Salvage Conquest

by Chris Kennedy

  I blinked several times, trying to reconcile the vision with what I knew. I’d owned Arcturus for years and knew every square inch of her halls and other spaces like the home I’d grown up in. Not only was the bulkhead before me new, it wasn’t like any other on my ship.

  I slowly floated up to the new bulkhead to examine it, even though my mind hadn’t completely come to grips with its existence. Playing the arm light back and forth across it, I quickly realized why I’d never seen it before; this bulkhead wasn’t an interior wall, it was outside hull. I could see fusion welds and sure indications of regular use, like carbon scoring and micrometeorite strikes. It also didn’t look like Arcturus’ exterior.

  I leaned even closer to examine it, pushing one of my hand magnets against the metal to secure myself. The magnet didn’t stick; it wasn’t ferrous metal. A lot of hull armor was only partially ferrous, meaning magnets didn’t work great. However, I’d never seen any which wasn’t magnetic at all. I tried again. Clank, clank, clank. Nope, the magnet wouldn’t adhere, not even a little.

  “What in the hell is going on?” I asked, my voice sounding dull in the suit helmet. My teeth were chattering, which didn’t help at all.

  I spun around and headed back the way I’d come. In the back of my mind, a dim idea was beginning to form. Maybe after I emerged in normal space, I collided with a chuck of starship debris? Yeah, that actually kind of made sense. Arcturus had some residual delta V, so it was possible, I guessed. However, shouldn’t the anti-collision radar have warned me?

  Grinding my teeth together and grumbling to myself, I didn’t pay too much attention as I passed the still-open airlock and floated in the other direction toward engineering—and right out into open space.

  The hallway, and my ship, ended in a jagged tear just ahead of where the rearward, airtight door should have been. One second I was floating along lost in thought, surrounded by the comfortable, familiar metal walls of my starship, the next I was immersed in the endless void of the deep.

  No, I gotta survive!

  A seeming eternity passed as my already stressed mind tried to process yet another roundhouse kick to reality’s balls. How the fuck does half a ship disappear?!

  I clawed the can of zero-juice from the ESVS belt, aimed it sideways in the direction I’d been traveling, and gave it a squirt. The compressed gas induced a gradual yaw to my flight path, and I slowly turned around to face opposite my direction of travel. The answer was plainly clear—half my ship had been torn away.

  * * *

  A zero-juice can is really nothing more than an overly large container of compressed CO2 and a handle, bulky enough to hold in a space suit’s glove. It was good for about 12 seconds of continuous spray or 50 odd little squirts to move you around a bit. I was moving away from the front third of Arcturus at a couple meters per second.

  The same instinct which got me into the eight-ball and refused to let me give up when the ESVS proved to have no oxygen overrode my sense of what-the-fuck and screamed if you don’t get control of your situation, you’re screwed.

  Gotta survive.

  The second I’d passed out of the ship’s residual heat area and bulkheads, it began to get colder. And I mean, really colder. Space isn’t hot or cold, it’s nothing but a vacuum. If you are near a radiant heat source, you heat up. If you’re in deep space (like I was now), you get colder. The tiny little heaters in my ESVS had already been maxed out. By the time my survival instinct overrode my profound sense of fucked, the suit’s thermal alarm was blaring just as annoyingly as the no-oxygen alarm had.

  Fight, fight, fight, just figure out how to survive.

  I glanced at the arm display and grunted. Interior suit temperature was 45 degrees and falling visibly. The first thing I did was fire a timed puff from the zero-juice can to align me with the now noticeably smaller remains of Arcturus. Once I was relatively stable, I craned my arm back, aimed as best as I could, and gave it a two second squeeze.

  Of course, using zero-juice was by no means an accurate form of zero-gravity propulsion. That is to say, as soon as I pulled the trigger, I turned into an insane whirling monstrosity of limbs and cursing. After I’d used even more gas to stabilize my now three-axis insanity, I remembered the instruction to use the can to thrust while facing away from your destination, curled into a somewhat fetal position, with the can held near your stomach. Duh.

