This Companion had been a boy. Very young.
“Please . . . ,” Slink breathed. He’d plead not for his life . . . but for his project. After all, was life worth living without his Companions? “Please,” he repeated. “We’ve made progress.”
The Master Purveyor sighed loudly, and his face went placid once again. “I trust you’ll make sure that no further ships are destroyed,” he said.
“Yes, master,” Slink said.
“Plodda believes the boy will be trying to leave the station on this side for the Outer Rim.”
“Yes, master.”
“I want the capital ship kept on the far side of the gateway, between them and the Outer Rim. Not a single ship is to be allowed to escape. I want them captured. Do you understand, Slink?”
“Yes, master.”
Behind them, there was a sudden clank, and both men turned to look. A sizable rock from the debris field was spinning away, having ricocheted off their starboard bank of windows. The dusty mass of Outer Rim–side Wall could be seen beyond.
“And watch for rocks leaking through the gravity barrier,” he said. “Eyes up. Everyone!”
The last command was addressed to the entire deck crew, which Slink realized had been watching the exchange in frozen terror. It had been deathly quiet, and now the deck hummed again with sudden activity.
The Master Purveyor clenched and unclenched a fist, and then turned to walk out.
“Clean that up,” he called back to Slink, gesturing to the dead Companion as he walked past. “And for stars’ sake, next time choose one who’s a little older, or just put the poor thing out of its misery.”
41
PETRICK FELT like he weighed two thousand pounds.
The pressure suits were bulky, even for adults, and certainly, none of them were designed for children. Fortunately, they were constructed of a fairly collapsible, if not thin, material. It was the helmets that posed the biggest problem. Petrick could have turned himself a full 360 degrees if his arms and legs hadn’t been slipped into the cavernous arms and legs of the suit. The gloved and booted ends blessedly had clamping mechanisms that Balta had put around the children’s wrists and ankles. The extra fabric billowed out from their shortened limbs, and Suzy had laughed right into Petrick’s faceplate when she’d seen him all done up. He was relieved to see her acting like her usual self.
The faceplate was another challenge, as it kept riding up to Petrick’s forehead every time he took a step, meaning the non-transparent bottom of the helmet went up over his eyes, and he had to crane his neck to try to peek over it and see what was happening. Suzy’s laughter quickly turned to grumbles when the same thing happened to her, and then Barry managed to laugh at the both of them as they all struggled to wrangle the awkward suits. He was sitting on the ground, unable to stand with the extra weight and his injured leg.
Balta told them to settle down, and that the suits weren’t meant to be used inside gravity plating, anyway. They were intended to be used outside in the weightless vacuum. She’d done quite a bit of grunting on her own, getting into her suit with her large frame, having precisely the opposite challenge as her diminutive tagalongs. Haber wasn’t suiting up, Petrick noticed, as the android walked over and checked Balta’s work on assembling his pressure suit. Apparently, Haber was satisfied, and he clicked Petrick’s helmet into its final locked position with a telltale hiss.
“You don’t need a pressure suit?” Petrick asked him.
Haber pointed to his ears and shook his head at Petrick. He couldn’t hear. He pointed to something inside Petrick’s helmet, and Petrick craned his head around to try to see what he was referring to. A switch perhaps? That would activate a speaker of some kind? But Haber shook his head at Petrick again to get his attention and then pointed again. This time, Petrick saw what the android was gesturing to; it was a sticker on the inside of the helmet that spelled out the phrase speak to activate.
“Activate?” he said.
“Very good,” Haber said back, seemingly right into Petrick’s ear.
He looked at Haber again, and the android was nodding.
“Your suit AI is voice activated,” he said. “Much more useful than using one of the only two hands you have when you’re extra-vehicular to push some infernal button.”
“How can I hear you in my helmet? Or you hear me?”
“Your suits have been marked with the transmission frequency of your comm signal. I’ve attenuated my vocal and auditory processors to match it.”
