Symphony of Destruction (The Spindown Saga, #1) Read online

  “Colin, how does it look out there?”

  “Pretty shitty.”

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah. I just mean in general. I can see a lot of damage from here and it’s a real mess I tell ya.”

  “Copy that. What about your target? How do you assess the mission objective?”

  “Umm, I’m almost there. Just a sec...”

  “OK, just pulling in...”

  “And... locking on now.” The pincer jaws of the thrustertug clamped onto the airlock hull as Colin deftly tweaked the control sticks. A satisfying clang rang through the ship, not that Colin could hear it out here, but he felt the tremor ripple up through the stick.

  Chapter 51

  Hannah was groggily deciding if her body was ready to wake up, when she heard the clang. “What was that?” she asked no-one in particular, not expecting an answer. Nevertheless, one came anyway. Brother Anderson heard her question as well as the clang. It had become habitual for him to constantly monitor both of his human charges. Hannah knew it, but still found it annoying. In this case, however, her excitement overrode her annoyance. As Brother Anderson explained the source of the sound, Hannah jumped out of bed and dressed hurriedly, then ran to join the doctor in med bay. She burst into the room nearly out of breath.

  “What’s happening now!?”

  “He’s just getting ready to try to straighten it out.”

  Colin revved the engine and gently applied thrust, then added a little more thrust, bit by bit, until a short groan emanated from the airlock. He held fast, maintaining torque.

  “Doc, try the hatch now!”

  Brother Anderson applied power to the hardwired hatch motor. The airlock camera showed no motion of the hatch.

  “No motion,” the robot reported.

  Colin increased thrust by about ten percent.

  “How ‘bout now?”

  “Still nothing.”

  Colin increased thrust once more. It was almost full throttle now. Might as well go the rest of the way. Another longer groan indicated some movement. Would it be enough?

  “Hit it again Brother!”

  The camera showed the hatch move slightly. It opened a couple of inches, then jammed again. “We have some movement, Colin. The hatch is ajar, but only slightly.”

  “Frig! Come on you bugger!” Colin tried to pin the control over even further, even while he knew it was already maxed. “OK. Just a minute.” He fidgeted with his tether, ensuring it would not tangle, then launched himself into a slow backflip with a loose handgrip on the overhead roll-cage. His feet spun around toward the tug’s rear, and at just the right moment, he released his hands to allow his momentum to carry him down toward the rear panel, where he grabbed the hand-hold. After entering his access code, he could override the previously configured maximum settings. He cranked the maximum allowed torque up by ten percent. That should do it. Almost. But it was stuck pretty good. Maybe a titch more. Another five percent, just in case. He would try to stay within the ten percent though. He locked it in, then pushed off toward the roll-cage, grabbing it and pulling himself into a somersault around the bar, to land with a thump back in the driver’s seat.

  Revving back up to almost max, he carefully increased torque gradually, through the groaning stage.

  “Ok Doc, keep trying it. Just do it every couple seconds.”

  The camera showed the hatch budging ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, even to his robot eyes. “It is moving, but only millimeters each time.” he told Colin.

  Hannah watched too, but now she wondered if the robot was lying to Colin. Of course, she could not perceive such a small motion.

  “Come on!” exclaimed Colin.

  “You can do it!” Hannah chimed in.

  Colin slowly increased the torque, watching the gauge rise past the predefined safety margin and ‘listening’ intently with fingertips poised on the control stick for the tell-tale tremors.

  Suddenly all hell broke loose! The thrustertug was thrown sideways, nearly bucking Colin off, as a massive rip appeared in the airlock itself, and then in the hull of deck C28A. The contents of Hannah’s quarters began spewing out into space as the pod jettisoned its atmosphere.

