Oort Rising

by Magnus Victor

  “I made it,” he commed. “Tying off the line now. Wait for my signal before you start.” Better make sure this airlock worked, first. He peered through the small porthole, but a spider's web of cracks obscured his view. He could see no detail inside, but at least there was no glow of fire, and there seemed to be nothing obviously wrong with the airlock's seal.

  Taking no chances, he cycled a safety check, and was rewarded with a row of green lights. Good. The compartment beyond should be safe to enter.

  He cycled the airlock open and pulled himself inside. The panel told him that the interior was depressurized, and he hit the override to open the interior lock while the outside one was still open. The emergency lights were on, but their red glow was not enough to check the compartment for damage. He switched on his suit's headlamp to fully illuminate the interior. Good. Looked safe and undamaged enough, except for the lack of atmosphere.

  Some systems must still be running in this part of the ship, as he could feel the hum of machinery through his feet. But that was not as reassuring as it would normally be, as the loud rattle of the air-circulation system was absent. Still, at least it was better than the near-silence of the EVA outside of the hull. About the only good thing he could say about the Ad Astra was that her machinery was old enough that you could judge how well it was working by the vibrations that the half-obsolete systems made.

  Similarly, the slight fluctuations in the pressure of the floor against his feet told him that the artificial gravity for this ship section was failing. Judging by the frequency, it probably had a week at most before it died entirely. He'd have to get around to fix – Klaus shook his head. He had far more things to worry about before then.

  More things like this almost-useless kid. He grabbed the line that he had tied off, and radioed Antoniy. “Alright, this lock is open. Untie the rope at your end, and tie it onto your belt. Worst comes to worst, I'll pull you in.”

  *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

  “Okay.” Antoniy Gureivich responded, although he could tell that his voice was tight with worry. He edged his head past the outer rim of the airlock, and looked around for the filament. Grasping it, he tried to untie it from the handle. Under his breath, he grumbled “Klaus, did you really need to tie this many knots?”

  “On an EVA with only that filament for safety? Of course.” came the engineer's amused voice.

  Antoniy jumped, and checked his mic. He could have sworn that it was set to transmit on command only. “I'll have to cut it.”

  He unfolded the knife from his utility tool, and thumbed the toggle to activate the blade's micro plasma emitters along its edge. He cut the filament, staring at the tiny lifeline. It looked incredibly thin, hard to see against the black of space, but Klaus had sworn up and down that it would hold a man's weight.

  Antoniy smiled grimly to himself. If it was strong enough for the engineer, it was strong enough for just about anyone. He shook his head, berating himself. His mind was rambling, delaying the point where he would have to leave the ship. Attaching the thread to his belt, he stepped out onto the hull of the Ad Astra.

  He grasped the line, his grip tightening unconsciously as he studied the row of handholds disappearing into the distance. On the plus side, at least the bright, gleaming steel, untouched by rust, promised that they would hold. On the down side, they were tiny prongs of metal weighed against the depths of space. “How long did you say was it to the airlock?”

  “Just five hundred meters, kid. Only half a klick.”

  Only. Hah. Antoniy really hadn't envisioned stunts like this when he took the job. Well, it was too late for a career change now. “All right. Leaving now.” Taking a deep breath and letting it out, he checked his tie-off one last time, and then began his journey.

  As soon as his feet left the airlock floor, the shocking silence of space struck him. Sure, the vacuum back in the ship had been silent, but this was different. Maybe it was the complete absence of surrounding walls, replaced by an infinite expanse of absolutely nothing.

  He could hear his own breathing, heavier than it should be, and his heartbeat – should it be that loud? He closed his eyes for a second, calming his nerves. He'd done spacewalks like this in training. Everybody had. It was routine, and he was — relatively — safely attached.

  But did it really have to be so long? He grasped the first handhold, and half-pulled, half-pushed himself along the hull towards the next. His hands shook slightly, and he frowned at himself. Klaus had breezed through the EVA like it was a Sunday stroll, and Antoniy bet that the old engineer hadn't been on the outside of a spaceship in years. Or engaged in any other form of exercise, for that matter.

