We All Died at Breakaway Station (3 page)

“Brandt!” Her name sounded loudly in the headphones of her helmet and startled her back into the here and now. There was no question that her section chief was angry about something.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sheila said, half rising and raising her arm.

“Get off your ass,” said the section chief, a middle-aged woman with both the looks and disposition of a Cynthian Rock Ape. “We’ve got work to do.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sheila answered again, standing fully erect now, with the meter in her hands, its test leads drooping down to where they connected with the half-buried shunt.

Sheila stood still for a moment, waiting for what was coming next, feeling even more uncomfortable in the vac-suit than before. It pulled tightly around her thighs and constricted her breasts when she tried to breathe, and she wished that she could take the damned thing off and throw it in the chiefs face.

“Now, are you ready for us to run this test, Miss Brandt?” The section chiefs voice dripped with sarcasm.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m ready,” Sheila said, biting her lip inside the transparent sphere of her helmet and telling herself that it wasn’t going to do a bit of good to get angry with the old bitch. In just a few more minutes they would be finished with the day’s tests and then they could go off duty for a few hours at least, and she could get a little sleep, and then if Len was off duty too, they could do what she had found Len to be very good at doing. Well, maybe, if Len wasn’t too exhausted…

“Okay,” the section chief said, “all of you monitoring the shunts, keep a close eye on your meters and make sure they’re recording. We’ll apply power to this net in exactly one minute. You got that, Thayer? One minute.”

Dea Thayer, Comm Tech First, and Sheila’s closest friend, knelt beside the power-pack some dozen meters to Sheila’s left and answered, “Got it, chief.” Sheila envied Dea her confidence, her ability to look the chief right in the eye and say what she thought The old bitch didn’t bother Dea much, not if she knew what was good for her.

Then she looked back down at the meter in her hands, punched a button that would begin running the recording tape through the device, and wished that she understood more of what they were doing out here anyway. Well, it really wasn’t her business to know what she was doing. She just took orders. If there was anybody out here who did know what was going on, it was Dea. The chief sure as hell didn’t know, even if she wouldn’t admit it.

It wasn’t that Sheila was as ignorant as she thought herself to be‌—‌she just didn’t have confidence in her own knowledge of subspectrum physics and its related branches of more nearly conventional electronics. She did, however, know that what they were doing was checking out sections of the main antenna of the modulation station of Breakaway’s north pole. About a third of that antenna was still intact and functioning, and now carrying the full load of incoming and outgoing signals. In fact, if she shielded her eyes from the glow of Breakaway’s sun and looked in the right direction, she could see the glow of ionization in the thin atmosphere near the horizon where the outgoing signal climbed skyward.

No, Sheila told herself as she waited for the chief to give Dea the signal to go ahead, it wasn’t that the station wasn’t functioning, but that it was functioning on a limited basis and on borrowed time. A third of the antenna array could carry the full load of communications for a while, but only for a while. More antenna was needed soon before they had burned out what they had left.

So teams like the ones of which Sheila was a member went out onto the surface after the clean-up crews had removed the waste and rubble, found the sections of the antenna net that the clean-up crews hadn’t pulled up for scrap, and tested them.

If they tested out good, another team of more highly trained technicians would come along behind them and begin connecting those surviving portions back into the operating antenna net. So far the teams had discovered about a hundred square kilometers of antenna that still worked‌—‌though four times that many square kilometers had proved to be less than useless. Jillie energy beams had wrecked close to half the antenna, at the very best.

But, Sheila told herself, thank God they hadn’t gotten a nuke or two in. Then there wouldn’t be any antenna at all, or any Sheila Brandt to worry about it.

“Give me power, Thayer!” the section chief said at last. “Watch your meters.”

Sheila looked down at the device in her hand and waited for some sign that the section of the antenna she was connected to was still good. She made a few quick calculations in her head, figuring from the amount of power that Dea’s pack could put out, the number of shunts now under test and supposedly still good, and came up with a rough idea of how much her meter should indicate if it checked out right.

