The Jovian Run: Sol Space Book One (16 page)

              “With all due respect, sir, I don’t believe you could have. I did not tell you because I was in a rush to put on the EVA suit and exit the ship. I planned to tell you when I was outside, but I forgot that the coms were down. By the time I remembered, I was unable to communicate with you.”

              Templeton scoffed at this and looked at Staples, but she merely nodded and said, “Continue.”

              “Once I cut the power, the two ships began to drift apart. I saw three bodies and a stasis tube exit from the breach in B17.” She paused for a moment. “I believe one of them was Mr. Yegor Durin.” At this, there were gasps all around and general consternation. Gwen looked tearful and confused, and Jabir took her by the shoulders and lifted her to hug her. There was a loud bang as Piotr, Yegor’s fellow countryman, slammed his fist on the metal counter behind him. It came again and again, and the cutlery bounced and shook in its magnetic tray until Declan Burbank, another of the ship’s cargo roadies and a friend of the cook’s, put his hand on Piotr’s arm and he stopped.

              “Then what happened?” the captain prompted. The noise died down again, though it was punctuated here and there by sounds of grief and shock.

              Dinah’s face was impassive as ever. “I judged that I could not retrieve the stasis tube. I also judged that it would survive in vacuum for the time being, so I began moving to collect... our crew member. As I was moving, I saw two incoming missiles headed for the enemy ship.”

              Templeton and Staples looked sharply at each other. “Missiles? You’re sure?” Templeton asked, rather pointlessly.

              “Yes, sir. I only saw two, but from the damage to the other ship, I believe there were at least four.”

              “We didn’t fire them.” He looked around at his assembled crew. “Does anyone in here know anything about these missiles?” There was only quiet whispering as each crew member looked at their colleagues and waited for someone to speak up.  Quinn and Parsells were passive observers, and Bethany was tucked in a corner behind the doctor and his temporary ward.

              “I don’t believe they came from our ship, sir.” The whispers subsided as the engineer spoke.

              “What?” Templeton asked. “Are you saying they fired at themselves?”

              Dinah considered only a moment. “I don’t believe they did, sir. I believe there’s another ship out there.” There was no stemming the tide now, and the room erupted in raised conversations. Conjecture, concern, and fear flew about, and Staples let it ride for a moment before nodding at Templeton to get control.

              “Hey!  Hey!” he shouted, and the noise abated, though it did not cease altogether. Piotr slammed his fist on the table again, and while it was unclear whether he did so out of frustration or to quiet the rest of the crew, it had an effect all the same. “Finish your report, Dinah.”

              “Yes, sir. I judged that I had only a few seconds to remove myself from harm. I used the jetpack to maneuver around
Gringolet
as fast as I could and used the ship as a shield. I regret that I was unable to retrieve Yegor before I did this, but there just wasn’t time, and I judged him beyond saving at that point anyway. The rest you know, sir.”

              The concerned voices rose again, and Gwen was crying into the doctor’s chest now. Jabir caught Staples’ eye with a beseeching look. She nodded, and he glided silently out of the room, still holding the girl to his chest. The captain knew she had to say something to defuse the situation, but she was unsure what.

              Templeton’s voice rang out loud and clear over the room. “Okay, listen. Listen.” The voices diminished. “We were attacked by pirates. They didn’t want us, or to hurt us. They wanted our passengers. They didn’t get ‘em, thanks to our chief engineer here. Someone or something blew up that other ship. I don’t know what it was, and yes, that scares me too, but it’s clear that if they wanted to blow
us
up, they could. They didn’t fire at us. They helped us, and I take that as a good sign. We will get to the bottom of this.” He looked around the room for a dramatic moment to drive his next point home. “In the mean time, we’ve got a lot of work to do. We need a damage assessment. The ship needs to be checked, nose to tail. We need engine diagnostics. If you’re in a department, get there. The rest of you: I want this ship checked. Every room, every window, every corner. Parsells, Quinn,” his eyes passed over Jang for the moment, “Ian, Declan, Piotr, and Yoli – if you’re feeling up to it -” he nodded at the Hispanic woman holding her arm gingerly, “that means you.” There was a moment of silence. “Now!  Let’s do it!”

