Issue In Doubt

CHAPTER Fourteen

Stasis Station A-1-53/S, NAUS Juno Beach



Second Lieutenant Ted Greig awoke; the commander’s stasis unit in the station Greig had led his platoon to automatically woke its occupant after two hours, unless ordered to wake him at an earlier time.

As with the other two times he’d been in stasis, Greig needed a minute to clear his mind before he could move, or do anything other than groan. He pried his eyes open and sat up. A look around that wasn’t as quick as he would have liked told him nobody else was waking yet. He levered himself out of the coffin-like stasis unit and stood on legs that quickly remembered how to stand and, eventually, walk.

Stasis can be a life-saver, he thought, as long as you don’t have to wake up fighting.

He stretched, twisted left and right, and did a couple of deep knee bends to get himself moving again. Then he checked the time. Two hours since he’d locked his platoon down.

Two hours. The automatic commander’s wake-up.

Where was the company commander, why hadn’t he roused him, or the rest of the platoon? Or was that the responsibility of one of the ship’s officers?

He tried his comm, but all he got was static. Things couldn’t be that bad though—the ship’s gravity was still on.

Greig looked to his left. Sergeant First Class Quinn’s stasis unit was still closed; the platoon sergeant was still out. That needed to change, right now. Whatever Greig did, he was going to need help, and Quinn was the best help available.

In two steps, he was at the control panel for Quinn’s unit. Waking him would be child’s play: there were two pads on the panel, a green one with the word “UP” blazoned on it, and a red one labeled “DOWN.” If “UP” didn’t mean, “Rise up from stasis,” whoever designed the panel didn’t have a very good working knowledge of English. He tapped the green pad and was rewarded by the faint sounds of machinery from within the unit. After a moment the lid rose and he saw Quinn begin struggling to sit up.

“Take it easy, Sergeant,” he said, putting a hand on Quinn’s shoulder to keep him down. “Let it come naturally.” He felt the sergeant’s muscles relax.

Quinn worked his jaw, building saliva so he could speak. “Who’s up?” he croaked.

“I don’t know. Nobody answered my comm.”

“Maybe your comm’s broken?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Greig didn’t think so; the comm units were field hardened, supposed to stand up to the rigors of combat. His hadn’t had any rough treatment at all.

“I don’t think so either.” Quinn took Greig’s silence as disbelief of the comm being broken. His voice was stronger now, and he managed to sit up with little difficulty. “Gimme a hand.” He reached, and Greig grasped his wrist and pulled him out of the unit. “You want me to wake the troops?”

Greig shook his head. “Not until we have a better idea of the situation. As soon as you’re ready, let’s go exploring.”

“How much exploring can we do by ourselves? The ship has what, ten levels?”

“All we really have to explore is this deck, this is where our battalion is billeted. Only three decks are troops, the rest of the ship is ship operations and crew, or cargo.”

“You’re sure of that, LT?”

Greig nodded. “The Juno Beach’s layout was covered in an officers call a couple of days before we left Earth. So like I said, we only need to look at this deck.”

“Where are the vacuum suits?”

Greig looked a question at his platoon sergeant.

“We were under attack, LT, and nobody answered your comm. At the very least, the ship might have been holed and the atmosphere in the passage has gotten very thin.”

When Greig didn’t say anything, Quinn went on, “At worst, the ship’s been destroyed and this station is drifting in vacuum.

Greig flinched. “Is that what you think happened? That the ship was destroyed, I mean?”

Quinn shrugged. “One thing I’ve learned in almost twenty years in this army is, when it comes to troop transports, anything’s possible.”

Greig gave a nervous chuckle. “I’m sure you’re right. Let’s find the vacuum suits.”

The vacuum suits were right where they should be. The station had four rows of “coffins” with a locker at the ends of each row. The lockers held six vacuum suits apiece. The suits were intended for emergency use only, and were strictly intended for short time use. They came in four sizes that almost guaranteed that nobody could find one that fit properly. The one that Quinn got into was a marginally better fit than the one that sagged on Greig. The suits didn’t look like the ones he’d seen sailors wearing when they went on EVA missions. They were far less form-fitting, and, instead of helmets, had hood arrangements with broad face plates that allowed the wearer’s face to be clearly seen from outside.

