John Sandford - Saturn Run

The captain went back to Comm: “Get me the command link to Dr. Johansson’s service egg.”

Two seconds passed. “Now, Comm.”

“I’m trying, Captain, but I’m not getting a ping back.”

“Pull up the last feed you have. Ten seconds’ worth.”

Two more seconds passed and the main screen lit up, showing the vid from the egg’s internal safety monitor camera. For three seconds, it was just Dr. Johansson peering intently through the main port. Then sudden darkness on the port, interior lights coming up instantly and Dr. Johansson’s head slamming into the inside of the port hard, very hard, and her head snapping back, as the vid feed dropped off-line.

Comm spoke, barely audibly. “After that we just have maybe three seconds of low-grade telemetry, but it’s showing cascading failures, one subsystem after another. Environmental’s out, atmosphere toxin levels skyrocketing, there’s a breach somewhere, the egg is losing pressure fast….” Her voice trailed off.

Shit. Double-shit, thought Fang-Castro. “Get me any of the other working channels. Try Mr. Darlington’s egg.”

“Trying all channels.”

A moment later, she heard what sounded like breathing. “Mr. Darlington?”

“Yes. Yes. Jesus, who is this?”

“Fang-Castro. Are you injured?”

“No. Becca’s been hit, hard. I can see her egg some of the time, I’m rotating, can’t stop it, but she’s way out there. You don’t have much time. I think she’s taken a lot of damage. I don’t see anybody after her. You gotta get going—”

“We’ve got everything under way, Mr. Darlington. You hold on tight there. Joe, Mr. Martinez, is on the way out…. I don’t see you on my screen.”

“I don’t see you, either. All the vid and all the audio channels seem to be out, except this one. I can’t reach Becca. Joe oughta go after her, if he can. She’s gonna need air, for sure, and probably power, her heater could be down.”

“Mr. Martinez is coming up on you,” Fang-Castro said. “Get ready for recovery. And I’ll say again we’re on top of the situation.”

She clicked away and said, to Navigation, “Get the aft view on my screen.”

The aft view came up.

“Spot Dr. Johansson’s service egg.”

That took a few seconds, but the camera finally locked on the egg and began zooming. There was nothing but empty space between the excellent lens and the egg, no heat ripples, no dust, no humidity, and when the camera got out to full zoom, and a further digital zoom was applied, they could see that the egg had been totally disabled. The metal slug that had hit it had taken out power, propulsion, comm. The shell looked intact, but it was splattered with now-frozen radiator metal. There was a crack in the view glass behind which Johansson had been sitting, visible between splashes of metal.

Somebody on the bridge said, “Oh, my God.”

Fang-Castro said, “Comm. Get me Mr. Martinez if he’ll take the call.”

Martinez came up: “I’m closing on Sandy’s egg.”

“Yes. I can get him on the command channel, I’ve spoken to him. He knows you’re about to do the recovery. Your assessment of the impact on Dr. Johansson’s egg is correct. I’m afraid there’s no prospect that Dr. Johansson has survived.”

“Okay. Listen, Sandy can be a handful. If you’d get the people he talks to—Fiorella, Crow, and get Dr. Ang for sure—get them down to egg operations to meet him when he gets out of his egg. I don’t know whether he’s physically injured—”

“He says not.”

“Okay, but his head’s gonna be seriously messed up. I don’t know if you’re aware of his relationship with Dr. Johansson…”

“I am. And I will get you that help. Also, I’ll have Comm patch my command channel into your egg so you can talk to him.” She clicked off: “Comm: patch my command channel through to Mr. Martinez. Also, order Mr. Crow, Dr. Ang, and Ms. Fiorella to report to my quarters, immediately. If I’m not there when they arrive, I will be shortly.”

She went to Engineering: “Dr. Greenberg? Where are we?”

“Off-line and shutting down. We’re shutting down everything as fast as we safely can.”

“Inform me if you start seeing more anomalies.”

“Yes, ma’am. We need to talk to Becca as soon as she can get back online, this is a rather complicated situation.”

“Do everything you can, Dr. Greenberg. Consider yourself in charge until I tell you otherwise.”

“Oh, no… oh no.”

Greenberg was no dummy.

With the situation stabilized, Fang-Castro turned the bridge over to the second officer, told him to get the off-watch executive officer up to the bridge as fast as he could be roused from his sleep time. “I will be in my quarters for a few minutes, but available at a second’s notice. Comm, keep me active all the time. And get me Joe Martinez right now.”

Martinez came in over her implants as she walked down to her quarters. “What’s your status, Joe?”

“I’m grappling onto Sandy’s egg. Man, the kid’s got some reflexes: he flipped the egg over when the radiator blew and took most of the damage on the corner of the undercarriage. I’ll have him back in half an hour. We’re gonna have to take this slow, the whole hookup’s pretty unstable. But I’m talking to him on the command channel and I think this is gonna work. He’s leaking air, but he should have plenty to get him inside.”

“Good. We’ll see you there.”

The second officer: “Ma’am, we’re getting a flood of inquiries about the shudder that went through the ship.”

Shit and double-shit. “Tell Comm to put me on the ship-wide.”

“Comm: you’re on, Captain.”

Fang-Castro said, “Your attention, please. This is Captain Fang-Castro. We experienced a difficulty on engine restart. This was the shudder some of you may have felt. The ship is in no danger whatsoever. Please continue with your normal operations. Engineering is shutting down the engines while they analyze the difficulty, so the ship will be in free fall for a while longer. I’ll inform you of our status further when we’ve fully evaluated the situation. Captain out.”

Crow, Fiorella, and Ang were waiting at her cabin door. Crow asked for them all, “What just happened?”

“Come inside,” Fang-Castro said.

She shut the door behind them. They all remained standing as she told them about the accident, and Fiorella buried her face in her hands and Ang said, “Oh my God.”

Crow shook his head.

Fang-Castro: “I want you all to come with me down to the egg section, to meet Mr. Darlington. I suspect you’re all aware of his relationship with Becca. We’re not sure how he’ll handle it. He’s a young man…”

Crow put up a finger.

“Mr. Crow, you have something to tell us?”

“Sandy’s not exactly what he appears to be, or rather, he is, but he’s also quite a bit more. We’ve held it close, but he’s actually one of my people. I expect all of you to hold this confidentially, but Sandy was an army officer in the Tri-Border fight, and not just an officer, but in a rather… extreme… or elite… outfit. He saw quite a few of his comrades killed. His friends. He suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, which accounts for his somewhat… lackadaisical… attitude. From which he has been recovering, as you may have noticed. He’s been extremely effective in his job—in all his jobs. But: what this will do to him, I have no idea.”

“I do,” Ang said. “I will meet you down at the eggs. I need to run get my bag.”

Fiorella was speechless. For almost the first time in her life.

Fang-Castro asked her, “Are you all right?”

“No. Yes. I mean…”

“I know what you mean. Let’s get down there.”