“How’s it looking, Corporal?” Dickerson asked.
Kali twitched at the sound of his voice and chuckled. Damn, but she was jumpy. “Good, so far. Forty meters to reach the port-side.”
“And a shitload of junctions,” Carb said. “We could just jet.”
If they detached from the floor and activated their suit thrusters, they could fly for the entire journey. They’d be at their destination in seconds. The only problem? If something was in their way, they’d have almost no time to stop their forward momentum. In z-g, objects continued moving in whatever direction they’d been pushed until another force counteracted the movement. Once they were moving forward at a good clip, decelerating would require another thruster burn to slow them and bring them to a halt.
“No,” Kali said, “we can’t. If there’s another horde of those things, we’d fly right into them with no chance to stop.”
“True,” Carb said. “But at least this shit would be over.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped herself. What did you say to that? What could she say? As much as she wanted to tear into Carb for the negative thoughts, part of her didn’t disagree. Thankfully, Dickerson knew what to say.
“Shut the fuck up, Carb,” Dickerson said. “I ain’t planning on dying here.”
“Me, neither,” Elliott said. “Not before SFMC fixes my goddamned hand. Besides,” he said, “I need a sympathy lay.”
Carb giggled. “About the only way you’ll get laid.”
Kali managed a grin. Nervous chatter. That’s what had been missing since they’d reached the auxiliary bridge and watched the final recorded moments from Mira’s captain. She’d let Carb make jokes and rib the other two marines so long as it kept them from falling into the same deep, black hole of fear threatening to swallow her whole.
She continued the mag-walk, increasing her speed. “There’s nothing ahead of you but escape pods,” she told herself. “Nothing to threaten you, nothing to stop your progress.” Right. As long as she kept telling herself that, it might even turn out to be true.
The forty-meter distance quickly became thirty at another four-way junction. She told the squad to halt while she cleared left and right. Again, she saw nothing. No debris, no corpses, no creatures. Nothing but the darkness and the seemingly never-ending corridor of clean metal walls streaked with frost.
She took in a shuddering breath, and continued forward. Kali flicked her eyes from her forward cam to check the rear. Dickerson walked at his full height, his weapon pointed to cover their asses. Once again, she should simply trust him to do his job. He hadn’t let her down yet. And she doubted that—
Something moved on her forward cam. She held up a fist and focused, her last breath trapped in her lungs. The darkness ahead had moved. Well, it hadn’t, but something had. A few seconds ticked by, her eyes trained on the gloomy corridor.
“What is it, Corporal?” Dickerson asked.
She tried to speak, but the words came out as a huff of air. Kali forced herself to take a breath and tried again. “Something moved up ahead,” she managed through clenched teeth.
The comms fell silent as the squad waited. A muscle spasm rocked her spine followed quickly by tremors in her thighs. She moaned with pain, but kept her eyes fixed forward, daring the darkness to twitch. Nothing moved. Had she imagined it?
Another moment passed, her breathing finally steadying, the adrenaline surge dissipating. “Okay, squad, guess I didn’t see anything.”
“Take your time, Corporal,” Dickerson said. “Rather you be wrong than miss something.”
“Copy that,” she said with a blush. Dickerson had sounded like a corporal himself, giving commands to a terrified boot. He wasn’t far off. She might have spent untold hours walking Titan Station’s pockmarked surface, but she’d never faced a combatant firing at her, much less the stifling claustrophobia of being trapped in the wreckage of an assault craft. “Or hunted,” she said to herself. That was a happy thought. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like during the Satellite War, worrying that another marine, one who wore the same uniform beneath the combat suit, was creeping up behind you to put a vibro-blade in your back or fire a flechette to rip through you like a shotgun through a side of beef.
But here she was, staring into darkness and waiting for something to leap at her. Kali calmed her thumping heart and took a step forward. And another. And another. “Keep moving,” she said into the comms. Another 25 meters. That’s all that separated them from the port-side bulkhead. That and two more junctions.
