Interplanetary Thrive

by Ginger Booth

  The other two boxes would be harder.

  Ben suddenly snapped erect and started firing. Debris got too close.

  “Gunner,” Abel said softly. “You do remember the shuttle is out there, yes? And you cannot alter heading.”

  “I did catch that part, yes,” Ben replied absently. He fired again, and hung tense and poised, studying his display. Then he slumped back into his seat. “That was close.”

  Abel nodded. “Mr. Copeland, coming into grapple range…now. Rolling ship.” He tuned the thrusters to minimum, then tapped them just the slightest bit, once, twice, wait a few seconds, then the opposing thrusters in the opposite order. Then he sighed hugely.

  “Lock,” Copeland reported. “Hauling it in now. Will arrest at 20 meters to go EVA and untie the knot. Hey, Ben? Next time, spear the thing.”

  “Belay that, Ben,” Abel countered. “Cope, it’s at least as much effort to cut out the harpoon. And make sure the container won’t explode.”

  “Point,” Cope allowed. “Nice shooting, Ben. Piloting also adequate.”

  Abel chuckled. “Screw you, too.”

  20

  Clay yawned mightily and scrubbed his face awake with his hands. “Remind me. What’s the goal here?”

  Sass, in the pilot seat beside him, finished bringing the shuttle to rest relative to the third container, over 100 km from the other two and spinning like a dervish. “Well, we can’t tow that much mass to the Thrive. But we can hopefully stop its spin. And nudge it a little closer. Then Abel can swoop in and latch on with the grapples.”

  “Cool,” Clay allowed. He was neither gunner nor pilot for this ride, simply along for backup. Sass probably didn’t need backup. He fidgeted with the console in front of him. That could probably sum up the past 4 months of his life.

  “Abel?” Sass hailed. “I’m in position. Any lessons learned on the harpoons?”

  Ben stepped in to reply, giving technical details of the errors on his shots, though they were lined up perfectly. “Probably idiosyncratic.”

  “Idiot what?”

  Clay glanced at her, surprised. She didn’t know the word. He worked so hard to convince her they were alike, he almost believed his own press sometimes.

  “Quirks,” Ben supplied before he could. “Minor differences in manufacturing. How it seated in the laser socket.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Sass agreed. “How’s it coming?”

  Abel replied this time. “Copeland just finished untangling box 1. Hard to guess how long the second will take.”

  “Understood.” Sass clicked off and sighed.

  “Something wrong?” Clay asked.

  “Just fuel,” she replied. “The longer we’re delayed, the more we need to burn to reach Denali in time.”

  “But we have enough, right?”

  She lined up her shot. “Let me focus.” She fidgeted a bit. She shot. She watched. She missed. She fidgeted some more as the harpoon slowly ratcheted back, then sat back to simply wait.

  “You didn’t answer,” Clay pointed out. “How much trouble are we in?”

  Her voice was soft and honeyed, as usual when she was being evasive. “Let’s just collect up our fuel first now.” They sat in silence until the harpoon arrived back with a faint kchunk.

  “Wish me luck.” She fired the next shot.

  He nodded slowly, watching her, not the harpoon.

  “What?” she cried.

  Clay whipped his head forward to look, but took a moment to understand what he was seeing. “The harpoon went straight through?”

  “Yeah, that shouldn’t – Oh, hell.” With the container whirling like a dervish, the cable rapidly coiled around it. The box approached like a yo-yo climbing its string.

  Clay braced himself, arm straight-elbowed against the console. That wouldn’t do him any good. But Earth-trained reflexes were hard to kill. “Release the harpoon! Now!”

  But Sass had already been stabbing the control panel. “It’s not working.” She punched the comms button. “Copeland, can I eject the harpoon base?”

  Clay was already on his feet, sealing his suit.

  “The base?” the engineer replied. “No. Cap, that’s a laser tube housing. Why would you eject a weapon?”

  Clay leaned forward. “Clay here. Cope, how do I cut this cable?”

  Sass stared. “EVA? In this? Are you nuts? Clay, I’ll need to maneuver!”

  “Understood,” he bit out. “Cope?”