Men and women began to push off from wall bars or unbuckle belts and to work their way out the door. As Jang headed for the exit, Staples addressed him. “Kojo, you’d better get back to Medical.”

“If I may, Captain, I would like to join the search. You have my word that I am feeling well enough.”

The man looked anything but well, but Staples sensed that perhaps he needed to prove something after being knocked unconscious in the attack. She nodded, and he left. Only Dinah remained with her captain and first mate.

“You know, sir, that if there were any hull breaches, depressurization alarms would sound.” It wasn’t a question.

“He knows,” Staples answered. “Probably they all do too. But what they need right now is reassurance that we are okay and that the ship is okay. This will help, and it gives them something constructive to do. A goal.” Dinah pulled her way along the distance of the table, grabbing the far edge and coming to rest a meter from the other two.

The captain continued, “And while we’re on the subject of things left unsaid: you said you forgot that coms were down due to Yegor’s retrofit of the satellite suite. I’ve never known you to forget something like that.” Templeton looked at her, expecting an answer, but Dinah did not provide one. Instead, Staples turned to him and said, “She didn’t tell us what she was doing because she knew we’d order her not to.” She turned back to her engineer. “I know the old axiom about it being easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, but don’t think that I won’t get angry at you for disobeying orders you bloody-well know I would give if you gave me the chance to.” She heaved a deep sigh, more out of relief than anything else. “Sometime when you haven’t saved the ship.”

Dinah fixed her eyes on a place past Staple’s head and said, “I didn’t save everyone, sir.”

“Yegor was an accident.”

The engineer pursed her lips in anger. “It wouldn’t have been an accident if Parsells and Quinn had done what I told them. I told them no one through.”

“Did you tell them why?” she countered.

For the first time since she had entered the room, the other woman looked at a loss for words. “I… didn’t. There wasn’t time.”

“These aren’t military officers, Dinah. You can’t expect them to follow orders without reason. They had no idea what you were planning. I’ll talk with them and see what they have to say about what happened, but if Yegor told them to move aside and let him through, well… they’re the new guys.
Everyone
outranks them. I might have done the same.”

Templeton spoke up. “I feel like we’re forgetting something here. What about the other stasis tube? Did they get it? Is it still in CB4? We need to check.”

“I want to know that very badly as well, Don, but we need to handle one problem at a time. The only way into CB4 is through B17, and that’s hard vacuum at the moment. What are our options, Dinah?”

Dinah’s eyes refocused on those of her captain as she spoke. “I see three ways in, sir. One: we can use an EVA suit and fly outside the ship to the hole, climb in, and proceed to CB4. Two: we can use the hallway leading into B17, B23 I believe, as a makeshift airlock. Someone goes into the corridor in an EVA suit, closes the doors, then opens the door to B17.”

“I don’t like that option,” Templeton said.

“Neither do I,” added Staples. “Those doors are designed as emergency depressurization control, not airlocks. Besides, I don’t want to depressurize any more of the ship than we already have.”

“I agree, sir. Both of these options come with an added problem. It is safe to assume that the pressure door into CB4 closed automatically in response to the depressurization alarm. If that is true, it is likely that the stasis tube is intact and that the room still has atmosphere. If we enter from vacuum, we vent the atmosphere, which is dangerous to both the stasis tube and the person in the EVA suit.”

“Agreed. Option three it is then. We repair the hole and repressurize B17. How long will that take?” Staples inquired.

“It might not take long at all if the circular hull piece can function as a patch. I’ll need to get out there with Mr. Park and a UteV and see what I can do.”

Templeton shook his head. “This is going to be made doubly tough without coms. Jesus, the fun never ends.”

“Ordinarily, even EVA suit-to-suit coms are routed through the ship’s coms suite, but I can probably rig up something using the guts of some watches.” Dinah spoke with confidence about the operation.

“Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us, eh?” Templeton’s voice was heavy.

Staples shook her head. “God, I wish Yegor was here.”

Chapter 10

Without communications, the retrieval of the errant stasis tube was an agonizing wait. There was no way to know how the search was going aside from looking through a window. John’s UteV buzzed through the ever expanding wreckage that floated away from the ship in all directions. Though not under thrust, Gringolet was still moving at over 5000 kilometers per second. The pirate ship had matched their speed, and so the debris was mostly moving in a dissipating cloud at roughly the same speed. Charis was waiting down by the cargo and shuttle bay, manning the controls required to open the already depressurized bay for her husband when he returned. Templeton, Jang, and Gwen held themselves to the starboard control panel on the bridge and tried to follow the UteV’s movements as it weaved in and out of the wreckage. Several other crew members were stationed at strategic portholes along the starboard side of the ship watching, and Yoli and Declan were in the rear observation lounge to help as well. After more than a half hour of watching the small craft maneuver deftly around the wreckage of their attackers, Templeton was beginning to lose hope. It was quite possible that they would never find the stasis tube, or that it had been destroyed in the explosion. The idea of leaving someone, alive but asleep, to float in vacuum until the power supply on the stasis tube depleted and they slowly froze to death was horrifying, but he also knew that each passing minute lowered the chances of their passenger’s survival. The stasis tubes were capable of using their batteries to provide heat in cases such as this, but they were certainly not designed for prolonged exposure to space.

              It was Gwen who spotted it first. “He got it!  He got it!” Staples and Templeton squinted through the window, and they could just see the UteV closing in on a piece of debris that looked about the right size and shape. As the small craft slowed, the capture claws extended, and John did his best to manhandle the stasis tube in their direction.

              “Bethany, can you close the distance?” Templeton asked, and was answered by a slight pull away from the window as
Gringolet
banked towards its second engineer. The movement was gentle, only about two degrees, but it was enough to close the distance to half. John seemed to have grasped two of the grip bars on the side of the tube designed to help people maneuver it in zero G environments. The small engines on the craft glowed lightly and briefly, and it began to cross the remaining gap to its mother ship.

              “Gwen, do you want to tell your mother that your dad is on his way back?” Templeton smiled over at the crew’s youngest member.

              Gwen nodded, her dark hair spilling out of her ponytail and swaying back and forth as she moved her head. She pinged her watch to talk to Charis, then spoke into it, sounding as official as she could. “Navigator Mom, this is Gwen speaking. You-tee-vee is returning to the ship. He found it!”

              “Thank you, honey.” There was more than a little relief in Charis’ voice.

              Staples smiled, then immediately felt guilty. One of her crew, a friend, was dead, and one of her passengers might well be too. She found, however, that she was also very glad to be alive. She had put on the bravest face that she could, but she had considered it a real possibility that the pirates were going to kill them all. Even once it became clear that they were after their cargo and not the crew, she was not sure that the other ship would not attack them once they were clear. Of course, Gringolet was armed as well, but it had still been a very dangerous situation. All of this and more ran through her head, but all she said was, “We should head down to the cargo bay.”

              Several minutes later, the bay was repressurized, and John, Templeton, Jabir, and Staples, their hands on grips, floated near the stasis tube by the back wall of the cargo bay. The UteV was docked nearby, and John still wore his entire EVA suit except the helmet, which he had clamped to a hook on the wall. The tube itself had been hastily secured to the deck with some cargo straps from a supply closet. Gwen was outside in the hall with Charis. Templeton had asked her to take the girl out when they saw the condition of the tube. It had clearly taken damage in the explosion, and it seemed to be ruptured in several places. More concerning was the lack of electrical activity. There was, in their immediate assessment, no way the occupant could be alive. A large letter A was stamped on the front of the device.

              “Who is it?” Templeton asked morosely.

              “Evelyn,” his captain replied. “Evelyn Schilling.”

