“Even if there was another way in,” Bishop said, “their docking access point is the best choice. It will link us to their loading corridor, putting us right outside the cargo bay holding all but one of the survivors.”
“If you enter that corridor,” Artemisia said, “you will need life-support gear.”
“Siv took a spacesuit,” Kyralla said. “Do we have any others?”
“We have one more,” Bishop said.
Kyralla activated the ship’s thrusters, and the Outworld Ranger’s AI maneuvered to line up the aft sections of both vessels. The ship notified her that the alignment would take seventeen point five minutes.
Octavian zipped onto the bridge bleeping and trilling emphatically.
“Octavian insists that we not link with their docking portal,” Oona said while keeping her eyes closed. “Based on his analysis, after the impact with our ship, their loading corridor has suffered structural damage and is at extreme risk of collapse. If their docking access portal even works, opening it may cause the ship to break apart.”
Bishop nodded. “So I guess we’ll have to find a structurally sound part of the cargo bay the researchers are trapped in and cut our way in.”
Octavian trilled and beeped.
Oona translated. “He says that’s also too risky and that the easiest point of entry would be on the underside of their bridge. On a ship of this class there’s a mounting structure intended for a weapon system, but since it’s a research vessel, they didn’t install one.”
“He’s correct,” Artemisia said with obvious surprise in her voice. “That is the weakest spot in the ship’s hull, by far. I don’t know how we missed it.”
Everyone gaped at Octavian. Everyone except Oona who had a knowing smile on her face.
Kyralla shouldn't be surprised by the cog's analysis, given the medical scan data he'd given them. But something about the engineering robot made her think he was simple. She wasn't sure if it was his insectoid appearance or his lack of voice, but no cog she'd ever interacted with before had even half of his ability.
“But we need to try to save as many people as possible,” Bishop said. “And there’s only one survivor on the bridge.”
Its bulbous eyes alight, the insectoid cog shook its head. Oona rapidly translated its vociferous response.
“Octavian says boarding the bridge is the correct choice. We can easily rescue the healthiest person, and from there we can attempt to restore life-support throughout the ship.”
“I’m not sure that’s the correct call,” Kyralla said. “I’d prefer to save more people as fast as possible.”
"Octavian says his recommendations are based on a Benevolence-designed rescue protocol which prioritizes who to save and how to go about it while protecting the crew of this ship."
Kyralla looked at Bishop. "What do you think?"
Bishop shrugged. “Octavian’s a ship engineering cog. This is his area of expertise. And it’s hard to argue against a protocol the Benevolence provided for ship rescues.”
"Well, I haven't a clue what we're doing," Kyralla responded. "Oona?"
“We should take Octavian’s advice,” she answered.
“So, we’ll have to cut our way in,” Bishop said.
Octavian bleeped, and Oona chuckled. “He says that you’re not going to cut your way in. That’s his job, and he knows exactly how to go about.”
The maneuvering thrusters fired. “I’ll get us lined up to the underside of their bridge.”
Luckily, Kyralla didn’t have to do much in the way of piloting. Lining up the Outworld Ranger to match the spin of the Argos Alpha was something the ship’s AI could do on its own. All she had to do was stay out of its way and loan her brainpower to the operation.
She did speed things up, though. The ship was erring on the side of extreme caution, but they were running out of time to save people on the research vessel.
Even with her hurrying things, it took fifteen minutes of turning and firing the thrusters to line up the two ships and then another ten minutes to extend the docking tube and make a secure connection to the underside of the Argos Alpha’s bridge.
“Connection complete,” the Outworld Ranger’s AI announced. “Pressurizing the docking tube.”
“Bishop, are you ready?”
“Almost.”
Kyralla worried Bishop would encounter a hostile situation and get hurt. His frame was slight, and he had no combat skills whatsoever. She had noticed that he had abnormally strong hands, but his overall physical condition was lacking. Nevertheless, he had the engineering skills needed to help Octavian make repairs.
“Kyra, we should see him off…just in case.”
Of course. Kyralla leaped up and hurried to her room to grab her plasma pistol and neural disruptor.
29
Karson Bishop
Karson dragged the spacesuit out of the locker in the engineering station, dropped it onto the floor, and shook his head, laughing.
“Something wrong, sir?”
“It’s comically large.”
“It will resize to fit you, sir.”
He stepped into the legs of the spacesuit and pulled the rest up to his waist. After sealing the front up to his navel, he slipped his hands into the arms and shrugged the suit over his shoulders. His hands didn’t even reach the gloves.
“Yes, but will it resize enough?”
“According to the specs, sir… Yes, but only just.”
He paused. “Barty, should I remove my clothes first?”
“Only if you think wearing them within the suit will be restrictive, sir. Professional spacers keep their clothes on, but of course, they wear minimal jumpsuits.”
He glanced down at his chest, flailed his arms awkwardly, and frowned. The suit remained unsealed from his navel to his neck, and he couldn’t use his hands. “Um…I a have problem here.”
“The spacesuit will seal itself, sir. As soon as I establish a connection with the suit’s control system.”
