Chapter Nine

Thompson and Aran got on the channel with Valo, and updated him on how things were going. It didn’t take long, though, before Thompson had exhausted himself. He went back into the pod to sleep, and Aran continued talking with Valo. After a few minutes Elise came on too.

“Hello again, Aran. I’m very sorry I didn’t… I wasn’t thinking straight, I really wasn’t very polite to you earlier. I’m sorry. I was upset.”

“No worries.”

Elise relieved Valo, who by then had kept watch on the channel for several hours. “We’re going to turn in for a bit, Aran,” said Val. “But if you want to talk to us, any of us, for whatever, just let us know. We’ll be here.”

Tursten’s voice came over the channel. “Yeah, whatever you need, just let us know. It’s not like we’ve got much else going on right now.”

“Tursten…” warned Val.

“Well, it’s not.”

“That’s enough. Good night Aran, or good day, whatever it is for you there.”

“I’ve no clue, I’ve lost track. Good night, and thanks for everything.” After Val and Tursten signed off, Aran spoke for a little while with Elise. Mostly it sounded like Elise just needed to know Wu hadn’t suffered. Aran assured her that he had probably died instantly, and also reassured her that Captain Bennett was feeling no pain either. He thoughtfully neglected to mention that Tommy and himself were feeling enough for everyone involved.

It didn’t take long for Elise to start to ask the same uncomfortable questions that Valo had. It become obvious they had conspired. Aran told her he was doing fine. The lie sounded more convincing; he was either getting better at telling that particular lie, or he was starting to fool himself, or… maybe he was just better at lying to women. Regardless, Elise fell for it just about as much as Valo had. She tched at him. “Really, Aran, it’s okay to talk about how you’re doing; you’ve been through a lot, hun.”

I’m not your ‘ hun’, lady. “I’ve got nothing much to talk about. I’ll be fine. I’ll be more than fine once I get off this ship and get some real food and a hot bath.”

“Right, I’ll keep that in mind. What do you want to eat once you get here?”

“I’ll take whatever. I’m not picky.”

“Filet of whatever with a whatever pilaf, coming up.”

Aran managed to dodge most of her questions, at least the ones he found too personal. She’d back off, but then she’d always get back to poking at him. Finally he gave up and begged off talking anymore, claiming he was tired. Actually, he felt awake and better than he had; his headache was dulling down, and he felt like he was starting to think a little clearer. He signed off the channel and carefully stretched, yawned. Some of his kinks seemed to be working themselves out over time.

He peeked in the life pod. Thompson was asleep, snoring softly, and Cap was unchanged. He rattled around the ship for a while, looking for anything useful to do, getting bored and knowing he still had a couple days to go before help arrived. He finally settled down at the command center, and fussed with the sensors, trying to see if he could either bring them back up and functioning, or bypass whatever was malfunctioning, ruined, or just plain gone. Sensors were his speciality, and within half an hour he was deeply involved in trying to solve all the problems he had found.

The ship had been running blind. He had no way to ‘look’ outside the ship, no visual, no sensors whatsoever. He had managed not to think about it much, but there was a very real danger that the ship could run into something, or get hit by something else, while it was blind and helpless. What Aran didn’t know, and couldn’t tell since he had no readings or other useful data on the ship itself, was that the impact, combined with the ship’s previous velocity, had sent it spinning off at an angle to the original course, still heading in a relatively straight line, still going fairly fast. The angle had taken it far from the usual route, and back towards one edge of the nebula – not really an ‘edge’, but the debris they were in danger of running into was getting more and more scarce. Besides causing the new angle at impact, though, the impact had also thrust the ship into a spin that had been automatically controlled, but controlled poorly, and one of the reasons Aran felt a bit dizzy and sick all the time was because the ship was still travelling in a gradual looping spiral as it sped along.

But he had no way of knowing that. He had no reference at all for what was outside the remains of the Martelle. All he knew was what he saw: the inside of the bridge, the life pod. He had gotten used to the cramped feeling of being on a small ship with a dozen men, now he had to readjust to being in what was essentially two small rooms. But with only one other guy. And two corpses, and another one in the making.

