The reefer was designed to back into tight corners, so they’d have to approach the juncture point on the pipeline aft-first. With the hull’s thickness, Frankie already knew they’d need to lower the tail hatch and allow the charge to slide out on its rails. Problem was, because the rails would no longer work, the charge would stay inside the ship. They’d lose explosive power this way. Womack and she hadn’t designed a depth charge. Unless they could lower the hatch, back right up against the pipeline and detonate the thing.
“Yeah, that could work.”
But this would mean some fierce bit of piloting. Plus, someone would have to visually guide the reefer, tail hatch opened, cargo hold gaping. Good thing they had a couple of e-suits. All the pieces snapped into place. Frankie nodded. Plan B. Or was it C now? Since the Ca Ong’s destruction, everything had degenerated into a downward spiral.
One, because John was a better pilot—not that she’d ever admit it to the fathead—he’d stay on the bridge while she’d don the environment suit and act as loadmaster. And two, long-range comms may not be able to penetrate the thick hull, but she’d be able to maintain intra-ship communication using the e-suit’s relay.
Better than nothing. It’s gonna work. It has to work.
“O, my fair lady,” John’s voice crackled from the comms across the hold.
“Ass.” She grinned all the way to the panel, pressed the Receive button. “Yeah, O Funny Guy?”
“You want to come have a look at this. Imber ships. A lot of them. They’re doing…something.”
It was not like him to be lacking the mot juste.
“What now?”
When she stepped onto the bridge, which he’d put somewhat back into shape, she stood by John and likewise stared at the tacscreens. She draped the e-suit and helmet she’d grabbed along the way on the nav’s seat.
As he had told her, a group of Imber ships were doing something. Problem was, she had no idea what.
John had split the tacscreens into two sections—the two larger ones for main view, and the smaller one to the right for a zoomed-in look at the pipeline. At the juncture, the exact point where she intended to dock the reefer ass-first and detonate the charge, a group of smallish Imber ships had grouped around one larger. And much uglier.
“What do you think they’re doing?” she whispered. They couldn’t possibly hear her, yet the threat they posed, the sheer number and proximity, made her feel whispering was the thing to do.
“They seem to be waiting in line for something. Look over there.” He pointed to the larger ship as it deployed what resembled giant funnels from its underbelly and sides.
The large ship’s aft rested directly on the pipeline as it raised its prow—its head. When the green acid that coursed in thick veins along its hull began to glow brighter, Frankie understood.
“They’re refueling.”
John cocked his head, upper lip curled. “It’s more like…suckling.”
Revulsion and curiosity riveted her to the spot. She watched as the smaller vessels aligned themselves along the large ship’s flanks, docked face first then began to refuel. To suckle, as John had put it. Green, glowing stuff passed from the mothership—in every sense of the term—to the others. This went on for several minutes until the large ship abruptly pulled away, not caring if it hit the babies and sent them scattering around.
“Deep motherly instincts, those Imbers,” John remarked as he turned away. “Well, this was very much like a shuttle wreck that you can’t help but watch. I don’t think I needed that in my head.”
“I did. That acid is much more than just fuel. Look at how much brighter they glow now. And their flight is different. They look drunk.”
“Alien ship-tits and drunken metal babies? Too much for me.” John dropped into his seat and meant to cross his hands behind his head but grimaced and dropped his injured arm. “Wake me when it’s time to blow them up, okay?”
“About that, you’re going to have to back that old clunker right on the pipeline. The charge’s rails are stuck in the bulkhead. Can’t cut them off. I’ll guide you from the hold.”
John snapped to his feet. “What? Guide? How?”
“With the tail hatch open. I’ll guide you from one of the e-suits.”
His blue eyes flashed. “You want me to fly that ship with the tail hatch open and you on it? Are you mad?”
“Should I answer that last one?”
