Torchship (17 page)

Mitchie forced herself to crawl a few more meters, then
jumped up and ran to another room. After shooting and running twice more she
noticed a change. Max fired at a steady pace, seemingly picking targets at
random.

She passed Guo and Roark in the hall again. They were taking
turns firing Billy’s rifle. Neither had his deer-hunting experience, “But we
just need one lucky shot,” said Guo.

A bit later the captain stopped her in the hall. “Drink
this.” Mitchie intended to just take a few swallows but finished the bottle
before she realized it. “Eat.” He handed her a ration bar.

“Thanks.” When the first bite hit her stomach she realized
how hungry she’d gotten. Before taking another she asked, “Think he’ll give up
soon?”

“Not from what he said.” At her puzzled look
Schwartzenberger explained, “Right, you slept through his speech. He rolled up,
turned on a loudspeaker, and ranted for fifteen minutes about how we were
treacherous dogs, there was no law here to turn to, and he’d never sleep well
again until we were all dead. Then the shooting started.”

“Great. I’d better get back to work.”

A scream sounded. “Bing,” said the captain. He turned and
raced down the corridor.

Roark had gotten there first. He applied a bandage to a
divot in Bing’s arm. A rifle bullet had come through the wall and ripped
through her triceps. The bandage was high-tech stuff from a TFS first aid kit.
It snugged up to the wound so smoothly Mitchie could see the curve of the
exposed bone under it. The bandage sprouted lines as it reconnected blood
vessels by forming channels along its surface.

“Never seen one like that before,” said the captain.

“TFS gear,” said Mitchie. “The Disconnect can’t afford it
and the Fusion is afraid it’ll outsmart them.”

Roark gave Bing three injections. “She should be okay if we
get her some rest,” he said. A rifle bullet smashed through the room to their
left.

“God, I hate this,” said Schwartzenberger. “I want to have
the law on him. But there’s no law here.” His eyes went distant. “No law. Not
any law. No laws at all.” He stepped into the corridor. “Guo! Stop shooting!
Find some good cover!” A muffled acknowledgement came back. He went down the
corridor until he found an intercom panel. Mitchie followed curiously.

The captain fiddled with the intercom until it displayed “EXTERNAL
PA ON.” He said, “Okay, Max, you win.” Another rifle shot hit the dome. “I said
you win. We give up.”

The shooting stopped. An amplified voice came through the
broken windows. “Fine. Come on out. We’ll make it quick and easy on you.”

“No, it’s not going to be that easy. We’re going to all get
on our ship and fly away. You get the whole planet to yourself. Including all
the TFS toys in here. They’ve got some doozies.”

“You people killed two of my men,” growled Max. “I want
blood.”

“You’ve gotten blood. You already killed two terraformers.
Most of the people in here are wounded. One may die. But we’re still up for
fighting if you want more blood. We could get lucky. It only takes one bullet
to kill you. Here’s the deal. You and your whole crew go back to the hills.
Once you’re there we’ll go to the ship. Then we’ll take off and you’ll never
see us again.”

Yukio panted up the stairwell. “What are you doing? We can’t
leave! He’ll slaughter everything!”

Schwartzenberger glared at Mitchie. “Shut her up.”

Michigan had already shifted to Yukio’s left side to stay
clear of the wildly swinging gun. The terraformer didn’t see the tackle coming.
Yukio fell through the door marked “Atmosphere Lab.” The gun bounced off the
doorframe. Mitchie kicked it down the corridor.

Yukio got to her hands and knees. Mitchie kicked her in the
shoulder hard enough to put the taller woman on her side. A roll of vacctape
sat on a counter. She waved it in the terraformer’s face. “If you don’t behave
I’m going to tape your mouth shut. And this stuff will rip your lips off when
you remove it.”

“I won’t disarm the defense system,” Yukio threatened.

“That’d scare me more if Max hadn’t gotten through it. Now
are you going to be quiet or do I tape you?” Yukio clenched her jaw and nodded.

Captain Schwartzenberger bellowed, “We’re leaving in fifteen
minutes! Stay clear of the windows! Guo, get the west door open! Everyone else
get to work on stretchers!”

***

Billy’s leg had started bleeding again. “Told you crutches
were a bad idea,” carped Roark.

