Breach the Hull

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  The XO’s voice counted down to reentry. “ . . . eight . . . seven . . . ”

  “See you when they wake us up,” I said to my gun crew. We always say it. Super-stition. We continued to roll flares down Annie’s barrels until the countdown fell to zero. I hoped we had done enough to disorient the Aylin tracking computers.

  I struggled against something wet and slippery and snake-like. I couldn’t breathe. I panicked. I was blind and deaf. Something hard and cold shoved me. I tumbled, flailing. All of the voices on the link, my constant companions for a year, were gone. I was alone in a muffled shell of cottony thoughtsilence.

  An electric cable arced below me bright and loud as I spun. I couldn’t feel my legs. I hit a wall hard and someone grabbed me. A hand wiped liquid away from my face and I sucked air, coughing violently. Steel groaned and popped.

  Where was our neural link? How could the neural link go down? Where were the destroyers?

  The hands that held me rotated me. A face loomed in the dim light, inches in front of my eyes. A man with his hair wet and slicked back, wearing a taught skin-suit. He slapped my cheek and I grabbed his wrist.

  “Are you awake, Sergeant?” he shouted in my face. My ears roared. “Focus on me, Damn it! We’ve had Catastrophic Decoupling. Get these people out of their containers. Disconnect yourself and go! Now, Sergeant!”

  I gaped at him as he turned to rescue someone who was drowning in a ball of suspension fluid. The fluid that had cushioned our bodies for so long in our containers was clinging to her head in zero-g like a ball. I understood. Catastrophic Decoupling. The Glory’s main computers had gone down. The link was gone. The failsafes had pumped us with adrenalin to cold-start our bodies, then thrust us out of our containers and into the core of the ship where there was oxygen. We’d practiced Decoupling drills in basic. Most people ‘died’ in the simulations.

  I started yanking quick-releases on the wires and tubes connected to my legflanges. My legs ended in metal cuffs at mid-thigh because Fleet removed our legs to make the suspension containers smaller. Smaller containers, larger crew. They would have regrown our legs if we made it home.

  I turned away from the man who’d saved me and started down the open, two-meter wide core-tube towards a bulkhead, hauling myself on handholds. Opened containers and gobs of suspension fluid surrounded me. Bodies tumbled and flailed in the dim light, tangled in tethers or caught in pockets of liquid.

  The worst part of Decoupling is the disorientation. I couldn’t think. My cybernetic implants were down and I felt slow. I hadn’t been in my body in a year and I couldn’t coordinate my fingers.

  I grabbed a twitching woman and wiped slime from her mouth. She didn’t inhale, only continued to twitch, so I spun her around and gave her a clumsy Heimlich. She spat and gasped and I left her. I didn’t have time for more. Most people die from De-coupling in the first two minutes. Drowning in space. It sounds funny until your first simulation.

  I bypassed the next man. His neck was tilted wrong and he was limp. I kept moving; kept wiping and yanking and slapping people. It took two of us to pull one poor bastard out of the tangled mess of his life support wires. Suddenly I was at the bulkhead. I turned, resting my hand on the lagging riveted to the metal surface. I was panting. Maybe a minute had passed.

  The tube stretched six or seven meters away from me to another bulkhead. The space was crowded with people staring wild-eyed. There were bodies. Many survivors shook from adrenaline overdose. All of us were coated in fluid and wearing tight skin-suits marked by stripings of rank. All of us had bright, stainless steel leg flanges glis-tening in the rows of emergency lights that were still flickering and coming to life.

  The man who had first rescued me floated at the far bulkhead, and I rotated my body so that both of our heads shared a common ‘up’.

  “Listen to me,” he yelled unnecessarily and all heads swiveled. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Jacobson, and we’ve undergone Catastrophic Decoupling. This is not a drill, but I don’t have to tell you that.” I stared at him and realized that he looked just like his avatar, only legless. He was our resident compartment officer.

  They randomly divide up personnel between compartments so that no matter how many compartments are breached, any remaining compartment will have a full skeleton compliment.

  “By the numbers,” the Lt. Commander continued. “Everyone get into your masks. The oxygen in here won’t hold out much longer.”

