Terms of Enlistment

Chapter 19

I wake up to the sensation of cool air hitting my face. The right side of my head feels wet and sticky, and when I touch my fingers to my forehead, I feel a deep, bloody gash over my right eyebrow. It’s dark, and eerily quiet. All I can hear is the familiar soft humming of the data storage racks. I look up to see Halley standing above me.

“On your feet, sailor. We’re in deep shit.”

She looks at the gash on the side of my face and winces sympathetically.

“That looks awful. You okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll live.”

My admin deck is on the floor over by the rear bulkhead. I walk over to it and pick it up to find that the deck is still running, none worse for the wear. I put it back onto the desk in front of the admin console. Then I lean over to press the button on the priority voice link to CIC.

“CIC, Networks.”

There is no reply, and Halley shakes her head.

“Already tried that. The circuit’s fried. I haven’t heard shit over the 1MC, either. Place is quiet as a tomb.”

I tap into the system with the admin deck, and it doesn’t take long for me to realize that the Versailles is profoundly broken. Virtually every vital subsystem shows a long string of emergency alerts and error messages.

“Holy shit,” I say. Halley steps next to me to look at my admin deck’s screen.

“What is it?”

“Power circuits are out—everything down to the tertiary. That’s not supposed to happen, ever. We’re running off our backup power cells.”

“What about the reactor?” she asks. I check the engineering section, and an unwelcome feeling of dread gives my stomach a little twist.

“It’s out. We’re dead in space. This is not good.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured we’re in deep shit.”

I scroll down the list of priority system messages, and my feeling of dread turns into borderline panic.

“The Abandon Ship order came twenty fucking minutes ago.”

“Holy shit,” Halley says again. “How long were we out?”

“Almost an hour, it looks like.”

Halley walks over to the hatch and pounds on the control box with her fist.

“We got a red light,” she says. “Not enough breathable air on the other side. It won’t let us open.”

“Well, how the fuck are we going to get out of here? I’d rather not suffocate on this can, you know?”

“Chill out, Andrew. Check your toy, and let’s figure out how to get out of this room before the air runs out.”

I check the system for the location of the nearest unused escape pod, only to unearth more bad news.

“Fuck. They’re all gone.”

“What’s all gone?”

“The pods. They all launched. There’s not a single escape pod left in the hull. The last one launched seven minutes ago.”

Halley throws her hands up in an exasperated gesture that looks almost comically understated, considering our circumstances.

“Well, isn’t that just fucking awesome.”

“I can blow the lock on that hatch remotely with the admin deck, I think, but we won’t have any air to breathe.”

“Or any way off the damn ship.” She pauses for a moment, and then snaps her fingers.

“Can you see if the drop ship is still on the flight deck?”

“Yeah, hang on.”

I flick through a dozen status pages and submenus until I reach the optical feed from the flight deck camera. The feed shows an empty set of docking clamps over a sealed drop hatch. The flight deck is empty and dark.

“It’s gone. Looks like your pals left without you.”

“Well,” Halley says. “Then that’s that.”

“Don’t you guys have more than one drop ship on this tub?”

I see excitement in her face, which is a lot better than the fear that was there just a moment ago.

“Yeah, the spare. It’s in the far corner of the flight deck, in a berth. Can you see that on the camera feed?”

I cycle through all the visual feeds from the flight deck. Finally, one of the overhead camera lenses gives me a perfect oblique view of a Wasp-class drop ship.

“There it is. Looks like they didn’t want to take the time to fire that one up, too.”

Halley leans over my shoulder and studies the screen.

“That bird is dry and bare—no fuel, no ordnance. Even if we can lock it into the clamps and drop it out of the hatch, we’ll go in ballistic. We’re too close to that planet.”

“Well,” I say, “isn’t the refueler automated?”

“Yeah. The ordnance monkeys have to load the ammo by hand, but the computer does the refueling. I have no idea how to work it, though. They usually have it filled up and ready by the time they hand me the keys, you know.”

“Well, I don’t know how to do it, either, but I bet the computer does.”

