I know this one is a little short, but I am sure all of you will understand why it absolutely had to end. Did.
Just saying.
___________________________________________________
Screw it, she thought drunkenly. There’s nobody aboard but me and John, and he’d be even more pissed off than me if somebody did try to yank u s.
“Got something at zero-three-eight,” Sergeant Debnam said, as if her thought had summoned the announcement.
“Like what?” Kilgore asked, automatically swinging the nose to the indicated bearing. The question came out slurred by fatigue, she realized, but Debnam appeared not to notice.
“Dunno,” he said. “Could just be another chunk of debris — God knows there’s enough of that,” he added bitterly.
Got that right, John, she thought with equal bitterness. Four of the last five radar targets they’d intercepted had been just that: debris. The fifth had been a life pod, its transponder as dead as the young woman in the commander’s skinsuit. Kilgore didn’t like to think about how that young woman had died, alone in a dead pod, slowly bleeding to death from her internal injuries. But Debnam had gone EVA to bring her aboard and Kilgore had left her flight couch to help stow her, gently and reverently, in the passenger compartment beside the two skinsuited corpses they’d already recovered.
“Got no transponder, but it’s about the right size,” Debnam continued. “Range . . . forty-three-point-six thousand klicks. We’ve got an opening velocity of about two hundred KPS.”
“What’s that make our intercept time?”
The question was a dead giveaway of her exhaustion. That was the kind of solution she did in her head every day.
“’Bout . . . fifty seconds to match velocity at four hundred gravs, then three-point-eight minutes to actually catch it,” Debnam replied.
“Well, let’s go find out if somebody got a little luckier this time around,” Kilgore said, and goosed the impellers.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Should be able to see whatever it is about now, Paulette,” Debnam said four and a half minutes later, and Kilgore nodded.
She didn’t take her eyes off of her own panel, though. The debris field traveling through the Hypatia System seemed tiny and forlorn as the last memorial to the two thousand or so men and women who’d given their lives so that six million might live, but its components were moving across the system at better than 15,000 KPS and spreading laterally at over ninety KPS. That meant it was actually over a million kilometers in diameter — a hemisphere with a volume of almost eleven cubic light-seconds. Despite its spread, the debris was dense enough to present a genuine hazard to navigation, and Asteria’s particle screens weren’t as powerful as those of larger vessels. The good news, if it wasn’t obscene to call anything “good” in the wake of such carnage, was that her shuttle was traveling with the debris. It had been for several hours, now — many of the other rescue craft had exhausted their endurance and been forced to break off after conducting SAR over such a vast space on top of their grueling efforts to evacuate the orbital habitats — but at least that meant the relative velocities weren’t as high as they might have been.
She checked the chrono and shook her head, still unable to process all that had happened. Barely four hours since the Manty admiral launched his sacrificial attack. But during that time, the shattered wreckage — and life pods — of his ships had crossed the forty-eight light-seconds to Hypatia orbit and then traveled almost 11.3 light-minutes beyond it.
Search-and-rescue had devolved on the Hypatians even after the Solly CO — the most recent Solly CO, she reminded herself with vicious satisfaction — had thrown in the towel and headed for the system’s hyper-limit. The single Manty destroyer left had to stay covert, hidden, the sword of Damocles hanging over the Sollies’ head until they actually cleared the limit and translated out.
There were thousands of Solarian life pods far closer to Hypatia, and they were being picked up, too. Unlike people like Hajdu Gyôzô, Hypatians weren’t butchers. But those pods were near enough to the planet for over two thirds of them to make safe, independent reentry; the Manties weren’t, and the Hypatia System owed the Star Empire of Manticore. That was why every single shuttle, like Asteria, had swarmed out to pursue the wreckage of Admiral Jan Kotouč’s slain ships.
So far, according to the reports, they’d actually rescued fifty-seven Manties alive, most from the heavy cruiser Cinqueda. Under the circumstances, that was a near-miraculous number . . . but it represented less than three percent of the people who’d crewed the four Manticoran ships. They’d also intercepted almost forty life pods with live transponders which had either launched empty or whose passengers, like the young woman aboard the dead pod she and Debnam had recovered, had died of wounds in the end, despite escaping their doomed ships.
There were no live transponders left. There hadn’t been, for almost an hour now. All the active beacons had been intercepted, and they weren’t going to find any more of their star system’s saviors alive. But it didn’t matter. Not to Paulette Kilgore.
To the human eye, the system primary was little more than a brighter-than-usual star at this distance. Soon it would be impossible for any eye to pick out from the debris field’s position, yet that wreckage’s journey was only beginning. Her mind quailed from the thought of the debris’ lonely, eternal trek across the bottomless void. No Odysseus would return to Ithaca from this Troy, and her heart ached as she imagined any bodies they hadn’t recovered voyaging endlessly across the silent, un-winking, uncaring stars. Imagined those funeral lights, scattered across a tomb as vast as the universe itself.
Not going to happen, she thought drunkenly, eyes stinging. Not on my watch. Not on John’s. Any of these people who’re still out here are going home, by God!
She knew that wasn’t really so. She was on the ragged edge of collapse, Asteria was low on fuel, and they were eleven light-minutes from home. Whatever she and Debnam wanted — needed — to do, they had to turn back soon. At least they knew the wreckage’s vector, and System Patrol had planted huge radar reflectors and active transponder buoys in the heart of the field. Maybe the Manty Navy would be able to complete the work Paulette Kilgore would have to leave undone, after all. Maybe. She hoped so. But in the meantime —
"Got it!" Debnam said suddenly. "Coming up on your Number Three now.”
