BattleTech

by Loren L. Coleman

  Realizing he needed a course correction of his own, Armis extended his arms again, moving them through less sudden arcs, and allowed the laws of motion to cancel his spin. Satisfied with his new orientation, he blipped his shoulder thrusters through a series of micro burns until he was targeted directly on the palette.

  In his own suit he would have made the correction mid-spin, but the standard-issue cadet suit was not as responsive. Or as snug. At sixty-two kilos and one hundred seventy-three centimeters Armis did not consider himself abnormally small, but whoever designed the cadet suits had apparently assumed no one under one ninety was interested in space service. Even with every strap cinched its tightest, he felt swathed in balloons.

  Once he was posted to a JumpShip he’d have an issue suit, with much better tech than the Tolan family could ever afford, custom-fitted. Until then, he was resigned to looking like a child playing dress up.

  Tucking his knees up, then bending at the waist—reflexively keeping net angular motions at zero—Armis oriented himself for landing. Essentially sitting with his legs extended toward the palette’s upper anchor point.

  The palette itself was a hexagonal box, four meters on a side and twenty meters long. This one, according to the manifest, was loaded with grain. Like most containers designed to be muscled in zero-G, it was covered with recessed tie points and hand-holds. This one also had a harpoon, a compressed air cannon that launched a two hundred meter adhesive tow line. A harpoon mounted on a palette made as much sense as a palette drifting free in the first place, but who was he to question the wisdom of the instructors?

  Armis flexed his legs slightly at contact, absorbing some of his momentum even as he let the rest carry his upper body forward. Snapping his safety line to a recessed ring as his feet bounced clear, he let his forward motion carry him through a somersault. Stretching his arms akimbo, he brought his total rotation to zero just as his feet once again touched the massive ferrosteel frame. Only then did he engage his magnetic boots, letting the field anchor him firmly to the surface.

  “Can’t you ever do anything without showing off, Half Pint?” Demanded a voice over his suit speakers.

  It was Brogden. Armis had looked up the term “half pint” the first time the huge Odessian had used it and discovered it meant 240 cubic centimeters of fluid. He had no idea what he had done to earn the nickname, but since Brogden evidently meant no harm by it, he’d accepted it in good spirits.

  Turning, Armis found the water cylinder, actually an external tank for the station, a few hundred meters up orbit. Over fifty meters long and perhaps a dozen in diameter, it was bluntly rounded at one end and at the other sported a flared shroud that protected the valve mechanisms. Even with recycling and rationing, a lot of water was lost in a shipyard the size of McKenna.

  At this distance the other two cadets appeared perhaps a centimeter tall. The sled, tethered with enough space to give the station’s grappling hooks room to reach the cylinder, was little more than sliver of silver in Kathil’s light.

  “If you’d learn to think of yourself as several dynamic systems working together instead of a solid lump,” Armis repeated for perhaps the hundredth time, “You’d waste a lot less energy.”

  “I like being a lump.”

  Armis shook his head, grinning despite himself. His reply was cut off by another cadet shouting over the all channel.

  “They’re shooting!”

  “Where away?” asked Jenkins, who salted his speech with every colorful bit of navy jargon he’d learned from trivids. Common wisdom had it he’d need another decade’s practice before he sounded authentic.

  “Behind, down orbit!” the same excited voice answered. “The Davion just blasted something!”

  Armis pivoted in place, wasting energy shoving against his magnetic boots. Just down orbit were two dissipating clouds of burning gas near a mote that could only be a DropShip. The ship was firing its lasers with apparently random fury. Fighters, he guessed, too small to be seen at this range.

  A curse from Brogden and a flicker of light at the corner of his eye brought Armis’ head around.

  Against the blackness beyond the bulk of McKenna Shipyards, a brief spider thread of azure traced the space between two motes. A few degrees to the left another mote was bracketed by tiny flashes of orange.

  “What was that?” Brogden asked on their workteam channel. Armis cut down the volume on the general frequency. It was a white noise of questions and exclamations anyway.

