"Pheromone Pharmacopia"

by Brandy Dewinter

(c 2001, All rights reserved)

 

Chapter 21 - "Missing in Action"

"Damn," Carol said over the comm. "I’ve always dreamed of taking out DC, but . . "

"That’s not all if it," warned Jacqui. "The high inclination of this orbit means that we’ll actually be tracking up the entire East coast. If the retro charge is higher than I figured, the things could hit Florida. If they’re less, or if there are more launch codes coming, then New York or someplace in Eastern Canada could be hit. That’s a pretty sizable part of the entire population of both countries."

"And that’s the good news, right?" Vanna’s dry voice asked over her own helmet mike.

"I guess it is, considering that the bad news is that we don’t know how to stop it," replied Marilyn.

"Any sign of a release mechanism?" Sandy asked, trying to find some way to work the problem.

"Um, yes and no," replied Carol. "They’re all held on by clamps, but I’m not sure how the clamps themselves are released."

"Maybe we could jimmy the clamps or something," Vanna said. "Point them the wrong way, and the de-orbit burn might even boost their orbit."

"Right," Marilyn said. "Okay, Carol, why don’t you come back here and escort Vanna back out there? I don’t like you being alone. While you’re on your way, we’ll see if we can find some way to . . . Carol, what are you doing?"

Marilyn interrupted herself as she saw Carol’s green-clad figure moving even closer to the array of weapons.

"Marilyn, we’ve only got five minutes, remember?" Carol said quietly, just loudly enough to be heard over the rasp of her panting breath.

"So don’t waste any of them!" Marilyn said sharply.

"Right," Carol replied. "Look, I don’t expect these things can go off while they’re still clamped to the station. I figure if I can see one release, I can turn it around or something."

"And get yourself killed in the process!" Marilyn said. "Stay clear of those things. We’ll find another way."

"Just as soon as you find it, let me know," Carol said, grunting as she pulled herself right into the middle of the array.

"Ready to go EVA," Vanna reported, breaking Marilyn’s concentration on her headstrong teammate.

"You are not," Jacqui said with a snort of disbelief.

"Close enough," Vanna said adamantly.

Carol’s voice intruded and their attention was once again drawn outside the shuttle. "Hey, guess what."

She continued immediately, "These little cone things are really light weight, almost like a tin cup. I can bend them."

Sandy shrugged. "Well, if the charge is placed right, the pressures should be fairly well balanced. The cone could act sort of like a balloon. And something like aluminum would not only be light, it would be sure to burn off quickly during re-entry so that the rod fell true."

Outside the shuttle, Carol was squeezing the material of one of the cones, causing it to distort into a double-lobed figure eight. "Well," she reported, "it ain’t easy, but it’s doable."

"There’s almost fifty of those things," Marilyn said. "And you don’t know which one will go first. Get out of there."

"Let me go help her!" Vanna demanded urgently.

"Time’s about up. Launch command in 10 seconds," Jaymi reported, adding yet another level of stress.

"Uh, oh," Carol’s voice said. "One of the clamps just released."

"Get out of there!" Marilyn repeated.

Carol pulled herself across the array until she got to a rod near one corner. It was clearly drifting away from its perch, responding to a spring that had been compressed by the clamp until it released. Hooking her legs around one of the still-anchored bombs, Carol reached up to grab the slowly-moving loose rod.

"Well," she said, grunting, "at least they don’t move too quickly at the beginning."

"Damnit, Carol, back away from there. If you lose your grip, you’re shit out of luck."

"Vanna will catch me," Carol said in a light tone made false by her heavy breathing. "Besides, I have this feeling that ol’ Beaver could scoop me up with the whole damn shuttle if she needed to."

Jacqui said, "I don’t like that name, Carol."

"I know," Carol said, still wrestling with the drifting weapon. "But I figured if I pissed you off enough, you’d figure out a way to rescue me just so you could tell me off to my face."

Any response Jacqui or any of the others might have made was lost in the intensity of their emotions as Carol managed to get the long rod turned around and facing the still-attached array of bombs.

"Now what?" she asked, more to herself than her teammates.

"Carol, I’m ordering you to get out of there," Marilyn said firmly.

