Fatal Boarding (22 page)

“Fifty minutes. We better get to it.”

Outside on the tube, the clean-out hatch
looked like the door to a submarine, big lever to throw, big wheel
to turn. To my surprise, Brenna and Terra handled it. I started to
raise my helmet and paused to look at Perk. “External telemetry
send and receive off. Closed com, private.”

Perk nodded, “Roger.”

We capped off, reached under the chest plate
and hit the master power levers, tapped the gradient pressurization
key on our sleeves, and heard the suit pumps whine. We stepped
passed our new friends, into the purge tube, and turned to watch
them close and seal it behind us. On my sleeve LCD display the suit
came up to thirteen pounds and then went into its slow let-down
mode. There were no alarms, no red Xs, and the power cell was
topped out. Perk appeared to be running okay, as well.

We maneuvered around and took seats as best
we could on either side of the tube, facing each other. I glanced
over at the inlet port on my right. It was near the bottom of the
tube, possibly a good sign; hopefully a moderately fast fill up,
rather than a waterfall of pressure. On my left, about thirty feet
away, was the big exit door, closed and sealed from space, waiting
to open and flush us out.

We had a forty-five minute wait. Perk
squelched in over the com, “Well, what’d you wanna do now?”

“Wake up?”

“Yeah, maybe if we click out space suit
boots together three times….” Perk looked down at his sleeve
readout, then back at me. “You know, trying to get this far, I
almost forgot.”

“What’s that?”

“That those bastards are out there right now
killing our people.”

“It’s why we’re here.”

Perk adjusted his position and glanced at
the timer on his suit sleeve again. “I know you’re a high time
pilot, Adrian. Why are you here rather than in a left seat
somewhere?”

“Couldn’t get what I wanted. Lost some
credits in a poker game.”

He laughed. “I fly. Not so much time in yet.
I’m working my way up. Tell me, what’s the dumbest thing you ever
did with a control yoke in your hand, and I’ll bet you I top
it.”

“Hmm, there’s some choices there. Let’s see.
One that sticks out, I was getting checked out in a Lancer. They
look just like a manta ray with no tail. They are touchy. A little
control goes a long way. I was practicing dead stick stalls.
Straight up, kill the engine, let it nose over, then recover.
Lancers like to roll wicked to one side when they nose over. That
day it kept rolling left. So I got this idea that if I kicked in
full port thrusters for a few seconds, I could make the thing
actually do a sort of falling leaf type dive. Nobody told me that
was a bad thing to do. So I take that Lancer straight up, and at
the pitch-over kick in the port thrusters, and that thing flipped
over to starboard so hard I couldn’t tell if I was upside down and
falling, or right side up and diving. And to make matters worse,
the thing went into a spin nice and flat, too. All I could see out
the windshield was green blur. So many G’s I couldn’t lean forward
to look for the sky. I just couldn’t tell if I was spinning upside
down or right side up. I did not want to eject upside down, and I
did not want to eject from a perfectly good aircraft and then have
to explain it. I had to hold the controls at neutral, because
obviously if you’re upside down the controls are reversed, and you
can really screw things up if you put in the wrong
corrections.”

“So how’d you fix it?”

“I didn’t. It spun down for almost ten
thousand feet, and then came out all by itself. It came out in a
nose down dive at the ground, but it came back up when I asked.
Every part of me was puckered up as tight as it could go, all the
way home.”

Perk’s squelch kicked in and out with his
laugh. “Okay, mine’s not as glamorous, but it will win on
stupidity. I was flying a T280 trainer. As I’m sure you know, it’s
a twin with those little astro jet engines. I was practicing flying
on one engine. You can’t take off with just one engine in those.
They just don’t have enough power. So if you have to land with just
one engine, you don’t get to go around and try again. You have to
make it the first time. So I kill one engine, and when I’m done
practicing, the thing won’t spool up. I was really worried about
not making the landing in just one shot. I set up perfectly for the
landing, doing everything I could to bring it in over the threshold
right on target. And I did.”

“So?”

