“Direct hit!” Rosaleigh shouted over the com, heavy metal guitars and crewmembers cheering us on.
“Take that you assholes.” I shook a gloved fist above my head.
The Razor began to free fall into a hard spin, its fat, backend spiraling quicker with each rotation. I could see their railguns flashing white and black in the display. Tiny jets of air attempted to slow their spin. The lights aboard the Vindicator dimmed to brown.
“Oh, shit, don’t do this to me now.” Power was failing, lights flickering. Our backup batteries were terminally leaking fluids. “No, no, no, no!” I hurried to the power core and inspected the damage closely.
“Goddard, sitrep,” Liberty said.
“It’s going down, damn it. The power. All of it. There isn’t anything I can do in the time we have. We’ve lost half our photovoltaics. The backups have been gutted. And…” The display showed a positive power line running into our secondary rail gun at zero voltage. It had been severed.
“Can we fire?” Liberty asked, lowering the music’s volume to a soft hum. “Can we?”
I frantically searched for an answer. There had to be a way. I glanced at the storage cabinet beside the breakers, back to the hole in the side of the Vindicator Griffin had been sucked out, and then over to the power distribution box on the wall. I turned to face the hole in our ship.
“Maybe. I have an idea.”
“David, I know that tone of yours. This is going to be stupid.”
“It is stupid, but it’ll work. I think.”
I slung open the storage cabinet’s door and reached inside, producing a braid of heavy gauge insulated graphene cable one thousand feet long. It was flexible and thin, but even in low-g it was heavy, making it a challenge to keep balance. Thank God I was in shape. I wasn’t sure if the cable would carry enough current, but it was all I could think to do. Without both the positive and negative end of the circuit on the secondary rail we had no hope of firing back at the enemy. Other power concerns were almost inconsequential in light of this. I was sure I could fix the original line, as well as main power, but we had no time for that. We had to fire at the enemy while they were limping. It was our only hope. We had to put this rabid dog down before it snapped and chewed our other leg off.
I fastened the end of the graphene cable to an open connection in the power distribution box, uncoiling half a dozen feet while edging closer to the gaping maw at my back like I was rappelling. I had to guess at what length I’d need. Over my shoulder Mars swung past every few seconds, the hab of the Vindicator spinning round and round. I took in a breath and focused. If I failed, we’d be dead. If I succeeded, we might still be dead. But I wasn’t giving up. I’d ride this bitch to the ground if I had to, throwing rocks at the enemy all the way.
“Here we go.” I disengaged the magnetic boots and hurled myself back through the hole. The ship continued to spin downward from my perspective as I rose. The edge of the breech slammed against my length of tightening cable and tossed me forward. I held firm to the cable as the ship spun and drew me in like the line of a winch. My fingers slipped for an instant and I gasped, but I clamped down with all my might and renewed my hold. Once I was close enough to the hull I reengaged the boots and clumsily found magnetic purchase aloft the ship’s exterior. I was safely outside, feet planted on a rotating can of death.
I held my sigh of relief.
“Still alive,” I called into the com.
“Be careful,” Liberty croaked.
As the hab continued to rotate I began to feel sick. Mars appeared just over my head, sliding down before my eyes and vanishing beneath my feet every few seconds. I squinted and focused on my target, the massive Nuclear Battery Ring ahead, trying not to think of the disorienting view repeatedly swinging past. I felt tiny as I trudged forward like a fly through honey. The ship seemed massive standing on the outside.
“The Razor, they’re turning around,” Rosaleigh reported, voice resonating in my helmet.
I risked a glance over my shoulder to confirm. A glint of light heralded the position of the Razor.
“Go, David, go,” I told myself, moving as quickly as the magnetic boots would allow. It wasn’t fast enough. It was a bad idea to do an EVA on a rotating hab in a soft suit without personal propulsion. Our false gravity worked against me, attempting to hurl me off the hull into space. My brains threatened to go flat against the top of my skull. I clung to the extending cable. Its connection inside the power core was all that could save me if my magnetic boots decided to give out.
Liberty: “David? Do we have power yet?”
“Working on it. Almost there.” I reached the trussed latticework of poly steel connecting the battery ring to the ship. I tied the coiled cable in a loose knot at the bottom, allowing me to control direction as it unspooled. I disengaged the boots. The rotation of the hab hurled me outward, up and towards my goal. I let the graphene cable slide through my gloves as I ascended. My hands became warm as my heart stuck in my throat.
Reaching the top I kicked open an access panel and shoved the cable’s end into an open, positively charged high voltage connection that was part of the ring’s power control center. After it was securely twisted in place, I let go and drew myself up, hand over hand back towards the ship along the trussing. I no longer had the safety of the cable to cling to, only my own handholds. The flexible, unfurling line of the cable whipped in the open space over my shoulder.
Climbing back to the ship was harder than I’d ever considered. Gravity worked against me full tilt. I strained and pulled, muscles screaming, knowing that if I let go I’d be in for a slow death. One hand over the next.
Ten feet to go.
“Come on, David. Come the fuck on, you stupid asshole.”
Five feet.
Two feet.
I reached the bottom and spun around, putting my boots flush against the hull. They clicked into place and allowed me to hiss a sigh of relief.
Rosaleigh: “They’re firing back.”
I winced at the report. It wasn’t as if I’d be any safer inside the ship with a projectile ripping through us at half the speed of light, but it was a natural reflex to get down.
The Razor’s projectile skimmed laterally across the ship and opened us up like a split can of tuna. Showers of metal flew past towards the aft end. The red world loomed beneath, then above, our home so close, yet so far away. An alarm beeped in my helmet. Air was jetting out from my hand.
Beneath the shadow of the battery ring I rushed for the arboretum’s emergency airlock, dodging the glittering debris of our ship. I punched in my code and threw myself inside. From the cramped space I unclipped my tablet and made a few remote commands, rerouting the positive power flow to the cable’s port. Green lights appeared.
“Captain, we’ve got power,” I said while patching the hole in my glove with a strip of bonding tape.
“David,” Liberty hissed through my watch, having taken herself off the main channel. “We only get one more shot at this.”
“I know,” I said, steeling myself for what was to come. “I—I just want to say…”
“Me too, David. Me too.”
I returned to weapons storage and control, following the usual routine. “Loading weapon. Powering up rails. Aim well, Liberty.”
“I’ll see you at sunset,” she said, her voice ponderous.