  Use your brain! Survive!

  I used the suit’s minimal camera to verify my angle and fired again. A minute later, and five degrees colder, I verified I was going in the right direction and fired another burst, shorter this time. The ESVS didn’t have any of the bells and whistles of an actual space suit, like laser ranging or remote telecontrol abilities. I had to use the good, old fashioned, Mk1 eyeball to verify I was moving back toward what remained of my ship. After a few seconds, it seemed I was.

  Gonna survive! My heart pounded, and tears threatened to well up. I reigned them in; crying in zero gravity only obscured your vision.

  Resisting giving another couple squirts was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But another of the ESVS shortcomings was its thin skin. You could tear it far easier than a spacesuit. Instead, I kept looking behind me with the arm mounted camera, verifying that the ship was, indeed, getting closer. Without the ranging, I could only guess how fast. It was a nervous few minutes.

  Finally, I could make out some details on a surviving antenna, so I knew the range was under a hundred yards. I used the zero-juice to slowly spin around and face the ship, then stop the rotation. Arcturus was closing faster than I would have liked. I considered using the zero-juice to slow down. The problem was that I didn’t have long either way, especially as it seemed I wasn’t heading for the gaping wound where the rear section of the ship once existed. I was going to hit in the vicinity of the ventral cargo door.

  I curled into a ball and aimed the cylinder nozzle in my direction of travel. How much have I used? I had no real idea. Hoping enough remained for what I needed to do, I waited until I was only a few feet away and gave a squeeze. The ship continued to close. Another squeeze. Slower now. One more little squirt. The metal handles around the cargo hatch crept toward me as slow as a winter night’s dream, allowing me to easily reach out and grab ahold. Yes! Home sweet wreck. Live another minute!

  I clicked the zero-juice bottle back into its belt clip and began to move hand over hand along the hull. It was getting difficult; it was so cold inside the suit, I was having trouble making my fingers work. I hazarded a glance at the display—36 degrees was the pronouncement, chilling in more ways than one.

  I hadn’t thought to orient which way around the hull I was going, only that it was sideways away from the cargo hatch. It was only when I was halfway around that I realized I was going in the opposite direction from the point I’d exited. I’d come upon more of the strange hull plating, only this time it was attached to a ship other than my own.

  At first, I thought it was two ships. The vessel somehow reminded me of a trimaran, with twin hulls running along a central, larger hull. Only one of the long, narrow, outside hulls was severed midway back and missing, and the other went through my ship between the bridge and the small craft bay. It was what I’d found just before blundering out into space. The confusing part was that it looked like the two ships were made this way!

  The point where the other ship’s hull contacted mine was flawless. The angle was sharp, and there was no sign of damage from a ramming collision. It looked like it was welded there, only there was no weld. If anything, it showed stress from being bent. It was like it was phased into my hull. Or, like it appeared there. And that was when I thought about the moment the accident happened. Had I appeared in normal space, inside this other ship?

  “Impossible,” I said as I shivered uncontrollably. In all the centuries beings had been using Bith Gates to travel between systems, no such event had ever occurred. Or had there simply been no survivors? I recalled the violence of the incident and extreme d
amage. If someone came upon the ships in space, with the apparent damage, would they consider it an alter reality intrusion or simply conclude two ships had collided? I suspected the latter.

  It was too far to go hand over hand all the way back around the ship, so I took dire actions. Pulling open an access panel on my ship I recognized, I fished inside for a pair of cables. Disconnecting one, I pulled it out as far as it would go to access what was below it. The power cell came free with a jerk, and I examined it. Designed to operate remote sensors, it was made to last for years. I only needed it for a few minutes.

  My fingers were numb now, and didn’t want to respond properly. I struggled with the connectors long enough to wonder if I could manage what I was trying to do. Then the plastic connections came free, and I released the charging port on the ESVS. It only took a second to connect the two together.

