She wanted to stop to catch her breath, but no time. “We’ve got about forty minutes before the reactor blows.” She held up a hand to forestall the questions that would come. “Hope’s got a plan. But it needs all of us.”
“For fuck’s sake—” started Kohl.
“My part in the plan,” said Grace, “is to deal with questions and comments from idiots.” She looked at Kohl. “You were going to say something?”
Kohl’s face said he sensed a trap, so he crossed his arms instead of saying anything else. Good. She looked at them all. “Here’s what’ll happen.”
• • •
“How’s the cutting coming along, Kohl?” Grace watched the counter on her visor. Twenty minutes to go.
“Not good,” he said, voice stressed. Strained.
Time for motivation. “The good news,” she said, “is that if you fuck this up, you won’t have to lift anything heavy ever again.”
A pause. “I’ll get it done,” he said.
• • •
“Helm,” said Grace. “El, are you ready?”
“I’ve never done this before,” she said. “I’m not sure—”
“If you don’t, we’re all going to die,” said Grace.
Static, then, “She’ll fly true,” said El.
• • •
“Captain,” said Grace.
“It’s … just call me Nate,” he said. His eyes were on hers, his face open. His heart open. She was getting fear/fear, but not for him. For them. She hated herself, again, more, harder, if there was such a thing, but she pushed it all down.
“Nate,” she said. “Do you know what do to?”
“I get the easy job,” he said.
“You get the job where you might have to die,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “The easy job. I’ll be ready.”
“All the air, Nate,” she said. “Hope said it was important. Something about mass, and energy, and how we’d all probably die anyway.”
“You don’t get more air than this.” His hand tapped the master console of the cargo bay doors. “It’ll be all the air we have.”
• • •
“Time,” said Grace.
“One more second,” said Kohl’s voice.
“It’s time,” she said.
“I don’t have the reactor in,” he said. “You do what you need to do, but if we don’t have it, what’s the point?”
“Whatever,” said Grace. More motivation. “In three.”
“Helm, standing by,” crackled El. With the Tyche’s reactor glowing like a cinder on the other side of Ravana, they were getting interference.
“Cargo, standing by,” said Nate.
“Engineering,” said Hope. “Oh. Hey. I don’t have anything to do.”
“In two,” said Grace.
“I’m not ready,” said Kohl.
“He’s ready,” said Hope. “It’s in. He’s here. We’re here.”
“In one,” said Grace. Then, “Go.”
• • •
The plan was simple. So simple, everything should have gone wrong. Grace just didn’t have the kind of luck it took to survive something like this. She wouldn’t survive it, none of them would.
Step one. Carve the reactor out of Ravana. Nothing pretty, just cutting torches, plasma spitting against the hull. Kohl, in hard vacuum, a bright star against the hard black as he sliced the heart from a dying ship.
Step two. Breach the Tyche. Seal Engineering, then suck all the air out there. Cut another hole. Pull out the burning reactor, internal safeties trying to save everyone from being turned back to their component elements. Give it a nudge, put it on Ravana’s dark side. Keep pushing, some spare maneuvering packs from the Ravana’s stores epoxied to it. Nothing done clean or right, no time for perfection. A just-good-enough job to push the dying reactor away.
Step three. Get Ravana’s reactor back to Tyche. Get it inside, get it tied down. Through the breached skin of their ship. No time for anything else.
Step four. Helm, adjust the attitude of Tyche. Point the cargo bay at Ravana. A line made of three points; the dying reactor, then Ravana’s insulating bulk, and finally Tyche.
Step five. Vent all their atmosphere. A big shove, to buy them some distance at the cost of all their air. Enough? Hard to say.
Step six. Helm again. Use whatever reaction mass they had left to keep pushing. As fast as they could. All power out. Sticks are dead. An impossible task, to fly a dead ship.
Step seven. The important step. All hands. Pray.
And if they didn’t pray hard enough — maybe they didn’t believe, or maybe all the gods were dead — they’d die.
