Isaac stared at the monitor in horror with mouth agape as the Alucar drone tore through the outer airlock door. Cutting the hardened metal away with its wrist blades, it pried hardened steel with an exacting grip. The pilots finished latching the reactor core to the front of the ship. The machine must have latched onto the tether of Jakob’s spacewalk and drew itself in.
“Punch it, go!” Jakob yelled toward the cockpit.
The MEU’s pilot jammed the physical throttle lever on the console between him and the co-pilot and it jolted into motion.
Unable to get a grip on a bench handle, Isaac rocketed backwards from the sudden acceleration and slammed into the rear wall of the cabin. The impact rattled his core. His helmet bounced off the metal partition. As the ship got up to speed, the force pinning him to the wall eased and he began to float freely again. With a shaking arm, he pulled himself closer to the front of the ship using overhead handles and stared at the observation monitor. The drone recovered from dangling off a shred of the outer airlock. Then it began its assault once more, dragging itself back into the ship.
“Decompress, now!” Jakob radioed.
“Copy lieutenant, decompressing cabin. Masks, masks, masks.” The pilot spoke in an even tone, radioing for helmets to be on and pressurized. He reached overhead and flipped a switch. Air rushed into overhead vents in a few moments.
As oxygen vented from the room, the roar of the engines overhead faded to nothingness. Jakob floated over and brushed Isaac away from the door controls.
“What are you doing?” Isaac couldn’t hold back flaring his nose in frustration, concealing worry over his brother’s intentions.
Jakob turned and stared for a moment in silence. “What must be done.” He broke the quiet and slammed the activation button. Then, with gladius drawn, deployed a tower shield which telescoped out from his opposite wrist.
Isaac shuddered, and the thought of watching his brother rush to his death instilled fear.
The Alucar drone was nearly inside when Jakob aligned his shield within the inner door frame and hurled himself toward the machine. As the machine stabilized itself and dislodged a blade from torn metal, Jakob slammed into the drone. Both tumbled from the MEU and began to drift off into space.
With a single strike, the Alucar jabbed both of its blades through Jakob’s shield, narrowly missing his arm. He flicked his wrist and detached the tattered guard. Then he kicked center of mass in a bid to push himself back toward the MEU. But it was fruitless. The Alucar floated away from Jakob, who was still drifting away from the ship, the drone falling away faster than Jakob.
“Slow it down, man overboard.” Isaac called out.
“Negative, I’m not risking it.” The pilot responded.
Isaac gritted his teeth and psyched himself up. “Going out tethered,” he radioed.
“Leave me.” Jakob replied over the radio.
Issac wasn’t having it. Throwing the spacewalking harness’s belt straps over his suit and snapping them together with the hook in the middle, Isaac slapped the winch control to neutral to let it give slack. With a firm grip on the frame of the shredded outer airlock door, Isaac hurled himself from the ship and toward Jakob. The spacewalk harness had small thrusters on the belts, but Isaac wasn’t sure how much fuel was left to maneuver and there was no way to check now.
He closed in on Jakob, who slowly tumbled head over heels. Isaac’s jump miraculously got him on a bearing to collide with his brother. As he extended an arm to reach, Isaac tapped the thruster knob on the center of his chest to slow. He felt the thrusters vibrate but there was no deceleration. The suit was out of fuel. Without any way to control his momentum, Isaac collided with Jakob and the two drifted in a tumble toward the Alucar.
"I told you to leave me.” Jakob latched on and smacked his helmet visor against Isaac’s. “Now what’s your plan?”
Isaac didn’t know what to say and looked around for a solution. Sacrificing himself to get rid of the drone was stupid, something that Isaac couldn’t accept. Despite their tenuous relationship, Jakob was Isaac’s only living family. Isaac would rather risk his life for his brother than be truly alone.
“You got into this mess, how are you getting out?” Jakob demanded, staring at the Alucar drawing near with blades ready.
In a panic, Isaac tugged at the tether. It began to bunch up in a ball behind him with every frantic pull.
“That thing’s kilometers long.” Jakob uttered with a flat tone, defeated.
The line drifted toward the drone, and it snagged the tether and wrapped itself in the slack, then drew Isaac and Jakob closer. As the Alucar grew within almost an arm’s length closer, Jakob curled his legs up and placed them against Isaac’s chest, ready to shove him away. Desperately Isaac continued to tug at the tether, hoping he could get it to unravel entirely before they reached the drone. His arms began to tire as he threw his shoulders into yanking the rope. Sweating and panting, they were inches away from being in range of the drone’s blades.
Suddenly, the line snapped taut, and Isaac was yanked toward the MEU. The sudden force caused Jakob to become dislodged and again tumble in space. Isaac reached for his brother. With only a few fingers, the two clasped hands as Isaac was drawn back to the ship. He strained to keep a grip on Jakob. With a pivot, Jakob latched onto Isaac’s forearm and the two were pulled back toward the craft, each barely hanging on to the other. As the line straightened out, the force flung the Alucar from the line into the void.
