New Frontiers (19 page)

Outside, hovering at the end of a tether in a spacesuit that smelled of sweat and overheated electronics circuitry, you get a feeling for how alone you really are. While the little turtle-shaped maintenance 'bots cut up the old meteor bumpers with their laser-tipped arms and welded the new ones into place, I just hung there and looked out at the universe. The stars looked back at me, bright and steady, no friendly twinkling, not out in this emptiness, just awfully, awfully far away.

I looked for the bright blue star that was Earth but couldn't find it. Jupiter was big and brilliant, though. At least, I thought it was Jupiter. Maybe Saturn. I could've used that astronomy text, dammit.

Then a funny thought hit me. If Forty-niner wanted to get rid of me all he had to do was light up the fusion drive. The hot plasma would fry me in a second, even inside my spacesuit. But Forty-niner wouldn't do that. Too easy. Freaky computer will just watch me go crazy with aggravation and loneliness, instead.

Two more months, I thought. Two months until we get back to Vesta and some real human beings. Yeah, I said to myself. Real human beings. Like Donahoo.

Just then one of the maintenance 'bots made a little bleep of distress and shut itself down. I gave a squirt of thrust to my suit jets and glided over to it, grumbling to myself about how everything in the blinking ship was overdue for the recycler.

Before I could reach the dumbass 'bot, Forty-niner told me in that bland, calm voice of his, “Robot 6's battery has overheated, sir.”

“I'll have to replace the battery pack,” I said.

“There are no spares remaining, sir. You'll have to use your suit's fuel cell to power Robot 6 until its battery cools to an acceptable temperature.”

I hated it when Forty-niner told me what I should do. Especially since I knew it as well as he did. Even more especially because he was always right, dammit.

“Give me an estimate on the time remaining to finish the meteor shield replacement.”

“Fourteen minutes, eleven seconds, at optimal efficiency, sir. Add three minutes for recircuiting Robot 6's power pack, please.”

“Seventeen, eighteen minutes, then.”

“Seventeen minutes, eleven seconds, sir. That time is well within the available capacity of your suit's fuel cell, sir.”

I nodded inside my helmet. Damned Forty-niner was always telling me things I already knew, or at least could figure out for myself. It irritated the hell out of me, but the blasted pile of chips seemed to enjoy reminding me of the obvious.

Don't lose your temper, I told myself. It's not his fault; he's programmed that way.

Yeah, I grumbled inwardly. Maybe I ought to change its programming. But that would mean going down to the heart of the vessel and opening up its CPU. The bigbrains back at corporate headquarters put the computer in the safest place they could, not the cramped little pod I had to live in. And they didn't want us foot soldiers tampering with the computers' basic programs, either.

I finished the bumper replacement and came back into the ship through the pod's airlock. My spacesuit smelled pretty damned ripe when I took it off. It might be a couple hundred degrees below zero out there, but inside the suit you got soaking wet with perspiration.

I ducked into the coffin-sized lav and took a nice, long, lingering shower. The water was recycled, of course, and heated from our fusion reactor.
JRK49N
had solar panels, sure, but out in the Belt you need really enormous wings to get a worthwhile amount of electricity from the Sun and both of the solar arrays had frozen up only two weeks out of Vesta. One of the maintenance jobs that the robots screwed up. It was on my list of things to do. I had to command Forty-niner to stop nagging me about it. The fusion-powered generator worked fine. And we had fuel cells as a backup. The solar panels could get fixed when we got back to Vesta—if the corporation didn't decide to junk
JRK49N
altogether.

I had just stepped out of the shower when Forty-niner's voice came through the overhead speaker:

“A vessel is in the vicinity, sir.”

That surprised me. Out here you didn't expect company.

“Another ship? Where?” Somebody to talk to, I thought. Another human being. Somebody to swap jokes with and share gripes.

“A very weak radar reflection, sir. The vessel is not emitting a beacon or telemetry data. Radar puts its distance at fourteen million kilometers.”

“Track?” I asked as I toweled myself.

“Drifting along the ecliptic, sir, in the same direction as the main Belt asteroids.”

