SpaceCorp (4 page)

Jimmy, Freddie, and Mack had just gotten themselves on board. There were twelve people on board. Jimmy and Freddie, normally assigned to other pods, would have to get off this pod or it would be two bodies over its standard mass limit for safe reentry.

“Hey, buddy,” Jimmy asked, “can you strap this guy in. The ensign and I gotta un-ass this thing or you’re going to be over-mass.”

Before the fellow could answer, the station lurched again, and the hatch closed and dogged itself shut. The pilot of Mack’s escape pod was strapping himself in when the pod launched on its own, apparently on a command from the bridge. A bridge-commanded launch would be optimized for maximum separation from the station as quickly as possible even if the area outside the launch way was chaotic with debris, the station hull, and other escape pods doing the same thing. As the craft careened out of the escape chute, it missed another pod by less than a meter. The other pod was not so lucky.

The space station hull had sheared in two at the point where the derelict Centaur upper stage had struck it. In doing so the normal flat disk of the station had come undone such that it now resembled a single turn of a helical spring, the two open ends vertically displaced from one another by about fifty meters. The other pod that Mack’s pod had barely missed was scooped back inside the free end of the hull as the station continued rotating at its standard 1.34 RPM. As that pod got scooped back inside the hull, it glanced off a bulkhead turning it sideways and causing it to shear in two as it smashed into one of the
Von Braun’s
exposed ribs. No bodies or body parts appeared to fly outside.

Ten minutes later

Monica regained consciousness still strapped in her berth. She loosened her restraints to look around. The fellow who had been strapped in opposite her had been cut in half by a shard of aluminum sheeting. His blood had formed a cloud of red mist that had smeared across the tear in his suit and on to the seat webbing.
The pod must have had a hull breach.
She undid the rest of her restraints and climbed out of her berth. The black woman next to the guy who had been cut in half had been decapitated. Her name tag read WASHINGTON. She was a lieutenant junior grade whom Monica gotten to know over lunch yesterday. She’d showed her a bunch of pictures of her little boy. “He wants to be an astronaut like his momma,” she announced proudly. Monica closed her eyes hard and shook her head inside the helmet, giving her a dull pain in the back of her skull. She felt a wetness seeping down the back of her neck.
Blood?

The berth behind Monica was empty, no sign of its occupant. She crawled aft in the direction of where the hatch should have been. The back two thirds of the pod were missing and through the gaping hole she could see that her portion of the pod was banging around inside the hull of the
Von Braun
.
Try the comm.

“Any station, any station—this is Monica Carvalho. I am suited and uninjured… I think. My pod must have crashed inside the hull of the
Von Braun
… unsure of exact location. Please respond.”

She repeated her call two more times before she got a response.

“Monica, this is Captain Hernandez. We’re at the bridge.”

“You’re still here? I thought the ‘abandon ship’ order was given!”

“It was, but the bridge team and I were confirming all the crew was away safely before we take off in our own pod. Can you make it to the escape pod bay next to the bridge? Things seem to be holding together for now.”

“I don’t know where I am. My pod seems to have been scooped up by the open end of the hull as it rotated around.”

“The impact went clean through the joint between Quads I and IV. I’m guessing that’s why the two ends separated the way they did. Can you tell if you’re in I or IV? If you are still in IV, you’ve got a long walk. But if you’re in I, you’re less than a hundred meters from the bridge.”

“Just a minute while I try to get my bearings.” Monica looked outside the open hull. After about thirty seconds, she saw the Earth’s surface pass by going toward the giant opening in the hull.
The hull rotates in quad order, Quad I leading, followed by II, and so forth.
“I got it! I’m in Quad I!”

“Okay, but be careful. The station is still rotating so you still have gravity,” Hernandez said.

“Thanks, I’m kind of stuck up here. Gotta see if I can find some line to lower myself onto the deck floor.”

“Call me when you do. Just don’t let yourself get thrown outside—we’ll have a helluva time finding you motoring around in one of these pods.”

