This Starry Deep (12 page)

Chapter 20 - Jonah

WE BROKE ORBIT before the engines died or the hull blew apart. The ship didn’t have artificial gravity, but I gave it a hard spin to let the newcomers enjoy something close enough. I needed them focused, not throwing up in free-fall.

Our biggest problem turned out to not be breaking orbit. Getting there had been a rough path, but staying there looked to be even worse. We popped up in the middle of a battlefield. I knew any second we would be attacked by everything out here, and that meant a lot of guns pointed our way. Then I remembered my thinsuit radio would work again.

“Deep Water, this is Jonah, come back,” I said, holding a hand up to Bee to shush her. “Repeat, Deep Water, this is Jonah, come back. You out there, Bushfield?”

“Jonah?” her voice sang in my ear. Oh beautiful, she was still out here raising hell. “Where have you been? I tracked you falling to the planet. But then—”

“But then. Yeah, I get that. Listen—”

“Hey, where are you?” she cut in. “Listen, intercept that big bucket of rust coming out of orbit, will you, it might be a bomb or something.”

“Shows what you know, Deep Water, that rust bucket is me. Long story.” I yanked on the yoke hard and managed to avoid colliding with ships moving fast enough to blur. “Put the call out, ship’s call sign is Hang On, repeat, call sign Hang On. We’d like to not be blown up, thanks. Also, maybe a rescue?”

“Have you looked out a window recently? We’d all like a rescue.” She broke off for a second as, I assumed, the battle took her concentration. I waited while the crew of the Hang On stared at me, hearing only half a conversation. “I’ll get you a quick escort out of the line of fire, but after that you better be able to suck air a while in that thing.”

“It’ll have to do, and hey, Bushfield, thanks.”

“Thank me when we’re on something soft and solid. Frogger’s on return vector, close enough, and will escort. He’ll vector from your right,” she said.

“I won’t shoot him, no worry,” I said with a laugh.

“Shoot him? I’m worried you’ll run into him by mistake.”

I turned in my seat to explain what was going on and what would be happening to everyone else. They were, almost to a person, too scared to listen. None of them had ever been in space before, much less in the middle of a firefight. Not the best introduction to the wide world of interplanetary travel.

Frogger showed up a few seconds later and started to clear a path for us. I grabbed up my GravPack and gave it a decent once-over. The pack had performed fine on Trasker Four and I knew I put it through its paces, but I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t loop-crash me into a planet again. Nothing on board seemed to indicate a problem with the pack at all, which meant the planet fall was what it seemed like. I got too close, I got sucked in. Fine. Better to check now that I had a moment than to find an error with the selector array or something the next time I ducked out.

I considered ducking out to help Frogger escort us, but a look around told me this crew would panic if I left. Not all of them, but enough to overwhelm the few who wouldn’t. They were on edge, and losing the one guy who knew what he was doing, and who could actually talk to anyone outside the ship, would shove them right over.

So I stayed where I was and piloted. Frogger kept us on a straight vector, leading us right out of the fray, except the bird ships didn’t seem to like that.

“Frogger, there’s—”

“I got it, Jonah,” he cut in, peeling off to go deal with a ship that had turned after us. He had sensors, we didn’t. I was flying pretty much blind. Then again, the blindness worked to my advantage as well. All we could do was look out the window, which meant everyone else wasn’t busy freaking out about the size and speed of the fight.

I took a deep breath and tried to find some sort of calm center. I wanted to be out there. A second deep breath. The staleness of the canned air in the ship started to annoy me as well. Sweat mixed into it, and with no air cleaners installed we weren’t going to enjoy this trip one bit.

I also couldn’t afford to call in to base until we were clear, so I had no way of knowing if there were any updates on Shae. I needed to leave my radio open to the fight. I hated this. I flipped the ship end over end to get a decent view of the field while Frogger was busy. Off to the far right I caught sight of a planet. There shouldn’t have been a planet in orbit this close to Trasker Four. It sat at the outer end of our range, and if we could make it there we might be able to land safe. But what was it?

