James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 08 Read online

  Worlds-Apart Book 08: Hellfire

  © 2007 – 2008. James Wittenbach

  Part I: No Blood For Tritium

  Part II: Falldown

  Part III: “Cake or Death?”

  Part I: No Blood For Tritium

  Section 01

  It has been 45 days since Pegasus departed the Yronwode System

  “You’ve got a little leak in your hull, there,” Johnny Rook said nervously, indicating a spot just a few centimeters from his feet, where atmosphere was hissing out through a rip in the old shuttle’s skin. As the shuttle’s engines created a constant and loud background rumble, they all had to wear helmets, listen through ear-jacks, and speak into microphones.

  The Hellion Technician named Logo (her name was on a large white square patch on the left breast of her blue-gray jumpsuit) unstrapped herself from her jump-seat, drew a spray bottle the size of a fire extinguisher from a compartment at the rear of the shuttle, and directed a stream of liquid metal at the tear. It was soon patched with a silvery glaze.

  She nodded with satisfaction. “Repair complete.”

  The lead technician, a pudgy and severe-looking woman whose patch identified her as

  ‘Ono’ made a notation in an electronic log.

  “Will it hold?” Eliza Jane Change asked.

  “The sealant is rated to 9 standard atmospheres. It will be adequate,” Logo answered, regaining her seat with oddly clunky movements, owing to the awkwardness of moving in low gravity with magnetic boots.

  “I feel reassured,” Johnny Rook said, sounding unreassured. He adjusted his Spex and continued to scan the interior hull for atmospheric leakage. As a warfighter, he was trained to harness fear as survival tool, but that didn’t seem to apply traveling in a rickety old ship he was almost certain was going to explode before it could get him safely to base.

  Eliza Jane Change was strapped into the jumpsuit two up from Rook. By Change’s estimate, the shuttle was somewhere between 200 and a thousand years old, depending on what part of it you were referring to. It seemed to have been the recipient of numerous non-spec repairs and additions since entering service. Its hull was a boxy hexagon shaped like an egg carton, enclosed by a skeleton of structural supports. It was propelled by two pairs of small ion engines that protruded from the rear quarter. Both its hull and its landing struts were pockmarked with corrosion. Inside, it was a barebones affair, with twelve jump-seats lining the sides, a bare metal deck, and minimal gravity such that no one in the ship weighed more than a few kilograms. They had to be held to the deck with the aforementioned magnetized boots. It was completely windowless. This was a good thing, because it was really better not being able to see what they were flying through.

  There were ten on the shuttle total; five from Pegasus and five from the local system.

  From Pegasus came the usual gang of idiots:

  Eliza Change, the ship’s acting executive officer, a tall, thin woman with glossy black hair drawn into a pony-tail. Commander Keeler had sent her on this mission because of her experience in mining ships, and in repairing and navigating same under adverse conditions.

  Matthew Driver, the pilot whose own ship, Prudence, was still being overhauled from the damage it had received on Yronwode. He was shorter than any of the others, but still in good shape, with thick brown hair and intelligent brown eyes.

  Johnny Rook and Max Jordan, the young warfighters, had been sent because the Hellions (as the system’s inhabitants liked to call themselves) thought they might be needed. Rook was the taller, leaner one with the large, angular nose, close-cropped hair, and mischievous brown eyes. Max was the one with the shaggy red hair and the athletic body. He sometimes went around with a cybernetic life-form riding along in his brain, but she was not with him this time.

  Specialist Zulu Oswald Jeff had come because the Hellions had also thought they might need the skills of a good battle damage repair tech. He was a dark-skinned man, with a husky build, and he was snoozing as the shuttle moved toward its rendezvous.

  And there were five Hellions:

  Aha was the shuttle’s pilot, an older, taciturn man who said little and was patient.

  Logo was a young female repair technician, cute in a somebody’s little sister sort of way.

  Tama was an older female engineer, skilled at repairing ion-based propulsion systems, and intimidating in a

  fullback-for-the-Armpit-Avengers-Groundball-Team sort of way.

