“We could reset it in here,” Sally observed. “Then the blast would be mostly carried outside.”
“That’d be true if we didn’t have those feed lines right there: they’re real high pressure, and could actually turn enough of the blast away that it might not cut through the hull. Blow it from the other side, and we’re gold.”
“Then what about a hole somewhere else, where the feeds won’t be an issue? If the batteries get damaged, then all of this would have been for nothing.”
“Hmm…okay, yeah. Good point. Let’s look for a spot out in the main companionway…”
“Uh, guys,” Genness interrupted then, “you might want to hear this…it’s the AI again.”
And then the carefully measured voice of the computer came through like before.
“…approaching at 14.72 gravities, mark, constant acceleration…spectral analysis of heat trail complete…cross-referencing with Industrial Specification Database For Commercial Propellants and Thrust Materials…comparison complete…match found: Klein-Pretorious Manufacturing product number 1107.975b/e55r…installed warhead Motherload Mark VII Tactical Nuclear Defensive Device…yield rating: .35 megatons…approximate constant acceleration range: 250,000 kilometers…standing by…”
Needless to say, we’d been in motion from the words heat trail.
“Where’s it coming from, Gen?!”
“I dunno, I dunno! Nothing on scans yet…wait! Oh, no! It’s PONTE!”
“What?! Get them on the horn! Tell ‘em to abort!”
“It’s offline, remember?!”
“Hook it back up!”
“How?!”
“For crying out loud!” Sally shouted as we made it back through the connecting companionway to the airlock, “Tertiary Power Channel 14, Standby, Off, On, Full, Go, Zero Delay – hold it down two seconds, then Commit!”
“What? Wait! Where’s that?” Gen was starting to sound worried, and it was almost scaring yesterday’s ration bars out of me.
“Oh, I know where that is,” Bayern put in, with a confident tone, which actually did make me lose ‘em. Thank the Powers for in-suit biowaste bags!
“No!” Sally and I both shouted.
“Forget about calling PONTE! How much time, Genness?”
“Looks like…oh, man, just over thirteen minutes! Get out of there you two!”
“On our way…no, wait…we still need the batteries!”
Sally looked at me through her helmet with wide eyes.
“There’s no time, Ejoq! We have to go!”
I tripped the shape charge with my suit comp. There was a hard shudder in the bulkhead under my gloved hand, but that was all.
“We go with the batteries. C’mon!”
“But, the missile…!” she spluttered, following.
Engineering looked really different now: large and small particles of hull material, gaseous fuel, fire-suppressant foam (instantly freeze dried in the vac conditions), and various machine parts floated in the wide compartment like murky water. A wickedly jagged, but prettily saw-edged hole, just about three meters across, gaped menacingly inward. Stars and DAME MINNIE’s bow were plainly visible beyond.
“Sally! Ejoq! Can you hear me?! Are you all right?!”
“Shaddap, Bayern!” Sally barked. Then to me, “One…two…ah, six of these batteries are toast. That one’s leaking something yellow that’s probably super-toxic, so watch the vapor – we can’t do a decent decon out here.”
She said all this as we unhooked the two that were best sheltered from the blast by the (now totally wrecked) jump engine.
“I turn it this way? Okay, I can do them both now. Get back to the boat, Sally; run us a power jump to the supply bay, and get it open! Move it – I can push these over there myself! And watch out for the loose stuff!”
“You watch out!” and then she was gone.
“Ten minutes, people!” said, Genness. “This is crazy, Ejoq! We can still clear off in time on docking thrusters…”
“And die slowly when the power finally fades?”
“PONTE’s coming,” he argued. “She can help us out.”
“PONTE’s trying to kill us! Or she doesn’t care if we die. Either way, she’s poison. Now shut up, and let me do this!”
It wasn’t hard to disconnect them; they were as sweet and sensibly designed as Sally had observed, and every bit as massive as they looked. I heaved hard, with a grunting weightlifter’s shout that had everybody screaming my name, and set the first of them into slow motion. It bumped a few pieces of floating junk out of its way, but didn’t change direction or slow down. I hopped up so as to pace it, and heaved again off a spar to do a course correction. It was a sublime moment, and the battery snailed out through the new hole like it was made to do it.
