Fatal Boarding (21 page)

“I don’t know anything about the docking
procedure, do you?”

“Chemical weld. There are two controls on
the attachment fixture. Dock and Anchor. You get the thing in place
and hit Dock, and a long docking clamp opens up. You hit Anchor and
a heater comes on and mixes the chemical. It eats into the surface
you’re mating to. You are locked in place after three minutes, and
in twenty minutes no force known to man will separate that motor
fixture from its cargo.”

“We’ll have to do it twice. We can’t risk
one being enough.”

“I’m free the rest of the day. I don’t have
anything better to do.”

“You’re something else, you know that?”

“That’s what my mother always says.”

“I’ll hold you to that bottle of scotch, by
god.”

“It’s in my quarters, under my pillow.”

“Wow, great minds do think alike.”

When we told Pell what we needed, he looked
at us as though we were crazy. Having Pell look at you like you’re
crazy is an extremely unsettling thing since he’s the one that
usually looks strange. Because the coms could not be used,
everything had to be set up on a timetable. With all that we had to
do, timing came down to a wild guess.

We strapped on our weapons and gear, and as
we headed for the door, the others looked up from their level two
attack-huddle, and watched us exit. The door slid shut behind us,
leaving only the empty surrealism of total darkness.

Three separate, independent attacks. Success
with any one would be gratifying. It gave me pause for optimism for
the first time since the nightmare had begun. Let the enemy bask in
their self-assurance, and revere their superior weapons. We were
now terrorists, with attitude. So, first stop, the hanger on level
B, the level they thought they controlled, to pick up the suicide
suits we needed.

We stealthed the darken corridors as safely
as possible, wishing we had infrareds, thinking that the enemy
surely did. We used our weapon lights as little as possible which
made the journey even more macabre. Though the corridors were
deserted, they were sporadically littered with an assortment of
items, some left over from the loss of gravity, others abandoned by
those on exodus to the tail. Without speaking, we took turns
leading and finally reached the closed doors of an elevator. We
quietly forced them open with our gloved hands, and squeezed
through onto the service ladder. It was easy enough to climb down
to level two in the dark, a touch harder for only one of us to
force the doors apart while the other waited on the ladder
above.

In the light, the level two environment was
even more cluttered and foreboding. I hated skulking around, but
our plan was long shot enough, so we crawled through a service
tunnel that paralleled the corridor to the flight crew ready room.
Access to the ready room was through a swinging service door on the
curved wall near the floor. To our dismay, it creaked loudly no
matter how carefully we tried. Had there been any intruders
waiting, they would have been alerted.

Amber light was strobing on and off in the
darkened ready room from an emergency light that had malfunctioned.
The deflated suits and helmets were in lockers against the wall. We
stayed low in the flickering light, reaching up only high enough to
open the locker doors to empty them.

It quickly became apparent that carrying
suits, helmets, weapons and satchels would be difficult. We
carefully considered which to leave behind; quickly decided nothing
could, and went about strapping everything on ourselves until we
both looked like street people with guns. Perk held up one finger
and ducked out the door to the highbay. He went scooting across the
floor in the dim light, accessed a scout ship, and returned a
moment later with two beautiful, infrared goggles. We quickly
pulled them over our eyes and switched on. The green world came
blissfully into view.

The shadowy highbay of the hanger was
deserted. Between the scout ships and support equipment, plenty of
cover existed for our crossover. We could then get into the geology
explosive storage compartment using the Ex/O codes, and crawl our
way above the ceiling to the coolant purge control room. After that
came some stuff I didn’t want to think about.

We zigzagged through the hanger to the
alcove that housed the support storage rooms. There were three
doors, all with keypads. I wasted time opening the first only to
find lifting fixtures and component parts. The next one was the
one. Inside the door, another door with the big explosives symbol
painted in red. We ignored the antistat straps and warning signs
hanging alongside, and barged in.