“No thrust?”

“No discernable exhaust plume, sir.”

“You're sure it a ship? Not an uncharted 'roid?”

“Radar reflection shows it is definitely a vessel, not an asteroid, sir.”

I padded to my compartment and pulled on a fresh set of coveralls, thinking, No beacon. Drifting. Maybe it's a ship in trouble. Damaged.

“No tracking beacon from her?” I called to Forty-niner.

“No telemetry signals, either, sir. No emissions of any kind.”

As I ducked through the hatch into the bridge, Forty-niner called out, “It has emitted a plasma plume, sir. It is maneuvering.”

Damned if his voice didn't sound excited. I knew it was just my own excitement: Forty-niner didn't have any emotions. Still …

I slid into the command chair and called up a magnified view of the radar image. And the screen immediately broke into hash.

“Aw, rats!” I yelled. “What a time for the radar to conk out!”

“Radar is functioning normally, sir,” Forty-niner said calmly.

“You call this normal?” I rapped my knuckles on the static-streaked display screen.

“Radar is functioning normally, sir. A jamming signal is causing the problem.”

“Jamming?” My voice must have jumped two octaves.

“Communications, radar, telemetry, and tracking beacon are all being interfered with, sir, by a powerful jamming signal.”

Jamming. And the vessel out there was running silent, no tracking beacon or telemetry emissions.

A freebooter! All of a sudden I wished I'd studied that tactical manual.

Almost automatically I called up the comm system. “This is Humphries Space Systems waterbot
JRK49N
,” I said, trying to keep my voice firm. Maybe it was a corporate vessel, or one of the mercenaries. “I repeat, waterbot
JRK49N
.”

No response.

“Their jamming blocks your message, sir.”

I sat there in the command chair staring at the display screens. Broken jagged lines scrolled down all the comm screens, hissing at me like snakes. Our internal systems were still functional, though. For what it was worth, propulsion, structures, electrical power all seemed to be in the green. Life support, too.

But not for long, I figured.

“Compute our best course for Vesta,” I commanded.

“Our present course—”

“Is for 78-13, I know. Compute high-thrust course for Vesta, dammit!”

“Done, sir.”

“Engage the main drive.”

“Sir, I must point out that a course toward Vesta will bring us closer to the unidentified vessel.”

“What?”

“The vessel that is jamming our communications, sir, is positioned between us and Vesta.”

Rats! They were pretty smart. I thought about climbing to a higher declination, out of the ecliptic.

“We could maneuver to a higher declination, sir,” Forty-niner said, calm as ever, “and leave the plane of the ecliptic.”

“Right.”

“But propellant consumption would be prohibitive, sir. We would be unable to reach Vesta, even if we avoided the attacking vessel.”

“Who says it's an attacking vessel?” I snapped. “It hasn't attacked us yet.”

At that instant the ship shuddered. A cluster of red lights blazed up on the display panel and the emergency alarm started wailing.

“Our main deuterium tank has been punctured, sir.”

“I can see that!”

“Attitude jets are compensating for unexpected thrust, sir.”

Yeah, and in another couple minutes the attitude jets would be out of nitrogen. No deuterium for the fusion drive, and no propellant for the attitude jets. We'd be a sitting duck.

Another jolt. More red lights on the board. The alarm seemed to screech louder.

“Our fusion drive thruster cone has been hit, sir.”

Two laser shots and we were crippled. As well as deaf, dumb, and blind.

“Turn off the alarm,” I yelled, over the hooting. “I know we're in trouble.”

The alarm shut off. My ears still ringing, I stared at the hash-streaked screens and the red lights glowering at me from the display board. What to do? I couldn't even call over to them and surrender. They wouldn't take a prisoner, anyway.

I felt the ship lurch again.

“Another hit?”

“No, sir,” answered Forty-niner. “I am swinging the ship so that the control pod faces away from the attacker.”

Putting the bulk of the ship between me and those laser beams. “Good thinking,” I said weakly.

“Standard defensive maneuver, sir, according to Tactical Manual 7703.”

