by Rod Walker
I moved back and took cover, since I couldn’t see through the increasingly heavy smoke and I couldn’t see any likely targets.
But after another two or three exchanges of roaring gunfire, the engineering room fell silent. I peered over the edge again, trying to see what was happening.
“XO, this is Rovio,” said Corbin’s voice in my ear. “Engineering secure. I repeat, the engineering room is secure. Everyone, check in. We’ve got some men down.”
“Nikolai here,” I said, tapping my earpiece. “I’m all right.” I shut the hatch, crawled over it, and made my way to the access ladder. I heard Nelson check in, followed by the other men. Four of the men didn’t check in, which meant they were dead or too wounded to speak.
I reached the ladder and clambered down to the engineering room. The room smelled of gun smoke, burned armor, and blood, and the black-armored commandos lay sprawled over the ground. Nelson and two of the techs were moving over the dead men, methodically stripping them of guns and grenades. I spotted Corbin standing near the console that controlled the hypermatter reactor.
“Any word on what they were doing down here?” said Hawkins.
“Looks like they were getting ready to eject the hypermatter reactor,” said Corbin, scrolling through lines of text on one of the displays.
“Did you get Ducarti?” said Hawkins. “Or the captain?”
“Nelson’s still looking,” said Corbin, “but I don’t think either of them were down here.”
I stopped by the console, and Corbin looked up, smiling.
“Nikolai,” he said. “Good work. They were well and truly stunned when we stormed the room. They put up a fight, but less than I expected.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking at one of our own fatalities. He lay near a set of storage lockers that held vacuum suits for hull repairs. I hadn’t known him well, but we had worked together on a dozen repair jobs, and now he was dead. “Well, at least we’re not all dead… yet.”
Corbin nodded, glancing back at the display. “You all right?”
“Didn’t get shot,” I said. “I might have broken a rib drone-wrestling. Suppose I had better wait to visit the infirmary until the men who got shot have been treated.”
“Afraid so,” said Corbin. “Did you see where Ducarti and the captain went?”
“I didn’t see them at all,” I said. “Maybe they went to the crew decks.”
“XO?” said Corbin. “What’s going on up there?”
For a moment there was silence, and then my earpiece crackled again.
“The commandos just surrendered,” said Hawkins, and I let out a long sigh of relief. “Looks like they realized the writing was on the wall. The chief engineer wound up down there, and he’s taking charge. We should have the commandos secured and the crew back to their stations within the hour. I think we’ve managed to successfully take back the Rusalka, Rovio.”
“Do you have Ducarti or the captain?”
“No sign of them.”
“They’re not here either.”
“Then where are they?” said Corbin, his voice sounding strained. “Rodriguez, Murdock. You there?”
“We are,” said Murdock, his rough voice cutting into the channel. “Rodriguez is bringing full life support back. I’ve got most of the systems back on line. Still working on weps. Got shields, though.”
“Good, they can’t hole us if they’re on Vanguard now,” said Corbin. “Get on the internal sensors, Rodriguez. Find Ducarti and the captain. They have to be somewhere and they’re probably heading for the airlock to the troopship.”
“Maybe they’re going to steal a cargo drone,” I said. Corbin squinted at me, puzzled. “Both the troopship and the Vanguard are docked along the Rusalka’s dorsal corridor, right? If they’re going to make a run for it, they can’t use the dorsal corridor because we’d shoot them dead. So maybe they’ll take over a cargo drone and ride it to their ship.”
“I doubt it, neither of them are technical,” said Murdock. “Here, Rodriguez. I’ll get on the other console. You take the infrareds, I’ll use the weapons detectors.”
I listened with half of an ear as they talked, my eyes returning to the dead crewman on the floor near me.
The dead crewman, and the open lockers behind him.
The lockers that should have been closed. The lockers that should have been holding pressure suits.
The empty lockers.
“Uh oh,” I said.
My uncle frowned.
“I think I know where Ducarti and Williams went,” I told him.
Chapter 9: EVA For Beginners
“I should have thought of it sooner,” said Corbin, slapping his palm against the console.
