Quite Possibly Heroes (Freeman Universe Book 3), page 26
“Perhaps they are, and we aren’t yet aware of their actions.”
“Maybe. In that case I’d contrive to nab Springbok and Lady Tabatha as insurance. Assuming our base conclusions remain correct and Ixatl-Nine-Go is ascendant but not yet in control.”
“Then we should stop dawdling,” Sarah said.
That, or get better intel. Seamus scraped the communications console onto the pilot’s secondary display. He hailed the tug.
The fiery-eyed comms officer stared back. “What’s the holdup?”
“I’m not sure our airlocks will mate up. We might have to rig something temporary, or you could send people over one at a time in hardsuits.”
“They’re both League military airlocks. They’ll mate.”
“I’m not so sure. Let me talk to the captain.”
“What will that do?”
“What do you mean?”
“How will talking to the captain fix an airlock compatibility issue?”
“It won’t. But I’d have a better idea of what they wanted us to do, in case the problem can’t be fixed.”
“There is no problem. Now dock, and prepare to be boarded.”
“I’m telling you, I’m not so confident.”
“Then go away.”
“What?”
“You’re the ones wanted to meet. If you can’t mate a League assault shuttle’s airlock to a League fleet tug’s airlock, then you should just go back where you came from.”
“I might do that. But I’d need to hear that from the captain’s lips.”
“Hear what?”
“That you’re unwilling to address the problem with the airlocks.”
“Wait one.” The display blanked.
Seamus waited. He wanted to see the captain. Talk to the captain. If the ship had fallen under Ixatl-Nine-Go’s control, then the captain would have as well. And Seamus would be able to tell. Because there was no way that Ixatl-Nine-Go could look back at him without revealing itself. It would want to gloat, and watch the fear build up behind his eyes.
The comm channel resumed, audio only, a woman’s voice, one with a Trinity Surface accent. “I don’t know what I can do if he’s too stupid to follow directions.”
The visual display resumed. A young woman stared down at the console in front of her. “What do you mean it’s up there? Oh.” She glanced upward, squinting into the visual sensor. “How are you supposed to look at the controls and up here at the same time?”
Seamus laughed. “The video controls are on the display, Janie Byrne.”
“Oh. So they are.” She twitched away from the screen when its light fell upon her. “Seamus mac Donnacha. I hear you have an impenetrably thick foreign accent. And are an idiot.”
“Maybe I do, and maybe I am. And it’s just Seamus nowadays, Janie.”
“Oh, right. Sorry about your family. What’s this business about the airlock?”
“I wanted to talk to the captain.”
“Which one?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve a surplus at the moment, and they’ve yet to work out which captain to trot out for public amusement.”
“We’re not keen to be boarded given such uncertainty.”
“We were under the impression you were strangers. And Leaguemen.”
“Two Leaguemen and one Seamus. We were under the impression you were strangers as well.”
“Most of us are, though I think you know Aoife nic Cartaí.”
“To look at, and a little more.”
“What about her man Carlsbad?”
“Him I know better, from the hospital.”
“And me, obviously.”
“I have your picture over my bunk.”
“Like I believe that.”
“The pair of us, in formal attire, at the Academy pilots’ dance, my sophomore year. Do you not recall the date?”
“I recall it. I’m just surprised you do.”
“Best night of my life.”
“Now I know you’re lying. I’m piloting for nic Cartaí now, can you imagine?”
“I knew it had to be one of the big three, if not your father. No one else could afford the repair bills.”
“Very funny.”
“Janie, are we in danger if we let anyone on board?”
“I was getting ready to ask you the same thing.”
“We’re safe on this end, talking only, unless we need to do more, but talking first, and fair warning otherwise.”
“Same here, though the timing isn’t ideal. They’d have liked you to come back later, after the question of who would speak for the ship had been decided.”
“I don’t think that would work.”
“Then you’d best come aboard. I think if Aoife nic Cartaí wanted to kill you, she’d have done it by now.”
“What about this other captain?”
“He doesn’t even know you.”
“So not one of the mac Kennas.”
“Not any of that lot.”
“I’ll bring her alongside.”
“And I’ll send a wrench down to look over the airlock, in case there’s a problem.” Janie sat, grinning into the display.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking. It was Macer Gant supposed to take me to that dance. He’d promised.”
“It was me supposed to, regardless of what anyone says, then or now. Tell me you didn’t have a good time, even with the last-minute arrangements.”
“If I did, I’d be lying.”
“We wouldn’t want that.”
“We wouldn’t, unless it was for a good reason.” She winked. “Four-Squared out.”
The display switched off.
Seamus glanced at Hector Poole. “One or more of our assumptions may be wrong.”
“Apparently.” Poole switched the first officer’s display to the close-quarters maneuvering monitor.
“And apparently,” Sarah Aster said, “there isn’t a single compartment or vessel in the universe without one of Seamus mac Donnacha’s girlfriends lurking inside.”
