A Choice of Treasons (40 page)

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in nine minutes and counting.

He triggered a dose of kikker and his mind started to race. There was an air line somewhere in the cockpit. There had to be. He reached for the power knife at his belt, a standard part of his kit, struggled for a moment before he found it and got it free.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in eight minutes and counting.

He wedged his bad hand beneath the outer skin of the ship where a section of plast had been torn away, and the agony became a distant ache as he flicked on the power knife and started cutting away the safety line.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in seven minutes and counting.

There wasn’t time to favor his injured hand now. With no safety line to protect him against a chance misstep, with the blast of air blowing out through the crack in his chest plate threatening to jet him away helplessly into space, he needed four functional limbs if he was going to make it in time. He used his forearm panel to administer a heavy dose of painkiller, then triggered a triple dose of kikker and jackers to counteract any drowsiness.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in six minutes and counting.

It worked. He was so blasted on painkillers and kikkers and jackers and pain itself, that it almost didn’t hurt to use the dead stump of a hand as a climbing grapple: jam it into something convenient, move the good hand to another hold, tear the dead hand loose and lodge it into something else. No room for mistakes.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in five minutes and counting.

It almost didn’t hurt; there was a schizophrenic piece of his mind that retreated from the reality of his actions, and took the agony with it. He controlled his motor functions nicely, while that other piece of him had taken control of his mouth and vocal chords, and was venting his torment by growling a vitriolic stream of curses aimed at Sierka.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in four minutes and counting.

His good hand reached the twisted edge of the hole blown in the nose of the boat. He crawled into the cockpit, pushed toward the warped bulkhead at the rear. The air line should be back there somewhere hidden behind a panel of some sort.

The cockpit lighting had shut down completely, so he’d have to recognize the panel by feel through the mesh of his gauntlet. He started low, searching with his good hand, touching everything. He covered every centimeter of the bulkhead that was accessible. Nothing.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in three minutes and counting.

He was a fool. He returned to the console in the bulkhead, wasted no more than a second or two bringing up a repair schematic of the boat. A few more seconds and he had a blow-up of the cockpit. A few more and he’d found the air nozzle. It should be behind a small panel in the side bulkhead next to where the pilot’s couch had been.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in two minutes and counting.

He scrambled over to the mess of wiring and twisted plast that had once been the pilot’s console, found a large piece of warped wall plating concealing the panel. He reached around behind it, found the panel, touched its latch and it opened less than a centimeter before it came up against the plating bent over it. He couldn’t even get a gauntleted finger behind the panel cover, let alone grab the air line and pull it out. He gave up on that approach, took hold of the edge of the bent plast, dug his heels into the deck and pulled. His eyes started to bulge and he almost passed out.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in one minute and counting.

He let go of the plast, pushed off to the arms locker, trying desperately to remain calm, to suppress the panic rising up his throat.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in ninety seconds and counting.

Still cursing at Sierka he rifled through the grenades in the small locker, found one with a two pound rating and pushed back across the cabin to the plate of bent plast.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in eighty seconds and counting.

He set the fuse on the grenade for three seconds, pushed it down behind the bent plast, wedged it between the plate of plast and the wall about half a meter to one side of the panel containing his only chance for survival.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in seventy seconds and counting.

He triggered the grenade, yanked his arm out from behind the plast, pushed away from the bent plate. He wasn’t one for praying, but while he cursed at Sierka he silently prayed the blast wouldn’t damage the tubing in the wall, nor the reel of hose, nor the valve on the end of it that he needed to connect it to his suit supply, nor . . .

Critical haz . . . breach . . . decompression in twenty sec . . .

The blast had blown him across the cockpit and he’d lost consciousness for a few critical seconds. It had also blown a hole through the sidewall and torn away the offending piece of plating.

Critical hazard warning. Torso breach. Terminal decompression in ten seconds and counting.

His ears popped and he was swimming on the edge of consciousness as he pushed toward the air line.

Nine.

The deck pitched and rolled in an effort to divert him.

Eight.

Tiny motes of death started to dance in front of his eyes and his ears started to hurt.

Seven.

He got hold of the line, yanked on it, pulled a couple meters out of the wall.

Six.

He fumbled for the nozzle on the bottom of the reactor pack on his back.

Five.

His fingers were going numb, his arm getting sloppy as if he’d slept on it wrong.

Four.

He found the nozzle just as he was blacking out.

Three.

It wouldn’t connect, didn’t seem to fit.

Two.

He cursed, pulled on the line, shouted an oath at Sierka.

One.

He struggled to connect the hose, his lips still feebly cursing Sierka, swearing he’d come back from the dead if need be . . .

Frank Stara’s hands were trembling with frustration and anger. York had accidentally left his com on and they’d all heard his ordeal, the desperate struggle to accomplish some task the purpose of which had something to do with keeping them from “cooking alive,” the semi delirious curses, the explosion, the critical hazard warnings from his armor, the count-down to terminal decompression. The bridge had gone absolutely silent.