The search took longer than hoped. Finally
Perk came up with a tiny portable remote control strapped to a
wallet-sized explosive. We took a dozen. You can’t have too many
wallet sized explosives when you’re about to attack a spacecraft
you know nothing about.

We found access to the ceiling between the
two doors. With both the outer and inner doors closed, we felt
safe, for the moment. We raised our infrareds and switched on
weapon lights.

“Adrain, I don’t believe we made it this
far!”

“For god’s sake, don’t say stuff like
that.”

“Obviously we can’t fit through this ceiling
hatch.”

“One of us goes up first. The other hands up
all the packs.”

“After you. It’s your plan.”

“Gee, thanks. It looks like about a three
foot crawl space. We’ll have to drag everything the whole way.”

“Yeah, but think of the fun when we get
there.”

“I’ve been trying not to. We’re ahead of
schedule, I think. One hour, forty-five minutes before Pell floods
the disposal tubes.”

Perk smiled in the wavering light. “We’re
just too good.”

The crawl was even worse than expected.
Everything is supposed to be secured on a starship. There should
have been nothing loose up there. Instead, we had to maneuver
around wire bundles, and over fiber junction boxes. It developed
into a pattern of crawling haphazardly for a minute or two,
lighting up the area to be sure we were following the right
structural landmarks, then dragging suits, helmets, weapons, and
satchels up in front of us. Then, do it again. I was thanking God
the whole way that the gravity was not still one and a half G’s. It
was exhausting enough as it was.

We knew we were in the right zone when a
portion of large tube blocked the way ahead. Beyond it, several
other tubes lay in parallel. Perk went left; I went right, in
search of an access way down. At that point any would have done. A
few minutes later Perk hit me with his light on and off, and I knew
he had found it. I crawled over to meet him, and we listened
quietly, not expecting anyone to be in the area below.

Perk was just about to twist the latch to
let the access cover fall open when there was a loud clang from
below. We froze.

A scuffling sound followed, then
silence.

We waited.

Five or ten excruciating minutes passed and
we began to hear whispering. Human whispering. Through the
infrareds I saw Perk shake his head. I silently agreed. He twisted
the latch and strained to hold the cover by it. He lowered it just
enough to see part of the room below. Nothing. He slowly lowered it
further.

He called out in a whisper, “Hey down there.
It’s okay. We’re the good guys.”

Silence.

He let the door fall open fully, but from
years of combat training, did not stick his head in.

A female voice finally whispered back, “Who
is it?”

“Special forces. Show yourself.”

“You show yourself!”

“Do you have any weapons?”

“No.”

“Well put them away, okay? We have
explosives with us.”

“Oh, okay.”

Perk pushed himself up and looked at me.
“What’d you think?”

“Where else we gonna go?”

He pulled one suit forward, stuffed it into
the open hole and let it drop to the floor. Nothing happened. He
dropped one satchel down. Still nothing. He looked up at me,
saluted, pushed his legs down into the opening, and dropped down
into the room. I watched from above as he surveyed the area,
switched on a light, and then signaled me for the rest of the gear.
After carefully handing down the last helmet, I followed along.

They were two female crewmen. They looked
disheveled, and scared to death. One held a plasma pistol and had
no idea how to use it. Her long brown hair fell just above the data
processing badge by her name tag, Brenna Hurt. She fidgeted with
the gun as though nothing on earth would ever set it off. Like her
companion, the makeup was pretty smeared and there had been plenty
of tears. Her short redheaded friend stood partly behind her, as
though the gun would protect them both. Terra Rogers, also data
processing.

Perk finished organizing the gear and stood
up. “I’ve sealed our stuff in the waterproof compartments. How much
time, Adrian?”

“Sixty-five minutes. We’re still early.”

Brenna asked hopefully, “Are you here to
help us?”

I tried to look compassionate in the dim
light. “In a manner of speaking. I’d say you’re pretty safe right
here for the time being.”

“If you knew what we’ve been through.”

