Grand Endeavour
Grand Endeavour is a piece I wrote in 2002 or so. It is set in the Traveller game universe.
Ley Sector of Gateway Domain lies at the far edge of Imperial space. It has at times been a troubled place, and Imperial resources are stretched thin. The Imperial Colonial Office (ICO) oversees various expansion and investment projects intended to bring prosperity and stability to the region, but progress is slow at the best of times. In an environment like this, a small merchant ship with a smart captain can make a fortune filling the gaps left between official projects and large-scale commercial operations. But that can mean going places and doing things that better-funded vessels might prefer not to, and fortunes can be lost just as quickly as they are won.
The free trader Eternal Optimist has just put down at Breton Starport on Raa, a backwater world well off the main trade routes. The ship is short of funds and in need of an overhaul, running on hopes and dreams while her crew look for the big score that will somehow solve their financial problems. Despite the vessel’s upbeat name, things are looking increasingly bleak.
Ley Sector of Gateway Domain lies at the far edge of Imperial space. It has at times been a troubled place, and Imperial resources are stretched thin. The Imperial Colonial Office (ICO) oversees various expansion and investment projects intended to bring prosperity and stability to the region, but progress is slow at the best of times. In an environment like this, a small merchant ship with a smart captain can make a fortune filling the gaps left between official projects and large-scale commercial operations. But that can mean going places and doing things that better-funded vessels might prefer not to, and fortunes can be lost just as quickly as they are won.
The free trader Eternal Optimist has just put down at Breton Starport on Raa, a backwater world well off the main trade routes. The ship is short of funds and in need of an overhaul, running on hopes and dreams while her crew look for the big score that will somehow solve their financial problems. Despite the vessel’s upbeat name, things are looking increasingly bleak.
Paulo Danilo, Master of the Free Trader Eternal Optimist, shifted his weapon belt, pushed his battered old Navy cap back on his head, and hit the stud to open the main cargo doors. As the door retracted and the ramp slid jerkily down – another thing on the list for the refit they couldn’t afford – Paulo sniffed the chilly, dry air of Raa and gazed out at a widening view of the port.
Even at the fullness of noon, Raa’s dim red primary could not manage much of a glare. Paulo took his sunglasses out of his tunic pocket and slipped them on anyway. Beside him, Marie Duffey, ex-Imperial Marine and now second engineer aboard the Eternal Optimist, settled her cutlass belt more comfortably, swearing at it as a matter of principle.
Unlike Paulo’s dress sword – which was in his cabin – Marie’s was a working blade; a self-defense weapon that served well on all occasions that didn’t require her Advanced Combat Rifle. Within hours of coming aboard as second engineer, Marie had appointed herself Paulo’s Very Own Marine Bodyguard. She took the role very seriously.
The ramp finally hit the ground, and the pair strode down it, onto the cracked and weed-dotted landing apron. “Even less impressive from the ground,” Marie observed, referring to some earlier comments she’d made. “You bring us to all the best places.”
Paulo glanced around at the clustering of prefab huts, the skeletons of half-cannibalized All-Terrain Vehicles and heaps of broken-down starship components. One other space vessel graced the landing apron; an incredibly battered Modular Cutter with a bent landing leg and obvious signs of running repairs. A gang of techs clambered all over it, welding and cutting. A couple glanced over at the Eternal Optimist with a complete lack of interest. “Well, they’re not exactly overwhelmed with enthusiasm, are they?” Paulo said, setting off for the aerial-festooned prefab that grandly called itself the Starport Administration Building.
Breton Starport was, to put it nicely, a dump, Paulo reflected as he walked slowly across the landing apron towards the so-called administration buildings. At his side Marie muttered some Marine-issue comments on the world, the starport and her captain’s business sense, pausing to sneeze as a sudden breeze blew cold, dry and dusty air over the perimeter berm.
Paulo chuckled, glancing at his companion. “Was that a comment or a statement?” he asked with a wry smile.
“Anything you want it to mean, Glorious Leader,” Marie responded. “Oh look, the tech crew have finally stirred themselves.”
Paulo glanced to his right, to where half a dozen of the techs had left the cutter and were manhandling a service cart out of its bunker. It was a standard model; electrically powered and fitted with tools for routine service tasks. Paulo was wiling to bet the motor had been cannibalized to power something else, leaving it as nothing more than an unwieldy trolley. He tapped his wrist comm’s quick-connect, already programmed with the Eternal Optimist’s intercom frequency.
“Captain?” said Haiiz’s voice in his earpiece.
“Tech crew inbound. Please don’t point and laugh,” Paulo said aloud. His words were picked up by his collar mike and relayed automatically.
“Understood.”
Paulo and Marie paused a moment before the Admin building doors, then shrugged and strode in. The inside was as unimpressive as out. A few chipped and worn desks supported communications gear in mountings that had clearly been temporary for the past two or more decades. The room’s sole occupant, an ageing male Vargr in a surplus Scout Service coverall, looked up from his console and nodded an offhand greeting. “Captain Danilo?” he said in only slightly accented Galanglic.
“You recognized me among this enormous throng of starfarers?” Paulo said with a wry smile. “I’m suitably impressed.”
“That’s what they pay me for,” the Vargr replied with a twitch of his ears that signified amusement. “You’re carrying our ICO shipment?”
“Yes. Plus a ton of sundries. No passengers, which is hardly surprising.” Paulo handed over a manifest reader as he spoke.
The Vargr took it and quickly scanned the list. He nodded, obviously disappointed but not surprised. “This is in order. The Colonial Office has sent us pretty much what we were promised,” he said. “Though naturally not what we asked for – or what we needed.”
Paulo nodded. “There’s no money for colonial support, not right now. Everything’s going to the commerce-protection projects.”
“To the Navy, you mean,” the Vargr replied sourly, gesturing with his snout at Paulo’s Navy cap.
Paulo said nothing.
“Well, not your fault. I’ll comm the Executive Directors and get your payment cleared… and no doubt take some abuse because we’ve not been sent what they asked for. We’ll warehouse your cargo straight away; the Directorate will have to send someone down to verify and distribute it whenever they get around to it. Not your problem.”
“I detect a certain world-weariness….” Paulo said.
The Vargr growled and looked down at the floor for a second, parodying a Vargr expression of extreme anger.
“That bad?” Paulo asked.
“Believe it,” the Vargr replied. “But I’m being rude. I’m Harg’vgn Garrnough… Usually go by ‘Gav’ among flatfaces, for obvious reasons.” Gav stuck out a graying paw, and Paulo shook it.
“You know me; this is Marie, my very own Imperial Marine Corps escapee,” Paulo said, as Gav and Marie greeted one another.
To Paulo’s surprise, Marie suddenly said, “You any relation to Gunnery Sergeant Garrnough? Err… Jarrlag Garrnough?”
Gav shook his head. “Don’t think so. Friend of yours?”
“Kind of,” Marie replied in a tone that suggested the discussion had just ended.
“Look, it’ll take hours to round up anything resembling an unloading crew, and we’re not exactly overflowing with handler bots,” Gav said after a moment’s silence. “I’ll put in a request to the Port Director, assuming he visits his office this week, but until then we might as well find something to do.”
“You’re not the director?”
Gav shook his head. “I’m the ICO representative to the Port Authority; an advisor. But for the past year I’ve pretty much handled the port on behalf of the Executive Directors. Not that there’s much to do.”
“Why? I mean, why is the port so neglected?” Paulo asked.
“Hah. This place was quite important way back before the Imperium; in the Rule of Man. During the Long Night Raa survived by going self-sufficient. Tech dropped right back to oxplows. It’s climbed back up to middling industrial level, but the locals are pretty isolationist. We’re off the trade routes here…”
“Are we NOT!” Marie said. “We had to use fuel bladders to get here.”