“Forgot to put the gear down.”

I had to catch my breath to stop my own
laugh from squelching on. “Aw, that’s not so bad. You know the worn
out joke about there’s two kind of pilots, right?”

“Oh yeah, the ones that forgot and the one’s
that are gonna. But that didn’t seem like much consolation to the
FBO officer. I wouldn’t tell anyone that story, except now it don’t
seem to matter that much.”

In a sobering moment, we both paused to look
at the empty inlet port.

Chapter 23

When the coolant purge inlet valve finally
began to click open, it was anticlimactic. The fluid barely
trickled out at first, like an overflowing kitchen sink. The fluid
was robin egg blue and warm enough that as it covered our shoes,
the suits took notice. The LCD screen on my sleeve came up with a
flashing air conditioner symbol. I started hoping the fluid wasn’t
actually hotter than the suit could handle.

As usual, Pell had been exactly on time. We
sat with our hands in our laps, watching the liquid come up to our
ankles, knowing the tube would have to fill completely, before the
inner valves would close so the outer door could open. As it
reached upward to knee-high, the inlet valve suddenly jumped the
rest of the way open and the strong gush of incoming fluid made a
wave that pushed us both out of position. We held to the ceiling
and walls, trying not to get too close to the big outer door.
Through the small round inspection windows, Brenna and Terra
continued to watch.

As the fill came up to our helmets, Perk
gave me a thumbs up. A second later, I could barely make out his
form from beneath the river of blue. The current forced us to sway
back and forth. As we continued to wait, it suddenly occurred to me
that if there was a purge system malfunction, we’d have a bitch of
time getting out of it. It also occurred to me that if the outer
door opened only part way, we could be sucked into the opening and
held there. This was a pressurized purge. There would be no going
against it. Next I realized if we flushed out successfully, we’d be
going from warm or hot fluid to harshly cold space, another kind of
profile our suits were not designed for. Why hadn’t I though of
these things beforehand. At least then, I could have dreamed up
some absurd mitigations to comfort myself.

As I tried to decide which problem to worry
about, the outer door snapped open in less than a second. The
coolant gushed out the hole, into the emptiness. Ungracefully, I
was yanked backward, my feet sticking straight out, arms held in
close to avoid the side walls of the outer door. The hatch walls
went by so fast I barely saw their faint outline. Outside the ship,
the universe came sporadically into view in-between globs of the
anti-freeze fluid. The ejection speed was too fast. As the spray
dissipated around me the hulk of the ship came into view. It was
moving away too quickly. I scrambled to find the station-keeping
key on my sleeve, praying that the suit mini-jets would still
function. Mercifully, the rearward thrusters kicked in hard,
pushing me against the back of the suit, and brought me to a stop a
good fifty meters from Electra. To my amazement, suit systems
quickly came back to nominal.

There was an intimidating feeling of
vulnerability being in a flight suit in open space. Though much
less bulky than an EVA suit, it felt equally less protective.
Flight suits carry only an emergency air supply that will give you
about an hour of air, though at least it’s the same safety gas mix
EVA suits use. Most of the comforting little pockets, compartments,
and tools are absent. The maneuvering system is token by
comparison, intended at most to allow a pilot to perform minor
tasks on his ship, not travel away from it. Fortunately we did not
need to go far.

I strained to find Perk and finally spotted
him off to my right. He was stationary, hanging in the nothingness,
fidgeting with his sleeve controls. I blew into my mike to be sure
the squelch would cut out.

“How’s your bio-matter?”

“Standby, Adrain.”

It was not the response I was hoping for. I
found my belt control and squeezed in some forward thrust toward
him. Halfway there, he squelched back on.

“I lost the pack, Adrian. It caught going
out the door and ripped off my arm.”

“We can live with that. Are you
injured?”

“No, but that pack had my charges.”

“We still have six in mine. I’ll share.” I
pulled up beside him, and visually checked over his suit. “You look
good from here. How’s the readouts?”

“They went berserk for a few seconds but
everything’s coming back in limits now.”