Aran had been trained most extensively in long range, microsensitive sensors. Similar but different from what he was trying to fix, which were the shipboard sensors and shortrange sensors. He made slow headway, until finally he was able to bring up one of the sensors associated with the life pod. The data it gave him came in garbled, and he had to make a concentrated effort to decipher it.

Finally he thought he understood what was going on. He couldn’t locate where the ship was, but he could get a vague idea of its velocity, and after puzzling it over for a while, figured out that the ship had both a wobble and a spin, low periodicity.

Huh. Well, it looked like the next thing he’d better work on was getting thrusters or emergency thrusters on line and working. See if he could get the ship under control again, or the Calla people were going to have a hell of a time hooking up, or whatever it was they planned on doing. It occurred to him that he didn’t know what kind of ship they were bringing to rescue them – one only large enough to load the people in, or a larger transport ship of some kind. He wasn’t sure what kind of extra ships a station like this one would have. Some of the stations he had been to so far on this route had several ships, all sizes and types, from small personel carriers to large tug ships, designed to salvage entire ships. He had no clue what a small, remote station like Calla might have.

He only had a vague familiarity with thruster repair. He knew how to operate them, and could do normal maintenance, but they were damaged beyond his ability to deal with easily. He spent another couple hours trying anyway, before admitting he’d probably have to get Thompson to help him out.

Thompson was still asleep. Aran checked the time; he’d been asleep several hours. It took quite a while to rouse him. Even when he did wake up, he was foggy and slow for a while. Aran had to explain everything to him again, until it clicked and he remembered. Thompson wasn’t much help when it came to the thrusters. He said his head hurt so much he couldn’t even stand the sound of his own thoughts, and after a half-hearted attempt to understand what Aran was trying to do, gave up and refused to try to help any more. Instead he took a double dose of pain medication and retreated back into the life pod, cursing Aran sullenly for bothering him in the first place.

Aran wondered when Val and Tursten would be awake again. He was getting frustrated with his lack of progress on the thrusters, but didn’t want to talk to Elise, who had seemed kind of nosy. Pleasant and friendly, but nosy. Of course, Aran thought, sometimes he thought people who just asked him his name were nosy, so maybe he should try and cut her some slack.

“Martelle to Calla, come in Calla.”

After a few moments he got a reply, but it wasn’t Elise. “Calla one here,” said Tursten.

Aran was disappointed. He had hoped to ask Elise, or Valo, if they knew anything about thruster repair. “Hi Tursten. I thought you were sleeping and Elise was covering?”

“No, I relieved her a couple of hours ago. I slept long enough. Dad’s still asleep.”

Now that Aran thought about it, it had been over eight hours since he had last talked to Elise. Time flies when you’re banging your head against a wall of broken ship systems, he guessed.

“Everything okay, mister – uh… Aran?”

“As okay as can be expected. You know anything about thruster repair?”

“Uh… not really.”

Aran shrugged. It had been worth a shot.

“Why?” asked Tursten. “Mom might know some. Maybe Dad, I don’t know.”

“Just trying to see if I can get our thrusters up and working before you get here. I did get some sensors up and running, and the ship’s… well, pretty much out of control. I’d feel a lot better if I could get it stabilized.”

“Wow. No, I wish I could help you, but I don’t know anything about thrusters. I mean, I’ve been trained to use them, on this ship, and the little ship, but I don’t know how to fix them.”

“All right, no worries. I’m going to sleep then; I’ll ask Val when I wake up, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Martelle out.”

“Calla one out.”

Aran thumbed off the channel and cursed, then wearily pulled himself to the pod and to sleep. He’d probably overdone it, working all day like that; he was still recovering. Ah well, he told himself, somebody’s got to do it. He nearly nodded off, then woke up, pawed through the medications avialable in the med kits, and took a sleeping pill. Maybe this would keep him deep enough that the nightmares would stay away.