  “Caution—power source is high-voltage,” the ESVS’s computer warned me. I tapped the override and channeled power into the heaters. Instantly, I felt the temperature begin to climb. In a couple seconds, I had to over-power the fans, because I was afraid the heating elements would burn my torso. The heat was so intense, my fingers and toes started to ache. It felt good.

  I spent a minute surveying my control panel. Oxygen was down to 89% and power wasn’t a concern for longer than the oxygen would last. Now, the only problem I had was that a strange ship had merged with my ship and probably wrecked both.

  While I was luxuriating in the heat, I examined the other ship. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen. The longer I looked at it, the more wrong it was in my mind. The angle of the hull, the rake of the nacelles, the fact that it was painted a mismatch of greens, blues, and yellows—they were all wrong. Not many spacers bothered painting their ships at all. Vacuum and radiation resistant paint isn’t cheap. My own Arcturus only had her name and an ID number painted on it. Whoever owned this ship had spent a small fortune in paint.

  I moved closer to the strangely painted hull and examined the paint. It wasn’t paint; the metal, itself, was colored. A thought tickled the back of my brain. As quickly as it appeared, it was gone. A hand run along the hull gave me the slight feeling through my glove of a remarkably smooth armor plate. It was a sleek ship, with advanced armor. I couldn’t see any welds.

  Warm, finally, I moved back toward the lock on the other side of Arcturus’ hull. The other ship was closer. I don’t know why I didn’t investigate it first. As I got close to my own lock, the alarm on the ESVS buzzed anew. One of the suit’s three heating elements had died from being overpowered.

  In a slight panic, I dialed down the power. Too late, another element followed the first one. I smelled ozone inside the suit. Inside the fucking suit! I did the only thing any sane person would do—I cut power to the heater and moved faster.

  No, I won’t give up now, I’m going to survive.

  The lock’s independently powered door cycled open quickly enough. I pulled myself in and triggered it to close. The inside levers which controlled atmospheric cycling were dead, of course. I looked at the suit’s oxygen level and considered. Was it enough to pressurize the lock? Maybe. Not likely. No way. Shit.

  The door finished closing, and I floated there for a minute, feeling the delightful warmth of the heaters fading. With the suit’s lights illuminating the lock, I worked its arm controls. Restoring normal power levels to the surviving heating element and being out of open space slowed the heat loss from fast to only quickly.

  I had to get into one of the space suits stored in the lock. So, I pressed the power controls on each, in turn, and examined their status displays individually. I didn’t want to make another mistake. Both suits ended up having identical charges and oxygen levels. I took one and went out the other airlock door and back into the ship.

  Find a way.

  * * *

  Soon after, I was back in the corridor where I’d accidentally left my ship, it was time to devise a strategy. While the still undisclosed incident cost the engineering section of Arcturus, the forward was still there. This included my stateroom, a small galley, and a guest stateroom. I considered a wild plan to re-pressurize one of them, then circled back to the same problem I’d had in the airlock: not enough air. All those spaces were actually larger than the airlock.

  The cold was returning, and with it, a sense of profound hopelessness. How was I supposed to survive this catastrophe with only half a ship, when I couldn’t even keep myself from freezing to death?

  Just find a way.

  Debris still clogged the corridor, remnants of the dismemberment of my ship. The flashlight threw shadows in never-repeating patterns as I tried to think. Cursing, I slid the door aside and entered my cabin to get out of the maelstrom. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much better. All my dresser drawers had come open, and a constellation of clean and dirty clothes, along with a myriad of bric-a-brac, including an award I won in high school and a half eaten sandwich, floated there.

  I remember sighing as I examined the space, realizing it would soon be someone else’s salvage. I’d come to this system, planning to collect some good scrap from a battle three years ago, only to add myself to the available junk. Now what would I do? The ship represented my family fortune.

  Survive first, plan later.

