Boundary 2: Threshold (35 page)

"Definitely worse than just the one accelerator rib. I'm getting significant gas and vapor around the ship. She's leaking atmosphere, reaction mass, maybe other stuff like a sieve. Best guess—when it happened, it shredded a large part of the rib and blew pieces of it into
Odin
."

"And they're still headed straight for Io," Larry added.

"You'd think they'd have been able to calculate that right after the main burn, though," Jackie said, puzzled. "Why didn't they shift orbit? They can't be
completely
out of fuel."

"No, they probably have a little left," A.J. agreed. "I dunno why they wouldn't have shifted."

"It's obvious," Madeline said. "Given the amount of time, we know that dodging even something the size of Io wouldn't take much effort from them for quite a while. They don't need kilometers per second of delta-V for that, just a relatively few meters per second, and they have enough for that. So, instead of correcting right off, they were waiting to find out where
we
were. They needed to know the strategic and tactical situation before making that move."

"Except that the longer they wait, the harder it's going to get," Joe continued. "And with a mutiny and now what looks like major damage, I'll bet no one's thinking about that right now."

Jackie looked at Larry and Joe. "Can we match up with
Odin
? Do anything to help them?"

Larry sighed. "We're closing at about four kilometers per second. We can bias that for a closer approach at course intersect if we want, but we don't have the power to make up the delta-vee difference. If they manage to
miss
Io . . . taking just the right orbit flyby, they might be able to come close to matching up with us at Europa. Maybe." The Ares astronomer shook his head. "I think they'd still have to do a minimal Oberth even there, and I don't think they have that much left. I think it'd take at least a kilometer-per-second burn."

Joe looked depressed and angry. "Even if we did . . . I really don't know what we could do. We can't tow them clear. Even almost dry in the tanks,
Odin
masses something over ten thousand tons. We don't have the room on board to take more than a few refugees, and I don't know how far we could push life-support."

"Then the only thing we can do is keep trying to warn them," Madeline said decisively. "Jackie, I want you to broadcast a warning to them, with details of exactly when they will impact and a constantly updating timetable of how much they have to shift their current course to escape. A.J., keep trying to get information out of their systems . . . and find
some
way to deliver a message. Can you do that?"

A.J. studied the meager data he was getting back, compared it with what he knew of
Odin
, its systems, and its crew. "I think so. I just hope I can do it fast enough."

Alarms screamed throughout the
Odin
, almost deafening Horst and Anthony. Horst's display flickered, paused in mid-update, and then went to local. "The shipboard net just went down."

"But I thought that was impossible!" Anthony said with a stunned look.

Horst felt the back of his neck prickling as though something horrid was creeping up on him. Which maybe it was. "Nothing is impossible. But that is a very improbable thing to have happen. A distributed network it is, not so centralized . . . Some nodes are coming back. I am trying to find out . . ." As he managed to force some kind of status evaluation out of the crippled network, the full horror began to sink in. "Dear God," he breathed.

Most of the habitat ring had suffered some kind of damage. A few cabin segments—including Anthony's—had been in the shadow of
Odin
's hull, shielded from the debris and shrapnel, but the vast majority of the habitat ring, standing so far out from the main hull as it did, was in line of sight of the explosion. Damage ranged from single punctures to shattered composite viewports to segments so riddled with holes they looked like a section of sponge. The entire facing side of
Odin
's hull was riddled with holes, random punctures through hull, support networks, power conduits, and stored supplies. One of the external cameras showed an image that Horst quickly blanked out: an image of debris slowly moving away from the
Odin
—debris that showed several human silhouettes.

Anthony was looking over his shoulder, muttering something that sounded like prayers. "Horst, how bad is it?"

