by David Mack
Beiana reached the outer ring and anchored himself with a firm grip on the handhold beside the airlock’s control panel. He keyed in his command code. The panel switched from amber to green, indicating it was ready to receive instructions. He looked back at his crew and finished his head count as Septen emerged from Spoke Six. “Everybody listen up. Only two of us can fit inside the airlock at a time. I’ll control the hatches and the pressurization sequence from out here, so once you’re inside, all you need to do is make a short spacewalk to whatever ship happens to be on the other side of the outer hatch.”
Faint peals of metal-on-metal reverberated through the station’s hull. They were few and far between, their percussion erratic, but within seconds they became noticeably more frequent and pronounced. Beiana knew he didn’t have to tell his crew what those sounds meant. The leading edge of a barrage of asteroids and satellite debris had arrived. They were out of time.
“Eyes on me, folks. Here’s how it’ll work: Heelar and Professor Mufungo, you’re going out first. Doctor Kaolula—”
Panicked, Heelar cut in, “Why us? Why are we going first?”
“Reverse order of seniority. Junior specialists first, senior specialist and junior engineer next, and so on. As I was saying, Doctor Kaolula and Engineer Nasutas will be the second pair out. Doctor Pylus and Engineer Nelonnuk go third. Major Septen and I will go last.” He pressurized the airlock and released the inner hatch. A pull on its lever, and it swung open. Beiana ushered Heelar and Mufungo through the hatchway. “Let’s move like the water’s hot.”
Mufungo and Heelar crowded inside the airlock. Beiana shut the door and secured its seals, then depressurized the tiny compartment.
As the pressure gauge counted down to zero, the station shuddered like a palsied beast, and the patter of tiny strikes on its outer skin grew louder. Behind them, the lights in Spoke Six stuttered and went out, and then the distant glow of the core module dimmed. Beiana caught Septen’s eye. “See if you can patch into the master board from that aux panel.”
Major Septen floated to the auxiliary control panel, opened its protective cover plate, and activated it with a few careful taps. “It’s working—for now.”
“Close all the interior hatches you can, starting with the two on either side of us, then the ones inside Spoke Six. We need to contain hull breaches for as long as possible. The last thing we need is to get sucked into space by an explosive decompression.”
“Understood.” Septen set to work with a manic focus, overriding failing circuits with the deft touch of a master. Seconds later, the emergency hatches in the outer ring on either side of Airlock Two rolled closed, as did the nearest hatch inside Spoke Six. “So far, so good, sir. I’m working on the rest of them now, working outward from our position.”
“Well done. Keep at it.”
The pressure gauge for the airlock registered zero. Beiana set the outer hatch’s release to standby and wondered how long it would be before he and his crew could start their evacuation.
His answer came seconds later, in the form of a shadow falling across the outer hatch’s view port—the silhouette of a vessel whose like he had never seen before.
If this was a hoax, it was the most welcome deception he’d ever suffered.
• • •
The main viewscreen was packed edge to edge with the image of Space Station Xenopus and the steady incoming flurry of debris that careened in dizzying blurs off its outer ring and twelve spokes. Between the spokes radiating from the core module, Theriault glimpsed slivers of the planet’s surface far below—and then the Sagittarius dropped level with the outside of the ring, facing an airlock lit from within by an emerald glow.
Nizsk fired the thrusters to arrest the Sagittarius in front of the alien station’s airlock. “Commander, we are in position. Be advised, I might need to make manual adjustments to compensate for shifts caused by debris and asteroid impacts.”
“Can’t you program an autostabilization to hold our position?”
“I tried,” the insectoid helm officer said. “Interference from the improbability field is making automated systems unreliable. But I can compensate without them.”
“Understood. Good work, Ensign.” Theriault used the command chair’s armrest controls to open an internal channel. “Bridge to Torvin. Is the ladderway hatch secured?”
The enlisted engineer replied over the comm, “Good to go, sir.”