  And Antoniy would be damned if he would let Klaus show him up on such a simple exercise. Besides, at least this was a physical challenge. Those he could handle. That was the part of training that he'd really enjoyed.

  Antoniy grabbed the next handhold, more firmly this time. He gauged the distance towards the next handhold. Fifty meters. Another fifty to the one after that. If he skipped alternate handholds, he could move faster – could get the EVA over with faster – and he was securely tied off, anyways.

  Gathering his feet underneath him, Antoniy kicked off towards the next-next handhold. This wasn't too bad, after all. Now all he had to do was not look down. But...which way was down? His eyes moved to the endless expanse of stars, so many that they seemed to blur together. Oh, right. That was down.

  He blinked rapidly, fighting back the rising feeling in his throat. No. He swallowed. He would not allow himself to vomit inside his helmet, not in the middle of a life or death EVA like this. He didn't even know when he'd be able to clean out his suit if he did.

  He snapped his eyes back to the destination airlock. It looked closer, at least. Forcing himself to breathe regularly, he passed over the handhold, still on target for the next. At this rate, he would be done soon. That was reassuring.

  Finally at the end, Antoniy half-clambered, half-was-pulled through the open airlock into the corridor. He slammed the airlock closed behind him. Air hissed into the compartment as he detached the thread from his waist, his hands shaking slightly. “Please tell me we stay inside the ship from here on.”

  He only half-meant it. This new compartment echoed with machinery, loud even through his helmet. If the rest of the aft portion of the hull was this loud, he'd seriously consider going EVA just to hear himself think.

  *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

  “Inside? Definitely.” Klaus finished re-packing the filament back into his kit, using its automatic spooling tool. Gesturing over his shoulder, he responded, “The aft control center is just at the end of this corridor. There's food and oxygen there.” He turned and pushed off down the corridor, throwing a glance over his shoulder to check that Antoniy was following.

  The kid had actually done surprisingly well on the EVA: Klaus hadn't had to reel him in after all. He'd even been faster than Klaus had been. He hadn't expected that. Maybe Antoniy had had more experience than Klaus had suspected? He would certainly ask about that later, when they got a chance to rest.

  The two men arrived at the interior airlock to the control center. With all of the high-voltage electrical lines running through the compartment, it was normally kept in a vacuum, as a fire precaution. Climbing through the airlock, Klaus took in the shiny steel walls, as unblemished as the day the ship had been launched. The isolated chamber was rarely used, and so had not had the opportunity to become dusty like the rest of the ship. Without oxygen, even rust hadn't had a chance to develop.

  Now if only Klaus could remember where the environmental controls were for this compartment. The Ad Astra was older than he was, and had been retrofitted so many times that no two compartments were built to the same plan anymore. He started hunting around the room.

  The hiss of the closing airlock told him that Antoniy had followed him through. “Doesn't look like anyone's ever been in here.” Antoniy stated. “No atmosphere, either. You said something about oxygen?�
��

  “This compartment's outfitted as a survival shelter.” He opened yet another panel cover, frowning at the switches that sat beneath it. Analog switches? How old was this room? He flipped the main-power switch and the one labeled “ENV.,” half surprised that it was labeled in English and not in Aramaic or something. Had he really signed off on this compartment? Air began to hiss into the room through the grate in what was supposed to be the ceiling. “That means oxygen, food and water supplies, the works.”

  “That's a relief. How long will they last?”

  “Don't know, offhand.” Klaus pointed towards a large, floor-to-ceiling door in one of the walls. “Food and water's in there. Could you go check how much we've got? I'll check the oxygen from here.” He examined the board. The emergency oxygen supply was almost full, providing enough to last nearly a month. The ship's aft reactor even read as online and undamaged. Though it was never meant to power the entire ship, it provided more than enough juice to run the artificial gravity.

  He hit the master reset button, and watched as a few of the indicator lights switched to green. The aft third of the Ad Astra now had gravity. They wouldn't have to worry about zero-G sickness, at least.