"I am trying to get more accurate information. Connecting to the controllers for the main systems. But it is very bad." Horst knew that most members of the crew, during the last few hours, had been in their cabins or in the hab-ring laboratories. The main hull was for command or bridge crew and engineering, for the most part, especially during maneuvers. Which implied something he did not want to think about. "Connected, finally. A lot of discontinuities in the network . . . Well, one good piece of news—the
Munin
is undamaged and can probably be launched."

"But it cannot hold that many people, yes?"

Horst hesitated for a moment, but there was no reason to evade the issue. "There may be not that many people left to load on," he said grimly.

Anthony stared at him, wordless for a moment. "You . . . you cannot mean that."

"I am very afraid that I do," Horst said quietly. "We need to get into our suits now. According to the data I am getting, any route we take out of here will take us through vacuum."

Anthony nodded silently, and began—painfully—to pull on his suit. "Where do we go?"

"To the
Munin
first. It has independent systems, including its own communications, life support, and power. We need to be able to tell
Nebula Storm
what has happened. Maybe they can help. And we can use
Munin
as our own fortress, if Fitzgerald and his people survived. Assuming, at least, that the bastards are not yet on board it." He went to shut down the terminal, but stopped as an unusual signal was highlighted by his application. He sat back down. "Who . . . ?"

The signal was coming from one of the surviving controller units on the
Odin
's driver-support ribs. But it wasn't a normal control or update signal. It looked like . . . 

Suddenly he understood. Decoding the signal didn't take long. Reading it, however, he almost wished he had taken longer. Anthony saw it in his face as he turned. "Horst, what is wrong now?"

"I just got a message from A.J. Baker, through some of the Faerie Dust he still has on board. And he tells us that soon we will have a much worse problem to worry about."

Anthony froze. "Oh, God, I had forgotten! Io!"

"Yes. Io."

The astronomer resumed putting on his suit. "We must find a way to get control of
Odin
very soon."

"We will have to use the laterals. The NERVA drive is no longer usable."

"What?"

"Oh, the reactor and so on is basically intact," Horst said bleakly. "But the thrust nozzle is shredded. Try a burn with that kind of damage, and it will vaporize. I have no idea what would happen after that."

"Then," Anthony said, clumsily forcing his wounded arm to cooperate, "we have even less time than I thought."

Hohenheim struggled slowly back to consciousness.
How long have I been out? What happened?

He tried to move, but found that something impeded his movement. Opening his eyes, he gasped.

Below him, space rotated slowly, majestically. Jupiter passed him, and other distant objects. Nowhere was there a sign of the
Odin
. He was alone, spinning through the void, four hundred million miles from Earth.

Not while still feeling gravity, I am not.
He moved his head; everything seemed to be working. He looked around, trying to ignore the vertigo of space all around him.

Looming above him like a constantly falling skyscraper was
Odin
. Looking down his body, he could see that he lay facedown across one of the habitat support ribs. The part of the cabin unit that would have been under his upper body had been blown away somehow. His legs and abdomen were trapped under wreckage that had fallen on top of him rather than being sucked out into vacuum. He was hanging, in effect, off the edge of a cliff that dropped off into infinite space.

Do not move yet. It seems stable for the moment. I do not seem to be badly hurt. What happened?

It came back in a rush: the
Nebula Storm
's victory and face-saving offer, Fitzgerald's treachery . . . Yes, and then he'd realized that real fighting might break out, since Fitzgerald controlled the armory. So he ordered the bridge crew to prepare, and . . . 

Disaster. He'd gotten into his suit, but the others had not yet finished when the doors opened. The lockdown had been subverted. They hadn't managed to kill him, but he'd forced them to split up. He hoped that they hadn't killed the few people remaining on the bridge. So he'd diverted them away in one direction, managed to take down one who'd relied more on guns than bare-hand skill, and . . . and come to his cabin. And then there had been a shockwave and impact. . . . 

Something had gone dreadfully wrong. Looking down the length of
Odin
, he could see the mangled ruin of the fourth support rib. To the right and left of him, the habitat ring curved down and away, riddled with holes, missing pieces as far as he could see. Some of the drifting debris he could make out was not mechanical or structural in nature, either.