“We have an idea.”

“There were six of us. It was supposed to be
safe on level two. There were lights on there. Lesha was supposed
to come back and tell us it was okay. She never did. The others
went there anyway and they never came back either. We hid in a
storeroom waiting for them. Then the awful ugly things went by. We
ran in the dark. We got lost for hours, but we found this gun on
the floor in a corridor. Then we ended up here.”

“What ugly things?”

“It looked like people in plastic bags all
hooked together, being towed someplace by someone or some machine
we didn’t see. It was terrible. I can’t stop thinking about
it.”

“Well, you two did well getting here. That
took a lot of courage. Perk and I are about to see if we can do
something about the bad guys. You two can help us get ready, if you
want. It would be a big help.”

And they were clearly happy to help.
Anything to get mentally away from the dread that had been
shadowing them. There is a curious storeroom for tragedies that we
all possess; a special accessory to our consciousness. When things
have happened that are so brutally bad that we can’t stop thinking
about them, it is a space for temporary storage, so that we can
continue with tasks of more immediate priority. Put-aside storage
is an attribute designed to allow us to remain temporarily
rational, even when our surroundings have become absurdly
ludicrous. It could be considered management of the bizarre,
leaving us to eventually end up with two dark rooms to deal with,
the one on the outside, and the one on the inside. It is very
difficult to say which is worse, although you can at least shut
your eyes on the outside.

We began the suit up process, wondering if
Pell had been successful with the computer purge commands. There
was also the question of how bad the inflow of coolant would be.
Would it crash in on us, or come gradually up like in a sinking
ship. The coolant engineers would know. We did not. It was another
chance on a long list. Plus, the orange flight suits were never
intended to be used for open space work. They utilize a chest plate
and belly-packs to accommodate a pilot in tight control seat. They
are thin-skinned with few bells and whistles, and were certainly
not intended for submersion. The little emergency suit jets would
be just fine. The packs were the problem. They wouldn’t be under
the antifreeze coolant for long, but could they take it at all?

I began to doubt myself for avoiding the
main airlocks. Maybe we could have used one and not been detected.
We would have needed decompression time in there. We’d have been
sitting ducks. You can’t run a space suit at fourteen point seven
pounds per square inch of pressure, Earth standard. You can, but
you look and feel like the Pillsbury doughboy, all puffed up and
barely able to move. To get any flexibility in the suit at all,
that pressure has to be set way down, and that means special gas to
breath. So you sit in the airlock and acclimate. I could imagine
being stuck in there waiting and have the wrong face look through
the inspection window. Given that, or this, I’d take this way every
time. Even if it did mean as Perk said, being shit out the
underside of the ship.

We pulled our black suit liners out of the
suits and stretched them on, being sure to keep the coolant tubes
in their holders. With help from Terra, I opened the flexible
flatpack on the suit-back, and stepped into the legs. The coolant
tubes and telemetry lines snapped into place. With a little
wrestling, my hands slid into the gloves and worked themselves into
place. I had done this dozens of times, but this time felt
different. It was an odd feeling. In all the previous mission
suit-ups, our very lives depended on the suit being right. Nothing
ever seemed more important than that. This time we were using pilot
suits, and this suiting suddenly felt more important. Not just one
life depended on it. The lives of all remaining souls on board
did.

Behind me, Terra closed the flatpack and
latched it. I turned and found her holding my helmet. We looked at
each other and I could tell she was silently praying. Silently, I
joined her. She held out my helmet, and for a moment I’m not sure I
was ever closer to anyone. She smiled, and seemed to know that if
she saw me again, it would mean things were okay.

I turned to find Perk, suited up, flexing
his right glove. He looked up at me approvingly. “You wanna
pressurize before we access the tube, or after, Adrian?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.
Can we get the tube hatches open either way?”

“It’s the clean-out entrance. It’s pretty
big. It’s just outside the door behind you. Let’s the four of us go
see how it opens. We can decide then.”