Home Planet: Arcadia (Part 3)

by Sedgwick, T. J.

  She was the one with most weapons and spacewalk experience other than me. I hesitated, weighing up my personal feelings of protectiveness with the needs of the task—a highly dangerous one with no guarantee of survival. But there was no way I’d go down without a fight. No way I’d let Patton sit back while we suffocated.

  She locked her green eyes with mine and drew closer.

  “Come on. You know it should be me, Dan,” she whispered so the crew couldn’t hear.

  I nodded curtly, conceding to logic.

  “Okay, Commander Zoska. You’ll accompany me. Everyone else, as you were.”

  Turning to Sirtis, I said, “Lieutenant, you have the con. Commander, let’s grab our gear. We don’t have long to get to the airlock.”

  Talia and I rushed to the armory closet and took a 9mm sidearm with belt, holster and spare ammo. We put on the belt, loaded and holstered the weapons before grabbing a laser rifle each.

  “Grab the holdall, Talia,” I said. “Stash the vests and helmets in there.”

  She pulled the black nylon holdall from the bottom shelf and slung in size-appropriate helmets and ballistics vests for us both. There was no room for the other Marine-issue gear—just space for a selection of grenades: four stun, four smoke and four frag. I wouldn’t be using the latter anytime soon—explosives and spacecraft don’t mix too well—but as a last resort, they might be necessary. After last cursory scan of the shelves I said, “Right, let’s go while there’s still some air left.”

  We slung the laser rifles and Talia zipped the holdall. I grabbed it and led the way through the bridge. I stopped momentarily.

  “What’s the air pressure now, Kalani?”

  “Eighty-two percent, sir.”

  “Any success opening the doors to Module 3?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Okay. Keep trying.”

  I scanned the bridge and saw Dr. Ritchie and the two injured crew members had returned from medical.

  “Is everyone from Module 1 accounted for here in command?”

  “Yes sir,” said Sirtis. “And life support is unaffected in the rest of the ship.”

  “Is the command center airtight?”

  “Yes, we’ve managed to shut off all vents.”

  “Good,” I said, looking over to Sirtis. “Right, once Commander Zoska and I are out the door no one leaves or enters. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” both he and Kalani said in unison before I dashed into the nav room and out to the corridor, Talia close behind.

  We continued running toward the starboard-side airlock, taking a right then dashing another sixty feet. The reduced pressure was definitely noticeable, but far from debilitating. We crashed into the airlock suiting-up room, put down our gear and suited up. Both of us had had plenty of practice during the spacewalks to remove Module 2, so it didn’t take long. We did a communications test, re-slung our laser rifles and I grabbed the holdall.

  “Your air tank full like mine?” I said.

  “Yeah, more or less—ninety-six percent,” she said, her breaths coming fast.

  “It’s okay. Just take a deep breath and we’ll go through the plan.”

  She laughed nervously. “Glad to hear you have one, Dan.”

  “It’d be a sad state of affairs if the captain didn’t have a plan, wouldn’t it?” I said, trying to lighten the mood but well aware of the time limit Patton had imposed.

  The command center’s air wouldn’t last forever, even though they’d isolated themselves. It’d be hours, not days and all the while carbon dioxide would be climbing toward dangerous levels. Then there was Patton. But not just Patton. We’d counted another twenty armed hostiles and that was just the ones we’d picked up on camera. There could be more. Two versus at least twenty-one—more than a ten-to-one ratio. Not good.

  “So here’s the plan...”

  We needed something special to beat ten-to-one odds—even against a bunch of local-yokels unused to shooting in anger. Talia nodded, added some good points but ultimately didn’t have a better plan, so agreed. We left the suiting-up room for the airlock-proper and I tried for Tiro once more. Still no sign of him. All I could hope was that he was winning the battle against the Forever World foe who’d invaded the network. I slung the holdall over my shoulder along with the laser rifle. Talia did the same with hers. I depressurized the airlock and we climbed out onto the sunlit starboard flank. She closed the hatch and we flew by thruster, tracking down the curve of the ship toward its shaded underside. My eyes took some time to adjust from brilliant sunlight to dark shadow. Once we reached the bottom, we followed the midline toward the center of Module 3, careful to avoid the starboard side cupola containing the telescope I’d used five years ago. Unlikely, but you never knew who could be watching.

