To Die Like a Man
by Alcuin Fromm
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 1
Moments before the explosion, an unexpected memory came to Captain Nithan Raille. He was half-tucked in the sleeping sack of his cabin, staring out a narrow window into deep space and lamenting to himself how few stars were visible from the ship.
The thought suddenly triggered a vivid image. There in his imagination stood his grandfather, holding hands with a long-forgotten, adolescent version of himself on the shore of Lake Morsh. The man and the boy peered up at the heavens bright with starlight and out over the calm waters, reflecting and doubling the illumination.
Every man has to die, so die like a man.
His grandfather had said those words to him thirty-two years ago, not long before the old man passed away after a courageous battle with Hinsk’s Disease. At the time, the boy had not understood why his grandfather had said what he did. Only too late did Raille realize that his grandfather had been preparing to die and had wished to pass on his insights on the subject to his grandson while he still could.
Every man has to die, so die like a man.
No sooner had the memory arrived than it vanished. An explosion rocked the Callia Mae. The force of the ship’s sudden trajectory change launched Raille from his bunk to the bulkhead in an instant. He squeezed his eyes shut as the right side of his body collided against the unyielding metal before he found himself floating in the center of his cabin.
Raille gritted his teeth against the dull ache running down his side, set his bare feet against the bulkhead and propelled himself towards the cabin door, carefully moving aside a picture of his wife and infant daughter that was spinning in his path. He stopped himself against the cabin wall and slapped a panel to open the door.
In the corridor, piercing alarms screamed and red warning lights flickered. He grabbed a handrail and pulled himself towards the access hatch at the end of the corridor. But his progress was slowed and stopped by the gradual return of gravity. Raille fell in a long arc, not to the floor, but to the left side of the corridor, which suddenly became “down.”
Landing lightly, the pressure mounted past normal gravity and increased until he was pinned down, immobile and struggling to breathe. The tremendous artificial weight only lasted for a few moments before lessening and relinquishing altogether as zero-gravity returned. The ship had been stopped. Raille gripped another handhold and continued to the access hatch.
The center hub of the ship was in disarray. Everything that had not been properly stowed, and much that had been, was floating or spinning or bouncing off the walls. Raille pushed himself horizontally off the wall towards the cockpit, batting objects out of his way as he swam through the debris. He reached the arched doorway to the cockpit, automatically shut due to the emergency situation, and pushed a switch. The two metal halves of the door slid open.
Raille was not the first to arrive. First Mate Hemm Alloryio was already strapped in the co-pilot’s seat. Like Raille, he was wearing his standard-issue, nighttime thermals. Alloryio’s hands danced across the controls, and he swore more than once by the time Raille floated to the captain’s seat and strapped himself in.
“Turn off those blasted alarms,” said Raille.
“Yes, Captain.”
The alarms and the strobe effect of the flashing red lights ceased.
“Status report,” said Raille, grimacing.
“Bad,” said Alloryio, “but not catastrophic.”
Raille stabbed a button for the interior comm speakers.
“Uunstet, report, please.”
There was no response. Raille and Alloryio glanced at each other.
“Uunstet?”
Finally, the cockpit speaker crackled and they heard the familiar voice of the Chief Engineer aboard the Callia Mae.
“I’m suiting up. Lemme alone.”
In spite of the situation, Raille grinned with relief. No one of the three-man crew had been killed or injured.
“Air pressure’s stabilized and the hulls of the habitation deck are intact,” said Alloryio. “Cargo bay and part of engineering have been breached, but the cargo’s still there. I think. We’ll have to take a stroll to check everything externally. One of the engines is out, but the other three are online. Short-range comm is all right, but the long-range comm is totally fried, as are a lot of the internal computer functions.”
“Navigation?” asked Raille as he scrolled rapidly over the damage reports and system update notifications.
“Seems okay. We’ve been knocked off course, but we can adjust.”
Raille kept skimming the information until he could piece together the cause of the explosion. “The auxiliary fuel system?” he said in dismay.
“Looks like it, Captain,” said Alloryio with a cock of the head. “One of the fuel lines ruptured and ignited. Lit up the whole tank like one of those antique, solid-fuel rockets. Who’s ever needed the auxiliary boost thrusters anyway?”
Raille bit his lower lip and tapped a display of the ship flashing red where the explosion had caused damage. “That explains it. The auxiliary fuel tank is located right above engine four and right below the cargo bay. Just near the door.”
There was another crackle over the loudspeaker. “Are we at a full stop yet?” said Uunstet, his tinny voice transmitted by the internal microphone of his flight suit helmet.
“Yes, of course,” said Alloryio quickly. “I’m not an idiot. That’s the first thing I did.”
“All right, I’m going out to look things over,” said Uunstet. “I’ll go through the auxiliary airlock in Engineering One. Keep us anchored until I get back. Don’t want to miss any of the fun.”
