A Choice of Treasons (39 page)

“Major hazard warning,” his suit reminded him. “Gauntlet breach. Decompression compensation increasing.”

The isolation seal around his left wrist began to tighten painfully. Something tore away from the boat; it lurched badly to one side, almost went into a spin, but he got it straightened out and marginally stable again. His left hand started to throb painfully as the isolation seal got tighter. Again, the ship lurched badly as something tore away, but the shaking eased as the joints in his armor expanded. He took a chance, glanced at the console: no blips coming at him from behind, altitude just under fifty kilometers. They were almost there.

The copilot’s couch really should have been able to take fifteen gravities, but then the rocket that opened up the front of the boat must have damaged it’s mounting in some way. York was watching the boat’s altitude, trying not to think about the pain in his left hand, but breathing easier because they were approaching an altitude of one hundred kilometers and moving beyond the range of the fighters, when the copilot’s couch tore loose from its mounting. It was only about a half-meter drop from the back of the couch to the bulkhead behind it, but at fifteen gravities it was like falling better than seven meters. He slammed into the bulkhead and lost consciousness.

CHAPTER 18: MURDEROUS NEED

York regained consciousness drifting weightless in a black and white world of bright glare and sharp shadows. He was still buckled in the couch, and a readout at the top of his visor told him he’d been out for less than ten minutes. His thoughts immediately settled on the intolerable pain in his left hand.

“
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read?
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read? Over.”

York keyed his com. “Ballin here. Over.”

“
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read?
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read? Over.”

They weren’t receiving him, and there was no console projection displayed at the bottom of his visor. His suit’s connection to the boat’s system was down.

He lifted his left hand; his suit had tightened the isolation seal around his wrist with crushing force and his hand had swollen to fill and distend the gauntlet. There was no feeling in the hand any more, not in the sense of manipulating the thumb and fingers, but there was plenty of feeling when it came to pain. As he looked at it a tiny drop of unhealthy looking yellowish fluid oozed out of the small tear in the mesh of the gauntlet, then dissipated quickly into the vacuum of space.

“
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read?
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read? Over.”

He took a dose of
kikker
, then just for good measure added a couple of nerve jackers. The drugs accentuated the pain, but they cleared his head and he took stock of his situation.

He was floating near the hole in the cockpit, still buckled in the copilot’s seat. When the seat had torn away it had taken both control yokes with it, pulling a couple of meters of shredded wiring out of the deck. If he hadn’t been tethered to the boat by the wiring he and the seat might have drifted out through the hole and floated away. With his good hand he released the straps buckling him to the seat, braced one foot against the deck and his hand against the bulkhead overhead, then used the other foot to kick the seat out through the hole. While doing that he felt a faint vibration in his hand and foot, as if someone was hammering on the frame of the boat.

“
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read?
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read? Over.”

His suit was equipped with fifty meters of thin, plast safety line. He pulled out a few meters, clipped the end to a piece of tubing protruding from the wreck of the control console, yanked on it a couple of times to test it. He went back to the bulkhead at the rear of the cockpit, pressed the palm of his good hand against it, felt the vibration strongly there as a series of distinct, though seemingly frantic, blows. He wondered if the marines had some code of taps and clicks by which they could communicate. If so they’d never taught it to him. He pounded on the bulkhead a couple of times and the hammering responded by picking up its pace.

“
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read?
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read? Over.”

He turned to the backup console still folded out of the bulkhead, had difficulty programming it with one hand. He learned that when the control yokes had been ripped away the boat’s computer had gone on autopilot, held to the simple program of maintaining course, and with the boat’s nose straight up that was just what had been needed.

“
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read?
Three
, this is
One
. Do you read? Over.”

A few more seconds and he had his suit tied back into the boat’s system. He keyed his com. “Ballin here.”

“Cap’em, Yagell here. Good to here from you. We’re having trouble locating you, not picking up any telemetry from your boat.”

“Ya, she’s a mess. I’ll get a beacon going.”

“Good. You do that and we’ll be right there to help you, Cap’em.”

“Negative,” York said. “There’s nothing you can do. We’re dead in space. Just get your wounded back to
Cinesstar
and tell them to pick us up.”

“You sure there’s nothing we can do, sir?”

“Just get your wounded in, and tell
Cinesstar
not to waste any time.”

“Right, sir. Yagell out.”

York grabbed a twisted piece of plast with his good hand, closed his eyes for a moment. The pain from his hand made his head swim, but he couldn’t chance the groggy side effects of a painkiller. He tried to program another dose of
kikker
, but his suit warned him he’d had a dose less than five minutes before so he retracted the order.

It took him about ten minutes to get the emergency beacon going. He should have been quicker but the throbbing in his left hand dulled his senses. He programmed a few keys on the keyboard to give him crude control over the boat’s attitude jets in case he needed to help
Cinesstar
during pickup. By that time his head was swimming and his hands were starting to shake from of the pain pounding at his nerves. He paused again for a moment and closed his eyes . . .