  “An Excalibur hit another with lasers at eleven o’clock relative,” Armis snapped, his words clipped with tension. “And an Overlord took missiles at ten.”

  “How can you tell who’s who?” Brogden’s partner demanded, her voice suspicious. “They all look alike.”

  “Standard orbital formation,” Armis tried not to sound like he was pointing out the obvious. “The Excaliburs are in close orbit, the Overlords farther out. Look at the relative velocities.”

  “Spacer voodoo,” Brogden murmured darkly, aware Armis heard the aside as clearly as his partner. “Just take his word for it.”

  “Attention Merchant Cadets,” Master Roberton’s voice cut across the babble on the general channel. “Return immediately to station. All exercises are cancelled. Stand by for emergency rescue procedures.”

  They’d been expecting this, or something like it, since Admiral Kerr had commandeered the Robert Davion. But expecting it and having it actually happen were two very different things.

  “McKenna Station, the Shipyards and the Merchant Marine Academy are neutral,” Master Roberton’s voice was firm. “Remember that. When the time comes, we’re going to help all who need it, regardless of their—”

  An expanding ball of flaming gas threw an assembly gantry into sudden silhouette.

  “They’re shooting at us!” someone shouted over the chorus of curses.

  They weren’t, Armis realized. At least not directly. The flare was the Mule he’d seen earlier, mortally wounded and trying desperately to not collide with the shipyard. Spewing fire and atmosphere, the ungainly spheroid, a jagged rip laying its cargo bay open to space, twisted upwards, trying to clear the construction frame.

  It almost made it, would have made it if the hull had been intact. The ragged edge of the hull breach snagged the topmost gantry, ripping the hundred meter structure from its moorings.

  Armis was the first to realize where it was going.

  “Brogden! Allison!” he yelled, remembering the woman’s name at last. “Jump to your sled! Fast burn, eight o’clock relative!”

  He saw the two cadets slap their belt packs, jettisoning their safety lines, and leap clear of the water tank. Their shoulder jets flared, seeming pitifully feeble before the ponderous approach of the gantry, but fast enough. One made the sled, dropping into the control harness, but the other arced suddenly to the left, swinging wildly away from the utility craft.

  “Release your safety line!”

  “It’s got my leg,” Brogden snapped. “Get out of here, Ali! Go, go, go!”

  He bent, trying to reach the line fouled around his leg as Allison obediently gunned the sled. Scooting up and away, she headed down orbit, above the trajectory of the massive ferrosteel frame.

  In deceptively slow motion, the gantry slammed into the water cylinder. The heavy metal frame bent, but only slightly, imparting nearly all of its kinetic energy. Brogden’s safety line popped like a whip, jerking the cadet savagely.

  The cylinder began to tumble down orbit.

  Armis wasted a heartbeat determining it would pass about a hundred meters behind his palette before he could move. He swung the harpoon around and, calculating the vectors almost by instinct, fired the adhesive line across the cylinder’s path.

  Stooping quickly, he levered the quick-release catches anchoring the harpoon to the palette, letting his magnetic boots and back absorb the torque. Once it was free, he straddled the harpoon’s support post, the square base behind his thighs.

  Jud
ging he still had about a dozen seconds, he let out the suit’s leg cinches and triggered the patching foam. For once his size worked in his favor and the frothing sealant filled the space around his legs. His extra half dozen centimeters of padding gelled just as the harpoon line snapped taut.

  Whiplash nearly separated his skull from his spine. He was sure that without the foam padding his legs would have broken.

  Fighting the impulse to climb along the line hand over hand, he activated the harpoon’s winch. Climbing would have been faster, but there was no point in arriving five minutes earlier if he was too exhausted to be any good once he got there.

  “Brogden,” he called over the team channel. “Brog, you still with us?”

  “Hunh?” Brogden’s voice.

  Ahead Armis could see the cadet’s suit still swinging at the end of its safety line. Neither cadet had enough mass to affect the water cylinder’s course appreciably.

