Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) (15 page)

Mako laughed but didn’t argue the point.  He found that the suit was easy to get out of and that when he returned from another visit to the shower unit, he was able to put it on without assistance.

‘Twenty six seconds.’  Rangi informed him, though Mako had not realised he was being timed.  ‘We time that from first touch of the suit to helmet seal,’ he explained.  ‘Fleet regulations require crew to be able to get into a suit in less than twenty seconds in pitch black and freefall.  Minnow standards are rather higher and any member of the crew who took longer than eight seconds to get into a suit would be detailed for agility training.  But twenty six seconds is respectable for your first time.  It’s actually quicker in freefall once you’ve mastered the technique, which I’ll teach you another time.  For now, don’t worry about it.  There’ll always be a member of the crew nearby responsible for getting you suited up if an alert goes off.  Anyway, let’s get you settled on the command deck, okay?’

Mako felt self conscious, returning to the command deck and being the only person in a spacesuit, but nobody made anything of that or of seeing the medic instructing him in freefall safety. 

This turned out to be somewhat alarming.  There was a kind of footrest underneath the datatable that closed down gently onto his ankles when he hooked his feet through it.  Rangi showed him how to release it with sideways kicks, but then, with his permission, locked off the safety on it just in case he should release it by accident.  There was also a harness that came out from under the chair and strapped him in, criss cross over his shoulders and his thighs.  And as if that wasn’t enough, a grab-bar clipped out from under the rim of the table, like a padded handrail, which Rangi told him to hang on to with both hands once the launch started.  Even as he was explaining that, the skipper touched a hand to a control.  ‘Attention on deck,’ he said.  ‘Last calls, ladies and gentlemen.’

Mako, after just a little hesitation, used the comscreen they made available to him on the datatable and called his family.  His son was linked into the call already and Mako saw his eyes widen with shock at the sight of him.  This was nothing to his daughter’s reaction.

‘Dad!’  She practically shrieked.  ‘You’re in a
spacesuit!’

That made him laugh.  His heart was beating faster now and there was an odd hollow feeling in his stomach, but there was a kind of exhilaration to it too and his daughter’s astonishment just made him bubble up with mirth.

‘Well, I’m on a spaceship!’  He pointed out, and grinned.  ‘I can’t talk long – we’re about to start our launch run, and comms will go off, then.  So I just wanted to say bye, you know – no big drama.  I may be able to send you some messages on other ships, but don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a while, okay?’ he smiled, particularly, at his wife, and she smiled back, though she too was looking rather amazed.

‘You just look so different!’  She told him, but having given him a searching look, broke into a grin.  ‘Excited, though.  Are you enjoying it, love?’

Mako nodded. 
‘Very
much,’ he said, which was true.  However wobbly his stomach might feel at the moment, he was feeling thrilled at the prospect of going out there, out into the wildest of wild places, venturing upon the perils of space.  ‘But I have to go – we’re getting into position for the launch.  I love you all.’

He parted from them with eager waving and calling out from his children and a final, ‘Take care, love,’ from his wife. 

‘All right,’ said the skipper, a couple of minutes later, over the PA.  ‘Last call for anyone who wants to get off.’  He gave Mako one of his quick, attractive smiles.  ‘I always say that,’ he explained, making it clear that this was not aimed at him, as there was a cheer from below.  ‘Ship tradition.  And we are going to sealed airlocks…’ he was watching a screen, and tapped a control, ‘now.’

They moved into position amidst a flurry of exchanges between the ship and the port authority station, between the skipper and the engineer and between the Exec and command deck team.  Every seat was occupied now.  Everyone else had suited up too by then and there was indeed a good deal of furtive rubbing of lucky talismans going on.  Though Alex von Strada, Mako noticed, wasn’t doing anything like that.

‘No, I don’t have a talisman,’ the skipper commented, seeing that the inspector was looking at him speculatively.  ‘I do, however, have a launch ritual.  I always make sure I’m leaving port with a ship in the peak of condition that’s been strip-down prepped by a first class crew and inspected by some of the finest officers in the Fleet.  For ensuring good luck on the patrol, I find that answers the purpose very well.’

