The City Who Fought (15 page)

"Then you plant that grapnel field," she said urgently. "We can help the boost with our own rise. But when that's done, we're goin'
home,
girl."

Channa began the adjustments. The tug was designed for straightforward long slow pulls, not this redline-everything race against disaster. She must balance the uneven pull that might shred the tug's structure and compensate for the hulk's weakness by intuition as much as anything. Who knew what structural members had given way within? It would do very little good to rip a large segment of it loose. . . . The giant ship began to grow slightly smaller.

She glanced at the readout. "I hate these clock things," she said fiercely. "They must have been created by a sadist. I'm going to
know
when I run out of air."

"Stop talking," Simeon ordered, "you're wasting oxygen. When that clock has flipped over another thirty seconds,
you
return to station!"

Gus' command rang through the conversation. "Synchronize release, slave controls to mine as Patsy cuts loose."

Channa keyed it in. "Five seconds.
Mark.
"

Patsy cursed with scatological inventiveness as the little craft surged. Then it flipped end-for-end and the space behind them paled as the drive worked to shed velocity. They would have to kill their delta-V

away from the station before they could return.

"
Priority,
" she barked over the open circuit. "Everyone git outta my way, 'cause I ain't stoppin'!"

Deceleration turned to acceleration again. Channa wheezed a protest as her ribs clamped down on her lungs.

04:11.

Simeon's monologue took on a frantic note. He forced his mind not to calculate times, with an effort that almost banished fear.

Keep her informed,
he thought: " . . . madness to have attempted that sort of linkage. The nutrients might have given out on the trip. It depends on when the feeder line was damaged.
I
might be responsible for that. It could have happened when I hit them with the satellites. What do you think? No, don't answer, save your air. I know we won't be able to tell anyway until we examine him.

"What kind of people are these?" he asked for perhaps the twentieth time. "Could they be pirates who stole the brain? Then why didn't they bring it inside? The access-way? Sure, that must be it, they couldn't get it through the hatch. Still, a shellperson is a valuable resource. You'd think they try to protect him more if they
had
to leave him outside. It could be some kind of punitive measure by an insane religious sect. Nah, Central would never assign a brain to a group like that, it wouldn't make sense." He began to curse again. "Hey, Channa, stop rolling your eyes like that. You're making me dizzy." The circling increased in tempo. "Okay, okay, I'll change the subject. Sheesh, take away a woman's ability to talk . . ." Channa closed her eyes. "I was
joking,
Channa." Her eyes remained closed. "You're getting close to the station. You're going to need to see where you're going. Remember what it's like out there."

No change. "Okay, I apologize. It was a stupid, ignorant remark and I regret it. I didn't even mean it.

Bad joke, okay?"

She opened her eyes.

03:01.

She was midway between the receding colony-ship and the station.

"I estimate that you'll run out of air three minutes before you reach the station," Simeon said. "But, if you take the most direct route, that unfortunately will take you right through the thickest concentration of spilled ore."

"Shit!" Patsy hissed. "Tell me somethin' Ah don't know!"

Channa fought down an oxygen wasting sigh. "Play safe?"

"Then you'll fall short by four minutes, eight seconds."

"Play safe. Don't want a shell full a holes."

Simeon was silent for a moment, feeding the pilot instructions for avoiding the worst of the ore-meteor cloud.

"You've got more guts than sense, Channa."

Patsy closed one eye and laughed. "Mind now, Ah didn't say Ah didn't like it, Ah was just remarkin' on it." She opened her eye. "Y'hold on now, we're goin' through like a scalded armadillo."

Channa's breathing began to rasp; psychological, but it wasted air.

Oh, God, don't let her die, he thought. That shell's hanging out there. Is the mass of the tug enough to shield him from debris?

Even one pebble of ore at the right angle and all her sacrifice would be for nothing. Simeon knew Channa was about to undergo an experience that would feel like dying. Humans could survive for several minutes without air—hours, sometimes, in cold water. The length of time to brain death was utterly unpredictable but oxygen deprivation might cause brain damage.

