Frontier

by Patrick Chiles

  There was a shout from Riley, and he disappeared behind a cloud of gas from a nearby thruster quad. When it cleared, a sinking feeling overtook Marshall as Riley tumbled away into space, his severed umbilical trailing behind him in a cloud of escaping oxygen.

  “Off structure!” Rosie shouted. “Control, EVA One is off structure!” She was moving to go after him even though she was bracketed between active thruster quads.

  “Stay there, I’ve got him!” Marshall said. “Control, EVA Three is in pursuit. Hang on, Chief!” He activated his emergency maneuvering and life-support pack, unhooked his umbilical and squared off to face Riley. He crouched down, took a deep breath, and jumped out of the airlock.

  The ship fell away, disappearing behind him as he focused on the writhing figure dead ahead: a yellow mass thrashing against the depthless black. His visor’s field of view, previously so much more expansive than the tiny portholes on Borman, now felt hopelessly limited—if he were experiencing tunnel vision, how would he tell the difference? There was no sense of depth perception: Riley could’ve been a child’s toy he could simply reach out and grab. The sudden sense of isolation was beyond his experience; he was keenly aware of his now-heightened senses. The sound of his own breathing pushed the cacophony of voices in his earphones to the background. He fought the reflex to turn and find the ship for reference, desperate to not lose his bearings.

  Riley’s form grew larger as Marshall rapidly closed the distance between them. “Almost there, Chief!”

  Why wasn’t he answering? These guys practically drilled safety protocols in their sleep. If an umbilical somehow became disconnected, the suit fittings had redundant backflow valves that would stop any venting. His suit should’ve held pressure long enough for his emergency air supply and SAFER pack to guide him back to the spacecraft. Come to think of it, his suit looked awfully loose . . .

  Oh.

  Marshall swallowed. “Control, EVA Three. Have you been able to contact Riley?”

  “Negative, Three. EVA One has not responded.”

  “Yeah . . . looks like he may have lost pressure. Stand by—”

  He was suddenly on top of Riley. Marshall held his arms out to catch him just as they collided, the jolt from his rib cage signaling that something was torn or broken in there.

  “Got you!”

  Marshall pawed at Riley’s suit and hastily clipped a D-ring onto his harness, lashing them together before he could bounce away. The tether went taut and snapped them back toward each other, bringing them face to face. He reached out to lift the chief’s sun visor, finally getting a look at him.

  His eyes were closed, his mouth hanging open. His breath had condensed and frozen inside of the visor.

  Marshall’s eyes widened. He mentally went down each step of the emergency assessment checklist he’d been drilled on—victim unresponsive. Okay, check suit condition.

  Step one: check his chest pack. Pressure was low. Real low—the needle hovered around one pound per square inch. They normally breathed pure O2 at five psi instead of an oxygen-nitrogen mixture at normal pressure. The lower pressure made the suits more flexible but that required pure oxygen to breathe.

  This was close to vacuum. He had a breach somewhere. Step two, check for signs of leaks. The shredded umbilical was a big hint, but again, at least one of the backflow valves should’ve plugged that hole right away. It was a passive safety feature, no human intervention required at all: if a hose were somehow disconnected, the negative pressure would slam the valves shut. They couldn’t not work.

  So there was a tear in his suit somewhere. Okay, torso and upper body first . . . Marshall turned him over quickly, looking for holes. It’d have to be fairly big.

  Nothing. He moved down to his waist, then his legs . . .

  There.

  “Control, this is Three. One’s suit is breached in two places. Right upper thigh, each one about an inch around.” He pulled out an emergency sealant kit from his utility harness and began opening the patch.

  A firm voice answered, Poole himself. “Three, this is Actual. Stand by on that seal. Any signs of burn-through?”

  What? They wanted him to wait? Marshall’s instinct to keep it clipped and professional kicked in with the boss on the other end of the radio. “Actual, Three . . . burn-through. Please advise. What am I looking for?”

  “It won’t look scorched, like from a flame. Look for blistering.”

