Sanctuary Thrive

by Ginger Booth

  Yeah, right. He graded himself a C on the bungee cord challenge. “I’ll ask Remi.”

  “Good. ’Cuz I don’t have a clue,” Sass admitted.

  Clay ducked into med-bay. He set his helmet on a counter and perched on the stool across from Dot, absorbed in her monitor displays. “I need to talk to him.”

  “Don’t raise his blood pressure.”

  Clay deemed that goal unattainable with the excitable Saggy. “How are you feeling, Remi?”

  “Like I smash into a ceramic wall.” The engineer’s eyelids drooped at half-mast. “The Yang-Yang nanites are good, though, yes?”

  “Yes. Remi, we have another problem. We need to patch the hull. Only it’s kind of big. We had trouble standing in the engine nozzle. How do you control a big steel plate to hover next to the hull, but not touching?”

  “How big?” the engineer inquired practically. “Does it weigh more than you? Why do you patch from outside the ship? The hole is below the grav plates?”

  Clay decided the engineer must be on very good drugs indeed. Because he didn’t seem concerned. “Below the… No, it’s on the side of the ship.”

  Remi frowned, puzzled. “Does it cross a pressure bulkhead?”

  “Yes,” Sass supplied, apparently listening in. “Clips the corner of your cabin, Remi. By a centimeter or two.”

  Remi dismissed that with a flutter of his fingers. “This is nothing. This hole, it crosses the floor? The ceiling? Show me.”

  “On your tablet, Clay,” Darren murmured over the channel.

  Clay froze an instant at his first view of the damage, then handed it to Remi.

  Who jerked upright in the med-bay gurney and shrieked, “Mary Mother of God! Ow! Ow-ow-ow…” He subsided to his pillows, hand to his temple.

  Dot pounced. “See what you did? Remi, I’m upping your painkillers.”

  “No!” Clay cried, batting her hand away. “In a minute.”

  Dot smirked. “Too late.”

  Indeed, Remi looked much relieved, collapsed onto his pillow, struggling to keep his eyes open.

  “Dot!” Clay bit off his harangue, and instead leaned down to Remi quickly. “Focus, it’s important. Why did you ask about the pressure bulkheads?”

  “In the way,” Remi replied, faintly puzzled. “You work outside to go around.”

  A light dawned. “This hole, Remi. You would patch it from inside the ship?”

  “Of course.” His eyes drifted closed.

  That made things easier! Clay rose to leave. But he should tell Dot off. No, he should work his priority, and ask Sass to scold Dot. No, first mate always played bad cop to captain’s good cop.

  A mournful brown Saggy eye peeled open again. “Dead?”

  Dot automatically soothed, “That can wait until you’re feeling better.”

  “Clip the corners,” Remi murmured, then sighed into the even breaths of sleep.

  Clay nodded to Dot, and reached for his helmet. She stayed him with a hand.

  “How many dead, Clay? He can’t hear us.” Dot pointed to some waveform on her monitor.

  “First we help the living, then we fix the ship,” Clay insisted. “Mourn later.” Disciplinary chats came after that.

  He returned to Sass’s work area, where Darren ably directed now, leaving Joey at loose ends. “Do we need to prep the crew quarters?”

  “Shop vacuum,” the chief engineer replied. “Clear out the debris.”

  “I couldn’t get through the door,” Sass warned him. “Stuck.”

  After some debate, they decided that cutting a hole in the door was the easiest solution, if Clay and Joey couldn’t open it either. This seemed likely, given the warping impact at one end of that pressure bulkhead.

  Forty-five minutes later, Clay had cut through both outer doors, while Joey cleaned. His girlfriend was simply obliterated. No recognizable parts remained. The one intact body, Clay wrapped in his blanket and set on the catwalk for later. He found the bathroom’s water was merrily subliming into space from ruptured plumbing, so he cut the water supply.

  That loss would hurt, especially combined with the air in the giant hold. The ship stored extra oxygen in the form of water. Now they’d be cutting into their emergency reserves on both.

  Clay shifted to examine the entry hole, to decide whether to cut a hole out of the pressure bulkhead into Remi’s cabin. But the engineers wouldn’t appreciate him adding arbitrary holes. These bulkheads needed to be pressure-safe before anyone could sleep here again.

