by T. F. Grant
After recompiling the movements, she rushed past the others until she reached the railing. She climbed it until she reached one of the viewports. She looked out and to the right. At first she couldn’t see anything, but then as she looked down, she saw the obvious spheroid shape in the reflection of the glossy black hull of the wreckage beneath them and, above it, through the floating graveyard of hulks, with amber lights shining at various points on its perimeter, a definite man- or alien-made space structure.
“It’s there. It’s right frecking there. I knew it. If we could get out, perhaps send a distress signal or something, maybe, I don’t know, send ourselves out there. We’d only need to push ourselves off and wait. It doesn’t look much further than a few hundred miles.”
“Oh, is that all?” Bookworm said. “Why don’t you pop out and get some milk, we’ll wait for you here. It’ll only take you… Oh, I don’t know two, three hundred hours. How much air do these tanks hold, DeLaney?”
“Four hours, tops. And the seals are electronic, remember?”
“Well, there goes that idea. Sorry, sister, you’re outta luck with that one. I’ll be in my cabin reading. If I take shallow breaths, I should at least get one classic read before the air in here gets so bad I suffocate. It’s supposed to be quite a nice way to go, bit of a headache and then you just drift away. Give me a shout if anything more interesting turns up.”
Bookworm clambered up the floor to a door next to the room that held the life-suits. A small passage led off from there to where their cabins were. Sara was glad Bookworm left; her patience with him was wearing seriously thin.
Murlowe helped Sara down and took her place, spying the same reflection as Sara. “I see it too,” he said in his low, considered tones. “It’s not so far. I volunteer to go. Trajectory is going to be difficult, but in lieu of any communications, perhaps they’ll notice one of us approaching.”
“Are you mad? We’re not sacrificing you. There’s got to be another way. Perhaps set a fire or an emergency beacon; there’s got to be some mechanical flares on this ship, right?”
“In the other section,” DeLaney lamented. “The section that didn’t come with us.”
“Wait,” Murlowe said, his face twitching back to the viewport. His eyes widened, and his mouth tensed. An age seemed to pass before he turned to look at Sara with a hint of a smile on his lips.
“What is it?”
“A ship’s coming.”
SIX
Tai had his hands full controlling the Mary-May under high boost. Three Gs pushed him back into his seat, but the console was designed for that. His arms lay flat on swiveling rests that supported his arms as his hands moved across the controls, opening switches, pulling levers, and turning dials. He adjusted the altitude of the ship via the directional jets, hitting a burn from the main drives, switching them off as the ship moved onto a new bearing through a hulk’s field. Then doing the whole thing all over again to avoid another broken hulk.
He was using a lot of fuel piloting like this straight through the hulk field, all those course adjustments needed full burns at this velocity, but it was the quickest route, his mother was paying for the fuel, and it was fun.
The ship was unpressurised, always best when somebody might take a potshot at you, so everybody was suited up and attached to the central intercom line.
Everybody except Reginous Phan, of course. The chegan didn’t need comms.
“What are those things? They look like coffins.” Kina stared out the cockpit window.
“Worth bringing in?” he asked over the intercom.
“Don’t know,” Kina said. She slowly turned her head to look back at the station. “I can’t see anyone else stopping us. Tooize?”
Displaying usual kronac resilience against the G-force, Tooize clambered down the ladder to look out the rear viewports. “Nothing close,” he whistled.
“Worth it,” Kina said.
Hela, who had come along to guard Reginous, sat in one of the ship’s G-couches, which held her in its tight embrace as Tai spun the Mary-May through the hulk field between Haven and the newly arrived ship. “You are only contracted to lay claim to the hulk,” she snapped.
“And we will,” Tai said. “Right after we grab one of these coffins. Set the nets.”
The three kronacs swarmed up the ship against the shifting G-forces and pulled the high-tensile nets out from under the flight deck, rapidly assembling them inside the ship opposite the hatch. Five nets, attached with catches that would give way long before the nets snapped, were ready to be deployed. Hooks glistened in the weave of the nets.
