East of the Sun, West of the Moon tcw-4

by John Ringo

  “That’s for Mike, you bastard,” she said. She also noticed that you could tell when you were in death pressure; the shadows were simply different when there was air present.

  “Well, that’s shuttle five disabled,” Herzer said as they made the turn into Maintenance. The personnel access corridor had been fairly… normal. It was just a long, straight tube lighted by glow-paint on the ceiling. You could feel you were in a tunnel underground. The Maintenance access tunnel was different. It was just as well lit and nearly as large, but it curved up in a slope that looked frankly unclimbable. Of course, it was under a constant positive “down” gravity, so each step felt as if it was level. But it was disconcerting, like a fun-house mirror walk.

  “Same with seven,” Van Krief called. “Rick’s on his way in. What caused the air-loss lockdown?” Only a moment ago the internal blast doors had closed, cutting the ship into multiple sections. Bravo Two was still sealed off.

  “Nicole vented shuttle five for some reason,” Herzer said. “Since you’re already there, and New Destiny doesn’t seem to be stirring have him go by eight and pull that one as well. Take your team and EVA, carefully, checking suit integrity, and join up with him in Support. Then move on the surface to disable three and four. After that, head back.”

  “Will do,” Van Krief replied after a moment. “See you soon.”

  “Nicole, this is Josten.”

  Nicole had dragged the body of the orc over to the airlock and kicked him out with the last puff of air.

  “Go,” she said, hooking on her safety line, grabbing a handhold and lifting herself around to clamp her boots on the exterior of the shuttle.

  “There’s a group of four orcs between me and Maintenance,” Josten replied, talking quietly. “I think I spotted them before they spotted me, but they’re headed this way. I’m in a shadow patch, but I don’t think I’ll be able to hide for long.”

  “You know they can’t hear you, right?” Nicole said, flipping down her goggles as the ship rotated so the sun was in view. “Sound doesn’t carry in space.” She paused for a moment suddenly realizing she was in space. Really. In Space. Nothing around her but vacuum. And… lots and lots of stars. And… the Moon was… really…

  “I just like to talk quiet, okay?” Josten said, nervously. “Why’s the damned ship turning? My shadow is going away!”

  “I dunno,” Nicole admitted, shaking herself out of the combination of terror and awe at her surroundings. “I can see a thruster firing from here.” She shaded her eyes against the glare and blinked in surprise. “Make that two and…” She turned around awkwardly and nodded at the sight. “And the main engine is burning. I don’t think the ship was scheduled for a main engine burn, was it?”

  “At the moment I can’t quite recall,” Josten admitted tightly. “Look, could you… come up with a distraction or something? These guys are less than a hundred meters away and the only thing that’s keeping them from seeing me is a rapidly evaporating shadow. Please, Nickie?”

  “Okay, okay,” she sighed, looking around again. “Where are you and where are they?”

  “I’m sort of under the ship,” Josten said. “About halfway down. They’re coming in from aft.”

  “So, what you’re saying is they’re closer to me than they are to you,” Nicole said, sighing. “You could have mentioned that.”

  “I don’t know where you are,” Josten said, clearly rattled.

  “Back by Engineering, remember?” Nicole said, pulling a pair of magnets off her thigh. She grabbed the handles and lowered them to the deck, then carefully unlatched her mag-boots.

  She used the magnets to walk hand over hand to the rear of the ship and, carefully, looked over the edge.

  Nothing was in sight at first but when she lifted herself up she could see a group of four orcs, spread out, heading towards the shuttle. She also realized she was in clear view of them and nearly ducked until she realized that, with their armor, there was no way they could see up at an angle to see her.

  She considered their position and the rate they were moving, slowly and awkwardly, then carefully stood up and walked back to the airlock.

  “Hey, Josten, sit tight,” Nicole said, lowering herself to the airlock and keying the sequence to open the door again.

  “You got an idea?” Josten asked as Nicole entered the lock and cycled the outer door shut. There was a small vision panel on the inner door and she checked, carefully, to make sure there weren’t any more orcs in the Engineering space.

