Spaceship Thrive (Thrive Space Colony Adventures Book 2)

by Ginger Booth

  None. He reached the end and squatted, resting forehead on his arms.

  That could have gone badly.

  “Copeland, you’re brilliant!” Ben cried, stepping into the corridor behind him. “And we don’t even need the duct tape pulls. The new section pulled air out of the old.”

  “You alright there, Cope?” Abel asked.

  Copeland took one more long shuddering breath, and looked up. “Yeah, I’m good.” They were 5 meters closer. No one was shooting at them yet. He firmly ordered his heart to stop thudding. This could work. Maybe. Partly.

  No it couldn’t. They had eight packets left. They spent two of them to get 5 meters closer. They now had 295-395 meters to go.

  He pushed back from his squat to land on his ass. “This won’t work.”

  Ben sat right next to him. Until he saw the blood soaking into Ben’s coveralls Copeland hadn’t noticed what he was sitting in. That was disconcerting. His uncle always said he focused too hard by half.

  “Cope,” Ben urged. “We’ve still got our grav generators. The bubble only needs to go around our heads. If we’ve got our arms and legs free, and some way to seal a bubble around our heads, we’re golden. Or hell, even if our arms are stuck inside.”

  The engineer started to chuckle, half-hysterically. “Pretty bright, Benjy.”

  Abel trailed in to squat beside them. “Would it kill you guys to include me once in a while? You never even ask me to have a beer with you or something. Too smart for me?”

  Copeland and Benjy exchanged looks.

  “You have a wife,” Ben pointed out.

  “Guess it never occurred to us,” Copeland added. “Any time, man. Just stick your head in, invite us to a beer. Smart? Hell, you’re light years ahead of the idiots I used to work with.”

  “I’ll do that. First beer’s on me,” Abel promised. “You alright, Cope?”

  Copeland swallowed. “I’ll say this once. This crap fucking terrifies me. My parents died in an air drop. Put me to bed. Good parents. Bought the baby an air tent, all safe and sound. Then they split a bottle of wine. And died.”

  “Schuyler?” Abel asked. “I heard about that. Nightmare scene. Lucky someone found you in time.”

  “Yeah. Hysterical, dehydrated, lived in the clinic for a few days. My uncle taught me engineering by triple-checking the air every night.”

  Abel squeezed his shoulder. It felt good, grounded him from the brink of panic. “You’re damned good at it, Cope. I didn’t catch the plan, though.”

  It took a lot more ingenuity. But within the hour, three bubble-heads broke free of the mother balloon and ran like hell for the Thrive, bounding at Sagamore’s native 1/7th g.

  The cold of Sagamore’s early night shocked Copeland’s system, maybe minus 10 Celsius under the powerful work lights, but wind-free at least. The air would be colder outside the broken dome. With luck, he wouldn’t be frigid more than a few minutes.

  A third of the way there, one of the pressure-suited figures up on the broken dome threw something at them that winged Ben’s bubble. They’d gotten clever at manipulating the latex stuff by now. The kid balled up the tear with his hands to halt the deflation, but he’d lost too much air. He started to fall behind.

  Abel hesitated. Copeland didn’t. He kept running, then sailed into the air to hit the side of the ship at airlock altitude, 3 meters up. He reached in for the air hose, popped a panel to detach it, and stuck it into his bubble. If the hole was small enough, he could bunch the bubble membrane around the nozzle without losing much air. Within a few seconds, he was breathing better than he had in hours.

  Abel resolved his doubts and bounced up next to him. On the second bounce Copeland grabbed the other man’s hand to help him get a foothold onto the airlock floor. Then he stabbed the air hose at him. Unfortunately, though their bubbles bounced off the hull they instantly married to each other, with a flat film between their heads

  “Good to go!” Copeland yelled.

  He shut off the air and managed to pinch the holes from the airline closed. They hopped back down to the surface together just as Ben’s legs gave out. He face-planted onto the regolith about 75 meters shy of the ship.

  Like running a three-legged race, only different, Copeland and Abel bounded back to him and married their bubbles to his. The fume-laden depleted air Ben was still breathing reeked when Copeland chewed through the intervening membrane to share his air with the younger man.