  Up ahead, on the underside of the module, was the lower telescope cupola. We skirted around it, passed it and continued along the lower midline of the hull.

  “Slow down,” I said over the headset. “We should be coming up on the vent cover. There it is, see?”

  “Yeah, about fifteen feet ahead. I see it,” she said.

  We floated toward it and grabbed onto the five-foot-wide circular grill.

  We tried to jerk it free, but the bolts were too strong.

  “Move away,” I said, reaching for my rifle.

  I set the firing mode from safe to cut. It dialed down the intensity but kept a continuous beam rather than a short, powerful blast.

  “I’m gonna soften up the bolts a little,” I said, taking aim at the first of four.

  I heated them one-by-one, the red laser lighting the scene. As quickly as possible, we both tried yanking the grill free before space sucked away all traces of the laser’s heat. It was no good—the heat loss was too rapid.

  “You heat while I’m pulling it,” I said. “We’ll try the top two first.”

  “Okay, setting my laser to cut.”

  She came closer, holding on with one hand aiming and firing the laser with the other while I squatted on the hull ready to yank as soon as the bolts were glowing red-hot. She heated them alternately as I pulled, wrenching with all the strength in my legs and arms. She topped up the heat, alternating until I felt the first movement. We kept this up until the bolts failed and the top part of the grill gained a few inches from its frame. Repeating the same again on the lower half, I gave it one almighty tug and off came the grill with me still holding onto it. I floated away from the ship a short distance thanking God for my suit thrusters. I let go of the grill and eased back to Talia and the vent aperture.

  We lit up our head-mounted lamps and, after giving the holdall to Talia, we squeezed into the dark vent line. Almost immediately, we rounded a right-angle bend toward the aft. I led the way, pulling myself along the large metal tube running horizontally fifteen feet below the observatory deck.

  “The valve’s up ahead,” I said, eyeing the flat flapper plate still closed in its seat. “This line’s still outside of the pressure envelope.”

  Still under zero-g, I hovered toward the valve, hinged at the top. The valve’s magnetic retention was easy to push past as I opened it up and moved on through, still in a vacuum. I saw the reflected light from Talia behind me and continued another fifteen feet until the vent line took another right-angle turn—this time vertically upward. Once around the corner, an identical flapper valve to the first blocked our way This one sat in line with the ship’s pressure envelope and would have full atmospheric pressure behind it. I gave it an obligatory shove—solid as a rock. A quick calculation had already told me it’d take over eighteen metric tons of force to open it. No one was that strong. I knew another flapper sat a short distance above this one—the innermost set of three valves—triple isolation from the vacuum of space. Rearranging my body so I could bear my laser rifle above me, I set it to cut once again. It wouldn’t take much, just a small hole to relieve the pressure between the valve and the one above. The concentrated laser beam burnt a hole the size of a penny, relieving the tra
pped air above the valve. I assumed air was bleeding out, but with no sound, the only way to know was if the flapper moved once it had.

  “I just tried Tiro again—still no reply,” said Talia.

  “Keep trying when you get the chance,” I said, giving the valve another push to no avail.

  We waited another few minutes and I tried again. This time only weak resistance remained and I pushed through the flapper, moving above it with no space for Talia to follow.

