A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [182]
The first several bodies sickened her, but Zhett pressed on, concentrating on the work. She could have done nothing to help these soldiers who had chosen her planet as their fateful battleground. The Roamers had only wanted to be left alone. Was that so much to ask?
She surveyed the remains of a Manta cruiser, carefully inventorying usable materials. Salvage teams had already linked with the gutted hulk of the big Juggernaut. Ekti tankers moved in, interfacing with the stardrive fuel tanks and draining away every wisp for their own stockpiles.
“If the Eddies are really hijacking our cargo haulers and stealing fuel, then we don’t need to feel guilty for the turnabout,” said one of the engineers.
“I doubt any of these people deserved such a fate, even if they were pirates,” Zhett said, subdued. “Trust me, I know we can’t let this stuff go to waste, but don’t get gleeful about it. Think of what it cost.”
An awkward silence dampened the normal comm chatter. Del Kellum broke in: “My daughter’s put her finger on it. We don’t have to be smug, by damn. The drogues are our enemies, too.”
While heavy salvage crews attended to the largest vessels, Zhett took her grappler pod farther from the main concentration of debris. Explosions and desperate escape maneuvers had imparted wildly random vectors to tumbling flotsam, and she didn’t want to miss a gem out there in the emptiness.
She stumbled upon the faint distress signal, a pulsing automatic beacon so weak that she didn’t even notice until she was on top of it. She extended the pod’s grappling arms and adjusted her illumination beams.
Zhett saw a battered lifetube that had been ejected from an EDF cruiser, a single-man pod. Though its systems had been severely damaged, she detected one life sign aboard. The reflective hull, scorched and scarred, had begun leaking air. It wouldn’t last much longer.
She sent her message over the standard EDF frequency, not sure if the occupant could hear her. “Yo, I’ve got you. Just relax. We’ll have you out of there in no time.” She heard no response and wondered whether the lifetube had too little energy to run a discretionary transmitter. Maybe the survivor was unconscious or injured.
Using tiny bursts of her maneuvering jets, Zhett aligned her ship with the lifetube, matching orbital trajectories so the two vessels were motionless relative to each other. She clasped the tube with the grappler arms. Though her pod was a small vehicle not designed for carrying passengers, if the survivor’s life support had dropped below subsistence level, the occupant might not live long enough for her to tow him back to the nearest habitation shelter.
“All right, my friend, if you can’t help me, then I’ll have to do this solo,” she said over the radio, hoping he could still hear.
She pulled the lifetube into position, working carefully to adjust the air lock’s standard seal. It was difficult work, requiring absolute precision. With the back of her arm, Zhett wiped sweat from her forehead, then tried again, finally matching the two docking seals.
When she had equalized the pressure and opened the hatch, a stale, rancid stench flooded out to her. After so many hours, the air inside the lifetube was bad, but somehow the person inside was still breathing. She could see blood on the metal inner wall, like a patch of rust in the stuffy tube. Then she heard a groan—a sigh of relief, or maybe just exhaustion at the end of despair.
She reached in and grabbed the uniformed man’s shoulders. The soldier was a young man with a handsome and cultured face. She noted his rank insignia—a commander among the Eddies. The ID plate affixed to his breast said his name was FITZPATRICK.
The young man blearily opened his eyes. His left side and arm had been