Chapter Two
The hiss and spit of an enormous virtual reality cobra hit me with cool, stinking breath. A dull ache of unconsciousness beckoned me back to oblivion.
Funny how it smelled like the air scrubbers on my pod.
My mind pulled me back to memories of the pod fire from an electrical short that one time.
Grandma Susu had helped me rebuild the scrubbers, but we’d never been able to get the faint acrid scent out of the housing plastic. For a while both my curly black hair and her tightly braided silver-grays had carried the nasty reek too. Grandpa Babu had joked about making us camp out at one of the Dockside apartments until we smelled better. Of course, Omaara, who couldn’t take a joke, had said she’d file a report with the Station Council for health code violations if we took the apartment next to the one she and her dad lived in.
If Ladybug’s blowers were on full blast, trying to compensate for a leak, it’d smell like this.
What an odd thing to build into a VR sensory system.
I’m going to be in so much trouble when Mom and Dad find out I used a VR set.
“They aren’t good for adolescent brains, honey,” my mind supplied in my mother’s voice.
“No good for anyone’s brains.” Wrinkled Susu shook her head, so that the beads rattled like the flutter of the emergency air protective case cracking open in the cascade quick release it was designed to do on low cabin air pressure.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
My brothers glared at me in matching expressions of disgust, odd on the faces of two boys who generally agreed on nothing. They both mouthed things at me that I couldn’t make out. Since I was in a VR, it didn’t surprise me in the least that both my baby brother and my older (but not wiser) brother were in here with me.
I’m not the kind of person to do something this dangerous on a whim. Though the vague idea that maybe I was floated in the back of my mind. Why would I think that about myself? If I had, I was sure I’d had a good reason and a plan. Or at least what seemed that way before things went sidewise.
Hope that I might get away with whatever it was rose.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
Why does my head hurt so much?
I had no idea VR would be this bad for a brain this quickly. Didn’t some people’s parents let their kids do this all the time? Not a Sadou family. Or anyone like the Rockworths or the type of people tough enough to try their hands and minds at contract work like the Ulbadines. But what about the people who lived on Earth’s Moon or were still on the planet Earth?
The studies about this being bad had had to have come from somewhere. Shouldn’t it be fun, at least at first?
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
“SHE’S NOT PULLING BACK UP,” that fume-breathed jerk Omaara said, in a weird choppy voice full of static like she was on a pod radio or a suit comm, and, Who let her into a VR with me? No fair! I’d never broken the rules, never done VR ever, and when I do, Omaara is in it with me?
“DON’T…NO SOS…CALY…GOT…” Xavier’s transmission was even more choppy.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
Wait.
Horror snapped my eyes fully open and a raging headache tried to crash me back into blackness again. I fought and won. Vision wavered, and screaming pain in my head made even thinking hurt, but by sheer will I was waking up.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
Panic surged me to full consciousness, and spite kept me going. I will not die an idiot. Is my blood stream too oxygen-starved? Is it already too late? No, it can’t be. I’m awake. Besides Ladybug is set up as a trainee pod with all the student safety controls. It shouldn’t be possible to kill myself in it.
Except…
I’d used that Rockworth software.
I’m going to die an idiot.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
No snake. No VR. Nothing but my own mistakes spinning me out of control on an easy let’s-test-out-the-pods jaunt.
I’m such an idiot.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
You can’t die of embarrassment.
I’m certain of that, but you can want to. And you can absolutely die from your best friend’s overconfident support. If I let myself die from this, Xavier will blame himself forever.
I can’t. I just can’t do that to him.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
I forced my eyes to focus on the blur that was the emergency kit, shame swallowing me whole, I snapped it open and put the oxygen mask over my face.
Oddly, I couldn’t hear anything on the comms channels. During drills while still connected to the station, I’d at least been able to hear the alarms. Maybe they didn’t sound within my own pod, but they should be going off at Chawla Station. It might take an instant for my pod’s automated distress signal to reach home, especially if Ladybug was out of direct line-of-transmission and Daphnis Bound or MetalHeadCrusher7 were relaying it.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
I took deep breaths waiting for the sounds of pity to fill my radio. I reached for the controls. The Rockworth kernel spasmed again. My pod bucked sideways again as a clang reverberated through the hull.
