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

by John Ringo

  “The stars really are spectacular out here,” Courtney said lightly. “I think I do better if I concentrate on them, don’t you?”

  “No,” Megan replied, nervously.

  “Are you okay?” Courtney asked.

  “Not really,” Megan admitted. She was carefully watching each of her boots as they clamped on. “I’m okay if I don’t look around.”

  “We’re nearly to the airlock, mistress,” Captain Van Buskirk replied. “It’s about ten steps more…”

  “Orcs,” Triari Sergeant Doclu said, suddenly. “Our seven o’clock.” He’d been doing an occasional three-sixty turn looking for problems just like the one that had popped up.

  Van Buskirk turned and looked towards where a group of five orcs had just exited one of the airlocks. They didn’t seem to have noticed the humans despite being less than seventy meters away on the gently curving hull.

  “Mistress Travante, Comp Tech Boehlke, if you’ll just continue to the airlock, we’ll manage this,” the captain said calmly.

  “We should—” Courtney said.

  “Just keep walking,” Megan replied, cutting her off. “Just head for the airlock, Courtney. Herzer…”

  “Go, Megan,” Herzer replied.

  “There are orcs coming out of one of the airlocks on the main starboard passage,” Megan noted. “They’re between us and Cruz’s team.”

  “Captain Van Buskirk, ensure the security of the councilwoman,” Herzer said, calmly.

  “We’re screening her exit, sir,” Bus replied. “She’s right by the Maintenance lock, now. As soon as she’s got the lock open, I’ll send the councilwoman, Courtney and half my team through. Then the rest of the team will follow.”

  “Do their intentions appear hostile?”

  The orcs had finally noticed them but they were still hanging by the hatch. Bus wasn’t sure of the answer.

  “Not so far,” he admitted. “We’re holding our position, they’re holding theirs.”

  “I’d like to know where they are headed,” Herzer admitted.

  “From the looks of things,” Bus said as another group of orcs, and four scorpions, emerged on the hull and the whole group headed down the midline towards the aft of the ship, “Engineering.”

  * * *

  “And that’s a wrap,” Linda said, closing the security cage. They’d pulled all the bars without the alarm ever going off.

  “What do we do with them?” Layne asked.

  “Well, we don’t want to destroy them,” Linda said, frowning. “I think we should try to hide ’em.”

  “Layne.”

  “Go, sir,” the Blood Lord sergeant replied.

  “Orcs headed your way on the surface. Get the hell out of Engineering.”

  “We’ve pulled the main busses,” Linda said. “But if we just leave them here, they’re going to just reinstall ’em.”

  There was a brief pause while Layne and Linda looked at each other and shrugged.

  “The orcs just emerged from airlock twenty-six,” Herzer replied after a moment. “You’ve got about ten minutes, maximum, to do something with them, get suited and get out. Get cracking.”

  “Lieutenant Cruz, I presume,” Nicole said, waving at the figure that was emerging from the airlock.

  “Jesus, Nickie,” Cruz replied, waving back slowly. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  Nicole and Josten were standing on the “bottom” of the ship. Of course, in microgravity, up and down didn’t have much meaning and down looked pretty much like up had.

  “Where’s Van Krief?” Josten asked.

  “Already headed back on the port side, lower,” Cruz replied as the rest of his team slowly climbed out of the hatch. “We got all the shuttles but number one. That was so close to punching, I skipped it. But it was headed for Alabad, anyway.”

  “I guess we’ll be seeing Team Graff in about twenty hours,” Nicole said.

  “If we last that long,” Cruz replied.

  “Cruz, Van Krief.”

  “Go, Herzer,” Cruz said.

  “Orcs are on the upper, rear, starboard quadrant headed for Engineering. Get back here as fast as you can. Right now, the only security in the area is me and Bus’s team.”

  “Moving,” Cruz replied. “But we’ve got one long damned spacewalk back.”

  “Just put one foot in front of the other,” Herzer said. “Out.”

  * * *

  “They went right by us,” Captain Van Buskirk said, taking off his helmet. “I left Mota on the surface to watch them.”

