Torchship Pilot Page 6

  The observation techs were both qualified with pistols. Mitchie issued them some of the ship’s weapons while lecturing them on how to handle prisoners. “Fusion crews wear skinsuits in combat. They’re flimsy, just for keeping them working while Damage Control fixes the air breach. But it also lets them jump out of their pod to attack you. We can’t open the pods to search them, the skinnies might have leaked. So any prisoner could have a knife or a gun. Three or four of them could take you down bare-handed. So if you feel threatened, shoot.”

  The hold hadn’t been repressurized. The techs’ body language still showed through their pressure suits. Jackson felt out of her depth. Hector had the stolid NCO mask on.

  “Ma’am, isn’t it, um, illegal to hurt prisoners?” asked the junior tech.

  “The regulations say if they accept their status as prisoners we have to treat them well. We’ve never taken prisoners in combat before so the regs are pretty vague. Given that we have six Diskers on this ship, five of them military, and zero security specialists, it wouldn’t be hard for a hundred prisoners to take over. So we tell them to stay in their bubbles and shoot them if they get out.”

  “What if they say they’re claustrophobic?”

  “Anyone who says he’s claustrophobic is lying or he wouldn’t be in a pod in the first place. Shoot him.”

  “Yes’m.”

  When neither had further questions Mitchie showed them how to keep a hundred lifepods from rolling all over the deck. Joshua Chamberlain had a net the size of the hold intended for securing irregular cargo. Folded into a bag it would keep the prisoners in place.

  She left them pulling the bundle out of the storage locker. They were only pulling three gravs of acceleration, letting the net bounce wildly as it uncoiled. She decided they’d be fine as long as they finished before the ship went to free fall and bounded over to Guo.

  Mitchie turned her transmitter off and stood tip-toe to press her helmet against Guo’s. “Did you catch all that?”

  “Yeah. Don’t like it but we need to be sensible. Let’s get geared up.”

  They went to the EVA gear locker. Shifting containers to make room for the sensors had put a double stack in front of the locker, making a snug changing room. Their pressure suits were skintight and tough enough to handle normal hazards. Rescue work called for adding the heavy duty coveralls. Putting that on required taking off the harness of straps and pouches covering the suits from knees to shoulders.

  Mitchie turned to grab a swinging strap and noticed Guo had paused with his harness half off. The suit did a very good job of displaying the definition of his shoulders. Apparently he’d been appreciating what her suit did as well. She dropped her harness to the floor and helped him finish with his.

  She snuggled into his chest and touched helmets. “We’ve got some time to . . . chat. If you want.”

  “Um, don’t do that.”

  “Why not? Heckle and Jeckle are too busy to interrupt us.”

  “Not that. It’s—do you have any idea how uncomfortable an erection is in one of these things?”

  “None whatsoever.” She grabbed his shoulders and lifted herself up to wrap her legs around his hips. “Describe it to me?”

  “Ticklish,” said Guo. Grappling him left her armpits exposed. He slid his fingertips into each of them. Mitchie squeaked and flung herself off of him. In any heavier acceleration she’d’ve wound up lying on the floor. A hand on the bulkhead let her land on her feet.

  Guo leaned down to touch helmets again. “We do need to talk about something. Why are you the one taking the maneuvering pack while I stay on the tether?”

  “It’s dangerous. Some of those Fuzies might want to keep fighting.”

  “Right. Which of us has been winning hand-to-hand fights?”

  “We’re tied in free-fall ones,” answered Mitchie. “And I’ve had the free-fall combat course.” Which hopefully would be enough for him to not push it to the point of rank and orders.

  Guo didn’t answer. He just took the coveralls out of the locker.

  The crew retrieved the first batch of prisoners with no trouble. Schwartzenberger maneuvered the ship into a cluster of beacons. Mitchie jetted out to retrieve lifepods, tossing them to Guo. He leapt out to catch them then used his tether to pull himself back to the cargo hold. A gentle shove passed each one to the observers who stuffed lifepods into the cargo net.

