Now for the tricky part, Wilson thought, and tapped his instrument panel to start broadcasting a signal on the Utche’s communication bands.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Wilson said to the missiles.
The missiles did not hear Wilson. They heard the shuttle’s signal instead and erupted from their silos, one, two, three, four, five. Wilson saw them twice, first on the shuttle’s monitor and second through the Clarke’s sensor data, ported into his BrainPal.
“Five missiles on you, locked and tracking,” Wilson heard Schmidt say, through the instrument panel.
“Come on, let’s play,” Wilson said, and pushed the shuttle as fast as it would go. It was not as fast as the missiles could go, but that wasn’t the point. The point was twofold. First, to get the missiles as far away from where the Utche would be as possible. Second, to get the missiles spaced so that the explosion from the first missile on the shuttle would destroy all the other missiles, moving too quickly to avoid being damaged.
To manage that, Wilson had broadcast his signal from a point as close to equidistant to all five silos as could be managed and still be a safe distance from the Clarke. If everything worked out correctly, the missile impacts would be within a second of each other.
Wilson looked at the missile tracks. So far, so good. He had roughly a minute before the first impact. More than enough time.
Wilson unstrapped himself from the pilot seat, picked up the oxygen container, secured it on his unitard combat belt and fastened the mask over his mouth and nose. He ordered his combat unitard to close over his face, sealing the mask in. He picked up the black box and pinged its charge status; it was at 80 percent, which Wilson guessed would have to be good enough. He disconnected it from the external battery and then walked to the shuttle door, carrying the black box in one hand and the battery in the other. He positioned himself at what he hoped was the right spot, took a very deep breath and chucked the battery at the door release button. It hit square on and the door slid open.
Explosive decompression sucked Wilson out the door a fraction of a second earlier than he expected. He missed braining himself on the still-opening door by about a millimeter.
Wilson tumbled away from the shuttle on the vector the decompressing air had placed him but kept pace with the shuttle in terms of its forward motion, a testament to fundamental Newtonian physics. This was going to be bad news in roughly forty seconds, when the first missile hit the shuttle; even without an atmosphere to create a shock wave that would turn his innards to jelly, Wilson could still be fried and punctured by shrapnel.
He looked down at the Polk’s black box, tightly gripped close to his abdomen, and sent it a signal that informed it that it had been ejected from a spaceship, and then, despite the fact that his visual feed was now being handled by his BrainPal, he closed his eyes to fight the vertigo of the stars wheeling haphazardly around him. The BrainPal, interpreting this correctly, cut off the outside feed and provided Wilson with a tactical display instead. Wilson waited.
Do your thing, baby, he thought to the black box.
The black box got the signal. Wilson felt a snap as the black box’s inertial field factored his mass into its calculus and tightened around him. On the tactical display coming from his BrainPal, Wilson saw the representation of the shuttle pull away from him with increasing speed, and saw the missiles flash by his position, their velocity increasing toward the shuttle even as his was decreasing. Within a few seconds, he had slowed sufficiently that he was no longer in immediate danger of the shuttle impact.
In all, his little plan had worked out reasonably well so far.
Let’s still not ever do this again, Wilson said to himself.
Agreed, himself said back.
“First impact in ten seconds,” Wilson heard Schmidt say, via his BrainPal. Wilson had his BrainPal present him with a stabilized, enhanced visual of outside space and watched as the now invisible missiles bore down on the hapless, also invisible shuttle.
There was a series of short, sharp light bursts, like tiny firecrackers going off two streets away.
“Impact,” Schmidt said. Wilson smiled.
“Shit,” Schmidt said. Wilson stopped smiling and snapped up his BrainPal tactical display.
The shuttle and four of the missiles had been destroyed. One missile had survived and was casting about for a target.
On the periphery of the tactical display, a new object appeared. It was the Kaligm. The Utche had arrived.
Send that message to the Utche NOW, Wilson subvocalized to Schmidt, and the BrainPal transmuted it to a reasonable facsimile of Wilson’s own voice.
“Captain Coloma refuses,” Schmidt said a second later.
What? Wilson sent. Tell her it’s an order. Invoke my security clearance. Do it now.
“She says to shut up, you’re distracting her,” Schmidt said.
Distracting her from what? Wilson sent.
The Clarke started broadcasting a warning to the Utche, warning them of the missile attack, telling them to be silent and to leave Danavar space.
On the Utche’s broadcast bands.
The last missile locked on and thrust itself toward the Clarke.
Oh, God, Wilson thought, and his BrainPal sent the thought to Schmidt.
“Thirty seconds to impact,” Schmidt said.
“Twenty seconds…
“Ten…
“This is it, Harry.”
Silence.
X
Wilson estimated he had fifteen minutes of air left when the Utche shuttle sidled up to his position and opened an outside airlock for him. On the inside, a space-suited Utche guided him in, closed the airlock and, when the air cycle had finished, opened the inner seal to the shuttle. Wilson unsealed his head, took off the oxygen mask, inhaled and then suppressed his gag reflex. Utche did not smell particularly wonderful to humans. He looked up and saw several Utche looking at him curiously.
“Hi,” he said to no one of them in particular.
“Are you well?” one of them asked, in a voice that sounded as if it were being spoken while inhaling.
“I’m fine,” Wilson said. “How is the Clarke?”
“You are asking of your ship,” said another, in a similar inward-breathing voice.
“Yes,” Wilson said.
“It is most damaged,” said the first one.
“Are there dead?” Wilson asked. “Are there injured?”
“You are a soldier,” the second one said. “May you understand our language? It would be easier to say there.”
Wilson nodded and booted up the Utche translation routine he’d received with the Clarke’s new orders. “Speak your own language,” he said. “I will respond in mine.”
“I am Ambassador Suel,” the second one said. As the ambassador spoke, a second voice superimposed and spoke in English. “We don’t yet know the extent of the damage to your ship or the casualties because we only just now reestablished communication, and that through an emergency transmitter on the Clarke. When we reestablished contact we intended to offer assistance and to bring your crew onto our ship. But Ambassador Abumwe insisted that we must first retrieve you before we came to the Clarke. She was most insistent.”
“As I was about to run out of oxygen, I appreciate her insistence,” Wilson said.