Isaac and Jakob bumped into the rear hull of the MEU, the over-sized engines blasting away around them. Isaac shoved Jakob inside the torn hole where the outer airlock door once was. Then Isaac curled up in fear of being incinerated by the exhaust of the huge ion engines around him. The tether began to draw Isaac into the ship and as he uncovered his face, he found himself within the exposed airlock.
“I might be crapping out of a bag for the rest of my miserable life, but you’re going to need a stronger back to haul around those bricks in your pants, L.T.” Erik radioed weakly, floating near the winch controls.
Jakob let off a belly laugh and patted the wounded sergeant on his shoulder. Then he hauled Erik back to the passenger benches and latched him into a seat, pulling the overhead bar down.
With shaking hands, Isaac struggled to unbuckle the belt around his chest to free himself from the tether. Jakob returned and loomed over Isaac with a disapproving stare. Then, out of mercy he reached in and disconnected the clasp, letting the rig drift away.
“Get in here. Last thing I need is you falling out the back now.” Jakob beckoned Isaac to get out of the airlock and back into the cabin.
As Isaac moved out of the airlock, his brother hit the switch and sealed the door.
“That was a stupid thing to do.” Jakob’s harsh, disappointed tone boomed over the radio. “People are depending on you to keep that lifeboat going. They need you to stay alive.”
“One minute to dock.” The pilot called out over the radio.
Isaac wanted to argue but found himself in the wrong and relented. He floated over to the bench and secured himself with the overhead bar, lamenting how right his brother was. The weight of how his own death meant that everyone would die shortly after. Isaac felt trapped, unable to truly decide his own fate. He sat, quiet in his thoughts as the MEU returned to the lifeboat.
It was a trapezoidal shape, slightly rounded with a bulge in the middle. The thruster blocks on one of the narrow ends were far too small for a craft of that size, but design concessions were made to prevent colony ships from carrying double its weight in thruster blocks alone. Lifeboat 9, once District 9 when it was a part of the Endurant hull, was an engineering block. It had a full-stack bio reactor array and converter facilities, something that most other districts didn’t, and what was keeping them alive this long.
Lifeboats were designed for a few weeks of spacefaring, more than long enough for the flotilla to organize a rescue. Colony ships travel in formations, and there should have been others nearby to assist when the Endurant broke apart from the Phage. But Lifeboat 9 was still underway, almost a full flotilla-year. No other ships in the local formation responded. Without wasting time, the lifeboats moved in a group toward the next nearest colony ship in the formation, the Fortitude. But the ship was nowhere to be found when they reached its expected location. For a week or so, the lifeboats traveled around, searching for other colony ships. It became clear that the Endurant was unexpectedly alone.
Eventually other lifeboats couldn’t continue their voyage. They ran out of battery power or life support systems started to fail. So Lifeboat 9 took on their residents and crew. As the trip continued toward the outer rim to locate military vessels, raiders came to pick the lifeboat group apart. Lifeboat 9 were the only ones who could repel them, as engineering decks were mandated by the fleet to have a detachment of marines stationed to protect all reactor arrays. Soon it was the only boat safe enough to continue the journey. Other boats were abandoned.
After matching speed with Lifeboat 9, the MEU dropped the reactor core into the containment section of the docking bay, which was a small compartment of the lifeboat that was just large enough to fit the core and the MEU like a slice of bread in a toaster. With the core secure, Isaac had a ton of work ahead of him to get that thing in a stable enough state to hook up to the ship’s array.
As the MEU readied to connect to the exit hatch that led into the lifeboat proper, a looming sense of dread washed over Isaac, feeling the distinct excess of space within the cabin. He could feel the distant tug of gravity underneath his seat as air rushed in from pressurization.
“Brace for grav sync.” The pilot called out as the two crafts were going to dock, which required the bio shielding, a measure to stop the spread of Phage, on the MEU to lower and allow the gravity system on the lifeboat to fully affect the MEU.
With a hiss, the two ships connected, and gravity plopped Isaac onto the bench. He didn’t want to get up, knowing what was outside.
“Help me with him.” Jakob called Isaac.
Erik stood with Jakob’s help; arm wrapped over his shoulder. With a determined sigh, Isaac rose the restraint bar and scooped himself under the wounded marine’s other appendage. The sergeant grunted in pain as Isaac moved to hold him up. Isaac pressed the inner airlock door button and a rush of air blasted into the cabin, equalizing it with the docking port.
As the three stepped out of the short thoroughfare which led into the lifeboat proper, they found themselves surrounded by the family members of everyone who didn’t make it back, desperation and hunger etched into their faces.
