Solar flare, p.11
Solar Flare, page 11
“Go!” said Staffal “Soon as you get there, cut your power!”
“Chief…” Vendi hated the desperation that having a monstrous incendiary malfunction riding on her back put into her voice. She pulled hard on the slidewire and skimmed along it to the shock-swivel. She reached the swivel and clipped her tether past it onto the wire leading straight to the ship.
“Go…go…” whispered Staffal.
Vendi unlatched her tether’s carabiner, tried to click it on the other side of the swivel and fumbled it. She tried to catch the free-floating tether and carabiner.
“Go!” Staffal yelled.
Vendi pulled herself, untethered, along the slidewire. Heat stabbed her back. Choking smoke shot from the feed and return lines into her helmet. She hacked out a cough and kept going.
“You’ve got it—don’t breathe any fumes,” Staffal said, chasing her up the slidewire.
“I’ve got to—I’ve got to shut off the pack!” said Vendi.
“Don’t shut off your power!” responded Staffal. “You’ll lose your compression and therms!”
Vendi’s heart raced; she fought the urge to breathe.
“You’ve got fire puffs,” said Staffal. “Your ox bottle’s gonna vent from the heat. Push your pack off but stay connected. Hurry, you’ve got flashes goin’ all over, it’s gonna vent!”
Vendi pulled the pack up from its clips on her suit and pushed it away from her back.
The thickening fumes needled Vendi’s eyes; searing heat raked pain across her spine and shoulders. A tongue of flame flickered inside her helmet as smoke filled it. Fed by the oxygen trickle from the catpack, blue-green flashes of disorganized combustion in her smoldering hair burned her ear and crackled its flesh. Her lungs ached for a breath. She took the smallest of breaths; the smoke stung her mouth and throat. Her suit lining, trying to hold its temperature, chilled to maximum cold, freezing the sweat from her neck to ankles into a layer of frost, seizing her body between fire and ice.
“Switch your helmet to recirc!” advised Staffal.
Vendi turned the valve on her helmet, switching from the catpack’s feed/return line to a built-in scrubber-reservoir circuit. A new scrubber could clear most of the fumes, smoke, carbon dioxide and water from the air long enough for its user to switch from an exhausted catpack to a fresh one. Vendi’s old scrubber did nothing but recirculate her breath and the fumes.
The smoke and fumes stung her nose and throat. “Chief,” squeaked Vendi, to no reply.
As Vendi pulled her way along the wire, ascending to the airlock, the feed/return line to her helmet and the power cord to her suit pulled her catpack behind her. Nails of ice stabbed through the mantle of scorching pain on her shoulders.
Blinded by stinging smoke, her hair crackling with blue-green puffs of fire, Vendi paused her ascent and opened her helmet faceplate a crack. The smoke thinned as some of her air hissed out into the vacuum. She grabbed the cable with her legs, then fumbled with her gloved fingers for a plastic bag from her suit’s right-thigh cargo pocket. With the bag ready, she took her helmet off. Vendi held her breath, but air squeaked from Vendi’s lungs into the hard vacuum of space.
She pulled the bag over her head and wrapped it tightly at her neck, then exhaled. The bag ballooned around her head, as her breath poured the scents of burned hair and plastic into the bag. Holding the bag closed with one hand, she continued her ascent, trailing the catpack and helmet by its attachment to her suit. Moving along the slidewire to the airlock, she fought dizzying lightheadedness. Unseen hands grabbed her and pulled her into the airlock. Vendi fought the urge to pull the bag off her head. Staffal closed the airlock hatch. A faint tapping sound grew stronger as the airlock filled with air.
Vendi panted; the bag collapsed around her head, then filled again as she breathed out. The tapping noise stopped, replaced by Staffal’s voice. “Point three. You made it.” The pressure monitor’s light changed from red to yellow.
Vendi took the bag off, tucked it back in her cargo pocket and sucked down deep breaths of fresh air. Each breath jabbed knives of pain into her ear, shoulders and back.
“Rakches, you’re messed up!” Staffal opened the airlock’s inner hatch, pulled Vendi through, then pulled her along the ladderway in the starboard passage to the loxie deck and into the bunk room. Polo, Zef, Yant and Galen peeled out of their bunks.
