“Saito, how about you?”
‘Go down swinging, sir.’
“Evans?”
‘Attack, sir. Let’s get some payback.’
Ed Evans’ sentiment wasn’t lost on the crew. None had forgotten what happened, what it did, to Larisa Denisova. And Joseph Mansfield. Shane had tried to reach him one last time, to include him in this do-or-die decision, but there’d been no response. Unconscious? No, Shane thought. Staying out of the way. Letting Shane have the ship, make the calls. It might’ve seemed odd to an outsider, but for Shane it made sense. Joseph’s fate was already sealed, the decision wouldn’t affect him. So he abstained. Shane chose to believe that. Thinking that he was already gone was too painful.
“Kashani, what’s your say?”
‘I’m with the others. Attack it.’
Shane could feel the momentum building as he called them out one by one and heard that same, brave sentiment. He made the rounds and ended with Jo. Her war-whoop pierced the airwaves, giving Shane a chill. ‘Hell yeah!’ she yelled, making the decision unanimous.
* * *
The anomaly was indeed vulnerable, at least according to Dean’s theory. Weakness between gravity wells appeared to be its true achilles heel, though it wasn’t likely they could do much damage with such a small energy source. But the idea of doing some harm was motivation enough. Talk of kicking and attacking continued as they made ready, and there was a real feeling of camaraderie against a common enemy that made the faceless threat seem more manageable
“I can give you an extra three, maybe four seconds before I start the sequence,” Shane reported to the remaining evac contingent.
‘That’s fine if it doesn’t affect the burn, colonel,’ Jo reported back, ‘but otherwise, do what needs to be done. We can hang on out here either way’
Her confidence was heartening, though the commander reasoned it wasn’t much more than brave talk. Still, her instincts had proven themselves time and again, not to mention her considerable knowledge of both the anomaly and space-based disaster control. She might actually be right about being able to hang in there. Shane hoped she wouldn’t have to put the notion to the test.
At any rate, there was no way to do this without putting evac in some danger. If they attempted to square the solution without visual confirmation, the risk of failure increased markedly. Shane had it in his power to give them the best chance possible, while accomplishing the objective at the same time, so he’d fight for every extra second he could, and leave the rest in their capable hands.
* * *
The last of the lockdown protocols were all but finished, and the rest could be taken care of from the flight deck. Dean and Ruka were the last to leave, checking to make sure all systems had been shut down or re-assigned before returning to their seats for the ride home. With the mission winding down, the ship was starting to take on an empty-nest sort of feeling. Soon the crew would be perched at the tip of the ship, lifeboat-style, hoping it would serve it’s purpose as well as the rest of the ship had.
Ruka took in the scene with a wistful glance, “Can’t believe we have to leave all this behind.”
Dean raised an eyebrow, regarding his emotional statement with the confusion of one ready to abandon all and never look back.
“I know, it’s been a nightmare and all. But still,”—he swept a palm along the length of the cylinder—“think about what we did here. This tiny space, nerve center for the greatest mission in human history. How can you not feel some sense of awe over that? This place,” he trailed off, as if the heavy thoughts were getting the better of him. “This place,”—his voice took on a sort of reverence—“it saved the world. Seems wrong to leave it out here to rot. Inside the damned beast, no less.”
Dean nodded, understanding the sentiment better for its well considered explanation. “Well, it’s kind of fitting though,” he said, “like a memorial or something. And the spirits who’ll live on and watch over…”
He surprised himself with the spiritual talk. He’d never considered himself much of a religionist, yet the words rang true, and he felt it appropriate to say so. Larisa didn’t die in vain. Joseph didn’t. Or wouldn’t. He pushed away the thought.
Ruka said nothing, looking around with a heavy sigh. Dean left first, giving him space. He might be one for posterity, but Dean was too caught up in what came next to think so much. Let the other ones write the book on this story, he just hoped he’d be around long enough to read it.
70.
Floating some thirty meters above—or below depending on your perspective—Ed Evans marveled at his ride home. Shoulder-to-shoulder with his unexpected companion Jo Osbourne, the two of them prepared to power up the solution. Opposite their positions, on the flip side of the ship, Gravitational Vacuum Specialist Arvind Kashani and Payload Specialist Andrea Price prepared for simultaneous responsibilities. Directly between the centerpoints of the struts, the main control board flashed a standby code, ready to charge the array. Now fully deployed, the extremities of Space Force One stretched out in an impressive spread. Evans wished he had a camera to capture the moment. There would be plenty of video, both of the setup and of this final phase, but it was all close up. The astronauts were the only witnesses to this amazing machine in its full glory.