“Precisely. We’re an isolationist world off the main routes, three parsecs from anywhere except a trivial little stopover point at Dimurkash. Nothing comes in here that isn’t hired by the Colonial Office, lost, or on maneuvers.” Again Gav looked significantly at Paulo’s hat. “And then we got Amber Zoned.”
“My library program just mentions isolationism,” Paulo said. “Why the Amber Zone?”
Gav cocked his head in an I-know-something-you-don’t sort of way.
“Okay; name a restaurant and we’ll buy dinner,” Paulo said.
“Deal,” Gav replied.
Marie triggered her comm “Haiiz, it’s your turn for shipboard watch. Everyone else get over here; we’re going to dinner.” She looked out of the prefab windows at the sorry dump that was Breton Starport, and went on, “Formal dress will not be necessary.”
With Haiiz standing – more correctly, lounging – bridge watch back aboard the Eternal Optimist, the remaining members of her crew seated themselves around a table hand-carved from local wood, and listened to Gav’s catalogue of woes over three courses of distinctly unusual local dishes.
“The government had collapsed in all but name by 956, “ Gav said around a mouthful of spiced noodles and chunks of some sort of half-raw desert creature. “Though it wasn’t that obvious. Seven hundred million people actually managed a decent job of governing themselves. Old culture, ingrained values and so on.”
Paulo nodded understanding as he chewed slowly, so that he’d only have to eat a little of the undercooked animal. Marie and Jarrsoegh, the Optimist’s Vargr engineer, did likewise. Only Daanai, the ship’s ersatz medical officer and dogsbody-general, attacked the food with relish. “This stuff is great!” he announced between great mouthfuls. “What say we stock up before we leave, Captain?”
Paulo wrinkled his nose, nodding to Gav. “Sorry. Do go on.”
“Not much to tell really. Businesses and neighborhoods went on running themselves. The essential services like firefighting and refuse collection went into a decline, but self-interest took over. Local groups started handling services on a voluntary basis – or coerced businesses into paying for it. Pretty soon the entire world was as Balkanized as you can get, fragmented into neighborhood and regional blocks. No effective government, no organized groups of more than five thousand people. And you know what?”
“Manifestly not,” Daanai said, downing his overworked fork. “You guys going to eat that, or what?”
As Daanai’s plate vanished under a mound of food generously donated by his crewmates, Gav went on, “It worked.”
“You’re kidding,” Marie said. “That’s anarchy…”
“Pretty much, but it was an evolved anarchy, resulting from a century of failing government. People got along, learned how to do what governments normally do. Oh, they fought among themselves a bit. But mostly it worked. Until ICO came along and tried to help,” Gav tapped his chest as he spoke.
“Clumsy intervention?” Paulo asked.
“Sort of,” Gav said. “The World Government was a joke, a day job for people too incompetent to actually run anything folks depended upon. Everyone on the planet knew that. ICO didn’t.”
“Uh-huh….” Paulo said, beginning to understand.
Gav went on, “The World Government asked for Colonial Office support. They drew up a plan, and ICO actually approved it. They sent advisors, experts and a whole bunch of other people, who tried very hard to implement the plan. Unified defense, law enforcement and refuse collection. Regional directors overseeing the local community committees. You can imagine how well THAT went down.”
“Violence?” Marie asked.
“Not really. But complete non-cooperation. So now we have a team from the Colonial Office advising a bunch of incompetents who don’t run the planet on how they should be running it. The great reconstruction plan is still going on, despite the fact that the locals already have a working system. There’s some friction but it’s mostly passive resistance. The locals are really, really good at ignoring people,” Gav said with a gesture of amusement.
“And you’re stuck in the middle of this… but why the Amber Zone?” Paulo asked.
“Because people who don’t know the locals see them as a bunch of surly isolationists – quite well armed at the personal level, too – who are obstructing an Imperial office in its attempt to help them…” Gav said.
“Pretty much true so far as I can see,” Paulo said.
“I suppose so, but that’s the point. In fact they’re friendly and self-sufficient. So long as you pull your weight and don’t interfere with the common good, they’re great people. And all they want is to be left alone.”
“So why are you still here?” Paulo asked.
“Because the buffoons on the World Government want ICO to give them real power, and ICO listens to world governments. Not to a Port Director’s Advisor… me… who has clearly gone native.”
“What a mess. Why….” Paulo said, but before he could go on, Gav’s comm chimed. Paulo stiffened, recognizing a Most Urgent message.
Gav listened for a second. Then his ears went flat and he growled, a Vargr’s instinctive reaction to adrenaline.
“What is it?” Paulo asked.
“We have a Jump Emergence at three hundred diameters. Big; maybe two thousand tons.” Gav scrambled to his feet and headed for the door with the others in pursuit.
“What are you expecting?” Paulo demanded as they rushed outside and jumped into Gav’s battered Port Authority Air/Raft.
“Not a thing. There’s no ship due for weeks” Gav said, crash-starting the vehicle as the others piled in. “And she’s coming in dead; no power, no maneuver, just a distress beacon.”
“Course?” Paulo asked, but he already knew.
Gav hammered the Air-Raft into a violent turn and streaked for the port. His ears were flat with more than the wind that lashed the open-topped vehicle.
“She’s coming right at us.”
* * *
“This is what we know,” Gav addressed the gang of excited techs and the crew of the Eternal Optimist. “The ship is an ICO transport, the Grand Endeavor. She’s due here in six weeks. Maybe they upped the schedule or something, but whatever happened she’s clearly in trouble. We’re getting a broken signal on a different band to the distress beacon, but we can’t make it out. Telemetry suggests battle damage and a bad Jump emergence. I’m guessing she crash-Jumped to escape a pirate attack or something, and came out on a collision vector. What little we can make out from the beacon suggests that she has power, but no maneuver capability and only partial life-support. Her manifest says she has five hundred ICO construction workers in Low Berths. They may still be alive.”
A ripple went through the techs as Gav went on. “She will hit atmosphere in three hundred minutes or so. Parts of her will reach the ground. We’ve predicted her impact point… and it’s inhabited. If we can, we have to divert her. And if we can’t, then no matter who’s on board… We’ll have to destroy her.” After a moment’s silence, Gav added in a small, dead voice, “If we can.”
Paulo was, for a moment, somewhere and someone else. A young gunnery lieutenant with the power of the gods under his hand. A plague ship in his sights, the crew and two thousand passengers infected with a terrorist bioweapon, minutes from entering atmosphere. Planetary governors begging the Navy to help, pleading with the plague ship to turn away. Eight hundred million lives at stake, but Paulo’s captain dithered. The Navy didn’t fire on civilians; the plague might be curable. Two thousand lives against eight hundred million. Seconds to act and no orders, the ship coming on in a last rush for the illusion of salvation.
A young officer screaming rage at the gods, at his captain, at himself, as six nuclear warheads bracketed the plague ship and burned her to sterile dust. The blessed numbness of the surgeon’s needle, the court of inquiry and the Thanks of the Emperor. A Sword of Honor, promotion and choice of assignments. And the quiet resignation of his commission.
The Navy needed men like Lieutenant Paulo Danilo, they said, men who were not afraid to act for the greater good. But the Navy had broken him. No, he had broken himself. He had done right, and they showered him with glory. But he could not forgive himself for what he’d done to two thousand people whose only crime was that they were already victims.
And now it was happening again.
“This is not going to happen,” Paulo grated. “Can that cutter lift?”
“Soon,” one of the techs said. “But we can’t take five hundred people off in it, awake or frozen.”
“I know,” Paulo replied. “But we’re going to try. Eternal Optimist will lift immediately. We will board and Daanai will crash-wake the low berth personnel. We’ll get as many as we can aboard, and see if we can’t find a way to divert her into orbit or at least into an uninhabited area. Follow as soon as you can in the cutter.”
