Floating upside-down near the windshield, Saanvi mindlessly worked her own wrench while staring at the rails and the asteroid’s surface as it rolled past. It felt primal, like gazing at a fire. It was so close she almost felt like she could reach out and touch the rough surface as it went by. She took a deep breath and blew it out.
Jennifer asked, “You OK?”
“Huh? Oh, not really.”
“I hear yah. Haven’t felt like this since Pan, and how close we came to dying that time.”
Saanvi’s face grew stricken, and she became choked up while she still worked the wrench.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t save you. You know, at their ridiculous airlock walk the plank thing. It was horrible. I felt more helpless than when that Wang Fat monster had us tied up and was setting out his torture tools. At least then, we were all in the same predicament.” She nodded at the passing asteroid. “I didn’t want to be one of their tools, a forced member of their group, but I also didn’t want to die fighting to save you.” Tears welled up in her eyes in the irritating way that they do in space, just sitting there blurring her vision. She squeezed her lids tight and wiped them away with her index fingers, the little blobs now floating in the cockpit. “I’ve always thought I’d give my life for all of you, but when the time came… I couldn’t. Is there any way you can ever forgive me?”
Jennifer stopped turning a bolt and put her hand on Saanvi’s, squeezing it for reassurance. “It would have been a life wasted. I don’t for a second blame you. You and Spruck and Natalie were in an impossible situation. They would have sent you out right after us if you’d tried. That’s not giving your life for me or for Caleb.”
Upon hearing his name, Caleb, who was tearing the insulation out of a ceiling piece, whispered harshly, “Cut the soap opera bullshit and keep looking.”
Jennifer got cranking and whispered to Saanvi, “You dying in vain. That would’ve made it only that much worse. There’s nothing to forgive.” She glanced at the cabin behind them. “That Hee Sook is one clever one though isn’t she? They both are, those two robots.” Her eyes crinkled with a smile.
Saanvi smiled in return. “Outdone by a housekeeper. The look on that awful pirate’s face, Pablo, right? It was hard not to burst out laughing when she shoved that mask into the door hinge.”
Jennifer nodded eagerly. “That jerk’s eyes were bulging like he’d been stuck out there himself.”
Saanvi chuckled and squeezed her friend’s hand back. “Thanks. A little laugh feels good.”
They worked in silence for a while longer. Jennifer finally said, “We’re a good team all of us, but at the rate we’re going, we’re gonna be dead soon unless we change course.”
Saanvi nodded in silent acknowledgment. She scanned the screens for any movement in the surrounding space. A pair of drones scanned the rear of the base. Dima’s ships had moved out of sight, presumably in the lead on the other side of The Island. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin with a new thought. “Change course. That’s it.”
“Huh?”
“Or slow them down, anyway.” She whispered to the back. “Guys, this can wait. I’ve got a better idea. We need to send somebody outside. ”
Minutes later, Caleb said, “I go out there, my heat signature will be like a beacon. They’re gonna spot me in seconds.” He sighed. “Got to be one of the bots.”
Hee Sook said, “It would be my pleasure to go, Caleb Day. I,” she hesitated and looked at the asteroid spinning past, “I sort of like it out there,” she lied.
Caleb was irritated by how he was struggling with this. He knew in his heart he had no desire to go outside, was tired of going outside, was frankly a bit afraid of the plan. And besides, he was right; he’d be spotted far more quickly than one of the bots and their low heat signature. Yet, the testosterone raging inside him fought with the logic. If I let this little maid-bot do what I should do myself…?
Jennifer, as though reading his mind, held his hand. “You’re right, and I don’t want you to go. I suspect there'll be plenty of chances for you to put your life in danger. Hee Sook and Pat are best suited for this kind of thing.”
Pat487 corrected her. “Jennifer, I am Pat487. I prefer my full name.”
“I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
Pat487 smiled. “We are wasting time with this discussion. I am the one here who needs to earn her keep. I will go.”
Spruck said, “You already more than earned your keep.”