  “Yeah,” she answered, opening the inner door and considering what she was going to need. She’d pulled the injector for the fusion plant and it was gone. So primary power was out.

  “What?” Josten asked. “Spit at them?”

  “You know these things have a sodium ion backup drive, right?” Nicole said.

  “I’m a pilot,” Josten said, caustically. “Yes, I know that. But you can’t activate it; you broke the fusion plant.”

  “Fusion plants don’t start themselves,” Nicole noted, lifting up a hatch plate and unlatching a power cable. “They use auxiliary power capacitors.”

  “You’re going to use the APCs to fire up the sodium drive?” Josten asked, wonderingly. “Can you do that? Do you know how to do that?”

  “Am I not a master of all things tinkerish?” Nicole asked mockingly. “I’m either going to do it or blow myself to hell. We’ll see.”

  The power leads for the APC were at least two gauges larger than the input point on the sodium drive. And they were short by at least half a meter. After considering that for a second, Nicole pulled out the primary power leads from the fusion plant and connected them to the leads from the APC using a pipe-clamp and some space tape as an insulator. Then she attached the fusion leads, which were also too large, to two spanner handles and jammed the latter into the sodium drive input terminals. She held them in place with a jammed in mag-bolt from the injector system on one and the orc’s dropped sword on the other.

  “MacGyver forgive me,” she muttered, praying to the joke God of all jury-rigging engineers. Surviving to activate this idiocy was going to be the next trick. There were about to be over sixteen megawatts of power running through some very screwed up connections. Resistance didn’t begin to cut it. When electricity hits resistance, it creates heat. When it creates enough heat, you get a kinetic event, also known as an explosion. They were outside Mother’s protocols, probably. Even if they weren’t for this, there was going to be enough electricity flying around to cook an elephant in seconds.

  The engineering compartment control panel was, fortunately, on the far side of the room from where the Rube Goldberg electrical circuits were lying all over the floor. She sat down at the station chair and ran her hands over the panels.

  “Sodium secondary engine,” she muttered, hitting the icon and diving deeper. “System engage. Fuel load. Power input bypass to input two. Fusion drive analysis. Auxiliary power. APC menu. Override safety protocols. Two-four-eight-alpha-niner. APC master breaker…” She closed her eyes and hit the last icon. “Engaged.”

  “I don’t like this place,” Narzgag whined. “I don’t like these suits. I wish the Great One had never brought us here.”

  “Shut up,” Sardak said. “We’ll be back inside as soon as we find that human pussy.”

  “He was over here, somewhere,” Yago said. “I saw him. He is near that ship, in its shadow I think.”

  The foursome were making their way slowly towards the ship. The EVA lock had been closer to two hundred meters away, and moving in the suits was neither fast nor comfortable. Furthermore, they were all, even Sardak, unhappy to be out in vacuum. The Great One had given them a graphic description of what could happen to them if their suits failed. Perhaps too graphic. In view of the Great One they would, of course, do anything for him. But when he was gone, that was a different matter.

  “Let us go back to the inside,” Narzgag said, unhappily. “We can tell the Leader that we were unable to find the human
.”

  “He’ll take us out of our suits and space us,” Sardak said. “Now shut up.”

  “There,” Beejor said, pointing at the ship. “By the rear. A light.”

  “Where?” Sardak asked, looking up where the Durgar was pointing. The spot was well up from the surface of the ship. He didn’t know how the human could have climbed up there. Jumped, maybe; in the microgravity it might be possible. But there was no light.

  “There was a light,” the Durgar insisted. “Like lightning for just a moment.”

  “Stupid fucking materials,” Nicole bitched, rewiring the interface between the APC mains and the borrowed fusion runs. This time with lots more space tape. “HOLD THIS TIME.”

  The Durgar had paused, rocking their suits back from their knees as the only way to look up and examining the rear of the ship.

  “There,” Beejor said, excitedly. “There, like lightning!”

