The Bright Black Sea (95 page)

'We'll cross that rift when we come to it. I want to
avoid any misunderstandings.'

'That sounds like you don't trust me,' she said, only
half joking.

'Let's say I'm very familiar with your type,' I
replied.

'Type?'

'Let's call it dashing and daring,' I replied with a
grim laugh. 'M'Ley can handle everything on this end, so I'm
comfortable remaining aboard until a boat can be sent in.'

'Right,' she nodded, 'Then let's get this rocket
launched.'

After Linnor left to gather her crew, I stepped
around to the bridge.

'You have the ship, First,' I said, 'I'm going with
Captain Linnor to survey the wreck. I may be gone a week. Have
engineering cycle up the
Azurete
's longboat.'

She stiffened ever so slightly and her eyes narrowed,
but nodded and said, 'Aye sir', just like a good first mate.

06

Linnor took the longboat in faster than any drone
would've made the passage. We were 25 hours into the inward voyage
and were now decelerating to match velocity with
Azurete
's
moonlet, some three hours down course. Linnor and Pax Sol had the
watch. Ivay and I were seated on two auxiliary acceleration chairs
in its small control compartment. As a precaution against a minor
holing incident, we were wearing light survival spacesuits with a
soft, hood-like helmet we could pull over if needed. It had been a
weary, but thankfully uneventful passage, and with at least half a
dozen more days of living in the long boat ahead of me, I was
already regretting inviting myself along – the price of
responsibility, I guess.

I was, however, allowing myself to grow optimistic.
Meteor density appeared to be associated with specific black dragon
active periods, and as such, it was arrayed in waves. As those
waves expanded outwards, their density decreased, so the three
waves we'd run through seemed safe enough to navigate through with
a slowly traveling ship, especially with Botts' eye on the radar
and finger on the trigger. I was beginning to think I could bring
the
Starry Shore
in alongside the
Azurete
and quickly
transfer the cargo. The only issue was that the waves showed no
clear pattern, so that we'd run the risk of being caught in a new
outbreak, very close to the source, where the meteors outbreak
would be very dense. But even , we could take cover behind the
moonlet. After a day in the longboat, I was ready to take that bit
of luck without a qualm. I never learn.

'Hang on,' snapped Linnor, breaking into my pleasant
daydream.

I cursed softly, 'What's up?'

'A new black dragon eruption. I'm seeing rocks at
hyper-speeds on the long range radar,' she replied, as she flung us
about to reverse the boat and push us deep into our seats as she
began to accelerate inwards, for the moonlet.

I could see, over Pax's shoulder, the sensor display
lighting up in an explosion of vivid colored lines and dots,
marking a sudden outburst of hyper-accelerating rocks along the
former edge of the Kryver Reef. The red colored plots were coming
at us, and there was an awful lot of red on that screen. The sensor
display estimated the eruption happening only five million
kilometers beyond the
Azurete
's moonlet. There was no way we
could avoid being caught in it.

'We're going to have to make for the moonlet hot and
fast. We'll shelter behind it or in the
Azurete
until this
disruption passes. It'll be close, but we should make it before the
peak of the wave reaches us,' said Linnor, opening the main rocket
flat out.

She'd no choice. It would've taken too long to stop
and run. Racing to the moonlet was not just the best option, it was
the only one.

Molaye radioed a warning and I ordered her to pull
the drones back. Without the drones we'd be out of radio contact
for a few days, but radio contact wasn't essential. There was
nothing they could do to help. We were on our own.

Linnor drove the longboat full blast, with the
occasional twitch as she dodged meteors. As much as I like riding a
rocket flat out, I didn't enjoyed it as a passenger. Not that I
didn't trust Linnor's handling of the boat – it's just that if I
was at the controls, the minutes would've flown by. As a passenger,
they crept by.