She continued walking, doing her best to ignore the spasms that intermittently wracked through her trapezius muscles. “Come on, bio-nannies,” she said, “get your shit together.” The little bastards had to be flooding her system with analgesics, but they had yet to kick in. Either that, or they had expended all their stored CBD and her nervous system had ceased releasing endorphins. How taxed do you have to be to lose the ability to create endorphins? She wondered if she hadn’t already reached that point.
Something twitched in the darkness. She once again held up a fist, suddenly afraid to blink. A shadow moved at the edge of the lights. Then another. And another.
“Back up,” she whispered into the comms.
“Corporal?” Dickerson asked.
“Back the fuck up,” she said, emphasizing every word.
Her headset filled with the sound of a deep breath and a shuddering exhale. “Carb?” Dickerson said. “Get behind me.”
Kali took a step backward. The shadows continued approaching. Dozens of them. They seemed to be filling the hallway. Kali raised her rifle and fired a flechette round.
The rocket engaged and split the darkness with a stream of light before it reached the end of the corridor and detonated in a cloud of electricity. The gloom exploded with sharp strobes of blue light. Framed by the stabs of illumination, she saw dark, shimmering arms reaching from an adjoining hallway. Swarms of pinecones flew through the z-g toward her squad. “Move! Jet to starboard!” she yelled and fired another flechette.
She turned in the opposite direction, demagnetized her boots, and hit the suit thrusters. A rush of compressed nitrogen shot out of the back of her suit propelling her forward through the hallway. Dickerson’s lights dispelled the darkness down the other end of the hallway as he flew ahead, Carb less than two meters behind him.
Kali checked her rear cam and increased her speed. The pinecone swarms were less than 10 meters away and gaining. She only had a few seconds before the strange creatures descended on her like a plague. Beyond the swarms, she saw the multi-armed creature enter the corridor and begin pulling itself forward. If she survived the onslaught of pinecones, she’d still have to deal with the starfish thing.
“Corporal!” Dickerson yelled. “Slip-point. Move!”
She hit the suit thrusters again and ratcheted up her speed to 8m/s, a suicidal rate of speed if she had to suddenly halt her progress. Her HUD lit up with a warning—she didn’t have much nitrogen remaining. She barely noticed. Up ahead, Carb and Elliott disappeared through an aft entryway. Dickerson floated beside it, one hand mag-locked to the wall.
“Too fast!” Kali yelled. She had maybe three seconds before she slammed into Dickerson. As soon as the thought passed through her mind, he seemed to leap from the wall at her. His large body collided with hers a few meters from the bulkhead. The impact rattled her bones and sent her mental furniture flying, but slowed her speed significantly.
Her momentum continued pushing the two of them to the wall, Dickerson’s legs floating horizontally. He crunched into the bulkhead and immediately swiveled her toward the slip-point entryway. A touch of his thrusters and the pair flew into the horizontal shaft.
With Dickerson’s hands wrapped around her waist driving her through the slip-point, her helmet was pointed toward the corridor they’d just left. A flood of pinecones came rushing by the slip-point entrance and crashed into the bulkhead. As Dickerson continued jetting them fur
ther into the slip-point, she just made out clouds of debris and another swarm colliding into the massive throng of pinecones. And then three arms plunged into the mess. The light faded out before she could see anything more.
“Got her?” Carb asked.
“I’ve got her,” Dickerson said, his breath rapid. “Corporal? You alive in there?”
“Yes,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“When you planning on letting me go?”
Dickerson chuckled. “As soon as we’re sure those damned things aren’t following.”
“Don’t think you need to worry about that,” she said. “Our starfish friend has them trapped back there.”
The narrow slip-point corridor suddenly seemed too tight, too close, and she felt as though she couldn’t get enough air. Her headache was back. Just another fucking concussion on top of the one she already had. Great.
“How we doing, Carb?” Dickerson asked. “I can’t see much.”
