“Cloak is back online. It was a quick fix. I can activate it from here, in a pinch, but I don't think that's a major problem right now,” she said.
“No, this is,” John said, waving at the mess the bomb had made of the main conduit.
“Hey, how's it going back there?” Andy's voice cut in over their radios. “I grabbed another suit so I could keep a radio link with you two.”
“The cloak was an easy fix. The rest of it's not going to be so simple. We're getting to it now. I'll see what I can patch fast, and what's going to take more time,” she replied.
“OK,” Andy said. “Let me know if there's anything I can do. Looks like Dan is starting to come around, going to go check on him now.”
Beth couldn't help feeling a sense of relief about Dan. She’d been more worried about him than she was willing to let on, even to herself. She shoved her roiling emotions about her ex aside. There was a job to do here, and she needed her head in the game. Beth knelt by the damaged conduit and went to work. The air in the bridge was going to get thin really fast if she couldn’t get life support operating again soon. Not to mention the gas giant they were coasting along next to, just waiting to suck them down and crush them into a little ball. No pressure, she told herself. Just the lives of every person on the ship at stake.
Twenty-One
Andy breathed a sigh of relief as Dan's eyelids began to flutter. He knew that Charline had been peeking at the medical monitor periodically. She’d told him more than once that Dan was just unconscious, and that it was best to let him sleep it off. He’d come around when his body was ready to wake up. That hadn’t made it any easier to sit around passing her tools and watching two sleeping men. He felt more than a little useless. Everyone else on the ship was helping get them out of this mess, and him? Andy was supposed to be the security specialist. It was his job to stop things like Paul’s scheme from happening in the first place, and he’d failed utterly in that duty. He watched Dan’s eyelids move again and heard the pilot give soft moan.
“It's about time you woke up,” Andy said. Dan coughed twice, his whole body shaking in the action, then slowly opened his eyes.
“What hit me?” Dan asked.
“Your console did. Blew up in your face,” Charline said. “How are you feeling?”
“Ow,” Dan said.
“Ow is right,” Andy said, chuckling. “I'd give you some water, but we're in zero gee right now, and the zero-gee water bulbs are on the other side of an airless corridor.”
“S'OK. I'll be all right in a minute,” Dan said, closing his eyes again. Then they snapped open. “My console blew? How'd that happen?”
Andy gave Paul a hard look where the man was still floating, zip tied to the wall. Paul was awake again too, although he seemed bleary and lethargic from the sedative. “Ask Paul. Looks like he had more than a gun.”
Dan was staring around at the bridge, which only dimly illuminated by emergency lights. He looked a little lost. Andy couldn’t blame him. When he’d been knocked out they had everything under control again. Then those explosions…
“I'll bring you up to speed,” Andy said. “Your console blew, and another bomb in the engine room went off. Beth and John are back there trying to repair the main conduit. Charline is over there hoping to get a little power from the emergency systems, give us something.”
Charline looked up from her work with a relieved smile and waved. “Welcome back.”
“We're in a spin, it looks like our orbit is degrading, and we have no power, so there's no way to access the alien systems,” he finished.
“Like the engines we need to get us out of this mess,” Dan said.
“Exactly,” Andy said.
Paul was making more noise over there on the wall. Andy eyed him suspiciously. He was rocking back and forth, and it looked like he was growing increasingly agitated despite the drugs. His mouth was opening and closing under the tape Andy had slapped over it, and he was frantically bopping about, but the lack of gravity was making his movements into a confused jumble.
“What's his problem?” asked Dan.
“Not sure,” Andy said. He pushed off from Dan's chair, gliding effortlessly to the wall near Paul. Paul's eyes were bulging now, and he was gesturing wildly at his gag with both bound hands. He was still breathing OK, so that wasn't the problem. Andy's eyes narrowed. He moved closer cautiously, looking for but not seeing any trap.
