Sword of Minerva (The Guild Wars Book 10) by Mark Wandrey (great books for teens TXT) 📕

“You can’t do it all yourself like that?”

“No,” Sato admitted. “The ship’s flight controls aren’t configured for a Human. I think it was Bakulu, or maybe Jeha. It’s taking a lot of my ability just to hover.”

“Okay,” Rick said and used the information flight control had sent, entering it into the navigation system, and then locking in the ship’s current position. “Steer 1-2-9, distance 1,900 meters.”

“Roger that,” Sato said. The ship spun around slowly and leaned forward, moving like a helicopter. “Watch the fuel consumption. Damn, everything is out of whack. We didn’t have time for flight tests.”

“We going to make it?”

“As long as there aren’t any delays,” Sato responded. “Damned good thing we didn’t try for direct ascent. I don’t think we would have made it.” A moment later, motors hummed, and the sound of rusty metal scraping echoed through the hull. “Extending flight surfaces.” They’d had time to test those, at least.

“Approaching position,” Rick said. Sato gave the slightest of nods. The ship slowed to a stop and Rick compared their position. “Fifty meters forward, eleven meters to starboard.” The ship moved. “Set and hold,” Rick said, and the ship stopped moving.

“Tokyo Starport flight control, Vestoon in position and standing by for orbital laser assist.”

“Stand by, Vestoon.”

Rick could see their fuel levels, and they were indeed going down precipitously. “Check fuel,” he said.

“Monitoring it. If we don’t have a push in 38 seconds, I’m going back to land again.”

To Rick, 38 seconds seemed long. However, he wasn’t wired in like Sato was, so he held his comment. The Tri-V flashed green, and ascent rocket number seven shut down. The ship yawed for a split second as Sato increased power to the other rockets.

“Make that 20 seconds,” Sato corrected.

The time ticked down. When only eight seconds were left, the radio came alive. “Vestoon, prepare for boost. Orbital laser initiating in five…four…three…two…”

They were punched in the rear as megawatts of power lit up the nozzle, and the old ship accelerated into the sky. Rick’s armor said they were pulling just over 3Gs, which was about normal for such a launch. Sato had cut the rockets the instant the launch laser hit, and they transitioned to vertical ascent.

“So much for not refueling in orbit,” Sato grumbled as his eyes opened with his reduced workload. This part of their trip to space was the easiest, he just had to follow an angular flightpath into LEO, low earth orbit. Nine minutes later, the laser cut out, and Sato brought the fusion torch online for a minute to circularize their orbit. “Easy as pie.”

“Never had that dangerous a pie,” Rick said, and both had a little tension relieving chuckle.

From there, the rest turned out to be easy, too. The strain of climbing to orbit caused a couple minor leaks, which Rick easily dealt with via his own built-in laser. Only one required Sato to help remove an electrical panel to access. They docked with a commercial fuel tanker two hours after entering orbit. The codes worked again, and they undocked with full reaction tanks once more. Sato was able to plot the course himself, and they rode the fusion torch out of orbit and toward the stargate.

In order to save fuel, they coasted most of the way. It was 12 hours to the stargate, plotted to arrive at the same time as gate activation. After a brief rest, they set about working on as much as they could.

Sato was most concerned about the dead ascent engine. They couldn’t work on it from inside the ship. This meant an EVA was necessary. Sato had bought three EVA suits, also known as spacesuits, before leaving. Like the ship’s stores, the spacesuit lockers were basically empty. But when Rick asked the scientist about his EVA experience, he didn’t get a straight answer.

“I did a lot of work EVA in shuttles and CASPers.”

“That’s not the same thing as a spacesuit,” Rick said. “CASPers are more like work pods, or little spaceships. A suit is a lot more dangerous. I’ll do the inspection.” He didn’t give Sato the option to argue, he just headed for the airlock. “Send me the specs.” A minute later, he was exiting into the black.

The armor was designed with universal Union-style data and power connection ports. All Rick had to do was take one of the zero-G maneuvering units and click it onto the back of his armor, trigger the suit’s vacuum operations through his interface, and go out into space.

Using puffs of compressed gas, the maneuvering unit let him easily fly under the coasting starship to examine the rocket engine.

“Its port is still open,” Rick reported. On most starships that could land, there were closable covers over ascent engines to protect them when not in use. As they were mounted within the hull, they provided easy access to interior structure and electronics, bypassing any armor.

“Okay,” Sato said. “Open the maintenance hatch, and let’s have a look.”

* * *

Rick set the maneuvering unit onto the shelf designed for it in the airlock. The ship’s systems would recharge the unit and repressurize the compressed gas thrusters. In all, he’d spent six hours in the black, first fixing the malfunctioning ascent rocket, then a half dozen other issues that had arisen during takeoff or since they’d left orbit.

When he arrived back on the bridge, Dakkar was half floating, half stuck to the computer/comms console, tapping controls with a tentacle. “Hello,” he flashed as Rick entered.

Rick stopped his flightpath by catching a handhold. “Where’s Sato?”

“He’s in engineering. I am working on a program for him.”

“Fine,” Rick said and floated back out. He located the scientist in the ship’s small engineering cubicle, a space three or so meters on a side, and five meters long. Its interior spaces were