John Walker looked across the gap between himself and the shuttle. He’d waited half an hour since they signed off. He ran through his check again; everything showed up as functioning normally. He had plenty of time on his suit, but Atlantis had to get out of the way before the meteor came through. Simple physics meant they had to start moving within ninety minutes.
Walker checked the satellite again. The screen still wasn’t working. He could try entering the code blind, but there were a few readings regarding available fuel he was supposed to take before he did the programming. Without those readings, he was taking a gamble with whether the satellite would successfully alter its orbit or send itself plummeting to the earth below.
He’d waited long enough. Keying his radio, he spoke slowly and carefully to avoid having his irritation come through. “Astronaut Walker to Space Shuttle Atlantis. Come in Space Shuttle Atlantis.”
He waited, but got no response. After five more minutes he tried again. Again, no response. He checked his radio; he could pick up fragments from the newly moved International Space Station, so he was receiving. It was possible he wasn’t transmitting, but the telltales marked him as transmitting fine. The telltale and the transmitter might both have malfunctioned, but that was unlikely.
He looked down at the satellite, checked his fuel. He could get the satellite back to the shuttle with what he had. It would have to be broken down and rebuilt completely, but they had the resources for that on the space station. If he left it here, it would wind up shattered wreckage decorating the south pacific. He adjusted his position, put the breakaway straps in place to secure the satellite to himself, set his hands on the satellite and fired up his jets. Slower than he was used to, he and the satellite accelerated.
Luckily it wasn’t a very large satellite, and like all satellites intentionally made of low density materials. When he made it a quarter of the way to the shuttle, he stopped thrusting and worked his way around the satellite. When he had his back to the rapidly approaching shuttle, he fired his jets again. Less than five minutes after he’d made his decision, his feet touched the surface of the open shuttle bay.
He flexed his knees to absorb the impact. That was second nature but doing it with a satellite wasn’t. For a moment, he was certain the satellite would smash him into the floor of the shuttle bay, his helmet shattered, the warmth of his life spilling out into the cold of space. Then he managed to turn the satellite slightly skew to himself, and it came to rest less than gently on the floor of the bay, sliding him backward across the floor of the shuttle as it did.
“Needs to be rebuilt for certain, now.” He wasn’t in the habit of talking to himself, but the fact that the crane hadn’t reacted to his approach unnerved him. As he secured the satellite, he thought about what might have occurred that would completely distract the crew of the shuttle from their EVA crew member.
He lumbered to the bay door controls. The doors needed to be closed before they moved, and they needed to get moving fairly soon. In silence broken only by a dull vibration coming through the soles of his feet, Walker watched the stars disappear. When they had, he moved to the controls to pressurize the bay. He threw the switches to pump air into the bay. Air resistance was the only thing that would keep fragments of the satellite from becoming dangerous projectiles when they thrust themselves toward the station.
After sixty seconds, green telltales flickered amber, indicating something keeping the bay from pressurizing. Walker tried his radio again, to no avail. Frustrated, he hooked his suit into the shuttle intercom. He hated being chained down that way, but the intercom used a different system to the radio, and if his radio was broken…
“…God, oh God, oh God…” Walker didn’t recognize the moaning litany. Before he could force his stunned voice into action, he heard another voice. Johnson, the engineer on the mission.
“Will somebody sedate him!”
Rosario, the shuttle’s copilot, replied, his voice a strained hiss. “You figure out how to do that through a suit with damaged electronics and I’ll drag myself over and do it, ok?”
Walker found his voice. “Rosario! Johnson! What’s going on?”
After a moment of stunned silence, Johnson replied. “Walker? Is that you? We can barely hear you.”
Pain colored Rosario’s voice, but he still sounded still more in control of himself than Johnson. “Walker. It’s good to hear you. We thought you were dead. Where are you?”
The chain of command in the shuttle was clear. He ought to be reporting to the shuttle commander, Commander Wilson. Still, Rosario ranked him, though it was a near thing. Besides that, in an emergency, whoever took charge ought to be followed, at least until they screwed up or the emergency was over. “I’m in the cargo bay. The satellite is inside, the bay doors are closed. I’ve tried to pressurize, but the telltales are showing amber; there are leaks.”
Rosario’s reply was immediate and firm. “Shut down the pressurization, now!”
Before he replied, he moved, shutting down the pressurization routine. He even had the presence of mind to start the pump to try and recover some of the air before it was lost. “Sir, pressurization routine shut down. Where is Commander Wilson?”
If Rosario was shaken, his voice didn’t show it. “Dying. The three of us are the only functional ones left of the crew. Johnson is the only one in good condition.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“What can I do, sir?”
“Get in here and get us set up on a route back to the ISS. I’m in no condition to do so.”
Confusion hit Walker hard. He was qualified as a pilot, but he hadn’t yet spent time in the chair. Rosario was experienced; he was a better pilot than Wilson, but Wilson had the time in grade and the mission time, so he got the Commander’s slot. The words left his mouth before he could think about them. “Sir, why aren’t you flying us there?”
“I’m blind, Walker. Near enough, anyway. The decompression hit us fast, and Johnson was the only one suited up. He was getting ready to work on the satellite in the bay without pressure. You coming in here, or is the meteor going to make road kill out of us all?”
Walker shuddered as he worked the controls for the air lock. Being blinded was a pilot’s worst nightmare. Pilots without perfect or near perfect vision got grounded as a matter of course. By the time he made it into the shuttle, he had his terror under control. Inside, the sharp-edged shadows told him all he needed to know. The interior of the shuttle had gotten exposed to space in some way. Anyone not in a suit was already dead by now. Painfully dead and freeze dried.