“I’m fine,” said Billy as he swung along. “That’s nothing.”

“Enough,” said the captain. It’s not like they had enough
hands to carry a third stretcher anyway. “We’re almost there.”

Fives Full
waited for them, unmolested by Max’s goons.
Billy pulled the crane remote out of his pocket and sent the elevator down. Schwartzenberger
and Guo carried Bing into it. Billy sent them up. At the shout of “Clear” he
brought it down for Jisi. The other terraformers carried her on and were sent
up. Some muffled shouting drifted from the cargo hatch. After a few minutes
another shout of “clear” came.

“Stop using that leg,” muttered Mitchie as they stepped in. “You’re
making it worse. Lean on the crutches.”

“My armpits are hurting.”

“Fine. Use the crutches until your armpits bleed, then stop.”

Billy busied himself with retracting the elevator into the
hold. Mitchie ran ahead of him to unhook it from the crane and secure it to its
brackets beside the hatch.

“Hook that back up,” ordered Schwartzenberger.

“Sir?” she asked.

“I want the stretcher cases strapped into bunks. Getting to
the hatch will be a lot easier with the crane than the ladder. Billy, you
supervise that. You two, come with me.” Mitchie and Guo followed the captain
over to the lower deck hatch, across the deck from the ladder going up.

He glared at them a moment before speaking. They shifted
uncomfortably, wondering if he intended to bring up last night’s expedition
again. His first question caught her off guard. “Long, have you done many
airless landings?”

“Um, some, sir. I’m not very efficient,” she stammered.

“Not worried about that. Kwan, can we reverse the turbines
while running the torch?”

That wasn’t something Guo had ever thought about before. “There’s
a set of interlocks to prevent that. I can remove them. Wouldn’t take long.”

“Good. Help him out with that, Long. I want to lift as soon
as we can.”

The pilot and mechanic looked at each other. They were
equally confused. Mitchie was more curious. “Sir, why do you want the
interlocks out?”

Schwartzenberger looked across the hold. Roark was forcing
more bandages onto Billy. No one over there paid any attention to the trio. “We’re
going to hover over Max’s camp. Burn it out. Reversing the turbines lets us run
the torch at higher thrust. I want to blast it as hard as we can.”

“That’s—that’s—sir, you can’t do that!” burst out Guo.

“We’d never be allowed to land on an inhabited world again,”
agreed Mitchie.

“Oh?”

She went on, “Every world has strict laws forbidding—”

The captain cut her off. “This world has no laws. There’s
nothing to keep us from doing whatever we want. Our employer wants Max smacked
down. So we’re going to do it. Hard.”

Guo nodded. Mitchie kept arguing. “If word of this gets out
we’ll be banned from every port.”

“Then we won’t tell them. We can keep our mouths shut. The
terraformers want to stay here. And Max’s people are going nowhere.”

The pilot wasn’t convinced. But she looked at the determined
look on his face and the gun on his hip and decided to stop arguing. “Aye-aye.”

Schwartzenberger waved them into the hatch. Billy tried to
coach Yukio and Roark through getting Jisi’s stretcher through the hatch. They
weren’t doing well. The captain climbed the ladder to them. “This won’t work.
Let’s unstrap her, I’ll carry her through, and we’ll put her back on the
stretcher.”

***

Mitchie stopped off in the galley to wash some of the grease
off her hands. Being there to hand tools and parts to Guo had sped up the task.
At least it had once she’d memorized where he wanted everything to go. He’d
tried to not complain much but the set of his jaw made it clear when she’d put
a tool in the wrong place. As she rinsed the last of the soap off she decided she
was fine with the guy maintaining her life support system being a
detail-obsessed control freak.

After drying her hands she pulled one of Bing’s blue pills
out of her pocket. This would need her to be at her best. She swallowed it dry.

Captain Schwartzenberger was already on the bridge when she
arrived. “Interlocks disabled, sir.”

“Good. The wounded and passengers are strapped in. Lift when
you’re ready.” He climbed into the co-pilot couch and fastened the harness
tightly.

“Aye-aye.” Mitchie secured herself, checked Guo’s readiness,
and started the turbines. The two of them had gone through the operations and
maintenance manual for the ship earlier. Apparently the manufacturer had never
imagined anyone intentionally setting the torch and turbines to work against
each other. They’d agreed to get some elbow room around the ship before trying
it.