Mako caught on after a second and grinned, though the skipper was acknowledging final launch clearance from the control station by then.  A nod of confirmation from Buzz and ‘All ready, sir,’, and Alex gave a nod.

‘Thrusters, engage,’ he said, and a moment later, ‘Engines, engage.’

For the first few seconds Mako thought they must have been making fun of him after all, winding him up to have a laugh when the actual launch turned out to be nothing at all.  The ship had gone into freefall and emergency lighting, to be sure, but the freefall was actually quite pleasant now that the implant meant he didn’t feel sick.  He could sense some vibration but nothing very much.

Then the ship gave a tremor as if it had just ridden through some kind of turbulence and he saw the skipper lay a hand flat on the datatable with a happy little smile.  The ship trembled again and seemed to buck a little, straining Mako against his harness.  Then, by the feel of it, they seemed to be going into some kind of long, somersaulting spin.  All the hatches were closed now but several of the crewmembers packed into the command deck began a low kind of roaring, as Mako had seen people doing on rollercoasters as the carriages climbed up for the drop.  It was getting louder and rising in pitch, too, as the intensity of the shaking increased very rapidly to teeth-jolting impact. 

Mako felt his head snap back and was convinced that the ship had gone into a mad spin.  Only the calm demeanour of the officers and the smile on the skipper’s face told him that it was okay.  Thrown up against his harness again by an even more violent impact, it felt as if the ship was running into things, as if it were slamming into some kind of waves of resistance, throwing them up and spinning them around. 

Then the noise started.  There was a creak of metal under extreme stress immediately followed by a little staccato popping that sounded like something electronic shorting out.  From directly above came a groan that sounded as if the hull might rip apart at any moment and from below came the awful, tearing sound of deck plates grinding against each other.  

They were coming up on the launch tunnel, a long path of satellites generating a crackling shimmer of energy like liquid lightning.  Mako was unable to see it properly because the vibration was so intense now that everything was blurring.  He was amazed that the officers could even see the screens, let alone speak normally, evidently unconcerned by the ship apparently coming apart at the seams.

‘Abort or go, sir?’  Buzz enquired formally, his hand on a control panel.

‘Go, go, go,’ said Alex, in what was evidently an equally formal response.  With that, the Exec moved his hand away from the abort-slap, hitting the ‘brace for launch’ slap control instead. 

‘Brace, brace,’ he said, and Mako saw him taking hold of the grab bar himself to keep his arms from flailing as the ship went through the launch.  Everyone else grabbed on tight too and the anticipatory roaring exploded into adrenalin howls.

This is it, Mako thought.  We’re crashing.  I’m going to die right here.  He could hear himself screaming but there was just no way he could even begin to make sense of what was going on.  It felt like being put into a high speed blender.  He was being spun and tumbled at dizzying speed whilst at the same time the ship was jolting and bucking like a wild bronco ride, and vibrating, too, fit to shake rivets loose.  From above came a terrible rending sound that must surely mean that the hull had wrenched apart.  It just seemed to be going on and on with a feeling of terror and utter helplessness.  

He had time for a pang of grief that he would never see his wife and children again, but most of his attention was taken up merely by the imperative need to hang on.  His hands were clamped around the grab bar, white-knuckled, as if hanging by his fingertips over the edge of a cliff. 
‘ARRRRRRRGH!’

And then in the next heartbeat it stopped.  There was one final lurch and then a miraculous calm with the vibration easing off at once.  There was no more jolting, no more awful tearing noises.  The ship was just cruising as effortlessly as it had when leaving the system. 

‘Green, all green, sir.’  Buzz Burroughs reported, a huge grin on his face.  The rating at the helm was whooping and punching the air as everyone cheered.  Rock music came blasting out, which all the crew either cheered or laughed or joined in with singing as they reactivated consoles and got busily to work.

‘
Gonna fly, gonna fly, gonna gonna fly for ever…’

Mako sat panting, still hanging onto the grab bar with such force that his hands were hurting from the grip.  He could hardly believe that he had survived.