  “Copy blistering. Checking now.” The outer layer of yellow ballistic fibers did look like a couple of bubbles that had burst, as did the inner pressure layers of latex-coated fabric. The severed end of his umbilical had numerous blisters. “That’s affirmative, sir. Immediately surrounding the two holes, and all over the umbilical.”

  “Did it burn through his cooling garment?”

  Marshall focused his helmet lamps on the two holes and pulled at them carefully. He could see the white elastic fabric and the edge of a cooling hose. “Looks intact, sir. Can I tape him up now?”

  “Affirmative, Three. That’s good news. He’s not completely screwed, but that’s exhaust residue. It burned through his umbilical and tagged his pressure suit, too.”

  “Understood, sir.” Fear gnawed at him as he wrapped sealant tape over the holes. The thrusters burned hydrazine, an exceptionally toxic and corrosive compound. Breathing in a few droplets of the stuff could destroy a person’s lungs, something he tried not to think about as he plugged Riley’s suit into his own life-support pack and began sharing air. How much residue did he now have on his own suit? Could either one of them come aboard now without contaminating the airlock?

  “Here’s what you’re going to do,” Poole said calmly. “First, are you stable?”

  Marshall closed his eyes and took a breath. When he opened them, he was looking at the heads-up projection in his visor. The horizon reference was motionless, no drift. Relative velocity was zero. The SAFER maneuvering pack had worked while he took care of Riley. “Affirmative. We’re stable, and Riley’s suit is patched. I’ve got him plugged into my air supply.”

  “Good. You’re not coming back to the utility airlock. I need you to head for the emergency lock, straight to medical.”

  “Understand medical.” Marshall unfolded control arms from either side of his backpack. Puffs of compressed gas surrounded him as he spun about to face Borman. It looked a lot farther away than he thought it would be. How far had they tumbled together? He tapped both controllers forward. “Three is Oscar Mike.” On the move.

  There was another unnerving jolt, this time at his back when Riley’s mass pulled against the tether joining them. He goosed the thrusters again to keep them moving, steering them toward a yellow beacon that had begun flashing atop one of the forward modules. That would be the emergency airlock, a massive door two meters square meant for the rescue spacers to move incapacitated passengers aboard in a hurry—not unlike what he was doing right now.

  There was a weak groan over the radio. “Good, you’re up,” Marshall said. “Stay with me, Chief. We’re on our way back to the barn.”

  “Closing—” A cough. “—too fast.”

  “I know. Trust me.” As they closed the distance, Marshall caught movement in his peripheral vision: Rosie, scrambling hand over hand along the length of Borman’s central truss.

  “Rosie, I could’ve sworn I told you to stay put.”

  “No disrespect, but get bent. Sir. Ship’s stable. I’m no spectator. See you at the med bay.”

  “Copy that.” He let the sideways rebuke go. She was definitely not one to stay on the sidelines. And now that she’d pointed it out, he realized the RCS quads had stopped pulsing. No doubt there’d been an epic screwup somewhere and Captain Poole would be looking for somebody’s head on a plate later, especially if it had harmed one of his crew.

  As they drew closer, he watched her brace against the end of the truss and push off for the medical module. She flew across the last ten meters or so and absorbed the impact with her arms, her bod
y swinging about as she pulled herself to a stop against a handrail. Her umbilical looped and coiled around her, which she scrambled to gather and get out of the way. He could sense the frustration in her movements despite the cumbersome suit encasing her. “From now on I think we stick with the MMUs,” she grumbled. They’d saved time prepping for this spacewalk by not having to prep the self-contained maneuvering and life-support units, but the cost of being tied to the ship was now painfully apparent.

  Marshall tapped back against the hand controllers, which brought him to a stop. Without a word, he unhooked the tether connecting him as Riley’s form went sailing by. Rosie reached out to stop him as he flew into the open hatch. “How’s your O2, sir?”

  Marshall looked down at his chest pack, confirming its gauge against the display projected in his visor. “Fifty percent.”

  “Good. You might need it.”

  “For how long?”

