John Ringo - East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Herzer waited until Evan was most of the way up, then waved Courtney up. Finally it was his turn to go and he looked at Joie. “Follow me when I’m through the lower hatch.”

“Got it,” Joie said, looking up at the ship unhappily. “I’d rather be free-flying, you know? And this suit is folding my primaries. It’s going to take me forever to get them all fixed.”

“If we get the ship, Megan will be able to fix them in a heartbeat,” Herzer said with a grim frown. “And if we don’t, you won’t be keeping them for long.” Part of the New Destiny manifesto was to remove all Changed from Earth. It was just par for the course that their legions were made up of Changed.

He mounted the ladder and made his way up through the hatches. There was an outer and inner hatch for a small, one person, airlock. The inner hatch swung inward and the outer the reverse. Herzer knew the design of the hatches as well as anyone in the world but at the moment what was most in his mind was that they couldn’t be sealed against entry. The locking bar lifted outwards, then swiveled to undog the hatch. From both sides. There was no specific way to secure it against use. It was an old safety system designed to permit ground crews to rescue a trapped crew. On the current mission it was anything but a safety feature. If orcs tried to board one of the shuttles they’d be pulling against the bar with the defenders trying to hold it down. It simply wasn’t going to happen.

The hatch was in a small open area between the pilot’s seat and the crew chairs. There was a double line of conformal acceleration chairs in the small compartment and he took the starboard forward couch, across from Megan and with one foot actually resting on the hatch. As he settled in the couch it adjusted to receive the armor and support pack. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was better than sitting in a regular chair. He propped his helmet on his lap and reached back to plug in the environmental controls. The dwarves had included a plug that would attach the shuttle’s own cooling system to the vascular cooling system in the suits.

Unlike the suits, the shuttle’s systems were exempt from several of the power protocols so the system was working. However, it required feedback from the suit to keep the user at an optimum temperature. The team’s suits had no such feedback system. Herzer carefully brought up the setting for direct temperature control and set it to 25 C. In a moment it was as if a blast of cool water was spreading across his skin from under his right armpit. Too cool. In a moment he was shivering. He quickly dialed the temperature up and after some adjustment found a temperature that would cool him down but not freeze him out.

By the time he’d fiddled with that Joie was in her seat and making adjustments.

“You going to fit?” Herzer asked.

“It’s tight,” the elongated bird-woman said. “But, yes, I’ll fit. The mock-up of the controls was perfect, by the way,” she added, touching a control. The screen in front of her, which had been black, suddenly lit up with a view of the outside.

“When do I switch over control?” Megan asked.

“We can’t until they dock with the ship,” Herzer said. “I don’t want to screw with the refueling and take-off, anyway. We’ll be headed in the right direction, that’s all that matters.”

“Bit of a race, huh?” Megan said, then frowned. “Hang on…” She closed her eyes for a moment and then nodded her head. “Okay.”

“You talking to me?” Herzer asked. Megan just held up a hand for silence and nodded her head again. Finally she looked up.

“That was T,” she said, avoiding referring to the head of the intelligence service as her father in the hearing of others. “He has reports from three of New Destiny’s reactors. Dura has shuttles eight and one at it. Only one can dump at a time, so one of the shuttles will be late. One of the shuttles in view took on three nonfighter Changed and four orcs. The second had all Durgar. The third had six Durgar and a Ropasan orc. Each of them also boarded three scorpions.”

“Going to be crowded in there,” Herzer commented. “And they’re going really light on techs.”

“The Durgar and the Ropasan orc were wearing the diving suits,” Megan continued, looking off at nothing. “The nonfighters were in cloth suits, not like ours, different. More bulky. No sign of Reyes or a Dark One.”

“That just means Reyes is at one of the other reactors,” Herzer said, grunting. “Why did Dura get two shuttles?”

“Very low on fuel?” Evan suggested. “There’s been some indication that New Destiny has been hot-running its reactors. You can tweak them up a bit. We don’t because you don’t get a lot more power and your fuel consumption goes way up. It also decreases the lifespan of some parts that are hard to replace even with kenning. Not a good idea in the long-term.”

“We probably should have done it anyway,” Herzer said, nodding. “We could use the power and if we don’t win there won’t be a long-term.”

“Whups,” Joie said, suddenly. “Here we go.” She switched the screen to a downward external view as the ladder started to retract and the hatches closed with a beeped warning. There was no sensation of movement but as soon as the hatches closed the ground began to fall away on the screen.

“Are we really moving?” Courtney asked. “I don’t feel it.”

“Inertial compensation,” Evan said, leaning his chair back and reaching up for the VR headset. “We’re going to be pulling up to twenty gravities on this run. It would be a rather unpleasant experience if there wasn’t inertial compensation.”

Herzer leaned back and pulled his own headset down, then paused.

“Troops? We’re going to be working on minimum sleep when we get to the ship. No more than four hours on VR and then set it to sleep mode.”

“I’m going right to sleep mode,” Megan said, pulling down her headset. “I’ve had all the waiting I can take.”

“Nicole, talk to me,” Mike said, breaking into the engineer’s VR session. “Tell me there’s a way to secure this hatch.” He’d been looking at his tactical problem and didn’t see a good ending to the trip. He’d automatically clocked out when the sleep mode hit, but he’d gone right back to nibbling at the problem when they came out. With less than twenty minutes to docking, he didn’t have much time to find a way out of the trap.

“I’ve been looking at it,” Nicole answered unhappily. “And I don’t see a way. The power controls are on a direct bypass. If you lift the bar, they disengage. Lift from either direction of course. There’s no place to tie anything down to. I’ve got some glue, but even if I squirt it in the armature, it’s not going to hold against a full-force tug. Not for long.”

“If that’s the best we can do, that’s the best we can do,” Mike said. “Josten, Manuel, the second we dock, you two head for the EVA hatch.” The latter was at the rear of the crew compartment, a small cubicle entered by a door at the rear of the corridor. “The rest of us are going to hold the damned door. It takes two people to cycle the EVA hatch but only one can get out at a time. Josten goes first, then Manuel. Feng fu, you’ll cycle Manuel through then Rashid will fall back and cycle you through. We’ll keep doing that until I’m the last here.”

“Who cycles you through, sir?” Sergeant Budak asked.

“If we back away from the hatch, you really think any of us will make it to the lock?” Mike asked, quietly.

“No, sir,” Arje Budak said, grimly. “Stupid question.”

“What about me?” Nicole asked.

“The second we dock, hell, before, you head for Engineering.” The hatch for that was at the rear of the compartment, also, set high on the rear, portside, bulkhead. It was just barely negotiable by a full-sized human in a suit. Nicole wasn’t small, but she’d fit, suit and all. “Pull the injector, then EVA.”