  “We’ll have to rotate him off,” Herzer replied, looking at Megan. “You okay, honey?”

  “I don’t like being out on the surface,” Megan admitted. “Too big, you know?”

  “I know,” Herzer said. She looked so wan and unhappy he wanted to hug her but now was neither the time nor the place. “Get some rest. Bus, for the time being, station somebody by the port airlock as well. I’d like some warning if they come at us on the surface. When Cruz gets back we’ll put somebody down in the belly, as well. Then we just hang tight. Everybody hook their systems up and recharge on air. We’ve got control of four shuttles. Sooner or later they’re going to figure that out and then we’ll see what they do.”

  “Let’s cut through the ring,” Nicole said as they approached the rear structural ring. “It’s shorter and it’s less likely to have orcs hanging around. And our icepacks can refreeze. I don’t know about you, but I’m heating up.”

  “Works,” Cruz said. “Which airlock?”

  “Ninety-six,” Nicole replied, pointing towards the underside of the ring. It looked like the top from where they were standing. “Cut through the EVA room then we’ll hand-over-hand on the support strings.”

  The EVA support room had an oversized hatch and all nine of them could fit in at once. The hatch had large arrows pointing to “down” for when gravity came on.

  “Ah, that feels better,” Sergeant Nasrin said as they settled to the bottom of the airlock. As the air went out, the gravity came on, slowly. By the time the airlock was fully pressurized, the room was at full gravity. “Down is a wonderful thing.”

  “There’s an inner hatch down the way,” Nicole said, leading the way. The EVA room had clear-faced lockers for suits, all of which were empty, and at both ends were sets of thrusters. Those were in place.

  “Think we should pick up a thrust pack?” Nasrin said, gesturing to the devices.

  “Those things are about six hundred years old,” Nicole replied, walking over to the inner-ring hatch. It was set in the rear bulkhead of the room, between two of the suit racks. “You really want to trust one?”

  “On second thought,” Nasrin replied.

  The group piled into the airlock and in a minute they were back in microgravity.

  “As a shortcut, this leaves a lot to be desired,” Triari Sergeant Dhanapal growled. The group of Blood Lords had paused, staring into the inky blackness.

  “That line,” Nicole said, pointing to the nearest support string. “Take that to the inner juncture, take the second one to the right when we get there and that will take us right to Maintenance.”

  “You’re sure,” Cruz asked, considering the distance to the support string. There were handholds on the wall of the inner ring and he first hooked on his safety line, then reached for one of the rungs.

  “I’m sure,” Nicole said. She hooked her safety line next to Cruz but instead of using the rings she pushed herself off lightly towards the support string.

  “There are old spacemen and bold spacemen,” Cruz said. “Watch your pretty neck.”

  “I am,” Nicole replied, catching the support string on her way by and correcting her spin with her grip. She pulled the release lanyard and carefully retrieved the safety line. “But what we need for this is something like a locking ring.”

  “We’ll link up,” Cruz said. “Hook the safety lines together and go up it in a string. If a person gets loose, we’ll retrieve him. Everybody careful to
uching these things; they’ve got to be cold as hell. Don’t damage your gloves.”

  The support string was just big enough around to grip, about ten millimeters in diameter, and appeared to be constructed of plastic.

  “What is this stuff?” Cruz asked as the group slowly moved up the string.

  “Carbon nanotube,” Nicole said. “Very strong, very light.”

  “Same stuff dragons use in their wings,” Josten said. “Cool.”

  “But this is a millennia or so old,” Nicole noted. “If there are any breaks in it, it’ll puncture the suit gloves in a heartbeat. So keep a careful eye out.”

  “Handy safety tip,” Cruz replied dryly. “Thanks for telling us after we took the shortcut.”

  “If there are any orcs down here they’ll have their lights on,” Nicole pointed out. “So we’ll be able to see them… across the whole ring, probably. And down here, we’re not getting bombarded by radiation.”

  “And sunlight,” Cruz said. “We spent most of our time in the sun. Our icepacks were about used up. We had to keep going into the shade to freeze them down again.”

