Tyger Burning
Page 9
Maung didn’t have to look. Water shot onto him as though he fought his way toward a fire hose, and then the droplets gently curved aft. A moment ago the captain had ordered the area semipressurized with argon. That way, along with partially opening a rear airlock, it created a gas flow and emptied the area of water to minimize potential damage to electrical components.
“Crank it up, Maung,” said Jennifer. “We’re running out of time.”
“I know.” He tried to sound calm despite the fact that he was starting to get angry; what did she think, that he was having fun?
Plumbers never looked at stars, thought Maung, and he thanked his ancestors for the opportunity to contribute something to life instead of killing, even though this wasn’t how he envisioned it, and he asked for the willingness to continue forward with enough courage to ignore his fear. Little by little, he moved closer. The spray impacted his faceplate now with force, and the plastic pressed against his nose so it immediately fogged; Maung cursed out loud.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jennifer.
“I can’t see. Fog. I’m going to keep moving; maybe if I get past the break I can look at it from behind and see a little better. The rupture is in the overhead gallery, right?”
Jennifer confirmed it and he moved again. Soon the jet impacted against his chest, then his stomach, and Maung tried to block it with his arms but then gave up when he realized he needed them. He tightened his stomach muscles against the high-velocity jet and wiped his faceplate clear.
The rupture was huge. Maung watched as water shot in a wide Mohawk shape, and microbots looked like a greasy smear around its edges as they tried to adhere to the pipe.
“It looks like the bots have at least cleaned the rupture,” he said. “There’s no bent or twisted metal that I can see and it may be possible to get the clean seal you said we’d need.”
This time when Jennifer clicked in, she sounded tense. “Abort, Maung. We just did another round of calculations and the computer is giving new numbers; it won’t be long until there isn’t enough water to run the engines. We’re going to start deceleration and you have to get strapped in.”
“How much time do I have?” he asked.
“Twenty minutes; enough time to get to your cube. Otherwise you’ll take the gees down your axis and be thrown head first against a bulkhead; that helmet will split wide open along with your skull.”
Maung’s hands shook as he squirmed to pull the manual repair kit from his belt, but when he reached for the patch it wouldn’t budge. Somehow the thing had worked its way between a set of pipes and wedged itself tight, just below the small of his back where he couldn’t get leverage.
“Shit,” he whispered. “Shit!”
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Maung had spoken in Myanmarese without realizing it, the fear like a vice around his throat. “I’m stuck. Shit, shit, SHIT!” He jerked himself as best he could to either side, then, without thinking, seized hold of the red-hot pipe overhead and used it to pull himself upward a centimeter and then back; the patch sprang free.
Another voice chimed in, one he’d never heard before. “Suit integrity failure; depressurization in five minutes.” The message repeated itself, and Maung yelled at it to be quiet.
“Maung,” said Jennifer, “We’re reading that your suit is splitting open in the palms of both gloves.”
Maung remembered Jennifer’s instructions and concentrated on a section of the pipe that wasn’t broken, opened the clamp patch on its hinge, and wrapped it around. Then he inserted bolts into the patch’s holes and threaded the nuts on, ratcheting them down halfway. Now, he thought, came the tricky part. Maung had to slide the partially assembled clamp sideways, over the broken section of pipe, and use the electric wrench to clamp it all the way down—while a super-pressurized jet of water fought his efforts.
“Suit integrity failure imminent; depressurization in three minutes.”
Maung used the other end of the ratchet as a hammer, and slammed it against the patch so that it scraped sideways, eventually seating itself over the leak. Now, instead of spraying downward, the water jetted out on both sides of the patch, turning into steam when it hit the hot pipe nearby. He was almost there. Maung attached the ratchet to first one nut, and listened to servos whine against the water pressure as the clamp tightened.
“Suit integrity failure; depressurization in one minute.”
He chuckled. Somewhere in the back of his mind Maung recalled a training video on basic spaceflight and hypoxia, the first sign of which was giddiness from breathing gasses like nitrogen or argon instead of oxygen, but the warmth made him chuckle again. He couldn’t concentrate. Next his ears popped and the change in pressure hurt like a bad ear infection, changing his happy mood to one of anger.
The water suddenly stopped. Maung let out a whoop because the patch had finished and the smear of gray bots spread over the area, sintering the metal to the pipe and making a permanent fix. He moved back the way he came, singing as he went.
Jennifer’s voice came from the speakers, but she sounded like a breeze and he had no idea what she said, only that it was hysterical. Maung wished Nang could talk to him. He giggled at the thought of her finding out what he really was and then he imagined that maybe she’d be OK with that. “Suit integrity failure; depressurization complete. Seek immediate medical attention.” That voice was annoying, Maung thought. Now the pain in his ears almost forced his eyes shut but he suspected he was almost safe, almost to the opening when he decided to hell with it. Maung’s eyelids became like lead. He closed his eyes and dreamed that Jennifer and Nang were both there, screaming at him and dragging him back through the corridors of the ship as fast as they could.