              “God, she was so young and smart.” He looked over the damage, shaking his head. “I’m afraid we’re going to need to open it, Doc.”

              “Indeed.” The doctor’s voice was grave. “We’ll need to preserve the body for the rest of the trip, if that is your wish Captain.”

              “It is.” She sighed heavily. “I… we should still deliver her to Cronos station. I failed to protect her, but we can at least take her the rest of the way.”

              Her first mate turned to her, shifted his grip, and put a hand on her arm. “You didn’t fail, Clea. There was nothing you, or me, or any of us could have done.”

              “We could have let them take her. She’d still be alive.”

              John spoke up. “You don’t know that at all, Captain, no offense. Pirates aren’t known for taking prisoners.”

              “They’re not known for stunning people either,” she replied sharply, rounding on him, her eyes moist. “They might not have killed her. If they wanted her dead, they could have just shot her in the tube.”

              Park’s head dropped, defeated, but Templeton continued the line of thought. “Then they wanted her alive, maybe to repair their ships or computers. She was smart, after all. From what I hear about people who live out here picking off ships… she might be better off here.” He gestured down at the tube that had become a casket.

              “That’s an awfully big
might
, Don.”

              “It does not actually matter, Captain,” Jabir weighed in. “You did not make this choice. Your ship was under attack, and you were ready to die defending it and your passengers, if what I hear is true.” He glanced at Templeton, who nodded. “You could not have known what Dinah was doing, and she could not have known that another ship would fire missiles at our assailants. She may have gambled by detaching the boarding tube, but I believe she had every reason to think that this stasis tube would survive in vacuum. It would have, I suspect, had it not been lacerated with shrapnel. And that is assuming that the tube would be in a vulnerable position when she cut the power to the magnets. There were many variables, and as much as you like to think that this is your world here on this ship,” Staples looked at him angrily, but he continued unperturbed, “you cannot control everything. This,” he regarded the inert device, “was tragic, but it was not anyone’s fault.”

              “No one on this ship, anyway,” Templeton corrected angrily, though it was clear his ire was directed not at the doctor but at the other vessels.

              “That is what I meant, of course.”

              Staples hung her head. She could find no fault in their logic, but after the two years she had spent on the ship with the crew, she naturally thought, as many captains did, that everything that happened on her ship was her responsibility. “You may be right,” was all she was ready to grant them at the moment. It was a step, she knew. “Anyway, let’s get to it. We have a long to-do list, and another passenger we need to get to.”

              The doctor and John moved forward, transferred their grips to the handles of the stasis tube, and began the process of opening it manually. As they did so, John said, “Captain, I’d like permission to continue searching for Yegor’s body when we’re done here.”

              Staples thought for a minute, then shook her head. “I want him back. I do; he should be with us, but we’ve got a ship to repair. We need to get B17 repressurized. Then you can look. You know,” and she paused until he looked up and met her eyes, “it’s very unlikely that you will find him.”

              John nodded reluctantly. Finally, he undid the last manual lock with his screwdriver and placed the tool back in its sheath on his belt. He and Jabir lifted the lid away from rest of the case, and though she wanted to avert her eyes, Staples forced herself to look into the open chamber at the occupant, expecting to see the comely features of Evelyn Schilling. Instead, she saw the body of Herc Bauer, frozen and pallid, a plaster cast about his wrist.

“How does it look out there?” Templeton’s voice came in broken and full of static through the jury-rigged watch fastened to the inside of Dinah’s helmet. She had set the line to transmit constantly, but the watches weren’t designed to transmit through the hull of a ship or through space, and the reception was spotty at best. Templeton, Park, and Ian Inboden were all on an open frequency with her. The first mate was in the cockpit pressed against the window to minimize the distortion from the much thicker hull. Park was manning a UteV which Inboden, the ship’s reclusive mechanic, was tethered to. Dinah was tethered to it as well, and as they moved through vacuum towards the breach in the ship’s hull, they inspected the damage that the explosion has caused to the starboard side of the vessel in the light of the spots John was targeting.

