Tyger Burning Page 8

  One hour until ignition. All had been confined to quarters except the captain and his on-duty crew. Maung jerked the straps tight across his chest and waist, then watched the tiny holo in the middle of his cube where a woman in a Carson Corporation jumpsuit confidently described the safety features; Maung guessed that she had never been in space.

  “One emergency vacuum suit is located in the storage space over your head, and consists of a reinforced, pressurized jumpsuit with integrated boots and gloves, a two-hour oxygen supply, and a semiflexible helmet unit. In case of depressurization, this compartment will open automatically. Place the jumpsuit on first . . .”

  Maung screamed when a roar filled his ears. G-forces slammed him backward against his mattress, which hardened and shaped itself to support his body in foam—with a curved pad that cradled his head. It helped. But the pressure only increased and soon it took effort to inhale and Maung barely heard the automated voice announce that additional oxygen was being pumped into living quarters and work stations, and that crew members were to be wary of the increased fire danger. Maung closed his eyes. But he opened them right away because he was sure that the g-forces were liquefying them and he had to make sure they were fine and that his room wasn’t engulfed in flames. The urge for a cigarette made him want to shout.

  The ship’s computer chimed onto his cubicle speakers, and Maung barely heard it over the engines. “Administering first dose of acceleration drugs.”

  Before he could react, a needle jabbed Maung in the back of his neck and then retracted, so that now his neck burned as the drug soaked through his muscles. But the needle had come too close. After living with it for so many years, Maung could almost see exactly where his semi-aware resided; part of it stretched from his brain to his spine, and down. The injection had just missed it. In the future, he decided, he’d be ready to move out of the way and he was lucky that none of the ship’s automated med sensors had found it. Yet.

  The drugs made him sleepy and he barely recalled the video that had explained what was happening. The solution consisted of elastomer building blocks, which strengthened his connective tissues, and blood thinners that activated above one g so his heart wouldn’t beat out of his chest under sustained acceleration. They also included microbots—tiny factories that scavenged spare amino acids to build temporary protein supports around vital organs—and Maung imagined he could feel them but figured this was impossible. He prayed to his ancestors that they wouldn’t damage the nonorganic connections to his other half, rendering him stupid for the rest of his life.

  Maung’s vision blurred. He shut his eyes and tried to pray, but had trouble concentrating through the constant pressure until finally he drifted off.

  When Maung was in Myanmar, even during the war, it had never occurred to him that one day he would be strapped into a miniscule cube room, hurtling through space toward a prison station that nobody wanted to see. He could barely lift his arm. Everything he needed to do—brush his teeth and eat, go to the bathroom—involved pushing himself slowly up from the pad, struggling against two gees to reach the other side of his quarters, and then functioning there for as long as it took. Days passed before he acclimated and sleep only came in increments, interrupted by his body’s realization that he wasn’t getting enough oxygen, forcing him awake to gasp for breath every twenty minutes.

  Maung was inching his way along the bulkhead to the toilet when a deafening clang sounded behind him, followed by a whooshing noise and then silence. The air went cold. A panel overhead dropped down and the emergency suit unrolled between him and his bed while the ship’s computer made a calm announcement as if everything was normal.

  “Malfunction. Pressure and oxygen levels falling, please don your emergency suit.”

  Maung panicked. He grasped the suit and crawled back onto his acceleration pad, turning onto his back to begin sliding the legs on, one at a time while his muscles fought against gravity. There was a black spot on the opposite wall. Maung squinted. What he originally thought was a mark was actually a fist-sized hole in the steel bulkhead, an inch thick panel bowing out toward him, and when he looked at his cushion he recognized that his head rest was gone; another fist-sized hole had appeared in its place. Maung finished pulling the suit on, gently forced the helmet from its overhead slot, and then sealed it. He clipped on the oxygen unit. A few seconds later he could breathe and collapsed back onto his cushion, already exhausted, so tired that not even being terrified gave him energy.

  Maung was grateful when the announcements stopped, but the next one almost made him scream with joy. “Engine cutoff imminent; prepare for zero g.” It repeated itself three more times and then counted down, sending Maung into yet another panic while he struggled with his straps. The engines cut off and the change to zero acceleration barely sent Maung against his restraints with a return to weightlessness. Everything had gone silent.

  Maung’s hands refused to work while he tried to unbuckle, and he cursed before pounding on the wall in frustration.

  “Get me out!” he screamed.

  Maung calmed down when the survival suit’s radio cut in and linked to the ship’s communications network, where he heard the captain giving orders. Finally the buckle gave and Maung kicked off toward the hatch; he pounded on the panel and as soon as it opened he saw Nang in the corridor. Her face looked pale until she took Maung’s hand, their environment suits preventing him from feeling her skin.

  “You’re alive!” she said. Her voice come over his helmet speakers.

  Maung laughed. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “We’ve been hit by a meteoroid. As soon as I got my suit on I heard the computer list the compromised compartments and yours was on it. The doctor thinks you’re injured or dead.”

