Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

Hadeishi clicked twice, indicating he understood.

  We have a match on the ship registration number from engine nacelle four. Koshō continued, sounding a little smug. Initial analysis had not found any identifying markings on the visible sections of the refinery. Everyone agreed the miners would probably have replaceable panels for use if they docked in port. The exec had not given up so easily, running all of the visual data through a variety of enhancement procedures. In time, a painted-over number had been found. Ship registry out of Novaya Zemlya Station, Rho Triangulis system. The Turan. A Tyr-class mobile open-space refinery. Master of last record is unknown. Crew registry is unknown.

  "Understood." Hadeishi grimaced. He'd hoped to learn something of the man or woman he faced from the public shipping records in the Cornuelle's database. "We are at two hundred meters. Hold one."

  The Fleet pilot looked up questioningly. Hadeishi keyed through a secondary comp panel bolted to the side of the carrel. Builder's blueprints and diagrams flashed past. After a moment, he pointed out a particular assembly.

  "Left," he said carefully, "six hundred meters, then in about a hundred and full stop."

  The pilot glanced out at the massive shape looming in front of them. Against the mountain-sized bulk of the Turan, the EVA platform was a fly buzzing against a temple column. The woman grinned, showing perfect white teeth in a cocoa-brown face, and gently swung the control stick over. The carrel tipped and scooted along the boundary of an enormous, round ore tank. Hadeishi gripped tighter on the bar, watching girders, panels, lading-ports, a ten-meter high "16" and intermittent singleton work lamps glowing against the darkness, drift past.

  Hadeishi turned and caught Felix's eye. "Someone needs to watch the comm wire as we turn into the approach. We'll stop and untangle if we snag."

  The heicho bared her teeth in a tense grin. One hand was clinging like a limpet to the overhead retaining bar, the other was steadying the blunt, wicked shape of a four-barreled Bofors Whipsaw squad support weapon. "Tonuac's on it."

  "Good." Hadeishi swung round to watch the curving wall of ore tank sixteen drift past—then it ended abruptly, leaving a dark canyon framed by the looming bulk of tank fourteen. Despite an outwardly calm demeanor, Mitsu's hand clamped tight on the bar as the pilot swung the platform into the pitch-black space. "Steady as she goes, Sho-i Asale."

  The Mixtec ignored him, her entire body concentrated on the delicate control required by the four maneuvering jets. Without even the faint gleam of the stars or the irregularly-spaced worklights, she was flying blind, guided solely by a carefully crippled radar unit whose power output could almost be measured in candles. Hadeishi gained an impression of vast shapes rising on either side among a forest of girders and pipes. Once the platform made a hard course correction to port, then back again. The sound of his breathing was very loud in his helmet.

  Asale was sweating too. He could see silvery beads slithering down her forehead, but the pilot's concentration never wavered. The platform glided to a stop, then rose up, swimming past ill-defined structures. A single light suddenly appeared—a recessed door with an illuminated faceplate and lock window—rut the pilot did not stop. The platform continued to rise, minutes ticking past. Then she brought them to a stop, stabilizing the platform with two short bursts.

  "We've got a problem." Asale looked up at Hadeishi, biting her lip in thought. "We've got thirty meters to go, to reach the airlock you want. But the space ahead is constricted—some kind of framework running crossways in front of the lock." She fingered the blueprint, showing where they were.

  Felix pressed in close, eyeballing the schematic, while Hadeishi was thinking. "We could dismount here and go in on suit thrusters."

  "No." Hadeishi wanted to rub his jaw, which was entirely impossible in the suit. "We'd have to move the gear by hand—and we'll need it inside. What clearance do we need?"

  Asale consulted the weak, scattered radar image. "Side to side we're fine, but this platform is just a bit too high."

  "Felix, cut off the roof." Hadeishi moved himself carefully into the space directly behind the pilot. "We'll crouch down."

  "Hai, Chu-sa!" Felix replied immediately, moving into the corner he'd vacated. "Hand tools on cutting blade," she ordered the three Marines floating behind her. "Cut the framework off at one meter. Then we'll push it clear—gently."

