Torchship (8 page)

Bobbie kicked away, reloading
as she soared across the cabin. The intruder turned slowly, looking for her out
the corners of the faceplate. She grabbed a shelf and steadied herself. This
time she aimed for the heart. She saw the bullets make holes in the suit. The
intruder jumped for her. Bobbie leapt, not fast enough. A hand grabbed her
ankle painfully hard. It swung her through the air. Her head struck the deck.
The gun flew out of her hand. “That hurt, bitch.” The intruder swung her again.
This time she went limp.

The intruder released her and
took a tube from a belt pouch. A dollop of goo went into each bullet hole on his
chest. Then he began a search of Bobbie’s body. Once a magazine, knife and
lipstick were removed he stuffed her into a heavy-duty bubble.

***

Mitchie followed the battle
by sound. Gunshots and hatches slamming were audible. The grenade rattled the
bridge. When the shots stopped and more hatches slammed she assumed the worst.
Bing had reported she and Billy were trapped in the hold. Captain Schwartzenberger
had ditched his handcomm before setting up his ambush. Clearly he hadn’t
succeeded. That left her.

By the time the hatch to the
hold closed Mitchie had her suit on and the bridge almost depressurized. One
window panel had its edges painted red. She carefully armed the explosive bolts
and yanked the emergency release. The panel flew point-first into the ice and
stuck. She took a deep breath and listened for leaks in her suit. Not a single
whistle or squeak. She pushed the maneuvering pack out the hole and followed
after.

Her goal was to zip past the
kidnapper and cut his suit open. Right now she was on the step of the plan
before that: “Don’t let him see you and shoot you.” The chasm was only starlit
so she should be safe as long as she clung to the ice. She crept around the
hull to where she could just peek at the shattered cargo hold window.

The red emergency lights
shone out through the window. The remaining shards of transparent aluminum
refracted the light in bright beams across the ice. One shadow moved. A little
study resolved it as a spacesuit holding a rescue bubble under one arm. He shuffled
across the floor on magboots. Every dozen or so steps he would stop and turn
back and forth in place.

Mitchie crept slowly over the
ice sticking to the deepest shadows. More of the hold came into view. The tents
and a few emergency bubbles still held pressure. Hopefully all the passengers
had survived. She froze as the intruder approached the window. He faced her in
clear line of sight. He turned back and forth in place then moved a few meters
along the window.

This time as he turned around
a light shone clear on his faceplate.
Blind!
thought Mitchie. The
intruder needed to turn to see out the edges of the cracked faceplate. He
couldn’t see where he was going. Mitchie sheathed her utility blade. A new plan
was bubbling up.

The intruder had found the
biggest gap in the window. He broke his boots loose from the deck with a hop
then gave a puff of maneuvering jets to float through the gap. Once clear of
the ship he started twisting about, trying to get a good look at the chasm
walls. Mitchie didn’t bother firing her maneuvering pack.
Bobbie first
.
She leapt hard, slamming into the intruder, and knocking the bubble out of his grasp.
The bubble floated up toward the stars.

The intruder wrapped arms and
legs around Mitchie painfully hard. She fired her thrusters on full.

Transparent aluminum achieved
its optical properties by forming a single huge crystal. Instead of a fog bank,
bouncing light among the droplets, it was an aquarium tank letting photons go
straight through. When fractured it split along the planes of the crystal. The
edges produced were single lines of aluminum atoms. TAl instruments were widely
used in surgery.

The intruder groped for a
hold on Mitchie’s arm while she steered him onto one of the window shards. The
arms flung wide as the tip pierced the propellant tank on his back. Mitchie
kept her thrusters on until the tip came through the intruder’s chest and
punctured her suit. She stopped thrust and kicked away from the ship. A red
circle appeared on the crazed-white faceplate. Another overlapped it a few
seconds later.