“Not terrible, not great. I don’t see any other breaches, but some sections of the hull are going to have to be replaced in dry dock. The damage looks to be worse towards the stern, sir.” Dents, scrapes, and buckles could be seen along the side of the ship. In some places, pieces of shrapnel remained protruding from the hull, and Dinah made note of their locations to check from inside the ship. No depressurization had been detected by the ship’s automated systems, but a knife wound in a body might not start to bleed until the knife was removed. She gave quiet thanks that none of the debris had struck the comparatively weaker portholes; the impact might have been enough to crack them.

“Sounds expensive but survivable. Anything that will stop us from firing up the engines and decelerating?” Templeton inquired.

“I can’t tell from here. I still need to get into the ReC and run diagnostics on the engines. It is possible they took a hit, or that some of the main circuits are damaged. Stand by, sir.”

They were nearing the rear of the ship, and the damage was worse here. Not only was there the obvious roughly cut hole that their attackers had made, but there were several large dents from strong impacts in the rearmost thirty meters of the vessel. Bethany had been pulling
Gringolet
away from the other ship when it had exploded, turning to put the engines at the rear in their face. The result was that the stern had taken the brunt of the damage. Two of the craters in the hull looked large enough to hide a car in, and she noted that one of them was just above CB4, the location of the other stasis tube. It was unlikely, she thought, that the tube had taken damage, but it wasn’t impossible.

“Let’s get closer, Park,” she instructed her second engineer, and the UteV moved in towards the circular breach. “Ian, I want you to come through with me. We’ll try to get the disc back into place and reseal it. I’ll stay inside, you stay outside. Park, you keep him in position.”

John maneuvered the small craft right up to the hole, giving a small blast of rearward thrust to stabilize himself when they were about two meters away. Dinah and Ian untethered themselves. Dinah was first through, expertly using her jetpack to turn herself horizontal and to drive through, rotating back around when she was inside the ship. She pressed herself up against the side of the hull and extended an arm. Inboden, a mechanic first and astronaut second, fought the controls to move himself towards the hole. He threw out his hand when he was close, and the chief engineer managed to grab it and drag him inside. It was eerie to be in the ship and still be in vacuum. It felt to her as if she were standing in the living room of her house - when she had owned a house - with the entire front wall of the room missing. The lines between inside and outside, normally of vital importance in space, were blurred. She didn’t like it.

The disc that had been cut out of the hull was nestled against the side of the corridor, blocking the hallway that the pirates had used to access CB4. The piece of hull should have weighed over a thousand pounds under the effects of normal gravity. There were a variety of tasks that zero G made more difficult; fortunately, moving heavy objects was rendered quite the opposite. The two of them, through light applications of thrust, moved down the corridor and to what she hoped was their readymade patch. She gave a sigh of relief when she saw that the pirates had cut at an angle, aiming their cutting torches slightly out as they had carved their circle. The result was not a perfectly squat cylinder, but something that more closely resembled a large metallic peanut butter cup. The logic behind this was simple. Their attackers had planned to use it as a shield as they moved into the ship, and by cutting it in this shape it could only drift in, not out, of the hole they had made. It also had the benefit of making it very easy to hold in place while they welded it back into place.

The effects of gravity might have been negated, but the rules of inertia remained, and it took both of them several minutes of pushing, pulling, and grunting to get the thing moving. The magnetic handles that the pirates had used to steer it had been left attached, and they were able to use these in conjunction with their jetpacks to drag the piece of hull back whence it had come. As they approached the hole, Dinah moved around to the back of the disc and pushed as best she could without a handle while Inboden pulled. As the makeshift bandage closed the last meter to the wound in the ship, the UteV’s lights were blocked and the hallway designated B17 on some designer’s schematic decades earlier became a bit darker. The conventional lights had blown when the air was sucked out of the hallway, but the emergency lights had kicked in, and they were designed to work in vacuum.