Poor Man's Fight (32 page)

“Yup. I guess some of ‘em aren’t waiting for the shooting to start. They’re running away now.” He tossed Tanner’s thermal regulator onto his rack. “Your shit’s fine. Finish suiting up and get outside. We’ve got a lot of supplies to load.”

***

Focusing on the hull plating in front of him helped
to fight off the usual dizziness. Magnetizing relays in the soles of Tanner’s boots kept him steady on the hull, as did those in his vac suit’s knees and elbows if necessary—and here, the knees certainly helped. In moments like this, though, floating off into space wasn’t the real worry. The danger was that he’d vomit inside his helmet.

Ships ordinarily had no problem staying on whatever level plane they chose.
Any corvette certainly could. Abdullah-19, a small civilian packet ship from Hashem, apparently had trouble maintaining such stability. Either its captain or
St. Jude’s
opted for a manual link-up rather than synching up their maneuvering jets via computer. Thus, St. Jude had to match Abdullah-19’s spin.

Tanner wanted to ask why this was necessary. He wanted to ask what was going on and what they would do once the ships were linked. After two or three hours aboard
St. Jude
, though, it became clear that most of the deck department felt that Tanner’s every question was a stupid one. Tanner soon learned to restrict his queries to an absolute minimum.

Establishing the hard link would be the easy part. All they needed to do was put the magnetized foot of one of Abdullah-19’s landing struts against the underside of
St. Jude’s
hull where their airlocks would face one another. After that would come the erection of an improvised, sealed passage between the two very different hatches… but that couldn’t be done until the ships settled together.

“How’s that coming, Tanner?” asked Bos’un Freeman. He
stood nearby, watching the packet ship “above” him. Concepts like up and down became rather malleable at times like this. Tanner, Freeman, Morales and Stumpy were all on the outside of their ship, looking at Abdullah-19’s dorsal section as her helmsman fought to slowly spin her 180 degrees for the link-up.

“Almost done,” Tanner grunted. It was a simple job, or should’ve been. All he had to do was tape down some padding onto the hull where the landing strut would hit. The padding constantly folded up on him, though, clinging to itself because of excess static electricity. To make matters worse, the umbilical cord attached to his harness kept getting in the way.

“Need to pick up the pace, boot,” Morales frowned. Tanner didn’t see the frown, but he heard it over the comm channel. It came right into his ear. He heard other chatter on Morales’s second channel—the one tying him and Freeman in with the bridge’s communications with Abdullah-19—but Tanner wasn’t in on that one. He only heard snippets of it whenever Freeman or Morales spoke.

Tanner finally pinned down a smoothed-out section of padding with one magnetized kneepad.
He ran electrostatic tape down that side of the mat. It should’ve been a simple job. Instead, it was frustrating as hell. “Sorry,” Tanner said. “This thing’s fighting with me.”

“Just get it done, we don’t have all day,”
grunted Morales. He waited out of sight on the starboard side with Stumpy. Only Tanner and Freeman were on
St. Jude’s
underside.

“He’s almost got it,” Freeman announced, sounding similarly annoyed. Freeman glanced up at the slowly spinning ship above
him. The older man instinctively crouched lower against
St. Jude
. “She’s coming around slower this time. I think we’ll be ready on the next rotation,” the bos’un declared.

As Freeman spoke, though, Tanner heard someone on the ship-to-ship channel say, “Execute landing strut link-up.”

Tanner’s eyes snapped wide. His head jerked up to see Abdullah-19’s landing strut extend and wheel toward him with alarming speed. Tanner threw himself away from his spot on the hull, abandoning the half-secured strip of padding as the magnetized foot swiftly came down onto it. Tanner didn’t hear the controlled collision of ships or the ugly scrape of Abdullah-19’s foot against the area of hull left unprotected by the still bunched-up padding. One never heard much of anything in space. He did, however, hear the snap of his umbilical cord as it was caught between the hull and the landing strut. The vibrations from that traveled along the cord to his harness and through his suit just fine.

