Chapter Thirty-Seven
“And…now!” Raptis exclaimed as the packet slid into the ice-teroid’s shadow.
Kamara gave the ship a small boost to match the ice-teroid’s velocity. A fairly large body, the object was pear shaped, nearly sixteen kilometers long and ten kilometers in diameter at its widest point. The thin end, which pointed generally away from the star as it slowly tumbled through space, was only about six kilometers.
“Okay,” Kamara said when he was satisfied with the craft’s positioning alongside the narrow end. His shoulders sagged as he released the breath he’d been holding. He turned to Raptis. “Your turn.”
Raptis nodded and pushed off toward the airlock. “Come on, Bowden. This was your idea. You’re my backup.”
“We got lucky,” Raptis announced once she and Bowden returned from their spacewalk two hours later. “There’s a vein not too far up from this end. It’s big, but the fatter end of the asteroid has blocked the seam from being heated too much prior. There is a lot of ice inside it we can use to our benefit. Because of the way the asteroid is shaped, we can burn our engine without any liminal heat being seen by the planet.”
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Kamara asked. “There is a possibility that this could go horribly wrong. If something outgasses and hits the ship, we could find ourselves on a vector where no one will ever be able to get us.”
Hrensku shrugged. “No one’s going to come and rescue us in any event.”
“Why’s that?” Fiezel asked.
“There’s no way they could get to us and get back without being seen,” Hrensku said, shaking his head. “And since they can’t…”
“They won’t,” Bowden finished. Hrensku nodded. “Therefore,” Bowden continued, “it’s up to us, and this is the only way we’re going to get there without being seen. We have to try it. If it doesn’t work or we’re seen doing it, then we’ll have to come up with a different plan.”
“What would that be?” Kamara asked.
“I have no idea, so let’s just make this work. Okay?”
Raptis chuckled. “It’s our only hope, and the ice seam looked good. I say we try it.”
“I agree,” Hrensku said. “It really is our only chance of completing the mission…which is our only chance of getting out of this alive.”
“I’m in,” Fiezel said.
“As am I,” Kamara said. “Anything is better than being caught by the Kulsians.” He shrugged. “Even drifting off into space with no chance of rescue.”
As complicated as the maneuver was going to be—to put them on a vector that would pull them into an orbit around the second planet without anything other than minor thruster corrections—Kamara booted up the computer, and they worked out the vector and thrust they’d need to intercept the planet. The results had Kamara shaking his head.
“It’s going to take a big thrust pulse to get us there, which means that not only are we going to need a big outgassing screen to hide behind, we’re also going to have to start our thrust for the planet much closer to the asteroid so we’re not seen.”
“It’s what we have to do,” Bowden said, “so let’s do it. You take the pilot’s seat, and I’ll back you up as copilot.”
“Very well. Everyone else is going to need to be strapped in. There is no telling what will outgas from the asteroid, nor where it will go when it does.”
“Everyone’s ready,” Bowden said a little while later, once the packet and the people onboard were as secure as possible. Bowden had also passed the word to the commandos in the modules to secure themselves for thrust/collision; both outcomes were possible with what they were planning.
“Maneuvering,” Kamara said. The ship was pointed away from the asteroid, and he walked it over sideways with the ACS thrusters, using the cameras at the back of the craft to watch his progress.
Bowden forced himself to breathe as the landscape of the asteroid passed beneath him far closer than he was comfortable with. After a few minutes, the seam appeared below them, darker in color than the rocky surface, and Kamara used the attitude control system thrusters again to stabilize their position over it.
“Here we go,” Kamara said. Bowden could hear the strain in the pilot’s voice as he intentionally put his ship—and everyone onboard—in danger. His fingers danced as he slowly advanced power to the engine while matching it with the ACS system to hold his position.
Nothing happened.
“We need to move closer,” Kamara said.
“Give it a minute,” Bowden replied. “Let it heat.”
“We won’t have the fuel for an extended burn if we waste it playing with this.”
Bowden’s eyes darted to the fuel gauge. The level was dropping—slowly, but visibly—toward the mark Kamara had drawn. When it reached the mark, they had to boost for the planetoid or they wouldn’t have the fuel to reach it.
“Okay,” Bowden agreed. “A little closer.”
“Moving,” Kamara said. He reduced thrust ever so slightly, and the ship moved toward the asteroid. Within seconds, vapor began to boil away from the ice seam.
“It’s working,” Bowden said.