  I was about to turn and leave, when I noticed not every storage place had disgorged its contents. The little room’s fresher door was still closed. I didn’t use it for anything more than a late-night piss break. Commonly called a wet toilet, it was designed to serve as a toilet, washroom, and shower all in one. It didn’t do any of those things particularly well, though. However, it was a small space, big enough to hold me.

  My heart raced as I floated over and examined the door. It wouldn’t be airtight, but I had a fix. I unlatched it and pulled it open. Soap, toilet paper, and frozen excrement floated out, along with a pile of boots and dirt-side clothes—I tended to use it as a storage space too.

  I shoved everything out into the growing storm which had been my cabin. The shower curtain, which kept the commode dry while showering, had come loose and was gently floating like a superhero’s cape. I braced against the door jam and ripped it free, shoving it out of the way behind me. The now mostly empty space was about seven feet tall, 30 inches side to side, and 50 inches deep. Damned little room for a man and a spacesuit.

  Do you want to survive, or not?

  I jammed the spacesuit into the shower area, trying to compact it into as small a space as possible. Because the helmet and the LSU, the life support unit, were large and solid, the suit was still bulky as hell. I needed every square inch I could manage to pull this off.

  Once the suit was, more or less, in a corner, I grabbed the shower nozzle as a handle and pulled myself in, and the door closed behind me. Shit, it was a small space. Hopefully, small enough. I locked the little latch and reached for another part of the repair gear on my ESVS belt.

  This was another cylinder, smaller than the zero-juice. Spacers called it a lot of names, but I preferred space-spunk. Making sure I had a good hold and had oriented the nozzle correctly, I started in the top right hand corner of the door and began spraying. The blue-green liquid shot out and hit the door seam, instantly turning white. Initially, a light liquid with high viscosity, it penetrated any seam it found before hardening into a polymer state in less than a second. It was made to stop pressure leaks and had saved countless spacers’ lives. Arcturus had been a good ship with an exceptional pressure hull. I’d never used space-spunk after I qualified.

  Moving the cylinder steadily along the seam, I worked quickly left, then down the sill. I stretched as far as I could, having trouble bending over in the crowded space, and worked the space-spunk along the bottom before turning upward. I stopped and went back to where I started, planning to save the last to give the locking mechanism an extra heavy shot. At least, I would have if it hadn’t run out before I reached the lock.

  I stupidly stared at the canister for several seconds, gav
e it a shake, and tried to spray. A tiny bit spurted out, hit the middle of the door—where it could do no good—and turned white. Of course, it ran out; the bottle was designed to stop little leaks, like laser holes or micrometeorite impacts. Anything big enough to need a huge bottle of space-spunk would be too big for it to work.

  I shoved the spent bottle aside and searched my belt. There wasn’t another on the suit. I cursed my lack of forethought. There were probably half a dozen bottles in the air lock as part of the damage control gear. Nothing to be done about it now. Survive.

  Examining my handiwork, I could see space about half a foot above and below the lock that was not sealed. Some of the space-spunk had probably expanded into the seam, but would it be enough? There was only one way to test it. Reaching down to my waist where the ESVS’s various interfaces and power cables were, I took hold of the main valve. You know, the one with red writing on it which says: Do Not Open in Vacuum! I twisted it open.

  Instantly, the suit’s alarm began blaring. The little computer must be getting annoyed with me by now. As the pressure dropped, the oxygen control system bled pressure from the bottle to keep the suit’s pressure constant. It took a second to respond, and my ears popped. I shivered from the cold, but also from the memory of sucking vacuum on the bridge.

  You’re going to survive.

  I watched the arm display. What else was there to do in a tiny bathroom, glued closed, inside my wrecked starship as my O2 bottle ran out. It went from 90% to 50% alarmingly fast, especially since the external atmosphere sensor didn’t so much as twitch. “0.0 millibars” was its deadly report. The temperature was again below 50 degrees, but the loss was, at least, slowing now that I was in a tiny space. The only thing not looking grim was power, thanks to the power cell I was largely not using.