Poor Man's Fight (47 page)

In the distance far ahead, Tanner could make out lights shining differently than the other stars. He called up the optics suite on his helmet, trying to bring his short, quick breath under control as he worked. The computer in his helmet locked onto the lights and enhanced the image.

He saw two ships, a cruise liner and a destroyer with CDC markings, bound together by multiple tethers and gangway tubes.
St. Jude
’s wreckage still maintained much of its momentum, rapidly approaching the ships at something close to her original intercept course. The ship’s corpse wouldn’t collide with either ship, but it would come within a few dozen kilometers.

He tried to think th
e situation through, once again cursing Stevens and his refusal to brief anyone on anything, ever.
St. Jude
came out alone and in a hurry, and was now off the communications and tactical grid. Augustine Harbor would notice that, but Tanner didn’t know how far out he was. The other corvettes on the station weren’t in alert standby mode and therefore couldn’t be out here for several hours at best. Allison’s ship wasn’t even scheduled to leave for another two hours, and who the hell knew how long it would take a Union battleship to get its ass in gear for a local emergency.

It
seemed obvious that
St. Jude
had been suckered one way or another. No one had even sounded an alarm before the blast hit. There was no telling how that had been arranged, nor whether or not it could be done again.

The likelihood of a destroyer taking out a battleship seemed remote. But then, Tanner considered, at least one pirate destroyer had pulled off an awful lot of audacious things in the last couple years. It had been in Archangel space before
… and CDC had been given the boot.

None of that did much to reduce his fear. To the contrary, Tanner felt his chances of survival
diminish further if it was that same pirate destroyer out there. He’d read everything he could find about recent pirate activity after his day on the
Yaomo
. Chances were that practically everyone on that liner was as good as dead, if not dead already.

Tanner looked out at the two ships again. He’d gotten a good deal closer already.
St. Jude’s
corpse would likely pass by the ships before his oxygen ran out.

He thought back to the
piracy reports. If it
was
the destroyer that hit
Aphrodite
, they might put the crew out in lifeboats again. Even lifeboats had airlocks—tiny ones, but airlocks nonetheless. If he could get to the liner and hang on to the outside of one of the lifeboats until it launched…

It was beyond crazy, but
the thought provided a much better chance of survival than he would find on a gutted and dismembered corvette.

***

For the first time, Nathan Spencer regretted taking a gap year. He also regretted going to the pool on the promenade deck to do his writing.

He’d been thrilled when his grandparents first proposed it. “Keep your educational debts down below twenty-five thousand,” they said, “and we’ll cover some travel after graduation. It’ll be good for you.”

Nathan didn’t quite hold up his end of the bargain—his final financial obligations were more like twenty-eight thousand—but his grandparents decided that it was close enough, and his parents agreed. It wasn’t lost on Nathan that his grandparents simply wanted to give him this experience regardless of how he did, but he couldn’t fault them for wanting to motivate him. They had paid his way into the Society of Scholars in the first place, after all.

His experience
turned out to be longer than a year, and more fun than he’d expected. Nathan saw Columbia and New Beijing, toured the palaces of Delhi Prime and went on an expedition through the canyons of Wushan. He spent more than six months on Earth soaking up history, culture and alcohol. As it happened, he remembered the partying the most, but it wasn’t like he spent the entire gap year on aimless celebrations and cliché tourism.

Nathan
volunteered for several charities. He even worked a little along the way, enough to save up for a ticket on the
Pride of Polaris
so he could ride home in style. He also followed a specific travel itinerary, which together with the report he’d been writing on his holocom up until an hour ago, earned credits at Raphael University, where he would begin his studies in just a week… if he made it there alive.

That seemed increasingly unlikely with each passing minute.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your new captain speaking,” announced a gravelly, energetic, frightening voice over the ship’s PA system. “As you’ve been told, your ship has been taken by pirates. We are on board and in control. If anyone happened to be looking out a porthole or an external viewscreen five minutes ago, you just saw us wipe out your one shitty chance of rescue.

“If you cooperate, this will be over soon and you will be allowed to disembark on a lifeboat or escape pod. If you do not cooperate, you’ll be shot. If you resist or try to hide, you and everyone around you will be shot. This is what happened with the passengers of the
Aphrodite
, though I’m sure the media didn’t tell you that.

“You should also know that every inch of this ship is monitored. Do not try to hide valuables. This will only make us angry. Do not try to reason with us. We will shoot you for wasting our time. Do not try to get to an escape pod or a lifeboat.
They are all locked down. Just do what you are told and remain quiet and no harm will come to you.

“Passengers
will assemble on the promenade deck. Go there with your hands above your head, find a place to sit and wait there quietly.”

Nathan glanc
ed about the promenade. He, and everyone else around the broad, spacious pool, had been trapped there when the attack began and the emergency doors slammed down on every exit to compartmentalize the ship. He sat waiting for the pirates to come to him wearing nothing but swim trunks, a towel and a very worried expression.

The doors opened again. Nathan wanted to run, but there was no place to run to.

***

“Abandon ship” had its place on any ship’s station bill, just like battle stations, damage control or search and rescue. Every officer and crewman had a responsibility. Everyone had equipment they were expected to salvage and bring off the ship
if at all possible. Tanner endured abandon ship drills in Squad Bay Oscar many times. He participated in a half-dozen much more realistic drills on
Los Angeles
during his apprenticeship phase, and even a couple during weapons and tactics school.