“Now that’s news a man can use.” Seamus blipped the thrusters. “I’ll be with you in a moment, darling. Once I park this machine.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, and you ought to just say it.”
Lady Sarah Aster snorted. “You really are a fool.”
“I am.” And he’d made her laugh in the face of danger.
Now for the easy part.
Hector Poole entered the airlock first, followed by Sarah Aster. Seamus took up the rear, standing a respectable distance behind the pair.
“What are you doing back there?” Sarah asked.
“He’s standing a servant’s proper one step behind and to the right,” Poole said. “Haven’t you screened a Freeman drama?”
“Why would I?”
“So you’ll know what they think of us.”
“Why would I care about that?”
Poole chuckled.
“Get up here, where you can be some use to me.”
Seamus did as commanded.
She took his golden hand in hers. Her fingers were shaking.
He squeezed. Gently, he hoped.
“Thank you. You can go back there if that’s what you want.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to go home and curl up with a good book. As I can’t do that, I want to appear strong and worthy of respect when I meet these people. I want them to do what I want. And that means they have to see me, and listen to me, and ignore whatever stories they have about people like her running around in their heads.”
“I will stay at your side.”
“I wish we were ordinary people and free to do as we liked.”
“I am free to do as I like.”
She let his fingers slip away. “I understand. Then—”
“I will stay at your side.”
She had to glance down to look him in the eye.
“Those hull-slippers make you look tall.”
“I feel tall.”
“That’s just your spine talking. Are you ready to do this?”
“No. So let’s get it over with. Major Poole?”
“Lady Aster.”
“You may commence banging on the hatch.”
“Suppose I simply press the call stud instead.”
“Fine. If you believe that will work.”
Pressing the hatch control stud didn’t open the airlock hatch. An error code blinked on the display.
In maintenance mode. Please wait…
Hector Poole banged on the hatch.
A tiny voice spoke from the control annunciator. “Replacing the over-pressure sensor. Just about done.”
“Great,” Sarah Aster said.
“Done. Try it now.”
Poole pressed the hatch control again.
Nothing happened.
“It’s not working,” Sarah said.
“Then the problem is on your end,” the tinny voice said.
“It can’t be.” Poole pressed the stud again.
“Check the inner hatch.”
“It’s closed. We’ve matched pressure with you.”
“What’s the delta across the lock?”
Seamus stepped forward and studied the display. Freeman longboats had paired fore and aft locks for rapid loading and unloading on a ring, where one lock was used for bringing things in, or ingress, and one for carrying things out, or egress. There was a failure mode where one lock would block the other from opening if there was too much of an imbalance of pressure on either active lock. The locks were holes in pressure vessels, imperfectly made holes with seals on the inner and outer hatches, and the inner seals under-rated relative to the outer seals. The assumption was that the pressure outside the lock would be equal to or lower than the pressure inside the hull, and if not, something had gone seriously wrong. One ought not open the outer hatch to a significantly higher pressure than that inside the hull. The procedure for locking in and out of free space, or a holed and depressurized vessel, was entirely different than the procedure for matching pressures between vessels.
Of course, if there had been hard vacuum inside the hull, they would have already been dead. And unlike a longboat, this vessel had interior pressure bulkheads, with intervening hatches. He wasn’t even certain it had more than one exterior hatch. It had to, though, because this airlock wasn’t large enough to bring bulk cargo aboard. There was a pressure hatch between the command deck and the rest of the ship, and it was closed last he looked, and only this hatch on the command deck.
He noted the pressure differential across the outer hatch. It wasn’t large enough to worry about.
“It was zero a minute ago,” Poole said.
Seamus took two steps across the lock and checked the inner-hatch pressure differential.
“That’s bad.” Sometime after they entered the airlock, the command deck had been opened to space. “We’re stuck.”
Sarah Aster glared at him. “What do you mean, stuck?”
Seamus fished a rebreather from his pocket. “Is it skin or skinsuit under all that fancy cloth?”
She brandished a rebreather. “What do you think?”
He glanced at Hector Poole, who gripped his own rebreather lightly.
Seamus pressed the communications stud. “Delta’s bad across the inside lock. Can you drop the pressure in your compartment?”
“Sure. How low?”
“Low as it can go.”
“That will take time. First I’ll have to clear the compartment. There’s a throng here to meet you.”
“There’s a slow leak past the inside seals.”
“Roger that.”
“What’s the downforce?”
“One point nine.”
“Repeat that.”
“We’re running one point nine gravities inside the hull.”
“What for?”
“Because we like it.”
Oh. We’ll be on rebreathers, in skinsuits.”
“I can slack off the load in the compartment. How low would you like it?”
“Low as it will go.”
“Give me a few. This will take a little arranging. Stand by.”
