When he opened his eyes, he forced himself to see the wreck as stationary and himself as approaching—and discovered that he was more than halfway down the tether. And had still not initiated the one-hundred-eighty-degree tumble which would turn him around and position him for a feet-first landing upon the wreck. Trevor was rising into sight again, making fast, angry circles with his hand.
Caine kicked forward slightly, felt his body begin to rotate backward, watched as the wreck seemed to fall down, beneath his feet—and was distracted by a glimmer of light just above his field of vision. He craned his neck to get a look at the source of brightness.
Caine started. A titanic hemisphere of white, ochre, and pale blue striations wheeled, wobbly, above his head. Whereas the slow rotation of the starfield had been modestly disorienting, the drunken oscillations of Barnard’s Star II were stupefying. The gas giant brushed the stars aside, half-filled his visor, seemed ready to swallow the module he’d jumped from like a whale’s maw poised to swallow a lone krill. The mammoth planet’s atmospheric turbulence sent whorls and spirals streaming into each other in slow motion, murky fractals eternally evolving. Silvery flickers backlit the clouds, telltale signs of lightning storms more extensive than the entirety of the Eurasian landmass. Caine swallowed, fought through a rush of vertigo so powerful that he felt he might spin down into a single, contracting point and vanish—
“Caine! Grab the tether! NOW!”
Caine started violently as Trevor’s voice blasted out of his radio receiver. He looked down past his feet. Only six meters below, the aft end of the wreck’s prow was rolling past. He choked down a rush of bitter vomit, grabbed at the tether, lost his grip, grabbed again, caught it only a palm’s width from the end. At this close range, the wreck’s roll rate seemed to have increased, with Trevor rotating closer at a fearsome speed—
—But I don’t have time to fear, or even think. I have to act.
Time slowed and the gargantuan emptiness of the universe seemed to shrink back—enough so that Caine could assess how much sway his frantic motions had imparted to the tether, could watch Trevor rotate past underneath him, and could gauge the best moment to “jump down” to the wreck. He felt more than calculated that moment and pushed off the end of the tether, bending and relaxing his knees, eyes riveted down between his feet.
Four meters, two. He kept his focus on the closest part of the wreck, scanned peripherally. There was a small angular protuberance rotating past, just to the right of him.
Contact. As his knees absorbed the shock, he felt the wreck rotating out from under his feet, trying to shove him away. Caine kept his knees loose instead of bracing them, let his body continue to sink toward the hull, felt it bump his buttocks as he leaned to the right and grabbed.
His hand closed around the protuberance he had spied: a curved bar. Probably a mooring point. He twisted in that direction, threw his left hand over to join his right on the bar. Caine felt pressure mount in his joints as the inertia of his old vector argued with the rotational force, the combined vectors tugging his body away from the wreck and turning it around in space until, finally, it relented. He checked his chrono as he pulled his body back into contact with the wreck and gathered his legs beneath him. Ninety-eight seconds since Trevor had started over. How time flies when you're having fun.
There was a light bump against his head; Trevor had crawled over and tapped helmets. His voice was quiet, tight. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, now,” Caine answered, pretty sure he was telling the truth. “Let's get going.”
Trevor nodded, and set out on a drifting crawl to the rear of the wreck’s command section, where he pointed to a small oval recess surrounding a slightly convex section of the hull. Caine felt the edges of the recess, discovered deep, wide grooves. “Airlock?”
Trevor nodded. “Might be. Look for a maintenance plate or manual access cover.”
Caine pushed himself back carefully with his right hand, then his left—and stopped; something was under that palm. It was another, much smaller oval recess with a convex interior, the center of which was pierced in a quatrefoil pattern. Caine grabbed hold, tugged: nothing. He tried turning and then pushing it; there was a moment of resistance, then a short downward release before the cover swung back easily.
Trevor was already beside him. “What have you found?”
