Suicide Run

by Nathan Lowell

  Natalya checked her suit’s gauges and nodded.

  “Serendipity, Echo One. At least five, possibly more depending on how energetic we need to be. Over.”

  “Roger, Echo One. This is your show. How do you want to handle this? Over.”

  “Stand by, Serendipity.” Zoya tapped a few keys and looked at Natalya. “Well?”

  “Somebody needs to pay for this,” Natalya said. “I don’t think whoever it was expected us to be wearing suits or be strapped in.”

  “Probably not.”

  “We really need to get this ship back to the yard if we can,” Natalya said. “I don’t want to die doing it.”

  Zoya nodded. “I can get behind that. The question is how to get the ship under control.”

  “The lock has a manual override. If we can manually latch one or both of the doors, we might be able to pressurize the ship again,” Natalya said. “Once we can get into the engine room, I can reset that breaker so the engine will fire to slow us down. If we can slow down enough, Ernst can probably tow us—or have the yard send out a tug—but we’re really moving fast at this point.”

  “Agreed,” Zoya said. “Bring Ernst in on it?”

  Natalya nodded. “See what he suggests.”

  Zoya keyed the communications system back on. “Serendipity, Echo One. Over.”

  “Go ahead, Echo One.”

  “We want to get the ship back to dock but at this point securing the ship and towing it back seems the wisest course. Over”

  “Roger that, Echo One. If we can match vectors, I can tow you but I can get a yard tug on its way out as backup. Any idea how to cut that velocity? The tug could probably brake you, but you’ll be halfway to Mel’s place by the time he could get here at this rate. Over.”

  “Serendipity, Echo One. We’re working on it. We’re going to use the manual override on the lock and try to repressurize. If we can get into the engine room, we can restart the main engines. Unfortunately, the door opens the wrong way. Over.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment before Panko replied. “Roger that, Echo One. Can you get to the manual override? Over.”

  “Nats is heading that way now. We’ll know in a tick or so, Serendipity. Echo One, out.”

  Natalya pulled the releases on her belts and stood. The grav plates kept her on the deck but she still felt exposed. “Zee, make a note to add a safety line to our kit.”

  “Just take it slow and easy.”

  “I’m going for the inner door. If we can get some pressure behind it, that trick won’t work again.”

  Natalya eased down the passageway as far as the head. She gave the open lock a wide berth as she went by it and felt marginally safer with the open door between her and eternity. She knelt on the deck and popped the hatch cover off the manual override. It took her more than a few heartbeats before she got her gloved fingers around the control and gave it a tentative tug.

  The airlock door moved almost imperceptibly.

  “I’m at the control. It seems to be connected.”

  “That’s the good news,” Zoya said. “Is there bad news?”

  Natalya gave the lever a solid pull and the door closed a small fraction. She pushed the lever back to the starting position and pulled again. The door moved another small fraction. “Yeah. This is going to take a while.”

  “Take your time. Done right is always faster than done twice.”

  “Your grandmother?” Natalya asked.

  “Yup.”

  Natalya chuckled and worked the small handle back and forth, each pull inching the door closer to the latch.

  After a few long ticks, Zoya said, “We may have a problem.”

  “Another problem?” Natalya asked. “Or just a complication in the current one?”

  “I think this would classify as a new one. The Burleson drive just came online. The capacitor has a full charge and the navigation system is set for a programmed jump.”

  “Let Ernst know and send him the coordinates,” Natalya said, leaning back on her haunches to give her knees a break. “I take it you can’t stop the drive?”

  “Nope. I’m locked out of that routine.”

  Natalya cursed under her breath. “Do we abandon ship and let it go?”

  Zoya sighed. “I don’t know. Serendipity, Echo One. If we jump, can you catch us? Over.”

  “Echo One, Serendipity. I’m trying to match your velocity now but I’m still a thousand kilometers behind you. Why?”

  “Serendipity, Echo One. The Burleson drive just lit up. The capacitor is full and there’s a destination programmed into the navigation system that we didn’t put there. Over.”