Tyche’s failed reactor creates a small sun in space. The hulk of the Ravana, turned to component atoms. The remains of the crew, carbon and ash. A bright, expanding fireball. Alarms, sounding through the comm channel. El’s voice, hard and panicked, “We’re not far enough away we’re not far enough away,” and then the Tyche is picked up by a giant’s hands, the hands of a god — not dead after all — and hurled out into the hard black, the creaking of the hull accompanied by something shrill and terrible. They can all feel it wherever their suits touch the metal of their home as the Tyche’s back breaks against the force of her own heart exploding.
• • •
Grace woke to darkness so absolute it felt like it had weight. Something to offset how light she felt. Floating.
They’re adrift.
She feels terror, but it’s her own. Grace isn't borrowing this from anyone. She’d heard there was nothing worse than being in a dead hulk, adrift in space. Trapped, silent. Unable to scream for help.
It’s so very, very black.
She almost giggles, hysteria wanting to break through, as a light comes bobbing towards her. It seems so tiny, that light, against the black that smothers her. She picks out a form, sees it’s a suit. Someone’s come for her. To save her from the dark.
Nate leans over her, presses his faceplate to hers. “Grace,” he says. “I found you.”
She hugs him. She shouldn’t get too close, not to this crew. But she needs it.
He holds her, right until she can’t bear it and pushes him away. “Yeah,” she said. “Right where you left me.”
“C’mon,” he stands. Holds out his hand. She takes it, feeling the jangle of nerves and worthless adrenaline making her unsteady. “Let’s go find the rest of them.”
• • •
It’s suits for everyone, for another couple of days at least. Hope wanted to get working on putting in the Tyche’s new reactor, but Nate had talked her down. Said she needed sleep. He told her she’d saved them all, and that he’d get Kohl to move Ravana’s reactor in place, ready for her.
Grace had seen the hole in engineering where he’d had to tear out Tyche’s dying core. Nothing but stars wheeled past her vision, and she’d stood there for a long time, watching the hard black turn about them. She felt like she should have felt something like cold fear, but she felt warm, warmer than she had in for as long as she could remember.
She crushed the feeling, because it felt like home, and turned her back on Engineering, went to find Hope.
Hope was in her cabin, bouncing between the walls. Grace watched the young Engineer push herself off, wheel through the space, catch herself on the other wall. Grace’s suit lights picked out Hope’s face behind her rig’s visor, something childish and pure in her smile.
“The second thing,” said Grace, after what felt the right amount of time to be standing in a doorway like a creepy psycho, not saying anything. Normally she had more class, but it had been one of those days.
“The what?” said Hope.
“You said there were two things,” said Grace. “One easy for me, one easy for you.”
“I said one hard for me, one hard for you,” said Hope. “You’ve done your hard part.”
“Yeah,” said Grace. It had felt hard, but somehow she figured this next bit would be harder still. For bot
h of them, no matter what Hope said.
“I … I’m not good at this stuff,” said Hope. “So I’m just going to say it. No one’s done what you’ve done. Not for me. Not before. Not even…” she trailed off, lost in a memory. Hope looked like she wanted to say much more, and also didn’t, and Grace let her work her way through that. “Not for me,” she finished.
“Okay,” said Grace. “Done what?”
“Oh, right,” said Hope. “I don’t mean the reactor thing. I mean the Navy thing.”
“The what?” said Grace.
“The Navy,” said Hope. “When they came. Here, into our home. To take me. To take me away, for what I’ve done. You became me, so they’d find someone different. Someone strong.”
Grace looked at the other woman, turning about in the space of her cabin, the walls dark where their suit lights didn’t push the black far enough away. “The way I see it,” she said, because she didn’t want to get close, and didn’t need this woman leaning on her, “is that you’re strong enough already. We’d all be dead without you.”
