The engineer-rating smiled happily as his vision cleared.
The sun was obvious now, the brightest light among the stars. And Bigz could see two of the system's orange-tinted gas giants.
What he couldn't see was the Lynx. The darkened frigate must be pretty far away, and inertia would only carry him farther. Fortunately, in another few minutes--once he and the ship were out of the range of the Rix big guns--Bigz could pull his emergency beacon.
Then he would be rescued. No problem.
Bigz decided that he'd had enough of spinning. He pulled the reaction canister from his belt and calculated the correct angle, then let off a quick spurt. The spinning slowed, the stars now twirling at the stately speed of a rink full of skaters. He could live with that. Engineer-Rating Bigz now saw a tether strongline flailing about him. It had been rotating with him, but now that his spin had stopped it was wrapping itself around Bigz. He let it wind around his waist until he could grab the end.
The clip was still in the ring. The ringmount must have been pulled clean out of the hullalloy. That was bad. That meant that the Lynx had serious structural damage: a travelling fissure in a bulkhead, a bulkhead that was now exterior hull.
But at least, Bigz thought happily, he hadn't clipped himself wrong. Being out here in space wasn't his fault.
Then he saw something else. Another object in the void.
It was very distant, at the edge of his still blurry vision. The shape was dark, its edges glimmering. It seemed circular, unlike the long, thin Lynx. But perhaps he was seeing the ship head-on. That made sense. He'd been blown out the frigate's bow.
Might as well get closer to home, Bigz thought. If the ship were badly damaged (as it surely was) it would be far easier to rescue a loose crewman if he stayed nearby.
Bigz angled his reaction canister again, and let loose a long spray. He watched the object carefully for a count of twenty. Yes, he was getting closer now. He could see smooth metal facets now. It wasn't a huge and distant planetoid fooling his eyes. It was artificial.
It must be the Lynx.
RatingTelmore Bigz sprayed again, smiling.
He was going home.
Executive Officer
ExO Hobbes rappelled down the last corridor before the cargo bay bulkhead, the wind of depressurization serving as gravity. She clipped her belt to a nearby ring before ordering her strongline grapple to release and follow.
The outrush of air was slackening, but she didn't trust the respite. It 111 had lessened once before, then increased again suddenly, as if various breaches were blowing in turn. The last truly stable bulkhead she'd seen was the one at the forward gunnery station. She checked her pressure gauge. It showed near-vacuum. That was a bad sign, but at least with hardly any air left in this segment of the Lynx, there couldn't be another decompression.
Hobbes turned and saw the cargo bay hatch before her, one jump away. It was open.
She reattached her grapple and jumped, letting out strongline as she neared the hatchway. She swallowed nervously, hoping she'd find Frick and his team alive in the cargo bay.
Although she had prepared herself for the worst--strewn bodies among the ravages of the loose armor--when Hobbes reached the hatchway and peered through, she couldn't believe her eyes.
It was blackness . . . with stars.
There was no cargo bay.
Katherie pulled herself through, aghast at the huge rent before her, a cracked dome open to the sky.
A hand grabbed her shoulder.
"Executive Officer?" came the surprised voice through the suit's audio contacts.
Hobbes turned to see an engineer-rating. The woman seemed healthy and unpanicked, the athletic lines of her body obvious in the pressure suit.
The rating made a hand signal, and Hobbes turned to follow her eyes.
The whole engineering team seemed to be out here, huddled against the bulkhead. She breathed a sigh of relief.
A suited figure moved toward her--Watson Frick, the first engineer.
They connected their audio contacts.
"What the devil does Zai think he's doing?" the engineer spat.
"We had to accelerate, Frick," she explained. "The Rix spotted our coldjet reaction mass; they were about to backtrack it to us."
"But why with a jolt like that? / lost a crewman!"
The first engineer's eyes sparkled with tears as he shouted, his hands grasping her shoulders. For a moment, Hobbes thought she might have to fend off another physical attack, but the man forced himself under control.
"You used the deadman drone launcher, didn't you?" he said.
She nodded.
"We needed a mechanical acceleration, one as strong as possible, and to use a solid object as reaction mass. If we spread another cloud of water, the Rix could have found us again. They used lasers to spot the ice crystals, and extrapolated back to the Lynx."
Frick thought for a moment, then swore, agreeing with a mean, sharp nod.
"But we didn't expect the cargo-bay exterior to go," Hobbes said.
Frick shook his head. "It shouldn't have. But there were hairline fissures, virus trails. We were probably infected in the flocker attack. This bulkhead here," he indicated what had been the cargo bay floor, "is cavitating as well."
Hobbes nodded. They'd had less than twenty minutes to catalog all the flocker damage. One of the projectiles must have left metal-eating nanos.
"So that's why you opened this hatch," she said.
Frick nodded. "It was either a slow leak or another breakout. If we'd had an uncontrolled decompression, we might have lost the gunnery station bulkhead as well, and so on all along the ship."
Katherie Hobbes swallowed, envisioning one bulkhead blowing after another, like the legendary 77fcan/c filling with water.
Her eyes scanned the bulkhead, and saw the cracks that had coursed across its surface, fanning out in a wedge, a river delta seen from space.
"Frick, can she handle another turn?"
"Another what?"
"The captain has to yaw the ship again, to bring us back head-on with the Rix."
"Good god," said Frick.
Hobbes checked the mechanical timepiece on her wrist. It had continued to function even in hard vacuum. "The pilots should be pulling us back in forty-three seconds," she said. "But only at a twentieth of a gee, as per your message."
"No! It's too hard!" Frick cried. "Point-oh-five yaw at the centerline is much stronger out here."