“What?” The man still looked terrified.
“Settle down. You can do this.”
“You don’t know what you’ve done, do you?”
“Tell me.”
“As well as everything else, we’ve lost hydraulics, and that means I’ll never control this thing long enough for us to slow down and bail out. There’s a limit to what the reaction control system can do, you know. We’re dead, Helfort.”
Oh, shit, Michael thought. This is not good. “Patch me into the command AI.”
“Why would-”
“Because you want to live, you idiot! Now do it.”
“Okay, okay.”
It took Michael only seconds to see the damage for himself. The command pilot had not been exaggerating. The shuttle was doomed. Without hydraulics, the wings would stay fully retracted, and no wings meant no control as the air thickened. The problem was that the pilot had to do two things at once: keep the shuttle stable and slow down. If he failed, the shuttle would disintegrate and they were both dead men.
“Damn, damn, damn,” Michael swore under his breath. If only … An idea popped fully formed into his head. Michael put it to the AI, and ten seconds later he had his answer. It would be touch and go, but they might still have a chance.
“Captain,” he said. “Can you bring the starboard main engine back online?”
“I can, though it’s not in very good shape. I don’t know how long it’ll hold up.”
“We won’t need it for long. How’s the reaction control system?”
“The RCS is nominal, unlike everything else.”
“Okay; I think there’s something we can do.”
Hope brightened the man’s eyes. “There is?”
Michael forwarded the AI’s analysis. “Have a look at this,” he said. “The AI thinks it’ll work.”
“Mmm,” the pilot said. “Not sure if the RCS can keep us stable long enough, but I can use the main engine to vector the thrust, which will help. Anyway, it’s worth a try.”
Michael nodded. “Sure is,” he said. “Hey, look. I’m sorry about the Captain Asswipe thing. What’s your name?”
“Karroubi, Jakob Karroubi.”
“Good luck, Jakob.”
Michael sat back and patched his neuronics into the holocam behind Karroubi. It was if he were sitting on the pilot’s shoulder. He looked at the same screens, the same status boards, the same everything. It was unnerving, and for a moment Michael felt for the man. With the crippled shuttle now plummeting earthward, he had a huge challenge on his hands.
Karroubi fired the reaction jets to spin the shuttle around. Now the stern faced the onrushing air. A fresh set of alarms bleated in protest at a maneuver that appeared in no manual Michael had ever read. “Stand by,” the command pilot called. “This will be very rough.”
No kidding, Michael thought as the pilot fired the starboard main engine and rammed the throttle to emergency power, provoking yet more alarms. With the artgrav off, the airframe kicked hard in protest, the seat underneath Michael bucking as the pilot fought to keep the shuttle stable.
“Throttle down, Jakob,” Michael shouted. “Throttle down. Too much and you’ll lose her.”
“Roger,” Karroubi said; a moment later the vibration wracking the shuttle’s frame eased off a touch.
“Better,” Michael said even though it was still worryingly bad. But there was some good news: Karroubi was a natural on the sidestick controller. With a confident hand, he kept control of the stern’s tendency to slide away from the oncoming air, and the shuttle was decelerating hard, riding a pillar of flame down to earth.
“Looks good,” Karroubi said, “so stand by. It won’t be long before we can go.”
“Just say the word,” Michael replied. “I’m ready to-”
In one terrible instant, everything changed. Karroubi lost control. The stern whipped up and over with frightening speed, the airframe hammered by endless cracking bangs. “Shit!” Michael screamed as the status board told him the controls had been overwhelmed. Condemned, the shuttle tumbled to destruction; it was beyond anything Karroubi could do to reverse the situation.
“Sorry about that,” Karroubi shouted, his body a blur as the shuddering thrashed him from side to side.
“Don’t be,” Michael replied through clenched teeth, marveling that the pilot still was fighting against impossible odds to regain control.
“Go when I say … best I can … do.”
“Good luck, Jakob.”
Time ran out. The shuttle began to come apart. Damaged clamps failed, and the stern ramp sagged open far enough to let the slipstream grab it. The air tore the massive piece of foamalloy off and whipped it away.
“Now!” screamed Karroubi.
The ejection system took over. It blasted Michael out into the night and into a violence that overwhelmed his senses.
This is wrong, he thought as darkness claimed him, all wrong.
Michael awoke.
Rain hammered at the plasfiber capsule, the noise audible even over the insistent ringing in blast-damaged ears. It was light, a murky gray day thanks to the thick clouds that scudded overhead. He had been unconscious for … He tried to make his mind to do the math, but it refused. Since it had been early evening when the shuttle had picked him and Polk up, it was a long time. Commitment’s nights were prolonged affairs. He lay there for a long while, tired beyond belief. It was only with a huge effort that he summoned up the energy to get free of his safety harness and crawl out of the capsule, his shoulder and the rest of his body screeching in protest.
He tried to stand up. That was a mistake. He never made it past one knee before gravity reasserted itself and dragged him back down.
Guess I’m staying put, then, he said to himself. He pulled the survival pack out of its stowage and wrapped himself in a space blanket. He was almost asleep when a voice snapped him awake.
“Over here,” the voice said. It was a man’s voice, a Hammer voice. Michael’s heart pounded. Not now, he thought. Not after everything.
Every instinct urged Michael to get away, but he knew he could not. He lay there and stared up into the rain. A face appeared over his. “Here,” the man called out. He knelt down beside Michael. “You okay?”
“Don’t think so,” Michael whispered. “Who are you?”
“Corporal Singh, B Company, 2/284th, NRA.”
“Where am I?” Michael asked, overwhelmed by relief.
“Just outside of McNair.”
“McNair, that’s goo-”
At which point Michael passed out.
Sunday, November 7, 2404, UD
McNair, Commitment
Arm in a sling and right shoulder buried beneath an impressive bandage, Michael sat atop a captured Aqaba main battle tank as it threaded its way through the milling throng, a mix of civilian and NRA, looks of dazed happiness and relief on every face. The tank slowed to a stop, and the commander stuck her head out of the hatch. “Central Station’s 500 meters that way, Colonel,” she said, pointing down a broad avenue. It was a sorry sight. Once blessed with a double row of imposing trees, most now reduced to shattered stumps, it was lined with bombed-out buildings and littered with the burned-out wreckage of Hammer fighting vehicles. “Sorry I can’t get you any closer.”
“That’s okay. This will do fine.”
“You look after yourself. We owe you big time.”
Michael’s face flushed with embarrassment “Not sure about that,” he said. He’d lost count of the times he’d been thanked for sending Jeremiah Polk into oblivion.
“Well, I am,” the woman said, a broad smile across her grease- and dust-smeared face, a face startlingly young, a face that radiated uninhibited happiness and faith in the future.
Michael looked at her; he felt a million years old. “Thanks for the lift,” he said.
“Need a hand?”
“No, I’m okay,” Michael replied. He eased himself down one-handed. It took a while. His body was still a long way from forgiving him for all it had been put through. He grabbed his pack and set off, trying to ignore the nervous twitching of his heart.