Gravlander

by Erik Wecks

  Vi turned a little white when she and Susan said together, “Aye, Captain.”

  Soren looked over at her sensors officer. “Susan, you have the bridge. I want the rest of my officers in my office now—including you, Katrina. You’re the medical officer.”

  For a half second, Jo looked around wondering who the captain had in mind. Then she jolted upright and followed the other officers off the bridge.

  Even as Jo and the other officers traveled the short distance down the corridor to the captain’s quarters, the familiar thunk of containers offloading rattled through the vessel, but this time instead of a series of discrete clangs and pops, the noise continued to grow until Jo felt like she was standing inside a dim metallic popcorn machine. She knew that the noise and vibration she heard represented only a small tithe of the thousands upon thousands of containers attached to the vessel.

  Since boarding, Neela Singh had made clear to Jo her opinion that the merchant marine was the backbone upon which the galactic empire had grown. Modern merchant ships like the Clarion averaged around two kilometers in length with some of the Goliath class reaching up to five kilometers. At only a kilometer, the Clarion was of the smaller Manatee class. Even so, putting such a behemoth down deep in a gravity well made for impossible acceleration curves to get it back out again, so a simple solution of uniform, self-propelled containers developed. The cargo ship simply passed into the orbit of a planet or moon and then offloaded containers while picking up others. Neela and her team were tasked with loading and unloading the vessel at each stop with the minimum amount of fuss possible.

  The Clarion was currently running at nearly eighty percent full, which meant the ship was carrying over seventy-two thousand units of cargo, every one of which was detaching itself and maneuvering into a parking orbit to await pickup later. Jo couldn’t imagine the insanity. Even from two decks above, Jo could hear Neela yelling.

  Jo was the last to step into Soren’s office. Jones, the first officer, was there, along with Freddi, the chief engineer. There was also the ship’s steward, a woman named Halsey, and the second officer, Danielle Billet. It made for a tight fit. Jo was soon trapped in a corner near the door, making sure she didn’t bang her head on the bulkhead.

  “Okay, folks,” said Soren. “We just committed to doing something, and the reality is that we have only a few minutes to make sure that whatever we do is effective and doesn’t get anyone else killed.”

  Jones spoke up. “Captain, I don’t know if that decision is wise. We don’t even know what happened. It could be some sort of terrorism, or even an attack. Besides, can we stabilize her? They won’t be able to get enough people off before it hits the atmo.”

  Freddi was shaking her head even before Jones quit speaking. “We don’t have enough time to stabilize it, Jones. There’s only a hundred minutes or so before they hit the point of no return and only a few more before they start heating up. Even at full throttle and mass bending, we don’t have the power, and we risk giving away our ship’s true capabilities. That would cause us some trouble with the transportation board, not to mention the security apparatus.”

  “I know the risks, Jones,” said Soren. “If it was an external attack, we haven’t been able to find the culprit, and I trust Susan. If it were out there, she would have found it. So I think we can rule that out. Terrorism seems the most likely culprit, and if so, there is some risk, but very few terror attacks are followed up with others. Most often, it’s one and done. My concern is for the people on that station.”

  Jones crossed his arms. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t argue either. “What about evacuations? We can cram a lot of people in our spindle.”

  Soren had been quickly flipping through incoming data on the screen of her desk. “They’re already underway, and that’s my thought, too, unless someone has a better idea. We won’t have much time—maybe fifteen minutes on station until we have to seal it up and get away—and even if they got everyone off, they’d still have a major problem. The simulations I’m looking at say this thing is going to come in right over their most populated continent, and there’s about a thirty percent chance it goes down right near Gotenba on their west coast—that’s a city of four million.”

  While the others were talking, Jo had her heads-up open examining the damage on the ship’s camera. “Freddi, why haven’t the emergency stabilizers fired? Aren’t they supposed to be on some kind of dead man’s switch just for this purpose?”