Some of the techs, and most of the crew of Eternal Optimist, looked puzzled at the sudden tense energy in Paulo’s voice. But not Marie. Marie knew why. She knew what Paulo was going to do, and she knew she had to let him do it, no matter what the cost.
* * *
Fittings rattled as the little Free Trader clawed her way into orbit. In the pilot’s seat Haiiz hunched over the controls, struggling with all her impressive skill to find more thrust from somewhere. Paulo paced, fiddling with his vac suit belt pack as he watched the range closing far, far too slowly.
“Still no communication from the cripple, Captain,” Marie said. “I’ve lost that broken signal altogether.”
“Never mind, we’ll board and make a physical search. What’s the cutter status?” Paulo said.
“Gav just signaled; he’s lifting off now.”
“Keep me informed,” Paulo said, and went back to fretting. Minutes crawled past.
“I have the Grand Endeavor on thermal. We’ll have a visual in a moment…. Visual contact established,” Marie said. “She looks to be hurt pretty bad.”
That was an understatement. The transport’s forward command area – the bridge, avionics and officer’s accommodation – was gone, chewed away by heavy laser fire. Burns and scars showed all along her hull, and there was a blackened, melted pit where one of her turrets had been. The other five were slewed round on a common bearing. The Grand Endeavor had fought for her life, and in the end she’d made a desperate lunge into Jumpspace to escape. Paulo mentally saluted her captain and crew, and the people who’d built her too. Half her controls gone, lashed by laser fire, and still she’d carried the survivors out of danger without a catastrophic Misjump.
“That’s a fine ship,” Paulo said softly as Marie peered at the telemetry readouts. After a moment he glanced across at her. “What do we have?”
“Engineering and main hold seem relatively intact, Captain. There’s some power to aft systems, but it’s patchy. And I’ve got that signal again. It’s a suit radio, being fed through a shipboard antenna.
“Play it,” Paulo said.
Static blared across the Free Trader’s bridge despite the computer’s best efforts to clean up the signal. As Paulo and the others winced, a strained and weary voice spoke from the stricken ship. “GK. Repeat Signal GK. This is the ICO transport Grand Endeavor calling any vessel. We are in distress. Our drive is crippled, bridge is gone. Requesting assistance from any vessel… please help us, for all the gods’ sake. This is ICO transport Grand Endeavor calling any vessel. I am junior deck officer Liam Nichara, sole survivor. I am injured. Bridge is gone, captain is dead… Drive is inoperative. Sensors are inoperative. Request assistance… please. Mayday… we are declaring an emergency… This is ICO Transport….”
Paulo broke into the dreamy litany. “This is Free Trader Eternal Optimist, responding to your GK signal. We are coming alongside to render assistance. Do we have permission to board?”
There was no need for Paulo to ask permission to board a crippled vessel requesting assistance, but the request seemed to drag the survivor back to himself, reminding him that he was a starfaring officer.
“Permission granted, and thank you…” Liam said. “Be advised that we have a bulk low berth aboard. I believe that many berths are still functional.”
Technically that made this Liam Nichara incorrect in claiming to be a sole survivor, but Paulo wasn’t going to pick nits.
“We can revive your personnel and take them off. What is your own status?”
“I’m in the aft engineering crawlspace, under the Jump drive. I can’t get out,” Liam answered.
“Why not? You that badly hurt?” Paulo asked.
“No… I welded the hatch up. To keep them out….”
Paulo and Marie exchanged a look as Haiiz broke in, “Who? You said you were alone.”
“I am now, now that they’re gone….”
Paulo nodded, understanding. Liam was hurt and alone, and he’d just spent a week in Jump with a shipload of dead men. If something had become misaligned in the frantic Jump attempt, then Liam would have had a very strange time of it indeed. Jumpspace could be freaky enough when the drive worked properly. Paulo had seen the effects of a slight Misjump on some of his crewmates; Liam probably had experienced far worse.
And of course, there were always the wild tales of “Things” that rippled beneath the surface of Jumpspace. But that was just scuttlebutt.
Probably.
“Bring us alongside,” Paulo said. “Jarrsoegh will assist Daanai in crash-wakening any survivors aboard the wreck and transferring them to the Optimist. And yes, I know some of them will die from hibernation shock. We have to save the greatest number…. That’s an order, people.”
Haiiz and Jarrsoegh looked at one another, surprised. Paulo didn’t normally use those words or that tone with his crew. But this was no ordinary day. He went on, “Marie and I will free the survivor, then attempt to gain control of the ship using the emergency conn in engineering.” He hoped to all the gods that the transport had one. “Haiiz will remain aboard the Optimist and monitor our distance to atmosphere. That’s it. Let’s do it.”
* * *
Inside the Grand Endeavor was a complete mess; worse than outside. Dim, low-power striplights cast a spooky half-light over silent corridors and shattered cabins as Paulo led his crew aft. Everyone took care to avoid sharp edges that might rip even their tough, top-of-the-line vac suits.
From the lack of loose objects, Paulo guessed the transport had been bushwhacked without any warning, breached while she was still full of air, and suffered explosive decompression. Most of the crew would have died a horrible death in space or in suddenly evacuated work and living areas. He did not stop to look at the bodies he saw. There was no point; anyone without a suit was dead, and looking at the results of explosive decompression would be disturbing. It would certainly not serve any useful purpose.
Reaching an intact bulkhead, Paulo took a quick look at the environment panel. It indicated the far side was pressurized. “Our first piece of luck,” he said as Jarrsoegh began to assemble the plastic emergency airlock on the outside of the bulkhead’s iris valve. After a moment the Vargr stepped into the lock and zipped it shut behind him, checking the seal it made against the bulkhead before hitting the control stud on the iris valve.
The valve opened slowly but smoothly, indicating that the ship’s reactor was still functional. One by one the crew passed through into the remaining habitable part of the Grand Endeavor.
There were bodies here, too. Some were shattered by spallation – flying fragments of hull and deck plate loosened by the sudden heat-stress of laser fire. Some were burned, some electrocuted. Some seemed to have been asphyxiated by fire-suppression gases. A few had gunshot or blade wounds.
“The ship wasn’t boarded. How…” Marie began, but Paulo shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter, and maybe we’ll never know. Jarrsoegh and Daanai, get through there.” Paulo pointed to the low berth area, “Begin crash-waking the survivors. We’ll shove them in rescue balls and float them across to the Optimist. Marie and I are going aft.”
As the engineer and doctor began the grisly task of sorting the dead from the hibernating among the low berth passengers, and then the infinitely worse job of deciding which were most likely to survive the wakeup process and therefore who to abandon, Paulo and Marie broke out an emergency rescue kit and cut their way into the aft engineering crawlspace.
A pitiful sight awaited them. Junior Deck officer Liam Nichara was a slender individual of about twenty years old, encased in a vac suit that was far too big for him. The helmet lay on the floor beside him, and as he turned to face his rescuers, his big, frightened blue eyes seemed to bulge from his hollow-cheeked face. Without taking his eyes off his rescuers, the boy edged his left hand towards a big wrench that lay close by on the deck. His lips moved almost soundlessly, mouthing a patchwork litany of distress signals.
Marie ducked into the crawlspace, batted the wrench away and, to Paulo’s surprise, flung her arms around the terrified survivor. After a moment’s fierce struggle, he burst into sobs that shook his entire body, and clung desperately to the ex-Marine. Paulo saw that his right hand was missing all the fingers, and the suit had been clumsily sealed with Patchtape. Paulo knew instantly just how rough things had been – Liam’s hand had been severed by contact with Jumpspace. That meant that the survivors had spent a week trapped in an unstable Jump bubble that had intruded inside the ship. No wonder some of them had killed one another.
