Together, The Belle and the assault ship pulled away building speed rapidly.
“No,” said Caleb, weakly. He looked at Hee Sook as though she might have an answer.
Hee Sook said, “I am sorry, Mr. Day. This result is deeply unfortunate.”
“You think?” He pointed out the windscreen. “We need to save Jen.”
“We are still immobilized from such a rescue. I have traced the source of the alien device. It will require going outside the ship to gain access to it. I…” The robot paused, clearly dealing with the emotion of fear. “I will go outside and attempt to remove it.”
“I’ll go. Just tell me where it is.”
Hee Sook was already aiming herself toward the airlock. “Quicker for me, I think. You stay here and guide the ship toward Ms. Jennifer when you have control back.”
Jennifer tried twisting her body to alter her spinning motion, but to no avail. Without air to act as friction, and with no actuators on her suit, she was stuck in a sickening tumbling motion that had her flipping backward over and over. The stars swooped by, with only the constant presence of Saturn in her right peripheral vision to offer any notion of place. With the help of the suit’s regulator, she had gotten her breathing back to almost normal. With each spin, she could see The Belle and the assault ship getting further away. Then she caught sight of The Diamond Girl in her left peripheral vision. There was some motion, and on the next spin, she could see the unencumbered figure of Hee Sook pulling herself along hand holds on top of the ship. Jennifer had long ago assumed that she would eventually live her worst nightmare, dying, spinning through infinity, but that little robot looked determined.
It didn’t escape Hee Sook’s bio-mechanical sensors that she was outside a spaceship. If she had a heart rate, it would have been racing past 180 beats per minute, and she’d be hyperventilating. As it was, she steadily and firmly gripped each handhold until she arrived at a simple black disc the size of a salad plate attached to an access port.
Caleb, using a handheld radio not tied into the ship, broke through her communication channel “—there? Repeat. Hee Sook, can you hear me out there?”
With a thought, Hee Sook, said, “Yes. I have a connection.”
“What do you see?”
“I see a black plate attached to a mechanical access port.” She pulled at it, but it didn’t budge. “It is firmly affixed. I am trying to determine how so.”
From inside the cockpit, Caleb watched Jennifer spin away. Her trajectory was taking her behind the ship. In moments, she was out of his sight. He tried every channel to reach out to her, but got nothing in return. Without a radio signal to affix to, she would rapidly disappear into the darkness. They’d lose her.
Jennifer became increasingly aware of this as well. With each revolution she was farther away, The Diamond Girl appearing smaller and smaller. Her air supply was showing three-quarters full, with a little less than two-hours until empty. That was odd, because they always made sure their suits were topped up. Then she noticed the frozen gas as she flipped. She had assumed it was a streak on her faceplate, but it wasn’t. It was her own escaping and freezing air supply. One-hour Fifty-four minutes, she thought. Then the counter went down to an hour fifty-three. She counted. Twenty-nine seconds later it dropped to an hour fifty-two. The supply meter was estimating based on the volume in the tank, but it wasn’t accounting for the leak. At this rate, she had less than an hour. Come on, guys. I’ve done the no air in space thing. I’d rather not do it again. For the first time since being ejected, she thought about Spruck, Natalie and Saanvi. Were they spinning through space as well? She swallowed the thought. She tried to scan the radio spectrum again, hoping to get through to Caleb. Her heads-up told her there was a malfunction. Then she remembered hitting her back against something as she was sucked out the door. She had no way to reach behind her to feel it, but she assumed the suit’s radio or antenna had been damaged along with the air supply.
Why does it always have to be about air?
She’d read a statistic while relaxing on Soul. It was in an article about overcoming the dangers of work in outer space, and how redundant systems and checks were the answer. Too many people got lazy about the work. Instead of super highways, train tracks, and ships, the humans of Saturn were a spacefaring people. Too many had become cavalier about traveling in vacuum and landing on rocks and ice. Most people died because of mistakes with life support.
Jennifer watched herself pass through her freezing air supply over and over. It’s always about air.