Chapter 10

Aran woke up, after a dreamless sleep, when Thompson bumped into him, trying to get out of the pod. “Sorry, man,” he said when he saw he’d woken him. “My steering’s off…” He pushed himself along, using mostly his right hand. His left was limp. He didn’t seem to notice, or was pretending he didn’t.

Captain Bennett looked like hell. Aran was now certain that Cap was busy dying, and was taking his sweet time about it. “Hey Tommy?” he called. “You think there’s anything else we can do for Cap?”

“No,” came the blunt reply. Thompson poked his head back in the pod. “If they’ve got a ventilator on the ship they’re bringing, maybe we can keep him going til he throws off this pneumonia, give him more time to get over his… well, whatever else is going on with him. But no, I don’t think there’s anything else we can do.” He paused thoughtfully. “Pray, I suppose, if you do that sort of thing.”

Aran thought about praying as he checked Cap’s catheter. He believed in God, had been half-heartedly raised as Catholic, but he couldn’t recall the last time he had prayed. Really prayed, not just a quick throw-away plea for help with something or other, like the constant little pleas he’d muttered while trying to fix the ship the day before: please God let this fit in there, please God let this work this time. Meaningless, muttered without thought. He hadn’t even prayed when he said words over Wu and Shaw. Hadn’t thought of it.

Captain Bennett’s catheter wasn’t working anymore, and his hand had swollen. Aran cussed softly as he took the catheter out and bandaged Bennett’s hand. The other hand was still badly bruised from his first attempt. Aran carefully searched for another vein, and tried one in his forearm that didn’t work. Aran had a tourniquet on Cap’s arm, but it didn’t help much. He tried the other arm, didn’t even like the look of any of the veins there, and finally settled on a nice vein Cap had on his foot. Aran wasn’t sure this was an approved site, but by then he didn’t care; he was just happy to find a vein that stood up to a little clumsy poking.

While Aran worked on getting a catheter in Bennett again, he prayed. Please let me get this in this time. Please let Cap live. Please make him better. God, let him live. He’s a good, good man, he should live, don’t cut him off yet. Aran prayed, but it didn’t make him feel any better. It felt useless. Cap was almost sure to die, looking the way he did, and with them not able to treat him. Asking God to let him live wasn’t really reasonable. It would take a miracle, and Aran had a sneaking suspicion he had already used up all his miracles for the week, just by living himself. When he got the catheter in, finally, he thought, Thank you, and then he gave up on praying.

Cap still looked bad. Aran gave the meds he had been giving, added a high dose of the most potent antibiotics they had, and then tried desperately to think what else he could do. Then he hit on an idea – they had oxygen; maybe he could rig something up so Cap could breathe more oxygen. It only took him a few minutes; turned out the pod had the equipment and all he had to do was figure out how to set it up. He strapped the mask around Bennett’s head, trying to be as gentle as he could, still worried about Cap’s neck.

Thompson, in the meantime, had gotten on the channel with Valo and was quizzing him. When Aran came into the bridge, he looked around and smiled. “Hey, they say they’ve got full medical equipment back at the station. It used to be a military station, and they just left all the stuff there. They’re fully loaded.”

“What about on the ship? The one they’re coming to us with?”

“Well, not as much. But Val says they’ve got a ventilator if Cap ends up needing it.”

“He might. He looks like shit. Sounds like shit.”

“Smells like shit. You get that catheter in him? I came in to check on why you were so quiet – thought you went back to sleep. Saw you working on him and didn’t want to bother you, you looked like you were a little… focused.”

“Yeah, I got it in. We don’t have much left for fluids though.”

“Val’s got that, we’ll be fine.”

Valo’s voice came in over the comm. “Is Aran there?”

“I’m here, mornin’ Val.”

“We should be there in another day, give or take a few hours. Still kind of touch and go with the route.”

“Hurry it up if you can, Val. Cap needs more medical attention than we can give him.”

“We’ll hurry as much as we can. I don’t know how much more we’ll be able to do, but we’ll get there as fast as we can.”

“Thanks. Hey, do you know anything about thruster repair?”