  Apparently the engineer had spent the interim thinking fast. “You’re right. Your suit tools include two tubes, yellow and green. You need to circle the spot with the yellow tube. Get it all the way around the cable. Then the green. You’ve got thirty seconds after contact before it cuts through. Clay, it’ll whiplash. You’d better be damned sure you’re locked onto the ship four ways, different points on your torso, before you start. Crazy dangerous.”

  “Understood.” He didn’t bother to say good-bye. Sass already had her helmet on. He clamped on his, and held on. She blew out their air through the airlock to save time.

  “You come back to me safe, Clay Rocha,” Sass growled at him over the suit radios as he locked on and flipped outside. “Tell me when you’re latched on. Make it fast. Only 100 meters of cable left. Gotta move to buy you time.”

  Clay studiously avoided looking at the hurling hammerhead of steel box coming at him. One line he left clamped at the lock door. He gave himself only 15 meters on that one, slightly longer than the shuttle. He crabbed hand-over-hand as fast as he could to the nose-gun. There he clamped on, yes, using more than one point on his suit, which took extra time.

  “Clay…?” Sass crooned.

  He finally glanced up at the catastrophe headed his way. “I’m clamped!”

  Immediately the boat lurched towards the oncoming box. Instinct took over again, and Clay flattened himself onto the hull. Only the magnetic gloves reminded him not to shield his head with his hands the way they’d drilled into him back in special agent school so long ago and far away. The stars tilted. The careening steel box loomed. A sun glare off its corner zapped him in the eyes faster than the faceplate’s photo compensation could adjust.

  And the shuttle zoomed past the box, his perch on the nose missing the caroming end by only a few meters.

  “Clay, I’m not sure I can give you 30 seconds. How’s it going?”

  “Haven’t started,” he admitted. He was only clamped on at two places nearby, too. Three, counting the airlock. Close enough. Lying on his belly was not the greatest position from which to extract tubes from his suit’s chest webbing, and God help him if he dropped one. He managed to get out the first one. Green. “Which color first?”

  “Yellow! Then green,” Sass barked at him. “Coming around again. Do not look.”

  “Not looking,” Clay grumbled, tugging at the second tube. Its crimped end, like a toothpaste, snagged on the webbing. He gave up and let go of the hull with both hands to work it loose.

  Sass chose just that moment to fishtail the shuttle around again. Clay slammed onto the hull with one shoulder, and narrowly averted cracking his helmet.

  “What was that thunk?” she inquired.

  “Me,” he replied shortly. But at least he got both his tubes free. He pulled in the yellow one to uncap it, and found that arm wasn’t working too well anymore. Fine. Be that way. He clamped that hand and elbow to the hull, and tucked his two tubes under the arm. He unscrewed the yellow cap, remembering what Copeland always said, how the hard part was getting to it.

  And cleaning up afterwards. Don’t think about that. He finally extracted his yellow tube and squeezed a blob onto the carbon fiber cable, the strand narrower than a pencil. Copeland hadn’t looked too closely at this cable. It had no sides. The blob flowed around to meet itself.

  The container, bright red and gleaming, aimed its corner at his head again as g-forces wheeled. Sass still flew her losing race to unwind the cable faster than the yo-yo could travel up it.

  In a flash of sani
ty, Clay jettisoned his yellow cap and tube, and focused on the green one. He nearly lost it as one of his D-rings snapped under the strain of holding him to the hull. He should clamp another down. He really should. And the green cap was off and bound for Pono for all he cared. He endured the g-forces of Sass’s latest tight banking turn because that was all he could do. Then he reached out and dropped another blob to join the first.

  He watched a couple seconds to make sure the second dab of gel met itself like the first had. He realized that was dumb and added another daub. He realized waiting was dumb and tried to find another way to clamp on. “Uh, maybe 20 seconds,” he finally remembered to tell Sass.

  “I hope so,” she sang fervently. “Hold on!”

  Clay abandoned his last chance to clamp on in favor of another arm locked magnetically to the hull. Snuggling into the unyielding metal, he double-checked his knee and toe magnetics were likewise firmly grounded.