  “Yessss,” Sardak said, uncertainly, flipping up his goggles for a better view up the rocket motor. “But what is that orange…”

  “YES!” Josten shouted.

  “It worked?” Nicole asked, picking herself up off the floor and checking for leaks in her suit. No apparent holes, but a couple of bruises. The burn hadn’t lasted more than five or six seconds and then one of the runs had failed catastrophically. The electrical blow-back had fed into the control board, since she’d locked out the safety breakers, and the resultant explosion had knocked her over. The engine was now thoroughly trashed, but the suit appeared intact. She’d have to take vacuum slowly though and check.

  “Four crisped orcs!” Josten said. “It kicked them right off the hull and the last I saw of them their armor was half melted. Good job!”

  “Thanks,” Nicole said. “That’ll teach them to fuck with an engineer.”

  “What is wrong?” Reyes asked. The goblin pilot had meeped in surprise and they’d all felt the shudder in the ship.

  “One of the shuttle engines fired, Great One!” the goblin said, excitedly. “Off course are we!”

  “Get us back on course,” Reyes growled.

  “Am Great One!” the goblin replied. “Fast.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Nicole, what’s going on?” Herzer asked.

  Maintenance was bank after bank of mesh-screened enclosures and a small personnel area. Several of the enclosures held repair bots and he could see three of them lighting off as he watched.

  “I had to fire the secondaries on shuttle five to get rid of some orcs,” Nicole replied. “The engine room is thoroughly trashed.”

  Herzer watched as the vaguely humanoid bots floated out on anti-grav and began collecting materials. When one of them got to the bin that was supposed to hold injectors it paused uncertainly, as if surprised by the dearth of injectors in the bin, and then wandered off to grab a coil of heavy wire.

  “Repair bots headed your way,” Herzer said. “Don’t get in their way.”

  “They’re going to be busy in here,” Nicole admitted. “I’m going to see if my suit is still functional. If it is, I’ll join up with Josten and we’ll head for Maintenance. I think we’ll probably circle to the starboard side and enter over there. Any friendlies around?”

  “Van Krief is over there with Richard and her security team,” Herzer said. “Join up with them. Take care.”

  “Will do,” Nicole said. “Out.”

  “Herzer, I need to go override the controls on the shuttles,” Megan said. “That’s next on the program, right? And I’d better hurry or they’re going to leave.”

  “Take Joie and Michelle and go override eleven and twelve,” Herzer said. “Take Jacklyn for computer backup. Captain Van Buskirk, secure the councilwoman and her team. Take your team and Yetta.”

  “Yes, sir,” the captain said, nodding and getting up from the station chair he’d appropriated.

  “If you don’t run into resistance, cross over and override nine and ten,” Herzer added. “I’ll send Kristina and Irvin over direct. Cruz.”

  “Yessuh?” the lieutenant said.

  “Take your team and head out to the port-side shuttles and start shutting them down,” he said. “Take Evan as your tech. Link up with Van Krief and get back here pronto.”

  “Will do,” Cruz replied, donning his helmet. “I live to serve.” It was the motto of the New Destiny orcs and it got a chuckle from the Blood Lords donning their helmets.

  “That only leaves you and Layne here for security,” Megan pointed out.

  “We’ll have to live with that,” Herzer said. “Get going, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” Megan said, dimpling. She donned her helmet and let him buckle it in place. “You be careful.”

  “I’m the one sitting in Maintenance,” Herzer pointed out. “You take care.”

  When the team was gone he wandered over to where Linda and Geo had set up some sort of engineering project.

  “Working on the whatchamacallits?” Herzer asked.

  “The Tammens, Herzer,” Geo said, chuckling. “I know you know what they are.”

  The device was about two meters long and a quarter meter wide. Currently they had three of the side panels off and were bent over, removing portions of the interior. From Herzer’s point of view, the interior looked something like a wire-form human anatomy. Including the nervous system.

  “You really think this thing can give us a field generator?” Herzer asked.

