The murder of his friend played on Trenchard’s mind as he climbed. The pirate Captain had killed Bird in cold blood. Bird should have known never to trust the pirates. They killed all crew and passengers of ships that they boarded to prevent anyone identifying them. What the hell had Bird been thinking? This was not like him. Bird was no longer the man that he once was. Trenchard tried not to think of all those late nights in Mike’s Bar on Cairn, of all the close scrapes they’d gotten into on Mars. Bird was a legend in his own lifetime. He’d saved Trenchard’s life more times than he could remember and when the crunch came, Trenchard hadn’t been able to reciprocate. Damn! That smiling bastard would get what was coming to him. Trenchard would see to that personally. For now, he had to concentrate. Somehow, he had to save the ship. If the pirates caught up with him, he was dead.
With some effort, Trenchard pulled himself into the central core. It was a wide metal tube that ran the entire length of the ship. As there was zero gravity in here, there was no point having a distinction between walls, floor and ceiling. There were just four long ladders running along the core which led from the entrances to the four fins towards the fore and aft of the ship. Trenchard pulled his magnetic boots off the metal ladder and started to pull his free-floating body along towards the engine room at the aft. No-one seemed to be following him yet, he couldn’t hear any boots clanging up the ladder behind him, but he couldn’t take a chance. He raced along the core as fast as he could, his arms burning with the effort, until he finally reached the mid hatch.
The hatch was similar to those he had seen on other star-ships. It had an electronic opening system but also had a backup manual pneumatic system in case the vessel lost power. He quickly grabbed a lever set onto the circular hatch and pulled it from “auto” to “manual”. A light on the hatch that indicated it was locked turned from red to orange. Trenchard pulled a steel bar from two clips set in a recess on the hatch. He then pushed the bar into a square hole located in the centre of the hatch and started to pump the bar up and down. He was rewarded with the sound of compressed air being pumped into the locking mechanism of the hatch. Shhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh…
‘Psst!’
Trenchard stopped pumping. He was almost certain that the hatch mechanism hadn’t made that last sound.
‘Pssssst!’
There it was again. Trenchard spun around in the zero gee to see the cover to an engineering crawlspace, halfway up the curved wall of the core, standing wide open. Sticking out of the crawlspace with a beaming smile on his tanned face was the Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Devinder Sivia. Trenchard had met Sivia on a tour of the engine room. He was a Sikh, one of the few practising religious officers in the navy. The sight of the tanned, smiling, fully bearded face below a regulation black turban was both a surprising and a welcome sight.
‘Lieutenant Sivia,’ exclaimed Trenchard with surprise. ‘How the hell did you get there?’
Sivia grinned broadly, showing off a beautiful collection of perfectly white teeth. ‘All the doors locked automatically. We couldn’t get out of the engine room. The Guardian’s overridden the door lock and we couldn’t get the pneumatic override to work. It must be faulty. I wanted to find out if it was just a local malfunction or the entire ship, so I crawled through the snipe tube. Everywhere is locked down. What the hell’s going on?’
Every sailor in the navy knew the grubby engineers as “snipes”. They were hard-working men and women who barely ever saw daylight or atmosphere and it was rumoured they drank engine oil instead of coffee. Older sailors would taunt the new recruits that had to venture down to engineering with, “The snipes will get you!” Sivia took great pleasure in perpetuating this myth by keeping a coffee mug full of engine oil next to his workstation and occasionally appearing unexpectedly from a snipe tube, scaring the rookies half to death.
‘Pirates have taken control of the ship,’ Trenchard blurted out. ‘I haven’t time to explain. The Captain is dead. We have to stop them getting the ship underway and somehow send an S.O.S.’ Trenchard pointed to the snipe tube, ignoring Sivia’s shocked expression. ‘Does that go all the way to main engineering?’ he asked hopefully.
Sivia nodded, his grin gone and his face suddenly serious. ‘Sure,’ he said, climbing out of the confined tunnel. Then he pulled a short length of string out from the pocket of his dirty overalls and tied one end onto the crawlspace cover. ‘Follow me in. It’s dirty and cramped in here mind. Grab the string as you go and pull the cover shut or they’ll know what we’re up to.’
