by Dan Davis
Director Zhukov was insisting the doctor take his hand so that they could leave the CIC immediately, which Kat thought was good advice.
“Everybody, stop!” Captain Tamura shouted. “You have all trained for this. Chemical lighting, now.”
Kat sensed the calm, felt it herself as her ERANS subsided. The CIC crew found their way to the locations of the chemical lights and began cracking them open, bathing the CIC in glowing orbs of red light. People relaxed further. It was amazing to Kat the effect that a few photons entering the eyes could have on human beings. That ancient fear of the monsters in the dark that were scared away by the camp fire. For hundreds of thousands of years, humanity in all its forms had huddled around the flickering warmth of wood fires and tended them through every night. Millions of people over millions of nights and now those same people, biologically speaking, were out in the darkness of a distant star system, still afraid of the dark.
“Let’s go, people,” the XO shouted. “Get those emergency computer blocks operational, let’s move.”
Kat, like everyone in the room, surely, was expecting the ship to resound with some deadly impact at any moment.
The Victory was shielded against radiation attacks, whether heat from lasers or the high energy particles of solar or galactic origin. Not only the outer hull and the physical layers of it but the ship generated an active magnetic shield beyond the hull. The ship’s computer and electrical systems were hardened and backed up with alternate circuits that would automatically and mechanically switch at the sign of failure. But they were prepared for the defenses to be breached and so there were portable, battery powered computer blocks stashed within shielded cases in key locations, ready to be plugged in to the ship’s systems. These were slotted in and powered up.
Some screens flickered back into life, their glare almost blinding after the gloom and Kat dragged the two senior civilians toward the exit and paused while the crew reported in.
“Engines operational and firing.”
“Secondary power coming back online. Primary power damage being assessed.”
Captain Tamura growled at them. “Give me a threat assessment.”
“Telescopes coming back now. Yes, multiple incoming objects. Possible guided rockets, engine exhaust detected.”
Their commander’s voice was clear, and louder than anything else in the room. “When, damn it?”
“Processing. Six to nine minutes until impact, sir.”
“Weapons systems report?” Tamura asked.
“Not yet, sir, sorry sir.”
“Save the excuses, I need the cannons online and tracking systems. Confirm.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Long range comms?” Captain Tamura asked.
“Negative,” the Comms Officer said. “All dead and unresponsive. Can’t send anything to the surface, to the Sentinel. Not even to the nearest drone.”
One of the techs called out. “Life support systems reboot failure. Air, heating, water—”
“Listen to me while you work,” Captain Tamura said. “We have been hit by a radiation weapon which has temporarily disabled many of our systems. Anti-radiation medication will be distributed by the medical team who will be on their way to each of us. Residual atmosphere and heat will maintain us for hours yet. As we retain engine control and navigation, our priority is to get the cannons online to intercept the incoming missiles. We must then launch our nukes at the enemy. Everything else can wait. Do we understand each other?”
A chorus of confirmation rippled about the room.
“Lieutenant Xenakis?” Captain Tamura said, surprising her. “Please proceed to your shuttle and evacuate the key personnel, immediately. Take Dr. Fo with you. Director Zhukov?”
“I shall remain.”
“Very well.” The Captain nodded at her.
“Sir.” She turned to go, finally.
“Wait,” the Captain said. “Someone give her a black box. Quickly, come on.”
The XO himself yanked open a hatch beneath a console nearby and yanked out a data block from its housing. They were just about small enough to hold in one hand and were mostly shielding, communication system and battery. Inside, it recorded and encrypted everything that happened to the ship and on the ship up until the moment the ship was destroyed. There was a dozen, all over the ship, so that at least one would be likely to survive any catastrophic event.
The XO handed it over while the captain gave her his final instructions.
“Lieutenant, once you are off the ship, do not land on the surface until you have communicated with the Stalwart Sentinel and conveyed the nature of the weapon that has disabled us and received confirmation from them that they understood the message. If you can’t communicate, you must dock with the Sentinel and hand over that data block before you land on the surface. Do you understand your orders?”
“I do, sir.”
“Good luck, Kat.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said but he was already speaking to someone else. “Come on, Doctor. We’re leaving.”
She pushed the old man through the door that Zhukov held open for them. The corridor was illuminated by emergency lighting and it was like being plunged into darkness once more when the Director closed the door behind her, shutting off the sounds at the same time. But it was enough to see by.
“So,” Dr. Fo said, “we’re not going to Arcadia?”
“We have to deliver the black box to the Sentinel first.” She tucked the data block under her arm.
“Seems perfectly logical.”
She prodded the doctor ahead of her and he made no objections as she guided him through the ship. Still, he was old and weak and with her ERANS compounding the relative speed, he moved with infuriating slowness.
“Is this the way to the shuttle bay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “But we need some medicine first.”
“Ah, of course.”
The Medical Section was bright with its own special white lighting so they could perform procedures during emergencies and the glare made her wince.
“Hello?” she called out. “Where is everybody?”
A stack of boxes collapsed unseen in the rear somewhere and one of the nurses staggered out with an armful of equipment. “Lieutenant?” he shouted. “Dr. Fo? What are you doing here?”
