Citadel

by John Ringo

  So even if there was a need for Thirty-Six, she wasn't going anywhere. Unless they were going to activate her "familiarization" training as a coxswain, which would be a...

  "Danno," Thermal commed. "Shut down your bird, seal it and shag ass over to Thirty-Three."

  When she got to Thirty-Three, EM1 Hartwell and CM1 Glass were waiting in the cargo bay.

  "Parker," Hartwell said uncomfortably. "You know we're short on coxswains. Boomer and Spade along with AJ are all groundside..."

  "We have a real-world evolution of helping the tugs close the main bay doors," Glass said, cutting to the chase. "You're the top rated EN for driving. You're going to drive Thirty-Three. The CO has signed off. Your bird, Coxswain."

  "Yes, Coxswain," Dana said, her face suffusing. Despite keeping up with qual and her flight test, she wasn't exactly an expert coxswain.

  "Don't look so scared," Mutant said. "This is a dead easy evolution and Thermal's got so much time in these things he can walk you through anything you're uncomfortable with. That's why you're in his boat. Just hit your seat and drive."

  "Roger, Coxswain," Dana said, nodding.

  "Take a deep breath and heat that seat, Danno." Mutant nodded, walked to the hatch and pulled himself through.

  "Bird's warm," Hartwell said, dogging the hatches. "You want to inspect, Coxswain?"

  "I can't exactly do a walk around, EM," Dana said, with a chuckle.

  —|—

  "Attention Flight," Lieutenant Commander Martin commed.

  "This is a really simple evolution," the flight commander continued. "We're going to undock and follow in a line to the main hatch. The SAPL is off in the bay so we don't have to worry about that. There are, however, going to be birds all over the damned place when we get to the hatch. Fly. Your. Lanes. I want a tight, solid formation. Stay centered on the lanes. You'll have a latch point marked. Hook on, wait for the word and then apply tow power. It would be very nice to have the door closed by the time the Horvath decide to come through the gate."

  Dana could feel her suit's environmental system trying to keep up with her increase in body heat and she didn't care. The next time she was chewing gum and the hell with the helmet. She was scared spitless.

  The coxswain's seat for the Myrmidon was placed centerline of the bird, just forward of the main drive plates and "up" in relation to the engineering position down and to starboard. There were two joysticks that controlled forward, up, down and side-to-side. However, yaw had to be controlled with finger controls on the joysticks. It was a complicated arrangement and she knew she really needed to be dialed in on it before she took a bird out.

  Which she might have sort of been. If she had been flying a simulator all week instead of maintaining Thirty-Six.

  On the other hand, the truth was she'd wanted to be a coxswain. She much preferred to fly the birds than fix them. A bit. She enjoyed the engineering.

  But she'd been assigned to engineering and only familiarized with driving in case the coxswain was, in the polite terminology of training, "incapacitated."

  "It's all good, Danno," Hartwell said. "Mutant's got good instincts. If he didn't think you could drive the bird, you wouldn't be in that seat. And if I didn't think you could drive the bird, I'd be back on the station faster than you could say 'incident.'"

  "Thanks," Dana said, giggling. "God, I hate that sound."

  Dana felt a sudden thump and her stomach tightened. It was the thump of undocking shuttles. Which meant their turn was coming up.

  "Just breathe, Dana."

  "Right," she said, giggling again. It was just her normal reaction to stress. But it sounded childish and idiotic. She buttoned it down as more thumps sounded from down the tube.

  "And we are... undocking," Thermal said. "Your bird, Coxswain."

  "My bird, aye," Dana said, carefully backing away from the lock and yawing the shuttle to play follow-the-leader.

  "Coming up on a turn..."

  "Got it," Dana said, focusing on driving. She made the turn fairly close to the center of the lane. She knew that "close" wasn't a good thing in space but she was inside and with as little training as she had she figured that was, for once, good enough.

  "Good turn," Thermal said. "See. No sweat. Get some brake in there. The shuttles are stacking up."