A cruciform knob stared up at them. Trevor reached in, turned it, watched the large convex panel that was probably an airlock. No discernible change. He turned the knob again, again, again. Slowly, the airlock door began to slide aside and farther away, deeper into the hull. Trevor braced himself and began cranking the knob rapidly with both hands: the portal widened more rapidly. He nodded for Caine to lean closer; their helmets touched again.
“Take the gun. Safety off. Cover the entry while I finish opening it.”
Caine detached the weapon's lanyard from Trevor's harness, attached it to his own, and slid the gun out of its holster. He crawled to the edge of the opening airlock and aimed the weapon inside. His visor’s red radiation icon began to flash; they had exceeded two minutes of exposure. Not good; not good at all.
The airlock door slid away, apparently retracting along a curved pathway. When it was about half open, the movement stopped. A second later, Trevor was alongside Caine, touching helmets again. “I'm going to shine a light in and take a look. As soon as I do, you lean in with the gun. If you see anything suspicious, nail it. Understood?”
“Understood.” Caine exhaled. After tumbling through endless, enervating space, this activity was reassuringly finite and concrete.
Trevor scuttled around to the other side of the opening, activated his helmet lights, nodded to Caine, and looked over the edge. Caine leaned in with the gun on that cue.
Trevor’s lights illuminated a tiny cubicle, smaller than the airlock on their Auxiliary Command module. At the bottom was another oval portal, flanked by a modest control panel. Small lights, most of which were yellow-green, stared beady-eyed back at them from its surface. The vehicle still had some sort of power, even if it was only emergency batteries. Otherwise, the airlock was empty.
Caine looked up; Trevor pointed at himself, at Caine, and then down into the airlock. Caine nodded.
Like a snake sliding around the corner of a rock, Trevor slipped over the rim of the hatchway and down into the airlock. Caine double-checked that the pistol's safety was off and followed.
Chapter Eleven
Adrift off Barnard’s Star 2 C
The airlock was even smaller than it had looked from outside, barely big enough to hold the two of them at the same time. Caine kept the ten-millimeter trained on the squarish doorway that led deeper into the craft, watching for any changes in the lights on the panels that flanked it.
In the meantime, Trevor had found a knob similar to the one on the outside of the hull and was turning it rapidly. As he did, a hard-edged shadow advanced across the door, the floor, and finally, cut off all external light into airlock: the outer hatch was sealed. The red radiation icon on Caine’s HUD flickered into orange and then disappeared. The Arat Kur have pretty damn efficient rad shielding, considering there’s no sign of an operating EM grid. However, there were still radiation worries: Caine’s chronometer read 144 seconds total elapsed mission time. That meant almost seventy-five REM whole body dose for Trevor, about fifty-five for Caine. Plus the thirty REM they had picked up when their own EM grid had to be shut off yesterday, and whatever else they were going to pick up making the jump back to the Auxiliary Command Module. In all probability, they weren't going to be feeling too well for the next couple of days.
Trevor moved over to the control panel beside the inner door, briefly inspected the lights and the glyphs beneath them. He tapped the bottom half of the panel, exploring.
Caine touched helmets. “What are you looking for?”
“This.” Trevor was now sliding aside the lower half of the panel, revealing three smaller, cruciform knobs. “Manual
systems in case the power is out.”
“Won't they be disabled or locked off?”
“Not unless there was a survivor on board who saw us coming and wanted to keep us out. You have to leave manual overrides functional during routine ops. Otherwise, if your power goes down and you're unconscious or unable to move, rescuers can't get to you unless they breach the hull. And I guess our adversary has learned the same lesson.”
“So since they’re not locked off, maybe that indicates there aren’t any survivors to take that precaution. Besides, survivors should have tried to effect repairs and rejoin their own fleet, particularly since this ship doesn't seem too badly damaged.”
“Don't judge a book by its cover, Caine, particularly when it comes to sensitive machines like spacecraft. They can look fine on the outside but can be hopelessly fubared inside.”