She switched the intraship channel to the cargo deck. “Bridge to Sorak. Depressurize the cargo deck, then stand by to open the ventral hatch.”
“Depressurization sequence initiated,” the acting first officer said.
Now or never. Theriault switched to the standby channel to the station. “Space Station Xenopus, this is the Sagittarius. We’re in position. Start your evacuation.”
The reply came quickly. “Sagittarius, this is Commander, Xenopus. Here we come.”
She closed the channel and drew a calming breath. “Look sharp, everyone.” The crew tensed at the booming thud of something ricocheting off the ship’s duranium hull. With one eye trained warily on the overhead, Theriault observed, “This ride’s about to get a little rough.”
• • •
The magnetic tether transmitted little sound through Sorak’s pressure suit as he affixed it to the bulkhead beside the ventral ramp of the Sagittarius. Through his suit’s broad faceplate he took in his surroundings one more time, to ensure nothing had changed since before he had suited up. Everything in the ship’s cramped storage hold was firmly secured, and the pressure gauge beside the ramp’s control panel showed the cargo deck had been fully depressurized.
He used the interface on the left arm of his suit to open an intraship channel. “Sorak to Bridge. The hold is at zero pressure and my tether is secure. Standing by to open the ramp.”
“Clear to proceed,” Theriault said. “Open the ramp and begin recovery.”
“Acknowledged.” He entered commands on the control panel, lowering the ramp. Wisps of vapor escaped its hydraulic system as it parted from the aft section of the ship’s saucer.
Searing daylight reflected off the exterior of the Austaran space station outside. Despite the polarization of his suit’s faceplate, Sorak squinted at the abrupt flood of harsh light. His inner eyelids constricted, a reflexive response that traced its roots to his ancestors’ need to withstand prolonged exposure to the harsh desert sun on his homeworld of Vulcan. In a matter of seconds his sight adjusted to the new levels of glare. Directly ahead of him was one of the station’s airlocks. Through a view port in its outer hatch, he saw two forms inside.
“Bridge, ventral ramp is open. I have visual contact with the station’s airlock. The path is clear of obstacles and safe for spacewalk. They can begin crossing over when ready.”
“Understood,” Theriault said. “Passing the message to the station now.”
He moved closer to the near edge of the ramp, to position himself to assist the station’s crew in their brief jaunt through vacuum to the safe haven of the Sagittarius. Several meters away, a wheel turned on the outside of the station’s airlock hatch, and the lights that ringed the hatchway turned from green to gold. Then the thick portal swung outward in a languid arc.
The first person out of the airlock flailed and tumbled. To Sorak, it was not unlike watching a novice cadet blunder through zero-g training at Starfleet Academy basic training. It seemed odd to him that someone who dwelled in null gravity aboard a space station should seem so maladroit during a spacewalk, but then he reasoned it out. Based on the evidence at hand, he concluded that the station’s first evacuee was not accustomed to wearing the bulky pressure suit required for working in a vacuum. To Sorak, that suggested this person was a short-term assignee to the station, perhaps a research specialist on a brief rotation into orbital duty.
The Austaran bumped against and rebounded from the
ramp without finding purchase. In the interest of moving things along, Sorak ventured farther down the ramp and took hold of the visitor’s sleeve. In zero gravity it took only a fraction of his Vulcan strength to launch the alien to the far end of the cargo hold, clearing the way for the next person to exit the airlock.
Moving with only slightly more confidence than the first evacuee, the station’s second crew member out of the airlock bounced and swung in clumsy arcs while trying to shut the airlock’s outer hatch. Behind him, furious blurs of fast-moving metal debris streaked through the gaps between the station’s spokes. A few projectiles made sharp changes of trajectory after striking the station, but most of those that made contact tore off chunks of the structure, turning its mass into additional fodder for the fast-moving orbital storm.
Sorak reminded himself of the low probability of any single bit of wreckage striking the Austaran making a spacewalk at the moment, but then he remembered that the laws of probability presently were not reliable guides for the assessment of risk on this planet, or perhaps anywhere within this star system. It was as if all outcomes had been reduced to the simplicity of either/or. The spacewalking crew member would either reach the Sagittarius . . . or not.