“Ready,” Tooize said.
“Open the hatch,” Tai said.
“You can’t scoop up debris going at this speed,” Hela complained. “Not here in the hulk field.”
“Wanna bet?” Kina grinned inside her helmet.
Tai aimed at one of the glittering objects floating in space in a gap between two hulks, and closed down the main drives. The heavy G-force lifted without the acceleration, but the ship’s velocity did not diminish. Tai spun the ship about with the maneuvering thrusters until her axis lay perpendicular to her direction of travel.
“Roll her up five degrees,” Tooize called.
Tai adjusted the ship’s orientation.
“Yaw her forward ten. Hold her there.” Tooize kicked away from the hatch and grabbed onto a stanchion.
“We’re getting kinda close to the new ship,” Kina warned.
“I know,” Tai said.
“Too close for the retro thrusters.”
“I know.”
Tooize whistled, “Here it comes.”
The coffin-shaped object flashed through the open hatch and slammed into the first net, which gave way and folded around it. And the next net. And the next. But the fourth net held, absorbing the energy of the object. The first three nets held it tight, their hooks snagging each other and the fourth, holding the coffin as it bounced slightly.
The force of the impact pushed the Mary-May away, not by much, but Tai used the kinetic energy to swing the ship around with the help of the orientation jets. “Close the hatch,” he ordered. “And get back in your seats.” He flipped the craft until her main engines were pointed at the hulk.
“All secure,” Tooize whistled.
Tai slammed the engines back up to full thrust.
“We’re going to crash,” Hela said without a trace of fear in her voice. “Just so you could pick up some irrelevant debris.”
“No, we won’t.” Tai laughed. “We’ll probably burn a hole in that hull first, though. Which will save time.”
—There are living entities on that ship. Reginous Phan sent the thought with an almost apologetic twist.
“Shit,” Kina breathed.
“Freck.” Tai pushed the thrust past maximum. “Keep an eye on the dials.”
“On it,” Kina yelled as the engines started to whine and the ship started to tremble. “One-oh-four percent thrust. Heat nominal. One-oh-six. One-oh-eight. Temp in the yellow. One-ten. We can’t go much higher, Tai. We’re pushing red.”
The Mary-May shuddered like she was alive, and pissed. Tai held the thrust lever fully open. His other hand danced across the controls, pulling levers, opening valves, desperately working at the very edge of his capability. Kina couldn’t help him; she had no idea what he was trying to do. Some would argue that neither did he.
Jets spurted from the maneuvering thrusters, holding the main engines pointed along the line of travel, directly at the hulk.
She wasn’t going to stop in time. The engines would burn a hole straight through the other ship’s hull. There were people in there. Time for some acrobatics.
He took his hand away from the throttle. With two hands now, he closed switches and pushed levers open. Hydraulic pumps whined, and cables snapped taut. “Don’t break now,” Tai breathed. He tilted the retro-thrusters on their gimbals and slammed them onto full power. He closed the main engines down for an instant whil
e he adjusted their thrust vector to the opposite direction from the retros and then slammed them on full too.
The Mary-May swung about. She arced through space, scraping a collision as she passed. Tai flipped the ship again, and she came to an eventual halt one hundred meters beyond the hulk—and about twenty meters from a particularly jagged piece of space debris.
“That was fun,” Hela commented. “Oh,” she said, “I almost forgot. Do that again with me in the ship, and I’ll take your teeth, one at a time, with pliers.”
“I’ll hold him down,” Kina said.
“I’ll hold his mouth open,” Tooize whistled.
—I’ll sell the teeth to my grelas brethren; they like necklaces.
***
Sara squeezed next to Murlowe and brought her face to the viewport.
“That’s a ship?” she said. “It looks like a piece of junk. But it’s sure coming in quickly. Too quickly. Wait… oh my God, it can’t be!”