Mitchie looked down at her
belt pouch. Her hands shook too much to get it open. She pushed her left hand
onto her chest, quieting but not eliminating the hiss of escaping air. The
other finally got the pouch open. She bounced off the chasm wall. Her right
hand pulled the sealant tube out. Trying to take the cap off without releasing
the pressure on the leak sent the tube spinning off. Catching it took both
hands. She panted frantically trying to fill her lungs from the thinning air.
First glob of sealant bounced off the suit. Second was in place. She smeared it
flat. Blessed silence. Another squeeze of sealant to thicken it. Air still felt
thin. She twisted the oxygen valve. A cold breeze blew on her cheek. Mitchie
took deep breaths, feeling her pulse slow.

The intruder’s faceplate was
solid red. His limbs swayed limply. Mitchie looked away, scanning the chasm for
Bobbie’s bubble. She headed up the wall, waving her flashlight about in hopes
of seeing a reflection.

***

The hold was calm now. Bing
had used a pair of magnets to roll her bubble over to the suit locker. She
could pop her bubble, open the locker, grab out her suit, slide it on, and seal
it up in . . . about sixty seconds. Which is about how long it would take to
pass out from hypoxia. And assuming that a full body case of vacbite wouldn’t
slow her down. So she just waited, rehearsing how to do it without any missed
steps, hoping someone else would come along in a suit before her bubble’s air
ran low.

Professor Tsugawa was in his
pressure tent. He also had a bubble with him so he had plenty of air available.
He kept worrying about his data. The observatory was vacuum-rated but he had no
idea how well it stood up to the explosion. One of those gunshots would have
completely destroyed it. He couldn’t see it from the window of his tent.
Without that data this whole trip would have been a waste. Part of him felt
guilty that he wasn’t worried about the lives at risk from the violence. But he
was just an innocent bystander and no one else was going to worry about the
data.

Billy’s improvised leak seal still
held tight. Other things in the big tent were less stable. “I know that, and
you know that, but the captain said you’re underage, so the age on this ship is
higher than that! Stay at your damn end of the tent.”

Bing had twisted her bubble
around until she could look over the rest of the hold. The intruder looked very
dead on that spike. She wondered how that’d happened. Two tents were occupied
and a couple of rescue bubbles floated loose in the hold. She’d seen all three
grad students donning bubbles when the blow-out happened. Hopefully the third
was safe in the chasm. She suppressed a vision of a bubble drifting against a
window shard and being blown about by air escaping from the cut.

“Mitchie to
Fives Full
.
Anyone there?”

Bing grasped her handcomm. “Bing
here. How are you? Where are you?”

“I’m outside. No injuries.”
If
you don’t count some vacbite to the chest
. “I have Bobbie, she’s
unconscious.”

“Good. Someone took out the
intruder. I don’t know what’s up with Mussa.”

Guo broke in. “I took Musha
out. Lower deck is shafe now.”

“You’re alive!” cried Bing. “You
sound like hell.”

“Jusht woozy,” answered Guo. “It’sh
wearing off.”

“Is the lower airlock
working?” asked Mitchie.

“Yesh.”

“Anybody else around?”
broadcast Bing.

“I’m here, fine, with two
uninjured passengers,” reported Billy.

“Good. Captain, are you out
there?” asked Bing. No reply.

Guo waited in the corridor as
the inner airlock door opened. Mitchie handed him the bubble before taking off
her helmet. She studied him for a moment. His face had a huge red blotch on one
cheek surrounding a small scab. “What’d the guy do to you?”

The mechanic shrugged. “Had a
dart pistol. Got me in the face as I told him he wasn’t allowed down here. So I
woke up strapped down in my acc couch. Idiot had no idea there were extra
release buttons. I waited until he was distracted, popped the straps, and let
him have it with a wrench.”

When they reached the
converter room Mitchie saw Mussa tied up in a corner. The wrench had clearly
been a 5cm crow’s foot. The dent in the thug’s skull was so large she was
surprised he was still breathing.

