“Ouch,” Rick said as he came around. He examined the sizeable dent he’d made in the deck armor and assessed his armor’s condition. Some trimming of joint adjustments and repairs would be necessary. However, once all was said and done, he was in surprisingly good shape, although the headache was of supernova proportions.
He knew he wasn’t dying. His brain was hurt, and the damage had been mitigated. He really missed the pinplant control of such autonomic processes, mostly because he couldn’t figure out how to give himself some drugs. In the end, he popped open a diagnostic cover on his left forearm and did it manually. As the drug entered his bloodstream, he felt the function of it. Nodding, he knew he could do it without the switch next time.
He suddenly felt like he was drowning. His air reserve was gone. He’d been blacked out for almost a minute; time was up. Rick grabbed the air tank, which he’d spared, hooked it to an auxiliary line in his thigh, and cracked open the feed. Luscious oxygen flowed in, and he sighed, ‘breathing’ in the air while realizing his lungs weren’t doing anything—the oxygen was entering his system through the nano-filters installed in the same arteries that served his lungs.
Magnetizing his feet, he ‘stood’ on the wrecked battleship surface. “Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.” He looked at the tiny gauge on the air tank. It was two thirds empty. “Thanks, little buddy,” he said. “But now I need to find out if I wasted my time.”
He rerouted a precious amount of the air tank to his nearly depleted cold gas thrusters, which would allow him some maneuvering. He detached from the deck and floated up, using tiny, precise bursts of gas to control his flight. When he was 500 meters from the hull, he had a much better view. In the medium distance he spotted the rear section of their ship.
“Yes!” he cheered. A notice told him the oxygen bottle was depleted. He detached it and tossed the empty cylinder away. The battery he’d liberated from the opSha laser was depleted as well. It joined the cylinder. Finally, one of the two laser rifles had been crushed in the impact. It too joined the small constellation of flotsam he’d added to the battleship’s hulk.
Now he had a choice. Go to their ship, where he knew he could get aboard, though it was the one place he knew Sato wouldn’t be, or find another entry point and search from there. If he could find a dataport inside, he could use his hacking ability to break into whatever computers this base might have. He had about 10 minutes of oxygen remaining. He went for a compromise; look for another way in until his oxygen got low, then head for Vestoon.
He spent a second with his pinplants trying to identify the battleship remnant. It appeared to be a good portion of a ship’s superstructure. He had extensive files from the Winged Hussars, thanks to Sato. However, it had either been so severely damaged or was actually an amalgam of several ships. Whatever the reason, his records weren’t any help.
He used a combination of his cold gas thrusters and magnetic grapples to scoot along the length of the hull, searching. He never moved far enough from their ship to lose sight of it. After only a minute, he spotted the first of what they’d thought were people salvaging. They turned out to be nothing more than extremely simple bots that flew around, occasionally sending flashes of actinic light to simulate cutting or welding.
Who are these people? Who would waste the effort of continuing the masquerade even after the dance was done? Sato always seemed to have answers. He wished the man was there to help. He made a promise to himself. I’ll find you, Sato. I owe you that much.
He was approaching the five-minute mark, and he glanced at their ship. Rick decided to give it one more minute. Seconds later, he found a hatch. Burning more oxygen than was safe, he flew to it quickly and clunked into the scarred metal just to the side.
There was no power to the lock, and that gave him pause. He was down to three minutes of oxygen. If this was just an airlock on a piece of junk with no interior atmosphere… He examined the mechanism and found the manual hatch. As he’d learned as a new marine, all airlocks had manual mechanisms. They were a weakness on a starship, but a necessary one. It could be your crew stuck outside in a power failure, after all.
He opened the hatch, grabbed the handle, and yanked. The airlock door retracted on springs. He moved inside and found an interior door, though there was no power on that panel, either. That forced him to turn back to the inside panel of the exterior door. The manual panel there had a pump handle. Spring assists were only for opening to aid entry. You were seldom in a desperate hurry to exit an airlock.
He pumped the door closed and felt it lock through the metal wall, then turned back to the interior door. This was the acid test. Opening the manual panel revealed a low-tech simple glass tube. It was filled with liquid and connected to the wall on the other side of the interior lock door. The use was simple. If you could see liquid, there was pressure. If it was clear, there was vacuum. He saw liquid.
Once again, he had under a minute as he turned the spill valve, dumping atmosphere into the closed lock. It only took five seconds to reach full pressure. The air tasted fine, and he instantly spun up his tiny turbine, beginning to repressurize his air storage. He