  His comm unit flashed for attention. Academy administration on his individual channel. He chinned to the secure frequency.

  “Merchant Cadet Tolan.”

  “Disengage, Tolan,” came the order he’d expected, but not the Old Man. The Academy’s Commandant never sounded that hard and clipped. “Let the rescue sleds do their job.”

  “Rescue sleds are out of position, sir,” Armis replied. “Besides, it’s too late.”

  Actually, it wasn’t, yet; not for him. He had another twenty, maybe thirty seconds before his point of no return. But Brogden, tethered to the mass of the water tank, didn’t have a choice.

  “Cadet Tolan, this is McKenna Station Control.” No wonder Armis hadn’t recognized the voice. “You are ordered to sever that line. Disengage.”

  “No can do, sir,” Armis was proud of his level tone. “I’m all he’s got.”

  “Cadet ...”

  “Sir,” Armis cut the officer off, “Impact was from up orbit. He’s retrograde. I figure atmosphere in twenty minutes.”

  For a moment the frequency was silent. Did they really think he hadn’t realized the water cylinder, and Brogden, had been knocked form orbit by the impact?

  “We make it twenty-two minutes,” the watch officer said at last. His voice was gentler. “What do you intend to do?”

  “I’m giving that some thought, sir,” Armis replied.

  “Understood,” Station Control said. “Let us know how we can assist.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  His point of no return, the last moment when he could leap free and not be pulled down into the atmosphere by the plunging cylinder came and went unremarked. The winch still reeled in the line, its vibration an irritating itch through the suit and impromptu padding.

  Armis was still twenty meters from the cylinder when Brogden came fully conscious. He announced the event with a string of curses directed at the fates, safety lines, his left leg, and space in general.

  “Leg broken?” Armis asked when the other began to run out of steam.

  “Yes, it’s broken. Yes, I filled the leg with patch to immobilize it. Yes, I triggered the yellow pain injector, not the blue one, so I am still conscious and able to function and very aware that I really want to take the blue pain shot, too,” Brogden dispensed with the standard first aid checklist in an angry rush. “Where the hell is rescue?”

  “I’m it,” Armis answered.

  Firing his jets, he abandoned the harpoon and leapt for the axis of the cylinder’s tumble, the safest boarding point. Matching vectors was tricky; he was almost too late in swinging his legs up to absorb the impact. He hit with a jolt and nearly bounced free before his boot magnets engaged. Not trusting their power, he stooped quickly and clipped his own line to a safety ring.

  Through his boots he felt the ring of the harpoon’s impact. No doubt it was smashed, its casing no match for the massive cylinder.

  He located Brogden’s safety line almost instantly, which didn’t surprise him. The fact that the other cadet was spiraling almost lazily behind the cylinder instead of swinging wildly through space had told him the safety line was anchored near the center of the spin.

  Planting his feet widely to absorb torque, he began hauling the line in.

  “What are you doing?” Brogden demanded through grit teeth. “That’s my damn leg you’re jerking around.”

  “Simplifying the dynamics,” Armis answered, grunting with effort. For a moment he envied the planet-born their massive musculature.

  At last he had the larger man in hand. Armis wasted no time in lacing the safety line through two pairs of rings, passing it across Brogden’s body several times as he bound him securely to the cylinder.

  “I’m getting tired of asking you what you’re doing.”

  “Keeping you from bouncing around,” Armis replied.

  “I was fine,” Brogden said. “Where the hell is rescue?”

  “I’m it,” Armis repeated.

  Brogden digested that as Armis worked his way toward the valve assembly. From their perspective, Kathil rose at the blunt end of the cylinder and arced above their heads at dizzying speed before setting beneath the flared shroud of the outlet nozzles.

  “We’re falling,” Brogden pronounced at last.

  “Right.”

  The cylinder was tumbling fast enough that there was a faint sensation of “down” pressing him against the titanium steel as Armis reached the base of the shroud. That was nothing compared to the vertigo induced by the wildly streaking stars and blur of Kathil swinging past. He kept his eyes firmly fixed on the cylinder beneath his feet.