  Finding pods was easy. For the ones too far out to get a visual Guo had given her a directional antenna. “Don’t lose it,” he’d said. “It’s the one I used on Savannah.” Sentimental value aside it did of lovely job of locating distress signals.

  When all the nearby pods were collected Joshua Chamberlain moved to the next cluster on only its maneuvering thrusters. That took almost as long as refueling the maneuvering pack.

  After they stuffed the third batch of lifepods into the net Schwartzenberger called Mitchie on a private channel. “A couple of destroyers arrived to work SAR with us.”

  “Good.”

  “They’ve got a lot of maneuvering packs so they want to take over the free-floaters and leave checking the wreckage to us. Apparently they don’t pack protective gear. You up for that?”

  “Yes, sir. Already have the gear on.”

  “Right. I’m going to park us five hundred meters from the big piece.”

  “Aye-aye.”

  Mitchie crossed the gap slowly, looking for a good place to enter the wreckage. Places where the structure had fractured glittered with sharp edges and jagged debris. One side was rounded—melted metal now cooling. The hull side had some weapon emplacements but no airlocks.

  A thruster plume caught her eye. More rescuers? No—the dark cylinder was covered in thrusters and antennas. She switched to the ship emergency channel. “JC One to Vegetius, come in please. JC One to Vegetius.”

  “SIS Vegetius to Jay-see-one, we read you. Over.” The Shishi accent made her suddenly miss Billy. Guo and Bing must be exhausted from trying to cover his maintenance work and hers.

  “V, I have some EOD work for you.”

  “Say again, over?”

  “Scan for target—” she recited the appropriate coordinates.

  “Roger, scanning designated—HOLY FUCKING SHIT!”

  “V, I assess as Horsefly-class countermissile, but close enough.”

  “Standby, JC One, generating firing solution.”

  The wandering bomb had moved on in its search. Fortunately neither Mitchie nor her ship had been missile-like enough to satisfy it. She was outside the blast radius by now so didn’t kibitz the destroyer on its firing plan.

  She’d actually lost sight of it by the time the warship fired. She was still looking in the right area to see the explosion. “Thank you, Vegetius.”

  “Any time, JC One.”

  Studying her target found no better option than landing on the hull and picking her way inside through the broken areas. Mitchie picked a spot on the spinward edge of the hull. The maneuvering pack boosted her to matching speed as the edge came by.

  She threw the loop she’d tied in her tether line. It caught on one of the spikes sticking out from under the hull edge. The spike curved away as the wreckage spun. Mitchie kept going straight until the line went taut.

  Technically that was a straight pull. But her eyes switched reference frames. Mitchie fell to the hull, swinging on the line. A few blasts of the maneuvering pack put her feet-down and slowed her enough she could absorb the impact with her knees.

  The touch-down would have made a dramatic pose if she’d landed on the inside. Since she was on the outside of the wreckage centrifugal force promptly tossed her back up again. She had to hand-over-hand her way along the tether to get aboard.

  The safest opening turned out to be the most useful. The corridor reached through the wreckage. Debris blocked parts but light flashed through it when the wreck spun past Bonaventure’s sun.

  Criss-crossing lengths of tether across the opening made sure she wouldn’t fall out a
ccidentally. The maneuvering pack she tied to a beam. It was too big for inside work. Then she took time to call in. “JC One to Joshua Chamberlain. Aboard wreck, beginning SAR.”

  Captain Schwartzenberger answered, “Acknowledged. Be careful.”

  “Always am.”

  The captain turned his mike off. He wasn’t quick enough to hide his disbelieving snort.

  A lifepod sat a few meters up the corridor. Mitchie wondered what had kept it from falling out until she saw the spike puncturing the underside. The pod was still pressurized. Red ice sealed the puncture.

  Mitchie climbed to the other side. The porthole was covered in red. Pressing her helmet to it and shouting and slapping brought no answer. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do it. She forced down the memory and climbed up to the next intersection.

  For once Fusion designers had done something right. “LIFEPOD LOCKER” with an arrow was written on the bulkhead with glow in the dark paint. Following the directions took her to an empty locker surrounded by six inflated lifepods and one corpse in a plain uniform. Idiot used his last minutes to guilt trip his friends instead of finding another locker.

