CHAPTER 28:
Old Flame
Yvonne A. @AlphaTeam21
Has anyone noticed that the Percheron website hasn’t updated? My husband and I wanted to see if his telescope would show us the rendezvous. After all, we should have been able to see that funny new drive on Bat, but we couldn’t see anything where the website said the ships would be.
Mars Exploration Consortium @TheRealMarsX
@AlphaTeam21, a server failure has resulted in a delay updating our websites.
Please see our website for the latest news and exciting opportunities in MarsX!
George J @spacefan
@TheRealMarsX, what the heck? That doesn’t make sense. Did you and @USSFActual trade chirp writers?
ChirpChat, October 2043
There was no one in the corridor outside the cargo bay.
He hadn’t really expected a greeting, but the rendezvous comm signals from Bat and Mission Control should have been noticed by somebody. He’d also banged around quite a bit during his landing in the cargo bay. While sound wasn’t transmitted through vacuum, it certainly carried through solid bulkheads.
Still, there was no one investigating either comms or sounds. Not a good sign.
He knew that a direct route to the bridge, and the maneuvering controls, would not take him anywhere near the personnel quarters, since he would be in the main hull and not the habitat ring. Since no one met him at the cargo bay, it was unlikely that he would encounter anyone if he went straight to the bridge with no diversions.
There was no gravity, so he didn’t walk to the bridge—it was more like a swimming motion. Each passageway had rungs up two sides. Under thrust, they would be ladders; in zero gee, they were handholds for starting and stopping. The central core of Percheron was designed not to rotate, so it was almost always in zero gee. Even now, the slow roll of the ship was not sufficient for any noticeable artificial gravity. This close to the axis of rotation, the only force affecting a moving person was air resistance or collision with another object. The handholds or rungs were designed so that an astronaut simply grabbed one and pushed off to start, or held on to stop. Glenn had plenty of zero-gee training and had learned to simply slap a rung with palm of the hand or sole of the foot, and to only touch one to stop or change direction.
As he started down the corridor, he caught himself in the learned habit of using both hands. He needed to limit himself strictly to his biological hand and arm. The risk of propelling himself too fast and having a catastrophic collision was too great for him to risk using his bionic arm.
On the other hand, Glenn thought to himself with a chuckle, I should keep that arm in front of me to provide steering, like Superman!
He was amazed that so many of the doorways he passed were open or ajar. Space Force policy—not to mention Yvette’s isolation order—should have every hatch closed and locked. Civilian vessels would at least have hatches and doorways closed in case of loss of atmospheric pressure. He still opened the helmet periodically to sample the air. The smell would reveal much about each compartment and its status. The food storage compartment had a faint smell of rotting food, while the zero-gee galley next to it had a slightly burnt smell coming from within. This was strange, since zero-gee food preparation should have been in totally sealed containers and dispensers. The aeroponics garden, on the other hand, gave off pleasant smells of plants, water, and fresh air. It was the first indication that some systems might be functioning normally. Through one of the hatches, he heard a voice male muttering to himself. Glenn thought about stopping to investigate, but he needed to get Percheron stabilized and Bat docked, first.
He reached the bridge. At least this entry hatch was closed. There was a small window, and he looked through it. As he’d expected, there was no one inside.
He opened the hatch, entered, and sealed it behind him. He also locked it with a physical bar to prevent any interruption until he had completed stabilizing of the ship. He lifted the faceplate of his helmet again—he would need the heads-up display in a few moments, but he wanted to look around and take a sniff. The smell was not as bad as in the corridor, suggesting that no one had been in here lately. On the other hand, it also suggested that Percheron’s erratic roll could be due to malfunction rather than malfeasance.
The general atmosphere of neglect extended to the bridge as well. Several safety covers were missing—notably, the one that Captain LeBlanc forcibly removed in order to blow the cargo bay hatch. Many status indicators were amber and quite a few others were red; the low number of systems reading green appalled him. He could only hope that the maneuvering systems were sufficiently functional for next task.
Time to get to work. Glenn realized he’d thought that to himself way too many times, lately, but it was true. He reached into an outside pocket on his skinsuit and pulled out a small circuit board. On the back wall of the bridge was a cabinet, behind which were communications relays for remote operation from Earth, Mars, or one of the shuttles. Those links provided a failsafe in an emergency in case no one was onboard, or if those individuals were incapacitated.