“I see it on monitors,” Bayern said. “Sally, get that hatch open!”
“It’s opening now! I, uh, I’ll try to snag it with a freight strut!”
“Negative!” Bayern commanded with more authority than anything else I’d ever heard him say. “Open the hatch and clear out of the way! I can catch it.”
“Oh, Bayern,” I said, because the thought of him doing something important without screwing it up seemed like a wild fantasy, but I went back for the other battery.
“Slower, knothead!”
“Bring it up, Bayern! Up, up!” Gen was plainly scared.
“C’mon, Captain Crunch! Axial spin…now yaw, yaw!”
Sally and Genness suddenly screamed in a pitch of fear, followed by a second of silence that made my heart stop.
“Well I’ll be a…you did it! Bayern, you really did it! Not a scratch on the thing! Never seen anything like it…hold on, it’s bounding up a little, but…GRUNT…okay, snagged it…and, ahh…it’s strapped down.”
I was pushing the second battery up at this point, but it started cartwheeling immediately. I swore loudly, and tried to steady it, but I had no leverage, and started spinning, myself.
“Five minutes!”
I took a precious moment to fume, looking at the huge battery rotating slowly as it knocked small bits of flotsam around like a clumsy whale.
“I can’t get the other one over in time,” I announced as I maneuvered myself around it. “I’m coming out the hole and jumping over. Don’t move, Bayern.”
“Take the scoot, Ejoq!” Sally warned, but she well knew there was no time.
“Use your strut if my aim is off,” I replied, pulling myself carefully through the maw of the hole. I tapped off the floods, and on the helmet lightamp, and spied Sally holding onto the battery inside the supply bay – only about ten meters away, but looking very far to me now. She had it secured with cargo straps, and held the freight tool in one hand. I jumped, and started to spin like the battery I’d just left behind.
“Oh, for the love of…! Hold on, Ejoq! Hold on! Stop flailing!”
I didn’t realize I was flailing because I was too busy panicking.
“Get me! Sally, catch me!”
“Already done…” she said with a heave, and I felt something pull at my tool belt. In a moment, I was holding on to a cargo ring, my head at Sally’s floating feet.
I was hyperventilating, but I moved carefully to orient myself to her, keeping a nearby handhold in a death grip.
“Take this,” she ordered, looking me decisively in the eye, and handing me the jumper connect. It was the right thing to say, because it gave me something simple but vital to do with at least one hand while she turned to the input panel on the battery.
“Close the bay, Bayern. Oh, man, this thing is sweet! Hand me that connect now, Ejoq. Good…okay, here goes…1…2…3…”
“Two minutes!” Genness was as panicked as me.
“And…main breaker is…on!”
We saw no difference down in the bay, because we’d pulled so many system controls – but we’d put Main Drive and inertial dampener shunts in place before we’d left, which is all that mattered.
“Now, Bayern! Full on!”
she screamed, but we were moving even before the bay doors were closed.
There was a big bleed-over from inertials – a couple of G’s, and we both went flying. If I hadn’t had a helmet on, I’d have fractured my skull against the bulkhead, and as it was, I was seeing so many stars I thought I was still outside. Sally hit off a corner of the battery, then slammed into a storage rack so hard she yelped like a puppy.
Waiting for a nuke to blow has a weird way of simultaneously slowing time to a crawl and accelerating it to light speed; a hideous subjective/objective relativistic melding, with abject terror as an added spice.
There was a sudden shudder that I recognized immediately.
“What the…” Bayern said, and then, “…oh, no! It wasn’t me, I didn’t fire, I swear it!”
“I know, I know,” I assured him. “The incoming has crossed a threshold I listed as one of my autofiring criteria. Our missiles will be tracking back along that one’s heat trail – they’re heading out to PONTE. What’s the ETA on those?”