Suddenly the main engine was quiet as the steering
engines swung us 180 degrees before Linnor engaged it again, just
as frantically, to kill our velocity so we'd not overrun the
Azurete
's moonlet. The closer we got to the moonlet, the
more frequently Linnor dodged the first and fastest onrushing
meteors from the eruption. Tiny grains of sand zinged across the
hull and pea sized ones dinged with unnerving frequency. Luckily,
the longboat was specially built for drift work with an extra thick
hull. But it had its limits, as we found out with a hard lurch,
followed by a resounding Bang! that set the alarms screaming. As
one, we reached back to flip our helmets on, slapping them into
position and turning on the life support systems of our survival
space suits.

'Just wingtip!' exclaimed Linnor over the com link.
'We're still in one piece. Five more minutes and we'll be in the
moonlet's shadow.'

The longboat's wings were little more than a mere
wide vane – just enough to stabilize the boat when going through an
atmosphere, so it'd been that close. Still, since we were in one
piece, I guess
just a wingtip
could be counted as a
very
near miss
.

We kept the suit's hoods on as Linnor had the long
boat twitching constantly in those last five minutes. And without
warning, the ship was suddenly still, with the pale, nebula-lit,
cratered surface of the moonlet visible on the console viewscreen,
close at hand.

'The moon seems to be tumbling. Neb-blast it! Must
have taken a big hit, ' she muttered, 'I've got a radar read on the
Azurete
. It's presently on the sheltered side of the moon.
Barely. I think we'll be safe within the ship's hangar. I'll take
us in.'

It took fifteen minutes of creeping over and around
the battered black ridges, grey peaks and dusty white craters –
many of which appeared to be quite new – to reach the large, low
walled, crater where Linnor had grounded her ship. In the pale
nebula light, the ship was a black shadow on the lower slope of the
crater wall.

'Not quite where I left it. Looks to have taken
another hit as well, ' muttered Linnor. '

As we crept closer she added, 'Good thing I vented
most of the fuel or we'd have had only a second crater to look at
now.

The bow of the ship had been smashed in, but the
cargo holds looked to be – more or less –intact. And well, gold is
not fragile. Ivay remarked that the engine section seemed to have
taken no further hits. I gathered the one working engine was on the
bottom, sheltered by the rest of the ship, so none of them seemed
too discouraged, although I'd seen many a ship on flats of &
Kin's in better shape than the
Azurete
. I kept that opinion
to myself.

'Let's get aboard,' Linnor said, firing the boat's
steering rockets to take us skimming across the crater floor to the
ship as the control console's viewscreen showed meteors flashing
overhead, just clearing the crater wall and often striking the far
side of the crater in a flash of light and dust. I could only hope
the moonlet's wobble was taking us away from the reef side.

The
Azurete
's hangar deck is an interior one,
corresponding to our no. 4 hold. The starboard hangar door, on the
ship's lower side, had been half left open. It was, however, with
the shifting of the ship, now half buried in dust and rocks. Linnor
deftly edged the longboat under the door, blasting enough of the
dust and debris out of the way with its landing jets to squeeze
under the shelter of the overhanging door.

'This will have to do for now,' she said. 'Let's see
where we stand...'

We donned the full spacesuits and, cracking the
hatch, climbed out onto the gravel that had ended up in the hangar
when the ship slipped sideways. Lit by the longboat's landing
lights and the light flowing from the open hatch, we made a quick
visual inspection of the other two boats – both the gig, partially
buried in the dust and rocks, and the skip fighter appeared to be
undamaged.

Then, with Linnor in the lead, we made our way down
through the ship by pulling ourselves awkwardly along the spiral
staircase that lined its main access well. The moonlet provided
just enough gravity to give a sense of orientation, making the
Azurete
, with its decks askew, feel like the wreck is was.
There were piles of debris in the darkness of the downside
companionways. The bulkheads above were twisted and torn by the
meteor strikes, the largest of which had breached both hulls and
made a shambles of the three decks above the engine room. While the
bridge had survived fairly intact, the engine room was a grotesque
tangle of twisted catwalks, scattered pipes and loose wires in our
darting helmet lights and torches. But , engine rooms are large and
complicated by their nature, so the disorder wasn't as striking as
the decks above – to a non-engineer – anyway. The massive main
engine looked intact, until you noted the black, half meter hole in
its main combustion chamber.