In his HUD, he watched a video of the docking tube extending from the Outworld Ranger to the Argo Alpha. He needed to get moving. What was taking Bartimaeus so long to connect to the spacesuit?
“Sorry for the delay, sir. Still working on it.”
Octavian clicked past him and opened the locker next to the one that held the spacesuits. In a blur of motion, four arms took tools from the packs around his waist and replaced them with items from the locker. Then he removed a backpack from the locker and put it on.
Octavian shifted back, glanced at him, and cocked his head.
“My chippy’s having trouble connecting to the suit.”
Octavian prodded at a control panel on the suit’s chest. He bleeped a few times then gave Karson an awkward-looking thumb’s up.
“Connection established, sir. Octavian rebooted the suit’s hardware.”
“Is there a problem with it?” Karson asked aloud.
Beeping, Octavian shook his head. Bartimaeus translated. “He says not to worry, sir. The suit will function properly. The hardware reboot was necessary given the suit’s last maintenance was twenty years ago.”
“Twenty years?”
"Siv's had to be rebooted as well, sir. And it functioned properly. As far as I can tell, Octavian has kept this ship and all the equipment on it in prime condition, as if straight from the factory."
The spacesuit whirred to life. The front sealed up to the neck. The material of the arms and legs shrank and folded in on itself, and then torso did the same. In less than a minute, it went from fitting like a giant-sized clown costume to a hazmat suit.
He took a few steps, lifted his arms, and wiggled his fingers. “You know, I’ve never actually considered how refitting works. Isn’t that odd?”
“Would you like for me to tell you how, sir?”
“No! Just put figuring it out on my to-do list.”
“It’s not a mystery, sir. The tech is quite explainable, and new suits are still being constructed without
difficulty.”
“I want to figure it out on my own, Barty. I need to keep my skills sharp.”
“Sir, I don’t think the others would appreciate you taking apart one of the suits.”
"I thought we could pick up a cheap secondhand suit. I could make it useable and have fun."
“I will never understand your humanity, sir.”
The spacesuit's helmet deployed. From the back of the neck, a sheet of clear plasti-steel expanded until it formed a transparent dome around his head. He was pleasantly surprised that his horns fit within the spacesuit's helmet. While his head was smaller than that of a Terran, the horns made the dimensions entirely different.
“Connection complete,” the Outworld Ranger’s AI announced. “Plasma window tunnel activated. Pressurizing the docking tube.”
Kyralla contacted him through his chippy. “Bishop, are you ready?”
“Almost,” he replied.
Clumsily, he lumbered to the back of the Outworld Ranger, entered the loading bay, and stopped a few meters away from the iris that would open into the docking tube.
The girls entered behind him. Oona carried a force-staff, and Kyralla had a blaster in one hand and a disruptor in the other.
“We’ll cover you from here, in case something comes through the tube,” Kyralla told him.
He attempted to scratch his chin. He chuckled nervously when his hand hit the helmet. “Good idea.”
Kyralla patted him on the shoulder. "Be careful in there. We can't be one hundred percent sure that we're not dealing with hostiles. Besides, the ship is in a bad state."
He patted the spacesuit. “I’m not too worried about the ship breaking apart. I can survive in space.”
“I’d be worried about a sharp metal fragment cutting the suit,” Oona said.
Karson blinked at her and swallowed. “Um…right…of course.”
Kyralla groaned. “‘Nevolence, Oona! Did you really have to tell him that?”
Oona dipped her head. “sorry.”
Kyralla held out the neural disruptor. “Take this with you. It’s set to stun. If anyone you encounter acts suspiciously, shoot them. Same goes for someone panicking.”
He nodded and took the disrupter. He placed it against the belt of the spacesuit, and it clamped into place magnetically.
Oona walked over and kissed the side of his helmet. “Be careful in there.”
“I will be.”
Octavian clattered up beside him then bleeped and buzzed and trilled.
“He’s ready to go,” Oona said.
Seneca swept into the loading bay with the ship’s antigrav sleds.
“Is he coming too?” Karson asked.
“He’s standing at the ready in case he needs to come across and rescue anyone.”
Seneca’s eye-band lit up an eager blue-green.
Karson smiled at the girls. “You should return to the bridge and keep a lookout in case another ship enters the system. I’ll be okay.” He pointed to Octavian. “With my companion here, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“We’ll wait a few minutes,” Kyralla said.
"I only see one orange dot in my locator," Karson said. "This isn't an elaborate trap. I'll be fine." She started to argue, but he interrupted her. "Honestly, I'd feel safer if you were keeping watch from the bridge. If an enemy shows up, it won't be from within the Argos Alpha.”
“He’s right, Kyra,” Oona said.
Kyralla nodded, and then she and Oona left, sealing the door behind them.
Karson faced the iris again and took a deep breath. He tried to keep his hands from shaking. He’d never used a spacesuit before, and he had never made ship repairs either. He should have studied that more instead of working on the Tezzin.
He glanced over at Octavian. The cog’s bulbous eyes turned a comforting orange as it bleeped softly.
“Sir, Octavian says everything will be okay. Just follow his lead.”
