Terms of Enlistment

by Marko Kloos

  “Isn’t your watch over?” she asks. “It’s 2230.”

  “Yeah, I’m off. I just wanted to hang around to watch us go into orbit. Here, check it out.”

  I point to the screen of my admin deck. She leans forward to look at it, and puts her flight log aside.

  “Wow. That’s Willoughby? I didn’t realize we were already this close.”

  “We’ll be in orbit soon. Aren’t you supposed to play taxi with those drop ships of yours?”

  “Yeah, but not until 0600 tomorrow morning. I guess they’re not set up for nighttime deliveries down there.”

  We look at the globe of azure and brown that’s slowly shifting around underneath the ship. It looks a lot like Earth, but there’s also something profoundly different about Willoughby. I’ve seen the familiar picture of Terra from orbit often enough that looking at a planet with completely different continent shapes feels a bit disorienting.

  “Look at that,” Halley says. “Continents, and oceans, and everything. Looks a lot like Earth, doesn’t it? Do you think they have wildlife down there?”

  “I have no idea,” I reply. “I don’t know how that terraforming thing works. Did they get to bring livestock from Earth when they set up the colony?”

  “Maybe in a tube, as genetic samples or embryos. I doubt they would have wasted the cargo space on that colony ship for a herd of live cattle. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to transport a whole cow forty-two light years across the galaxy?”

  The ship lurches to the side so hard that I lose my footing and stumble against one of the databank racks. Halley lets out a surprised shout.

  “What the fuck was that?” I ask when I regain my balance.

  The overhead lights flicker, and switch to the red-orange combat lighting scheme. The overhead starts to announce Combat Stations, but whoever’s doing the announcement in CIC only makes it halfway through “Combat…” before the audio cuts out with a squelch. Then there’s the sound of explosive decompression coming from the deck below us. The ship lurches again, much more violently than before, and the sudden jolt throws me into another rack of equipment. The side of my head collides with the unyielding edge of a data storage cabinet, and then I’m prone on the rubberized deck and rapidly slipping into unconsciousness. I hear Halley screaming, and I register the thumping of the emergency locks on the NNC hatch, and then my brain turns off the lights.

  Chapter 19

  I wake up to the sensation of cool air hitting my face. The right side of my head feels wet and sticky, and when I touch my fingers to my forehead, I feel a deep, bloody gash over my right eyebrow. It’s dark, and eerily quiet. All I can hear is the familiar soft humming of the data storage racks. I look up to see Halley standing above me.

  “On your feet, sailor. We’re in deep shit.”

  She looks at the gash on the side of my face and winces sympathetically.

  “That looks awful. You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ll live.”

  My admin deck is on the floor over by the rear bulkhead. I walk over to it and pick it up to find that the deck is still running, none worse for the wear. I put it back onto the desk in front of the admin console. Then I lean over to press the button on the priority voice link to CIC.

  “CIC, Networks.”

  There is no reply, and Halley shakes her head.

  “Already tried that. The circuit’s fried. I haven’t heard shit over the 1MC, either. Place is quiet as a tomb.”

  I tap into the system with the admin deck, and it doesn’t take long for me to realize that the Versailles is profoundly broken. Virtually every vital subsystem shows a long string of emergency alerts and error messages.

  “Holy shit,” I say. Halley steps next to me to look at my admin deck’s screen.

  “What is it?”

  “Power circuits are out—everything down to the tertiary. That’s not supposed to happen, ever. We’re running off our backup power cells.”

  “What about the reactor?” she asks. I check the engineering section, and an unwelcome feeling of dread gives my stomach a little twist.

  “It’s out. We’re dead in space. This is not good.”

  “Yeah, I kind of figured we’re in deep shit.”

  I scroll down the list of priority system messages, and my feeling of dread turns into borderline panic.

  “The Abandon Ship order came twenty fucking minutes ago.”

  “Holy shit,” Halley says again. “How long were we out?”

  “Almost an hour, it looks like.”