  “Coming in,” Sass warned. Joey ducked out of the way as she and Darren brought in the first plate, awkward in their pressure suits.

  Clay asked his question, and Darren bent to peer at the awkward problem. “Dot? Any chance Remi can come look at this?”

  “He shouldn’t!”

  Sass shot Clay a look. Time was up. “Dot, I require Mr. Roy here, now. Do you need help to get him upstairs? Immediately.”

  Dot growled a bit over the comms channel, but admitted by now the engineer could walk under his own power if she counteracted the drugs. Sass pursed her lips, at Clay.

  “Medic,” Clay chided, “in future, do not render key personnel unconscious in an emergency.”

  “Well, it’s not as though anyone explained the emergency to me!”

  “Remi. Here. Now. Rocha out.”

  Soon Remi bounded up the stairs four at a time, apparently at some low gravity setting.

  He tipped the first plate to look it over. “I told you, clip the corners.”

  Rather than the steel cutting torch Clay used, Remi simply squirted a gel to define nicely rounded corners, followed by a second gel to activate the first, and within a minute, four corners dropped to the deck.

  Clay felt like an idiot. He could have cut through the doors in a quarter of the time if he’d just known which gel to use.

  Resting on Joey’s bunk, Remi gave directions while Clay and Joey jimmied the plate into place over the hole. After careful consideration, the Saggy determined the easiest way was to turn the plate so one corner stuck into his cabin. That way the pressure bulkhead didn’t need cutting and reconstruction. Which meant they needed to reshape their patch.

  Remi whisked the helpers out of the way. He applied his gels again to cut away the rent metal hull into a tidier-looking hole. He began to hammer-test the adjoining steel, but it set his head aching again.

  Clay took over the hammer, wondering how he would know if the metal was sound. It wasn’t as though he could hear anything. Then his next blow went straight through. Surprised, Clay lost hold of the hammer, which flew away into the stars.

  Darren touched his shoulder to request he get out of the way. The engineer applied another batch of cutting goo around his new hole. With another lobe added to the clean hole, Darren handed Clay another hammer.

  The next time it went through the hull, Clay managed to hold onto the tool. They continued, him hammering and Darren cutting, until they thought only sound hull remained.

  “Bubble test,” Remi decreed, and tossed Clay a couple Sagamore bubble kits.

  Sass glanced up from her tablet. She’d finished clearing debris. Clay wasn’t sure what she was up to now. “Could we burn the engines –?”

  “Ha! No,” Remi replied. “Engine plasma turns bubbles to dust. Clay, attach the first bubble where the welds will go. Then bubble yourself in with it, your end of the room. Then release some of your air. Check if it holds or leaks.”

  Darren marveled, “Brilliant, Remi! I never would have thought of it!”

  “Experience,” Remi acknowledged. “At Hell’s Bells, we fix holes all the time.”

  “Leaks,” Clay reported a few minutes later.

  Remi windmilled his gauntleted hand. “Pop the smoke, find the leak…”

  Right. Clay knew how to find and fix small leaks. In moments, he found the pin-hole and dabbed sealant into it. Rinse and repeat. Remi made Darren patch one of the pinholes with steel for easy practice. It was easier to comprehend the cold
weld task without struggling with an oversized plate.

  Finally they reshaped the plate to the hull curvature in its final orientation. Only then could they clean all surfaces and stick them together. The steel welded itself while they held it in place.

  “Clay,” Remi directed. “Bubble up, find the leaks.”

  These were prodigious, his popped smoke streaming into the plate seemingly from every direction. Clay was glad Remi seem unconcerned, because Sass kept checking the time more anxiously the longer this took. Clay dutifully marked the seepage. It wasn’t quite as extensive as he first thought.

  Remi prompted, “Now Darren. Curve the plate to connect where Clay marked.” He directed them to begin with the tricky edge that nosed into the other cabin.

  Darren took his turn, then Clay’s smoke again, both of them inside the bubble chamber now. The tricky edge quit leaking altogether. A handspan along the top and a few leaks at the bottom remained.

  “Don’t get anxious,” Remi advised. “Just work steadily, get it right. And again.”

