Gravlander

by Erik Wecks

  The fire on the wall licked toward the ceiling. One of the spiders had climbed next to it and, aiming its extinguisher cannon at the wall, quickly put it out. The other crept inside the wall. A second or two later, Katy felt and heard a small thud followed by a long exhaled hiss as the second fire bot detonated as close as it could to the center of the heat. A small puff of white, powdery steam rushed from the hole at the bottom of the wall where the bot had entered and all along the partially bucked seam in the paneling. The second spider now descended the wall to take the place of its fallen comrade.

  Figuring she had done all that she could, Katy hurried back to her seat to strap herself in.

  Soren continued to shout at the computer. “Where are we?”

  “We are currently nine thousand kilometers from our sixth gate. It is open and operational. Preliminary scans indicate that the frontier side of the gate is clear. However, the gate was blocked by a contingent of four Unity ships. We took heavy damage immediately after transit, and I was forced to break off from continuous transit and sprint away from the gate.”

  Soren screamed, “Put it on the board!”

  “I cannot comply. The board is unresponsive.”

  “Heads-up, then!”

  Katy, who had stumbled on some of the fallen debris as she headed back toward her seat, picked herself up as she opened the tactical board on her own heads-up. The trap was clear, even to Katy’s untrained eye. Four patrol boats held the gate and had opened fire when the ship entered the system. A small corridor had been left open, allowing an apparent means of escape. Having no other option, the ship’s AI had committed to the corridor, increasing its speed away from the gate. The corridor came to a quick end not long after, guarded by a full Unity cruiser. Having their engines knocked offline had momentarily saved them from accelerating right into the trap.

  Soren, who had unbuckled her straps, stood. “Mother of God, help us! Reverse course! All reverse, flank speed! Launch! Launch! Launch! Launch everything! Neela! Launch them all!”

  The computer continued to sound calm. “Unable to comply. Ship’s engines are offline due to a main fault in the primary cooling system.”

  The disaster had only delayed the inevitable. The Clarion was now surrounded, and the deadly railguns of the patrol boats at the gate now appeared to be the weakest link in what was quickly becoming a tightened net. To make matters worse, the four boats at the gate had now been joined by two military destroyers that had just entered the system.

  Katy wondered how this fleet had managed to get assembled in the short time since they had made a run for it back in Ursis. The Unity couldn’t really have predicted where they would go. Then she remembered the attack on Korg Haran, which lay damaged or destroyed through the gate now receding behind them.

  For a second, she thought this might be the fleet that had attacked the Timcree city, but then she realized that didn’t make sense, because at best speed, the city lay a couple of hours away from the gate—and several more at a typical cruising speed.

  Katy took a closer look at the tactical display. “Captain! I don’t think they have any missiles left. Or at least, they only have a few.”

  “What? Explain.”

  “They have to be part of the attack on Korg Haran.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. It’s only been thirty minutes or so since we decided to make a run for it in Ursis.”

  “I understand, Captain. I think these were the reserves—the fleet at the gate meant to keep any Timcree from escaping.”

  Soren thought for a moment. “That makes sense. It explains how the ambush was set up in such a short time, but how does that help us?”

  “They may have used up a lot of their ordnance—especially missiles. Otherwise, I don’t understand why they haven’t fired on us already. They’re out of ammo or at least low.”

  The Clarion started to shake and shudder under Katy’s feet, as down below the longshoremen began to unload all the remaining containers left on board. Katy was about to rehook her harness when she remembered something from the computer’s initial announcement. She let go of the harness and turned to let the captain respond to her deduction.

  Soren sat back down. All eyes on the smoke-filled bridge were on her, looking for guidance, a few of them still groggy after their recent trip into unconsciousness.

  To Katy, Soren seemed almost serene in defeat. In the last two years, Katy had grown to care for the older woman a great deal, seeing her as one part therapist, another part mother, and still a third part mentor. The older woman’s control under pressure was one of the things that Katy appreciated most about her captain.

  Soren released the grip on her command chair, which she had been using to balance herself. Her eyes sparkled as she said with calm deliberation, “Vi, do you have the engines back yet?”

  “Not yet! It was just a blown breaker, but it will take twenty to get the fusion plant up again!”

  Soren crossed her legs and brushed at the soot on her uniform. Her voice remained calm. “That won’t do, navigation. We’ll be dead by then or boarded. Freddi, can you do something?”

  “Already on it! I can give you thirty percent now on the aft engines and then full power on the forward engines in ten, maybe less.”

  Although she remained externally calm, Katy watched Soren’s face lose some of its color. She opened her mouth to speak again but after a moment decided better of it. Instead, she turned on her comm and said, “Neela, set up an attack plan for those containers. If we get power back, we might have a puncher’s chance. We’re making a run for the gate.” At the same time Soren waved at Vi, sending the pilot scrambling to use the little thrust available to her to get the ship limping back toward the gate.

  Katy moved toward the closed pressure door that led from the bridge to the rest of the ship.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” asked Soren. The captain had turned her chair to face her. Soren’s face was stern, but there was something else playing at the corners of her lips—perhaps pride, or maybe satisfaction.

