by I G Hulme
“Try it again now,” ordered Angelique from the depths of the navigation console.
“The comms?” asked Ryann hesitantly.
He saw Angelique’s body tense and she dragged herself out from the tangle of wires turning on him with a look of fury.
“Dammit Ryann!” she yelled as he looked on in surprise. “The damn sensor-node relay! Switch the breakers again and see if they hold!”
Ryann went to move, but Angelique was already heaving herself up to her feet.
“Don’t you know anything about this damn ship?” she cursed, pulling angrily at the circuit-breaker panel. “I’m trying to keep us alive here dammit!” She punched at the panel in frustration.
“Hey, easy Angelique! I’m sorry. I’m just not so good with the nuts-and-bolts stuff — you know me, I’m much better at blowing stuff up than fixing it.”
Angelique just stared at him in fury; her eyes were wide and staring, the dried blood and grime giving her a look of madness.
“Is everything just a damn joke to you?” she hissed at last, and as she continued, her voice rose into a scream. “You don’t seem to realise — we’ve got less than two hour’s of air left, no power, and we’re four hours away from the Defiance! Even if we did manage to get the damn comms back online we still can’t put out a distress signal because a giant Luminal battleship is waiting for us out there, ready to blow us all to hell!”
“Hey, easy,” said Ryann in a soothing voice. He stepped towards her, laying his hands lightly upon her arms. “We’ll think of something — you always find us a way out of stuff like this.”
Angelique exploded in fury, lashing out at him, her arms flailing.
“I can’t do anything!” she yelled, and her voice was raw with fear. “The ship’s wrecked! Everything’s wrecked! I can’t do anything!”
Ryann struggled with her in his arms, holding her tightly to him as she sobbed, her fury burning slowly away.
“It’s like I’m trapped in that escape pod all over again,” she whispered at last, alluding to the time when Ryann had first found her, drifting amid the wreckage of her parents’ ship off the ice-fields of Carthenia. “I’m not going to die here. I won’t die here,” she croaked through her tears.
“We’re not going to die,” whispered Ryann, holding her tightly to his chest. “You survived that and we’ll make it through this, I promise.”
Angelique stepped back, wiping her tears away in embarrassment. She turned forlornly back to the breaker panel, tugging at the switches but the circuits were dead.
“Stop, just stop a moment,” said Ryann, reaching forward and taking her hand. “Look, let’s just go back through our options.”
“We don’t have any damn options!” she replied in frustration, staring down at the floor.
“Well, we’ve got air in the cabin — like you say, that should give us a little under two hours,” continued Ryann, ignoring Angelique and looking around for any inspiration. “We’ve still got our flight-suits — and my helmet; are you sure that we can’t get yours fixed up?” He looked to the crushed storage bin beneath Angelique’s chair at the navigation-console where the remains of her helmet were still wedged.
“I told you, it’s fried — like everything else,” she replied morosely.
“Okay, er, well I’ve got about one-hour-thirty in my helmet’s air-reserve — I could EVA out into the wreck-field — try and find a ship that might have some air tanks that are still intact — or, I go down into the engine deck and release a little bit of H-fuel. We’ve got emergency flares in the stowage, I could light the fuel, and if the Defiance is scanning they might see the explosion and send a scout group or something.”
“Blow stuff up,” sighed Angelique with a bleak smile. “Is that all you ever have Ryann? The Defiance has just watched the biggest Luminal ship you’ve ever seen park up alongside this wreck-field. They aren’t going to move a damn muscle for the next week. Either that or they’re already running — that would be the smart option.” She slumped down heavily against the navigation-console. “Face it Ryann, there’s no way out of this one.”
“No, I won’t accept that,” he replied, picking up his flight-helmet and pulling it over his head.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“The only thing I can,” he muttered, his voice muffled behind his visor as he locked the helmet into place. “If I can’t find a ship with some air, then I’m going to blow stuff up.”
“Ryann,” sighed Angelique.
