by Dan Moren
Training. Right. Eli racked his memory for that long discarded information. Something about establishing a frame of reference.
“See you on the other side,” said Kovalic, reaching out and clasping Eli’s arm. He turned to go.
“Major!”
Kovalic glanced back.
“Just… make sure you get Maverick, OK? She’s one of us.”
Something flashed across Kovalic’s face too fast for Eli to process, but the major dipped his head before walking away. Eli worked to get saliva back into his dry mouth. Damn it, Kovalic. Get her back.
“All right,” said Tapper, “switching you over to your oxygen pack now.” He tapped a button on the Eli’s chest and the quality of the air in the helmet changed, its taste a little more stale and plastic than it had been a moment ago. “You’ve got two hours’ worth of air in the tank, plus a thirty minute reserve in the suit. Plenty to get you to the vault, inside, and back.”
Eli took a deep breath, feeling the air fill his lungs, and gave the sergeant a thumbs up that was more confident than he felt.
“Aegis, we’re good to go here,” said Tapper. “Pop the can.”
Taylor’s voice filtered through the suit’s comm system and into Eli’s ears. “Copy that. Two minutes out from the gate. Opening inner airlock door now.”
Eli turned around, slightly unbalanced thanks to the utility pack laden with the plasma torch and emergency airlock seal, and watched as the red indicator lights above the circular portal turned green and the door rolled aside, opening onto a small, white compartment.
He felt Tapper’s hand land on his shoulder, and turned – he had to turn all the way around; craning his neck in the suit would only give him a crick.
“Good luck, kid–”
Eli swallowed. “Thanks.”
“We’re all counting on you.”
No pressure. Er, hopefully just the right amount of pressure, he amended, glancing at the suit diagnostics on the heads-up display.
He maneuvered the bulky suit into the airlock, and faintly heard the doors groan close behind him. It seemed quiet, just the usual whirring of the ship underneath him, until suddenly, a moment later, the only thing he could hear was his own breathing, loud in his ears.
“Atmosphere’s been evacuated,” said Taylor, startlingly loud in the silence. Eli dialed down the volume on the comms.
“There’s an anchor point for your tether right outside the airlock. Once you’ve clipped in, you can switch on the gravboots,” said Tapper over the channel.
Eli looked down at the toes of his boots, currently glowing red. The gravboots were based on the same technology as repulsor coils, but inverted; basically, very small versions of the same tech that allowed for artificial gravity onboard ships. A localized, miniature gravity field that should keep his boots stuck to the hull; you just didn’t want to use them inside, because their effects when you were already using artificial gravity generators could be… unpredictable.
With a tap on his sleeve, Eli brought up the mission clock. The wormhole jump should be happening imminently, plus or minus some time to negotiate with the gate control.
As if summoned by his thoughts, Taylor came back on the channel. “External sensors say we’re at the gate. Wormhole jump in thirty seconds. Sit tight everyone.”
Eli reached out, grasping the handhold near the airlock’s external door, and tried to calm his breathing. His old therapist, Dr Thornfield, had instructed him on using breathing exercises to quiet his anxiety over flying and, well, it had worked, hadn’t it? No reason it couldn’t work here.
Beneath his feet, he could feel the vibration of the ship’s engine. And then it was gone, vanished, as the Queen Amina cut its main engines while it entered the wormhole. Jump time. A wormhole jump didn’t feel like anything – at least, not outside of the slightly mind-bending experience aboard the Illyrican prototype jumpship Project Tarnhelm, where it felt a little bit like the world’s worst ice cream headache.
“Jump complete,” came Taylor’s voice, breaking Eli’s train of thought. He’d been so distracted thinking about the jump he hadn’t even noticed it. “External sensors are offline; opening outer door now.”
Silently the airlock door in front of him rolled open, washing the white interior of the compartment in the eerie blue-purple of the wormhole. Eli’s mouth opened. He’d seen the inside of a wormhole plenty of times, but there was something different about knowing that you were about to step into it. The colors rippled and washed in almost hypnotic undulations.
