Warp Thrive

by Ginger Booth

  “Explosive decompression, approximate location 5.4 aft, 4.6 up starboard.” Coordinates were cited in meters, relative to the middle of the central trapdoor in the hold. “Securing pressure doors. Failure to secure compartments crew-1, crew-2, crew-3.”

  Over this, Clay demanded answers. She ignored him because she didn’t have answers yet.

  Her eyes glued to the display which backtracked the trajectory of what hit them. In seconds, this found another ship, tracked its trajectory, and Sass fired with her biggest gun. Because the offender was moving so fast relative to Thrive, she laid on continuing fire along a line until the laser’s capacitors were exhausted.

  But the target was out of range before she began firing. She’d love to follow up, but she had other priorities.

  “All hands! Into pressure suits and into the hold! Medic to med-bay!”

  “Aye, captain. How many injuries?” Dot asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” Sass replied grimly.

  She rummaged at the back of the bridge, but no, she didn’t have a pressure suit here. Well, this would suck, but she’d live. That might not be true if anyone else tried it. “Computer, emergency override, unseal captain’s cabin and the bridge.” She took a deep breath and held it as the air whooshed away.

  She slipped through the bridge door the moment it opened, and dashed for her cabin and her closest pressure suit. She was getting dizzy by the time she got her helmet on, but no worse injuries than that. Her nanites made quick work of skin damage and broken capillaries.

  This was no subtle leak. The air in the hold was gone. When she had air to speak again, she hailed the EVA team. “Clay, massive decompression caused the lurch. We were attacked. About to look for survivors. Status.”

  “One injury, Remi. I’m carrying him to the trapdoor. Darren and Joey to complete nozzle clearing project.”

  “Belay that. Insert Remi into trapdoor. Call Dot to retrieve. I want you back with Darren and Joey. I need those engines back online ASAP. Captain out.”

  By now she was face-to-face with the first 4-crew bunkroom. The door wouldn’t budge. “Computer, is crew-1 pressurized?”

  “Crew-1 is open to space,” the computer replied in unconcern. “No pressure in crew-1, crew-2, or crew-3.”

  Sass assumed crew-2 referred to the 8-person shared bath. Three rooms in series took up the width of the ship at the aft end of the catwalk, the bath only accessible through the bunks. She trotted to the far door, crew-3, but couldn’t open that either. “Corky? Status.” The housekeeper and Remi likewise shared an intervening bath between their two single cabins on this side of the galley.

  No response. “Computer, what compartments currently hold air?”

  “The galley, the engine room, single-1, and officer-4. An airlock is being erected on med-bay.”

  Bless you, Dot! Sass didn’t even bother to glance down, instead hustling to the the single cabins just up from crew-1. The first door, Remi’s, was stuck. But Corky’s door finally opened.

  Covers thrown off the bed. No one in the room. Pressure suit cabinet open, no suit. Sass tried the bathroom door, which didn’t open. She banged on it, then recalled there were no pressurized bathrooms on Thrive. So she braced a boot on the wall for leverage and hauled harder until the door slid open. There Corky stood in tears, yelling and pumping her fists.

  “Corky, can you hear me?” Judging by her lips, the housekeeper yelled back, ‘Of course I can hear you!’ “Switch to damage control channel to reply, Corky.”

  “– Oh, hell! Ohmigod, Sass, I thought I was the last person left alive on the –”

  “Mr. Graham!” Sass barked at her. “Control yourself! Where is the air leak in that chamber!”

  Corky promptly shut her mouth and backed up to let Sass through. She pointed to the back upper corner of Remi’s chamber. Sass didn’t spot it immediately, but got closer. The join between the inner and outer bulkhead was shorn away, open to space, gaping less than a centimeter at its widest.

  Sass tried a fist through the pressure bulkhead to crew quarters. Her punch broke straight through. The far side of this bulkhead was burned away.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t make it any easier to get in there, but hopefully she could look –

  Damn, I’m an idiot!

  “Computer, display camera feeds from crew-1 and crew-3, nearest monitor.” The view came up on a screen above the foot of Remi’s bed. The first image showed Joey’s empty bunk. Above it lay a single crewman, facing away, wrapped in his covers looking peaceful under the lurid strobe lights. The camera angles were never intended to peer closely at sleeping people.

