First Flight

by Claremont, Chris

  They had mere seconds to register the trio of fat, overpowered missiles leaping towards Wanderer from the asteroid before the gunship, too tiny to be seen with the naked eye, cut across their path. There were three laser flashes.

  Nicole couldn't help crying out as the flight deck filled with light so quickly that the automatic polarizers built into the camera lenses couldn't compensate in time. As she looked away, blinking the spots from her vision, she couldn't help thinking, absurdly, that so monumental an explosion didn't seem quite right without any sound to accompany it.

  "Hana," she called, her voice unnaturally loud, "status on the Deuce. Are they all right?"

  "Can't tell. The blast established an ionization field that's blocking my probes."

  "Shit!"

  "More contacts approaching from aft," Ciari reported. "Also laser tracks. That bastard must have the firepower of a battle cruiser; he's pushing our defensive systems close to their saturation levels. Another hit—conventional, way aft—minimal effect, it splattered against the heavy structural shielding around the engines."

  "Once we reach farside, we'll have some breathing space."

  "That's what worries me."

  Nicole wanted to snarl at him, but in truth it worried her, too. His words made too much sense to be ignored. "Explosions on the surface," Hana cried, and almost simultaneously they heard Paul DaCuhna's jubilant voice.

  "Nailed the sods! Wanderer! Hana, Nicole, you guys see that?! I hit 'em square! Some Class-A shooting—wow! "

  "Lovely piece of work, hotshot," Hana agreed.

  "Major," Nicole said, as a horrible thought struck her, "what if those weren't raiders down there? Suppose they were Wolfe Clan, thinking we were raiders?"

  "I used a private challenge, Nicole, worked out between Phil, his senior partner and myself to cover just such an eventuality. Also, I know—I...knew—everyone on that rock. They botched the reply and I didn't recognize the voice. Whoever was down there wasn't Wolfe Clan. And raiders don't take prisoners."

  Nicole looked at Ciari. "They've been here awhile."

  "Advance party. To do the dirty work and prep the rock for the refinery."

  "But why let us come in? Why the silence? Why not try to warn us off days ago, when we first started calling? They put themselves in this box."

  "Or us."

  "We're masked," Hana broke in. "Wolfe's asteroid now shields us from the raider's sensors."

  "Hurry up, Cat," Nicole said urgently, "before they start shooting at you."

  "That's odd," Cat said, her tone slightly bewildered. "My scanners indicate that both the raider and the refinery have modified their approach. Hell and damnation! With all the by-God electromagnetic 'clutter' created by these multiple nuke detonations, it's impossible to get a solid fix. I can't be sure."

  "Hana—!"

  "Waste of effort, Nicole. The rock hides them from us as effectively as it does us from them. Major, you have a two-hundred-second window; if you don't initiate the rendezvous maneuver within that time frame, you'll never catch us."

  "Plenty of time, Doctor. Something about this pattern rubs me the wrong way. It's... familiar, but I can't quite place it. Do Wanderer sensors read anything ahead of you?"

  "Negative. Clear space..." Nicole fell silent as she caught part of a background line from Paul to Cat. "A single missile?" Cat asked, doubt unmistakable. "Vectoring for the asteroid?"

  "They must know we've slipped past," Andrei muttered. "Or they don't care," Ciari said with a look to Nicole.

  "Cat," she called, "a hundred seventy seconds. Your clock is running, you guys, quit farting around."

  "Oh my God," Cat whispered.

  "Say again, Deuce," Nicole demanded.

  "Get out of here, Wanderer," Cat told them, trying to keep her voice crisp and businesslike and failing. "Run as hard and fast as you can. Push the engines for all they're worth."

  "Major, what's happening?"

  "I haven't time to explain. We have to run blocker against this bogie; we have to... detonate it before it strikes the asteroid. It's your only hope—and a slim one at that."

  "Cat!"

  "It's an anti-matter warhead, Nicole, has to be. A friend of mine—Morgan, the one you met at DaVinci—pulled this stunt against a raider outfit in the colonies. The missile feeds on the mass of its target; if it strikes the rock, it'll convert the entire asteroid into a pint-sized supernova. But if I can detonate the warhead prematurely—if all it has to feed on is open space, or... the mass of this Rover, not only will the primary explosion be that much weaker, the asteroid itself will act as a buffer, protecting you for a few seconds before the anti-matter fireball consumes it. Not much, but it might prove the difference necessary for your survival."

