Rimrunners

CHAPTER 26

She slept again, just a sprawl on the deck while she waited for Merrill to bring a finished job up, lay down with her cheek against the icy deck-surface and went out cold a precious quarter, maybe half-hour, because except that, it was done.

It was a mistake, maybe, because she came awake with Merrill shaking her, and couldn't remember for a couple of beats where she was, couldn't get her arms to work to get herself off her face, because her back wouldn't take her weight. Just dead, gone. And the back hurt and the joints hurt and the cold had made her stiff.

"You all right?" Merrill was asking her. "You all right, Yeager?"

After a while you got from being afraid you were going to die to wanting to get it over with. She crawled up off her nose, butt-high, elbows on the deck and just rested there a second while Merrill told her how NG was all right with waiting, NG and Mike Parker both, but on an in-case, they were going downside to work on the outside lock controls, two Systems guys used to throwing around giga-numbers out there trying to hotwire a security circuit—

God. "Fitch'll know," she hissed at Merrill, scared somehow Fitch had the place bugged, Fitch was right outside. "Dammit, where's the captain?" Merrill was downside, Engineering was right alongside ops, right down there next the lock, they'd hear it if anybody came or went.

"No news," Merrill whispered. "Nothing. Like there wasn't anybody out there…"

"Crew's got to know they got the ship closed up, dammit, aren't they going to wonder? Aren't they going to ask? What the fuck are they doing out there?"

"Nobody knows," Merrill said. "We've called the bridge, Mike asked to get a call out, tried that. No go. Two on the bridge and us."

"Fitch out there?"

"Goddard."

Hughes' operator. "Shit." She sat up, crashed back against the wall, banged her head. "Fitch's sleeping!. Screw that! Tell 'im I need 'im, tell Goddard get him up, it's time to do that body-fit."

You stripped down to fit the rig, you started with the boots and you built up from there, and it was cold, damn, it was, no locker on the ship had good vents.

Gave her a good deal of satisfaction, Fitch standing there in his underwear—not bad scenery, either, even if he was a sonuvabitch, kept himself right in shape bouncing crew off the walls. Few scars, real good one on the ribs, probably a knife in some sleepover, probably deserved it, she thought, tightening up little screws.

Put a little black crud on the braces inside the boot, clamp the boot shut and adjust until all three braces left a stain on the skin. Not neat, gugged up the suit-surfaces something awful, but if you had to fit a neo it was easier than asking did it touch: it always felt like it touched, till you knew better.

Besides, it was Fitch.

Left boot, right boot, left shin, right shin, knees and chisses.

While Fitch stood there with a com-plug in his ear listening to stuff she'd have given a deal to hear.

And with a damnable lack of attention to the discomfort, like what he was hearing was a hell of a lot more real to him.

Lower body. She flat had to sit down in a minute and take a break. Her hands were shaking so her fingers couldn't keep the driver in the damn little invisible slots.

And of a sudden Fitch moved, knocked the fragile driver out of her fingers, hurt, dammit, so she sat down hard on her backside, not sure for a second he wasn't coming past her.

But you couldn't walk fast in that weight. Fitch activated his com, said, "No answer," to whoever was listening, and repeated it, louder: "No answer, dammit, do what I said…"

She picked herself up, rapped on the armor-leg to get his attention, started to work again—flex here, turn there, sir, hold it there, sir…

Push it, sir, or it'll stop you there…

Damn, she'd like to set it about one tick looser.

But give Fitch one thing, Fitch had his mind on business and you told him to hold and he held, no twitches, no complaints. Fitch wasn't real rested either, eyes looked like hell.

"Think this thing's going to work," she confided in him, what little voice she had left. "Ran a systems-check, it didn't blow…" And jumped to the question she was after. "We prepping for fire, hard vacuum—what?"

"Anything," Fitch said. "Anything it has to."

"You ever stood up in one of these, sir?"

Dead silence.

"Power goes on, you got to relax. That's the main knack to it. Minute you tense up, you got the rig taking orders, you twitch, like you're going to fall, rig's going to over-react and you'll lose it. Some like it set real loose, some want a hair-trigger react-time, you got your choice, sir—this one's set fast, I can take it down half."

"I'll take your judgment on it," Fitch said, downright civil.

"How much time you got to try this?"

"I don't know," Fitch said. He never looked at her while she was working, she never took liberties with the situation. "Maybe none." Fitch took a breath and let it go, said, into the com, "I got that."

"We got a weapons interface," she said. "We can patch right into the rig's systems, if you got a gun with an I/O plug, ranging, tracking, auto-fire, anything you got."

Pure smartass arrogance. Lucky if the ship carried side-arms that good.

Hell if Fitch was going to let her near anything of the kind if they did.

"We got plain sidearms," Fitch said after a moment, "be lucky if we get a target."

Different Fitch than she'd ever heard… tired man, mostly civil man, with a muscle tic in his right arm and skin cold as a corpse right now.

