Footfall

“It’s their last chance at us,” Tiny Pelz said. “They’ll pour it on.” “Rotation. Stand by.” Steam jets hissed. “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

Franklin had forgotten the intercom was on. Don’t blame him much. This was the trickiest part: as they passed through the ring of digit ships, they would rotate to face away from the thickest cluster, protecting themselves with the butt plate, but exposing Michael’s comparatively weak sides to others.

The ship turned ponderously. Spin, you bastard!

Missiles exploded. Light washed two screens. The ship kicked mildly, Wham Wham Wham pause Wham: snout missiles exploded under the butt plate.

“-now and in the hour of our death, amen. Temperature rising starboard amidships.”

“Gun turret four no longer reporting.”

“Bandit, nine o’clock.”

“Steam forming, bow section three.”

More missiles. Michael trembled to the shock waves.

“You can do it, baby, you can do it—”

A vastly larger shock wave kicked Michael sideways. Somebody screamed. Half a dozen screens blinked white and went blank. Tiny Pelz said, “Oboy.”

“Damage control, report!”

“Stand by,” Max Rohrs said. “Tiny, what the hell was that?”

“We got two! Two, digit ships blanked out!” Harry shouted.

“Fascinating. I didn’t shoot,” Jason Daniels said. “Who got them?”

“We’re tumbling,” Gillespie said. “I’ve got no attitude control. Damage control, do something!”

“I know what happened,” Pelz said. “I just can’t see it. Somebody deploy a camera.”

“Gamble, go. Tiny, talk.”

Hamilton Gamble left his seat on the jump. Tiny Pelz said, “I think we’ve lost one of the spurt bomb bays. The snouts set off a nuclear missile close enough to pump some spurt bombs. Maybe the whole bay fired! One tremendous blast of gamma lasers. It’s not as bad as it sounds — I hope.”

We’ve had it! The implications hit him. We’re all there was. Aw, shit.

“Kasanovsky, get moving. I want to know what’s happened to our steam jets.”

Another suited figure left the bridge.

My turn soon. Harry played with his own TV screens, switching to internal cameras. Nothing here. Go around the ship. Assume we lost the ventral spurt bomb bay. Move from there. Ha!

Something had kicked an enormous dent in Michael’s port side. Forward of that, the port pipe room was swirling gray chaos.

“Ham Gamble here. I see it. Look for yourself, cha

Harry switched his TV monitor. There.

The screen lit to show the sky. Digit ships were blurred green spotlights; the stars didn’t show at all. The camera swung down. Spurt Bomb Bay 1 was gone. Only its melted-looking base still stood up from the Shell. The much larger tower that was Thrust Bomb Bay 1 had a chewed look. As Gamble swiveled the camera, their view ran along the flank of the Brick. Meteor holes pocked it. The base was ripped. A stream of fog jetted away.

Max Rohrs spoke quietly, a litany of disasters. “Port water tank gone. I’ve got the port fission pile scrammed. We’ve got no water for it anyway. The whole portside attitude jet system is dead.”

“Slow response to starboard control system,” Gillespie said.

“Nothing from the Stovepipes or the Shuttle. I think they’ve had it.”

“Overheat, starboard amidships.”

“We’re still taking hits,” Gillespie said. “Max, if you can get a wiggle on—”

“Situation assessment coming up,” Rohrs said. His calmness was a rebuke.

“Okay, I have the picture,” Pelz said. “It could have been worse. Most of the energy must have gone forward. Better figure we killed all of the ships we deployed, and the two snout ships that aren’t firing lasers anymore. We got some spillover energy to the side.”

“Anything coming apart? If we shake and rattle, do we break anything?”

“Not by me,” Rohrs said.

“Stand by. I’ll try to stabilize. Jason, get ready! Kill something! Acceleration and rotation, stand by!”

“Wait one. Bombs away — she’s yours.”

WHAM

WHAM

WHAM

quiet

“It sure sounds good in theory,” Tiny Pelz said.

“What does?” Franklin demanded.

“Firing bombs off center to compensate for rotation. Sure sounds good in theory.”

The screens showed they were still rotating, but more slowly. Michael was the center of a ring of dazzling green lights… receding aft.

“We’re through, or close enough,” Jason said. “Their missiles can’t hit us, we can’t hit them, but this is the closest approach to those damn lasers. The steam we’re losing — the cooling effect may be all that’s saving us.”

“If we don’t get attitude control, we’ve got a big bloody pinwheel! Acceleration. Stand by. Jason.”

“Bombs away. Locked on. She’s yours.”

WHAM

“Try again. Jason…”

“Roger.”

WHAM

“Shuttles Three and Four. We may not make it. We have to hit this mother with something. You’re on. Stand by.”

“Roger.”

“Max, get me some attitude jets!” Harry already had his faceplate closed.

Max Rohrs used a light pen to trace lines on the screen. “There’s plenty of pressure in the starboard system, and we have working attitude jets starboard, ventral, and here and here dorsal.” The pen flicked across a stylized view of Michael. “The port jets look okay in TV pix, but they won’t hold pressure. The electronics aren’t much good either.” No wonder! Half the portside pipes are gone!

“What we’ve got to do is isolate the working chunk of the portside system, then shunt steam in there from the starboard generators. We don’t have electronic control of those valves — or if we do, we don’t have any feedback on what they’ve done, which is just as bad. What we have to do is start at the breaks and move toward the jets, patching as we go.”

Harry laughed. His screen showed a three-foot pipe with a six foot section missing. Beyond it was a hole in the hull, a neat oval with a rim that bulged outward. Stars showed through.

Rohrs pointed at Harry’s display. “The merely difficult we do immediately. The impossible we leave for dry dock. You’re supposed to use judgment, but get the damn lines fixed! Patch anything you can patch, and use the manual valves to shut off everything else.

“Lambe, Donaldson, go through the starboard system and check it out. Get things set up to shunt steam across to the port system, and stand by. We’ll need pressure to test.

“Reddington, Franklin,”

Here it comes.

“Start with the big hole in the port system and work your way up to the jets. Your goal is to make the port jets work with starboard steam. Got that, Harry?”

“Righto.” All this so I could wear a pressure suit? “Move.”

ChunkChunk. Roy Culzer, in Shuttle Four, named Atlantis in a more peaceful era, felt the prongs unlock at the nose. The main tank was moored to Michael by the same matings that in gentler times would have gripped solid fuel boosters. Now only the aft matings were still attached, and Atlantis’s nose pointed beyond the overhang of Michael’s roof.

Jay Hadley had the motors going. Blue flame played down the flank of the Brick. The aft prongs released, and Atlantis was free.

The sky was a hot green.

“Turning. Stand by.” The Shuttle turned as it pulled away. Earth and Michael were behind, the violet-white flame of the prime target ahead. Four, five green spotlights sank below window view. “Okay,” Jay Hadley said, “now they’re only heating the main tank. We’ll burn that fuel before the tank blows up.”

For nearly eight hours Michael had been in direct sunlight. The pressure in the main tanks was already too high, and rising. Have to live with it.

Shuttle Three, Challenger, was already lost to sight. Roy caught sight of a gunship’s yellower flame just before it disappeared into a missile explosion.

“Maneuvering. Stand by.”

Roy’s sense of balance protested as Jay turned the Shuttle. “What have we got?”