“Looks like…eleven…no, twelve minutes,” Genness replied. “Our toys are a little faster, it seems. Just forty seconds until their one arrives – still on target for DAAF’QA.”
“Oh, man. Bayern?”
“Drive’s at full acceleration..it’ll be close. I just want to say that it has been a pleasure and a privilege to be your commanding officer, and that if we don’t make it out of here…”
“Bayern,” I warned, “better shut up with that crap, ‘cause we might just live, and then I’d have to beat you with a power cable!”
“Uh…um…right…”
“Fifteen seconds,” Genness whispered.
“Ten…”
“Five…”
“Impact.”
There was a stiff jarring, and the acceleration dropped off immediately.
I waited for something nastier to happen. We all did, because in an atmosphere, we’d have been blown apart like a porcelain jar in a gale; the efficacy of nuclear weapons in vacuum is of a magnitude smaller, though – and therefore much more dependent upon accuracy.
“Engines are off,” Bayern said at last. “I’m getting an EMP warning.”
“Oh, yeah…no engine casings,” I replied, after a low groan. “The computer will run a hard reset on them automatically. Should just be a few minutes.”
“Sensors will be up again, too, but right now we’re blind,” Genness put in. “If PONTE’s still moving along the same trajectory, at the same speed, I think our missiles have an ETA of eight minutes.”
“Oh, PONTE’s on the move, all right. Gen, get sensors up and running ASAP. Sally and I will bring weapons back online.”
Sally’s lack of comment made me turn and look. She floated at a weird angle in front of the rack she’d hit, and was unmoving except for a slow drift. I swore and turned her over. Her eyes were rolled back, and she looked gray. I keyed the air cycle for the supply bay, but that was going to take minutes.
“Sally’s hurt! I’ll need help down here as soon as we’re pressurized!”
“How is she?” Genness asked with tense urgency.
“I can’t tell yet…unconscious…maybe a seizure. She hit hard at takeoff. Have the shock kit handy, okay?”
“Taking proper hold during movement is a basic responsibility of each crew member,” Bayern stated. “Um…who’s the Primary Medic?”
“Sally!” Genness and I both shouted, and I added a few expletives about his management skills that I thought she would appreciate. “I’m Secondary Med, and Genness is Tertiary. Genness, we still have four minutes ‘til you can get in here – reset what you can with the sensors, and get those actives up. Bayern, cover sensors and comm when he leaves, and keep your weather eye open for heat trails.”
A few long moments crawled by in silence.
“I…I have actives,” Genness finally announced. “You’re right, PONTE’s accelerating, and…no! Those dirty backstabbers! I count two…check that, three inbound heat trails…and they have a lock on us already.”
“What?! Already?! That’s impossible! Get down here, Gen! Thirty seconds until the pressure cycle is done, and I need to reconnect the weapon power nodules as soon as I can get inside!”
Half a minute, and it crawled.
Sally’s breathing seemed labored; mine certainly was. Gen, headset on and wired for sound, was at the window in the airlock door, looking almost as pained as Sally did, while Bayern was acting way too take-charge for comfort. The moment the pressure indicator showed green, I tore open the door and pushed passed Genness. I popped my face shield as I swam through the main companionway to the correct maintenance hatch, then popped that, too, and sent the plastic covering sailing down the main companionway like a discus. I heard Bayern yelp and swear through the open hatchway to the bridge, so my aim was good, anyway. I only hoped that it would hold.
“How’s Sally?” I asked as I worked.
“I don’t know. She doesn’t look good, Ejoq. I gave her something for shock, but there might be other problems. I need help here.”
“We all need help here. Do what you can. Where are those incomings right now, Bayern?”
“Uh…ETA…looks like six minutes. They’re moving really fast, and still gaining. Can you shoot them down?”
“I’m gonna try, but our ordinance isn’t rated for antimissile defense. That’s what the charpacs are for, and they’re offline. These may be nukes too, in which case they’ll blow when they’re within 100 meters. Plus, they’ll be going so fast by then, they’ll be able to splatter us, with or without a warhead. What’s PONTE doing?”
