Another lurch. This time I saw the bright flash through the bridge’s window. The beam must’ve splashed off the structure just outside the pod. My God—if they punctured the pod, that would be the end of it. Sure, I could slide my visor down and go to the backpack’s air supply. But that’d give me only two hours of air, at best. Just enough time to write my last will and testament.
«I thought you turned the pod away from them!» I yelled.
«They are maneuvering, too, sir.»
Great. Sitting in the command chair was awkward, in the suit. The display board looked like a Christmas tree, more red then green. The pod seemed to be intact so far. Life support was okay, as long as we had electrical power.
Another jolt, a big one. Forty-niner shuddered and staggered sideways as if it were being punched by a gigantic fist.
And then, just like that, the comm screens came back to life. Radar showed the other vessel, whoever they were, moving away from us.
«They’re going away!» I whooped.
Forty-niner’s voice seemed fainter than usual. «Yes, sir. They are leaving.»
«How come?» I wondered.
«Their last laser shot ruptured our main water tank, sir. In eleven minutes and thirty-eight seconds our entire cargo will be discharged.»
I just sat there, my mind chugging hard. We’re spraying our water into space, the water that those bastards wanted to steal from us. That’s why they left. In eleven and a half minutes we won’t have any water for them to take.
I almost broke into a smile. I’m not going to die, after all. Not right away, at least.
Then I realized that JRK49N was without propulsion power and would be out of electrical power in a few hours. I was going to die after all, dammit. Only slower.
«Send out a distress call, broadband,» I commanded. But I knew that was about as useful as a toothpick in a soup factory. The corporation didn’t send rescue missions for waterbots, not with the war going on. Too dangerous. The other side could use the crippled ship as bait and pick off any vessel that came to rescue it. And they certainly wouldn’t come out for a vessel as old as Forty-niner. They’d just check the numbers in their ledgers and write us off. With a form letter of regret and an insurance check to my mother.
«Distress call on all frequencies, sir.» Before I could think of anything more to say, Forty-niner went on, «Electrical power is critical, sir.»
«Don’t I know it.»
«There is a prohibition in my programming, sir.»
«About electrical power?»
«Yes, sir.»
Then I remembered I had commanded him to stop nagging me about repairing the solar panels. «Cancel the prohibition,» I told him.
Immediately Forty-niner came back with, «The solar panels must be extended and activated, sir,» soft and cool and implacable as hell. «Otherwise we will lose all electrical power.»
«How long?»
It took a few seconds for him to answer, «Fourteen hours and twenty-nine minutes, sir.»
I was already in my spacesuit, so I got up from the command chair and plodded reluctantly toward the airlock. The damned solar panels. If I couldn’t get them functioning I’d be dead. Let me tell you, that focuses your mind, it does.
Still, it wasn’t easy. I wrestled with those bleeding, blasted frozen bearings for hours, until I was so fatigued that my suit was sloshing knee-deep with sweat. The damned Tinkertoy repair ’bots weren’t much help, either. Most of the time they beeped and blinked and did nothing.
I got one of the panels halfway extended. Then I had to quit. My vision was blurring and I could hardly lift my arms, that’s how weary I was.
I staggered back into the pod with just enough energy left to strip off the suit and collapse on my bunk.
When I woke up I was starving and smelled like a cesspool. I peeled my skivvies off and ducked into the shower.
And jumped right out again. The water was ice cold.
«What the hell happened to the hot water?» I screeched.
«Conserving electrical power, sir. With only one solar panel functioning at approximately one third of its nominal capacity, electrical power must be conserved.»
«Heat the blasted water,» I growled. «Turn off the heat after I’m finished showering.»
«Yes, sir.» Damned if he didn’t sound resentful.
Once I’d gotten a meal into me I went back to the bridge and called up the astrogation program to figure out where we were and where we were heading.
It wasn’t good news. We were drifting outward, away from Vesta. With no propulsion to turn us around to a homeward heading, we were prisoners of Kepler’s laws, just another chunk of matter in the broad, dark, cold emptiness of the Belt.
«We will approach Ceres in eight months, sir,» Forty-niner announced. I swear he was trying to sound cheerful.
«Approach? How close?»
It took him a few seconds to answer, «Seven million, four hundred thousand and six kilometers, sir, at our closest point.»
Terrific. There was a major habitat orbiting Ceres, built by the independent miners and prospectors that everybody called the rock rats. Freebooters made Ceres their harbor, too. Some of them doubled as salvage operators when they could get their hands on an abandoned vessel. But we wouldn’t get close enough for them to send even a salvage mission out to rescue us. Besides, you’re not allowed salvage rights if there’s a living person on the vessel. That wouldn’t bother some of those cutthroats, I knew. But it bothered me. Plenty.
«So we’re up the creek without a paddle,» I muttered.
It took a couple of seconds, but Forty-niner asked, «Is that a euphemism, sir?»
I blinked with surprise. «What do you know about euphemisms?»
«I have several dictionaries in my memory core, sir. Plus two thesauruses and four volumes of famous quotations. Would you like to hear some of the words of Sir Winston Churchill, sir?»
I was too depressed to get sore at him. «No thanks,» I said. And let’s face it: I was scared white.
So we drifted. Every day I went out to grapple with the no-good, mother-loving, mule-stubborn solar panels and the dumbass repair ’bots. I spent more time fixing the ’bots than anything else. The solar wings were frozen tight; I couldn’t get them to budge, and we didn’t carry spares.
Forty-niner was working like mad, too, trying to conserve electricity. We had to have power for the air and water recyclers, of course, but Forty-niner started shutting them down every other hour. It worked for a while. The water started to taste like urine, but I figured that was just my imagination. The air got thick and I’d start coughing from the CO2 buildup, but then the recycler would come back online and I could breathe again. For an hour.
I was sleeping when Forty-niner woke me with a wailing, «EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY.»
I hopped out of my bunk blinking and yelling, «What’s wrong? What’s the trouble?»
«The air recycler will not restart, sir.» He sounded guilty about it, like it was his fault.
Grumbling and cursing, I pulled on my smelly spacesuit, clomped out of the pod and down to the equipment bay. It was eerie down there in the bowels of the ship, with no lights except the lamp on my helmet. The attacker’s laser beams had slashed right through the hull; I could see the stars outside.
«Lights,» I called out. «I need the lights on down here.»
«Sir, conservation of electrical power—»
«Won’t mean a damned thing if I can’t restart the air recycler and I can’t do that without some blasted lights down here!»
The lights came on. Some of them, at least. The recycler wasn’t damaged, but its activation circuitry had malfunctioned from being turned off and on so many times. I bypassed the circuit and the pumps started up right away. I couldn’t hear them, since the ship’s innards were in vacuum now, but I felt their vibrations.