“Captain,” came Haiiz’ voice over the suit radio as Marie half-dragged Liam out of the crawlspace. “The port cutter is inbound. Gav says he has some techs aboard.”
“Excellent. Tell him to send anyone who knows about starship engineering Aft, and set the rest to work evacuating the casualties.”
“Understood.”
Paulo took a deep breath of tasteless suit air, and nodded purposefully at Marie. “Get him to safety,” he said. “Then come back here. If we can reactivate the drive, this ship doesn’t have to die.”
“Aye, sir!” Marie said with an approving grin. She looked like she might actually salute, but the deadweight of the survivor was too much. Instead she supported him gently, saying to him the words that had reassured countless survivors over the centuries.
“It’s going to be all right, son. The Navy’s here!”
But as she spoke, Paulo understood that today those words meant something entirely different.
Gav looked up from the emergency conning position. He, Marie and Paulo were alone in Engineering, the techs having proved more useful in the evacuation attempt. “That’s it. I have helm,” Gav said. “Intermittent, though.”
“Will it do?” Paulo demanded.
“We can maneuver a bit. Can’t miss the planet though,” Gav said softly.
“Could we get remote control from the cutter or the Optimist?” Marie asked. “That way we could guide her in somewhere uninhabited.”
“Not in time,” Gav said. “Brave try, though.”
“It’s not over,” Paulo replied. Give us what you have, try to get us some time. We still have more than half the casualties to evacuate.”
“Captain, the Optimist reports that she is full,” Marie said.
“Paulo to Optimist.”
Haiiz’ voice responded instantly. “Optimist here.”
“Get clear with what you have. The rest will go to the cutter,” Paulo said.
Nobody commented on the fact that the cutter could hold less than half the remaining low berth evacuees.
Paulo moved to the helm controls and seated himself. “All hands, prepare for acceleration,” he announced. There was really no need. The thrust he controlled was weak and jerky, a feeble shuddering rather than the powerful acceleration they needed to avoid destruction. All the same, Paulo implemented a course change and gave the battered ship her head, trying to gain enough velocity to establish some kind of orbit. It was hopeless, pointless, but still he wrestled with the erratic power supply, battled the wild yaw resulting from damaged control pathways. The gallant ship had too little strength left to save herself, but Paulo gave her every chance to try.
Suddenly, the acceleration increased and the yaw stabilized. Paulo grinned, then frowned. There was no more power, no more thrust. Then how...?
“Cutter here,” came the answer over the radio. “We’re almost full. We’re giving you all the help we can while we’re here.”
“You’re doing great, but watch the couplings,” Paulo replied, though he could see from his display that great wasn’t good enough. They couldn’t reach orbit, nor even miss the main inhabited belt. All they could do was prolong the inevitable and maybe shift the impact point.
It wasn’t enough.
“Marie, Gav,” Paulo said. “The drives are the most solid part of the ship. Can you rig them to blow?”
“Not explode, no,” Marie said. “Fusion reactors don’t do that.” She didn’t waste time wishing for a nuclear demolition charge or two.
“I’m thinking that if we can overload the reactor it’ll fill this part of the ship with plasma. Weaken the structure so that the Optimist’s guns can break her up. More of the ship will burn up….”
Marie nodded, knowing what it cost Paulo to say those words. In a small ship it was impossible not to know that the captain woke up every night from terrible nightmares; that in his dreams he killed a starship over and over again. Marie knew what Paulo might have been if it hadn’t been for the breakdown, and what he had still managed to achieve. She couldn’t help but admire the way he fought back the bleak madness every single day… but neither could she help him in any way.
Marie and Gav worked feverishly for a few minutes, then stepped back. “This might or might not work,” Marie said. “The reactor will go into massive overload, at which point it might or might not rupture. We’ve disabled the safety interlocks, but there still might be a shutdown we’ve missed. And a rupture might or might not weaken the hull sufficiently.”
“Too much might,” Paulo said.
“It’s what we have, Captain.”
Daanai’s voice came over the radio. “Captain, the cutter is full. There are nearly two hundred potential survivors here… Can the Optimist reach us in time?”
“No. She’s offloading now. She can’t reach us before we hit atmosphere. Get to the cutter, Daanai,” Paulo said. “No arguments.”
There was no answer for a long moment, then Jarrsoegh’s voice spoke harshly in Paulo’s ear, “Complying.” There were sounds of a struggle in the background.
Paulo nodded. “Time to go,” he said to his companions. Get to the cutter. I’ll set the reactor and follow.
“I’m demo qualified,” Marie argued. “I should…”
“Take Gav to the cutter. I’ll be along.”
“Sir!” this time Marie did salute, for she knew as well as Paulo that he wasn’t coming. And she knew that this was something he had to do; the act of redemption he’d sought through all those long nights. “Godspeed, Captain,” she said crisply, grabbed Gav by the arm and marched out.
Alone in the emergency conning position, Paulo struggled with the controls as the cutter separated and sped towards the planet and safety. He watched the readouts as the Grand Endeavor fought her hopeless battle for life. The equation was merciless. Two hundred workers still hibernated in the hold, oblivious as the ship skimmed into Raa’s atmosphere. A belt of cities stretched away below, cities filled with teeming life. With millions of good-natured isolationists who just wanted to be left alone to pursue their affairs.
It was a no-win situation. The ship could not reach orbit, could not even make a powered descent. Grand Endeavor was going into the ground no matter what Paulo Danilo did. All he could do was choose where she struck. He could maybe keep her up a little longer, clear the city belt and possibly even put her down into water. He couldn’t survive and he couldn’t save the ship or her passengers. He’d really thought he could do it, and he’d been wrong. He laughed bitterly as the realization finally sank in that he’d lost. Marie had known it was hopeless from the start, but he’d wanted to win so badly that he’d blinded himself to reality.
Well, there was only one thing to do now. Pay the price. He’d overload the reactor, find the best vector he could, and give the ship to her fate. Once again he’d kill a ship to save lives below. But this time there would be no more nightmares. This time he’d ride her into the ground and share her fate. Maybe there was some Naval Valhalla for people like him. But whatever happened, this was redemption. This was freedom from the nightmares. This, in a perverse way, was not defeat after all. Paulo gritted his teeth and triggered the reactor overload.
Nothing happened.
After a moment it sank in that Marie’ jury rig had failed. Paulo split his display screen, calling up a program chart. Flying the ship with one hand he began to work feverishly to find the problem, struggling to find a way to blow himself to oblivion. The Starport fell away behind as the ship screamed through the upper atmosphere, growing hot with friction and compression heating. Antennae sheared away, along with fragments of the shattered bridge.
Below, the Eternal Optimist rose from the starport pad with Marie at the guns. She sped away on an intercept course. The citizens of Raa listened to news broadcasts and struggled to decide whether to flee or to simply hope the ship would strike elsewhere.
And above, Lieutenant Paulo Danilo of the Imperial Navy reached once again for the reactor controls. He smiled, almost wistfully, as his hand closed on the final switch. His life might be over, but he’d end as his own man, free at last from the world of nightmares. This was victory of a sort. This was redemption.
“It’s going to be all right,” Paulo said aloud to the world below. “The Navy’s here.”
He closed the switch.
* * *
A crowed had gathered at the Starport after the Eternal Optimist left. Gav stood among a horde of techs and local citizens, relaying the news from his headset to the masses.
“Fireball on the horizon,” Gav said. A sigh came from the crowd. “No, heat trail. Infrared tracking shows a heat trail. Headed this way. Less than a kilometer up.”
The crowd tensed, but Gav went on, “She’s going to fall short. We’re safe.”
A long moment passed, then Gav said disbelievingly, “Her vector is changing. She’s coming right at us. We’re tracking the Optimist but she’s not firing… why’s she not… Take cover! Take cover!”