  “I’ve got ten minutes before the artificial gravity can’t compensate for our thrust. I’m going to check on our missing crew.”

  Now Katy felt sure of Soren’s grin. Katy guessed that Soren had known her intentions before she’d stated them. Soren pointed with a nod of her head toward the two pressure suits hung in a shallow alcove next to the door. “Suit up. You’ll need the portable airlock as well.”

  Standing in the corridor five minutes later, Katy took a brief look through the porthole in the closed pressure door that led into the mess hall. The yellow cast of her HeFAR and the narrow view didn’t allow her much of a perspective of the room, but what she could see didn’t look good. The room looked distinctly windswept. There was some kind of linen—probably a tablecloth—wrapped around the leg of one of the metal tables, and there were all sorts of detritus spread through the room. There was a dark film on the far wall of the room that looked like soot, but it streaked to the right, out of Katy’s field of view.

  A sharp jolt in the floor of the ship knocked Katy against the wall and brought her back to the present. Something had hit the ship, and they were still only limping. Katy positioned the portable airlock on the ground in front of the closed pressure door. Using the digital screen, she started the device, which inflated almost instantaneously until it had surrounded the door and sealed itself to the wall. Now connected to her heads-up, the door chirped in her ear as the datapad turned green. Katy pressed on the pad and the newly formed door unsealed with a sharp hiss that Katy could hear even through her suit. Having entered the lock, Katy used a thought command to signal it to seal itself and depressurize for entry into the mess hall.

  “Come on! Go faster!”

  When that was done, the mess-hall door responded to the equalization in pressure by unsealing itself. The round wheel on the door automatically turned, removing the two large steel pins that held the door in place. In the silent vacuum, Katy pushed gently,
and the door glided open.

  Stepping in, Katy looked immediately to her right and was shocked to see that she was looking directly into the void. In the last few years, she had spent many hours in void, maneuvering in and out of containers as she left and returned on her missions, but this felt different. To see that the void had entered her own space, to see that it had tried to kill her family—that it already had killed two members of her family—it brought home the danger in a different way. The skin on the back of Katy’s neck prickled.

  Someone out there is trying to kill me, and they don’t even know me. They should have to look me in the eye before they kill me. They should have to know me.

  Not wanting to take any more time, Katy turned away from the void and scanned the room, but considering the size of the gash running along the side of the mess hall, she doubted that she was going to find anyone alive. The room itself was in shambles—cupboard doors torn, open supplies scattered here or there, all of them pulled toward the void when the life-giving air rushed out.

  Sick to her stomach, Katy jogged toward the kitchen, almost sure that she would find Todd and Lilah in their chairs. Yet when she stepped around the corner, they were not there. The chairs were empty, their bodies nowhere to be found. Katy stepped forward, and a small movement caught the corner of her eye. A pair of fearful eyes and curly red hair stared out at her from the window of the freezer, desperate to get her attention.

  Oh God! They’re alive!

  Katy commanded her heads-up to access the bridge comm system.

  The device crackled to life in her ears.

  The first voice came from Neela. “They’re firing on the containers!”

  As if to emphasize her point, Katy felt the deck under her veer sideways as some kind of weapon hit the ship again.

  “I see it,” Soren answered. “Get them moving! They don’t make very good bullets if they’re sitting still. This isn’t an orderly exit. They will be of more use to us if we get them up to speed, even if we do lose a few.”

  “Understood! On it!”

  “Give me six swarms, Neela. Assign them to your people. And put two on that cruiser. We aren’t going to make it unless we take out that bastard! It will hunt us down after we transit the gate!”

  Katy switched gears and popped up Jones’ private channel. She didn’t wait to be answered. “Jones, they’re alive! I don’t know how, but they locked themselves in the freezer, and they’re alive! We have to get them out of there. How are we going to do that?”

  “No shit? They’re alive?” Katy could hear a barely audible whoop from Soren on the bridge in the background.

  “Yes! We have to get them out, and I’ve got hard vacuum in the mess with a gash you could fly a shuttle through. I’d ask Freddi, but she’s working on the engines.”

  “Understood.”

  While Jones thought for a moment, Katy tried to wave her arms to give Lilah some indication that she would come back.

  The cook smiled and gave an exaggerated nod to show her understanding, but Katy could see that she was already shivering.

  Katy hurried toward the airlock that would lead her back to the atmosphere-filled corridor. “Jones, we’ve got to hurry! They’re already cold.”

  “Right! Let me think…”

  Katy entered the lock and closed the pressure door behind her. She manually turned the handle, securing the metal bolts in the door so that it would remain closed as she pressurized the temporary airlock.

  “The closest suits are in the ship’s docking port,” said Jones. “The second emergency airlock is stowed just inside the spindle in the closet on the right. I think that’s what you have to do. You get the second lock and then you … Hang on!”

  The ship shuddered violently, knocking Katy against the opposite wall of the corridor. The pressure suit absorbed much of the blow. She was just grateful that the knock hadn’t ruptured the suit in any way.

  When she recovered, she could hear Freddi in the background yelling.

  Jones sounded worried. “Katy you have to move! Forward engines are going to be online sooner than expected, and we have incoming!”