  The engineer snorted her disgust. “Those things were always a bit of a farce. They still rely on the main gyroscopes in engineering for orientation. Without proper orientation, they won’t fire.”

  Jo thought for a moment. “So, really, the station doesn’t need to be pushed. It just needs to know which way is up.”

  Freddi stood up a little straighter, almost grazing her head on the low ceiling. She looked up at the gunmetal gray, and her eyebrows contracted while she thought. “I think I see where you’re going, Katrina, but without a computer core to relay the information to the emergency engines, there’s not much we can do.”

  Soren answered. “I might have an idea to get around that.”

  Ninety minutes later, Katy was back on the bridge with the crew. On the main screen, Freddi’s head cam on her pressure suit showed her crawling through a very narrow tunnel of burned wires and debris. Attached to her belt, she dragged a three-inch-thick data cable that ran directly from an external port on the Clarion into the depressurized part of the station where Freddi worked.

  The Clarion had only found one viable docking point at the top of the station, and even then their hold was tenuous, with only two of the six clamps able to connect. It had been enough, however, for the ship’s computers to get a bead on the station’s altitude, speed relative to the planet, and its acceleration.

  “Damn it, Freddi,” said Soren, “this was a stupid idea. It isn’t going to work. Let’s get you out of there. We’ve got to get buttoned up and undocked before we hit atmo and burn up with the station.”

  “Fifty thousand people, Captain.”

  “Fuck, Freddi. I need you to turn around now!”

  “Two minutes. I’ve got a good feeling about this bundle up ahead of me. It looks right, and it’s intact.”

  “All right, Freddi. Two minutes. No more!”

  Soren leaned over to the first officer and spoke in a quiet voice. Jo overheard because she was standing nearby. “I need you to get down to the airlock. If this doesn’t work, we’re going to rip her out of there with that cord she’s tethered to, so get on the winch.”

  Jones nodded and stepped off the bridge.

  Jo guessed that Vi also overheard the captain, as she turned gray and sat up a little straighter.

  “I got it!” Freddi cried. “I’ve got a live one. Give me a minute, and I think I can make this work.”

  Jo watched as Freddi carefully sliced the line apart. Inside, hundreds of lines of fiber started to writhe and twist as they sought out new mates through which to send their data. On the head cam, Freddi reached down to her belt and brought out the cable she had carried with her and quickly trimmed the casing away from the end with her knife. Now her wire also came to life, writhing like living spaghetti in her hand. Freddi brought the two wires together in front of her face. Almost instantly the wires began to merge, wriggling until they found their appropriate counterpart. Once they did, the two fused seamlessly, forming a continuous stream of data.

  Almost everyone on the bridge was watching the wires blend together when Susan caused most of the crew to jump. “Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Fire! Fire! Fire!”

  Under her feet, Jo felt the point defense railguns open fire. A second later, a deafening bang knocked her into the wall. It was followed by a long, scraping metallic whine. The bridge lighting changed automatically to red and collision alarms wailed.

  Jo felt her ears pop and somewhere behind her there was a series of loud booms as the emergency bulkheads slammed into place.

&nb
sp; Soren stood, one hand bracing herself against her chair. “Report!”

  Susan turned, wide-eyed, mouth open to the captain. “Captain, it came almost directly from behind in our blind spot. The sensors didn’t pick it up until it was a good third of the way down the spindle—”

  “What the hell was it? A missile?” Without letting her overwhelmed sensor officer answer, Soren turned to the engine mate sitting in Freddi’s chair. “Do I still have a ship behind me?”

  The young red-haired woman answered almost calmly. “No, sir … I mean, yes, sir. You do have ship. It wasn’t a missile, just a piece of debris. There’s a small hull breach in the spine in section Q. Sections R and P have some integrity issues but no breach. The two aft repair bots have launched and are headed to patch it up.”

  Soren stared at the calm woman and nodded almost imperceptibly. Then she flipped up the screen on her heads-up device and rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. Even before she finished, she was yelling into the comm. “Freddi, that’s it. Time’s up. Jones, reel her in. We have to get out of here!”