  Ono, the other older female, was what the Hellions called a “warrant officer,” who would be the nominal mission commander. She was distinguished from the others by a pair of dark. oversized goggles she wore to correct a vision deficiency.

  Mata was a younger male security officer, the Hellion’s counterpart to Rook and Jordan.

  The Hellions appeared to have all sprung from the same tribe of ancient Earth, the same that had been the distant ancestors of Eliza Jane Change. They shared her dark black hair and the gracefully slanted, almond-shaped eyes in the same rich dark brown color. Like the rest of the humans the crew had encountered in their exploration of the galaxy, the Hellions were physically smaller, had lower muscle density, less keen senses, and no evidence of the advanced gifts of telepathy, enhanced perception, or precognition. But, the crew tried not to rub this in.

  The Hellions wore simple blue-gray coveralls, with names and functions printed in white over the left breast. Aha’s, for example, read “Aha/Pilot.” Ono’s read “Warrant Officer.” Tama and Logo’s read “Technician” beneath their names. Mata’s read “Security.” There was also an emblem on the sleeve in a design for a company called “Crucial Space Fuels.” It was similar to one they had seen on another planet.

  The Hellions had met Pegasus as the great ship began its exploration of their system, sending out a pair of ships and a detachment fighters to meet them. Those latter ships had been in somewhat better shape than the shuttle, they looked like arrowheads with twin ion-engine pods protruding from the back. They would have been no match for Peg’s armaments, but the crew was flattered by the gesture nonetheless. The Hellions had been evasive on the topic of their home-planet, refusing to reveal its location, and politely insisting that Pegasus hold its position beyond the asteroid debris field that marked the inner-system boundary.

  “We are approaching the final recorded position of Liminix CH-53, ” Aha informed them from the pilot seat. Matthew Driver had been staring at him constantly in the five and half hours since the journey had begun, in hopes of understanding how to operate the ancient shuttle. Steering the ship was accomplished by pressing on a yoke connected mechanically to the floor of the shuttle. Driver had also learned to interpret the numerous switches and instruments on the shuttle’s control board.

  Change touched the speak button on the side of her helmet. “How much farther?” she asked.

  “We are within 10,000 kilometers of its final recorded position,” Aha responded.

  Without windows, they were entirely dependent on data from the external sensors; this was displayed on four screens at the front of the shuttle and one of those was flickering so badly it was useless.

  “Because of stellar interference, we will not be able to detect the beacon of the Liminix CH-53 until we are within 6,000 kilometers of its location,” explained Technician Logo.

  “An Aves could,” Matthew Driver felt obligated to put in.

  “But your Aves produce gravimetric distortions with their propulsion systems,” said Ono. “These distortions can result in cyclonic storms and stellar flares, both of which are very dangerous to our installations and our colony.”

  Change suggested, “You should have allowed us to retrofit your ship before we departed. We could
have at least installed some of our sensors.” Warrant Officer Ono bristled at the suggestion. “The systems would have been incompatible.” The Hellions seemed to be touchy about being reminded that their technology was inferior to Pegasus. They had insisted that this mission be carried out with their ships, and their gear. Eliza Change was reminded of Prime Commander Keeler’s comment, “Pride is a silly thing,” which was one of the few things he had ever said that she agreed with.

  Johnny Rook, however, did not have any diplomatic sensitivity about bringing it up. “I would have appreciated some of the Aves radiation shielding. I’ve measured a sixty percent increase in radiation since we entered the stellar atmosphere.” Technician Logo answered in all seriousness, “We are only being mildly irradiated. We are within the safety parameters.”

  “I hope it stays that way,” Johnny Rook said. He had had a lot of fun making his daughter, Skua, with Anaconda Taurus, and was looking forward to trying it again. He thought going into detail would have been more than anyone needed to hear. He was right about that.

  “Dr. Skinner can decontaminate us back on Pegasus if anything goes wrong,” said Max Jordan.

