Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

“You can’t do that! It’s in use . . . there’s ninety meters of whisker in the drum now . . .” The shift supervisor for the Special Materials Fabrication Facility was a solid, graying petty-chief, who was not intimidated by a mere four officers. “You’d have to have permission from Commander Dorse, and he wouldn’t—”

“Stand aside, or there’ll be ninety meters of whisker and . . . I estimate 1.7 meters of you.” Seska, intent on getting back to his ship, furious with more than the Bloodhorde, was past making polite requests, although he’d started with one.

“Admiral Dossignal will kill me if you get in there and destroy an entire batch—”

“No . . . the Bloodhorde will kill you. The admiral will only break you to pivot and then give you twenty years hard time if you don’t get—out—of—the—way.”

“Bloodhorde? What does the Bloodhorde have to do with it?”

“Haven’t you heard anything?” Esmay stepped forward, trying to project harmlessness and a pure heart.

“No, I haven’t. I’ve been monitoring a startup whisker for the past five hours and my relief hasn’t shown up and—”

Esmay lowered her voice. “Bloodhorde commandos are loose on the ship, and your relief is probably dead. The only way we can fight them is to get out of T-1 and the only way out of T-1 is through here. I suggest you let us pass, and when we’re safely out, let the Bloodhorde in, if they show up. Then do a breakoff early.”

“But that’d be ninety meters wasted . . .”

“Excuse me,” said Frees, to one side. The man’s head turned, and Esmay hit him as hard as she could with her weapon. She might have killed him; at that moment she didn’t care.

They barricaded the hatch to the passage as well as they could, and climbed quickly into the EVA suits in the nearby locker. They checked each others’ suits before opening the first of the lockout hatches that isolated the Special Materials Fabrication Unit from the ship’s artificial gravity. Inside was a metal-grid walkway ten meters long, ending in another lockout hatch. Rails ran along either bulkhead, with rings set every half-meter. They went in, closed the hatch behind them, and punched for Airless Entry. The light ahead of them turned green, and they started down the walkway.

Esmay felt herself lifting with each step, as if she were walking in deepening water. In the last meter, her steps pushed her off the walkway completely, and her feet trailed back, lured by the weak attraction of Koskiusko ’s real mass. She grabbed for a rail, and hoped her stomach would crawl back into her midsection.

“I hate zero-G,” Bowry said.

“I hate the Bloodhorde,” Seska said. “Zero-G is just a nuisance.”

They cycled through the second lockout hatch into a long dark tube lit by the eerie purple and green glow of the growth tank. It seemed to go on and on, narrowing to a dark point far away. Here Esmay could feel no slightest hint of attraction to any mass. Her stomach slid greasily up into her throat when she moved one way, and back down her spine when she turned the other way. She tried to concentrate on her surroundings. Along one side was a narrow catwalk with a rail above it.

“Remind me again what happens if we disturb the growing whiskers,” Seska said.

“They shatter and impale us with the shards,” Bowry said. “So we don’t disturb them,” Seska said. “Minimal vibration, minimal temperature variance—we slide on the rail. Not thrashing around, not trying to look. Just relaxed . . . like this.” Esmay watched as he made a circle of his suit glove loosely around the rail, and pushed off from the lockout hatch. He slid away . . . and away . . . and vanished into the darkness. Esmay noticed that he’d pushed off precisely in the axis of motion he wanted; his legs simply trailed behind him.

“I hope there’s a bracket on the end of this thing,” Frees said, and did the same thing.

“Lieutenant, it’s my turn to be rear guard,” Bowry said. Esmay wrapped her glove around the rail, loosened it in what she hoped was the right amount, then kicked off. It was a strange feeling. She was drawn along effortlessly, as if the rail itself were moving, and she could see nothing but the faint reflection of the greenish purple glow on the bulkhead, a long vague blur of not-quite-color.

When she slowed, she didn’t at first realize it. Then the blur steadied . . . she thought it was motionless. Now what? If she moved around too vigorously she could bang into the bulkhead and disturb the whiskers. She moved very slowly, bringing up her other hand to steady herself, then turning to look back the way she’d come. Far away now she could see the little cluster of lights at the lockout hatch. Nearer—something was coming, sliding along . . . too fast. If Bowry hit her, they’d both hit the bulkhead, if not worse. She gripped the rail and pulled herself along hand over hand, trying to let her body trail without twisting.

She couldn’t watch and move at the same time, not without twisting. And she didn’t want to go too fast; she didn’t know how much farther she had to go. She glanced up from time to time, matching speed with Bowry . . . and as he slowed in his turn, she also slowed. Somewhere ahead of her were the others; she didn’t want to slam into them, either.

“Slow now,” she heard. She hoped Bowry heard it too; but she didn’t look, just put out her arm to brake against her movement. Her legs slewed sideways, but she was able to stiffen her torso and keep them off the bulkhead.

When she turned to look forward, she saw the narrowing rounded end of the fabrication unit, and the big round lock that allowed completed jobs to be taken out. To one side was a smaller personnel lock. Why did they even have locks at this end, when the point of SpecMatFab was its hard vacuum and zero-G? She thought of the answer almost as soon as the question. Of course they didn’t want all the debris in space getting into the unit.

The personnel lock was manual, a simple hatch control that required only strength to turn. Then they were outside, clinging to the grabons and loops that Esmay thought were misnamed as “safety” features. Beside it were a row of communications and oxygen jacks.

“Top up your tanks,” Seska said. Esmay had almost forgotten that standard procedure. She glanced at her readouts; it hardly seemed reasonable to spend the time now for just a few percents. But the others were all plugged in; she shrugged mentally as she pushed her own auxiliary tube into place. Her suit pinged a signal when tank pressure reached its maximum, and she pulled the connection free.

Seska clipped his safety line to the first loop and started pulling himself along, up the rounded end of the fabrication unit alongside the arching supports for the whisker transport system. Esmay followed Frees again, with Bowry behind her, stopping to unclip and reclip her line every time it ran out. When they got to the upper surface—upper as defined by the whisker track—Seska paused.

From here, the size of Koskiusko surprised Esmay all over again. The fabrication unit alone was larger than most warships, coated like them with matte black, and studded with the shiny knobs of the shield generators. Beyond it rose the angular outer face of T-1, black against the starfield, with the faint gleam of the transport track rising over its edge.

“Check,” Seska said.

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

Esmay shivered. Only four of them, out here alone on a ship so big she couldn’t see most of it . . . .

“We’ll take the transport line,” Seska said. “It’ll save us time.” Nobody mentioned how much air was left; no one had to.

Esmay could see on her own suit gauges that they had spent twenty minutes cycling through locks, traversing the long tunnel of the fabrication unit, climbing up this far. And now they had to go back the same distance they’d come, cross the entire ship, find a way down to one of the locks opening into T-3’s repair bay. Inside, walking along the decks, even running up and down ladders, they could have done it within the limits of a suit tank. Out here? It didn’t matter—they had to. Seska clipped his line onto one of the rails of the transport line and pushed off. They followed.