  “Hannah’s stuff!” Colin instinctively leaped toward the stream of her belongings hurtling through empty space. Clothing, papers, books, electronic gear, and furniture fell into the void to be lost forever, and Colin found himself on an intersecting trajectory, nearly right angles to the main volume of spewing materials. A desk chair nearly hit his helmet, and he suddenly realized the foolishness of his instinctive move. Nevertheless, he was now entering the stream so all he could do was hope nothing killed him and that he might actually be able to retrieve something worth the bother. A sheet of paper slapped against his mask, blinding him. He grabbed at it and got a momentarily glance at its content before his flailing arm carried it out of view, his hand still clutching the page. It was full of hand-scrawled notes. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like it might be musical notation. Maybe part of a song Hannah had been working on. His hand grasped tighter so as not to let it slip away. Meanwhile more pages flew toward him. It looked like a small storm of them was heading his way. He began grabbing with his free hand, and trying to stuff the captive sheets into his other, without dropping the existing ones. He never would have guess how difficult such a maneuver could be.

  Amidst the flurry of paper, another object emerged. He experienced it in slow motion, like the moment you realize you are about to die, except in a much more optimistic paradigm, in that instead of his life flashing before his eyes, he somehow imagined Hannah’s life flash before his eyes. The pages suddenly lost their importance, and he let them slip away into the maelstrom of microphone cables, black jeans, makeup, sofa cushions and Omega Bars that swirled past him, as one singular object eclipsed all others. Hannah’s oboe was flying right at him, almost perfectly lined up with his left hand. He recalled an old baseball movie he had seen as a boy. Little Johnnie was dozing off, standing in the outfield, when suddenly the ball landed right in his glove, winning the game. Something like that - Colin had no idea how to play baseball. In the movie, the crowd went wild! Now, as the grain of the smooth dark wood of the approaching instrument became visible to Colin’s hypersensitive perception, he imagined that the crowd went wild again, but it was a crowd of Hannah - little girl Hannah, black jean Hannah, Hannah on a stage in front of thousands, and pink bunny t-shirt Hannah. They all watched in amazement as the oboe landed perfectly in Colin’s palm, and his fingers closed around it with just the right amount of pressure to snuggle it in safely and protect it from harm and keep it from ever feeling lost and abandoned ever again.

  A few more items careened toward Colin, and he instinctively ducked and bobbed them, often narrowly, but always avoiding collision. Soon the stream had passed. Colin’s tether snapped taut and bounced him back the way he had come, jerking at his weightless body and spinning him around to reveal a fresh horror. The airlock and Hannah’s deck were both still bending slowly backward, folding in on themselves. The tug, still attached to the bending airlock was about to be shoved squarely into the hull of deck C28A. Within seconds they would crash, and he was being pulled directly toward the impact zone. He thought fast. His suit had a small built-in emergency thruster. It was easily strong enough to push him out of the way, but could he trigger it fast enough? He clutched at it with his right hand, removing the safety seal, pushing the ignition button, and catching the extending nozzle quickly, before it even kicked in, to ensure it was pointing the right direction - away, backward! No, wait! At the very last split second, he turned the nozzle to the side. His best chance would be to slingshot around to the right, keep himself at the perimeter of the bungee tether without activating its counter-productive elasticity. It might just buy him a few more seconds.

  He swung to his right, but it soon became his left as the thruster spun him into a cartwheel. It didn’t matter. He could see the tether remaining taut,
even as the ship spun upside down and began rotating out of view. It was hard to focus as the universe spun madly around him, but even so, the view was all too painfully clear as Colin watched the thrustertug and the hull slowly crunch into each other. A ball of flames erupted, briefly engulfing the tug and charring the shiny hull alongside the impact zone. Stupidly launching himself after Hannah’s stuff may have saved Colin’s life. His pressure suit was fire retardant, and the explosion wasn’t a huge one, but still, He was glad to have avoided being a part of it. The relief overcame him and his body responded with utter inaction. He froze, not in fear, but in the opposite of fear. Noticing his own limpness, he had to make a concerted effort to keep his left hand closed around the oboe while letting his remaining body parts enjoy a well-deserved rest, as he continued on a graceful arc along the tether’s fifty foot radius.

