Jennings glared daggers out into space. “Do you want a fist in the mouth?” he demanded.
“Non, merci,” the reply came.
“Then get your asses back down to the first floor all the way across from the entrance. We found the control room,” he said.
“En route.”
“Fix, did you copy?” Jennings asked.
“You could nae hear me laughing up here?” he replied.
“Anything on the third floor?” he asked.
“Supply closets, maybe even some O two tanks. Hard to tell without lights though,” he reported.
“Alright, make your way back here,” he ordered.
Michelle looked at him through her faceplate and asked, “Are we going to make it?”
“Too early to tell,” he answered.
Thirty minutes later, Squawk was feverishly punching commands into a portable CPU that he had hardwired into the ore processing center’s own processor. The system had no power, but the computer did not seem to be in a state of disrepair. The engineer was clicking his tongue against his teeth in what could only be a dialect of the Pasquatil language, most likely some elegant form of cursing, Jennings supposed.
“Done,” Squawk announced in a high-pitched squeal of excitement.
“What’s done?” Jennings asked, but the question died in his throat as slowly some lights started fluttering on in the control room. There was also a dim glow beginning out on the work floor as the larger ceiling-set halogens took longer to warm up. “Squawk, you brilliant bastard,” he whispered in awe. “What do we have?”
“Main power!” he squeaked. “The entire complex powered! Cut off and redirected any power from inessential areas just in case.”
“Less chance of a burnout. Good thinking,” he commended, patting the Pasquatil on the shoulder. “What about life support?”
“Charging. Charging. Four hours until air levels are breathable,” he reported. The zeal had left his voice.
“Why so long?” he asked as a heavy weight seemed to plant itself on his chest.
“Mine and ore processing interconnected. Not designed to be set up separately,” he said.
“Dammit,” Jennings spat. “The situation set itself up perfectly. For some reason, the company left the main power and life support hardware in place, there’s no breeches in this building open to space and we’re still fucked.”
“Hold on a second,” Michelle said, laying a hand on his EVA sleeve. “Didn’t you say you found some oxygen canisters on the third floor?” she asked Fix.
“Might have, but I couldn’t tell,” he said. “Could’ve been acetylene.”
“Let’s check it out,” Jennings said.
They made their way up to the third floor together, the processing center seeming less haunted and frightening with the lights kicking on. Many were out, so there were large patches of darkness in places, but it was still much more amenable than the pure dark that had embraced them only a few minutes before. Fix led them back to a small room that had only one door and no windows. The door was a massive steel monstrosity set on hinges like an old fashioned bank vault door. The others seemed very excited when they saw this, but Michelle had no idea why.
“Let’s hope some of these tanks are still full and the machinery still works,” Jennings said excitedly.
The three men and one Pasquatil started inspecting the large gas tubes that were propped against one of the walls. They started talking excitedly, and Michelle did not feel like trying to keep up with their conversation. They kept finishing each other’s sentences and snapping their fingers, making excited exclamations and jabbering in some kind of techno-babble she had no hope of understanding. Engineering was nowhere near her major in college.
The room was relatively small, about ten feet by fifteen with a row of benches on one side and the equipment that everyone was so interested in on the other. The far wall had what looked like a refrigeration unit and a series of shelves that looked like it had once housed food stores. What was this room? Some type of emergency shelter, Michelle thought to herself. She turned around and looked at the wall dominated by the vault-door. In addition to the door’s control panel, there were two large electronic panels flashing messages. Stenciled above the left hand one was: Processing Center Atmosphere. The message flashing in red below it said: NONE. The other panel read Safe Room Atmosphere. It flashed the same message.
“This is a Safe Room?” she whispered.
“Yeah, in the event of a breech in the building, you’ve only got a minute or so to get into this room and get the door shut,” Jennings said, looking up at her.
“Air supply connected,” Squawk said.
“Fix, get the door kindly,” Jennings said.