With that, Sivia climbed back into the snipe tube and scuttled away on all fours like an insect crawling up a drainpipe. Trenchard took a deep breath and followed him in, pulling the cover shut as he went. Just as the cover closed with a gentle click, four space-suited pirates appeared out of the ladder at the far end of the core and started to make their way slowly towards the mid hatch.
Ten agonising minutes of bruised elbows and scraped knees later, Trenchard fell out of the inspection tunnel onto the metal deck of the engine room. The floor of the engine room was on the outer hull of the vessel and so there was partial gravity here but it felt like standing in a swimming pool. As Trenchard caught his breath Lieutenant Sivia and a junior engineer helped him to his feet.
‘Are you okay Sir?’ asked Sivia.
‘Fine,’ replied Trenchard, looking around him, ‘for the moment at least.’
The room they were now in was essentially the engine control room, full of circuit boards and panels that controlled the various operations of the Might of Fortitude. The actual reactor core was further aft from here, just before shaft alley and was protected by thick shielding. At least there was partial gravity in here, Trenchard thought as his nausea subsided slightly.
‘How do we stop them taking the shi… boat?’ Trenchard asked Sivia, a deeply serious expression replacing the usual grumpy look on his face.
‘If they have control of the Guardian,’ replied Sivia, grinning at Trenchard’s schoolboy error, ‘then there’s only one way to bypass that. We could take out the main circuit breaker; it protects the electronics in case of a power surge. Essentially, it’s the main fuse. The only problem is that the reactor will scram, it’ll shut down automatically. The whole boat will be dead, cold iron, and we’ll be running off batteries only.’
‘How long can we survive on batteries?’ asked Trenchard, a sinking feeling in his stomach.
‘Lighting and heating will last for around twelve hours, but the air will run out long before that as the scrubbers and burners stop working, perhaps four to six hours?’
Four hours! It wasn’t long, but it was better than nothing.
‘What about sending an S.O.S. from here?’
‘No can do I’m afraid. All the communication equipment is forward from here next to the control room. Even if we could get up there, they could block the signal internally. But…’ Sivia tailed off thoughtfully. ‘If I could get to one of the forward sensor domes, I could disrupt the sensor beam and concentrate it into a pulse, send a sort of Morse-code signal. The range would be extremely limited but any passing ships would pick it up and we’re still pretty close to the main trade routes. We might even be able to hail another Wolverine or Hunter if they pass close enough.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Trenchard. Then he looked towards the hatch that led from the passageway outside into the engine room. ‘Is there any way you can block that hatch? Slow them down a little.’
‘We can weld it shut. That’ll buy a little time.’
Trenchard nodded and Sivia looked towards one of the junior engineers who went to a storage cupboard and selected a plasma torch. He moved over to the sturdy metal hatch and began to weld a seam around the edge, the metal dancing and dripping under the searing heat of plasma.
‘Can I get out of the ship from here?’ asked Trenchard. ‘I need to get the circuit breaker as far away from those bastards as possible.’
Sivia jerked his thumb towards the back of the room. ‘The
re’s an outer hatch at the back of this compartment to allow us to inspect the engine housing and vents from the outside. We’ve got four E.V.A. suits prepped and standing ready. We’ll have to cycle the airlock by hand once the main power is off, which will be slow, but it’s possible.’
‘Right then,’ said Trenchard firmly. ‘Let’s get to it! Where’s your weapons locker?’
CHAPTER 9 “SPACE WALK”
Trenchard was suited up in the cumbersome E.V.A. suit and waiting inside the airlock for the engineering crew to cycle the air and open the hatch in front of him, when the nerves finally kicked in. Until now the adrenaline had been keeping him going, he hadn’t had time to think about what he was about to do. Now that had passed, he had started to feel a pit open in the bottom of his stomach. He had the circuit breaker and the spares in his inside pocket. He also had a selection of weapons from the engineering weapons locker strapped to the outside of the spacesuit. It was regulation that all critical areas of military star-ships kept a store of weapons loaded and ready for action for just this sort of emergency.