For a minute or two, I dig through the systems that are still talking to the Neural Network, expecting the automated flight deck modules to be offline, or the system objecting to my poking around with a security lockout. Luckily, neither event comes to pass. The refueling module on the flight deck is active and idle, waiting for human input. I log into the refueling console remotely, and point to the screen of my admin deck to draw Halley’s attention to the menus.

“That’s gotta be the one,” she says, tapping the screen over the menu item that says “READY FIVE LAUNCH PREP”.

“Good thing they label their stuff clearly,” I say, and activate the sequence. The menu status changes to “INITIATED/IN PROGRESS”, and I switch back to the optical feed to make sure that something is really happening down on the flight deck. Near the drop ship, a warning strobe starts flashing. As we watch, the robotic arm of the refueling module comes into view and swivels around the Wasp to dock with the refueling port in the top of the hull.

“That takes care of the gas,” I say. “How long does it take for the tanks to fill up?”

“Ten minutes,” she replies. “Another five to fire up the avionics and do the pre-flight self-checks, and two to move the whole thing over to the drop hatch.”

There’s a low rumble going through the hull that makes the floor shake slightly underneath our feet. Over by the data storage modules, something starts to beep, and all the lights in the room go out briefly. When they come back on, all the storage banks in the NNC fall silent at once. I’ve never been in this room without hearing the drone of the cooling elements for the storage banks, and the lack of background noise is ominous.

“I think your shit just broke,” Halley says flatly.

“Yeah, no kidding,” I reply.

My admin deck is still running, and the local telemetry is still up, but the link to the hangar bay systems is gone. The neural network of a warship is terrifically resilient, backup data links on top of backup links, but now I can’t see anything beyond the local telemetry range, half a deck in either direction. Something big just broke, and the Versailles is dying. If the link had gone down twenty seconds earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to verify the presence of the drop ship on the flight deck, much less activate the refueling sequence.

“Let’s get out of here while we still can,” I say.

“No argument,”Halley replies tersely. “Let’s.”

I can’t see much through the viewport of the NNC’s hatch. The corridor outside is dark, and I can’t tell whether there’s smoke outside, or hard vacuum. The system only knows that opening the door would be dangerous, so the safety lock keeps the hatch closed.

“Can you unlock that with your toy?” Halley asks, pointing to my admin deck.

“Yeah, I can override the safety. There’s no air on the other side, though. It’ll blow all the air out of this room, and then we’ll suffocate.”

“What about the NIFTIs? We got a ton of those on every deck.”

“Of course,” I grin, and feel like slapping my forehead for overlooking the obvious. The NIFTIs—Navy Infrared Thermal Imagers—are stored in emergency lockers on every deck on the ship. They’re little masks with infrared goggles and a small oxygen supply, designed to let a crewmember see and breathe in the event of a major fire on the ship. I open the admin deck and check the emergency chart for the nearest NIFTI locker.

“There are three right on the bulkhead just before the aft staircase,” I say. “Twenty yards to the left. Think you can hold your breath that long?”

“I guess we’ll find out. If I faint, you’ll just have to drag me, you fierce combat grunt.”

“Like I have a choice,” I say. “I can’t fly a drop ship for shit.”

We both laugh, even though we’re scared almost witless.

“Where are we going after we get the NIFTIs on?”

I consult the admin deck again.

“Staircase, and down to Deck Seven. This thing doesn’t show any fires. We should be okay with the infrared from the NIFTIs. Just watch your step.”

“Let’s hope your toy is right about that,” Halley says as she zips up the collar of her flight suit. “I’d hate to open a hatch and get baked.”

“Check the hatches with your hand before you open them,” I say, recalling the firefighting lessons from Navy Indoc.

“Right. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

I don’t really want to trade the relative safety of the NNC and its autonomous oxygen supply for the air-deprived corridors on the other side of that access hatch, but there’s no way of knowing how much longer the Versailles is going to hold together. I open the admin deck and find my way to the emergency override for the fireproof hatch in front of us. Once again, I expect the system to refuse my request, but the light on the door panel switches from red to green without complaint. I close the lid of the admin deck and stow the device in its carry pouch.

“Ready?” Halley asks, her hand on the door release.

“Left turn, twenty yards. Ready,” I say. “Go.”