“Sometimes,” Petrick said slowly with a grin, “you are just the coolest, Haber.”
Petrick heard Suzy and Barry click on a moment later, and they each tested their systems out. It seemed as though they were all connected.
“So, you don’t need a suit, Haber?” Barry asked, echoing Petrick’s forgotten question from moments earlier.
“No, Master Barry,” Haber answered. “Not for short periods of exposure. I do not require oxygen as you do to function. The cold, however, will force me into hibernation shutdown, as it did in the cargo hold on our way from Indacar, if I stay exposed for too long.”
“It won’t be long,” said Balta. “These p-suits only have ten minutes of air, twenty tops, anyway.”
“What about Clarke?” Petrick asked.
Petrick glanced down to his feet to get a view of Clarke. They’d placed the dog into a pressure crate that Haber had found in the locker. It had been designed as sort of a toolkit for anything that needed to maintain a temperature above vacuum temp, like mechanical devices that would otherwise freeze. But, Clarke being as small as he was, he fit in quite nicely, and he even had a window through which to watch. He was lying down, like a good dog, eyes alert.
“Does he need air, and that’s why he’s in the crate?” Barry chimed in. His curiosity was still in full force.
“Not oxygen,” Haber answered, “but he is not suited for the cold as I am.”
Petrick picked the crate up with a gloved hand.
“I’m ready,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Hold your horses, boy,” Balta chided. “We all need to get tied in.”
Balta had a tether line that she’d attached to herself, and she threaded it through the fastened belts of each of the children’s p-suits and through the handle of Clarke’s crate, then handed it off to Haber, who clipped the far end to his torso. She then gave Haber a rather large backpack-like apparatus to put on, and she put one on herself as well. Petrick recognized them as the thruster packs Balta had found nearby. The pirate captain said she had experience with them from her mining days.
“I’ll be letting you handle the main booster burns,” she said, nodding to Haber. “You’ll have the better view of everything, and I’ll hold up the back of the tether line. We’ll keep mine as a backup for corrections.”
Haber nodded.
“We’ll head straight for a rock or chunk of debris,” Balta explained further, going over the plan one last time. “You clip us onto that, and we can ride that cover to the ship.”
“And we know where that is?” Suzy asked.
Balta held up the commlink so they all could see it. “Colossus will give us a low-powered signal to home in on as we get closer to the Red Robert. Now, everyone in tight.”
Haber hoisted Barry up as they all came into a huddle together by the entrance of the airlock. “This whole chamber is going to start to depressurize when we cycle this door. That means air will rush out right from where we’re standing, so we don’t want to be standing here long. Hold on to your tethers!”
Petrick peered up through his oversized helmet and caught sight of the airlock chamber beyond them through the window in the door. It was jagged and sparking. Beyond was the Wall, and the massive capital ship set in front of it, waiting for them. And they were about to launch themselves out there right toward it.
I hope this works, he quickly thought. He clenched Clarke’s case a little tighter, even though it was now securely on the tether line. H
e felt Suzy’s grip on him and saw Haber holding on to Barry. Barry was still looking pale behind his faceplate, and he was sweating, but he gave the group a Let’s do this thumbs-up.
“Here we go!” Balta said.
She threw a lever by the side of the airlock door, and Petrick could feel clanks at their feet as something mechanical moved in response. He realized that he’d closed his eyes, and he opened them when nothing happened. A light from above the inner airlock door bathed them all in red. The light switched to green.
The door they were standing to the side of swung open, and with a slam the air took Petrick out at the legs. He was midfall when the tether yanked him forward from his torso, and just as fast they were outside the airlock and spinning uncontrollably. It was a lucky thing that they were outside, too, because all around them, debris was hurtling past from the corridor—debris that had been sucked out the opening they’d just been standing in.
