by Allen Stroud
“Be careful,” Johansson warns. She pulls out another tether and anchors them both to a clip on the hull.
“Will do,” Sam says. He’s looking into the torn remains of the launch bay. The entrance doors are twisted. His hands reach out and grab at one, levering it away. He moves forward, into the space. His helmet torch illuminates the darkened recess. “What am I looking for?” he asks.
“I think our guest Rocher entered the ship through there, before it was wrecked in the fighting,” I explain.
“I’d say you’re right,” Sam replies. “I’ve found something that shouldn’t be here.” His torch focuses on a small box secured to the wall. There’s a data screen in the middle. I can’t read any of the writing on it, but it shouldn’t be there. Sam’s hands reach out—
“Don’t touch it!” Duggins warns over the comms. “I know what that is! It’s identical to the device I found in the storage compartment.”
“It’s a bomb then?” I ask.
“Yes,” Duggins says. “It’s a bomb.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Shann
I’m back in the room with Rocher. “Tell me how to defuse and remove the device!” I demand.
Rocher smiles. He’s barely moved since I last saw him. “Ah, you found something that you believe belongs to me?”
“Cut the crap,” I say. “If that thing goes up, you die with all of us!”
“As Major Le Garre pointed out, I am not an idealist; I am a contractor.”
“Then you’ll never get to spend any of the money you’re being paid.”
“Your interpretation of my profession is interestingly narrow.” Rocher raises his hands. “I told you my objective before. I need you to realise that you have no alternative to surrender. Your crew, your ship, you and I are a small calculation in a much larger context. If you return to Phobos with a story of piracy, destruction, secret colonies and the rest, you’ll bring much of what’s going on out into the open. Perhaps that would be a good thing, but my employers calculate that we aren’t ready for such exposure. You and the drifting Hercules with all her cargo are assets with assessed value. If you threaten another asset, such as the existence of a covert military ship, we’ll have to dispose of you.”
I stare at Rocher. What can I offer? What will work to change the situation? I should have known he would have a contingency. Where is the compromise? “What will it take to get you to disarm your explosives?” I ask.
Rocher shrugs. “You know the answer. You have a working transmitter now, right? Signal the Gallowglass, reduce speed and surrender to them at a location of their choosing.”
I don’t reply to that. There’s nothing to be gained from this conversation. I exit the room. Keiyho is waiting for me outside.
“Chase and Johansson have about forty minutes of air left,” he says. “That includes their emergency tanks. What do you want them to do?”
“What do we know about the other device Duggins found?” I ask.
“Only that it wasn’t primed,” Keiyho says. “We didn’t do much work on it, as we’ve had other priorities.”
“Where is it?”
“In storage.”
“We need a clear space to work. Get it and meet me in the strategy room. I’ll ask Duggins and Chiu to join us.”
Keiyho nods and disappears. I send an urgent comms requests to Chiu. She’ll have to leave the bridge. I guess Duggins is still in his quarters. Two minutes later, I’m outside and he’s opening the door.
“Come with me now and bring your toolbox.”
“Where are we going?”
“To diffuse a bomb.”
I’m moving quickly through the corridors and hatches to the torus. I’m into the elevator and out through the hatch into the shaft, then up and through the gym into our meeting space. I activate the screen on the table and pull up every camera feed I can find, along with an open communications microphone.
“Chase, Johansson, this is Captain Shann.”
“Receiving,” Sam answers. “What’s the plan?”
“We’re bringing up the device we found in storage. Hopefully we can use it to talk you through disarming the one in front of you.”
“Okay, wouldn’t someone better qualified be—”
“You two are what we have,” I say. “Can you make the space big enough so you can both work in there?”
“Yes, Captain, I think so.”
“Good.”
“If this is going to require fine motor skills, I’m not rating our chances, Captain,” Johansson says. “To get any kind of grip on components, we’ll need to get our gloves off.”
I glance at Duggins, who nods. I agree with them. Our EVA suits have inner gloves that are similar to those used by scientists examining specimens in sealed boxes. There’s no explicit danger in removing the outer glove, provided the astronaut is in a controlled environment. The ruin of the drone launch bay is not exactly that, but it is better than being on the side of the hull. “Okay, do that,” I say, “but be careful.”
“Aye, aye.”
Keiyho enters, clutching the deactivated explosive device. Chiu is right behind him. I beckon her over. “I need you and Duggins to take this thing apart and explain to Johansson how to do the same to the armed device that’s attached to our ship,” I say. “You have about thirty-five minutes to sort this.”
“Chase to Captain Shann?”
“Go ahead.”
“If we need more time, we can re-tank?”
I mute the channel and look at Duggins. He guesses my question. “Another airlock operation would be risky. Our EVA suits run live estimates on how much air remains in the primary and emergency tanks. The estimate recalibrates based on a continual measure of the astronaut’s breathing rate. We can’t be absolutely precise about how much time people have. We calculated the mission at four hours and provided oxygen supplies accordingly. There is also a spare tank in the airlock that they can access and share if they need it. Metabolism, stress and exertion can be contributing factors. They can both stretch a bit if they stay calm.”
