by Jake Elwood
If I want them kept safe, I have to keep the hull intact. And I can't do that from here. I can't do anything from here. I'm wasting my time. She stood, feeling her stomach twist. Hardy had crashed his fighter into a limpet ship to protect the Tomahawk, and it felt wrong to just walk away from him. But staying would do no good.
She worked her way across the floor, one careful step at a time. She was almost to the door when the speakers in her helmet came to life. "Captain to the bridge."
"Coming." She picked up her pace, reaching the doorway in two long strides. She glanced back, got a dirty look from the Gideon's doctor, and moved into the corridor. She was less patient now, shoving past sailors who were too slow getting out of her way. In another minute she reached the bridge.
An opaque emergency patch covered the port window where the limpet ship had made a breach. The whole bridge crew, though, was staring in the opposite direction. Kaur looked through the starboard window—and felt some of the weight slide from her shoulders.
There, not fifty meters away, was the Theseus in all its battered glory.
"The admiral would like to speak to you," said Jin.
Kaur dropped into her seat, then unsealed her helmet and dropped it into the rack. "Admiral. Kaur here."
"Captain." He sounded as calm as ever, as if they'd all spent the day having a picnic. "I'm delighted to find you still alive. What's the status of your ship?"
She explained the situation with the distribution coupling. "We've lost maybe twenty percent of our Fourier metal, and we lost our fighter. It's pretty crowded in here, too. Aside from that, we're good."
"Your wormhole generator is intact?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Excellent. I want you to go through the Gate. You'll find the Sgian Dubh on the other side. Take their coupling and install it, then come back through to this side. It's probably closer to home. Once you're through the Gate, I want you to open a wormhole and leave immediately. Don't even get your bearings first. Make a jump into deep space, get out into the middle of nowhere where they can't find you. Then figure out where you are, and get home."
"But-" Her objections rose in a lump, choking her, silencing her. She couldn't blurt out her calculations in front of the bridge crew. She couldn't fill their heads with thoughts of starvation, cannibalism, death. "Sir, I need to speak to you in person."
There was a long moment of silence. At last he said, "Fine. I'll meet you in the nose."
By the time Kaur reached the airlock, the two ships were already docked together. She fidgeted, waiting for the lock to open, then stepped through and into the Theseus.
Hammett waited inside the lock, the hatch open behind him. A long catwalk stretched away behind him, extending along the top of the ship to the bridge. The catwalk was empty, and she wondered if she could send twenty or thirty people over. They could line up along the walkway and have more space than they had now.
"Would you like to come to the bridge, Captain?"
"I'd rather not, Sir." He nodded, and she said, "Most of us will die if you send us home."
"Staying here isn't exactly a safe option."
"Dying in battle is bad," she said. "Dying of starvation is worse. We're months from home. Not weeks. Not days."
Hammett frowned. "Still, I'd rather see a few of you survive than none of you. And if my mission fails, I need somebody to get back to Spacecom with the position of the Hive."
"Mission!" She pounced on the word. "What mission?" It has to be a mission I can help with. Please, God, anything but slow starvation.
"There's a Gate in the hold of the Manatee," he said reluctantly. "I'm going to try to get back to the wreck. I'll try to find the Gate and deploy it."
"That's a much better option," Kaur said. "But you'll need my help."
Hammett shook his head. "It's suicidal."
"So is going home the long way," she said. "At least your way lets us skip the cannibalism."
That made his eyebrows climb his forehead.
"You've got a shot at getting us directly home," she said. "And a shot at bringing reinforcements from Earth directly to the Hive's home system." She clutched his arm, then remembered herself and let go. "That's a priceless goal. It's worth gambling everything. This is no time to divide your forces, Admiral."
For a long moment they stood there, staring at one another. Finally he said, "I want you alive at the end of this, Meena."
"Not at the cost of eating my crew," she said. "That's a favor I don't need."