"What’s that, Boss? Your signal is breaking up," Carol asked, though her own voice was clear - clear enough, in fact, that they could hear Carol humming idly to herself. In the image from the shuttle arm camera, her dark green suit was a shadow against the skeletal grid of metal, but it was enough to see that she was *not* moving away from the bombs.

Recognizing the futility of ranting into the microphone, Marilyn turned to Jacqui. "Can you get us moving over there? We’re not doing any good here."

"Working on it," Jacqui said.

"Marilyn, let me go to her. I can make it as quickly as Jacqui can fly us there."

"Please be quiet, Vanna," Marilyn said, the polite words carried on a tone of tightly-clamped anger. "You have 3 minutes left on your pre-breathing. I don’t want to hear about you going EVA before then. Is that clear?"

"Yes, ma’am," Vanna replied reflexively.

"Everybody hold on to something," Jacqui commanded. A moment later the shuttle lurched as they undocked from the ruined airlock. Thruster blasts began their intermittent drumbeat as Jacqui maneuvered them clear of the station.

"Uh, oh," the speakers transmitted Carol’s voice, recapturing their attention from the distraction of seeing the station recede.

Marilyn looked at the monitor again. "Carol?"

"Another missile has been released. It’s drifting . . . "

"There," Sandy called, pointing at a gleaming dot against the darkness outside a viewport. Jacqui’s maneuvers had brought the nose of the shuttle around the bulge of the main station module and the array of bombs was now visible directly.

Carol’s tones were triumphant when the speaker next reported.

"Got it!"

"What’s going on?" asked Marilyn.

"I used my tether to tie off the first bomb, and managed to snag the second one," Carol said proudly. As the shuttle drifted closer with painful slowness, they could see Carol with her arms wrapped around one long rod and legs wrapped around a girder, while a second rod was alternately drifting and snubbing against a standard tether used in a decidedly non-standard way.

"I could, uh, use some help here," she said quietly, her initial pride giving way to the realization that she was in a very tenuous position.

"You’re not supposed to release your tether!" gasped Jacqui, then those on the flight deck could see her bite her tongue at the obvious futility of that observation.

While they were still several hundred yards away, the first retro-charge exploded.

It was strangely unexciting. There was a flash of light, but no sound, no pulse transmitted through the ground to reverberate viscerally, no shudder vibration in the shuttle windows or jitter in the instruments. It was as though a simple flashbulb had gone off, nothing to cause concern.

Except it was not a simple flashbulb, it was an explosive charge that rapidly built pressure within the bell of the Brilliant Pebble that was tethered to the rest of the array. At the moment of the explosion, at least the bell was pointed away from Carol. Unfortunately, it was not pointed far enough away from Carol.

The rod only changed velocity by a couple of thousand feet per second or so, less than half of what an armor-piercing round would experience in the gun of a main battle tank, but that was enough to turn the device into a very capable penetrator of the ultra-lightweight structure of the space station. It arrowed to the base of the array, not hitting it cleanly, but striking it with enough energy to break one leg of the supporting girder and send a shock through the entire arm.

Which happened to be the arm that Carol’s legs were wrapped around.

The long beam cracked like a whip, a visible pulse racing along it’s length.

That’s when the second retro-charge exploded.

Which happened to be in the bell of the Pebble that Carol’s arms had been wrapped around.

Neither of those were coincidences of course, since those were the ones which had been released from their clamps *because* they were about to be de-orbited, but that didn’t help Carol’s situation at all.

The pulse of the whipping girder had actually helped her situation, though. It had snapped the second rod from her grip. As a result, when the second charge went off, it wasn’t mere inches from her face.

However, the combination of the pulse from the girder and the expanding gas from the retro charge flipped Carol away from her anchor hold as cleanly as a sling hurls a stone.

That effect was almost lost in the larger disaster befalling the station. The eerie silence made the collapse of the bomb array seem artificial, a movie special effect without the confirming sound track. There were no groans of tortured metal, deep and bass to prove it was not a tiny model that was twisting before the shuttle ports. Only the ponderous, inexorable, interminable duration of it gave a sense of scale to the motion. It did not ‘fall’ of course, since there was no up or down, but once set in motion it ground its way through solar panels and connecting girders, setting off a fireless fireworks display of sparking electrical arcs.

"Carol," Marilyn called, the first to wrench her attention from the slow motion catastrophe.