“Maybe,” said Hope. “Maybe we’d be dead without you, because they’d have taken me away, and the captain would have sailed off, and the Tyche would have exploded.” She sighed. “I don’t know. We’ve got a lot of fixing to do before she’ll fly again.”
“That’s for tomorrow,” said Grace. “You should be sleeping.”
“Can’t sleep,” said Hope. “Too tired. Too wired.”
“You’re welcome,” said Grace. “For the Navy thing.” She wanted to say anytime, but didn’t, because she didn’t want to lie. Not to Hope. You’ve just got to walk away. You don’t have to like them. But you shouldn’t break them either.
“Can you…” Hope trailed off.
“Can I what?” said Grace.
“Teach me,” said Hope. “How to talk to them like you do.”
“I don’t know if you want to be me,” said Grace. “I don’t think you want that at all.”
“No, no,” said Hope. “Of course not. I just … want to sound the part.”
Grace thought about that. A little advice wouldn’t hurt her. Return the favor, a small thank-you because she was living and breathing now. “Okay,” she said. “You need to learn to swear.”
“I don’t,” said Hope, “like talking like that.”
“It’s not about what you like,” said Grace. “None of us do what we like. Not if we want to survive.”
“But—”
“Anyway,” said Grace. “I think you’re probably good as you are. Just go grab Kohl.”
“Kohl doesn’t like me very much,” said Hope. “He’s right, you know. I don’t know why you like me.”
“I don’t know either,” said Grace, turning away. Walking back into the dark of Tyche.
Don’t get attached.
She felt it might have been too late. Which meant it was time to go.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nate wanted to scratch his nose, but the helmet made that tricky. He walked the cold dark of Tyche. No lights, except from his suit. No gravity, which meant his walking was a huge pain in the ass. Magboots only went so far. Technology made them predictive, gave them a more natural cadence for the way feet contacted the ground. Didn’t matter — it still felt like walking through a mire, muddy water sucking at his feet with each step. He didn’t like zero G. It made it hard to move, to balance, to get his bearings. This whole job felt like that. He was tossed about, adrift, and his ship — his home — was open to hard vacuum.
He made it to the flight deck. There was emergency power here, dim red floor lighting casting tall shadows. Ice rimed the walls, a little more of an atmosphere’s memory clinging to the ship. El was working on the console, trying to coax navigation, schematics, anything from the system. Tyche wanted to help, the holo flickering to life for brief seconds of time before scattering into random lines and signal noise. She was wearing her Old Empire flight suit, the black of the material making her look like a living shadow as she worked on the ship.
“How goes it?” he said.
El turned, and the illusion of living shadow was banished as her visor faced him, lit from within. Tired. “Systems aren’t good, Cap,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You should get some rest,” she said, a little concern mirrored between them.
“I can sleep when I’m dead,” he said. “I’m not ready to be dead yet.”
“We just need some power,” she said. “A teaspoon of it, get the RADAR and LIDAR back up. Then we could see what was going on around us. I think we’re okay. We weren’t near any of those floating rocks when … when the Ravana … so. But I can’t be sure.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Let’s worry about what we can control.”
“I’ve got the next jumps plotted,” she said. “That’s good, right?”
“I hear a ’but’ in there somewhere, El,” said Nate. “You’re preparing me for bad news.”
“It’s the Tyche,” said El. “She’s hurt pretty bad. The superstructure took a knock in the blast.” Her hands moved in the air in front of her, making a twisting motion. “It’s only a little bit, a tiny shimmy in the middle of her. We can fly her. Probably as high as four, maybe five Gs of thrust. I reckon I can land her, exactly once. She won’t take off again. Not unless we land in a shipyard.”
“Can we jump?” said Nate.
“I would have led with that,” she said. “If we couldn’t, I mean.” She sighed, the noise a hiss over the comm. “Hope’s done her best. We’ll have power back soon. Drives will come online. Kohl’s welding the hull closed, so we don’t vent air. But we’ll need to shore up somewhere. A week. To get her to fly true.”