“We’re good,” Carb said. “We can slow down.”
Dickerson reached out a hand and used his magnetics to slow their pace. He brought them to a near halt and pushed gently away from Kali. She continued moving backward from him, but at far less than 1m/s. “There you go,” Dickerson said. “Sure you’re okay?”
She nodded, although it shot another bolt of pain through her head. Her vision wavered slightly and she grit her teeth against a groan. “Yeah,” she said. “Just dandy.”
“So much for the fucking escape pods,” Carb said.
Kali used a hand to slowly turn to Carb and Elliott. With the wounded marine attached to her shoulder, she looked as though a giant tumor had sprouted from her suit. “Well, we’re not going back that way,” Kali said. She brought up the schematics. The slip-point had several ingress/egress points throughout the ship and emptied into the aft engineering bay.
“Midships,” Kali said. “We need to go further in.” Several emergency icons lit up the map less than fifty meters from their current position. “We should be able to make it to the mid-junction and then head to port again. With any luck, we won’t find another tangle of those things.”
“Luck,” Elliott wheezed. “So far that’s working out for us.”
“Shut it,” Carb said. “Adults are talking.”
Elliott laughed and then coughed. “That was cold, Carb.”
“What do you think, Dickerson?” Kali asked.
He paused a moment before speaking. “I don’t see a better alternative, Corporal. But that puts us closer to engineering than I’d like.”
“Me too,” Kali said. “Give me a fuel status.”
“I’m near the red,” Carb said.
“Same here,” Dickerson said. “Actually, I’m in the red.”
“Damnit,” Kali said. Her own supply was halfway between the red and empty. “Okay. So no more jetting unless absolutely necessary.”
“Copy that,” Dickerson said. “But if we find a refill station, we need to hit it.”
“Either that or we produce more CO2,” Carb said. “Actually, ignore that.”
“Yeah,” Kali said. Excess CO2 could be stored to a point, but for that much extra, they’d have to be breathing pretty hard. And that meant more O2 consumption. Not exactly optimal. “I doubt compressed nitrogen was a mainstay among the crew,” Kali said. “Even in the emergency stations.”
“True,” Dickerson said. “But if we come across one, we should check.”
Kali blew a sigh through her teeth. “Okay. Let’s get moving. Slow. Pull yourself until you’re at about 1m/s, and then float to the next junction.” Both Dickerson and Carb acknowledged. Kali pulled herself until she floated past Carb and Elliott. Her suit lights cut through the darkness before them, but the slip-point tunnel seemed to stretch on for forever.
Chapter Nine
His private holo display was filled with the ship’s status reports, courses plotted by Black and Oakes, and several tensile strength tables. Dunn wished it also had a list of recommendations on what he should do. No, he thought. It’s not about what you should do, but how you’re going to do it.
And that was the problem. Oakes would begin moving the ship into position in a few minutes. After that, Gunny’s squad would hook up the harness to the spindle. Once that was done, they could begin the initial acceleration. And that was the problem.
The harness was designed to moor the two ships together using the Atmo-steel deck plating for support and leverage. The nannie-formed carbon tubes provided immense flexibility and strength, but they were only as powerful as the steel they burrowed into. Mira’s deck plates were fractured in multiple places. In others, the plating had started to come apart completely, the layers separating from one another.
According to Black’s best-case scenario, they would lose a line-mooring from a fractured deck plate or Atmo-steel separation. If that occurred, the harness hive would adjust and they’d still be able to tow the mammoth hulk. The worst case was something he didn’t even like to consider.
If they lost two or more lines, S&R Black would tear free from Mira and shoot forward at a fast clip. The harness lines would doubtless trail sections of deck plate that could whip forward and slam into the hull. If they were lucky, the nannies would release the deck-plates before they snapped back and S&R Black would only suffer damage from the carbon nanotube lines. Unlucky? Pieces of the deck plate would slam into them like a massive flechette round. In either case, the ship would suffer catastrophic damage or, more likely, destruction.
