The captain, however, was currently on the lowest level, leaning over a navigation-radar station. The navigator kept pointing out things to her on the screen. Through the windows ahead, he could see a lumpy, potato-shaped rock, which he assumed must be Shensi’s small moon, Kung Pao.
“What’s the situation, Captain?”
She frowned at him. “About twenty minutes ago, we started picking up a distress call. Low-power transmitter, and tight beam—definitely intended for our ears only.”
“So?”
“It comes from a small ship hiding behind the moon. We think it’s a fighter—one of the ones that attacked Shensi. It must have missed the hookup with its carrier DropShip.”
“Could it be a trap?”
“Possibly, Commander, but I don’t think so.”
“This could be good intelligence, then. Can we bring it aboard?”
“It will delay our arrival at the jump point by a few hours, but it can be done. But I’m troubled.”
“How so?”
“They signaled us, Commander. It wasn’t an all-points distress call, and they’re obviously trying not to be detected by the planet. Why would they send the call to us?”
Erik shrugged. “Because we’re such swell and fair-minded folk? How should I know?”
“Just the same, it strikes me as curious. All the readings we’re getting say this ship is really damaged, and there’s an injured pilot onboard. It doesn’t seem to be a trap, and yet it has all the makings of one.”
“Still, I don’t see how we can let this opportunity pass us by.”
“Your call, Commander. We’ll pick it up and see what happens.” She picked up her microphone. “All hands, free fall in thirty seconds. Turnover and deceleration burn in five minutes. Be prepared for unexpected acceleration as we rendezvous.” She called up to the pilot. “Shut her down on my mark, then prepare for rollover.”
“Aye, sir.”
She turned her attention back to Erik. “You’d better hold onto something, Commander.”
“I’ve been on a DropShip a time or two before, Captain.”
“Of course; sorry. Should we call Shensi about this?”
He considered, then shook his head. “Let’s find out what intelligence we’ve got before we decide who to share it with. Doubtless, somebody is going to wonder what we’re doing poking around their moon, so come up with a cover story and stick to it. We’ll have rounded up any survivors, and will be on our way to the jump point before they get overly suspicious.”
“Throttling down,” said the pilot, as he slowly reduced thrust.
Erik supposed doing it that way was safer than cutting the thrust instantaneously, but he had the feeling that he was in an elevator where the cable had snapped, and he was just beginning to fall.
It took several hours for the Mercury to kill its velocity and park itself in a close orbit above the little moon. It could have been done in less time with a high-G burn, but that would have attracted even more attention than their current activities. Erik considered using the time to have his long-delayed lunch, but decided that testing his stomach under the current erratic acceleration wouldn’t be a good idea, even with anti-space-sickness pills.
Instead, he nibbled a few crackers, and caught a nap in a hammock someone had hung in an equipment room behind the bridge. It was the sleeping-bag type, with a zip-up cover to keep the occupant from floating out in zero-G, or being thrown out by the maneuvering thrusters. As a MechWarrior, he prided himself on his ability to sleep anywhere, but he still woke several times after dreams of falling.
The captain didn’t wake him until they’d already dispatched an S7A Bus to the surface. Though Erik protested that he would have preferred to go along, the captain wasn’t having any of it. “No offense, Commander, but working in microgravity like this is a lot harder than it looks. You could almost jump into orbit, but if you found a crevasse, you could still fall far enough to kill yourself. My guys have been doing this half their lives, so you’d only slow them down.”
They returned to the bridge to supervise the mission. “The distress call is just automatic now. There are actually two fighters down there. Our instruments show one of them as registering a temperature of about 120 degrees below zero. It’s dead, and so is whoever was inside. We’re showing residue of reactor plasma and life-support gases that probably vented from one or both vehicles. There’s another one plowed in next to it, but we’re getting energy readings that tell us it has a barely functioning reactor. Of course, that just may mean we’ll find a warm corpse instead of a frozen one.”
These weren’t just lost ships that were hiding. They’d obviously taken severe battle damage, and had barely made it away from the planet. “Well,” said Erik, “looks like the Shensi did manage to get a few licks in, even if I didn’t see it.”
There was a crackle from the radio. “Captain, Brinks here. We’ve got one survivor, but he’s unconscious and in bad shape. I think a missile peeled most of his radiation shielding off, and solar flare activity is high right now. Poor bastards were limping back to their ship while the flare was cooking them from the inside out. They must have tried to land here and use the moon as a radiation shelter, but by then it was too late.”
The captain looked a little pale. Radiation: one of a spacer’s greatest enemies. “Get him back as soon as you can, Brinks. You know the drill.”
“Yes, sir. Strip the ships of any intelligence materials, pull the computer cores for analysis, plant a thermal charge and melt the rest to slag.” There was a pause. “And sir?”
“Yes, Brinks.”
“Should we bring back the other body?”
She glanced at Erik. Then her jaw clenched and she shook her head. “Burn it.”
As soon as the shuttle was aboard and secure, the Mercury went to a one-G thrust. Not only did it get them away from the prying eyes of the Shensi, it made handling the survivor easier.
The Mercury was a large ship, but nominally had a crew of only twelve. She had a well-equipped infirmary, but no doctor. Sergeant Brinks had the most medical training of anyone aboard, but the survivor, if he could properly be called that, needed far better care.
Erik and Captain Yung stood outside the plastic bubble that had been inflated around the pilot’s bed. A drip IV depended on the reliability of a planet’s gravity; therefore, Brinks hooked the patient up to a number of electronic IV pumps. The man’s eyes were clouded white, his gums bled profusely, and his skin was turning a mulberry color. Exposure to heavy radiation was a horrible way to die.
Brinks emerged through a simple airlock that closed with zippers. He was wearing a full surgical garment and mask. His face was gray. This was every spacer’s nightmare, and he was getting to see it closer than anyone. “I’ve done what I could. I’m pumping him full of the antiradiation cocktail they supply us with, and loads of painkillers, but he’s way beyond my help.”
Yung looked at Erik. “We could turn back to Shensi.”
Brinks shook his head. “No point. He’ll be dead before we get there. We might make it to the jump point, and possibly one of the ships there has a real doctor. But—” He shook his head again.
Erik looked at the man in the bubble. “Can he talk?”
“He’s in and out of consciousness. Keeps talking about Sergi. I think that’s the pilot of the other fighter. Maybe his wingman.”
“I want to talk to him.”
Brinks shrugged. “Put on a mask and gloves. He’s got no immune system left to speak of—not that I think he’ll live long enough for infection to be an issue. And don’t expect much.”