Seamus crossed the lock again and studied the inner-hull-to-airlock delta display. It could be a sensor malfunction. Or they could have been holed. Or someone left an exterior lock open and opened the lock between the command deck and the rest of the hull. Of those three possibilities, the most likely was a sensor malfunction. Not something he’d expect to see on an immaculately maintained League vessel, but then maybe the League wasn’t as on top of things as he’d imagined. Maybe they had the same problems everyone else had: a shortage of capital for parts and worse, a shortage of qualified people to install and maintain them. The engineer on the other side of the airlock didn’t seem the sharpest tool in the drawer, or on top of regular maintenance. Who waits until there’s an incoming hull to work on the airlock? And you’d think with all the money the League put into their kit, they’d be able to make a fixed-wire intercom that didn’t make everyone sound like asthmatic helium huffers.
The pressure delta dropped as he watched. They were definitely leaking past the inner seals. So it wasn’t a single sensor malfunction.
“We could dial the pressure down in here, and go back into the ship and seal whatever’s causing the problem.” Seamus didn’t like that idea, since if they couldn’t seal whatever was leaking, they’d be crawling into hardsuits for however long it took these people to scrape their rubbish into a pile. “If things go bad here, we’ll want our getaway ride in order.”
“They won’t go badly,” Sarah said.
“I was only kidding about airlock problems,” Seamus said. “If it can go badly, it will.”
“Let’s do it,” Poole said. “I agree, we need a functioning escape vessel.”
“Once we’re on their ship, they’ll lock us in,” Sarah said. “The only way we’d get back on board our own vessel is with their permission, or by stealing hardsuits and going in the hard way. Let’s try it the easy way first, and see what happens.”
“Let’s not.” Poole touched the airlock controls. The atmosphere began to bleed off. “Rebreathers in.”
That’s one way to put an end to any argument. Of course it also meant that the annunciator and its tinny speaker no longer worked. The display panel did work, though, and it blinked red, then green.
Pressure normalized.
Seamus glanced behind him.
The interior airlock hatch panel also glowed green.
Pressure normalized.
“Wait,” Seamus mouthed around his rebreather, but without atmosphere to carry his words, he was only wasting his breath.
Poole touched the inner-airlock open stud.
Seamus pinned Sarah Aster to the airlock bulkhead.
Both hatches opened at once.
And something huge and armored brushed Poole aside and pounded loose onto the big tug.
53
Seamus tapped Sarah Aster and slapped his palm against the bulkhead, the spacer’s gesture for stay here. Freeman spacer, he reminded himself. They might use a different gesture in the League.
New Seamus slowed to offer Poole a hand, but Old Seamus stepped over the bleeding man’s legs, pausing long enough to kick the man’s rebreather into arm’s reach if he yet retained consciousness.
Someone had used him and made him into a liar, and it didn’t matter who. And not just a lie, but one to Janie Byrne, who trusted him, even though she knew him. He’d said there were only three of them on board, and there’d be no shooting, just talking. The big League exo stood in front of him, weapon at the ready, glancing around the compartment.
It was an expansive compartment, one with seating for well over a hundred, standing space for as many straphangers, with short ladders and hatches at either end. Seamus kept waiting for the rest of the League crew to come pouring out from behind him. The compartment looked empty at first, then he saw them, a crowd of people, in the farthest corner of the space, and the engineer, on his hands and knees beside the airlock, a scalp wound that looked bad. His toolbelt had scattered junk across the deck, and his handheld lay by his knee.
The engineer’s fingers found the handheld, thumbed it active, and he glanced up and their gazes met.
Seamus’s lips moved silently, his fingers flashing in Freeman handspeak. Macer? What are you doing here?
Macer Gant blinked and signed back. Live work here both go stand back.
The League exo turned toward them.
Macer brushed his left wrist, the fingernails of his right hand silently flicking away from his wrist in a curve. You need to jet. Macer’s finger stabbed the handheld and Seamus did jet, away from the airlock as the overhead began to empty fast patch onto the deck, and the docking clamps released, and the assault shuttle and the big tug began to lose connection.
Macer disappeared beneath the fast patch that buried the exo up to its waist. The stuff was bad news for hull breaches—lightweight and self-attracting, drawn to low pressure like iron to a magnet. The hatch stood open but the compartment was pressure-normalized with the open hatch. Macer must have had time to engage the air handlers before he was buried in the stuff, because the fast patch began to move toward the hatch, accelerating, hardening, an exothermic reaction that would heat the exo and felt like being roasted alive on bare skin.
The League exo took a step forward and swung its weapon toward him, and past, and opened up with a sustained burst of plasma rifle fire in the direction of the crowd that scattered as the rain of weapons fire poured in. It was unreal, no stink of preheater oil, no hissing roar from the spouting barrel, just silent death spewing into the distant crowd as whatever lived inside that machine held the trigger down and aimed, not like a marksman, but like a fireman with a hose.
Seamus scanned the compartment for someplace to hide, for a weapon, for anything. Engineer’s tools littered the deck.
Oh. A gravity hammer.
Macer burst out of the fast patch, silently screaming.
The exo ceased fire and turned toward him.
Seamus snatched up the gravity hammer.
And leapt.
