by Mark Gardner
“I need to see the status of everyone below, Gauge. Do you think you can handle it here?” Winchester asked.
“I’ll do what I can, Skip, especially for Booker. He has a gash that goes all the way down to his skull, hemorrhaging. It may be too late for him. Do you understand?”
“You’re all we got, big man, and there’s only four of us left. I’m going topside. Get my pilot back up, will you. If anybody has the skills, it’s you.” He put on his helmet and checked his suit, then glanced over at Femke one last time.
Gauge seemed to appreciate the confidence placed in him and went back to where Booker lay. Winchester climbed up the ladder, unscrewed the hatch leading up to the second level then, once inside the airlock, pulled it shut, and then unscrewed the latch leading up into the ravaged room. He squatted and pushed off, floating through the gap past Angelo Lu’s legs.
When he was back in the bridge area, he found a computer, wedged his feet in a way that would keep him stationary, and accessed the internal camera system. He looked in on the miners to see how they were faring and was taken aback by the amount of death reflected on the screen.
Parts of the hull had been breached, and the atmosphere was shot, so floating bodies, frozen and alien in their appearance, were on every screen he switched to.
Winchester looked in on the engineers, and it was the same thing. In the hallways, in the smaller spaces, and in the sleeping quarters where a few hard-headed lovers strapped in. The few survivors he saw were just too little in number. The explosion had taken one hell of a toll on human life.
He went back to the miner’s level and scanned the supplies. They all seemed intact with none destroyed by the blast. The area where they stored the rations was a different matter, it was a charred up version of its former construct and would not be usable by anyone.
Winchester did the math in his head. How close are we to another ship? Is there any chance of a rescue before we starve? Who would have done something like this?
He moved to his old computer to see if he could get in contact with Adelaide or Jeremy from engineering, but then his transmitter buzzed. He answered it in hopes of hearing some good news.
“Cap’ Hayes?” It was Gauge.
“Gauge, hey man, I see you got the transmitter fixed. What’s the status on our team?”
“Femke’s still out, and Marisol is talking to one of the engineers. It’s bad, Cap. Lots of people dead and they’re throwing around the word, sabotage. There’s one other thing, I hate to bring this up now, but—,” Gauge’s voice cracked, and he stopped himself, which made Winchester’s heart start to race.
What the hell is going on, he thought, what could be so bad? “Just tell me Gauge, just run it out. It’s the easiest way to deliver bad news.”
“Booker’s dead. He fought till the end. The-there was nothing I could do to help him.”
CHAPTER NINE
Days Until Home: UNKNOWN
The view of the black would’ve been breathtaking if she weren’t slowly suffocating in a suit that was supposed to keep her alive. Even the heads-up display was reduced to a quarter-inch piece of Lexan. No alarms told her she wasn’t getting oxygen. A severe chill pressed against her, leeching the warmth from her bones. She could feel the X-shaped bruise forming across her torso. Erika closed her eyes and willed the sea of glowing emeralds, rubies, and sapphires from her sight.
No engineer worth her training couldn’t feel a tether’s gentle tug against her EVA suit. But, Erika thought, I’m not on an EVA.
The tug was there nonetheless. The thin material of her launch suit wasn’t designed for extended forays into the black of space. She tried to cross her arms to warm her torso, but her arms splayed akimbo. She had gotten used to the soft roll of Egeria-13, and like it was a religious pilgrimage, she had always found a portal to watch Sol rise during each of the three times it happened every Earth day. She was used to the microgravity produced by the spud’s nineteen kilometers a second, and now that it was gone, she felt an impending dread in the pit of her stomach.
Her tether tugged at her again. The lurch pained her bruises, and her arms floated into her field of vision for a moment. Her eyes welled with tears. Her left glove appeared fine, but her right glove was missing, as was everything below her forearm. Erika sucked in a breath. Cold radiated up her right arm and settled in her elbow.