As Fix swung the massive vault door shut, Michelle watched the board. The one on the left still showed no atmosphere, but the one on the right was flashing another message in yellow: SELF-CONTAINED.
Squawk turned a handle on the oxygen tank, punched a few commands into the control pad on the wall as Jennings continued, “This room is completely self-contained and is designed to be an emergency station for personnel to get to before the entire complex becomes a vacuum. There’s probably one on each floor and some in the mines.”
“It’s small for an entire complex,” she observed.
“Probably not a lot of people on this level, n’est-ce pas?” Lafayette observed. “Maybe they have bigger ones we missed on the other floors?”
“Maybe they don’t care about anyone on the lower floors,” Fix muttered.
A new message started flashing on the right hand screen: OXYGENATING. It only took a moment for the red letters to vanish entirely, replaced by green letters that read ATMOSPHERE ACTIVE.
“Is it safe?” Michelle asked.
“This would be a bad time for there to be a malfunction in the sign,” Lafayette said.
“Everyone, keep your helmets on,” Jennings ordered. “I’ll test it first.”
Tentatively, he shut off the oxygen feed for his own suit and removed his helmet. Jennings was unaware he had been holding his breath instinctively. At last, he let it out and breathed in again. He coughed suddenly and then sneezed.
“God, it’s dusty in here,” he muttered. He inhaled deeply again and satisfied, said, “All right, everyone, helmets off. Save your suit’s air. Amazingly enough, we seem to still be alive.”
Chapter 21
1
The next three and a half hours passed very slowly for Captain Jennings and his crew. There was nothing to do in the small emergency room, but sit and chat, but none of them felt much like it. It was a strange sensation- knowing that you were going to die. Jennings had felt it twice before in combat, times when he could not see a way to survive. He obviously had in both instances, but afterward he felt the same lethargic feeling that overcame him now. For some reason, being about to die really took it out of you.
Michelle had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, both of them leaning against the wall, Jennings staring off into space. From one of his pockets Lafayette had produced a deck of cards and after getting no takers for poker, began playing solitaire. The boring, repetitive nature of it must have been appealing. Fix’s eyes were closed, but Jennings could tell that he wasn’t asleep. Perhaps he was praying, Jennings thought. Fix had a weird sense of piety when he thought no one else was looking. Even the Pasquatil was out of it. The normally hyperactive Squawk had fallen into a heap on the floor and was snoring loudly. They were all so out of it, they almost did not notice when the screen displaying the Processing Center Atmosphere started reading SELF-CONTAINED: OXYGENATED.
It was Jennings’ eye that caught it first. “Alright, everybody up,” he announced with as much energy as he could muster, standing slowly and stretching as he did so. “Come on, up! Squawk, wake up! Squawk!” The Pasquatil remained snoring. Jennings turned to Lafayette, “Marquis, get his helmet on him. Helmets on everyone. I’ll open the door and test the air. Assuming I don’t get
spaced, we can assume we’re okay.”
Jennings swung the pressure door open and stepped through into the hallway. A couple of deep breaths of cool, musty air swam into his lungs. He coughed a little but did not decompress, explode or instantly freeze, which he took as a good sign.
“God smiles at us for a change, non?” Marquis said as he pulled off his helmet.
“Try not to jinx it,” Michelle muttered. This drew a look of annoyance from Jennings’ first mate.
“I guess Squawk isn’t going to wake up any time soon,” the captain observed. “Let’s leave him be. Fix, Marquis, get to the hangar bay, make sure it is pressurized and then start working on a way to get the Tryst in.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” Fix replied.
“Michelle and I will head back to the control room and see what we can find on this place. Maybe there are some parts we can salvage,” Jennings said. “We’ll get Squawk on the repairs once he’s conscious.”
“What then, mon capitaine?” Lafayette asked as Jennings turned to leave.
Jennings looked back. “We get out of here,” he said.
“And the girl?” he added.