Hell of a pair they made, Fitch complaining, finally, hoarsely, "What the fuck you doing, Yeager?" when she was shaking so bad she couldn't get the screwdriver seated. "Sorry, sir," she said. She was shaking, he was shivering, the thing kept slipping, Fitch being turned at a godawful angle at the time, while she was trying to get the main body joints to max-set.

Somehow, she was mostly on auto by then, she got the plastron put together, got the right sleeve and gauntlet on, and she bit her lip and did little screws until Fitch himself made a com-call to Goddard for hot coca and sandwiches.

Breakfast or supper, she didn't even remember. Mike Parker brought it up, didn't say anything. She remembered dimly that Parker and NG were down there committing an act of mutiny, that all Fitch had to do was discover that somebody'd screwed with the lock downside…

Five quick guesses who'd go up on charges.

She didn't have any appetite left. She just chewed and swallowed big lumps, washed them down with coca and wished it was beer.

Wished it was a good stiff drink of the vodka down in their makeshift quarters, most of all. But if alcohol hit her system right now she'd just be gone, out, zee'd in ten seconds.

Something came in that Fitch didn't like. She watched him listening to Goddard or whoever-it-was, frowning, shaking his head a little.

"I got that," he said to Goddard, which was as much as he had ever said.

"What's going on, sir?" she finally asked, just to have tried.

Fitch gave her a cold look, said, finally, "Just an on-going problem.—Let's get the rest of it. Promise you, if this thing runs, you get a sleep break."

If this thing doesn't run, she thought, thinking about pumps and servos blowing, filters going, all over the rig, I'd rather shoot myself.

"Let's get it then," she said, and picked up the right sleeve, to mate it up.

All those little joints, all those little screws, right down the elbow and wrist and finger-joints.

She was half-blind when she finished. She really thought about powering Fitch on without a warning, because Fitch was shaky-wobbly himself, and she had this vision what Fitch could do when the wobbles hit the body sensors.

But she didn't—didn't want to start a war where one wasn't, right now, didn't want to take a halfway civil Fitch and make a fool out of him.

"Tell you, sir," she said, in the croak of a voice she had, "you been standing long enough, if we got time, you better get some rest. If you power on when you got the shakes it'll throw you, don't want it to pitch you on your ass."

"Where's the switch?"

She showed him. He threw it, threw it back off damn quick, because it rattled.

"It runs," she said. "Wobbles is you." And being diplomatic, as Teo would say: "Most take a fall, straight off. Rather you didn't, sir. Better you get some sleep."

"When it runs," Fitch said. "Runs means when it works, Yeager. Works means when it works for me, so you show me the switches, you show me the technicalities, you show me the systems, so we both know it works, then we'll both talk about getting some sleep. Hear me?"

Damn you, I do, sir. "Yessir. I hear you."

First thing you did, if you were instructing somebody, you put your own rig on. Fitch objected. "No need," he said; and she said, "There is, sir. Or I can call out the instructions from outside this locker till you got that rig under control. Sir."

Do him credit, Fitch did get the idea what she was talking about. And Fitch listened when she said Relax, and stood there watching while she stripped down and got into her own rig the right way.

She rattled and chattered too, when she powered on. She damped it down. "That's your adjustment, number three switch, sensitivity on the pickups. If you get the chatters you just screw it tighter till it stops. If you rattle loud enough you can draw fire."

Fitch didn't think that was funny.

"You got gyros that keep your balance," she said, no missed beat. Fitch was a helmeted, faceless form, bracketed in green-glowing readouts from her faceplate display, 360° vision compressed and projected in a green shadow band on the top and bottom of her faceplate—Fitch's slight movement getting his hand and alternately his body bracketed in a stutter of yellow, his sounds amped up with a decibel readout ticking and flashing in her lower left. She took his hand and guided it to the first of the controls under the collar.

"You can see your hand, bottom 360 display, you got to get used to the distortion. This is lock, this is gyros, this is free-movement, three position switch, first over, see the blinking display, right corner of your screen, tells you that's switch two, position B, that's stabilizing on, A is lock, C is free. Got that?"

"A is lock, B is gyros, C is free."

"Rig tends to feel like it's out of balance. Different center of gravity, but don't forget those big boots under you. Put it on B, the gyros keep your balance and you got to really fight it to kneel or fall down. I'd advise you keep it on B a while. Switch three's your sensitivity. I'd put it 85%. It's going to wear on you some, but better that than falling down. I keep mine at 150, amp to the rig's max at 300, but I been using these things twenty years. You don't need switch four, we got no base station, so that's no good.—Feel steadier at 85?"

"Cumbersome," Fitch said. "Stiff."