“That’s all I’ve got Angelique.” He rummaged through one of the storage lockers for a pack of flares.
“Ryann, stop, it’s a hopeless plan. It’s too dangerous — you’ll get us both killed.”
“We’ll be alright — I’m not afraid,” he replied grim-faced.
“Ryann!” cried out Angelique in frustration, her bloodied head in her hands. “This isn’t about being scared! You’re never scared! I know that! That’s the problem! You’re just damn-well reckless! I mean, what in hell were you thinking, setting us down on the Ibis and just assuming that whoever was in that Patroller was friendly? Just because you’d met some old woman once who —”
“Oh come on,” Ryann retorted, his pride hurt. “I didn’t hear you complaining at the time — they’d just disabled the Ibis, how was I to know —”
“Oh my word, that’s it Ryann! Of course, that’s it!” Angelique’s face lit up in realisation. She stepped forwards grabbing Ryann by the arms and planted a kiss firmly upon the glass of his visor.
Ryann looked on, an expression of confusion spreading across his face.
“The Ibis!” exclaimed Angelique as she turned back to the open console, frantically collecting up her tool-roll. “I’d forgotten all about it! But it’s the nearest ship to us by far — if we can get across to it, then at least it might still have some more air!”
“I don’t know Angelique,” muttered Ryann, dragging off his flight-helmet. “That little Patroller shot her up pretty bad.”
“She was in nowhere near as bad a shape as we’re in,” she replied in excitement. “Her main power was out, but I didn’t see any major hull breaches. It’s the best hope we’ve got.”
“But Angelique, how are we going to get there? You said yourself, we’re dead in the water.”
“Well, the drive-system’s shot, but I might be abe to get the attitude thrusters back online — the auto-stabilisation system runs independent of the main drives, so that we don’t drift about even when the power’s down. They should work off the solar-array, but that’s fried of course — but if I can re-route them to the emergency batteries, we might be able to get enough power to the attitude thrusters for, I don’t know — a few minutes at least. I can’t think of anything else that could get us moving.” She took the flares from Ryann, pushing them into a pocket of her flight-suit.
“That’s great Angelique! I told you you’d get us out of this!”
Angelique flinched for a moment then shook her head and smiled.
“Well, the clock’s ticking,” she sighed, taking Ryann’s helmet from him. “I’m going to need to borrow this, I’ll go down to the engineering deck to re-route the power. How much air did you say it has in it?”
“Not long,” mumbled Ryann. “About an hour and a half an hour at most.”
“You’re going to lose a lot of air into the companionway beyond the cabin when I open up this hatch. You may end up with less time than me, but I can’t think what else to do.”
“Do do you think we’ll have enough to get to the Ibis?” asked Ryann, helping her on with her helmet; she brushed him off impatiently.
“We’ll find out in about half an hour,” she replied with a grim smile. “I’ll stay on the other side of the hatch after I’ve re-routed power to the thrusters,” she said, grabbing a few more tools from a stowage bin. “We can’t afford to lose any more air in opening up the cabin again. But the moment those thrusters are online, just get us straight to the Ibis.”
> “Take care Angelique,” said Ryann softly as they stood before the hatch that led to the rest of the ship. “Don’t take any risks. If it looks too messed-up down there, just come back and we’ll find another way.”
“It’s you that’s the risk-taker,” she said with a weary laugh, her voice muffled inside her helmet. “Get ready — I need to get through and seal the hatch before you lose all the air that’s left.”
She took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment.
“Okay, ready?” Ryann held his hand out to her and she gripped it tightly before taking hold of the hatch’s locking-lever.
“Three, two, one…”
CHAPTER FIVE
COUNTING DOWN
Ryann sat with his ear pressed against the hatch for what seemed like an eternity. His mind span in endless scenarios as he ran through lists of possible dangers that Angelique might face as she traversed the darkness of their wrecked ship.
He jumped at the sound of three sharp bangs on the other side of the door.
“Ryann? Ryann, can you hear me?”
