Ship's Boy (3 page)

There were spare EVA cylinders stashed here and there all over the place; if Dad had only asked for one I’d have had to go no further than the engineering spaces lock. But because he specified two I had to make my way into passenger country, where a dozen of the things were stowed near the main lock. It was a long, difficult trip even under ideal conditions;
Broad Arrow
was pretty large as personal VIP spacers went, though of course any space-to-space cargo vessel would dwarf her. Even worse, as in most passenger vessels there were only a handful of places where the ship’s “working” corridors intersected with those frequented by the civilians. So I had to go well-for’ard before working my way back to the lock, then make the same round-about trip on the return leg carrying the cylinders. Fortunately no one challenged me for being away from my station; either Dad had let folks know I was coming, or more likely everyone was just too busy just then to worry much about a mere stray apprentice.

I was right in the middle of passenger country with an EVA tank in each hand when the artificial gravity failed. Suddenly the half-gravity that was ship’s standard during takeoff transformed itself into the five or so gees of actual acceleration we’d finally worked up to after our no-hardpoint liftoff. I was lucky as could be in that I was caught at the bottom of the main companionway instead of halfway up it, and when the two normally hefty but manageable tanks suddenly turned to lead I simply released them and let myself flop forward, just as the training manual advised. The impact hurt, yes. But I was still a kid and it wasn’t so bad. For heavier and less-flexible adults, such a fall could often be deadly. Then and only then the klaxon that should’ve gone off
before
the system failure began to sound. “Catastrophic Field failure imminent!” an automated voice advised. “Take shelter! Take shelter!”

“Dad!” I cried out into my comm-link. If the Field failed under load, no one in the after sections of
Broad Arrow
could even
hope
to survive. “Get out of there!”

“I love you, David,” he responded. “Make your mother and me proud!”

Then there was a brilliant flash. I felt the torn, unbalanced Field waver sickeningly…

…and everything aft of the emergency buffer bulkhead collapsed into another universe. Including Dad.

5

I didn’t have much time to think about Dad being gone just then—as catastrophic as a Field collapse was for the engineering spaces, the disaster was plenty brutal on the rest of the ship, too. It was sort of like an unbalanced liftoff in that it torqued the hull more ways than ordinary beings could perceive, only about a bajillion times worse. Not a single ship had ever been salvaged once her engine rooms collapsed, not even billion-credit liners. Proud
Broad Arrow
was now little more than scrap, even her tiniest component parts too distorted for re-use.

The first thing I had to do, being caught in passenger country at the time of the disaster, was to make certain of the hull integrity of whatever compartment I found myself in until receiving definite instructions from a fully-qualified spacer—my textbook on dealing with space emergencies was very clear on the subject. I pushed myself up off the deck and half-spun in mid-air. The wall indicator was strobing brilliant red, and fast—there was major leakage taking place somewhere! I bounced off the ceiling—a bit clumsily because I’d hadn’t gotten around to advanced null-gee maneuvering training yet—and grabbed the bundle of tarpatches stored behind the telltale. But it wasn’t long before I realized my efforts were hopeless. I’d placed perhaps my dozenth patch when I looked further forward and saw that at least ten structural members had somehow been driven through the main for’ard bulkhead. They were still protruding, so no mere tarpatch could hope to stop the resulting gaps. Reluctantly, for the main companionway was a key ship’s thoroughfare, I grabbed my spare EVA cylinders, fell back and sealed the emergency airlock.

By then I was almost halfway through my patches, and for what gain? While I might’ve been able to maintain pressure in the corridor I was standing in, I stopped and asked myself what the point would be? My prime duty was supposed to be ensuring the safety of the passengers, after all, and there weren’t any around to breathe the air I might or might not save. Dad had taught me that when in doubt following the book was usually the best thing to do. “Usually” wasn’t the same as “always”, he’d also explained, and I figured that maybe this was one of those times.

So I looked up and down the corridor for inspiration, and my guts froze. I was in the VIP area now, where the over-large cabins were built right up against the outer hull so that they might be equipped with viewports. That also meant they were up against hard vacuum…

…and sure enough, every single telltale was solid red, save milord’s own! And even it was blinking fast!