“Well, Mister Stara,” Sierka demanded. “Answer me. Are there any signs of life?”

“No, sir,” Frank said, struggling to contain his anger. “There was an explosion of some sort, and his suit telemetry reported a massive torso breach and
terminal decompression
. Then there was another explosion and we stopped getting any signal at all. He’s dead. You killed him. You murdered him.”

“What did you say?”

“I said he’s dead, sir.” Frank peered carefully over his shoulder. Sierka sat at the captain’s console staring blankly at the screens, paralyzed with fear—mostly fear of York, it seemed. After the second explosion Sierka had ordered Maggie to move the ship to within a hundred meters of the crippled boat, and now they were sniffing around it fearfully, like a small animal frightened a large predator might come back to life at any moment.

“Sir,” Olin Rame said carefully. “I recommend we retrieve that boat. Mister Ballin may be dead, but certainly there are others there in need of aid.”

That was how they’d been getting Sierka to act, recommend the appropriate action, try to talk Sierka into doing the right thing, into doing anything, then all pretend it was he who was running the ship. “Yes,” Sierka said. “Do it.”

“Mister Stara,” Rame said. “Open
Three Bay
and tell them to stand by for pickup. And warn Miss Yan we’ll probably have more wounded for her.

“Miss Votak. Move us in slowly. I don’t think that boat is going to be able to help you any, so you’ll have to maneuver
Three Bay
around her.”

York’s entire arm hurt now, right up to the elbow. As a sort of half consciousness returned to him he stared at the jet of air blowing out the crack in his chest plate, pinning him to the bulkhead. Then his eyes followed the tangled mess of the air line that snaked between his reactor pack and the side wall of the craft. Slowly he came to the realization that he was alive.

Suddenly the harsh glare of the distant sun disappeared and everything went black. He looked out through the hole of what had once been a cockpit and he saw the bright lighting of one of
Cinesstar’s
service bays open to space like the mouth of a giant beast, seeming to grow as she drifted lazily toward the boat. He keyed his com. “Sierka,” he said, the words coming out in a cracked and garbled growl. “I’m coming to get you, you son-of-a-bitch.”

Frank started at the sound of York’s voice, but Sierka jumped as if he’d just heard from the dead.

“Shut that service bay,” Sierka screamed. “Shut it, now.”

Frank almost obeyed him, but finally he’d had enough. He put his hands flat on the com console and refused to move.

“Mister Stara, I gave you an order. Obey me, damn you. Obey me.”

Frank sat dead still, refused to act, to speak, to even acknowledge the order.

“Miss Votak,” Sierka screamed hysterically. “Get us out of here.”

The ship didn’t move. Maggie was hidden within the helm cluster so her act of defiance was less visible, but no less obvious.

Sierka crossed the distance to Frank, and he rammed the muzzle of a gun against the base of his skull. “This is an act of mutiny, Mister Stara. Now close
Three Bay
instantly or I’ll execute you myself right here and now.”

York watched the open safety of
Three Bay
approaching, but then suddenly, with rescue no more than ten meters away, the bay doors started to close.

“No,” York pleaded. “No. Please no!” He pushed off the bulkhead, but the jet of air forced him back against it. He reached down deep for the last bit of strength he had, slid along the bulkhead to the backup console, prayed that he remembered correctly the way he’d programmed the keys, hit three that should fire the right attitude jets.

Nothing happened for a moment, then the boat started to move with agonizing slowness. Ordinarily, in a docking procedure, you erred on the side of caution, gave the jets a tiny goose, let the boat drift carefully into place. But now York held the keys down and the boat picked up speed rapidly.

It almost worked nicely, but the bay doors were half closed, and the boat was a total wreck, and York was only conscious because he was close to overdose on
kikkers
and jackers, and it really wouldn’t have been possible to exercise fine attitude control with a keyboard anyway. The boat clipped one of the bay seals on its way in, jack-knifed around, tore off a good piece of its tail section on a large girder, entered the gravity field of the service bay, crashed to the deck and skidded to a stop in a grinding mess of twisted steel and plast.

York pitched forward through the hole in the cockpit, landed on his side on the deck, still tethered to the boat by the air hose, and the jet of air pinned him down.

Three Bay
clanked shut with a crash that echoed through the hull, and the service crew brought pressure up in the bay. As the air pressure around him rose the jet of air slowly stopped blowing, York’s suit depressurized the isolation seal around his wrist, and that increased the agony he was trying to contain. He triggered a
kikker
, rolled over and tried to struggle to his feet.

Someone helped him up, half dragged him to a bulkhead and sat him down against it. The bay was filling quickly with service crew and marines from the other boats, all starting to swarm over the wreck of
Three
. York popped his visor, filled his lungs with the clean, fresh air from the bay, looked up, found Maggie and Frank standing over him. He tugged at his helmet, growled, “Help me get this thing off. And what the hell are you doing here?”