  Sure enough, they managed a good seal on the next try.

  Then they had to do it all over again in the other cabin.

  Then they tried to pressurize the hold – at 1%. This failed, but they quickly tracked another pinhole in Remi’s cabin, and sealed it.

  “Captain, we are air-tight!” Clay finally reported in triumph. And he’d been useful after all, he realized in satisfaction. For a lifelong desk jockey, he did OK.

  “Mon capitan.” Remi lay spread-eagled on his own bed now, nursing his headache. “Decelerate at will.”

  “Third officer. To the bridge.” Sass smirked, and offered him a hand up.

  “Cap, what have you been working on all this time?” Clay finally asked.

  “That ship, the one that shot at us. It exceeded max velocity by twelve percent.”

  Remi hissed. “Insane!”

  At Clay’s puzzled look, Sass said, “Talk later. We need to decelerate. Well done, crew. Very impressed, Mr. Rocha.” She smiled at him warmly, as captain, not lover.

  He almost dismissed the compliment. But no, he earned it.

  13

  An hour and a half later, Sass and Remi finished their freshly recalculated braking burns. Due to the delay, they elected to gravity-brake around the planet instead of a standard orbit to arrival. This added a half day to their trip, but Sass figured that was just as well.

  She hailed her first officer. “Clay, are you free yet?” His current task was to settle the surviving crew – put their one body away and keep Joey distracted from his lost girlfriend.

  “Still need room assignments for tonight,” he replied.

  “Report to the bridge.”

  When Clay arrived, Remi suggested, “I sleep in my own bed. Corky won’t mind sharing her door. But Joey shouldn’t be alone. So maybe Joey in my cabin with me?”

  “But that’s not a pressure-tight compartment,” Clay argued.

  Remi shot him a withering raised eyebrow. “And where would you place the bubble?”

  “Right, sorry.”

  “I start fixing the pressure bulkheads tomorrow, but.”

  Sass interrupted, “We have more pressing concerns, gentlemen. We were shot at. We need to speak to a human being on the surface immediately. Or retaliate. I’m thinking a 30 minute warning.”

  “But Sass…” Clay’s voice trailed off as she glared at him in steely resolve.

  “I agree,” Remi noted for the record. “Clay, that ship that fires on us? She exploded.” Remi mimed a ka-boom and swept his fingers to indicate the vague direction of its demise. “Gone.”

  Clay recoiled. “Self-destruct?”

  “We suspect idiocy,” Sass explained. “Reading the drive trails, it began decelerating the moment after it fired at us. But not soon enough. It exceeded the rated speed limit for a JO-3. And paid the ultimate price. Good riddance.”

  Clay still looked puzzled, so Remi explained. “At this speed, a speck of space dust can destroy a ship. The ESD, she has no reaction time. This is why we don’t fly faster.”

  Sass growled, “Couldn’t happen to a nicer ship. Bastards. Let’s choose a target. Say five klicks from the nearest structure? Land shot, I think. I don’t want to muck up the water supply. It’s pitiful enough already.”

  “Maybe the second shot,” Remi suggested.

  Their visuals on the planet were good now. Sass proposed a demonstration target site. Remi simulated a visualization of how the pyrotechnics would appear from the colony proper, and the debris field radius, give or take. Sass wasn’t averse to some wayward gravel pelting the colony dome and scratching the windows. Based on his projections, she decided to shift the target inward to 3.5 klicks, to demolish a scenic outcrop of rocks.

  In Remi’s mockup – and the ex-miner had ample experience – that hill would make for an unforgettable show with about 8 seconds of loving attention from their main guns. Based on the surface colors, he hoped for some purple and pink flames from strontium and lithium. Though they might be overpowered by a burning geyser of golden sodium.

  “I love rock explosions!” Remi noted in rapture.

  “Sass, devil’s advocate,” Clay cautioned. “Some steps are unforgivable. Maybe one more round of talks is in order before issuing threats.”

  Sass pressed her lips in rage. “Seven deaths, Clay. You’re right. Some acts are unforgivable and must be answered in kind.”

  “Another drive trail comes from the asteroid belt,” Remi updated him. “Nanomage class, ETA five days.”