“I need radiation meds for the evacuees.”
“The team already headed to the shuttle, you should—”
She raced off that way, dragging Dr. Fo behind her, but had not taken ten steps when the ship lurched again, violently. The suddenly increase in g brought her to her knees but floored poor old Dr. Fo.
“Oh dear,” he exclaimed.
She was helping him to his feet when the gravity reversed, went negative and she began to come away from the floor.
“Shit, grab hold of something, sir,” Kat said. Instead, he flailed like he was tumbling off a high dive so she grabbed him, braced herself and pushed him down the center of the corridor. Then she launched herself after him, pulling herself along hand over hand, legs floating high. Her throw had been off and the doctor bounced into the wall in a jumble of scrawny limbs. She collected him up and pushed and pulled the old man all the way to the shuttle bay in record time. Her ERANS humming along just enough to give her time to make close to ideal judgments and recalculate adjustments as she went.
As she had feared, the shuttle bay was a scene of minor chaos with the mechanics doing their best to get VIP civilians and senior officers to follow their instructions. The shuttle bay was barely bigger than the Lepus but it was the biggest open space on the Victory and people were scattered on all of the six walls, clinging to handholds and all of them trying to make their way somewhere else.
“I am Lieutenant Xenakis. I am the shuttle pilot,” she shouted, as loudly as she could. “You are all now under my temporary command so please do as I say. Everyone previously designated as an evacuee has exactly two minutes to board this shuttle. Everyone who is not an eva
cuee has two minutes to exit this area before it becomes a vacuum. If you require assistance to complete your instructions, please inform the person nearest to you and ask politely.”
She hoped it would light a fire under them. By her estimates, they might not even have two minutes before the Victory was destroyed.
“Strap yourself in to a chair,” she ordered Dr. Fo when she pulled him through the door and shoved him into the passenger cabin.
“Should I not obtain a flight suit? Or a space suit or whatever you call it?”
Kat went the other way to him and replied with a shout. “No time, Doc. Sit your ass down, now.”
Inside the cockpit she let out the sigh she had been holding since the CIC. She stowed the data block under her chair before she strapped in.
Her data consoles and flight control system appeared fully operational. Even though the shuttle’s hull provided another layer of protection against radiation, and even though the shuttle’s computer system were also hardened, Kat had not dared to hope. The ERANS allowed her to analyze the modulations in her shaky voice as she spoke the question aloud.
“Sheila?” Kat said, throat constricted. “Sheila, are you still here, sweetheart?”
“Hello, Kat.”
“Thank Christ. How come you’re okay when the ship cores were taken out?”
“The unknown enemy weapon made initial contact at opposite end of the Victory, weakening as it travelled the length of the ship. Shuttle bay wall shielding plus the shuttle hull shielding are in addition to ship hull shielding. Even so, I am experiencing partial failures in non-critical systems and am shutting them down.”
“Oh shit. But thank Christ, Sheila, you’ve started the liftoff sequence, you beautiful bastard. How soon can we get out of here?”
“RCS thrusters are ready to go. Fuel is at maximum. All batteries fully charged. We are deficient in passengers, however. They did not listen to me when I suggested that they strap themselves into their seats. They felt they would rather argue with the ground crew than listen to an AI.”
“I say we go without them,” Kat said, running through her checklist. “What do you reckon?”
“I’m afraid I would rather preserve as many human lives as possible.”
“You AIs,” Kat said. “You’re all bloody do-gooders. You make me sick.”
Even while she spoke, however, the evacuees boarded in a panic behind her.
“What’s happening?” People shouted at her and each other, their voices and questions overlapping. “Are we losing? I forgot my EVA suit, where are the spares? Is the gravity off ahead of schedule? Have we been hit?”
One of them poked his head into the cockpit. “Lieutenant, anything I can do?” It was Crewman Harada.
“Thought I saw your name on the list, Harada,” Kat said while she worked. “Assumed it was a mistake.”
She was joking because everyone knew that Harada was the best chemical rockets engineer on the ship and the outpost had a bunch of landers waiting to be repurposed into orbit-capable or at least suborbital lifters and transport vehicles.
“Probably is,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Just see they’re strapped in back there,” Kat replied, “if they’ll listen to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Then Harada was gone. Reliable, uninteresting and crucial, just like his rocket engines.
“Sheila, play the zero-g warning internally and broadcast the airlock evacuation or a stand clear warning outside.”
The messages began even before Kat finished speaking. Sheila’s artificially produced voice informing the passengers they had mere seconds to secure themselves into the reclined chairs before the imminent and sudden acceleration of the shuttle threw them bodily against the bulkheads, certainly breaking their bones and possibly turning their entire bodies into the consistency of blancmange. Outside, she was repeating the phrase that space travelers had nightmares about. Warning. Airlock cycling. Vacuum imminent. Evacuate immediately. Warning. Airlock cycling. And so on, until everyone got the message, one way or another.
“Everyone onboard?” Kat asked, glancing at the manifest while cycling through the RCS thruster control tests.
“All authorized passengers,” Sheila confirmed, “plus four extras.”