  I peeled a mask out of a wall socket, not wanting to fight my way back down to my home container. A hose stretched from the mask to CO 2 scrubbers in the wall.

  “By the looks of our lights,” the Lt. Commander continued, “the ship has lost main power and we’re operating on local batteries. We’ve taken a bad hit. Maybe the destroyers have left us for dead. Maybe they’re coming around again.”

  I could hear rivets groaning and I gripped the lagging tighter. I hate confined spaces and the tube seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. In the consensus reality of the neural-link, the ship seemed huge. Not here.

  “Sergeant,” he said to me, “what is your name?”

  I lifted my mask. “Gunnery Sgt. Kirchov, Sir!” My throat was hoarse from disuse. I was thirsty.

  “Glad to have you aboard. What is the status of the compartment adjacent to you?”

  I turned to the gauges at my elbow, squinting. “I read 27 Kelvin, zero atmospheres, Sir.”

  “Then we have had at least one compartment breach, possibly more. The compartment behind me is the FTL drive chamber. It also contains an emergency shuttle that can provide life support if needed. Roll call, starting at the back. If the person next to you is dead, return them to their stasis container.”

  I was shivering. The temperature was dropping, but maybe it was the adrenaline shot and the dislocation of waking up. I missed Annie. If we were adjacent to the FTL chamber, then we were Compartment Alpha behind the bow. I was a long way from my gun.

  In the end we had thirteen living and seven dead. My old drill sergeant would have called that unbelievable luck. None of my gun crew was here, and I hoped they survived somewhere in another compartment. We did have one surviving ordnance jockey and a maintenance tech. The telemetry tech was dead. I shut her eyes before closing her container.

  The life support officer worked with the tube engineer to divert what power they could from the emergency systems to improve the CO 2 scrubbers. They initiated a full air change, and the remaining bubbles of suspension fluid were drawn out through drains with a terrible sucking sound.

  The communications tech and the electrician’s mate got the local network up and running in relatively short order, and I blessed whatever genius had installed a LAN in each compartment. We jacked in through wall ports and suddenly my world was back. Twelve minds swirled around mine. I damped their fear because mine didn’t need any help and tried to access external ship-feeds. They didn’t respond. We were isolated.

  “I haven’t heard any secondary explosions,” the Lt. Commander said, “but we don’t know what happened. Someone’s going outside. Mr. Liu,” he looked at the hull tech, “you will be my eyes. Who else?”

  I volunteered immediately. I had to get out of here. Better to die out on the hull than in here where the walls were closing in. Mr. Liu and I unracked our compartment’s two EVA suits

  My new jockey, Michael, and maintenance tech, Leona, helped me on with the suit. My leg flanges clicked into place on the suit’s cybernetic leg-jacks and suddenly I felt like a whole man again. I could feel my feet.

  “Who’s your gun,” I said to my two new crewmen.

  “Lucky number Seven,” said Michael. “Midship, starboard. We call her Betty. Veronica’s her sister gun on the ventral side.”

  “Number Two,” Leona said. “Forward, port. Clotilde.”

  “Did either of you get off a shot?” They lowered the helmet over my head.

  “No,” they both thought to me on the LAN now that the helmet was on. “We caught a split se
cond of realspace and then nothing.”

  “Good luck,” said the Lt. Commander.

  I turned and Mr. Liu was floating right behind me, looking calm. Hull techs are born to crawl the outside skin of ships like lice. He clapped me on the shoulder, pushing me down to the deck because I hadn’t been holding a handclasp.

  “Shall we?” he said.

  We shoved chest to chest into the auxiliary hatch and Leona closed the door on us. The only light was the tiny headlamp we carried. Eleven avatars took up residence in our helmets’ feeds. I closed my eyes. This tiny space was worse. What if the hatch didn’t open? What if I died in here? C’mon, c’mon. Open the hatch.

  “Close your glare shield,” Mr. Liu said. “We could be next to a star.”

  I flipped down the shield as the outer hatch opened. Stars drifted by. The Glory was rolling. Suddenly, the brilliant rim of a star flared into view. We were close. Our ship was in orbit around the monster. Roiling reds filled the hatch mouth with harsh light and I lowered a second glare shield. Then I pushed out. Hard wires connected to the LAN played out behind me, keeping the avatars connected. Just being outside I began to relax. I checked the suit’s O2 levels. With the rebreather, I had nearly two hours supply.