I found the manual control switch high on the overhead panel where it wasn’t going to be touched accidentally. I turned up the volume for the internal speakers. Rescuers would be here soon, I promised myself.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
But nothing heard. Omaara’s voice didn’t shrill out triumphantly about what a wimp I was. The open channel didn’t immediately fill up with discordant voices with the usual chatter about how I wasn’t a real Sadou anyway, and it hadn’t been fair to expect things of me as if I was. Even Prof. Azul didn’t say anything.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
The channel was dead. Nothing.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
Someone would already be rescuing me if Omaara or Xavier had called in my mess. Professor Azul’s remote would be trying to stabilize Ladybug if nothing else. I turned away from the comms panel and looked out the viewport. All I could see was giant Saturn, with the great pale expanse of Ring ice spreading out in the distance, rolling in and out of view as my pod tumbled. The light from the distant Sun streamed through the iceroids as I rotated slowly to point back the way I came. The big iceroid I’d so arrogantly skimmed was visible behind an expanding cloud of glittering debris. That must be the smaller part that tumbled off at the end. I remembered trying to dodge and how the Rockworth mod beat me to it. I’d been going a few hundred meters per second relative, and that ice out there was hard. I was lucky it was such a small chunk or Ladybug would’ve just shattered open.
I tried to figure out where I was as my view kept rotating around.
The Sun was on the wrong side of the Ring.
I had punched through the Ring!
With no control.
I’m such an idiot. But also a very lucky idiot. I’d made it, hadn’t I?
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
It’s a miracle I hadn’t hit anything else bigger.
The distinct sound of ice on metal came followed almost immediately by a change in Ladybug’s tumble rate.
Okay. So I hadn’t hit anything else bigger yet.
I needed to save myself.
“You can do this, Calypso,” I said aloud. “The mod messed up the code directing the thrusters. Fix that first so you don’t run into anything else.”
The hiss thing happened again, but I didn’t have time for that.
“Ladybug.” Nice and loud with my best command-of-the-pod full enunciated voice: “Three-axis stabilize with laterals. Mark.”
Nothing happened. No click-bang as the thruster fuel valves open. No feeling of acceleration.
I glanced over to the detailed propulsion engineering repeater. A wall of error codes greeted me. Ladybug hit something a little bigger and the screen jerked to try to hit me in the face. I noticed another icy boulder coming up fast before my tumble took it out of view.
I was definitely going to hit it again.
“Sorry, Dad, but I think the autopilot’s having a bad day.” I slapped the reboot button for the regular controls and pulled hard on the throttles to take my pod further away from the Ringplane.
My poor Ladybug swung around with the grace of an overfed hamster about to be fed treats by every single member of the thirty-two-kid preschool class. She flew like she was missing a quarter of her thrusters, but at least I didn’t smack into the rising mass of my new least favorite iceroid.
This reprieve bought me time to push up out of my seat and look out the bulbous viewport back along Ladybug’s hull.
Well, that explained it at least.
A quarter of Ladybug’s thrusters were ripped off, along with their mounting pylons, a reserve fuel tank, and the articulated webbing of my long-haul communications antenna. The big one. The only one I had that could call the Station for help. I still had short-range broadcast communications so I should be able to talk to the other pods and Prof. Azul’s remote…if there wasn’t a bunch of Ring ice between us. That was why I couldn’t hear anyone else.
I reduced my relative velocity as much as I could then made sure all the fuel valves to the lost thrusters were shut so I didn’t lose any more.
“Okay, okay, okay.…What next, Calypso?” as I finally had time to look at Ladybug’s status display in earnest. “You’ve lost some fuel, some laterals, your long-haul comms, and you’ve got an air leak somewhere…”
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
What was that weird sound? The oxygen levels in the pod showed a leak somewhere but nothing that should’ve made me lose consciousness earlier. What had…
Oh. OOOOH. How had I forgotten about Chameleon? Dorian’s “gift” clung grimly to the lip of the viewport pressing itself against a spot on the rim. It looked like the stress of the impact had distorted the frame enough to cause a leak or a crack somewhere. Which was pretty impressive since that viewport had four redundant panes of fused silica.
Hiss. Air rushed out the hole. Throo-psts-t-t-t. Chameleon tried to sit on the hole to plug it bodily until the pressure of the interior atmosphere squeezing past the sides of his body pushed him back away again.
Hiss. Throo-psts-t-t-t.
I cranked the handle to close the shutters over the viewport, grateful for the simple hand powered mechanism and the extra seals on the shutter for just such an occasion. The hiss stopped the moment the shutter secured completely. I snagged Chameleon and pulled him with me. He wasn’t really trying to fix it, I told myself. He probably was just sucked over by the leak like things do in a zero-gee cabin losing pressure. But my brother still was going to kill me if the little creature harmed himself trying to be a better spacer than his human shipmate.