Petrick felt another violent gut-wrenching yank on his tether and he bumped butt-first into Haber’s waiting grip. He turned around to see the rest of the group now clustered together, their spin slowing as the backpack Haber was controlling made several quick correcting bursts from its small thrusters. The tether had become hopelessly tangled, and Haber and Balta were struggling to get themselves untwisted.
“We must find cover, android!” Balta barked at Haber, and Petrick could see why.
The capital ship, as big as it had been from the station, was now impossibly large from their view outside. It filled their vision, and as small as he knew their little group was, he felt that the entire ship must be staring right at them.
It was right . . .
There.
Haber had anticipated this or was taking advantage of his superior reflexes. No sooner had Balta barked out the command, Haber had snagged a sizable rock that was nearby. Petrick felt his tether jerk, and he lost his grip on Clarke’s crate. He needn’t have worried; Clarke was still firmly attached to the line. A few more tether jerks later, and Haber had hauled the group in, each of them finding purchase on the craggy rock face.
The android had chosen well. The rock was large enough for them all to hide behind, barely, but it didn’t seem so large as to be impractical to control. Haber was already testing his thruster jets, steadying the spinning of the rock. They were currently and blessedly out of sight, but if the rock were to continue to roll and they stayed put, they’d be right back within view of the Authority ship in seconds.
Petrick’s tether had the most slack of the jumbled group, the last one hauled into the rock, and he was therefore on the far edge of their hiding place. He thought for a brief, terrifying moment that he was, in fact, going to rotate back into view of the capital ship, but right as that seemed inevitable, Balta kicked on her thruster pack and halted their drift. Haber nodded at the pirate captain. The rock felt steady.
“Is everyone all right?” Haber said into each of their helmets. It was odd to hear his voice but not see his mouth moving.
Everyone chimed in that they were okay, and the android instructed the children on how to ask each of their onboard suit AIs for a status check. Petrick’s helmet chattered back after the verbal command with a list of various values, which Petrick relayed to Haber after Suzy and Barry each did the same. Haber seemed satisfied all was well, and he turned his attention back to Balta, who was wrangling her commlink out of a secure pouch on the outside of her suit.
“We should untangle the tether lines,” Haber called to her, but Balta shook her head ‘no’ inside her helmet.
“Let’s figure out how far away we are first,” she said.
In the momentary lull, Petrick decided to venture to the edge of the rock and take a peek just around the corner to see the capital ship. He leaned over and craned his neck to see out of the very top portion of his helmet.
“Uh . . . guys?” he said upon getting a view of where they were heading. Balta and Haber didn’t answer immediately. “Guys!”
It was the one thing they hadn’t considered: it was all fine and good to be hanging on the back of a rock, blocked from the view of the capital ship. What wasn’t fine and good was that by the very nature of their position, they couldn’t see where they were going. And where they were going was directly toward the nose of the giant capital ship.
“We’re going to hit the ship!” Petrick shouted to the two adults.
Petrick could see Balta’s round face widen in realization of what the boy was telling her, and then freeze. Haber, on the other hand, immediately stopped what he was doing and started crawling up the back of the rock to peer over the top, similarly to how Petrick had spotted their impending doom. He got a good look, then snapped his head back down and crawled right back to the group.
“Huddle close!” he said to them, and they all obliged wordlessly.
“We have to change course!” Balta said to the android.
“No time,” Haber said back.
He was right. A moment later, they were all jarred up against the rock face they’d been hanging on to as the rock smacked right into the capital ship. If it had been any harder, if their rock transport had been traveling with any real velocity, it would have made pancakes out of them and punched straight into the giant ship. As it was, they clanked off of it and began to spin away in an entirely new direction.
Petrick realized with horror that their new spin was whipping them right into view. He felt the vibrations of Haber behind him, trying to compensate with the thrusters, but it was far too late. They swung fully into view, and Petrick couldn’t help but look.