Despite a very real and intense anxiety about Channa, his thoughts inexorably returned to the shell . . . to Guiyon.
He's alone in the dark,
Simeon said to himself,
Channa's got Patsy, and me.
Sensory deprivation would make every second feel like a subjective hour, and the backups would keep the shellperson conscious until the last precious molecules of nutrient were gone. Simeon wished desperately that he could spare hum the nightmare.

"Headache," Channa gasped. "
Hurts.
" Her head lolled, would have fallen forward if the savage high-G

acceleration had allowed it.

Her breathing was rasping louder now and not psychosomatic. It was instinct—the hindbrain telling the lungs that they were suffocating. The readouts showed an adrenaline surge, just the wrong thing. Reflexes older than her remote reptile ancestors were preparing the body to fight free of whatever barred it from air.

"Hang on, Channa, hang on," Simeon chanted. Then: "Can't you go any
faster?
"

"Not 'lessn you want this here tug smeared all over the loadin' bay," Patsy said grimly.

* * *

"Bit of a paradox," one of the volunteer miners said. "I want this thing as far from the station as I can get it—but I want to be as far away from it as possible myself."

"Ho. Ho. Ho," Gusky said. "Number three, you're a little off synch. Don't waste our delta-V."

"What's our safety margin, Gus?"

"That depends on when Simeon tells us to cut and run."
I'm really, really sorry I got you mad at me,
Simeon!
"I'd like to get twenty klicks from the station before we drop the thing. But, what can I tell ya? If she blows without warning, if the explosives don't do what they're supposed to, if we don't get far enough away before she goes . . . actually, I don't think we
have
a safety margin."

"Sorry I asked."

"Hmph."

Simeon's voice broke in. "Prepare to drop in one minute seven seconds from mark.
Mark
. Get it right, Gus."

"Yeah," said one of the miners who had rigged the charges, "that thing has to stay in the same attitude.

Charges won't be half as effective if it's tumbling."

"Roger that," Simeon said. No time for a linkup. They'd have to listen,
really
carefully. "Everyone got that mark?"

A chorus of affirmatives. Gusky licked sweat from his upper lip. He'd never told Simeon, exactly, but his five-year hitch in the Navy had been pretty uneventful: patrols, exercises, showing the flag, mapping expeditions. The most nerve-wracking moments had been the fleet handball competitions and surprise inspections.

"You pull the trigger, right?" he said.

"You got it, buddy," Simeon replied. His voice had less timbre, less humanity to it than usual.

"I hate being reassured in a voice that calm."

I've got other things on my mind.
"Channa's suit got hit. She's running out of air."

"Oh." I screwed the pooch again, goddammit. "Sorry."

"Get ready."

The tugs were arrayed around the great tattered bulk of the intruder ship like the legs of a starfish, linked by the invisible bonds of the grapnel fields. Gusky kept the rear-field screen on at a steady 25x magnification. When the fields released, the image of the hulk seemed to disappear into a point-source of light in less than a heartbeat. Vision went gray at the edges, before the engines cycled down to something bearable. Tugs necessarily had high power-to-weight ratios. Then the shrinking dot of the derelict blinked with colorless fire.

Gusky cycled the screen to higher magnification. "Phew," he said gustily. The charges had cut the remaining forward section loose from the half-melted engine compartment and its core. Joined to the power module, whatever parts of the ship did not vaporize would be hyper-velocity shrapnel in all directions. With a klick or so distance and a vector away from the station, much less could go wrong.

Blast is less dangerous without an atmosphere to propagate in. There is nothing to carry the shock wave except the actual gases of the explosion and they disperse rapidly. Given minimal luck, the explosion would just kick what was left of the hulk further away.

"When will it—"

The screen blanked protectively. So did his faceplate and the forward ports of the tug's cabin. Beside him the copilot flung his hand up in useless reflex. Even from the rear, the intensity of light was overwhelming.

"
Did it work?
" Gusky called as visibility returned. That was not as reassuring as it could have been. Half the sensors and telltales on the board were blinking red.