“It looks like he wants to say something, Andy,” Dan said, eying Paul from his seat.
That was exactly what it looked like. Andy shrugged a little. Couldn't hurt to let him have his say. Probably. He leaned in toward Paul. “I'm going to take off the gag, Paul. If you piss me off, I'm going to put it back on, and add an extra couple yards of tape, wrapped around your head a few times. You get me?”
Paul's head bobbed up and down. Andy grabbed a corner of the tape and yanked hard.
“Ow!” Paul said.
“Less crying. What did you want to say so badly?” Andy asked.
Paul was breathing hard and fast, like he'd been running. He was beyond agitated. This was a panic reaction, Andy realized. He stayed alert for any sudden movements. People got unpredictable when they panicked, and Paul had been more than enough trouble already. He wasn’t going to give the guy any more chances to create more problems for them.
“You have to understand,” Paul said. “I wanted the ship. I wasn't going to hurt any of you if I could avoid it.”
“Tell that to my skull,” Andy said, rubbing the still-sore spot where Paul had knocked him out with one hand.
“Sorry for that. I really am. But our country needs this ship, don't you see? With the energy from this ship powering our electric grid, we could solve so many problems!” Paul said.
“By turning us over to your Marine friends?” Dan asked.
“There weren't really any marines – the security John put over communications was too tough. I was only able to clue the feds in that something worth watching was going down. That's why they repositioned the satellite.”
“Best news I've heard all day,” Andy said.
“But you don't understand!” Paul said. “There were four bombs!”
“What?”
Charline shouted in triumph. “Got it!”
The emergency lights flickered and dimmed, but her console came alive with power. Then she froze. She looked over at Paul and paled.
“What do you mean, four bombs? Where are the other two?” Andy asked.
“They're on the outside of the hull, down near the engines. My last ditch, to get you all to give it up. They're on timers. They ought to be going off soon. First one, then the other, about five minutes apart,” Paul said. “They look like bolts. They’ve been inserted into the hull like any other bolt, to make them hard to spot.”
“How do we disarm them?” Andy asked. He shook Paul’s shoulders.
“You can't. You broke my remote,” Paul said with a scowl.
The pen. Andy cursed under his breath. He'd broken it out of anger, and to keep Paul from using it to pull any more tricks. How much trouble had his temper landed them in? Damn it, this just kept getting worse. He felt his anger surge again and struggled to rein it in. Smacking Paul around might feel good, but it wasn’t going to fix their problems. He needed to keep his cool to handle this situation.
“We ought to just space you, Paul, for all of this. You're lucky I don't have time right now,” Andy replied.
“Charline, can you get any sort of read on our vector? How much trouble are we in?” Dan asked.
Leave it to the pilot to remember what was important right now, Andy thought. He was doubly glad Dan was awake and alert again. They needed his brains.
“Lots,” she replied, still typing at high speed.
“How bad?” Dan said.
“Very. According to the computer, if we can't regain control soon, we'll be in the atmosphere. Maybe fifteen minutes. Once we hit that, the computer predicts we'll pick up downward
speed rapidly as we lose our angular momentum.”
Andy grabbed the suit helmet he'd used to talk to John and Beth. They weren’t going to enjoy hearing this information any more than he had, but he needed to fill them in on what was going on. Plus he had an idea how these bombs were going to need to be dealt with. He didn’t like it, but someone was going to have to go out there and pull the things off the ship, and that someone pretty much had to be him. Beth could maybe do it, but she was needed to repair the conduit. Andy had at least some experience with explosives from back when he was in the Army. It wasn’t much, but it was probably more than Charline or Dan could boast of. There was no way Andy was letting John go out there to clean up the mess he’d allowed to happen.
“Hey, Beth? Charline got some power up, and she's tracking our descent. Our orbit is degrading fast. Fifteen minutes to atmosphere, and then things get nasty fast,” Andy said. “On the plus side, Dan’s awake again, so if you can get the engines running before we get cooked, he can fly us out of here.”