He looked at Michelle, who was staring at him quite intently. She had to be wondering what was to become of her now that their lives had been spared. “She goes free,” he said. “I gave her my word.”
“Oui, mon capitaine,” Lafayette said bitterly.
Michelle and Jennings headed back to the stairs, the latter taking them two at a time down to the first floor. “Do you trust the Frenchman?” she called ahead to him.
“He’s Cajun actually.” He stopped and looked back to her. “With my life,” he answered. “I take it you don’t.”
“He doesn’t seem pleased that I’m not going to the Gael,” she said as she caught up to him.
Together they emerged into the processing center and walked past the long conveyor belts, headed toward the control room. “He’s just trying to watch out for me,” Jennings said. With as much false bravado as he could muster, Jennings added, “He knows I am too noble and honorable for my own good sometimes.”
“You don’t think he would hand me over to the Gael against your orders?” Michelle pressed.
“Remy Lafayette has been following my orders since before I had earned the right to give him any,” he explained. “I once ordered that man to hold a position against fifty Gael. He only had five men. Had he not held, our flank would have been rolled and what was left of the entire regiment destroyed. He held. I don’t if he’s capable of disobeying an order. So, to answer your question, you need not fear. There’s no chance he would sell you out to the Gael.” He paused. “Fix on the other hand…”
They stepped into the control room, and Jennings pulled a faux leather chair up to the computer console and started bringing up a diagnostic menu. “Fix doesn’t seem as perturbed as Lafayette,” she pointed out as she pulled up a chair next to him.
“That’s what would worry me,” Jennings said. “I haven’t known him as long, and I barely know him personally at all. I know he was in prison, and I get the feeling he wouldn’t want to go back. If things go south after we let you go, that’s exactly where the four of us are going to end up. That’s assuming they don’t space us.”
The data Jennings was looking for at last popped up on the screen. “Marquis, do you copy?” he asked into his comm unit.
“Go ahead, capitaine,” came the reply.
“Internal sensors confirm that you have power and atmosphere in the hangar,” he said. “External door should open and force fields should be in place.”
“Lot of shoulds in there,” Fix grumbled.
“We’re at the hangar entrance now, proceeding in,” Lafayette reported. There was the sound of a door swinging open on the comm and then Lafayette muttered, “Merde.”
“Problem?” Jennings asked.
“Place is a mess,” he reported back. “We’ll need to clear some space before we can bring the Tryst in.”
“Le temps, c’est l’argent, mon ami,” Jennings said in grade school passable French.
“Oui, mon capitaine,” the reply came back before he signed off.
“They’ll be a while sounds like,” Michelle observed.
“So will we,” Jennings replied.
“Doing what?”
“We’ve got to go through the schematics for the power systems here and the inventory screens for anything left behind that might fix the power plant and turn the Tryst’s engine back on,” he said. “If we can’t do that, we’re going to be here for a mighty long time.”
2
Getting the hangar bay clear was a lot of annoying, onerous work. There were bits of scrap metal, used fuel containers, lots of items that Lafayette couldn’t identify and categorized only as junk, and one amazingly still running power loader. Once they discovered that, the job became a lot easier. The bull-dozer like power loader pushed all the miscellaneous garbage to the far side of the hanger, giving them just enough room to fit the Melody Tryst inside. Now, they just had to deal with the problem of getting her in.
The grav-locks were shot on the towing emitter beams, so an electronic lock was impossible. The Melody Tryst had so little power left that trying to get her into the bay on her own power was likely to result in a crash of some kind or she would not even get off the ground. Finally, Lafayette found some industrial strength tritanium cable that they could run from the power loader to the Melody Tryst. Normally, a power loader would not be strong enough to tow a ship of the Melody Tryst’s size, but there was no atmosphere on the outside and therefore little resistance. Jennings realized if they depressurized the hangar bay, they shouldn’t have any trouble bringing her in.