  “Sgt. Kirchov,” the Lt. Commander said, “find those destroyers while Mr. Liu checks the hull.” I attached myself to outside handholds while Mr. Liu started climb-ing.

  The overwhelming glare of the star made searching difficult, but at last I located one of the destroyers. I had to lower a third shield to focus on her. I could only make out her black silhouette, but she was listing at a much lower orbit that we were. Some of our guns must have gotten a shot off to cripple her that badly. She was on a decaying orbit. The Glory rotated away from the star and I saw the second destroyer.

  “She’s coming back around, Sir,” I said.

  “Tap into Mr. Liu’s feeds,” the Lt. Commander said. “She’s not going to bother with us.”

  I switched to Mr. Liu’s feeds and stopped aghast. Our communications arrays were gone. All of the dorsal guns were gone. The docking hatch. Our hull was crushed from bow to stern.

  I scrambled up the side of the hull, past the hulks of powerless loaders and main-tenance ’bots. I needed to see for myself. And I stopped short at Mr. Liu’s side, directly on top of our compartment. The only surviving compartment. A rip extended from just a few meters shy of our feet all the way to the aft drive pods. The hull gaped open; the edges of the wound were coated in frozen fire-extinguishing foam. I took an-other step and looked down through the double hull and shattered hulks of hyper-space batteries into our adjacent compartment. The stasis containers must have flash frozen, but I could see that the failsafes had opened some. Bodies hung partially out, entrained in frozen globules of suspension fluid. Fourteen compartments, two hundred and eighty men and women.

  “I wonder if they felt anything,” I said.

  “What do we do?” Mr. Liu whispered. “The ship is gone. The communications arrays are gone.”

  “The Aylin destroyer must have come out of hyperspace right on top of us,” our surviving navigator said in awe over the link. “They didn’t overshoot us.” “Write that up in your report,” I said. “Sir?” I called to the Lt. Commander, “You are now the ranking officer of the ship.”

  “Affirmative,” the new Captain said. I couldn’t feel a lick of his emotions. He was that controlled. It solidified my resolve.

  We rotated back around and the second destroyer came into view again. She was slowing down, probably on a rescue mission to her crippled sister below. “Some of our guns must work, Captain,” I said, watching the long, sleek ship drift past. Hundreds of thousands of tons of steel, waiting to be popped. “I can aim without telemetry at this range. Give me one shot into her main drive section.” There was a long silence. Finally, “How many shots do you think you can get off before they fire back?”

  I sent a thought down to Michael. “Can you load quickly without the computers?” “I placed third in the military games running a loader just from my implants. Never jammed a shell.”

  “Captain,” I said, “they’ve already scanned us and found that we’re cold iron. They must have seen oxygen venting from every compartment. They’re done with us. All of their attention is below. I’m sure I could get in four, maybe five shots.”

  “Sergeant, our former Captain’s orders stand. We must get a message back to Fleet. Fire as many shots as you can. Your primary mission is to draw their attention away from the drone.”

  “But they’ll fire back,” someone said. “We’ll be destroyed.”

  I could feel horror crackle across the LAN as realization descended. I bowed my head. At least we would go down fighting like the Mariah.

  “I’m sorry,” the Captain said. “Yes, we’ll be destroyed. Many of us will die, but not all. I’m sending out the emergency shuttle with the drone. It has limited FTL capabilities, but only six suspension containers. Sergeant?”

  “Yes?”

  “I need you to stay and man the gun. Select a gun crew to assist you.”

  “Aye, Aye, Captain,” I said slowly. I felt the frightened attention of the avatars turn to me. Damn it. “We’ll need more EVA suits.”

  “Mr. Liu,” the Captain said. “Go down into that failed compartment and retrieve their two EVA suits. Bring them here, then return to the next compartment for additional suits. We will suit everybody.”

  I felt cold. Then hot. I stared at the destroyer. I had memorized her over the past forty-seven hours. There were three gun batteries up the starboard side and three on top. There would be an equal number on the far side. There were many smaller cannons. I had to get through that and strike her fuel cells somehow.