“Are you ready, Sarge?” Greig asked over the suit’s short-range comm once the two had attached the breathers to their backs.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, LT.” Quinn was less than two steps from the compartment’s hatch. He ignored the display next to it and braced himself against the possible outrush of air if there was vacuum outside. He was staggered only slightly when he hit the “open” button and the airtight slid into a recess on the bulkhead: the atmosphere outside the compartment was thin enough that they needed the breathers, but far from vacuum.

Greig started to say, “I’ll lead,” but stopped when Quinn put out a hand to stop him and stepped into the doorway. Leaning so only his head and shoulders were outside, he looked both in both directions along the passageway.

“The emergency lights are on, but that’s all I can see.” He looked over his shoulder. “Which way, sir?”

Thinking quickly, remembering the basic plan of the ship, he said, “Go right.” Right was forward, toward the front of the ship. The troop command compartments were forward of the troop compartments, the stasis compartments were aft, toward the rear. “There’s another stasis compartment on the other side of this passage. Let’s check it out first.”

“Yes, sir.”

Greig noticed that he had gone from being “LT” to “Sir.” Evidently Quinn had decided to let the officer take full responsibility for what they were doing. That was fine by him. If he needed the platoon sergeant’s advice at any point, he could ask for it.

The passageway was less than Spartan. It was painted battleship gray, top, bottom, and sides. Conduits and ducts ran the length of the overhead, tunneling through the bulkheads with airtight doors that divided the passageway into twenty-meter segments. Most of them were the same battleship gray as the walls. More anonymous gray conduits ran along the walls.

Stasis Station A-1-53/P was unoccupied; the lids on all the units were ajar. Just to be certain, Greig and Quinn quickly went through the compartment, looking inside each unit. Either nobody had reached the station, or they’d already gotten up and moved out. But if they had, why hadn’t they woken him, or at least replied to his comm?

Back in the passageway, Greig tried his comm again.

“Static, nothing but static.” Neither man commented on the lack of response, but it seemed possible that their platoon was the only survivors on board the Juno Beach.

The second hatch beyond the stasis compartment in which they’d ridden out the battle didn’t open when Quinn hit the “open” button.

Greig swore under his breath—that probably meant there was vacuum on the other side of it. “Step back and grab hold of something,” he said.

“Are you sure you want to do that, sir?”

“Got to be done. Now do what I said.”

Greig watched Quinn take a few steps back and firmly grip a side duct and an overhead conduit. The sergeant fumbled shoving his gloved fingers behind the duct and conduit so he could get hold of them.

A small hatch was set into the bulkhead next to the airtight. A red lever was set in its middle, blazoned with the message, “Pulling this lever will sound alarms throughout this area of the starship and in all command and control compartments.”

Greig braced himself into the corner where the passageway and hatch walls met, and pulled the red lever.

No alarm sounded, but the small hatch swung open, exposing manual controls for the airtight.

Greig took a steadying deep breath and flexed his fingers before slipping them onto the control dial. He twisted it.

And jerked back.

A voice boomed in the passageway: “Warning! Warning! Opening this airtight is potentially dangerous! Make sure everything is secured before proceeding!”

Greig looked back at Quinn. He could see his platoon sergeant had his eyes closed and his fingers twitched on the conduit and duct he held onto. He looked back at the manual controls and took another steadying deep breath.

“Here goes,” he said softly, and turned the dial all the way to the “open” position. A clunk in the airtight told him it was unlocked and ready to be opened. He shoved a hand into the control box, reached the other to the “open” plate, and slapped it. The airtight made a grinding noise as it started sliding into its recess, but the noise quickly died out to silence, although Greig still felt the grinding through the metal. Evacuating air buffeted him as it rushed out of the short passageway into the void beyond.

The lieutenant waited until the air was no longer buffeting him, then, keeping a firm grip in the control box, leaned to the side to see though the now-open airtight.

Straight ahead was solid blackness, but to the left he saw stars. Some of the stars were moving; he thought they must be SAR craft looking for survivors. He hoped they weren’t whoever had attacked the troop fleet. None seemed to be close to the Juno Beach. On the right, he faintly made out in starlight reflection the caved in bulkhead of the continuing passageway.

Miraculously, he was still being held to the deck by the ship’s artificial gravity.

“Do you have a light, Sarge?” he asked, turning around to look at Quinn.

Quinn patted at his vacuum suit. “Can’t find one,” he said; his voice was weak. “What’s there?”

“A big chunk of the ship’s simply missing. But there might be a way forward. If I had a light I could find out.”