The second evacuee secured the airlock’s outer hatch, then pushed off toward the Sagittarius. Sorak risked moving farther down the ramp, almost to its end, to hasten his retrieval of the imperiled astronaut. The Austaran floated toward him, an awkward spectacle if ever Sorak had seen one. Entrusting his safety to the grip of his magnetic tether on the ship’s hull, Sorak reached out with both hands to the desperate Austaran and caught his foot. He pulled the alien toward him and caught the scaly, bulbous-eyed visitor in a friendly embrace. The Austaran opened all three eyestalks wide in surprise at the sight of Sorak, who limited his own reaction to a subtle arching of his left eyebrow. A curious species. They seem easily alarmed.
With a jerk of his arm, he sent the second refugee tumbling through the cargo hold to collide with his—or her; Sorak couldn’t reliably assess their genders, if any—predecessor.
He fell back to stabilize the pair and secure them inside the hold with safety lines and magnetic tethers affixed to the forward bulkhead. As soon as they were safely anchored, he moved back toward the aft ramp and used the controls on his suit’s forearm to reopen his intraship comm channel. “Sorak to Bridge. The first two evacuees are safely aboard. Standing by to receive their next pair.”
“Good work,” Theriault said. “The station commander is sending them over now.”
A large chunk of fast-moving space junk slammed through a distant part of the station, which pitched and yawed in response to the collision. As the outer ring swung upward toward the Sagittarius, it occurred to Sorak that their own chances of surviving this hastily conceived rescue mission might in fact have just gone from fifty percent to zero.
• • •
There was no gravity in space, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t momentum, or mass. A fearsome roar shook Station Xenopus, and Commander Beiana felt his surroundings swing into motion around him. “Grab something!” he shouted at the others.
Everyone reached for handholds or levers or even the thin lip of coaming around the edge of a bulkhead. Through the airlock’s view port, the dusting of stars became a dark blur, followed by a streak of bluish-green light as their vantage swung past their homeworld. Their newfound momentum robbed them of the liberty of free fall and pinned them against the ring’s inner bulkhead and overhead. All the while, more bangs of impact rocked the station, and deep thundering, though distant, told Beiana sections of the station were being ripped apart.
He raised his voice to cut through the din. “No more time for going by the book! Pylus, depressurize the airlock and this section. We’re opening both the inner and outer doors and moving out, single file, as soon as we can!”
Doctor Pylus protested, “To where? We’re in a chaotic spin! How are we supposed—”
His rant cut off as the silhouette of the Sagittarius reappeared outside the view port of the airlock. To the surprise of Beiana—and also, it seemed, everyone else—the alien vessel was moving with the station despite its erratic tumbling, holding station outside Airlock Two.
The senior engineer’s eyes bulged almost as wide as his vocal sac did. “But . . . how? How are they . . . That . . . that’s not possible!”
Beiana regarded the strange vessel with awe. “Apparently, for them, it is.”
The alien commander’s voice crackled once more through his helmet’s transceiver. “Station Xenopus, this is Sagittarius. Are your people all right? Please respond.”
“Affirmative, Sagittarius. All hands accounted for and unharmed.”
“Are you ready to continue?”
“Absolutely! We’re all coming out now, single file. Stand ready to receive us.”
“Understood. Standing by.”
Beiana pointed at the airlock’s control panel. “Pylus! Purge this section and the airlock!”
The engineer keyed in the override codes and vented the remaining air from their isolated section of the outer ring. Then he purged the interior of the airlock and released the safety locks on both hatches. He looked back at Beiana. “Good to go.”