“Great,” came Beth's voice over the radio. “Nothing like pressure.”
“That's not all though. Paul says he had two more bombs. On timers. Under your feet, from the sounds of it. I'm going to suit up and go outside to try to disarm them,” Andy said.
John's voice came back “You sure that's the only way? He can't just turn them off?”
Andy looked at Paul. “He says no. Damned fool. Who sets bombs on a spaceship he'll be flying in? No, it looks like EVA or nothing.”
“OK, Andrew. Get it done, but be careful,” John said. “You'll all need to suit up – the corridor is depressurized, and I don't know if we can get the engine room door shut so you can pressurize it again. You're going to have to pump the air out of the bridge, too.”
“Not a bad idea anyway,” Dan said. He had already released himself from his wheelchair and was gliding over to the suit rack. “Spacesuits might save lives if another of those bombs goes off.”
“Beth wants to get Majel back online,” John said. “Charline, you can help her with that better than I can. I'll come forward to assist Andrew. Dan, you stay on the bridge. As soon as those drives come back on line, we need to get out of here.”
Andy looked around the room, the thin haze of smoke still drifting in the missing gravity. He closed his eyes, trying to recall everything he'd ever learned about demolitions disposal. It had been a long, long time. He hoped it hadn't been too long.
He opened his eyes again. “OK, let's do this.”
Twenty-Two
It didn't take much time to get suited up. Funny how fast you can do something when there's so much on the line, Andy thought. He was glad he'd drilled so much in spacesuit use. It struck him as something that would probably be used infrequently, but when it was, he'd need to be quick. Dan was an old hand at EVA, and got into his suit faster than either he or Charline. He checked them both over, making sure the suits were perfect. Andy was pleased to get a sharp nod of approval from the man. He’d raced through the process of getting the suit on, and managed it without any errors.
Then came the more dangerous part. They needed to at least try to get Paul into a suit. None of them were happy with him, but they didn’t want him asphyxiating in front of their eyes, either. Dan held the gun on Paul while Andy stood by in case physical persuasion was required, but Paul put the suit on without complaint. The hardest part had been getting him zip tied back to the stanchion and taped up well enough that he couldn't give Dan any grief while Andy was ‘outside’.
John came up the corridor and gave Charline a wave as she went by on her way to the engine room.
When she passed through the doorway to the engine room, John opened a private channel with Andy. “How are you feeling about this?”
“About the whole thing?” Andy laughed. “Not how I'd pictured this trip going, let's put it that way.”
“My fault,” John replied. “I should have seen trouble coming with Paul.”
“He wasn't for keeping the ship, but I don't think anyone could have expected this out of him.”
John shook himself a little. “Anyway, I was talking about the bomb disposal. Can you do this?” They stepped into the airlock and shut the inner door behind them. Andy started the airlock cycling. Most of the air had already evacuated from the ship through the holes in the engine room, so it didn’t take long before the green light indicated they were clear to open the outer door.
“I think I can. Not like I have to disarm them; from what I got out of Paul, it sounds like I just need to pry them off the ship. Stay inside the airlock, though. Just in case,” Andy said.
John reached out and placed a hand on each of Andy's shoulders. “Be careful.”
“Better believe it.”
Andy popped the outside hatch with the manual release – this airlock had been designed as an escape hatch, so it was hooked into the emergency power supply and had backup manual controls. A little residual air puffed out into space ahead of him.
Andy clipped one end of a safety line onto a steel ring just outside the airlock door. The other end was already attached to his suit. He slipped out of the airlock and flicked on his helmet lights. Parts of the ship were picking up light, either from the sun or reflected off Jupiter, but the ship was still slowly spinning, and that was putting different parts in and out of shadow. He played out some line and grasped a rail on the ship's hull, pulling himself hand over hand toward the engines. The suit had a small thruster pack, but he'd save that in case he really needed it.