People fled yelling about the landing apron, seeking shelter that was simply not there. Realizing the folly of his momentary panic, Gav forced himself to stand still. There was nothing solid enough to save them from the blast if the ship came down nearby. He turned his attention back to his relay, shouting out updates for the benefit of the few who were not crawling under dismantled ATV carcasses.
“The Optimist is falling behind. Grand Endeavor is under power! One point three g’s! That’s more than her drive rating…” Gav suddenly barked in triumphant understanding. “Half the ship’s gone and the reactor didn’t blow – it’s running at overload and she’s got all the thrust she needs!”
With the little free trader in pursuit, Grand Endeavor bottomed out of her dive at half a kilometer, right over the Starport. Gav crouched snarling as a hot wind ripped across the landing apron, a tearing roar that became a cheer as the crippled transport passed by overhead.
Then, with a majesty that befitted her heroic efforts, Grand Endeavor turned her battered and melted face towards the stars and began the long climb back to orbit.
Even at the fullness of noon, Raa’s dim red primary could not manage much of a glare. Paulo took his sunglasses out of his tunic pocket and slipped them on anyway. Beside him, Marie Duffey, ex-Imperial Marine and now second engineer aboard the Eternal Optimist, settled her cutlass belt more comfortably, swearing at it as a matter of principle.
Unlike Paulo’s dress sword – which was in his cabin – Marie’s was a working blade; a self-defense weapon that served well on all occasions that didn’t require her Advanced Combat Rifle. Within hours of coming aboard as second engineer, Marie had appointed herself Paulo’s Very Own Marine Bodyguard. She took the role very seriously.
The ramp finally hit the ground, and the pair strode down it, onto the cracked and weed-dotted landing apron. “Even less impressive from the ground,” Marie observed, referring to some earlier comments she’d made. “You bring us to all the best places.”
Paulo glanced around at the clustering of prefab huts, the skeletons of half-cannibalized All-Terrain Vehicles and heaps of broken-down starship components. One other space vessel graced the landing apron; an incredibly battered Modular Cutter with a bent landing leg and obvious signs of running repairs. A gang of techs clambered all over it, welding and cutting. A couple glanced over at the Eternal Optimist with a complete lack of interest. “Well, they’re not exactly overwhelmed with enthusiasm, are they?” Paulo said, setting off for the aerial-festooned prefab that grandly called itself the Starport Administration Building.
Breton Starport was, to put it nicely, a dump, Paulo reflected as he walked slowly across the landing apron towards the so-called administration buildings. At his side Marie muttered some Marine-issue comments on the world, the starport and her captain’s business sense, pausing to sneeze as a sudden breeze blew cold, dry and dusty air over the perimeter berm.
Paulo chuckled, glancing at his companion. “Was that a comment or a statement?” he asked with a wry smile.
“Anything you want it to mean, Glorious Leader,” Marie responded. “Oh look, the tech crew have finally stirred themselves.”
Paulo glanced to his right, to where half a dozen of the techs had left the cutter and were manhandling a service cart out of its bunker. It was a standard model; electrically powered and fitted with tools for routine service tasks. Paulo was wiling to bet the motor had been cannibalized to power something else, leaving it as nothing more than an unwieldy trolley. He tapped his wrist comm’s quick-connect, already programmed with the Eternal Optimist’s intercom frequency.
“Captain?” said Haiiz’s voice in his earpiece.
“Tech crew inbound. Please don’t point and laugh,” Paulo said aloud. His words were picked up by his collar mike and relayed automatically.
“Understood.”
Paulo and Marie paused a moment before the Admin building doors, then shrugged and strode in. The inside was as unimpressive as out. A few chipped and worn desks supported communications gear in mountings that had clearly been temporary for the past two or more decades. The room’s sole occupant, an ageing male Vargr in a surplus Scout Service coverall, looked up from his console and nodded an offhand greeting. “Captain Danilo?” he said in only slightly accented Galanglic.
“You recognized me among this enormous throng of starfarers?” Paulo said with a wry smile. “I’m suitably impressed.”
“That’s what they pay me for,” the Vargr replied with a twitch of his ears that signified amusement. “You’re carrying our ICO shipment?”
“Yes. Plus a ton of sundries. No passengers, which is hardly surprising.” Paulo handed over a manifest reader as he spoke.
The Vargr took it and quickly scanned the list. He nodded, obviously disappointed but not surprised. “This is in order. The Colonial Office has sent us pretty much what we were promised,” he said. “Though naturally not what we asked for – or what we needed.”
Paulo nodded. “There’s no money for colonial support, not right now. Everything’s going to the commerce-protection projects.”
“To the Navy, you mean,” the Vargr replied sourly, gesturing with his snout at Paulo’s Navy cap.
Paulo said nothing.
“Well, not your fault. I’ll comm the Executive Directors and get your payment cleared… and no doubt take some abuse because we’ve not been sent what they asked for. We’ll warehouse your cargo straight away; the Directorate will have to send someone down to verify and distribute it whenever they get around to it. Not your problem.”
“I detect a certain world-weariness….” Paulo said.
The Vargr growled and looked down at the floor for a second, parodying a Vargr expression of extreme anger.
“That bad?” Paulo asked.
“Believe it,” the Vargr replied. “But I’m being rude. I’m Harg’vgn Garrnough… Usually go by ‘Gav’ among flatfaces, for obvious reasons.” Gav stuck out a graying paw, and Paulo shook it.
“You know me; this is Marie, my very own Imperial Marine Corps escapee,” Paulo said, as Gav and Marie greeted one another.
To Paulo’s surprise, Marie suddenly said, “You any relation to Gunnery Sergeant Garrnough? Err… Jarrlag Garrnough?”
Gav shook his head. “Don’t think so. Friend of yours?”
“Kind of,” Marie replied in a tone that suggested the discussion had just ended.
“Look, it’ll take hours to round up anything resembling an unloading crew, and we’re not exactly overflowing with handler bots,” Gav said after a moment’s silence. “I’ll put in a request to the Port Director, assuming he visits his office this week, but until then we might as well find something to do.”
“You’re not the director?”
Gav shook his head. “I’m the ICO representative to the Port Authority; an advisor. But for the past year I’ve pretty much handled the port on behalf of the Executive Directors. Not that there’s much to do.”
“Why? I mean, why is the port so neglected?” Paulo asked.
“Hah. This place was quite important way back before the Imperium; in the Rule of Man. During the Long Night Raa survived by going self-sufficient. Tech dropped right back to oxplows. It’s climbed back up to middling industrial level, but the locals are pretty isolationist. We’re off the trade routes here…”
“Are we NOT!” Marie said. “We had to use fuel bladders to get here.”
“Precisely. We’re an isolationist world off the main routes, three parsecs from anywhere except a trivial little stopover point at Dimurkash. Nothing comes in here that isn’t hired by the Colonial Office, lost, or on maneuvers.” Again Gav looked significantly at Paulo’s hat. “And then we got Amber Zoned.”
“My library program just mentions isolationism,” Paulo said. “Why the Amber Zone?”
Gav cocked his head in an I-know-something-you-don’t sort of way.
“Okay; name a restaurant and we’ll buy dinner,” Paulo said.
“Deal,” Gav replied.
Marie triggered her comm “Haiiz, it’s your turn for shipboard watch. Everyone else get over here; we’re going to dinner.” She looked out of the prefab windows at the sorry dump that was Breton Starport, and went on, “Formal dress will not be necessary.”
With Haiiz standing – more correctly, lounging – bridge watch back aboard the Eternal Optimist, the remaining members of her crew seated themselves around a table hand-carved from local wood, and listened to Gav’s catalogue of woes over three courses of distinctly unusual local dishes.
