"We're headed to treetop high in about seventy seconds."
"Great, sir.
"All right, we're hitting the air in about a minute. I want hatches opened to the bulkheads, uh . . ." Joe stepped toward a holoscreen and had his AIC display the image that was in his mind. "Okay, that's it. Here, here, here, and here. We open these hatches and route airflow through the exterior hull walls. We need to figure out how to pull the structural integrity fields in one layer hull or just turn them on and off rapidly enough to get some airflow in there. Any ideas on that?
"Shit, at the rate we're going, the SIFs are gonna shut down anyway," Mira complained.
"Probably, but let's hope not! Shit, there has to be a way to get the air in the exterior dry hull without compromising our security." Joe was perplexed and running out of time. "We'll figure it out. Get those hatches open. Andy, be careful. You'll be outside the SIFs on the hull, and there are fighters and incoming out there. Armor up, but do it quick."
"I'm on it, Joe," Andy replied. He took off running across the room, underneath the hyperspace projector conduit, and into an antechamber where the e-suits were kept. Joe hated sending one of his team into such a dangerous situation. Before he would have done the dangerous bit himself, but now he was CHENG and had too many problems to deal with to do every little dangerous and shitty job. Part of command was sending good people into bad places. Joe would just have to get used to that.
"We need a sheer fence, Joe," the main propulsion assistant, Lieutenant Commander Keri Benjamin, said. "You know, a metal plate full of holes, or a grate."
"Maybe that would work," Joe thought out loud, rubbing at his chin. "Would that stop a QMT? Kurt? You're the tech officer."
"Hell if I know, Joe. That QMT shit is so new I barely even understand why it is possible," Lieutenant Kurt Hyerdahl replied from halfway inside the console that had previously tried to electrocute him.
"Okay, we'll ask." He had to ask his AIC for the names of the warrant officers assigned to the ship as the QMT experts. Then he got one of them on the horn. "CWO4 Ransom, this is the CHENG!"
"What can I do for you, CHENG?"
"Would a metal grate stop a QMT?"
"No, CHENG. You can QMT through walls, you know."
"Duh, right. But what about SIFs? Isn't there some interaction with spacetime or the vacuum fluctuations or something that confuses the QMT connection?" Joe asked.
"Uh, something like that, CHENG. Uh, sir, is this gonna take long, cause, well, we're kinda busy down here." Mr. Ransom seemed a bit uppity to Joe, maybe even constipated.
"Well, we need to flow air in from the outside without allowing enemy QMTs. Could we put small holes in the SIFs and do that?" There was no immediate answer, which meant that Joe had asked a question that the arrogant CWO4 QMT expert hadn't thought of.
"Damn, I never thought of that. Hell, you could just make the SIFs a screen instead of a solid field, and think how much energy you'd save on that," he replied.
Energy saved, hell—think of the heat we wouldn't have to dissipate if the field were half the size due to holes in it, Joe thought. Since it is a surface-area thing, that will be a squared factor! We could increase the SIF lifetime in battle by orders of magnitude.
We need to get on with this, Joe, his AIC warned him. Time was getting short, and the fucking Seppies were still outside, pounding away at them.
"Uh, how small do the holes need to be?"
"My AIC says a tenth of a millimeter in diameter with the same center-to-center spacing. And I bet that is conservative. Damn good idea, CHENG."
"Right, Mr. Ransom. Thanks for your help. CHENG out."
"You're welcome, CHENG."
Joe turned and noticed for the first time the bewilderment on the faces of his engineering crew. He wasn't sure if it was because they were confused or couldn't believe the brilliant idea they had just pulled out of their collective asses. He didn't care. Ideas did nobody any good if you didn't follow through with them.
"Okay, Kurt, get that damned panel fixed and get on to the next job. Mira, thanks for the sheer-fence idea. I'm reconfiguring the SIFs on the aft section and in nooks and crannies that are unlikely to be hit by enemy fire to have the screen geometry. I'm also doing that over the openings that Andy is making. We'll see how it works."
"All hands, all hands, prepare for hyperspace jaunt in ten, nine, eight, seven, six . . ."
"Goddamn, that's a sight," Engineer's Mate Petty Officer First Class Andy Sanchez clanked through the outer dry hull of the aft starboard section where the SIF-generator coolant conduits flowed. Even in his tech e-suit he could feel the radiant heat from the pipes. He looked forward and then aft. As far as he could see was the empty corridor between the outer hull and the next layer that the Navy had called the dry hull since the days of submarines. The corridor was poorly lit, and the white light from his helmet cast eerie shadows across the deck plating. The ship jerked downward fast, making him lose his balance briefly. Andy fell back into the coolant conduit and could feel the heat even through his armored glove and seal layer. "Goddamn it all to fuck, I'd better watch what I'm doing or that fucking thing might fry me."
Andy crawled up through the bulkhead to the outer hatch and clanked it a few times with the BFW he had brought with him. The technical term for the tool was a "big fucking wrench." After tapping the bolts on the outer hull hatch with the BFW, he placed it on the nuts, let it self-adjust to them, and then he torqued like hell to break them free. After a few seconds the bolts popped loose. He turned the safety latch and was almost sucked out of the ship. As soon as he had pushed the hatch panel up beyond the SIF, air—very fast-moving air—grabbed it and yanked it away. Twilight from the red dwarf shined through, and Andy could see the planet below.
"That's three. One more to go," he told himself. Then he dropped down to the deck and hurried to the last one of the exterior hatch panels, a good hundred meters away.
The bolts on the last hatch were more stubborn. Andy tapped them harder with the BFW and tried to torque them loose. No luck. He tapped them again, and this time he sprayed some solvent on them. He tapped them again, and then tried turning them again. One of them broke free, and he managed to get the thing off. The second nut was stuck.
"Stubborn bastard!" Andy pulled a laser cutter out of his pocket and started in on the bolt with it. About that time, something slammed into the ship above him with so much force the metal vibrated in his hands and made his suit ring.
"Ahh!" He reflexively grabbed at his ears, which were inside his helmet, of course.
Then another loud hit and the hatch blew free and the SIF directly above him blinked out for the briefest of instants. That was all it took as the atmosphere rushing over the hull at several hundred kilometers per hour sucked him right out of the blown hatch and into the evening sky. Large orange and green AA tracers zipped all around him, slamming into the ship's hull from the ground below. Andy spun with his arms and legs akimbo until he nearly passed out from it. One of the tracer rounds passed right between his legs and nicked his thigh. It burned for a brief second, but the suit sealed it off and killed the pain. Seeing the tracers pass between his legs scared him more than seeing one tear into his leg. His bladder and bowels let loose uncontrollably.