The pounding on the bulkhead brought him back, and he realized he’d lost consciousness. He’d happened to float into a position where his helmet was touching the bulkhead, and the racket sounded as if there were a half dozen of them pounding away frantically. He looked at the readout on his visor, realized he’d been out for almost an hour.
Cinesstar
should have picked them up by now!

He took another dose of
kikker
. The boat’s radar and scanners were shot, but he was getting a canned telemetry feed from
Cinesstar
. From that he had their positions. The wrecked hulk of
Three
had achieved escape velocity and was arcing away from the planet’s surface.
Cinesstar
had picked up
One
and
Two
more than forty minutes ago, then taken up a position about fifty thousand kilometers from
Three
, was just sitting there, waiting.

The pounding on the bulkhead got more frantic. York had the boat’s computer run a quick systems check, and there it was. The port drive pod had gone into overload, her power feed was pouring out heat and hard radiation. The back of the boat must be an oven. York keyed his com. “
Cinesstar
. This is
Three
. Mayday! Mayday! One of our drive pods has gone haywire. It’s cooking us alive out here.”

No answer, just silence.
Cinesstar
sat there and waited, and York realized Sierka was still trying to get rid of him. He’d been willing to sacrifice the entire marine contingent to do it. But for some reason he now needed them, and here was an opportunity to get most of them back, then sit back and watch York burn alive with the rest.

York looked frantically around the cockpit for something, anything, and spotted a small arms compartment. He hit the latch with his fist, tore the cover open: two rifles, two sidearms, and about a dozen grenades with various ratings. He grabbed two of the ten-pounders, forming a plan as he did so, and clipped them to his waist. He keyed his com. “Sierka, you son-of-a-bitch,” he growled. “You can’t kill me this easily. I’m coming back for you if it’s the last fucking thing I do.”

There was one chance. It wouldn’t get them back on
Cinesstar
, but it might remove the immediate danger of the damaged pod and buy them some time. He reeled out twenty meters of safety line, guessing that to be length of the boat, then coiled it carefully, and crouching against the bulkhead he jumped out through the hole in the front of the boat, floated out until he reached the end of the safety line. It went taut, stretched a bit, then sprang him back toward the boat. It was an old trick, but it had been a long time since he’d done any real weightless work, and he missed a bit. If he’d done it right he would have come past the nose of the boat, swung around toward its tail, and when the line went tight a second time, he would have latched on to the aft end of the boat. As it was he careened off a gun turret, tumbled a bit, and when the line again went taut, through habit he reached out with his bad hand, tried to grab something, and that just shot pain up through his arm.

He ended up hanging onto the port gun turret, his line badly tangled, his arm a dead stump of pain, his lips growling a silent curse at Sierka. He played out more line, tried to ignore the pain and started crawling over the outside of the boat. Luckily, wherever a section of the boat’s skin had been torn away he was able to find something to grip, but his suit started nagging him long before he got to the drive pod. “Radiation hazard. Limit exposure to five minutes.”

Five minutes was enough for what he had to do.

Each drive pod was mounted to the rear of the boat by a large faring, one on each side. All that remained of the starboard drive pod was a stub of a faring that ended in a twisted, blackened mess of plast and steel. The port drive pod was still intact, though it was starting to glow a dull red.

“Radiation hazard. Limit exposure to one minute.”

He might need more than a minute. He reeled out a few more meters of line and wrapped his good arm around the faring. But with his good arm holding him in place, the arm that remained was useless for the work at hand, so gritting his teeth against the torment, he wedged his bad hand between two supports; he almost lost consciousness, had to take another
kikker
.

He cursed and swore, tried to focus his anger on Sierka to remain conscious, pulled one of the grenades loose with his good hand, fumbled at it to set the timer for one minute, wedged it in place on one side of the faring. He repeated the process with the other grenade, placed it next to the first, then he armed them, and hit the detonation studs.

He pulled at his bad hand, and it wouldn’t come loose. It was wedged too tightly, and it was too dead and useless to help him. He tugged at it, staring point-blank at the two grenades about to blow him to pieces, yanked on it with all his might, sending an excruciating jolt of pain up his arm with each pull. Then suddenly it came loose, and he careened away from the faring, floating helplessly. Floating free he swung his arms and legs about wildly, trying to connect with something, happened to be about ten meters from the two grenades and staring right at them when they blew . . .

Critical hazard war . . . compress . . . and counting.

The agony at the end of his arm; he would have given anything to have Alsa cut it off at that moment. The hissing jet of air blowing out through the blackened crack in his chest plate didn’t seem to bother him, though a piece of him knew it should.

Critical hazard warning,
his suit said.
Torso breach. Terminal decompression in ten minutes and counting.

He was a dead man. The grenades had blown away the bad pod. He could even remember the explosion, the soundless flash, an instantaneous glimpse of a big piece of debris hurtling straight at him. Either the blast itself, or the jet of air blowing out his chest plate, had spun him around the boat a few times like a rock on the end of a string. He’d finished up tied to the side of the boat twisted in the safety line. Soon his air would run out and there was nothing he could do about it.