Lifeline (42 page)

Chapter 63

KIBALCHICH—Day 72

Karen pounded on the sealed door to the command center. “Anna!” A smear of blood marked the surface where her raw fists had beaten against the metal. She heard nothing from inside. Anna Tripolk refused to respond at all. “{{FOUR HUNDRED SECONDS TO DETONATION.}}”

“Please, Anna! Open the door!” Her voice broke as she became frantic. She waited and listened, but heard no other sound from the command center. She had to get inside.

Karen felt trapped. She could not possibly get her suit on in so short a time. Four hundred seconds, less than seven minutes. Ramis was still outside.

“{{THREE HUNDRED SECONDS TO DETONATION.}}”

The computer’s voice filtered through the intercom, so she knew she was hearing the inside of the command center. What if Anna had passed out? Had some sort of breakdown? Karen knew the other woman was unstable.

“Anna, answer me! Are you all right?”

She felt like a hypocrite. Anna would not believe any show of concern from her, but Karen at least expected a response. She pounded on the door again.

Karen tried to calm herself, to think of any way possible to get into the room. Anchoring herself against the power lift floor, she pressed her raw palms against the metal and tried to push it aside, hoping it had some sort of emergency override system. But nothing happened. She saw only the intercom, no door controls. And she knew nothing of electronics anyway, nor did she have any tools, even if she could find a way to jury-rig some way to break in.

Okay, think!
She ran a hand through her hair. Her reddish curls were straight, soaked with sweat. She found herself breathing faster. There had to be a way to get inside, a back door.…

“{{TWO HUNDRED SECONDS TO DETONATION.}}”

In about three minutes, some sort of weapon was going to go off beneath the
Kibalchich
and destroy the
Phoenix.
Or maybe Anna had set it to destroy all of
Orbitech 1
instead.

And Ramis! Anna had locked him outside, left him unprotected. Karen had no way to contact him. He was going to be roasted in the detonation. He was going to die, along with all the other people Anna Tripolk had targeted.

“{{ONE HUNDRED SECONDS TO DETONATION.}}”

“I know what time it is! Stop reminding me!” she screamed into the intercom. After a brief pause, the computer voice spoke again.

“{{AUDIO OVERRIDE ACCOMPLISHED. VERBAL COUNTDOWN DISCONTINUED.}}”

Karen blinked in astonishment and choked with sudden hope. She had to act fast. If the computer was voice-activated, she might be able to communicate over the intercom. The computer would not know, or care, if she was physically inside the room or not.

“Computer, confirm access to command controls!”

“{{AFFIRMATIVE. CONFIRMATION AUTHORIZED BY COMMANDER TRIPOLK.}}”

“Continue verbal countdown! In one-second intervals.” She didn’t want to hear how little time she had, but still, she needed to know.

“{{EIGHTY-EIGHT. EIGHTY-SEVEN …}}”

Karen pressed her lips up against the speaker. The descending numbers seemed to roll through the lift-platform corridor, washing over her. “Computer, stop the detonation sequence!” But the computer did not acknowledge, “{{EIGHTY-ONE. EIGHTY. SEVENTY-NINE …}}”

“End the detonation sequence! Cancel! Abort! Halt! Quit! Stop!” Computer language semantics—she had to use the right word. Or perhaps only Anna Tripolk could stop what she had started.

“{{SIXTY-EIGHT. SIXTY-SEVEN …}}”

Karen screamed, “Computer, open the command center door!”

The outer elevator door slid open. Karen pushed inside, slammed at the control panel, and floated up from the floor. The door in front of her face hissed open, leaving her to stand weightless on the threshold. The air smelled stagnant with sweat. Inside, the command center was silent, daring her to enter.

Karen grasped the lip of the door and pulled herself forward, finally noticing tiny drops of blood from her battered fists smearing the outside wall. She flexed her hand, not yet feeling any pain in her adrenaline shock, but knowing it would come.

She pushed outward and sailed into the room. Anna lay slumped in the chair. The holotank in the center of the room showed a three-dimensional graphic of the nuclear weapon sitting behind the solar shield.