Kilgore looked at the indicated display, slaved to the optical head Debnam had been using to search visually for their target. All she saw for a moment was the dim, almost imperceptible glow of reflected sunlight, but then Debnam zoomed in, and her weary eyes narrowed.
"It is a pod, Paulette!” Debnam said.
"Yeah, but it looks bad," she replied. Not only was there no beacon, but even the running lights designed to guide searchers visually to it were dead. Nor did their passives detect any EM signature from it at all.
Doesn’t mean anything, she told herself doggedly. Only been four or five hours. Pod may be dead, but Navy skinsuits’re good for a lot longer than that on internal resources, and the pod’s rad and heat shielding’d hide their signatures. If somebody got aboard it in the first place, she might still be —
She chopped that thought off. There was no point fooling herself, and it would only make the inevitable hurt worse. In fact, she found herself hoping this was one of the pods which had launched empty. They had a sufficient honor guard of dead heroes aboard already.
She blinked as she realized that even as her mind had been churning through those thoughts, her hands had automatically brought the shuttle around to an intercept heading and sent it ghosting towards the life pod at ten gravities.
"You about ready, John?” she asked as she reached turnover and flipped to decelerate to rest less than fifty yards from her target.
"Moving into the lock now," he confirmed, and she felt the pressure in her eardrums and saw the red light blink as the pumps evacuated the lock’s atmosphere back into the passenger compartment.
"Opening the hatch," he said a moment later, and then she saw him — tether trailing behind him — as his SUT thruster pack carried him across the vacuum.
His handheld tractor-presser unit locked onto the pod and drew him in, and he landed gently beside the inspection panel.
"LED's dead," he said over his skinsuit com. "Plugging into the auxiliary jack now, and — Holy Christ!”
Kilgore jerked upright in her flight couch.
"John?" She heard him breathing over the open com. "John?!”
"Paulette —” For a a second, she couldn’t recognize his voice. It sounded so . . . broken. So hoarse. But then —
“Paulette, they’re alive! Christ and all the Holy Angels, we’ve got two of them, and they’re alive!”
“Oh my God,” she whispered, and realized the strangeness hovering in his voice was tears. And then she realized she was weeping, and that she’d pressed both trembling hands to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“I’m hooking my tether now.” Debnam sounded much closer to normal. “I’m heading back.”
“Understood.”
Kilgore wiped her eyes brusquely, unstrapped, sealed her helmet, and headed for the passenger compartment. She’d cycled through the lock by the time Debnam got back to Asteria, and the two of them worked with practiced efficiency as power came on the winch, reeling in the cable the sergeant had attached to the life pod.
Getting it properly mated to the docking collar wasn’t easy, but life pods had been built to standard models for over six hundred T-years for moments exactly like this. It took them less than ten minutes to establish a solid seal between the collars, and Kilgore made herself stand back and watch Debnam double check it — then check it again — lest they’d screwed up in their fatigue.
“Good seal,” he announced finally, and Kilgore removed her helmet as air rushed back into the lock. She hit the hatch toggle, but she wasn’t really surprised when nothing happened, given the pod’s obvious loss of power. She drew a deep breath and reached out to the manual locking lever on the pod hatch, vaguely surprised to realize her hand was trembling.
She had to pull twice before the lever activated.
No surprise there, she thought, looking at the pod’s scorched, scored, seared, and actually dented surface. My God, they must’ve been right on the fringe of the fireball when their ship went up!
Then the hatch opened, and she looked in at the unconscious passengers. Neither looked to be in very good shape, she thought, and activated the closer Manty’s external med panel readout. It was impossible to read the woman’s skinsuit nameplate. From her suit’s blackened appearance, she’d been way too close to something nasty even before she boarded the pod. But the med panel came up, and Kilgore inhaled deeply.
“Broken arm, half a dozen broken ribs, and some internal bleeding,” she told Debnam. “But the vitals look good.” Her smile faded and she looked over her shoulder at the sergeant. “According to the readout, the only reason she’s unconscious is that she tranked herself pretty much to the max from her skinny’s pharmacope about an hour ago. ’Nough to keep her out till her suit’s enviro ran out.” Her mouth twitched. “Guess she’d figured out how unlikely anybody was to find them.”
“Don’t blame her,” Debnam said softly. “Don’t think I’d want to be awake under those circumstances, either.” He shook his head. “Surprised she didn’t go ahead and OD, really.”
“Don’t think you can with a Manty skinsuit,” Kilgore replied absently, switching her attention to the other Manticoran. She keyed the second med panel, then inhaled again, much more sharply.
“Not good,” she said. “Looks like the spine’s gone in at least three places, and his vitals don’t look good at all. And —” she looked back at the woman “— according to the time chop, she tranked him five minutes before she tranked herself.” Her mouth tightened. “Probably wanted to make sure he was out before she put herself to sleep, too.”
“Makes sense.”
Debnam nodded, and Kilgore bent back over the savagely injured Manty. Unlike his companion’s, his skinsuit, seemed undamaged, despite his injuries, and —
“John,” she heard herself say in a voice she didn’t quite recognize.
“Yeah?” He looked at her, his exhaustion-lined face puzzled by her tone.
“Get on the com,” that voice she didn’t recognize said very, very calmly. “Tell them we just found Admiral Kotouč . . . and he’s alive.”
Governor’s Residence
City of Shuttlesport
Smoking Frog
Maya System
“Mister Ellingsen, Captain Abernathy. It’s good to see you again!” Oravil Barregos said, standing and extending his hand as Julie Magilen escorted the visitors into his office.