  Halley walks over to the hatch and pounds on the control box with her fist.

  “We got a red light,” she says. “Not enough breathable air on the other side. It won’t let us open.”

  “Well, how the fuck are we going to get out of here? I’d rather not suffocate on this can, you know?”

  “Chill out, Andrew. Check your toy, and let’s figure out how to get out of this room before the air runs out.”

  I check the system for the location of the nearest unused escape pod, only to unearth more bad news.

  “Fuck. They’re all gone.”

  “What’s all gone?”

  “The pods. They all launched. There’s not a single escape pod left in the hull. The last one launched seven minutes ago.”

  Halley throws her hands up in an exasperated gesture that looks almost comically understated, considering our circumstances.

  “Well, isn’t that just fucking awesome.”

  “I can blow the lock on that hatch remotely with the admin deck, I think, but we won’t have any air to breathe.”

  “Or any way off the damn ship.” She pauses for a moment, and then snaps her fingers.

  “Can you see if the drop ship is still on the flight deck?”

  “Yeah, hang on.”

  I flick through a dozen status pages and submenus until I reach the optical feed from the flight deck camera. The feed shows an empty set of docking clamps over a sealed drop hatch. The flight deck is empty and dark.

  “It’s gone. Looks like your pals left without you.”

  “Well,” Halley says. “Then that’s that.”

  “Don’t you guys have more than one drop ship on this tub?”

  I see excitement in her face, which is a lot better than the fear that was there just a moment ago.

  “Yeah, the spare. It’s in the far corner of the flight deck, in a berth. Can you see that on the camera feed?”

  I cycle through all the visual feeds from the flight deck. Finally, one of the overhead camera lenses gives me a perfect oblique view of a Wasp-class drop ship.

  “There it is. Looks like they didn’t want to take the time to fire that one up, too.”

  Halley leans over my shoulder and studies the screen.

  “That bird is dry and bare—no fuel, no ordnance. Even if we can lock it into the clamps and drop it out of the hatch, we’ll go in ballistic. We’re too close to that planet.”

  “Well,” I say, “isn’t the refueler automated?”

  “Yeah. The ordnance monkeys have to load the ammo by hand, but the computer does the refueling. I have no idea how to work it, though. They usually have it filled up and ready by the time they hand me the keys, you know.”

  “Well, I don’t know how to do it, either, but I bet the computer does.”

  For a minute or two, I dig through the systems that are still talking to the Neural Network, expecting the automated flight deck modules to be offline, or the system objecting to my poking around with a security lockout. Luckily, neither event comes to pass. The refueling module on the flight deck is active and idle, waiting for human input. I log into the refueling console remotely, and point to the screen of my admin deck to draw Halley’s attention to the menus.

  “That’s gotta be the one,” she says, tapping the screen over the menu item that says “READY FIVE LAUNCH PREP”.

  “Good thing they label their stuff clearly,” I say, and activate the sequence. The menu status
changes to “INITIATED/IN PROGRESS”, and I switch back to the optical feed to make sure that something is really happening down on the flight deck. Near the drop ship, a warning strobe starts flashing. As we watch, the robotic arm of the refueling module comes into view and swivels around the Wasp to dock with the refueling port in the top of the hull.

  “That takes care of the gas,” I say. “How long does it take for the tanks to fill up?”

  “Ten minutes,” she replies. “Another five to fire up the avionics and do the pre-flight self-checks, and two to move the whole thing over to the drop hatch.”

  There’s a low rumble going through the hull that makes the floor shake slightly underneath our feet. Over by the data storage modules, something starts to beep, and all the lights in the room go out briefly. When they come back on, all the storage banks in the NNC fall silent at once. I’ve never been in this room without hearing the drone of the cooling elements for the storage banks, and the lack of background noise is ominous.

  “I think your shit just broke,” Halley says flatly.

  “Yeah, no kidding,” I reply.