MAROONED
“HOW’S IT ATTACHED!” barked Caleb to Hee Sook.
Hee Sook had brought along a small tool kit and was failing to pry the disc off. “There are no screws, bolts, claws or other fasteners or mechanical devices. I can only assume that it is magnetic.”
“Can’t be. Depending on which parts, the hull is either carbon titanium or aluminum. Nothing for a magnet to adhere to.”
“Then it somehow drilled through the hull and anchored itself on the inside.”
Caleb looked at the ceiling of the cockpit, then floated himself into the cabin. There were access panels in some areas, but they were purely for storage not maintenance. “Uh.” Caleb held his wrist device above his head. “Can you locate my wrist thingamabob if I set it to ping?”
“Yes, I can do that.”
“Tell me when I’m directly under the device.”
“Move further aft. Now to the starboard side. There. Stop. Right there.”
Caleb opened a storage locker above his head and pulled out an armload of women’s underwear. Jennifer had a thing for fancy underwear. Now it was floating around the cabin. “I’m going to cut through the roof.”
Hee Sook considered this. “If this device has cut through from the outside, cutting from the inside to reach it will likely cause a breach in the hull.”
“I imagine so. I’m putting on an emergency suit.”
“OK, but the hull will remain breached.”
“Christ! Stop questioning me. We’re going to lose Jen! We’ve got hull patches for micro meteor hits. That should solve it.” He opened the emergency suit locker and pulled one out. “You stay out there and keep tracking her. I find this thing and detach it from in here, then you can yank it off.”
Hee Sook deliberated over various responses and chose, “Sounds like a plan.” She then turned her body around and scanned for Jennifer. Once she had her spotted, she set her vision to maintain tracking. Zooming in, she noted the leak in the back of Jennifer’s suit. The robot considered informing Caleb, ran a series of potential reactions based on how his response to the crisis had unfolded so far, and kept the information to herself for now.
As he pulled on the emergency suit, Caleb muttered, “How in the hell did they attach that thing in the first place?” He looked accusingly at the walls of the ship. “And what kind of cop ship gets had like that?”
Since the line was still open to Hee Sook, she assumed the question was for her. “If you would like me to speculate on that, I can, but I doubt that I will be able to offer an accurate or sufficient answer.”
“Wasn’t talkin’ to you!”
Hee Sook went quiet and continued to track Jen.
From a tool kit, Caleb withdrew a battery-operated Dremel type cutter and fitted a circular blade to it. The suit had a safety cable for attaching the user to the hull for just this type of work. He attached it to one of several embedded rings that were placed throughout the inner hull. He then snugged himself up to the open storage locker. Turning on the Dremel tool, he smiled with satisfaction at a light showing a full battery charge, then began to cut.
With each rotation Jennifer could see that Hee Sook had turned around. She assumed the robot was watching her, and somehow it offered a bit of comfort. For the moment, she felt a little less alone. Not exactly tied to anything, but at least someone else was aware of her out here. She knew that Caleb was doing everything in his power to save her, and that offered
some comfort too. The man was good in a scrape. It was one of the things that attracted her to him the most. If anyone could save her it was Caleb, right?
Caleb let out a stream of curse words as the sawblade broke. He’d cut two lines of the square hole he planned to make in the aluminum skin of the inner hull. He knew without looking back in the kit that the tool only came with one metal cutting blade. “Why one? Who makes a tool kit with just the one blade?”
Hee Sook said, “Are you communicating with me?”
“No!” He unclipped his tether and floated over to the toolkit. There were all sorts of bits for drilling and shaping, but nothing that would cut the way he needed. He opened the main tool cabinet and smiled at the pry bar that was neatly Velcroed to the wall with assorted other hand tools. As a former B&E artist, the lowly pry bar had long been a friend.