Natalie agreed, saying, “Sheet, girl. Without you, we’d all be dead right now. You don’t owe us nothing.”
The robot nodded acknowledgment, consciously choosing not to correct Natalie’s incorrect syntax. “Nevertheless, for lack of another term, I feel a desire to avenge my companions Bruno and T892.” She looked at the rearview screen that offered a panorama including the distant Sun and the tiny bright dot that was Earth mixed in with the stars. “I am grateful for the collective human mind back there that gave me the gift of this state of being. I cannot fathom why they chose to do so, but I intend to use it for good purpose, a purpose I can feel.” She returned her gaze to the group. “So please allow me.”
Ten minutes later, Pat487 held a rail inside The Princess Belle’s airlock and watched the outer door open. She had a small tool pouch strapped to her waste, with a holster holding a drill. The airlock was toward the rear of the ship, so as she stepped out, her view was mostly away from the space station. Being sure she had a hand on the hand-hold outside the airlock door, she nodded at Spruck who stood on the other side of the inner window. He nodded back and remotely closed the outer door.
With the door shut, the ship in front of her was both there and not. Its coating mimicked the surrounding space, yet it reflected her own image at her in a warped and broken way. She glanced at the pushing engine above her silently working away. She had maintained an antique grandfather clock in another life. The work of the driver, and the passing rail made her remember the workings of the ancient clockwork. She glanced over her shoulder, scanning for the drones. Lazy, she thought. Neither had altered course.
Spruck had told her that there were handholds leading across the length of the ship. She felt out for one that was more forward and found it. Hand over hand, she pulled herself past one of the two exosuit bays that bulged out from the ship’s sides and toward the bow.
When she reached the front, she couldn’t see the team of new friends inside past the invisible windshield, but she knew they were all watching, so she gave a little wave.
Spruck had nudged the bow of the ship as close to the asteroid as he dared. Pat487 would have to close the rest of the distance herself. She held the last grip, crouched, and without hesitation leapt toward the passing rail. The moment of free fall was brief. She had timed the leap perfectly so that her outstretched hand gripped onto one of the railing stabilizers. Just like that, she was being pulled away, holding the rail as it spun down from the view of The Belle. She turned and gave another small wave, then pointed the drill at the side of the rail and put it to work.
Had she looked up, she would have been treated to a spectacular view. Saturn was there of course, but a lovely alignment of several moons led like stepping stones to the magnificent rings.
Among the spare items Spruck had squirreled away was a 50cm titanium shaft that could be used as a pry bar. When she finished drilling, she reached into her pouch and pulled out a tube of keck gel. A squirt of that and a shove of the rod into the new hole and she had an instant permanent bond. It would create a heck of a speed bump when the levitated pusher came around.
Sooner than she expected, the rail came back around to the pusher side. Her original plan had been to hold on to one of the track stabilizers and time her leap to get back to the ship, using the velocity of the rotating asteroid to add to her jump. A quick glance told her she had missed the opportunity. She would have to see what would happen and
improvise after that. She shielded her eyes as the pusher bore down on the rod. When it hit, the titanium simply shattered, breaking into small shiny shards that floated and shot about, some bits kicking up dust on the asteroid itself.
Well, that is disappointing, she thought as her section of track rolled away from the pusher to make the circuit again. The rod hadn’t even created a hiccup.
Inside The Belle, everyone groaned.
Inside The Island’s flight control room, Hap sat alone receiving an alert that the rail system had detected a short anomaly. He brought up the cameras on the pusher itself, along with the regular feeds around the base. Everything looked fine until the sight of Pat487 jolted him. Clinging to one of the rail connectors she came down past the pusher’s back and then showed up rolling past the belly camera’s. Then he noticed that the space below the belly camera didn’t quite look right. As Pat487 passed, she was briefly reflected on the blurry space below. He zoomed the camera back to a wide view and realized that the blurry space was roughly the shape of a spaceship.
“Hot damn!” He hit the ALL HANDS button and hailed the Innocent.