The hatch, thirty-seven meters forward, seemed as far away as home, but the rotation would bring it closer. Close enough to reach, if they executed the plan to perfection. Evans told himself, in no uncertain terms, that they would. Looking over at his comrade, taking emotional support from her presence, he awaited the order.
Jo had only one responsibility, to keep the broken strut in place when the juice started to flow. Once the elements were connected, it would be shored up by the others, and she would be free to leave. Although Evans was perfectly capable of executing everything else by himself, having a second pair of eyes was comforting. On Commander Douglas’ command, the two began a sweep of the four struts, searching for any more breaks in the line, or other signs of imperfection. There were none.
‘Command, Evac,’ Evans called, ‘countdown from five to mark. Five, four, three,’—he wrapped his thick glove around the switch and flexed—‘two, one, mark.’
He pulled down in one crisp motion. The array was activated. There was no immediate reaction, no additional visual signals to confirm, and any sounds were lost like the proverbial tree in a forest. The anticlimactic sense was short-lived, however, as there was no time to lose. The two astronauts hit the jets and began sailing toward the ship. Immediately following that, the ship began rotating, the hatch coming up fast to meet them. They made it nearly halfway to safety when Jo’s pack malfunctioned, blowing her hard to starboard.
* * *
Dean felt a sick sense of déjà vu as he watched his shipmate, his friend, begin to drift, angling away at an increasing clip. Jo worked quickly to recover, cutting power to the damaged side so she could regain some semblance of control. She slowed a bit, but was still moving in the wrong direction. A flash of blue shot out from Evans’ pack, adjusting his course so that he, too, was now in danger of missing the mark. The hatch would sail past them and around to the other side, all but unreachable. There was no stopping the rotation now. Even if they wanted to, the counter-balance of the array’s momentum wouldn’t allow for reversal.
‘Oh Christ!’ Shane burst out, reminding the scientist that he wasn’t one watching. ‘Dean, tell me you’ve got something up your sleeve here. They’re not gonna make it on their own…shit!’
The last epithet was in response to the fast fading burn coming out of Jo’s pack. Her fuel had run its course, the damaged guidance system having expelled the last of its energy knocking her off course. Now only Evans had control, and he was still several meters behind.
Silently, Dean spun to the workstation and pulled up his equations once more. Having put it away, he’d allowed the numbers to fade, but they came back fast now that yet another emergency was at hand. How many iterations of Murphy
’s Law can one crew stand? he thought in passing.
Not wanting to find out, Dean ran through alternatives, fast and furious, dismissing the outlandish ones as soon as they came up, until he found one that stood a chance.
“Adjust pitch 3 degrees and nudge us to the port side,” he called to Shane, impressing himself mildly by his fast-growing knowledge of terminology.
‘Adjusting,’ Shane announced, making the correction immediately, showing his faith in Dean’s judgement. But he did add a cautionary question. ‘Hate to ask, but how does that affect our slingshot odds?’
“This time? Not much. But if we have to make more corrections we’ve got very little room for error.”
Outside, Evans managed to grab onto Jo’s arm and start reigning her in. But Dean knew better. Appearances were deceiving this close to the beast. They wouldn’t make it on their own.
* * *
“Go!” Jo pleaded, willing her shipmate to save himself. There’s nothing he can do for me, she thought in desperation. He’d only be committed himself to a side-by-side death.
‘Hang on,’—the resolute conviction of Evans’ voice provided some comfort, though mixed with an intense guilt—‘I’ve got this.’
Evans got them oriented and then executed a series of micro-bursts, lining them up for a new approach. There was no time for calculation, this was instinct, though born of experience. Evans had guts, and a keen sense of self-preservation, ensuring that he’d maximize the likelihood of success. Jo believed that, too. If they had any chance at all, it’d be a better one with him by her side, much as she regretted his decision to take the risk.
As the hatch swung around and started getting away from them, they accelerated into a perfect curve, bringing them close to apogee before angling back down. The ship momentarily swung around, giving them a sweeping view of the underside. Beyond, the anomaly glowed white from the heat of the rockets, sweeping blue arcs of energy licked from it like icy bolts of lightening. One could easily imagine that this entity, this thing, was becoming enraged. Jo hoped so. She hoped they were killing it right alongside them. If they had to go, she hoped they could at least take that hell-thing along with them.
* * *
“Dean, can you adjust?” Shane said. “They’re only off by a few meters now.”
As much as he would’ve liked to gun it himself and damn the consequences, he knew that only the precise timing Dean could offer might save both ship and stranded crew. He fought back the urge to tell Dean to hurry. The man was going as fast as he could. Still, they were cutting it close to now or never.
“Dean?”
