Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

“How long?”

He shrugged. “Depends. How far and in what direction will New Moon be displaced? It could take days, or weeks. But New Moon could incinerate within hours from now.”

I shook my head. “You can’t risk five thousand people. Tell management to abandon ship.”

Howard looked away.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “No. Don’t tell me.”

He said, “They could jam fifty into the Clipper, if they skip cargo. The Emergency Pods can take another three hundred, total. The design worst case was a one-ring loss.”

I winced. “Unsinkable. You rebuilt the Titanic.”

Jude lay immobile and unsmiling, his eyes shifting between my face and Howard’s.

Munchkin clawed her son’s shoulder. “Get him loose!”

Below us, the Exit Tube’s emergency lights glowed red through the smoke. Where there had been a thrashing arm-and-leg haystack, a single, coughing line now marched, hand-on-shoulder-in-front, into the Exit Tube. Something had transformed panic to evacuation.

“Single file! That’s better!” On one side of the human line, the transforming something bellowed, hands-on-hips. Ord pointed at the shuffling technicians. “My uncle Elmo moves faster than that! And he’s dead!”

The line sped up.

The little MP stood opposite Ord, penning in her side of the line, white-gloved hands windmilling the evacuees along like a traffic cop. Unfortunately, the people Ord and the MP were saving were evacuating onto a sinking ship with no lifeboats.

I turned back to Howard. “Is there a best case?”

“Two cases, actually.” He pointed at the Exit Tube. “If the tube gave way sooner, New Moon would stay in orbit. The Firewitch would — well, I’m not sure.”

“But at worst, we’d save five thousand people. Case two?”

He shook his head and looked away. “There is no case two.”

I grabbed his lapel and spun him toward me. “Goddammit, you just said there was!”

He coughed, then sighed. “If the Firewitch didn’t sense a pilot, it might shut down immediately.”

I pointed at Jude and the three firefighters. An electric saw whined and sparked, but the metal around Jude held fast. “It senses a pilot.”

Howard dropped his eyes. “A live pilot.”

The Tech Sergeant paused, listening to us. He wore a sidearm.

Munchkin’s eyes widened. So did Jude’s.

I said, “You’re right. There is no second option.”

Howard pointed to the Exit Tube again. Fifty people besides Ord, the MP, the firefighters, and the four of us remained in the Firewitch. The fifty were crawling, now, to stay under the smoke.

Howard said, “But there’s no first option, either. That umbilical’s engineered to withstand hours of worse flexion than this. If the tube doesn’t snap in the next thirty minutes, New Moon will be irretrievably unstable.”

A red beam sliced through the smoke. Ord must have dug a laser designator out of our gear, and set it to mark a path to the Exit. So MAT(D)4’s equipment had been some use, after all.

The smoke thickened. Jude coughed.

The saw screeched, then died. Its smooth-worn chain glowed dull, defeated red. Under the firefighters’ headlamps, the clamp metal reflected barely a scratch.

The Tech Sergeant nodded his head from his two assistants toward the laser beam. “Go.”

The other two Zoomies stared at him.

He told them, “You can’t do dick here. There’ll be casualties in the station that need treatment.”

“What about the rest of you, Sarge?”

“This ain’t a debate. Move!”

They turned away, heads down, then clattered onto the scaffold.

Electrical fires crackled in the darkness, while the four of us knelt alongside Jude.

The smoke boiled higher, curling around our feet.

The Tech Sergeant strapped a respirator from the toolbox on Jude, then handed respirators to the rest of us.

The Tech Sergeant pressed the side of his helmet, over his ear, with one hand. Then he spoke from behind his Eternad’s visor. “Damage Control says orbital velocity’s dropping.”

Howard asked, “How fast?”

The Tech Sergeant said, “She’ll start losing altitude in thirty minutes.”

Howard shook his head. “Once that happens, there’s no turning things around.”

After three minutes, four respirators whirred while we stared at one another.

The Tech Sergeant cleared his throat. “General Wander, you’re the senior officer here. Colonel Hibble said New Moon’s got a chance if we can make this ship shut down—” He fingered his pistol.

Eyes watering, Munchkin sobbed behind her mask.

Jude struggled against the clamps. Nothing budged.

The undulating Exit Tube, by which the Firewitch was dragging five thousand people to their deaths, groaned louder. But it didn’t break.

I shook my head and muttered.

The Tech Sergeant cocked his head. “Sir? I didn’t catch what you said, General.”

“Nothing.” I lied. I had repeated what that Quartermaster Colonel had said to me back in my hospital room at New Bethesda. The hell of command is ordering your family to die.

THIRTEEN

I POINTED AT THE TECH SERGEANT’S antennaed helmet. “You got contact with New Moon?”

He nodded.

I turned to Howard. “If the tube breaks soon enough, the station will stay in orbit, right?”

Howard said, “Jason, I told you! It won’t break soon enough.”

“So break it!” I turned to the Tech Sergeant. “New Moon’s got maintenance equipment. Tell the staff in the Rings to wheel some Plasma cutters to the other end of the Exit Tube. Tell them as soon as they get all the evacuees into Pressurized Volume, cut the Exit Tube at their end.”

The Sergeant frowned and shook his head. “Heavy equipment storage’s in the Multi-Use Ring.”

“So move it out of the Multi-Use Ring, Sarge. Fast.”

“Sir, soon as this hit the fan, all Pressurized Volume on New Moon locked down. Nothing passes between the public rings and the Spook Ring.”

I nodded. “Sure. Airtights. Override ’em.”

Howard said. “They can’t be overridden. Jason, the lock-down program’s anti-espionage encrypted. Nothing in or out for four hours. To prevent technology loss.”

My breath hissed out between my teeth and I clenched my fists. Knowing why Howard behaved like a paranoid Spook didn’t make me like it.

Munchkin hissed through clenched teeth. “If I’d brought my own gun, I’d shoot you, Howard!”

I sighed. An infantry soldier feels naked without her weapon, even years later. Then it hit me. “Munchkin, what did you say?”

She said, “I said I’d shoot this pugging pugger with my own pugging—”

Jude’s mouth formed an “O.” “Mom! Language, please!”

I said to Munchkin, “Before that.”

“If I’d brought a gun—”

I leapt onto the scaffold stairs, slid down the handrails like they were playground equipment, and crashed onto the deck.

I scrambled to my knees, limping, and felt my way through the smoke.

It seemed like I stumbled across the Sahara before I felt the first equipment crate. I voiced the Cargo’Bot that held it, and the ’Bot’s forward manipulators whined. The ’Bot tore back the crate top as easily as a child popping a Coke Plasti.

I rummaged. Obsolete radios with blanked serial numbers. “Dammit!”

A hand touched my shoulder, and I jumped.

“Sir?”

“Sergeant Major! We need—”

“The breaching charges are in crate sixteen, Sir.” Ord voiced a different ’Bot, and it unpiled crates until it lifted out number sixteen, yellow-stenciled “DANGER: EXPLOSIVES.”

There was no point asking Ord how he knew we had to blow the connecting tube off ourselves. Every Non-Com speed-reads his officer’s mind.