Another tug, and another brief moment of her limbs coming into view. Some metal, scorched and black against the white of her suit, reflected ambient light. Stress was evident from the bubbled edges of the metal. Even in that moment of visibility, she could see her suit terminated at the metal, brown and black residue ran up her suit arm.
What the hell is that tug? she thought as her arms floated into view once again.
Her left glove twitched. No, she thought, not my glove, my fingers.
She clenched her fist, and her left hand slowly responded. She could feel the thin material of her launch gloves against her knuckles.
When the tug happened again, she tried to memorize what she saw of her left arm. The white material formed around her arm, and it appeared to be the proper color. She rotated her elbow and felt the material shift against her forearm and elbow. The tugs were happening at regular intervals, and she braced herself against the impending pain.
She wanted to brace herself, but shock defeated her plans as her vision filled with debris from the Kerwood. Beyond that, she caught a glimpse of Egeria-13. To her, it looked like a gray, partially deflated soccer ball. They were moving away from the rock, but in what direction?
Dark shapes danced at the edges of her vision, and she was tugged back once again.
How long have I been out here? she wondered. The suit couldn’t hold much oxygen. The explosion couldn’t have been very long ago since she was still breathing. She tried to bring her right arm forward to check the display on her forearm cluster, but her right arm refused to obey her orders.
Damn that incessant tugging! she thought as more debris came into view. Is that my console? Her damage control panel floated by, it’s trajectory now different from hers. Her heart raced, her breath faster. She commanded her tired left arm into service and reached for her chest. The slightest contact made her wince, but her gloved fingers found the gap between her suit and the safety straps. I’m still strapped in, she thought.
She was grateful that she followed Crazy Ade’s order and suited up. Something collided with the side of her seat and spun her into an odd rotation. Her center of gravity was somewhere between the tether and her helmet. She saw the black, then the Kerwood with Egeria-13 behind it, and finally, a body. She thought she recognized it as her partner in damage control. He must’ve been closer to the breach, she thought. Poor Christopher. The tug happened again, and her rotation reversed: Christopher, then the Kerwood and Egeria-13 and finally the black. She even got a glimpse at her tether. It was the wrong color and the wrong shape.
Panic washed over her like a wave. It wasn’t a tether. Her eyes focused on the stranded fiber optic cable that kept her from oblivion. The only bundle that big and that long was the 4MC or damage control circuit. It ran the width of the Kerwood from damage control to auxiliary propulsion, right under the launch tunnel. It connected her terminal directly to the chief engineer’s console in aux.
Another tug and rotation reversal brought the gaping hole that should’ve been the starboard aft launch thruster into view. A suited figure gripped the fiber optic cable with both hands and staggered back into the gaping maw of twisted and burnt metal and plastic.
Closer and closer she drifted toward the Kerwood. Each tug brought her closer to… To what? she thought. The Kerwood had apparently suffered a catastrophic explosion. Did it make any difference if she died in the black or on board the ship?
The suited figure appeared again and waved three of it arms. Wait, thought Erika, too many limbs.
The figure bent down at the waist and gripped the fiber optic cable. It neatly stacked the slack cable, i
t’s extra limbs floating freely. No, not limbs. Erika focused on the suited figure with each rotation. That person had tied another launch suit around their waist, the arms expertly wrapped and tied to stay out of the way. The legs floated freely, and the figure had to position them each time they did another lap with the fiber optic cable.
The slender figure reached for Erika’s damaged right arm and froze. Erika floundered with her left arm, and her fingers made brief contact with her rescuer. On her next rotation, the figure seized her left arm and drew her into an embrace, cognizant of the damage to her right arm. Their helmets touched, and Erika looked into the bloodshot eyes of her savior.
Days Until Home: UNKNOWN
Grip the cable with both hands.
Make sure the damn thing won’t catch on anything.
Walk the length of what’s left of the launch passageway.
Repeat.