Tethering himself back up to the storage locker, he got his feet anchored into two straps on the ceiling. He pushed the edge of the pry bar through one of the cuts and shoved. Instead of bending open the cut in the hull, the leverage rammed his head into the ceiling. Closing his eyes and willing himself to be calm, he crouched against the ceiling by pulling himself in close with one hand grabbing another strap. With one arm now, he pried, moved the bar a bit to the side, pried. A bit more. Pried. More. Pried. Until he bent open a triangle nine inches on a side. The open space glowed from a bundle of fiberoptic cables. Around the cables were an assortment of skinny crab-like legs. Each leg had a hooked end that had embedded itself into an individual cable.
“What the fuuu?” said Caleb, as he pulled the cable bundle aside to look up higher. The crab legs had pushed through a dense layer of insulation. Caleb wiggled the wedge end of the pry bar into a seam between joining insulation panels and bent and broke the compromised panel away from the outer hull. With the panel loose, he pulled it down past the crab legs, which flexed and moved with the shifting space around them. With the flashlight in his wrist device, he looked up past the legs and saw what looked like a circular claw coming from a hole drilled in the hull. The sinister-looking thing had clamped itself to the inside hull skin. Having thus attached itself, the disc had deployed the crab legs, which had pierced their way into the ship’s fiber optic system. “Gangly little fucker, aren’t you,” said Caleb.
Hee Sook responded, “I assume you still aren’t referring to me.”
Caleb tried pulling one of the sharp tips of the crab legs out of a cable. It was easy, but the thing just plunged back into another spot. “This is one clever, nasty device. I have no idea how to dislodge it. You still have eyes on Jen?”
Outside, Hee Sook hadn’t moved. Jennifer was so far away that Hee Sook needed to use her infrared sensor to keep tracking her. She decided to tell Caleb. “Jennifer’s suit has a gas leak.”
“Say again?”
“Jennifer’s suit is exhibiting signs of loss of gas. There is no way to tell at what rate.”
Caleb hung, floating off the ceiling. “When were you going to tell me that?”
“Now. It is my conclusion that you need to be inspired to get creative.”
Caleb floated while staring at the device. “Maybe you should get creative,” he said petulantly.
Hee Sook kept her eyes on Jennifer’s infrared form, locked in the trajectory so she could look away, and then looked down at the ship, scanning for inspiration.
Inside, Caleb slapped his hand against his forehead. “Duh. A nerve disruptor. Stand by, I’m going to shoot the thing.”
“Doesn’t that seem a tad rash? We don’t know how it will react.”
“Oh, I know,” he mumbled. He floated over to a locker labeled weapons, opened it and removed a McMaster nerve disruptor from a holster strapped inside. He armed the device, setting it to fire at full capacity—a blast that would permanently destroy any animal nervous system as well as disable an android.
“Be ready to pull it off if it comes loose, but don’t touch it until after I’ve fired.” With an emergency hull patch in one hand and the disruptor in the other, Caleb peered back inside the hole. The crab legs seemed to sense him and stiffened slightly. “Here goes.”
Caleb pointed the weapon into the hole. At the same instant, an eyeball-like object in the belly of the alien device glowed, then pulsed. One moment Caleb had a finger on the trigger, the next, his own nerves were disrupted. He jerked straight then pulled into a fetal position as it knocked him unconscious.
“Mr. Day? Did you do it? I heard a pulse.” She pulled at the plate. “It’s not coming loose. Mr. Day?”
Hee Sook looked down as if she could see through the hull. She pulled herself toward the bow and out over the windshield and looked inside. The cockpit door was open. She could see Caleb floating lifelessly beyond. She zoomed in on his carotid artery and noted a pulse under the skin. She spun around and scanned for Jennifer again. Her infrared sensor was beginning to fail to detect the woman’s heat. Though her trajectory remained the same, she was much further away. In another minute there would be no way to see her.