  Maung had forgotten the holes in his bulkheads. Now he felt dizzy, and had to fight the urge to throw up since it could be potentially dangerous in the suit. “Well then where is he?” he asked. “Where’s the doctor?”

  Nang towed Maung from his cube and then led him down the corridor. “He’s treating the crew; they’re more important right now. The meteoroid sliced right through the main crew area, and almost destroyed the bridge.”

  “Nang,” said Maung. He heard the fear in her voice and it unnerved him. “What else is wrong?”

  “We’re losing water. Coolant for the fusion reactors, and at least half the engineering crew is dead, maybe all four of them. The captain will need our help.”

  “But I heard the captain giving orders to the engineers.”

  Nang nodded. “He’s sedated now because he has a head injury, and didn’t know what he was doing. The first officer is taking command.”

  It took a few minutes to reach the front of the ship, and when they passed through the crew berths, droplets of floating blood adhered to Maung’s suit. All the starboard cube hatches were open. It looked like the meteoroid went through the exact center of the ship, down its axis on the starboard side, and punctured the crew compartments one by one before heading out the rear and into the engine spaces.

  “I don’t understand,” he whispered.

  Nang asked, “What? What don’t you understand?”

  “How it missed me. I had just gotten up to use the toilet when it hit and the thing whizzed past me. It must have missed by millimeters.”

  Nobody on the bridge spoke. It was impossible for Maung to recognize anyone in their suits because the crew wore real ones with mirrored visors, the kind of suits capable of repair work inside and outside the ship. Including Nang and Maung, there were only seven people in the bridge. Someone sobbed. The urge to access his semi-aware hit with a force that Maung barely controlled, and he thought of it as an addiction, one that he’d never be rid of as long as the thing was attached to him. But he couldn’t risk it. All they could do was wait for the first officer and hope that, in the meantime, the bots were doing their jobs.

  Maung grasped that the first officer was barely conscious. After pulling himself into the bridge, the
man tucked his left hand under his belt and his labored breathing echoed over Maung’s speakers because it was loud enough to trigger his mic. But when the first officer spoke, it was barely in a whisper.

  “I need you guys to stay focused. The bots should have the damage to the main crew section repaired within the hour and main life support will be able to repressurize this section within two. That’s the good news.” He paused to catch his breath before continuing. “The bad news is that we have a waterline rupture in the reactor area. The bots can’t patch it. Without coolant we can’t run the main engines, which means we drift until rescued.”

  “Or we drift forever,” someone muttered.

  The officer used his feet to hook under a console and punched on the touch pad with his good hand. A schematic holo popped up. Maung recognized the rear of the ship and the engine compartments, and the computer traced a red line to show the meteoroid’s path.

  The first officer pointed to a blinking red dot in the engine area. “The rupture is right here. It’s in a spot too small for any of us to reach, and because the reactor still needs cooling the system won’t allow us to deactivate pumps, which means water is shooting at high pressure; none of the bots can seal it. So somehow we have to get a manual patch on there so the microbots can do their job, in a space that the crew can’t access.” He shut the holo off. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Which idiot designed that system?” someone asked.

  Nang raised her hand. “Where are we? Can we decelerate and get help?”

  “Jennifer?” the officer asked.

  The person who had been working at the control station was the navigator, who stopped, and Maung thought that she was looking at Nang but he couldn’t be sure. “If we begin deceleration now, there is enough coolant to bring us to a stop. After that we can maneuver with gas thrusters.”

  “But would we be close to anything?”

  “Europa,” she said. “Jupiter was part of our navigational path, which included a leg to use its gravity to slingshot us and save fuel.”

  Maung’s skin went cold. “That moon belongs to the Chinese. It’s their main base in the system. Other than what they have on Earth and in orbit.”

  “That’s right.” Jennifer turned back to the panel and continued working. “But Beijing granted permission for our navigational route and asking them for help may be our only chance. That’s all I can give you guys right now, but I’ll try for a plan B.”

  One of the crew members muttered, “Chinese. I bet they put the meteoroid in our path. I mean, does anyone really think the peace treaty with them and Burma means anything?” He laughed then, but nobody else did, and Maung knew why: The Chinese were nothing to laugh at.

  “How do I get one of those electronic cigarettes?” Maung asked.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Maung couldn’t allow them to stop at Europa; he remembered their bureaucracy, their systematic methods. Beijing’s government representatives would demand to board and then half-human, half-machine creatures would scan every inch of the ship and when they did, it would activate Maung’s systems, alerting both the Chinese and the ship’s computer to his presence. There would be no hiding after that. Either the Chinese would leave him with the crew, who’d lock him away, or they’d take him off ship to their outpost. It terrified Maung to think of what would happen next—the experiments they would run. He was about to protest the idea when the first officer raised his hands.

  “We’re not stopping at Europa,” he said. The rest of the crew began speaking at the same time, but the man spoke over them. “It’s my decision not yours. This ship has been contracted out by the American and European governments, so we can’t let the Chinese board as long as there’s a chance we can handle things ourselves.”

  “Just what does that mean?” Nang asked.