A quick search of some of the maintenance lockers in the hangar revealed some full O two tubes for their spacesuits. After getting the suits restocked, and resealing themselves within, it was an easy enough matter to depressurize the bay and get the Melody Tryst towed inside. The relatively small ship, within the grand scheme of things, seemed massive in the hangar bay, its nose nearly scraping the back wall and the aft engines barely contained within the now closed hangar door.
The hangar was now re-pressurized, and Lafayette was eyeing his ship in a look of amazement and gratitude. “What’s that about?” Fix demanded.
“What?” he asked.
“Why are you staring at her like you’ve never seen her before?” Fix clarified.
“I didn’t think I would ever see her again,” he said nostalgically walking underneath one of the wings. He reached up and touched the metal gingerly and said, “Merci.”
“She just about died on us,” Fix pointed out.
“Non,” Lafayette countered, shaking his head. “She stayed alive long enough to get us where we need to be.”
Fix snorted. “I’ll nae ever understand the weird relationship you have with this bird,” he said.
“You don’t have to,” Lafayette said with a smile. “Come on. Let’s get this lady a drink.”
Together, they lugged several power connection cables hardwired into the base’s electrical supply over to the Melody Tryst’s belly section and attached them. There was a few moments pause before the control panel next to it came to life in a series of dull colors, quickly growing brighter. The ship would not be able to maintain power on its own without a new plant, but the whole ship could be run at least while it was plugged in. After a moment, Lafayette punched in a command, and the hydraulic presses began lowering the loading deck for entry into the cargo bay. There was a hiss of air as some of the hangar’s more oxygen rich atmosphere rushed into fill the ship.
“We’ll have to give it a little while to equalize,” Lafayette said, “But we should tell the captain.”
“Go ahead then,” Fix replied.
“Lafayette to Jennings,” he called.
“Go ahead, Marquis,” came the reply.
“Good news, mon capitaine,” he said. “She’s breathing again.”
Lafayette co
uld almost hear the captain’s smile on the other end. “Good work, Remy,” he said. “We may have some more good news if Squawk ever decides to wake the hell up. The processing center’s auxiliary power system could actually serve nicely as a primary for us. At least until we can get into a real port and buy some real parts, that is.”
Not wanting to think about when they might actually be able to afford real parts, Lafayette said, “The ship should have full life support soon. Fix and I will go aboard and start running diagnostics.”
“Understood. Keep an eye on the space above us too,” he said. “I want some warning if anyone else shows up.”
“Oui, mon capitaine,” he replied and signed off.
3
Four hours later, things were looking amazingly up from what Michelle could tell. The Pasquatil engineer had awoken from his near comatose state and had agreed with Jennings’ assessment that the back-up power generator for the ore processing center could be removed and jury-rigged into the Melody Tryst. The computer system that Jennings called Minerva had agreed with that assessment and was discussing the matter over the radio with Squawk as the Pasquatil and the other two humans attempted to disconnect the auxiliary power plant from the station.
Michelle was on the bridge with Jennings, where he was working on prioritizing a list of other repairs that needed to be done. Minerva had interfaced with the processing station’s computer and was doing a much faster analysis of items that might work as components on the damaged Melody Tryst. Some of the items were going to have to be passed on, but Jennings repeatedly said he would not leave without the power plant, shields and at least some functioning weapons. For her part, Michelle was just trying to keep out of the way. The captain had suggested she go rest in one of the cabins, but she told him she was not tired. The truth was she was rather afraid to be alone, afraid she would fall asleep and they would all be gone when she woke up, afraid that this would all be a dream and she would wake up with her tormentors on the Brigandine, the high rollers on Strikeplain, or with the Gael themselves. There was a very calming presence to Captain Jennings that made her feel safe for the moment. Despite everything they had been through, he had never panicked, never lost his cool. She hoped that his word was as good as he claimed, but she almost instinctively knew that it was.
111 Souls (Infinite Universe) Page 19