There was no answer.

"Carol!" Marilyn called again, then before there was a chance for an answer, her attention focused on Jacqui.

"Get us around that mess and find her!"

"Yes, ma’am," responded Jacqui reflexively. She was already doing it, as best she could, but the huge arc of the swinging arm was slicing through the direct path to Carol’s dwindling form, and the secondary destruction was a minefield of waiting danger. Jacqui had to thrust laterally first, then get past the wreckage before she could gain any distance toward her crewmate.

"Get on the radar, Sandy," Jacqui ordered. "I need a velocity vector on her right now!"

"Um, okay," Sandy said doubtfully. "Jaymi, you better give me a hand."

The slim brunette nodded, moving to join her longer-haired sister. For a moment, she glanced at Vanna. She had been the one to train on that equipment, but for her to work it, she’d have to unhook from her pre-breathing apparatus. Vanna’s eyes returned the helpless look, but they both knew that someone would have to be ready to go EVA.

All Vanna could do was say, "The manual is in Storage Compartment A-3. There are some diagrams of what the screen symbology means in Appendix 4."

There was a sudden silence as the shuttle thrusters cut off.

"What’s wrong?" asked Marilyn.

Jacqui shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing, except, I need data before I can do anything more."

"Just head that way until we get what you need," Marilyn demanded.

"And when we get there? Passing her with several hundred feet per second of excess speed? How are we going to help her then? We need to match orbits with her, not just wave as we go by. I need data for that."

"Whoo!" a voice from the speaker said - Carol’s voice. "That was one wild ride!"

"Carol!" four voices chorused together. "You’re okay."

"Yeah, well, more or less," she replied. "My neck feels stiff, like I wrenched it or something, and I think I may have broken one arm, but all things considered . . . "

Her voice held a note of humor when she said, "Hey, guess what. This means all those damn rides in the Vomit Comet were worthwhile after all. I’m tumbling in zero-g, but I’m not sick at . . . "

"Uh, oh," Carol said, her voice now not cheerful at all.

"What’s wrong?" demanded Marilyn.

"I just saw the station. I’m, um, quite a ways away."

Jacqui’s confident voice hid any trace of the frown those in the shuttle could clearly see. "We’re on our way."

"Gee, Beav, I didn’t think I was being serious. But you can come and get me any time you want."

Any answer Jacqui might have intended was sidelined by the distraction of a tap on her shoulder by Jaymi, who pointed at data scrolling up the pilot’s displays. "We’ve got her!"

"Not yet," Jacqui whispered grimly, her concentration on the data even as her finger held the mute button for her mike. She worked her specialist magic on the computer and in a moment they had a graphic display of multiple intercept paths, each with accompanying data on time to intercept and fuel used. Even as the first data were appearing on the screen, Jacqui’s nimble fingers were keying orientation data into the flight controls. "Grab on to something," she warned tersely, just before the shuttle started to rotate. A moment later, the OMS was firing and they were boosting toward a distant dot the computer promised was their drifting teammate.

Jacqui’s frown didn’t dissipate when they started after Carol, but she didn’t say anything. Marilyn waited for a moment, expecting the pilot to make some sort of announcement, but the petite brunette’s concentration was intense and rather than break into it, Marilyn made her own call.

"Carol, we’re on our way, now. We’ve got you on radar and have an intercept course laid in."

"S’all right," Carol replied. "I’m not goin’ anywhere." The she giggled and said, "Well, actually, I *am* going somewhere, but I’m not doin’ anything while I’m goin’ there."

Her voice was still clear in tone, but the slurring of the words drew Jacqui’s attention from her own calculations for a moment and her head came up to look through the port. Before she said anything though, Vanna’s voice sounded over the speaker.

"Carol, hon? Will you do me a favor while you’re, um, waiting?"

She had to repeat her call, "Carol, are you okay?"

"Jus’ fine," the distant redhead’s voice replied. "No problems where I am. How ‘bout you?"

Vanna’s voice held a worried note when she replied. "Carol, will you check your Oh-Two gauge for me? What’s it say?"

"It don’t say nothin’, girl," Carol’s voice giggled. "But it also doesn’t show nothin’. It’s broke."

"How do you know it’s broken?" asked Marilyn, breaking in.