“{{FIFTY-ONE. FIFTY …}}”

“Anna! Stop it!”

Karen hit the opposite wall and bounced back toward Anna. Reaching out, she grabbed at the command chair, and the motion set her feet spinning. She stopped her rotation. “Anna!”

Anna Tripolk’s head hung limp.

“{{FORTY-FIVE. FORTY-FOUR …}}”

She shouted one more time at the walls. “Computer! Stop the countdown!” Then she added, for good measure, “That’s an order!”

The computer answered, “{{ACCESS DENIED.}}” then continued its countdown.

Karen breathed deeply through her nose. The War. And now, the end.

She wondered how much she would be able to feel or sense when the warhead went off. She squeezed her eyes shut.

What if Dr. Sandovaal does not make it? thought Ramis. He has pulled too many rabbits out of his hat—perhaps he cannot maneuver the sail-creatures fast enough to escape.
Ramis remembered how sluggish Sarat had been at the end of its journey. Ramis didn’t even know if Dr. Sandovaal had received his warning.

He tried to open the sealed airlock door one more time, felt the vibration rippling up his arm. Anna Tripolk had locked him out, leaving only Karen inside to reason with her.

The superstructure did not look any more formidable to Ramis than when he had first arrived—had it been three weeks, already? The graphite-composite rod that held up the giant dish mirror jutted above him.
Orbitech 1
gleamed a hundred kilometers away, its details masked by the distance. Ramis turned around and scanned the stars—he could make out the sail-creatures only dimly.

But that did not stop him.

If he had heard Anna correctly through the muffled bulkhead door, then this mirror was the key to the weapon system. It might aim the destructive beam and reflect it to the target, pinpointing either the
Phoenix
or
Orbitech 1.

Ramis stared at the mirror, bending backward to see better over the curve of his faceplate. His magnetized soles clicked against the
Kibalchich’s
hull as he tested his stretch. He would have to add extra strength in his jump, extend himself to compensate for the brief tug of the magnet’s grip.

And if he missed the mirror, he would go flying off into space.

His time was running short. The weapon would detonate within seconds if he believed the clock on his heads-up display. He had no other choice.

The Jumping on the
Aguinaldo,
the trip to
Orbitech 1,
the hundred-kilometer Jump to the
Kibalchich
—all seemed minor compared to this task: a mere twenty-five-meter hop, no farther than the length of a small rice paddy … yet he was now truly alone: no hull to catch him, no sail-creature to nudge him, no weavewire to send him bouncing back if he missed.

Ramis aimed his body carefully, bending deep to get the most push possible, and jumped as hard as he could. He shot up and reached out. The ring mirror seemed to be just beyond his grasp.

He snagged the edge with his curled fingertips and jerked himself around. He felt his muscles strain with the sudden change; his arm was nearly yanked from its socket.

“Booto!”
he cursed, coughing from the pain and surprised at his own profanity. Wincing, his eyes shut, he hauled himself to the surface and crawled to the unfinished side. From the impact the mirror bent, rocked against its support, and began oscillating. He tried to increase the rocking motion by crawling and swaying across the mirror.

Ramis felt like laughing. Anna would never be able to aim her weapon now.

Red lights blinked in the
Kibalchich’s
command center. A siren shrieked up and down the scale, making Karen jerk. Dozens of windows opened up in the central holotank, displaying a visual of the giant mirror from different external cameras. Oscillation rates, yaws, periodicity, and pitch angles all flashed in red. The mirror rocked back and forth, held in the center by the single graphite rod. The carefully configured parabolic shape had been bent from some kind of impact.

“{{UNABLE TO OBTAIN TARGET LOCK. MIRROR WILL REMAIN UNSTABLE FOR SEVENTY-FOUR POINT SIX TWO MINUTES. UNABLE TO DETERMINE AIMING ABILITY OF NEW MIRROR CONFIGURATION.}}”

The computer fell silent; a second passed.