The attitude of the navy was always D.G.U.T.S. - don’t give up the ship. No deals, no surrender. A Captain would rather deliberately scuttle a ship than hand it over to an enemy. In the old days, that had meant breeching the hull and letting water flood in so the ship would sink. Out here in space it meant setting the reactor to self-destruct; a very final act from which there was no return. Trenchard had left orders with Sivia and the other snipes that if the pirates got the circuit breakers back, they were to try and blow up the ship rather than let it fall into enemy hands.
Trenchard pondered this gloomily as he waited in the cold darkness. The inside of the E.V.A. suit smelled of sweat and for some obscure reason, there was a faint odour of menthol. Probably one of the engineers liked to chew menthol gum, Trenchard thought. They were doubtless a recovering smoker. Smoking wasn’t permitted on these smaller vessels. On Cairn and the bigger vessels there were designated smoking areas. These hermetically sealed rooms had extra fine filters to extract the smoke particles and additional fire dampers. Smokers were few and far between in this enlightened age. The equipment was bulky and expensive, so smaller vessels simply couldn’t afford the cost, or the space. Trenchard hadn’t smoked since leaving Cairn. Mike had the equipment fitted inside his bar as a great number of his clientele were smokers. Trenchard’s last drag had been over a cold beer in Mike’s Bar. He was suffering the effects of withdrawal. God, he could murder a cigarette.
Whoever the last occupant of the suit had been, they had left the inside feeling damp and cold from their sweat. His visor was beginning to mist up already from his own breath and hot body. He reached over to the control on his left arm and turned the internal demister onto full and the visor started to clear. His neck scar was already itching but there was nothing he could do about that now that he was inside the suit. He just had to try and ignore it.
The whole of the Might of Fortitude was now dead inside. An eerie silence had replaced the ever-present background hum of the engines and there was no light, bar dim emergency lighting that was slowly but surely draining the batteries. The ship was truly “cold iron”. The pirates would have realised by now what Sivia had done. They would be desperately attempting to force their way into engineering. Trenchard had left the snipes welding every spare piece of metal to the hatch in an attempt to prevent the pirates gaining access.
Abruptly, the hatch in front of him opened with a hiss and a clunk and he stepped gingerly out onto the blue-black surface of the hull. It was almost a relief to be outside the ship and to see the dim light of the distant stars. Although zero gravity made him feel sick, he had no problem with heights and so the dizzying effect of being in open space had never bothered him. He was always a little taken aback by the sheer vastness of space though. On a planet’s surface, there was always a horizon. Out here there was nothing except black airless void in every direction. He felt his stomach tighten and his breathing became shallow and quickened.
The stealth tiles that were glued to the hull felt spongy under his feet, which was unexpected. It was like walking on springy foam cushions. They were reasonably fragile but they prevented radar and most other types of scanning beams from bouncing off the hull. Beneath the tiles was the solid steel outer hull of the Might itself and that felt comforting and sturdy. What was his next move? He hadn’t thought much further ahead than getting outside of the ship. While he was suiting up, the pirates had begun to hammer on the outside of the hatch that led into engineering. It wouldn’t be long until they figured out what he was up to and came after him. The pirates were smart, too smart. They obviously had inside information about the Might of Fortitude that Captain Bird must have given to them before the launch. What other secrets had he told them before they killed him?
Trenchard shook the memory of Bird’s death from his mind and looked back towards the hull of the Might of Fortitude. He had come out next to one of the rear tail fins. The main engine was to his right and the long, streamlined hull, stretched onwards to his left. The ugly, black, pirate ship Onibaba was docked on the opposite mid fin behind him, rotating gently along with the Might. Looking around, he took in the local area. This part of the asteroid belt was sparsely populated with the slowly turning, megalithic chunks of rock and ice. The nearest asteroid was an unclassified pile of rubble that was held together loosely by gravity. It resembled a freely floating sack of potatoes. It would be a good place to hide; there were plenty of nooks and crannies that he could wedge himself into.