Quinn’s voice was suddenly more confident; the LT sounded like he knew what he was doing. “I think I saw lanterns in that empty compartment we checked out. I’ll take a look, Sir.”

“I’ll be here.” Then he had to hold tight again as the air in the next stretch of passageway evacuated past him.

When the buffeting of escaping atmosphere stopped, Greig tried his comm again. This time he thought he heard fragments of voices in the static. That encouraged him to try to raise somebody.

“Anyone who can hear, there are survivors on the Juno Beach. I’m Lieutenant Theodore W. Greig, Alpha Troop, First of the Seventh Mounted Infantry. My platoon is intact. I haven’t been able to make contact with anybody else on board the ship, but my platoon sergeant and I are attempting to find other survivors. Any station, do you receive me? Over.” He listened as intently as he could, but didn’t hear anything that sounded like an attempt to reply to his transmission, not even when he repeated his message.

A bright beam of light suddenly flashed past Greig, illuminating the darkness beyond. He turned to see a grinning Quinn hustling toward him, a headlamp on his helmet and another in his hand. The one he wore was lit.

“I found two of these, sir!” Quinn stopped in front of the lieutenant and handed him the other lamp.

“Thanks, Sarge.” Greig took the offered lamp and put it on before turning back to the void beyond the hatch, careful not to step through the opened door.

Whatever had been to the port side of the passageway was completely gone. The lantern showed jagged, bent edges of metal around the massive. . .”hole in the hull” seemed an inadequate description of the vacancy where just a couple of hours earlier compartments had existed, keeping the emptiness of space at bay. The gap extended to high above and halfway down, the strike must have come in from above the level of the passageway. It extended a full hundred meters beyond where Greig stood. A narrow ledge ran sporadically along the right side of what had been the passageway. Bits of the overhead were still there, similar to the remaining pieces of decking. Chunks of conduits and ductwork still hung onto the right side wall, but what had been on the ceiling was gone. The right side of the passageway wasn’t intact; it was bowed away from the blast in places, and frequently holed. The wall on the far side of the gap was the same, deeply dented and holed.

Greig swallowed to moisten a suddenly dry throat, he doubted that anyone who might have been in the holed compartments had survived, not unless they were in stasis units. Even vacuum suits might not have saved them when the atmosphere blew out and slammed them through the holes, maybe shredding their suits on the jagged metal edges.

“What do you think, sir?”

“I think we can make it across there.”

“Are you sure?” Quinn sounded doubtful.

“It looks like there’s enough of the decking left, and we can hold onto the conduits to keep from falling away. So, yes, I think we can make it.”

“Ah, LT? I’m surprised we’ve still got gravity here. You think there’s gravity out there?”

Greig hesitated, then admitted, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“We better find out before we go walking along.”

“Right.” Greig pulled himself fully into the doorway and extended a foot to the nearest piece of left over decking on the right wall.

He had to push his foot down to make contact, there was no gravity to pull him to it.

“It’s pretty much free fall out here,” he told Quinn. “Navy engineering is even more unbelievable than I imagined. How on earth do they manage to have artificial gravity in intact spaces, when it’s missing in the next, holed space?”

“Got me on that one, sir.” Quinn sounded like he thought Navy engineering was irrelevant to their situation.

Keeping hold of the frame over his head with his left hand, Greig reached for a conduit with his right and gave it a tug. It held. “I’m going to try. Watch me. Follow if it seems safe.”

“Shouldn’t we have a rope of some sort, tie ourselves together?”

“That’s a great idea, Sarge. But I haven’t seen anything that looks like a rope. Have you?”

“Sorry. No I haven’t. Be careful, sir.”

Greig glanced out through the gap. Lights still moved around in the distance; what he thought were SAR teams rescuing survivors, just like before. And, the same as before, none were moving in the direction of the Juno Beach.

Making sure his right hand grip was firm, Greig reached with his left. He wanted to shuffle along, hands at shoulder level, feet on the remains of the deck, but the lack of gravity forced his legs to drift outward so he was angled away from the bulkhead rather than flush against it. He’d have to travel only using his hands. Unless he could find footholds along the way.

Ten meters along, he reached a punched hole that looked big enough for him to get though without catching himself on a jagged edge. It was.

Before entering, he looked at a sign on the wall. It read, “A-43-P.” It was the troop compartment his platoon had been in. If he hadn’t moved them to the stasis station, they’d all be dead now.