  That radius continued to pivot around the thruster-tug, which now was moving away from the hull. The collision and explosion had transferred energy into a force that propelled the masses of tug and hull away from each other. The tug had let go of the airlock, and its jaws were now spread wide, a sure indicator of power loss aboard the tug.

  That fact could prove to be either a minor setback or an incredibly dire situation. Colin didn’t have any more time to grant his limp body. He had to do something. He had a decision to make and he needed to act fast. He could see the possibilities playing out. His arcing trajectory would soon place him up against the hull where he could hopefully find a good solid grip to hold onto, but at the same time, the arc’s fulcrum was steadily moving away from the hull. He was fairly sure that the velocity vectors would enable him to reach the hull before the tug reached the point where he would be too far away, and miss the hull altogether. Fairly sure. But the timing would be a narrow margin for sure. If it didn’t work out, he could untether and let go at the exact right second to slingshot himself the rest of the way. But then he’d be stuck on the hull without the tug. Certainly not an ideal situation.

  Even if he did manage to stick the landing before the tug pulled him too far away, it would be a matter of seconds or probably less, before the elastic tether would tighten up with the full force of the thruster-tug’s substantial mass. He highly doubted he could maintain a single handed grip against such a force. It would rip him away from the hull and bounce him back to the tug. If that was ultimately inevitable, he might as well cut to the chase, by simply abandoning his current arcing trajectory right now, and pulling himself along the tether to get to the thruster-tug. In any case, it would be a lot easier to work if he had both hands free, but he could not lose the oboe. If only he had some duct tape! But the nearest roll of it was on the tug. At least there had been some on the tug. Who knew if it was still there? It could have been knocked loose by the impact or the explosion. He tried to look down to his waist, which is more difficult than one might think while wearing a pressure suit. He felt with his free hand instead. Yes, he had taken off his tool belt. It too, was on the tug the last time he had seen it. “Damn!”

  Colin reached a decision. He tugged on the tether. At least this way he could control the amount of force, and therefore his speed, as he began approaching the tug. The speed of the launch equals the speed of the landing, after all. Best to keep what little control he had of this situation.

  It’s hard to be patient when you are floating gently away from your ship and toward what may or may not be a completely inoperable thruster-tug which itself is drifting slowly but surely into the depths of cold hard space. How much fuel remained in his suit’s emergency thruster? If he couldn’t get the tug started, he’d have to figure out how to get back to the ship. That was the whole point of why suits had emergency thrusters in the first place, but he wasn’t precisely sure how long they were supposed to last, or how much he had already used. Of course, he could launch himself off the tug by jumping, but his own thrust might not even be enough to compensate for the outward drift of the tug, or more to the point, of the him+tug inertial reference system he was now already part of. The best option would be to jump first, providing as much initial momentum as possible, and then use the emergency thruster to supplement it. That should work. Good. It was decided then. He was still only halfway to the thruster-tug. Time was wasting, and distance increasing. The tether was slack, so he coiled it around his right forearm. It was an awkward move. He dared not try to use his left hand, lest he break or drop the oboe, so he could only use a weird stirring and spiraling motion with his forearm against the floating tether. It worked, basically, although it was a bit too tight in spots and too loose in others so that several loops slipped off and flapped clumsily. No matter. He tightened up the slack enough for another yank, adding a bit more momentum, and slowly tightening up the distance to the drifting tug. The new velocity seemed better. It should still allow for a manageable contact. He reversed his arm spins, shaking off the coils of tether. Then used a similar arm spinning motion to correct his orientation toward the tug. He wanted to land feet first so as to absorb the impact with his legs. He would then grab the roll-cage with his right hand, and settle himself into the tug’s seat. Manipulating one’s orientation using a single flailing arm is not as easy as it sounds. Overshooting is pretty much inevitable. Nevertheless, he made a valiant effort, and it was met with about as much success as one could reasonably hope for. He made the landing, absorbing most of the force with his right leg. It wasn’t perfect or pretty. He stumbled a bit and smacked his right arm pretty hard against the roll-cage. It would leave a bruise, but no bones were broken.