“No time for gawking,” said Tapper. “Get moving.”
“Uh, right. Roger, I mean.”
Taking a deep breath, Eli pulled himself over to the opening using the handholds set in the wall, and then flipped himself over and out of the ship.
Gravity literally went out the window.
Disorientation was familiar enough from all the hours he’d logged in fighters and sims – that was the name of the game there – but he hadn’t had to deal with weightlessness in the same way. Even though fighters lacked artificial gravity, you were almost always strapped in and under thrust.
He hung there for a moment, re-acclimating to the feeling. It’s just like you’re in a swimming pool, Brody. Easy. Swimming pool? When the hell was the last time he’d been in a swimming pool?
Static crackled over his comm system along with Taylor’s voice. “Don’t forget to clip your tether.”
Right. Good as the gravboots might be, redundancy was the name of the safety game. Always have a backup. He looked down at his waist and found the tether reel, pulled out the safety cable – a flexible carbon nanotube weave – and secured the carabiner clip to the anchor on the hull.
“Locked and ready to go,” he reported. Raising his sleeve, he tapped a few controls and a red path appeared overlaid on his HUD, showing the way towards the maintenance hatch.
Positioning himself at the edge of the airlock, he clicked his heels to activate the gravboots and felt the zip as they glommed securely onto the hull. He tested one foot; it released on the upward motion, then grabbed the deck plate again on descent. Slow, but it would work. “Updraft is en route to target. ETA…” he glanced at the HUD, “ten minutes.”
“Good luck,” said Taylor’s slightly garbled voice.
Thanks, thought Eli, as he started to work his way across the hull. I hope that’s enough.
The abort flare that Sayers had sent up had logged her location at the time: the esplanade. Kovalic frowned as he found the nearest lift tube and punched the control for the ship’s main level. He wasn’t sure what had brought her there – maybe she’d been on the move. All that mattered was finding her before Xi’s people did.
He kept coming back to the look in Brody’s eyes, a combination of guilty and reproachful. The pilot didn’t know the whole story with Page, but he’d clearly formed some version of it in his head, and Kovalic wasn’t in a position to disabuse him. No matter how wrong it was, there was a grain of truth there: despite Page’s betrayal, he’d been one of them. Kovalic had owed him something more.
He shook his head. Not the place or time for recriminations. They had a job to do.
The lift slowed to a stop, the doors parting at the esplanade, about a five minute walk from Sayers’s last known location. From the ship map on his sleeve, it looked to be one of the small parklets that dotted the area.
The wormhole jump was happening during the night shift, which meant that the esplanade was quieter than usual, but on a ship this big it was rarely empty. Revelers stumbled their way home from the casinos or a late dinner; amorous couples stole away to a late-night rendezvous; a man bounced and cooed at an infant strapped to his chest. Security patrols were in evidence as well, and Kovalic gave them a wide berth – he may have an understanding with Cortez, but he wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to think that extended to carte blanche.
The parklet came into view around the curve of the ship: a five meter square stand of shrubs and medium-heig
ht hedges, fed by the ship’s irrigation system. Good for scrubbing some of the carbon dioxide exhaled by all the people on the ship, and a nice aesthetic touch to boot.
Head on a swivel, Kovalic stepped into the middle of the parklet, then did a quick circle. Nothing. Maybe Sayers had made a run for it, or maybe she’d tried to hole up somewhere. But she sure wasn’t here now.
He tapped his earbud. “Aegis, this is Corsair. I’m at the flare location – no sign of Maverick. You got anything?”
There was a pause before Nat’s voice came back. “Her sleeve still registers at that location. Can you find it?”
Kovalic frowned; it wasn’t as if there was anyplace to hide. He ducked to look under the parklet’s sole bench. Casting an eye around, he caught sight of an object amidst a tangle of hedge branches.
