series 01 04 Abattoir in the Aether

by L. Joseph Shosty

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Fullbright asked.

  The big Irishman grinned. “The scuttlebutt has you gents off into the aether to fix the stabilisers,” he said. “I thought since I had some experience in these areas that I’d come along.”

  “Since when were you rated for such manoeuvres?” Fullbright asked.

  “You need to be in Heaven, directing a search of the air ducts, Dolan,” Nathanial said.

  “Or overseeing the loading of the cutters in Hell,” Fullbright said. “Or any number of the other tasks that have been assigned to you.”

  Dolan chuckled. “Oh, and don’t think I don’t sincerely appreciate being given the lion’s share of the duties where the evacuation is concerned, Fullbright. Sir,” he said. “But do any of you actually know where to look?”

  “I’ve an idea,” said Nathanial. “There really is only one place.”

  “But you don’t know, specifically.”

  The men glanced at one another.

  “No,” Nathanial replied.

  “Then you need all the help you can get.”

  Dolan sat down and began pulling off his heavy boots.

  “Well, if Dolan’s along, then you don’t need me,” Provost said, but before he could begin to wriggle out of his suit, Nathanial stopped him with a hand on the chest.

  “No, Dolan’s right. We need as many men as we can get. My apologies, Provost. I know you don’t fancy this, but it is your duty to help.”

  “Queen and Country, old man,” Fullbright said, clapping Provost on the back. The botanist gave a wan smile. That, too, should have been his jest, only with a touch of irony to it. Coming from Fullbright, it merely sounded patriotic.

  2.

  When Dolan was finally in his suit, the men entered the airlock and closed it behind them. They broke the seals on their air tanks, and oxygen flooded in. The air was cold, and it made Nathanial’s face hurt for a moment until he acclimated himself to it. He remembered watching the rescue team on the lunar surface safe from his vantage point in Sovereign, such a long time ago it seemed, and he recalled how he had wished to go with them. He also remembered his concerns about the vacuum of space being so close by. How things had changed!

  The outer door opened, and there was a sense of vertigo that made Nathanial’s stomach twist. In the aether the concepts of up and down no longer had meaning. There was a brief moment where he felt like he was falling out of the door, and he scrambled for a bit, fear seizing him, before a hand grabbed him and pulled him close to the station’s outer hull. It was Dolan, and he was grinning his usual grin.

  “Careful, Stone. We can’t afford to have you go traipsing off into the cosmos, now, can we?”

  That was the last that could be heard. After Dolan uttered these words, the world went silent as they floated out into the abyss.

  Dolan tugged Nathanial to a handrail affixed to the station’s side. Each atmosphere suit had a utility belt which was affixed with a length of wire cable that could extend to fifty feet, and which ended with a metal clasp that could be hooked onto the handrail to anchor a worker so he did not float away. The men secured themselves and began working themselves, hand over hand, along the rail.

  Nathanial recalled some advice he had heard while aboard Sovereign, and that was if you had to work in a gravity-free environment, it was best to keep your eyes focused on the nearest large object. By staring at that, you could keep focused on what you were doing and not worrying about the fact that you now had no world to hold you close. Getting a first-hand lesson in stepping off the world, he understood the wisdom of it and did as instructed.

  It was slow going, but eventually they came to a junction where their handrail ended and a wide gulf stood between them and the next. Another handrail came off the station’s side next to theirs, but it went up. They needed the one that lay far away. Fullbright, who apparently had some experience in these matters as well, demonstrated. He unhooked himself from the rail and pushed himself, gently and evenly, left. He floated along the hull without colliding with it or without accidentally pushing himself away. That was the crux of it, Nathanial imagined, making an even and level push.

  Holmes was next and showed surprising acumen. He arrived without incident, and the two looked expectantly at Provost, who was next. Nathanial became apprehensive at this juncture. He was sure he could manage to do as Fullbright had done, but Provost was in no condition for this sort of activity. He turned and looked at Dolan, but got no help there. The big Irishman only smiled. There was too much animosity between Dolan and Provost and Fullbright, and it had come to its head here.