  “But the shuttles are well and truly screwed,” Evan said. “All the injectors except for shuttle one are spinning off in space.”

  “Mission more or less accomplished,” Cruz said. “Now all we have to do is stay alive to make it back to Earth. And hold onto the shuttles we control, of course.”

  “And Linda apparently pulled the power busses to the engines,” Nicole said. “There were orcs headed for Engineering. I wonder if they’ve got them back online.”

  “She said they hid them,” Cruz replied. “It’ll be interesting to hear where…”

  “Be glad you were in sun,” Van Krief said, shaking her head. All of the teams were back in Maintenance and, with the exception of the attack on Team Massa, there had been no casualties, for which everyone was thankful. Since most of the teams had spent the better part of two hours out in the beyond, they were thankful to be back in pressure. There were air rechargers in the maintenance section and everyone had refilled their oxygen bottles. The CO2 scrubbers were good for a couple of days. “We were working on the shadow side of the ship. It was like working in a mine. It’s incredible how black it gets. And cold. At first, before they maneuvered, we were getting some reflectance from the Earth. But after they maneuvered, we got nada. It was suit lights all the way.”

  “Try having your icepacks melt and the nearest refill being the other end of the ship,” Cruz pointed out. “We were glad for shade.”

  “I spent most of my time hooked up to the shuttle systems,” Courtney admitted. “I don’t know why I was even along; Megan had the override down pat.”

  “In case there was a snag,” Megan said, smiling. “And to hold my hand; I really didn’t like being out in the vacuum.”

  “Okay, everybody, listen up,” Herzer said. “They can’t get through the doors and they can’t get the shuttles working. And the main engine and thrusters are down.”

  “Dead,” Linda said. “Of course, they might find the busses,” she added with a grin.

  “You hid them, right?” Herzer asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Linda replied, grinning wider. “I dare even Evan to find them.”

  “Just as a bit of useful information,” Evan said, dryly. “Where are they?”

  “Where are they?” Gomblick snarled, looking around the engineering space. The six main power busses were completely removed.

  “What do they look like?” Tur-uck asked, looking around. “How big are they?”

  “Pretty much like…” Gomblick said and looked up at the massive latticework of power busses that led to the ion cannons. “Pretty much like every single one of those…” he said, pointing.

  “They’re jammed in to the auxiliary power junctures,” Linda said, smiling. “One per engine between the fifth and sixth juncture. They look just like all the rest of the busses and since there’s a gap there they look totally normal. I dare them to find them in that tangle. You’d have to get out the schematic and look for busses that aren’t supposed to be there.”

  “If they’re all the same, can’t they just remove one of the other ones and reinstall them?” Bus asked.

  “No,” Evan replied, nodding to Linda. “Pull one of the busses and you’re going to cause a cascade failure in the drive. And with the busses in place… You made sure they were a hot contact, right?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Linda said, smiling.

  “With the spare busses in place, the system would be totally destabilized,” Evan noted. “Think of it as being shorted out. And I’m not sure you could trace the short with any great ease. You’d have to have full power. Damn, you’re right, I don’t know if I could find them.”

  “Herzer,” Nicole said, “I’d like to apologize.”

  “Why?” Herzer asked. “You did one hell of a job. Hell, you all did one hell of a job. All I did was sit here and worry.”

  “I got really peeved at you in training,” Nicole admitted. “You kept pushing and kept making us learn some really oddball stuff. I thought we just needed to know how to pull the injectors. But I’ve had to cover half the ship. If you hadn’t made us learn all that stuff…”

  “Hell, if I had to, you had to,” Herzer said with a grin. “Van Krief, what do you think New Destiny will do when they realize they don’t have a way to redirect the ship and they don’t have control of any of the shuttles?”

  “Try to seize the functioning shuttles?” Van Krief said. “Maybe figure out a way to get the engines back online? Why were they doing a burn, anyway?”

  “I think I’ve figured that one out,” Evan said, frowning. “If they can get the ship inside geosynchronous orbit, they can teleport the fuel out.”