The scientist put up a hand, silently bidding them to hold on, while still staring at that cursed screen that held their fate in its unemotional guts. Then Dean saw something that registered. He shook his head vigorously and began a countdown from four with his fingers, thumb across palm.
Shane waited, inwardly counting the beats Dean was ticking off, but it wasn’t seconds he was calculating. He was counting down equations, waiting for the sequence to wind down, for the calculations to match up and give them the proper opening.
Dean’s fingers switched to three up, two on the palm, squeezing tight so that his hand went red. He held on three. Shane’s body tensed. He was multitasking like a madman, watching the controls, checking the viewscreen, executing the roll-over and staying in contact with Dean all at the same time. Now Dean peered closer at the scroll and switched to two fingers, nodding his wish to hurry things along. He looked up at Shane and back to the screen several times, still holding at two.
71.
Ed Evans held tight to Jo’s arm, the priority not to let go, no matter what. He feared he was hurting her, but that consideration had to be secondary.
They glided closer to the hatch, but maddeningly off-course. By the slightest margin, too. But there were no more adjustments worth making, Evans knew that from experience. Their forward momentum couldn’t be slowed fast enough for any more useful corrections. They would have to strike hull wherever they could, try and make their way back from there.
Arching over the doorway, stretching limbs from socket to fingertip, the promise of safety a mere hand-width out of reach, they passed just over it. Looking back in desperation, still they stretched, watching as the hatch, and their hopes, begin the long slide out of reach. But just as they were about to fall away completely, it rose up to meet them.
* * *
Shane Douglas scream-laughed, an outburst of relief the instant Evans found his grip. Momentum flung them up over the mark, adding another heartstopping beat to the rescue, but they recovered and settled back down to face the hatch. “Dean you beautiful sonofabitch,” Shane yelled, loud enough to be audible over half the ship, “you did it man!”
Dean, not quite as demonstrative as his commander, felt the excitement as well. His friends were safe, and their patience seemed to have paid off. Not only did they lose very little time, but thanks to the use of forward momentum to flip the ship into a rescue position, they were still in a position to do some real damage.
The others reacted with the enthusiasm of a sports crowd, filling the opened channels with a raw, emotionally charged uproar. They’d gone silent for a time, staying out of the way while Shane and Dean mounted their rescue effort, but now were back in the loop.
Eyes still intent on his spacewalkers, Shane also picked up on the changing conditions on his hull. The metal was beginning to glow from the blastback, heat that should have been propelled away from the ship, but he took it as a good sign. If the anomaly—the entity, he corrected himself—was pushing back, that could only mean that their effort might yet have some effect.
Come on, come on, he mentally urged the wayward pair along, get in already, let’s go…
He needed them to be inside before attempting the final, crucial burn. Like a driver stomping the gas and the brakes simultaneously, he would be throwing up the reversers in order to hold them in place while he cooked the beast. If Evans and Osbourne were still outside when that turbulence kicked in, they wouldn’t hold out for long. Not this time. So Space Force One wasn’t going anywhere just yet. Come on…
* * *
Evans and Jo worked fast, throwing their weight into the hatch. Getting a decent grip was difficult, and there was considerable micro-damage to the airlock frame. Getting nowhere fast, Evans looked for some sort of workaround, but there was nothing but metal and rivets. Nothing useful.
“Something I can do to help?” Dean’s voice came as a surprise to Evans, but even more to Jo, judging from her shocked expression. He soon realized the reason for her reaction—it wasn’t Dean’s voice that’d thrown her, it was his glass-encased face, suited up and peering back at them through the porthole. At Evans’ double-take, he gave a half-smile and held up a pair of heavy spanners. “Never know when these might come in handy,” he said, “a little extra leverage, right?”
Relief flooded over Evans like a warm bath, and he gave the go-ahead with a wide smile. “Make sure you anchor yourself,” he instructed, but then he noticed that Dean had already begun the process of clamping his boots. This one has a million tricks up his sleeve, he thought with admiration.
“I suggest you step aside, this’ll just take a second.”
They didn’t have to be asked twice. They scrambled to the side of the airlock, as far as they could move without losing their hold. The turbulence was on the rise again, making it difficult to maintain position, but they could hold out as long as the shaking remained constant.
It was difficult to see whether Dean was making progress from their vantage point, but Evans kept silent, trusting his shipmate to do the work. After what seemed like several minutes, but was probably less, a space appeared in the bulkhead, then the metal slowly began separating. Inch by inch, Dean was working the fractured metal apart. Just a few minutes more and he’d have it. Another jolt nearly sent Evans off his perch, but Jo reached out and steadied him with an arm across his mid-section. Being side-
by-side, there was no way to make eye contact, but Evans gave an ‘I’m okay’ arm wave, which she responded to with a wave of her own.
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