  Dana had already seen that and stopped her acceleration. But she still wasn't quite up on space driving and nearly forgot that she'd just keep going in that direction until they ended up in deep space if she didn't apply some countering delta-V. She marked the velocity of Thirty-One, the next shuttle in line, and conformed. Then it slowed down more.

  "I am a butterfly," Dana said, correcting some yaw that had crept in from somewhere. And overcorrected and had to correct again more carefully.

  "Doing good," Thermal said. "Seriously. You're doing this like a pro and I don't blow smoke."

  "You're blowing smoke," Dana said.

  "Okay," Hartwell said, chuckling. "A little. But you're seriously doing well. Better, I hate to admit, than a couple of our regular drivers."

  As she saw the CO's boat head into the opening, though, she got a little less nervous. There were shuttles and tugs moving in both directions not to mention the large SAPL safety zones, and Mutant's comment on "crowded" suddenly hit home. There was actually plenty of room but if you made one serious mistake you were either going to explode from the SAPL or run into something at a closing velocity that was going to have the same result. Although it seemed as if the shuttles and tugs were barely moving, their actual velocity was higher than most race cars.

  "'You all look like little ants from up here,'" Hartwell squeaked.

  Dana tried not to giggle again. She just hated the sound. But the CO's sixty-foot long shuttle did look like an ant entering the massive exit.

  "The scale keeps throwing me," Dana said.

  "It's hard to grasp at first," Hartwell said. "The point being that it's like any other form of driving be that plane, boat or auto. They say with pilots the most important thing is to remember that there are edges to the air, those being land and space. Do not approach the edges unless you mean to. In this case, there are edges to space. Do not approach unless you mean to and are prepared. Note the SAPL zones?"

  "Yes," Dana said. "No-go zones."

  "Right now the SAPL isn't on but I don't care. Do not approach the big red lines. Problem being that when it's on, there's a web of them you have to negotiate to get in and out of the door. They'll turn one or two off when a Connie or Business heads through but we have to slip between them. The space is big, mind you, but try to keep to the center."

  "Check your seals, aye," Dana said. "Check the hatch indicators, aye. Do not approach the big red lines, aye."

  "Good girl," Hartwell said. "Spotlight coming on."

  They'd entered the tunnel and the light from the main bay was suddenly extinguished. She still had graphic imagery and flight data but that was retransmitted. She certainly didn't have visual.

  The spotlight was only so much help. All it did was illuminate the next ship a hundred meters ahead, which already had its nav lights on. But then she realized that what she thought were dots of the other ships were...

  "Into the Black," Dana said.

  "Yep," Hartwell said, for the first time sounding slightly uncomfortable. "We're about to go out in the Big Black."

  "This is always my favorite part," Dana said, marveling again at the view of deep space. People like Hartwell didn't really enjoy "the Big Black." She couldn't even understand why. The view was glorious.

  "Quit enjoying the view," Hartwell said. "We've got another turn coming up."

  "Roger, EM," Dana said, paying attention to driving again. What the hell, she figured she'd be back.

  "Spread formation," the CO ordered.

  Dana carefully followed the marked lines in her screen. She had to yaw turn, which was still the toughest part of the job but she stayed pretty much on track.

  "See the blue mark on the wall?
" Hartwell said.

  "Yes, EM," Dana said. The plug to fill the entrance was immense. The dozens of attached tugs looked like bits of sand attached to it.

  "That's our attach point," Hartwell said. "Be aware, the door is already in motion. You don't want to crunch into it. Among other things, that will transmit the wrong sort of motion and undo all the work that those tugs have been doing for the last thirty minutes. You want to touch it soft as a... Very softly. You'll actually have to come down to it, stop your relative motion, then back away slower than it's moving."

  "Aye, aye, EM," Dana said.

  Dana quickly saw what the EM was talking about. She followed the track down until she was about two hundred meters from the door and slowed her relative motion to zero as she approached. Then it started creeping back up as the door was slowly being accelerated. She let it come up then set the ship to creeping back at a half meter per second.

  "That's close enough," Hartwell said as the door approached to within fifty meters. "Give me point one-one-six reverse delta."

  "One-one-six reverse, aye," Dana said, setting the reverse.

  "Engaging grapnels."

