by Dan Davis
The XO handed it over while the captain gave her his final instructions.
“Lieutenant, once you are off the ship, do not land on the surface until you have communicated with the Stalwart Sentinel and conveyed the nature of the weapon that has disabled us and received confirmation from them that they understood the message. If you can’t communicate, you must dock with the Sentinel and hand over that data block before you land on the surface. Do you understand your orders?”
“I do, sir.”
“Good luck, Kat.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said but he was already speaking to someone else. “Come on, Doctor. We’re leaving.”
She pushed the old man through the door that Zhukov held open for them. The corridor was illuminated by emergency lighting and it was like being plunged into darkness once more when the Director closed the door behind her, shutting off the sounds at the same time. But it was enough to see by.
“So,” Dr. Fo said, “we’re not going to Arcadia?”
“We have to deliver the black box to the Sentinel first.” She tucked the data block under her arm.
“Seems perfectly logical.”
She prodded the doctor ahead of her and he made no objections as she guided him through the ship. Still, he was old and weak and with her ERANS compounding the relative speed, he moved with infuriating slowness.
“Is this the way to the shuttle bay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “But we need some medicine first.”
“Ah, of course.”
The Medical Section was bright with its own special white lighting so they could perform procedures during emergencies and the glare made her wince.
“Hello?” she called out. “Where is everybody?”
A stack of boxes collapsed unseen in the rear somewhere and one of the nurses staggered out with an armful of equipment. “Lieutenant?” he shouted. “Dr. Fo? What are you doing here?”
“I need radiation meds for the evacuees.”
“The team already headed to the shuttle, you should—”
She raced off that way, dragging Dr. Fo behind her, but had not taken ten steps when the ship lurched again, violently. The suddenly increase in g brought her to her knees but floored poor old Dr. Fo.
“Oh dear,” he exclaimed.
She was helping him to his feet when the gravity reversed, went negative and she began to come away from the floor.
“Shit, grab hold of something, sir,” Kat said. Instead, he flailed like he was tumbling off a high dive so she grabbed him, braced herself and pushed him down the center of the corridor. Then she launched herself after him, pulling herself along hand over hand, legs floating high. Her throw had been off and the doctor bounced into the wall in a jumble of scrawny limbs. She collected him up and pushed and pulled the old man all the way to the shuttle bay in record time. Her ERANS humming along just enough to give her time to make close to ideal judgments and recalculate adjustments as she went.
As she had feared, the shuttle bay was a scene of minor chaos with the mechanics doing their best to get VIP civilians and senior officers to follow their instructions. The shuttle bay was barely bigger than the Lepus but it was the biggest open space on the Victory and people were scattered on all of the six walls, clinging to handholds and all of them trying to make their way somewhere else.
“I am Lieutenant Xenakis. I am the shuttle pilot,” she shouted, as loudly as she could. “You are all now under my temporary command so please do as I say. Everyone previously designated as an evacuee has exactly two minutes to board this shuttle. Everyone who is not an evacuee has two minutes to exit this area before it becomes a vacuum. If you require assistance to complete your instructions, please inform the person nearest to you and ask politely.”
She hoped it would light a fire under them. By her estimates, they might not even have two minutes before the Victory was destroyed.
“Strap yourself in to a chair,” she ordered Dr. Fo when she pulled him through the door and shoved him into the passenger cabin.
“Should I not obtain a flight suit? Or a space suit or whatever you call it?”
Kat went the other way to him and replied with a shout. “No time, Doc. Sit your ass down, now.”
Inside the cockpit she let out the sigh she had been holding since the CIC. She stowed the data block under her chair before she strapped in.
Her data consoles and flight control system appeared fully operational. Even though the shuttle’s hull provided another layer of protection against radiation, and even though the shuttle’s computer system were also hardened, Kat had not dared to hope. The ERANS allowed her to analyze the modulations in her shaky voice as she spoke the question aloud.
“Sheila?” Kat said, throat constricted. “Sheila, are you still here, sweetheart?”
“Hello, Kat.”
“Thank Christ. How come you’re okay when the ship cores were taken out?”
“The unknown enemy weapon made initial contact at opposite end of the Victory, weakening as it travelled the length of the ship. Shuttle bay wall shielding plus the shuttle hull shielding are in addition to ship hull shielding. Even so, I am experiencing partial failures in non-critical systems and am shutting them down.”
“Oh shit. But thank Christ, Sheila, you’ve started the liftoff sequence, you beautiful bastard. How soon can we get out of here?”
“RCS thrusters are ready to go. Fuel is at maximum. All batteries fully charged. We are deficient in passengers, however. They did not listen to me when I suggested that they strap themselves into their seats. They felt they would rather argue with the ground crew than listen to an AI.”
“I say we go without them,” Kat said, running through her checklist. “What do you reckon?”
“I’m afraid I would rather preserve as many human lives as possible.”
“You AIs,” Kat said. “You’re all bloody do-gooders. You make me sick.”
Even while she spoke, however, the evacuees boarded in a panic behind her.
“What’s happening?” People shouted at her and each other, their voices and questions overlapping. “Are we losing? I forgot my EVA suit, where are the spares? Is the gravity off ahead of schedule? Have we been hit?”
