Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(106)

Ja laughed.

Zhang answered, “After we designed all the defensive walls for all four battlerooms and trained everybody in how to build them, they suddenly noticed how young and short we were.”

“It’s all about the alpha males, binoon,” said Timeon. “Once they get the stash of fruit we found, it’s bye bye bunducks.”

“What are the raiders doing?” asked Dabeet.

“Don’t know,” said Ja. “We came to meet you.”

“Over the top of the pass-through?” asked Dabeet.

“Well, indoors, but yes,” said Ignazio.

“And you just sauntered up to their ship and found it was open?” asked Zhang He.

“No,” said Dabeet.

“You came in from outside,” said Monkey.

“I left my suit on the ship,” said Dabeet.

“Can we possibly talk any louder?” asked Ragnar.

More quietly, Monkey persisted. “So you walked the station hull onto the ship?”

“Never walked,” said Dabeet. “Crawled like a silverfish. Had to let the nanooze hold me. And then I jumped the last ten meters.”

Monkey’s lips tightened and she walked ahead a little faster.

They were at the open airlock.

Monkey immediately began putting on one of the suits arrayed there. A major airlock like this, even on the construction side, was going to be equipped.

“What are you doing?” asked Ja. “I didn’t know we had a plan.”

“There’s no plan that doesn’t include me needing a suit,” said Monkey. “Kintama Boy made one incredibly lucky first jump—”

Dabeet tried to correct the record. “A carefully planned and flawlessly executed—”

“But if anybody’s doing anything that requires space-walking…”

Ragnar had opened a panel low in the wall of the station airlock. “Two kilometers of cable,” he said. “Firmly attached, load limit five hundred kilos.”

“We don’t want to attach the ship to the school,” said Ja.

“Blow it off the airlock?” Monkey asked Ragnar.

“Get some serious distance, fast,” Ragnar answered.

“Gotta be the ship’s airlock that blows,” said Monkey. “Manual override, evacuating all the atmo in the ship. All propulsion, blowing the ship away from us.”

Everybody seemed to agree that nothing else would work.

“All right then,” said Monkey. “You all stay inside the airlock here, doors closed, suits on. After I blow the ship off the station, I’ll jump back.”

“Using your mighty legs of steel, O Wonder Woman,” said Timeon. “What’s the velocity of the ship at that point?”

“Maybe I just ride it out,” said Monkey with a grin.

“No suicide missions,” said Ja, with real heat.

“What, I can’t fall on a grenade cause I’m a girl?” asked Monkey.

Ragnar put a hand on her shoulder. “We know you’re the best at this kind of thing, Monkey. But here’s the problem. Anybody can open the ship’s airlock on a manual override, and anybody can jump toward the station. But there’s only one person with a decent chance of going out and catching them.”

“You’re search-and-rescue, Monkey,” said Ja.

“You’re not actually the commander on this operation, Ja,” said Monkey.

“No, I am,” said Dabeet.

They all looked at him as if they had forgotten he existed. “I have a suit on board the ship. Fully charged by now. I go in, put it on, you seal your airlock. I do a manual override on the ship’s airlock, which blasts all the atmo out of the ship and it rockets away. Then I go through that open airlock door and jump for home. When I do, Monkey comes out to catch me, is that the plan?”

“It’s about a third of the plan,” said Monkey. “The big movements. What’s missing is all the little stuff that keeps you from dying.”

“Tell it to me quick because we don’t know how long we have.” To Dabeet’s terror and chagrin, nobody argued with him about his being the one on board the ship to blow out the airlock. It was his job now.

“First,” said Monkey, “the manual override is designed for one weakened and dying person to be able to trigger it. So easy that they have to protect it inside a door track so that it doesn’t get triggered by accident. You already have to be inside the airlock with only the outer door closed, and then, where the inner door runs up, there’s a button embedded inside the door’s track. Always on the aft side. Toward the back of the ship. When you push it, whoosh.”

“Got it.”

“You’ve got nothing yet,” said Monkey. “Because the system is designed so that you push the button and you get blown out along with everything else that isn’t riveted in place. Only that won’t work this time because we’d never find you and if you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a search-and-rescue ship to go looking for you. So you have to stay inside. And here’s how you do it. The inside bar of the airlock is right here around the corner.…” She demonstrated the position. “And there’s another handhold about a meter farther along the wall.”

Dabeet remembered seeing both of them on the way out.