Though a domestic model, Hee Sook was nevertheless built with a vast database. In a society that shunned networked computers, she was made to be a standalone knowledge tool. Humans had long ago become reliant on cloud computers providing the answer to nearly any question. Hee Sook’s quantum processor was jam-packed with encyclopedic knowledge. She searched within herself for a way to give herself some type of controlled locomotion using household goods. She settled on fire extinguishers. After passing out of the Diamond’s airlock, she had noted an external locker labeled emergency supplies. Pulling herself hand over hand, she moved down next to the airlock and opened the external locker. Inside were an assortment of items a police officer might need to enact a rescue. Among assorted tools were two CO2 based fire extinguishers. She removed both of them, pulled the pins and held one in each hand. She glanced through the locker once more, her eyes settling on a small hull repair kit. She unzipped the front of her jumpsuit and stuffed it inside, then zipped it safely closed. She turned and scanned for Jennifer, found her faint heat signature, bent her knees to push off… and stopped. Firmly grasping a handhold with one finger, she stared at the vastness of space. Accursed fear. Why? Why have I been made to experience this debilitating sensation!
Hee Sook used her rangefinder to measure the distance between her and Jennifer. Her database offered nothing about how much CO2 was in each device, nor how long it would last. She might get herself out there and have nothing to return with. In the cold, her battery charge was already dropping much faster than normal. Would she even be able to function in order to return? Unlike the big industrial robots who were fitted out with shielded refillable fuel cells, as a domestic model, Hee Sook had a basic solid-state graphene super capacitor. In a typical domestic setting, her batteries recharged over the air or while sitting in a charging station. Away from the domicile, they topped themselves up via the friction from the movement of her garment. Her’s was a self-heating cell stack, giving it a performance threshold of minus 30 degrees celsius, but it wasn’t designed to offset the severe cold of outer space. She was also due for a battery replacement, something that she’d hoped to get sooner than later.
Jennifer’s heat signature was fading out to almost nothing. What is my purpose if not to save that human? They brought me on to do whatever is required of me. What is required is saving Jennifer.
Hee Sook worked her way back toward the front of the ship, bent her knees again, then charged, running along the rungs of the roof ladder until she pushed off, aiming for Jennifer. With her hands on the handles of the extinguishers and the nozzles pointed past her feat, she gently squeezed. She shot forward, then up, then twisted into an uncontrolled spin. With her internal stabilizers being far superior to a human sense of space and direction, she calculated a way to counter the spin by alternating the extinguishers. Her aim was deeply off, but the spinning stopped. She scanned again for Jennifer and could not find her. Knowing that Jennifer’s trajectory could not c
hange, she recalculated the angle and fired again, this time with precision control.
Before long, using short bursts, she was able to speed toward Jennifer’s estimated location until the stricken astronaut came back up on infrared.
Jennifer had long before closed her eyes. The visual of the spinning universe around her had been making her feel sick. By closing her eyes she could completely shut it out. It allowed her to be alone with her thoughts. She wasn’t looking forward to the sensation of finally asphyxiating, but she’d been through it once before. She had no memory of the actual event—when she and Caleb had shucked their suits on Phoebe. She recalled the action to back out of the suit and her scream being suddenly silenced as she exposed her head to vacuum, but the rest was gone, the memory wiped. Her next one being inside the airlock and blessed Bert attending to her and Caleb. She hoped that maybe she would fall asleep into a carbon dioxide coma before her lungs heaved and screamed for oxygen. She really didn’t want to die young. Life had gone from terrifying, and then mundane on her farm on Dione, to entirely too exciting since its destruction, then back to somewhat mundane. It was a mundane she was enjoying—most of all for having met Caleb. As she spun further and further away from the site of the assault, she suspected that Caleb’s gallant efforts were coming to naught. That made her feel sad for him. She decided she wouldn’t fight this. Not that she physically could. It might be her worst recurring nightmare, but if this was her end she would face it with dignity. She dared to glance at infinity once more, saw her air down to seven minutes, immediately got nauseous and slammed her eyes shut. Meeting her end with eyes closed it would be.
When Hee Sook careened into her, Jennifer was so surprised and shocked by something slamming against her that she peed. She felt arms tighten around her and thought, My hero! Caleb, you wonderful —
Pirates of Saturn (The Saturn Series Book 2) Page 12