Halley slaps the hatch release with her palm, and the locking bolts on the hatch retract with a loud clacking sound. Then she pulls the hatch open, and the room immediately starts filling with smoke. We step over the threshold of the hatch and rush out into the passageway.

The air outside smells toxic and acrid, like smoldering insulation. My eyes start burning as soon as we step out into the dark corridor. There’s no light anywhere, not even the emergency strobes that should be running until the ship’s battery banks are depleted. I stretch out my right arm and use the walls of the passageway to guide myself along. In front of me, Halley lets out a series of rasping coughs, and after a few moments, I follow suit. The air out here burns in my lungs, and I have no doubt that we’ll be dead soon if we don’t find the NIFTI lockers.

The distance from the NNC hatch to the nearest row of NIFTI lockers is only twenty-five yards, but in the smoke-filled darkness, it feels like much more. I’m holding my breath to keep the toxic-smelling fumes out of my lungs, and by the time we reach the lockers, my system is screaming for fresh air. Halley pulls the locker doors open, and fumbles around in the dark before handing me one of the NIFTIs. I put the mask on in a hurry, and bite down on the mouthpiece to activate the unit. A moment later, I have clean, oxygen-infused air streaming into my lungs. The air in the little NIFTI tank tastes like old socks, but it beats the hell out of the noxious blend of fumes that’s now permeating this section of the Versailles. The goggles of the NIFTI turn on automatically, and I can once again see my surroundings, albeit in the alien red tinge of the infrared imager.

Halley takes the lead as we take the staircase down to the lower decks. When she reaches the landing of Deck Seven, she puts her hand on the access hatch to the corridor, and I reach out and tap her shoulder. She turns around, and I point to the admin deck over my shoulder, and then to the hatch in turn. Halley nods, and I take the bag off my shoulder to pull out the deck and turn it on to check what’s in store for us on the other side.

There’s no fire in the passageway beyond, but there’s no breathable air, either. I wave Halley closer and type a message to that effect. She looks at the screen and nods, giving me a thumbs-up for good measure. Then she flips the latch and throws open the hatch.

There are a few bodies in this section of corridors. Somebody in enlisted work blues lies crumpled up against a bulkhead, a dark pool of blood spread underneath his head. Halley turns him on his back, but even through the fuzzy, red-tinged image of the NIFTI goggles, it’s pretty clear that this sailor is beyond help. There’s blood all over his face, thick streams of it coagulating underneath his nostrils and around his mouth, and his eyes are half open. Halley lowers his upper body back to the deck.

The next section of the ship has emergency power. The red ceiling lights are on, and the orange floor markers designating the escape pod hatches are blinking in an urgent rhythm. Every time we pass a pod hatch, I check it just to make sure the computer didn’t feed me any misinformation, but every single pod on the deck is gone, and its hatch sealed.

The flight deck is in the center of Deck Seven. It takes up the middle of the deck between the main port and starboard passageways. Halley walks up to the control box for the hatch and enters her credentials. The light on the panel flicks from amber to green, the locking bolts of the hatch retract obediently, and the hatch opens with a sigh of expelled air.

Inside, in the darkness, the drop ship is still in its berth by the wall, with the refueling hose still pumping fuel into the tanks. The only light in here is the flashing warning beacon on the ceiling that’s painting the inside of the hangar in dim, orange light. Halley closes the flight deck hatch behind us, and the little air safety indicator on the lower edge of my NIFTI’s thermal imager goes from red to orange, and then green. There’s still breathable air in the hangar bay. I pull the NIFTI off my head and take a very small breath to test the computer’s assessment. The air in here smells like fuel, but it’s fine otherwise. I give Halley a thumbs-up, and she follows my example.

“I wish those things had voice comms built in,” she says as she pulls the NIFTI’s hood off her head.

“Yeah, I know. Shouldn’t that bird be fueled up by now?” I nod at the drop ship, still secure in its berth.

“It should,” Halley says. “Go and grab a flight helmet out of that locker over there. I’ll go check on the ship.”

Just as I take a helmet out of the locker she pointed out, the ceiling lights all come alive, bathing the flight deck in bright light that hurts my eyes after stumbling through NIFTI-enhanced darkness for ten minutes. I open my mouth to say something to Halley, but then the lights go out again, and this time the orange warning strobe on the ceiling goes out with them, leaving the hangar in complete darkness. The low droning sound from the refueling unit stops as well.