“The government had collapsed in all but name by 956, “ Gav said around a mouthful of spiced noodles and chunks of some sort of half-raw desert creature. “Though it wasn’t that obvious. Seven hundred million people actually managed a decent job of governing themselves. Old culture, ingrained values and so on.”
Paulo nodded understanding as he chewed slowly, so that he’d only have to eat a little of the undercooked animal. Marie and Jarrsoegh, the Optimist’s Vargr engineer, did likewise. Only Daanai, the ship’s ersatz medical officer and dogsbody-general, attacked the food with relish. “This stuff is great!” he announced between great mouthfuls. “What say we stock up before we leave, Captain?”
Paulo wrinkled his nose, nodding to Gav. “Sorry. Do go on.”
“Not much to tell really. Businesses and neighborhoods went on running themselves. The essential services like firefighting and refuse collection went into a decline, but self-interest took over. Local groups started handling services on a voluntary basis – or coerced businesses into paying for it. Pretty soon the entire world was as Balkanized as you can get, fragmented into neighborhood and regional blocks. No effective government, no organized groups of more than five thousand people. And you know what?”
“Manifestly not,” Daanai said, downing his overworked fork. “You guys going to eat that, or what?”
As Daanai’s plate vanished under a mound of food generously donated by his crewmates, Gav went on, “It worked.”
“You’re kidding,” Marie said. “That’s anarchy…”
“Pretty much, but it was an evolved anarchy, resulting from a century of failing government. People got along, learned how to do what governments normally do. Oh, they fought among themselves a bit. But mostly it worked. Until ICO came along and tried to help,” Gav tapped his chest as he spoke.
“Clumsy intervention?” Paulo asked.
“Sort of,” Gav said. “The World Government was a joke, a day job for people too incompetent to actually run anything folks depended upon. Everyone on the planet knew that. ICO didn’t.”
“Uh-huh….” Paulo said, beginning to understand.
Gav went on, “The World Government asked for Colonial Office support. They drew up a plan, and ICO actually approved it. They sent advisors, experts and a whole bunch of other people, who tried very hard to implement the plan. Unified defense, law enforcement and refuse collection. Regional directors overseeing the local community committees. You can imagine how well THAT went down.”
“Violence?” Marie asked.
“Not really. But complete non-cooperation. So now we have a team from the Colonial Office advising a bunch of incompetents who don’t run the planet on how they should be running it. The great reconstruction plan is still going on, despite the fact that the locals already have a working system. There’s some friction but it’s mostly passive resistance. The locals are really, really good at ignoring people,” Gav said with a gesture of amusement.
“And you’re stuck in the middle of this… but why the Amber Zone?” Paulo asked.
“Because people who don’t know the locals see them as a bunch of surly isolationists – quite well armed at the personal level, too – who are obstructing an Imperial office in its attempt to help them…” Gav said.
“Pretty much true so far as I can see,” Paulo said.
“I suppose so, but that’s the point. In fact they’re friendly and self-sufficient. So long as you pull your weight and don’t interfere with the common good, they’re great people. And all they want is to be left alone.”
“So why are you still here?” Paulo asked.
“Because the buffoons on the World Government want ICO to give them real power, and ICO listens to world governments. Not to a Port Director’s Advisor… me… who has clearly gone native.”
“What a mess. Why….” Paulo said, but before he could go on, Gav’s comm chimed. Paulo stiffened, recognizing a Most Urgent message.
Gav listened for a second. Then his ears went flat and he growled, a Vargr’s instinctive reaction to adrenaline.
“What is it?” Paulo asked.
“We have a Jump Emergence at three hundred diameters. Big; maybe two thousand tons.” Gav scrambled to his feet and headed for the door with the others in pursuit.
“What are you expecting?” Paulo demanded as they rushed outside and jumped into Gav’s battered Port Authority Air/Raft.
“Not a thing. There’s no ship due for weeks” Gav said, crash-starting the vehicle as the others piled in. “And she’s coming in dead; no power, no maneuver, just a distress beacon.”
“Course?” Paulo asked, but he already knew.
Gav hammered the Air-Raft into a violent turn and streaked for the port. His ears were flat with more than the wind that lashed the open-topped vehicle.
“She’s coming right at us.”
* * *
“This is what we know,” Gav addressed the gang of excited techs and the crew of the Eternal Optimist. “The ship is an ICO transport, the Grand Endeavor. She’s due here in six weeks. Maybe they upped the schedule or something, but whatever happened she’s clearly in trouble. We’re getting a broken signal on a different band to the distress beacon, but we can’t make it out. Telemetry suggests battle damage and a bad Jump emergence. I’m guessing she crash-Jumped to escape a pirate attack or something, and came out on a collision vector. What little we can make out from the beacon suggests that she has power, but no maneuver capability and only partial life-support. Her manifest says she has five hundred ICO construction workers in Low Berths. They may still be alive.”
A ripple went through the techs as Gav went on. “She will hit atmosphere in three hundred minutes or so. Parts of her will reach the ground. We’ve predicted her impact point… and it’s inhabited. If we can, we have to divert her. And if we can’t, then no matter who’s on board… We’ll have to destroy her.” After a moment’s silence, Gav added in a small, dead voice, “If we can.”
Paulo was, for a moment, somewhere and someone else. A young gunnery lieutenant with the power of the gods under his hand. A plague ship in his sights, the crew and two thousand passengers infected with a terrorist bioweapon, minutes from entering atmosphere. Planetary governors begging the Navy to help, pleading with the plague ship to turn away. Eight hundred million lives at stake, but Paulo’s captain dithered. The Navy didn’t fire on civilians; the plague might be curable. Two thousand lives against eight hundred million. Seconds to act and no orders, the ship coming on in a last rush for the illusion of salvation.
A young officer screaming rage at the gods, at his captain, at himself, as six nuclear warheads bracketed the plague ship and burned her to sterile dust. The blessed numbness of the surgeon’s needle, the court of inquiry and the Thanks of the Emperor. A Sword of Honor, promotion and choice of assignments. And the quiet resignation of his commission.
The Navy needed men like Lieutenant Paulo Danilo, they said, men who were not afraid to act for the greater good. But the Navy had broken him. No, he had broken himself. He had done right, and they showered him with glory. But he could not forgive himself for what he’d done to two thousand people whose only crime was that they were already victims.
And now it was happening again.
“This is not going to happen,” Paulo grated. “Can that cutter lift?”
“Soon,” one of the techs said. “But we can’t take five hundred people off in it, awake or frozen.”
“I know,” Paulo replied. “But we’re going to try. Eternal Optimist will lift immediately. We will board and Daanai will crash-wake the low berth personnel. We’ll get as many as we can aboard, and see if we can’t find a way to divert her into orbit or at least into an uninhabited area. Follow as soon as you can in the cutter.”
Some of the techs, and most of the crew of Eternal Optimist, looked puzzled at the sudden tense energy in Paulo’s voice. But not Marie. Marie knew why. She knew what Paulo was going to do, and she knew she had to let him do it, no matter what the cost.
* * *
Fittings rattled as the little Free Trader clawed her way into orbit. In the pilot’s seat Haiiz hunched over the controls, struggling with all her impressive skill to find more thrust from somewhere. Paulo paced, fiddling with his vac suit belt pack as he watched the range closing far, far too slowly.
“Still no communication from the cripple, Captain,” Marie said. “I’ve lost that broken signal altogether.”
“Never mind, we’ll board and make a physical search. What’s the cutter status?” Paulo said.
“Gav just signaled; he’s lifting off now.”
“Keep me informed,” Paulo said, and went back to fretting. Minutes crawled past.
“I have the Grand Endeavor on thermal. We’ll have a visual in a moment…. Visual contact established,” Marie said. “She looks to be hurt pretty bad.”