“Yeah, right,” said Alloryio.
From outside the Callia Mae, Uunstet reported that a large hole had been blasted through the exterior hull. Looking inside the cavity, the engineer could only see a mangle of metal and wires. Beyond the mess, one of the two engineering decks and the entire cargo bay were exposed to space through the half-eaten structural panels. Automatic pressure doors had sealed off the breached area a fraction of a second after the explosion, leaving the habitable upper portion of the bulk freighter pressurized and air-tight.
According to the security cameras, the interior of the cargo bay and its contents were intact. None of the thirty-four crates of raw hythurium ore had been damaged or lost. However, it would be impossible to enter the cargo bay or Engineering Two, even with pressure suits. They would have to content themselves with the view from the cams until they could dock.
Severed wiring had caused the long-range communication system and many of the internal computer functions to be knocked out, and engine four had also suffered by being too close to the explosion. Raille sent out a short-range distress call to any ships within range, informing them of the Callia Mae’s accident, her position, and her revised flight path. He also requested assistance and, if possible, emergency accompaniment for the remainder of their trip back to Memlock Station.
There was one wound, however, that the Callia Mae hid from both man and machine. Neither the trained eye of Chief Engineer Uunstet nor the highly sophisticated sensors of the computers could detect it. The explosion had wedged the ragged end of a fractured structural beam next to the hinge of the cargo bay doors. Opening the doors would cause the hydraulic piston to press the beam firmly into the plasma-core stabilizer, first puncturing it, then boring into it, rendering the stabilizer inoperative. The subsequent cataclysmic overheating would result in nothing less than a rapid, unstoppable vaporization of the Callia Mae and anything else within thirty times her length in all directions.
As long as the cargo bay doors remained closed, the plasma-core stabilizer would continue to function. If the cargo bay door were opened, the result would be deadly.
* * *
The three crew members of the Callia Mae spent several hours after the explosion cleaning up the ship’s habitable deck. In over fourteen years in the Merchant Marines, even as a first-year ableman, Raille had never spent so much time tidying up. It seemed like everything had been knocked loose. The men worked together at first, returning order to the central hub, which contained the ship’s rations and cooking station, mess table, and shared recreational materials. Then they split up to work on the various smaller sections of the ship that branched off the central hub.
Uunstet was assigned the airlock. He passed through the inner door connecting the central hub to the main airlock chamber, where he returned helmets, gloves, pressure suits, and oxygen tanks to their positions along the wall. At the far end of the main chamber was the intermediate door, beyond which was the small departure cabin and the exterior doors which could open onto the vacuum of space. Halfway through his tedious work, Uunstet glanced through the windows of the intermediate and outer doors and took a moment to marvel at the beauty of the stars.
Alloryio had nothing at which to marvel. He was given the two unused cabins and the two heads to clean. Applying a rapid, minimal effort to the task, he returned to his own cabin before anyone could notice.
Raille assigned himself the medlab, which turned out to be a particular challenge. One of the storage cabinets had popped open and sundry medical equipment swam in every direction. Three different cases of vials had been opened and intermingled in a cloud of gently clinking glass. The punctilious Raille plucked each vial out of the air, like harvesting ripened fruit from a tree, and returned it to its proper case. Amazingly, none had broken. He found all twelve vials of each medicine, an anti-coagulant, an antibiotic, and an opioid. Raille smirked grimly to himself at the morbid thought that the Callia Mae possessed a quantity of the opioid sufficient to kill the entire crew of a fifty-man frigate.
Having established a semblance of organization, Raille gave the order for everyone to wear his pressure suit during all duty hours in case any undetected damage to the hull might be aggravated once they were underway. He triple-checked the diagnostic reports of both the computer and of Chief Engineer Uunstet as to the stability of the plasma core and the three remaining engines. The Callia Mae could continue her flight at a reduced velocity.
Raille ordered his crew to join him in the cockpit, where all three men, in full pressure suits and helmets, were together as they reignited the remaining three engines and continued on their journey. Everything went smoothly. The engines burst to life and the ship moved forward, accelerating to five-times gravity, then gradually returning to zero-gravity as they reached and held their target speed.
It had been a terrifying, exhausting day, and the crew of the Callia Mae needed a break. To the great disappointment of First Mate Alloryio, there were no more electronic entertainment files onboard. The explosion had rendered a significant portion of computer functions inoperative. Even the Captain’s Log files had been obliterated. Raille would have to use an old-fashioned datapad and stylus to keep his daily entries.
They sat at the mess table with their feet hooked into straps on the floor to stay anchored. Uunstet reached into one of the newly organized refrigerators, pulled out what would be the first of many plastic drinking cylinders of ale, and begin sucking it like a baby at a bottle. After a long drink and a satisfied exhalation, he produced two more cylinders for his shipmates, who accepted them happily. Raille took out a set of magnetic Solli cards, which they could affix to the metallic mess table.