"Sorry." This time Simeon
did
sound sorry. "That ship . . . the engines were so old, the parameters were different . . . There's a lot more secondary radiation and subflux than I thought there would be."

"Thanks," Gusky said facetiously. "All right, people, report."

"I've got a flux in my drive cores I can't damp," one of the volunteers said immediately. "Induction, I guess. Getting worse."

"Let me see it," Gusky said, surprised at his own calm. This was much better than waiting; there wasn't
time
to be worried. "All right, you've got a feedback loop there and it's past redline. Set your controls for maximum acceleration at ninety degrees to the ecliptic with a one-minute delay, then bail out."

"
Hey, this is my tug.
" the volunteer wailed.

"It's going to be your ball of incandescent gas in about ten minutes," Gusky said grimly. "Or hot gas that includes you. Take your pick."

Simeon cut in. "Station will pick up full replacement costs."

"Lobachevsy and Wong, you're closest," Gusky said, "pick 'em up!" Gusky's pickups showed the luckless volunteers jetting away on backpack and their craft streaking for deep space on autopilot. "The rest of you, dump me some data."

"Yessir, Admiral," one replied dryly.

The information dutifully came in. "Okay, Lobachevsky, Wong, you look functional, sort of. Take the others with overstrained drives in tow, and we'll go back nice and slow and easy."
With several millions'

worth of tug that just became so much scrap. Suddenly boring routine becomes very attractive as
a way of life. War games are excitement enough.

He touched the control surfaces to establish a tight line circuit to the station. "Simeon, what about us?"

"Let's put it this way, Gus. None of you are going to die. But some of you aren't going to be very happy for a while, either. Sickbay will be crowded." A long pause. "Congratulations."

Gus grinned; half of that was relief from raw fear. Everyone who lives in space is afraid of decompression, which is why many become agoraphobic planetside. Those who do much EVA work or serve on warships develop a similar fear of radiation, which has the added terror of killing insidiously. On the other hand, most dangers in space either kill cleanly or let live.

"You're welcome," the big man continued. "What about Channa?"

Patsy's voice joined in. "She's gonna be fahn. Hey, Gus," she went on lazily, "you thaink people will respect us for this?"

Gusky keyed for the visuals. He got a double view, overhead from the docking chamber where the tug rested in its cradle and from the vehicle itself. Both showed Channa Hap being carried off in a floating stretcher.

"Phew. Glad she made it okay."

"Yayuh, mah sentiments exactly. Got a good one thar."

Gusky nodded.
On station, Channa acted like a cryonic bitch,
he thought,
but she's there when it
comes down to cases.
This was the worst emergency SSS-900 had faced in the time he'd been here.

SSS-900-C,
he reminded himself.

"I dunno," he said, "
I
never respected anyone who led from the rear."

She laughed. "Hey! This might get us a nice rest cure somewhar pretty. We could go tagetha." She made the last a question.

"If any two parts of us are still stuck together when this is over, Patsy, you got a date."

"Unh-hunh!" she said enthusiastically.

Hey, first base,
Gusky thought. After thirty months of ritualized sparring so routine it had gotten to be as comfortably low-key as playing war games with Simeon.
That is, if I'm not sick as a puke once sickbay
gets through with me.
Doctor Chaundra believed in repairing you
rapidly.
In some circles he was known as "Kill or Cure Chaundra."

"I need a drink," he said solemnly.

"Ah'll buy," Patsy said.

Channa woke to an excruciating, high-pitched wailing.

The engines! she thought. I'm still on the derelict! I've got to get out of here!

She lifted her head with a gasp and laid it back down again with a heartfelt groan.
This has to be a fatal
headache,
she thought,
nobody could feel like this and live.

The ceiling overhead was a soothing pale blue as were the privacy screens around her. There was a vase of flowers on the bedside table and a bank of portable equipment on the other side, quietly talking to itself and occasionally waving a sensor probe over her body. A suit of working clothes, overtights and jacket and belt, were draped on a clothes stand at the foot of the bed. The air had a slight, pleasant scent of cedar.