The silence stretched out. At last he nodded, a reluctant jerk of his head. "Fine. We'll put everything on one roll of the dice. Let's go see what's left of the Manatee."
CHAPTER 23 - BLOCH
When the temperature dropped below minus 100, Wolfgang Bloch reluctantly decided to abandon the bridge. The decision wasn't easy. Getting his bridge crew to leave proved even more difficult.
Frost rimed the bulkheads and screens all around him. Frost coated his shoulders and chest, and flaked away from his arms as he pushed himself up from his chair. The ship's gravity was long since gone, and he kept a hand on the arm of his chair, then pulled himself across to the next station.
Remlinger was in her seat. She hadn't moved in quite a while. Frost made her faceplate opaque, and he wiped the worst of it away, then peered at her face. Her eyes were closed, and she didn't react to the jostling as he touched her helmet. He grabbed her shoulders, fearing the worst, and shook her. It took three good shakes, but at last, to his profound relief, her eyes opened.
She blinked, mumbled, then shook her head, took a deep breath, and squinted at him. "Commodore?"
Her voice over the suit radio was faint, but at least she recognized him. "Lieutenant," he said. "Nap time is over."
She nodded, and he let go of her shoulders. He floated over to the Communication station, stopped himself by grabbing the communication officer by the helmet, and slapped his hand against the man's faceplate until the man's arms came up, scraping at the coating of frost.
By this time Remlinger was up, pulling herself along toward the Operations station. She reached for Durand's shoulder, but Durand brought an arm up to stop her. "I'm awake," he said, his voice raspy. "I'm cold, but I'm awake."
In a minute or two the entire bridge crew was awake and listening. They'd put their suits in power conservation mode, which meant they were not quite hypothermic, but close to it. It gave the best odds for long-term survival, with the crew in a state close to hibernation, barely moving, barely breathing. But now, Bloch decided, it was time to take some action.
"It's been several hours," he said. "We haven't been boarded, and no one in the rest of the ship has contacted the bridge. We will wait no longer. We will go in search of our shipmates. We will go in search of air and warmth."
The ship was compartmentalized, with quite a few redundant systems. There was an excellent chance that parts of the ship still held air. Main power was clearly down, but that didn't mean there was no power anywhere. That no one had contacted the bridge was disappointing, but there could still be other survivors, preoccupied with the immediate needs of survival.
He would wait no longer.
The hatch to the bridge was the first challenge. Before the Hive, bridge security was a token thing. Now, with entire ships' companies committing mutiny and joining the rebel colony, the loyalty of a crew could no longer be taken for granted. The new bridge hatch was armor-plated and firmly locked. Fortunately the locking mechanism was on the inside. Without power it still required tearing away a couple of big wall panels and cranking a wheel to pop the lock. After that, a couple of sailors hauled the hatch open by brute force.
The corridor beyond was empty, frost thick on the walls. Bloch tried to work out what that meant as he led the others along, rebounding from wall to wall, from ceiling to floor. Things got cold, and then the ship attempted to repressurize this section, releasing moist air that formed frost as it cooled …
It didn’t matter, and he pushed it from his m
ind. When he reached an intersection he headed aft. The key systems—engines, the missile bay, Medical—were all well aft of the bridge. There was light enough to see, coming from the self-contained lights embedded in the ceiling. He was glad the days of completely centralized ship's power were long in the past.
He didn't see any direct signs of damage, which wasn't surprising. The bridge was in the well-protected center line of the ship, a good ten meters from the hull in every direction. He stayed on the same deck as he worked his way aft. It was quite a shock when the deck plates in front of his face ended and he found himself staring at stars and drifting chunks of rock.
He rotated his body. A piece of the ceiling was gone, giving him a view of a dark room above. Below, he could see the jagged edges of three decks. The enemy had carved a vast pit in the belly of the Adamant. The damage chilled him, and he caught the torn edge of a ceiling panel, dragging himself along, wanting to get past this terrible wound in his ship.
"Oh, my God."