We had gathered around the master console in the engineering room, since it had the biggest displays. Arthur patched in several views from the external cameras, and the main display showed a good view of the Rusalka’s exterior, the big freighter’s running lights throwing the cylindrical hull into stark relief. It meant we had an excellent view of the two vacuum-suited figures making their way across the hull towards the closer of the two ships attached to it, the Vanguard. One of the figures moved with the easy grace of long zero-G experience, while the other lumbered along with clumsy steps.
Williams and Ducarti.
“A distraction,” said Nelson, shaking his head with contempt. “That’s all this was. He sacrificed all ten of his men in here and the five on the crew deck to cover his escape, the coward.”
“Trust me, Chief,” I said. “That’s his style.”
“It’s over, then,” said Hawkins. “He gets into the Vanguard and escapes, and that’s that.”
“No, it’s not,” said Corbin. “Our reactors are still entangled. I’ve got the hypermatter regulator back online, but it will be another four or five hours before the reactor is stable enough for a proper reboot. Ducarti has decided to cut his losses. He’ll go for the troopship. He can wait in-system for a week for the Party rescue ship to pick him up after we blow.”
“Then why are they headed for the Vanguard?”
“Probably to prevent our access to it,” my uncle had a grim expression on his face as he answered the XO. “Ducarti won’t want to let us board it and either disentangle the regulators or use its weapons to take out the troopship before he can get clear.”
“And we’ll all be dead,” said Murdock over the phone.
“Not if I can help it,” said Corbin. “Any chance of getting any weapons online?”
“None,” said Murdock. “Williams left them locked, and there are no backdoors that I know about. It wouldn’t matter until he uncoupled anyway. It’s not as if any of our guns can target anything on the hull.”
“A cargo drone,” I said.
They all looked at me.
“What about my drones?” said Arthur with alarm.
``They can maneuver in zero-G. So we send one to ram the troopship.”
“That’s crazy,” said Murdock. “It has an armored hull. Those cargo drones are flimsy little boxes with antigrav units, ion thrusters, and a bunch of manipulator arms. Hitting the ship with a drone won’t do more than put a dent in it.”
“No,” I said, “what if we hitched a ride with the drone?”
They all looked at me again.
“Are you seriously suggesting,” said Nelson, “that the drone carries us out to catch Ducarti?”
“Why not?” I said. “We’ve got suits. We can’t catch up with them spacewalking, but we can ride.”
“Not anymore,” said one of the other techs. “It looks like Williams destroyed all the spacesuits when he left.”
“What about the EVA packs?” I said.
The techs stared at each other.
“Those are still intact,” said the tech.
“The three of us have still got our suits,” I said, pointing at Corbin and Nelson.
“These suits aren’t rated for EVA in hard vacuum,” said Nelson.
“Not for working outsid
e,” said Corbin, his voice thoughtful. “But they’re rated for two hours. That’s long enough.” He frowned at me. “You up for this?”
“No,” I said. “I want to go lie down with a bottle of painkillers. But Ducarti’s going to blow up the ship and kill us all. If we’re going to catch him, this is our one shot.”
My uncle nodded and looked at the chief.
“Kid’s right,” said Nelson with a sigh. “If we’re going to go, we’ve got to go now.”
Hawkins said several words that the Officers’ Manual of Starways Hauling Company stated that officers were never to use under any circumstances. Then he held up his hand. “All right. God go with you, Rovio, Nelson, Nikolai.”
“Good luck,” said Murdock.
“We’ll need it,” said Corbin. “Rodriguez, fire up a cargo drone and send it to the engineering room airlock. Nelson, Nikolai, let’s get ready.”
We hastily checked our suits, donning our helmets and gauntlets once more. One of the techs wrestled out the EVA packs and we pulled them on. The heavy packs had gas thrusters, allowing movement and maneuverability outside of the ship in zero-G. Ducarti and Williams had taken a pair of the packs, so I wondered why they hadn’t just flown straight to the Vanguard.
