Orphan's Journey Page 6

  Howard looked away.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “No. Don’t tell me.”

  He said, “They could jam fifty into the Clipper, if they skip cargo. The Emergency Pods can take another three hundred, total. The design worst case was a one-ring loss.”

  I winced. “Unsinkable. You rebuilt the Titanic.”

  Jude lay immobile and unsmiling, his eyes shifting between my face and Howard’s.

  Munchkin clawed her son’s shoulder. “Get him loose!”

  Below us, the Exit Tube’s emergency lights glowed red through the smoke. Where there had been a thrashing arm-and-leg haystack, a single, coughing line now marched, hand-on-shoulder-in-front, into the Exit Tube. Something had transformed panic to evacuation.

  “Single file! That’s better!” On one side of the human line, the transforming something bellowed, hands-on-hips. Ord pointed at the shuffling technicians. “My uncle Elmo moves faster than that! And he’s dead!”

  The line sped up.

  The little MP stood opposite Ord, penning in her side of the line, white-gloved hands windmilling the evacuees along like a traffic cop. Unfortunately, the people Ord and the MP were saving were evacuating onto a sinking ship with no lifeboats.

  I turned back to Howard. “Is there a best case?”

  “Two cases, actually.” He pointed at the Exit Tube. “If the tube gave way sooner, New Moon would stay in orbit. The Firewitch would—well, I’m not sure.”

  “But at worst, we’d save five thousand people. Case two?”

  He shook his head and looked away. “There is no case two.”

  I grabbed his lapel and spun him toward me. “Goddammit, you just said there was!”

  He coughed, then sighed. “If the Firewitch didn’t sense a pilot, it might shut down immediately.”

  I pointed at Jude and the three firefighters. An electric saw whined and sparked, but the metal around Jude held fast. “It senses a pilot.”

  Howard dropped his eyes. “A live pilot.”

  The Tech Sergeant paused, listening to us. He wore a sidearm.

  Munchkin’s eyes widened. So did Jude’s.

  I said, “You’re right. There is no second option.”

  Howard pointed to the Exit Tube again. Fifty people besides Ord, the MP, the firefighters, and the four of us remained in the Firewitch. The fifty were crawling, now, to stay under the smoke.

  Howard said, “But there’s no first option, either. That umbilical’s engineered to withstand hours of worse flexion than this. If the tube doesn’t snap in the next thirty minutes, New Moon will be irretrievably unstable.”

  A red beam sliced through the smoke. Ord must have dug a laser designator out of our gear, and set it to mark a path to the Exit. So MAT(D)4’s equipment had been some use, after all.

  The smoke thickened. Jude coughed.

  The saw screeched, then died. Its smooth-worn chain glowed dull, defeated red. Under the firefighters’ headlamps, the clamp metal reflected barely a scratch.

  The Tech Sergeant nodded his head from his two assistants toward the laser beam. “Go.”

  The other two Zoomies stared at him.

  He told them, “You can’t do dick here. There’ll be casualties in the station that need treatment.”

  “What about the rest of you, Sarge?”

  “This ain’t a debate. Move!”

  They turned away, heads down, then clattered onto the scaffold.

  Electrical fires crackled in the darkness, while the four of us knelt alongside Jude.

  The smoke boiled higher, curling around our feet.

  The Tech Sergeant strapped a respirator from the toolbox on Jude, then handed respirators to the rest of us.

  The Tech Sergeant pressed the side of his helmet, over his ear, with one hand. Then he spoke from behind his Eternad’s visor. “Damage Control says orbital velocity’s dropping.”

  Howard asked, “How fast?”

  The Tech Sergeant said, “She’ll start losing altitude in thirty minutes.”

  Howard shook his head. “Once that happens, there’s no turning things around.”

  After three minutes, four respirators whirred while we stared at one another.

  The Tech Sergeant cleared his throat. “General Wander, you’re the senior officer here. Colonel Hibble said New Moon’s got a chance if we can make this ship shut down—” He fingered his pistol.

  Eyes watering, Munchkin sobbed behind her mask.

  Jude struggled against the clamps. Nothing budged.

  The undulating Exit Tube, by which the Firewitch was dragging five thousand people to their deaths, groaned louder. But it didn’t break.

  I shook my head and muttered.

