The City Who Fought Part 10

"Can't be helped," she said and planted her own grapple at the top of the sh.e.l.l, just beside the lugs.

"It's a different design from mine," Simeon told her. "I'm doing a search now to see where you can put a heavy magnet without interrupting anything vital."

"Fine," she said distractedly. "Looks like they just took a dozen loops of wire cable and tack-welded it to hold the sh.e.l.l down. Talk about improvisation!"

Simeon watched her hands as she used a small laser to cut through one of the cables las.h.i.+ng the capsule to the hull. It broke free and the sh.e.l.l fell away from the hull slightly, fine wires floating like roots in a gla.s.s of water. G.o.d, it looks so naked, he thought helplessly.

Channa's gaze had pa.s.sed over the code name incised on the sh.e.l.l so he could read it. PMG-266-S, a low number brain of very advanced years. Guiyon. The name floated up out of deep storage where all the names of his kind rested. A managerial sort. Working for the Colonial Department as it was, back then. Paid off his contract and dropped out of touch, presumed rogue. A hermit "He's a two-hundred series," he told her. "Now put the grapple dead center, upper side."

Channa used a remote control device to lower one of the smaller grapples from the tug, gingerly placing it as directed. Then she returned to cutting cables. She was working on the next to last one when a pebble-sized piece of ore struck the back of her helmet, hard enough to knock her sideways and to burn straight through her air regulator from left to right. Simeon saw specks of plastic spin off in the wake of the tiny meteor. The exterior view from the tug's pickups showed metal glowing white-hot.

"Channa!" Simeon called. The med-readouts flashed unconsciousness. He overrode the suit and ordered it to inject stimulants, a horse-dose, anything to buy her time.

"Oww." Channa jerked and then shook herself, hauling back on the safety line until her feet touched the surface of the s.h.i.+p. A red light flashed on the inside of her faceplate and die message: "System failure - atr-meulation. Ten minutes emergency supply (m//*appearefi Irwas replaced by 10:00. Then 09:59, and the seconds scrolled down inexorably.

"Channa, you okay? Should Ah git down there?

"No!" Channa rasped. "Keep ready for lift."

Simeon called. "Channa, get inside."

"I'm almost finished," she said gruffly.

"Now," he said.

She ignored him. He watched the cable part, and her hands reached for the last one. From another view he watched the ancient colony s.h.i.+p being dragged away at an ever increasing acceleration.

"Channa! Get your a.s.s in that tug now!"

"Shut-upr she snapped.

The final cable parted and the sh.e.l.l swung free. For the first time, Simeon saw that the feeder line was damaged. No, he thought.

Channa began to disconnect the sh.e.l.l's input leads. It was difficult work in the unwieldy suit gloves, but her long-fingered hands moved with careful delicacy. She dosed the valve on the broken feeder line.

"Might not be too bad," she muttered. "There'll be an interior backup. Probably ruptured when they stopped."

Then she keyed the remote to reel them both back Co the tug at a careful pace, holding on to the exterior lugs and using her feet to fend them off random projections. The sh.e.l.l went ter-wmnggg against the light-load grapnels up near the apex of the stubby wedge; the mechanical daws dosed on the hard alloy with immovable pressure.

She turned and pivoted around a handhold and dove feetfirst into the control seat.

"Get yo' suit plugged in!" Patsy snapped, beating Simeon by nanoseconds.

"Can't This is a standard EVA s^jiit, the input valve's upstream of the break. Get moving, we have to help haul this thing!" :..

"Negative," Simeon said. "Make tracks back to the station, Patsy."

"Negative on that" Channa said. "If we don't get this hulk far enough away, there won't be a station to go back to."

Patsy bit her lip and touched the controls. The tug sprang straight up, the derelict shrinking from skyspanning vastness to child's model size in seconds as the great soft hand of acceleration shoved at them.

"Then you plant that grapnel field," she said urgendy. "We can help the boost with our own rise. But when that's done, we're goin' home, girl."