"’Cause the silly thing says I’m out of air, but I’m not," Carol replied. "I feel fine. And I have hours of air left."

Vanna made a slashing motion across her throat, and Sandy switched off the transmitter. She was puzzling out the switches at Vanna’s station so that she could route their communications internally, when Jacqui took care of it, then spoke.

"We’re in trouble," their pilot said.

Marilyn started to speak, then caught herself and looked her question at Jacqui instead.

"Hypoxia," Jacqui said. "As Vanna guessed, Carol is running out of air."

Jaymi asked, "How can you be so sure? She’s not gasping for breath or anything, and like she said, she should have hours of air yet."

"Gasping is triggered by CO2 buildup, not by lack of oxygen," explained Jacqui. "When you’re low on oxygen, it’s a bit like being drunk. Get real low, and you just go to sleep."

"So we need to keep her awake?" Sandy suggested.

"Not necessarily," Jacqui replied. "She’ll use less air sleeping."

Marilyn asked the important question. "How long does she have?"

Instead of replying, Jacqui turned back to her calculations. Her body language said she was going to get there as soon as possible, doing whatever it took to save her crewmate. But that was an answer, too, though not good enough for Marilyn.

"Jacqui, how long does she have? And how long will it take to get there?"

"I’m NOT going to lose a member of my crew," Jacqui replied through gritted teeth.

"You ARE going to answer my question, though," Marilyn said quietly, but implacably.

Sandy leaned over to look at Jacqui’s calculations, then quietly whispered, "Oh my God."

"Someone better start giving me some answers," Marilyn said, still quiet, but storm clouds building in her tone.

Jacqui and Sandy looked at each other in silent agony, each praying that the other saw a solution where they could not.

A solution that was not there.

"It looks like . . . 40 minutes minimum," reported Sandy. "And, um, there’s another problem."

"Give it to us," ordered Marilyn. "All of it."

Jacqui pointed at a number on the trajectory data, then a gauge on her panel. "If we follow that minimum time trajectory, we use up all our fuel."

"That’s okay," Jaymi said. "We’ll just go home after that anyway.

Jacqui can handle it. Can’t you?"

"We use up ALL our fuel," repeated Sandy. "Including what we need for our own retro burn."

"It’s worse than that," Jacqui said. "Carol is going too slow for a stable orbit. She’s going to re-enter herself if we don’t get to her. And chasing her will mean we go down with her."

"So are you saying we can’t get to her?" asked Marilyn.

"No!" Jacqui replied. "I’m saying that we WILL get to her. But it will be on a path that means we re-enter right after we catch her."

"That would bring us down . . . where?" Jaymi asked with carefully controlled curiosity. The frown and shrug from Jacqui was enough of an answer.

Jaymi’s question was punctuated by a call over the speaker. "Hey, guys, whas goin’ on? You asleep over there?"

Jacqui looked at Marilyn for permission, and at the blonde’s nod, activated the transmitter.

"Carol, dear, how are you feeling?"

"Jus’ fine," the voice said lightly. "A bit lonely. When are y’all gonna drop by?"

"Would you check your Oh-Two gauge again for me?" Marilyn asked.

"Same as before," Carol replied. "I tol’ you, it’s busted."

"Carol," Marilyn said, slowly. "It may not be broken."

"Gotta be," Carol argued. "I’m feelin’ fine."

"That may be . . . hiding what’s going on," explained Marilyn patiently. "You remember the briefings we got on hypoxia?"

"On what?"

"Hypoxia. It means you’re not getting enough oxygen. It’s sneaky."

"Sneaky," Carol’s voice repeated dreamily. "Like ol’ Rachel.

Snuck up on me."

"Um, yes," Marilyn said. "We’re coming after you, but . . . it may take a while."

Something in Marilyn’s tone broke through Carol’s drifting state and her voice suddenly sharpened. "I’m not going to make it, am I?"

"We WILL get you!" Jacqui answered sharply. "I do NOT lose members of my crew."

"Not hard to find," Carol replied, her tone bitter. "Nobody out here but me."

Sandy reached over to cut the transmitter again. Her motion caught Jacqui’s eye, and the two brunettes looked at each other. Sandy’s pointed at a number on the trajectory plot, then her eyes made an offer to Jacqui. The pilot’s lips firmed and she pointedly turned back to her calculations. Her stiff body said she not only refused to take Sandy up on whatever she had offered, but refused to discuss it. Sandy sighed, then turned to Marilyn.