“{{DETONATION SEQUENCE ABORTED.}}”

***

Chapter 64

PHOENIX—Day 72

Two minutes of stomach-knotting blasts from the hydrogen-oxygen rockets seemed like an eternity. The
Phoenix
roared in Clancy’s ears; he vibrated like a man at a jack-hammer. He prayed to himself, all the while thinking about how a transposed digit in the computer codes, an impatient worker affixing one of the gaskets with too little sealant, a measured exhaust angle offset by a fraction of a degree—any trivial mistake could make everything fail.

Visions of catastrophe filled his head, until the burn ended with explosive silence. Tugging back against the connecting weavewire, the
Phoenix
counteracted all the velocity they had built up over three days.

Then they hung still.

The port showed a glowing—unmoving!—vision of
Orbitech 1.
The industrial colony filled the view, only a short distance away. They had stopped themselves with their cobbled-together engines.

Clancy ripped the restraining straps from his chest and pushed away from the acceleration chair, bellowing like a madman.

Orbitech 1
began pulling the weavewire again, slowly hauling the yo-yo in toward the waiting docking bay.

McLaris looked gray and sick, shaky. Clancy clapped him on the shoulder and helped to unstrap him. “We made it, Duncan! Have that keyboard of yours play something triumphant!”

Clancy felt ready to tackle anything, but McLaris didn’t look in any condition to respond to the humor. After rebounding from the opposite bulkhead, and performing a spontaneous jerk-worrble from a popular punk ballet, Clancy managed to reach the communications console. He whistled as he established contact with
Clavius Base
and
Orbitech 1
on the open channel.

“Howdy, howdy! This is the, ahem, successful pilot of the one and only orbital yo-yo in history! Braking rockets have fired and we are home free. Forget all that stuff about ‘the Eagle has landed’—the
Phoenix
has risen!”

Wiay Shen manned the comm unit. Her almond eyes lit up when she saw Clancy’s face intact. The full second of light delay burned her image in Clancy’s mind. He grinned at her.

“You made it!” she cried. He heard cheers in the background from his crew. “I mean, of course you did. We weren’t really worried about you hitting
Orbitech 1
—”

A massive brown face moved into view. Tomkins grinned and gave them a thumbs-up. “Congratulations, you two! Cliff, you can take a rest now, but Duncan’s work is just starting.”

The
Orbitech 1
ConComm broke in, overriding the transmission from
Clavius Base
and pushing Tomkins’s face off to the side of the screen.
“Phoenix,
we have you positioned and our intercept crew is ready to receive you. We are still having some difficulty contacting the Filipino emissaries—”

“Wiay, do you know what this means?” Clancy smiled smugly as he pushed his own override back to
Clavius Base
. The
Orbitech 1
people knew what they were doing; inside the
Phoenix,
Clancy and McLaris could do nothing but wait anyway.

Shen’s face reappeared in the center of the screen. “Cliff, Dr. Tomkins wants to talk to Duncan. Let him—”

But Clancy couldn’t stifle his own enthusiasm. “Once we get aboard
Orbitech 1
and get everything arranged, I’m coming right back home to you. Back to Clavius, I mean—”

“Cliff!”

Wiay’s tone forced him to get hold of himself. He sighed. “Uh, go ahead. Put Tomkins on.” He swiveled in the cramped compartment. “Hey, Duncan, come on over.”

McLaris needed a moment to reply. He hadn’t even left the acceleration chair yet. His eyes seemed focused on something imaginary behind the walls of
Orbitech 1.
“Sure, just a minute.”

It took an unusually long time for him to move into range of the monitor.

When McLaris began to talk with Tomkins, Clancy noticed that the base manager could not keep his mind on the conversation. He looked very worried.

Outside the viewport,
Orbitech 1
waited for them.

***

Chapter 65

KIBALCHICH—Day 72

Karen stretched out her hands and cried, “Yes—oh, God, yes!” She reveled in the feeling for uncounted moments. The weapon had not gone off.

Anna Tripolk sat unconscious, still strapped in the command chair. Her face was slack, her eyelids drooping and unaware. She had drawn her knees up to her chest.