“Cheeky bastards,” Kat said, looking at the list of unauthorized passengers, their passive ID chips automatically read by the shuttle. The medical team had decided to stay on the Lepus.
One of the unofficial guests was Feng Don.
You sneaky bastard, Feng.
Probably he was hoping that she would not throw him off because he was both her sexual partner and drug supplier. Luckily, she did not have time to make a decision as they had to leave and they were out of time. She hoped that he had brought her more of her drugs, at least.
“Shuttle bay clear,” Sheila said.
“Open bay doors and prepare to release docking clamps.”
“Confirm, opening bay doors.” The usual, smooth and pleasant vibration of the door operation under the wheels was replaced by three rapid, harsh bangs. “Doors nonoperational.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Unknown,” Sheila said. “Command sent to Victory, no response. Command sent to local node, no response.”
“Fuck,” Kat said and switched comms while she unlocked the sealed access point on the outside of the cockpit. “Harada? Crewman Harada, get outside and connect the hardline to the infrastructure node, now.”
She heard him bouncing off the walls and flinging open the shuttle side hatch door. “What’s the problem?” Harada said as he made his way under the shuttle, already breathing hard through the comms into her ear. “Opening hardline access cover now.”
“Can’t get the bay doors open,” Kat said. She heard Harada stop breathing. “Don’t worry, you moron. We won’t open them until you’re back inside.”
He let out a breath. “Unspooling the data hardline cable. Shit, it’s hard without gravity.”
“Let the motor push the cable out, you just guide it. Come on, you’ve trained for this,” Kat said, feeling the Victory vibrate along with the autocannons as they fired thousands of rounds per second.
“Sure,” Harada said, breathlessly. “Not alone, though.”
“You’re the only engineer or ground crew in here, everyone else evacuated the area. All I have in the back are VIPs. You know, very incompetent people.”
She recognized the hissing static as laughter. “Alright, I’m in contact with the flight deck,” Harada said, breathing hard. “Advancing to the data node access hatch. Looks like a long—”
Vibration rocked the ship, hard. Gravity returned, pinning her to her chair momentarily, then lifted again while the hull screeched and banged, as if God Almighty was wringing the Victory out like a wet rag.
“Harada?” she shouted through the noise. “We need to go, right now.”
The comms system was down. Had to be.
All the lights inside the bay and in the Lepus turned off. Then the ones in the shuttle came on again.
Her world slowed. The screens blinked and she felt that fear return, that fear that she would be left without flight control for the shuttle or without Sheila to help her. She would be lost without Sheila. Kat had time to imagine how it would feel if her colleagues and fellow officers knew how much she relied on an AI to help her fly. Imagined having no one to talk to but the inanimate object of the thing itself rather that the shuttle’s heart and soul.
Her hand traveled to the controls for the external lights in slow motion, like pushing her body through invisible gel. She punched all the switches, hoping they would respond but expecting the worst. After a moment’s delay, the shuttle bay was illuminated by her lights.
A screen popped back on, showing Harada sprawled on his face on the doors beneath the Lepus, the data hardline snaking away from him across the flight deck.
Get up, Harada.
Kat knew she would have to go herself. Jump out
of the cockpit and go after it, connect it up then get Harada back into the shuttle with her, open the doors and thrust out before the ship was destroyed. She would have to.
The Victory lurched again. Popping sounds rippled from somewhere.
There’s no time for all that. And the local power’s off, idiot.
Kat released her harness and pulled herself out of the chair and headed out of her cockpit.
There was only one thing for it.
I’ll open the doors by hand. Sheila can fly the ship, unless she’s dead. In which case, we’re all fucked.
If the useless idiots that designed the ship had put some sort of manual control for the bay doors inside the shuttle, then Kat would be able ease the shuttle out of the Victory without leaving her pilot’s chair to crank the stupid door release. She wouldn’t have to die on the off-chance that her AI was functional but temporarily silenced.
That’s how it goes. Welcome to the military.
She was halfway out of the side hatch when the vacuum alarm sounded in the shuttle bay. The doors were either opening or the aliens had blasted a hole in the hull. Either way, she had to seal her shuttle.
“Lieutenant.” The word came in slowly, her ERANS pumping data to her quickly but she recognized Harada was speaking strangely. She slammed the side hatch door closed then ducked back into the cockpit and saw him on the screen, access hatch open on the flight deck, cranking the door release. He had the emergency breathing mask over his mouth and nose, both hands on the crank handle and giving it everything he had with his entire upper body, his feet braced unseen beneath the deck. “Get. Thrusters. Firing.”
“Shit, Harada,” she said as she stared at the doors opening beneath her shuttle. He was out there in his overalls. No EVA suit. “Listen to me while you open the door. Once the air pressure in the bay drops and the temperature falls, your skin will be exposed to the cold and vacuum. The moisture in your eyes will boil off so keep them closed as much as you can. But you will have time to get back into the shuttle without permanent damage. You hear me? You get back in here. It’s only about thirty meters from your position to the upper airlock. Hear me? Not the side hatch. You come to the forward airlock hatch above the cockpit. I will wait for you.”