  I sent down to Micheal and Leona: “Looks like we’re it. Can I count on you?”

  Michael answered right away, “I’ll be out as soon as I get the EVA suit.” Leona took a longer time in answering. “Yes, Sergeant.”

  In the end I only requested Alex, the electrician’s mate, to help Leona jury-rig a gun to temporary batteries. I couldn’t command anyone else to die. That left nine people for six seats. The Captain would have to decide.

  Our ship rolled away from the destroyer and I sat in the cool darkness and waited. I liked it out here. I wouldn’t mind dying out here, watching the cold stars shine. Watching the giant star rotate by. Maybe I should have been a hull tech instead of a gunner.

  Three times the destroyer rotated back into view before Michael, Leona, and Alex joined me. They stopped next to the rent hull just as I had and stared in. “At least they never woke up,” Leona said.

  “Let’s get to Betty,” I said. “We’ve got a lot to do.” “Why can’t we use Clotilde?” Leona asked.

  “I don’t want to use the forward guns. Without attitude control, they’ll twist the ship. The midship guns might roll us faster, but we’ll stay straight.” We followed handholds along the edge of the torn hull. I tried not to look inside in case I recognized someone. A nimbus of sheered metal around the ship was all that remained of the dorsal guns and primary communications arrays, but Betty and Veronica were still pristine. They still held a 150mm egg in their baskets. Their loading servos still clutched a second egg at ready, waiting for the shot that had never come.

  “For our lost crews and for the survivors,” I said. They all nodded. “We’ll fire every warhead we’ve got and hope a couple get through. Michael, I bet that star is putting out a lot of interference. The Aylin may not detect our warheads if we don’t fire up the rockets. Can you recalibrate the shell firing control for just enough burst to clear the barrel? I want to send them in cold.”

  “I haven’t run a system directly since the military games,” he said. He inserted a neural wire from his helmet into the back of the loader.

  “Can you do it?”

  He saluted. “I can do it, Sergeant.”

  Leona and Alex began reconfiguring wires, directing battery power into the loaders and into my barrel
adjusters.

  “Sergeant,” the Captain said across the LAN, “what’s your estimated firing-time?”

  “Rough estimate of fifteen minutes, Captain. How are you doing on suits?”

  “We’re short one, but that’ll be resolved in a minute. We’re going to the shuttle now.”

  I switched to a private band and sent down to him. “Who’s staying?”

  “I’m staying. And Ensign Earl and Second Lieutenant Savron have volunteered to stay.”

  “It’s a shame we survived the crash and still have to die, Sir. Come on up when the shuttle’s out. Enjoy the show with us here.”

  “Affirmative, Sergeant.”

  The LAN shut down as the nine people below exited Compartment Alpha for the FTL chamber.

  I started moving Betty as soon as Leona got me an ounce of juice. I used the rough bore-site down the barrel. I doubted it had been used since she was first aligned and test fired at the dockyards, but it would serve me. The destroyer was di-rectly above her crippled sister now. Through visual filters I could see that her shields were crackling irregularly. There was interference. And she may have been trying to extend her shields around her sister to lend some protection. A warhead could get through that.

  “How we doing on juice?” I asked. I was growing eager.

  “If our hands weren’t so weak, we’d be done rewiring by now,” Leona said. “I need my tech-servos just to work on the tech-servos.” Showers of sparks leapt from her torch and out into space.

  At the bow, nine people gathered. The shuttle lifted slowly into view, ejected from the Glory’s nose on spring-jacks. Six people climbed inside. Three crawled in our direction.

  “How long ’til sufficient power,” I said.

  “Two hundred and eleven seconds,” Leona said.

  I started a countdown. Yellow lights flashed on Michael’s loader.

  “I have fifteen warheads, Sergeant,” he said. “That’s it. The rest were distributed for Operation Slowdown.”

  “Fifteen it is.” I laughed and flexed my fingers. I had often pressed simulated buttons to fire Annie. The manual firing buttons on Betty’s control arm were the real thing, and they felt real. I could just imagine the recording from the shuttle, sent back to inhabited space. Me, standing at the back of a ten-meter gun, firing manually. This was the stuff of Recruitment Holos.