Cursing myself for blindly following the rules instead of looking around and thinking for myself, I leapt down the passage and grabbed a handhold as I reached milord’s lock. The solid red cabins held only dead men, it was virtually certain, while here there was still at least faint hope. The pressure-door refused to cycle until I entered my crewman’s override code—this was because the air was unbreathable on the far side, on the assumption I was a passenger too silly to read the telltale. Then finally the door rose…

…and there arose the most ungodly wind I’d ever known as the already-thin corridor air rushed into what couldn’t have been more than a fifth of an atmosphere or so.

There wasn’t time to think; as the gale eased to a mere strong breeze I released the fitting I’d been holding and let the flow draw me under the still-rising door and inside. Instantly it was clear what was the matter—a line of six evenly-spaced hand-sized dents, presumably the result of hits from an atmospheric fighter’s cannon, ran at an angle just blow the largest viewport. Each was tarpatched—apparently someone had thought and acted quickly, for a passenger. But the cracks at the center of each dent were too large and had sucked the patch-juice on through. Without wasting a second I peeled and slapped two more patches on each dent. The two toughest were the last ones on the far end, where some intelligent but untrained person had tried stuffing their socks down into the leaky juice—it’d probably helped some, but of course wasn’t nearly good enough. I yanked the ruined silk out, then glommed on my double-patches and pushed off for the pressure door. It closed without making a fuss, and was almost all the way down when I yanked open the ‘dump’ valve on my one of my EVA tanks to restore pressure. Next I opened my helmet-visor and listened intently—there was a distinct whistle emerging from the closet, which was set against the now-vacuum-filled cabin next door. I floated inside, closed my eyes, concentrated…

…and almost without looking slapped my last patch on a stress-crack perhaps half an inch long. For an instant, I let my head hang in relief— milord’s cabin was sound again, or at least sound enough for the moment. But…

…instantly I was in motion again, my conscious mind registering what I’d previously shut out in my single-minded—and quite proper—focus on restoring pressure. I looked down at the King’s Ambassador as I floated by—he was messily dead, apparently from the five-gee fall. So was Jenkins, milord’s beloved manservant and a Rabbit like me. He was halfway into a survival bubble but hadn’t quite made it. Nearer the viewport lay a now-collapsed bubble that’d been all nice and puffy when I’d first arrived; now that the outside pressure was back up, it’d collapsed. In it lay James, milord’s son, who oddly wasn’t wearing any socks. He was also slowly turning blue.

And so was milord himself, lying in his bed inside yet another collapsed bubble!

6

My Field suit was equipped with an otherwise standard-issue spaceman’s knife that was made out of warp-resistant material. Not that warp-resistance mattered at the moment; my Field had been off since the visor was cracked. Being careful not to cut either victim, I slashed open their bubbles so they could breathe good, clean air. Almost instantly their color improved, which was a good thing since I’d still not had any first-aid training yet. It wasn’t until I got around to removing the bubbles entirely that I realized milord was wearing a med-unit strapped to his chest, which was flashing red in two places and yellow in a third.

And I didn’t have a clue what to do about it!

Just then James coughed and began to throw up; glad of the distraction I snatched a sick-kit off the wall and helped milord’s son make use of it, then used the attached vacuum bottle to snatch the little gobbets where he’d missed out of the air.  There was nothing worse than loose vomit under freefall; the stuff was so corrosive and nasty that extraordinary precautions were justified when accidents happened. By the time I was finished James was floating by his father’s bedside, looking at the same blinking lights that I’d noted earlier. He didn’t seem to have any idea of what to do about them either. Finally, one of the reds went yellow on its own and the yellow quite blinking entirely. “That’s a good sign, I hope,” he said to me.

“Yes, sir!” I agreed, not quite certain about how to properly address milord’s son. I’d never been much on etiquette and things like that. Unlike most passengers, milord had a ship’s computer at his desk; I curled myself into a sitting position and began pulling up screens, trying to find us some help.

