The Serrano Connection (48 page)

She leaned over and put her helmet against Seska's. "Some fool must have painted this thing shut," he was saying.

"No," Esmay said. "It won't work in FTL flight. It says that at the bottom." The others stopped struggling.

"So it does," Frees said, leaning into her helmet. "On this panel too. Says we don't need it because of course we aren't out here in FTL. Silly us, being impossible."

"Wish they were right," Bowry said. "All right, Suiza—now what?"

Esmay opened her mouth to protest that—they outranked her; they were supposed to make the decisions—and shut it again, thinking. The oxygen running out, at a rate they could not determine. Time passing . . . somewhere, at least inside the ship, time was passing. Could they make it to their original goal before the oxygen ran out? Could they get in if they did? If all the airlocks were inoperable in FTL flight, they could at least use the air outlets in the repair bays . . . if those worked.

Then it occurred to her that maybe this airlock had an external oxygen feed too . . . some airlocks did, for the use of personnel stacked up waiting to use the lock. She turned back to the control panel and looked. There: traditional green nipple fitting, though only one at this lock. Would it work or was it too automatically shut off because no one would use it during FTL flight?

"Oxygen outlet," she said, and tapped Bowry, next to her, on the shoulder. He looked, nodded, and turned. She found the recharge hose on the back of his suit, and unclipped it for him.

The oxygen flowlight came on when he plugged in, so at least the ship's system thought it was supplying oxygen.

"Gauge still stuck," Bowry said. Which was going to make it hard, if not impossible to figure out when the suit tanks were recharged. "Counting pulse," he said then. "Don't interrupt."

Esmay had no faith that her own pulse was anything like normal, nor did she know how long it would take to replace an unknown consumption, even if she could use her pulse to determine duration. They crouched what seemed like a long time in silence, until Bowry said, "There. Should do it." He unplugged from the access, and said, "Your turn. If you know your heart rate, give it three minutes. Otherwise I can count for you."

"Others first," Esmay said. "They were wrestling with that lever."

"Don't be too noble, Lieutenant; we might think you were bucking for promotion." Seska moved over and plugged in, then Frees, and finally Esmay.

"Why three minutes?" Frees asked, while Esmay was still hooked up.

"Because—if I can just get it out—I've got a test that doesn't depend on the suit's internal clock. We'll need more, but I figured three minutes would give us a margin of fifteen, at least. My suit stopped registering at 1 hour, 58.3 minutes. Is that in the range for the rest of you?" It was, and just as Esmay had counted not her pulse but seconds, Bowry said "Aha!" in a pleased voice.

"It works?"

"I think so. It would help if we could rig some way of getting us all hooked up at once, though, because calculating the differentials for the waiting periods is a bit tricky."

"Give us an estimate; it'd take too long and we don't have tools—"

"All right. Suiza, you're still hooked up—you'll need the longest time on, then it goes down. I'll count it off for you."

Esmay wondered what kind of gauge Bowry thought he'd worked out, and how long it was going to be, but she didn't want to interrupt his count. She felt vaguely silly, hanging there in the dark and silence, waiting to be told it was time to unhook herself from the oxygen supply, but tried to tell herself it was better than being dead. Finally—she could not guess how long it had been—Bowry said, "Time's up. Next?"

When they had all tanked up by Bowry's count, which Esmay could only hope bore some relation to reality, they still had to decide what to do next.

Seska took the lead. "Suiza—do you know where all the airlocks are?"

"I studied it for Major Pitak's exam when I first came aboard, but I don't really know . . . there are some I do remember. On each deck, between T-3 and T-4, for instance. Once we're on T-3, there are airlocks both inside the repair bay, and opening on the outer face toward T-4."

"We could just stay here," Frees said. "We know where
this
oxygen is."

"If we knew how long the jump transit was . . . if it's anything more than a day or so, we've got other suit limitations."

"I don't suppose you know a handy external source of snacks, water, and powerpacks?"

"And toilets?"

Esmay surprised herself with a snort of laughter. "Sorry," she said. "I believe all those substances are restricted to the interior of the ship during FTL flight."

"Then we'd better head toward the next oxygen access, and hope that we find a way inside before . . . we have to."

Navigation was going to be their worst problem. Although
Kos
's hull was studded with more protuberances than Esmay had expected, it was still mostly matte black and unmarked. Creeping, feeling her way, across that great black expanse, she felt like a deep-sea creature, one of those her aunt had shown her pictures of. Some of those, she recalled, clustered around deep-ocean vents that provided warmth and nutrients. How did they find their way? Chemotaxis . . . however that worked. She couldn't figure out an equivalent for it on the hull of a ship in hyperspace, so just kept moving.

An abrupt change in the topography she could see signaled the dropoff, as it were, into the gulf between T-3 and T-4. Esmay struggled to think which direction to move next. Down toward the lower decks in the crease between T-3 and the core? Along the top of T-3? She didn't even know if the great clamshell gantry supports were closed around
Wraith
, or if they'd gone into jump with the repair bay open to the dark.

As if in answer to her question, light reappeared in the outer dark. At least, she supposed it was light, because her eyes reacted to it, and her brain, trying to make what she saw into the shapes she expected. It looked strange, and more like pale smoke blowing than light, thick streams fraying to looser strands as she watched, but it gave an impression of some angular bulk just off to her left, with towering plumes above. Far away, a tumbled trail of light, a badly ploughed furrow, receded redly into the distance.

