by Britt Ringel
He looked down at himself and saw he was wearing his orange jumpsuit from the correctional facility. He shuddered at the sight of it. His convulsions intensified. He could not stop himself from shaking.
“Reece, wake up!”
Lochlain opened his eyes to find Brooke preparing to slap his face. “I’m awake,” he answered before she could deliver the blow.
“It’s one fifteen, baby,” she informed him. “Time for our last dose of anti-rad.”
“It’s thirteen fifteen!” he exclaimed and bolted upright on his bed. “You let me sleep for over an hour, Mercer. I told you to wake me up in twenty minutes! We’re diving in forty-five!”
Brooke looked down at him and frowned. “Everyone got at least two hours of rest but you. We need you coherent for this, dammit,” she scolded.
“But I should’ve been working on the shuttle,” he protested weakly. “We still haven’t got the remote system running.”
She waved him off, irritated. “Jack and I wasted hours on it before we both admitted that it just wasn’t going to work.” Her head shook angrily. “Trying to marry the autopilot to the comms system is a good idea but we simply don’t have the expertise or time to pull it off.” Hazel eyes returned to him. A shoulder rose and fell. “Sorry but that’s the reality.”
Lochlain touched his brow to shield his eyes from the bedroom’s light. “We’ve run out of time. What are we going to do?”
“I’m going to pilot the shuttle.”
His hand dropped and he stared blankly at her.
“It’s the easiest way and it’s practically foolproof,” she explained. “I fire up the shuttle and hover inside the hangar. Elease works her magic and gets us centered. When that happens, I quickly fly out and bring the shuttle to relative rest.” Her mouth tightened into a pained smile. “Easy.”
“How do you get back?” Lochlain asked. His head began shaking forcefully. “I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself, Mercer.”
Brooke clucked and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not letting me sacrifice myself either.” A genuine, if tired, smile formed on her lips. “Once I’ve piloted the shuttle clear of Zanshin, I’ll activate the autopilot that will bring the craft to relative rest without me. The autopilot already has a timer feature and it’s more than capable of stopping the shuttle. I’ll be in a pressure suit and spacewalk back to Zanshin.”
Lochlain’s jaw dropped open in disbelief. “You’re going to attempt an untethered spacewalk… in tunnel space… a distance of… Wait? How far will the shuttle be from Zanshin?”
Brooke breathed out slowly. “I don’t know. I’m hoping I can keep it to a few hundred meters.”
Lochlain rose from the bed and let the volume of his voice surge. “If Elease has to change course even a fraction, Zanshin’s thrusters will push the ship thousands, maybe tens of thousands of kilometers away from you!” Expecting a fight, he let his voice boom with finality, “You are not going.”
Brooke merely appraised him with sad eyes. Her voice was but a whisper compared to his fury. “If we want to save the crew, there’s no other way.”
The couple stared at each other, neither willing to back down.
“Fine,” Lochlain relented. “But I’m going.” He nodded firmly to signal he would harbor no argument. “I’m the captain. I’m accountable for my crew. I’m making this decision and I won’t skirt my responsibilities. I’ll die before I let my crew become trapped in tunnel space.” His mouth immediately dropped open in astonishment and his eyes went wide at his declarations. “My God, did you just hear me? Who the hell am I?”
Brooke continued to gaze upon him with miserable, hazel eyes. “The man I’ve always seen.”
Chapter 41
With less than thirty minutes until Zanshin reached the tunnel exit, Lingenfelter raised her last anti-rad bag into the air with little revelry or ceremony. Her expression was uncustomarily subdued and instead of her standard Svean toast, she soberly moved her eyes over each of her friends and said, “To Captain Lochlain.”
The crew rumbled their agreement and drank their medicine in concert.
Lochlain felt his skin break out in gooseflesh at the simple honor. He tipped his head back and swallowed. When he was finished, he ordered simply, “Take your positions.”
The crew quickly filed past Lochlain although each took the time to shake his hand or pat him on the back. Only Brooke remained with him in the mess.
She collected the empty bags but left them stacked on the island. “Let’s get you into your pressure suit.”