At least, that was the plan. Somehow, that link had been turned off. Mission Control had attempted to take control, or even transfer control to Bat once Glenn arrived. The chip in his hand would not just restore the remote communications link, it contained the codes he’d been given by OSI to allow direct access through the wireless interface which operated his bionics.
He opened the panel, and checked the relays. As expected, the fourth one down on the left was missing. It floated in the bottom of the compartment . . . broken in two. Glenn inserted his chip, watched until it lit internally with an orange, then blue glow, accompanied by activation of his heads-up display.
Despite the fact that Glenn could now take direct command of Percheron’s maneuvering system, it still took nearly two hours of increasingly fine control of the thrusters for him to null out the irregular motion of the ship. Counterintuitively, he first had to increase the roll to eliminate the precession, then he had to cancel the roll. It was a complicated three-dimensional problem, and he had to take it slowly to prevent the wobble from getting worse.
Stopping the roll presented a further problem—should he restart the habitat ring rotation? If so, he would need to counter that force to ensure that he didn’t simply have ship’s core and ring rotating in opposite directions. That result would reduce the artificial gravity generated in the ring by rotation, and wouldn’t solve his issues with docking Bat. In the end, he decided to leave the ring as he found it, and address that problem later, after Bat was docked.
By the time he was done, indicators showed that the reaction gas for the maneuvering thrusters was quite low—he’d had to burn fuel for some of the maneuvers. The gas could be replenished, as long as they had fuel for the main drive. He wondered if Percheron had wobbled because the reaction gas was too low to null it out, or if reaction gas was low from the events that caused the wobble. He activated the systems that would replenish the reactants before shutting down and locking out bridge controls so that no one else on the ship could activate it. That act compounded his piracy, but at he at least restored the Earthside remote controls.
He also found and activated the telemetry link to Earth. He sent a message to his own comm system on Bat for relay to Earth informing them that the automated attitude control and remote systems were back online.
It was done, but it had been way too much time since he’d checked his oxygen supply. From a starting point of four hours, he now only had an hour left. Still, plenty of time, and he always had the option of simply switching to ship’s air, but he wanted to put that off as long as possible. It meant not cutting the time any closer than he was right now. He unsealed the bridge hatch, then secured it behind him. He considered locking it, but figured that the bridge control lockout, and new sealant on the comm locker, would prevent problems for now. He headed back down the passageway toward the cargo bay—and for the first time, encountered one of the crew.
Yvette was waiting for him just outside the cargo bay airlock.
She wasn’t just standing outside the airlock, but was blocking it, her pose defiant. She’d grabbed a rung on one side of the airlock, and stuck a foot through a rung on the opposite side of the doorway. She wasn’t in a skinsuit, but in a dirty singlet with short arms and legs—the sort of garment one wore underneath clothing that offered more protection and concealment. Her normally tidy hair fanned out around her head in all directions. She was dirty; her face and arms showed smudges, her fingernails had black grime under them. There was a sheen of sweat to her face, her eyes were red-rimmed and sunken, cheeks hollow . . . and she looked angry.
“I knew someone was here. I saw someone moving on my monitors and followed you, but you locked me out of the bridge. Who are you? What are you doing here?” It didn’t seem as if she recognized him. Of course, he had his helmet closed, breathing only the air from his internal supply, which had now dropped below one hour remaining.
“Yvette, it’s me. Glenn Shepard.” He hoped it would be enough to identify himself. He activated a control with his chin to turn on a light inside his helmet. The light made it more difficult to see out, and impossible to use his heads-up displays, but it was there to allow a companion to see the face of an injured partner.
“You lie. Glenn Shepard’s dead. Who are you and what do you want? Did you cause this?”
“I’m not dead Yvette, you sent me to Earth for reconstructive surgery.”
“No, that’s a lie. He’s dead. I saw him die.”
“You didn’t see me die, Yvette, you saved my life.”
“No, he died. I killed him. I cut off his legs and killed him.”
“I don’t want to fight you, but I need to get through that hatch.”
“I can’t let you do that. You’re just going to let the aliens get us. They got the captain and they poisoned us. You just want to let them in.”
Conversation and reason were not going to work if she was delirious. It gave him no consolation to realize he’d been right; in fact, it broke his heart. He’d told Space Force that a human was needed on Bat just in case the crew was incapacitated. Yvette was the medical officer—the one who must be healthy and sane in order to treat the rest of the crew. If she was delirious, it was a big problem. He needed to get past her, though, and he might very well injure her in the process. As a doctor, he’d taken an oath to first do no harm. Still, if he couldn’t reason with her, he would have to physically remove her from her position blocking the hatch.