  “Echo One, Serendipity. I can track the ship. I don’t know that I can track two softsuits on their own at this range. How are you coming on the lock door?”

  “Natalya’s working the latch but it’s slow. Over.”

  “Roger, Echo One. I’m trying to catch up with you but it’s going to be a few ticks yet. Over.”

  “Zee?” Natalya said.

  “Go ahead, Nats.”

  “If we jump we’ll still be going as fast as the ship. If the Burleson punches a hole before Ernst catches up, we’ll just follow the ship through and we won’t be able to get back aboard without a lifeline or a thruster.”

  Zoya sighed. “You’re right.”

  Natalya got back to work, pumping the handle as fast as she could, watching the door close one tiny fraction at a time.

  “Serendipity, Echo One. We can’t jump until you’re alongside and can take us aboard. Over.”

  “Echo One, Serendipity. Yeah. I was just considering that. If I don’t get there in time, you’ll drift through with the ship and I’d never find you. Hang on. I’m trying to match vectors with you. Over.”

  “Zoya, how far is that jump targeting?” Natalya asked.

  “Four BUs.”

  “What’s there?”

  “It’s not showing up in the database,” Zoya said. “Could be nothing. Could be the middle of a star.”

  Natalya sat back on her heels again and wished she could scratch her nose. “Four BUs will have enough error in it to keep us from jumping directly into a star. At least on purpose.”

  “I’m more worried about jumping into a dust cloud at this speed,” Zoya said.

  “That would be bad.”

  “How you coming on the door?” Zoya asked.

  “It’s closing but slow—” Natalya bit down on the word as the lock door swung shut. “It just closed on its own,” she said.

  Zoya whooped. “We have hull integrity back. I’m pumping atmosphere as fast as I can.”

  Natalya pushed up off the deck and grabbed the handle for the airtight door into engineering. “I’m at the door.” From that vantage point she could look down the short passageway amidships and see the back of Zoya’s head.

  “Fifty percent and climbing,” Zoya said.

  Natalya could feel the difference in the way her suit moved and could make out some sounds from outside her suit.

  “Seventy percent.”

  Natalya pulled the dogging lever but couldn’t get enough shoulder behind the door to move it. “I only need a crack here.”

  “Eighty percent,” Zoya said. “It’s going to be close. There’s not that much left in the air reserves.”

  Natalya tried not to do the math in her head. A kilogram per square centimeter times too many square centimeters. She wedged herself against the door and pressed. The only thing that gave was her shoulder. She backed off before she ripped her suit.

  “Ninety percent,” Zoya said. “More than enough to breathe.”

  “Still too much pressure on the inside of that door. Whose idea was this door anyway?” Natalya felt inordinately angry. “I just need a wedge. Something I can get a seam open with.”

  “Butter knife in the galley?” Zoya asked.

  “Don’t think it’s got the tensile strength to hold up to the pounding I’d need to give it to drive it into the door jam
b.”

  “Ninety-five.”

  “This door is about a meter and a half by two. That’s what? Three thousand square centimeters?” Natalya slumped against the door. “We’ll need better than ninety-eight to break the seal.”

  “That’s all we got,” Zoya said. “Ninety-eight percent. The tanks are dry now. We can generate a bit more over time but I don’t know how much time we have.”

  Natalya saw Zoya pull her seat belts off and climb out of the couch. “What are you doing?”

  “Maybe both of us can put enough muscle behind it to get it started,” Zoya said.

  Natalya shifted herself to give Zoya as much room on the edge of the door as possible. They both got a firm grip on the dogging handle and braced themselves as best they could on the decking.

  Zoya nodded and began a count. “One. Two. Three.”

  They threw their combined weight against the door, straining against the pressure inside, pushing with their legs. And promptly fell forward into the engine room as they broke the airtight seal, letting the pressure equalize almost instantly.