“Aegis, got it,” he said, plucking the sleeve from amongst the branches, the sharp leaves pricking at his wrist. It lit up at his touch, still pulsating with the abort signal. “But just the sleeve. Can you scrub back through the video security logs and see where she went afterwards?”
“Checking now. Wait one.”
Kovalic’s fingers curled around the sleeve. At least she’d been alive to dump the sleeve. He hadn’t let her down yet. There was still time.
“I’ve got a figure dumping the sleeve about twenty minutes ago, around the time we got the abort code. I think it’s her, but she’s wearing a hood and not facing the camera. Cameras show her heading astern, towards the main plaza, but then I lost her.”
“Copy that, Aegis. I’m heading there now.”
What else could he do? Kovalic chewed his lip and took another look around for anything he’d missed. Irritation gnawed at him. He shouldn’t have let Sayers go off without backup. Anything happened to her, and it was on him.
He only hoped Brody was faring better on the EVA.
The first snag came eight minutes into Eli’s walk across the hull. A red icon flashed on his HUD and he spent a solid thirty seconds trying to figure out what a cylinder-with-an-X-through-it meant before, mid-step, he suddenly spun around as though jerked. His right foot flailed in the air and all the muscles in his left foot strained to hold him to the hull.
“Jesus Christ,” he yelled, thankful it didn’t trigger the comm system.
OK, OK. First things first, get anchored. He managed to maneuver his right foot back down to the hull and felt the boot clamp into place again. Once that was secured, he had a moment to get his bearings.
It didn’t take long to figure out what had happened: the tether cable stretched out behind him, tracing a path back along the hull to where he’d exited the airlock.
It was taut.
“Uh, Bruiser, Aegis… how much tether cable do these suits carry?”
The static had gotten worse the farther he’d gotten from the airlock. “Up… peat … didn’t copy.”
He checked the HUD. Almost fifty meters left to the vault hatch. “I’m gonna guess about a hundred meters.” Looking back along the cable, he gave it an experimental tug, feeling it vibrate and writhe against his gloves like a live snake. “Tether cable is at the limit. Please advise.”
Once again, he got a crackle of garbled audio back. He glanced at his sleeve; the signal strength had dropped to twenty percent. Next to it, the mission clock continued its inexorable countdown.
Shit.
It wasn’t like he had a lot of options. He could reel himself back in to the airlock, but this was their opportunity – there might not be another.
He checked his belt, but there was no way to release the tether from this end, because why the hell would you want to do that, unless you were totally nuts? They really ought to have foreseen the situation where you can’t reach the access hatch for the secure vault you’re trying to rob. And the carbon nanotube weave was not going to be something he could just snip through with a pair of scissors, even if he had some. It was going to take some serious industrial equipment, like a…
Like a plasma torch.
He couldn’t see behind him, but reaching back he found the gear pack that Tapper had given him, just in case he needed to cut his way through the vault hatch. That ought to make short work of the cable.
He swallowed and toggled his comm on. “Aegis, Bruiser, I’m cutting my tether.”
If there was a response or an acknowledgment, Eli didn’t hear it. He even waited a few seconds, in the hope that they’d try to talk him out of it, or maybe call for an abort. But there was nothing.
The mission clock, ticking away on his HUD, said they had fifty minutes left in the wormhole transit; there wasn’t a lot of time to agonize over this decision. He needed to get moving.
Bracing himself, he unslung the small, handheld plasma torch. Even in his bulky gloves, thumbing it on was the work of a moment, and a bright blue-white jet appeared at the nozzle. His visor tinted automatically, shielding his eyes. Taking a step back, he let the cable slacken, gathered a fistful in his hand, and then applied the torch to a spot a few inches away.
The torch cut through the cable in a less than a minute, and the ship’s forward movement caused the loose end to start drifting outward. Well, I hope that doesn’t cause any problems.
No time to worry about it now. Flipping the torch off, he stowed it once again in his pack and started out towards the access hatch again, very carefully making sure that each foot gripped securely to the hull before taking his next step. Right now, his gravboots were the only things keeping him from spinning off into the abyss.