His heart leapt and he almost cried out in relief.
“Angelique! Thank God! Are you okay? Did you manage to re-route the thrusters?”
“Yes, you should have power to your flight-station now,” came back her muffled reply. “But it won’t be much — the emergency batteries will drain fast, so use the thrusters sparingly. The solar array is completely destroyed so once the batteries are dead, they won’t recharge. I just hope you’ve got enough power to shake us free of all this wreckage.
“Everything’s pretty messed up out here — I thought I might find some more emergency air-tanks kicking about but no luck.”
“Well, great work Angelique,” Ryann called back through the hatch. “I knew you’d come up with something — I just knew it!”
“We’ve got a long way to go yet Ryann,” he heard her reply in a sombre voice.
“How much air have you got left?”
“Probably more than you. About thirty minutes, maybe a little less. You better get going, let me know when you reach the Ibis and I’ll get an airline attached — assuming that she’s still got any air. Are you sure that you can find your way back to her?”
“I’ll find her,” he replied, his hand pressed against the cold metal. “I wish you could come back in Angelique,” he finished hesitantly.
“Yeah, you really wouldn’t want me to open up this door again though would you? Go on, get going — you don’t know how much air you’ve got left in there. I’ll be waiting right here — I’m not going anywhere. Just tell me when we get to the Ibis.”
“Okay Angelique,” he said in a quiet voice. “Just take care — I’ll get us there, I promise.”
He got to his feet and picked his way back through the debris that littered the cabin floor then slumped heavily into his grav-seat.
“Come on baby, don’t let us down,” he muttered under his breath as he tentatively brought the flight-controls back online.
To his relief, one-by-one he saw green lights flashing into life across the board.
“You did it Angelique!” he called back over his shoulder. “It’s working!”
Dabbing lightly at the attitude thrusters, he felt the Raven shudder slightly. A low screech of metal ran throughout the hull and the ship came to a stop with a jolt.
Gingerly, he backed the ship up again, but it was no use, the Raven had become lodged in the tangle of metal. It appeared that the star-liner in which they hid had been crushed by the passing of the Luminal battleship.
“This may take a bit of time!” he called back towards the hatch, even though he doubted that Angelique would hear him through the bulkhead. There was another grinding of metal as he tried to roll the ship away from a girder he could see was resting upon the hull.
Backwards and forwards he went, painstakingly manoeuvring the ship inch by inch out of the tangled wreckage.
And all the while, the ominous silhouette of the Luminal battleship hung stationary in space upon the far side of the wreck-field. With each crash and scrape of metal, Ryann almost expected that the great craft would somehow hear them and return, ploughing its way once again through the wrecks.
But mercifully there was no sign of movement from the Luminal ship, and eventually, with a great shout of joy, Ryann managed to coax the Raven free.
He glanced down at the readouts and his mood quickly dropped — he had used up most of the charge in the emergency batteries.
He cursed, and gazed about the wrecks now that he was out in the open. The passage of the Luminal ship had caused them to scatter, ploughing a corridor all the way back in the direction that they needed to go.
He double-checked his heading by the Viridis sun in relation to the dim glow of the system’s planets and then — with his heart in his mouth — he hit a sustained burst on the thrusters. The Raven inched forward painstakingly slowly, then picked up speed, drifting between the dark silhouettes of the wreck-field. He watched in concern as the battery levels dipped down into the red, and he held out until the last second before releasing the power.
All fell silent throughout the ship. He hoped that he had got the direction to the Ibis about right, and that he had kept back enough power for any course alterations that he might need. He wondered absently whether, even if they did make it to the other ship, he would have enough battery power to slow the Raven down. But there was little more he could do now. All he could do was wait.
He glanced back as the Luminal ship slowly receded into the distance. At least it had caused so much chaos with its passage that elsewhere, the wrecks were still spinning and crashing into each other like some slow-motion explosion. There was little chance of them being spotted amongst all that movement.
He hoped.