  “Must not have been full pressure in here,” Zoya said. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

  Natalya scrambled to untangle herself from Zoya and dove for the breaker box. She yanked the door open and reached for the main breaker.

  “Wait!” Zoya said, scrambling to her feet. “We just jumped.”

  Chapter 38

  Deep Dark

  2366, May 29

  ZOYA DISAPPEARED DOWN the passage while Natalya examined the drive. Nothing seemed out of place. The indicators showed the capacitor was three-quarters depleted with at least five stans before it would be fully charged. She checked the gauge on her suit. Barely four stans left.

  “We’re somewhere,” Zoya said. “Astrogation scan shows us four-ish BUs from Ravaine. The database doesn’t indicate this place was ever surveyed.”

  “We need to start heading back as fast as possible,” Natalya said. “What’s your suit status?”

  “Just about four stans,” Zoya said. “We’re almost five before the capacitor is fully charged.”

  “We’ve got to unbutton,” Natalya said. “The ship’s life support can handle us, which should buy us some time.”

  “Pressure’s coming up slowly. The environmental system seems to be replenishing the atmosphere, but I don’t know what it’s using as a source.”

  Natalya unlatched her helmet and let it fall back on its hinge. “It’s probably scavenging from the potable water,” she said. “Shall I fire up the thrusters?”

  “Better. We need to get moving in the other direction if we’re going to try to jump home.” Zoya’s voice sounded a bit tinny after listening to it in the speakers in her helmet.

  Natalya pulled the breaker panel open and flipped the breaker on. Nothing happened. “Breaker’s on. Do you have control of the thrusters?”

  In a couple of heartbeats the ship rumbled with the vibrations from the rocket nozzles. “Yeah. For the moment, they’re working.”

  Natalya made her way back to the jump seat. She gave the air a sniff. “Smells like something burned. You seeing any systems alerts?”

  Zoya flipped through console screens. “Nothing showing up. No alerts. No warnings.” She flipped through a couple of windows. “We have long-range scan back. Nothing showing.”

  “I was hoping we’d see Ernst jump in,” Natalya said.

  “He may already be here but out of range. I don’t know what our jump error was but if one of us was short and the other long, we could both be here but too far away to see each other. It could take a few stans for a radio message or long-range scanner pulse to make the round trip. We’re only reliable out to a million kilometers.”

  “Serendipity wouldn’t make much of a return blip at that range,” Natalya said.

  Zoya nodded, but clicked on her mic. “Serendipity, Echo One, over.” She turned off the mic and made sure the speakers were patched into the cockpit. “Maybe he’ll hear us and reply before we jump out.”

  Natalya buckled in, her mind racing through the various problems. “We need to make sure that lock door doesn’t pop open again,” she said.

  “You have any ideas?” Zoya said, her fingers dancing over the console’s keyboard. “I think I can plot a jump back but the question is whether or not we’ll have any main thruster fuel left when we get there.”

  “Do we have enough air for a full day?” Natalya asked.

  Zoya sighed and pulled up a window. “Scrubbers are new so we’re good there. You’re right about the potable water being broken down for oxygen. The hydrogen’s going to the maneuvering thrusters. We should have enough for a day. Maybe a little more.”

  “So a day plus about four stans with the suits. We really need to make sure that lock doesn’t play any more games.”

  “Too bad we can’t weld it shut,” Zoya said.

  “What if we cycle the lock?” Natalya asked. “Suck all the air back into the ship so it’s vacuum in the lock itself. The door can’t open against atmosphere with the vacuum on the outside.”

  “That might work, but what stops the system from just pumping the air back in again?” Zoya asked.

  Natalya nodded. “Yeah. That’s a flaw. Is there pressure in the lock now?”

  Zoya consulted a window. “Looks like it.”

  Natalya grinned. “Hold that thought.” She jogged back down the passageway and retrieved her tool kit from the locker in the engine room. She opened the inner lock door and popped an inspection hatch off the bulkhead inside the lock itself. In a matter of a couple of ticks she dropped a component into her kit and snapped the hatch back on. As she left the lock, she pushed the door closed and dogged it down, resting her weight on the dogging handle. She took her tool kit back to the cockpit and settled into the jump seat. “That’ll do it.”

