East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Chapter Twenty-Four

“One team down, Tragack,” Reyes said, propping his feet on a control console and looking around. “And they didn’t even bother fighting us for the control room. Silly of them.”

“Yes, Great One,” the Dark One replied, soberly. The Changed elf was armed with a long sword and dressed in articulated space armor, much more maneuverable than the suits the orcs used.

Reyes was wearing a similar suit but his was highly patterned in red, blue, orange and green. He’d taken his helmet off and wore only the headpiece for the quantum communicator.

“Reefic,” Reyes said, looking over at the primary goblin pilot. “When are you going to get started?”

“Right away, Great One!” the goblin chorused cheerfully. “I fly it! Going home we are!”

“That’s right,” Reyes said, chuckling as the ship began to vibrate. “Going home.”

“Nicole?” Herzer asked, trotting down the corridor towards Maintenance.

“I’m headed for the engine room,” the girl answered, breathlessly. Her voice was right on the edge of a sob. “They’re all gone.”

“I know,” Herzer said. “You have to pull the injectors, then get out the engineering EVA hatch.”

There was a pause and then the girl did sob.

“Just one problem,” she said, half hysterically. “There’s an orc in the passage behind me!”

“In that case, just get the hell out,” Herzer said. “We’ll come back and pull the damned injector.”

“Herzer?” Nicole said. “Shut the hell up and let me work.”

“You go, girl,” Herzer said, pausing by the hatch to shuttle seven. “Van Krief?”

“Richard’s just about to the engine room,” Van Krief said, popping open the outer lock and dropping through. “He’s going to EVA and meet us at lock fourteen.”

“Okay,” Herzer said as the rest of the team piled through the hatch. “Let’s go. I’ll leave you and your security detachment at fourteen. Meet us in Maintenance.”

Nicole finally reached the end of the long, dark, tunnel and undogged the hatch at the engineering end. There was a grab bar over the tunnel, which she used to swing out and down to the floor.

She quickly crossed to the fusion generator and pulled out a hydrospanner, popping the four hot points on the fusion generator’s top and lifting the twenty-kilo plate off. After that she had to remove the primary computer interface, the injection cover, and last the injector. She’d done the job when bone tired, underwater and upside down. Doing it with an orc closing in was nothing.

As soon as she pulled the forearm-sized injector she walked carefully but steadily to the airlock and considered her options. Turning in place she could see the access hatch and so far, no orc.

She considered the EVA door controls carefully. There was a code that had to be punched to activate the inner door, a security procedure. Back when, people would occasionally go buggy in space. Situational stress disorder. Making sure that only certain people could open hatches was important. Certain hatches, like the EVA hatch in the crew section, required two people to open them. Others, like this one, simply required a code.

She carefully punched in the code and was rewarded with a green light.

“Hello, human,” she faintly heard from behind her. “It’s time to die!”

She stepped into the airlock, set the injector on the deck and grabbed a handhold. Firmly.

Engineering occasionally had situations where it was necessary to move bulky materials through the hatch, such as fusion plants, that were too large to fit in the airlock. Ergo, it could be opened to vacuum. The fusion plant and the reactionless drive system were both vacuum rated, so there was no problem there. The orc, on the other hand, didn’t have on a suit. She hadn’t thought they could get one of those bulky suits into the access tunnel.

“Yes, it is,” she said, quietly, typing in the code to override the safety protocols and open the outer door.

Whatever the orc was going to say was cut off in a squawk as air blasted out the airlock. There was more air, much more air, in the shuttle’s crew spaces and most especially in the, now vented, personnel corridors. The air rushed down the access tunnel in hurricane force, spinning the orc across the room to slam on the far wall. It also blasted the injector out into the deeps of space and beyond New Destiny’s ability to recover it.

Despite the power of the wind, one look at the atmosphere readouts showed that there was hardly any oxygen in the room. In fact, the room was at damned near vacuum pressure, low enough to have caused catastrophic decompression in her erstwhile foe. So Nicole, her boots firmly planted and locked and one hand in a death grip on the handhold, carefully hit the controls to close the outer doors, cutting off the rushing wind.

“That’s for Mike, you bastard,” she said. She also noticed that you could tell when you were in death pressure; the shadows were simply different when there was air present.