  “Wait there while I cut a way through,” I said, before turning the laser on the vent pipe itself. The alloy melted easily, the glow and red laser light supplementing my helmet lamps. The first rush of air from the cavity beyond oxygenated the cut at first, making it glow even brighter than before. But as the vent line repressurized between the inner and outermost valves, the flow abated. I pushed the cutout piece into the cavity and glided inside with Talia following. Our headlamps gave vignettes of the pitch-black space below the observatory deck running ten feet above our heads. It followed the gradual curve of the hull to the port and starboard and extended some way fore and aft. But the cavity was in no way spacious since it was packed with equipment. Fifteen-foot diameter, shallow hemispheres cover the curved ceiling flat side up facing into the observatory. Sitting side-by-side, they formed a grid pattern around the inner surface. These hemispheres were mere covers for the gravity field generators they obscured.

  Our first task didn’t involve them, though.

  “Air pressure’s normal, Dan,” said Talia. “Composition’s normal, too.”

  I double-checked on my spacesuit HUD for safety’s sake and confirmed her report.

  “Good, let’s get out of these suits,” I said, switching off bottled air and breathing directly from the Module 3 cavity.

  We desuited in zero-g and donned the Marine-issue ballistics vests and helmets. I switched on the helmet’s night vision. A systems check confirmed that HUD, comms and sensors on our helmets were working. We pocketed six grenades each—two stun, two smoke and two frag—then grabbed our laser rifles and the rest of the ammo for our 9mms. I surveyed the cold space crisscrossed by service lines, conduits and pipework searching for the right panel.

  “It should be over there, just around the curve,” said Talia.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  We navigated our way there hovering around any obstacles, squeezing past pipework. The place was built to be human-accessible... just.

  “This is it,” she said, pointing to the small, non-descript metal cabinet.

  “Open it up,” I said.

  She opened it to reveal a switchboard and an inactive seven-inch display. She switched it on.

  “All as expected,” she said.

  “Right, let’s find the hatch.”

  We retraced our zero-g glide path to the very bottom of the module and found the hatch in the ceiling between four of the gravity-generating hemispheres. I reached up, unlatched the hinged hatch cover and pushed it open. It fell slowly under the force of artificial gravity, its progress dampened by its pneumatic cylinder. Pulling myself through, I felt my own weight once more as I crawled aside for Talia. It was a weird feeling going from weightless to heavy and sluggish over such a short distance. It reminded me of getting out of the pool after a long time lazing around in the water.

  The observatory deck was directly above us, either side of the narrow crawl space were yet more service lines and electrical equipment. Even Talia couldn’t stand under the low ceiling. I had no hope. It didn’t matter, though, we just needed to find the best vantage point. The crawl space ran like a cross under the observatory deck plating. We sat at the crossroads of it. Looking port then starboard, I saw the ceiling get progressively lower as the flat decking above met the curved inner surface below. The crawl space fore and aft stayed at a constant height, but its path deviated thirty feet or so toward the bow direction. This was where the lower telescope emplacement penetrated the hull, its cupola protruding from the ship’s underside. The crawlspace skirted around that obstacle, turning sharp right then forward again to remain off-center.

  “There should be a total of four hatches along the port-to-starboard line and six along the fore-to-aft crawl space,” I said.

  “Yep, that’s what I remember from the blueprints too,” she said. “Question is: which one’s best?”

  “I think I know. Let’s go take a look,” I said, crawling up the curve toward the starboard side.

  We passed one hatch above and kept on going to the far hatch.

  “This one comes out beside the starboard telescope,” I said.

  The floor-to-ceiling height was now less than three feet—a tight space for a big guy, but workable. I reached up and turned the latch gently, feeling for any resistance that might make noise. It came open near-silently and I pushed the hatch cover until it opened an inch. Brightness flooded in and I adjusted my night vision to compensate. In reality, the cavernous observatory was on low lighting so the hostiles would have had a hard time spotting me. I listened intently for any sign of them. Nothing, save for distant footsteps on metal deck.

  We spent the next twenty minutes reconnoitering the enemy. Kalani was right—twenty-one masked people—mostly men, three or four women—with one of them it was hard to tell. Most of them were just waiting around, shooting the breeze. Meanwhile, the half-dozen hostiles watching the fore and aft link tunnels seemed more vigilant. Patton himself shared the glass-sided staff room with three others—the same place I’d slept in all those years ago when I first reentered the observatory. He sat on that same couch next to another guy while two others leaned against the opposite wall. All were laughing and smiling, sharing a joke and looking relaxed. I hoped to change that very shortly.

