Fearless

by Allen Stroud

  Where indeed?

  The comms window disappears and I’m left to consider my options. They are coming, and they’ll expect me to be in or around the airlock. I’m doing nothing strapped here, other than waiting for another call. The advantage of staying put is that I’m safe if Captain Shann decides to start moving the ship, but I guess she won’t do that until whatever Rocher’s friends are sending over has nearly docked at least. Shann wants the Gallowglass vulnerable, or at least as vulnerable as she can make it.

  That means I have a little bit of time.

  I’ve changed my mind. I start unstrapping the buckles on my chair, but something distracts me. There’s a red light flashing a little way away, over by Shah. He looks at me and removes his own restraints. He moves in my direction, drawing a weapon, aiming it at me.

  “What are you doing, Specialist?” he asks.

  “I might ask you the same.”

  Shah’s hands are trembling. He’s holding a Taser – a good choice given the circumstances. No chance of explosive decompression if he misses. I’m surprised they left him looking after me. He’s a civilian contractor, probably has some firearms and security experience from back on Earth, but I doubt he’s discharged a weapon or fought somebody up here. That said, Shann probably doesn’t trust him either. I bet she couldn’t think of anything else to do with him.

  “I want to go to the airlock,” I say. “You heard the comms transmission. They’ll be expecting me to be down there.”

  “You told the lieutenant you’d stay here.”

  “Yeah…well, then I thought about it. I need to be in the airlock.”

  “That’s not what you agreed.”

  I sigh. “You want to buzz them and get permission? Haven’t they got enough on their plate right now?”

  “I was given orders to make sure you—”

  “Look, the only reason you’re alive after what happened on the freighter is because you made some independent choices. We’re in the same position, stuck out here with them coming in. You know what’s next.”

  Shah chews his lip in thought, but he doesn’t lower the Taser. “You’re talking about two different things,” he says at last. “What I did on the Hercules was for my own survival. Captain Shann is trying to make sure we all survive.”

  “So am I,” I counter. “I want to go to the airlock because they’ll expect me to be at the airlock. If I’m not there when they arrive, it’ll get messy.”

  “There’s a team at the airlock. They’ll deal with what’s to come. If you and I go down, we’ll just complicate things.”

  “And based on your experience, you think they can handle what’s coming?”

  Shah doesn’t answer. The Taser in his hand wavers. He looks even more unsure. I’m out of my chair now. If I wanted to choose a side right now and make a move on him, I think I’d succeed. First thing would be to take away that Taser and put him out with it. If the master-at-arms gave him a second cartridge, I’d take that and make my way down to the airlock to get rid of the others as well.

  However, if I want to stay neutral or go the other way, I need to keep him on my side, for now.

  I hold a hand up. “Okay, you buzz Travers. Get him to make the call. I’ll wait.”

  He touches his comms bead with his left hand, while keeping his weapon trained on me. He taps the bead twice, like a code, not what I expected. “Hey, what are you—”

  He fires the Taser and the points hit me in the chest. A moment later, the charge is delivered and I’m thrashing around, twisting myself up in the cables. My sight starts to blur, but I can see the weapon has been torn out of Shah’s hands. He leaps for it, grabs it and presses the trigger a second time.

  “I’m sorry, Mister Sellis, you were right. Better not to bother the bridge, but settle this ourselves. Turns out you were a traitor after all and…”

  He’s still talking. I can see his lips moving, but I can’t make out the words. Then everything goes dark and I…

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Shann

  The Gallowglass is right in front of us. The computer says there’s two and a half kilometres between the ships. I can see the smaller object now, still approaching, rotating toward our airlock. We know from what was said it contains some kind of boarding party, but there has to be a twist to this. The enemy ship has a smaller crew than ours. They can’t want to increase that disadvantage by dividing their personnel.

  “Chiu, can we get a reading on what’s in that pod?” I ask.

  Chiu shrugs. “If I activate a scan, Captain, they’ll notice.”

  “Okay, hold fast on that. Are Chase and Arkov ready?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Keiyho says. “They report everything is prepared.”

  Now is the moment when I need to make a choice. We can’t find out anything more about the object unless we allow it to dock. The enemy ship is in range, but still outguns us. Do I wait, or do we make a start?

  “Keiyho, do we have firing solutions for all of our torpedo launchers?”

  “We do, Captain.”

  “Then let’s begin. Order the crew to battle stations.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  In the old films, there would be a red light or some kind of alarm. We have a klaxon and automated announcement in the same dry ship’s voice that we’re all used to hearing. There’s a reason for that. The lighting on a spaceship is kept at an optimum level for working. Changing that level or colouring it for any reason would be a distraction.

  We don’t need distractions.

  “Bring tubes to bear and fire a broadside when everyone’s ready,” I instruct.

  “Aye, aye,” Keiyho replies. There will be a moment when the enemy registers what we’re up to and reacts. We have to hope we can be quick enough to—

  “They’ve started moving, Captain,” Le Garre warns. “Looks like they might be on to us.”

  “Power up and get ready to evade!” I shout. “Close quarters, Major!”

  “Close quarters, aye.”