  “And no hails,” Sass gritted out, each word lashing out separately, accompanied by a rap on the dashboard. “When you play devil’s advocate, Clay…”

  “Careful not to sound like the devil,” Remi happily completed the thought.

  Clay held up his hands in surrender. “Agreed.”

  Sass was too angry to bother pre-recording. She just flipped on her comms channel to the colony and began speaking live, her words irreclaimable. “Sanctuary Colony, this is Captain Sassafras Collier of the starship Thrive, Mahina Colony, Aloha Star System. Your attack on my ship was an act of war, resulting in the deaths of seven of my crew. Our retaliatory strike will be in precisely 30 minutes.”

  She rattled off the coordinates. Remi set the timer with relish.

  “I suggest you relocate all personnel away from the vicinity. And I demand to speak to a human in charge immediately. Thrive out.”

  Her comms lit up almost instantly. Little lag time remained to the planet now, a mere 4 second round trip.

  The second avatar appeared on Sass’s dashboard. She tossed his feed up onto the window in front of her for Clay’s viewing convenience. She scowled. His face had aged, and his body language was more credible. But Remi shook his head to confirm – zero reaction time. They’d reached the damned answering machine again.

  “Thrive! This is Mayor Zeb Tharsis of New Hellas Colony on Sanctuary. The attack on your ship is complete news to us. Please hold your fire while we straighten this out.” He gave her a smarmy smile.

  “Sanctuary Control, be advised. Our first strike is non-negotiable,” Sass barked back. “Our second strike remains open to discussion. That one goes in your damned lake. I have been talking to your rego-damned answering machine for months! And you? Are another instance of her. Have a nice day, AI!”

  She clicked off the comms in disgust and turned to Remi. “Can we identify yet where exactly that computer is located?”

  “Sass, don’t,” Clay cautioned. “That’s a true act of war.”

  Remi pointed to the map. “This is a nice island, two klicks from town. Lovely shock wave and tsunami. Billowing water vapor, kilometers into the air. The winds will spread it in a tail to the southwest. I hope Alkali Lake means calcium. Burns such a lovely shade of red.”

  “Perfect, I like it!” Sass agreed with enthusiasm. “That strike will damage the colony?”

  “Almost certainly,” Remi agreed. “Waterworks. Repairable.”
>
  Clay growled, “You two are enjoying this too much. We’re trying to avoid war.”

  “Are we, Clay?” Sass countered. “They fired on us, without warning. My crew is dead!”

  Remi observed, “She is a very big lake. We don’t need these people. If there are people. All we know so far is the AI.”

  Sass pursed her lips as the next hail arrived, fully minutes after the last. Remi bobbed his head so-so beside her. It was possible a human was calling.

  But no. The same face came on the screen. His outfit had changed, to a shade of pale brick, wrinkling more credibly around the joints. His face bore credible wrinkles and pores, too. His breast patch carried his putative name, Col. Tharsis, and the old astrology glyph for Mars.

  “Thrive! Colonel Zeb Tharsis of New Hellas Colony. Stand down and walk me through this! Who are you? Who fired at you? What on Earth is going on?”

  “On Earth?” Clay mused. “He looks real.”

  Sass flicked on her comms and explained who she was and why she was here. “Colonel Tharsis, your system answering machine is a medieval torture chamber. We will fire on the coordinates given. Our first strike is non-negotiable. You killed seven of my crew, and I am very pissed off.”

  “Captain Collier, I don’t know what to say. My people killed no one. We didn’t fire at you. We don’t have guns capable of that. Our system AI monitors communications. I wasn’t aware a visitor was inbound. Now I know, and I will confer with other community leaders.”

  Sass was unimpressed. “Who fired at us? It was a PO-3 skyship. Or JO-3, I suppose.”

  “I don’t know. I will get you that answer,” Tharsis attempted.

  “Colonel Tharsis, I suggest you get that answer quickly,” Sass replied. “The coordinates of our second strike are…” She rattled off the location of Remi’s choice of island. “That will land 30 minutes after the first strike. Unless I am convinced that you’ve muzzled whatever morons murdered my crew! And colonel, that will take some convincing. Because there’s a second ship headed straight for us!”