“Well, that’s shuttle five disabled,” Herzer said as they made the turn into Maintenance. The personnel access corridor had been fairly… normal. It was just a long, straight tube lighted by glow-paint on the ceiling. You could feel you were in a tunnel underground. The Maintenance access tunnel was different. It was just as well lit and nearly as large, but it curved up in a slope that looked frankly unclimbable. Of course, it was under a constant positive “down” gravity, so each step felt as if it was level. But it was disconcerting, like a fun-house mirror walk.

“Same with seven,” Van Krief called. “Rick’s on his way in. What caused the air-loss lockdown?” Only a moment ago the internal blast doors had closed, cutting the ship into multiple sections. Bravo Two was still sealed off.

“Nicole vented shuttle five for some reason,” Herzer said. “Since you’re already there, and New Destiny doesn’t seem to be stirring have him go by eight and pull that one as well. Take your team and EVA, carefully, checking suit integrity, and join up with him in Support. Then move on the surface to disable three and four. After that, head back.”

“Will do,” Van Krief replied after a moment. “See you soon.”

“Nicole, this is Josten.”

Nicole had dragged the body of the orc over to the airlock and kicked him out with the last puff of air.

“Go,” she said, hooking on her safety line, grabbing a handhold and lifting herself around to clamp her boots on the exterior of the shuttle.

“There’s a group of four orcs between me and Maintenance,” Josten replied, talking quietly. “I think I spotted them before they spotted me, but they’re headed this way. I’m in a shadow patch, but I don’t think I’ll be able to hide for long.”

“You know they can’t hear you, right?” Nicole said, flipping down her goggles as the ship rotated so the sun was in view. “Sound doesn’t carry in space.” She paused for a moment suddenly realizing she was in space. Really. In Space. Nothing around her but vacuum. And… lots and lots of stars. And… the Moon was… really…

“I just like to talk quiet, okay?” Josten said, nervously. “Why’s the damned ship turning? My shadow is going away!”

“I dunno,” Nicole admitted, shaking herself out of the combination of terror and awe at her surroundings. “I can see a thruster firing from here.” She shaded her eyes against the glare and blinked in surprise. “Make that two and…” She turned around awkwardly and nodded at the sight. “And the main engine is burning. I don’t think the ship was scheduled for a main engine burn, was it?”

“At the moment I can’t quite recall,” Josten admitted tightly. “Look, could you… come up with a distraction or something? These guys are less than a hundred meters away and the only thing that’s keeping them from seeing me is a rapidly evaporating shadow. Please, Nickie?”

“Okay, okay,” she sighed, looking around again. “Where are you and where are they?”

“I’m sort of under the ship,” Josten said. “About halfway down. They’re coming in from aft.”

“So, what you’re saying is they’re closer to me than they are to you,” Nicole said, sighing. “You could have mentioned that.”

“I don’t know where you are,” Josten said, clearly rattled.

“Back by Engineering, remember?” Nicole said, pulling a pair of magnets off her thigh. She grabbed the handles and lowered them to the deck, then carefully unlatched her mag-boots.

She used the magnets to walk hand over hand to the rear of the ship and, carefully, looked over the edge.

Nothing was in sight at first but when she lifted herself up she could see a group of four orcs, spread out, heading towards the shuttle. She also realized she was in clear view of them and nearly ducked until she realized that, with their armor, there was no way they could see up at an angle to see her.

She considered their position and the rate they were moving, slowly and awkwardly, then carefully stood up and walked back to the airlock.

“Hey, Josten, sit tight,” Nicole said, lowering herself to the airlock and keying the sequence to open the door again.

“You got an idea?” Josten asked as Nicole entered the lock and cycled the outer door shut. There was a small vision panel on the inner door and she checked, carefully, to make sure there weren’t any more orcs in the Engineering space.

“Yeah,” she answered, opening the inner door and considering what she was going to need. She’d pulled the injector for the fusion plant and it was gone. So primary power was out.

“What?” Josten asked. “Spit at them?”

“You know these things have a sodium ion backup drive, right?” Nicole said.

“I’m a pilot,” Josten said, caustically. “Yes, I know that. But you can’t activate it; you broke the fusion plant.”

“Fusion plants don’t start themselves,” Nicole noted, lifting up a hatch plate and unlatching a power cable. “They use auxiliary power capacitors.”

“You’re going to use the APCs to fire up the sodium drive?” Josten asked, wonderingly. “Can you do that? Do you know how to do that?”