They had all paused, and moved into the helmet-touching huddle. "If I were a physicist," Seska said, "I just might go crazy. Most of what we've seen since jump hasn't fit most of what I learned about FTL flight. But since I'm a mere ship's captain, I say it's beautiful."

"The gantries are up," Esmay said. "Repair bay's unsealed. If it doesn't have some kind of barrier I don't know about, we should be able to get in that way."

"Why'd they turn the lights on
now
?" asked Frees.

"Just got the separate power supply hooked up," Esmay said. "The Bloodhorde's got the bridge—they probably cut power to the wings, maybe even life support, but each wing actually has its own ship support capability."

"So we just walk over and hop down one of those openings?"

"Only if we want to hit sixteen or seventeen decks down after a 1-G acceleration. We might be able to climb down the gantry legs . . ." She'd never actually been on the gantries, but she'd seen others up there. The problem was . . . would their friends shoot them first, or give them time to explain who they were?

"Our suitcoms should work in there," Seska said. "And maybe they won't see us right away."

The walk along the topside of T-3 to the first of the openings was easier than the final traverse of the dome, but fraught with its own difficulties. The unhappy light streaming away from the openings illuminated nothing in their path, and a lot was in their path. The sheared roots of the materials transport track supports . . . cables set to brace the clamshells, counterweights for the mechanisms that raised and lowered them . . . at least something was always near at hand to clip the lines to.

Personnel access in normal operations was on the center of curved openings, now clearly downlight of the arching supports themselves. They edged along the opening, and the light changed color as they moved beside it. Even those few tens of meters of uplight . . . were too blue, and a turn of the head made it red.

The personnel lift shaft was where Esmay had remembered it should be. Far, far below, its controls locked down. She could see a section of
Wraith
with her skin off and a crowd of workers in EVA gear clustered around a bundle of crystals that ran out of sight fore and aft.

There was, at least, the comfort of a niche below the hull line, a platform large enough for twenty or more workers to stand waiting for the personnel lift. Esmay started down the ten mesh steps that led down to it. On the second step, ship's gravity caught her feet; she felt glued to the step. By the time she got to the platform, she felt the drag of gravity through every bone, but her head felt clearer. Inside, the light looked normal, if less bright than usual. She glanced around. Only some of the lights were on, spotlighting the workers. Of course—on internal power, they'd conserve where they could.

The others came down, one by one, carefully; none spoke until they reached the platform. Esmay glanced around. Oxy supply lines in the bulkhead . . . a real bulkhead, with the green triangle for oxygen access painted on it. A water tap. Even a suit relief valve . . . suit maintenance really hated people who turned in soiled suits. A movement in her helmet caught her attention—her suit's internal clock was working again, and the oxygen gauge squirted up, then dropped, then rose again slowly to indicate that she had 35 percent of her supply left, one hour and eighteen minutes at current usage.

She started to speak, then realized that if the suitcoms were working properly they could be overheard. And why wasn't she hearing the others. Different circuits?

She found the controls in her suit and switched around the dial.

"—Gimme
one
—just
one
—now half . . ."

Back to the other channel, the one they'd used into the jump into FTL. "They're on a different setting, at least some of 'em are."

"Makes sense." Seska was peering over the rail at his ship. "How do we get down?"

"Carefully," said Frees, eyeing the emergency ladder which led down to the first horizontal gangway on this side of the repair bay, five decks below. "If we try to get the lift up, they'll know we're here."

"Better report now," Esmay said. "If we hail them on their own frequency, it might be someone I know. They can get Major Pitak to identify me, anyway."

"You're right, but—in the grand tradition, it seems a bit tame to let them know. Adventurers who've survived unprotected FTL flight ought to do something more dramatic . . . why weren't we provided with those little invisible wire things that spies and thieves are always using to lower themselves from heights?"

"Blame the props department," Esmay said, surprising herself. They all chuckled.

"Suiza, if you ever get tired of maintenance, I'd be glad to have you on my ship," Seska said. "I wondered at first, but now I can see why the admiral wanted you on the operational end of this."

Esmay's ears burned. "Thank you, sir. Now—I'll just let them know we're here." She switched channels, and found herself listening to the end of the previous set of directions.

" . . . Now back a tenth . . . just right . . .
there
."

"Lieutenant Suiza here," she said, hoping she wasn't cutting across another transmission.

"What! Who? Where are you?"

"I'm up at the top of the bay, on the personnel platform by lift one. With three other officers: Captain Seska and Lt. Commander Frees of
Wraith
, and Commander Bowry from the Schools. I have an urgent message from Admiral Dossignal for the senior officer in T-3."

"What did you think you were doing hiding out up in the rafters all this time? I was told you were going over to T-1 to some kind of conference with the admiral and Commander Seveche and other important brass." Commander Jarles, head of Inventory Control, was the senior commander aboard T-3. Esmay had met him briefly, at one of the officers' socials, but she did not know him well. Now he was angry, his stocky body thrust forward in his chair, his cheeks flushed.

"I did, sir."

"And with everything else going on, you just lazed your way the long way round? You can't tell me you got past the blast doors, or that you didn't hear the allcall telling everyone in this wing to get their tails to assembly points!"

Esmay interpreted the emphasis on "important brass" to mean that Commander Jarles of Inventory Control had had his nose put out of joint because he wasn't invited to that conference. Now he was feeling very much on his dignity.

"Sir, if I may ask—how is communication with the rest of the ship, especially T-1?"

"We've got a link to T-4, thanks to the access tunnel, but no one else. Why?"