Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [103]
She concentrated on flying again, not looking at him, though he could see a sparkle of tears in her large eyes. “Roamers live and work in high-risk environments. Everybody knows that. Accidents come with the territory. We just try not to let the same disaster happen more than once.” He saw her swallow convulsively. “In fact, the dome breach accident that killed my mother and brother led to a remarkable innovation. We would have sold the idea to the Big Goose, if we hadn’t thought you’d cheat us.”
Fitzpatrick didn’t rise to the bait. “What was your solution?”
“We disperse thready aerogel clouds in the upper layers inside the colony hemisphere. That way if a breach happens, the squishy aerogel clutter is sucked to the gap first. They whoosh over, seal together, and clog the hole. Exposed to vacuum, the material sets and seals the breach like platelets in your blood forming a scab over a wound.”
Fitzpatrick recalled Tasia Tamblyn, another Roamer, and her unorthodox solution of creating artificial rafts out of tactical armor foam to hold refugees on Boone’s Crossing. “That’s quite an idea.”
“You learn to be resourceful when you don’t get everything on a silver platter,” Zhett said. “Like some people I know.”
Fitzpatrick felt he had to defend himself, at least a little. “Yeah, it was so easy growing up with a famous, snooty name. Once in a while I wished I could just have a normal, unremarkable life.”
“We know your parents were ambassadors,” Zhett said. “And your grandmother was Chairman Maureen Fitzpatrick, Dame Battleaxe herself.”
Fitzpatrick nearly choked with unexpected laughter. “That’s a good name for her.” He pictured his stern grandmother, remembered the times he had spent with her as a child. Maureen was distinguished-looking, with porcelain features and an icy beauty—few people’s conception of an old battleaxe—but he realized the appellation was completely accurate. “And I knew her only after she’d retired and supposedly mellowed. I would not have wanted to cross her when she was the Hansa Chairman.”
As Zhett flew the grappler pod around the battlefield wreckage, Fitzpatrick noticed other pods and small tugbikes carrying Roamer salvage experts who dismantled the ships, stripping away valuable materials. Electronic systems, sleeper modules, food and air supplies, even scrap metal. He assumed everything was hauled over to the spacedocks and ship-assembly grids, where they would be reinstalled in Roamer constructions.
“So who was your grandfather? How did he put up with her?” Zhett asked.
Fitzpatrick shrugged, watching a work crew remove a large Juggernaut hull segment that had been blackened by hydrogue lightning. He turned away, not wanting to look at the damage.
“Oh, I never even met him. When their marriage ended in a bitter divorce, good old Dame Battleaxe used her political clout to crush the poor man. She made him bankrupt, destitute, and he never set foot in the halls of power again. I always wondered what was so bad about the guy.” Self-consciously, he ran a hand through his loose, dark hair. Already, it was growing longer than he’d ever been allowed to keep it in the EDF. “I knew my grandmother well enough not to believe her ‘Maureen-centric’ view of history.”
Zhett flew past a mangled Remora, its cockpit torn open as if some rabid dog had ripped it to shreds. Parts of an engine drifted about, and Fitzpatrick was sure he caught a glimpse of a deflated spacesuit, all that remained of the dead pilot. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Could we, um…look someplace else?”
Without teasing him, she flew away from the salvage operations, following the long, sweeping ring. Below, Osquivel’s clouds seemed smooth and peaceful, giving no hint that monsters hid deep within.
“By virtue of being Fitzpatricks, my parents were made ambassadors to a succession of Hansa colony worlds. They transferred from place to place as they got bored with each location. But I lived with private tutors or in fancy boarding schools. My fellow blueblood students and I had regular assignments to go slumming—you know,