  Hadeishi settled in to wait. He could feel a vibration in the platform through his boots as the Marines began cutting through the framework of hexacarbon pipe the engineers had taken such care to install. Losing the shroud of absorptive fabric would reveal them to any active sensors in the vicinity, but he hoped the miners had not decided to mount a targeting radar inside the ore-tank shield.

  Felix's team worked with commendable speed, and only three minutes later the encasing roof was pushed up and away, drifting back a few meters, hull-fabric standing out stiff from the edges of the cut.

  "Let's go." Hadeishi rapped gently on Asale's shoulder. The pilot nodded and the platform began to edge forward. Far ahead, Mitsu thought he could make out the oblong rectangle of an airlock door edged with tiny green lights.

  Koshō turned away from the video feed transmitted by Felix's helmet.

  "They are almost at the airlock," she announced to the bridge crew. There was a full complement at their consoles, though by shiptime this was early in third watch. Every hand aboard was awake and standing to battle stations. "Hayes-tzin, do you have a firing solution?"

  "Hai, Sho-sa." The weapons officer nodded sharply, his face mostly obscured by the helmet of his combat suit. The sho-sa was taking every precaution. At any moment, they could be engaged in a point-blank beam weapon shoot-out with a hostile ship sixty times their size. "One bird, sprint mode. Shall I load out?"

  "Proceed." Koshō turned her attention to a camera view shot from one of the point-defense sensor clusters on the skin of the Cornuelle. Hayes tapped a series of commands on his panel. A section of the ship's hull retracted, revealing the mouth of a missile accelerator mount. Gleaming magnet rings shone brightly for a moment and then the snout of an Atlatl-IV anti-ship missile emerged with graceful speed. The missile exited the ringtrack and drifted free of the ship's hull.

  Not the usual kind of launch, Susan thought, suppressing a snort of amusement.

  On the screen, three z-suited figures drifted into view, guiding an EVA collar between them. Five minutes of careful work clamped the collar around the Atlatl. Two of the men jetted away, while the third accessed a control panel on the collar. Susan leaned slightly forward, watching for signs of trouble.

  "Guidance test underway." Yoyontzin's voice burred on the intership channel. "Test is green."

  Hayes tapped a glyph on his own panel. "Remote comm test is a go." A v-pane appeared, displayed a variety of results, then vanished again. "Test shows green. Remote control is live."

  After acknowledging the results, the engineer jetted away from the missile and Susan waited patiently until all three men were processing in through number eight airlock. She looked to Hayes and nodded. Her own hand drifted above a preprogrammed point-defense weapons order.

  "Sprint One is under secondary power," the weapons officer reported. "Maneuvering."

  Susan watched the fully-armed Atlatl move away from her ship, accelerating slowly as the jets on the collar hissed thin streams of white vapor into the black abyss of space. Fifteen minutes later, the missile had vanished from sight, curving away around the mass of the asteroid screening the Cornuelle from the Turan.

  "Sprint One has cleared self-destruct distance." Hayes consulted his panel. "Sprint One will be at launch station in sixteen minutes."

  Susan nodded, allowing herself to savor an atom of relief. She had moderate faith in Yoyontzin's abilities, but the prospect of anything—much less an antimatter-charged shipkiller—colliding with the hull of the Cornuelle precipitated a cold sweat of tension. "Proceed with inertial guidance check and targeting comp test."

  The weapons officer nodded, keyi
ng a new set of commands into his panel. There had been some problems with reconfiguring the Atlatl to acquire target, lock and ignite within the minute acceleration time frame required by their current situation. The manufacturers had not envisioned using the heavy-class shipkiller at knife distance. Susan wondered if the code modifications would hold up in a split second of reaction time. As the gods will.

  She looked away from the view of the stars, returning her attention to the feed from Felix's helmet.

  Hadeishi swung out of the platform, tucking in his legs to clear the ragged edge of the now-missing frame. Felix and her men had unloaded all of the gear, anchoring the crates to the refinery hull in a semicircle around the airlock door. Corporal Felix and Tonuac were crouched at the lock access panel, having removed the faceplate, with a cluster of cables snaking from the blocky comm relay into the opening. They were watching a hand-held spin through millions of control code combinations. At the far end of their hardwire, the Cornuelle's main comp was prying at the commercial-grade control circuits in the lock mechanism.