  "What about you guys?" Nicole asked softly.

  All they heard was a small sigh.

  "Paul," Harm cried, " no!"

  "It's done, babe. We're committed." He tried a laugh. "Y'know, Nicole, I dreamed of going out in a blaze of glory, but this is ridiculous." A pause. "Oh well, when you can't even manage a decent laugh for your own jokes it's a definite cue for the final exit. Famous last words, Major and Bear, if you have any; we're approaching firing point."

  "Ms. Shea," Dr. Shomron said, in his grave, slow voice, "among my effects... a letter for my wife..."

  "She'll get it, Bear. You have my word."

  "Wanderer," Cat said, "Nicole, you're good people, some of the best I've known. It's been a privilege."

  "Good-bye, Cat," Nicole whispered. "A... a dio, Paolo."

  For once, Paul had no words and Nicole was thankful he couldn't see her face as she bent over the console, fists clenching so tight the nails drew blood.

  Over the constant susurrus of static, they could hear the interplay between Cat and Paul as they closed on their target. Wanderer was developing a five-gravity acceleration, well beyond its design maximums, the pressure forcing Nicole up and back into her seat, alarm lights flashing all across her board as systems protested and threatened to fail. In the main screen, Wolfe's asteroid grew perceptibly smaller as they shot away from it.

  "Ready," Cat said, Paul echoing her commands. "Systems set and locked. Fire."

  "Got it!" Paul had time to yell, before his voice—and Cat's and Bear's as well—spiraled upward into a primal, falsetto shriek of atavistic terror. Then, the voices disintegrated, replaced by an agonizingly high-pitched electronic squeal—the gunship's own scream as it was instantly vaporized. The noise ended almost as soon as it began; after that, nothing was heard but background static.

  "If anyone's interested," Hana noted, "I'm monitoring a huge spike in infrared emissions on the opposite side of the rock."

  Nicole saw the asteroid outlined in a corona of whiter-than-white fire and, even as she watched, its rim seemed to melt and crumple in on itself. The fire cascaded along the surface, seared through the rock's heart, and a star was born before their eyes.

  The asteroid had looked so small, so far away, a moment ago, yet the awful, unendurable fire reached out to catch them with terrifying ease. Wanderer twisted and groaned around her. In the distance, aft, there was a hollow thump that had to be an explosion. Every telltale turned red at once and boards shorted, sparks and small flames popping alive and into the air. Nicole didn't care. Instinctively, she covered her eyes, but it didn't help as light enveloped them, growing brighter and brighter until it filled her mind, became all she could conceive of.

  Her last thought was that this must have been what the Universe looked like on the day of Creation. Beautiful and terrible, at the same time.

  Chapter Seven

  When at last Nicole opened her eyes, she thought she'd gone blind. All around her was darkness, more complete and absolute than any she'd ever experienced. She blinked once, twice. There was no change. She didn't react at first, amazed enough to find herself alive. It was as if body and mind were disconnected, one functioning, the other not. She was capable of movement, action; she was aware of what was ha
ppening; and yet, those events seemed to have no real meaning.

  She could hear, though; a loud, variable whoosh echoed in her ears. She didn't understand what it was until she started groping around with her hands; that was when she discovered they were gloved, that she was wearing a pressure suit, helmet included. The noise she heard was the sound of her own breathing.

  With that realization, she couldn't help laughing. But the laughter quickly leapt into falsetto, threatening to slip irrevocably out of control. She was awake now; she couldn't duck reality any longer, the reality that she was blind. She remembered the awful radiance of the anti-matter explosion, her eyes suddenly burning with tears as Paul's death shriek echoed in her thoughts, and assumed that the fireball had somehow burned out her optic nerves.