  The next image looked out toward the hull. A jagged hole gaped a meter across. The laser entered the port side, clipping Remi’s corner as she saw. The beam all but vaporized the bunks on the forward side of the cabin, passed into the showers, and out the other side.

  No bunks survived in crew-3, the coherent beam having scattered by then. The exit hole to starboard spread even wider, having drilled clear through the ship. At a guess, the attacker used an asteroid-carving gun on them. They aimed at her engines and missed.

  “Computer, time elapsed since laser strike,” Sass asked dully.

  “Five minutes, sixteen seconds.”

  No one survived in crew quarters. No urgency remained here. Sass stared at the screen, paralyzed in horror.

  Corky, bless her, jogged her elbow. “Three above!”

  Dammit! That’s right, she still had three crew in cold storage. And judging by the damage trajectory, they might yet survive. “Go, go!” Sass urged her.

  The captain started to follow the housekeeper, but paused. Was that her most urgent concern? Corky was on it. “Clay, status.”

  “Just closing the trapdoor now with Remi inside. Done. How’s the damage in there?”

  “Catastrophic.” She scrunched her eyes in anguish, and described the damage. “The engine room is secure. We need to perform the next braking burn soon. Get it done out there, Clay. Sass out.” The act of issuing orders steadied her.

  She switched to a private channel. “Dot, do you need a hand with Remi?” The nurse would need no time to cycle the airlock, going from vacuum outside to inside the hold.

  “I think he’s just dazed. Vitals consistent with a concussion. How’s crew berthing?”

  “No survivors in crew berthing.” Assured there was nothing more pressing to attend to, Sass headed after Corky. “Checking cold storage. Those compartments are fully pressure-sealed, yes?”

  “Checking vitals. They look perfectly safe. Don’t open those drawers.”

  Sass flicked her gravity and hopped up to join the housekeeper crouched on the roof of the crew quarters. Corky pointed to the green lights promising all was well within. Thrive had one geologist and two grad students still tucked away, all the science talent they were able to recruit for this decades-long adventure. Despite the carnage open to space below Sass’s feet, they looked safe enough up here.

  The captain patted Corky on the shoulder, and thought hard. Training the cook as an emergency deckhand would only waste time. “Do you know how to rig an airlock, Corky?”

  “No, sar.”

  Constructing the real portable airlocks took mechanical skill. But the Sagamore emergency air bubble kits were fool-proof for uneducated slave labor. “Would you prefer med-bay or the galley?”

  “Galley, please,” Corky begged.

  Sass hopped down to the catwalk and escorted her there. She positioned Corky in front of the door, then blew a tight bubble around her, stuck to the floor and bulkhead around the doorway. Seal accomplished, Sass ordered the computer to open the door to let Corky in, then sealed the galley after her. “Keep your suit on and your helmet at hand for now. I’m sure everyone will be grateful for your excellent cooking soon.”

  Minus the seven dead.

  106

  Clay tucked one of Joey’s feet into the trapdoor, and entered himself. Once he was clear of the aperture, he immediately hit bot
h door controls to let them straight into the hold.

  This was the first he realized that the ship was depressurized. His heart fell, yet again. Fat lot of use he was as first mate.

  Bereft of their space-savvy engineer, the three of them flailed like monkeys inside the engine nozzle to work free the obstructing nodule. Clay didn’t choose to preoccupy them with scary thoughts. They could barely apply a crowbar in the right direction. Sass hadn’t told Clay much, probably for the same reason.

  Clay felt a sudden and burning need to step up his leadership game.

  He steeled himself, and thrust his helmet into the hold first. Aside from lacking atmosphere, it looked OK at first glance. The scrubber trees were safe in their gas-tight tent, automatically deployed. A suited Sass maneuvered a steel plate forward. The med-bay sported a new external airlock. His eyes drifted to take in the bubble-lock to the galley, and the door gaping open to Corky’s cabin.

  “Welcome back,” Sass hailed them. “Darren, any concerns about the nodule you found?”

  “Oh, that was fascinating –” Darren began. Clay stuck a flat gauntleted hand in front of his face to interrupt. The engineer regrouped. “Good to go?”