“What is it?” DeLaney said, shouting up at her.
“I… yeah, it’s a stasis unit. There’s dozens of them. They must have come through after all. The ship, it’s going to crash into one of them.”
Sara watched, her eyes wide, as the ship maneuvered expertly, snaring the stasis unit before dragging it into the ship. It flipped over, pointing at the Venture. It appeared to be aiming right for them and coming quicker.
“Oh crap, it’s going to hit us. Grab on to something.”
Sara and Murlowe clambered down the rail until they were standing on the deck. Sara wrapped her arms around a computer station, hoping its metal stand would survive the impact.
The Venture rocked and shook. As Bookworm rejoined the others, climbing down the ladder, he fell backward. His helmet struck against the hull. Sara caught a glimpse of the ship flying by the viewport, bits of metal and debris flying off as it skidded against the Venture. Slowly, the Venture moved, the impact and the effect of the directionally locked grav-plates rotating the ship until the floor was once more the floor.
Bookworm fell, not far, but enough to upset him. “Christ, are they trying to kill us?” He staggered to his feet.
With the adrenaline still in her system, Sara climbed the rail once more to look out the viewport. To the left side she saw the ship hovering a hundred or so meters beyond them. She could just make out a number of humanoid shapes beyond the cockpit window.
Behind them, more stasis units floated in the vast graveyard. And then it occurred to her: the power, it was still on. For some reason the stasis units hadn’t malfunctioned; the systems were still online and working, keeping the people inside alive.
Margo screamed briefly before falling to her knees. Murlowe had doubled over, resting his hands on his head.
“What’s wrong?” Sara said.
“I felt… something touch my mind. There’s something out there.”
“Oh, that’s just great,” Bookworm said. “After all this, we’re gonna get mind-raped. I read about this: brains in floating jars tickling your frontal lobes and disabling your amygdala to use you as a meat-puppet. Well, to quote some old dead guy, freck that shit! I ain’t going out like that.” He took an old revolver from inside his flight suit, checked the cylinder, and cocked the hammer.
“Just let those freckers try to get inside my head.”
There was a breeze coming from somewhere. Sara looked around desperately—there, one of the viewports, a fine web of cracks, slowly spreading. “We’ve got worse things than mind-rapers to worry about,” she said. “The hull’s breached.”
“Oh God,” DeLaney moaned. “The automatic repair systems are offline.”
“No shit,” Bookworm growled.
“Wait,” Margo said, “I’m getting something…” She closed her eyes in an expression of pain. “They want us to…”
***
“Hey, boss,” Lofreal whistled, the long feathery frill that ran down her back shook with each word, indicating she was about to deliver some bad news.
“Yeah?” Tai gently nudged the Mary-May up against the hulk, opposite the torn-apart ship’s airlock. The red and black mosaic flaked away into space under the pressure of the Mary-May’s thrusters, but Tai could still make out part of a word, looked like Ventu, but the damage to the hull had obliterated the rest.
“We’ve got crystals.” Lofreal pointed out the viewport.
Tai’s head whipped around. He shut down the ship and leapt from his seat. The Mary-May was zeroed with no acceleration-induced gravity, so Tai twisted as he rose from his seat, kicked from the bulkhead above the cockpit windows, and swooped to the viewport. His intercom lead coiled and curled behind him.
Absorbing his momentum with his arms, Tai stared out the viewport. Small crystals of ice floated past the window. They sparkled and spun like diamonds. “Check the—”
“Air tank,” Kina snapped.
“Pressure?”
“Down by half, bladder has self-sealed as it contracted, but we’re still losing air. Must be a bad rip.”
“The impact,” Hela said, “ruptured your air supply.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Tai snarled. “Freck. Get the pumps working, Ki. Get what’s left of the air back in the cabin.”
“Boss?” Scaroze said.
“What?”
“Scrubbers are down.”