  “Oh, it is a field generator,” Geo said. “But it can only handle a bare megawatt of throughput. What we’re doing is using that megawatt of throughput to form a secondary field generator that can handle, oh… a few gigawatts at least. Control is going to be spotty, however. I hadn’t realized how antiquated the interfaces were. This version uses copper base molycircs. Very very antique. We’ll have to hook them up to the primary engine busses for power. They’ll give Megan some significant power as long as the engines aren’t firing.”

  “The engines are firing,” Herzer pointed out. “You hadn’t noticed?”

  “No,” Geo said, finally noticing the rumble under his feet. “Why? I mean, why are they firing?”

  “No idea,” Herzer said. “I don’t think there was a burn scheduled.”

  “Not that I recall,” Geo agreed, frowning. “We need to find out where we’re going, Herzer.”

  “Well, we’re not going anywhere fast,” Herzer pointed out. “This is an ion drive, remember, low thrust.”

  “But it builds up a good deal of a velocity over time,” Geo pointed out. “They might be crashing the ship into the Moon, for example.”

  “Oh,” Herzer said. “We need to override a console… shit. I just sent Megan down to the shuttles. We can’t override without her.”

  “Can we look out a window?” Geo asked, looking up from the complicated field generator.

  “You can’t figure out where you’re going by…” Herzer said then paused. “Josten?”

  “Go,” the pilot said. He was breathing hard.

  “You’re on the surface still?” Herzer asked.

  “Yeah,” Josten replied. “We’re headed over the ship to starboard. Why?”

  “Can you more or less tell where the ship is pointed?” Herzer asked, carefully. “Like, is it pointed at the Moon?”

  There was a long pause and then Josten chuckled.

  “Nice one, Herzer. No, it’s not pointed at the Moon. But we have been maneuvering. The latitude thrusters are firing, as well as the main engine. If I had to make a guess, I’d say we’re maneuvering towards Earth.”

  “Damn,” Herzer said, frowning. “Thanks, Josten. Hurry and join up with Van Krief. We need her team back here, pronto.”

  “I can get into a console and call up a navigational program,” Geo said. “Or Courtney can, for that matter. But it won’t tell us what the ship is doing unless we override the navigation controls.”

  “And we can’t hack nav until Megan gets back,” Herzer said. “Joie.”

  “Joie here,” the pilot r
eplied. “Megan’s overridden twelve. There’s another thirty-seven minutes until it detaches.”

  Herzer thought about the fact that the shuttle really needed to be secured and then shrugged.

  “We’ll put a picket outside the shuttle. If New Destiny heads for it, punch even if you’re not full. Get back to Earth and get me some reinforcements. But for now, can you figure out the ship’s navigation from there?”

  “Not really,” Joie said. “I don’t know how long their burn is going to be. I can tell we’ve been adjusted towards an Earth orbit. But, depending on the burn, we could be pointed to pass the Earth, go into an orbit, or even crash into it. It just depends on the burn.”

  “What happens if the burn stops, soon?” Herzer asked.

  “We’ll head on past Earth well outside orbital,” Joie answered after a moment. “If it stops any time in the next forty minutes. After that there’s a period when ending the burn will direct the ship into a degrading orbit around the Earth; effectively we’ll crash unless we adjust course radically. Then, after about ten hours or so, we’d pass right by again. I’ll take a look at the Moon’s trajectory, but I don’t think it’s going to be an issue.”

  “Thanks, Joie,” Herzer said, frowning. “Geo… no, Linda.”

  “Yes?” The engineering tech looked up.

  “Go with Layne to Engineering,” Herzer said, looking into the distance. “Stop the burn.”

  “That’s a tall order, Herzer,” Linda said. “The controls are…”

  “Just stop it,” Herzer snapped. “We do not want the ship heading anywhere near Earth, okay? Bad things can happen. You’ve got about thirty minutes to stop it. After that, things get bad. Just go.”

  “Okay,” the redhead said, frowning. “I’ll go.”