  “Thank you. Gentlemen, take a seat.”

  Clay simply sat on the floor, legs dangling into the trap lock. The other two followed his lead.

  In soft tones, the captain informed them of their status. “Joey, I’m sorry for your loss. We’ll take time to mourn, but not now.”

  “Yes, sar,” their lone surviving crewman breathed. His girlfriend was among the dead, and naturally all his peers.

  The captain continued, speaking over their comms channel instead of joining them. “Darren, can we perform a braking burn with holes in the hull?”

  “Certainly not! The plasma…hm.”

  “The ESD field doesn’t protect us from plasma leaking in?” Sass pressed.

  “I need to look that up.” He clambered to his feat and made for the engineering console.

  “I’m prepping hull patches,” Sass explained. “Help.”

  Clay gave Joey a minute. The size of Sass’s hull patches – plural! – was daunting. Then he stood and pulled the crewman up, with a half-hug. “The rest of our lives depend on this, Joey. Ready to work?”

  The younger man sniffed and nodded. Clay knew from sad experience how badly it sucked to cry inside a helmet, with no way to blow his nose afterward. He considered sending the guy to one of the airlocks just to mop off, but decided against it. Better for him to keep moving.

  Darren reported, “Captain, it depends on the size of the hole. Anything bigger than my fist, the ESD field is too weak across the gap.” He paused, probably taking in the size of the plates Sass toiled over. “We have…two holes over fist-sized?” That was an enormous hole for a spaceship hull.

  “Yes,” Sass bit out.

  “Right. Sass, I’ve never… Is Remi…?”

  Clay had never either.

  “I’m curving the patches to design spec now,” Sass explained. “You’ll have to reshape to current reality once you’re out there. But I thought you’d appreciate a break indoors for a few minutes. Make it very few.”

  Leading Joey by the elbow, Clay joined her forward, where a plate of high-tech steel lay on rough sawhorses made from Mahina spruce. Sass used a laser sight affixed to one edge as her straight-edge. A flat robotic gizmo crawled the surface, which curved upward slightly.

  “You’re waiting for the first plate to be shaped,” Sass informed them. “Then you’ll carefully coat it completely with a weld-prevention compound. This is crucial,” she paused to eyeball her progress for a moment, “because in space, steel welds to steel automatically between clean surfaces. Clay, I need you to figure out how to carry this plate outside, into position, and hold it both touching and not-touching the hull for final shaping, testing, cleaning, and cold welding.”

  Yeah, right. He graded himself a C on the bungee cord challenge. “I’ll ask Remi.”

  “Good. ’Cuz I don’t have a clue,” Sass admitted.

  Clay ducked into med-bay. He set his helmet on a counter and perched on the stool across from Dot, absorbed in her monitor displays. “I need to talk to him.”

  “Don’t raise his blood pressure.”

  Clay deemed that goal unattainable with the excitable Saggy. “How are you feeling, Remi?”

  “Like I smash into a ceramic wall.” The engineer’s eyelids drooped at half-mast. “The Yang-Yang nanites are good, though, yes?”

  “Yes. Remi, we have another problem. We need to patch the hull. Only it’s kind of big. We had trouble standing in the engine nozzle. How do you control a big steel plate to hover next to the hull, but not touching?”

  “How big?” the engineer inquired practically. “Does it weigh more than you? Why do you patch from outside the ship? The hole is below the grav plates?”

  Clay decided the engineer must be on very good drugs indeed. Because he didn’t seem concerned. “Below the… No, it’s on the side of the ship.”

  Remi frowned, puzzled. “Does it cross a pressure bulkhead?”

  “Yes,” Sass supplied, apparently listening in. “Clips the corner of your cabin, Remi. By a centimeter or two.”

  Remi dismissed that with a flutter of his fingers. “This is nothing. This hole, it crosses the floor? The ceiling? Show me.”

  “On your tablet, Clay,” Darren murmured over the channel.

  Clay froze an instant at his first view of the damage, then handed it to Remi.

  Who jerked upright in the med-bay gurney and shrieked, “Mary Mother of God! Ow! Ow-ow-ow…” He subsided to his pillows, hand to his temple.