“Kaolula, Nasutas. You’re up. Nelonnuk, Pylus, fall in behind Nasutas. Septen, you’re in front of me.” The group formed a line, with their medical specialist leading the way. Kaolula pulled open the inner hatch and floated through the airlock. By the time Nasutas followed him into the airlock, the doctor was already throwing the lever on the outer hatch, which he pushed open ahead of himself. Because both portals were open at once, amber warning lights flashed inside the airlock as well as in the outer ring and on the exterior hull.
Ahead of them, glowing an eerie bluish white, was the open belly of the alien starship. Behind it pinwheeled a blurred vista of stars and the bright smear of Anura as the station whipped past it in a wild roll at velocities Beiana could hardly dare to conceive.
In the absence of atmosphere, there was no longer any sound of the calamity raining down on Station Xenopus, but Beiana still felt the titanic skeleton of the station shudder from each punishing blow. Engineer Nasutas, perched in the outer hatchway, must have felt the same death throes from the station, because she turned suddenly and looked back at Beiana and the others. He met her fearful stare with a decisive thrust of his finger toward the alien vessel. “Keep moving!”
In front of her, Kaolula tumbled like a bag of hammers into the waiting embrace of an alien crew member in a space suit not so different from those of Beiana and his crew. Seeing the hand of charity reaching out to meet his people, Beiana dared to hope for a moment that he and his people were all going to make it out of this mess, and that there was nothing to fear.
Then another disastrous collision slammed into Station Xenopus and threw him and the rest of the crew back against the bulkheads, prisoners of momentum and centripetal force, as the station was forced into a new, faster, and more violent spin.
A man of science, Beiana couldn’t bring himself to believe in miracles.
Which was how he knew he was about to die.
• • •
Chunks of high-velocity shrapnel hit the station in a steady barrage, blasting away entire sections of its outer ring and radial spokes. Each collision birthed a new cloud of wreckage, some of which hurtled away on the same vectors as the impacts that spawned them, while other pieces spun off in various directions, creating new and unpredictable hazards.
Watching the spectacle erupt on the main viewscreen, Theriault was mesmerized. It all felt so unreal. Her whole life she had taken shields and navigational deflectors for granted. It horrified her to witness the destructive power of unshielded impacts on a structure that lacked even the rudimentary reinforcement of an interior structural integrity field.
A huge slab of rock slammed into the far side of the station
and sent the entire structure into an erratic dance through the incoming asteroid swarm. She clamped her hands onto the command chair’s armrests. “Brace for impact!”
Razka, who had taken over Sorak’s post at tactical, grabbed hold of the edge of his console, while Dastin did his best to take hold of the end of the sensor panel. At the combined helm and navigation station, however, Nizsk planted her lower appendages wide in front of her and continued to tap commands into the flight controls.
The hull of the Sagittarius pealed from a steadily worsening series of minor collisions, but the image on the main viewer, despite some jerking shifts and corrections, remained focused on the station’s airlock, even as the disintegrating alien structure rolled and yawed with wild randomness in the grip of the barrage.
Baffled by the seeming impossibility of such a feat of piloting, Theriault hollered above the deafening clamor, “Nizsk! How are we holding station?”
“Tractor beam,” the pilot-navigator said through her vocoder. “Minimum power. Not enough to move the station. Just enough to hold us in place.”
It was simple, elegant, and—in hindsight—obvious. “Good work, Ensign!”
“Thank you, sir.”
Theriault thumbed open the channel to the cargo deck. “Sorak! Report!”
“The rest of the station’s crew is unable to leave the airlock. They appear to be trapped.”
She looked at Dastin, who was already checking the sensors. “What’s going on?”
“They’re pinned to the bulkheads,” Dastin said. “Centripetal force, from the station’s movement.” He looked up from the sensor hood. “They’re pulling at least eight gees in there.”
A deafening boom rocked the ship hard enough to make Theriault wince. Razka swiveled away from the tactical panel. “Commander, we can’t stay here forever. If they can’t move—”
“We’re not leaving them! Not yet.” She opened the channel to engineering. “Bridge to Threx! We need a miracle, and we need it now!”
Threx answered with trademark calm, “Miracles are what we do, sir. Name it.”