‘Are we all right?’ he asked, though he could see that they were, really.  He jut needed to hear it to believe it.  ‘Is the ship okay?’

‘We’re good, the ship is fine.’  Alex assured him with an understanding look.  ‘That was a good launch.’

‘Sweet!’ said the helmsman and patted the helm console.  ‘Who’s my darlin?’ he picked up singing again, giving the helm another pat as he did so, ‘
’Cos baby, you and me were born to fly.’

Mako found himself laughing, partly in relief and partly, admittedly, with a touch of adrenalin fuelled hysteria. 

‘Woo hooo!’ he yelled, and punched the air himself, feeling that the moment justified some release of the energy now pumping through his veins.  He got a look of warm, friendly approval from Buzz Burroughs for that, too, and a look of amusement from the skipper.  ‘And no,’ Mako declared, on such a high that he was feeling no inhibitions, ‘I do
not
need to go change my underwear.’

He got a cheer for that but it was evident that even with the pumped-up atmosphere and singing along with the music, the crew were getting very purposefully to work, so he controlled himself and stayed quiet, then.  He had hardly had time to catch his breath before final signals were exchanged with the launch-clearance station and they curved away, heading out into deep space.

____________________

Chapter Six

Mako was just amazed by how quickly the system vanished behind them.  He had seen this view of Chartsey thousands of times on holovision.  ABC used a view from deep space as part of their station logo, zooming in on the system before a montage of shots of the capital world’s most famous sights merged into a montage of some of ABC’s most famous award-winning journalists and studio presenters, focussing down to the studio that was on then. 

Now, Mako felt that he was in that montage but in reverse, with home, work, his city, the planet and the system rushing away.  He was shocked to find that having looked away for a few seconds, when he looked back he could no longer distinguish Chartsey on the visual scope that Buzz had provided for him.  There were a myriad stars there, and nothing to distinguish the capital’s.  The only ships on their scopes, now, were the ones that were in their vicinity on the Sharfur route. 

They were not, he noted, going particularly fast – the readout on the watch screen showed L11.  He’d been told that the ship would cruise at L24 and might reach L29 in pursuit.  The slow speed, however, seemed to be an operational decision rather than any problem with the ship.  It meant that they were overtaking the flow of yachts at a rate that gave them a minute or so to exchange communications with each of them in passing.  This, Buzz explained, included a routine timecheck as well as enquiry as to whether they needed assistance.

They had been launched for just seventeen minutes when they ran up to their first distress signal.  Mako had just got back from de-suiting and was enjoying a post-launch coffee on the command deck when the next blip coming into the leading edge of heatscan showed up flashing red.  

‘Here we go,’  Buzz said, in a wry tone, getting up as he said it, and at the same time, a whining alert sounded through the ship, overlaid by an official, impersonal voice.  ‘All hands stand by.  Snatch party alpha to primary two.  All hands stand by.  Snatch party alpha to primary two.’ 

‘Sorry, we have to take your coffee.’  One of the crew came over to the datatable, and Mako surrendered his mug at once.

‘Should I do anything?’ he queried.

‘No, you’re all right there.’  Martine Fishe answered.  She was the corvette’s Second Lieutenant, a lady with an air of friendly common sense.  She had come to take over the watch, once they’d stood down from launch stations.  Both the skipper and exec had remained on the command deck, though, which seemed to be routine. 

Now he saw why, because the likelihood of distress-call response in these first few hours was so high that they’d have been called to the command deck repeatedly anyway.   

‘This is a standby alert, which you will very soon get used to because we go to standby like that,’ she snapped her fingers.  ‘We’re a crack ship, see.  We’re now moving in to long-range comms to establish the nature of the problem.  If it’s serious, we will go to full alert.  If that happens, we’d need you to suit up and maybe go to the wardroom.  But standby just means clearing away things like hot drinks to be ready in case.  It also brings relief crew to stations.  And the snatch team, there,’ she indicated a group of five crew who were gathering the other side of the hatchway, in the little space between the port and starboard airlocks.