by Mark Wandrey
“You have got to be kidding,” the older man had said, eyes wide. “A 35-meter-tall, 20,000-year-old war machine with a pony painted on its chest?”
“Plenty of soldiers have mascots painted on their tanks and stuff over the years,” Jim had reminded him.
“Yeah, but none of them are painted cartoon ponies.” Jim wondered what the Dusman would think. The creators of the Raknar war machines eons ago likely wouldn’t have approved. Jim’s tech crew found it…endearing.
The Raknar was being cycled through the airlock, so Jim signed off on the loadmaster’s manifest. “Thank you for the transfer,” he said.
“Our pleasure, Commander Cartwright,” the Maki said, and the two parted company. Jim just managed to get inside in time to see the Raknar being maneuvered out of the cavernous airlock. It was so big it took five minutes to complete. Even Union-made pumps needed time to move 16,000 cubic meters of atmosphere.
“I see you finally had Dash moved over!” Jim’s grin got bigger as his girlfriend, Adayn, floated over. She was in a light-duty uniform, which just happened to show off her curves quite well. She wore sergeant’s chevrons with a “T” under them, indicating she was a technical sergeant. She was also Cartwright’s Cavaliers’ chief armorer, and the one who’d managed to get the Raknar running in the first place. Well, her and Splunk.
“Yeah,” he said when he’d caught her and shared a quick kiss. He was always conscious of overt displays of affection in front of his people. As a merc, there were no military-style rules about fraternization with officers or public displays of affection. That didn’t mean he wasn’t careful when dealing with her in the ranks. “It made sense to leave it for last, since it would be in the way.”
“Not for long,” she said. He gave her a curious look. “Hey, Splunk. Splunk!” she yelled. “Now where did my little watchmaker go?” It was Adayn’s favorite nickname for the Fae. She’d harvested it from a 20th century science fiction novel. Jim had read the novel as well, and he wasn’t sure whether he appreciated the analogy or not. He looked around and quickly spotted the Fae’s little dark brown form.
“She’s up there, on the Raknar.” Adayn looked and spotted her. The Fae already had a panel open on the machine’s torso and only her rear and big, bushy tail were visible. Adayn grabbed Jim’s hand and they leaped together, landing on the side of the Raknar. Even though the machine was being maneuvered by jets, the impact of the two had no effect on the trajectory of 1,000 tons of metal and alloy war machine. It was enough to make Splunk pull her body out of the hatch and look at them, though, and her fur-tipped ears shot straight up. “Everything okay?” Jim asked.
“All fine,
“Splunk,” Adayn said, “show Jim what you found.”
The Fae pulled a little slate from the handmade belt she wore and handed it to Jim. When she wasn’t chasing Teachal snacks, she’d been exploring every square inch of Upsilon 4. The slate was full of images she’d taken, though most looked mundane. He gave her a queer look, and she tapped the slate with a delicate finger, then made sweeping motions. Keep looking was the obvious intent. So he did.
Somewhere around the 100th image, there was a massive bay. That wasn’t unusual in itself; Jim had noted more than a dozen such huge open spaces. They needed to be careful moving around without spacesuits. Most of the atmosphere cycling system was in a state of disrepair, and in space you could get dead zones where the atmosphere was depleted and have no oxygen to breathe. Asphyxia could overtake you before you knew what was happening. Everyone carried small rebreathers and alarms on their waists to warn of high CO2 or low O2 levels.
He stopped on the image and manipulated it. Splunk nodded. There was a line of 20 or so frames along one wall. A wall at least 40 meters tall. He looked at the recesses between the frames, and his mind filled in what would fit in those recesses.
“Raknar frames,” he hissed, and Splunk snapped her fingers. Adayn grinned big. “Even more of them.”
“You said you thought this might have been an old Raknar maintenance depot from the Great Galactic War,” Adayn said, “and you were right!”
“I was lucky,” he said.
“No, you’re insightful and observant. Once again, it paid off.”
“Thanks,” he said, feeling his cheeks getting warm. “How far away is it?” he asked, changing the subject.