  The shuttle’s sudden jerk to his left tore all those magnets free. Only one clamp still secured him to the nose, and he flipped over this pivot on its 10-cm line, to slam against the hull. That knocked the air out of him. He wasn’t really thinking, so much as his muscles straining on instinct to grab something in order to brace himself. His gloved fingers touched a grab-bar. He stretched to try for a grip on it, only to have it snatched away as the shuttle thrust backwards. He flapped up again on his single local tether.

  He didn’t see it coming. All he knew was fire as the whiplashing free end of the harpoon cable sliced him from shoulder to opposite hip.

  “Clay, status!” Sass yelled. “Talk to me!”

  “Cut. Bleeding out.” He wondered at how slowly the words flowed, like molasses. Everything had been so frenetic just a moment ago. So peaceful now. “Love you.”

  “Ben!” Sass hollered into the comm. “Can you shoot this can and miss me?” She’d goosed the shuttle as much as she dared to open up the range for him.

  The pause on the other end was not long, given that the question zoomed out of left field toward a very tired youth focused on something else.

  “Now, now, now!” Sass demanded.

  “Uh…kinda tight, sar,” Ben replied. “No.”

  “Watch for your shot,” Sass ordered. “Take it when you can. I’m going EVA.”

  “Clay?” Abel attempted.

  “Casualty pickup,” Sass elaborated, damning the man. A few tears squeezed out of her eyes because she had to say that.

  She didn’t stop moving, in any event. The container was slowly falling farther away. That would have to do.

  She clamped on just outside the door and stuck her head out to look by the nose. No Clay. He had a backup line attached to the same bar as hers. A simple tug verified that the line broke. Sitting back on her heels, she opened the comm again. “Ben. Don’t take that shot.”

  “Sar?”

  “Clay’s adrift.” And her universe came to a dead stop.

  “Searching,” Ben replied. The suits had location transmitters, of course. “Tracking. You can catch him, Sass. Sending vector.”

  She’d forgotten. Usually, an unconscious crewman going adrift was a one-way trip. Because a rescuer would have to suit up, launch the shuttle, hope they weren’t moving away too fast to retrieve – it took too much time. But she already had all that. And as she lurched back to her seat, she saw Ben spoke simple truth. Clay was only 200 meters away, falling away at no more than the gait of a slow donkey. He wasn’t headed toward the container from hell, either.

  With precision taps of the thrusters, she brought the little boat right next to him. She even saw his pressure suit flash past the door. Then she matched velocities, and lurched to the door. She didn’t even have to latch on again. She’d never unhooked. She simply dove out, without a pause for thought or aim. And she reached him on that first try.

  His suit gaped open, vacuum-desiccated innards trailing out from flash-frozen skin, still a warm tone despite its bloodlessness. She tried to lovingly tuck some of his insides back in, but they crumbled like crackers.

  She shifted behind him and clamped his body to hers with one arm across his dead chest. Then she yanked on her safety line to bring them in.

  “Headed back now, Abel,” she reported huskily, after the airlock was sealed again. She flicked a button to pressurize the tiny cabin, though she didn’t care. Air wouldn’t do Clay any good either. He lay dead in the tiny aisle between the four seats, his staring eyes in the cracked helmet beside her feet.

  “How is Clay? Shall we prep the med bay?”

  Damn him for asking. Clay was dead. His transponder would have told them. But they’d seen him come back from the dead before. Abel was just being cautious.

  “Don’t disturb Cortez,” Sass replied. What was she doing? Oh, yeah. She plotted the course back to the Thrive and let the computer do the flying.

  “The container?” Abel inquired.

  The what? “Oh. It was empty.”

  Jules met her at the shuttle lock. The teen was very kind, but blanched at seeing the corpse. Sass sent her away. She toted Clay on low gravity, and lay him out in his bed herself.

  He would live this time, yet again. Or he wouldn’t. The ship wasn’t out of the woods yet. She swallowed. “Come back, Clay.”

  If asked, she wouldn’t have cared to justify what she did next. She unsuited her top half. She selected her utility knife. And she cut her wrist over Clay’s open chest. While that pumped out bright arterial blood, she detached his helmet. Her wrist was healing fast. As she dripped a cross on his face, brow to chin, eye to eye, it slowed to a few scant drops, then stopped.