“Let’s see what she needs.”
Guo unzipped the bubble. Bobbie was limp but had strong breathing and pulse. “Pupils
aren’t bad. Mild concussion at most.” He took a drugpatch from the first aid
kit and applied it to her neck.

“Did you give Mussa anything?”
asked Mitchie.

“Fuck no.”

“Well, we don’t want him dying
before he confesses. The other guy isn’t talking.” She grabbed another patch
out of the kit and applied to it Mussa.

“Hey, he could’ve waited
until we had a headcount. We don’t know how many other injured we’ve got.”
Mitchie ignored Guo while checking Mussa’s restraints. The mechanic had used
fuel wire on the wrists and ankles. Looked like he’d cut circulation off to the
hands. That didn’t bother her.

Bobbie started coughing. Guo
handed her a waterbulb. She sucked it dry before trying to talk. “Is John okay?
Have you seen him? He was hurt bad in the fight.”

“No, I’m sorry, we haven’t
had time to look for him. We just got you back,” answered Mitchie.

“Please look for him! It was
bad. He might not have much longer if he doesn’t get help.” The girl teared up.

“Well, you’re stable here, I’ll
see what I can do,” said Mitchie.

Guo strapped the first aid
kit onto her suit as she put her helmet back on. He followed her to the
airlock.

“Take care of her, okay? She’s
just a kid.”

Guo smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll
keep an eye on her. You be careful.”

Mitchie’s first stop was the
hold. She got Bing’s suit out of the locker and put it and the first mate’s
bubble in the hold airlock. Then she went outside again to enter through the
upper airlock. No evidence of the struggle was visible in the corridor. She
checked the captain’s cabin first. John’s body spun as it drifted. There was no
need to check for signs of life. The stun grenade had visibly crushed his
ribcage. He must have died instantly. She braced herself against the hatch and
gave the body a parade ground salute.

There was no sign of the
captain in his cabin. Bing’s across the hall was also empty of life. She looked
in the unused cabins by the hatch to the hold next. Schwartzenberger was
unconscious but breathing strongly. Mitchie applied a drug patch to him and
strapped him down in the bed. She reported in to Bing.

The mate had finished a
headcount of the passengers—all fine except for missing one student. “I’ll come
take care of Alois. Leave the kit there. You get to the bridge and see if we’ve
got any more visitors coming.”

“Aye-aye.” Mitchie headed
back out the airlock. The window panel she’d blasted free from the bridge had
stuck in the chasm wall. Some fiddling and scraping got her and it both on the
inside of the bridge. She put it against the window frame and started liberally
applying sealant goo. With her own tube and the one Captain Schwartzenberger
had opened to deal with the cannon shot holes she had barely enough. The
surviving tube went into her pouch. She gave the stuff ten minutes to harden
then started up the air vents. She felt her suit relax around her as the
pressure went up.

Once there was a full
atmosphere in place it only took her a few moments to work up the nerve to take
the helmet off. Her improvised seal held. Not that she’d want to take it
through an atmosphere. Or put more than a few gravs on it. She turned to the
comm console and activated the guard channel. “Any ships, any ships, this is
Fives
Full
requesting assistance. Repeat,
Fives Full
is requesting
assistance. Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

A Demeter-accented voice
answered immediately. “
Fives Full
, this FNS
Assaye
, here in
response to your distress call. Please relay your coordinates.”

“Navy, we are on an uncharted
rock. Approximate coordinates . . .” she reeled off the numbers from the
plotting table. “We require medical and engineering assistance. Also we’re
missing a rescue bubble, please watch for a beacon. Um, there may be a hostile
ship out there as well.”

“Roger,
Fives
. How many
casualties do you have?”

“Two dead, five injured.” She
used her handcomm to let the rest of the crew know help was on the way.

“
Fives
, we’ve been
asked to check on the status of your special passenger.”

No mystery who that was. “Injured,
stable, receiving care, in safe place.”

“Thank you,
Fives Full
.
We expect to rendezvous in two hours.”

“Looking forward to seeing
you,
Assaye
.”