He was bigger and stronger, but in zero gee, that didn’t count for much. Yvette was manic, and under the circumstances, that outweighed—literally—any advantage he might have.
“Please, I need to get through the hatch. I have supplies. I have food. I have water and medicine. I’ve come to help you.”
“No, you’re one of them. I can’t let you do that.”
“Yvette, please it’s me, Glenn. Honest, I’m here to help you. I don’t want to hurt you—but I Must. Get. Through. That. Hatch!”
She wasn’t giving up. He could see the skin on the back of her hand turn white as she clenched down even harder on the rung. She tried to reach her other arm to a rung on the other side, and couldn’t reach far enough. Instead, she reached back and grabbed the same rung with both hands and tried to do the same with her opposite foot to firm up her position across the hatch.
That was the opening Glenn needed. She’d had to turn her back slightly toward him. He reached out and grabbed the rung she failed to grasp. He pulled himself close and then reached across her shoulders and around in front of her neck. She wasn’t wearing a skinsuit, and there was no collar ring for a helmet. There was nothing to block him from trying a breath hold—but he would need to do it with his right arm—the natural one, not the bionic.
“Please, don’t make me do this Yvette. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to hurt you, but you must get out of my way.”
She tried to bite him. Yvette growled and grunted, squirmed, and tried to get away from the hold. Glenn had to use the same arm for the breath hold as he’d used to grab the rung earlier. He was now depending on her to anchor him as he tightened his arm around her throat. This was the tricky part. To avoid injuring her, he needed to get the crook of his elbow directly in front of her throat so that his bicep and lower arm pressed against her carotid arteries. He’d learned martial arts for the exercise, but this was the first time he had to do it for real. He’d dreaded the thought that someday he might have to use it on a patient; he never dreamed he would have to use it on his former fiancée.
Yvette continued to struggle. She reached one arm up and grabbed at his. This loosened her grip and he kicked with his feet to pull her away from her handhold. They began to drift down the corridor now that neither of them was holding onto the rungs. She reached up and started to claw at his face, but his faceplate was closed.
She was so close that the interior light reflected, and was affecting his ability to see. He turned it off with the chin switch, and the motion rocked his head back. Yvette took that opportunity to try to twist in his grip, and they started to tumble. His head hit the bulkhead wall, and then her head hit his. His helmet took the impact, but an indicator turned from green to amber in his status display. The neck seal had been compromised. That would be a problem when he stepped out into the vacuum of the cargo bay, but he still had to get past Yvette.
Fortunately, Yvette’s struggling stopped, and she slumped in his arms. He checked her eyes—unconscious, not dead.
They were still drifting down the corridor. He swam toward the wall, much the same way as a lifeguard—he was not going to let Yvette go, just yet. He grabbed a rung and brought them up to the wall. He placed one of her arms through a rung, and then pushed that hand into a pocket of her singlet. That should at least keep her from drifting off until she woke up. He moved back to the airlock and entered it, closing and locking the hatch behind him. He’d restored the automated controls while on the bridge, it was one of many systems that appeared to have been simply turned off. As the chamber pumped down, he turned up his oxygen feed. He could hear air hissing, and his ears popped. The neck seal was definitely damaged, but he could still make it. As long as he could get back into the MILES, he would be back in a pressurized environment, but with limited oxygen. He opened the airlock outer door and quickly stepped over to the MILES. He climbed in and closed the belly hatch.
Twenty minutes of air.
He looked out through the open cargo bay and couldn’t see Bat. Of course, he’d made quite a few maneuvers to stabilize Percheron, so there’d been no guarantee that the cargo ship would be in close proximity. He triggered a comm signal to flash Bat’s exterior lights. He saw them blinking quite a distance away—maybe two or three kilometers.
He fired his maneuvering jets at full thrust. He didn’t have time to waste. He also braked hard, and soon hit Bat feet first with a jolt. The magnetic soles held, and he walked back to his access hatch. Once inside, he inflated a pressurized emergency bubble, opened his MILES suit, and drank in the blessed, clean air. Even with the confined space and his own body odor, it smelled sweet compared to Percheron.
He checked the gauges on the MILES and his portable life support pack.
Two minutes remaining. That was too close for comfort, but there was no time to dwell on it. He had to get Bat docked with Percheron. After that, he could figure out how to rescue a ship full of people who had gone crazy.