  Dot pounced. “See what you did? Remi, I’m upping your painkillers.”

  “No!” Clay cried, batting her hand away. “In a minute.”

  Dot smirked. “Too late.”

  Indeed, Remi looked much relieved, collapsed onto his pillow, struggling to keep his eyes open.

  “Dot!” Clay bit off his harangue, and instead leaned down to Remi quickly. “Focus, it’s important. Why did you ask about the pressure bulkheads?”

  “In the way,” Remi replied, faintly puzzled. “You work outside to go around.”

  A light dawned. “This hole, Remi. You would patch it from inside the ship?”

  “Of course.” His eyes drifted closed.

  That made things easier! Clay rose to leave. But he should tell Dot off. No, he should work his priority, and ask Sass to scold Dot. No, first mate always played bad cop to captain’s good cop.

  A mournful brown Saggy eye peeled open again. “Dead?”

  Dot automatically soothed, “That can wait until you’re feeling better.”

  “Clip the corners,” Remi murmured, then sighed into the even breaths of sleep.

  Clay nodded to Dot, and reached for his helmet. She stayed him with a hand.

  “How many dead, Clay? He can’t hear us.” Dot pointed to some waveform on her monitor.

  “First we help the living, then we fix the ship,” Clay insisted. “Mourn later.” Disciplinary chats came after that.

  He returned to Sass’s work area, where Darren ably directed now, leaving Joey at loose ends. “Do we need to prep the crew quarters?”

  “Shop vacuum,” the chief engineer replied. “Clear out the debris.”

  “I couldn’t get through the door,” Sass warned him. “Stuck.”

  After some debate, they decided that cutting a hole in the door was the easiest solution, if Clay and Joey couldn’t open it either. This seemed likely, given the warping impact at one end of that pressure bulkhead.

  Forty-five minutes later, Clay had cut through both outer doors, while Joey cleaned. His girlfriend was simply obliterated. No recognizable parts remained. The one intact body, Clay wrapped in his blanket and set on the catwalk for later. He found the bathroom’s water was merrily subliming into space from ruptured plumbing, so he cut the water supply.

  That loss would hurt, especially combined wit
h the air in the giant hold. The ship stored extra oxygen in the form of water. Now they’d be cutting into their emergency reserves on both.

  Clay shifted to examine the entry hole, to decide whether to cut a hole out of the pressure bulkhead into Remi’s cabin. But the engineers wouldn’t appreciate him adding arbitrary holes. These bulkheads needed to be pressure-safe before anyone could sleep here again.

  “Coming in,” Sass warned. Joey ducked out of the way as she and Darren brought in the first plate, awkward in their pressure suits.

  Clay asked his question, and Darren bent to peer at the awkward problem. “Dot? Any chance Remi can come look at this?”

  “He shouldn’t!”

  Sass shot Clay a look. Time was up. “Dot, I require Mr. Roy here, now. Do you need help to get him upstairs? Immediately.”

  Dot growled a bit over the comms channel, but admitted by now the engineer could walk under his own power if she counteracted the drugs. Sass pursed her lips, at Clay.

  “Medic,” Clay chided, “in future, do not render key personnel unconscious in an emergency.”

  “Well, it’s not as though anyone explained the emergency to me!”

  “Remi. Here. Now. Rocha out.”

  Soon Remi bounded up the stairs four at a time, apparently at some low gravity setting.

  He tipped the first plate to look it over. “I told you, clip the corners.”

  Rather than the steel cutting torch Clay used, Remi simply squirted a gel to define nicely rounded corners, followed by a second gel to activate the first, and within a minute, four corners dropped to the deck.

  Clay felt like an idiot. He could have cut through the doors in a quarter of the time if he’d just known which gel to use.

  Resting on Joey’s bunk, Remi gave directions while Clay and Joey jimmied the plate into place over the hole. After careful consideration, the Saggy determined the easiest way was to turn the plate so one corner stuck into his cabin. That way the pressure bulkhead didn’t need cutting and reconstruction. Which meant they needed to reshape their patch.

  Remi whisked the helpers out of the way. He applied his gels again to cut away the rent metal hull into a tidier-looking hole. He began to hammer-test the adjoining steel, but it set his head aching again.