She flipped on the PA—“Up ship!”—and throttled up the
turbines to lift off. “We’ll light the torch at twenty klicks, sir.”

“Very well,” said the captain.

She let the ship slow to a hover at that altitude. The
turbines were still working hard to produce enough thrust from the thin air.
She left the converter room intercom locked on. If the ship started to get out
of control she might not have time to hit an extra button. “Ready for cold
start.”

“Initiating cold,” answered Guo. A trickle of water began
dripping from each of the sixty-four nozzles ringing the flat base of the ship.

“Heat it up,” directed Mitchie.

“Heat aye.” The converter began heating the water, first to
supercritical steam then plasma. The nozzle plumes merged into one big flame
pressing against the base of the ship. As she felt the torch thrust come up
Mitchie backed off the turbines to keep them at a hover. She couldn’t help
thinking that the rocket exhaust had to be visible from Max’s camp.

When the turbines went to idle she called, “Hold thrust
steady. Shutting down turbines.”

Guo echoed, “Steady aye. Shutdown, aye.”

Mitchie powered down the turbines and confirmed that the
blades had stopped spinning. “Turbines shut down. Ready for reverse thrust.”

“Okay, reversing turbines. Stand by.”

After two minutes went by Captain Schwartzenberger asked, “How
long is this going to take?” He’d never reversed
Fives Full’s
turbines
before. The main use for the capability was adding delta-V to aerobraking plane
changes, an aggressive maneuver he considered gambling.

“At least ten minutes. Maybe twice that. He has to crawl
into the accessway for each turbine and switch a valve manually.”

“All right.” The captain lay back with a patient expression
on his face. After five minutes with no word from Guo he started drumming his
fingers on the edge of his couch.

Mitchie enjoyed the delay. It was her last few minutes of
not committing a capital crime.

Guo finally reported, “Turbines set for reverse. I’m
strapped in.”

“Reversing aye.” Mitchie fired them up at low thrust.
Fives
Full
began to descend. She increased the torch thrust to bring them back to
a hover. Repeating that moved the ship down a few klicks. The turbines pushed
slightly harder in the denser air. “Guo, I’ve got a calibration mismatch. The
turbines aren’t producing the thrust they should.”

The intercom stayed silent a few moments as the mechanic
checked his gauges. “Yeah, we’re not getting full voltage in the power lines.
The distributor can’t handle serving both at once.” The captain cursed quietly.

“Can you give me an offset I can work with?”

“No. Looks to be a non-linear effect. Just handle it by
feel.”

Mitchie thought to herself
Doing it by feel is not how I
want to handle hovering ten meters up
but said only, “Acknowledged.” She
turned to the captain. “Ready to buzz them, sir.”

“Do it,” said Schwartzenberger.

Savannah’s atmosphere had been engineered to standard
pressure at sea level. Sucking in that dense air let the turbines push down on
the ship almost three times as a hard as gravity did. Mitchie set the torch to
not much more than that, letting the ship fall on the camp like a burning
meteor. Hopefully Max would be caught by surprise, or at least too shocked to
get away in time. She watched the ground altitude radar report their descent
and boosted thrust to bring them to a halt just above the camp.

She saw the blue sky above the bridge canopy replaced with a
gray cloud—steam from the reflected torch plume, smoke as everything burnable
ignited below them, and dust and other debris kicked up by their exhaust. The
ship suddenly pivoted off vertical. Mitchie pushed the torch to maximum thrust
and cut the turbine on the top side. They were six klicks east of their target
by the time she had the ship under control again.

Mitchie yelled, “What the hell was that?” into the intercom.

“I think we just fodded the hell out of number three
turbine,” answered Guo.

“Can we get it back?”

“Shut it down and restart it in idle. Let’s see if that’ll
clear out whatever junk it sucked in.”

“Okay.” The turbine was already shut down. Starting it up
meant blowing in a gentle puff of supercritical steam. The normal start-up
sequence didn’t work, but a stronger jolt did get it turning again. The ship
rocked back and forth as Mitchie adjusted the opposite turbine to compensate.

“It’s running at 83%. I think that’s as good as we’re
getting,” said Guo.