manage to get above the artificial gravitational metric of the ship and then somehow push himself toward the QMT facility. Slowing down before he hit the surface of the QMT facility would be another problem to deal with. But first things first.
Can you get off the ship, Penzington? Can you come and get me?
I don't know. I think I can get onto a shuttle that is leaving in a few minutes for the QMT pad, but that is about as good as it gets. Maybe from there I can get out to you. But you'd have to get off the ship first.
Shit, that ain't gonna work. I've got to get above the ship's gravity well somehow. Any way he thought about it, he was screwed. Jack couldn't think of anything to get him off the ship. He'd need some sort of propulsion system to manage that.
He went through his webbing and again took inventory of his gear. He had some HE, a handful of grenades, ammo for his railpistol, a couple knives, first-aid gear, about a hundred meters of nanotube filament rope, a few carabiners and clips holding things to his webbing, some duct tape, and whatever he could scavenge from a slightly used ejection couch. He looked the seat over and figured there was little there he could use. The propulsion system for the seat was dead because he had used it all up to keep from plummeting to his death a few minutes before. The QMT facility was right there. It hung just five kilometers or so above his head. If he could get there, he'd figure out a way to the planet.
Jack, I'm on the shuttle, and we are leaving now. You've got maybe five minutes before the ships get here and they all start moving into position to jump. If you're gonna think of something, do it quickly, Penzington warned him through the DTM link.
I've got no idea. Can't you take the shuttle by force and come get me?
Well, no. Not yet. I'm in an e-suit in a storage compartment stowed away on it.
I see.
By the time we land and I can get back to you, it would be too late.
I get it.
Good luck.
You, too.
There was a way to do everything, Jack had always told himself. He jumped twice to get to his crash site. His ship had done minimal damage to the hull. There were no material pieces of his fighter left that were larger than a meter long. Sooner or later they would just fall off into space. Maybe a work crew would get out to remove it on the next exterior-hull maintenance shift. But for now, he had a few chunks of armor-plated fighter plane that he might be able to use for something. He wasn't sure just what.
Time is ticking, Jack.
I know, Candis. You have any bright ideas?
No.
We need propulsion somehow. What could give us that? Jack thought about it, and then he had a very, very bad idea. I got it. Maybe.
What?
Run some sims for me. How much HE would I need to lift the ejection chair with me in it out of the gravity well of this ship with a little extra velocity left over?
How far does the gravity well extend? The Madira's goes ten meters.
Okay, use that. This ship looks like a knockoff of her anyway.
All right then. According to spec the chair has a mass of five hundred kilograms. You in your suit and gear are another one fifty. To get to a height of ten meters you would need a minimum energy of thirty-two point five kilojoules. The HE is ten megajoules per kilogram, so you need a minimum of three and a quarter grams to reach escape height with no velocity left. You need less than four cubic centimeters. Like four dice worth.
Okay, got it.
Jack pulled three chunks of the scorched armor plating and piled them beside the ejection seat. Then he rummaged through his webbing and pulled out a bar of the HE. The bar was basically the size of a stick of butter and was sealed in a vacuum package. He guessed at about five cubic centimeters and then added a little extra just in case. He stuck a wireless detonator chip into it and then set the two armor fragments from his destroyed fighter on top of