  The grav generators spooled up slowly, and the gently-increasing field pulled Klaus' feet softly to the floor. Hearing a 'thud' behind him, he turned to see Antoniy sprawled half-in, half-out of the food compartment. Rolling his eyes, he turned back to the console built into the port-side wall. The generators came up slowly precisely to avoid that sort of thing. Had they never practiced zero-G drills on Antoniy's last ship?

  His train of thought was interrupted as he saw the data readout. “Damn. The LIDAR array's offline.” He ran a diagnostic – the LIDAR software returned green, but the hardware check failed. The panels must have been damaged by the explosion. “Offline for good, at that.”

  Antoniy's sigh drifted in from the supply storage compartment. “Any other ideas?”

  Instead of answering, Klaus drew a screwdriver from one of the pockets on his suit. He carefully paced off three meters aft from the console, one meter to starboard, kneeled down and removed the screws holding a deck panel in place. He opened the seals on the panel, and lifted it a fingers'-width. Nothing happened. Good.

  Antoniy looked over from his compartment. “What are you doing?”

  “The main power lines for most everything in this segment of the ship run near this compartment. I can cut off power to the ship's beacon from here."

  "What good is that? If you turn it off, we just disappear off the map! How would that help?”

  Klaus lifted the entire panel out, and set it on the deck beside him. He drew a small knife from his boot, lay down on his stomach, and reached down into the large junction box. Carefully selecting one of the myriad of exposed wires, he neatly cut it and began to strip the protective rubber coating off of the wire. "Tell me - what system did people use to communicate on Earth, before the computer, even before the telephone?"

  Antoniy frowned, but went along with the seemingly pointless question. "I dunno. Smoke signals?"

  Klaus held up the two ends of the cut wire and smiled. "Morse code!"

  Antoniy shook his head. "Nobody knows Morse code! It's downright prehistoric! They'll just think our beacon is faulty."

  "Maybe, but probably not. Worth a shot, at least." Klaus pointed at the nearby damage-control console. “Could you hand me those splice cables stowed in the console? The red-and-black striped ones?”

  Antoniy handed the cables to Klaus, and the engineer spliced together one end of each to the cut wires, and then attached the other ends to the corresponding power ports on his datapad.

  "Now, I've got the beacon’s power cable linked, so I can control the signal from my datapad.” Klaus brought up the program, and keyed it to send a series of pulses, set on repeat, through the cables which he had attached.

  Antoniy pointed at Klaus' pad. “Even if this works, what are the odds that anyone will see the beacon and recognize the code?”

  “Well, the planet-based tracking systems follow each beacon's signal. The automated systems will recognize an SOS.”

  “You're placing that much trust in a system you've never tried?”

  “I don't trust the person operating it, no. The programs doing the actual work, though, I trust to work. Even if they don't recognize the pattern, they should trigger an automated message telling us to repair our beacon. When we don't respond, that will definitely get someone's attention.” Klaus' vision began to blur, and he shook his head. How long had it been since he ate? Nearly nine hours? “On another note, how are we set for food and water?”

  Antoniy waved what resembled a large, multicolored energy bar, the mixed colors amazingly unappetizing even to a hungry man like Klaus. "There's enough water for a month, but all we've got for food are ration bars."

  Klaus' stomach clenched. He knew from experience that they looked far, far better than they tasted.

  "That's still better than starving" he responded, although he was not entirely sure. "Back when I went through Basic, we went for months with nothing else to eat. Once you get past the taste, they’re perfectly healthy. We'll be all right.”

  “Unlike the rest of the crew.” Antoniy's voice was morose.

  “Aye.” Klaus nodded, slowly. Now that he didn't have an immediate problem staring him in the face, the loss of the crew really hit him. Some of them he wouldn't miss quite as much – Harper in particular was possibly the worst cook he'd ever heard of, the only man who could make ration bars look good by comparison.