Karson took a deep breath and nodded. It would all be okay. The ship’s cog was designed for this and had maintained the Outworld Ranger for a century. It knew exactly what it was doing.
The iris dilated open, Karson’s fear disappeared, and a smile spread across his face.
He was on a pristine starship light years from Ekaran IV, in the company of a hyperphasic messiah, and he was about to board a failing ship to help the most advanced cog he'd ever encountered before make enough repairs to mount a rescue.
In two short weeks, his life changed completely. And despite the dangers, it was all for the better.
Octavian scurried ahead, and Karson followed him.
“Sir, another crewman in the cargo bay just perished.”
Karson stood two meters back as Octavian ignited a laser attached to one of his hands. Moving his arm in rapid circles, he began to cut into the vessel’s hull. The laser was surprisingly high-powered for one mounted on a cog, but then maybe that was common for a pristine ship’s cog.
“Barty, what’s the condition of the young man on the bridge?”
“Artemisia says he’s unconscious. Probably from smoke inhalation. And, of course, life support is offline, so the oxygen supply is depleted.”
As soon as they were somewhere where he could purchase new equipment, assuming he had enough money, Karson planned to acquire a sensor array so that Barty could give him more detailed information.
Obviously, he wouldn’t be able to get anything nearly as advanced as what Siv used, but he didn’t even have a basic array. Why would he? He had never expected to be in a situation like this.
Octavian finished cutting and withdrew the laser. Then he placed two, apparently magnetic, hands against the metal circle. His motivators whining under strain, Octavian drew the cutout free and dropped it to the side.
They climbed through the hole into a cramped space where the weapon system would have been mounted. Doing so, they left the Outworld Ranger’s artificial gravity, which had been extended into the docking tube.
Floating free, Karson glanced around, hoping to find something to grab onto, but the compartment was empty. With a micro-burst from his suit’s thrusters, he got his boots onto the floor and activated the maglock. Octavian was using the same technique.
They now had to go through a second layer of the vessel’s hull. But this section must have been thinner because it didn’t take Octavian even half as long to cut through it.
He tossed aside this cutout to reveal a plasma window that had automatically deployed to maintain the ship’s atmosphere from a breach. All ships had a containment system like this.
Some advanced ships, like the Outworld Ranger, even had an inner hull layer made from a self-repairing material that could recover a breach within a few minutes to an hour.
Octavian touched the plasma window, and his hand struck a force field.
“Is that common?” Karson asked.
Octavian bobbed his head and trilled.
“Sir, he says most containment fields use a low-powered force field to keep out radiation and debris.”
“So how do we get through it?”
Octavian beeped excitedly.
“Sir, he says with the hull sections removed he’s now close enough to connect to the Argos Alpha’s mainframe. He can use an emergency protocol override that will get the other ship to release this plasma window. He just needs your permission first.”
“Of course, you have my permission,” Karson said.
Octavian shook his head vigorously and hissed.
“Sir, he says he needs your explicit permission.”
“Oh, I see,” Karson said. “Octavian, you have my permission to access the other ship using whatever procedures you deem necessary for performing a rescue mission.”
Octavian bobbed his head and released a high-pitched whine. Even with the helmet on, Karson wanted to cover his ears with his hands. Fortunately, the whine lasted less than a minute.
“The transmission was sent, sir. We’re just waiting for the ship’s approval.”
>
“What if this doesn’t work?”
Octavian beeped, and Barty translated. "Sir, he says that the Argos Alpha's plasma window containment system is strained to breaking. If we can't make contact with the system, then we will have to attack the force field until it fails. But there is a significant risk in doing that since it's active in other sections of the ship."
The plasma window dissipated, and Karson breathed a sigh of relief.
Octavian gestured and beeped.
“Sir, he’s reminding you that you’re about to enter the research vessel’s artificial gravity field.”
“Thank you, Octavian.”
Octavian launched himself forward and crawled onto the Argo Alpha’s bridge. Karson followed along behind him and became momentarily disoriented as he went from zero-G back to gravity, only a different orientation to last time.
He climbed to his feet and faced a dark, smoky environment lit dimly by a few stray sparks tumbling from the ceiling. All the electronics that had been sparking before must have burned themselves out.
Karson activated the spotlights mounted on each shoulder of his spacesuit and scanned the bridge carefully.
A thick gray layer of fire retardant coated the bridge.
“Why didn’t they exit the bridge and vent the atmosphere to put out the fires?”
“If their overloaded electronics continued to spark, sir, then it would not have solved any problems. As it is, the fire retardant wasn’t necessary. Outside of harming individuals, the sparks were unlikely to ignite anything of importance.”
As he turned, his spotlights illuminated the debris piled in front of the door leading out. A section of the ceiling had collapsed, leaving behind chunks of electronics amidst a tangle of wires. The bridge was effectively sealed off from the rest of the ship.
He could hardly see the top third of the door. Octavian might be able to climb over all of that and climb through, assuming none of the exposed wires were live, but there was no way Karson could do it.
“Well, shit. That’s a problem.”
He turned toward the front of the bridge and spotted the baby-faced young man with unruly white hair lying unconscious before the command chair. According to his HUD, the man was still alive.
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