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 it. Then he began kicking and tugging at the ejection seat until he managed to free it from a piece of loose hull plating on the ship. He dragged the seat on top of the armor fragments—he was glad there was only half a g, or he might never have gotten the couch moved.
Jack looked up. The QMT facility filled most of his overhead view. There was no way he could miss it. He'd more likely kill himself with the HE than drift off into space. And by that time, if he did miss and was floating off into space, Penzington might be able to come and get him.
While Jack was looking up, four supercarrier class Seppy ships materialized out of hyperspace out in front of the ship he was on. Then several new battle cruisers and a couple of older haulers came out of hyperspace.
"Holy shit! The Madira is gonna be in it deep," he muttered.
You got that right, Candis agreed with him.
Jack adjusted the seat angle to what he hoped was somewhere near the edge of the QMT pad and not into the jump region. He needed to get moving. The ship could start moving into jump position at any moment. He sat down in the chair and strapped himself in. He made sure his feet and arms would be inside the shadow of the chair so no shrapnel or plasma from the explosion could damage him or his suit.
"This is really gonna fuckin' suck!" Jack pushed his body into the couch as best he could and tucked his chin into his chest.
Okay, Candis, trigger this thing.
Are you sure, DeathRay?
Yes, that is an order Lieutenant Commander!
Yes, sir. Going in five, four, three, two, one . . .
The high explosives went off from the wireless trigger signal Candis sent to the detonator chip. The stored chemical energy inside the solid material converted to kinetic energy in the form of heat and a plasma moving upward at over three thousand meters per second. The shockwave vaporized the first armor plate and slammed the second one upward into the ejection chair. The ejection chair blasted upward away from the hull of the Seppy supercarrier with about twice the force of a standard ejection seat. In other words, it went up pretty damned fast—fast enough that Jack was slammed into the chair with a force of about ten gravities for about a second. But DeathRay was used to high-g maneuvers that rattled his bones. It didn't hurt as much as he had expected, but that was probably because he had just taken a shitload of immunoboost and pain meds.
The chair crested the ten meters that he needed in order to clear the ship's gravity well, and it kept on going. It kept on going pretty damned fast. The acceleration was over within microseconds after the blast, and any deceleration was finished once they escaped the Seppy ship's artificial gravity well. DeathRay was in microgravity at this point and was floating freely along a constant velocity vector straight at the QMT facility. Jack could see the surface of the QMT moon starting to get slowly closer. The planet Ares filled his field of view off to his right. The Jovian planet Ares orbited was behind him now.
What is relative velocity, Candis?
Using objects on the surface for angular-size reference, I can approximate that we are moving at about fifty kilometers per hour with an error bar of about five kilometers per hour.
Okay, the seat was designed to take a fall at fifty-five kilometers per hour with no problem.