“It’s not funny.” He stalked up to her, seemed to want to touch her in some way but dropped his hands by his sides. “What if I collide against something and crush you? What if I adjust too quickly and you fall off? I can’t fly with you standing outside, for Pete’s sake. I’ll go. You sit here and pilot the damn thing.”
Frankie put her fists on her hips. “Aren’t you the better pilot of the two?”
“I am. But that’s different—”
“We don’t have time to argue. You’re going to have to trust me. And you’re going to have to pilot that thing like you’ve never done before.”
“Frankie, that’s demented. And don’t make this about trust, that’s just bullshit.”
She grabbed the front of his T-shirt and hoisted herself up to his level to plant a long kiss on him. Heat like a blast furnace right in the face hit her. Hard. Air left her lungs, neurons her brain. She became a bundle of nerve endings incapable of mental processes. Supernova. Meltdown. Surfacing from a great depth. Because she knew that if she didn’t act now she never would, Frankie pushed herself at arm’s length.
“Trust me,” she whispered. “Okay? Like you always did.”
“That was…” His mouth glistened. That mocking, beautiful and wicked thing. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply. “That was a cheap shot.”
“It wasn’t cheap and it wasn’t a shot. It was real.” She backed away from the bridge, heart beating like a mad war drum. “I’ll go suit up now. We don’t have much time. Other ships will come to refuel. We have to do this, John.”
“If somehow we come out of this alive, Francine Beaumont, we’re having a long conversation.”
She grinned because she was afraid to start crying. Detonator in hand, she tilted her head his way. “We will.”
“How long is the countdown for?” His eyes were rimmed in red. Did tears cause this?
“Twenty seconds.”
That mocking grin. God, she’d miss it. “Not ten?” he asked. “It’s usually ten.”
“I like twenty. It’s a nice number. Bye, John.”
The hardest thing she’d ever had to do, turning her back on her best friend. Much more than a friend.
“Goodbye,” came John’s reply. Barely audible.
Unshed tears dried in her eyes as she rushed down the passageway. She felt the ship moving to portside. John had begun to slowly maneuver the thing right up to the pipeline. She guessed John was keeping the engines at barely five percent. If that. Just enough for a slow and steady course. They didn’t have much time. The Imbers may think lowly humans incapable of posing a threat but surely they wouldn’t let anything—even supposed space debris—come too close to their precious fuel. Or whatever it was.
Small thuds against the hull indicated he’d entered the vicinity of the pipeline and Earth’s Saturn-like rings. A sound similar to a fistful of rocks hitting a metal panel reverberated all along the deck. Gradually, the sound intensified. They must have been very near their goal. Frankie turned the corner and spotted the row of e-suits. One was missing—the one she’d brought upstairs onto the bridge. She donned one of the remaining suits, clipped everything into place, strapped on a crowbar and a pair of stunners, all of which hung on her utility belt at the end of short leashes. Awkward and heavy inside the ship and its one-atmosphere, but out in space, everything she could ever need would just float around her like little space poodles. The detonator, she slipped into her thigh pocket for ease of access. After fiddling with the controls on her forearm, she activated life support and comms. Stale air filtered into her helmet.
“Frankie, here. You on?”
“Is that a trick question?”
Good old John.
Her breathing made long, strained ssh-ssh sounds as she made her way to the cargo hold. A thin ribbon of steam stopped her cold in her tracks.
The seal between the refrigerated portion of the reefer and the main section seemed to be failing. When she put her face shield right up against the bulkhead, waiting for telltale signs of a breach, Frankie spotted a minute cut in the rubber seal.
Shit.
She grabbed a bit of nearby webbed belt and tore a strand off, which she dangled near the cut. It fretted then stuck to the seal. John’s reefer may have been built like a bunker, but the hit still had damaged it. Probably beyond repair. As long as it held on until they could turn on the charge. It had to hold on until then. Good thing they flew slowly because there was no way in hell this ship would remain in one piece should they kick up the engines past thirty, forty percent.