He didn't know who had spoken, and he didn't care. "We're not here to sight-see," he barked. "Keep moving." He sounded obnoxious, he knew. That was fine. If the crew was busy resenting him they wouldn't be thinking about the devastation around them, or wondering when the aliens would come back.
They would come back. Of that Bloch had no doubt. The Hive was regrouping, or rescuing survivors in their ravaged settlement. Or they were patiently waiting for these battered human interlopers to die. But eventually they would come back to the Adamant. They would eradicate any life that remained, and cut up the ship for scrap to use in the repair of their home.
And Bloch, if he was honest with himself, knew he wouldn't put up much of a fight. He was leading a pitiful handful of refugees through the crippled remains of a ship. There wasn't a whole lot he could do.
But the Adamant had a missile bay well-stocked with explosive warheads. Those warheads could be detonated by hand, if it came right down to it. The aliens would find less salvage than they expected when they returned. And maybe take a few more casualties.
A body floated just beyond the devastated section, a man, judging by the bulk of his torso. His legs were missing, and the inside of his faceplate was dark with frozen blood. Bloch pushed the remains up against the ceiling panels and kept going.
No one spoke as they passed the body and followed him.
Bloch moved an appalling distance through the ship, the bridge crew trailing along behind him, before he finally found a sealed hatch. He pressed his palm against the flat panel, knowing he had no chance of feeling warmth if it was there but unable to resist trying. Then he pushed himself back, getting his bearings.
Medical was directly above him. Kitchen stores to starboard, crew quarters to port. The kitchen was on the other side of this hatch, with the enlisted mess just beyond. The crew quarters would be his best bet, he decided. They were heavily compartmentalized. Emergency doors were set at intervals as short as five meters in some places.
"This way." He led his band of followers a few meters aft, then into a cross corridor. He found a closed hatch, opened it, and moved through, saying, "Last one in seals the hatch."
The next hatch wouldn't open. He pulled apart a bulkhead, found the override handle, and twisted it. There was no way to be sure the section of corridor he was in was airtight, but he couldn't advance without taking chances.
The hatch slid open a finger's width, and a rush of air pushed him back. Hands against his back and shoulders stopped him, and he waited while the air pressure equalized. Frost formed on every surface, and he had to scrub his faceplate clear.
"Somebody get that hatch." He waited while a couple of sailors grabbed the edge of the hatch and heaved it open. They moved aside and he led the way into the next compartment.
Crew cabins lined the corridor. The cabin doors were closed, and he ignored them. At this range any survivors would hear him on their suit radios. There was no need to search the cabins.
The next hatch opened as he approached, and light flooded the corridor. He checked the status panel on the sleeve of his suit. The temperature was chilly but tolerable, and he retracted his faceplate.
The air, dry and cold, smelled of burned plastic and dust. He wrinkled his nose, sneezed once, and pulled himself forward. He was in a cross-corridor, and he drifted forward, moving toward the kitchen. As he went, he found himself sinking toward the deck plates. By the time he reached the next hatch he was taking long, bounding steps in about ten percent of a gee.
Again the hatch slid open as he approached. He stepped through and found himself facing a knot of figures gathered beside the main ovens. There were five of them, all in vac suits with faceplates retracted, armed with a mix of kitchen knives and handguns. They hastily lowered their weapons as they recognized him.
The air was noticeably warmer here, and the gravity was stronger, almost fifty percent. Bloch felt some of his pessimism slide away. The ship was still dead in space, but it felt more like a ship now, less like a hulk. It felt like an inventory, something to work with, not a place to huddle in the dark while he waited to die.
A woman with a single thin rank stripe across her chest stepped to the front of the little group, glanced at the bridge crew gathering behind Bloch, and wiped the palms of her gloves on her hips in an unconscious nervous gesture. "There's about twenty of us," she said. "We haven't seen the others, but we hear them." She touched the side of her helmet. "Two men are in the sun room. They say the enemy ships all pulled back."