  She clipped Riley to a restraint. “Depends on how much hydrazine residue I find, sir. Hold the chief still for me, please.” He heard a sharp whistle in the background as she unhooked the lead for her umbilical. As she plugged the hose into a nearby port, he took the loose umbilical line and pushed it out of the way. They could gather it up from the airlock later.

  Rosie punched the quick-release latch to open up a small orange locker marked HAZMAT RESPONSE and took out a testing kit. She activated its chemical sniffer and began sweeping it over Riley’s still form. She then went to remove a pair of heavy shears from a nearby first-aid cabinet.

  Marshall was alarmed. “You’re cutting him out of his suit? We’re still in vacuum!”

  “Have to, sir. Gotta get the contaminated bits out of here first.”

  “He could lose his leg!”

  “That damage is done, sir,” she said calmly. “If he breathes in hydrazine residue, he’ll lose a lot more than that. Now keep him still, please.” She jammed the open shears into the outer shell just above the patch Marshall had applied, then moved to cut completely around his thigh. “Okay, now you pull away.” She grabbed his boot and tugged in the opposite direction. Dual layers of the outer shell came free which she tossed outside in one smooth motion. Riley’s leg, now in his exposed inner pressure and cooling garment, hung free. She circled him at arm’s length, searching for any other signs of blistered fabric and making one more sweep with the chemical sniffer.

  She then turned to Marshall, looking him up and down. “You’re next, sir. Spin for me.”

  Marshall pushed against a wall with his fingertips and turned about, holding his breath as she swept a fresh testing kit over him.

  “I think you’re good.” She reached for the big hatch and slid it into place, then spun down the latch. “Barn door secure. Pressurizing.”

  The next day, Marshall checked up on Riley in the med bay. He’d thought it impossible to make the area any cleaner than it already was, yet his spacers had somehow managed. Its ever-present antiseptic aroma seemed especially sharp now, and he wondered how they’d found time to scrub the place down with all of the other activity going on. Had some crewmembers come in here to prep the compartment while they’d been scrambling after Riley outside? One of their own—their chief, no less—was about to become a patient. Of course they’d wanted the space squared away.

  Riley floated in a sleep restraint mounted along a wall, a tangle of hoses and leads snaking around him in zero g. The thin line of a nasal cannula looped around his head and beneath his nose while an inflated sleeve encased his injured leg: oxygen therapy for his vacuum- and chemical-damaged tissue.

  His violaceous leg ballooned against the transparent therapy sleeve, a result of burst capillaries from exposure to vacuum. Marshall deliberately averted his gaze from Riley’s swollen limb, focusing on the chief’s tired face instead. The chief’s eyes were bleary from either sedation or exhaustion; Marshall decided the distinction didn’t matter.

  “How are you feeling, Chief?” A stupid question, and the only one that came to mind.

  “My lungs feel like sandpaper and my leg’s one giant bruise but other than that I’m good, sir.”

  Marshall eyed his leg and grimaced. “No marathons for you for a while, I think.”

  “I hate running anyway. Only reason I do it is ’cause they make me. I keep hoping they’ll add fishing to the annual fitness test, but it never happens.” He looked Marshall square in the eye. “You shouldn’t have come after me, sir. At least not until they got those thrusters isolated. That was foolhardy.”

  “I didn’t have much choice,” Marshall said. “You didn’t activate your SAFER pack.”

  “I would have, just as soon as I got my suit patched.”

  “You were passing out, Chief.”

  Riley closed his eyes in submission. “Okay, so there’s that. Still, we could’ve lost two people out there, sir.”

  “Three, sir. I had to stop Rosie from going after you while that quad was still firing.” The Chief looked alarmed. Before he could say anything, Marshall held up a hand to stop him. “Would you have done any different?”

  “You got me again.” Riley stretched against his restraints and winced. He took a labored breath. “Do they know what happened yet?”

  Marshall shook his head, wincing at his freshly wrapped ribs. Bruised, though he couldn’t imagine how they’d feel if broken. “They’re still troubleshooting, but obviously some fail-safes were missed in the ground sims. The guidance routine took over, tried to orient the ship as if it were executing the program live instead of running a QC check.”