  “I know exactly what it means.” Jennifer stopped working the navigation board and turned around. “It means they rented out part of the ship for spy gear. Observation equipment, sensors, and God knows what else because they predicted we’d be passing closer to Europa than anyone else in a long time. I bet Carson Corp just couldn’t turn down a fat pay check like that.”

  The first officer broke into a fit of coughing, during which Maung sensed the tension; every second they waited, they lost more coolant. And now they weren’t just a tanker. If the ship had to ask for Chinese assistance they would all be labeled as spies and taken prisoner, or worse.

  It took a few seconds for the first officer to finish coughing. “Just wait a minute. We don’t know what the contract is for, but our instructions were clear: not to let the ship be inspected—by anyone. In the event we have to abandon ship, we’re to destroy her.”

  Nobody said anything. Maung heard the alarms and occasionally the computer announced the status of different systems, but nobody spoke until Nang raised her hand again.

  “So let’s go to Europa and once we get there we all pile into the lifeboat. We send a message to Earth that we’re in need of rescue, and then we self-destruct the ship.”

  Jennifer nodded. “I agree. A hundred and fifty percent.”

  “No.” The voice came from behind them and everyone turned to look.

  The captain stood in the hatchway and behind him was the doctor, his helmet marked with a red cross, who helped the captain through the hatch and into his chair.

  “There will be no abandoning ship—not as long as she can maneuver. All my engineers are dead or injured so I need a volunteer to attempt repairs, now, while we still have some water left.”

  Jennifer pounded her fist on the console, and then gripped it to keep from pushing off. “Sir, if you take that chance and we fail, there’s no shot at decelerating for help and we end up heading off into space or run into a solid object.”

  The room went quiet again. “Patching of main hydrogen storage tanks complete,” the ship’s computer announced, “loss of approximately three point seven-eight percent by weight of hydrogen slush. Approximately twenty minutes until life-support systems reactivate.” Maung tried to convince himself that everything was fine, mentally fighting back terror, and he wondered if the crew were thinking mutiny so he moved back and away from them, not wanting to get in anyone’s way. He was about to leave the bridge when he had an idea. The thought scared him and despite the fact Maung had decided none of this was his responsibility, the idea refused to vanish and burrowed into his brain: I may be the only chance we have.

  Before Maung knew it, he’d spoken. “I volunteer.”

  Nang grabbed his shoulder, spinning him to face her. “You can’t volunteer. You don’t know anything about ship operations.”

  Maung shrugged. “So tell me what to do. I’ll learn. I’m also smaller than most people here and might fit into the space they described.”

  The captain hammered at buttons. He rattled off names and commands so fast that Maung couldn’t follow, but people kicked off, one of them grabbing him by the arm and pulling. It was Jennifer, the navigator. She shoved Maung into the corridor and the two of them yanked along the railing as hard as they could, rocketing toward the aft sections and engine rooms. When they arrived at what looked like a workshop, Jennifer told him to wait in front of a massive hatch and not to move, before she disappeared into one of a dozen service shafts that lined the walls. Maung felt dazed, numb. Another crew member arrived and buckled a belt around his waist, to which the man added equipment that Maung’d never seen before, and he wondered if Nang had been right: The idea of him fixing anything was insane. His heart raced. Jennifer finally returned and detached the oxygen generator from his suit and slapped on a new one.

  “This will give you another full hour of oh-two,” she said. “And if you haven’t succeeded by then, it really doesn’t matter.”

  “Can’t we just radio someone for help?” Maung asked.

  “We have. The computer sent repeated automated distress calls as soon as we got hit and we’ve gotten no response; there’s a good chance nobody will ev
en hear it until it’s too late—except for the Chinese. And now we all know why that won’t work.”

  She spent five minutes explaining how to use the equipment on the maintenance belt, including the pipe patch, and Maung hoped he wouldn’t forget it once she left. Jennifer punched a code in a panel beside the hatch. It split in the middle to open, the plates noiseless since there was still no atmosphere, and water sprayed out so Maung had to wipe his faceplate clear. A maze of pipes and machinery, their complexity and interconnections making him think they looked like the colorful veins of a monster, waited on the other side.

  “Come on,” Jennifer said, pulling him in after her. “We move forward toward the crawl space and then you just follow the water to its source; patch the pipe like I told you. I’ll talk you through it on the radio if you forget anything.”

  What Jennifer called a crawl space was a barely one meter wide, forty centimeter high gap within the center of a pipe gallery, so that Maung had to squeeze into it on his back while she thrust against his feet. Now he understood why nobody else fit; his emergency helmet was cheap flexible plastic and so it conformed to the narrow space where regular helmets like Jennifer’s wouldn’t, and his thin frame barely scraped through with the suit, belt, and added equipment. His tools bounced against the pipes. Maung tried not to think about getting stuck while he hauled and wormed his way through the access space, doing his best not to touch one of the secondary coolant outflow conduits, a ceramic pipe that glowed red hot where insulation had chipped away.

  “Section eight.” Jennifer’s voice crackled over the helmet speakers. “That’s where you are right now. So keep going about another hundred meters and you should see the spray.”