  My admin deck is still running, and the local telemetry is still up, but the link to the hangar bay systems is gone. The neural network of a warship is terrifically resilient, backup data links on top of backup links, but now I can’t see anything beyond the local telemetry range, half a deck in either direction. Something big just broke, and the Versailles is dying. If the link had gone down twenty seconds earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to verify the presence of the drop ship on the flight deck, much less activate the refueling sequence.

  “Let’s get out of here while we still can,” I say.

  “No argument,”Halley replies tersely. “Let’s.”

  I can’t see much through the viewport of the NNC’s hatch. The corridor outside is dark, and I can’t tell whether there’s smoke outside, or hard vacuum. The system only knows that opening the door would be dangerous, so the safety lock keeps the hatch closed.

  “Can you unlock that with your toy?” Halley asks, pointing to my admin deck.

  “Yeah, I can override the safety. There’s no air on the other side, though. It’ll blow all the air out of this room, and then we’ll suffocate.”

  “What about the NIFTIs? We got a ton of those on every deck.”

  “Of course,” I grin, and feel like slapping my forehead for overlooking the obvious. The NIFTIs—Navy Infrared Thermal Imagers—are stored in emergency lockers on every deck on the ship. They’re little masks with infrared goggles and a small oxygen supply, designed to let a crewmember see and breathe in the event of a major fire on the ship. I open the admin deck and check the emergency chart for the nearest NIFTI locker.

  “There are three right on the bulkhead just before the aft staircase,” I say. “Twenty yards to the left. Think you can hold your breath that long?”

  “I guess we’ll find out. If I faint, you’ll just have to drag me, you fierce combat grunt.”

  “Like I have a choice,” I say. “I can’t fly a drop ship for shit.”

  We both laugh, even though we’re scared almost witless.

  “Where are we going after we get the NIFTIs on?”

  I consult the admin deck again.

  “Staircase, and down to Deck Seven. This thing doesn’t show any fires. We should be okay with the infrared from the NIFTIs. Just watch your step.”

  “Let’s hope your toy is right about that,” Halley says as she zips up the collar of her flight suit. “I’d hate to open a hatch and get baked.”

  “Check the hatches with your hand before you open them,” I say, recalling the firefighting lessons from Navy Indoc.

  “Right. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I don’t really want to trade the relative safety of the NNC and its autonomous oxygen supply for the air-deprived corridors on the other side of that access hatch, but there’s no way of knowing how much longer the Versailles is going to hold together. I open the admin deck and find my way to the emergency override for the fireproof hatch in front of us. Once again, I expect the system to refuse my request, but the light on the door panel switches from red to green without complaint. I close the lid of the admin deck and stow the device in its carry pouch.

  “Ready?” Halley asks, her hand on the door release.

  “Left turn, twenty yards. Ready,” I say. “Go.”

  Halley slaps the hatch release with her palm, and the locking bolts on the hatch retract with a loud clacking sound. Then she pulls the hatch open, and the room immediately starts filling with smoke. We step over the threshold of the hatch and rush out into the passageway.

  The air outside smells toxic and acrid, like smoldering insulation. My eyes start burning as soon as we step out into the dark corridor. There’s no light anywhere, not even the emergency strobes that should be running until the ship’s battery banks are depleted. I stretch out my right arm and use the walls of the passageway to guide myself along. In front of me, Halley lets out a series of rasping coughs, and after a few moments, I follow suit. The air out here burns in my lungs, and I have no doubt that we’ll be dead soon if we don’t find the NIFTI lockers.

  The distance from the NNC hatch to the nearest row of NIFTI lockers is only twenty-five yards, but in the smoke-filled darkness, it feels like much more. I’m holding my breath to keep the toxic-smelling fumes out of my lungs, and by the time we reach the lockers, my system is screaming for fresh air. Halley pulls the locker doors open, and fumbles around in the dark before handing me one of the NIFTIs. I put the mask on in a hurry, and bite down on the mouthpiece to activate the unit. A moment later, I have clean, oxygen-infused air streaming into my lungs. The air in the little NIFTI tank tastes like old socks, but it beats the hell out of the noxious blend of fumes that’s now permeating this section of the Versailles. The goggles of the NIFTI turn on automatically, and I can once again see my surroundings, albeit in the alien red tinge of the infrared imager.

