Time Bomb

by R. M. Olson

  “Yeah. I know that. But here’s the thing—” she managed a jaunty tone, “I don’t think you have any idea how much Lena hates me. Figure if push comes to shove, she’d trade the rest of you for me.”

  “I see,” said Masha at last. They were silent for a few moments, and Jez focused on her boots.

  Because she really didn’t want to focus on what she’d just said. And she really, really didn’t want to focus on what it would be like, trapped on Lena’s ship, watching her angel ship disappear for the last time.

  “Don’t tell the others,” she said finally. “They probably won’t agree. Figure you won’t care, though. I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t going to leave anyways, and besides, you pretty much hate my guts.”

  There were another few moments of silence before Masha spoke.

  “Jez,” she said at last, a strange note to her voice. “My first goal has always been to keep as many of this crew alive as possible. And there have certainly been times when I believed your actions were working against that goal. I will admit to having been frustrated, more than once. But—I’ve never hated you.”

  “Yeah? Not even when I got completely smashed right before we hit Vitali? Or when I staked all your credits on a game of fools tokens?”

  “No, Jez. Not even then.”

  Jez shot a glance over her shoulder, but she couldn’t make out Masha’s expression inside her helmet.

  She gave a small shiver.

  Probably wasn’t telling the truth. But—somehow, it had been a lot easier when she knew that Masha loathed her, and she loathed Masha back.

  “Anyways,” she said finally, “like I said. I wasn’t planning on sticking around, so this is probably for the best. Besides, I guess Tae was right. You can’t just run away forever. I’m going to have to face her sometime. May as well be now.”

  There was another silence.

  “You know this may not be necessary,” said Masha. “If Lena doesn’t get here until after the hyperdrive is powered up—”

  “Yeah. But seems like not a lot of things have been going according to plan lately.”

  They’d reached the cockpit now. She could see the others through the window, their faces focused and cut with strain. She managed a faint smile.

  No. She’d been right. Getting these idiots back somewhere safe—that’d be worth it. Even if the thought of going back to Lena made her sick to her stomach.

  “Well, Jez,” said Masha finally. “I suppose I underestimated you. It’s happened before.”

  “Look,” said Jez, turning slightly. “I don’t care. Doesn’t matter. Just—get them out safe, OK? And don’t let Ysbel kill Lev?”

  There was a slight smile in Masha’s voice. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Yeah.” She paused. “Thanks.”

  “Do you copy?” Ysbel’s voice crackled over the main line, and Jez jumped.

  “Loud and clear,” said Masha, tapping the side of her helmet for the general line.

  “Alright then. You’ll need to do some hard work, so Jez, if you can’t do something because of your ribs or your arm, let me know and I will try to think of a solution.”

  Jez tapped her helmet. “Ah, come on, Ysbel, you know me. I can do basically anything.”

  “I see.” Ysbel made no attempt to hide the skepticism in her tone. “Then let’s see if you can get the guns to release. I don’t even want to think about how badly they’re jammed up.”

  “On it,” said Jez, grinning.

  Ysbel had been right—the two massive front-cannons that poked out just under the cockpit were badly jammed. The strain on the blackened metal was visible even before Jez got close.

  “We’re here, Ysbel,” said Masha into her com.

  “Good. Can you show me what it looks like?”

  Masha pulled up her suit’s holoscreen, and swung it around so Ysbel could see the position of the guns. Over the com, Jez heard Ysbel suck in a quick breath.

  “That’s not good. But I think I can still make it work. Alright, here’s what I need you to do.”

  Jez wasn’t entirely certain how long they wrestled with the first gun, but it must have been almost an hour. She and Masha had brought cables and tackle lines, and she clipped the mag-winch to the hull of her beautiful ship, gritting her teeth the whole time, and finally, finally, with a grinding, twisting sound of tortured metal, the gun began to break free.