  "Almost through ..." Felix motioned to the chu-sa. "Thirty-five seconds, kyo. Please stand out of the line of fire. Maratay and Clavigero will enter first."

  Obediently, Hadeishi touched down beyond the ring of equipment, letting his boots adhere to the scarred, blackened hull. He found it wryly amusing that the EVA platform now seemed to be hanging in the air overhead. The two Marine privates shifted themselves to include him inside the immediate fire perimeter. Both men were crouched and braced against the hull, shipguns out and armed.

  "Sho-i Asale," Hadeishi clicked open the comm. "You should back off, out of this confined space. Take station a hundred or so meters from the exterior ring of ore tanks and stand by."

  The pilot frowned—Mitsu could see her worried expression through the glassite of her faceplate. "Kyo—what if you need extraction? I should stay close."

  "We might not need pickup from this particular airlock," he replied, keeping an eye on the darkness among the gantries and space framing joining the ore tanks to the refinery hull. "Take your time and stay clear of the hardwire."

  Asale nodded dubiously, but ran through her flight check and then—in a faint cloud of vapor—began to back the platform away from the airlock. At the same time, Felix stood and took up position to cover the airlock opening.

  "We're in," she said, thumbing the safety on the Whipsaw to live fire, single-shot.

  Hadeishi crouched down as the two privates swung round and took hold of the locking bars on the face of the lock. He did not bother to check his own sidearm. If things degenerated to a firefight, his own nominal skill with a pistol or assault rifle would not make much of a difference.

  The airlock unbolting vibrated through the hull. Hadeishi could see the seal outgassing and then a brighter light flooded out as the heavy pressure door recessed and slid aside, leaving a half-moon-shaped section exposed. Maratay ducked inside, crabbing around the corner, gun first. Clavigero followed a heartbeat later and their voices—low and clipped—filled the comm channel.

  "Clear. No hostiles."

  "Clear. Inner door seal intact. No warning lights."

  Felix signed for him to enter and Hadeishi swung 'round and inside in a single motion. He felt the tug of a differential gravity interface inside the white-painted chamber and oriented himself by the g-deck logo stenciled on the wall. Clavigero was already at the inner hatch, peering this way and that, watching for opposition.

  "Chu-sa? We could use a hand here?" Felix was standing above him, boots still adhered to the outer hull, looking down impatiently. Tonuac was releasing the first of the equipment cases from its anchor.

  "Of course," Hadeishi flashed a reassuring smile. Some officers would have been content to stand aside, but he did not believe in shirking and speed was of the essence. He braced himself and took hold of the lanyard attached to the first case. A blocky gray container marked with the ownership glyph of the Engineering department drifted solidly into his hands. Hadeishi swung it aside to the wall of the airlock and thumbed the adhesion patches 'live'. The case attached itself to the wall with a solid thump.

  As Hadeishi hauled the equipment inside, Felix angled through their midst with the octopuslike assembly of the comp interface. There was a second access panel beside the inner door. She removed the faceplate with her hand tool in a series of crisp, flawless actions. Hadeishi, watching her out of the corner of his eye, was pleased to see the endless round of sims had imparted noticeable effects.

  The heicho began clipping interface leads onto the exposed components. At the inner door, Clavigero was counting nervously, marking the seconds while the airlock was exposed to open space. The builder's blueprints indicated a two-minute safety interlock, past which an alarm might sound. Hadeishi hoped the miners had not wired a direct alarm system to the bridge.

  "Stand by to pierce outer hatch." Tonuac swam inside with the last case. The bulky shape of a shipyard hexacarbon drill was strapped to his chest. As he did so, Maratay kicked himself out through the opening, catching the edge of the opened lock door. He swung round to face back inside. His motions had the same kind of controlled, endlessly-practiced grace shown by Felix in disassembling the access panel.

  Hadeishi flattened himself against a wall now covered with gear. Felix ignored Tonuac as he powered up the drill and maneuvered the machine to sit flush with the airlock door. A series of lights on Felix's panel flashed amber in warning.

  "Forty-five seconds," she announced in an offhand voice. Tonuac ignored her, checking the seals around the base of the drill. A pressure test showed green and he punched the go button. Immediately, Hadeishi felt a thready, intermittent vibration through the wall at his back. The drill attacked the inner surface of the airlock door, ejecting a stream of sparking hexacarbon flakes through a side vent.