  “Understood.” Katy disconnected the line and took off running. She felt sure that she knew what Jones was suggesting that she do. She ran as well as she could down the main corridor, past the stairs that led to the secondary engineering suite, down below and past the ladder that led up to the docking port where the ship’s boat still hung—if it hadn’t already been destroyed. She decided that she would get the portable airlock first and then climb up to get the suits.

  Katy came to a sudden halt at the closed pressure door that led to the spindle. Wait! This isn’t going to work! The spindle’s been hit. It’s all torn up. I can’t open this door unless …

  Katy tried to connect to the door panel with her heads-up. When the door responded, she asked what the status was. She was surprised to find that the first section was still pressurized. She palmed the door and told it to let her enter.

  Katy felt the floor vibrate as the giant door slowly swung back on its hinges. She entered the corridor that led almost a half kilometer to the midship thrusters. Katy was shocked at the serenity inside. The lights all still glowed in straight lines. Katy felt the gravity gradually weaken as she stepped forward to the cabinet on the wall. If she went too far, she could leave gravity and float down the tube to the midship and then beyond to the aft engineering compartment, but she wasn’t thinking about such things, and she slammed open the cabinet, looking for the second portable airlock. She found it at the back. She was just wondering how she was going to manhandle the airlock and two suits when a bright flash distracted her.

  Katy turned toward the midship and watched in horror as a fireball swam up the long hall toward her, and then it seemed to slow and reverse course, diminishing as if someone had turned back time. The pressure door slammed behind her, shutting her out of the safety of the command quarters. Katy got almost a half step into a scramble toward the now-closed door when she lost her footing in the onrushing exhale of the destroyed spindle. She tumbled backward, bouncing off walls and railings like a rag doll. As she made her way toward the void, wall panels, fixtures, and equipment started to go with her, creating a dangerous haze of jagged metal and massive objects, any one of which might tear her to shreds or crush her.

  She made desperate attempts to grab a railing, a handhold, anything, but all to no avail. Nothing came within reach until she ended up grabbing a light fixture with one arm for about half a second, until it too gave way and tumbled into the maelstrom. Katy felt a sharp pain in her forearm, but she had little time to notice, as she was once again tumbling. A few seconds later, the Clarion vomited her and the other bits of detritus into the darkness.

  Stars and chunks of metal whirled by as her suit screamed over and over in her ear. “Warning! Suit integrity critical! Venting atmosphere!”

  The suit clamped down hard around Katy’s elbow, and then it suddenly loosened again. “Tourniquet unavailable due to venting atmosphere! Maintaining positive pressure. Suit resources diminishing rapidly.”

  Katy looked down at the arm and noticed with distress that a frothy pink spray was being exhaled from a two-inch tear in her suit. Katy felt the suit jab her in the back of the neck, injecting a potent cocktail of emergency nanites and adrenaline.

  Shit!

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  Panicking, Katy grabbed her right forearm with her left hand.

  What do I do now?

  Katy took a ragged adrenaline-filled breath and started to triage her situation. The gash probably wouldn’t kill her, but the hole in her suit definitely would. Willing herself to do what needed to be done, Katy deliberately let go of her left arm, allowing the suit to again begin leaking. This time, Katy noticed that the venting atmosphere was adding new vectors to her already nauseating spin, but she ignored that input. Instinctively, Katy pressed the leak against her chest, desperate to save her precious air. The stab of pain that
accompanied the act worried Katy. She wondered if the bone was fractured underneath.

  Using her free left hand, Katy grabbed at the emergency patch kit on the lower-right thigh of her pressure suit. The four-inch-square kit came off with a small tug. Katy wrapped the responsive fabric in place over the gash, careful not to allow the venting atmosphere to cause it to drift away. The responsive fabric did the rest in just a few seconds.

  Katy flipped on her heads-up. Now that she wasn’t distracted by her imminent death from asphyxiation, she could feel that the fingers on her right hand felt slick inside their glove. Well, at least I can feel them, she thought. “Computer, reset the tourniquet on the right arm.”

  The computer beeped, and Katy screamed a bit as the tourniquet tightened down, but the pain helped force her to focus on her situation. Now that immediate death had been thwarted, it was time to find a way back to the Clarion, which couldn’t have gone far without its engines.

  “Computer, stop spin relative to background stars.”

  Katy felt the thrusters on the back of her suit fire. It only took a few seconds for her suit to bring her spin under control. Katy turned her head, trying to assess her situation. The suit neatly countered this motion, allowing her to look around without inducing another spin. Nearby, jagged hunks of metal tumbled in between cartons of cleaning supplies, light fixtures, and other remnants from inside the spindle. Beyond that lay the lower two-thirds of the shattered spindle itself, barely visible in the dim light of the outer reaches of her current system.

  “Suit, point me toward the Clarion.”

  “The Clarion is in three pieces. Which part would you like me to find?”

  Three? she thought. “Point me toward the crew quarters.”

  The suit twisted Katy somewhat to her left, but the crewed part of the Clarion was not immediately visible to her until she noticed a small triangular smudge of blue that didn’t quite look like a star.