Monica stumbled around inside the forward half of the pod looking for anything she could use to rappel down to the deck floor. She felt a sudden lurch, but couldn’t tell if it was the pod shifting inside the hull, or the hull twisting itself apart some more. If it was the latter, there was no telling how long before the hull separated at the side opposite the breach due to torsion.
Talk about a fucking situation.

At last she made her way to the emergency locker and pried the door open with a small fire axe. She was going to toss the axe out of the way when she thought it might come in handy later on. She stuck it in her belt. Inside the locker was everything you might need for survival at sea—fresh water, rations, a large rubber life raft…
wait a minute, the life raft!

During her survival training, she was taught how to handle a ten-man raft in a storm. There should be a sea anchor and it should have fifty meters of nylon line to secure the anchor to the side of the raft. She pulled the raft out of the locker but couldn’t undo the zippers and straps to free it with her bulky space gloves on.
Shit
! There was only one way to get it open—the lanyard that made the raft inflate. She pulled it.

The raft began filling immediately and just as quickly she realized her mistake—she was about to be crushed by the inflating raft inside the tight confines of the escape pod.
The fire axe!
She had just gotten it free of her belt as the raft pinned her to the wall. Fortunately she’d had the foresight to keep the edge of the axe away from her suit. After some minutes of struggling she managed to work the edge through the wall of the raft and felt an immediate reduction in pressure.

After a couple of minutes, the pressure reduced enough so that she could work her way past the raft to the open end of the escape pod.
At least I won’t die of claustrophobia.
She found the zipper to the door of the raft but couldn’t get a grip on it with her fingers. Once more the fire axe. Once she had a large enough slit she was able to work both hands in and rip it the rest of the way. Inside the cabin of the raft everything was squished together. She decided the best thing to do was pull it outside the pod and use it as a ladder.

At the opening of the pod, she hooked the end of the raft onto some shards of metal. Then she started pulling the raft inside out and paying the free end down to the deck floor, ten meters below. She had about three meters dangling out the opening, when she felt the hull lurch again.
No telling how much longer this old girl is going to hold together.

“Monica! You still with us?” Captain Hernandez asked over the comm link.

“I’m still here, Captain. I’m feeding the raft through the opening in the pod down to the deck. It’s snagged on something.”

“Copy.”

The raft had gotten tangled in Washington’s legs. Monica tried not to look at where her head had been as she pulled the raft past Washington. It was a bit easier to maneuver now that most of the gas had escaped from the rent she’d made in its side with the fire axe.

“Monica, this is the Captain. Talk to me. Are you out of the pod yet?”

“Not yet. I just got the raft untangled from a crewman.”

“There are other survivors in that pod?”

“No Captain. Zero survivors besides myself.”

“Call me when you’re on the deck. Keep your mike hot.”

“Copy on deck, copy hot mike.”

The survival equipment box sewn into the back of the raft cabin was just coming into reach when the hull lurched again—severely this time, knocking the pod off its tenuous perch. This in turn caused her to fall out of the opening in the end of the pod, grasping frantically to cling to the raft. Between the length of the deflated raft and the pod coming loose from its perch, her body dangled less than a meter from the deck floor. She let go, hoping she wouldn’t sprain her ankle.

“Umph!” she said as she hit the deck flooring. She hit the deck tilted rearward causing her to rotate onto her back where all her life support equipment was strapped. She looked up at the pod suspended above her.

“Monica, you okay? What’s your status?”

“I’m on the deck, Captain—” At that moment the pod began to slip away from whatever was holding it and it slid toward her body. Its weight—more correctly its centrifugal force—was more than enough to crush her torso. She had to struggle onto her side against the weight of the bulky life support system. When it hit the decking, it made no sound in the vacuum, but the reverberations felt through the decking were enough to make your feet numb.

“Monica! Monica! What’s all the racket?”

“You said keep the mike hot. The pod came loose and almost fell on top of me.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I think so. Just gimme a minute to wiggle out of the way of this thing in case it decides to fall the rest of the way.”