“What a ride.”

“Yeah, two kinds of floating in less than a
minute.”

“Time to go play with some big Este’s
rockets.”

I took a moment to get my bearings. The view
was dreamlike. Electra, with her exterior lighting still on, hung
weightlessly, a massive construct of the human desire to
understand. To our right, the alien ship loomed. It looked like a
stinging bug that anyone, though they be ten thousand times larger,
would run shrieking from. Staring at it gave me a sick feeling in
my stomach, quite a change in perception since my previous
visit.

Together we jetted slowly toward the
underside of Electra, with the impossible intention of deploying
two large solid fuel rocket motors that might help squash the ugly
bug. Perk seemed to know where to go.

As we moved beneath the ship, I chanced a
look down at that limitless blanket of stars you never get used to.
The first glance always makes you want to stop whatever ride you’re
on so you can take a moment to figure out what the hell is really
going on. The answer has to be some evasive, ancient secret more
profound than the mind-boggling vision itself. In open space, there
are so many stars they look crowded, but at the same time the gulf
between you and them is so great, you surely must be outside
looking in, except that they are all around you.

We scooted along the irregular underside of
Electra. The Hercules motor compartments were long barrels attached
to a portion of her belly. They were designed to open like
clamshells. That way, the motors could be coaxed away from the ship
with the least chance of unwanted contact.

We found the stowage control panel midway
beside the first tube. The cover slid open, white lighted buttons
appeared, and a screen lit up demanding a level four security code
or higher, or go home. Beside the key pad were two ominous looking
buttons, one glowing orange, the other red. The orange one was
labeled ‘Open’, the red one, ‘Release’. I typed in my Ex/O code,
hit the enter key and the open button began rapidly flashing green
and orange. Without waiting I pressed it. In the silence of space,
the doors gently swung open, exposing the first motor. The Release
button took over the flashing.

To our advantage, the motor casings were
darker than amber. They blended with the shadows of space
surprisingly well. The translation thruster fixtures were clearly
visible at the nose and tail. Perk glided back to the tail, held on
to the fixture, and waited.

I tapped the release button and at first
thought the system had failed. A moment later it became apparent
that the motor was drifting free, leaving me to hurry to the nose
and steady the front end. Using our weak suit thrust, we very
slowly brought the behemoth down and away from Electra’s
superstructure. We paused and got into position over the manual
thruster control panels. There were, six buttons only, north,
south, east, west, and pitch up, pitch down, all with reference to
the thruster fixture itself.

I looked back in Perk’s direction. “Are you
seeing this?”

The com switched on immediately. “Yep. It’s
gonna be like dancing.”

“We both go left, or right, or forward or
back.”

“And you’re doin’ the hoochey-coo.”

“At least it’s pointing in the right
direction.”

“Yeah, away from Electra.”

“So we go straight ahead until we’re
underneath them, then we move off to our left for attachment.”

“That’ll keep us out of visual range for
most of it.”

“A quick tap of the north button on zero to
see how it moves?”

“On zero.”

“Three, two, one, zero.”

We both gave our north button a short tap,
and to my amazement jets on both sides of the fixture gave a brief
burst. The huge beast began to drift gently forward, pulling us
along with it. The control was so good, I felt like I needed to be
doing more as we coasted toward the bow of Electra.

As we moved forward, something unexpected
came into view up ahead. The gangway from Electra had been
redeployed and mated with the alien ship. It should not have been.
It had been retracted and stowed after our return.

“Perk, the gangway is out.”

“Oh my god. They’re using it.”

“We’re right in line with it. We’ll pass
directly underneath.”

“So, stop and try to check if the coast is
clear, or chance it?”

“It’s a bad place to pull over. We’ll have
to chance it.”

We floated out from beneath Electra, and
under the gangway, moving silently through the darkness. We were
lucky. Through the grating of the walkway I could see that no one
was above us. Electra’s hatch was closed, the alien’s entrance
still open. We glided beneath the abstract bottom of the enemy ship
until we approached midship.