  Nathanial tapped the botanist on the shoulder before he could push off. Provost looked at him, eyes wide with fear. Nathanial pantomimed his plan. Provost looked confused and a little ashamed, but he nodded finally. Better to feel the shame of needing help than to die out here when people needed him, Nathanial supposed. Whatever one could say about the botanist, his compassion for others was always evident.

  Nathanial removed his clasp. With his left arm, he hugged Provost close to him, and pushed off with his right, ever so gently. Their arc was maddeningly slow, but within two minutes they had arrived at their destination. Nathanial was relieved. He clasped himself to the new handrail, and as they pushed on, Dolan was already crossing over. Nathanial would have a talk with the man once they had returned to Peregrine. Such behaviour as he had just shown was unacceptable.

  They journeyed only a short way before they tied on to a new rail, one that would take them down towards the bottom of the station. Here the main stabilisers were affixed. The power couplings could also be accessed. It was here that Nathanial knew the problem must lie. There could be no other answer.

  They passed over an oblong-shaped part of the hull. This was where the planetary should be, Nathanial thought. The other heliograph stations had them, one large mirror fixed atop the station to communicate between great distances, called the interplanetary, and a smaller mirror, fixed at a downward angle, called the planetary, which allowed for a relay of information to the planet below. Peregrine, since it only communicated between planets, had no need for such a mirror, but Professor Wren (no, Le Boeuf) had designed the outer hull’s shape based on Harbinger’s, mimicking the station’s underbelly instinctively.

  It took about fifteen minutes for them to reach the bottom. Since they would need fifteen minutes to return, that gave them only a half-hour to repair the stabilisers. Nathanial tried not to think about what would happen if they failed to find the source of the problem. Instead, he followed Fullbright to a fixed point near the bottom, an outcropping with a circular handrail that would allow them to move freely in ever-widening circles without having to constantly attach and reattach to various points. Nathanial motioned the men to begin their search.

  3.

  The men spread out. Nathanial quickly located three of the seven aether propellers. He checked them out of mere obligation. They were undamaged. He had not expected anything otherwise. It had to be something easily repaired, something central, that could affect all the propellers at one time. The intent, after all, had been to temporarily disable, not destroy.

  Nathanial returned to the aether propeller he had just inspected. He looked at the hull surrounding it. A small access panel ran back to something near the outcropping where the men had tied on. He gave a tug on his line and pulled himself back up. Beyond the outcropping he could see a number of similar access panels running from the other propellers, all converging in a point just over his horizon. He pushed off from the outcropping and floated upward.

  Beneath a panel just over the horizon was a central coupling. His heart raced as he removed four bolts from the panel. Pulling it away, he found what he had come to find. The couplings had been separated and left to sit. Gently, he grasped the live section and affixed it the other, securing it in place with a brass clamp.

  And just like that, his ordeal was over.

  Nathanial let out a deep breath he h
adn’t noticed he was holding. So simple, yet this one seemingly insignificant length of cable had had the potential to destroy everything. Already its mystery had cost more than two dozen lives and left every living soul aboard Peregrine awash in a sea of paranoia, fear, and deception.

  He spun and went back to the outcropping. Provost and Holmes noticed when he began waving wildly, and they stopped what they were doing and returned to the outcropping. He had to tap on Fullbright. Back at the outcropping he gestured to them that everything was fine, that he had fixed the problem. Barring further sabotage, which was unlikely, they had done what they had set out to do. By his estimation, they had done so with just enough oxygen to return.

  A round of back-patting and handshaking passed, and they were about to begin their ascent when Provost stopped Nathanial with a hand to the shoulder. Nathanial turned and watched as Provost counted off four fingers. Nathanial understood what he meant immediately.

  There had been five of them. Where was Dolan? Nathanial gestured that they split up and look for him. The clasp tying the Irishman to the outcropping was gone, as was any trace of his wire cord. Dolan was nowhere to be seen.