“I wonder how fubared this craft really is.”
“Why?”
“The rads dropped away completely when you shut the door behind us.”
Trevor shrugged, digging for a small tool kit on his utility harness. “They're probably way ahead of us in material sciences.”
Caine shook his head. “You'd need tremendous density to stop that much particle radiation.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I'm saying that this ship might still have enough power to be shielding itself, somehow.”
“Then why didn't our passive sensors pick up the electromagnetic anomalies?”
“I don't know. Maybe their EM field effect is not projected, but remains within the matter comprising the hull. Sort of how active electrobonding works, only this version is designed to repel charged particles rather than strengthen the bonds between molecules in hull materials.”
Trevor was silent before replying. “Where would the power come from? Their fusion plant is cold.”
“I don't know. Batteries, possibly on constant recharge if some part of the hull is sensitized to work like a solar panel.”
“Which would probably mean that somebody on board did survive the battle,” Trevor pointed out. “What you’re describing is not an automated emergency backup system. It would need someone to activate and integrate all those functions.” Trevor put a hand on one of the three small knobs. “So, assuming we have an enemy to meet, let's get moving. Stand to the side and cover the door.”
Caine crunched himself into the nearest corner, took the gun in both hands, extended it out in front of himself. The first knob that Trevor manipulated activated a series of dim red lighting bars that outlined the inner airlock door. The lights flashed rapidly. Probably the knob for opening the inner airlock door, the alarm signifying that the airlock itself was still unpressurized. “I’m no linguist, but I think red is their color for danger, too.”
Caine nodded his agreement and re-centered the handgun's laser sight on the interior door.
The next knob Trevor tried had no immediately observable effect, but after several seconds, they noticed a faint external sound: the rush of air. Trevor squeezed himself to the other side of the interior airlock door, drew a pry-bar from his tool-kit, and hefted it. Caine heard his voice over the helmet speakers. “We'll need to use radio, now. Shift to secure channel four.”
Caine made the appropriate choice on his HUD display with an eye-directed cursor, bit down with his left molars to confirm the selection. “Radio check. Are you receiving?”
“Loud and clear.” The inrushing of air had already crescendoed and was now diminishing rapidly. “Ready to dance?”
Caine nodded, focused on the intense red dot that his weapon was projecting upon the interior door. Trevor manipulated the first knob again. This time, the door slid aside.
A passage, side-lights receding away vanishing-point style. No blast of out- or in-rushing air, either; the craft still had an atmosphere. No sign of fog or fine snow drifting in midair; the humidity hadn't frozen out, meaning that the internal heating hadn't failed.
Trevor stopped turning the knob. “Fresh life-support means the probability of survivors just got a lot higher. Cover high; I'm going in low.”
“Understood. Go.”
Trevor jackknifed around the edge of the doorway, swam aggressively into the passage beyond. He swooped low, hugged the floor tightly as he followed along the wall to his left.
“What do you see?” Caine asked.
“Doors up ahead, two on either side. Two rows of handles—the four-flanged variety—run the length of the walls.”
“For zero-gee movement?”
“That's my guess. Can't make out the end of the hall. Looks like a dark opening, but I can't be sure. Damn. What I'd give for thermal imaging goggles right about now.”
“Should I advance past you?”
“No, just join me here. This space is too tight for a leapfrog advance.”
And I'm not good enough in zero-gee to make it feasible, anyhow. Holding the gun in his right hand, Caine pushed with his feet and let his body straighten into a slow forward glide.
Trevor hadn't exaggerated. The corridor was not well-suited to human physiognomy. Only one and a half meters wide by two meters high, it felt cramped, vaguely reminiscent of the engineering access spaces aboard the Auxiliary Command module. The lights that receded toward the dark at the end of the corridor were more amber in color than white.
“Caine, watch how you're handling that gun. Don't point the laser down the hall. We don't want to announce ourselves.”
Caine nodded his understanding and pushed himself down to a prone position alongside Trevor. “Now what?”