She shook her head or what passes for such an act when wearing a heavily padded helmet, then stood up on shaky legs, leaning in to compensate for the 15-degree tilt in the floor. Only then did it occur to her to wonder about Mack.
Thank god, he wasn’t on my pod. I hope he made out okay.
She started out down the passageway counting her steps in the darkness. She expected to find a bulkhead about a hundred meters in. There should be a stairwell that would lead her up to the innermost deck where the bridge was. The escape pod bay should be about ten meters down from that.
Ten or fifteen minutes tops.

Inside Mack’s escape pod

The pilot of Mack’s pod was a lieutenant junior grade with flight wings glued to the breast of his space suit.

“How many are we?” the lieutenant yelled over the intercom. The interior of the pod was normal atmosphere and Jimmy and Freddie were both wearing head sets.

“We’re twelve,” Jimmy said. “Two bodies over the mass limit.”

The lieutenant swiveled his seat around to look at everyone. He seemed to be counting to himself as though he did not wish to take Jimmy’s word for the situation that portended his next order.

“We can’t make reentry with two extra bodies,” he said. “You two without suits will have to self-eject… I’m sorry.”

Jimmy and Freddie looked at each other and slowly removed their headsets before beginning the crouched walk down the narrow aisle of the pod. Several of the suited passengers reached out to touch them as they scuttled past. They touched them back by way of acknowledgement, unable to respond by voice with no headsets.

“Nobody needs to get off,” Mack said.

Jimmy and Freddie both paused and looked at Mack in disbelief. This procedure had been drilled into them repeatedly during their training. Everyone took it for granted that it was the only recourse in situations like this.

“Everyone make sure you are securely strapped into your berths,” the lieutenant said. “When the hatch opens the vacuum will suck out anything not tied down.”

Mack cycled his intercom switch. “Nobody needs to get off!” he repeated as loud as he could. Several heads turned to look at him.

Mack undid the quick release seat harness and scuttled as fast as he could to the lieutenant’s seat at the controls, grabbing his arm and pulling it away from a shielded toggle switch.

“Are you fucking deaf?” Mack yelled. “I said nobody has to get off.”

“I am in command of this pod and I am ordering you back to your seat.”

“And I am the designer of this pod and I am telling you nobody has to get off!”

“What do you mean? Procedures clearly call for only ten personnel per pod.”

“I
mean
that since this is the oldest bucket in the SpaceCorp fleet, your
procedures
are out of date!”

“I don’t understand.”

“All you have to do is adjust the burn time of your retro rockets by about… five seconds and you will slow the craft sufficiently to achieve the correct intercept angle with the Earth’s atmosphere. In other words, you will neither bounce off coming in too shallow nor burn up coming in too steep. The reentry sequence will be nominal.”

“About five seconds? You expect me to risk the lives of ten personnel based on your
about
?”

“I expect you to get your ass out of that seat so I can get at your reentry computer and make a couple of minor adjustments so that I can give you an
exact
number of seconds!
About five seconds
is as good as I can do in my head.”

“Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“I’m Mack MacGregor. Now get your ass out of that fucking chair, lieutenant—I am taking command of this pod.”

Mack turned to Jimmy and Freddie and motioned with his hands that they should come forward and replace their headsets. “Lieutenant, strap yourself into my berth. Everyone else, pass up your
exact
mass in kilos. The lieutenant here likes things done
exactly
!”

Mack assumed the pilot seat and began fussing with the flight control computer. After a few minutes, he turned to the lieutenant. “You were correct, sir! Five seconds
was
wrong. It’s actually 4.88 seconds. Happy now, lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir.” He looked at Freddie and Jimmy and shrugged. “I’m sorry… nothing personal… it’s… it was the procedure.”

Freddie and Jimmy said nothing.

“You may have your seat back, Lieutenant. Reentry procedures will be exactly as you have been trained to do with the exception of the increase in retrorocket burn time.”