  “Don’t leave me here alone, Clay.”

  She left to help secure the two containers Abel retrieved.

  21

  Day 118 outbound from Mahina

  45 days to Denali

  Copeland slumped on the bench under the scrubber trees. He was so far beyond tired he couldn’t imagine climbing upstairs to go to bed. Abel and Sass had finally finished the emergency burns, decelerations and course corrections to make up for all the time they’d lost, all the burns they’d missed.

  He had to stay awake for that, watching the cargo like a hawk. But the quick hatchet job he’d done securing the containers had held. Abel and Sass stumbled into their cabins to bed. Ben had the watch now, having been forced to take a nap first for a few hours.

  Copeland hadn’t visited Cortez yet. He needed to do that. Then he could finally sleep. He’d snatched a few naps on the cargo hold floor. His tired brain tried to figure what day it was now – Glow? No, it was after midnight. Monday morning, then. No wonder it sucked.

  “Cope!” Wilder cried. He peeled out of the med bay, and ran at him with more energy than the man should rightly have remaining. “The auto-doc. There’s an alarm. It wants a refill.”

  Copeland stared at him dully. Refill the auto-doc. Yes, he’d brought that along. The refill kit was in one of the containers. In slow motion, he pulled his tablet out of his pocket, the abused muscles of his hips aching from the effort. Yes, it was in one of the containers they still owned. He’d topped up the auto-doc before they left Mahina Actual, fully expecting 5 months of unrelieved boredom en route to Denali. Auto-doc refills weren’t a priority stow near the interior doors. It was in one of the containers Abel retrieved today – or whenever. Bottom aft port container, about a third of the way back. That is, it was about there before everything got the tossed salad treatment. He’d be unscrambling those cargo containers all the way back to Mahina, he feared.

  He swallowed. He wanted to cry. “Can’t it wait?”

  “I don’t know. Kassidy and Eli passed out. Maybe a little while. There’s a timer. Critical failure in 4 hours? Something like that.”

  “Of course,” Copeland breathed. He rubbed his face and hit a button on his comm. “Officer Ben. Emergency EVA required. Can we suspend the burns for a few hours?”

  “Good evening, Chief Engineer,” Ben replied. “We have a scheduled burn every half
hour. And you’re not going EVA. Cope, last time I saw you, you could barely walk. Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “We need something from a container. Cortez does. The auto-doc needs a recharge.” He waited a few seconds. “Ben? Did you hear me? We can’t just let her die.”

  “Agreed,” Ben bit out. “Hold while I assess staff availability. Do you happen to know how long ago Eli went to bed?”

  “Couple hours ago, I think,” Wilder supplied. The guy looked as emotionally strung out as the engineer, with his girlfriend still in critical condition.

  Ben’s voice vanished and Copeland’s eyes drifted closed while he waited. Next thing he knew, his ‘domestic partner’ was shaking him awake. He held out two caffeine pills in his open hand. “Eat these. And take the bridge watch.”

  “Won’t work, Ben,” Cope argued. “I’m the only one who could find it in time. Maybe Abel. But only if I told him where to look and how to get it out of there.”

  “Me bridge officer,” Ben replied. “You take orders. Eat them.”

  Growling, Copeland chomped down the caffeine pills. The jitters had long since ceased to give him energy. The pills made his skin feel like ants were trying to crawl out. His burning eyes insisted the light was too bright, and tired muscles spasmed here and there.

  Ben pulled out the relevant storage schematic in 3D. Bright lad, he’d already located the auto-doc refill on the cargo manifest. Its box, conveniently located on the narrow aisle down the middle of the container, about a third of the way in, was highlighted in purple. “Talk me through this, Cope. How would you plan to go looking for it?”

  Kassidy dropped into the hold with him and started donning her pressure suit. She looked exhausted. But at least she’d been working indoors instead of pushing the big tonnage around since Cortez was injured.

  The engineer took the schematic tablet and scowled at it. This particular container hadn’t been repacked. Which meant it was full. Its contents were thoroughly shaken, but no longer moving, having settled by the gravity field. He’d love to say he could just drill some peep holes in the side of the box around the right place, and look. Maybe even pull their quarry out through the hole.