“Tanner!” Freeman yelled a second too late. Tanner was
already clear, saved by his own reflexes rather than his supervisor’s sketchy vigilance. He floated away from the two ships as they slowly spun together in space, losing none of the initial momentum of his leap. He avoided being crushed, or maimed, or having his suit punctured or shredded.

Embarrassment sank in quickly. “I’m okay,” Tanner announced, cutting the remnant of umbilical cord from his harness. Stars spun even more wildly now, making it hard for him to think. “I just need…
I’m okay.” He swallowed hard. His hands went to the controls of the emergency thrusters on his vac harness. They wouldn’t get him far, but the compressed nitrogen capsules would maneuver him back to his ship.

“What the hell just happened out there?” the captain demanded. Tanner swallowed hard. He didn’t realize the captain
was listening.

“Close call, skipper,” Freeman answered. “We’re okay. Think the boot didn’t have the padding all rigged up in time, though.”

“Sounded like we got a scrape on the hull.”

“Uh, probably, sir. The boot was just getting the padding in place and I think the link snuck up on him, skipper.”

Flying back to the hull, Tanner didn’t stop to parse Freeman’s evaluation. It never occurred to him to reflect on his supervisor’s explanation or how the whole procedure was coordinated. He didn’t wonder whose fault it was.

His first day aboard
St. Jude
had already been one blunder after another, from not bowing his head immediately when the captain called for a pre-launch prayer to stumbling and dropping crates in the cargo bay twice. Why would this be any less his fault than the rest of that?

Tanner
looked over at Freeman as he took hold of the landing strut. The bos’un gave a shrug. “Eddie, Stumpy, bring the cables over,” he said. Tanner wondered if this was all business as usual for the crew.

Morales and
Stumpy both came up and over, close enough to see the landing strut and the hull beneath. Tanner glanced down, too. There was indeed an ugly scrape; it was probably worse under the strut itself, but just the few inches where it had slid against the hull before coming to rest looked ugly enough.

“Good job, boot,”
Stumpy commented as he passed by.

***

“This is a huge part of your job,” Morales said as Tanner wiped the last of his lunch off the cargo bay deck. “We do spacewalks all the time. You’d better get used to it quick.”

“I will,” Tanner nodded, swallowing hard again and trying to ignore the foul taste in his mouth. He had been lucky to hold it together until he’d gotten back to the ship and into the cargo bay. For the second time, he mumbled out, “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe you should keep your faceplate down so nobody has to smell your breath,” Morales added as he turned away. Standing next to him,
St. Jude’s
gunner’s mate handed Morales a holstered laser pistol.

Rising up off his knees, Tanner noticed that Morales didn’t take the gun out to check it.
Everett and Janeka had drilled that into everyone. Weapons and tactics school also emphasized it. Stumpy didn’t check his, either. Nor did Leone, the tall, lanky young machinist’s mate who seemed content to just loom in the background rather than take part in conversation. Knowing better than to speak while he was in the doghouse, Tanner simply moved off to place his rag in a waste receptacle. Then he retrieved his helmet from off the deck.

“I think he should leave it off,” opined Miller. “Might have better breath than the guys over there. He could pick up on a refugee hottie. Get some tight
Hashemite pussy.”

Tanner blinked, trying to mask his shock. Every instructor in basic would’ve skinned a recruit alive
for saying something like that.

“How would you know, Miller?”
Stumpy asked. “You ever fucked a Hashemite?”

“Probably,” shrugged the gunner’s mate. “I dunno.”

“It’s not like they wear nametags,” Morales said.

“Yeah, but some of ‘em wear veils. Or hoods or whatever. Right? Never fucked a woman wearing a hood before.
Fucked a few who should’ve, though.”

“It’s called a hijab,” Tanner corrected, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice.