One of them poked his head into the cockpit. “Lieutenant, anything I can do?” It was Crewman Harada.
“Thought I saw your name on the list, Harada,” Kat said while she worked. “Assumed it was a mistake.”
She was joking because everyone knew that Harada was the best chemical rockets engineer on the ship and the outpost had a bunch of landers waiting to be repurposed into orbit-capable or at least suborbital lifters and transport vehicles.
“Probably is,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Just see they’re strapped in back there,” Kat replied, “if they’ll listen to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Then Harada was gone. Reliable, uninteresting and crucial, just like his rocket engines.
“Sheila, play the zero-g warning internally and broadcast the airlock evacuation or a stand clear warning outside.”
The messages began even before Kat finished speaking. Sheila’s artificially produced voice informing the passengers they had mere seconds to secure themselves into the reclined chairs before the imminent and sudden acceleration of the shuttle threw them bodily against the bulkheads, certainly breaking their bones and possibly turning their entire bodies into the consistency of blancmange. Outside, she was repeating the phrase that space travelers had nightmares about. Warning. Airlock cycling. Vacuum imminent. Evacuate immediately. Warning. Airlock cycling. And so on, until everyone got the message, one way or another.
“Everyone onboard?” Kat asked, glancing at the manifest while cycling through the RCS thruster control tests.
“All authorized passengers,” Sheila confirmed, “plus four extras.”
“Cheeky bastards,” Kat said, looking at the list of unauthorized passengers, their passive ID chips automatical
ly read by the shuttle. The medical team had decided to stay on the Lepus.
One of the unofficial guests was Feng Don.
You sneaky bastard, Feng.
Probably he was hoping that she would not throw him off because he was both her sexual partner and drug supplier. Luckily, she did not have time to make a decision as they had to leave and they were out of time. She hoped that he had brought her more of her drugs, at least.
“Shuttle bay clear,” Sheila said.
“Open bay doors and prepare to release docking clamps.”
“Confirm, opening bay doors.” The usual, smooth and pleasant vibration of the door operation under the wheels was replaced by three rapid, harsh bangs. “Doors nonoperational.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Unknown,” Sheila said. “Command sent to Victory, no response. Command sent to local node, no response.”
“Fuck,” Kat said and switched comms while she unlocked the sealed access point on the outside of the cockpit. “Harada? Crewman Harada, get outside and connect the hardline to the infrastructure node, now.”
She heard him bouncing off the walls and flinging open the shuttle side hatch door. “What’s the problem?” Harada said as he made his way under the shuttle, already breathing hard through the comms into her ear. “Opening hardline access cover now.”
“Can’t get the bay doors open,” Kat said. She heard Harada stop breathing. “Don’t worry, you moron. We won’t open them until you’re back inside.”
He let out a breath. “Unspooling the data hardline cable. Shit, it’s hard without gravity.”
“Let the motor push the cable out, you just guide it. Come on, you’ve trained for this,” Kat said, feeling the Victory vibrate along with the autocannons as they fired thousands of rounds per second.
“Sure,” Harada said, breathlessly. “Not alone, though.”
“You’re the only engineer or ground crew in here, everyone else evacuated the area. All I have in the back are VIPs. You know, very incompetent people.”
She recognized the hissing static as laughter. “Alright, I’m in contact with the flight deck,” Harada said, breathing hard. “Advancing to the data node access hatch. Looks like a long—”
Vibration rocked the ship, hard. Gravity returned, pinning her to her chair momentarily, then lifted again while the hull screeched and banged, as if God Almighty was wringing the Victory out like a wet rag.
“Harada?” she shouted through the noise. “We need to go, right now.”
The comms system was down. Had to be.
All the lights inside the bay and in the Lepus turned off. Then the ones in the shuttle came on again.
Her world slowed. The screens blinked and she felt that fear return, that fear that she would be left without flight control for the shuttle or without Sheila to help her. She would be lost without Sheila. Kat had time to imagine how it would feel if her colleagues and fellow officers knew how much she relied on an AI to help her fly. Imagined having no one to talk to but the inanimate object of the thing itself rather that the shuttle’s heart and soul.
Her hand traveled to the controls for the external lights in slow motion, like pushing her body through invisible gel. She punched all the switches, hoping they would respond but expecting the worst. After a moment’s delay, the shuttle bay was illuminated by her lights.
A screen popped back on, showing Harada sprawled on his face on the doors beneath the Lepus, the data hardline snaking away from him across the flight deck.
Get up, Harada.
Kat knew she would have to go herself. Jump out of the cockpit and go after it, connect it up then get Harada back into the shuttle with her, open the doors and thrust out before the ship was destroyed. She would have to.
The Victory lurched again. Popping sounds rippled from somewhere.
There’s no time for all that. And the local power’s off, idiot.
Kat released her harness and pulled herself out of the chair and headed out of her cockpit.
There was only one thing for it.
I’ll open the doors by hand. Sheila can fly the ship, unless she’s dead. In which case, we’re all fucked.