  “They’re waiting for everyone to suffocate before repressurizing Module 1,” I said.

  “They won’t know what’s hit them,” said Talia, confidently.

  “If it works ... remember ten-to-one—not good odds.”

  She came up beside me, held my hand and pushed up her visor. I did the same and we shared a slow, tender kiss full of her taste and the velvety feel of her soft lips.

  “Well, that was nice,” I said. “We’ll have plenty of time for that later, commander.”

  I smiled and gave her one more peck before pulling down my visor and getting back to business.

  “Right, I’m moving back to the panel below,” she said.

  “Okay, good luck. I’ll take position by the starboard telescope, you take the hatch near the port one as we discussed. Remember, whether we like it or not, we must shoot to kill. This is the hijacking of humanity’s last chance and these guys are waiting for our friends to die up there.”

  She nodded grimly. “No mercy,” she agreed.

  Then she sped off, crawling toward the hatch at the center of the crossroads as I took up position. A minute later, I crouched beneath the hatch cover, observing through the small gap. The large white dome of the central telescope occupied the middle of the floor. This was the downward-pointing telescope above the lower cupola. Right behind me was the starboard dome built into the side of the observatory, its counterpart hidden behind the central dome, over to the port side. Other than the domes, I could see a row of offices and labs built into the far wall on my right, at the center of which was the lower tunnel to Module 1. The open areas hosted clusters of workstations and the near wall on my left were the large white desks where the old professor had out his star maps and planetary maps. Just beyond was the glass-walled conference room. Four men now stood guard by the entrance of the bow link tunnel. Looking past them to the aft tunnel, another four hung around beside it, still in the observatory. I caught movement inside the glass-walled conference room and saw two more making themselves comfortable on the chairs inside. With Patton and the other three still in the room with the couch, that left three of twenty-one unsighted.

  Then I heard Talia over the headset.

  “Dan, I’m in position below the port-side hatch near th
e telescope.”

  “Did you execute the shutdown?”

  “Yes, I programmed a time delay of three minutes so I could get in position.”

  I didn’t know it was possible, but it was a smart move.

  “Good move,” I said. “I count eighteen hostiles with three unaccounted for. See if you can find them from your side of the central dome.”

  “Okay, taking a look...”

  She recounted the same eighteen armed foes I’d located, but no more.

  “Nope, just eighteen—same as you.”

  “Never mind, we’ll find them,” I said. “And I somehow doubted they’ll continue fighting once we get Patton.”

  I switched to infrared vision and saw the dim figures of hostiles turn to varying shades of light gray, their heat signatures betraying their positions even in the gloomy light.

  “Switch to IR, Talia.”

  “Already have.”

  “Good. How long now?”

  “Seconds. Ten-nine-eight-seven six ...”

  I took my hands off the laser rifle and pulled the grenade’s pin while peeking out of the hatch.

  “Five-four-three-two-one... Bingo!”

  The subtle background hum powered down as the module’s gravity generators went offline. The effects on Patton and his men were instantaneous as their bodies entered zero-g. Shouts of confusion reigned. Hostiles lost their footing, their struggles only sending them into the air, desperately grasping for their equally weightless allies. If the situation hadn’t been so grave, I would’ve been laughing.

  “Okay, smoke away,” called Talia.

  I heard a loud pop from behind the central dome.

  I rolled my own smoke grenade just feet from my hatch, then ducked down just before it burst sending its obscuring veil forth.

  “That’ll keep them thinking,” I said, emerging from the hatch, moving toward the starboard telescope entrance behind me. I opened the steel door and crouched behind it for cover.

  “Looks like a fire below!” shouted one guy.

  “Yeah, it’s taken out the gravity generators,” called a woman.