  After giving Ben a few seconds to breathe better, Copeland pulled him up. “Let us do the running.”

  Abel nodded and picked up Ben’s legs. Three pairs of feet to navigate one compound bubble just wasn’t worth the aggravation. This time they strolled back to the ship calmly. If someone shot at them now, fine. They’d just run home. And they’d make it.

  Back at the airlock again, they suffered a few false starts before they managed to cut free their bubbles. Ben’s hypoxia made him keep breaking out in giggling fits.

  Abel hauled the outer door shut and hit the button to pressurize. They fell to the floor of the airlock, all three laughing. Copeland grabbed the air hose and sprayed it directly into Ben’s face as it filled the chamber.

  The blessed clean air only turbo-charged their laughter of sheer relief.

  The moment the green-for-go lamp lit, Clay and Eli opened the door, all smiles.

  The trio’s mirth died instantly into shock and awe. “You’re alive!” Abel rose from the floor first, and reeled Clay in for a bear hug.

  “You too! Where’s Sass and the others?”

  Abel’s face fell. “Who’s here?”

  “We’re it. You’re acting captain. We can’t fly this thing.”

  “It’s OK, boss,” Copeland quipped. “We’ll give you a rain check on the beer.”

  Funny, he used to think Abel was stolid to the point of stupidity. Now he was grateful the unflappable one got to make the next decisions. The engineer didn’t have a clue.

  Eli’s pocket buzzed. He fished out his comm and gave it a few seconds before answering. “Pirates calling.”

  Abel nodded. It was too much to hope that no one noticed the bubble-heads approaching the ship. “No one’s here.”

  Eli nodded and accepted the call. “Yes, Rasmussen. I’m in the middle of… Airlock? I’m in my lab. I haven’t noticed anything. Why, did you send someone? … I’ll check and call you back. As soon as I finish this titration… Look, I’m doing extremely meticulous work here. You can’t just interrupt… Fine. I’ll go look. There’s no call to be rude.”

  He pocketed the comm, and shrugged. “Tried to buy you a few seconds to think.”

  “You did great, Eli,” Abel encouraged. “Say four minutes, we call back.”

  “Settlers,” Copeland suggested. He still sat on the floor, leaning against the wall of the airlock. “Poor bastards ran out from the city. Can’t understand their dialect. Eli, you’re serving them a cup of hot tea by the scrubber trees.”

  Ben chuckled. “Truth works.”

  Copeland bopped fists with him, then Abel.

  40

  Despite their proximity, Sagamore and Mahina couldn’t readily talk to each other directly. Both lay in the plane of Pono’s rings, which scattered communications. Half the month, Pono itself intruded between them.

  Sass shifted Lavelle’s bulk on her shoulder and took a breather. His pulse was still OK, his breathing a bit thready. They’d located the Thrive.

  That was good, so far as it went.

  They crouched about 8 meters up the side of their original dome. Below stood the airlock into the next dome, but that was the one they shattered with the gun turret. On the bright side, the door appeared unguarded. But the broken dome held no air, and going that way they were maybe half a klick from the skyship.

  Thrive was parked near the seam of the broken dome and the adjacent intact one. Kassidy was off checking out that entrance. But Sass could tell from here that the next dome was far more populous.

  On the bright si
de, no ruckus had been raised yet about them having disappeared from their cell. That wouldn’t last.

  They needed a decision.

  They needed air.

  “What’s the bubble?” Jules asked, pointing. “Is that some kind of temporary air thing?”

  Sass frowned and studied the phenomenon, kind of a floppy balloon, half-deflated, with wreckage inside. And – it was hard to make out through two layers of angled and grubby glass – a few janitor carts? “Yeah, some kind of work airlock. I don’t see the workers, though.”

  In sudden decision, Sass ordered, “Jules, sit here. I’m going down to study the door. I want you to hold Lavelle and wait for Kassidy.”

  “Can’t you just dump –? Oh.”

  No, if Sass put Lavelle ‘down,’ he’d drop 10 meters to the dome floor and go splat. Jules sat cross-legged, tuned her gravity stronger to hold them to the slanting dome girder, and reluctantly accepted the strange man on her lap. In distaste, she hugged him around the waist.