“What did I do,” Maung asked, still speaking in Burmese, “to piss off both of you? I am cold, and my fingers are freezing at the same time my joints feel on fire. I just want a cigarette.”
CHAPTER SIX
The doctor leaned over him, wearing a facemask that made him look like an evil spirit and Maung struggled but grasped that he couldn’t move, that he’d been sedated. The man shone bright lights in his eyes. Maung remembered. He had taken hold of a red-hot pipe to get leverage and the heat had been enough to melt through his suit and weaken its shell so that he depressurized. Soon he’d find out how much damage he’d taken to his blood vessels and brain. As if reading his mind, the doctor put drops of a gray opalescent material in the corners of Maung’s eyes, administering diagnostic microbots that worked their way into his retinas, examining everything.
Everything.
Maung was strapped into a bed in the ship’s small sick bay. He still couldn’t move. The doctor floated nearby and held a scalpel to Maung’s cheek, and the man’s angry glare confused him until he remembered the doctor had administered microbots. He knows, Maung realized.
“You aren’t human?” the doctor asked. When Maung looked away, the doctor rested the scalpel against his throat. “Answer or I’ll slice you open from ear to ear.”
“I’m human. Partially. I’m Dream Warrior. Parts of my brain have been replaced by a semi-aware system so I’m not sure how much of me is me. Not anymore.”
The doctor’s eyes went wide and he pushed off, floating backward and slipping the scalpel into a case. “My god. You guys were supposed to have all been killed.”
Maung nodded, relieved; there were no secrets left and soon it would be over, one way or another. They might, he thought, even send him back to Earth but he doubted it. If it were his people, they’d torture him to death on the spot but at least he wouldn’t have to maintain the lie anymore.
“So what are you here for? To spy?”
“No,” said Maung, “I want to get away from Americans—all of you. Your government brought me and my family to Charleston to help with port duties and shipping, a slave, and now my son is in an American school where they call my people monsters. I have seen the Chinese up close. Have you?
I want nothing to do with them or you anymore. I want the war to be over.”
The doctor looked confused and yanked on a table, launching himself toward the hatch where he paused to say, “What to do with you is the captain’s decision. But don’t expect sympathy; he lost two sons in the Philippine jungles.”
“How’s the ship?” Maung asked. “Are we safe, did the repair work?”
But the doctor ignored him and left.
Sounds came and went and every time Maung tried to open his eyes it was as if someone had sewn them shut, an impossible weight that no amount of effort could lift, but he heard the doctor and the captain anyway. They couldn’t seal his ears. Maung knew he’d been sedated and he understood why, because now more than one of them saw him exactly for what he was; he couldn’t figure out why they hadn’t killed him. Maung fought the urge to activate his system and promised himself he wouldn’t switch on until he knew their intentions because he didn’t want to go there, was sick of destruction. Besides, he might need the crew alive to reach Karin, even if he went super-aware.
Once more the engines roared and Maung came to in the sick bay when an almost unbearable pain made him scream; the room was dim, lit only by the blinking lights of dormant medbots as they rattled under the stress of high gees. The ship, he guessed, must have accelerated again. Before he reacted, one of the medbots came to life and jabbed his arm with a long needle, sending sedative into his bloodstream. Maung smiled as he fell asleep, happy to have reality erased. But before he passed out he remembered what woke him and Maung noted that both his hands were bandaged because he’d fried them while repairing the water pipe; that had really happened.
“Wake up.”
Someone smacked Maung’s face and he flinched but couldn’t open his eyes. Then they shouted, “Wake up,” punching him in the stomach so that Maung coughed and spat. The captain was there. The doctor floated in the hatchway, glanced up and down the corridor outside, and then shut the two of them inside, alone.
“They think you’re in critical condition,” the captain said. “The rest of my crew.”
“Am I not?”
The man smiled and shook his head. “You could be and maybe should be. Hell. You don’t know what it’s like to face someone like you, a mass murderer who may have killed my sons, and yet who just saved the ship and the lives of half my crew.”
“I was a Dream Warrior. That’s not who I am anymore.” Maung realized that the ship was no longer pulling gees and he looked down; the bandages were off. At first he was scared to see his palms, but then opened his fists, relieved to find there were no scars and Maung reminded himself to thank the doctor. “I am not anything anymore, Captain. Nothing except a father. I just want my son to have a chance.”
The captain seemed older than he thought. Maung hadn’t bothered to examine him until now and saw he had white hair, close cropped and snowy atop gray skin that looked as if it had been overworn and stretched. His neck was scarred on the left side, below the ear, down to his collar—and probably below that, Maung figured.
“You were in the war,” he said.
The captain nodded and stopped himself from rotating, facing Maung again. “Twenty years ago, when the Sommen were still here. They had blockaded us, trapped us inside the solar system so we couldn’t move out and look for more resources. I was part of a fleet that went after Sommen space-based assets in a joint expeditionary force. It was all classified; I guess someone in the government thinks it would have once caused a panic, and now they’ve forgotten. But the Sommen ordered us to stay put, all of humanity—trapped on our home planet. That’s why the last Asian War kicked off, because we’d bled Earth’s mines dry of metallics.”
