A stab of light shot from the Chandler, striking across and at a small angle from the figure in the airlock.
“They’re firing on the ship,” I said.
“Interesting,” Aul said.
“Why is it interesting?”
“They need to cut into the hull,” Aul said. Ze pointed at the beam. “Normally for a rescue we’d send a crew over with some particle beam cutters to get through the hull. We have a couple here on the shuttle, in fact. But it takes time. Time they don’t have. So instead they’re just burning a big damn hole in the hull with a beam.”
“It doesn’t look very safe,” I said, watching. A venting blast of air puffed out of the Odhiambo, crystalizing in the vacuum wherever the beam didn’t turn it into plasma.
“It’s definitely not,” Aul said. “If there’s someone in the cabin they’re cutting into, they probably just died of asphyxiation. That is, if they weren’t vaporized by the beam.”
“If they weren’t careful they could have blown up the ship.”
“The ship’s going to blow up anyway, Councilor,” Aul said. “No reason to try to be dainty.”
The beam shut off as abruptly as it began, leaving a three-plint hole in the Odhiambo’s hull. In the monitor, the figure in the Chandler airlock launched itself toward the hole, trailing a cable behind it.
“Okay, now I get it,” Aul said. “They’re running a cable from the Chandler to the Odhiambo. That’s how they’re going to get them off the ship.”
“Across a vacuum,” I said.
“Wait for it,” Aul said. The figure disappeared into the Odhiambo. After a moment, the cable, which had drifted slightly, tightened up. Then a large container started moving across the cable.
“I’m guessing vacuum suits, harnesses, and automatic pulleys in that,” Aul said. “Get them suited up, secure them in a harness, and let the pulleys do all the work.”
“You sound like you approve.”
“I do,” Aul said. “This is a pretty simple rescue plan with pretty simple tools. When you’re trying to save people, simpler is better. A lot fewer things to go wrong.”
“As long as the Chandler can keep in sync with the Odhiambo.”
“Yes,” Aul agreed. “There is that. This plan has all its complications in one place, at least.”
There were several moments of nothing obvious going on. I took the time to look at the co-pilot monitor set, on which we were tracking the Odhiambo’s power and heat signatures. No excitement there either, which was a good thing. “You might suggest to the Odhiambo’s captain that any remaining crew might want to disembark as soon as possible,” I said to Aul.
“With all due respect, Councilor,” Aul said. “I’m not going to suggest to a captain that it abandon its ship a single moment before it makes that decision on its own.”
“Fair enough.” I glanced back over to the monitor with the Odhiambo on it. “Look,” I said, pointing. The first of the diplomats was making its way across the line, swaddled in a highly reflective vacuum suit, chest in a harness, trailing behind a pulley.
“That’s one,” Aul said. “Nine more to go.”
The Chandler collected seven before the Odhiambo blew itself up.
There was almost no warning. I glanced over as the seventh diplomat disappeared into the Chandler’s airlock and saw the feeds on the co-pilot’s monitor spike into critical territory. I yelled to Aul to warn the Chandler just as the external monitor showed a wrenching jerk, severing the cable between the two ships. Aul zoomed out the picture in time to catch the eruption on the Odhiambo, midships.
Aul yelled in zis headset and suddenly the image in the monitor began spinning wildly—or appeared so, as the monitor had stopped tracking with the two ships’ movements and had reoriented itself to our perspective. The Odhiambo had begun tearing itself apart. The Chandler had begun moving away from its doomed compatriot.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Aul was yelling at the monitor. “Move it, you stupid shit-for-brains, you’re too close.” I had no doubt ze was yelling at the Chandler’s pilot.
And ze was right; the Chandler was too close. The Odhiambo had now split in two and the pieces were moving independently of each other, with the fore portion now careening dangerously close to the Chandler.
“They’re going to hit!” Aul yelled.
And yet they didn’t; the Chandler’s pilot yawed and skewed its ship, moving it across three axes in a mad ballet to avoid collision. The separation between the ships widened, too slow for my taste: fifty plint, eighty, a hundred fifty, three hundred, one chu, three chu, five chu, and then the Chandler stabilized its movement relative to Conclave headquarters and began to pull away at speed from the Odhiambo.
“You should be dead!” Aul yelled at the monitor. “You should be dead, your ship should be dead, you should all be dead! You magnificent shit-eater!”