  “Get back!” Ysbel shouted, and Jez and Masha retreated as quickly as they could with their mag boots sticking to the hull as the gun wrenched itself loose and swung free.

  For a moment they stood there, breathing heavily.

  “Good,” said Ysbel. “Now I need you to do the same with the other.”

  The other gun was less badly jammed than the first, and even though the sound of the mag-winch scraping against the Ungovernable’s perfect hull made her wince, it didn’t take nearly as long before they heard the tell-tale creaking and groaning.

  “Get back,” Ysbel grunted again, and Jez and Masha retreated.

  And then Jez noticed the small loop of cord caught on a protuberance on the edge of the gun, and her breath caught. She started forward, hitting her com to shout to Masha, as the gun wrenched free.

  Like she was watching in slow motion, she saw Masha jerked forward, saw the impact as the woman was slammed into the side of the gun and knocked sideways. The already-strained line tightened, frayed, and snapped. And Masha was flung outwards, towards deep space.

  In Jez’s earpiece, Ysbel swore and shouted something, but Jez didn’t have attention to spare. She glanced around quickly.

  Masha was already too far for her to reach with her line intact.

  OK, well, that just made things interesting. She snatched the heat-knife out of its sheath on her suit.

  “Jez.” Lev’s voice was panicked, “What are you doing? You can’t—”

  She grinned at him through the cockpit window. “Lesson one, genius-boy. I can do basically anything.”

  “Jez—” It was Tae this time.

  She hit off her com.

  There. Floating lazily beside the now-free gun, a wide, flat sheet of metal torn off the gun port. Something she’d never be able to lift in gravity, because it probably weighed double what she did, but that was the nice thing about zero Gs.

  She remembered, for a moment, the engine room, and Lev.

  One of the nice things, anyways.

  Masha was drifting out further. Her body was limp. The impact must have knocked her out momentarily.

  Served her right to be the one passing out for once. Jez was usually the one doing that, and to be perfectly honest, she was getting a little tired of it.

  She grabbed the metal, hitting her suit controls to dial up the strength of the mag boots and letting them hold her in place as she pulled the twisted chunk of metal around in front of her.

  The others were signalling frantically from inside the cockpit. She gave them a jaunty wave, took a deep breath, and with the heat knife, cut her line. Then she bent her knees, glanced up at the direction Masha was floating, and cut the power to her mag boots as she kicked off with both legs.

  She glanced up and couldn’t hold back her grin.

  Perfect trajectory.

  Then again, this sort of thing was kind of her specialty.

  She wasn’t going fast—her kick-off, which would have normally sent her shooting off in her chosen direction, had put her on a staid course with the added mass of the metal. Still, probably better this way. Yes, there were vanishingly-few times that going fast was not the best option, but this, she supposed, was probably one of them. As long as she was going faster than Masha …

  She glanced ahead again.

  Yes. She’d reach her in a moment …

  There. She was just close enough to touch the woman’s space suit.

  As Jez grabbed her, Masha stirred.

  Good. Because it would have been really irritating if she’d done all this and Masha turned out to be already dead.


  She managed to shift the metal to one arm, and with her free arm she wrapped the end of her line around Masha’s waist, strapping the woman as tightly to her as possible, with a slightly disgusted expression.

  There were certainly people in the system she wouldn’t mind being in close quarters with, but Masha was not one of them.

  Then she moved so as much of her body as possible was in contact with the chunk of metal. She glanced behind her at the Ungovernable, receding into the distance, and for a split second, watching the dark of space that surrounded them, the gorgeous, velvety perfect blackness, she realized that if she didn’t make it—well, she could think of a hell of a lot worse ways to die.

  Still, that soft-boy idiot Lev was back there, and Olya.

  I knew you wouldn’t leave us.

  Her stomach was tight with adrenalin. She maneuvered the bottoms of her boots against the chunk of metal, glanced back one more time to calculate her trajectory, and shoved as hard as she could.