"Jacqui hasn’t explained the whole problem," Sandy began. "We’re not only going to be committed to re-entry when we reach Carol. We’re going to be partway into it."

"What does she mean, Jacqui?" asked Marilyn.

"We’ll probably be seeing some atmospheric effects when we rendezvous," Jacqui said dismissively. "I can handle it."

"With the bay doors open?" whispered Sandy. "And with Carol’s bo. . . with Carol reacting differently than we do?"

"I am NOT going to lose a member of my crew!" Jacqui declared.

"What is the risk?" Marilyn asked.

"I can handle it," Jacqui claimed again.

"You didn’t answer my question," Marilyn said quietly.

Jacqui just kept her face pointed at the displays. Marilyn sighed and said, "Vanna, what is the risk?"

"How low will we be at rendezvous?" the other blonde asked before answering.

"Maybe to the 5 millibar level," Sandy answered. "Less than 60 miles altitude, at about Mach 15."

"How much?" Vanna asked in shock.

Sandy didn’t answer. Instead she looked again at Jacqui.

Marilyn’s own eyes went to Vanna, who closed her eyes in dismay, but shook her head.

"Jacqui, stop thrusting," the curvy, blonde said, her soft body no counter to her hard words - words forced on her by a commander’s unrelenting responsibility.

"I can *get* her," Jacqui said, but her adamant words couldn’t hide the despair in her voice.

"Jacqui, stop the engines," Marilyn repeated implacably.

The pilot’s dark eyes glistened with frustrated tears, but she reached for a switch. Suddenly, they were weightlessly drifting again.

Marilyn closed her eyes for a long moment, searching within herself for the words to say. Jaymi’s slender arm stole around her shoulders in support, and Marilyn’s hand reached up to pat the brunette’s comforting touch. The others were silent, still, waiting. Sandy’s lips moved without sound as she remembered prayers she had long thought irrelevant. In a moment, Vanna was doing the same. Whether they shared the same view of God was not very important right then, both wanted the solace of faith in something greater than themselves, something that could help where they were helpless. Jacqui just cried, eyes filling with tears that had no where to go, that couldn’t even fall away.

"Carol?" Marilyn finally spoke. There was no answer.

"Carol?" Marilyn repeated.

The speakers provided Carol’s voice, seemingly so close. "Uhhhh, sorry, Boss. I musta dozed off. Sleepy."

"Carol, we have a problem," Marilyn said.

"Already figgered that out," Carol replied.

Jacqui spoke. "Carol, I’m so sorry."

"S’all right, Rachel. Unnerstan’"

Jacqui’s eyes narrowed in a new frown at the error in her name, but before she could correct Carol, Marilyn interceded, whispering with her mike muted.

"Go with it. I’ll explain later."

Jacqui shrugged, but nodded. "Thanks Carol. I appreciate that."

"’ppreciate you," Carol mumbled. Then her voice strengthened, though it was still slurred. "Rachel, you ever see that asteroid movie? Not the one with Bruce whatsisname, Willis. Other one."

"Um, sure," Jacqui said, confused.

"Inna end a’ that movie, when they’re gonna die, remember what the girl said?"

"Which girl?"

"Onna shuttle. Said they’d all get high schools named after them. Remember?"

"Yes."

"Good. Tell Marilyn, I want name to be Carol, not Carl."

"What?" Jacqui said, too surprised to continue with the role-play.

Carol’s voice took on a petulant tone. "Carol, not Carl. Promise me, Rachel. Tell Marilyn. She can do an’thin’. Promise?"

"I’ll tell her," Jacqui said, the confusion in her eyes not hiding the tightness in her throat.

"Gettin’ dark," Carol’s voice reported a few minutes later. "Can’t see Earth anymore. Mus’ be nighttime. Nighty night."

"Go to sleep now, Carol," whispered Jacqui.

"You, too, Rache," Carol replied. "G’night."

The silence that followed was broken only by a soft weeping too terrible for Marilyn’s heart to contain.

 

(continued in next part)

 

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SMITE 2 - Pheromone Pharmacopia © 2001 by Brandy Dewinter. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.