“About a kilometer that way,” she said, pointing. In Jim’s mind, he called up the schematic of the station. The Raknar chamber was in an area he hadn’t yet explored, but he’d noted a dozen large connecting passageways in the area, all big enough for a Raknar to float through horizontally. Now it all made sense. “There’s another cargo lock down there. It’s out of service.”
“Can it be fixed?” Jim asked. She gave a little nod.
“I have a team working on it now. We’ll need to buy some equipment.”
“Do it,” he said, and she gave a thumbs up. “As soon as the life support down there’s verified, get Dash transferred and start working on the frames. I want a search of the area, look for parts and anything related to the Raknar. More importantly, I want the maintenance frames fixed as soon as possible.”
“All twenty of them?” she asked. He gave a single nod. “So, you are going to look for more.”
“Yes,” he confirmed. Splunk watched him intently with her big blue eyes. “There are two small, low-risk garrison jobs coming up. I just signed a contract for fifty brand new Mk 8 CASPers. They’ll be ideal cadre duty to bring the new Cavaliers up to speed without risking casualties while I work.”
“While you work? What about us?”
“I need you to get this station in order and bring the fifty new CASPers online, not to mention hiring and training technical crew.” Adayn looked at him, and her eyes narrowed.
“You’re going out without me.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, I’m coming along.”
“Not this time,” he insisted.
“Then who’s going with you?”
“Just Splunk,” he said. “We’re taking Pale Rider.”
“I thought you might pull something like that when I heard you were getting instructions from Captain Su.” Jim turned and saw Hargrave floating over to land on the Raknar. Jim looked at Adayn, his expression accusing. “You can’t go flitting off looking for more giant toys.”
“These aren’t toys,” Jim said. “Need I remind you what I did in this one against three living Canavar? Three?” He’d managed to defeat three of the supposedly extinct giant biological killing machines. Of course, the damage he’d taken was the reason the blue Raknar had parts from the green Raknar, the one which hadn’t survived its only battle.
“Sure, they’re badass. But that doesn’t mean you can get any more working.”
“I’m pretty confident,” Jim said.
“I’m not letting you leave by yourself,” Hargrave said with an air of finality.
“You think you can stop me?”
“Actually, yes.” He said. Jim opened his mouth to say something else, then shut it. The older man was both a stubborn XO and a wise one. Jim wondered if he was being foolish taking off by himself.
“All right,” he said, and Hargrave got a smug look on his face, “I’m willing to make concessions. But I am going.”
“Then I and your personal team are going as well.”
“No,” Jim said immediately, “this time I’m putting my foot down. You’re taking command of the Cavaliers for a few weeks while I run down some leads. But I’ll take a squad with me for security. Not the command squad; they’re needed here. I will, however, let you pick who I take, subject to veto.”
“No freaking way,” Hargrave said. Jim grinned inwardly. Despite the seemingly increased vitriol of his XO, it was a sign Jim was going in the right direction. He knew he’d get what he wanted the most, to go on this mission. All he needed to do was deal with one overprotective XO.
* * *
It was
well after midnight when Jim checked out his newly renovated office in Upsilon 4. Nobody was about; the men were all in bed. Above his desk on a new Tri-V floated hundreds of data elements, the mixed batch of seeming junk he’d gotten from the alien robot before it tried to kill him. He used his pinplants to save the data on his office computer then shut it all down.
He went to his bunk and finished stuffing the last of his gear into a duffle bag. Splunk was in the little hammock he’d set up for her in one corner of the room, watching him with her big blue eyes. The habitat they’d moved into maintained a steady, spin-induced quarter G. Technically, it wasn’t sufficient to stave off muscular atrophy in Humans. The problem was, the Cavaliers’ engineers said, the rotation needed to generate half a gravity was too risky for the unmaintained hub.
“What?” Jim asked when she didn’t stop staring.