  Jo felt the gravity under her feet shift slightly as the ship adjusted to a new vector of acceleration.

  Freddi sounded suddenly giddy. “I got it, Captain. I got it!”

  Soren’s head snapped up. “Belay that order, Jones. Susan?”

  Susan nodded. “The stabilization engines must be firing, Captain. The rate of orbital decay is dropping. We are in contact with whatever is left of the station’s server system. For now, we’re serving as the computer network on the station.”

  “How long until the station reaches a stable orbit?”

  “Our computer estimates it will take sixteen hours.”

  Soren shook her head. “Sixteen hours? We can’t stay here in this debris field that long. We’ll get torn to shreds. Besides, our cargo is out there unattended.”

  While slowly picking her way through the debris back toward the ship, Freddi spoke up on the comm system. “I don’t think we’ll have to, Captain. There’s a tertiary control center on deck seventeen that’s pressurized and ready to go. I just had our computer take a look at it on the security cams. It looks intact. It probably went offline in the EM surge from the blast.”

  Soren’s forehead wrinkled. “So what does that gain us, Freddi? The station will still need our gyroscopes for orientation, and how would we get there anyway?”

  “The ship’s boat will have a much easier time avoiding the debris than the Clarion and me … we have a spare set of gyroscopes in our parts. We can take them with us and hotwire them to the control center. Once they are up and running, the Clarion can cut the umbilical cord up here and get to safety. I can catch up later with the boat. Besides, it will get Neela back to our precious cargo so she can start reloading it.”

  Soren was nodding now. “All right. That sounds like a plan, Freddi.”

  On the view screen, Jo could see the engineer stepping into the airlock of the Clarion, ready for it to cycle her back aboard.

  Even as she continued to give orders, Soren started moving. “Freddi, we’ll meet you at the boat. Jones, I need you back on the bridge. Dr. Paige, you’re with Freddi. When she gets into the pressurized areas of the station, there’s going to be work for you.”

  Heart pounding, Jo followed Soren off the bridge, repeating over and over to herself. “I am Dr. Katrina Paige.”

  17

  Triage

  Even the obvious damage and lack of power couldn’t prepare Jo for what she saw when she came around the corner three blocks away from the Mt. Fuji hospital. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people huddled in the corridor, a dim carpet of bleeding and damaged bodies that only got thicker as it got closer to the small hospital that served the station.

  She had been prepared for chaos, soldiers running, panicked people, and maybe that would come, but right now it felt as if the station was still in a state of shock. Jo tried to remember that it had only been thirty minutes or so since the station had arrested its descent and began its climb back to stability. Rescues would come. For now, most people were still trying to locate their loved ones.

  At least at the back the crowd was mostly quiet, with a patient crying out in pain here and there. Jo’s focus narrowed as she unconsciously shifted into medical mode. She no longer saw people, only abrasions, lacerations, shallow breathing, and deadly bleeding.

  At first no one spoke to Jo as she started to pick a path toward the hospital entrance, but a few feet in, a young mother recognized the medical bag slung over her shoulder and her white jumpsuit. She clutched at Jo’s ankle. “My son! You have to help my son!” Her voice carried far into the crowd.

  Jo stopped.

  Heads came up as she became the center of attention.

  Not wanting to be mobbed before she even made it inside the hospital, Jo quietly knelt beside the woman and examined the child. He looked maybe six. His eyes were unfocused and his breathing labored and shallow. Most worrisome to Jo, a pink froth bubbled softly at the corner of his mouth.

  Jo looked the woman in the eye. “What happened?”

  “A shelf in my office fell on him.”

  “Okay, I’m going to bring help.”

  Jo started to stand, but the woman clutched her arm in a vicelike grip. “No. You have to help him. This is as close as I could come. There are soldiers there. They’ve locked the doors, and they won’t let anyone in. If you don’t help him, he’ll die!” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Jo felt her stomach turn sour. The hospital had locked its doors? People nearby began to whisper. A few of them were already slowly moving toward her. As the only medical person outside the closed doors of the clinic, there was a real danger that she might be mobbed. Jo glanced around nervously.