“Okay,” I say. I unmute the channel. “Sam, proceed as instructed for now. Your job is to be Johansson’s extra hands.”
“Got it.”
“Good.”
Duggins is unscrewing the cover of the half-prepared explosive. “Looks like a custom-made shield,” he says. “Modular internal design, which makes decommissioning it a little easier for us. They didn’t plan for these to be tampered with.”
Chiu leans over the open case and points at a box in the top left corner. “That’s the detonator.” She traces the wires to a second section below it. “Control unit and power is here.”
Duggins nods. “The issue will be whether there’s some kind of dead man’s switch that triggers an explosion anyway.” He leans toward the mic on the table. “Johansson? Best to start by examining the box lid catches and how the unit’s secured to the wall.”
“Aye, aye,” Johansson replies. In the head camera screen, her plastic gloved fingers reach toward the box. She’s holding a small metallic object. It looks like a mirror. Torchlight from her helmet reflects back at us, whiting out the screen for a moment. “Two catches at the bottom,” she says. “Looks like some sort of chemical reactive resin on the wall.”
“That’s useful,” Duggins says. He flips over the box on the table. There are no holes on the back. He places it right side up again. “I think there’s no anchor trap. That’ll mean we should be able to cut it away from the ship.”
“Should?” Johansson asks.
“I don’t know yet if there’s a tremble sensor,” Duggins admits. “The vibration from us removing the resin could set the bomb off.”
Chiu has taken a powered driver to the side of the detonator casing. She’s looking for screws. None are obvious. I pick up a mini-torch from Du
ggins’s toolbox and hold it over the table. “Thanks, Captain,” Chiu mutters, but the light doesn’t reveal anything that I can see. “The cabinet is molded and sealed. We’ll need to drill in.” She picks up a metre. “There’s polarity in here. That means there’s a charge.”
“Which means it’s live,” Duggins says. “Damn. We can’t cut into that.”
“If there was a motion sensor, it would be affected by the ship,” Keiyho reasons.
“Risky to assume anything,” Duggins warns. “That said, I’d think you’re right. It’s a shell defence to prevent us cutting into the unit.”
“Then we don’t cut into it,” I say. “Sam, can you hear me?”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Cut away the wall plate. Make the section as large as you can manage to feed out of the launch bay,” I order.
“Are you sure, Captain?” Sam asks. I glance at Duggins and Chiu. Duggins shrugs, but Chiu refuses to commit herself.
“Yes, do it,” I say.
Sam moves away from the box. I see him produce a handheld cutter. “I’ve got thirty-five per cent charge left. Might not be enough.”
“Do your best.”
“Aye, aye.”
Sam applies the cutter to the wall. I see the metal plates part as the invisible laser burns through them. They curl away from each other, leaving a ragged gap. Lasers are always strange to watch as there appears to be no cause for the damage. But this is inch-thick steel. Sam is working methodically, drawing a line of torn metal around the black plastic shape.
“Halfway,” Sam says.
At three-quarters, the work gets harder. Sam has to retrace his marks several times. “We’re pretty much out of juice,” he says. “We’ve fifteen minutes of air left.”
“If you use the drill and make consecutive holes along the final section, it might be enough,” Keiyho suggests.
Duggins shakes his head. “It’ll take too long. Better to stick with what we have. Johansson, can you run a cable to the new antenna? We can power the cutter from there.”
“Yes, I think we brought enough.”
“You’ll need to do it quickly,” Chiu says.
“Okay.”
There’s movement and Johansson is back outside, flying across the hull. She’s moving hand over hand – risky, but needs must. She reaches the antenna quickly, grabbing the safety rail to lose her momentum, and opens the power unit they’ve just wired up, ripping out the cables. She attaches a new lead from a long drum and makes her way back to the drone garage.
“Chase, here!”
Johansson is outside the drone garage, reaching in with the end of the cable. The wire is passed between the two astronauts. It’s strange to watch it happen on two head cams and an external view. Sam plugs the cutter in and repositions himself.
“Okay, let’s finish this.”
He begins working. I glance at the time counter. “You’ve eight minutes,” I warn.
“Almost there,” Sam replies.
I watch the numbers recede. There’s a brief moment of achievement when the wall section comes away. Johansson manages to grab hold of one end. She’s replaced her gloves. Together, she and Sam begin manoeuvering the jagged sheet of metal out of the launch bay.
“Slowly and gently,” Duggins warns.
My hands are gripping the table as I stare at three different windows. I’m viewing the external camera feed and both head cams. The astronauts are at either end of the cut plate. I can see strain and exhaustion on their faces. We’ve all been pushed beyond the point of reason. If our lives weren’t at stake, we’d be ordered to rest.
“Three minutes,” Chiu says softly, almost in reverence.
Slowly, the plate inches out of the ship. Both Johansson and Sam appear on the outside camera feed. I sigh with relief. The dangerous bit is done and there’s been no explosion.
“You’ll need to give it a push,” Duggins says. “We can’t just let it go; otherwise it’ll float alongside the ship.”