  The metal accelerated its course towards the perfect, endless black, and Jez, with Masha strapped to her, was pushed at a slow, almost leisurely pace back towards the Ungovernable.

  She managed a shallow breath of relief.

  She’d calculated it right. They were going to make it. All she had to do now was—

  And then another piece of space-junk from the freed cannons, traveling so slowly it was ridiculous, bumped her shoulder.

  It wasn’t much, just enough to knock her into a slow spin. But—the ship was approaching fast, and where they were going to hit now on the hull, there were no handholds.

  She gritted her teeth and tried to maneuver herself downward.

  She had to hit feet first. She had to let her mag boots anchor them, because if she couldn’t, they’d bounce off and now she had nothing to change her momentum.

  She could probably save herself if she cut Masha free and shoved her off to one side, which was honestly somewhat tempting, but considering that the whole point of this damn exercise had been to save Masha’s life, it seemed somewhat counterproductive.

  She was getting closer, too close, and she wasn’t going to hit with her feet at all, she was going to hit with her shoulder, and there was nothing she could do.

  For a moment, cold, irrational panic washed over her.

  She was going to die. She was going to have to make a decision, and either she or Masha was going to die.

  She hit the ship, the impact enough to jolt her broken ribs. She swore, trying to twist in the air, scrabbling for something, anything to grab on to, but there was nothing, and her fingers brushed helplessly over the rivets on the smooth paneling that she loved so much. And then she was straining to reach them, and then they were out of reach as she drifted helplessly out towards deep space.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and grabbed for her heat knife, and even as she did so she wasn’t certain about who she’d push back towards the ship. And then something jerked her around, and she opened her eyes with a start.

  Masha was standing on the hull of the ship, her mag boots hooked down to the metal. She untwisted the line, where Jez had tied them together, and pulled Jez in.

  Almost in shock, Jez activated the mags on her boots and stood there breathing heavily.

  She looked up and met Masha’s gaze. The woman had blood running from her forehead and into her eyes from the impact with the gun, but for a moment the two of them locked eyes. And then Masha gave her a slight smile, and somehow, Jez found herself smiling back.

  Masha tapped the side of her helmet with a finger, shaking her head, and Jez tapped her com on.

  Lev was swearing in a long, steady stream, and she was secretly somewhat impressed at his vocabulary. She’d never known he had it in him. Tae was also swearing, and Ysbel was saying something that was probably very uncomplimentary, although her accent had thickened, like it always seemed to when she was upset, and besides, with Tae and Lev’s admittedly inspiring diatribes, it was hard to hear.

  “Hey,” she said, smirking. “Didn’t know you could swear like that, genius.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Jez?” said Lev in a strangled tone.

  “Yep.”

  “Where are you? Are you alright? Are you—”

  “Relax. I’m here. Masha and me. We’re good.”

  There was another moment of silence. Then Lev let loose another string of expletives.

  “What the actual hell were you thinking?” he sputtered at last. “What in the name of everything holy or unholy were you—”

  She shrugged, even though she knew he couldn’t see. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “No, I don’t actually think you do. Because no one in their right mind—”

  “Who said I was in my right mind?” She was grinning broadly.

  “Jez. Do you have Masha with you?” asked Tae, his voice just as strained as Lev’s.

  “Yep. Right here. She got hit, I think the impact killed her com.”

  “Alright.” Tae took a long breath, clearly trying to remain calm. “Alright. Neither of you have anchor lines anymore, so I need you to make your way back to the airlock, OK?”

  “Ysbel? You want us to do anything else first? Because I’m going to be honest with you, at the rate we’re going through space suits, I’m not totally sure how many more times we’re going to make it out here.”

  “You stupid, ridiculous, idiotic, crazy lunatic—”

  “Take that as a no, I guess?”

  There was the sound of Ysbel drawing in a long breath. “No. You did what I needed you to do. You hopeless—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got that part. Alright Tae, we’re heading back. Meet you on the other side.” She hit her com off and turned her grin to Masha. Masha raised an eyebrow. Jez jerked her head in the direction of the airlock, and they made their slow way back.