“A week?” said Nate. “You’re just trying to get that shore leave, aren’t you?”
“You read my mind,” she said, offering him a faded smile. “Piña Colada. I could use a Piña Colada.”
“It’s on me,” said Nate. “El? You’re doing great.”
“I wish I could do more,” she said, trailing a hand over her console. “But our ship’s hurt, Nate.”
“We’ll get her better,” said Nate. “She kept us alive. Now it’s our turn.”
A whoop sounded over the comm, Hope’s voice stressed with joy and too many stims. “Fuck yeah,” she said. The way she said fuck reminded Nate of an audition he’d done what felt like a lifetime ago. He’d been trying to do a stage play in his local town, the community pulling together with their kids for a little old-world fun. He’d been offered a script, a part to read. Before he’d got there, Logan Harasymowicz — a bigger kid, but not a stupid one — had tried a few lines out. The words had tumbled from him with pauses in all the wrong places, stilted, like it was a language he didn’t know. Like he was sounding the words out. That’s how Hope said fuck — like she was reading it from a book.
El looked at Nate for a second. “She’s trying to learn to swear,” she offered.
“Why?” said Nate.
“Reasons,” said El.
There was a bright flash, the flicker of lights, so bright after days of darkness that Nate saw stars. He had to blink them away. The flight deck came to life in fits and starts, El’s console beaming bright with bright primary colors, the holo between the acceleration couches running through a diagnostic. A cascade of lights ran up the walls, and Nate could feel a low hum through his feet as something inside the Tyche woke, yawned, and stretched.
“We’ve got power,” said Hope over the comm. “Reactor’s giving me some error codes but nothing that can’t be accounted for by way of it not being in her old ship.”
“Thank God,” said Nate. “I can have a shower.”
“You can have a shower,” came Kohl’s voice, “when you help me finish the welding.”
“On my way,” said Nate, giving El a nod and making his way to Engineering. It might end up being a good day after all. Tyche was alive again, living, heart beating, and soon she’d be breathing again.
&nb
sp; • • •
Nate had found Kohl and Hope working in silence. They were in the same space, the same room, but it was like they couldn’t see each other. Same old shit, he thought. One day, he figured that he and Kohl would have more of a conversation about that. He’d tried before, because Hope had done nothing wrong, unless you figured that helping your wife out was some kind of crime, but Kohl had just shrugged and asked Nate to go fuck himself.
It’d keep.
Engineering was lit now, all the lights on, like Hope was trying to erase the memory of darkness from her area of the universe. Ravana’s old reactor was in the middle of the bay, larger than the Tyche’s one. The floor plates around it were crumpled, pieces missing, thick cables coming out from the reactor to couple with ports around Engineering. No smoke, which was a good sign, although without atmosphere it just meant something couldn’t burn, not that it wasn’t wanting to.
Kohl grunted. “Great. You’re here. Why don’t you go weld the outside. Double hull, right? It’ll be faster.”
“Why don’t you,” said Nate, “go weld the outside?”
“I’m already doing the inside,” said Kohl.
“I’m the captain,” said Nate.
“So?” said Kohl.
“So,” said Nate. “Completion bonus.”
“That shit’s wearing thin,” said Kohl. But he grabbed his welding rig, stamping past Nate. This in itself was good news — not that Kohl was in a bad mood but that he needed to go out a proper airlock. There wasn’t a hole big enough to fit a human through in the side of the ship anymore.
Nate smiled. He grabbed a welding rig from the deck, hauled himself up, and got to work. Straight welding was easy enough, and truth be told Kohl was doing the exterior welds because the man was just better at it. Nate could draw a weave bead that looked like a series of dying caterpillars. Kohl could draw the Mona Lisa in the face of metal. No way was Nate saying that, though. Kohl had enough problems keeping his ego under control at the best of times, and that was for things he was terrible at.
“It doesn’t need to be pretty, Cap,” said Hope. He turned, saw her looking up at him, her rig’s arms slack behind her.
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