  Her utility blade took a ten meter length off the end of the coiled tether. Getting them to the opening would be easy enough. Guo would appreciate the ties when he tried to catch them. Getting the line knotted onto each pod’s D-ring took a few minutes.

  Once at the opening Mitchie had to wait for Joshua Chamberlain to come in view again. Captain Schwartzenberger had parked her in the plane of the wreck’s spin. As long as she released them at the right moment they’d go straight to the ship.

  Or at least close enough for Guo to grab them.

  “Incoming,” Mitchie transmitted as she let go. She knew the pods were going in a straight line but it felt like they were heading up in a curve.

  “See ‘em,” replied her husband.

  She headed back into the wreck.

  More corpses than survivors littered the wreck. Mitchie put marks at every intersection until she was more worried about her vacpen running out of ink than getting lost. More than half the total volume wasn’t worth exploring. Too hot, too radioactive, too crushed. No chance of survivors. But she’d found more than thirty live ones which made the effort worth it.

  Then she ran into Chief Donner, who responded to her offer of a nice POW camp with gunfire. She wished she’d found better cover that didn’t depressurize a compartment full of survivors. When that mess was over she counted the bodies. Fourteen. All of whom had been alive when Mitchie boarded. She kicked Donner’s corpse. “You stupid son of a bitch. Your buddies would be alive if you’d surrendered.”

  Pulling bodies out of the way, she headed out to look for survivors more willing to be rescued.

  Poking through the far side she noticed a banging sound when she put her hand on a bulkhead. It repeated. Six bangs, a pause, six more. Someone trapped in a compartment? It felt stronger when she moved to portside. A “KEEP OUT: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” hatch hung open.

  Mitchie went through it. Two compartments later the bangs could be felt through her boots. Looking through the next open hatch revealed the banger.

  A man in a Fusion heavy-duty pressure suit stood in a room filled with computer racks. He pulled a data crystal from a rack and pounded it against the bulkhead with a piece of debris. The shards of many more glittered around his feet.

  Mitchie’s radio was set on the standard suit emergency frequency. “Hey!” she yelled, drawing her pistol.

  He turned, saw her, and pulled a grenade from his belt.

  Mitchie ducked back through the hatch. The compartment had buckled from a shock wave. She bounced behind a ruptured bulkhead and took cover, only her head and pistol hand peeking out.

  The Fuzie came through the hatch feet-first. He grabbed the coaming and swung flat against the bulkhead.

  Mitchie lined her sights onto the center of his back but didn’t fire.

  In the computer room the grenade detonated. Several pieces of shrapnel came through the hatch and bounced around the compartment. One made a five-bank shot to crease Mitchie’s thigh.

  She bit down on a curse. Her left hand grabbed the rip in the coverall and pulled it wider. No blood. Good, the sting must be just vacbite.

  “I surrender,” said the Fuzie.

  Mitchie fumbled a square of vacctape off her spool and slapped it on the tear. The sting faded to ache.

  “I surrender,” he repeated.

  “Fine. Start by very slowly taking that belt off and tossing it away. And keep facing the wall.”

  “Okay.” The belt landed a few meters behind him. It had a pistol but no more grenades.

  “Stand at attention,” ordered Mitchie.

  That confused him, but he obeyed. Mitchie’s inner cadet pointed out his feet were improperly placed. She decided the beams and flanges crossing the ceiling they were standing on were a good excuse.

  She holstered her pistol. Vacctape stretched between her hands, she gently stepped up behind him. A brief hug stuck it to his waist and forearms.

  “What the fuck!” He thrashed about, unfortunately for him taking up all the slack in the tape. “I surrendered, dammit, what are you doing?”

  Mitchie backed to the other side of the compartment and drew her pistol. “This is what surrender means: you let me tape you up and tow you back to my ship. You obey everything else I tell you to do. Or I put some holes in you and nobody in the whole galaxy ever knows what happened to you.”

  He leaned against a bulkhead and glared at her.