  She tried to move, only to discover she couldn't. She nearly panicked, until her hands found the buckles of a safety harness drawn tight across her torso. Makes sense, she thought, the last thing anyone needs is a crip blundering about, making a nuisance of herself. She kept exploring and soon came across air hoses connecting her suit to a backpack. That gave her pause. Usually, suits were hooked into the ship's cycler system through plugs built into the base of every Command Module chair. A backpack meant the primary LifeSystems couldn't be trusted.

  She tried to say something, but only a ragged croak emerged. She was so dry she couldn't even sneeze. It seemed to take forever to moisten her lips enough to talk; as she started to speak, she wondered how she'd keep from screaming if no one answered. Hell, she had no idea if her suit radio even worked.

  "Shea... Shea here—anybody there?" was what she meant to say, thought she said. Hard to tell. Her head had begun to ache—a merciless pounding against the back of her skull—and her mouth tasted fuzzy and metallic. Legacy of a concussion, most likely, combined with bad air. She wondered how long she'd been on this pack, and what to do if it ran out, which was suddenly becoming a distinct possibility. The fact she was in a suit meant Wanderer had most likely been holed, its internal atmosphere voided into space. Unfortunately, the only way Nicole could be certain would be to open her helmet and take a breath, a definite mistake if she was sitting in a hard vacuum.

  Hobson's choice, as per bloody usual, she sighed to herself, damned if I do, damned if I bloody don't. Terrific.

  She felt something touch her right arm and jumped, yelping as well in shock and surprise, before sagging in relief when she realized it was only another hand.

  "Nicole," she heard Andrei call over the radio, "can you hear me? Respond, please?" Nicole nodded, grunted aloud, and he asked, "Are you all right?"

  "Yeh—yes, I... I think so," she stammered, while her brain screamed, liar! "Andrei, I can't see. I'm blind."

  "Zdorovo," he cursed, then paused. "Wait a moment. Why do you think so?"

  "Because my eyes are open, chum, and I can't see a fucking thing!"

  "One simple way to be certain." Andrei flicked on a torch and Nicole brought her hands up to protect her eyes.

  "I—that light! I can see!" she yelled. "I can see!"

  When she'd calmed down, removing helmet and safety harness, she pulled herself up to the top of the flight deck and stared out the big view ports at the stars. She'd never seen anything more beautiful. It was only after her initial euphoria had passed that she realized the air she was breathing now was, if anything, worse than in her suit and that, with each breath, a cloud of frost appeared before her face.

  She looked at Andrei. There was sufficient starlight on this level to show her that the Russian was also in a full suit, wearing an airpack, lacking only his helmet. He was nodding, his thoughts paralleling hers.

  "Correct, Nicole; we have no power. And without power, we have no atmosphere recyclers, which means no fresh air. We've been bleeding pure oxygen from the undamaged reservoirs into the CM but without the cyclers we can't do a thing about carbon dioxide build-up. Already, we're skirting the danger levels; in a few hours, we'll be past them. We have perhaps a day, no more."

  "No power means no heat, either," Nicole noted quietly.

  Andrei nodded. "True. Wanderer is marvelously well insulated, but we're still losing heat along a steady curve. After all, it is near absolute zero outside. But we'll suffocate before we freeze."

  "Terrific. Crew status?"

  "Hanako is working on the powersystems, trying to jury-rig a feed from the fuel cells. Marshal Ciari is EVA, on a reconnaissance, to see how badly we're damaged."

  "Isn't engineering your specialty?"

  Andrei smiled wanly and shone his torch down his right side. The arm was empty and Nicole could see the angular outlines of splints against the bulky fabric of the suit torso. "Most uncomfortable," he said.

  "Bad?"

  "Two places, compound fracture. It was a very rough ride."

  "I can guess. I think I banged my head."

  "You'll have a very rakish scar above your left eyebrow. Quite a mess. Possibly concussed, but since we had no means, and no decent opportunity to give more than first aid, we decided to let you be."

  And if I happened to die, she realized, probably my good fortune. She shook her head in a vain attempt to dislodge the cobwebs still crowding her brain. "How long have I been out," she asked.

  "A day, more or less."

  "You should have waked me."

  "To what purpose? You would have been of less help than I and"—he paused—"we felt it would be kinder, should worst come to worst, to let you die in your sleep."