Channa began the adjustments. The tug was designed for straightforward long slow pulls, not this redline-everything race against disaster. She must balance the uneven pull that might shred the tug's structure and compensate for the hulk's weakness by intuition as much as anything. Who knew what structural members had given way within? It would do very little good to rip a large segment of it loose. ... The giant s.h.i.+p began to grow slightly smaller.

She glanced at the readout "I hate these clock things," she said fiercely. "They must have been created by a s.a.d.i.s.t I'mgoingtoAnoa>whenIrunoutofair."

"Stop talking," Simeon ordered, "you're wasting oxygen. When that clock has flipped over another thirty seconds,you return to station!"

Gus' command rang through the conversation. "Synchronize release, slave controls to mine as Patsy cuts loose"

Channa keyed it in. "Five seconds. Mark."

Patsy cursed with scatological inventiveness as the little craft surged^Then it flipped end-for-end and the s.p.a.ce behind them paled as the drive worked to shed velocity. They woujd have to kill their delta-V away from thestatioh before they could return.

"Priority" she barked over the open circuit "Everyone gitouttamyway.'causelain'tstoppiri!"

Deceleration turned to acceleration again. Channa wheezed a protest as her ribs clamped down on her lungs. .

Simeon's monologue took on a frantic note. He forced his mind not to calculate times, with an effort that almost banished fear.

Keep her informed, he thought: "... madness to have attempted that sort of linkage. The nutrients might have given out on the trip. It depends on when the feeder line was damaged. / might be responsible for that It could have happened when I hit them with the satellites. What do you think? No, don't answer, save your air. I know we won't be able to tell anyway until we examine him.

"What kind of people are these?" he asked for perhaps the twentieth time. "Could they be pirates who stole the brain? Then why didn't they bring it inside? The access-way? Sure, that must be it, they couldn't get it through the hatch. Still, a sh.e.l.lperson is a valuable resource. You'd think they try to protect him more if they had to leave him outside. It could be some kind of punitive measure by an insane religious sect. Nah, Central would never a.s.sign a brain to a group like that, it wouldn't make sense." He began to curse again. "Hey, Channa, stop rolling your eyes like that You're making me dizzy." The circling increased in tempo. "Okay, okay, I'll change the subject. Sheesh, take away a woman's ability to talk..." Channa dosed her eyes. "I was jotting, Channa." Her eyes remained closed. "You're getting close to the sttion. You're going to need to see where you're going. Remember what it's like out there." No change. "Okay, I apologize. It was a stupid, ignorant remark and I regret it I didn't even mean it Bad joke, okay?"

She opened her eyes.

She was midway between the receding colony-s.h.i.+p and the station.

"I estimate that you'll run out of air three minutes before you reach the station," Simeon said. "But, if you take the most direct route, that unfortunately will take you right through the thickest concentration of spilled ore."

"s.h.i.+t!" Patsy hissed. "Tellmesomethin' Ahdon'tknow!"

Channa fought down an oxygen wasting sigh. "Play safe?"

"Then you'll fall short by four minutes, eight seconds."

"Play safe. Don't want a sh.e.l.l full a holes."

Simeon was silent for a moment, feeding the pilot instructions for avoiding the worst of the ore-meteor cloud.

"You've got more guts than sense, Channa."

Patsy closed one eye and laughed, "Mind now, Ah didn't say Ah didn't like it, Ah was just remarkin* on it" She opened her eye. "Y'hold on now, we're goin' through like a scalded armadillo."

Channa's breathing began to rasp; psychological, but it wasted air.

Oh, G.o.d, don't let her die, he thought. That shelFs hanging out then. Is the ma.s.s of the tug enough to s.h.i.+eld him from debris?

Even one pebble of ore at the right angle and all her sacrifice would be for nothing. Simeon knew Channa was about to undergo an experience that would feel like dying Humans could survive for several minutes without air - hours, sometimes, in cold water. The length of time to brain death was utterly unpredictable but oxygen deprivation might cause brain damage.