  Using her other hand, she freed herself from the woman’s grasp and, putting all the sincerity into her voice she could muster, she said loudly for everyone to hear, “I promise that if I can find a way, I will help your son.”

  The woman nodded but only cried all the more.

  Jo stood and threaded her way back the way she came. A couple of other people spoke to her but she ignored them, and thankfully no one followed her once she escaped, but she breathed a sigh of relief when she managed to step around a corner.

  Now free of the crowd, Jo flipped down her heads-up and ran a search. She found what she was looking for not far away on her right.

  The huge warehouse doors had warped in the blast, leaving an opening large enough for Jo to walk through. Inside, chaos reigned. Shelves had collapsed, goods scheduled for transport lay strewn everywhere. Holographic projectors mixed with food processors and unwanted industrial goods. Considering how few of the workers on the station could afford such luxuries, it seemed a testimony to how damaging the blast had been that no one was looting the place yet.

  It took nearly fifteen minutes for Jo to thread her way from the warped warehouse door to the skin of the station. Once there, she was pleasantly surprised to see that the docking bay had been left relatively clear of debris.

  Jo clicked on her comm. “Captain?”

  “Go ahead, Dr. Paige.”

  “I couldn’t reach the hospital. There are hundreds if not thousands of injured outside. They’re completely overwhelmed, sir. Apparently they’ve locked the doors.”

  “Do what you can, Paige.”

  “Yes, sir, I will, but to be honest, I’m a little afraid for my own safety. It’s quiet down here right now, but people are beginning to get desperate. I think I have an idea that might help, but I need your say so to involve the crew on the Clarion, and I’ll need some serious help from Neela and cargo.”

  “Neela’s kind of busy right now. We’re beginning to take on cargo.”

  “Captain, 50,000 people.”

  There was a brief pause. “Understood.”

  The first cargo container docked with the warehouse an hour later. Her help arrived inside. A second arrived shortly thereafter.

  Her roommate Alia squawk
ed in her ear through her heads-up. “All right, Katy, the second container is locked and sealed to the station. Now what?”

  Jo didn’t look up from the blood-pressure reading she was taking from a woman with a leg that protruded at a very wrong angle. “Load line A in every container until you get that line empty. Then start on line B. However, A’s always have priority, so even if you’ve started on the B’s and I send you a bunch of A’s, then load them first. Is that clear?”

  “Yep. I got it. A’s always go first and so on.”

  When Jo finished taking the blood pressure of the woman, she looked at one of the local people she had managed to recruit from the crowd outside the hospital. “Put her in line B.”

  The young man, whose name Jo could not remember—a cook from a local restaurant—gently started to lift the woman. Her leg had been poorly splinted. The woman cried out in her pain.

  In a detached manner, Jo thought it to be a good sign. The woman hadn’t succumbed to shock yet. In any other circumstance, Jo would have given her something for the pain and nanites to help stabilize her, but she had brought half the ship’s store with her, and it wasn’t nearly enough. Pain wouldn’t kill, other things would. She was saving her medications for the particularly gruesome injuries. She’d seen at least one chest wound that produced a rasp every time the patient breathed. One family brought in a man who had been covered in a blanket. He was still breathing and coherent, but when Jo lifted the covers, she saw that his guts had spilled out of his abdomen. A quick scan with her heads-up and datapad showed that other than the severe laceration, he was in relatively good shape. He got medicine.

  Before turning to her next patient, Jo spared a glance toward the dock. Alia stood there escorting the young mother and her son into the container. When she had first returned to them in the corridor outside the hospital, the boy was still breathing but had turned an awful shade of gray. She had little hope, but she kept her promise to the mother and put them in line A. Other people like the boy got put in line D. Jo tried not to think about line D.