“Shit,” Halley says into the darkness. “There goes the battery power.”

I pull the NIFTI over my head again to turn on the infrared imager. Over by the drop ship, Halley opens an access hatch. She waves me over with a hurried gesture, and then climbs into the Wasp. As I follow her into the drop ship, the interior lights turn on, and I can once again see without the infared goggles.

“Ship’s got its own power cell,” Halley says. “That won’t get us over to the drop hatch, though.”

“So no what?”

“Open up your handy little toy there, and see if you can kick loose some power for the flight deck, or we’re stuck for good. I have no clue whether we slowed down enough to make proper orbit, and I’d rather not burn up in atmo with this shit bucket.”

I sit down on the non-slip flooring and open my admin deck. The local network is completely dead—I can’t even connect to the wireless cloud. I scan through all the local nodes, and none of them are transmitting or receiving.

“Nothing,” I shout into the cockpit, where Halley is strapping herself into the right-hand seat. “Network’s down. I can’t see shit.”

The lights in the hangar come on again suddenly. I hear the soft whirring of the refueling module as it resumes its task. I look at my admin deck’s screen, and see that the local network is once again coming to life.

“What’d you do?” Halley shouts.

“Not a damn thing. It came back on all by itself.”

“Can you get into the refueling subsystem?”

“Hang on, I’m already on it,” I reply.

I go back down the menu tree from memory to get to the hangar bay systems. The access is mercifully quick, since I am directly at the destination node without having to go through a quarter mile of damaged neural pathways. The active menu still says READY FIVE LAUNCH PREP, and the progress bar underneath is only three quarters complete.

“System says five more minutes,” I tell Halley.

“Cut it short,” she says. “Power goes out again before we’re clamped and ready to drop, and we’re fucked.”

“I’ll try.”

Thankfully, the fuel systems are labeled very predictably, presumably simple enough for enlisted personnel to figure out. I delete the fueling process from the task queue, and tell the system to shift the Wasp to READY/LAUNCH status. A moment later, the noise from the refueler stops, and the fuel hose retracts away from the ship. Then a warning klaxon blares, and there’s a low rumbling sound overhead as the docking clamps roll into position above the Wasp.

“Outstanding,” Halley says, relief in her voice. “Now get your ass into the chair over here, and strap in.”

I feel out of place in the left seat of a drop ship. The automatic clamp lowers itself onto the Wasp, locks onto the hardpoints, and then lifts the ship off its landing skids. Next to me, Halley is powering up avionics and going through on-screen checklists at a rapid, focused pace, her fingers doing a quick dance on the various screens. I strap myself in with shaky hands and watch as the docking clamp moves the drop ship across the hangar bay at infuriatingly slow speed.

“Plug in your helmet,” Halley says. “If we get a hull breach out there, you’ll want to be hooked up to the oxygen feed.”

I slip the flight helmet over my head and attach the hose coming from the mask to its receptacle on the side of the cockpit wall. The helmet is made for someone with a smaller head than mine, and the helmet liner squeezes my head uncomfortably. I connect the voice circuit and toggle the intercom channel.

“If there’s a Chinese destroyer out there, this will be a short flight,” I say.

“If there’s a Chinese destroyer out there, they would have boarded us already, or blown us into tiny little bits,” Halley answers without taking her gaze off her screens. “Besides, there’s precisely fuck-all we can do about that, unless you want to wait for the rescue ship on this busted tub.”

“No, thank you,” I say. “I’m not a huge fan of suffocation.”

The lateral movement of the docking clamp stops, and then the ship moves down into the drop hatch. We’re just a few moments from getting off this ship, and I hold my breath and pray to the entire Terran pantheon of deities for the ship’s power to stay on until we release from the docking clamp.

“Turning One,” Halley says as she reaches overhead and flips a succession of switches. Behind us, one of the drop ship’s engines comes to life with a loud and steady whine. When the engine has spooled up to Halley’s satisfaction, she moves her hand to a different bank of switches.

“Turning Two.”