“Solli?” said Alloryio with disdain. “Who plays that anymore?”
“What are you talking about?” said Uunstet. “It’s a classic.”
“Classic just means old and stupid. Let’s at least put some money on it. We sure aren’t gonna see what we deserve for our haul.”
Raille frowned and dealt out the cards, saying nothing. They played and drank well into the night according to the Mae’s chronometer. Uunstet insisted that they binge on the small supply of the less bland nutrition bars to celebrate their survival. The atmosphere was light and convivial.
Around midnight, Raille switched to a non-alcoholic drink, while the other two men continued without noticeable effect. They should have stopped playing then. At 1:30 in the morning, the mood took a sudden turn.
“What are you doing?” said Uunstet.
“What?” said Alloryio.
“You moved your hand under the table.”
“What? What are you talking about? You’re being paranoid.”
“No, I saw it. You just put your hand under the table right after the shuffle.”
“You’re just stalling. It’s not my fault you have a junk hand. It’s your lead. Go.”
Uunstet frowned at the other man.
“Go,” said Alloryio with more vehemence.
“No. I think you’ve pulled a card out from under the table.”
“And I think you’ve pulled something out of your—”
“Gentlemen,” said Raille firmly.
“Who cheats at a game of Solli on a day like today, after what we all went through?” said Uunset.
“What’s that got to do with anything? Who cares? What are you, my mother? Now, are you going to play or not?”
“Not if you’re cheating.”
Raille interrupted, saying, “All right, calm down, why don’t we deal over?”
“What? No. No way,” said Alloryio. “There’s twenty-five Marks in the pot. You can’t just stop in the middle of a hand and deal again. Nope. Too late. Play.”
“You can’t cheat either,” said Uunstet.
“Prove it.”
There was a tense pause before Uunset finally slapped down a card to begin the round. They played quickly and in awkward silence. Alloryio won five of the seven tricks and took the pot. Grinning, he coaxed the floating Marks from the center of the table to his own pile.
Uunstet murmured something.
“What was that?” said Alloryio, his grin vanishing.
“Huh?”
“What did you just say?” said Alloryio in a clipped voice.
Uunstet was silent for a few moments. “Nothing,” he said, finally.
“Did you call me what I think you called me? Look at me.”
Alloryio, his chin raised and his eyes wild, stared at Uunstet who fidgeted with his ale, avoiding eye contact.
“Listen, gentlemen, it’s late and we’ve had a very eventful day, to say the least,” said Raille in his best attempt at casual indifference. “Why don’t we—”
“Nalth maelion e ishti luurt ib fauyio,” said Alloryio in Old Uulorian.
It was a vulgar and insulting phrase. Raille did not understand. Uunstet, on the other hand, understood perfectly. Swinging his long arm across the table he slapped Alloryio square in the face, a foul curse on his own lips. Alloryio’s head jerked back.
Under normal gravity, a fist fight might have commenced, but in zero-gravity, the very attempt to stand up and square off was impossible. Uunstet, seated on the outside of the table, lifted himself up and simply floated back, one hand on the edge of the table to anchor himself. Alloryio and Raille, on the other side of the table, were both trapped in a booth. Alloryio tried to get up, writhing in rage, but his legs were pinned in by the table. He started sliding out to his left, but Raille was in his way. Uunstet ensured that he remained out of Alloryio’s reach from across the table. Alloryio unleashed a barrage of violent obscenities.
“That’s enough!” yelled Raille, finally losing his patience.
“That piece of—”
“I said stop, First Mate Alloryio,” said Raille with a booming voice. “Now, you both cease this nonsense at once.” He emphasized each word.
Uunstet was more than happy for a ceasefire, realizing he had instigated a fight that he was not prepared to pursue. Alloryio remained livid, seething with fury.
“Uunstet, get out of here. Go to your cabin. Lights out.”
“Yes, Captain,” said Uunstet sullenly.
The engineer obeyed, pushing off the table and floating across the center hub to the crew’s corridor.
Raille turned to Alloryio, who stared after Uunstet’s departing figure. When the engineer was fully out of sight down the corridor, Alloryio slowly turned towards Raille.
“He’s a—”
“Calm yourself, first mate,” said Raille.
Alloryio turned his head away sharply but said nothing further. He grabbed the edge of the table, slammed himself back down into his seat, gathered together his Marks and began counting them. Raille contented himself that nothing worse had happened. He slid out of the booth and hovered next to the table. “Get some rest. We’re all on edge and need to rest.”
Alloryio neither looked up nor responded. Raille sighed, took hold of the table and sent himself floating back towards his cabin.
* * *
Copyright © 2022 by Alcuin Fromm
