"Headache," Channa gasped. "Hurts." Her head lolled, would have fallen forward if the savage high-G acceleration had allowed it.
Her breathing was rasping louder now and not psychosomatic. It was instinct-the hindbrain telling the lungs that they were suffocating. The readouts showed an adrenaline surge, just the wrong thing. Reflexes older than her remote reptile ancestors were preparing the body to fight free of whatever barred it from air.
"Hang on, Channa, hang on," Simeon chanted. Then: "Can't you go any faster?"
"Not 'lessn you want this here tug smeared all over the loadin' bay," Patsy said grimly.
"Isn't inertia wonderful?" Gusky muttered to himself, looking down again at the readings, fourteen kps and building. Not very fast, but the battered remnant of the hulk still massed multiple kilotons.
"Bit of a paradox," one of the volunteer miners said. "I want this thing as far from the station as I can get it-but I want to be as far away from it as possible myself."
"Ho. Ho. Ho," Gusky said. "Number three, you're a little off synch. Don't waste our delta-V."
"What's our safety margin, Gus?"
"That depends on when Simeon tells us to cut and run." I'm really, really sorry I got you mad at me, Simeon! "I'd like to get twenty klicks from the station before we drop the thing. But, what can I tell ya? If she blows without warning, if the explosives don't do what they're supposed to, if we don't get far enough away before she goes… actually, I don't think we have a safety margin."
"Sorry I asked."
"Hmph."
Simeon's voice broke in. "Prepare to drop in one minute seven seconds from mark. Mark. Get it right, Gus."
"Yeah," said one of the miners who had rigged the charges, "that thing has to stay in the same attitude. Charges won't be half as effective if it's tumbling."
"Roger that," Simeon said. No time for a linkup. They'd have to listen, really carefully. "Everyone got that mark?"
A chorus of affirmatives. Gusky licked sweat from his upper lip. He'd never told Simeon, exactly, but his five-year hitch in the Navy had been pretty uneventfuclass="underline" patrols, exercises, showing the flag, mapping expeditions. The most nerve-wracking moments had been the fleet handball competitions and surprise inspections.
"You pull the trigger, right?" he said.
"You got it, buddy," Simeon replied. His voice had less timbre, less humanity to it than usual.
"I hate being reassured in a voice that calm."
I've got other things on my mind. "Channa's suit got hit. She's running out of air."
"Oh." I screwed the pooch again, goddammit. "Sorry."
"Get ready."
The tugs were arrayed around the great tattered bulk of the intruder ship like the legs of a starfish, linked by the invisible bonds of the grapnel fields. Gusky kept the rear-field screen on at a steady 25x magnification. When the fields released, the image of the hulk seemed to disappear into a point-source of light in less than a heartbeat. Vision went gray at the edges, before the engines cycled down to something bearable. Tugs necessarily had high power-to-weight ratios. Then the shrinking dot of the derelict blinked with colorless fire.
Gusky cycled the screen to higher magnification. "Phew," he said gustily. The charges had cut the remaining forward section loose from the half-melted engine compartment and its core. Joined to the power module, whatever parts of the ship did not vaporize would be hyper-velocity shrapnel in all directions. With a klick or so distance and a vector away from the station, much less could go wrong. Blast is less dangerous without an atmosphere to propagate in. There is nothing to carry the shock wave except the actual gases of the explosion and they disperse rapidly. Given minimal luck, the explosion would just kick what was left of the hulk further away.
"When will it-"
The screen blanked protectively. So did his faceplate and the forward ports of the tug's cabin. Beside him the copilot flung his hand up in useless reflex. Even from the rear, the intensity of light was overwhelming.
"Did it work?" Gusky called as visibility returned. That was not as reassuring as it could have been. Half the sensors and telltales on the board were blinking red.
"Sorry." This time Simeon did sound sorry. "That ship… the engines were so old, the parameters were different… There's a lot more secondary radiation and subflux than I thought there would be."
"Thanks," Gusky said facetiously. "All right, people, report."
"I've got a flux in my drive cores I can't damp," one of the volunteers said immediately. "Induction, I guess. Getting worse."
"Let me see it," Gusky said, surprised at his own calm. This was much better than waiting; there wasn't time to be worried. "All right, you've got a feedback loop there and it's past redline. Set your controls for maximum acceleration at ninety degrees to the ecliptic with a one-minute delay, then bail out."
"Hey, this is my tug." the volunteer wailed.
"It's going to be your ball of incandescent gas in about ten minutes," Gusky said grimly. "Or hot gas that includes you. Take your pick."
Simeon cut in. "Station will pick up full replacement costs."
"Lobachevsy and Wong, you're closest," Gusky said, "pick 'em up!" Gusky's pickups showed the luckless volunteers jetting away on backpack and their craft streaking for deep space on autopilot. "The rest of you, dump me some data."
"Yessir, Admiral," one replied dryly.
The information dutifully came in. "Okay, Lobachevsky, Wong, you look functional, sort of. Take the others with overstrained drives in tow, and we'll go back nice and slow and easy." With several millions' worth of tug that just became so much scrap. Suddenly boring routine becomes very attractive as a way of life. War games are excitement enough.
He touched the control surfaces to establish a tight line circuit to the station. "Simeon, what about us?"
"Let's put it this way, Gus. None of you are going to die. But some of you aren't going to be very happy for a while, either. Sickbay will be crowded." A long pause. "Congratulations."
Gus grinned; half of that was relief from raw fear. Everyone who lives in space is afraid of decompression, which is why many become agoraphobic planetside. Those who do much EVA work or serve on warships develop a similar fear of radiation, which has the added terror of killing insidiously. On the other hand, most dangers in space either kill cleanly or let live.
"You're welcome," the big man continued. "What about Channa?"
Patsy's voice joined in. "She's gonna be fahn. Hey, Gus," she went on lazily, "you thaink people will respect us for this?"
Gusky keyed for the visuals. He got a double view, overhead from the docking chamber where the tug rested in its cradle and from the vehicle itself. Both showed Channa Hap being carried off in a floating stretcher.
"Phew. Glad she made it okay."
"Yayuh, mah sentiments exactly. Got a good one thar."
Gusky nodded. On station, Channa acted like a cryonic bitch, he thought, but she's there when it comes down to cases. This was the worst emergency SSS-900 had faced in the time he'd been here. SSS-900-C, he reminded himself.
"I dunno," he said, "I never respected anyone who led from the rear."
She laughed. "Hey! This might get us a nice rest cure somewhar pretty. We could go tagetha." She made the last a question.
"If any two parts of us are still stuck together when this is over, Patsy, you got a date."
"Unh-hunh!" she said enthusiastically.
Hey, first base, Gusky thought. After thirty months of ritualized sparring so routine it had gotten to be as comfortably low-key as playing war games with Simeon. That is, if I'm not sick as a puke once sickbay gets through with me. Doctor Chaundra believed in repairing you rapidly. In some circles he was known as "Kill or Cure Chaundra."