The three of them worked on repairing the thrusters as best they could. Val couldn’t see what they saw; Aran hadn’t repaired the visual feed to the channel, and Thompson’s eye pip was broken anyway so he wasn’t able to transmit. But Val knew a little about thruster repair, in principle anyway, and he tried to talk Aran through it. Thompson knew a little, could see what Aran saw, but couldn’t really help him other than offer advice. His grip was weak and unstable, and he couldn’t hold any tools. Hours passed, with no success.

“That’s it,” said Aran, after their latest idea failed. “I’m done. I’ve got no more ideas.”

“Don’t you have thrusters on the life pod? For some minimal maneuvering?”

“I checked them earlier. They’re not working.”

“How abou the other pod?”

Aran grimaced. “That pod’s shut off.”

“But does it have thrusters?”

“…yeah. I haven’t checked them.”

“Well, go check them and see if they’re working. It wouldn’t be ideal, with just the one, but it would be better than nothing.”

Aran reluctantly went to the closed pod. He still had a vivid recall of his nightmare about this pod, about Wu and Shaw, alive, screaming to be let out.

Thompson was following him. “I don’t think you want to look in here, Tommy,” Aran told him.

“No, I do.”

Aran shrugged and opened the hatch to the pod. A huff of fetid air came out in a wave. Aran involuntarily put a hand over his mouth and nose, reminded by the strong scent of a fly-blown, past-bloated-to-ruptured deer he had found in the woods once.

Wu and Shaw weren’t fly-blown, but they were bloated, and their skin was discolored. Aran looked away from them, and as he pushedd himself carefully past them, he heard Thompson make a gagging sound, real this time, and then heard him move away from the pod. Aran didn’t bother to look back. He just wanted to get in and out as fast as he could. But when he checked to see if the thrusters were working, they fitfully responded. Crap, he thought. Then, I mean, good.

In order to use the thrusters to stabilize the ship more, Thompson had to stay in the bridge and tell him the results of his efforts over their pips. Thompson even suggested, at one point, that if Aran was going to be in there a while, could he close the door?

Aran’s gave him an uncharacteristically vehement “NO.”

They were able to slow the Martelle, though it took some fancy steering by Aran and Thompson, crippled as the ship was. The straight trajectory slowed, and although they had more trouble controlling it at first, they were eventually able to lessen the spin of the ship. After what seemed like a week, Aran decided he was satisfied that the Martelle would be able to get picked up by the Calla ship.

“Can’t we cut heating to the pod? Freeze them, or something, until we can space them?” asked Thompson as Aran came out and closed the door.

“You can’t cut the heating. Fail safe. I’m just grateful the heat’s working.”

“I guess. I could go for a bit warmer, myself.”

“Who’s on the Calla channel?”

“Dunno. Haven’t talked to them for a while.”

Val and Elise were both on, and when Aran and Thompson began to talk to them, Tursten came on too. Aran and Thompson updated the Calla crew on their work with the thrusters, and that they’d slowed the Martelle enough so that the Calla ship should be able to pick them up without too much difficulty. Aran didn’t mention the details of what he’d had to do to get the thrusters working, namely squeeze past Wu and Shaw’s rotting bodies, and try to work in the way too small pod while they were there.

Aran thought the whole pod thing looked like it was going to turn into another horrific nightmare for him, at some point. He made a mental note to stash some sleeping pills away for when he got off the Martelle – didn’t want to risk not having anything like that on the Calla ship.

Less than a day to go for the Calla ship to arrive. Aran couldn’t wait; he was so sick of the tiny section of the Martelle he was confined to. He was sick of the food, sick of the flat, nasty water he got through the reclamation system, sick of sleeping in the pod near Cap, sick of the smell of the ship, sick of the smell of himself. He was sick of keeping Cap clean, sick of hurting.

Aran and Thompson talked with the Rydells about what the station was like, what kind of food they had, what flavor of ‘whatever’ did Elise plan on making for them. Aran slipped into a comfortably drugged sleep in the pod feeling a little more hopeful, looking forward to the Calla ship arriving, looking forward to getting off the dead ship Martelle.

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