  There’s a noise, like a thumping, and I start to feel the acceleration pressing me into my seat. The torpedoes are away, and we’re heading toward the Gallowglass, trying to negate their firepower advantage by moving in as close as we can. It’s an aggressive move, maybe an obvious move, but we’ll see what they do.

  “Three successful launches, Captain,” Keiyho says. “The fourth is behaving…erratically.”

  I turn my chair. “Erratically? Something we need to worry about?”

  “There appears to have been some sort of problem with the launch,” Travers says. I can see him opening windows on his screen. “Projectile is clear, but decelerating.”

  I’m relieved. An armed warhead stuck in a launch tube might have finished us, but it’s still confusing. “How can it be decelerating?”

  “Some sort of guidance misfire,” Travers says. “I’m monitoring it.”

  Ahead, a flash of fire on the main viewer snatches my attention. There’s debris around the Gallowglass. Then there’s a second flash and a third. “Three clean hits!” Keiyho shouts.

  “Detecting return launches,” Travers says. “They’re trying to adjust to our position.”

  “Angle and rotate!” I order. “Use whatever we have left in the manoeuvering thrusters!”

  The Gallowglass is getting larger as we move toward it. The rotational jets kick in and I’m pulled to my left in the chair. I touch my screen and the shutters begin to close. I activate a feed to the external camera and a window pops up on my console. The distance between the ships is counting down, closing rapidly. “Do we have anything left for deceleration?” I ask.

  “Not much,” Le Garre replies.

  “Do what you can,” I urge and activate the ship-wide alert. The klaxon blares out again, and then the computer speaks.

  “All hands, brace for imp
act. All hands…”

  A metallic screeching noise echoes through the ship. I’ve heard it before; the sound of a laser tearing through compartments of the ship, as if they were made of paper. There’s a muffled thump too. That’ll be a missile hitting the hull. “Monitor for breaches! Seal compartments as quickly as you can. I—”

  Impact. When it comes, it’s like being kicked in the back. All the wind goes out of me and for a moment, I can’t breathe. Then the pressure on my chest eases a little and I’m taking shallow gulps of air. That means I still have air, at least in my suit.

  There’s a noise, like heavy rain. A part of me remembers sitting in my room and hearing the storm outside. Hale, sleet or a deluge of water, hammering against the roof and walls. That’s what I can hear now, outside. Little pieces of debris, clattering into the ship, every impact another chance to wound and rend the fragile skin of our ship, our home.

  The console in front of me is flashing. The two ships have collided. Le Garre is using the last of our fuel to twist our position as best she can. “Activate the cavalry!” I gasp, but my voice is no more than a hoarse whisper. I glance up, but I can’t see Keiyho in his seat. Either he’s unconscious and slumped forward or something else has happened.

  We’re locked in a deadly embrace, both ships moving and abrading each other. If things stay as they are, it will only be a matter of time before we all die in a maelstrom of rotating fragments, as everything is sliced apart by unforgiving Newtonian physics.

  I key up the weapon’s console controls on my own screen. The time it takes to get command of Keiyho’s station feels like an eternity. Every agonising second is another moment that we have to survive.

  We have to survive.

  A new window appears. It’s the weapon’s system, with asset tracking in the debris field. I activate the call signal for the dormant missiles we launched hidden among our jettisoned junk. All three receivers acknowledge the signal and start moving on the tactical plot. They’ll be heading this way, as fast as their limited fuel can manage, to detonate against the side of the Gallowglass.

  Hopefully…

  I glance at Le Garre. She’s focused on her screen, her fingers flying across different windows and controls as she fights to control our ship in the aftermath of our collision. There are too many variables for her and the computer to track, but she’s trying and we need her to do everything she can. At the moment the missiles arrive, we need to be behind the Gallowglass, using it as a shield.

  Another window on my screen flashes. It’s Sam, staring into the camera in airlock control. He looks terrified. I accept the request. “What’s the problem, Sam ?”

  “Airlock has been breached, Captain! They’ve sent over a—”

  The screen goes blank.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Johansson

  My world turns, rotates, spins and changes all around me.

  I remember training for this. In the first few days, they’d put everyone in the gravity simulator to find out their tolerances. You never got a score, but whispers and rumours went around about who coped best. I recall lasting fifteen minutes or so, from being strapped in to being peeled out. Those fifteen minutes felt like a lifetime. They always had to wash up after, scrubbing out the cockpit with disinfectant.

  When we were all lumped together as trainees, with no seniority or chain of command, how long you lasted in an endurance test like that gave you status. Apparently, fifteen minutes wasn’t too bad.

  I’ve no idea if they went easy on me back then.

  Now I’m jammed inside a rocket shell, twisting and turning end over end. My stomach is churning, trying to rebel. If I throw up, it’ll be in my helmet, floating around in the air I have to breathe.

  In front of me is the portable screen. The exterior camera feed is a swirling mass of stars, racing around in the black. I can’t see the Gallowglass or the Khidr, but they are on the tactical display beneath. I need to get this little ship under control, turn around and make my way in, but I need to be smart. I don’t have to do everything alone.