That was an understatement. The transport’s forward command area – the bridge, avionics and officer’s accommodation – was gone, chewed away by heavy laser fire. Burns and scars showed all along her hull, and there was a blackened, melted pit where one of her turrets had been. The other five were slewed round on a common bearing. The Grand Endeavor had fought for her life, and in the end she’d made a desperate lunge into Jumpspace to escape. Paulo mentally saluted her captain and crew, and the people who’d built her too. Half her controls gone, lashed by laser fire, and still she’d carried the survivors out of danger without a catastrophic Misjump.
“That’s a fine ship,” Paulo said softly as Marie peered at the telemetry readouts. After a moment he glanced across at her. “What do we have?”
“Engineering and main hold seem relatively intact, Captain. There’s some power to aft systems, but it’s patchy. And I’ve got that signal again. It’s a suit radio, being fed through a shipboard antenna.
“Play it,” Paulo said.
Static blared across the Free Trader’s bridge despite the computer’s best efforts to clean up the signal. As Paulo and the others winced, a strained and weary voice spoke from the stricken ship. “GK. Repeat Signal GK. This is the ICO transport Grand Endeavor calling any vessel. We are in distress. Our drive is crippled, bridge is gone. Requesting assistance from any vessel… please help us, for all the gods’ sake. This is ICO transport Grand Endeavor calling any vessel. I am junior deck officer Liam Nichara, sole survivor. I am injured. Bridge is gone, captain is dead… Drive is inoperative. Sensors are inoperative. Request assistance… please. Mayday… we are declaring an emergency… This is ICO Transport….”
Paulo broke into the dreamy litany. “This is Free Trader Eternal Optimist, responding to your GK signal. We are coming alongside to render assistance. Do we have permission to board?”
There was no need for Paulo to ask permission to board a crippled vessel requesting assistance, but the request seemed to drag the survivor back to himself, reminding him that he was a starfaring officer.
“Permission granted, and thank you…” Liam said. “Be advised that we have a bulk low berth aboard. I believe that many berths are still functional.”
Technically that made this Liam Nichara incorrect in claiming to be a sole survivor, but Paulo wasn’t going to pick nits.
“We can revive your personnel and take them off. What is your own status?”
“I’m in the aft engineering crawlspace, under the Jump drive. I can’t get out,” Liam answered.
“Why not? You that badly hurt?” Paulo asked.
“No… I welded the hatch up. To keep them out….”
Paulo and Marie exchanged a look as Haiiz broke in, “Who? You said you were alone.”
“I am now, now that they’re gone….”
Paulo nodded, understanding. Liam was hurt and alone, and he’d just spent a week in Jump with a shipload of dead men. If something had become misaligned in the frantic Jump attempt, then Liam would have had a very strange time of it indeed. Jumpspace could be freaky enough when the drive worked properly. Paulo had seen the effects of a slight Misjump on some of his crewmates; Liam probably had experienced far worse.
And of course, there were always the wild tales of “Things” that rippled beneath the surface of Jumpspace. But that was just scuttlebutt.
Probably.
“Bring us alongside,” Paulo said. “Jarrsoegh will assist Daanai in crash-wakening any survivors aboard the wreck and transferring them to the Optimist. And yes, I know some of them will die from hibernation shock. We have to save the greatest number…. That’s an order, people.”
Haiiz and Jarrsoegh looked at one another, surprised. Paulo didn’t normally use those words or that tone with his crew. But this was no ordinary day. He went on, “Marie and I will free the survivor, then attempt to gain control of the ship using the emergency conn in engineering.” He hoped to all the gods that the transport had one. “Haiiz will remain aboard the Optimist and monitor our distance to atmosphere. That’s it. Let’s do it.”
* * *
Inside the Grand Endeavor was a complete mess; worse than outside. Dim, low-power striplights cast a spooky half-light over silent corridors and shattered cabins as Paulo led his crew aft. Everyone took care to avoid sharp edges that might rip even their tough, top-of-the-line vac suits.
From the lack of loose objects, Paulo guessed the transport had been bushwhacked without any warning, breached while she was still full of air, and suffered explosive decompression. Most of the crew would have died a horrible death in space or in suddenly evacuated work and living areas. He did not stop to look at the bodies he saw. There was no point; anyone without a suit was dead, and looking at the results of explosive decompression would be disturbing. It would certainly not serve any useful purpose.
Reaching an intact bulkhead, Paulo took a quick look at the environment panel. It indicated the far side was pressurized. “Our first piece of luck,” he said as Jarrsoegh began to assemble the plastic emergency airlock on the outside of the bulkhead’s iris valve. After a moment the Vargr stepped into the lock and zipped it shut behind him, checking the seal it made against the bulkhead before hitting the control stud on the iris valve.
The valve opened slowly but smoothly, indicating that the ship’s reactor was still functional. One by one the crew passed through into the remaining habitable part of the Grand Endeavor.
There were bodies here, too. Some were shattered by spallation – flying fragments of hull and deck plate loosened by the sudden heat-stress of laser fire. Some were burned, some electrocuted. Some seemed to have been asphyxiated by fire-suppression gases. A few had gunshot or blade wounds.
“The ship wasn’t boarded. How…” Marie began, but Paulo shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter, and maybe we’ll never know. Jarrsoegh and Daanai, get through there.” Paulo pointed to the low berth area, “Begin crash-waking the survivors. We’ll shove them in rescue balls and float them across to the Optimist. Marie and I are going aft.”
As the engineer and doctor began the grisly task of sorting the dead from the hibernating among the low berth passengers, and then the infinitely worse job of deciding which were most likely to survive the wakeup process and therefore who to abandon, Paulo and Marie broke out an emergency rescue kit and cut their way into the aft engineering crawlspace.
A pitiful sight awaited them. Junior Deck officer Liam Nichara was a slender individual of about twenty years old, encased in a vac suit that was far too big for him. The helmet lay on the floor beside him, and as he turned to face his rescuers, his big, frightened blue eyes seemed to bulge from his hollow-cheeked face. Without taking his eyes off his rescuers, the boy edged his left hand towards a big wrench that lay close by on the deck. His lips moved almost soundlessly, mouthing a patchwork litany of distress signals.
Marie ducked into the crawlspace, batted the wrench away and, to Paulo’s surprise, flung her arms around the terrified survivor. After a moment’s fierce struggle, he burst into sobs that shook his entire body, and clung desperately to the ex-Marine. Paulo saw that his right hand was missing all the fingers, and the suit had been clumsily sealed with Patchtape. Paulo knew instantly just how rough things had been – Liam’s hand had been severed by contact with Jumpspace. That meant that the survivors had spent a week trapped in an unstable Jump bubble that had intruded inside the ship. No wonder some of them had killed one another.
“Captain,” came Haiiz’ voice over the suit radio as Marie half-dragged Liam out of the crawlspace. “The port cutter is inbound. Gav says he has some techs aboard.”
“Excellent. Tell him to send anyone who knows about starship engineering Aft, and set the rest to work evacuating the casualties.”
“Understood.”
Paulo took a deep breath of tasteless suit air, and nodded purposefully at Marie. “Get him to safety,” he said. “Then come back here. If we can reactivate the drive, this ship doesn’t have to die.”
“Aye, sir!” Marie said with an approving grin. She looked like she might actually salute, but the deadweight of the survivor was too much. Instead she supported him gently, saying to him the words that had reassured countless survivors over the centuries.
“It’s going to be all right, son. The Navy’s here!”
But as she spoke, Paulo understood that today those words meant something entirely different.
Gav looked up from the emergency conning position. He, Marie and Paulo were alone in Engineering, the techs having proved more useful in the evacuation attempt. “That’s it. I have helm,” Gav said. “Intermittent, though.”