“Deep Water, this is Jonah,” I called.

“Go, Jonah,” Bushfield replied, sounding harried. Not a surprise.

“I got a planet out here, might be in range for us. Once Frogger gets back I think we’ll head for it.”

“Roger that, Jonah, but wait, what planet?”

“Scope it,” I told her and fired off truly rough coordinates based on some guesswork. She didn’t get back to me for a bit, so I took the time to explain to the crew what my hopeful plan was.

“Another planet?” Kem asked, “Will we be able to breathe?”

“That’s one of the things they’re finding out for us right now.”

“We’ll be aliens!” insisted one of Bee’s lifting squad, a guy with no neck who liked to be called Steelbox.

“Well, sure,” I answered, “but that won’t matter, I’m sure. Listen, most other planets get visitors, they’re part of the galaxy. It’ll be…hold on,” I blinked and shook my head, not sure about what just came over my comm. “Repeat that?”

“Jonah, they took out Squire! Trasker Four is defenseless.”

“Well, crap.”

“To put it mildly. I can’t spare Frogger any more.” She sighed and spoke softer, “And listen, don’t head for that planet. It’s Bercuser, Jonah, you can’t land there.”

“Sure I can,” I fought down a chuckle, “I have before.”

“No one is allowed to land on Bercuser, Jonah! No one.”

“Now, sure. But how do you think we got the information on it?” I asked her. “Listen, I’ll tell you all about it when this is over. I’m headed there, no good choice. You keep the fleet alive, will you?”

“Roger,” she said angrily, “spot you at base, you buy.”

“Over.”

I explained the situation to the crew and, as I did, I had an idea. If I could convince the people of Bercuser, they might be able to send some of their ships out to Trasker Four and save a few folks. Without Squire, nothing should be preventing ships from landing on the planet. That meant the invasion as well as a rescue convoy, but the theory held.

All I had to do now was pilot us to a contender for the strangest planet in the galaxy, through the edge of a fight. In a ship with no weapons or sensors. And a crew that couldn’t have had less experience if it’d tried. And then land a ship that shouldn’t have realistically broken orbit to begin with.

I felt alive. Young again. My mission sat in front of me, part of a larger goal, and it invigorated me. The stale air in the ship, the constant low hum of the quickly patched-together electronics, none of it bothered me anymore. I smiled out the scarred viewport and turned the ship hard.

“Listen, I’m gonna stop this roll, so get ready for zero G for a minute,” I warned them. We came out of the turn and headed slightly away from the planet, looking like we were basically trying to limp out of the field of fire.

It worked for a few minutes, and we were well on our way until one of the bird ships fired at us from behind. I had to assume it was them, not one of our guys going crazy. Didn’t matter, in the end, because they managed to tear a small hole in the hull. We started to lose air, and fast.

“Shove something into that hole, will you?” I called out.

Steelbox launched himself from his seat toward the hole and got sucked up against it. Then he started to scream.

“I’m gonna get sucked out!”

“You won’t get sucked out,” I told him, “it doesn’t work that way. It’ll hurt, maybe, but you’ll be fine and the air will stay in. Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to be there long. Just take off your jacket it and shove that in there instead, all right?”

I didn’t want to tell him he’d be fine so long as they didn’t shoot at us again. Standing against the hull when they could pierce it was not a recipe for a long life. Still, it wasn’t as if we had a patch kit.

I hit the engines, hard, and we lurched forward unsteadily. That second engine wasn’t working quite right and gave us a list to port. I kept them both at full burn. A bit of gravity settled the ship as we hit speed. Of course, the gravity wasn’t oriented the same way as we were, and most of the crew turned slightly green upon realizing that their up and down had shifted yet again.

I knew that bird ship wouldn’t give up after only one shot so I started to take basic evasive maneuvers. Nothing fancy, the
Hang On
couldn’t do fancy - it could hardly do simple.