No hiss. No throo-psts-t-t-t.
Blessed silence.
Xavier’s pod streaked by my cracked viewscreen in a skillful and elegant loop to steady out again at a flawless zero velocity relative to the Ring.
“I found her! DON’T YOU DARE CALL FOR A PICKUP, OMAARA.” Xavier’s words, also way too loud, had that clicking noise that comm sets make after an end-transmission. “Hey, Calypso, don’t sweat it. We’re using a narrow-beam low-signal-strength comm. Prof. Azul hasn’t figured out anything is up yet. I got Omaara to do some special practice runs to keep him distracted. I didn’t know he let you dive today!”
Yeah, I thought, That’s because he didn’t, but Xavier Rockworth has my back. I can, too, do it, Omaara.
“You okay, Calypso?” Omaara’s voice came over the speaker. The Daphnis Bound popped down to our side just long enough to send that message and popped back up again. Flawless piloting.
I just gritted my teeth. As if she really cared about me.
“Oh, poor Ladybug. Your grandma is going to be mad.” Xavier added without needing to, “And Prof. Azul is going to notice.”
The remote slammed through to our side of the Ringplane and circled my craft. So much for Omaara distracting him. Daphnis Bound followed him.
“She’s fine,” Xavier radioed, “obviously Caly’s just working on her piloting skills.”
“Mr. Rockworth, Ms. Ulbadine, switch to automated piloting and zero relative for the remainder of this session! Ms. Sadou, your waiver doesn’t exempt you from flying your vector as briefed.” the voice of Prof. Azul came in calmly but with more intensity than I normally heard.
He definitely knew something had gone wrong, but why hadn’t he called an emergency yet?
I was flying on a waiver this session, not getting graded on this like Xavier and Omaara were. That wasn’t supposed to mean that I was immune from getting rescued!
Sure, I had to have gotten the pod certified to get graded, and I hadn’t managed to get all the systems running myself in time. I’d hoped to get one graded run in before my family left for our trip to Phoebe. But that wasn’t looking likely, and besides, I still had to finish the life support systems. Those were hard. And so, I’d instead been supposed to be on all pre-certified standard systems, except like an idiot, I’d added in that one little extra.
“I’ll figure it out later,” I told myself. “Just got to figure out what is wrong with my comms.”
“Calypso’s got an exception,” Xavier said, in what was probably supposed to be a defense of me. The waiving of requirements back before launch had seemed just fine.
Omaara made a rude noise on the radio.
“Quiet on the line. People have died from mishaps caused by poor comms discipline.” Prof. Azul added, “All comms points have been deducted from Ms. Ulbadine’s flight accordingly.”
“No points from Ms. Sadou’s though,” Omaara pointed out.
Prof. Azul had made a mistake announcing that he’d zeroed out her comms score. He had nothing left to threaten her with now. I hadn’t lost any points, but I didn’t have any to lose on an ungraded practice.
“Too bad I can still die from being given too many exceptions,” I grumbled.
The oxygen cannister from my emergency box gave one long beep. “Okay, I got this.” That was my thirty minutes warning. I glanced at my oxygen reserves and realized I had plenty of time. It looked like the collision hadn’t taken out any of my oxygen tanks. Ladybug’s engines were hydrogen-oxygen powered, so every pod carried way more oxygen than needed for breathing.
I picked up the comm headset and keyed it on. I should be able to patch into Xavier or Omaara’s comms. They still had their long-haul comms so they could still tell the station I needed help. My comms status display said one of my short range broadcast antenna was still attached to Ladybug at least.
“Prof. Azul, this is Calypso. I need an emergency pickup.”
He didn’t answer. Prof. Azul always answered, always had a hint or a suggestion. This time: nothing. He hadn’t gotten my transmission.
His remote was right there. But his antenna angle seemed to be directed towards Xavier. I thought the damage was obvious, but a pod had a lot more mass than a remote. They could carry bigger telescopes. Maybe Professor Azul couldn’t see that my pod was badly damaged?
“My outgoing comms are intermittent maybe?” I tried to send again. No one replied to that either. My transmitter wasn’t sending anything. Not good. I could only think of one more thing to do.
When in doubt reboot it out.
Half hoping that it wouldn’t work, I turned my entire comms system off, paused for a moment, and turned it back on again.
The blare of angry voices demanding to know what in all the Rings I’d done to Ladybug was proof enough that outgoing transmissions were working again.
I almost regretted fixing them now that I knew help was on the way.