They turned right from the mess and walked an urgent pace toward the lockers near the cargo master’s compartment. When he reached them, Lochlain punched the access panel to the closet containing the suit he had worn when Brooke repaired the Deltic tunnel drive vents. Since the job never required him to enter a vacuum, he had merely returned the pressure suit to the locker without a cleaning. His suit had passed its diagnostics test back then but he fully intended to run a second one now.
He lifted the helmet from its hook and glanced at the thirty-year-old inspection tag. His heart nearly stopped at the sight. Try as he might, his mouth could not form the words.
“Reece?” Brooke exclaimed upon seeing Lochlain pale visibly. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” She grabbed his shoulder and turned him toward her. “Reece?”
“Mercer, read,” he finally croaked out. He rotated the helmet’s tag toward her.
Her eyes darted to the inspection tag. It read “Song Shi.” She blinked several times and reread the tag. Still in disbelief, she squeezed her eyes closed before checking again. Finally, she said, “Engineer Shi? It can’t be a coincidence. What does this mean?”
Lochlain shook himself out of his fugue. “I don’t know but it doesn’t matter right now.” He handed her the helmet and lifted the suit off its supports. The back was already open and he stepped his feet into the suit and down its legs. “I’ve got a shuttle to fly.”
Ten minutes later, Lochlain was fully suited inside Zanshin’s shuttle. Naslund had warmed up the craft and now stood behind the hangar controls opposite of the erected containment field. Lochlain left the shuttle door open. There was no point in closing it when he was already in a sealed pressure suit. Besides, he reasoned, it would not only save time later but also avoid the distraction of decompression that would have accompanied the portal’s opening in space.
He tapped commands into his console. “Jack, the shuttle’s ready.”
“Aye, Captain. I’m leaving the channel open so you can hear us and we can hear you.” There was a short pause before Truesworth added, “With your permission, we’re going to start maneuvering Zanshin.”
“Do it,” Lochlain ordered. “We’re less than twenty minutes from the predicted tunnel exit.” The statement of fact knotted his stomach. To keep his mind off the rising panic, he verified the preprogrammed autopilot sequence that would bring the shuttle to relative rest. As he listened to Truesworth and Lingenfelter, he rerouted the execute icon from his own screen to the copilot’s touchscreen to safeguard against accidentally pressing it. He added a seven-second delay between the command’s input and its execution.
Lingenfelter steered the freighter under Truesworth’s guidance. The sensorman’s voice carried easily over the channel in clipped bursts. He was, once again, interpreting radiation readings as Lingenfelter struggled to coax the ship toward the centerline of the tunnel. Lochlain sat impatiently and adjusted his gloves while following the intense exchange.
“Captain, we’re getting close,” Truesworth inserted rapidly between radiation readings. “You might want to lift the shuttle off and get the hangar open.”
“Copy, Jack,” Lochlain answered and immediately added power to the engines. The shuttle nudged off the deck and held steady as he engaged the auto-hover with a thumb press. “Casper, open the doors.” Seconds later, Lochlain saw Zanshin’s hangar doors split apart on his wall screen. Infinite, black space lay beyond the tops of the
freighter’s propulsion drives. “Jack, I’m ready,” he declared. “Tell me when to go.”
“Aye, Captain,” came the cropped response.
Lochlain looked at the shuttle’s chronometer. It read 13:49. The hangar doors locked open. “Okay, Casper, get your butt down to Engineering.”
“Good luck, sir,” Naslund offered before racing for the ladder.
The shuttle hovered less than a meter from the deck. Still within Zanshin’s gravity and inertial dampening fields, the tiny craft was, essentially, one with the freighter. Lochlain knew that would all change the moment he exited the hangar. Once past that barrier, the two vessels would operate independently. Even the slightest maneuvering of one ship would rapidly carry it away from the other. Lochlain’s eyes drifted again to the upper right of his visor. His EMU remained fully charged.
The tension in Truesworth’s voice rose exponentially as Lingenfelter’s deft handling brought Zanshin closer to the tunnel’s center. The chatter between the two was now constant. Lochlain sat on a knife’s edge.