“Polo,” said Staffal, “Close the hatch and vent it—I turned Vendi’s pack off; fire’s out but it’s still smoking. Zef, get the Fixkin, and some bandages if we have any.” Yant and Galen held Vendi in her floating position while Staffal cut and peeled away Vendi’s burned suit. Vendi shivered and her teeth chattered from the whole-body chill of her ice-cold suit.
“Your suit took most of the hit,” said Staffal, “It’s banjaxed, but it only burned through in a couple of places.
“I’m…so…cold,” whispered Vendi, shivering.
“You’ll warm up with the pack power gone. Right now, being numb is a good thing.” Staffal gripped the melted suit fabric on Vendi’s shoulder, then glanced at Yant and Galen; they tightened their grip on Vendi and nodded to Staffal.
Vendi screamed when Staffal pulled the piece from her shoulder.
Staffal looked at the burned suit fragments stuck in Vendi’s flesh and shook her head.
Vendi gasped as Staffal pulled off another piece; her gripping fingers dug into Yant and Galen. She pushed at the pain, forcing it away from the center of her mind. She found a moment of control and distance, but when Staffal peeled off another piece, fiery claws of pain shredded that moment.
“Looks like SSG saved a duro by leaving out the dust screens,” said Yant.
“Maybe two duros,” agreed Galen.
Zef moved into Vendi’s view holding a spray bottle and some absorbent pads.
Staffal took the bottle from Zef. “This stuff works pretty well,” said Staffal. “I could’ve used a liter or two when it happened to me.”
Staffal’s spray hit Vendi’s skin. Thousands of stinging needles and shrieking stabs of pain melted into a crushing ache.
“It happened to you?” asked Vendi, her voice weak and hoarse. She turned her head a millimeter toward Staffal; pain stopped her from moving more.
“Yeah. Same time as Erben, but close enough to the airlock to make it,” said Staffal, “That’s how I got this.” Staffal leaned over and pulled her collar down. The scar under her ear fanned out onto her shoulder. “I powered down my pack—lost my compression, lost my chill, I got it all down my back. When Erben’s ox bottle vented and started torching through her suit, she opened her helmet. She panicked or just decided to punch out. She didn’t say.”
Vendi took a tentative deep breath, waiting for a stab of pain. The sharpness and the stabbing faded, drowned by the all-the-time-everywhere ache. “That stuff—Fixkin?”
“Yeah,” said Staffal. “Might be one of the Earthers’ finest moments. It says here, ‘For vet-er-in-ar-y use only.’ Any idea what that means?”
Vendi started to shake her head, but the effort sent shards of pain bursting through the Fixkin’s anaesthetic effect. Holding her head still, she whispered, “No idea.” Vendi kept her grip on Galen and Yant while they pulled the rest of her suit off, leaving her floating and shivering in the burned and tattered remains of her undersuit.
Polo’s return from the airlock took Staffal’s attention. Staffal said to Polo, “There’s a tainer of roll rockets to load. It’s got a nuvarig on it.” Staffal wrote a number on a scrap of paper and handed it to Polo. “Here’s the control code. Ask Lorzi to unhook it from the pilings, and give her a chance to get clear.” Polo nodded and departed to work on the assignment.
Staffal nodded and turned to Vendi. “I’ll get to work on your suit. Maybe I can do something with it.”
“I’ll get to it—no need for it for a while,” rasped Vendi.
“My fault, not checking for screens” said Staffal. “Makes it my work too.”
Vendi loosened her grip on Galen, reached toward her locker and opened it. The tiny mirror in the locker door reflected her eyes. She backed up to see the damage. On the right side of her head, hair burned down to bristle poked through the hardening pink Fixkin foam. The foam extended down from her scalp to her ear, neck, shoulder and back. Her right earlobe, blackened by char at its tip, stuck to the Fixkin on her neck. She looked at her left ear to see how it should look. Accepting the impending pain as an expected, if unwelcome, guest, she wedged her finger behind her ear and pried her burned earlobe from the Fixkin on her neck. She held on for a moment to ride out the waves of pain the maneuver sent through her ear and neck. Grateful for zero gravity, she let Yant and Galen assist her into her bunk. Yant zipped up the bunk’s privacy panel far enough that Vendi could not float out. Tears came to Vendi’s eyes as she tried to find a mental refuge from mind-wrenching pain and flashbacks that wrapped green-tinged flickers of fire in the stench of burned hair, stinging, choking vapors, and the painful, maddening ache of air hunger.