The captain paused and patted his pocket as though he was looking for cigarettes, which reminded Maung of his own craving. “Anyway, before going to war with them, a small group of countries, including us and China—if you can believe it—tried to break out. The Sommen slaughtered us. It wasn’t even a fair fight, like a two-year-old trying to take out a fighter carrier with a squirt gun.” The captain was about to say more but then cocked his head and stared at Maung. “It doesn’t matter. We have a problem right now; one that you might be able to help us with.”
“What?” Maung asked.
“You saved the ship. And none of the other crew know who or what you are; we can’t tell them because they might kill you or mutiny, or both, despite what you’ve done for them.”
Maung nodded. “I thought you were here to do that.”
“No,” said the captain. “I’m too old now. Soon I’ll be with my sons again and that will be enough, I don’t need to get even.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
The captain reached out and unbuckled Maung, then released his arm and leg restraints, and when he was free Maung thanked his ancestors for being in zero g. His limbs were asleep. Without asking the computer he couldn’t tell how long he’d been held, but he guessed days and it would take another day or so for him to regain normal muscle control.
“We received a transmission from Earth,” the captain said, “from Carson headquarters in Singapore, ordering us to send our lifeboat down to Ganymede to investigate an anomaly.”
“An anomaly?” Maung asked.
“That’s all they’ll tell us. We’re in orbit around her right now, and luckily Jupiter is between us and Europa, but you and Nang are going to be really late for your first day on the job at Karin.”
Maung nodded and massaged his arms; he smiled at the fact that he was alive, that the bots must have repaired any depressurization-related damage. “So the pipe patch is holding.”
“We have just enough water,” the captain said, “to continue normal operations and a detour to Ganymede would allow us to replenish reserves. But that’s not why they’re sending us there.”
Maung groaned from the soreness; whatever happened after he blacked out must have caused significant damage because his muscles and bones ached, and even his teeth radiated a dull pain that he couldn’t ignore. “Why do you need me?”
“Ganymede is also technically within the Chinese sphere of influence, and if the company won’t tell us anything except surface coordinates, it makes me nervous. I want a weapon down there. For now you’re confined to sick bay, but get some rest.” The captain navigated toward the hatch and kicked it twice so the doctor opened it. “We leave in twelve hours. If you do a good job down there and keep my crew and boat safe, Doc and I might keep your secret and let you go on to Karin.”
“What do you think is down there?” Maung asked, as the hatch inched shut.
“I don’t know. But whatever it is, Carson wouldn’t risk a mega-tanker unless it was important, and they never do anything like this unless the government guarantees to fund the ship’s replacement—in the event of catastrophic loss or capture.”
“Why doesn’t Maung have a weapon?” Nang asked.
Four of them floated inside the lifeboat hangar—a tight compartment in the ship’s aft. To Maung, the lifeboat looked like a brick with rounded edges; he was not an expert on spacecraft, but was almost certain that this one was uglier than most.
The captain answered before Maung could. “He doesn’t want one. And we have limited supplies of firearms, anyway. Get in, suit up, and then helmets on. We don’t want to wait any more than we have to.”
“Well then why is he coming?” she asked. Maung wondered why Nang pursued the issue, and he considered asking her to stop. “Maung is recovering from rapid depressurization and a day ago you told us he was critical. Shouldn’t he stay in sick bay?”
“Miss,” the captain started. Maung guessed the man was about to lie, but part of him wanted Nang to see through it; part of him wanted the captain to tell his secret because it dragged on his soul, an impossible weight. “Carson Corp wants me, a navigator, and two nonessential personnel to tag along on this little mission and that includes Maung. Now, that’s all I need to know. And it’s more than you need to know.”
“That bump,” Jennifer said, her voice coming from Maung’s headphone speakers, “was Ganymede’s wisp of an atmosphere. I wish you guys could see this. It’s beautiful. Ganymede is gray and white and blue; you’d never guess that ice could look so pretty.”
Only Jennifer and the captain could see out the main window; Maung and Nang were in the rear of the small craft, facing backward and strapped into black seats.
“Quiet,” the captain said. “On course. ETA ten minutes. So far there’s no sign of Chinese assets. Stay low to avoid radar, just in case they have something here that didn’t get picked up in scans.”
Maung said, “Captain, did you scan the coordinates given to you by Carson? Did you pick up anything on the ground?”
“Affirmative,” the man said. “A little over twelve thousand spherical objects arranged in a geometric pattern—a huge square. All of them solid. All of them the same density of material used by the Sommen to construct their bases and ships.”
Maung turned his head to glance at Nang, but her eyes were closed, and he tried to slow his breathing by praying. Cigarettes, he thought again. Although his cravings were starting to fade, he needed to ask the doctor about that patch, the one that used microbots to deliver nicotine.