Black rated their chance for success at 60%, but, as usual, had added a plethora of conditionals, including the fact there was no way of knowing the extent of the damage to the deck plates. Black had used information gathered during Taulbee’s hull survey to decide where to place the harness and the lines. But without proper sensor equipment onboard the SV-52 to test for damage, Black was only able to guess. And computers hated to guess.
The AI wasn’t the only sentient sweating over the details. Oakes knew the situation, as did Nobel, but the rest of the crew was blissfully unaware. Dunn intended to keep it that way. Standard procedure was for all personnel to wear emergency gear during a tow, just in case something catastrophic occurred. But when the time came, he’d have to let Gunny and Taulbee know just how fucked things could get.
“Sir?” Oakes said.
Dunn looked up from the holo display. The pilot had turned his chair to face the captain, mouth set in a grim, thin line. “Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Force calculations complete,” he said. “I’ll send them to your display.”
Dunn nodded. “How bad is it?”
Oakes shrugged. “It is what it is, sir.”
Dunn flicked his eyes back to the holo display. The graphs showed a lot of red, more than he feared. Their acceleration would be severely affected by Mira’s condition. By Oakes’ calculations, it would take them nearly four hours of periodic fusion burns to get the hulk moving at 1/4 speed. If they managed to achieve that speed without Mira breaking up, they’d still have another twenty-four hours before they reached Pluto. The only saving grace would be Pluto’s gravity. It would help pull the derelict into orbit and give them a chance to refuel at PEO.
“Twenty-four hours,” Dunn said.
“Aye, sir.” Oakes ran a hand over his closely shaved scalp. “If we use supplemental burns beyond that point, we can probably get her moving a bit faster. Twenty-four hours total is the worst-case scenario.”
Dunn raised his eyes. “That’s the worst case?”
“Um.” Oakes frowned. “No. Worst case is she breaks up. But I mean beyond that. If she holds together, and we see enough reason for it, we can most likely increase the acceleration. Just comes with a lot of risks.”
The words “if,” “likely,” and “risk” echoed in his mind. Their plan, just like everything else with this mission, was plagued by conditionals. So many variables, so many unknowns, so many guesses. “Too many,” he said aloud.
“Sir?” Oakes asked.
“Nothing,” Dunn said. “What else can we do to help get Mira’s fat ass moving?”
Oakes thought for a moment and smiled. “We still have a thruster pack in the cargo bay.”
Dunn raised his eyebrows and then leaned back in the command chair. “Why the fuck didn’t I think of that?”
Oakes said nothing.
“Good job, Oakes. Black and I will figure the calculations on how we can use them and where to place them. I want to know if it makes sense to use the thrusters to change her course, push the beast toward Pluto, or both. Right now, we need to get in position for the harness.”
“Aye, sir,” Oakes said. He swiveled in his chair and focused back on his own display.
Dunn stared through S&R Black’s canopy. Mira filled the starboard edge of the trans-aluminum cockpit. They were making plans to move her. If not for Kalimura’s squad trapped somewhere aboard, he’d just blow the fucking thing to pieces and be done with it.
He initiated a block connection to the AI.
Yes, Captain?
He licked his lips. Any communications with Kalimura?
No, Captain, the AI said. The interference is still blocking standard radio transmissions and I’ve received no block traffic external to the ship. Might I also point out, sir, that I would have alerted you immediately if we had.
Dunn rolled his eyes. Of course you would have. Just like you did the first time.
The AI said nothing, but sent an image of a shrugging figure.
Do you think the additional thrusters can help us?
Yes, Captain. I think Lieutenant Oakes is on to something. I’ll provide you with a full report in a few moments.
Good, Dunn said and broke the connection. Even if the thrusters did little more than turn the hulk toward Pluto, it could drastically help their timeline. The less force they had to use to get Mira moving and in the right direction, the better.
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