“Shut up about the damned tactical manual!”

“The new meteor shields have been punctured, sir.” I swear Forty-niner added that sweet bit of news just to yank my chain.

Then I saw the maneuvering jet propellant go empty, the panel display lights flicking from amber to red.

“Rats, we're out of propellant!”

I realized that I was done for. Forty-niner had tried to shield me from the attacker's laser shots by turning the ship so that its tankage and fusion drive equipment was shielding my pod, but doing so had used up the last of our maneuvering propellant.

Cold sweat beaded my face. I was gasping for breath. The freebooters or whoever was shooting at us could come up close enough to spit at us now. They'd riddle this pod and me in it.

“Sir, standard procedure calls for you to put on your spacesuit.”

I nodded mutely and got up from the chair. The suit was in its rack by the airlock. At least Forty-niner didn't mention the tactical manual.

I had one leg in the suit when the ship suddenly began to accelerate so hard that I slipped to the deck and cracked my skull on the bulkhead. I really saw stars flashing in my eyes.

“What the hell…?”

“We are accelerating, sir. Retreating from the last known position of the attacking vessel.”

“Accelerating? How? We're out of—”

“I am using our cargo as propellant, sir. The thrust provided is—”

Forty-niner was squirting out our water. Fine by me. Better to have empty cargo tanks and be alive than to hand a full cargo of water to the guys who killed me. I finished wriggling into my spacesuit even though my head was thumping from the fall I'd taken. Just before I pulled on the helmet I felt my scalp. There was a nice-sized lump; it felt hot to my fingers.

“You could've warned me that you were going to accelerate the ship,” I grumbled as I sealed the helmet to the suit's neck ring.

“Time was of the essence, sir,” Forty-niner replied.

The ship lurched again as I checked my backpack connections. Another hit.

“Where'd they get us?” I shouted.

No answer. That really scared me. If they knocked Forty-niner's computer out, all the ship's systems would bonk out, too.

“Main power generator, sir,” Forty-niner finally replied. “We are now running on auxiliary power, sir.”

The backup fuel cells. They wouldn't last more than a few hours. If the damned solar panels were working—no, I realized; those big fat wings would just make terrific target practice for the bastards.

Another lurch. This time I saw the bright flash through the bridge's window. The beam must've splashed off the structure just outside the pod. My God—if they punctured the pod, that would be the end of it. Sure, I could slide my visor down and go to the backpack's air supply. But that'd give me only two hours of air, at best. Just enough time to write my last will and testament.

“I thought you turned the pod away from them!” I yelled.

“They are maneuvering, too, sir.”

Great. Sitting in the command chair was awkward, in the suit. The display board looked like a Christmas tree, more red then green. The pod seemed to be intact so far. Life support was okay, as long as we had electrical power.

Another jolt, a big one. Forty-niner shuddered and staggered sideways as if it were being punched by a gigantic fist.

And then, just like that, the comm screens came back to life. Radar showed the other vessel, whoever they were, moving away from us.

“They're going away!” I whooped.

Forty-niner's voice seemed fainter than usual. “Yes, sir. They are leaving.”

“How come?” I wondered.

“Their last laser shot ruptured our main water tank, sir. In eleven minutes and thirty-eight seconds our entire cargo will be discharged.”

I just sat there, my mind chugging hard. We're spraying our water into space, the water that those bastards wanted to steal from us. That's why they left. In eleven and a half minutes we won't have any water for them to take.

I almost broke into a smile. I'm not going to die, after all. Not right away, at least.

Then I realized that
JRK49N
was without propulsion power and would be out of electrical power in a few hours. I was going to die after all, dammit. Only slower.

“Send out a distress call, broadband,” I commanded. But I knew that was about as useful as a toothpick in a soup factory. The corporation didn't send rescue missions for waterbots, not with the war going on. Too dangerous. The other side could use the crippled ship as bait and pick off any vessel that came to rescue it. And they certainly wouldn't come out for a vessel as old as Forty-niner. They'd just check the numbers in their ledgers and write us off. With a form letter of regret and an insurance check to my mother.