Despite a very real and intense anxiety about Channa, his thoughts inexor^blyreturned to the sh.e.l.l... to Guiyon. He's alone m the dark, Simeon said to himself, Channa's got Patsy, and me: Sensory deprivation would make every second feel like a subjective hour, and the backups would keep the sh.e.l.lperson -conscious until the last precious molecules of nutrient were gone. Simeon wished desperately that he could spare him the nightmare.

"Headache," Channa gasped. "Hurts." Her head lolled, would have fallen forward if the savage high-G acceleration had allowed it Her breathing was rasping louder now and not psychosomatic. It was instinct - the hindbrain telling the lungs that they were suffocating. The readouts showed an adrenaline surge, just the wrong thing. Reflexes older than her remote reptile ancestors were preparing the body to fight free of whatever barred it from air.

"Hang on, Channa, hang on," Simeon chanted. Then: "Can't you go any faster'?''

"Not 'lessn you want this here tug smeared all over the loadin* bay," Patsy said grimly.

"Isn't inertia wonderful?" Gusky muttered to himself, looking down again at the readings, fourteen kps and building. Not very fast, but the battered remnant of the hulk still ma.s.sed multiple kilotons.

"Bit of a paradox," one of the volunteer miners said. "I want this thing as far from the station as I can get it-but I want to be as for away from it as possible myself."

"Ho. Ho. Ho," Gusky said. "Number three, you're a little off synch. Don't waste our delta-V."

"What's our safety margin, Gus?"

"That depends on when Simeon tells us to cut and run." fmivaUy, realty sorry Igotyou mad at me, Simeon! "I'd like to get twenty k&cks from the station before we drop the thing. But, what can I tell ya? If she blows without warning, if the explosives don't dojwhat they're supposed to, if we don't get far enough away before she goes... actually, I don't think we haye a safety margin."

"Sorry I asked."

"Hmph."

Simeon's voice broke in. "Prepare to drop in one minute seven seconds from mark. Mark, Get it tight, Gus."

"Yeah," said one of the miners who had rigged the charges, "that thing has to stay in the same att.i.tude. Charges won't be half as effective if it's tumbling."

"Roger that," Simeonsaid.Notimeforalinkup. They'd have to listen, reaSy carefully. "Everyone got that mark?"

A chorus of affirmatives. Gusky licked sweat from his upper lip. He'd never told Simeon, exacdy, but his fiveyear hitch in the Navy had been pretty uneventful: patrols, exercises, showing the flag, mapping expeditions. The most nerve-wracking moments had been the fleet handball compet.i.tions and surprise inspections.

"You pull the trigger, right?" he said.

"You got it, buddy," Simeon replied. His voice had less timbre, less humanity to it than usual.

"I hate being rea.s.sured in a voice that calm."

Fve got other things on my mind. "Channa's suit got hit She's running out of air."

"Oh." I screwed the pooch again, G.o.ddamitt. "Sorry."

"Get ready."

The tugs were arrayed around the great tattered bulk of the intruder s.h.i.+p like the legs of a starfish, linked by the invisible bonds of the grapnel fields. Gusky kept the rear-field screen on at a steady x25 magnification. When the fields released, the image of the hulk seemed to disappear into a point-source of light in less than a heartbeat Vision went gray at the edges, before the engines cycled down to something bearable. Tugs necessarily had high power-to-weight ratios. Then the shrinking dot of the derelict blinked with colorless fire.

Gusky cycled the screen to higher magnification. "Phew," ne said gustily. The charges had cut the remaining forward section loose from the half-melted engine compartment and its core. Joined to the power module, whatever parts of the s.h.i.+p did not vaporize would be hyper-velocity shrapnel in all directions. With a Id.i.c.k-or so distance and a vector away from the station, much less could go wrong. Blast is less dangerous without an atmosphere to propagate in. There is nothing to carry the shock wave except the actual gases of the explosion and they disperse rapidly. Given minimal luck, the explosion would just kick what was left of the hulk further away.