The immense shaft jutting through the command center stood before Karen like the cage of a giant monster. The cylindrical holotank hid the central optical fibers that would have driven the x-ray laser. Green lights on control panels burned all around her, bathing the room with a serene glow. Everything had stopped, as if holding its breath. A solitary window in the holotank showed the image of Ramis hanging onto the
Kibalchich’s
mirror, like a fly on glass. What was he doing up there?

She had to tell
Orbitech 1
what had happened. They would be retrieving the
Phoenix
even now. They didn’t realize how close to death they had come. Ramis had saved them.

Karen looked up at the image in the holotank. Ramis! Of all other priorities, she had to get him inside first.

“Computer, close all inner airlock doors. Inform Ramis Barrera that he may reenter the station.”

“{{CONFIRMED. ALL INNER AIRLOCK DOORS HAVE BEEN SEALED. OUTER AIRLOCKS NOW FUNCTIONAL.}}” The computer paused, then spoke once more, “{{EXTERNAL PERSONNEL INFORMED.}}”

“Computer, access external radio channel.”

“{{CONFIRMED.}}”

Karen drifted past the command chair, watching Anna Tripolk but avoiding her at the same time. She called out toward the walls, hoping the computer would broadcast her words.

“Ramis, can you hear me?”

A tired voice came back. “Karen? Has it stopped? Are you inside the command center?”

She perked up. “Yes, I am.”

“I am on the mirror. I jumped up here to spoil the aim of the weapon. The mirror is still oscillating, but slowing down. I am getting dizzy. Please tell me the weapon has been deactivated.”

Karen wanted to laugh. Of course he would have tried to do something like that. “Yes, we’re safe now. Can you get off the mirror?”

“I am near a strut. A minute more and I will be back inside. The computer spoke to me a few moments ago, telling me the airlocks were working again, but I could not move any faster.”

After a moment of silence, he spoke again. “Karen, have you heard any word from Dr. Sandovaal?”

She felt exhausted. She wanted him back inside, telling his own story to her. But that could wait. She had forgotten about the Filipino emissaries and their sail-creatures. “No, Ramis. Not in the excitement. Can you see them out there?”

He paused. Karen looked down at the motionless Anna Tripolk, certain that she had had some kind of breakdown.

Ramis’s voice came back over the speakers. “I can see the sail-creatures, but they did not go away as I warned them to do. Instead, they seemed to come closer.” He made a clicking noise into his radio. “If you have not heard from Dr. Sandovaal, then something must be wrong. I am afraid they might have sailed through the weavewire.”

Karen didn’t know what to say. She was going to offer to send a message, to try and contact the Filipinos, but Ramis would have been able to do all that with his suit radio.

“I am going to re-enter the station to get an MMU. I will go to them.”

“Ramis!” The idea sounded crazy, but Ramis would try it anyway. “How much air do you have?”

“I will get a new tank. If I use maximum thrust and forget all about safety factors, I can either get there and back here, or return to
Orbitech 1.
Yes, I can do it.”

“Ramis, don’t—”

“Do not stop me, Karen.”

She waited, hoping he would change his mind, but she knew he wouldn’t. “Ramis, be careful …”

“I will be.”

She could do nothing to stop him. Not now. After his first flight to
Orbitech 1,
his Jump to the
Kibalchich,
and his leap up to the overhead dish mirror, Ramis made his own decisions. He was too headstrong to listen to anyone else.

Karen relaxed, letting a weight of responsibility drop from her shoulders. She couldn’t shoulder so much blame. Everyone did the best they could, in whatever way they found possible. She had done a damned fine job herself, she thought.

Behind her came a small animal cry. Anna Tripolk began to wake up, shivering.

The emotion of the last three months welled inside Karen. Everything seemed to cascade back: her separation from Ray, the War, surviving the RIF, Ramis arriving and becoming her friend, the journey here to the
Kibalchich.…

Karen drifted to Anna Tripolk and grasped her shoulders. Anna looked devastated and helpless. Karen held her close and stroked the woman’s hair. Tears came quickly. She didn’t know what to say, but she said it anyway.

“You poor dear. It’s all right now. Everything will be all right.”

***