  The tug slid forward towards the wall of nickel iron, slowly at first then faster until it slammed into the wall.

  "EM?" Dana said.

  "Using the grapnels, the relative inertias are negative," Hartwell said. "Close enough. Okay..." He frowned and looked at his screen. "We're not supposed to pull, we're supposed to push? I take back what I said. We should have slammed it."

  "We have to rotate the plug," Longwood commed. "Mission of Charlie is to provide smooth, continuous power. Full power forward on my mark. Three, two, one... Mark."

  Instead of the previous flight lines, Dana now had a target caret. She applied power and the marking reticle slid off the caret.

  "Fly to the target," Paris said. "This will apply maximum value thrust to the mission."

  "Got it, Paris," Hartwell said. "Danno, you understand?"

  "Fly to the target, aye," Dana said, adjusting her vector.

  "You're doing good. Just keep that."

  "On it, Therm... EM," Dana said.

  "You've heard my handle," Hartwell said. "The thing you've got to understand about handles is that once they're applied, it takes an act of God to change them."

  "So I'm stuck with Danno for the rest of my career?" Dana asked. She was figuring out that the target seemed to drift up and to port and was keeping mostly on target. It was actually sort of easy.

  "Danno isn't a handle," Hartwell said. "Danno is like a holding handle. You haven't been here long enough to get a handle. You haven't done anything stupid enough to get a handle, yet. Danno is what we call you because we're too polite to call you FUN. Besides, you aren't particularly useless and it has... alternative meanings that could get us in trouble with EEOC. 'Yeah, this is Dana, our FUN.' No, no, no, simply not gonna happen. Ditto all the alternates that were considered. So I've come to the conclusion I'm stuck with Thermal. In the richness of time, because there is now a permanent stop-loss and whether I like what I'm doing or not I can't get out of it, the reason for the handle may be forgotten and as a handle it's not all bad."

  "Yes, EM," Dana said.

  "So since you are my temporary coxswain until Boomer gets back, you may call me Thermal."

  "Aye, aye, EM. Question, EM."

  "Go."

  "Myrmidons have a remote control function," Dana said. "Why isn't Paris just flying all the Myrms?"

  "Because Paris is doing about a billion other things," Hartwell said. "I suppose Paris could fly all the Myrms if he decided not to run the elevators, the battle systems, the air and water recycling, the STC..."

  STC stood for Space Traffic Control.

  "Having humans do what humans can do takes the load off Paris. Your backup, I will now tell you, is Paris. And Paris is flying two unmanned Myrms that I know of. But having you doing this frees up cycles. Paris said that the most he could manage was two and if the Horvath come through while we're doing this he's going to have to flip them out in a Dutchman."

  "Oh," Dana said, nodding. "Thank you for the explanation, EM."

  "There are no stupid questions," Hartwell said. "But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots. Speaking of Sean..."

  "Discontinue thrust," Longwood commed. "Full burn reverse."

  "Discontinue thrust, aye," Dana said, cutting the power and going into reverse. "Full burn reverse, aye. EM? Why?"

  "We've gotten the plug rotating," Hartwell said. "Switching your port screen."

  The schematic was of the overall plan to move the plug into position. The combination of the Myrmidons and the Paw tugs, which had much more thrust and tractor power, had gotten the five hundred and fifteen billion ton plug away from its attachment to the wall of Troy and rotating in space. The rotation, in an apparent reverse of when it was pulled out of the wall, was going to leave it hanging in space with a gap.

  "Why the gap, EM?" Dana asked.

  "There are two shuttles on their way from Earth," Hartwell said. "They're hoping that they get back before the Horvath come through. Normally, we wouldn't have any warning at all."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "Holy cow!"

  "What?" Dana asked. She was still managing to keep the targeting reticle and the caret together but she couldn't really pay a lot of attention to other issues.

  "Switching your screen again," Hartwell said.

  The visual was of a pillar of fire, like a volcano, on the surface of what had to be Troy. Dana had a moment of the usual problem of scale until she realized the large objects around the pillar were Paws, which seemed to be sucking the outgases from the volcano onto their forward plates.