  “I hope he doesn’t wake up,” she grumbled.

  Sass shot her a quick grin, then walked down the wall to above the inter-dome gateway. The coast was clear. One hand on her grav generator, she eased herself down to the ground and clicked it off, accepting the Sagamore-city-standard 0.9 g for the moment. She drew into the deep door well, the size of a large elevator, and started looking around.

  The advantage of Sass doing this herself was experience in symbols. She recognized the air panel immediately by the Ganymede-standard icon, a staggered stack of three wafting waves, directly above a high-voltage panel with its familiar caution triangle and downward lightning zap. Inside the air panel were a couple columns of hole-shaped valves, just like the ones on the Vitality.

  OK, they do it that way. To go with those air valves, the Ganymedes used face masks on tethers. The mask cord jacked into the hole much like an audio jack, pushing open the air valve within.

  But none of the storage panels showed the mask symbol. Working quickly, she found a bank of light switches, neatly labeled. A drawer held little gumball-and-straw packets labeled ‘emergency air lock’ in English and French. She pocketed a few of those to study later. Then a larger panel bore a balloon symbol in a warning triangle. Huh.

  She drew out a gumball packet. Yeah, the balloon symbol was repeated on the gumballs. Huh. But what she wanted was face masks. Those were bulky. The panels and drawers in the doorway were too shallow. She peeked around the corner to check for traffic again. Seeing none, she stepped across the corridor for vantage. There. A utility cabinet to her left could have come straight off the Vitality, right down to the rusty ventilation grates near the bottom, and the waft-sign on one side. The broom emblem on the other side denoted cleaning supplies.

  No sooner seen than opened. Sass found only 3 face masks, one cracked and patched with duct tape. Great stuff, duct tape. She opened the other side of the closet. Yup, duct tape and scissors – she slid them quickly into the pockets of her coveralls. The Gannies would have stocked air canisters in here to go with the masks. She squatted and peered into the back of the bottom shelf on the side she found the masks. Bingo, an air tank.

  Footsteps approached. Sass hastily grabbed the canister, closed the closet, and leaped back aloft to regroup with Jules.

  Kassidy had returned. In whispers, they traded observations. Kassidy reported that the populated dome was a lost cause. With the Thrive parked just outside, armed forces arrayed before the outer airlocks. Others pointed guns to terrorize the cowed Sagamore settler-slaves. The soldiers in there appeared vigilant and trigger-happy. The three Mahina women in no way blended in, least of all carrying Lavelle and breath masks.

  “What was that?” Jules interrupted Sass’s retelling. “The Thrive blinked its lights.”

  Sass turned to look, and a grin blossomed on her face. On the far side of the starship, out of sight from Gossamer, red and white navigation lights blinked 3 short, 3 long, 3 short, pause, repeat. “That’s an SOS.” Kassidy nodded. Jules looked puzzled. “Standard distress call.”

  “I saw that from the other door,” Kassidy offered. “I used my comm tablet as a flashlight and returned it.”

  Sass’s breath caught. “You advertised your location?”

  “Where I was,” Kassidy corrected. “Then I paused halfway back and did it again. I haven’t signaled anything from here. Not an idiot, Sass.”

  Sass remembered to breathe again with a large sigh. “Light switches. Wait here.”

  Quickly, she dropped back down to the airlock and flicked a couple switches experimentally. She identified the control for the center of the great work lights. She used that to blink out S-O-S, twice. She stuck her head out and summoned the girls to follow her down.

  Kassidy toted Lavelle. She bent her knees with the final fall to land neat as a cat. Jules, carrying nothing and set to limp at 1/7th g, nevertheless thunked and stumbled on her landing. The kid sure was trying, but recent growth spurts left her discombobulated in the grace department.

  Sass drew them into a huddle.

  “Thrive answered back,” Kassidy supplied in a whisper, “dash-dash-dash, dash-dot-dash. Repeated once, then stopped. What’s that mean?”

  “Oh-something,” Sass replied. “My guess is ‘OK.’ They know where we are, roughly. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  Kassidy sealed the pressure doors behind them. She nodded confidence at Jules – you can do this. Sass looked back for confirmation, then overrode the airlock to open the exit door without waiting to equalize pressure with the outside.