Adelaide performed it as a checklist and as a mantra. She didn’t even know if the other engineer was alive. She suspected the limp suited figure was either Erika or Jeremy. The fiber optic cable still attached to the broken console bracket told her it was one of her shipmates from damage control. She hauled the fiber optic cable with purpose. She needed competent engineers to help fix whatever disaster had crippled the Kerwood, so she continued reeling in the suited figure still strapped into their launch station chair.
She often had to pause and adjust the spare launch suit arms wrapped around her waist. She had tied it so she could see the display on the left forearm. It was an ugly hack, but without an atmosphere, she was forced to operate on the fly as it were. The display in her helmet didn’t want to show the information from the co-opted suit, thus the need for the readout to be visible from her waist. That in itself was difficult. The bulky launch helmet forced her to stop and hold it steady so she could see it. She needed to have two hands on the helmet and one to hold up the display. A problem easily solved by even the newbiest of engineers: she wrapped the fiber optic cable around the free-floating arm. Another ugly hack, but with the situation as dire as it was, what else could she do?
She reached for the suited figure and froze when she saw a mangled display bracket embedded in the right forearm of the suited figure. It ran through the suit arm and out the other side. The hand was fused to the metal, bent at an unnatural angle.
One more rotation, she thought as she prepared to grab the figure’s other arm.
A quick look over her shoulder to see the length of fiber optic looped around a door standing defiantly against the destruction like a single tooth in a rotting mouth, and she lunged for the figure.
Her hands clamped on the arm, and she spun the figure into an embrace. Erika Ängström’s wide eyes stared back, then filled with tears. Damn that woman’s ugly when she’s blubbering, thought Adelaide.
Adelaide reached behind Erika and, with a pair of copper shears, sliced through one of the bolts that connected the launch chair to the straps. Trying the release latch was pointless. Even if it were operational, the cold would’ve rendered it inoperable. Erika sobbed and shook in her arms as she worked to cut through another bolt. The bracket embedded in Erika’s arm had likely kept the young engineer alive. It pressed against Adelaide’s leg as she worked. When all four bolts were severed, Adelaide stepped back into the Kerwood, and the chair tumbled away before the fiber optic cable arrested its escape.
Adelaide pressed their helmets together. “Erika!”
Erika’s face was a pinched, quivering wreck. Tears floated away on their own trajectories in Erika’s microgravity. They ricocheted off each other and the inside of her helmet.
“Erika!” Adelaide yelled, “Get a hold of yourself!”
Adelaide wanted to smack the woman’s cheek, but the launch helmets made that impossible. Adelaide gritted her teeth and grabbed the thin oxygen scrubber tube just below Erika’s helmet and squeezed it closed. She was amazed the system still worked at all with the forearm cluster destroyed.
Erika stopped crying and lazily pushed her good hand against Adelaide’s arm trying to fix what she could only be subconsciously aware of with her HUD non-operational.
Erika stopped crying and looked into Adelaide’s eyes. Only a few inches separated them, but it might as well have been across a chasm.
Adelaide’s eyes flickered to her left, and Erika nodded in reply. Adelaide released her sometimes lover and examined Erika’s right arm. The six-inch by ten-inch bracket had rounded corners so there wasn’t a puncture risk, but it was unwieldy. Adelaide stared at the seal of melted fiber, metal, and flesh and whistled low.
She pressed their helmets together again. “We need an environment and some gravity to look at that arm.”
Erika nodded.
Adelaide sighed. “We need to find ChEng and get you a new forearm cluster. Tether?”
Erika winced and nodded.
Adelaide found a round binding latch and worked it around Erika’s bicep. It was designed to secure fitted pipes together with a layer of flexible sealant where excessive heat wouldn’t allow the standard epoxy to set. It would make a passable tourniquet if the need arose.
“Good thing you’re left-handed, huh?” Adelaide retorted when she finished with her makeshift tourniquet and their helmets made contact again.
Erika rolled her eyes and asked, “What’re we gonna use for a tether?”
Adelaide grabbed a bundle of wires sticking out of a bent conduit, braced her feet against the sides of a rupture, and pulled with all her might. Five feet of wire came free, and Adelaide cut it away with her copper shears. While she had to work at the bolts that held Erika to her chair, the shears did a quick job of the bundle of wires.