The noise outside doubles as the second engine starts up. I feel a low vibration going through the hull.

“I feel like I’m taking my parents’ hydrocar for a joyride without permission,” Halley says. “Never had one of these to myself before.”

“Did we fill up enough to get us down?”

She checks a display with a few taps of her gloved finger, and shrugs.

“We’re half full. Enough to get us to the surface, and then some.”

Underneath us, the floor drops. The drop hatch is a huge airlock in the bottom of the hull. Normally, the ship would be oriented with its belly facing the surface of the planet below, but all I can see outside is the nothingness of space. Despite Halley’s assessment, I imagine a Chinese cruiser right next to the Versailles, point defense armament standing by to shred any escapees that manage to get clear of the hull.

The drop hatch finishes its downward-and-outward travel arc, leaving nothing between us and space but ten feet of drop through a hole in the ship’s armor plating.

“Here goes,” Halley says. “Dropping in three. Two. One. Drop.”

She thumbs a button on her throttle lever, and the Wasp drops out of the belly of the ship, sixty tons of spacecraft in freefall. I feel my stomach lurching upward sharply. Then we are clear of the hull, and the artificial gravity field of the Versailles, and the feeling of falling from a great height is replaced by a sudden weightlessness that pulls me out of my seat and against the straps of my harness. The floating feeling doesn’t last long. Halley guns the engines and whips the Wasp into a steep turn as soon as we’re out of the Versailles’ gravity field. She turns left, then right, and the countermeasures dispensers underneath the engine pods kick out a burst of decoy cartridges.

“I think we’re good,” she announces after a few moments of hard turns, and reverts to a less stomach-churning flight profile. She brings the Wasp around to get the Versailles into view.

“Holy fuck,” I say, and Halley merely exhales sharply into her helmet mike.

The Versailles looks like someone blasted her flank with a giant shotgun. Gray smoke is pouring from hundreds of holes in her outer hull. The planet below looks much closer than it should be for a proper orbit, and the battered frigate is drifting without propulsion, pointing nose-first at the green and brown planet surface below.

“I hope we were the last ones on there,” Halley says. “That thing’s going to come down in a million glowing pieces.”

We make a slow pass along the hull. The smooth and streamlined cigar shape of the ship is peppered with holes from bow to stern. Each hole is no bigger than a foot or two across.

“That wasn’t done by anti-ship ordnance,” Halley says. “What the hell kind of weapon makes holes like that?”

“Whatever it was, it did the job,” I reply. “I bet there’s not an airtight compartment left on this side of the hull.”

The Versailles is trailing debris on her aimless trajectory. There are bits of armor plating, frozen bubbles of leaked fluids, and random bits of junk from the compartments that were vented into space. As we make our way along the hull, Halley has to bob and weave to avoid hitting larger chunks of debris head-on. We see a few bodies, too—shipmates, asphyxiated and frozen in an instant, drifting away from the ship in head-over-heel tumbles. There are body parts as well—arms, legs, and heads, torn from the bodies of their owners either by the impact of whatever tore through the hull, or by the shock of the sudden decompression that ejected everything in the compartment into space in the fraction of a second. I recall that the berthing spaces for the enlisted Engineering crew are close to the outer starboard hull, and I wonder whether Halley and I would be floating out there as well if I had left the NNC on time at the end of my watch. Of all the possible ways to die, gasping for air in hard vacuum while being shock-frosted is one of the least pleasant ones I can imagine.

“Let’s see who else made it off this wreck,” Halley says. She toggles the comm channel over to the Navy emergency frequency.

“NACS Versailles personnel, this is Stinger Six-Two,” she says into her helmet mike. “Anyone listening in on shipboard or escape pod comms, please acknowledge.”

There’s only static in response. Halley repeats the broadcast twice, but there’s no reply, not even the click of a toggled “send” button.

“I’m going to get us clear of this hull, and closer to the planet,” she says, and pulls the Wasp into a roll. I look at the Versailles through the side window of the cockpit until the battered frigate disappears from view.

“Versailles personnel, this is Stinger Six-Two,” Halley transmits again when we are clear of the Versailles’ bulk. “Anyone copy down there?”