Frankie decided not to tell John. He had his hands full as it was, trying to maneuver the ship toward the pipeline without looking as though he did. More debris hit the hull in little thunks that made her wince. Every rock could be the proverbial last drop…
Let’s do this.
Light inside the cargo hold had been dimmed to minimum. Barely a thin ray of amber light filtered down from the deckhead. She mashed the Send button on her forearm and kept the comms on automatic. She would need both hands for this job.
“Are…erm, are you ready?” Her voice trembled. She cleared her throat.
“No, of course not.”
“John.”
“We’re approaching the target,” he went on, business-like. “Hang on for a complete rotation. I’m backing this thing right up to the pipeline.”
Frankie gripped the closest rack of cargo netting and waited until the deck had resumed its normal angle. Under her booted feet, the deck’s tremors faded to a barely discernible rumble. John had powered down almost completely.
“Engines at two percent. One, point-five. Zero.”
“How far are we from the pipeline?” Sweat stung her eyes and she couldn’t even rub them.
“A meter, give or take a couple centimeters.”
“Wow.”
“Thank you,” John replied. She heard his deep breath. “I love you, you madwoman. Always have. You know that now, don’t you?”
John’s voice felt like a warm breeze on a cold night. Steam haloed the edges of her face shield as tears leaked down her cheeks and into her mouth. She grinned in spite of them. Because of them. “I think I always suspected, but didn’t know what to do with it.”
“As I said, mad. Utterly, completely, adoringly crazy. I’m glad I’m here with you. I’m where I belong.”
“John…” She choked on the rest. “You’re the best. I’ll miss you.”
“No, you won’t, you’ll be dead, my dear.”
They shared a strained laugh.
Frankie took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do this. For Earth.”
“For that polluted, mined-out chunk of space debris swimming in green acid. For Earth.”
“Lower the tail hatch.”
Nothing happened.
“Don’t mess with me, John, open the damn thing.”
“I just did. It’s still closed?”
“It didn’t move at all. The clamps are still on and so is the seal.”
“Standby.” A moment later, John’s voice filtered into her helmet. “What about now?”
“Nothing.” Panic began to bubble up.
“Well,” he began, chuckling nervously. “That’s kind of anticlimactic, if I may say so.”
Frankie closed her eyes. Things could never be simple, could they? Shit.
“Maybe the hit damaged the hinges. Can we open it manually?”
“Yes.” John’s voice sounded tight and strained.
“Okay, tell me where the mechanism is.” Frankie left the cargo netting and approached the five-meter wide hatch. Surely there was a lever somewhere. “I can’t see it.”
“It’s outside, Frankie. It’s supposed to be activated by ground crews from the outside.”
As John would say, shit indeed.
Chapter Five
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he heard from the comms console. Frankie had always had a way with words. Certain kinds of words, anyway.
“So, what now?”
“Got a cutter?” she asked. “In case it goes to shit, I’ll need something to cut the clamps.”
“In the anchoring niche by the medical kit there’s a blowtorch. It should be fully charged.”
He couldn’t believe he was helping her find another way to go kill herself. What was wrong with him? He should take this as a sign of the Divine and hightail it out of there. A coward’s retreat. He had no problem with being one. Cowards tended to remain alive. But if Frankie stayed, then so would he. He hadn’t lied—he was where he belonged. By her side.
A tiny red light blinked at the far edge of the systems console. He craned his neck. Hull integrity. A glacial frisson snaked down his spine. According to the ship’s schematics he pulled from the chart table, the breach had occurred near the cargo hold. The main seal, probably. The one linking both parts of the ship together. Small, obviously, otherwise they wouldn’t be having this conversation. But a breach was a breach was a breach. Never a good time to spring one.
“Did you find the blowtorch?” His eyes remained focused on the tiny red light. A robotic, Cyclops beetle.
“Got it. Which service access should I use? The one at the back?”
“No, that’s too close to propulsion. Take the one at the base of the lift. You’ll come out directly above the tail hatch. That way I won’t crush you against the pipeline, because, you know, that’d be bad.”