The needle of the device wiggled against its post, and then began to climb, registering the flow of electric current through the shunt, the dropping of voltage across its resistance. Quickly, very quickly the needle came up to the point Sheila had selected for it, and then slightly beyond. It was checking out good.

“Cut power,” the section chief said to Dea Thayer. “By number, give me your readings.”

“Number one,” said the voice of Comm Tech Third Mami D’Ocour in Sheila’s headphones. “Seven six point six.”

“Number two,” responded the next technician, “seven five point zero.”

Down the line the team read off their figures, none varying more than two or three volts in either direction. “Number eight,” Sheila said, “seven six point four.”

At last the final reading was given and the section chief was silent for a moment, looking through the globe of Her helmet at the clipboard in her hands and the figures she had jotted down.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said after a while. “Comes out real good, gang. We got ourselves another hundred square meters of antenna. That’s better than gettin’ screwed on Sunday morning.” Then she was silent for a moment, probably talking to her own superior by a private communications channel. Then, finally, she spoke again. “Okay, girls, we’ll knock off for now. Go back and get yourselves a little, and report in to me at oh-nine-fifty. Dismissed!”

Sheila sighed, decided that she really
did
hate the dirty-mouthed old chief, and then made something with her face that might have been a smile if anyone had been able to see it, and walked over to where Dea Thayer stood beside her power-pack.

“Can I give you a hand with that?” she asked the comm tech first as she felt the beginning of the return of the fear that she had almost forgotten, the fear that she had tried to talk herself out of‌—‌unsuccessfully.

Dea looked up as she approached, and Sheila could see her smiling through the transparent helmet. “Sure,” Dea’s voice replied in her headphones, “this bastard’s heavy.”

Grabbing one handle while Dea grabbed the other, Sheila lifted and felt the weight of the thing rise from the cold stone, and wondered how many women it would take to carry the old, awkward power-pack on Cynthia or any other worthwhile planet where people could live, without spacesuits. Well, she hoped that she never found out. When she got back to Cynthia‌—‌God willing!‌—‌she wanted to do it as a civilian and get some decent kind of work, even if that meant going nude and being a permanent meditator in one of the Tribal meditation halls.

Together the two women started out across the rough stone toward the air lock that led into the underground tunnels and wardens that made up the modulation station of Breakaway’s northern pole.

“You going to see Len?” Dea asked after they had crossed about half that distance.

“Hope so,” Sheila answered, trying to shake herself from her gloom and foreboding. “He’s supposed to get off at oh-four-hundred today.”

“What are you two going to do?”

“That’s none of your business,” Sheila answered in mock anger, attempting to seem as cheerful as her friend.

“The whole time?” Dea asked, glancing over at Sheila and smiling.

“I don’t know, Dea,” Sheila answered, giving up the effort of keeping up a cheerful front. “We might go down to the canteen for a beer or something. There’s not much else to do.”

“I guess not,” Dea said. “Well, if you do end up in the canteen, look for me. I’ll probably go down there and hang around for a while.”

“Okay, we will,” Sheila said, and looked out across the rocky plains of Breakaway, at the cold hills that lay on the horizon, at the stark, uninviting shadows, and at the piles of stone and fused metal that lay between her and the hills, at the ruins of the antenna and modulation station that the clean-up crews had found unsalvageable after the Jillie attack, and she told herself that she was going to do whatever Len wanted to do as long as he wanted to do it. God, there‌—‌there’s so little time left.

Now why did I say that? she asked herself. We’ve got all the time in the world, really. The Jillies tried to take us once and they didn’t make it, and we’ve got more help coming, and they’re not going to try anything more. We licked them once. Even the Jillies aren’t stupid enough to come back again.

And she wished that she could believe what she was telling herself, and knew that she didn’t, and could not help saying to herself again: there is so little time left. So little.

Captain Absolom Bracer stood on the bridge of the starship
Iwo Jima
for what seemed like a very long time, feeling a sensation that was frighteningly akin to fear. Then, with a great effort of will, he broke himself from his trance.

“Mr. Maxel,” he said suddenly, turning to his first officer.

“Yes, sir?”