  “I’ve got a teleport block in place,” Megan pointed out.

  “Then they’ll try to find you and take you out,” Evan replied. “But they don’t have controls. Heck, they don’t even have power.”

  “They’re going to do something,” Cruz noted.

  “They’ll have to attack on the surface,” Van Krief pointed out. “If they can get the shuttles, Reyes can override Megan’s controls. But I don’t know if they have pilots.”

  “They won’t need them,” Linda pointed out. “If they just let them run on program they’ll get half the fuel.”

  “And we don’t want that,” Herzer noted. “When the shuttles get back, we’ll be supplemented by twenty-four Lords. But until then, I think we’re still outnumbered. Maintenance has just about lost its utility to us. Evan, get with Geo and find out what he needs to rework the other Tammens. Then we’ll split up, collect them, and head for Engineering. When the shuttles come back, we’ll use the incoming teams for security on the transfer. We’re going to hunker down in Engineering and hold out until then.”

  “You may have my head, Great One,” Tur-uck said, bowing before Reyes. “We tried to find the power leads but they were either thrown away or hidden beyond our ability to find.”

  “There are over four thousand buss bars, Great One,” Gomblick said, licking his lips nervously. “If they were hidden in that tangle, I couldna find them.”

  “Get up,” Reyes growled at Tur-uck. “We have no control, here. We will move the whole group to Engineering and search it inch by inch if that is what is necessary to find the power bars.”

  “Great One, I have a question,” Tur-uck said, cautiously. “When we were returning, I noticed that most of the shuttles were still attached. Were they not supposed to have refueled and returned to Earth?”

  “Yes,” Reyes said, looking at Gomblick.

  “I dunno know why,” the engineer said, his eyes widening. “I didna do it!”

  “Find out,” Reyes growled.

  The engineer took a seat in front of the shuttle control panel and began hunting through menus as Reyes furiously tapped one foot.

  “They’re disabled,” Gomblick said, finally, wincing as he did. “The injector system canna work on the e
ngines. Only shuttle one and the four to the rear launched. The four to the rear launched under internal control. They’re all heading to Coalition reactors.”

  “Damn them,” Reyes screamed. “While we’ve been running all over the ship trying to deal with their crap, they disabled the shuttles and no one noticed?”

  “I was in Engineering,” Gomblick said, cowering in front of the raging Great One. “Tom was trying to fix the doors and Goblast…” He ended, nervously, looking at the body in the corner.

  “Can you fix them?” Reyes asked, trying to control his temper. He only had two engineers left and he didn’t need it pointed out that the one he’d killed would have been the one to tell him the shuttles were being deactivated.

  Gomblick hunched over the control panel again and began calling up more menus, muttering under his breath as he did. After a moment the mutter died away.

  “What?” Reyes said, dangerously.

  “The injectors ha’ been pulled from the engines, Great One,” Gomblick replied, not bothering to turn around. “And Maintenance lists the spare injector bin as empty. The bots ha’ repaired shuttle five’s damage, all but the injector. There’s a replicator in Maintenance, but it’s been taken offline.” He turned around and looked the Great One in the eye, firmly. “No, I canna repair them. Not wi’out the injectors. And if they’ve gone an’ buggered them this good, they’ll ha’ gone and buggered the spares.”

  Reyes stared at him, hard, until the kobold dropped his gaze; then the Key-holder looked away as well.

  “We’ll capture their tame shuttles when they get back,” Reyes, finally. “In the meantime, we need to get to Engineering and get the engines back online. Somehow. Pilot Reefic and four Durgar stay here. The rest of you are on me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Whoa,” Corporal Berghaus muttered as the airlock in the distance opened. He was hiding in the dimple near shuttle eleven, one of three pickets left out in vacuum to watch for New Destiny’s response. And it was a good thing he was since New Destiny was responding. First four scorpions crawled out and spread out. The metallic arthropods did, indeed, have magnetic feet and they could move much more quickly than humans or orcs on the exterior of the ship. The question in everyone’s mind was how long they could survive on the surface. They’d only been seen in death pressure for a few minutes at a time.