Standing in the dead engine room, I couldn't help but
feel, well, a sense of foreboding or fear. If this could happen to
a captain as competent as Linnor, how close was I sailing to
disaster? And what would I feel like if I was taking a party though
the blackened remains of my ship? I'd been lucky so far, but luck
not only lifts, it lands as well. I couldn't see myself bringing
the
Starry Shore
in this close, with the black dragons still
active, even if that meant we'd have to deal with the drift hawks
before this was over. There was always that back door Botts had
talked about.

After brooding silently, with the nightmarish shadows
dancing in the beams of our headlamps, Linnor said, 'Right. Let's
get some light and power.'

That pushed Ivay out of her melancholy contemplation
and sent her scrambling to find an intact emergency
reactor/generator to get online – the work of a minute. As the
scattered working lights blinked to life, Ivay exclaimed bravely,
surveying her shattered domain, 'It doesn't appear to have been
further damaged. Can we be so lucky?'

With the lights on, the engine room looked even more
of a disaster as the full extent of the damage became apparent –
platforms and ladders where twisted and hanging askew with piles of
debris and large machines settled at the downward side of the
engine room. Nevertheless, Ivay remained optimistic, even after she
discovered that another meteor hit – a small one – had ruptured the
fuel line to the remaining balancing engine. The balancing engine
was still connected to the engine room control panel and the
diagnostic data suggested it remained operable.

'How long will it take to repair the fuel line?'
asked Linnor.

'A couple of hours. We've plenty of spare parts
laying about,' Ivay replied ruefully. 'But I'd like to go over the
engine again to make sure everything is in order before we fire it
up again. I can have it up and running within two watches.'

Linnor considered that for several seconds and turned
to me, 'I think that as long as we're here, we might as well get
the ship off this rock and on its way. I rather doubt you'd care to
bring your ship in this far in.'

'With the black dragon still active, getting caught
in passage like we were, would be a potential disaster. So no,' I
admitted, glad she'd said it first.

'Right. The sooner we lift the
Azurete
, the
farther out we'll be when the next dragon strikes. No point lifting
the ship until this eruption passes, so I think we can afford to
take a watch off to rest. Might as well start fresh. I've a feeling
getting the engine up and running will be the least of our
problems. Getting it off this rock the way it now lies is going to
be tricky.'

07

We had just returned to the longboat and were
climbing out of our spacesuits when the longboat shifted under us –
and its hull rattled and pinged with debris. Linnor raced for the
control panel, as the rest of us quickly sealed our suits
again.

'All systems are green,' she called out. 'But I think
a meteor must have struck the ship – the port hatch looks askew...'
And added, 'Damn, the skip fighter has been knocked about as
well.'

Damn indeed. I'd been counting on that skip
fighter...

'A ricochet hit, or are we now on the reef facing
side of the moonlet?' I asked.

'I can't get a reading from above due to the hangar
door, but from the side, I think I'm seeing micro meteors striking
the crater floor, so I suspect we've just edged on to the reef
side. Stay here, or make a run for the far side?'

'I'm just a passenger,' I replied. 'Your call.'

'Pax, Ivay?' she asked, poking her head out of the
short companionway from the control compartment.

Pax shrugged.

'The hangar door should protect us from everything
but a big one. A micro meteor might hole us when were running for
it. I say, let's stay,' said Ivay. Chief engineers have no problem
expressing their opinion to captains.

Linnor nodded. 'We'll stay. I think we're at the tail
end of the wave in any event.

There were no more alarms, so we ate, napped and went
to work. The gig was undamaged but the skip fighter's port engine
had been severely damaged by the meteor or debris from it. Nothing
to be done about it, so Ivay and Pax went about repairing the fuel
line and going over the engine while Linnor and I set up a remote
control station for the
Azurete
in the longboat's small
control compartment. That way, the ship – what was left of it –
could be controlled remotely from the longboat. Accelerating on one
steering engine could take it eight to ten weeks for it to reach a
point where the
Starry Shore
could come alongside to take
off her cargo. The longboat would likely be the only non-space suit
environment and standing watch in a spacesuit is no fun.