  "Thirty seconds." Felix consulted her handheld and let the Cornuelle comp attack the access panel. This time, there was a barely noticeable flash of numbers and the inner door unlocked. Door two unlocked."

  Hadeishi clicked his circuit to the Cornuelle. "Comm will be dead in five seconds."

  Koshō did not have time to reply. Felix rotated a locking ring and the hardline disconnected. The monofilament wire hung suspended for an instant before Maratay—his gloves protected by magnetically active pads—reeled the line out of the lock.

  "Fifteen seconds." Felix glanced at Tonuac. The drill was ill vibrating against the door.

  "Twelve seconds." Maratay nodded sharply and moved out of sight.

  "Door one pierced," Tonuac announced, disengaging the drill adhesion seals. He handed off the tool to Hadeishi, who stuffed it into the appropriate case. A cloud of drifting metallic curls floated around him. Outside, Maratay forced a pressure-sleeve into the fresh drill hole. The comm hardwire was tucked inside, mac grabbed the connector as it eeled through the opening, slid a seal gasket around the device and handed off to Felix.

  "Outer segment sealed." Maratay's harsh Gujari accent conveyed some of the tension Hadeishi felt. The Marine swung nimbly around the edge of the airlock door. He and Tonuac moved out of the door frame itself. "Inner segment sealed. Outer door cleared to close."

  Hadeishi heard the comm channel chime open and saw Felix had reconnected the hardline to the relay. The system warbled happily to itself, signaling a clear connection back to the ship.

  "Six seconds," she declared, one hand poised over the outer door control lever. She eyeballed Tonuac and Maratay to make sure they were behind the crosshatched danger stripe and swung the control down. "Closing outer door."

  A thump followed as the airlock engaged, rolled closed and slid into secure position. Tonuac kept an eye on the hardwire, guiding the monofilament with his hands. "Outer door secure. Pressurizing."

  Two minutes later, the airlock was at positive, nominal pressure, the seals around the hardline were holding and the inner door rotated aside. Maratay and Clavigero sidled out into a dim, gray-walled passageway. Hadeishi waited u
ntil all four Marines had exited the lock and taken up positions on either side. He stepped out into shipside gravity and frowned.

  The bulkhead opposite held a dark—apparently broken—map panel. Streaks of rust spilled down unpainted metal. He looked up and down the corridor—some of the overhead lights were missing, while everything had an unmistakable air of decay and long-overdue maintenance. The difference between the immaculate, shipshape Cornuelle and this wreck was striking. Hadeishi shook his head in dismay and consulted his handheld

  "Left-hand corridor," he said, trying to avoid staring at the deck, which had a thin sheet of some kind of oil shimmering underneath the waffle-grid flooring. "Three hundred meters straight on, then there's an internal pressure hatch."

  Maratay moved out on point, gliding down the dingy passageway at a run. Hadeishi looked around again and clicked open the channel to the ship. "Sho-sa, what do you make of this?"

  The crew is too small, Susan's voice came back, as clear as if she stood at his side. And the ship is too large. According to the builder's plan, there are nearly a hundred and twenty k of corridor and pressurized space inside a Tyr.

  "Understood." Hadeishi closed the channel and bent to help Tonuac and Felix haul the rest of the equipment cases into the corridor.

  THE PALENQUE, INBOUND

  One of the v-panes showing a peapod data-feed suddenly went dark. A warning light flared on Magdalena's control panel and the resolution of the composite image on the main display degraded markedly. Now there was only a flickering, indistinct image of a vast, sprawling storm seen from a great height. Barely better than looking out a window at the distant planet. And who knew what was happening under the mottled ochre clouds?

  "Only one eye left. We see no better than a snake," the Hesht snarled helplessly. She wanted to pace or run or just crash through a stand of high grass, long legs blurring across hard-racked, dusty ground. Trapped on a tiny ship without proper exercise facilities, limping along at half-speed, a vast distance from the lost steppes of Heshukan, her options had been reduced to shredding the furniture ... and now even the joy of exercising her claws palled. "Parker, engine status?"