  “I’m not talking to you,” Rook reminded him crossly.

  “What? So if we’re under attack, and I tell you to duck, you won’t duck?” Jordan pressed him with a grin.

  Rook looked like he was about to say something, then remembered he wasn’t talking to Jordan. He shut up and checked his radiation monitor again.

  Change glared at both of them and made a not-at-all-discreet slash-across-her-throat gesture.

  Some order was exchanged between Ono and Logo on the Hellion’s private channel.

  Logo stood and made her way awkwardly to a station at the front of the shuttle. She tapped some controls and one of the viewscreens changed. Now, a three-axis grid was displayed on it.

  A bright-white line pulsated back and forth over the screen, as electro-mechanical antennae on the shuttle’s exterior scanned for a signal from the missing ship.

  “The stellar currents in this part of the atmosphere are pushing toward 260 degrees,” Technician Logo reported after peering into some kind of periscope-like device.

  Warrant Officer Ono ordered, “Concentrate scans along that vector. Pilot, alter course to pursue that vector.”

  Aha entered a sequence into the alpha-numeric pad on the right-hand side of his console. “Would you like to see it?” he asked Driver.

  “See what?” Driver asked.

  “The real external view… without the sensor filters.”

  Driver nodded. Aha hit a pair of controls that raised the opaque shields at the front of the shuttle, and let in the burning light from what they had been flying through.

  What they had been flying through was the hot, fiery outer atmosphere of a red giant star. It was like flying through a hot furnace the size of a star system. If it had been the center of the Sapphire system, the star would have been larger than the orbits of Sapphire and Loki, and would have melted the icy moons of Gigantor. The star had long ago burned away its inner planets and evaporated its gas giants, but at one time, it must have had a lot of orbital companions, as it was ringed with a belt of planet and asteroid debris.

  According to the system’s inhabitants, the star was known as 200 200 Ara. But, they had another, more succinct name for it. They called it, ‘Hellfire.’

  Hours passed as the old shuttle continued its search pattern through the blazing stellar atmosphere.

  For Rook and Jordan, the waiting was not so bad. To avoid the mind-numbing boredom, they simply fell asleep. Shortly afterward, Technician Jeff reached over and deactivated their transmission microphones because the only thing worse than the rumble of the shuttle’s ion engines was the roar of Rook’s snoring. Technician Jeff had brought a novel, Lord of the Hissy-Fit, and was quite immersed in the multi-level, interactive, poly-sensual, synesthetic experience the novel’s authors had generated.

  Change had never had any trouble with boredom. A mining ship could spend months in orbit around an asteroid or comet, systematically extracting pure minerals and gases from it, while its pilot had little or nothing to do. In the Mining Guild, there were even some who found her tolerance for the mind-numbing duties of a station-pilot… almost eerie.

  And as for Driver, he was learning how to pilot the old ship, and that seemed to keep him fairly interested through the long, long hours of the search.

  During that time, the Hellions spoke very little, aside from operational instructions.

  Logo spent most of the time peering into the periscope-like sensor apparatus, seeming never to take a break. Ono dutifully recorded every operational instruction in her log.

  Eventually, many, many hours into the search, Logo announced, “There she is, Vector 271 by 120 north. Range: 3,500 kilometers.”

  A red dot began pulsing on the forward viewscreen with the tri-d grid projected on it.

  Ono ordered: “Pilot, alter course to vector 271 by 12 north. Intercept Liminix CH-53.

  Weapons Officer, bring defensive system on-line.”

  Mata stood and made his way to another periscope-like device in the forward part of the shuttle. This device activated the shuttle’s only defensive system: an old pulse laser mounted on the forward section. He put his eyes against the periscope to monitor the outside of the ship. The pilot moved his yoke and then took the joystick that was located by his left hand. The shuttle had only rudimentary inertia-dampening systems, and there was a sickening sway in its motion as it closed on the target.

