Chapter 2

Five hours later I was finishing up. I was hot, sweaty, tired, and pissed. The cooling unit in the suit was trying to keep me cool but when you're exerting yourself for hours on end, it's a losing battle. Patching holes requires a lot of effort, physical and mental.

First you're figuring out the size of the patches needed, cutting away bits and pieces of meters thick hull to get a smooth surface, using the HUD to 'draw' the shape of the patch and measuring it. On my ship, a fabricator is making patches using the measurements I send and drones deliver them. You then match the patch to the hole and hope like hell it fits. Around the inner edge of the patch a bead or two of molecular epoxy is run from a special tank mounted to your suit through a gun. The tank weighs close to 45kg (100lbs). In the zero-g of space if you aren't careful and turn to fast, inertia will keep it and you going and spin you around.

After you have the bead down, you have to very carefully place patch over the hole, hoping there is no atmosphere leaking or it'll break the bead. Once in place, a current is run through the patch, activating the epoxy and hardening it instantly. The epoxy molecules mix with the molecules of the patch and hull and create an airtight seal.

After all the holes that require fabricated parts are patched come the smaller patching. These are usually hairline cracks in the hull that can be sealed with a small bead of the epoxy and special tape. Then comes the fun part, finding the new leaks as the compartments are filled with a bit of atmosphere to test integrity. Invariably, more leaks are discovered that have to be sealed.

All of this was done while the ship was travelling several thousand kilometers a second. Remember, space is huge. What we think is fast in planetary atmosphere ain't jack shit to what the universe thinks. Traveling through space at thousands of kilometers a second is like watching a bug crawl from Earth to Jupiter. It'll happen but it'll take a long time.

So after five hours of that, I was done. Oh there was still a bunch more holes but the ones that I fixed were only for areas where personnel were needed to get through to or occupy that they couldn't reach during jump. Other areas could do without atmosphere until the freighter could undergo repairs in port.

As the ship was pressurizing the airtight portions of the ship, I sent the tank of epoxy back to the 'Shivari' with a drone and made my way to the aft airlock that the ship schematics showed, using my mag-grips and handholds mounted into the hull of the freighter. When I got there, the hatch opened and closed as soon as I was clear. The airlock filled with air but this portion of the ship was still pressurizing. As soon as the pressure equalized on either side of the inner hatch, I overrode the lock with my suit's signature, reassuring the computer that I was in a pressure suit and I wouldn't explode.

I found myself in a hallway and turned towards Engineering. Once there I hit a bulkhead that I had to override also after making sure the pressures were equal. Stepping through and looking around, I wanted to start hitting the pilot with a crowbar, starting at his toes and working my way up. I'd patched a hole in this compartment but hadn't been paying attention or looking closely inside.

Swearing profusely under my breath, I keyed a private comm to 'Shivari'. "Sam."

"Go ahead, Max, we're secure."

"I'm in 'Virgo's' Engineering. We're going to need to tack on a few murder charges to the pirates."

"Son of a bitch. How bad?"

"Bad enough. Looks like explosive decompression took them out if the shrapnel damage from that blast that came through didn't. None in pressure suits so I'm guessing this is probably the first compartment hit. I'm moving to check on the power core for the engines now."

"Nice of the good captain to inform us of the casualties."

"My thoughts exactly. I'm really not liking this jackass and I haven't even met him in person yet."

I made my way to the power core for the systems engines and looked it over. "'Virgo', this is Privateer. Your core is knocked offline due to power overloads to several subsystems. Looks like your dead in the water until you get into port."

"Dammit. I'm sending some men back."

"If you're sending someone back, you may want to warn them of the casualties you have."

"Oh. Ah, right. I'll do that."

"What an asshole," Sam said to me over the private channel. "He didn't even apologize or anything."

"Yeah, maybe he's busy. But he's still an asshole."

My suit was indicating that atmosphere had normalized to the correct pressure but I still didn't take off my helmet. I didn't want to smell the bodily fluids that were scattered all over the compartment. True, everything had dried in the vacuum while they had been in jump but I didn't want to chance it.

I left Engineering and closed the hatch behind me. Can't be too careful is my thinking right now. I took off my helmet as I made my way to the bridge. Sweat was dripping from my face running down my neck.

On my way forward I met some crew. Each was in pressure suits and had helmets under their arm. I stopped them and asked for any water. One tossed me a 2 liter bottle and I drank the whole thing in about 10 seconds.

I looked at them after I had finished and said, "I'm warning you now, it's ugly. I'm thinking three of your crew were in there for the blast and decompression. If you don't have a real need to be in there or you don't have a strong stomach, do not go in. If you do go in, try not to move anything. Amethyst should be sending security forces and they'll need to gather video for evidence." That was not entirely true. The video from my suit would be enough but security forces got touchy if they thought you were trying to do their job.

The crew looked at each other with grim faces. One crusty guy, probably somewhere around two centuries old, looked to me and told me, "Captain don't think you know enough to make a call on the engines."

"What the hell's not to know? The readouts say the fucking thing is offline, multiple subsystems are blown to hell."

"The captain don't have a high regard for privateers. Said any that he's met hadn't ever impressed him."

"Your captain hasn't impressed me and I have yet to meet him." The crewmen smirked at that.

"Yeah and I doubt he will. He's new and trying to impress some passengers we have. But we need to go back and check it out anyway. Thanks for the heads up. We'll try not to disturb anything but, well, they were our mates, you know."

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Can I ask you a question? What are you transporting?"

"Not much really. Mining machinery, food stores, some general goods. It was all bound for Polaris system."

"You were going Polaris? What are you doing here?"

"Captain thought we could trick them."

I had a frown on my face and the crewman asked what I was thinking.

"It's just that it was a ballsy move for the pirates to hit you in the Denarrus system for what you guys are carrying. Denarrus is fairly secure."

"Yeah well, we don't know everything on the ship. Only the captain does and he hasn't told us much. Sorry, but we need to get going or he's going to get more annoying than he already is."

"Alright, good luck," I said to them.

I moved off and made my way midship to the bridge. Now if you don't know anything about modern ships, I'm going to disappoint you. There are NO windows on ships. Windows are weak spots and likely to blow out if you sneeze on them. Any viewports are actually hi-def monitors showing you what the optical sensors see outside. The bridge of modern ships is deep inside the hull.

As I entered the bridge, I spotted the captain and had to stop myself from laughing. The guy was a freighter captain and he was dressed up as if he were the captain of a luxury liner. White uniform, snazzy haircut, and a ton of smarmy attitude. He had his back to me while he was speaking to someone on his internal communications display as other crew were at terminals coordinating internal repairs and assessing damage.

Chapter 3 »