“Aye, aye,” Johansson replies.
“Then make your way back to the airlock quickly. You’ve got about ninety seconds of air left,” Chiu says.
Four hands let go of the metal simultaneously. The black box drifts away, serenely, a process that belies its purpose. “Well done. Get yourselves back indoors,” I order.
“On our way,” says Sam.
“Wait!” Johansson says. “We need to re-plug the antenna!”
“We don’t have air, Ensign, wait—”
Too late. Johansson is already moving, propelling herself across the hull at speed. I’m gripping the desk, wanting to order her back, but she knows the risk. Women tend to use less air than men. There’s a chance she has a bit more left in her suit tank. That might give her enough time.
I see her return to the transmitter site, yank out the trailing cable and fumble with the comms power plug. I can hear the emergency oxygen level alert going off in her helmet. She restores the connections and heads for the airlock.
She’s at minus forty-five seconds of capacity.
It’ll take another three or four minutes for her to get back to the airlock. I activate another communications channel. I pray she’s got enough left in the tank. “Arkov, have you been monitoring?” I ask.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Make sure Bogdanovic is notified. They’ll both need a check over.”
“Will do.”
The four of us are left in the strategy room, staring at the camera feeds and the bomb components on the table. Success is somehow an anticlimax; Johansson is still out there. There’s no sense of achievement in finding a way to live for a while, until the next crisis.
“Well done, everyone,” I say, but the words feel empty. “Let’s get all this tidied up.”
“We still need to test the antenna,” Duggins says.
“We’ll worry about that in a bit,” I reply.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Johansson
I must be mad.
The alarms in my helmet are a constant hammering torture. I can’t switch them off; I haven’t time. I’m throwing myself across the outside of the Khidr’s hull, racing for the airlock.
Carbon dioxide poisoning is a strange way to die. It’s not like drowning or being in a vacuum where there’s nothing for you to breathe. You keep breathing, but every moment that you do, you’re killing yourself. Your body doesn’t really understand this. You can breathe the contents of your helmet, so you do. Only a conscious effort of will keeps you trying to restrict your intake, and that’s fighting your body’s natural instinct to gulp down more air as it realises you aren’t getting enough oxygen.
Everyone’s hypoxia symptoms are different. We’re trained to recognise the signs in our own body and take action to deal with them as they occur.
There’s a handhold, just outside of the exterior hatch. I’m reaching for it. I grab it with my prosthetic hand and brace myself as my momentum takes the rest of my body onward. My upper arm is a little numb, but the sudden pain as I’m pulled around sends a jolt through me, keeping me awake for a few more seconds.
I have a thumping headache. The throbs of pain come in rhythmic waves that match the suit alarm. Ahead, I can see the hatch. Quartermaster Sam Chase is inside. He’s not moving. I realise Arkov couldn’t repressurise the damaged compartment twice. They’ve had to wait for me.
Then he turns and gives me a thumbs-up. I can see he’s plugged his suit into the extra tank we left behind. Fresh, tasty, new, breathable air!
“Come on, April, you can do it!” he urges over the comms.
I grit my teeth and pull myself forward.
I remember a lecture from two mountain climbers in my first week of basic astro training. They’d been part of a commercial touring group who worked on Mount Everest, before the quake in 2084. They came to t
alk about oxygen deprivation and how you can train yourself to keep functioning when you recognise the signs. Hypoxia is all about gradual brain death. Above 25,000 feet on Earth, your body is dying. You have to try and function, knowing every move you make will be exhausting. That’s my moment, right now.
Thankfully, space helps. I’m not fighting gravity; I just have to aim myself at the right place and…
“Got you!”
Sam’s got hold of my shoulders. He flips me around and unscrews the emergency valve on the neck of my suit; then he plugs in a new feed to the emergency tank. I can hear a hissing noise and the alarms subside.
“Arkov, get us inside!”
The outer door begins to close. A sense of euphoria washes over me, but right now is when I need to be most careful. My EVA suit’s atmospheric processor needs to rebalance the nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide mixture that I’m breathing. It’ll take a few moments. If I don’t wait, I might do more damage and pass out. I must breathe only when necessary and keep my heart rate down.
“April, what the fuck were you thinking?”
Sam has me in his arms. He’s not letting me go. I’m quite touched by how much he seems to care. Maybe he’s attracted to me? We’ve lost so many people in the last few days it’s difficult not to feel a bond between those of us who remain. Perhaps that’s what motivated me to go back and finish repairing the transmitter.
It’s difficult to process my emotions. I’m kind of detached and dislocated. Could be it’s an effect of the carbon dioxide. What I just did was madness, but at least I’ll get the letter of recommendation I want when we get back to Phobos.
Is that what motivated me?
No, I don’t think so. Not anymore.
There’s a clunk against my helmet. I blink and focus on Sam. “Hey there,” I say.
“Hey yourself. You’re nuts.”
“It needed to be done.”
“Not at the expense of your own life.”
I think about that for a moment. “The stakes are pretty high right now, and they’re only going to get higher. If we don’t start taking some bold risks, we’ll all die out here.”