  A few seconds later he was in the pilot’s seat, and he instinctively began reaching for the ignition button. Then he remembered his plan. First, find the duct tape. He breathed a sigh of relief as his eyes landed on a well-used roll jammed into one of the dashboard slots. “Thank all the gods!” he muttered. He grabbed the roll, and an old rag from another slot. He wrapped the rag around the oboe as a protective padding, then held it against the side of his shin, and used the roll of tape to wrap his leg and the oboe like an Egyptian mummy. He would be some kind of crazy undead flying god of musical resurrection. That thought make him laugh. Sometimes he wondered if he was actually slightly insane.

  Now, his finger hovered over the ignition. It was in this moment that he noticed the charring of the tug. The explosion had blackened her paint, adding another layer to her already rich patina. The ignition button, like the other controls on the main panel was slightly deformed due to melting. “Please don’t jam. Please don’t jam” he chanted. It didn’t jam. The button depressed under his finger as normal, but still his heart sank as it did so without any response from the engine. “Come On!” he pleaded, as he tried the button a second time. This time, the engine cranked, and sputtered in typical fashion. She was an ornery old beast, but it was not yet her time to die. Nor his.

  He revved her up and kicked on her primary thruster, leaning on the stick to spin her around. Back toward home he raced, perhaps a little too quickly, and her engine coughed in protest.

  Proceeding toward sector F, he rode again past the forward sections of the Ventas-341. It was a mess. Gaping holes, ruined strut work. A small part of him almost wanted to cry. Deck C28A now matched the chaos of the surrounding sectors, hanging limply like a broken limb, a burnt and empty husk, scraped free of all value, all beauty. All the good it once held was gone forever, save for the oboe taped to his leg, and the girl who would once again play it. The girl waiting for him back on board the ship.

  Chapter 52

  In the back of Hannah’s mind there was a small sadness. The conscious majority of Hannah’s mind, however, was overjoyed. She held the rag-wrapped package, and she knew in her heart what her eyes could not yet confirm. Colin had managed to retrieve her most prized possession. It was the only thing she really cared about.

  He had been coy about presenting it to her, starting with the bad news first. Her studio was all but destroyed. There had been an explosion, he had tried his best to contain her belongin
gs. They had all slipped through his fingers, but somehow...

  “I was able to catch...” He was pulling something from behind his back, and she knew already. A spark lit in her eyes. Something that had been dead.

  Rising to her feet, she almost hugged him, but he was holding the wrapped object out in front of himself. “OH MY GOD! COLIN! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!”

  Colin only smiled. What could he say?

  She unwrapped the package gingerly, then examined it closely. It appeared to be undamaged. “Thank you so much!” she said this looking him straight in the eyes. Now she did hug him, though briefly, and somewhat reservedly, due to the fact that she still held the oboe carefully in one hand. “This is just... I mean, wow. I really never expected to see it again.”

  “Well, play a song?” Colin suggested.

  “Oh! Yeah!”

  She held the oboe toward her mouth, licked her lips, and stretched out her face muscles. Then frowned. What to play? What song could possibly capture this moment? Did she even remember any songs?

  “It’s OK,” said Colin, reading the indecision in her expression, “just play anything. It’s not like me and him are gonna notice any different.” He hoped it sounded encouraging. He didn’t mean to convey that he didn’t care about her music choice. On the contrary, he wanted to tell her that he trusted her ability - her choice of song, and her mastery of her instrument. He wanted to tell her that she could play a single wavering note and it would be good enough for him. He would be happy to hear it. He really just wanted her to be happy - to find the joy in her own music. He wanted to say all those things, but instead he could only manage to smile stupidly.