  The Tech Sergeant cocked his head. “Sir? I didn’t catch what you said, General.”

  “Nothing.” I lied. I had repeated what that Quartermaster Colonel had said to me back in my hospital room at New Bethesda. The hell of command is ordering your family to die.

  Thirteen

  I pointed at the tech sergeant’s antennaed helmet. “You got contact with New Moon?”

  He nodded.

  I turned to Howard. “If the tube breaks soon enough, the station will stay in orbit, right?”

  Howard said, “Jason, I told you! It won’t break soon enough.”

  “So break it!” I turned to the Tech Sergeant. “New Moon’s got maintenance equipment. Tell the staff in the Rings to wheel some Plasma cutters to the other end of the Exit Tube. Tell them as soon as they get all the evacuees into Pressurized Volume, cut the Exit Tube at their end.”

  The Sergeant frowned and shook his head. “Heavy equipment storage’s in the Multi-Use Ring.”

  “So move it out of the Multi-Use Ring, Sarge. Fast.”

  “Sir, soon as this hit the fan, all Pressurized Volume on New Moon locked down. Nothing passes between the public rings and the Spook Ring.”

  I nodded. “Sure. Airtights. Override ’em.”

  Howard said. “They can’t be overridden. Jason, the lock-down program’s anti-espionage encrypted. Nothing in or out for four hours. To prevent technology loss.”

  My breath hissed out between my teeth and I clenched my fists. Knowing why Howard behaved like a paranoid Spook didn’t make me like it.

  Munchkin hissed through clenched teeth. “If I’d brought my own gun, I’d shoot you, Howard!”

  I sighed. An infantry soldier feels naked without her weapon, even years later. Then it hit me. “Munchkin, what did you say?”

  She said, “I said I’d shoot this pugging pugger with my own pugging—”

  Jude’s mouth formed an “O.” “Mom! Language, please!”

  I said to Munchkin, “Before that.”

  “If I’d brought a gun—”

  I leapt onto the scaffold stairs, slid down the handrails like they were playground equipment, and crashed onto the deck.

  I scrambled to my knees, limping, and felt my way through the smoke.

  It seemed like I stumbled across the Sahara before I felt the first equipment crate. I voiced the Cargo’Bot that held it, and the ’Bot’s forward manipulators whined. The ’Bot tore back the crate top as easily as a child popping a Coke Plasti.

  I rummaged. Obsolete radios with blanked serial numbers. “Dammit!”

  A hand touched my shoulder, and I jumped.

  “Sir?”

  “Sergeant Major! We need—”

  “The breaching charges are in crate sixteen, Sir.” Ord voiced a different ’Bot, and it unpiled crates until it lifted out number sixteen, yellow-stenciled “DANGER: EXPLOSIVES.”

  There was no point asking Ord how he knew we had to blow the connecting tube off ourselves. Every Non-Com speed-reads his officer’s mind.

  I lunged for crate sixteen, and tugged out the first Semtex packet even while the ’Bot was peeling back the crate lid. I told Ord, “We’ve only got twenty minutes. I don’t know if you and I can wire that many charges—”

  “Delegate, Sir.” He voiced two more ’B
ots; they whined to life and began uncoiling det wire.

  Through the red-tinged smoke, three human figures stumbled toward us. Munchkin, the Zoomie Tech Sergeant, and Ord’s MP.

  I asked Munchkin, “Howard? Jude?”

  She jerked her head toward the toadstool. “Howard’s still working on Jude up there. Howard figured out what you were doing. I can wire charges faster than you ever could.”

  Ha.

  Over the scream of the flexing Exit Tube, Ord shouted to the MP, “Status?”

  “Last of ’em are on the way down the Exit Tube, Sergeant Major.” She arced her arm at the five of us and at Howard and Jude, as she shouted back. “Nobody else left in here but the seven of us.”

  If we could blow the Firewitch loose in time, those two hundred evacuees, and anybody else who could make it down the Exit Tube into New Moon’s main structure, would be safe. Anybody left in here remained imperiled.

  Four ’Bots spidered up the chamber walls, planting explosives that would clean-cut the Exit Tube from the Firewitch, at the Firewitch end. A fifth ’Bot unreeled a det wire spool.