  Nathanial went to where he had last seen the man, going all the way to the end of his line and peering hard over the horizon. The man had apparently trained in such an environment before. Perhaps he had detached and gone elsewhere, feeling an obligation to forge ahead into areas that would be dangerous to the others, given that they were mostly inexperienced in moving about in the aether. That hardly sounded like Dolan, but perhaps Nathanial had judged the man wrong. Here he was, after all, placing his life in danger to help save the station from destruction.

  Briefly Nathanial considered detaching the line from his utility belt and going elsewhere, but decided against it. If Dolan had somehow fallen away from the station, there was nothing he could do about it. He would be risking his own life needlessly, then. The reality of it was, they could wait no longer.

  Someone tugged at his cord. He turned and saw Holmes waving him. The others had returned to the outcropping. Fullbright was pointing upward. Did he want to return to the station? No. There was something he wanted Nathanial to see.

  At first, Nathanial could not see what Fullbright was pointing at, but then something metallic glinted, catching his eye. It was Dolan, scaling the station’s side, headed back the way they had come. He had already cleared the first handrail and was sliding along the horizontal one, nearly out of sight as he cleared the horizon. He was halfway to the third and final rail, the one that would take him back to the airlock. Nathanial indicated they should follow, and the men complied.

  What could be the matter? Nathanial wondered. Did his suit malfunction in some way? Dolan seemed almost frantic. Fullbright, easily the most adept of the lot, rocketed up the handrail, arriving at the first junction while the others were still halfway through their climb. He detached, pushed over to the second handrail, and continued onward.

  Soon, both Fullbright and Dolan were out of eyesight, and so Nathanial concerned himself with safely traversing the terrain. Holmes and Provost were having little trouble with the climb, but he could not help but wonder what must be going on in their heads as well. No love was lost between Dolan and Provost, but it was doubtful any of the men wished the Irishman ill will, not to that degree. Nathanial could not help but wonder if they were seeing in Dolan how easily one could get into trouble out in the aether. Such worries could cause them to make a mistake.

  4.

  They arrived at the top of the first handrail and were about to begin filing over to the second when Fullbright came flying around the corner. He was waving his arms wildly, indicating they should hold their positions. He disconnected and leapt to where the three of them sat. He nearly missed his jump, but Nathanial reached out and grabbed his cord, pulling him in and cinching him to their handrail.

  Fullbright grabbed Nathanial’s helmet as soon as he was stable, and their eyes locked. Fullbright was terrified. He began to speak. Of course, Nathanial could not hear him, but the words forming on his lips were clear.

  “Dolan’s betrayed us. He’s sealed the airlock. We can’t get back inside.”

  Provost panicked and began flailing about. Holmes pinned Provost’s arms to his side before the man could do any damage, to himself or the others. Nathanial’s mind raced. They only had ten minutes’ worth of oxygen left, at best. He was, of course, just estimating, having no way to tell the time. That meant they had to formulate a plan, and soon, and then begin executing it. They could not wait for a rescue.

  Nathanial ruled out the possibility of trying that at any of the other airlocks. The airlocks could be sealed from the inside, and a standing order from van den Bosch had everyone do so after use. Only an airlock that was in use was left unsealed, and even then, a person was generally kept on hand to watch out for anyone outside on manoeuvres. They had left no one.

  Nathanial grunted in frustration. Provost had not wanted to come along. They should have left him.

  “Damn!” he shouted into his helmet. “How could I be so foolish?”

  He considered his options. There were no other ways of getting into the station. They could try to crawl up to the viewports on either Sunward or Starward Observation and hope someone noticed them, but that involved some risk. It would also take time to do so, even for a skilled fellow like Fullbright, and even then, how would those inside know which airlock to open? The station had seven. Any time lost in miscommunication would be crucial time that could be used in other ways. What they needed was someplace to sit for a while and let Nathanial create a plan, but where would they find that?