“You lie Hargrave,
“Yes,” he said, then added, “sort of.” Splunk’s eyes narrowed, and Jim sighed. “I can’t do this with a dozen Cavaliers troopers watching my every move, following orders from Hargrave to treat me like a kid.” She continued to watch him, eyes bright and inquisitive. “We’ll draw way too much attention to ourselves. If we go quiet, nobody will think anything big is going on.” She glared, and he grumbled under his breath, strapped on the trusty C-Tech GP-90, then stood. “You coming?”
Jim walked carefully to the door and slid it open. Like the rest of the habitation area, the proportions were wrong. The doorways were too tall and slightly too wide. He glanced back at Splunk and, for a second, he was afraid she’d elect to stay. Finally, she scooped up her little bag of gear and, in one graceful leap, landed on his shoulder.
Jim nodded and headed into the hallway. A short distance away, he came to one of the many interconnecting ladders between the spokes of the ring and took it hubward. As he climbed, the gravity steadily decreased until he reached the hub of the habitat ring. The spokes spun on massive sealed bearings, though they gave off a constant hiss of escaping pressure. His engineers were working to reseal them, but it wasn’t a high priority.
He floated down the zero-gravity hub into a maintenance corridor. One of the 40 autonomous maintenance drones the Cavaliers had brought was busily scrubbing the walls, maneuvering on little puffs of compressed atmosphere as it worked. Those drones had constructed the map Jim was using in his head to navigate the asteroid and cross to one of the unused bays. His route was carefully chosen, and, as planned, he encountered nobody living. Only more machines.
If he hadn’t had a map, he’d never have known where to stop. He did, though, and Jim turned at a seemingly normal door, grabbed the handle, and used his legs to wrench it open. Inside was a spacesuit with his name on the breast, powered up, and oxygen bottles charged. When he saw the suit’s LED glowing in standby, he heaved a sigh of relief. There was a note clipped to the helmet.
Jimmy,
I don’t know if what you’re doing is right, but your dad always said you had the right stuff, and when the day came, to trust you. So, I’m trusting you now. Come back safe.
Pōmaika’i, little buddy.
Buddha
He’d hoped Buddha would come through for him; now he hoped Hargrave wouldn’t completely lose his shit when he woke up and found his young commanding officer AWOL.
Jim opened the suit and pushed back in alarm. “Quee!” One of the Teachal chirped in surprise and flapped its wings away from the suit. The damned thing was trying to nest in his suit. Splunk eyed it greedily but allowed the creature to flee down the hall.
Jim inspected the suit for any more creatures, then donned it. After a couple of years in space, such an operation was no longer much of a challenge. The only part he disliked was getting Splunk into the suit with him. He’d slimmed down to under 160 kilograms, but it was still snug. Once he had the legs and torso on, he looked for Splunk so she could crawl in, and he saw she was floating next to him in her own spacesuit.
“What the hell?” he asked, surprised. For a second, he thought Adayn had made it for the little Fae.
Splunk was studiously double-checking fittings on the wrists as he examined her suit. The LSU, or life support unit, had clearly been cobbled together from various parts. The helmet was solid, with three fit pieces of glass, and resembled any other common Union spacesuit helmet, except it was perfect for the shape and size of her head, as were the gloves and lower torso. A lot of work and thought had gone into the suit, and he couldn’t make up his mind whose.
“Did you have help with this?” he finally asked.
Splunk nodded as she slid the helmet on, did another seal check, and tapped a control on her forearm. LEDs came to life on the suit’s shoulders, serving as markers and visibility lights. Her personal gear was stowed inside a vacuum bag slung across her body. She looked up at him when she was done. A little light inside her helmet let him see her face. She cocked her head at his curious look, then smiled.
“You never cease to amaze me,” he said. She gave him a thumbs up in response, something he knew for a fact Adayn had taught her. “Radio check,” he called. “Suit tight?”
Her voice came over his radio. “I hear you. Suit’s all right, Jim,
“Okay,” he said, and sealed his own suit.