  Zoya glanced back. “What’d you do?”

  Natalya opened the tool box and pulled out a fist-sized hunk of metal and wires, holding it up for Zoya to see. “Actuator solenoid.”

  Zoya grinned. “Shall I bring up the thrusters a bit more?”

  “Are we carving down the vector?”

  Zoya nodded, consulting a readout on her screen. “It’s slow but it’s steady.”

  “We’re still almost five stans before the capacitor is full,” Natalya said. “How much do we need to jump back?”

  “We only used three-quarters of it on the jump out, so if we can get at least half of it back, it should be enough for a return jump–assuming it doesn’t decide to jump us somewhere else.”

  “So, in theory we could jump in just over two and half stans?”

  Zoya nodded. “That’s what the system says.”

  “Can you program a burn that will get us moving in that direction in two stans?”

  Zoya frowned. “It should be possible. We were only pushing hard for a few ticks before you got the thrusters shut off.”

  “Fuel?”

  Zoya’s hands tumbled across the keyboard for a few moments. “We used a lot but there’s still almost half a tank. Lemme run some numbers.” After a tick she nodded. “If we can keep control of the thrusters, we should be able to goose them up to reverse our current vector. That’s assuming the thrust is properly calibrated for this ship. It was one of the things we were supposed to do before we left Ravaine.”

  “So we’re guessing based on uncalibrated readings?”

  Zoya gave a little shrug. “They’re not too far off. Our velocity vector seemed pretty near the estimated value for the low-speed test.”

  “Can we do some calibration out here in the Dark?”

  “Probably not,” Zoya said. “We don’t have anything close enough to bounce a ranging signal against and we don’t have enough velocity to read direct from the stars.”

  Natalya sighed. “I was afraid of that. I was hoping I overlooked something.”

  “The only thing we haven’t considered is that this spot in the Deep Dark doesn’t appear to have bee
n charted. We could get punched by a high-velocity rock at any moment,” Zoya said.

  Natalya’s heart sank into her stomach. “We better burn, then.”

  Zoya’s only reply was to goose the throttle up a notch. The rumbling from aft picked up as the large thrusters pushed harder to stop their momentum and begin to nudge them in the other direction.

  Natalya went into the galley to survey the damage. The coffee maker had apparently survived its immersion in vacuum. “Shall I try to make some coffee?” she asked.

  “Check to see if the head survived, first,” Zoya said. “We went before we left, but I don’t really feel like pissing down my own leg if I can help it.”

  Natalya chuckled, grabbed her tool kit and headed aft. “If it’s broken, I don’t have any spare parts to speak of.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Zoya said. “I got faith in ya.”

  Natalya snorted and headed down the passageway.

  NATALYA STRAPPED INTO the jump seat, taking care to hold her mug level while maneuvering the straps. “We got lucky with the head.”

  Zoya held her own cup up to her face and nodded. “Somebody knows this ship isn’t spec’d out correctly.”

  “How do you figure?” Natalya asked.

  “You saw the specs. How far do you think the ship had enough power for?”

  Natalya took a sip and thought about it. “Five with a tailwind,” she said.

  “I agree. The official line is that she can jump twenty.”

  Natalya nodded, granting the point. “The drive is rated high enough for that but the capacitor doesn’t have the power to deliver it.”

  “Exactly,” Zoya said. “And what happens if the capacitor doesn’t have enough power to make the programmed jump?”

  “It shuts down,” Natalya said. She stared at Zoya, realizing the implication. “Somebody wanted the ship to jump and be lost after the decompression pulled the pilot out.”

  “I don’t think so,” Zoya said.

  “What then?”

  Zoya looked over her shoulder at Natalya. “If they weren’t wearing a suit, they’d have died. The ship jumped out to avoid having the evidence found.”