COMBAT SALVAGE 2165 (6 page)

"Hey! Where the hell are you going? You come off a sixteen-hour duty shift and bolt without a word?" He flipped the latches at his neck and lifted his helmet off so he couldn’t hear her yelling in his ear. She lifted her helmet off, too and shouted down the passageway after him. "Hey!"

"
Bay 3, primary!" he barked over his shoulder. Maybe that would shut her up. "I’ll meet you in the mess."
 

"
Why?" She caught up with him in front of the lift.
 

"
I just gotta get to bay 3, primary is all," he said as he stepped on the lift at the last second. She followed just before the railgunner who’d got on the lift first hit the lever and sent them down towards the carrier's spine.
 

She squinted at him. Parker was too smart. She was already figuring it out. "Bay 3 is the bay the Chief’s salvage junk is launching from," she said. "The one that’s going to try and save the breaching ship...
Tipperary
."
 

"
How’d you know about it?"
 

"
Same as you," she said. "Devon can’t shut his scuttlebutt-slingin' pie hole."
 

When the lift shot out the bottom of the tube, Tig thought his vision tweaked out for a moment from all the space to his left and right. From where he was, in the hollow, tensegrity spine of the ship, he could see some 250 meters through the struts looking towards the bow and nearly 700 meters looking towards the stern.

In the spine, he didn’t have to wait more than ten seconds for a mover. That’s what they called it in places like the spine when a lift moved horizontally, but it was really the same piece of equipment they called a lift when it was going up and down inside a tube. When it arrived, he pushed his way past of a pair of greensuit glow-peckers to get on first and didn’t wait for anyone else. He gripped the lever and sent the mover away from the platform and down its track before anyone else could get on. The reactor tenders shouted profanities at him, but another mover would rise up out the port in the bulkhead for them in ten or fifteen seconds.

He thought he’d got away from Parker until she yelled his name from behind him. She sounded too close. He only got half way turned to look behind him before she landed. She hit the deck of the mover after making what must have been a ten-meter jump from the platform. It was a hell of a jump even in
Hardway’s
.3 gees, but she couldn’t stick the landing. She slammed into Tig hard. He thought maybe it was harder than she had to.

"
Don’t you try to ditch
me
, Tig Meester." She pushed herself up and off of Tig and stood. "I’m the only friend you’ve got on this ship."
 

"
I thought you said you didn’t even like me."
 

"
I don’t," she said as she helped him up.
 

As the mover shot down its track in the spine, Tig shifted the lever back to slow the platform gradually so she wouldn’t notice. Then, he waited until she let go of the rail, and then he pushed the mover’s lever forward to speed up quickly, producing about .2 gees worth of acceleration inertia. That was all it took to knock you on your ass if you weren’t ready for it.

Parker fell backwards, on her big butt, and Tig grabbed her legs and used the momentum to roll her over, under the mover’s railing, and out of the mover. She fell a meter onto the smooth track with her helmet bouncing beside her. He looked back once more to see if she was okay and she gave him the finger.

With Launch Bay 3’s doors closed there wasn’t much extra space for the modified 50-meter junk,
Audacity
. Her name was painted on the orange and white striped cockpit module that jutted out the bow, offset on the starboard side of the tensegrity frame onto which everything aboard a Staas Company junk was mounted. That frame was one, big hard-point for modules or ordnance.
 

Audacity
had been configured for salvage ops. They’d swapped out the gunnery module slung under the frame for what looked like an expanded armored personnel and gear compartment. Tig thought they’d redesigned the landing gear until he realized what were folded up under the main module weren’t feet. They were long, metal, almost insectile arms with which to grip - four of them. Tig had seen junks with this rig at Sagan get pressed into service when there just weren’t enough real tugboats to service the haulers and barges.
 

A fat, reinforced and arching spine protruded on top where the arms for the jumbo maneuvering thruster nacelles had been mounted. They rotated fore and aft as the redsuit crew assigned to do the pre-flight checked them out like every other system.

The one turret that remained on top swiveled with a whine, faintly audible behind the chatter and clanking in the bay. Tig looked for Horcheese. He saw salty red suits everywhere in that bay, but none of them was her.

He found her at the aft of the boat, squeezed between the main engines, talking to Harry Cozen and a pilot in a black exosuit without markings...no rank...no insignia. The bug-eyed flight helmet under her arm said
Burn
over the visor. While a crew led service carts past them, Tig waited, not much more than five meters off, trying to stay out of the way against the bulkhead and not look like he was listening.
 

Horcheese couldn’t see him, but Harry Cozen could. He glanced at Tig once or twice. Looking back at the old man was uncomfortable, like staring down a needle close too your eye. Cozen didn’t lower his voice when he saw Tig, not even when it was obvious that he was, indeed, listening.

Cozen said, "Burn will be the officer in charge. She holds the rank of Commander in the Staas Privateers."

"
You’re a fighter pilot," the Chief said. "You run the flight school."
 

"Ancient history
. Now, I just fly. And today," she said, "I’m flying your junk."
 

"
I’m going to tell you both flat out," Cozen said. "We don’t know how bad the damage to
Tipperary
is. The ship and her crew don’t respond. We don’t even know if they’re alive."
 

Horcheese said, "You know that none of us redsuits have ever worked on one of those ships. The full specs of the breaching ships are classified." Cozen nodded like he knew that. "It’s no great secret those particle emitters are reverse-engineered alien tech and
our experts
barely get it. I know you want to hear optimism, Mr. Cozen, but there's a better than even chance that breaching ship is down for the count.
Tipperary
is probably beyond repair without replacing half her critical systems. That wasn't meant to be done in the field."
 