The lock was manual and meant for emergency use. Once they got the door closed she helped him work the valves and the lock’s atmosphere was spilled into space, exposing them to vacuum. Clearly Splunk’s suit even had internal structure, like his own, so it didn’t turn into an unusable balloon. The outer door opened, and Jim energized his suit’s magnetic clamps. Splunk didn’t appear to have them, but then again, she didn’t appear to need them. Her species was arboreal in nature and even without her tail to help—the one part of the suit it didn’t seem to have—she easily scrambled onto the outside of the station ahead of Jim.
Off to one side was one of Upsilon 4’s marker lights, steadily flashing to indicate the crew dock location. The planet Karma was between Upsilon 4 and the system’s sun, so it was quite dark. A couple of the station’s few functioning flood lights cast beams over the bulbous hull of Bucephalus, holding position just a kilometer from the station. Closer to the station and his current position was the dim outline of another ship.
This one wasn’t as bulbous as Bucephalus, nor as large. This ship was sleek and graceful, with a retracted gravity deck and a teardrop-shaped drive section. Pale Rider, the Cartwright’s family yacht. Jim estimated the distance as 200 meters. He swallowed, a more conscious act in zero gravity. Splunk’s faceplate was turned toward him as her big light-collecting eyes regarded him.
“That’s a long jump,” he said.
* * *
Jimmy Cartwright pulled himself along until he reached the window. It was like a window at their home in Houston, the one overlooking the pond. Funny light was streaming through. He took hold of the handles that ran around the window and looked out…into the endless dark.
He stared for a long moment at the twinkling stars. The sun was there in one corner, hot and yellow, yet somehow blurred. But the stars. So, so many of them. Not like down on Earth. It had seemed like there were so many stars then. Now he realized how wrong he was. How terribly wrong. He felt tiny and scared as a billion billion stars shone. It went on forever, and ever, and ever.
“Daddy!” he cried out and pushed away, spinning out of control across the deck.
* * *
“It’s too far,” Jim said. He was five again, just realizing space went on forever. If he fell away from the station he’d never stop falling. “I should have brought a CASPer.” Only Hargrave was sure to have a watch on the CASPers, guessing Jim would go for one if he was taking off on his own.
“Don’t worry, Jim,
“Splunk!” he exclaimed, his voice almost a squeak of surprise. “What are you doing?”
He co
uld feel the buzz as the cable played out. It was so thin it was invisible. All Jim could see was the gradually disappearing outline of Splunk, which was soon swallowed by the abyss. I don’t like feeling helpless, he thought as she sailed out of sight. I should have jumped.
The cable dispenser was Union technology, creating a practically unbreakable carbon-extruded line up to ten kilometers in length. With nothing else to do, he watched the counter on the slate built onto his suit’s arm. When it reached 289, it stopped. Splunk had reached the ship. A few seconds later, there was a series of gentle tugs on the cable.
Jim ran a length of the cable through a lead built into the right palm of his suit glove. Once it was set, he triggered the Retrieve function. The mechanism drew in the cable, sliding through his hand, and pulled him away from the station. It was a little like a fish being hauled into the boat. In less than a minute Pale Rider drew near.
Jim knew Hargrave would be suspicious his protégé might make a move like this and was likely watching the personnel locks as well as the spacesuit maneuvering packs. He’d forgone them for the same reason he didn’t take a CASPer.
He wasn’t a zero-gravity acrobat. Had he been, Jim would have tucked into a ball, spun on his axis, and landed feet first on the hull. Instead, he estimated the remaining distance and, when it was down to a few meters, he put up both hands, activated the magnetic grapples, and gritted his teeth. He set the device to reel in at only two meters per second. A slow walk, really. But when the hull of Pale Rider slammed into his outstretched arms, it felt like he’d jumped out of a second story window face first.
“Oof!” he grunted as his arms gave way and his helmet smacked against the ship’s metal hull. Despite the grapples his hands bounced off, and he rebounded away a short distance before the tether yanked him back. Luckily, all his velocity was spent, so it was a light bounce. Splunk was there in a flash, examining his helmet with her bright, inquisitive eyes.