“See, we just needed to get—” Without warning, the motor cut out completely, and the asteroid began growing quickly in the camera view. Kamara flipped the switches to restart the engine, but Bowden could see they were going to hit before the engine would be able to develop enough thrust to boost them away.
“Shit!” Bowden said, having had more than his share of bad rendezvous with asteroids. He slapped the aft ACS thrusters to full and killed the forward thrusters, which were pushing them toward the asteroid. The planetoid continued to grow in the camera view for another few seconds, then—just as it seemed Bowden could reach through the camera and touch the surface—it began to recede again. Bowden jockeyed the ACS controls to slow their velocity away from the planetoid, then stabilized the ship’s position with respect to the asteroid beneath them.
“What the hell was that?” Bowden asked.
“I don’t know,” Kamara replied. “You saw—the engine just cut out.”
“Yeah, but then you didn’t do anything to stop our momentum down.”
“I was trying to get the motor started.”
“We were going to hit. I saved us.”
“Maybe,” Kamara finally allowed. “Maybe I panicked; I don’t know. I thought I could get it restarted in time, but, thinking about it now, maybe not.”
“Maybe we should stop and check it,” Bowden said.
“No, the fuel we use isn’t perfect, and the engine cuts out every once in a while. Let me run the diagnostics on the engine, and we can try again. We’re already in position, and I don’t want to lose any heating of the ice below that we’ve already done. We won’t have enough fuel if we do.”
Kamara restarted the engine and ran the diagnostic on it while Bowden let everyone know what was happening.
“We’re ready for another try,” Kamara said. “Everything is good, and I can’t find anything wrong with the engine. It must have been a bit of bad fuel, as I suspected.”
“Okay,” Bowden replied, trying to keep his tone level. A second attempt violated most of the procedures he’d learned in the Navy.
“Here we go.” Kamara moved the ship closer to the asteroid and increased power.
Bowden leaned forward and kept his hands close to the thruster panel. If it was needed again, he was going to be ready. Having done it once, Kamara moved to the position where they’d been when the motor failed and brought up the power levels again. Within seconds, the ice began to vaporize again, and the cloud of vapor grew quickly. Soon, pieces of rock and other, non-vaporized things began to spew from the crevasse, and Bowden heard a loud bang! as one of them hit the hull.
“Want to move a little farther from the asteroid?” Bowden asked nervously. A rock that destroyed something in the propulsion system was just as good a mission kill as a Kulsian ship-to-ship missile.
“I’ve got it,” Kamara said, jockeying the craft to the side slightly. The surface of the craft rang with repeated small impacts, almost as if it were raining on the hull.
Bowden glanced up, and his jaw fell. Kamara had a giant smile on his face that could be seen through his helmet as he worked the craft back and forth over the seam. When it got too hard to see the surface, he’d move slowly to the side until he could see again, slowly painting the craft’s exhaust over a greater and greater swath of the ice vein.
Smash!
Something spewing forth from the vein hit the camera. There was a flash of rock, then the screen went black. Bowden’s finger moved to the ACS thruster.
“No!” Kamara ordered. He looked out the ship’s small canopy. “I’ve still got it. I can see…well enough. I think.”
The qualifier didn’t do Bowden’s nerves any good as the rate of things hitting the hull continued to grow. Bowden would have hated to be the commandos—their boxes were probably taking a pounding and they’d have no idea what was going on. The container walls are thick—they won’t get holed…I hope. The first yellow warning light illuminated on the control panel. A sensor on the aft portion of the ship had ceased reporting.
Bowden took a quick look out the canopy. He didn’t see how Kamara was able to continue. The cloud completely enveloped them, and it continued to grow and thicken. As did the pattern of impacts with the hull.
“How much more can the ship take?” Bowden asked.
“As much as it needs,” Kamara replied with a grunt as he slid it back to the right again.
Another glance to the fuel gauge; they were almost at minimum fuel for their maneuver. “The fuel…” Bowden warned.
“I know,” Kamara replied.
“You’re going to shave it too thin!”
“I know!” Kamara paused, nodded a couple times to himself, then stabbed the enable button on the autopilot. The ACS thrusters cut off, and the engine roared to full power. The ship accelerated a second, then spun to its intended course while the engine continued at full thrust. After about ten seconds, it cut out, and Kamara turned to look at Bowden as they started to draw ahead of the ice-teroid and angled off to the side.
“We’re on our way,” Kamara said. “For better or worse, we’re on our way.”