“You ever used one of these before?” said Nelson, passing me a fully-loaded K7 rifle. I attached it to my suit’s magnetic harness.
“Yeah,” I said. “Once.”
That was why they hadn’t tried to fly. EVA packs were tricky to handle. Ducarti could barely handle walking on the hull.
Nelson sighed again. “Well, it beats sitting around waiting to explode, anyhow.”
“I’m sending the number three drone.” Arthur’s voice came over my helmet’s speakers. “Better get ready.”
“We’re ready,” said Corbin. “Come on!”
The chief and I followed him through the engineering room and into the airlock. The room had one airlock, designed to allow the crewers to escape in the event of a disaster that cut off the dorsal corridor. It passed closer to the sublight drive plumes than I would have liked, but we ought to be safe from the drive radiation.
Of course, if we couldn’t stop the two Socials, it didn’t really matter.
The airlock cycled, and the outer door swung open, revealing the vacuum of space, a thousand times a thousand stars blazing in all directions. As we stepped free of the ship’s artificial gravitics, I activated the magnetic gripping system in my boots, and followed Nelson and Corbin as they clambered onto the Rusalka’s outer hull. My inner ear wasn’t at all happy, which combined with my headache and the unending pain in my chest made for an unpleasant sensation. Spinning off the hull would have been even more unpleasant, though, so I clomped onwards, following the older men.
Walking atop the ship’s outer hull was a weird feeling. With the gentle curvature and the various protrusions of thruster vents, sensor arrays, shield generators, and docking ports, it was like walking through a really strange skateboard park. I saw the hump of the dorsal corridor running along the ship’s spine, and in the distance, the sleek, predatory mass of the Vanguard hovering over the ship like a hawk about to feast upon its prey. The Vanguard couldn’t have gotten any closer to the Rusalka without ripping off part of its hull, so an airlock tube extended from the ship’s nose to the side of the dorsal corridor.
That would be Ducarti’s target. All he’d have to do was sever the airlock connection to decouple the two ships and the Vanguard would float off into space until the tangled reactors went critical. And there would be nothing we could do to stop it; ejecting the reactor from Rusalka couldn’t be done outside of a shipyard.
I couldn’t see either Ducarti or Williams yet, but I knew they were somewhere out there ahead of us.
“We’re ready,” came Murdock’s voice over my helmet’s speakers.
“Here comes the drone,” said Arthur.
Blue light flashed as the dark bulk of the cargo drone moved overhead, swooping in low towards the hull. Unlike the drone that Arthur had used to defend himself, this drone was still intact, and it looked like a combination of a praying mantis and a big metal jellyfish. The drone slowed, its ion thruster flaring, and came to a stop a few meters from the hull. Of course, neither the Rusalka nor the drone had come to a complete stop, but were following identical velocities and vectors so they merely appeared to be at a stop relative to each other, but my head hurt too much to do the necessary math just now.
“Nice flying,” said Murdock’s voice.
“Thank you,” said Arthur.
It was nice to hear them getting along, but my uncle was unimpressed
“Rodriguez, how are we getting onto that thing?”
“The container manipulator arm,” said Arthur. One of the drone’s arms extended, stopping maybe a half-meter from the hull. It was a big three-pronged thing, designed to grip onto the top of heavy shipping containers. “I will lock it in place, and the drone will ferry you over to the Vanguard.”
“How far are Ducarti and the captain from it?” said Nelson.
“About ninety meters,” said Hawkins. “Get on your ride, gentlemen!”
“Let’s go,” said Corbin. His armored hand reached for the control arm of his EVA pack. “Short burst, and then we’ll head for the Vanguard. Go!”
I squeezed my own control arm, using the weakest possible thrust setting. The EVA pack gave me a gentle kick, and I drifted off the hull and into the manipulator arm. Even that hurt a lot, and I barely managed to grab one of the prongs of the manipulator arm.
Turns out that using an EVA pack with a cracked rib isn’t any fun.
“It is possible,” I said to myself, “that I might be an idiot.”
I’d forgotten my radio was still on.