  I repeated, “Seven of us. That’s three more people than we need in here to voice the ’Bots.” I pointed to the Corporal, the Tech Sergeant, and Munchkin. “You three, down the Tube.”

  Nobody moved.

  I glared at the Tech Sergeant, like I was a real Major General. “This ain’t no debate, Sergeant.”

  He straightened and saluted. But, sweating behind his helmet visor, he didn’t look happy to be leaving this party. Neither did Ord’s MP. But both faced about and ran, crouching, toward the laser-marked path.

  Munchkin stood, neck-deep in swirling red smoke, feet planted, arms crossed. “Pug off. I’m a civilian.”

  “We don’t need you here.”

  “My son needs me. I won’t leave him. I won’t leave you. I won’t even leave pugging Howard.”

  Ord knelt alongside a detonator control unit, and glanced at his wrist ’Puter. “Sir, I could use your help here.”

  I rubbed my chin, so I could get close enough to my uniform mike to voice a ’Bot, without Munchkin noticing. After I whispered, I said, “Munchkin, you said it’s a General’s job to lead people.”

  “And it’s a mother’s job not to abandon her son.”

  Behind her, the ’Bot I had voiced crept close on four legs. Its two forward manipulators unfolded, like a spider after a fly.

  “He’s my godson, Munchkin. I’ll take care of him.”

  She pointed at me. “We. We’ll take care of him.”

  I said, “I’m sorry.”

  Munchkin narrowed her eyes. “What?”

  The ’Bot grasped her around the waist, with manipulators gentle enough to pack Ming vases but strong enough to lift a taxicab.

  Munchkin screamed, tore at the encircling manipulators, then looked up at me, eyes wide. “You! Make it let me go!”

  I shook my head.

  The ’Bot elevated her off the deck, while she screamed, and she kicked the smoke until it swirled. The ’Bot turned and crabbed toward the Exit Tube, like King Kong clutching his bride while she beat her fists against his chest.

  “Jason, you dick!”

  I shouted after her, “I’ll bring him back to you! I swear!”

  Then I knelt beside Ord, and fastened wire leads to the Detonator’s old brass screw posts.

  Ord said, “Well done, Sir.”

  I said, “We’ll see in twenty minutes.”

  “Five.” A thin hand touched my shoulder.

  I looked up. “Howard? Did you get Jude—”

  Howard shook his head. “He’s still stuck in the couch. Fine for the moment. Jason, the Firewitch is pulling stronger. We don’t have twenty minutes. We have five.”

  “We can’t have five. It takes ten just to run through the Exit Tube to the Spook Ring.” I glanced at Ord.

  He held up the detonator. “It’s wired. We’re good to go, Sir.”

  I snatched the box from Ord’s hand. It was just a generator that you hand-cranked like a pepper grinder, until it stored enough electric charge to spark off caps at the opposite end of det wire, when you thumbed the trigger. Old but reliable, like Ord.

  I ran to the Exit Tube’s mouth, cranking the generator as I ran, then peered down the Tube.

  The Tube’s air was barely fogged with smoke, compared to the clouds inside the Firewitch. Through the haze, so far away I could barely make them out, the last evacuees clambered through the opposite hatch, into the Spook Ring’s temporary safety.

  Two hundred evacuees down, three to go.

  Halfway down the tube ran the Tech Sergeant and the MP.

  The ’Bot carrying Munchkin skittered behind them. I had voiced off its governor, so it had already made up their head start. It clanked up the Tube’s sidewall, and onto its ceiling. With Munchkin kicking and screaming in its jaws, the ’Bot skittered upside down above the human runners, and passed them faster than a roach caught under a flashlight beam.

  Ord and Howard came alongside me. Howard panted. “Now.”

  I held my thumb still on the detonator trigger, and my eyes on the three figures moving down the tube. “We still got three runners.”

  Howard frowned. “Two minutes. Maybe less.”

  Ord grabbed Howard and me by the backs of our belts, and tugged us ten yards back from the Exit Tube lip, inside the Firewitch.

  Alongside us the remaining Cargo’Bots idled, manipulators folded, their work done. A web of old-school det wire stretched from the charges in the floor and ceiling back to the trigger I clutched.

  Howard craned his neck at the charges. “When those blow, the decomp sensors will lock down this hatch in a half second.”