The light from the distant sun was dimmer here. Everything had the blue cast of twilight. It gave the already freezing void an extra hint of frostiness, foreboding and sinister. He had about two hours of air with him in the suit and a spare gas bottle tied to his belt. That gave him four hours if he was lucky and didn’t need to exert himself too much. At least he would suffocate at the same time as his shipmates he thought darkly. The thought gave him a strange comfort. He just had to hope that Lieutenant Sivia could make it to the scanner array by then and send the S.O.S. Then they had to hope that someone was in range and would hear it and come to the rescue. It was a slim chance, but if he could just…
WHAP!
A sizzling burst of energy flew past him and exploded against the hull to his right, singeing one of the stealth tiles. He hadn’t heard the impact so much as seen the flash and felt debris hit his suit. He turned quickly and looked to his left towards where the burst had come from. Five, no, he counted six space-suited pirates who had just exited from an inspection hatch towards the front of the ship near the forward sensor domes. They had fired a flare at him, a mix of chemicals designed to give off a bright glow in the oxygen-less vacuum of space. It was a warning shot. They wanted him to surrender and give them back the circuit breakers. They were armed with traditional rifles but obviously didn’t want to damage the circuit breakers by firing directly at him. That gave him an edge.
He studied the pirate’s rifles. Even from this distance he could see that they were old models, not intended to be fired in the vacuum of space. The rounds would probably ignite well enough, unless the chambers became too cold. It was very cold out here in the void. Trenchard looked down at his own rifle. The Void-Capable Case-less Assault Rifle, or “Vicar” for short, was standard navy issue. It was deliberately designed to be fired in space. He pressed a small control next to the handle and a tiny element began to gently warm the firing mechanism. His rifle wouldn’t miss-fire. That was a certainty. That gave him another edge.
Trenchard pushed off from the hull of the Might of Fortitude with a huge leap and simultaneously fired the steering jets on his backpack. He kept the burst short to save the precious fuel. The thrust was just enough to propel him towards the nearest asteroid. He held up his left hand and looked into the mirror that was fitted onto the back of the glove. The pirates had pushed off towards the asteroid after him. They were burning far more fuel in order to catch up. Their tanks wouldn’t last as l
ong on full throttle. They would run out of fuel. Did they know that? Did they even care? Another warning shot from the flare gun zoomed past him and disappeared into the dark interior of the asteroid, illuminating a large cavity between two enormous lumps of solid iron. It was almost like an invitation to come inside, lighting the way for him.
It seemed to take an age to reach the asteroid. There was no feeling of speed out here as there was nothing to judge his speed against. He was probably travelling at hundreds of meters per second by now but he felt as if he were standing still. Minute by minute the opening in the asteroid loomed gradually larger and larger. Another object suddenly shot past his head, small and fast. It was a bullet. The bullet smashed into the iron surface of the asteroid in front of him and shattered into a thousand tiny fragments, spinning away into the void. Their rifles did work after all.
Trenchard reached the opening and risked a quick glance backwards before the darkness of the interior swallowed him up. The pirates had gained some ground but were still more than thirty meters away. Let’s see if I can’t lose them in here, Trenchard thought to himself as the asteroid enveloped him like the jaws of a mighty yawning whale.
Inside the Might of Fortitude, an inspection hatch cover slid quietly open and Lieutenant Sivia peered cautiously out. He had crawled as far as he could in the hidden compartments and engineering crawlspaces behind the walls. He was now just outside the hatch to the scanner room, located in the main hull, just forward of the fin that housed the control room. The pirates had obviously thought that the crew might try and get a message out this way and had cleared the scanner room of the watch-standers and posted a guard outside. Blood was pooled on the floor where some unfortunate crewmember had made a stand and been swiftly dealt with.
The Space Navy Series Books One & Two: Including the Kindle novellas Josiah Trenchard and the Might of Fortitude & Josiah Trenchard and the Morgenstern Page 9