Pain tips the balance. Garbage death beats garbage life.
Vendi pushed her mind through the painted door above her into the black nothingness beyond.
14
Vendi awakened to the morning chime in her sleeping cubicle. Half asleep, she reached to unzip the privacy panel. Claws of pain clutching her shoulder reminded her of her wounds. She eased out of her bunk feeling something amiss—twinges of shooting pain reverberated in her shoulder. After a moment, she identified the source of the twinges. Movement of her breasts in zero gee, unrestrained by her undersuit’s Tractyl band, tugged on the raw, hypersensitive burned skin of her back and neck. The elastic tissue moved in one direction, rebounded, then pulled again in the opposite direction, taking several reflections for the motion to be fully damped, only to be restarted again by the slightest movement. Vendi pondered the problem of coverage and confinement that wouldn’t disrupt the Fixkin foam, stick to her wound or hurt too much for her to function.
Vendi found the Fixkin bottle taped to her locker door beside a replacement undersuit already tabbed with red epaulets. Vendi read the Fixkin directions: re-apply as needed to maintain a covering layer. Vendi surveyed the layer in her locker mirror, applied the Fixkin in places that looked thin, then put the bottle in her locker. She pulled off the remaining part of her torn undersuit, pulled on the replacement and adjusted the Tractyl mesh. She tucked the right sleeve inside, leaving her right shoulder and arm uncovered.
As she adjusted the sleeve, Zef, Polo, Doxel, Yant and Galen climbed out from their bunks. Vendi offered a hoarse “morning” to the en-efs; they replied with the usual “heya.” She grabbed her rebreather and, encumbered by pain and reduced motion, worked her way through the airlock, along the starboard passage to the Earther deck. As she entered, Prinder’s voice on the intercom announced a thrust warning. She positioned the rebreather’s straps high and low to get the most tolerable, least painful fit.
Vendi entered the laundry room and went through her routine of loading the next bag into the syzer. Her fingertips flicked over the syzer display to select the standard run. The machine whirred to life and for a few seconds, pulled clothing from the hopper into its melt bin. It stopped and flashed an error on the screen: ERROR-0602. Vendi looked at the display for help, then retrieved the manual from the duct and looked there too—no mention of error 0602. Vendi reset the machine to no avail. She went back to the help menu and stepped through the troubleshooting steps. Yes, the power’s on. Yes, the software’s up to date. Yes, she emptied the dirt trap and foreign object collectors. No, no rigid objects jammed the intake feed. Vendi paused at the next step.
“Contact customer service.”
“Customer?”—an unfamiliar word, but service might help. Vendi tapped on the option.
“Enable audio and video?” asked the machine.
Vendi nodded; the question stayed on the screen.
“Yes,” said Vendi.
The question disappeared, replaced by a frame that said “Connecting. Your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.”
After a few seconds, blocks of color in the rough form of a face appeared on the display. Unlike the video, audio came through clearly. “Syzer service, this is Alisha, how may I help you?”
“I’m getting error zero-six-zero-two,” said Vendi. “I tried troubleshooting and reset. Nothing helped and the syzer is still stalled.”
The pixels of an image danced around shifting images, and audio returned after a delay. “I’m sorry, the connection’s giving me some trouble,” said the service representative. “I haven’t seen a connection this bad since I left Mesaki. Did you say zero six zero two?”
Vendi found herself mentally measuring the delay as she had on the Moon in order to locate Alisha, but reminded herself that when communicating from Tarball, delays to the Moon, Earth and Farside would be too similar to tell one from another.
Vendi let an impulse of curiosity slip out. “Where are you?” she asked.
“Mumbai,” said Alisha.
The pixelated image formed a sharp image of Alisha, a dark-skinned, black-haired ef. Her skin glistened, smooth like the ef in the photeo in the barge lavatory—no peeling skin, no splotches, no scars.
“I see you now…“ Alisha sat back, eyes wide. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” said Vendi.