The sun room was a small lounge for off-duty personnel. Located on the top deck at the starboard side, it featured a wall and ceiling of steelglass. It would make an excellent observation post.
"There are some others in the engine room," she said. "They're trying to get main power back on. They aren't very optimistic, though."
Bloch activated his implants. The menu across his retina showed only embedded data sources, and no communications at all. He turned on his suit microphone instead. "This is Commodore Bloch. Your vacation ends now. We'll be repairing as much of the ship as we can, concentrating on weapons and movement. We will also be preparing to repel boarders. We'll begin with a roll call. Who's in the sun room?"
"Specialist Davis and Technician Murtaugh," said a man's crisp voice.
"Engine room," said Bloch. "Report."
There were four technicians in the engine room, plus three wounded, all of them unconscious.
"Who else have we got?" Bloch demanded. "Anyone else?"
"This is Doctor Parker," came a rasping voice. "I'm in the medical bay, and I'm trapped. I've been trying to get the door open for a while now. I've got three wounded in medical pods. It's just the four of us in here."
"Anyone else?" said Bloch. "No?"
Silence.
"Specialist Davis. Report. What have you seen?"
"Some of our ships made a run for it at the end of the battle, Sir. Most of the enemy gave chase, and they never came back. There were a few Hive ships prowling around. They burned off the starboard laser turret. We haven't seen them in a couple of hours, though."
"Good," said Bloch. "What else?"
"There's a lot of wreckage outside. I can see the Sai and the Cassandra." He was silent for a moment. "There's no sign of life on either one."
"All right. Anything else I should know?"
"There's lots of alien wreckage, too. We hit them bad, Sir."
Bloch turned his attention to the engine room. The technicians were unanimous in their verdict that the engines and main power were beyond salvage, at least without a dockyard.
"Forget about that, then," Bloch said. "One of you get up to Medical and get the doctor out. Put your wounded into pods. The rest of you, meet me in the missile bay. We're not quite done fighting."
There was a process for manually launching missiles, though he'd never imagined he'd have to use it. The missiles themselves were complex self-contained machines that could fire up their engines and steer toward targets, once they were free
of the confines of the missile bay. Spacecom's engineers had planned for an eventuality like this one, where a ship was crippled with unfired missiles. The bay even came equipped with a tiny airlock designed for expelling missiles into space one at a time.
Bloch supervised a couple of technicians as they pushed a missile out through the airlock. The only survivors with the authority to access the missiles through their implants were Bloch and Remlinger. He ordered her back to the kitchen to make sure they couldn't both be killed by one enemy strike, then called up the missile on his implants.
He found himself staring at the outside of the hull through a tiny camera in the missile's nose. He ran through the menu, checking his options. If he'd ever been trained on the particulars of directly controlling a missile he'd entirely forgotten it. The menu was quite simple, though. He could scan, choose targets, and activate the missile. That was it.
Getting the rest of the missiles out through the little airlock would be labor-intensive but not complicated. He called the kitchen crew to the missile bay, put a technician in charge, and led the rest of the technicians into the corridor.
"Get me some maneuverability," he said. "We're all boxed in by rocks and wreckage. I need to be able to see what's going on. I need to be able to move."
Twenty minutes later he had an improvised bridge set up in the engine room. Zimmerman, his helmsman, held a data pad that gave him control over half a dozen maneuvering thrusters. Movement would be slow and clumsy, but the ship would move.
Tomlin stood nearby, managing communications through his implants. At the moment he had nothing to do. Rearden, his Operations officer, was assisting Zimmerman. She had her eyes closed as she watched the view through a camera on the hull of the Adamant.
"I think we're ready, Sir," said Zimmerman.
Bloch was opening his mouth to reply when Rearden said, "Ship!" Bloch looked at her. She didn't open her eyes, but she said, "A ship just went past my camera. Very close. I couldn't identify it."
"Alien or friendly?" Bloch demanded.