“Looks like they’ve changed course a little, and are outward bound under full drive power. Their flight path…er…”
“What is it? Don’t waste time!”
“Well…if I didn’t know better, I’d say PONTE was getting ready for starjump. That doesn’t make sense, though – they’re still inside the gravity shadow. There’s a good chance of a misjump if they go now.”
“They want out of here in a big way. This whole thing’s a setup!”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. How are engines?”
“Looks like…yes! Online! Do we run for it?”
“Negative! The incomings are too fast. Just watch the sensors, and power up. Be ready for evasives on my call!”
I’d been talking as I brought up my tactical boards and fire control interface, and began running them through a quickie diag. The gloves were in the way, so I spent a full minute disconnecting them and sending them off; by this point we had so much unsecured stuff floating around, I didn’t care about it. I was acting and reacting, but I had no illusions.
Not anymore.
I tweaked one of our two outgoings towards a point I thought PONTE might want to reach before risking her jump. The other one I throttled back for ten seconds, then brought up it’s propellant burn again, along with a tiny course correction. That put the first missile in front of PONTE’s projected path, and the other one right on target but delayed just enough to give them time to make a rash decision: if the risk of a misjump was higher further in, then that’s exactly where I wanted them to try it.
“Ejoq…I’m reading a graviton discharge from PONTE,” Bayern said. “They’re jumping. I just don’t get it…it’s way too early.”
“They don’t have a choice. What are the odds of a misjump from there?”
“I have no idea but…okay, here’s the spike. Good jump or bad, they’re gone.”
So that was that.
I spared the vindictive space of a heartbeat hoping PONTE and her crew had been torn apart at the molecular level and scattered across years of time and parsecs of space, as was theorized to happen in catastrophic misjumps. Then I had the incomings on a hard lock, and was gratified to see a close formation, even after all that distance. I rotated DAME MINNIE’s forward missile packs in both tubes, and fired simultaneously. I held my breath for a count of eleven, then hit the auto destruct. They d
isappeared as tight contact points from my screens, and became widening clouds.
“Oh, Ejoq! I’m gunning it!”
Bayern had just seen our only defensive weapons blow up on sensors, and had a terrified echo in his voice, like a scared bird singing for its life.
“Wait for it!”
“But…”
“I said wait!”
And then two of the three incomings on the tacboard winked out when they hit my impromptu debris field. The third one, though, slipped through it like a ghostly thing, and I shouted hard.
“Now, now, now!”
I was slammed against my harness, the low-quality inertials once again bleeding shamelessly, then I felt my stomach get tossed to the side, up, down, and over.
“Bayern!”
“Hold on!”
Then my spleen and eyeballs alike joined in, and tried to jump out of my body – and I could only hope that Genness had secured Sally well.
A serene, agonizing silence followed for several seconds, wherein I fully expected to become part of a rapidly expanding ball of plasma, but I finally let out a sigh when it stretched on. The tacboard showed a small mass of debris on the missile’s former track, moving out obliquely in a messy wave of scrap.
“What happened to it? Bayern…?”
“I’m not sure…I was dodging, but it kept compensating, so I pulled a tighter angle. It altered course again on a tight arc, and then just fell apart.”
“Ha! Gee-strain! Fantastic job, Bayern!”
He coughed in shock and, I think, appreciation, and then immediately launched into a sermon about teamwork. Genness cut him off before I could.
“All clear? If so, get down here, Ejoq. Sally’s not looking good, and med’s not my bailiwick.”
It wasn’t mine either, but I’d had some training. I couldn’t do much for her while I was still in the suit, so I spared the time to climb out of it, telling Genness to do the same for her before I got back down to the big stowage bay. She was in her skivvies by the time I did arrive, and pale, though her breathing was more regular. She moaned, but wasn’t quite conscious.
“Watch the right arm,” Gen said. “She cried out when I took the suit off. I think it might be broken.”
The funny angle she held it at spoke of volumes of pain.
Motherload: Stardrifter Book 01 Page 6