  I ask the screen to analyse my rotation, based on visual clues from the camera and to calculate the best burn of our limited manoeuvering jets to bring it under control.

  I want to take my helmet off. I know I can’t. Calm, steady breaths, that’s it, calm…

  Slowly, the little processor in the screen works everything out. Tiny little puffs of propellant from the thruster slow us down, stop us turning and redirect our trajectory. Computers have always worked out this stuff, ever since humanity first went into space. Amazing to think how exponentially more powerful the computer in this device is compared to the systems they had back in the 1960s. It’s like comparing humans to plant life, I guess.

  As the rotation eases, so does my heart rate and breathing. Now I can see the Gallowglass on the feed. She’s turning slowly to the right, but I’m definitely heading toward her. There’s a cloud of fresh debris all around her. Tiny fragments start to bounce off the missile casing. If I close my eyes, I can imagine rain on a summer’s day.

  I’m looking for a possible landing site. It’s hard to make out any specific locations on the hull at this range, even though the design is similar to the ships I’m used to. It doesn’t matter too much. The majority of the ship’s skin will have the necessary cable feeds, buried under layers of steel and plastic, just like the Khidr. I’ll be running a wire into the system, in the same way we did with the Hercules. Under normal circumstances, that kind of attack would trigger an alert, but I’m hoping the crew on board the Gallowglass will have too much going on to notice. The chances of me missing out and finding a ‘dead plate’ are pretty low – about one in fifty – but I can’t work out a contingency for that. If it happens, this mission ends.

  I’ll have failed.

  The noise from outside is worryingly loud. If a large piece of wreckage hits the torpedo, it could puncture the skin, or deflect my course. There’s not much leftover propellant in the thrusters. I’ll need every little bit I can save to get me back on board a ship.

  Either ship, whichever one survives.

  The screen is bright white, filled with shining metal, reflecting the distant light of the sun. I can see details now, the securing nuts, the lined grooves between plates. I’m aiming for that. It’ll be a good place to anchor up. The mechanical arm might be able to find a weakness in the join and get through.

  The next bit is tricky, a trade-off between a landing and a collision. My improvised spacecraft is designed to explode on impact. Removing the warhead and other fissile material might prevent most of that, but the shell is still designed for that purpose. Thankfully, during the eighteenth century, people learned that embedded detonations are more destructive than explosions on a surface, so the missile is designed to penetrate, crumple and explode.

  Where I have a problem is the moment of impact. I’m inside here. Any damage to the casing might also be damage to me. Preserving my existence is counter to the purpose of weapon technology designed to be destroyed, so I need a carefully judged collision.

  The screen counts down the distance. When I judge I have ten seconds left, I shut my eyes, tense my muscles and ball myself up as much as I can in this cramped space.

  The moment we hit jams me forward into the casing. My helmet wedges against something, my left arm is twisted out at an awkward angle, and my knees slam into solid metal. That’s where the pain comes from. Something has broken, and it hurts.

  Oh god, that hurts!

  I’m shrieking. I can’t think straight. Make the pain go away! There’s a control on my suit to release emergency medication. It’s inside my helmet, requiring a specific movement to the left, so as to prevent an accidental trigger. Drugs will fog up my brain, but right now I can hardly breathe.

  I turn my head inside my helmet and touch the lever with my chin. The needle jabs into my chest. Moments la
ter, the pain settles into throbbing agony.

  I can’t shift my position in the casing anymore. My control screen is to the right and level with my shoulder, making it difficult to see. The metal plates Sam welded onto the housing are dented, but the atmosphere reading in my suit is okay. I’m still alive and there appears to be no leak.

  I move my hand toward the screen. There’s a faint feeling of awkwardness as I do so. I reckon I’ve cracked some ribs, but the drugs are making sure I can’t feel it. I can just about see the activation control for the mechanical arm. Hopefully, it hasn’t been damaged.

  A little blue light reflected on my gloves confirms that the arm has successfully deployed. I can’t make out the image being displayed from the camera on the arm, so it’s going to be difficult to manually control it.

  I need to move. That means risking more damage to myself, my suit and the metal casing around me. But if I don’t try, I’m stuck here.

  I reach up and try pushing myself back down. I can get one arm above my head. I grab on to a dented plate with my hand to pull as well. There’s a scraping sound against my helmet that makes me wince, but the atmosphere alarm doesn’t go off, and slowly, inch by inch, I lever myself back into approximately the same position I was in before impact.

  Now I can see the screen. Now we can go to work.

  The camera feed from the arm is in one window. The other, which was displaying the images from the front of the warhead, has gone black, with the words ‘signal lost’ in front of it. I should have expected that, given the impact. It’ll make any effort to guide this little ship back doubly hard. I glance at the fuel indicator. There’s four per cent remaining in the tank. That means any trip back to the Khidr will be virtually impossible without some kind of velocity assist. Something like being fired out of a launch tube would do it.

  Yeah…not going to happen twice. Who’s fucking stupid idea was this little mission anyway?

  Oh…of course.

  My only real chance is to be rescued, and that means I need the Khidr to survive all this as well. They’re in the middle of a firefight, their own version of hell, better and worse than mine, I expect.