  Logo flipped a pair of toggle switches and the view on one of the forward viewscreens changed again. The outlines of a large spaceship resolved themselves in the midst of the intense static. Although it was not clear from the image, they knew Liminix CH-53 was a fairly big ship, over 400 meters long. Most of that length was taken up by six hemispherical tanks arranged along the framework that made up its centerline. As the shuttle approached from aft of the big ship, and they could make out the six wing-blades that made up Liminix CH-53’s aft section, arranged in an uneven but symmetrical array. Four engine pods stretched behind the wing-blade assembly.

  The shuttle moved forward and closed the distance, approaching the derelict Tritium-hauler from its rear quarter. Aha adjusted course again, and the old shuttle began moving along the length of the old ship, until eventually they came to the superstructure at the front of the ship, a large sphere that housed the operational parts of the ship and the crew quarters.

  “It appears to be intact,” Driver observed.

  Ono ordered. “Begin scanning the superstructure to confirm structural integrity.

  Weapons Officer, maintain alertness for potential Solarite intrusion. Pilot, maintain relative position.”

  “Beginning scan,” Logo acknowledged.

  “Tactical scanners are active,” Mata confirmed.

  Driver asked, “Are you going to hail them?”

  Logo tapped some of the buttons on her communication panel. “I am not detecting any distress signals, only the beacon.”

  “We will maintain radio silence until we are certain the area is clear of Solarites,” Ono affirmed stiffly. “Continue scanning the hull. Pilot, plot a course around the ship so that we can examine every meter of it.”

  For the next four hours, the shuttle described a slow spiraling course around the larger spacecraft, examining every meter of hull with optical sensors, a job an Aves could have completed in seconds. They awakened the rest of the Pegasus crew, but did not allow them to participate in the scanning process.

  The boredom was once-again mind-numbing.

  At the end of it, they had determined that all of the storage tanks were fully intact, but that the ship’s atmosphere had vented into space when three of the four airlocks on her command sphere were exploded from the outside. They also made the determination that since they had not been attacked in the previous four hours, their vicinity was probably clear of Solarites. At which point, the Warrant Of
ficer ordered the pilot to dock with the one remaining undamaged airlock on the Liminix CH-53.

  As Aha maneuvered the shuttle into position, the others distributed the six spacesuits.

  Every Hellion but Aha would get one, plus Change and Zulu. The others would remain in the shuttle.

  “You have experience in salvage?” Ono asked Change.

  “I have been involved in 13 separate salvage and recovery operations,” Change told her.

  “But never in the heart of a sun?” Ono persisted.

  “Three years ago, we pulled a ship out of the upper-atmosphere of a rocky planet,” Change told her. “Conditions were considerably worse than here.”

  “I think you will come to disagree.” Warrant Officer Ono finished checking the seals on her spacesuit, and then addressed Tama, Logo, and Lieutenant Jeff. “You will be Number One Team. You will repair the airlocks on the outer hull so that we can regain atmospheric integrity.

  Then, proceed to key repairs of power and propulsion systems. Madame Change, Mata, and myself will be Number Two Team. We will examine the internal systems, the control center, the engineering section, and make such repairs as we can.” Warrant Officer Ono turned to Change. “If this ship is inoperable, there will be no deal, and no Tritium for you.”

  “I am fully aware of that,” Change said, sealing her space helmet. “From the outside, the ship doesn’t seem to be damaged irreparably.”

  “It will depend on whether the Solarites sabotaged the internal systems,” Mata said, speaking for really the first time as she sealed her own helmet. “Usually they shut down key systems so the ship can be salvaged later, but sometimes they destroy the life support systems, or they damage them too badly in the process.”

  “Technical information is only to be exchanged through me,” Ono snapped.

  The repair teams checked each other’s spacesuits, then cycled the airlock and proceeded into Liminix CH-53, leaving behind two bored-as-hell, occasionally unconscious, and uncommunicative warfighters and two pilots. They hoped the services of the former would not be needed, and that the services of the latter would be.