If the useless idiots that designed the ship had put some sort of manual control for the bay doors inside the shuttle, then Kat would be able ease the shuttle out of the Victory without leaving her pilot’s chair to crank the stupid door release. She wouldn’t have to die on the off-chance that her AI was functional but temporarily silenced.
That’s how it goes. Welcome to the military.
She was halfway out of the side hatch when the vacuum alarm sounded in the shuttle bay. The doors were either opening or the aliens had blasted a hole in the hull. Either way, she had to seal her shuttle.
“Lieutenant.” The word came in slowly, her ERANS pumping data to her quickly but she recognized Harada was speaking strangely. She slammed the side hatch door closed then ducked back into the cockpit and saw him on the screen, access hatch open on the flight deck, cranking the door release. He had the emergency breathing mask over his mouth and nose, both hands on the crank handle and giving it everything he had with his entire upper body, his feet braced unseen beneath the deck. “Get. Thrusters. Firing.”
“Shit, Harada,” she said as she stared at the doors opening beneath her shuttle. He was out there in his overalls. No EVA suit. “Listen to me while you open the door. Once the air pressure in the bay drops and the temperature falls, your skin will be exposed to the cold and vacuum. The moisture in your eyes will boil off so keep them closed as much as you can. But you will have time to get back into the shuttle without permanent damage. You hear me? You get back in here. It’s only about thirty meters from your position to the upper airlock. Hear me? Not the side hatch. You come to the forward airlock hatch above the cockpit. I will wait for you.”
“Yes. Sir.” He was breathing hard and his voice was shaking from the cold and the absolute terror he must have been feeling while the last of the air rushed out of the huge shuttle bay and out into space. Harada was probably staring out at the black abyss widening under the wheels of the shuttle.
The Victory rocked and dipped in a gut wrenching lurch, followed by another. Bringing the Lepus out of a ship which was maneuvering so violently could easily end in disaster. Once released from the docking clamps holding her to the ceiling of the bay, any sudden change in velocity would smash the shuttle against a wall or on the rim on their way out.
“Sheila, if you’re there, please respond, I need you.” While Kat spoke, she worked to bring the RCS thrusters up to an even 1% thrust from all axis.
No response from the bloody useless AI but the dumb autopilot backup was functional so that would have to do.
Crewman Harada’ teeth chattered in her ear. “Bay. Doors.” He mumbled something she could not make out but checked the feed.
“Doors are fully open, get in here now, Harada. Now, now, now, come on. Move it.”
She watched as he dragged himself out of the access hatch with infuriating stiffness, like he was a thousand years old. The ship rocked again, the sounds of firing thrumming through the hull and the engines thrust, hard.
The sudden acceleration pinned her into her seat. Must have been well over 1g. Too fast. Changing the velocity of the Victory so aggressively put thousands of tons of superstructure under enormous stresses and the sound of it vibrated through the docking clamps joining the top of the shuttle to the shuttle bay. The screeching of alloy tearing apart and rapid bangs scared her. It felt like the Victory must be coming apart.
An ERANS fear spiral. The anxiety could speed up her perception so much that it gave her more time to experience the fear, to delve into the terror so deeply that it led to more anxiety which would extend her subjective perception of the passage of time. It could be paralyzing. It was suspected to be a factor in the deaths of at least three pilots in the ERANS experiment she had volunteered for, all those years ago. Trouble was, knowing the danger of a fear spiral simp
ly added to it. Only—
They were hit. A kinetic or explosive weapon of enormous power impacting the hull. The Victory boomed, a long, low shockwave spreading along the ship. The acceleration eased off, stopped.
Snap out of it.
Checking the camera feeds, she watched debris, illuminated by her lights, flying about inside the shuttle bay. Crewman Harada was nowhere to be seen. Crushed against a wall or flung out into space. She had to get out of the Victory, now. Harada was gone and she could not wait for him.
Kat punched the controls for the two docking clamps that held the shuttle in place from two arms above. The locking mechanism for those clamps were part of the Lepus itself and they thumped open. She heard them, felt them, over the sound and feeling of the ship around them resounding to blasts and impacts.
While the ship lurched unpredictably, there was no way to know when the best moment to attempt the exit would be. So she thrust down at maximum power. Her shuttle leaped at her command, slipping through the shuttle bay doors and out into space.
Above, the Victory rotated slowly in a cloud of debris. Warning lights light up all around, the alarms sounding, everything moving at a fraction of normal speed. Slow enough for her to make out proximity warning alarms on every side and at every distance, radiation alarms detecting a soup of dangerous particles smashing into the hull, infrared sensors bleating about hot gases and plasmas burning within range and moving unpredictably.
She could be hit at any moment. A chain of nuclear warheads had been detonated nearby, just thousands of kilometers away and the space all around was screeching with lead slugs and whatever the hell insane radiation, electromagnetic pulse, alien death ray shit the alien weapon fired.
The shuttle drifted away. The random timing of her exit had at least thrown her away from the encounter, she hoped, and off into space. But their route would take them across Arcadia’s orbit. With a minor adjustment, she could swing wide around the planet and burn toward the Sentinel, away from the alien ship.