“Did the syzer do that?” asked Alisha.
“This?” Vendi touched her scalp, missing half its hair and partly covered in pink goo. “No—no, the syzer didn’t do that.” Vendi backed away from the display, giving Alisha a sense of perspective. “My catpack did.”
“Your what? This connection is awfully slow. Where did you say you’re calling from?”
“I didn’t. Tell me how to fix the error.”
“It’s an undefined error. You have a service contract, so I’ll send a service tech. The locator module’s not giving me any information. Your purchase information says Amsterdam. Is that your location?”
“Is Amsterdam on Earth?”
“Of course it’s on Earth.”
“Then it’s not correct.”
“Where are you?” asked Alisha.
“Right now, Tarball, but we should be leaving soon. Should’ve left already, but no thrust yet.”
“I didn’t know we had any machines in space,” said Alisha. “I’d think that would be news for our company. Is this a joke?”
“A joke? No, I called for service,” replied Vendi.
Alisha looked to her left and right and said to someone off camera “Is this a prank?” Alisha whispered something more that Vendi couldn’t understand, then looked back to the camera. A short-haired em appeared behind Alisha making facial gestures that animated the line of hair under his nose.
“This is Anil,” said Alisha.
“So you’re at Tarball now?” asked the em.
“Yes,” said Vendi, backing away from the camera.
“She is a child!” said Anil to Alisha.
“No, look.” Alisha’s hand reached toward the camera, went out of sight and made tapping sounds.
Anil made a peculiar face. “I see your point…points.”
“You’re a loxie?” asked Alisha. “I’ve heard about you—you help build the sopo stations in orbit.”
“Some of us, yeah. And we don’t help build them. We build them.”
“Some of you? How many are you?” asked Anil.
“More like ten, twenty thousand,” said Vendi.
“It’s a prank,” said Anil. “No way there can be that many. From what I’ve heard, it’s maybe a hundred, tops.”
“What’s that on your face?” asked Alisha.
“A rebreather. Thins out the ox. Does it matter?” asked Vendi. “I need to get the syzer going again.”
“Maybe it’s a QA test,” Anil whispered to Alisha. “They’ve rigged her on wires or something. We’re going to wind up in a training video.”
“Error 0602 is an undefined error,” said Alisha, reading from something on her display. “It means the Syzer brand garment synthesizer is not working, but there’s no specific fault being reported by the sensors.”
“Zero gravity screws up a lot of things,” said Vendi. “I didn’t try to use it in zero-gee ’til now. Most of the time we’re under a little thrust—only a tiny fraction of a gee, maybe not even a tenth, but enough to make things go in one direction and stay there.”
Alisha and Anil conferred, then nodded their heads. “Makes sense to us. Can you try it again when you, ah, get thrust?”
“Yeah,” said Vendi.
“Very well,” said Alisha. Her eyes scanned back and forth as she read again from her display. “Call again if you see more problems. Is there anything else?”
“Yeah, what does ‘veterinary’ mean?”
“It means something is for animals—like, ah, a veterinarian is an animal doctor.”
“Oh,” said Vendi. “And a doctor’s like a mechanic for Earthers?”
Anil and Alisha looked at each other, then back at the camera.
“We could get fired for this,” said Anil. “Way off topic.”
“Then go back to your cubicle,” said Alisha. She turned back to the camera. “If this is a QA test, you can stop now and consider me failed.”
“I don’t know what a QA test is,” said Vendi.
“Quality assurance,” said Alisha. “It’s where they check to be sure we’re doing a good job. Can you do something for me? Spin, like a ballerina’s pirouette.”
“A ballerina’s pirouette?”
“Like this,” said Alisha, spinning herself in her desk chair, “only minus the chair.”
“Sure,” said Vendi. She pushed off the syzer and spun for two turns, then stopped herself. “Like that?”
“Yes…now can you make something float?”
“I don’t make it float. It just doesn’t fall!” She reached for the syzer manual, pulled it in front of the camera and let it hang there, set it spinning, then pushed it out of the way.
“If it’s special effects, it’s damned good,” said Anil, “but someone could can all this — they’d know what we’d ask her to do. Think about it. One of our machines in space? We’d know about it!”