The hull is down. The hull is down. He repeated the mantra as he went, trying not to pay attention to the swirling vortex above him. That was how you got lost in these things – you lost your frame of reference, got vertigo, and then it was throwing up in your spacesuit and hoping the internal vacuum system had been cleaned out before you put it on.
So intently was Eli focused on his feet that he almost walked right past the access hatch. It wasn’t particularly well marked; if it hadn’t been for his HUD blinking that he had reached his destination, he might have kept going until he was at the bow of the ship.
“Aegis, this is Updraft. I’ve reached the hatch. Any time you want to pop this thing is OK by me.”
A buzz of static was the only response.
“Aegis? Bruiser? Corsair? Anybody out there?”
Shit. The interference from the wormhole was playing havoc with the comms. He glanced at the mission clock. Forty-two minutes. He only had a couple of minutes of leeway until he needed to be inside. If Taylor couldn’t find a way to punch through the static, he’d have no choice but to burn his way in.
Come on, commander. Help a guy out.
“Corsair, we’ve got a problem,” came Nat’s voice in Kovalic’s ear as he followed the esplanade towards the main plaza.
“Is it Maverick?”
“Uh, no,” said Taylor. “We’ve lost contact with Updraft. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him since shortly after he went outside.”
Something caught in Kovalic’s throat. “Do we have any way of knowing if he made it to the hatch?”
“The same sensor interference that’s keeping him shielded from the Queen Amina’s crew is screwing us too,” said Nat, frustration welling up in her voice. “But assuming that he continued on at about the same pace, he should be there.”
Should be. Where Eli Brody was involved, things that “should” happen had a way of not always going quite according to plan.
“So, no communications means he’s on the contingency plan, right?”
There was a hesitation before Nat spoke. “Yes… but…”
“Oh, I love the sound of this already.”
“It seems the outer hatch was recently reinforced for security – it didn’t show up on the older schematics we were looking at. Cutting through it with the plasma torch is going to take way too long.”
Kovalic bit off a swear. “Tell me you’ve got a solution.”
“I can trigger the vault’s emergency fire
protocol, which will open the inner and outer airlock doors simultaneously – but that will also depressurize the vault, which means alarms. I should be able to suppress them, but I can’t keep them from registering in the system.”
Kovalic checked his sleeve. Forty-two minutes left on the wormhole transit, according to the mission clock. There wasn’t a lot of time left to debate this. Damn it, he should have been the one out there. “Pop it.”
“Copy that.”
Taking a deep breath as the plaza came into sight, Kovalic hoped he’d made the right decision, otherwise this whole plan was dead in the water. And Kovalic was the sitting duck.
Eli had just pulled out the plasma torch to prep it when there was a shuddering that resonated through his boots. A light glowed green on the panel next to the hatch and the door started to slide open. He staggered backwards as a torrent of air started venting from the opening, but the bulky vacsuit wasn’t exactly designed for quick movements.
Oh no.
The airflow caught his arm and it started to flail; the plasma torch was snatched from his fingers and spun away into the abyss. Eli’s whole body started to lift away from the hull and his leg muscles once again screamed as they were stretched farther than they ought to go. He tried to pull himself back, but his only point of anchorage were the gravboots, which valiantly tried to keep him locked to the hull.
Holy shit. Hold on hold on hold on.
Orange indicators flared on his HUD: the increased strain on the gravboots was weakening their seal. As he tried to re-establish his toe grip and pull himself down, he saw one orange indicator turn red as the grav unit in the left boot ramped up and burned out. That foot flailed and came loose, twisting him into a knot and putting even more strain on his other foot, in turn ramping up power to the remaining gravboot – which quickly started to overload.
WARNING, flashed the onscreen display. LOCK LOSS IMMINENT.
This is not g–
And then he was spinning off the hull, cartwheeling into a massive whirlpool of blue and purple.