  When they were inside, and the airlock re-pressurized, Jez unclipped her helmet and pulled it loose, taking a long breath of the ship’s air.

  Always tasted better, somehow, than the canned air in the suit tanks.

  Masha did the same, and a moment later the inside doors slid open. Lev grabbed Jez, holding her at arm’s-length to inspect her, then pulled her into a tight embrace that still managed to be gentle enough not to hurt.

  For a moment she was too surprised to react, and somehow the feeling of him holding her, even through the bulk of her space suit, sent a tingling sensation through her body, and the side of her face was pressed up against his, and his warm skin against hers was surprisingly pleasant. She closed her eyes for just a moment, breathing in the familiar smell of him.

  Since when had this soft-boy become so familiar? And since when had she thought that being held like this by him would be a good thing? It wasn’t a good thing. In fact, it was a very stupid thing, and she was probably going to protest in just a minute.

  As soon as she stopped feeling lightheaded.

  Because to be honest, her head was feeling a little fuzzy at the moment, and she thought perhaps she’d enjoy it for a few minutes before she’d do something about it. And somehow, without her really thinking about it, her arms had gone around him as well, and he was whispering in her ear in a choked voice something about “You crazy, wonderful, ridiculous idiot.” She’d never actually had someone call her an idiot in that tone of voice before, like it was something you’d say to a lover. And considering that she was completely unhurt, it made no sense at all that she was leaning against him like she wouldn’t be able to stand on her own if he let go of her.

  The sound of Ysbel clearing her throat jerked her back into full awareness.

  “I said,” said Ysbel, her tone a mix of irritation and amusement, getting back to her feet from where she’d crouched beside Masha, “while I am also very happy Masha and our lunatic pilot are alive, if we want them both to stay alive, I would suggest that we get back to the cockpit and make sure our weapons are functional, and then perhaps make a plan for what we’re going to
do when Lena’s missiles get here in—” she glanced at her com. “Four and a half hours. Tanya and I will hardly be able to get it done as it is, and my understanding is, Tae, that you will need Jez and Lev if you’re planning on getting everything online and functional.”

  Lev cleared his throat and stepped back slightly, and somehow she managed to stay on her feet. She turned a glare on Ysbel, who looked like she was fighting down a laugh, then to where Tae was finishing applying a bandage to Masha’s forehead, and studiously avoiding looking at her and Lev.

  “Alright, tech-head,” she snapped. “If we’re going to fix my damn ship, let’s get going.”

  He glanced up, shaking his head slightly. “Jez, what in the system were you thinking back there?”

  She shrugged. “I know how to work in space. Wasn’t a problem.”

  “Except for the part where you almost died,” he muttered. He glanced over his handiwork. “You alright, Masha?”

  “Yes, Tae. Thank you,” she said. She got to her feet, somewhat unsteadily, and caught herself against a wall for a moment before she straightened. “And I will second Ysbel’s suggestion—while I’m very grateful that I’m alive, I don’t think that will last long unless we get back to work.”

  Lev sighed. “She’s right. Let’s go. I don’t even want to think about what trouble Misko’s gotten into while we’ve been gone.”

  As they made their way out of the airlock and back towards the cockpit, Masha fell back so she was walking beside Jez.

  “Jez,” she said quietly, and Jez was surprised to see that her eyes were hard. Still, wasn’t like she’d expected Masha to be particularly grateful—she hadn’t done it for Masha. She’d done it so there’d be someone on the ship who could get them all out after she left.

  And, if she would admit it, much as she hated the woman, she probably would have felt guilty watching her drift out into space without even trying to save her.

  “What?”

  Masha turned to look at her, her face grave. “You should have left me. My life wasn’t worth the risk you took, and if we’d both died, everyone else would have as well.”