He wished he could believe that this meant most of the mutineers had perished, but he knew better. They'd been wearing their armor, almost certainly ready to put on helmets. Some might have already been wearing the helmets. Maybe one or two were dead, but a far larger number of the main crew were now gone.

He realized there had been no chatter of communications. The shutdown Fitzgerald had imposed was either still working, or the damage had been extensive indeed. In either case, it occurred to him that it might be even more useful to be thought dead. He could access the communications and update software . . . Yes, he could do it. Reception should remain, and deliberate communication, but anyone doing a regular search would not get operating-status data from his suit.

He studied his position. The wreckage that pinned him must weigh at least three hundred kilos—in this case, a good thing, because otherwise he'd probably have slowly slid out of its grip and plummeted off into the deep. The problem was going to be getting out from under it without possibly causing worse problems. He had no way of knowing how strong, or fragile, the wall on the other side of the support was. If he moved wrong, put stress on the wrong place, it might fracture, leaving only the main support he was sprawled over intact. This might get him out from under—but it could also drag him overboard with the rest of the debris, and there was no swimming back to this ship. He wasn't wearing a suit with reaction jets.

An idea struck him. He reached down to the area of his belt. Yes, the safety line was still there. That should work. Carefully, he managed to force the safety-hook end out of its place underneath him. Once that was out, the slender composite-metal combination line slid out with minimal effort. With great care he managed to loop the line entirely around the support, which was almost—but not quite—small enough to get his arms around. He had to try whipping the hook end from one hand to the other several times before he managed to catch it, but after that it was easy to pull it the rest of the way around and hook the line to itself. He tested the loop to make sure the hook was locked shut, then started wiggling, tugging, and pulling.

The suit moved a fraction of a millimeter. Then a centimeter. He pushed and grunted and swore and gave a mighty heave.

Abruptly the pressure holding him shifted, tilted, pulling him back and down as the other wall cracked. But the looped line prevented him from falling, while the carbonan suit shrugged off the glancing blows and scrapes as the remaining debris fell away from
Odin
. Hohenheim dangled from the main support for a moment, then grabbed the support and clambered onto it. Standing up, he slid the loop of safety line with him, looking for a higher point to fasten it to. There was no floor left to this room now except the pieces remaining on the support beam, but the main door was visible. And so was his wall safe, still securely fastened to the wall.

The wall safe was what he had come here for. He studied the situation. The safe was about two and a half meters from the door. Maybe a bit more. He couldn't reach it standing in the doorway. He looked up. That was more promising. Some of the ceiling had been ripped away when the cabin depressurized, and there were pipes and cables visible. Taken together, they should support his weight. If he climbed up the main support . . . 

It was not nearly as easy as it looked. Without the little safety line, he was not sure he could have managed at all. But eventually he was suspended from the plumbing and air tubing and slowly lowering himself to the safe. A code and verification later, and the safe opened. Hohenheim reached in, found what he was looking for, and pulled it out.

A few minutes later he stepped through the doorway into the silent vacuum of the corridor beyond and made his way, gingerly, to the nearby connecting tube that led to the main hull. He paused a moment, looked down at his waist, where the gun now rested, waiting, and gave a nod of satisfaction.

Alone in the silence of space, General Hohenheim crawled toward the body of his wounded ship.

"Anything new, A.J.?" Madeline asked after a long period of mostly silence.

The blond sensor expert nodded. "Getting something finally, with Horst's help."

Jackie's head snapped around. "Horst's alive?"

A.J. grinned, the first normal smile any of them had managed in a while. "Sure is. Alive and kicking, in fact. He and Anthony are headed to
Munin
, their other lander. It has separate comm systems, so hopefully we'll have communications going soon."

"Taking them a while," grumbled Larry. "Do they know about their deadline, emphasis on
dead
?"