  She drew him into a gentle, sisterly embrace. "I appreciate the thought. But if I have to die, I'd rather do so with friends than by myself. I'd like to have my chance... to say goodbye."

  At that point, the lights came on.

  Nicole reacted first, sprawling across her console and slapping the intercom. "Hana," she called, "Hanako, you did it! Way to go, girl, we have power on the flight deck."

  "Power in Command and Service Modules, thank you very much. But how long it'll last is anyone's guess. Hey—Nicole, is that you?"

  "The one and only, aching but alive."

  "Will wonders never cease. I've some work to finish. Better to lock as much of this mess down as I can while I'm here. So I'll see you two in a bit, okay?"

  "I copy. Hana, you want some help?"

  "I can handle it. Thanks, though. Maybe later."

  A new voice came on-line: "Glad to hear you're up and about, Shea. Now that the hard work's all but done."

  "Gimme a break, Ciari. You InShip? The EVA complete? How do we look?"

  His voice was bleak as he replied, "It's something we should all hear together. I suggest we meet in C-l, as soon as possible."

  They parked themselves wherever they pleased. The Carousel wasn't spinning anymore. That took more power than the fuel cells could provide. The great wheel was far darker than they'd ever seen it, more raw illumination coming from the few functional status telltales than the lighting panels that framed the hub above their heads. They were still in suits, because it was still bitter cold inside the spacecraft and would be for some time, as the heaters slowly and gradually took effect. They were taking things as easy as possible for the moment, trying to put an absolute minimum of strain on their improvised power system. It was their lifeline; if it failed, they died. The equation was as basic—as final—as that.

  Nicole sipped some soup, cursing under her breath as it burned her tongue, while Ciari floated forward to face them all.

  "In a nutshell, folks," he said, "if we were any worse off, we'd be dead." Nobody reacted, they were all too tired, too empty. She held the heatercup under her jaw, luxuriating in its warmth.

  "We took some hits during the fight," he continued, "but it was the anti-matter blast that pretty much did us in. When Wolfe's asteroid shattered, some fair-sized chunks of rock must have slammed into the main engines. It's a miracle nothing blew. Wanderer's tail looks like an inspired piece of freeform sculpture, even more impressive than our last sight of Rockhound. Everything aft of the C-l ring o
f the Service Module is open to space. Hana and I had to improvise an airlock in the DropShaft so she could get downship to work on the fuel cells."

  "That's our second miracle," Hana broke in. "We're getting nominal function out of the undamaged cells. And I'm fairly sure a number of the others can be salvaged. For the moment, at least, power isn't a major problem.

  "Unfortunately, that's about all the good news there is The heat-flare of the blast, plus impact with the debris, stripped us clean of our external antennae and sensor modules. For all intents and purposes, Wanderer is blind, deaf, dumb and retarded. The ElectroMagnetic Pulse that hit us was so intense it even scrambled the circuitry of our hand calculators. The across-the-board outage suffered when we lost the main engines was the coup de grace. Now, I've managed to restore the idiot systems—air cyclers, environmental units, basic life support—but beyond that, nada."

  "The Auxiliary Propulsion System appears fully operational," Ciari said, picking up the briefing again. "Fuel levels are at 93% capacity. Mind you, we'll have to improvise firing circuits, and do any astrogational calculations by hand, but if we ever want to move, the APS will do the job. The glitch in that program, however, is that it hasn't the power to move the entire spacecraft; we'd expend all our fuel simply trying to turn Wanderer around. So, to utilize the APS, we'll have to separate the Command Module, which will cost us the benefit of the fuel cells. CM batteries will sustain us about a day at normal operational levels; at bare minimums, a week. After that, lights out."

  "Anyone have any idea precisely where we are?" Nicole asked.

  "A long, long way from home," Andrei cracked, but no one even smiled.

  "As soon as I'm rested," Ciari replied, "I'll go EVA and shoot some starsights."

  "How long before anyone comes looking for us?" Hana wondered.

  "Depends," said Nicole thoughtfully. "If there was a starship handy, a week tops. Sublight, figure a month minimum. But that assumes they know we're in trouble."

  "C'mon, Nicole, they'll start worrying the minute we go off the air."

  "I wouldn't count on that."