“What?” Tai bounced from the floor and landed next to the air-circulation system. The impact had snapped the main bearings on the power shaft. Easy job to fix, if you had the tools, and the time, and the air to flush the system through. Well, one out of three wasn’t bad. They had the tools.
“So the air will go bad. How do you intend to lay claim to this hulk if you don’t have air to breathe?” Hela ground out the words.
“They’ll have air aboard.” Tai jerked his thumb at the hulk.
“This is a ship from outside of Hollow Space, Tai,” Hela said. “How do you intend to get to their air before the other scavengers start crawling all over her?”
“There are people aboard. Sentients,” Kina said.
—Human, Reginous Phan informed them.
“Humans,” Tooize whistled his disgust. “As if we don’t have enough of them?”
“Whatever,” Kina said. “They are still in control of the hulk; therefore no one can lay claim.”
“Including us,” Hela pointed out. Then she smiled, which sent a shiver up Tai’s spine. “Of course, they might not have air either. What with them being a computerized,” she spat the word like a curse, “ship. And we no longer have air to trade them for the claim.”
—They have air, but it is growing stale. And they have a leak.
“That’s nice,” Hela said. “They’re in the same fix as us.” Her face lost all emotion. “Makes me feel all squishy inside.”
“Are you in contact with them, Reg?” Tai asked.
—With one of them. Very fine mind. Disciplined. She is named Margo.
“What are you going to do now?” Hela asked. “How do you intend to get out of this one? It won’t be like killing Felek, you know?”
“I haven’t seen Felek,” Tai said automatically.
“Of course you haven’t. This is your mother you’re crossing here, Tairon Cauder, not some sniffling vul with the brains of a solan bull.”
“She has a point,” Kina said. Nobody expressed any surprise at the presumed demise of Felek. And nobody would ever speak of it again. Those were the rules, and anyway, Tai hadn’t actually admitted the kill.
“Well, Tairon such-a-great-disappointment-to-his-mother Cauder,” Hela said. “How do you intend to get out of this one?”
“Let me think,” Tai said.
***
“They want us to do what?” Bookworm exploded.
“They will cut their way through the hull. We will transship to their vessel. And they will take us to the station. They call it Haven,” Margo said calmly. “They sound quite friendly.”
“Apart from the whole mind-raping thing.
A bit intrusive, don’t ya think?”
“It’s only my mind,” Margo said.
“Yeah, I doubt they’ll want to go poking about in the reaches of your disgusting little mind, Bookworm,” Sara added. “Through the hull, why not the airlock?”
“It would take too long,” Margo said.
“That doesn’t sound right,” Humphrey said.
“Look,” DeLaney said. “Either way, we have no damned choice. Suit up, shut up, and let’s get ready to get off this damned ship. Hopefully whoever these people are will have facilities to gather all the stasis units. At least we’re not the only ones after all. We might even be able to setup a new Crown on the station.”
“Once a Crowner, always a Crowner, eh, DeLaney?” Bookworm said as he approached the airlock.
The rest of the crew followed DeLaney and waited for their guests.
Bookworm kept his pistol by his side. Sara just hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.
***
—They agree, Reginous Phan informed them.
“You are a nasty twisted man, Tai,” Kina said.
“Thank you.” Tai grinned. “Okay, Hela. We take them off, boost back to Haven, and then we come take this hulk back under orders from the Scholars. Reg, you’ll have to send the plan to my mother once we get into range. She’ll have to lay the groundwork before we dock.”
—It will be done.
“Fire, frying pan, it’s all the same to you, isn’t it?” Hela said.
“I like to be warm.”
“Yeah, makes a change from your cold heart.”
—Their hull is breached. The air is escaping.
“Damn. That air would have been worth something,” Kina said.
“Small loss, big gain,” Tai said. “Just look at all that shiny titanium. And we got the coffins too. Gotta be something good in them, right? We’ll grab the others on our way back out.”
—Their air is escaping quite quickly.