“The gravity failed,” James offered, sounding younger than his true age. Which was about the same as mine. “Jerome fell, and his neck went at a funny angle. Then Dad had a seizure, and while Jenkins was getting the ‘doc unit running there was a big explosion! The air was already getting thin, and that was enough for Jenkins! He stuffed Dad in a bag, then me. But he… He…” James looked down at the Rabbit’s stiffening corpse.

“I know,” I answered softly. The computer wasn’t cooperating at all—even the ship’s core systems were mostly down. But I didn’t let the frustration show in my voice. “Who patched the holes?” I asked.

“I did!” James replied brightly, obviously glad of the distraction. As I’d rather hoped, actually. “Each and every one—I learned about tarpatches from my primary-school tutor, Mr. Plainsfield. He used to be a space-marine!” Then his face fell again. “Everyone else was too busy. But I didn’t do a very good job, I guess. They still leaked. Even after I used my socks too.”

I nodded again—some of the cockpit systems were still running. I got a nice, clean close-up of a gore-smeared suit-visor that was still boiling off liquids into space. Captain Saunder’s name was inscribed just above the bloody mess. I switched back to a blank screen before James could recognize the image. “You did good work, sir,” I countered. “But without specialized training you had no way of knowing that you needed to double the patches.” I looked up and smiled. “And when I saw the socks, I knew someone had thought quickly.”

James smiled back at me, clearly uncertain if he was being flattered or not. “Doctor Lewis was taking the day off,” he explained, turning back to his father. “That’s Dad’s special doctor. So, we had to leave without him.”

I nodded and checked off another mental box. There was no point searching for milord’s personal physician.

“I don’t know what to do,” James said eventually, still looking down at his father. “I mean, I really and truly don’t. But… Look! The other red light’s gone back to yellow!”

I nodded and smiled. “He must be getting better then, sir!” I offered in the most encouraging tone I could manage.

“Yes!” James agreed, doing a little backflip of joy. Then his face sobered. “Isn’t your dad aboard too, David? He’s the chief engineer, I think?”

I froze, unable to move or think for a moment. But my face must’ve said plenty.

“Oh no!” James gasped. He turned away. “I’m so… I mean…”

“It’s all right, sir” I answered, though I knew that things could never, ever be all right again. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known.”

Then at last James left me alone for a bit while I rummaged through the cockpit systems. For a while I thought the flight deck camera might’ve been the only system left working on the entire ship. Then I found a working navigational screen as well. I wasn’t trained in astrogation, and a lot of it I couldn’t have figured out on a bet. But, the only part that really mattered, I could read just fine.

“Warning! Catastrophic re-entry in twenty-four minutes!” a flashing message read in large, blinking letters. “Increase relative vector immediately!” Which was exactly what I couldn’t do, of course.  For even Dad couldn’t have gotten so much as a single erg of thrust out of a ship with no engine room.

7

After that I found a working life-support feed. It indicated that the vast majority the ship was in hard vacuum by then, and what wasn’t didn’t show anything alive, milord’s cabin excepted. Which was just as well, I decided—there was no way I could open the pressure door without letting all the air out again, and I didn’t think milord would survive the stress of another survival-bubble inflation.

Somehow I found myself floating at James’ side, gazing down at milord. Even as sick as he was, there was a regal, even royal air about him. There were those who claimed that he was a bastard son of His Majesty himself, and perhaps it was true since the House of Marcus had been upgraded to a dukedom. Because the formal investiture hadn’t taken place yet, however, milord was still just a Lord. The king was otherwise childless, people whispered, and if the much-beloved and soon-to-be Duke of Marcus was actually acknowledged as being of the blood royal, well…

I looked over at James, and suddenly saw him with new eyes.

He misunderstood me. "I’m so sorry about your father,” he repeated, reaching out to take and squeeze my hand. “Father loved to chat with him—he told me once that his yacht’s engineer was the only person in the universe who spoke to him honestly and told him dirty jokes.” James looked away. “I think he loved him most of all.”

I felt my own eyes tear up; barring a miracle there was only twenty minutes or so left for any of us by now, though I hadn’t dared say so yet. “And Father loved him back,” I answered. “All of us bunnies do. We appreciate how well we’re treated.”