Her chuckle made everything a whole lot better, even death by spacing. He was such a fool. A fool in love.
Speaking of which, while keeping his gaze on Frankie’s e-suit monitor—her heart rate had hit the three digits and kept climbing—John wrestled on the e-suit on the bridge. Just in case something went wrong.
Ha.
What could be worse than blowing up the Imber milk factory?
He knew Frankie had reached the outside just by the way her heart rate spiked. “You okay?”
Her voice came back distorted from the hull’s thickness interfering with the signal. “…goddamn cold…am reaching…both hinges are…elted!”
“Repeat. Both hinges are what?”
“MEL-TED!”
Not good.
A plan formed in the back of his mind. One more reckless than Frankie’s. She’d probably love it. He hated himself for even thinking of ways to pursue this demented course of action instead of just throwing in the towel and going to find another damn planet. His plan was positively Crazy, capital C.
“That fucking…it’s shut. Can’t move a goddamn—I’m running out of options, John.”
His heart sank. Eyes closed because he couldn’t bring himself to watch the little red blinking light anymore, John adjusted his e-suit around his neck. He’d need it. His arm throbbed and made little crunching noises when he bent it.
“I have a plan.”
“Shoot.”
“There’s a breach between the two main sections.”
“I know.”
She did?
“I say we jettison the cargo hold, spin it around so the open side faces the pipeline, then we blow it up.”
“Dear God…” Frankie exclaimed.
“Oh, believe me, He wouldn’t approve.”
“Let’s do it.”
“On one condition,” John blurted out. He had no idea what to say next. But as he struggled to find a fault in his own plan, words just tumbled out of his mouth. As though his subconscious knew exactly what to say. “If you want the plan to work, you’ll have to do as I say. Don’t you trust me?”
“What the hell…condition…no time for that.”
&
nbsp; “You’re going to put on one of the monkey tails, they’re near the cargo netting just inside the tail hatch. You’re going to strap one of those tether straps on. And I want to see it on your cam.”
“…no time for…please, John.”
“Do it!”
Never, ever in his entire life, had he spoken to her this way.
He heard nothing for a long moment, then, in a much clearer voice, Frankie announced she had one of the anchoring harnesses on—monkey tails for the long strap tethered to the ship. A tiny cameo on the tacscreen squared out to show a first-person view of someone wearing an e-suit and a black harness. Frankie gave him a thumbs up, hand held right in front of her helmet so the cam could capture her.
“Good. Perfect.” He checked the distance to the reefer’s aft portion and the pipeline. One and a half meters and holding. “Okay, I’m going to jettison the cargo hold. Make sure you stay out of the way. Hang on to one of the loading ladders, okay?”
“Okay.”
She sounded as though she was panting hard. Space was harsh on the human body, especially under the circumstances.
He moved farther away from the pipeline—two meters, three. Proximity alarms began to wail again as soon as he changed positions. He cut them all off.
“You ready?”
“Hell yeah. Just do it.”
John grinned and pulled down the lever. Another alarm filled the bridge. He cut that one too. A jolt rocked him into his seat as the cargo hold latched off the reefer. Despite the dense hull, the short distance allowed him to keep control of the hold and its four attitude jets. Simultaneously piloting both halves—something he hadn’t done since working at New Ankara Station’s massive kitchens, John nudged the cargo hold into a slow, lazy roll. One wrong move and he would crush his friend. His beloved Frankie.
None of the exterior sensors relayed the woman’s position, even if he could hear her breathing inside her helmet. Movement at the edge of his peripheral vision forced John to take his eyes off the main tacscreen.
“Dear Lord…”
There she was, on portside, bouncing agilely along the rotating hull of the cargo hold like a triple jump athlete. By the green glow that shone from the pipeline, he could see the monkey tail attached from the back of her harness to the fore half of the ship. It floated behind her like a ghostly snake.
Metal Reign: An Impulse Power Story Page 6