The ship continued its slow spin, and Jupiter rolled beneath him. He froze, watching the planet slide into sight. The view was incredible, and took his breath away. He wasn't close enough to see individual clouds – and a voice in the back of his head was grateful for that! But he could see the whirling patterns moving through the clouds, swept around by winds stronger than any hurricane on Earth. Bands of color, patterns of light and shadow, twisting together with a savage beauty.
No one had ever seen Jupiter quite this way before. Video utterly failed to convey the enormity, the majesty, of this view.
“Beautiful, isn't it,” John said. His tone made the question a statement.
“Yes,” Andy said, embarrassed to be caught skylarking. Then the roll was moving the planet back out of view again, and he shook himself to get his head back in the game. Time was short, and everyone was counting on him.
The airlock was nearer to the nose than the aft of the ship, so it took him about a minute to reach the engine block. “I'm here. Going to start looking for the bombs now.”
“Be careful, Andrew,” John said.
The ship completed a spin, suspending him with Jupiter below his feet again, and he realized he didn't feel quite weightless anymore. There was a distinct pull from the huge planet below, a drag on his arms, until the spin went around again and he felt himself gently pushed back toward the hull instead. That was going to be a problem.
Now that he was feeling gravity, he'd have to work fast. Jupiter's pull would start dragging the ship down more rapidly, and make prying the bombs off more difficult for him as well. He went hand over hand across the hull, looking for a bolt that seemed out of place. Paul had told him how he'd disguised the small explosives. The bolts were shaped charges, so they'd blow mostly toward the point of the bolt, away from the head. Which meant these last two would direct their charges into the engine room itself. Beth and Charline were in there working. If the bombs blew, they could be killed. Worse yet, if the bombs blew the engine apart, or even damaged it enough, they were never going to get it working in time to escape Jupiter’s pull.
There it was! He spotted the first one, and started pulling himself toward it. As he was moving, he saw the second as well. Both were a little off color from the other bolts. And where the others were all in neat, orderly rows, these two stood out, off on their own in the middle of plates. He stared at both bolts, trying to guess which one would blow first. Paul hadn't said. But one was closer to t
he alien engines than the other, so he guessed that one would blow last. Paul would have wanted to save the tech, if he could.
He settled himself near the device he thought would blow first, and hooked a snap carabiner around his safety line and a loop of metal bolted to the hull. At least someone had considered that deep space external repairs might be necessary. Just in time, too, as the ship swung around again, and he felt weight pulling him away from the ship. The line stopped him and held him in place, so he had both hands free to work.
He reached down to the velcro patch on his suit leg and pulled out a pair of tools. Charline had loaned him these back on the bridge – non conductive tools she used for dealing with the guts of computers. They might help prevent a static spark from jumping around as he worked. Sparks and explosives. Bad combination.
He worked one of the tools in between the bolt head and the hull, gently nudging the bolt free from the metal. It slid a tiny bit. Small motions, keep it small! There was a tiny gap now between the hull and the bolt head. Andy was sweating in his suit, acutely aware that the timer on the bolt might run out any second.
He was reaching down for another tool when his time ran out.
The bolt exploded, discharging most of its force into the hull, toward the engine room.
But enough force remained to blast the bolt head apart. There wasn't much of a shock wave, because there wasn't atmosphere around the ship to carry it, but the impact was still enough at point blank range to kick him back off the ship. That saved his life, as bits of hot metal whizzed by his suit instead of shredding the soft material.
For a terrible moment he felt like he was falling toward that huge planet below, unsure if anything would stop him. Then the line snapped taut, jerking him to a sudden stop. Andy's head cracked against the back of his helmet, sending new pain through his already sore skull. Stars danced in front of his vision, and he could taste blood in his mouth. The line held, but he dangled from the underside of the ship as it began to pick up speed, descending into the upper atmosphere of the enormous planet below.
Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library Page 9