“Go, Captain!” Truesworth shouted loudly.
Lochlain jabbed the throttle forward and pulled it back just as savagely. The shuttle broke from its hover and surged out of the hangar. In the blink of an eye, the craft was in deep space. Lochlain skimmed his console to confirm he was clear of the freighter. The distance between the ships was a scant sixty-five meters but increasing at seventeen meters per second. “Is the shuttle centered on the tunnel, Jack?” he cried out while fighting the almost overwhelming temptation to apply counterthrust to slow the rate of expansion.
Seconds ticked by before Truesworth answered, “It’s a little off but I think I can figure out how to compensate.”
“Do you want me to adjust?” Lochlain asked hurriedly. The distance was now 191 meters and growing.
“Get out of the damned shuttle, Reece!” Brooke shouted over the channel.
“Do I need to adjust the shuttle’s position, Jack?” he asked again over her plea.
Truesworth’s voice was pure torture. “Captain, the shuttle needs a max delta-v burn of one point eight seconds at two-three-eight mark six. But sir, you’re already over two hundred meters from us and if you burn while in the ship, it’s going to put you over fifty thousand kilometers away. I might be able to compensate if I have some time.”
Lochlain’s hands flew to the shuttle’s controls. “That’s the one thing we don’t have, Jack! I’m entering the burn data into the autopilot. I’ll have it execute the burn and go to immediate relative rest.”
“Reece, please just come back!” Brooke pleaded.
“I’m sorry, babe, but we both know all of this is for nothing if we can’t plot an accurate course line with the lifepod and the shuttle.” He entered the final commands and then took precious moments to review his work. With an affirming grunt, he rose from the pilot’s seat and tapped the execute icon on the copilot’s main screen. He then turned and raced for the open shuttle door.
Lochlain was sure that his pressure suit would snag in the tight confines of the shuttle or, perhaps, he would trip and fall in the narrow aisle. He did neither and jumped from the open portal into the heart of space. As he floated away from the shuttle, he wondered if he was the first human to ever spacewalk without a tether in tunnel space. Surely, he reasoned, no one would attempt such a foolhardy stunt. He looked back at the shuttle as he considered the fleeting thought. Before his eyes, the craft vanished. One moment, Lochlain had been looking at the open portal on the side of the shuttle, sixteen meters away. The next instant, it was simply gone, carried away faster than his eyes could perceive under a full 1.8-second burn.
His hands wrapped around the EMU controls and he oriented himself toward the navigation marker displayed inside his visor. The freighter beyond the translucent shield was little more than a tiny speck against a black curtain. His suit informed him that his distance to home was 1657.2 meters. The number pushed Lochlain’s heart into overdrive.
“Reece?” It was Brooke over his helmet’s open comm channel. Her voice seemed very childlike.
“Hi, honey.”
“Thank God!” She sounded on the verge of tears. “I thought you had stayed in the shuttle. How far are you from us?”
“Is the shuttle centered?” Lochlain asked as he began to thrust toward Zanshin. His flight would be an intricate maneuver. Not only did he have to thrust his EMU onto a correct intercept course but all of the momentum required to overtake the freighter would have to be nulled before he smashed into it.
“Captain, it’s Jack. The shuttle is at relative rest. It’s not perfect but it’s within limits.” Truesworth hesitated. “Okay, Elease is calculating the course line using the two beacons.” There was another interminable pause. “She says she can make it work but she needs to start maneuvering Zanshin soon if we want to be sailing through the centerline when we hit the exit.”
Lochlain felt himself smile at the information. He had done his job right. He had not failed them. “That’s great news.”
“How far is he from us, Jack?” Brooke persisted.
There was a much longer pause before the sensorman answered. “One point six kilometers.”
Brooke did not gasp or cry at the nearly insurmountable distance between them. She did not encourage Lochlain with a false bravado or offer woeful platitudes. With a steadfast voice, she simply urged, “Burn hard, Reece.”
Lochlain took her proposal to heart. Already his EMU’s alarm cried an over speed alert as its rate of closure toward the 150,000-tonne freighter passed beyond recommended limits. Further driving home the point, a second alarm wailed and flashed in Lochlain’s helmet. He was hurling so rapidly toward Zanshin that the EMU’s forward-facing thrusters were no longer strong enough to stop him before impact.