He decided not to mention that to Quinn. Bunks, lockers, cabinets, and other minor furnishings were jumbled about, funneling toward the opening. Everything was slowly settling to the deck. Personal belongings that had been left behind unsecured during the rapid abandonment of the compartment were mixed in with everything else. Greig felt a slight downward tugging, as of a very weak gravity field. Amazing, he thought.

“What do you have in there, sir?” Quinn asked, sounding worried.

He realized he had to tell his platoon sergeant. “This used to be our platoon’s compartment.” He hurried on before Quinn could react to the news. “I’m going to search, there might be something we can use. Maybe a stronger comm than the one I have.” He didn’t find a comm unit, but he did find a spool of electrical cable.

“Sarge, I’ve got something we can tie off with.” He kept looking, now for something to use as a hook on the conduits, but came up dry.

A minute later, Quinn gingerly pulled himself through the opening in the bulkhead. They tied the cable around their waists with a ten meter length between them.

“Now if one of us goes, we both go,” Quinn said.

“You’re so encouraging, Sarge.

Quinn barked a short laugh.

Greig was surprised to find that he felt more secure tied to Quinn. If he lost his grip and drifted away the other could pull him back. Just as he could pull Quinn back if he lost his. But if they both somehow let go at the same time, or if something violently shook the ship and broke their grips, then they’d drift until someone picked them up. If someone picked them up. And if they were still alive.

Feeling more secure, he crawled faster along the wall, and it was only a few minutes before they reached the far side of the gap. The first hatch was broken, pushed in from its frame. It didn’t take much effort to push it farther to admit them.

“The strike must have come from aft as well as above,” Greig said. “That would explain why this wall and door are battered, but they’re intact from the other side.”

Quinn grunted. The direction the missile had come from was obvious enough it didn’t need commenting on.

Twenty meters farther on they came to the end—the entire forward portion of the Juno Beach was missing, blown away by missiles that had zeroed in on the ship’s bow.

“I’ve got a feeling we won’t find anybody up ahead,” Greig said to himself. He did his best not to show his dismay to Quinn, who was silent himself. He gathered himself and tried his comm again, beginning with identifying himself.

This time, he got an answer.

“Lieutenant Greig, this is Captain McMahan, Foxtrot, Second of the Tenth. Where are you?”

“Sir, I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear your voice!”

“That’s nice, Lieutenant, now where the f*ck are you?”

“Yes, sir. We’re on, on—. I don’t know what deck this is, it’s the one First Battalion was on. We’re at what is now the forward edge of the Juno Beach...” His voice caught on that. “The wh-whole front end of the ship is missing.”

“All right, I know where you’re at. Now, you say ‘we.’ Who’s we?”

“That’s my platoon sergeant and me. The rest of the platoon is still in the stasis chamber. I left them in stasis while Sergeant Quinn and I try to find out what’s happening.”

“Have you located anybody else from your troop?”

“No, sir. We haven’t seen anybody, and you’re the first person to answer any of my comms.”

“What stasis station is your platoon in?”

“We’re in Alpha one dash fifty-three slash Sierra.”

“You must have that wrong. Either that or you aren’t as far forward as you said. Dash fifty-three is farther to the rear.”

“Sir, we’re as far forward as we can get—there’s no ship in front of us.”

“Wait one, I’m almost at the forward edge of what’s left of the ship.” A moment later Captain McMahan said, “I’m there. Go to the edge and look down. If you’re all the way forward, you should see me two decks below you.”

Greig took two steps to reach the end of the ship, grabbed something, and leaned out to look down.

“I see you, sir,” he said and waved at the figure he saw leaning out two decks below.

“I see you too, Lieutenant,” McMahan said. “Not far aft of here there’s a big chunk blown out of the port side of the ship. The stasis station you said you came from is on the other side of it. Care to give me a different station number?”

“Sir, I know about the missing area. We were able to negotiate our way along a narrow strip of decking. Well, mostly we went hand over hand along conduits.”

Greig could make out McMahan shake his head. “You’re either very brave, or incredibly stupid,” the captain said. “You think you can make it back to your station without killing yourselves?”

Greig looked at Quinn, who nodded.

“Yes, sir, we can do it.”

“Then go there and wake your platoon. Right before I heard you, I made contact with SAR. They have us on their list and will be here in a couple of hours. So be ready to be rescued.”

Greig and Quinn grinned at each other, relieved to know that someone knew where they were, and was coming for them.