“Once you get to a certain age, son,” said Nelson, “you feel like that most of the time.”
“Not me,” said Murdock.
“Rodriguez, we’re on board,” said Corbin with a hint of asperity. I wondered if he had put up with this level of backtalk while in the Coalition navy. “Get us to the Vanguard. Murdock, can you target the captain and Ducarti on our HUDs?”
“Roger,” said Murdock. The HUD in my helmet flickered, and in the distance I saw a faint red blotch. The HUDs in these suits were pretty basic, mostly devoted to oxygen levels, but they could display the locations of our two enemies.
It looked like Ducarti and Williams were almost underneath the Vanguard. If we were lucky, they’d only be armed with laser cutters and it would take them a few minutes to sever the reinforced metal of the airlock. At the speed the drone could move, we’d have plenty of time to stop them in the act.
Then the manipulator arm shuddered, and the drone started forward. I had half-feared that Arthur would accelerate so sharply that we’d be crushed in our unarmored suits, but he knew his business. The drone eased forward, the Vanguard growing larger and larger before us, the Rusalka’s hull scrolling away to the left. The little red blotches representing Ducarti and Williams kept moving closer to the base of the airlock tube.
“Get ready to shoot,” said Corbin. “Make it count.”
Nelson raised his K7, and I lifted my rifle from its magnetic harness. It was clumsy in the suit gauntlets, but I managed. I wasn’t at all sure of my ability to hit anything at this range, but Corbin and Nelson were better shots. We didn’t have to be that accurate. We just had to pierce their suits in a few places, and Ducarti and Williams would die of asphyxiation.
Then there was an intense flash, bright enough against the deep black of space to cause my helmet filter to darken instantly. The bright reds and greens that impressed themselves into my closed eyes suggested it was a chemical reaction.
Which was to say, a shaped charge, or in more casual terms, a bomb.
“They blew the lock!” Hawkins shouted unnecessarily. The force of the silent explosion not only severed the connection between the Vanguard and the Rusalka, but also served to throw the smaller ship away from the much larger one. The
warship’s nose had been thrown back, so that it looked as if it was dismounting from Rusalka in a back handspring. It slowly tumbled away from the silver expanse of the hull in a somersault that would not stop until the ship exploded.
Now that the Vanguard was gone, we could see the troopship another 400 meters ahead. But we didn’t see Williams or Ducarti.
“Where’d they go?” I asked.
“Maybe they blew themselves up,” Nelson suggested optimistically.
“No, they’re still there,” Hawkins said. “They’re right there!”
They must have lain flat against the hull to avoid having their suits punctured by debris from the bomb, but now they had gotten back on their feet and we could see them easily, right out in the open and exposed to our fire. But we were just as exposed to them.
“Now?” said Nelson.
Hawkins’s voice crackled in my ears.
“Rovio!” he snapped. “Watch out! It looks like they’re turning to shoot at you! Ducarti has some kind of launcher.”
I couldn’t hear anything, but a vibration went through the cargo manipulator arm. Williams was shooting and at least one of his shots had hit the drone. We knew the big machine could shrug off the hits, but K7 projectiles would tear through our suits like tissue paper.
“Now!” said Corbin. “Fire!”
Nelson snapped up his rifle faster than I would have thought possible and started shooting on full auto. Corbin followed suit, his boots locking to the metal of the arm, and I raised my gun and squeezed the trigger. We were shooting in almost total silence, which made the whole thing feel unreal.
Firing a vaccuum-capable gun on full auto in zero-G is different than shooting one in a gravitized atmosphere. In gravity, the gun had both mass and weight, which helped keep it in your hands while firing. In zero-G, it had no weight, which meant it was harder to hold, and the kinetic motion of the K7 would send me shooting backwards like a booster rocket. Bracing the stock against my shoulder hurt, but I was ready for it, and my boots kept me from shooting off into the eternal void. Still, it spoiled my aim, and I doubt my shots went anywhere near Ducarti and Williams. I would have been surprised if they had come anywhere near the Rusalka, and the ship was a kilometer long.