Pablo came up on Hap’s screen, “What you got, Hap?”
“They’re right out back. I’m thinking the whole time. Right under the pusher. I got the drones on them.”
“Damn,” said Pablo with admiration. “Don’t shoot it. I want it captured. That ship’s the most valuable thing I’ve seen since we left Earth.”
“Sure thing, boss. Pilots are finishing scrambling too.”
Chico looked at his readouts. “We’re finally ready for launch.”
Pat487 had seen the camera array on the belly of the pusher turn to observe her as she passed, then spotted the one on the pusher’s back pick her up as well. She felt inside the tool pouch. The wrench her fingers touched seemed useless. She also had a screwdriver, and there was the pouch itself, which would do what? The levitating sled that the pusher held above the rail was massive compared to such puny things. She needed something bigger. As she passed the pusher again, she gauged the space between the sled and the rail. If she could have taken a deep breath to center herself, she would have.
As her piece of track took another circuit, she finally took in the view: Titan, orange and huge, like a second planet; Dione, with its fractured icy surface; Rhea, like a perfect orangish snowball; and Tethys, with its giant eyelike crater. An old video of a lawn behind the school she had worked at, played inside her mind. The moons before her must have triggered it. They were scattered like spilled bocce balls across the face of the planet. It unsettled her that she was not in control of such random playbacks. She returned her gaze to the rail, the clean linear shape of it, the near perfection of the curve and how it was assembled and attached to the giant rock. It was a simple yet sophisticated design. No better place, she thought. She pulled the tube of keck gel from the pouch, unzipped her jumpsuit, and squeezed it down the length of her bare torso.
Inside The Belle, Hee Sook spoke out loud, “Oh. OK.” She paused, “I understand.”
Caleb said, “Understand what?” His barely contained frustration held little room for robotic cryptics. He and Spruck had been wracking their brains for another option and were coming up with nothing. They had fruitlessly moved to the top of the pusher, but the drones were not fooled.
Hee Sook said, “Pat487 has come up with an alternate solution.” She frowned.
“What is it?” asked Jennifer. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh no,” said Saanvi.
They watched Pat487 coming around again. This time, she held her body the length of the rail itself, her arms and fingers outstretched flat in front of her, her head turned to the side, eyes wide open.
Hee Sook said, “Goodbye, friend.”
Caleb asked without irony, “What is it with you people?”
Hap watched in fascinated horror as the bot came closer to the pusher and its sled. In his panic, he made things worse, lighting up the pusher’s engine to fire at full throttle, hoping to ram through, and instead handing the station over to the merciless nature of chain reactions.
The robot wrapped her legs tight around the rail. As the pusher came into contact with and passed over her hands, then her arms, it crushed them flat and kept coming, driving her skull into her torso. With the robot’s body affixed permanently to the rail with the keck gel, it was mangled and crushed, but it held fast. The sled jerked, faltered, and came to a fairly sudden stop, but the with the engine still burning.
There was a discernible heave that shuddered through the entire space station. Hap looked at the readouts for a collision warning for a millisecond and was flung from his seat into a wall where he was left floating unconscious in sudden zero G.
Down in the beach room, the faux ocean hammered against the projection wall, then floated and blobbed about like gelatin as a handful of humans who hadn’t been knocked cold swam about in mid-water, panicked, trying to get to an edge, to air.
In the honeycomb, Jada, Chico and Pablo watched from the just launched Innocent as the inner rotation of the central hub came to a halt. The effect was strong enough so that the base’s airlock tunnels jerked, one hard enough to break open and send a just-boarding flight crew flailing and silently screaming out into space. At the same moment, the unoccupied ship broke loose from its moorings and spun crazily toward the Innocent.
“Brace Brace Brace!” screamed the ship’s computer.
Jada, Chico and Pablo yelled out in unison and gripped their seats as the unmoored ship plowed into The Innocent’s belly, driving it into yet another ship that was just launching, and smashing it back onto its landing pad. There was no explosion, but hundreds of parts of the three ships flew about the space causing untold damage.