Another shot rocked the ship, this time along the starboard side, which meant they’d noticed one of our engines struggling and had decided to help it along to its demise. I started to roll us again and kept weaving as best I could.

I wondered about my GravPack. It was rated for a one-man field, and could extend to maybe three times that if it had to, but could I wire it so it would extend the field to the entire ship? Probably not. And if I didn’t get the whole ship, we’d be torn in two. Then again, maybe not.

“Bee,” I said, looking over at her. Her face showed me no fear, only determination. Somewhere in there she’d gone from scared, mousy woman, afraid of the other members of her own gang, to someone who wanted to live badly enough to do what it took. Perfect. “I need you to pilot for a few minutes. Just a few.”

“I can’t fly the ship,” she said simply.

“You’ve been watching me. Just keep doing things like I’ve been doing and it’ll be fine. I’m going for a walk.”

Kem cried out, “You’ve leaving us?”

“Not going far,” I told him. “I think I have a way to save us, but it’s dicey and requires me to do it from outside the ship.”

“How will we know if it works?” Bee asked.

“If we suddenly speed up, and I mean way up,” I said as I adjusted my helmet, “let go of the yoke and trust me. I’ll be steering from out there.”

“What? How?” I didn’t see who asked, it was someone on the crew of nine people who I didn’t know. How did I not even know all of their names? Shameful. I’d apologize when we landed.

“I’ll explain on the ground, just trust me.”

Bee shifted into my seat and started to steer, “What if it doesn’t work?”

“Don’t worry about that,” I said, refusing to add the reason why: if this didn’t work, we’d be dead.

I left the airlock, hoping the pressure would hold since we hadn’t tested it, and found myself in space again. Home. I moved to the top of the ship, pulling forward until I was almost at the viewport. Landing on the ship proved easy enough, and I pulled my blaster and fired behind me at the bird ship I knew was out there. At any sort of real range I couldn’t harm it, but maybe it didn’t know that.

I extended the field of my GravPack as far as it wanted to go normally and then pushed it. The HUD lit up red with warnings and I pushed the field farther. I inched back along the ship and got the field aligned over the entire hull, with maybe a centimeter to spare.

My GravPack would need a bit of work after this, but I’d at least be alive to fix it. Grabbing my blaster again, I burned two handholds for myself and holstered the weapon so I could grab on. Then I selected my target - the planet - and pushed the GravPack into action. It whined, I could feel the vibration along my back. They weren’t supposed to do that. I didn’t even know they could. I wondered how long before it exploded and what I would feel when it did.

No time for that. I had a ship to accelerate. Bee stopped fighting my direction quickly and I gave it everything I had. Steering wouldn’t be pretty, no finesse, but all I had to do was get us into orbit and get back inside the ship.

The engines whined, giving thrust uselessly, but we’d need them going and hot when I turned off the field. So long as they didn’t burn out. Come on, Bee, come on, think of it. Turn the engines down but not off. Come on, I chanted to myself for a full three minutes until the engines died down to a steady hum.

Bercuser came up far too quickly. We were approaching it at impossible speeds and I’d have to bring us back down to the speed the ship had been going in order to give it a chance of landing. I knew the GravPack wouldn’t hold on through a landing, which meant the ship had to be going slow enough to stop itself. It would stop, regardless, but I preferred one piece to splattered face first into the ground.

I spun the ship so we faced away, engines pointed at Bercuser, and took us down low enough for the planet’s gravity to tug. Cutting the gravfield, I took a good look, mapping our relative position in my HUD - once I got back inside, I would be flying literally blind to our destination for a while.

Back inside the ship, everyone was trying to not panic except Bee. She sat there, still determined, trying to project it to everyone else. They seemed happy enough to see me.

“Miss me?” I asked Bee as she moved over and let me grab the controls. “Nice work on cutting back the engines.”