  But most of them were decent people. Captain Sidonia had been the best business partner that Klaus could have asked for. The Captain had been one of the few people willing to hire Klaus after his ejection from the Navy. He didn't have many people that he would consider 'friends', but Klaus would remember Sidonia as one of them.

  He leaned back against the bulkhead, pinching the bridge of his nose as his eyes teared up. Too many good people died today, and the survivors were him and some random kid? Klaus recognized the signs of survivor's guilt, but he felt the emotional spike all the same. He didn't try to hold it back – sometimes an emotional response was necessary.

  Antoniy handed him a ration bar, which Klaus peeled open. Hopefully the taste of the damn thing would distract him, give him something to focus his misery on.

  Chapter 2: The Long Wait

  Klaus held back a smile as Antoniy took a bite out of his fourth ration bar and made a face. Half an hour of slow eating, and the kid still hadn't gotten used to the taste. He had probably never before tried survival rations. They'd keep you alive, regret it as you may. Antoniy paused in his eating, and looked up. “How will we know when they get here?”

  Klaus carefully finished chewing before answering. Even though he could stomach the rations, he did not want any more of that taste in his mouth than necessary while he talked. “Rescuers, you mean? They’d use an all-frequencies radio broadcast.” He tapped his suit helmet, sitting on the deck beside him. “The receivers built into these things aren’t too good, but they’re good enough to pick up a local transmission. As for how soon, well, allow twelve hours or so for the beacon’s signal to reach anybody. Then assume they recognize it as an SOS within a day of receiving it, and that they divert a patrol craft or some other passing vessel over to us. Depending on our luck, it could be anything between a week and a month.”

  Antoniy sighed. “Sounds like we’re in for a long wait, then.”

  Klaus nodded. “Yeah, but at least we’re alive.” He looked at the half-eaten ration bar in his hand. “Enough oxygen for weeks, food and water for months. A trickle of power, enough to keep the gravity in place, lights on, all the essentials.” He contemplated taking another bite, but his hunger didn't quite overcome the intrinsic repulsion of the bar.

  “That'll keep our bodies alive, yeah.” Antoniy gestured at the compartment around them. The monolithic steel walls were devoid of any decoration. Nothing for the eye t
o rest on, nothing to alleviate the boredom. “What's to keep us from going crazy from the wait?”

  “Whatever books you've got on your datapad. If that doesn't do it, there are some sleep-inducers in the survival kits. One of us will want to be awake, though, to hear if anybody shows up.”

  Antoniy grimaced. “My datapad is — was — back in my bunk.”

  “You can borrow mine when I'm sleeping, then.” Klaus brought out his datapad, and handed it to Antoniy. “Hope you like science-fiction.” He stretched his arms, yawning. “My advice for right now, though, is to get some sleep. Burns less calories and oxygen, and even better, burns through time.” He laid down on the floor, rearranging the tough yet flexible oxygen bladders of his suit to form a pillow. Good design, that.

  Klaus was about to close his eyes when Antoniy called out. “Wait!” Antoniy reached for his helmet, which sat on the deck beside him, and held it close to his ear. “Did you hear that?” he asked, and raised the volume on the suit’s speaker.

  An unknown man's voice now became audible, mid-sentence. “—is Lieutenant Becker of the Tannenberg. We saw your beacon, and we’re here to look for survivors. Respond if possible.”

  Klaus and Antoniy looked at each other. Klaus spoke first. “Maybe they happened to be nearby?”

  “No, the Tannenberg’s still out at Andromeda station, she’s nowhere near here.”

  Klaus frowned. Why would Antoniy know about a naval warship? “Maybe she was heading back in-system, same as us? We’d be on about the same vector, it could happen.”

  “Still no.” Antoniy shook his head. “She’s on station for another few months.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Uh-huh.” Klaus looked askance at Antoniy. “At any rate, if the external cameras are still working, we can take a look outside from here. If our radio receivers are picking up that transmission that well, their ship can’t be far off. The Tannenberg's a capital ship, so we can spot them with visual.” He walked over to the console. “Hmm. Not all systems re-booted automatically. Cameras are still down.”