“Captain?” It was Lingenfelter. “I need to move the ship soon or I might not hit the exit point, sir.”
“You adjust course as needed, Elease,” Lochlain snarled between heavy breaths. “That’s a direct order. Don’t you risk the crew for me!”
“I can wait a bit more, Captain, but please, hurry.”
Lochlain screamed past the midpoint of his suicidal charge. Reluctantly, he tore his eyes off his target and spun the suit one hundred eighty degrees to face away from the freighter. His world became the tiny position plot in the lower left of his visor. The distance to Zanshin’s alloy hull shrunk cataclysmically. Waiting far longer than prudent, he engaged the stronger thrusters positioned on the back of the EMU. His body pressed firmly into his pressure suit as the thrusters fought to slow him down.
“Captain,” Lingenfelter said dolefully, “I should probably be adjusting my course by now.”
“Give him more time!” Brooke thundered over the channel.
Lochlain scowled at the speed of his approach. He squeezed his eyes shut and lied, “I’m in the hangar, Elease. Maneuver the ship.”
Chapter 42
Brooke heard Lochlain’s pronouncement and felt her heart soar. During his impossible challenge, she had refrained from informing the crew that the supercapacitor’s charge was only at ninety-one percent. Why the device had failed to reach its capacity was an engineering and mathematics question that would have to wait for later. The deficiency, however, meant that she would have to push Zanshin’s power core two percent over its safe shielding threshold to feed the hungry tunnel drive. Already, the freighter’s core throbbed and pulsated in anticipation.
She loomed over the main console, one hand tightly around the brace, the other ready to push the core over its safety limits when the bridge ordered the dive. Originally, her post had been next to the supercapacitor, with Naslund operating the primary engineering controls. Brooke’s confidence in the improvised device had waned over the last hours and she had felt that it should be her body standing next to the unit if it malfunctioned catastrophically. However, with the contraption’s under-charge, Brooke realized that the crew would be better served with her controlling the power core�
�s output. A quick glance to the far side of the noisy compartment confirmed Naslund was in place to discharge the supercapacitor and run for cover.
“Any second now!” she cried over the fury of the power core and the idling tunnel drive. Her status panel was an engineer’s foulest nightmare. A tsunami of yellow cautions flooded around ugly, crimson warnings and failures. Soon, most of the console would splash red. Yet Brooke stood stoically in the eye of the terrible storm.
The dive order on the console arrived one second before Lingenfelter’s command over the console’s speakers. “Now, Mercer!” The navigator had either forgotten about or dismissed Zanshin’s dive bell.
“Execute!” Brooke screamed at Naslund while sliding several of the reactor’s controls forward in unison. The power levels spiked inside the core and a wash of red from her console highlighted her intense expression. A bright flash accompanied a horrendous boom and the compartment exploded in front of her as she pounded the tunnel drive controls. An instant later, she was flying backwards through the air.
Her back smashed against the front bulkhead and the air rushed from her lungs. She heard a pathetic yelp and assumed it had come from her own mouth. Before the pitiful squeal faded, she was face down in a heap.
Brooke pushed herself off the deck and trailed a thin cord of blood from her mouth to the floor. She looked up with hazy vision and ringing ears. Engineering still existed. The power core had not breached.
She inhaled and tasted the acrid flavor of an electrical fire as her eyes swept toward the supercapacitor. It was ablaze. Staring at the hypnotic flames, she realized the ringing was not originating from inside her ears but from the compartment’s fire alarm. She forced herself to her feet, stumbled three steps toward the burning supercapacitor and crashed back to the deck.
“Casper?” she called weakly from her side but heard no answer.
Dazed and immobile, Brooke could feel the growing inferno’s heat on her face. She squinted against the heat while musing that although the construct may have failed utterly as a supercapacitor, it excelled as a furnace. It was becoming harder to concentrate, even harder to breathe in the smoke-choked room but these facts no longer seemed as important as they should have been to her.