Eric Flint: Threshold

Fitzgerald hadn't intended to kill her-but it was of no major concern to him, either. Whatwas of concern was that her body blocked his exit and, in vacuum, had swelled and securely wedged itself into the tunnel. Since she was already dead, however, there was no need for delicacy. A quick set of efforts showed that he couldn't budge her by hand, especially without any weight or leverage. But he still had what was left of Johnson's kit. Explosives… Richard sometimes thought there were no problems theycouldn't solve. He squirmed backward and made sure he covered his head as well as possible. The detonation slammed into him through the floor and walls. Doing his best not to dwell upon the nature of the mess all over, he was able to shove past the remains and come out into the central corridor, back behind still-operating shielding. Only to find that another sealed door was cutting off access to the central corridor, one that had been concealed by the dead woman's body. Bloody brilliant. Of course there would be. No decompression of the central corridor would go unsealed.

He was running out of explosives, but there should be enough for this last door. He'd just have to hope there were no more obstructions. He felt, rather than heard, cracking and groaning noises from around him.

Whole bloody ship's coming apart soon. A blast shook the maintenance corridor, and he started moving forward immediately. Air whistled past him now, and abruptly everything spun around him, accompanied by screeching, shattering sounds in the thin atmosphere. Weakened by impacts, stress, and two successive nearby explosions, a section of the main hull suddenly blew out under the return of air pressure.

Richard Fitzgerald was hurled outward fromOdin, scrabbling desperately to catch hold of a cable, a support stay, anything.

Something loomed up and struck him a heavy blow; he blacked out.

When he came to, he realized he was falling, falling through space. The jets on his suit managed to stabilize his spin, and he looked around. Jupiter loomed over him, enormous, its roiling surface filled with storms beyond imagining. In one direction, receding slowly but surely into the distance, layOdin. Ahead, a small dot of yellow-orange waited. That would be Io. He couldn't see it growing slowly yet, but he knew it would soon enough. Richard quickly checked the fuel remaining for his jets. Not enough to return to theOdin. Not nearly enough. He sighed. It was over, then. All hope, all struggle, all effort. All life. Done, over, finished. He was a dead man. So be it. Oddly, perhaps, he had not lost any of his equanimity. He'd been a lot more depressed on his fortieth birthday, actually. Besides, there was still time for sightseeing. He'd visited the Grand Canyon once and found himself getting bored after gazing upon the magnificent vista for an hour or so. He wondered how long Jupiter would keep its interest.

Considerably longer, as it turned out. The Grand Canyon had been created by the infinitesimally slow forces of erosion. The thing was grand, certainly, but also static. You saw one part of it, for a while, and you'd pretty much seen it all. Jupiter, though… The giant planet wasalive. Richard found it fascinating, the way those immense storms worked their way across the face of the great globe.

Hohenheim stared in frustrated chagrin at the locked door. He'd been outwitted on his own ship. But it should not be a surprise, really. This sort of operation was Fitzgerald's specialty. Perhaps Hohenheim should not have delayed, but simply gone on ahead. Yes, Fitzgerald would have been in pursuit, but perhaps it would have worked out better. Enough recriminations. He would have to try to work his way around and intercept Fitzgerald, though it seemed unlikely he could catch up unless something slowed his former security chief down.

Still, there were many things that might happen. And his presence here did give him one advantage. That advantage, was that Hohenheim knew that the way in the other direction-which led toward Engineering-was passable. Or had just recently been, at least. If he could make it there, he could take the central corridor straight to the radials.

"Passable" was, of course, a relative term. It turned out that Fitzgerald and his party must have had to squirm past a number of obstacles, which now slowed Hohenheim's progress considerably. With every passing moment, he grew less optimistic about catching up with either Horst or Fitzgerald. Abruptly he emerged into the main engine room. Despite the damage done to the rest of the ship, this area looked deceptively intact. The armor, water, and other bunkerage around the reactors, as well as the angle from the explosion, had combined to protect it. Only the huge number of red telltales and alerts gave away how very little ofOdin was still functional. However, all the general cared about at this moment was the central corridor.

Engineering, of course, had a direct passageway straight to the central corridor, which he followed. But just as he opened the door, new alarms screamed through his mortally wounded ship, and the door resealed itself against a sudden decompression. Something had blown out the side of the main hull somewhere. He would have sat down heavily, had there been gravity, for he knew now it was hopeless. If Fitzgerald had followed the right path, and nothing had changed along the way, he would already be where the final survivors were. Perhaps Horst would have picked them up by then, or perhaps not; but whatever was passing there was now beyond the general's ability to influence.

Communications were essentially out on the ship. Given some time, especially here, Hohenheim might be able to cobble together a transceiver that worked, even in this part of Jupiter system. But for what purpose? "At least I will be comfortable," he said to himself.

Main engineering retained power from the main reactor. Storerooms nearby were still pressurized. Despite the damage, there were supplies here that could keep him alive for a long time-weeks, certainly; perhaps even months. That was another ironic taunt of the universe, given that he had only the relatively few hours remaining before… How had Mr. Buckley put it once, in a conversation at dinner on Ceres? Ah, yes: deceleration through lithobraking. That would be happening to him on Io very soon. It was hardly a terrible way to end things, though. There would be none of the lingering horror of radiation sickness, and he had done what he could to restore some of his own honor. A quick flash of light and no pain; there were many worse ways to die. Except… That didn't sit well with the general. He drifted over and looked at the consoles. Damage to the main thrust nozzle and its cooling systems. Self-sealing tanks prevented us from losing all the remaining reaction mass. There was minimal connectivity left even in the most basic health-maintenance systems, but the main engineering computers were able to produce a good estimate of conditions throughoutOdin. He shook his head dolefully. The situation was worsening by the minute. The spin, the imbalance-each time something broke, it weakened something else. It was quite possible the whole ship might come apart before they reached Io. Come apart… He suddenly had a dim memory of a long-ago conversation with Dr. Castillo, the chief engineer onOdin. It had been after he had first boarded the great vessel and Castillo had been giving him a final internal guided tour. What was it? "Severable sections," he said to himself slowly. TheOdin was made such that in emergencies some components could be separated from the others. The major concept had included being able to remove symmetrical sections of the hab ring in case one of them was damaged, causing imbalance. At the time, he had wondered what the point was, given that the probability of actual collision with a meteor was so low as to be not really worth considering. Now, of course, he understood that the designers had been thinking of… far more directed disasters. The ship's main contractor had been the European Space Development Company. From the very beginning, undoubtedly operating under the directions of the chief operations officer, Osterhoudt, the company's top engineers had seen to it that theOdin was far more of a warship than she appeared to be. And then, adding insult to injury, had hidden the fact from theOdin 's captain but given it to their hand-picked chief security officer. The most extreme variant of "severable" would remove the engineering and mass-beam drive-essentially the entire rear of the ship-from the rest, leaving the forward section of the main body and the hab ring drifting. That made perfect sense for a military vessel. Such a separation would concentrate power, leaving the concealed weaponry and drives operable and getting rid of any excess weight. True, maneuverability would be terrible, given the geometry.