too. “Now, we’ll get a directional fix on the beacon. Find its frequency: search for beacons: Earth-AN Waypoint 2, ID.”

  Meanwhile, his eyes roamed the instruments, seeking one out in particular. He grimaced when he saw it. The damage they’d received had more than just holed the passenger cabin. It had taken out most of their oxygen reserve. The scrubbers could remove the deadly CO2 from the air, but they couldn’t create oxygen. Their chances of survival had just dropped from slim to next-to-none.

  “Got it.” She read off the frequency he already knew, and he inputted it to the direction finder.

  “Good. Now we do a little manoeuvring.” But only minimal. He didn’t want the pirate, were it still in-system picking up their cargo, to see the flare of his engines. He jockeyed the lifeboat until he had it pointed toward the beacon.

  “I don’t want to open the shields, Angela. The captain dumped us amid whatever came out of the hold. So, you’re going to operate the telescope and check to ensure a clear
way forward.”

  She frowned. “What about the detectors?”

  “We don’t want to use them.”

  She shivered suddenly, though the compartment had regained a pleasant temperature.

  “No, I guess not,” she said. “OK, I can do it.”

  “Good.”

  The captain had not ejected any cargo at the same time as he’d launched the lifeboat. They had a clear lane to the beacon. Carson applied short burns, just enough to get them drifting in the beacon’s general direction. They had time, and he didn’t want to waste fuel – or attract attention.

  “I have to go,” she told him.

  “Go?” Where could she go?

  “To the toilet.”

  “Oh.” Of course. Go. “Fair enough. I think we can risk a little gravity. Not full earth, like on the ship, but one quarter. Fortunately, the crew toilet didn’t receive any damage. I could use a stretch, myself.” And if the gravity generator attracted the pirates, it would only mean a quick death instead of a slow, suffocating one. He engaged the generator.

  He followed her into the crew space, and set about finding a meal while she relieved herself. When she came out some time later, he noted her eyes were red – likely from crying.

  “Wen?”

  So, his given name. “Yes, Angela?”

  “What are we going to do?”

  He laid it out simply. “We’re going to go to the beacon, and wait for the next ship to drop. When it does, they’ll pick us up.”

  She regarded him for a long time. “Please don’t tell me any lies. How long?”

  He shrugged. “Not many use the Earth-African Nations route. Our next ship isn’t due for about a month. Someone may drop earlier. I don’t know.”

  “Do we have enough oxygen?”

  Ah, right to the heart of it. And what will you tell her, Wen Carson, after she asked you not to lie?

  “There’s only the two of us, so that’s good. However, we lost capacity. So, we might make it, but my best guess is no, we won’t.”