  Riley lowered his voice. “Skipper’s got to be pissed.”

  “Epically pissed,” Marshall said. “He’s going to have someone’s ass for sure when we get back. Flynn was in the seat when it happened, and word is he’s being sent back to oversee the beatdown.”

  “About that, sir . . .” Riley patted the sleeve around his leg. “If he’s going, you realize this means you’re staying. I sure can’t, especially if we’re expecting rescue sorties.”

  Marshall’s eyes widened. “Nobody said anything to me,” he demurred. “I just figured Commander Wicklund would end up back on the crew roster.”

  “The XO’s a good fleet officer,” Riley said, “but they’ll need EVA specialists on this mission.”

  “I’m not one of those either.”

  “You are now, sir. That was some real Hollywood shit you did out there.”

  “Captain Poole’s going to want more experienced officers. I’m not getting my hopes up,” he said, embarrassed to admit it had been something he hoped for. Between Riley’s injury and Flynn’s misfortune it was a huge opening, and why wouldn’t he want to go in either man’s place? It would be their first mission into interplanetary space, sent to rescue a couple he’d been following near obsessively since they’d left Earth nearly two months ago. Yet this wasn’t about what he wanted—it was deadly serious work, as he’d just experienced firsthand.

  As if reading his mind, Riley gave him an equally serious look. “What’s more important is the other spacers like you, and you’re earning their respect. Have you checked the manifest lately?”

  Marshall pulled out his tablet and looked up the latest mission plan. When he tapped the manifest icon, his name appeared at the top of the list.

  He was going.

  17

  Special Aerospace Mission Twelve-Zero-Five, a chartered Clipper from Polaris Aerospace Lines, was almost invisible as it approached the Borman while still in Earth’s night side. Its black and gray color scheme was a product of necessity, the spaceplane’s belly being covered with carbon composite heat shielding and its upper fuselage skinned with titanium alloys. The curves of its lifting-body fuselage blended into clipped delta wings, and the company’s swooping blue and white logo on its twin tails stood out against the plane’s dark silhouette, prominently illuminated by its position lights.

  Poole was in the dome, personally guiding them in. “SAM 1205, we have you in sight. Still ugly as ever.”

/>   “On the contrary,” the pilot replied, “this has to be the prettiest bird in the sky.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the plane.”

  “Nice to see you too, Simon. Keeping busy?”

  “The new guy’s giving me fits,” he said wearily. “Just can’t find good junior officers anymore.”

  “Sometimes you have to wish they’d bring back the old naval traditions, like public floggings.”

  “Sounds like something a jarhead would say.”

  “And here I thought a squid would appreciate the sentiment.”

  “I’ll let you see for yourself.” Simon switched tones, signaling it was time to get back to being professional. “SAM 1205, you’re inside the bubble at Waypoint One. Cleared to approach.”

  “SAM 1205 has the ball. See you in a few.”

  * * *

  When Marshall opened the airlock door, he was greeted by a familiar face: puffier than he remembered thanks to the fluid rebalancing of zero gravity, but the piercing gray eyes and unruly black hair they shared (though a good bit thinner and shot through with streaks of white) was like looking in a mirror.

  “Permission to come aboard, Ensign Hunter?”

  “Dad?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes, then.” Ryan Hunter pulled himself through the hatch and looked up to find the ship’s bell. He gave the lanyard two firm tugs, announcing his arrival. He gave Marshall a knowing wink. “Somehow I knew Simon would put one of these up here.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Just another government evac charter. They contracted us to come pick up your crewmates and those solar flare victims. You thought I’d pass this trip up?”

  “I guess I hadn’t thought . . .” Marshall stammered.

  Ryan put a steady hand on his son’s shoulder. “So I’ve heard. That was quite a stunt you pulled off yesterday.”

  Had it only been yesterday? It felt like at least a week. “Had to be done. The other spacer was pinned between two active thrusters and the chief wasn’t responding.”