“We go room by room. You cover, I enter.”
Which seemed a wise plan. Trevor was ensuring that they would not leave any uncleared spaces behind them. But there was one problem with its execution. As they began low-drifting toward the first of the four doors, Caine secured the handgun's safety and offered it back to Trevor, butt first. “Give me the pry-bar. I'll enter the rooms. You cover.”
“Nope. We’ve got the right resources in the right hands.”
“Trevor, you're much more qualified with this weapon than I am.”
“And even more qualified in zero-gee maneuver. Did you have any classes in zero-gee hand-to-hand combat?”
“One.”
“Then you should know what I’m talking about. Every time you take a swing, you're propelling yourself in a new direction. Same thing every time you block a blow or duck; every movement is acceleration. Two sudden moves and you'll be too disoriented to do anything other than try to steady yourself.”
“Okay, okay. Let's get on with it, then.”
The first door—which was almost perfectly square—did not respond to physical manipulation. Trevor tried the buttons on the panel alongside it. On the second try, the door slid aside.
The room, illuminated by Caine’s helmet lights, was a hollow cube. Clutched in metal beams at the center was a radially symmetric collection of metal spheres, translucent tanks, and conduits.
Trevor dove in, brought himself to a halt, peered in between the tanks and tubes, drifted back out. “I’m guessing that’s life support. No one home.”
The next squarish door had irregular black smudges along two adjoined edges. Trevor ran a finger over the smudge, which erased but deposited itself on the tip of his glove. Carbon. Probably from an interior fire that had tried to lick around the door seal. The buttons on that entry refused to work and Trevor’s attempts to budge it were futile. His movements were hurried and annoyed as he drifted toward the next door.
This opened onto what seemed to be a private room of some sort. However, just beyond the doorway, the ceiling and floor pinched closer to each other, so that an individual entering the room had less than one and a half meters of vertical space in which to operate. An apparent sleeping nook that sheltered a pair of berths that looked like a mix of mechanical cocoon and fluffy sleeping bag stood out from the far wall. Other objects—furniture and implements, Caine guessed—seemed to be secured for zero-gee.
The structure and trappings of the fourth and final room were almost identical to the previous one. But here, there were telltale signs of use. A large object, akin to a narrow-necked inkwell with four radially symmetric depressions, had drifted into a corner of the room and floated there, unsecured. One cocoon-sleeping bag was neither fully open or closed, its lid hanging at an angle.
“This doesn’t look like any warship I’ve ever seen,” muttered Trevor as they moved back to the doorway.
Caine nodded. For a small craft, the design was too—well, indulgent: spacious sleeping compartments, sophisticated long-duration life-support recycling facilities, a comparatively roomy corridor, and of course, the tremendous fuel tankage capacity amidships. “No, I'd guess it was a recon vessel or a command nexus for drones on long-duration duty.”
“Recon,” Trevor asserted. “Otherwise, some of the drones which pranged the cutter should have gone offline when Hazawa knocked this hull out of action. Unfortunately, that doesn't answer the most important question: how many crew were on board for the battle?”
“More important still, how many are left alive?”
Trevor shrugged. “No way to know that, but it has enough accommodations for four—which doesn’t make sense. Two crewpersons are enough to handle any of the missions this ship might undertake.”
“Military missions, yes. But what about paramilitary or civilian missions?”
“I don't follow you.”
“What if your first comment was correct, that this ship wasn't designed to be a military ship at all?”
Trevor looked around the craft again, as though seeing it anew. “Could be. Possibly a packet or a survey craft.”
“That's what I'm guessing. Some kind of communications or research vessel, pressed into military service. Maybe it was even a civilian crew. Which might explain why we’re not seeing any of them.”
“Because they’re hiding?”
“Because they’re dead. If they weren’t used to military protocols, maybe they were operating without pressure suits when they got hit.”
Trial by Fire - eARC Page 12