  “You’ve got a plan.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Going to use a simple reaction drive,” Armis said, wishing he could wipe away the sweat that was seeping past his headband.

  “Ah.”

  The shroud was meant to shield the nozzles and valves until final connection. It was designed to open out in sections, like the petals of a flower, as the nozzles and valves it protected slid into a gasketted port in the work station’s hull. There was no way for Armis to either jettison the shroud or open it; he was going to have to climb inside to reach the water tank’s controls. His job was made a little easier by the rings of handholds meant to facilitate muscling the massive cylinder through the last millimeters of connection. Armis leaned forward, stretching himself along the grey metal, and gripped one of these tightly.

  “Unclip my safety line, will you?” he asked.

  “You anchored?”

  Safety protocols even now. Especially now.

  “Yes.”

  “Line is free.”

  The electric motor at his waist retracted the line with maddening slowness as Armis counted his heartbeats. He figured he had six minutes in which to either succeed or fail. He knew the station gave him a bit more, but he trusted his instincts more than their calculations.

  “How are you going to stop the tumble?” Brogden asked.

  “Can’t,” Armis said simply.

  Catching the end of his safety line, he reached above his head, clipping it to the handhold.

  “Loquacious,” Brogden said. “Anyone ever tell you you were loquacious? You just talk too damn much.”

  Armis grinned.

  “Good to have you back in gear,” he said. “You understand the plan?”

  “You’re going inside the nozzle shroud,” Brogden answered. “You’re going to manually vent water—we’ve got what, six thousand liters under pressure here? —and hope it’s got enough thrust to push us back in orbit.”

  “We’d need three of these tanks to make orbit,” Armis corrected. “I’m going for one bounce to buy us enough time for rescue to get here.”

  “One problem.”

  “One?”

  “If the cylinder’s tumbling and you’re inside the shroud working the valves,” Brogden said, “You won’t know when we’re pointed the right way. How will you know when to open and shut the valves?”

  “That’s why I brought you along,” Armis explained. “Time our rotation. Shout ‘open�
�� and ‘close’ at the right times. Physics will do the rest.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Brogden objected. “That’s seat-of-the-pants astrogation. You’re way better at that than I am. You sit out here and I’ll work the valves.”

  “Even if both legs worked,” Armis countered, “You wouldn’t fit inside the shroud assembly.”

  He waited a moment, but Brogden had no answer for that.

  Gripping the handhold tightly with both hands, Armis chinned his boot magnets off. The angular acceleration of tumbling cylinder immediately swung his body around. He barely suppressed a gasp of pain as his body snapped taut, his feet swinging against the wildly spinning sky.

  “Hang in there, Half Pint,” Brogden’s voice was soft in his ear, as though the big man didn’t want to startle him into losing his grip.

  Armis grunted an acknowledgement.

  One hand at a time, he reversed his grip on the handhold, twisting his body so that he was facing the open maw of the shroud assembly. Pulling his knees toward his chest, he folded himself against the centrifugal force of the spin. It took far too long to get his feet inside the shroud, too long for them to kick against something metal and their magnets take hold.

  For a moment Armis hung, his hands gripping the handhold outside the shroud, his boots anchored to some part of the plumbing mechanism within while angular acceleration tried to throw him into space, and caught his breath. Releasing one hand, he found purchase on the inner lip of the shroud assembly. There was a raised ring, part of the seal, a ledge about four centimeters wide against which he could push.

  Shifting his magnetic boots blindly from metal surface to metal surface, he pushed himself down until he could grip the end of the nozzle with one hand. Releasing the lip of the shroud, he began pulling himself further in.

  Finally his back was against the cylinder itself, his legs astride the emerging pipes. The valve controls were almost directly in front of him, while the nozzles themselves were above—although it felt like below—his head.

  Pulling a loop of slack in his safety line, still belayed to the handhold outside the shroud, he lashed himself firmly in place.