They’d smacked right against a giant window in what appeared to be the command center. Fully visible and impossible to miss stood out three figures . . . or rather, two figures standing over a third who was on the floor. Of those standing, one was gaunt, stooped, and familiar. The other was tall and broad, his back to them, looking down. The tall, wide man turned after the rock clanged into the side of his ship and Petrick’s breath caught in his throat, sure that they would be spotted. His profile came into view . . .
Petrick gasped. It was like being struck by lightning.
The man started to disappear from view as their rock spun, and Petrick scrambled on instinct toward the edge, trying to keep him in sight. To make sure he’d actually seen what he thought he’d seen.
“Petrick!” Suzy cried after him, and she pulled as hard as she could on the tether that connected him to her.
But Petrick couldn’t stop. The rock edge was rising toward him, toward the top of his stupidly large helmet. The man’s body was facing fully now toward the rock, though his head was still looking down. Even though it was getting smaller as they moved away, Petrick could see the face rise up to look out the window. Petrick thought for a moment they even locked eyes . . .
And then it was gone. The rock had steadied. With a heave, Suzy yanked him back to the group.
“What is wrong with you?!” she yelled at him, and slapped him on his oversized helmet as hard as she could with her gigantic-gloved hand in the vacuum of space.
Petrick didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He didn’t know if he’d seen what he thought he’d seen. The adults, for their part, were far too busy with their tumbling ride to pursue the matter. To boot, Balta’s commlink was now flashing furiously at them with alternating red lights. As soon as both he and Haber looked convinced they’d stopped the rock from putting them back into view of the capital ship, Balta took the small cylinder and keyed back a response. A moment later, a similar set of flashing responses came back. Balta raised the device up and let out a bellow.
“Ah!” she said in exultation. “Good robot.”
They were starting to enter the dust cloud, which was rapidly thickening as they moved further away from the station and its field generators, which kept the Wall at bay.
“Colossus is close by, I hope,” Haber said, looking at his thruster pack’s fuel gauge. “Our course correction has nearly depleted my fuel.”
“Close
enough!” Balta answered with a grin. “Close e-nough. I could kiss that shiny hunk of metal.”
As that uncomfortable image set itself into the children’s brains, Balta quickly conversed with Haber about how best to traverse the distance to the Red Robert. It was immediately evident they lacked the thruster fuel to change the trajectory of their rocky hiding place again. They were going to have to ditch it and huddle together in open space to rendezvous with their ship. It was too risky, they decided, for the ship to move to them, lest it was spotted, being several orders of magnitude larger than they were. Leaving the rock meant untangling their tethers, and the children were instructed to hold tight to the rock while everyone was detached and then re-threaded to the safety line.
Petrick looked around as the soup of the dust cloud thickened as the adults worked. Visibility was rapidly decreasing due to that, and the fact that the lights of the station and the ship were quickly receding. He looked behind them, in the direction in which their rock was traveling, and saw the depths of the far side of the Wall stretch out beyond.
Did I really see what I thought I saw? he wondered as he peered into the darkness. He felt another tug on his tether from Suzy. He looked at her. Through her helmet, he saw her nod toward Balta and Haber, who he realized were addressing the children about their imminent departure from the rock.
“. . . just like when we blew out of the airlock,” Haber was saying, gesturing to each of their newly-attached tethers. “This time we’re going to stay locked arm in arm together, to avoid any stray pulling on the tethers will make it impossible to navigate.”
Petrick nodded, picking up the gist of the conversation. He glanced again at Suzy, and she glanced back, mouthing, What is wrong with you? Petrick shrugged as an answer, though he wasn’t entirely sure after completing the gesture that she actually saw anything, given the gigantically oversized nature of his pressure suit.
“Link in,” Haber instructed.
They crawled in toward each other. Petrick grabbed Clarke’s crate handle and checked on the dog. The window had fogged over, but sensing Petrick’s scrutiny, Clarke pressed his nose up to it and panted. Apparently, the insulation was working perfectly; he looked downright warm.
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