“We will proceed to Breakaway Station,” Bracer said. “Get there as quickly as possible and don’t worry about reaction mass. Breakaway will have to resupply us anyway. Establish polar orbit at five hundred kilometers. Watch out for energy transmissions. Make sure we don’t intercept them. Coordinate with
Cragstone
and
Pharsalus,
And, Dan,” he said less formally, “maintain the crew on full alert until I say otherwise.”

“Yes, sir,” First Officer Daniel Maxel replied, nodding and then turning to the console before him, bridge lights reflecting from the metal and plastiskin spheroid of his upper torso, and began to direct commands to the ship’s sections.

Now, within his mind, Absolom Bracer spoke: …roger, what do you think?…

There was a thoughtful silence before the ship’s Organic Computer answered through the CEMEARS net. …i’m not sure, sir. prior to leaving adrinaopolis there were no reports of jillie activity in this sector following their raid of three standard weeks a go…

…no reports… Bracer mused.

…of course, captain, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t jillies near, waiting to intercept relief from the paladine…

…that convoy hasn’t made it, has it?… Bracer asked.

…i’ve already established contact with the computers on breakaway, sir… Roger said through the CEMEARS, …and they report that the convoy is now a standard week overdue…

…but why would the jillies attack only the convoy?… Bracer asked. …if they have the strength to stop those ships, they have the strength to take breakaway station, hell, roger, why do the jillies do any of the things they do? but why should i ask you? you’re no more capable of thinking the way they do than i am…

…true, captain, but they’re still rational creatures…

…are they?…

…to an extent, of course, at least rational to the extent that we are. totally irrational creatures don’t build starships, sir…

…okay… Bracer thought, …but what is their
rational
reason for destroying the convoy, if they did, and not destroying breakaway itself?…

…well, sir, perhaps they don’t
want
breakaway, as such, it may be that they just want to destroy our ships, and they’re using breakaway as bait…

…yeah, it could be, though if i were in their position, i’d hit breakaway, it’s worth more to us right now than a dozen ships… Bracer paused for a moment. …look, roger, what do you really figure the odds are that the convoy was actually intercepted by a jillie patrol? that isn’t the only possibility, is it?…

…that’s hard to say, sir. since breakaway’s computers don’t know any more than we do, we can assume that neither does adrianopolis, otherwise breakaway station would have been informed…

…i know, just give me an idea of the percentages…

…this can’t be anything more than an educated guess, sir…

…that’s better than nothing, roger…

…very well, sir. i’d say there’s a high probability of enemy activity, on the order of 72 per cent or better, about 22 per cent probability of mechanical troubles on one or more of the ships, forcing them to turn back at about midway in their voyage, had it been much before that, at least one of them would have returned to adrianopolis by now. 10 per cent probability of astrogation errors. 3 per cent‌—‌…

…okay, roger, that’s enough…

The communications tank in the captain’s console had begun to resolve again, now presenting the image of a thin man with graying hair, deep-set eyes, thin lips, and the uniform of a brigadier general, Communications Corps. “Captain Bracer?” the image asked.

“Yes, sir. How do you do, general?”

“Well enough, captain. I’m Herbert Crowinsky, commanding officer of Breakaway Station. We’ve been expecting your ships. We have a large number of‌—‌ah‌—‌wounded needing shipment to Earthside hospitals.”

“I know, sir,” Bracer began. “We should be in orbit in an hour or so; you can begin shuttling them up at any time, sir.”

“Thank you, captain,” Crowinsky said, forcing the ghost of a smile onto his drawn features.

“General, it appears that your relief convoy from Adrianopolis has failed to arrive,” Bracer said slowly, carefully.

“I’m afraid that’s true, captain,” the general replied, a hollowness to his words, his eyes. “I don’t suppose that you have any knowledge of their whereabouts.”

“No, sir, not since leaving Adrianopolis. I had assumed they would be here. What do they say on Adrianopolis?” he asked, knowing the answer in advance. “They’re as much in the dark as we are,” Crowinsky said sharply. “In essence, they’ve told us to wait and be patient. Relief will come‌—‌eventually.”