A sudden bark of laughter escaped him. Inside the shuttle, his suit had auto connected to the intercom. Rosario’s voice remained calm, collected. “Walker, are you getting shockey on me?”
“No, sir. I’m fine. I was laughing at myself, sir.”
Rosario’s voice was understanding, but firm. Walker understood. In Rosario’s position, he would have to know that his pilot was in control of himself. “Walker, I need you to keep it together.”
“I’ve got it together, sir. Honestly. I was laughing because the idea of dying from exposure to vacuum is less frightening to me than the idea of being blind.”
Immediately Walker wished he could take the words back. They hung there as he moved past the suited figures of Johnson and Rosario. When he was securing himself to the pilot’s chair, the pilot spoke. “Yeah. I know what you mean.” Then Rosario laughed. “We’re a messed up bunch, aren’t we?”
“Might be, sir. We’re also the finest our country has to offer.”
“That we are. That said, you’re in charge.”
Walker stopped in the middle of entering in his thrust calculations. “What, sir?”
Walker realized pain had made Rosario’s voice sharp. “You heard me. I decompressed enough to blind me, at least temporarily. You think I’m in good shape otherwise?”
His suspicion confirmed, Walker bowed his head a moment. This was his dream, but not the way he would have wanted it. Still, this was the reason for the chain of command. Every person knew that if it came down to it, he was in charge. Still, he had to be sure. “Captain Rosario, are you certain you cannot remain in command of the mission?”
“Yes, Captain Walker. Log this, Johnson.”
“Recording, sir.”
“This is acting mission commander Captain Jared Rosario. I have sustained debilitating injuries in the same decompression event that rendered our mission commander, Commander Wilson, unconscious. With the return of our astrogator, Captain John Walker, who appears to be uninjured, I am no longer the best choice for acting mission commander. I am placing Captain John Walker in command and sedating myself at this time.”
When Rosario stopped speaking, Johnson waited a few moments and then said, “Got it. Want me to transmit it to ISS?”
Rosario’s voice already slurred as the drugs kicked in. His suit pharmacopeia apparently had its full complement of painkillers, and he’d used some. “Up to Walker now. I’m… I’mma…” A soft snore sounded over the channel until Johnson leaned over and turned off Rosario’s intercom connection.
That left the piteous moans and whimpers still echoing through the channel. With no one talking, they were the only thing in Walker’s ears. He spoke as much to drown them out as to get information. “Just you and me then, Johnson. These two are counting on us getting them to the medical facilities at the ISS.”
Johnson’s voice wasn’t pleasant, but it still rated as better than the moaning. “If there are any medical facilities there.”
Walker had already entered the sequence of thrust required to get them moving on a least time, zero relative velocity intercept with the space station. It was wasteful of fuel, but they had plenty, and if they got clipped by the meteor it would all get lost anyhow. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been trying to get them on the horn since we got hit. No luck.”
The need to focus on his navigation distracted Walker, but he had to keep the conversation up, or Commander Wilson’s moans would distract him even worse. “Maybe our radio got hit when we were holed?”
Walker smiled as he heard the faint rustle that indicated Johnson shaking his head. A suit made it near impossible to see, but some people never lost the habit. “Nope. I was talking to them just before we got hit. They cut out just before we got nailed, and I swear I heard some impact sounds just before they did.”
Walker knew Johnson had a bit of paranoia. It seemed to run in folks really savvy with computers and electronics. Still, while he might be paranoid, he wasn’t a liar, and he was a good tech. “Did you get it on tape?”
“Electronic recording, but yeah. I’ve listened to it since, but I can’t tell if I’m imagining things or not.”
“Let me listen.”
“Two shakes.”
For a few moments, as he entered in the last few settings and double checked his calculations, Walker listened to Johnson’s breathing and Wilson’s moans. Then, without warning, the recording cut in.
“…you have the parts required on board.” Walker didn’t remember the name of the radio tech on the ISS, but he remembered her face. He’d been vaguely disappointed that she was in active service to the military of a foreign power.
Johnson’s recorded voice replied, sounding put out when it did. “I know that. I just hate going EVA.”
The mockery in the radio tech’s voice was clear. “Scared of doing a Flying Dutchman?”
“No. I sweat. A lot. Everything gets sticky and sweaty, and the faceplate fogs up.”
“Well, that’s…” Walker never found out what the distant radio tech thought of Johnson’s problems with suits. A series of pops, like fireworks, sounded over the radio. A moment later, the sounds dissolved in static, but not before he heard a sound, one he hoped he’d never hear again; the sound of a boneless body sliding across a microphone.
He paused, saying a quick prayer for the distant crew of the ISS, then another for his own crew. The ISS might be damaged, but it would still have some parts they could use to affect repairs. His moment of contemplation over, he squared his shoulders and spoke.
“Johnson, secure the sedated crewmembers.”
“Already done, commander.”
“Please double check. We are under severe time constraints, and I will be putting us under full thrust at times.”
Fabric rustled through the radio, Walker. Johnson’s voice held far less impatience when he spoke again. “OK, commander. Both Captain Rosario and Commander Wilson are secured in acceleration couches.” A short pause, during which more fabric sounds came over the radio. “I am secured as well. All living members of the crew are secure, all deceased members are secure. We are secure for full thrust.”
“Thrusting now.”