The captain of Nemesis Six tried a different tactic. He ordered is crew to shift to full suit operation and used the emergency valves to vent atmosphere. With pressure within the ship normalized to local space he hoped to limit damage from a hull breach. Perhaps that would have helped against a minor volley of railgun fire. Pulsed laser fire from the bug ship impacted the hull of Nemesis Six causing the metal to heat to a plasma state. A section of the hull vaporized as the interior of the ship turned into a furnace.
We are like a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
Viz is fighting back tears. “They never had a chance. The bug weapons are so powerful. Grandad, what can we do?”
Mr. T shook his head. “I don’t know Dear-heart. I just don’t know.”
* Control, 01:52:30:
“Admiral Tracy, we have a green indicator on an EVA suit, sir. We think it must be Kowalski from Nemesis Three, sir. We’ve been running a complete vector data analysis. There is telemetry data suggesting Kowalski may have been at the outer hatch and was shielded from the worst of the exchange. The opposite side of Three suffered a massive hull breach, but there was only a minor explosion. We have some optics too, sir. You should have that at your station, now.”
* Admiral Tracy:
“Someone survived that? Options, Control?”
* Control, 01:53:59:
“We do have the bug rescue ship primed. I’m afraid it would simply be destroyed by the enemy sir.”
Roll had taken Mr. T by the arm and was having an intense conversation.
Roll was gesturing with his hand. “They’re not going to authorize use of a bug ship for one person. I can port out and get Kowalski. I just need some spatial reference information, some way to get close enough to see him, or get a reading from his suit transponder. A spacesuit would be nice.”
Mr. T held his hands up as if to say settle down. “It’s too dangerous. The area is a debris field. Too many energetic projectiles.”
Roll closed his eyes. “I can see it. I can see the track taken by Nemesis 12. Where they were between the Earth and Moon when they were hit. Rock! Rock, are you able to access the images of the attack frame by frame? Can you give me a feel for the direction Kowalski was thrown by the explosion? They were talking about vector data analysis. Mr. T, please get the general. I need that suit. Or I’ll just port out there without one and stumble around until I find him. Or die trying.”
Mr. T clenched his fists. “Oh, for the love of.... Fine. Don’t do anything rash. I’ll be right back.”
Mr. T hurried out of the room to track down the general. He was gone for approximately 5 minutes. In the meantime, Rock and Roll found they could work with the terminal feed and access the data.
Roll kept nodding his head. “Yes. Yes, I am sure I can do this. I can feel where it happened. I really can. It will be hot, right Rock? Direct sunlight. 250 degrees or so. Can you do the math from the data? We need a Kowalski trajectory, blast wave velocity, distance traveled per second.”
Rock mumbled. “Yeah, it’s hot out there. All kinds of hot. Chunks of metal punching right through you hot. You’re an idiot if you go wandering around ... in that. Still, this is some amazing telemetry.”
Roll smiled. “The Universe will protect me.”
Rock took a long look at him, shook his head a little, then turned back to the panel. “I can develop a rough vector ... and yeah, the speed will be constant. The trajectory isn’t straight line because of the forward momentum of the ship when it was hit. I can factor that in and give you a plot of distance per second too. Just a sec. You’ll want to jot down the time stamp of the explosion for reference.”
Mr. T came back with the general. The general knew where the suits they had used on the Mars mission were being stored. He gave Roll the address and the storage room number. Roll mapped the address. Rock sent the data he had worked up to Roll’s device.
The general handed Roll a scanner gadget. He said it would help Roll pinpoint the transponder in Kowalski’s suit. Roll nodded, looked us all in the eye, nodded again, and ducked out to the rest room for some porting privacy.
It would be a mess out there. There would be a lot of hot debris moving very fast. It would be a teleportation nightmare. Mr. T had collapsed into a chair. After a couple seconds he smashed his fist into the armrest shattering it into 100 pieces. He jumped up and headed out after Roll. If he didn’t stop this, he was sure he would never see Roll again. But Roll was already gone.
Para’s s-loop rang about 25 minutes later. It was Roll. Para started crying. Roll was at Shockwave Headquarters, in the lounge area with Kowalski. Both of them were fine, though Kowalski would need some medical attention. Roll had already used the first aid kit to do some damage control.
The rescue required six separate ports in all. Roll could “see” the original path of Nemesis in his minds-eye.
He ported to a spot along that path he was sure would be safely outside the expanding debris field. He tried to imagine the course that Rock had developed from the available data. Time, speed, distance. Rock had factored in the original rate of speed for Nemesis. No sign of Kowalski.
He looked at the data again, decided on a probable course, and ported. A piece of debris pinged off of his helmet leaving a deep gouge. No alarms chirped. Well, no alarms other than the