“Am I not a master of all things tinkerish?” Nicole asked mockingly. “I’m either going to do it or blow myself to hell. We’ll see.”

The power leads for the APC were at least two gauges larger than the input point on the sodium drive. And they were short by at least half a meter. After considering that for a second, Nicole pulled out the primary power leads from the fusion plant and connected them to the leads from the APC using a pipe-clamp and some space tape as an insulator. Then she attached the fusion leads, which were also too large, to two spanner handles and jammed the latter into the sodium drive input terminals. She held them in place with a jammed in mag-bolt from the injector system on one and the orc’s dropped sword on the other.

“MacGyver forgive me,” she muttered, praying to the joke God of all jury-rigging engineers. Surviving to activate this idiocy was going to be the next trick. There were about to be over sixteen megawatts of power running through some very screwed up connections. Resistance didn’t begin to cut it. When electricity hits resistance, it creates heat. When it creates enough heat, you get a kinetic event, also known as an explosion. They were outside Mother’s protocols, probably. Even if they weren’t for this, there was going to be enough electricity flying around to cook an elephant in seconds.

The engineering compartment control panel was, fortunately, on the far side of the room from where the Rube Goldberg electrical circuits were lying all over the floor. She sat down at the station chair and ran her hands over the panels.

“Sodium secondary engine,” she muttered, hitting the icon and diving deeper. “System engage. Fuel load. Power input bypass to input two. Fusion drive analysis. Auxiliary power. APC menu. Override safety protocols. Two-four-eight-alpha-niner. APC master breaker…” She closed her eyes and hit the last icon. “Engaged.”

“I don’t like this place,” Narzgag whined. “I don’t like these suits. I wish the Great One had never brought us here.”

“Shut up,” Sardak said. “We’ll be back inside as soon as we find that human pussy.”

“He was over here, somewhere,” Yago said. “I saw him. He is near that ship, in its shadow I think.”

The foursome were making their way slowly towards the ship. The EVA lock had been closer to two hundred meters away, and moving in the suits was neither fast nor comfortable. Furthermore, they were all, even Sardak, unhappy to be out in vacuum. The Great One had given them a graphic description of what could happen to them if their suits failed. Perhaps too graphic. In view of the Great One they would, of course, do anything for him. But when he was gone, that was a different matter.

“Let us go back to the inside,” Narzgag said, unhappily. “We can tell the Leader that we were unable to find the human.”

“He’ll take us out of our suits and space us,” Sardak said. “Now shut up.”

“There,” Beejor said, pointing at the ship. “By the rear. A light.”

“Where?” Sardak asked, looking up where the Durgar was pointing. The spot was well up from the surface of the ship. He didn’t know how the human could have climbed up there. Jumped, maybe; in the microgravity it might be possible. But there was no light.

“There was a light,” the Durgar insisted. “Like lightning for just a moment.”

“Stupid fucking materials,” Nicole bitched, rewiring the interface between the APC mains and the borrowed fusion runs. This time with lots more space tape. “HOLD THIS TIME.”

The Durgar had paused, rocking their suits back from their knees as the only way to look up and examining the rear of the ship.

“There,” Beejor said, excitedly. “There, like lightning!”

“Yessss,” Sardak said, uncertainly, flipping up his goggles for a better view up the rocket motor. “But what is that orange…”

“YES!” Josten shouted.

“It worked?” Nicole asked, picking herself up off the floor and checking for leaks in her suit. No apparent holes, but a couple of bruises. The burn hadn’t lasted more than five or six seconds and then one of the runs had failed catastrophically. The electrical blow-back had fed into the control board, since she’d locked out the safety breakers, and the resultant explosion had knocked her over. The engine was now thoroughly trashed, but the suit appeared intact. She’d have to take vacuum slowly though and check.

“Four crisped orcs!” Josten said. “It kicked them right off the hull and the last I saw of them their armor was half melted. Good job!”

“Thanks,” Nicole said. “That’ll teach them to fuck with an engineer.”

“What is wrong?” Reyes asked. The goblin pilot had meeped in surprise and they’d all felt the shudder in the ship.

“One of the shuttle engines fired, Great One!” the goblin said, excitedly. “Off course are we!”

“Get us back on course,” Reyes growled.

“Am Great One!” the goblin replied. “Fast.”