"You can designate sections for different amps, but it's overall sloppy. Put three up to 90, just up a point or two as you feel like it, but be careful when you start passing the hundred mark. Higher you set that amp-switch, that's the way the rig reads all your muscle twitches. At a hundred it'll move that much faster, hit that much harder, grip that much tighter. It's incremental. At 150, a guy can break a gunstock with a squeeze, and most guys never set the total rig over 250. You move gentle, handle everything like it was blown glass, don't jerk. Everything you do is amplified. Mass is more. When you get moving, you got to allow more to stop. Running stride's a float, light as you can, max-set walk's a lot the same. You got to be light on your feet. If you fall, don't fight it, don't jerk, fall won't hurt you, just take it and get back up.

—Going to take the gyros off, now. Relax. Just stand. Lift the arm. Gently."

"Damn!" Fitch said, when the rig hummed and flexed. A little jerk. Her arm and his crashed together and he broke a locker handle stumbling backward and forward.

She caught him, steadied him. She could hear the breathing, heavy gasps over the helmet-com.

Man not used to not being in control.

Man exhausted, mad as hell, and maybe a little scared.

He jerked, a rattle and stutter all up and down the joints, he lurched free and swung the arm further than he wanted, but he caught himself.

"That's pretty good," she said. "If you swing like that, you got to brace back harder than you would. Mass again. —Who're we supposed to use these on, you mind to say, sir?"

He didn't say anything for a minute. But she could hear the breathing.

"Suppose you just do your job," Fitch said, "explain the rest of these switches and stick to business."

"I got no problem with that, sir, except we got hundreds of switches, I take it our time is limited, and if I knew precisely what we got to deal with, I could figure out what functions you better know. Sir."

Silence. Then: "Suppose you don't be a smartass, Yeager, and you got a notion to stay alive. Let's just learn to move this thing."

"Yessir," she said hoarsely, with the wobbles in her joints and the readouts blurring and a real tight grip on her temper. "You got a good initial balance on your switches. Let's try walking."

He managed it fine at 95 and a hundred, upped it to 110 and did tolerably well—managed to stand the first time at 110 with the gyros when she hit him in the gut; didn't fare so well on the second try without—hit the lockers, but he didn't hit her hands hard when he bounced forward on the recovery.

"You got a real aptitude, sir." She adjusted her amp, shoved him at 130. He hit the lockers, bounced forward, she bounced him back, he got better at staying on his feet.

"You want to find out about the targeting, sir? Question of weapons?"

She kept after him, put her suit on lock finally and just rested, drilled him on the basics, droned through the standard new-skut lecture, sometimes with her eyes closed, but he couldn't know that.

"You got four settings, one's for right-handers, one's for left, some don't care, number one's autofire, skip that, we ain't got it, set it to 2, see the yellow bracket pop up on your foot there, sir, that's a fiber-optics in your right glove, gives you a fair idea what you got your gun generally pointed at. You can adjust the focus, rig understands spoken commands, you say Program On, Target, Manual, you say Cancel to stop it—" Flutter of grid and markers across her own rig's faceplate, that stopped with Cancel. "You can tell it left/right, up/ down, tell it Set when you're happy—"

"Got it," Fitch said. Fitch wasn't sounding real focused himself.

"Think we got the basics," she said. She hoped. "Give you the verbals next try if I got time. Toggles are more reliable, some voices the pickup just doesn't get a hundred percent, don't know why somebody can't make a programmable that can tell sit from shit.—You want to get out of that thing, now, sir?" She didn't wait for a confirmation, she didn't want to hear no, she just came up and guided his hand to the master release. "There's your tension-straps. Left is on, right is off, you let 'em up and you unlatch, ever'thing just exactly like a hard-suit, once she's built and mated, same direction on the latches—sleeves first, top, boots and breeches—hold on, there, let me get the hanging-hooks, sir."

She unscrewed the sleeve-rings, helped him unmate the right one, he got the left, got his own top-section off, helmet and all, once she had it hooked, and he ducked out of it, sweat and grease to the waist, while she got her own joints unscrewed and unmated, and her own hooks on the shoulder-rings.

Fitch looked like he was going to fall on his face, white and sweating and wobbly as he wiped off and started to get his clothes on.

No sympathy, you sum-bitch. Her back reminded her of old debts, and oh, God, she wanted a beer.

Fitch was mopping his face, standing there with his clothes half together while she was putting hers on. "All right, Yeager, you're off. You got maybe six hours."

She blinked, too stupid to find the catch in that.

"Get!" he said.

She zipped up. "Can I draw a beer, sir?"

"Screw any skuz you want, drink, get some sleep, any way you can, long as you can get your ass up here cold sober when I want you. Hear me?"

"Yessir! Thank you, sir."

"Get!"

She shoved her feet into her boots, wobbled her way out onto the bridge where Goddard was still on watch, got into the lift, propped herself against the wall and leaned there with her head pounding and her knees trying to melt under her.

She didn't even go to the locker where their quarters was set up, she went staggering on up the curve, into Engineering, up to where NG was working, and startled hell out of him.

"Got a six-hour," she said. "We got Fitch's sweet goodnight. How you doing?"