  "What's that?" Dana asked, nervously. "Did the Horvath come through?"

  "No," Hartwell said. "They're mining for some reason. Fast. I've never seen that beam before. It's cutting the iron like butter."

  "What are they doing that for?" Dana said. "It seems like a bad time to cut a hole in our wall."

  "Not sure," Hartwell said. "Damn..."

  "EM?"

  "We're getting a flicker in one of the grapnels. I fixed that, dammit! Not a big problem. Just keep what you've got. I'll be right back."

  He unbuckled and slid out of the compartment.

  A moment later he was back and slid into his station chair.

  "Command, Thirty-Three. Requesting permission to pull power on lower port grapnel. Imminent failure. Will require reduced power."

  "Roger," Longwood commed. "Can you fix it?"

  "On it," Hartwell said.

  "Reduce power," Longwood said. "Get it fixed as quick as possible."

  "Cut power by forty percent," Hartwell said.

  "Power forty percent, aye," Dana said, pulling back on her stick. The caret immediately started to drift off target. "I can't keep on track at forty."

  "Paris," Hartwell said. "We've got an issue here."

  "Disconnect," a robotic voice replied. "Repair if possible."

  "Roger," Hartwell said. "Reduce to five percent back while I kill the grapnels."

  "Five percent, aye," Dana said. "What's with Paris?"

  "Like I said," Hartwell replied, cutting the grapnels. "Things must be getting complicated. Get us backed away from this cluster so I can work on the grapnel in peace."

  "Back away, aye," Dana said, scanning around. There wasn't much traffic. All of the boats in the immediate area were still pulling away at the plug. But... "I don't have traffic lanes."

  "Just stay in formation but... back a few hundred meters," Hartwell said, standing up and pulling out the tool kit.

  "Two hundred meters, aye," Dana said, backing away at a snail's pace. She set her relative motion to match that of the drifting plug of nickel iron and then leaned back and crossed her arms.

  "Danno," Hartwell commed. "There any traffic around?"

  "Negative," Dana said, scanning the traffic monitors.

  "Set the lights to unpowered," Hartwell said. "A
nd start tracing the power relays to the port, lower grapnel from your end."

  "Set transponder to unpowered, aye," Dana said, setting the transponder to "inactive" and getting out of her seat. "Trace from my end, aye."

  "Thirty-Three," Longwood commed a second later. "Status?"

  "EN Parker is assisting in tracing of fault," Hartwell commed. "Remains in cabin. No nearby traffic. Maintaining spatial awareness, Command."

  "Roger," Longwood replied.

  "Thermal, get Danno back in her chair," Mutant commed. "She needs to be concentrating on flying, not engineering."

  "Back in her chair, aye," Hartwell commed. "Dana, back in the chair."

  "Back in the chair, aye," Dana said. She'd barely gotten the access panel off.

  She had to admit she was happier sitting in the command chair. She'd set the traffic monitor to retrans to her plants but having the screens up was a much better choice. She changed the transponder to "active" and leaned back with her arms crossed again. That kept them away from the controls.

  —|—

  "Command, Thirty-Three," Hartwell commed about twenty minutes later. "This fault is only appearing at full power. Decline to perform a hot test during an active evolution. We're deadline as a tug."

  "Roger deadline," Longwood replied. "Head to the barn."

  "RTB, aye," Hartwell commed. "Dana, return to base."

  "Return to base, aye," Dana said. "Paris, vector to shuttle docking bay."

  "Roger, Thirty-three," Paris said. "Stand-by..."

  "What are we waiting for?" Hartwell said, resuming his seat.

  "I'm waiting for a vector from Paris," Dana said. "I guess he's busy."

  "Whatever," Hartwell said. "Just keep us away from that plug. It's got a lot of mass."

  "Away from plug, aye," Dana said, backing up some more.

  —|—

  "Call Paris again," Hartwell said. "We've been..."

  "Thirty-three, Command," Longwood commed. "Belay RTB. Stand by vector Athena to rendezvous with Columbia shuttle Seventeen."

  "Rendezvous Shuttle Seventeen, aye," Hartwell replied. "What the frack?"