“Get me out of here!” she shouted through the mask. “Take off! Take—”
The Valkyrie jolted as it detached from the cruiser, and the weight of a thousand tons crashed into her as the shuttle’s engines roared to life. The suit hardened in response, but still, it hurt.
The bulbous alien ship flashed past the nose of the Valkyrie, and then Kira glimpsed the forward section of the Extenuating Circumstances half a kilometer away, and she saw a pair of coffin-shaped escape pods shoot out from the prow of the ship and burn toward Adra’s desolate surface.
In a surprisingly quiet voice, Bishop said, “Ms. Navárez, I left a recording for you on the Valkyrie’s system. Contains all the pertinent information regarding you, your situation, and this attack. Please watch at earliest convenience. Unfortunately, nothing else I can do to help. Safe travels, Ms. Navárez.”
“Wait! What—”
The viewscreen flared white, and the aching pull in Kira’s chest vanished. An instant later, the shuttle bucked as the expanding sphere of debris hit. For a few seconds, it seemed as if the Valkyrie would break apart. A panel above her sparked and went dead, and somewhere behind her, a bang sounded, followed by the high-pitched whistle of escaping air.
A new alarm rang out, and rows of red lights cycled overhead. As the roar of the engines cut out, the weight pressing down on her vanished, and the stomach-churning sensation of free fall returned.
2.
“Ms. Navárez, there are numerous hull breaches in the aft,” said the shuttle’s pseudo-intelligence.
“Yes, thank you,” Kira muttered, unbuckling her harness. Her voice sounded strange and muffled through the mask.
She’d made it! She could hardly believe it. But she wasn’t safe, not yet.
“Kill the alarm,” she said.
The siren promptly cut out.
Kira was glad the mask stayed in place as she followed the high-pitched whistles toward the back of the shuttle. At least she didn’t have to worry about blacking out if the pressure dropped too low. She wondered, though: Would she have to spend the rest of her life with her face covered?
First she had to make sure she did live.
The whistles led her to the rear of the passenger compartment. There she found seven holes along the edge of the ceiling. The holes were tiny, no wider than a piece of pencil lead, but still large enough to drain the atmosphere from the shuttle within a few hours.
“Computer, what’s your name?”
“My name is Ando.” It sounded like a Geiger, but it wasn’t. Militaries used their own, specialized programs to fly their ships.
“Where’s the repair kit, Ando?”
The pseudo-intelligence guided her to a locker. Kira retrieved the kit and used it to mix a batch of quick-setting, foul-smelling resin (the mask didn’t seem to block the scent). She troweled the goop into the holes, and then covered each one with six cross-layered strips of FTL tape. The tape was stronger than most metals; it would take a blowtorch to remove that many strips.
As she rolled up the kit, Kira said, “Ando, damage report.”
“There are electrical shorts in the lighting circuitry, lines two-twenty-three-n and lines one-five-one-n are compromised. Also—”
“Skip the itemized report. Is the Valkyrie spaceworthy?”
“Yes, Ms. Navárez.”
“Were any critical systems hit?”
“No, Ms. Navárez.”
“What about the fusion drive? Wasn’t the nozzle pointing back at the explosion?”
“No, Ms. Navárez, our course put us on a bias with regard to the Extenuating Circumstances. The explosion struck us at an angle.”
“Did you program the course?”
“No, Ms. Navárez, ship mind Bishop did.”
Only then did Kira begin to relax. Only then did she allow herself to think that maybe, just maybe, she was really going to survive.
The mask rippled and peeled off her face. Kira yelped. She couldn’t help it; the process felt like a giant sticky bandage being removed.
Within seconds, her face was clear.
Kira tentatively ran her fingers over her mouth and nose, around the edges of her eyes, touching and exploring. To her surprise, she seemed to have kept her eyebrows and eyelashes.
“What are you?” she whispered, tracing the neckline of the suit. “What were you made for?”
No answers were forthcoming.
She looked over the inside of the shuttle: at the consoles, the rows of seats, the storage lockers, and—next to her—four empty cryo tubes. Tubes that she couldn’t use.
At the sight, sudden despair filled her. It didn’t matter that she’d escaped. Without the ability to enter cryo, she was effectively stranded.
CHAPTER IX. CHOICES
1.
Kira pulled herself along the walls to the front of the Valkyrie and strapped herself into the pilot’s seat. She checked the display: the Extenuating Circumstances was gone. So too was the alien ship, destroyed by the explosion of the UMC cruiser. “Ando, are there any other ships in the system?”
“Negative.”
That was one piece of good news. “Ando, does the Valkyrie have a Markov Drive?”
“Affirmative.”
Another piece of good news. The shuttle was capable of FTL. Even so, the lack of cryo might still kill her. It depended on the speed of the drive. “Ando, how long will it take the Valkyrie to reach Sixty-One Cygni if the shuttle makes an emergency burn to the Markov Limit?”
“Seventy-eight and a half days.”
Kira swore. The Fidanza had only taken about twenty-six days. She supposed the shuttle’s slowness shouldn’t be a surprise. The ship was intended for short-range hops and not much more.
Don’t panic. She wasn’t completely out of luck. The next question would be the determining one.
“Ando, how many ration packs does the Valkyrie carry?”
“The Valkyrie carries one hundred and seven ration packs.”
Kira had the pseudo-intelligence do the math for her. Not having her overlays was frustrating; she couldn’t solve even basic calculations on her own.
Adding in the days needed to decelerate at 61 Cygni resulted in a total travel time of 81.74 days. At half rations, the food would only last Kira eight weeks, which would leave her without food for another 25.5 days. Water wasn’t a problem; the reclamation equipment on the shuttle would keep her from dying of dehydration. The lack of food, on the other hand …
Kira had heard of people fasting for a month or more and surviving. She’d also heard of people who’d died in far less time. There was no telling. She was in reasonably good shape, and she had the suit to help her, so there was a chance she could make it, but it was a real gamble.
She rubbed her temple, feeling a headache forming. “Ando, play the message Bishop left for me.”
An image of a harsh-faced man appeared on the display in front of her: the ship mind’s avatar. His brows were drawn, and he seemed in equal parts concerned and angry. “Ms. Navárez, time is short. Aliens are jamming our comms, and they shot down the one signal drone I was able to launch. Not good. Only hope now is you, Ms. Navárez.
“I’ve included all of my sensor data with this message, as well as records from Doctor Carr, Adrasteia, et cetera. Please forward to the relevant authorities. Destruction of Extenuating Circumstances should remove source of jamming.”