  The moment the door opened enough for Sass to slip through, Kassidy yanked the plugs for their air masks. She would carry Lavelle as long as she could, with Jules holding the air canister and alternating the three of them on a single face mask for brief breathing breaks.

  The cold was stunning. Don’t think about that. Exercise will keep you warm! That was complete and utter nonsense. It must be minus 20 out here!

  Sass ran out unencumbered, scouting for another place to jack in for air. That would be ideal, if they could recharge two or three times. She’d left the dome work lights off.

  Kassidy and Jules jogged out behind her into a dark space riddled with broken debris on the floor. The raw Sagamore atmosphere and drastic drop in air pressure on their skin yielded hideous sensations. Kassidy’s skin already itched and burned. The alkali metal smell seeped in even when Jules slapped the breathing mask on her face.

  They jogged no more than 10 meters from the initial door before Jules tripped over some metal wreckage and went down on hands and knees. Kassidy paused for the teen to untangle herself, counting off the seconds lost. Sass beckoned from a spot 50 meters further on along the wall, wearing her breath mask and waiting on them.

  In instant decision, Kassidy said, “Jules, meet you at Sass. You’ve got the air.”

  The speech took all her breath. Don’t do that again.

  She set off at a lumbering jog, dodging broken wallboard, jagged metal, and organic shapes best not dwelled upon. Sass awaited her at the end of her airline tether, second breath mask held out at the ready. She was carrying two at the moment.

  Kassidy blew out explosively, then breathed deep from the blessed mask. The wall air tasted awful, tinged with Sagamore’s horrid atmosphere. Her eyes were burning. She pulled five breaths deep into her diaphragm, then nodded to Sass. She squeezed her eyes shut, and leaned against the wall.

  Her eyes burned, her skin itched, and Lavelle was heavy. They’d come only a tenth of the distance, and already Kassidy was in trouble. She slitted her eyes and looked back. Jules moved, but tripped again. This time it looked like she added a gash to her shin.

  “This won’t work, Sass,” Kassidy murmured.

  Sass nodded. She pulled off her mask and gave Lavelle some air.

  Kassidy winced. She should have remembered to do that with her own mask. Except that was impossible without putting Lavelle down first. His face was on her back.

  “Plan B,�
�� Sass ordered. Her voice attenuated strangely through the low pressure atmosphere. “We leave Lavelle here with air, come back for him.” She paused to take another couple breaths from the mask she shared with the pirate. Talking expelled breath.

  Jules finally joined them, and jacked her mask into the wall outlets. “I’m so sorry! I’ll do better!” The girl was near tears again.

  “Stop that,” Kassidy insisted, squeezing her arm. “How bad is your cut?”

  “I don’t know.” Jules bent down to look at it.

  Sass pulled her back up. “Leave it, Jules. Kassidy, it’s time.”

  Kassidy squatted and hauled Lavelle off her back to prop slumped against the wall. With all this rough handling, it was a wonder the man wasn’t dead yet. Kassidy rather wished he was, so Sass would stop worrying about him. Resentfully, she pulled off her own mask and affixed it to his face. She checked his pulse, then his chest. Yeah, he’d do for a little while.

  Sass unfastened her mask and held it against Kassidy’s face while she spoke. “Next leg, one hundred meters, a quarter of the way to the ship. Jules stays on the canister.” She took back the mask for a couple breaths, then pressed it back against Kassidy’s face. “You recognize this panel, Kassidy? You can spot for the next one?”

  Through near-closed lashes, Kassidy eyed the panel in misgiving. She pulled off the mask and pressed it back on Sass’s face for her turn speaking. “My eyes burn, Sass. Better to go for distance.” Sass pressed the mask back to her.

  Jules nodded emphatically. “I can barely see.”

  “OK. I take Jules. Stick with us, Kassidy. Just that, nothing more, and you get a quick breath at the end.”

  Kassidy swallowed terror, watching Sass take her turn breathing. She licked her lip. The urge to retreat to the airlock was overpowering. Or she could stay here, with Lavelle, trading air. Sass could get Jules back to the skyship. She could come back for Kassidy and the injured man better equipped, dammit!