  I swallowed. It had better. When the charges blew, the Exit Tube would expel its air into space like a popped balloon. Anything inside the tube, such as us, would be sucked along for the ride.

  I had seen human beings explosively decompressed. I had nearly been one, more than once. Fifteen screaming seconds to remember your life is too short.

  Ord handed me a synlon cargo sling. “Around your waist, Sir. Then through the floor tie-downs.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s going to get windy in here for a moment, Sir.”

  The ’Bot carrying Munchkin slowed as it neared the far hatch.

  Howard said, “Now, Jason!”

  I shook my head. “Couple more seconds.”

  Munchkin’s ’Bot reached the far hatch, lifted one leg at a time over the sill, and she and the ’Bot disappeared into Pressurized Volume.

  Howard grabbed my shoulder. “Now! It’s too late, already!”

  My heart thumped. Ord’s little MP and the Tech Sergeant ran for their lives, still a hundred yards from safety.

  I pointed at them, and shook my head. “That’s two living human beings down there, Howard.”

  “For God’s sake, Jason!” Howard said.

  “Two against five thousand, Sir.” Ord placed his hand over my thumb, and squeezed until the trigger snicked loose.

  The rotor whirred, then vibrated in my hand.

  Fourteen

  Whump. Whump. Whump.

  I squeezed my eyes shut against the flashes as the charges exploded in three opposing pairs.

  I opened my eyes, and the Exit Tube was still there, still flexing like a python’s gut, but intact.

  Then metal moaned and echoed.

  A tear opened along the Tube’s left side, with a boom that made the charges sound like popcorn.

  A ring of black nothing opened all around the hatch margin, and red, smoky air howled out into space. Wind slammed my back and threw me across the deck toward space, as the Airtight began scissoring shut across the Tube mouth.

  I slid on my belly toward the too-slowly-closing hatch, clutching the cargo sling I hadn’t looped through the tie-down ring. “Crap. Crap, crap, crap.”

  Ahead of me, sandwich wrappers, dust, screwdrivers, and Kleenex got sucked into space. Through the narro
wing opening between the closing hatch segments, I saw the Tech Sergeant and the MP tumbling head-over-heels, back up the severed tube toward us, as the air outflow sucked them to the breach.

  Air rushing from the Firewitch hurled me against the lower hatch segment, then rolled me up and across the closing lip.

  I pulled myself back inside, until I clung, spread-eagled, across the hatch opening, while the wind tore at me.

  The MP hurtled toward me, now close enough that I could see her bulging blue eyes, and count the white-gloved fingers on her flailing hands.

  The hatch segments seemed to close in slow motion. My hands, then my feet, slipped, until just fingers and toes held me back from spinning out into the vacuum. Wind roared around me as loudly as if I had fallen beneath a speeding train.

  The fingers of my left hand slid off the hatch lip. “Oh, no.”

  Something grabbed my waist and held me.

  The airtight hatch lips joined and sealed.

  Wind howl stopped as though chopped by a cleaver, and I hung in mid-air, safe inside the Firewitch.

  Thump. Thump.

  The hurtling MP and the Tech Sergeant bounced off the outside of the closed hatch.

  With luck, the impacts knocked them unconscious. Before my heart could beat, they became debris adrift in frigid nothing, along with the Kleenex, dust, and screwdrivers.

  Behind me, the Cargo’Bot that Ord had ordered to snatch me back from the brink whined and lowered me to the deck.

  I shivered, as much because the air remaining in the Firewitch had turned thin and cold as from shock.

  The decompression had snuffed the fires and cleared the smoke. I got to my knees, shaking, and turned away from the closed hatch.

  I lay with my cheek against the floor plates, panting.

  Ord knelt beside me. “You all right, Sir?”

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  “Sir—”

  “You had to pull the trigger for me. I couldn’t even subtract two from five thousand and get the right answer.”

  Ord touched my shoulder. “We’re past it now, Sir.”

  I shook like an out-of-tune Electrabout. “Is it cold in here, or is it me, Sergeant Major?”

  Ord rolled me onto my back, tucked a crate plank under my feet to elevate them, and covered me with my uniform jacket. “Mild shock, Sir. Your replacement parts aren’t quite up to this yet.” He tugged the end off a syrette with his teeth, then rolled my sleeve up to expose a forearm vein.