On
St. Jude
, Tanner knew his responsibilities from reading the station bill. Training for his ship began and ended there.

Obviously, the call to abandon ship would be made only in the worst, most chaotic circumstances. It was understood that a given crewman might not be able to carry out his or her responsibilities. The equipment they were expected to salvage might be destroyed, or it might be impossible to get to one’s regularly assigned lifeboat. One was expected to improvise and do the best job one could. If a crewman’s regular responsibilities were impossible to execute, he should do the next best practical thing.

Tanner’s regular responsibilities were out of the question. He was supposed to go forward and collect the boxes of personal power cells from a gear locker that no longer existed. The next best thing was to grab whatever might possibly be useful, be it a weapon or a sniffer kit or even a blanket. Any equipment was better than no equipment.

One of the damage control bags hadn’t floated out into space. He had that. Searching for more gear, Tanner found a spacewalking harness in the surviving locker, complete with its nitrogen capsules for zero-g maneuver. “Oh thank you, God,” he said out loud. Finally, one real piece of luck.

Then again, he figured, he’d had the dumb luck to be in this situation in the first place.
Is it good luck to get shot but survive
, he wondered,
or bad luck to have been shot at all?

Tanner donned the harness before slinging the bags over his shoulders like a backpack. Then he pulled the magnetic tape from his utility belt and wrapped it around himself and the bag to keep it under control. He didn’t want all that mass flopping around and throwing him off while executing such a risky maneuver.

The numbers on his holocom spun down. He glanced around the side of the bulkhead, noting that
St. Jude
’s remaining hull panel was already starting to break apart. He didn’t need it to hold together much longer, though; if his math was correct, he would soon come as close to the linked-up ships as
St. Jude
’s corpse would carry him.

Tanner waited. Salvage work had gotten his mind off of his terror, but for two endless minutes all he could do was wait. For the moment, he wasn’t so overwhelmed by the certainty of impending doom. He was possessed instead by the ordinary fear that he would make a mistake, that either his calculations or his physical strength and finesse wouldn’t be enough to do the job.

Either he stayed here and spun off hopelessly into space, or jumped for it only to screw it up and hopelessly spin off into space… or, just maybe, he could do it right and go from one longshot chance to the next. It would be a miracle if he could do any of this at all without filling his helmet with vomit.

H
e triple-checked the course on his helmet and his holocom. Both systems were tied in to his EVA harness. The time spun down.

Tanner fired the nitrogen capsules on the harness, blasting him away from the remains of
St. Jude
.

D
ozens of kilometers separated Tanner from his target. He had little fuel. There was also a limit to his oxygen, which while sufficient for the job wasn’t enough to make him comfortable. Tanner kept the capsules firing until they dwindled to fifty percent of their capacity, hoping that he would build enough momentum to get the job done. Then he cut the power. The vibrations of the harness capsules ceased to resonate through his suit and in his helmet.

Then there was nothing around him but the void.

***

“Attention, crew of the
Pride of Polaris
,” Casey said into the mic on the bridge. “This is the acting master of your ship speaking. You have heard instructions for passengers to assemble on the promenade. You will not go with them. You are to assemble in the main ballroom. Go there immediately. Do not stop to aid passengers. Let them aid themselves. Failure to follow instructions will be dealt with severely. Do not test us. Do as you are told and you will live through this.”

Casey
then dropped the mic handset and looked to Carl. “There,” he said, “that short and concise enough for you, professor?”

The big man shrugged with a grin playing at his face. “I’m just sayin’ we’re the ones holding guns to their heads. Why coddle them?”

“Coddle ‘em? ‘cause every fuckhead crewman’s wondering to himself, ‘Wait, you want me to abandon the passengers?’” Casey said in an exaggerated tone of bewilderment. His frown reasserted itself. “Besides, we don’t want to kick potential recruits any harder than we have to, right?”

Carl shrugged. “Surprised you want to pick up recruits at all given our situation. Guess it gives you a good chance to practice your speech again.”

Casey nearly retorted, then bit it back. “You know what?” he said. “Just for that, you get to stay on the bridge.” He gave Carl a feigned salute, then turned toward the exit. “Everyone’s a fucking critic,” he grumbled.

***

Fourteen minutes of agonizing nothingness turned over to fifteen. Then sixteen. Seventeen. The tiny glowing numbers in the bottom left corner of his heads-up display rolled on, minutes counting up while distance counted down. He had to use optic measurements alone, since he couldn’t risk bouncing any sort of signal off the ship lest it be detected. That meant for less reliable measurements, but soon the hulls of the liner and the destroyer beyond it grew larger and closer.

Tanner
controlled his breathing, his nausea, and his fear.

He wouldn’t run out of oxygen before he hit the ships. That much was certain now. He’d have a good twenty minutes left at least. More if he could keep his breathing to a slow, measured pace and keep his activity to a minimum. All he had to do once he was at the liner was to walk across its hull to one of the lifeboats and wait—and hope
he chose the right one, and hope it would be released before his oxygen ran out.

Maybe there would be other opportunities to extend his dwindling lifespan. Maybe not. One problem at a time.

***

“
Casey, I’m here with the passengers,” Chang announced on the open comms channel. “They’re sitting tight for the moment.”

“Good job,” replied
Casey. He stood just outside the main ballroom, receiving a final few reports before he went inside to launch into his monologue. “You got enough manpower?”