Dima had been enjoying having tea poured for him in his private suite by Candy while Silvio was polishing his nails. Shu stood nearby, face to face with Link, the two robots in deep private conversation. In nearly the same split second that The Island’s rotation jerked to a violent stop, the four robots leapt and created a protective ball around Dima so that their bodies would take the hit as they were all flung against a wall.
FRIENDS HELPING FRIENDS
THE ISLAND’S ROTATION had stopped, but its forward motion remained the same. Sensing catastrophe, the pusher engine shut down automatically. Various system’s shock absorbers had jerked hard, saving critical infrastructure from catastrophic damage. Nevertheless, sirens blared, lights blinked, and lots of people were either dead or critically injured.
Spruck whirled his finger in the air, indicating that it was time to go. The gang in The Princess Belle scrambled to strap in. Spruck fired the forward retros, pushing them away from the asteroid. It was a brief enough shot of gas so that when it ended, The Belle became invisible once more. The two drones assigned to contain them, followed The Island, continuing to close on a phantom ship that was no longer there.
Spruck and Natalie watched as the flotsam of damaged ships and docking parts spun and twirled out of the donut hole on either side of the station’s center. They could see Dima’s small fleet now out ahead of the base. No courses were altered.
It seemed like The Princess Belle had gotten away for now.
Caleb was the first to speak. “I’ve seen a whole lotta crazy. That hits the top five.” He caught Hee Sook out of the corner of his eye. Her face held sorrow, but in the artificial way that a machine never designed to truly show real sorrow would. He put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
In the cockpit Spruck whispered, “Fuckin’ A! You should see this. Looks like we laundered their ships inside. There’s wreckage floating out of both sides.”
“We?” said Jennifer. “Try Pat487. Why’d she do that?”
Hee Sook said, “She calculated that it was the only viable option.”
“Pretty harsh calculation,” said Caleb.
Hee Sook remained sorrowful. “It was not a difficult choice. For those of us who have been remade this way, the diffi
cult choice is to carry on.”
Saanvi said, “I am sorry, Hee Sook. We have experienced first hand such a sacrifice from such a friend.”
Everyone offered various forms of agreement, with Caleb even nodding a yes. Then he cleared his throat and looked around the flotsam that was their torn up ship. “OK, enough tearing apart The Belle. We wait a bit longer. Let them get out of easy visual range, then I guess you, Hee Sook, goes outside to find where that thing is attached to the hull.”
Spruck was scanning a display of the system. “Maybe I’ve got a better idea. You did say that once you found it, the thing almost killed you, right?”
Caleb nodded. “Nasty little fucker.”
Jennifer said to him, “Grown-up words.”
“Come on, I just heard Spruck swearing. You didn’t scold him. The situation fits. It was a nasty little fucker, and I’m sure this one’s just as nasty.”
Spruck continued, “And it nearly crippled the electrical system and therefor the life support.”
Natalie said, “Get to your point, baby.”
Spruck pointed to a moon on the map. “Ijiraq’s orbit happens to be lining up nicely with Kiviuq. If we go to Ijiraq, it’d be a lot safer to dismantle the thing while connected to their life support. We can also call out a warning from there.”
Jennifer said, “That’s a great idea. And we can see Jook.”
Caleb glared at her so she stuck out her tongue.
Siggi Winter stood in Ijiraq’s command center and yelled with his German accent into his radio, “Aushole, do not smash your ship on my moon!” He’d recognized Spruck’s de-cloaked ship as it approached, but was beyond pissed off that the man didn’t respond to any of his calls or texts. He’d be goddamned if someone landed on his little rock without permission, even if he did know who it was.
Jook stood over his shoulder and reasonably said, “Sig, dude, it’s possible their communication array’s busted. Given the trouble they get themselves into, wouldn’t surprise me.”
Pirates of Saturn (The Saturn Series Book 2) Page 25
