Apart from a few squirming fragments of meat, the thing was gone, spiraling away into the hydrogen layer. Its fall would take it into areas of the jovian no ship, no probe had ever explored, into regions of gas so massively compressed by gravity that it became fluid, then solid, then something even beyond those states. By the time the creature with Kyle Deacon’s face had gone a thousand kilometers it would be hammered into nothing.
Ellis was alone in the corridor, and Meyers was yelling at him though his headset.
By the time he got back to the bridge he could hear a little, although sounds came to him as though he was listening through layers of thick cloth. “Okay people, listen up. Things got pretty loud back there, so if you could face me when you’re talking to me for the next few minutes, I’d appreciate it.”
He dropped into the command throne, suddenly aware that he was spattered with fluids. Large areas of his green uniform had been turned an oily black. When Meyers turned around to him she saw it too, and grimaced. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Did you get it?”
“It’s gone. Good work, people.” There was a muted cheer from the bridge crew, but Ellis ignored it for now. There was still a long way to go before they were out of this. “Meyers, get the bay doors closed. Once we’re back online send a team to the corridor. There may be some scraps of that thing left lying around.”
She nodded, and turned back to her console. As she did so, Ellis glanced upwards on reflex, waiting for the power drain. That dip in the lights, the groan of the air systems winding down and then spinning up again, the flickering of computer screens as they lost voltage was so much a part of him now that he could have set his watch by it.
When it didn’t happen, he didn’t quite know what to feel. “Sharpe, what’s our status? Where are we?”
She answered, then stopped herself, turned around in her seat. “Sorry sir. We’re almost out of the water layer. Main power’s still offline. Unless we can get restarted we’ll be past bingo in about two minutes.”
“The Wraith?”
“Not far behind us,” Meyers told him. “I’m not picking up any weapons fire yet, but as soon as they get close enough to realize what we are, things are going to get bad.”
“I hear that.” He switched his headset to ship-wide communications. “All decks, brace for an increase in gravity. We’ll be pulling about four gees, so you have roughly ten seconds to not be standing up any more.”
He glanced around the bridge. “That means you too, people. This is out of our hands, so get ready.”
Behind the tactical map, the technical crew got down onto the deck. Meyers and Sharpe settled themselves back in their seats, and Ellis followed suit, trying to relax into the contours of the command throne. Then he turned the volume on his headset up as loud as it would go. “Copper?”
“Right here, sir.”
Ellis took a deep breath. He’d been secretly dreading this part. “Lieutenant, you have permission to disengage the power system. Shut her down.”
“Yes sir,” Copper replied, and even though his hearing was still muzzy Elllis could tell he didn’t really like the idea either. “Shutting down in five, four —”
“Just do it.”
The bridge lights went out.
Ellis didn’t hear the air system shut down; his hearing was still too affected. But he could feel a sudden stillness in the air, a deadness in the structure of the deck and the command throne and the very walls surrounding him. Within a few short moments, all energy and motion leached out of the bridge, leaving it dark and almost completely silent.
There was no light, barring a few laptops and PDA screens. No sound loud enough for him to hear. Only his own breathing and the thump of his heart as he waited for the jovian to reach out and grab him.
It took a few seconds for the artificial gravity to die, but when it did the increase was frighteningly abrupt. Ellis had been expecting a slow rise in his own weight, but instead he found himself being crushed into the throne mid-breath. He sucked in a lungful of air, and it was hard, four times harder than it should have been. His limbs felt as though they were full of wet sand.
He clamped his stomach muscles down hard, just as he would do in a high-gee flight maneuver. It kept the air in his lungs, the blood in his head. Everyone on the ship would be doing the same thing. Basic Air Force training.
No light, no sound, hard to breathe. It was like being buried alive, thought Ellis grimly. Copper, just as planned, had not only shut down all output from the reactor, but all the emergency power circuits and auxiliaries too. Even the capacitor banks had been taken offline.
Apollo was dead metal, plunging through the water layer on the downward slide of its arc, unassisted, uncontrolled, heading for the hydrogen and certain destruction. And there wasn’t a damn thing Ellis could do about it. His life, everyone’s life, rested in the hands of a slender technician who, just a few hours before, had suffered a serious head wound and almost passed out.
Ellis blinked into the darkness, his eyelids heavy. He hadn’t thought of that. What if Copper blacked out under the high gee? “Meyers?”
“Here sir.” He heard her, this time. His hearing must have been improving, because there was no way she could turn around right now. Her words came out from between clenched teeth.
“Time.”
“Twenty… Seconds.”
Had it only been that long? Ellis dragged in another breath. In aircraft, high-gee turns seldom lasted this long. Still, he’d endured more than this in the centrifuge, hadn’t he? Unless he’d gotten old flying the battlecruiser, gotten weak. He should be able to do this…
There was an odd feeling. He was being dragged backwards, not just down. “Sharpe… What’s that?”
“We’re ass-heavy,” she grated. “Tilting.”
Apollo’s prow was rising, the weight of the engines and the reactor and the 302 bays pulling the rear of the ship down faster. That would rob them of even more speed. At this rate, the ship would hit the hydrogen layer too fast. Apollo would shear in two.
As he thought that, the bridge came alive.
In an instant, he was balloon-light, almost out of the throne with the sudden loss of weight. The lights around him came up to full brightness, a painful glare after all those hours in the gloom, and every panel chirruped with start-up routines.
Copper had done it. The reactor was back online, the generators pumping out power. Now, if they could only keep doing so for more than forty-one seconds Ellis would be a happy man.
“Sharpe, what’s our status?”
“One second, I’m just re-booting…” She got up from her seat, ripped the laptops free from her console and dumped them onto the deck. “Main drives are in warm-up. Thrusters are online. Capacitors beginning charge cycle.”
“Get us level. Meyers?”
“Most systems are still in calibration, sir. Passive sensors indicate the Wraith are accelerating to within weapons range. We’ve got nothing to hit them with, and no shields. Comms and active sensors are down.”
“How long until the main drives are back up?”
“At least a few minutes, sir —”
The ship jolted, a sledgehammer blow from behind. “Wraith are in weapons range, sir. They’re firing.”
“I gathered.” Ellis thought fast. There was no way to outrun the three cruisers, not on thrusters. Apollo could maneuver now, even leave the ammonia layer and climb into empty space, but doing so would simply get them closer to the rest of the Wraith fleet. Without weapons or shields the battlecruiser was an easy kill. He couldn’t even use the 302s — their launch racks wouldn’t be fired up yet either.
So all he could do was fly. But where? The Wraith ships were bigger than Apollo, fast, armed with multiple weapons and protected by energy shields and the bone-like armor of their hull carapaces. There was no contest.