  Halley takes the lead as we take the staircase down to the lower decks. When she reaches the landing of Deck Seven, she puts her hand on the access hatch to the corridor, and I reach out and tap her shoulder. She turns around, and I point to the admin deck over my shoulder, and then to the hatch in turn. Halley nods, and I take the bag off my shoulder to pull out the deck and turn it on to check what’s in store for us on the other side.

  There’s no fire in the passageway beyond, but there’s no breathable air, either. I wave Halley closer and type a message to that effect. She looks at the screen and nods, giving me a thumbs-up for good measure. Then she flips the latch and throws open the hatch.

  There are a few bodies in this section of corridors. Somebody in enlisted work blues lies crumpled up against a bulkhead, a dark pool of blood spread underneath his head. Halley turns him on his back, but even through the fuzzy, red-tinged image of the NIFTI goggles, it’s pretty clear that this sailor is beyond help. There’s blood all over his face, thick streams of it coagulating underneath his nostrils and around his mouth, and his eyes are half open. Halley lowers his upper body back to the deck.

  The next section of the ship has emergency power. The red ceiling lights are on, and the orange floor markers designating the escape pod hatches are blinking in an urgent rhythm. Every time we pass a pod hatch, I check it just to make sure the computer didn’t feed me any misinformation, but every single pod on the deck is gone, and its hatch sealed.

  The flight deck is in the center of Deck Seven. It takes up the middle of the deck between the main port and starboard passageways. Halley walks up to the control box for the hatch and enters her credentials. The light on the panel flicks from amber to green, the locking bolts of the hatch retract obediently, and the hatch opens with a sigh of expelled air.

  Inside, in the darkness, the drop ship is still in its berth by the wall, with the refueling hose still pumping fuel into the tanks. The only light in here is the flashing warning beacon on the ceiling that’s painting the inside of th
e hangar in dim, orange light. Halley closes the flight deck hatch behind us, and the little air safety indicator on the lower edge of my NIFTI’s thermal imager goes from red to orange, and then green. There’s still breathable air in the hangar bay. I pull the NIFTI off my head and take a very small breath to test the computer’s assessment. The air in here smells like fuel, but it’s fine otherwise. I give Halley a thumbs-up, and she follows my example.

  “I wish those things had voice comms built in,” she says as she pulls the NIFTI’s hood off her head.

  “Yeah, I know. Shouldn’t that bird be fueled up by now?” I nod at the drop ship, still secure in its berth.

  “It should,” Halley says. “Go and grab a flight helmet out of that locker over there. I’ll go check on the ship.”

  Just as I take a helmet out of the locker she pointed out, the ceiling lights all come alive, bathing the flight deck in bright light that hurts my eyes after stumbling through NIFTI-enhanced darkness for ten minutes. I open my mouth to say something to Halley, but then the lights go out again, and this time the orange warning strobe on the ceiling goes out with them, leaving the hangar in complete darkness. The low droning sound from the refueling unit stops as well.

  “Shit,” Halley says into the darkness. “There goes the battery power.”

  I pull the NIFTI over my head again to turn on the infrared imager. Over by the drop ship, Halley opens an access hatch. She waves me over with a hurried gesture, and then climbs into the Wasp. As I follow her into the drop ship, the interior lights turn on, and I can once again see without the infared goggles.

  “Ship’s got its own power cell,” Halley says. “That won’t get us over to the drop hatch, though.”

  “So no what?”

  “Open up your handy little toy there, and see if you can kick loose some power for the flight deck, or we’re stuck for good. I have no clue whether we slowed down enough to make proper orbit, and I’d rather not burn up in atmo with this shit bucket.”

  I sit down on the non-slip flooring and open my admin deck. The local network is completely dead—I can’t even connect to the wireless cloud. I scan through all the local nodes, and none of them are transmitting or receiving.