"
It gets better," Cozen said. "You won’t be able to requisition replacement parts because the spare parts for the breaching ships were all on board
Luxor
when the Squidies blew her up." Horcheese looked at Cozen then with her eyebrows raised so high that Tig could almost hear her incredulity. Cozen said, "
We need
that beaching ship operational, Chief. The battlegroup only has one left and we’re a long way from our rendezvous with Admiral Ming. If we lose our last breaching ship, then we’ll be stuck in whatever star system we’re in when it happens. The offensive will be over and there won't be much to stop Squidy from flooding into Sol from Sirius."
 

"
Why can’t you cover us while we repair her?"
 

"
You’ll be getting one gunnery junk and a single UNS destroyer for cover, the
Duer
. She’s got four tubes and a dozen warspites on board."
 

"I
’d feel better if w-"
 

Cozen cut her off. "If we slow down and stay while you work on
Tipperary
, then we won’t be able to rendezvous with Admiral Ming’s task force in time to reinforce him as planned. Neither we nor Ming have the firepower to make the drive through the defenses in the Squidies home systems alone."
 

"
You’re gambling, Mr. Cozen. If you think we can repair that ship with what we’ve got, you should know that bet is a real longshot."
 

"
That’s right. It's a gamble, Horcheese. I’m betting on you and your redsuits. And I know what I’m asking. Board
Tipperary
. Repair my breaching ship. Bring her to me, Chief."
 

"If we’re successful," Burn said, "How are we supposed to catch up with the battlegroup and the convoy?"

"
You can’t. But if that ship can breach space, then I want you to transit from here and rendezvous with us at Mizar. We’ll be snaking a course through that sector to disguise our intentions and draw the enemy away before we will double back on our way to rendezvous with Admiral Ming at Beta Tauri. By the time we steam through Mizar the second time, it should be thinly defended. Your orders are to open the Algol-Mizar transit and rejoin the convoy as we traverse that system in 22 hours time."
 

"
What if she can’t be repaired?"
 

"
If she can’t breach space, then you power up her reactors and her gravity and you tuck her safely down in the atmo of the second planet, where the Squidies hid their task force before the last assault. A convoy might risk passage through Algol in two days to reinforce us. Lay low until then if she won’t breach space, but I can’t stress strongly enough how much we need that ship."
 

"
I’m going to the cockpit," Burn said. "Thanks for the suicide mission, Harry."
 

Tig didn't think anyone called him Harry. If she was out of line, Cozen only grunted as she walked away. Then, Tig flashed with mild alarm when the old man nodded his chin in Tig’s direction and pointed him out to Chief Horcheese who now turned to see him standing there for the first time. He wished he could walk away, but his feet wouldn't move.

"
What is it, cherry?"
 

"
You’re going to repair
Tipperary
," Tig said. His voice sounded too excited and made him want to wince. "You have to take me with you."
 

She didn’t look amused. "Why would I do that? You’re three days out of training."

He said, "You don’t have anybody with experience on these systems. Nobody on any of the crews has worked on those before, I mean. If you’re talking about making something work and you don’t know exactly what it is, then I’m your guy. Unconventional rigs are my specialty. Now, I've never been on a breaching ship, but I know 90% of the parts its made of backwards and forwards because they’re on other hulls. If it flies, I’ve ripped it, stripped it, modded it, and sold it."

"
You talk like a docks chopper," Horcheese said. "Rip it, strip it, sell it."
 

"
I’m no hack job. I mostly worked on record breaking
custom
rigs for, ya’ know, anonymous buyers. I’m from Staten Island City, Space City USA."
 

"
Cherries stay in the bay, slick," she said, "Where’s your supervising 03 at?" Cozen winked at him then. Once Tig accepted that it wasn’t some hallucination, it seemed like Harry Cozen was actually goading him on, encouraging him to push his luck. What Tig was about to say would probably have him scrubbing glow-pecker latrines for a very long time. But he said it.
 

"
Chief Horcheese, you’ve got me in a bay shadowing F-151 and QF-111 maintenance with Raleigh. That’s a waste. I can fix 151s and 111s blindfolded. I can do a lot more than that. Way more. I can make anything run and if it runs, I can make it run
faster
."
 

"Just today,
Raleigh said you’re the shiniest cherry he’s ever had to burn in. He said if he left you alone with a QF-111, he’d find you pleasuring yourself with your pecker in the barrel of a 140 mike-mike."
 

"
Raleigh’s just saying that because I make him look bad. Bottom line is: I can fix the parts of that breaching ship that your crews haven’t worked before."
 

Horcheese scrutinized him with those queer, milky white, artificial eyes and he suddenly wondered if she could see thermal and see his blood flow and know how hot he was right now under his skin. "Astronautics Maintenance Technical Specialist Meester," she said. "You will now take three steps back and get the fuck out. You will not bother me again."

On the second backwards step, Harry Cozen opened his mouth. "Take him."

"
What? Mr. Cozen, I have to object to th-"
 

"
He’s lucky," Cozen said.
 

"Really?
How do you know that?" He was surprised to hear Horcheese ask the question like people being lucky was a real thing. Now, they both stared at him together, scrutinizing him, looking for god knows what and Tig wished he’d never come to Bay 3. Harry Cozen’s gaze was sharp like broken glass and Horcheese’s stare had a weight to it that made it hard to breathe. Tig tried not to visibly squirm.
"He d
oesn’t look lucky to
me
," Horcheese said.