This time, there’s a garbled response on the emergency channel. Halley looks at me and exhales with emphasis.

“Thank goodness. I was starting to think we’re all alone out here,” she says to me.

“Versailles personnel, stand by. I’m going into a lower orbit to improve reception. Next transmission in five.”

We coast away from the Versailles, and toward the planet below. Under other circumstances, the ride would be a spectacular sight-seeing tour. There’s nothing between us and the blue-green planet but a few avionics consoles and an inch of armored glass. The planet spread out in front of us is a pristine world of clean oceans, snow-capped mountain ranges, and wild and empty continents. The NAC colony is the only human presence on Willoughby, twelve hundred colonists on a planet two-thirds the size of Terra.

As we dip into a lower orbit, Halley rolls the ship around its dorsal axis to give us a better view of the outside. She has a very light hand on the controls, and the Wasp follows her input like a powerful, well-trained animal. I remember how difficult it was for me to simply get the nose of the simulated drop ship pointing the right way in Basic, and Halley says that the real thing is about five times more difficult to fly than the simulator.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” she says to me, and I nod in response.

“Look at all that land down there, and it’s all unsettled,” Halley says. “We could set this ship down in the middle of one of those continents, and live on the supplies in the back for years. You’d get your wish early, about that patch of land on a colony planet.”

I laugh in response, but the thought of being marooned on a far-off world with Halley is almost indecently exciting for a moment.

“The Navy would come looking for us,” I say. “They’d want their drop ship back, and I doubt they’d be willing to forgive us the rest of our contract.”

“The hell they would. The Versailles is going to break up in atmo. Far as the Navy would know, we burned up in that hull, and the second drop ship never made it out of the flight deck.”

For a moment, I can’t tell whether she’s kidding, and the possibility hangs in the air between us almost like a physical thing. Then there’s another garbled transmission on the emergency channel, and the ear-grating sound of the mutilated broadcast serves to snap us both back into reality.

“I guess we shouldn’t have advertised that we’re up here with a working Wasp,” she says. “Makes it kind of hard to skip town unnoticed.”

“Stinger Six-Two, do you read, over?”

The voice on the emergency channel is suddenly perfectly clear, as if the broadcast is coming from our own cargo hold.

“Affirmative,” Halley replies. “Stinger Six-Two copies five by five. Broadcasting party, please identify.”

“Stinger Six-Two, this is the XO. What’s your status and location?”

“Stinger Six-Two is in orbit. We’re clear of the ship, and heading for the deck, sir.”

“Six-Two, do you have any ordnance loaded?”

Halley exchanges a glance with me.

“Uh, that’s a negative, sir. This is the spare drop ship. We just have gas in the tank, but the racks are bare.”

“Copy that, Six-Two. That’s too bad.”

Halley taps a few buttons on the tactical console before toggling back a reply.

“Sir, my TacLink node shows your pod four hundred klicks north of my position. I can be on top of you in twenty minutes.”

“Sooner would be better. Six-Two, do you have any weapons on board at all?”

“That’s affirmative, sir. We have a full weapons locker with standard tactical loadout.”

“Outstanding,” the XO says, and the relief in his voice is unsettling. “Expedite your descent as much as safely possible. Don’t break your ship, because you’re the only hardware we have in the system right now.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Halley asks me. “What about the other drop ship? That one’s fully armed with air-to-ground ordnance.”

I can only shrug in response.

“Sir, didn’t Six-One make it down to the surface with you?”

“If they did, they’re not talking to us. You can try to raise them on the way down. Now hurry up, we need you down here yesterday.”

“Affirmative, sir. We’re on our way.”

Halley cuts the comms and starts tapping buttons on her tactical console again.

“Flight profile for descent says we’ll be down on the deck in twenty-two minutes,” she says. “I’ll be goosing it all the way, so make sure you’re buckled in tight. It’s gonna be a bit bumpy.”

“What the hell is going on down there? He sounded like he’s scared shitless. You think the SRA’s trying to take the place?”

“I have no idea,” Halley replies as she adjusts our trajectory and points the nose of the Wasp below the far-off horizon.

“I guess we’ll find out in twenty minutes,” she says. “Now hold on, and shut up, will you?”