“I hope that wasn’t important,” Erika said when their helmets were pressed together again.
Adelaide shrugged and tied one length around Erika. She struggled with her end of the bundle, Erika’s one working hand of little use.
A helmetless miner in a launch suit floated by and Adelaide reached out to stop him. She gripped the arm and squeezed the release mechanism of the forearm cluster. She pulled a flat screwdriver from the pocket she had placed the copper shears and worked the pair of wire connectors away from the suit. Clutching her prize, she let go of the miner.
Erika reached with her good hand to stop the miner from floating out the breach. Adelaide grabbed Erika’s forearm and pried it away from the corpse.
Erika’s helmet collided with Adelaide’s. “We can’t just leave him!” Erika declared.
Adelaide nodded, and reached for the miner’s pocket, tore open the Velcro flap, and retrieved the toolkit each suit was supposed to have.
“Good thinking,” Adelaide said when she pressed their helmets together.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Erika said through clenched teeth.
“Look, we’re likely dead already, but if by some miracle we can get this tub running again, we’ll need to dispose of the bodies anyway.”
Erika frowned.
“We’re fighting for our lives here. One and a half AU from Earth. Even if they knew we were in trouble, it’d still take them four weeks to get to us.”
Erika stared. “There could be unregistered ships here.”
Adelaide scoffed. “Anyone out here without conglomerate backing is probably not someone we want rescuing us.” She broke their connection and held the forearm cluster over Erika’s working arm. The right-handed display would be backward for Erika, but it was a small inconvenience to allow Erika to read her suit’s parameters. She twisted the wire connectors to make it work and was satisfied when she saw Erika’s eyes dart around the helmet visor as she read the output on her HUD.
They made eye contact once Erika had surveyed her readings. Erika nodded, and the duo floated into a dark Kerwood in search of Jeremy and maybe their salvation.
Days Until Home: UNKNOWN
Jeremy watched a steady feed across the display. Everything was red. Warnings, klaxons, they all blurred. Jeremy squeezed his eyes closed an
d tried to clear the moisture from his eyes. When his hand struck the smooth Lexan of his helmet, he scowled and reached for the collar latch. A hand grabbed his arm.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, sir?”
Jeremy paused. “I think so…” he stared at the nameplate on the mining suit. “Siebert.” Siebert is a rotund man, thought Jeremy. If we survive the day, he’s gonna have to tone up.
Siebert removed his hand, and Jeremy slowly rotated his collar to release the seal between his helmet and his suit. He tasted the air and grimaced. Siebert tried to latch the collar, but Jeremy pushed his hands away. “It’s fine,” he declared, “I’m just not used to the taste of the air here.”
Siebert eyed the fiber optic cable snaking out of a removed panel in the wall and the electrical wiring popping out of the seal in the hatch. “That’s safe?” he asked pointing to the electrical wires they ran over the trunk hatch and closed the door on it.
“Well,” Jeremy started, but decided he should spare the nervous miner the particulars of atmospheric mechanics. “We’ll be fine.” Adelaide was uncanny when it came to engines. Erika was the best zero-G mechanic he had ever seen. But when it came to atmosphere, no one on the ship could match the keen mind of Jeremy Thompkin, the Chief Engineer of the Kerwood. Adelaide came close, but she just wasn’t as good as he was.
“What about the other hatches?” Siebert asked and stared up the trunk at the regular indentations marking each of the Kerwood’s decks.
Jeremy tapped the panel lashed to handholds recessed into the bulkhead. Colored dots moved slowly about the ship schematic. “We’ll have about a three-minute warning before anyone gets to a hatch. The panels are locked down, only an engineer or the bridge crew would have the codes to override it. I trust my engineers.”
“What about those pricks in their blue suits?”
Jeremy shrugged. “We’ll have about three minutes warning.”
Siebert again looked up the escape trunk that ran the entire height of the ship.