CHAPTER SIX
OUT OF TIME
By the time that Ryann finally spied a pinpoint of light reflecting off the hull of the Ibis, he was barely conscious. Carbon dioxide levels in the cabin had reached critical levels and he didn’t know how much longer he could fly the ship. His head swam as he sat slumped in his flight-seat, barely able to manoeuvre the Raven towards the disabled vessel.
He willed his ship on, desperate to close the distance, but already his vision was dimming and he felt nauseous and was bathed in sweat, his breathing now reduced to shallow gasps.
“Come on,” he urged himself, but it came out no more than a slurred whisper.
Those final few hundred metres seemed to take a lifetime to cross. Ryann fought to keep his eyes open, but he kept drifting off as his thoughts returned time and again to Angelique, still waiting on the far side of the cabin hatch. He didn’t know if she were still alive — surely the reserves in her helmet would be used up by now? he thought hopelessly.
His hand fell limp from the flight-column in a moment of despair as the Ibis came closer, spinning lifelessly in space, revealing the main airlock hatch that he made for. To his horror he saw the door had been forced open and there was only darkness beyond.
The Patroller must have blown the doors when it landed on her, he thought to himself in alarm, and a shot of panic drove him back into the moment. He forced his eyes open and fumbled for the flight-column, trying to manoeuvre the Raven as they came nearer, but his movements were drunken and clumsy. With a deep boom the Raven slewed into the hull of the Ibis, bringing it to a shuddering halt.
The view-screen swam before his eyes as he tried to guide the Raven back over the Ibis’ airlock, but he was slipping in and out of consciousness now, and again he struck the hull of the larger ship and the Raven rebounded away.
This wasn’t how he had imagined running out of air might be like, he cursed as he willed his numb hands to guide the ship towards the airlock once more. He had imagined that in the final moments he would be snatching his last breaths as he fought to fill his empty lungs. But even though his heart raced and his breathing was shallow, this insidious dulling of his senses was much less dramatic as the carb
on dioxide poisoning overwhelmed him. If it weren’t for the searing pain in his head this slide into oblivion could almost be a pleasant process, he thought grimly.
With a final effort he edged the Raven back over the Ibis’ airlock and he smiled drunkenly as the two ships came to rest alongside one another.
“Angelique,” he croaked, but he couldn’t be sure if he even spoke. He dragged his body forward, sliding downwards, grasping ineffectually at the armrest as he crawled back towards the hatchway.
“Angelique, I’ve done it. It’s down to you now — get to the airlock.”
Somehow, he managed to crawl across the cabin floor — it might have taken him minutes, but he couldn’t tell anymore, he was delirious by now.
He fumbled for a wrench that lay amongst the debris, hitting it against the hatch; but his strength had left him and he could barely make a sound.
“Angelique,” he mumbled again. “Angelique — the airlock, the airlock. I did it Angelique.”
Slowly, his head fell forwards to his chest and he blacked out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BACK FROM THE DEAD
“Ryann! Ryann! Wake up dammit! Wake up!”
Dimly, Ryann heard the words come to him as though in a dream, and he realised that his body was being shaken.
A wave of pain washed over him and he screwed his eyes tighter shut as the returning light felt as though it were burning through his skull.
“Ryann dammit! Wake up!”
With a final effort, he forced his eyes open to see Angelique’s face looking down upon him.
“Jeez, I thought, I thought you were dead for a minute back there,” she sighed, slumping back against the wall of the cabin in relief. “You were blue.”
Ryann just smiled weakly and managed a shaky thumbs-up.
“I managed to patch an emergency air-line from the Ibis.” she muttered as he began to come round a little. His head was splitting, but he managed to roll over on to his side. “We’ve got air to the cabin and the corridor beyond, so that gives us a rudimentary airlock,” she continued. “Though I don’t know how much air the Ibis has in her emergency tanks. We really need to get her power back online and get her charging everything back up again — here —” She held his helmet out towards him. “I found a spare in the Ibis’ airlock — I’ve charged yours back up again.”