I nodded and gripped the tablet tighter. “He does. It’s just dangerous, very dangerous.” I watched his vitals for a minute, finding it strange he was so calm, considering the circumstance. César hated confined spaces. During every EVA simulation he’d been hella nervous as a result. But now he was calm as a cucumber. It was odd.
“You always track us like this?” Doc nodded in reply. “Can I talk to him from here?”
“Hold the button on the left.”
I did, opening a conference channel between César and the bridge. “César, you there?”
“David! So good to hear your voice, señor. Glad you’re okay.” He waved back at the ship, flashing a massively oversized white hand.
“How’s it looking?”
“Damaged, but she’ll live. The PVAs may take a couple days to fix, and we’re drifting off course till then. Can’t correct our trajectory till we fix the power. No power power, no thrusty thrust.”
This was true, of course, the ion engines required a vast supply of energy to maintain thrust, but he didn’t have to go outside in order to fix them. The panels were retractable. “Give me a rundown. What’s the issue?”
“Actuators are jammed. Something screwed up the lateral motor where the panels fold in. Every time I try and retract it, it just tears them worse.”
With thumb and forefinger I pinch zoomed on the damage. “I see. So you had to go and do it in person. Look out for that titanium rib on the right, it’s swinging around.”
“I see it.” He lowered his head. “Almost done, sir. Five more minutes at most.” He lifted a pneumatic clamp and sheared a twisted section of metal in half. The length of poly alloy set free began to float off. César took hold and tossed it in a collection net. He began to hum. “Anyone hear that song bleeding in over the com? I know it. Is someone singing back on the ship?”
I let go of the broadcast button and asked Doc, “What hit us?”
He shrugged. “Lieutenant Fryatt believes the enemy’s projectile collided with something en route causing it to splinter. There’s minor damage all over the ship.”
“And so afterwards, I just passed out? What’s wrong with me?”
“Goddard, you have severe DCS—decompression sickness, the bends, air embolisms, all that fluff. Something must have broken your mask during the ship’s decompression, and when the air in the cabin started getting thin and you didn’t exhale along with it… well, I’m sure you know the rest.”
My usually steaming blood turned to ice. I’d come a hair’s breadth from flipping inside out, blood boiling, eyes freezing in their sockets. If I’d stayed another couple minutes in that place it would have been the end of David Goddard, idiot engineer. I felt for the comfort of my gasket ring. I’d survived that wreck too, and the surface of Mars wasn’t much safer than deep space. Someone had to be looking out for me, that’s for sure. I just wasn’t sure who.
The tablet began to speak, a woman’s voice. “Enela, long range radar detects a heavy concentration of micro meteorites in our path. I estimate less than five minutes before we reach them.”
I pounded the window of the hyperbaric chamber. “Let me out. We need to get César back inside.” A rush of heat washed up over my spine and into my forehead. My right leg began to shake. Get me out of here. Get me out of here. The hyperbaric chamber began contracting, its edges drawing into the middle, squashing me like a spider on paper. I needed to get out.
Doc shook his head, and I wanted to knock it right off his shoulders. “Goddard, you have two hours left of treatment. Can’t do it. Besides, how you gonna get there in time? You can’t help him.” His calm only fanned the embers of my anger. Maybe he was the target and this was his plan. Incapacitate the Master Engineer and put his assistant in a position where he was likely to screw up and get killed.
“César!” I called into the tablet. “You have to get back inside, right now. That’s an order.”
“I can’t,” he replied, voice edgy. “Almost done here. We need the power up or we won’t get back on course. We have to make it past Mars on schedule or all is lost. The Axis will not get the chance to kill our friends. Let’s see, what tool do I need now? Ohhh, Toodles.”
“Look, you can come back inside, and you will come back inside. We can make up the thrust deficiency another way. Comm, how dense is the field?”
“Can’t tell,” she responded. “Too much interference.”
“Damn it!” I shouted, only to be heard in medical. Across the room a face appeared in the other monoplace chamber. It was Kelly from Valles Rojo. Where had he been during our decompression to be gifted this sickness along with me?
There had to be something I could do. Had to. Our ship was designed to take these sorts of poundings while drifting through the void, micro meteors and the like, but César’s EVA rig was not. One hit and he was lost, set adrift in a place between life and where we believed we all go—into the waiting room, purgatory, the cold well. One hit—and César was dead. But that’s not all. Something wasn’t right. César was too focused, too relaxed. It just wasn’t like him. He was a frog leg on a hot skillet, a flea with the promise of blood. His personality was jumpy and jittery, though right now he was calm. Too calm. Unless…
“César, are you okay?” I asked, forcing a duplicitous subtext into every syllable that I hoped no one else could read.
The tone hit him like a slap, making him hesitate for a moment. “I’m fine, señor. No problems.”
“Don’t play dumb. You know what I mean.”
He hesitated again, but went back to work.
“Get back inside, now,” I growled. “Retract your safety line.” There was no way he could finish in time.
“Listen to him, son,” the Captain cut in. “We’ll make do. We have other power.”
For an instant it appeared as if César was going to drop his tools and reel himself in, but he didn’t. He went back to his task, furiously moving as if by working harder he could beat the clock.
“It’s like we talked about, David. We all pick up certain habits.” He sniffed and shook his head, making the suit waggle. Moments dragged into minutes, each heartbeat an exploding supernova millions of light years away. One more bolt secured. One more piece of twisted poly alloy removed. “Sometimes you just gotta take a break, you know? Sand that edge off. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’ve almost… That’s it… If you’ve got ears, say cheers! I’ve got it!”
I sucked in a breath and looked at the clock. Three minutes had passed. Hot damn, that kid was fire. I never could’ve finished that fast.
César began to sing, “Hot dog, hot dog…”
The solar panels folded up like an oriental dancer’s fans, closing and drawing back towards the ship. César let go and pushed off, drifting to get out of the way. Cheers of congratulations went out over the conference channel. A grin split my face.
Our joy was cut short.
An object whizzed past César’s left leg, grazing the edge of his suit and tearing a rent that spewed gas.
“César!” I shouted, my fists pounding against the tube’s glass.
A second, smaller video feed appeared on the left side of the tablet, showing the inside of his mask and panicked face. “Señor David?” he asked, eyebrows turned down in confusion. “Why is it so cold? I can’t control my direction. I’m… I’m spinning.”