  He grabbed Fullbright and spun him around so they were facing.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  Fullbright read his lips and nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Dolan’s Home”

  1.

  The door opened, and light flooded the room. He stood there, lantern in hand, breathing heavily, like he had just run a great distance. Annabelle averted her eyes to shield herself from the bright light of the room beyond. She hoped he would take that as submissiveness.

  “Well, well,” he said. It was still difficult, getting used to his real accent. He wasn’t Irish. That is, he wasn’t born in Ireland. He was American, born to Irish immigrants, but he’d travelled to Ireland to live with family there when he was twelve. His father had been a dissident, and had had to flee the country, or so the story had gone. He’d picked up the accent while there, he’d said, adding, “There’s something to how they speak over there, that makes you want to do likewise. The words almost welcome you, like a lover.”

  His real accent was that of Boston, Massachusetts, slurred and irritating.

  He pushed into the ring of crates he’d erected as her makeshift prison cell and crouched a few feet away, staring at her. His shoulders continued to heave. She tried to keep her eyes averted. She was sitting on the floor, hands behind her back as if still tied, and in her left hand was her sliver of wood, feeling like rough salvation.

  She flinched as Dolan lunged at her. Her first instinct was to pull up her arms to shield herself, but she turned her face away instead. Dolan was very close, his hot breath in her face.

  He kissed her, hard, breathing heavily through his nose. The pressure against her mouth was painful.

  Dolan pulled away. “You’ll never believe what I just did,” he said. “Your―”

  Annabelle drew the sliver and jammed it just under Dolan’s chin, pushing with all of her strength.

  His eyes bugged, and he jerked away. He fell to the floor, flailing about like a fish that had pulled from the ocean and left to flop in the bottom of a boat.

  Annabelle dove onto Dolan. Her hands roamed the pockets of his coveralls for a weapon of some kind. She came away with a knife, short of blade, but sharp. It was this she used to finish the job of killing Dolan. She did this with none of the rage she was sure she would feel, but with the coldness of a bookk
eeper marking an expense into a ledger. Her calm, ironically, frightened her.

  Chapter Thirty

  “The Narrow Escape”

  1.

  They pushed in through the airlock door and onto the deck of Esmeralda, pulling off their helmets and gulping the air.

  “Made it,” Fullbright grunted.

  “Barely,” Holmes said. He was red-cheeked and drenched in sweat.

  “Damned fine idea, Stone,” Fullbright said. “You’ve saved us.”

  “I’m just glad it’s capable of retaining an atmosphere,” Nathanial said. “I’m afraid it won’t be good for much else.”

  “It’ll serve our purposes,” Fullbright said.

  Provost stood and dusted himself off. He pushed off from the entry platform onto the main deck and floated over to the viewport. He peered outside. “What now?” he asked.

  “We wait a while and think,” Nathanial said.

  Fullbright heaved himself to his feet. “All we’ve had is a secondary boiler to power the greenhouse. I’ll go stoke the main generators.”

  “Excellent idea, Fullbright,” Holmes said. “I’ll see to galley. A nice cup of tea would settle our nerves.”

  Nathanial went to stand with Provost near the window. He sat on the window seat and thought about Dolan. Had the man ever bothered to search for Annabelle, he thought, or had he something to do with her disappearance? He’d been hesitant to check the air ducts. Perhaps she was there. Alive or dead, Nathanial was going to find her. Now that the stabilisers were repaired, Peregrine could correct its course. The loss of Greenhouse Two would still force a partial evacuation, but that could be done in an orderly fashion. At any rate, Fullbright and the others could handle station operations. His work was done where the station was concerned.

  “Do we have candles?” Provost asked suddenly.

  Nathanial looked up. The botanist was staring upward toward Sunward Observation. Nathanial gestured about the room. The place was still more or less as they had left it, nearly two weeks before. Candles were everywhere. Provost hadn’t noticed them. “Yes. We’ve plenty of them, Uriah.”