“Will it do?” Paulo demanded.
“We can maneuver a bit. Can’t miss the planet though,” Gav said softly.
“Could we get remote control from the cutter or the Optimist?” Marie asked. “That way we could guide her in somewhere uninhabited.”
“Not in time,” Gav said. “Brave try, though.”
“It’s not over,” Paulo replied. Give us what you have, try to get us some time. We still have more than half the casualties to evacuate.”
“Captain, the Optimist reports that she is full,” Marie said.
“Paulo to Optimist.”
Haiiz’ voice responded instantly. “Optimist here.”
“Get clear with what you have. The rest will go to the cutter,” Paulo said.
Nobody commented on the fact that the cutter could hold less than half the remaining low berth evacuees.
Paulo moved to the helm controls and seated himself. “All hands, prepare for acceleration,” he announced. There was really no need. The thrust he controlled was weak and jerky, a feeble shuddering rather than the powerful acceleration they needed to avoid destruction. All the same, Paulo implemented a course change and gave the battered ship her head, trying to gain enough velocity to establish some kind of orbit. It was hopeless, pointless, but still he wrestled with the erratic power supply, battled the wild yaw resulting from damaged control pathways. The gallant ship had too little strength left to save herself, but Paulo gave her every chance to try.
Suddenly, the acceleration increased and the yaw stabilized. Paulo grinned, then frowned. There was no more power, no more thrust. Then how...?
“Cutter here,” came the answer over the radio. “We’re almost full. We’re giving you all the help we can while we’re here.”
“You’re doing great, but watch the couplings,” Paulo replied, though he could see from his display that great wasn’t good enough. They couldn’t reach orbit, nor even miss the main inhabited belt. All they could do was prolong the inevitable and maybe shift the impact point.
It wasn’t enough.
“Marie, Gav,” Paulo said. “The drives are the most solid part of the ship. Can you rig them to blow?”
“Not explode, no,” Marie said. “Fusion reactors don’t do that.” She didn’t waste time wishing for a nuclear demolition charge or two.
“I’m thinking that if we can overload the reactor it’ll fill this part of the ship with plasma. Weaken the structure so that the Optimist’s guns can break her up. More of the ship will burn up….”
Marie nodded, knowing what it cost Paulo to say those words. In a small ship it was impossible not to know that the captain woke up every night from terrible nightmares; that in his dreams he killed a starship over and over again. Marie knew what Paulo might have been if it hadn’t been for the breakdown, and what he had still managed to achieve. She couldn’t help but admire the way he fought back the bleak madness every single day… but neither could she help him in any way.
Marie and Gav worked feverishly for a few minutes, then stepped back. “This might or might not work,” Marie said. “The reactor will go into massive overload, at which point it might or might not rupture. We’ve disabled the safety interlocks, but there still might be a shutdown we’ve missed. And a rupture might or might not weaken the hull sufficiently.”
“Too much might,” Paulo said.
“It’s what we have, Captain.”
Daanai’s voice came over the radio. “Captain, the cutter is full. There are nearly two hundred potential survivors here… Can the Optimist reach us in time?”
“No. She’s offloading now. She can’t reach us before we hit atmosphere. Get to the cutter, Daanai,” Paulo said. “No arguments.”
There was no answer for a long moment, then Jarrsoegh’s voice spoke harshly in Paulo’s ear, “Complying.” There were sounds of a struggle in the background.
Paulo nodded. “Time to go,” he said to his companions. Get to the cutter. I’ll set the reactor and follow.
“I’m demo qualified,” Marie argued. “I should…”
“Take Gav to the cutter. I’ll be along.”
“Sir!” this time Marie did salute, for she knew as well as Paulo that he wasn’t coming. And she knew that this was something he had to do; the act of redemption he’d sought through all those long nights. “Godspeed, Captain,” she said crisply, grabbed Gav by the arm and marched out.
Alone in the emergency conning position, Paulo struggled with the controls as the cutter separated and sped towards the planet and safety. He watched the readouts as the Grand Endeavor fought her hopeless battle for life. The equation was merciless. Two hundred workers still hibernated in the hold, oblivious as the ship skimmed into Raa’s atmosphere. A belt of cities stretched away below, cities filled with teeming life. With millions of good-natured isolationists who just wanted to be left alone to pursue their affairs.
It was a no-win situation. The ship could not reach orbit, could not even make a powered descent. Grand Endeavor was going into the ground no matter what Paulo Danilo did. All he could do was choose where she struck. He could maybe keep her up a little longer, clear the city belt and possibly even put her down into water. He couldn’t survive and he couldn’t save the ship or her passengers. He’d really thought he could do it, and he’d been wrong. He laughed bitterly as the realization finally sank in that he’d lost. Marie had known it was hopeless from the start, but he’d wanted to win so badly that he’d blinded himself to reality.
Well, there was only one thing to do now. Pay the price. He’d overload the reactor, find the best vector he could, and give the ship to her fate. Once again he’d kill a ship to save lives below. But this time there would be no more nightmares. This time he’d ride her into the ground and share her fate. Maybe there was some Naval Valhalla for people like him. But whatever happened, this was redemption. This was freedom from the nightmares. This, in a perverse way, was not defeat after all. Paulo gritted his teeth and triggered the reactor overload.
Nothing happened.
After a moment it sank in that Marie’ jury rig had failed. Paulo split his display screen, calling up a program chart. Flying the ship with one hand he began to work feverishly to find the problem, struggling to find a way to blow himself to oblivion. The Starport fell away behind as the ship screamed through the upper atmosphere, growing hot with friction and compression heating. Antennae sheared away, along with fragments of the shattered bridge.
Below, the Eternal Optimist rose from the starport pad with Marie at the guns. She sped away on an intercept course. The citizens of Raa listened to news broadcasts and struggled to decide whether to flee or to simply hope the ship would strike elsewhere.
And above, Lieutenant Paulo Danilo of the Imperial Navy reached once again for the reactor controls. He smiled, almost wistfully, as his hand closed on the final switch. His life might be over, but he’d end as his own man, free at last from the world of nightmares. This was victory of a sort. This was redemption.
“It’s going to be all right,” Paulo said aloud to the world below. “The Navy’s here.”
He closed the switch.
* * *
A crowed had gathered at the Starport after the Eternal Optimist left. Gav stood among a horde of techs and local citizens, relaying the news from his headset to the masses.
“Fireball on the horizon,” Gav said. A sigh came from the crowd. “No, heat trail. Infrared tracking shows a heat trail. Headed this way. Less than a kilometer up.”
The crowd tensed, but Gav went on, “She’s going to fall short. We’re safe.”
A long moment passed, then Gav said disbelievingly, “Her vector is changing. She’s coming right at us. We’re tracking the Optimist but she’s not firing… why’s she not… Take cover! Take cover!”
People fled yelling about the landing apron, seeking shelter that was simply not there. Realizing the folly of his momentary panic, Gav forced himself to stand still. There was nothing solid enough to save them from the blast if the ship came down nearby. He turned his attention back to his relay, shouting out updates for the benefit of the few who were not crawling under dismantled ATV carcasses.
“The Optimist is falling behind. Grand Endeavor is under power! One point three g’s! That’s more than her drive rating…” Gav suddenly barked in triumphant understanding. “Half the ship’s gone and the reactor didn’t blow – it’s running at overload and she’s got all the thrust she needs!”
With the little free trader in pursuit, Grand Endeavor bottomed out of her dive at half a kilometer, right over the Starport. Gav crouched snarling as a hot wind ripped across the landing apron, a tearing roar that became a cheer as the crippled transport passed by overhead.
Then, with a majesty that befitted her heroic efforts, Grand Endeavor turned her battered and melted face towards the stars and began the long climb back to orbit.