  “I’ve got lifepods to rescue. What’s it going to be?”

  He slumped. “I surrender. What next?”

  “Lie down on your belly, feet toward me. Kick me and it’s a bullet.”

  Once he complied she taped his ankles, knees, and hands. On his back she wrote, “STORE SEPARATELY. DON’T UNWRAP.” Then it was a two hundred meter drag through twisty passages to her entry point.

  He was quiet until he saw the opening. “Where’s the shuttle?”

  “This is the Disconnect,” Mitchie said. “Shuttles are for rich people.”

  “How are we getting to your ship?”

  “Ballistics.” She’d been using a particular bent spar as her horizon reference. The moment Joshua Chamberlain crossed that she would release him.

  “You’re just dropping me? You can’t, that’s inhuman. I could be lost forever!”

  There she was. “They’ll catch you.” Mitchie let go.

  The Fusion officer screamed as he sailed off into the empty. Sometimes I love my job. Mitchie crawled up into the wreck again.

  Four lifepods later she’d run out of places to look. The rotation after sending the last one over was enough time to get all her gear together. Then she jumped off to float directly to her husband’s arms. If “directly” included a couple of maneuvering puffs. She slowed enough for them to embrace instead of stretching his tether for momentum absorption.

  “What’s with the leg?” he asked.

  “Suit scratch. Didn’t break the skin. Did you get the special guy?”

  “In the pressure suit? Yeah. He has a container to himself, secured for acceleration. You should have Bing check you for vacbite.”

  “I will,” promised Mitchie. “But I have some more work to do first.”

  Bonaventure System, acceleration 10 m/s2

  Guo had put the special prisoner in the unused dormitory container. The Fuzie was vacctaped to a bunk. He wore a stoic expression. Mitchie smiled at him as she came into the container. He kept the expression but she could see he had to work for it.

  She found the container’s life support controls and switched them from “stand-by” to “active.” The prisoner hadn’t needed it. His suit was still sealed tight. Mitchie wanted better air than her suit’s.

  She’d needed some things from her cabin for this task. The temptation to unsuit and use a real toilet had overwhelmed her. She’d given in, which made it even harder to suit up again an
d go into the depressurized hold.

  The container didn’t have an airlock. It had lost some air when Guo delivered the prisoner, and more as Mitchie entered. She could feel her suit relax as the life support brought the air back to normal pressure. A chair by the door caught her eye. She hooked it into the brackets next to the prisoner’s bunk. Sitting down she could still make eye contact with him, if he ever looked her way.

  The Fuzie’s suit had a display panel on the chest. A scowling ancient warrior took up most of the area. Some text clung to the edges, proclaiming his ship to be the FNS Terror, his post deputy chief engineer for damage control, and that the processor was overdue to be connected to an approved network for verification.

  A little exploring through the well-designed user interface gave her the communications controls. She turned off the radio and activated the external speakers and microphone.

  Mitchie took off her helmet. “There. Now we can talk privately.” Just him, her, and anyone listening to the recording. Hector had kludged together a recorder from his spare parts stock with amazing speed.

  The Fuzie kept staring at the bunk above him. “Commander William Wentworth. JSD700549339271.”

  “Lieutenant Michigan Long, Akiak Space Guard. I have a few questions for you.”

  “I’m not telling you anything.”

  “You will be talking to me. I’d like to make this painless if I can.”

  Wentworth answered with obscenities. Mitchie calmly muted his speaker. She reached under his neck to turn off both air valves in turn. A few taps on the display brought up the health readouts. Pulse and blood pressure were rising.

  The Fuzie thrashed in the bunk. The vacctape didn’t budge. He managed some impressive flexing of his torso. Mitchie reached into a thigh pocket. This could be tedious.

  She pulled out a battered hardcopy book. A shop on Bonaventure made them specifically for analog ship crews. The cover showed a couple standing in a furious blizzard. Her dress provided no warmth, other than to male viewers. His fur coat suited the climate well, or it would if he closed it instead of letting it fly in the wind to display all his chest hair. On a snowy slope behind them an escape pod burned. Mitchie turned to page 57.