"When will it-"

The screen blanked protectively. So did his faceplate and the forward ports of the tug's cabin. Beside him the copilot flung his hand up in useless reflex. Even from the rear, the intensity of light was overwhelming.

"Did it work?" Gusky called as visibility returned. That was not as rea.s.suring as it could have been. Half the sensors and telltales on the board were blinking red.

"Sorry." This time Simeon did sound sorry. "That s.h.i.+p ... the engines were so old, the parameters were different... There's a lot more secondary radiation and subflux than I thought there would be."

"Thanks," Gusky said facetiously. "All right, people, report."

"I've got a flux in my drive cores I can't damp," one of the volunteers said immediately. "Induction, I guess. Getting worse.** "Let me see it," Gusky said, surprised at his own calm. This was much better than waiting; there wasn't time to be worried. "All right, you've got a feedback loop i20 there and it's past redline. Set your controls for maximum acceleration at ninety degrees to the ecliptic with a one-minute delay, then bail out"

"Hey, this is my tugf the volunteer wailed.

"It's going to be your ball of incandescent gas in about ten minutes," Gusky said grimly. "Or hot gas that includes you. Take your pick."

Simeon cut in. "Station will pick up full replacement costs."

"Lobachevsy and Wong, you're closest," Gusky said, **pick 'em up!" Gusky's pickups showed the luckless volunteers jetting away on backpack and their craft streaking for deep s.p.a.ce on autopilot. "The rest of you, dump me some data."

"Yessir, Admiral," one replied dryly.

The information dutifully came in. "Okay, Lobachevsky, Wong, you look functional, sort of. Take the others with overstrained drives in tow, and well go back nice and slow and easy." With several mitticms'worth of tug that just became so much sc.r.a.p. Suddenly boring routine becomes very attractive as a way of life. War games are excitement enough.

He touched the control surfaces to establish a tight fine circuit to the station. "Simeon, what about us?"

"Let's put it this way, Gus. None of you are going to die. But some of you aren't going to be very happy for a while, either. Sickbay will be crowded." A long pause. "Congratulations."

Gus grinned; half of that was relief from raw fear. Everyone who lives in s.p.a.ce is afraid of decompression, which is why many become agoraphobic planetside. Those who do much EVA work or serve on wars.h.i.+ps develop a similar fear of radiation, which has the added terror of killing insidiously. On the other hand, most dangers in s.p.a.ceeitherkilldeanly or letlive.

"You're welcome," the big man continued. "What about Channa?"

Patsy's voice joined in. "She's gonna be fahn. Hey, Gus," she went on lazily, "you thaink people will respect us for this?"

Gusky keyed for the visuals. He got a double view, overhead from the docking chamber where the tug rested in its cradle and frSm the Chicle itself. Both showed Channa Hap being carried offin a floating stretcher.

"Phew. Glad she made it okay."

"Yayuh, mah sentiments exactly. Got a good one thar."

Gusky nodded. On station, Channa acted like a cryonic b.i.t.c.h, he thought, but she's there when it comes down to cases. This was the worst emergency SSS-900 had faced in the time he'd been here. SSS-900-C, he reminded himself.

"I dunno," he said, *7 never respected anyone who led from the rear."

She laughed. "Hey! This might get us a nice rest cure somewhar pretty. We could go tagetha." She made the last a question.

"If any two parts of us are still stuck together when this is over, Patsy, you got a date."

"Unh-hunh!" she said enthusiastically.

Hey, first base! Gusky thought After thirty months of ritualized sparring so routine it had gotten to be as comfortably low-key as playing war games with Simeon. That is, ifTm not sick as a puke once sickbay gets through with me. Doctor Chaundra believed in repairing you rapidly. In some circles he was known as "Kill or Cure Chaundra."