Caught Between

A Thursday Prompt story
© 2018 by Walter Reimer

Prompt: carrier



Please, Deus, get me out of this.

Please?

Grigori glanced to his left, grimacing at the view through his cockpit windows before going back to glaring at his instrument panel. Apart from emergency power for life support and the fighter’s reaction control system, the little single-seat ship was nearly dead. The squirrel thumped the panel with a gloved fist and settled back in his seat, seething. He shifted in the padded chair as his tail, compressed within a pressurized sleeve, started to complain about his posture.

Below him, the planet moved on, unconcerned with his predicament. Above him, the deep cold black. No stars to be seen, as the reflected sunlight coming from the world beneath him swamped out their light.

It had been a fairly simple mission, with his squadron being dropped from just inside the atmosphere to contest the airspace over a large rebel city. Unfortunately, some stupid fucker had neglected to tell anyone that the antiaircraft systems down there were still active, and somehow overlooked the fact that the rebels had their own fighters.

Two of his mates had been killed within seconds of contact, Alys and Hamid struck by missiles before they fully realized that they’d been painted. As things went to shit, Grigori followed the usual doctrine and started heading up, back to the orbiting fleet and safety.

With two rebels hot on his tail.

Luckily, the planes chasing him didn’t have extra-atmospheric capabilities and had to fall back as the air got too thin. He, on the other paw, shot past the Karman Line and headed into low orbit, only to find that the fleet had moved on without him.

Then his power systems had failed. All of them: engines, main life-support, guidance, navigation, communications, the lot. As far as he could tell, he’d lost his nav and emergency beacons, too. Once he got over the initial surprise of his ship dying on him, he guessed that he’d run down the fuel cells fleeing from his adversaries.

Grigori had started cursing. He didn’t know why, but it seemed to be the thing to do under the circumstances, and after he ran out of filthy words (his mother would have surely stuffed a bar of soap in his mouth) he settled down and started taking stock of his situation.

In a word, he was fucked.

A spacecraft has to have certain things incorporated into the design to keep its occupants alive, like insulation and radiation shielding, and the fighter had those. The other category was consumables, notably power, water, air and food, and this was a short-haul fighter. He had water in the recycler to last maybe a few hours, some emergency ration packs for two days if he only nibbled, and . . .

It was going to be a foot race to see what ran out first, his remaining emergency power, or his air.

But all of that might be rendered moot, Grigori had realized as he looked out at the planet. He was in too low an orbit to be maintained properly, and not enough delta-vee to keep him ahead of gravity’s grip. Pretty soon (not more than two more hours, he estimated) his orbit would decay and he’d be headed back down into atmosphere the hard way.

Where the ever-living fuck was his ship? The Everest was huge, dwarfing even its cruiser escorts; it couldn’t have simply left.

Could it?

A memory swam up from the depths of his mind, an old story that his grandfather had told him. The Prophet’s coffin, suspended between Heaven and Earth. It was a pretty myth, but Grigori actually felt a bit of sympathy for the Prophet.

Another memory, a song his mother used to sing, and although he’d never been to Earth, and had never heard of Scotland, for a moment the cockpit heard him sing The Mull of Kintyre. When he finished singing, the squirrel looked out at the planet, and the light reflecting off his wings.

Wait a minute . . .

He almost started swearing again, but brought himself under control quickly and started checking things. Yes, he still had the RCS, good. He thought through what he had to do very carefully; the last thing he wanted to do now was waste fuel.

The little ship pitched slightly forward, yawed a bit, and started a very slow back-and-forth roll. It might give him motion sickness, but that was the absolute least of Grigori’s worries at this point.

An outside observer would see the little craft slowly waggling its wings, back and forth, back and forth, flashing silver in the reflected sunlight. There was no pattern to it, apart from the slow waggling, until a slightly stronger moment of thrust set up an odd kind of pirouette. The fighter apparently balanced on its nose, its wings strobing with a regular periodicity.

Grigori tried not to look out of the cockpit windows now. After a half-hour or so the motion was starting to make him feel a bit queasy, or maybe his air was starting to go bad.

Maybe he shouldn’t have been singing.

Please, Deus, he thought to himself, please listen to me . . . I don’t want to die.

As always, Deus didn’t deign to reply. After a moment Grigori opened his eyes and tried to look out, shading his eyes against the glare as the fighter rotated.

He blinked.

There was a ship out there, hanging on station not fifty meters from him. He recognized it immediately as a small picket ship, crew of maybe a half-dozen furs, usually assigned to a higher orbit than his to keep an eye for any ship trying to leave the besieged planet.

Lights flashed from the ship, and he was busy for a few moments as he used precious reaction fuel to bring his crippled and dying fighter to a stop relative to the picket. Suited forms emerged from the ship, moving slowly in the low gravity, coming toward him to verify that he was friendly, and whether this was a rescue mission, or a recovery.

Grigori sealed up his environment suit, but kept the cockpit hatch closed. He waved as one figure, features masked by his helmet’s faceplate, patted one gloved paw against the window. The figure then touched the side of his helmet.

“Are you all right in there?” Suit radios were good for short distances.

“So far,” Grigori said, “but I’m low on air.”

“Name?”

“Grigori Carlson, Lieutenant, Squadron XVF-55 off the Everest. We got our tails shaved clean down there.”

“So we heard. We’re going to grapple you in closer before we pop your hatch.” The one at his window gestured as the other moved aft. “I’m Omar, and that’s Rae. What happened?”

“Ran from two fighters, and everything died.”

“I’m not surprised,” Rae said. “There’s a hole here half the size of my paw, straight into your hull. Looks like it took out a reactant tank.”

“Damn.”

“But you’re in safe paws now. Your little trick drew our attention. How are you fixed for air?”

“About a half hour in the suit. Cabin air was starting to get stale.”

“Right,” Omar said. “Sit tight, and we’ll grapple you in.” He turned to face the picket.

The ship came closer cautiously as an arm began to extend from beneath it. His fighter abruptly jerked to the right, forward and down as the grapple engaged the mooring clamp on the smaller craft. Rae and Omar clung to paw-holds on the fighter as it was hauled closer to the waiting airlock.

Grigori felt tears welling up. It was a miracle, and Deus had heard his prayer. He was going to write to his mother, and when his term of service was up, he was going to have a long talk.

But first he wanted to get back aboard the Everest, among his remaining friends, and talk to the dropship’s chaplain.


end