Miller gestured to Tanner and said, “Yeah, one of those heejeebee thingies. How did you know that?” he asked.

The XO’s arrival ended the conversation. “We all ready to go?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Morales answered, shooting Miller a look. The gunner’s mate quieted as he handed Gagne another holstered laser pistol.

To Tanner’s partial relief, Gagne immediately checked the weapon’s test lights and power settings
before he clipped the holster to his side. The XO looked to Tanner and asked, “Anyone explain what we’re doing yet?”

“No, sir,” Tanner replied.

Gagne nodded. He was simultaneously more casual than the others and more professional. “The crew and passengers of the shuttle are requesting asylum. Ordinarily we’d escort the ship to an isolated berth on Augustine and process ‘em there. After what happened on Qal’at Khalil, though, the government ordered physical inspections of every ship coming into Archangel space.” He smirked a bit, glancing at the other members of the deck crew. “That’s made for some real traffic jams out here in the last couple weeks and some sleepless nights for us. Command was getting things more organized so we could handle the increased load and spread the work around, but now we’re getting refugees on top of normal traffic.”

As he spoke, Morales brought to Tanner a black device little larger than a shoebox with a carrying strap on it. He ran a sequence of commands on the device’s control panel. “You know how to use a sniffer?”

“Yes,” Tanner nodded. “I’ve trained with them.” He could already hear the whirl of the sniffer’s intake vents.

Whether Morales ignored his answer or simply didn’t believe him wasn’t clear. Either way, he explained, “Just let the sniffer do the work for you. It’s set to ignore the signatures from our weapons. If it picks up any other weapons, it’ll let you know. You get any warning signs on this thing, tell one of us but don’t freak anyone else out.”

Tanner blinked. “So I’m going aboard with you?”

“That’s why you’re down here, boot,”
scowled Morales. Again. He put the sniffer in Tanner’s hands.

“What’d you
expect?” Gagne smiled, seeming a bit more patient.

“I just thought…
I don’t know, sir. I thought maybe I was staying near the airlock in case you needed something.”

“We throw you in right at the deep end around here, Malone,”
Gagne replied. “Anyway. Just follow our lead and let me do the talking.”

“Yes, sir
. I, uh… am I supposed to be issued a sidearm?”

Gagne threw a deferential look to Morales, who looked to Tanner like the younger man had just suggested that he be allowed to set his hair on fire. “You haven’t been checked out for that yet, boot,”
Morales said. “We’re not gonna give a gun to a brand new boot and have him shoot himself in the foot. Or one of us.”

“Don’t sweat it, Malone,” the XO shrugged without contradicting the bos’un. “Technically you’re not qualified to be a boarding team member for the ship until you get signed off on it by the ship’s team leaders.
That rule would hold even if you’d come aboard with twenty years’ experience on other ships. We’re bending the rules here by bringing you at all because we need the extra manpower,” he finished, seeming for the first time as if he might be a little uncomfortable with this himself. “Don’t worry, these people aren’t here to cause trouble.”

“Yes, sir,
” Tanner gulped. He didn’t really expect any trouble from a ship full of refugees, either, but someone had decided no one should go over unarmed. No one except Tanner.

The XO unslung his helmet from its perch behind his left shoulder. “We’re on channel four, guys,” he
mentioned just before slipping it over his head. The others donned their helmets as the XO announced, “Bridge, this is the XO. We’re ready to go over.”

“Acknowledged,” they heard Reed mutter in response. “Open the airlock up at your end when you’re ready.”

Gagne nodded to Leone, who knelt down to the circular hatch and keyed in commands. They heard the sucking sound of air flowing from the cargo bay into the passage beyond. On the other side of the hatch was the white triple-layered plastic tunnel that Tanner and the other “deckies” had fixed in place between the bellies of the two ships. A moment later, the hatch at the other side opened. Two men looked down and waved at the men of
St. Jude
as they, in turn, looked down toward Abdullah-19.