“Seventy-five percent.”
“Give me five degrees Z.”
“Sir, that’ll put us outside our trajectory. We’ll be off course.”
“What do you think being dead will do?”
“Understood. Yes, Captain.”
“That’s it. Fifteen percent. Fourteen percent. Thank G… Wait… the projectile’s split.”
“What?” The Captain’s shocked tone was a glacier cracking at the heart of winter. “Split? What do you mean split?”
“I’m tracking sixty targets.”
“Sixty!” XO shouted.
“Go go go! Maximum thrust, get us out of the way.”
“Contact in fifteen seconds…”
“Ninety-nine percent probability, sir.”
“Get us out!”
“Ten seconds. Ninety percent.”
“Harder! Damn it. Harder!”
“Five Seconds. Eighty-nine percent.”
This was it. They’d managed to somehow shotgun blast us from across the solar system, leaving no vector for us to escape.
César came rushing into the room and locked eyes with me, his hand clutching Jane’s. I don’t know how they knew, but it was clear they sensed this attack was different from the rest. I wished I was on the bridge with Liberty, but there was no time left.
“Two seconds. Eighty-five percent.”
“It’s too much.”
“One.”
A fresh set of alarms, unlike the rest, howled throughout the ship. These were the whooping cries and monotone voice of imminent danger that could not be ignored.
ATTENTION CREW: HULL BREACH FORWARD AND AFT.
I froze in the moment, awaiting my insides to be turned backwards and flee out my ass. I heard a deafening hiss from out in the hall before the emergency hatches began to snap shut. César stepped into the crew quarters with Jane and looked at his watch, the section’s hatch shutting an instant later. Jane was terrified, whereas César… he appeared, almost a little groggy.
“David!” my earpiece screamed. “Are you there?”
It took me an instant to realize that even though the ship was losing pressure, we were still alive. The leak must have been at least two sections away. There might be a chance to save us.
“I am,” I replied, dry eyes trailing down to my watch.
“We’ve been hit.”
“No shit!”
“David! The ship’s been punctured in two locations. If you hurry…” Her words trailed off and were replaced by the Captain’s. I took out the earpiece and shoved it in my pocket. No distractions.
She was right, my watch’s readout showed a puncture halfway to the bridge on the port side, and another, ten feet ahead of Nuclear Storage. It also showed extensive damage to the solar array, but that was not immediate. We needed pressure more than power. We had batteries for that.
“We gotta beat it, César.”
“Si,” he snapped to attention. “Where to?”
I raised a finger and pointed. “You, Jane, fix the aft leak. I’ll get the one close to the bridge. Be careful.”
César nodded and took off, his tools at the ready. Before leaving the section he took a patch kit from a box on the wall beside the hatch. He used his code and overrode the safety seal and the two of them vanished into the hall. I took up my tools and did the same, but when I tried to leave the room through the opposite hatch an error message prevented me.
DECOMPRESSION TOO GREAT. CANNOT OVERRIDE.
“Shit!” I pounded the controls with my fists. That left only one option.
I hustled to the center of the room and called for the Maintenance Core’s ladder, squeezing into the spine of the ship where our spin gravity ceased. I hurled myself at the forward end like a missile. Arms at my side, legs back, the Vindicator rotated around me like a drunken beast stumbling in the dark. I ripped a breathing mask from off the wall and fixed it over my face, not slowing for an instant in my ballistic approach. The alarms droned on, but I could hardly hear them for all the blood pounding in my ears like an ensemble of demonic drummers.
My watch vibrated and chirped, informing me I was above the leak. I took a patch kit from the wall, the floor, whatever the hell you wanted to call it, and lowered the ladder. The hatch yawned open, allowing a gentle tug of leaking pressure to pull me down. On either side a pair of safety hatches snapped shut like guillotines, sealing the tunnel and preventing any further loss of cabin pressure. There was no retreating now. I would either fix this leak or suffocate.
What an incentive.
“Come on, David, you can do this.” My hands were trembling. I’d been through the exercise dozens of times, but this shit was real life.
My heels struck the floor. I drew in a deep breath from the mask. I was in Officer 1, Liberty’s quarters, and the air was getting thin. The hatch leading into the hall was broken, unable to close, air ripping through a hand size slit like a hungry dust storm. I clipped the safety line of my tool belt to the core’s ladder, using it to steady my approach. A flat black object with a flash of silver flew towards me, leaving a gash down my right cheek at the edge of the mask. I reeled back out of reflex, frantically searching for any further danger. It was just an old style clipboard that now flapped over the steadily growing breach. The shallow cut was warm. I fought the urge to touch it.
The roaring, icy leak edged closer.
I held the patch kit in front of me, safety line clicking by tiny intervals as I approached with baby steps. Sweat poured off my face and was dried in an instant. My rapid breathing accelerated to the edge of hyperventilation. I hit the button on the side of the patch kit, and a sheet of poly alloy fell from it, the vacuum of space covetous as it grasped the metal patch with unseen arms in a violent embrace. It shot through the air and slammed on top of the breach, knocking the cheap clipboard aside and snapping it into pieces. Air hissed from around the vibrating patch. I used the yellow handled torch clipped to my belt and welded it in place with a neat line, then punched the kit’s nozzle into the patch’s center, pulled the trigger on its bottom, and released a cloud of rapidly expanding metallic foam.
The whistling of precious, precious air ceased, allowing decompression wails to recede from my aching senses as I sent them back into their slumber.
I checked my watch to ensure that the seal was complete. Thank God it was. I’d been lucky, just like when we wrecked Harrison’s skimmer. I was always lucky.
“César?” I growled at my right wrist, finding it hard to breathe.
“All good, señor.”
“Good. Let’s see if—”
Power flickered and the ship became dim. The emergency batteries cut on.
“Master Engineer,” the intercom sounded. “To the bridge, immediately.”
It was go time.
I stood up and stumbled, hand trailing down the bulkhead. My vision swam. Pressure built behind my eyes.
I blinked.
The intercom screamed once more, its words washing over me but having no meaning. I put a free hand to my forehead, tingling fingers massaging in a fruitless hope to clear my muddled state.
Why was I in this room? What was I doing?
That’s right, I was going to the bridge, but…
Why the bridge? What the hell was on the bridge?
My legs were wobbly, like I’d just run fifty miles at full tilt, reducing them to nothing more than loose bands of meat stretched over bleached sticks. My shoulders and joints followed suit with their locomotive kindred, but instead of merely being sore, it was as if they’d been stuffed with something hard.