The End of All Things #2: This Hollow Union by John Scalzi Read Free Book Online

I have to do this without a co-pilot.” Ze pressed a button on his pilot monitor. “Attention, team,” ze said. “You have two ditu to get on your vacuum suits. In three ditu I’m pumping the air out of the hold and opening her up. Be ready to take on passengers at speed. Have emergency air and heat prepared. These people are going to be cold and near asphyxiated. If they die once you got them, I’m leaving you out here.”
    “Inspiring,” I said, after ze had finished.
    “It works,” Aul said. “I’ve only had to leave them out here once. Now, slide in a little more, Councilor. I have to seal up this compartment. Unless you want to try holding your breath for a while.”
    *   *   *
    “The four of them haven’t drifted too far from each other,” Aul said, as we were underway, two ditu later. Ze put an image on the main screen showing the positions of the diplomats. “And two of them are together so we really only have three targets.” A curving line swept through all three positions. “We open the gate, bring our speed down, and literally let them drift into the hold. Three targets, three ditu, we go home, we’re heroes for the sur.”
    “You’ll curse us if you put like that,” I said.
    “Don’t be superstitious,” Aul said.
    The aft portion of the Odhiambo erupted.
    “Oh, come on, ” Aul yelled.
    “Give me tracking, please,” I said. Aul transferred the screen to the co-pilot monitor. The main portion of the Odhiambo ’s aft was still spinning away from the diplomats, but a large chunk of debris was now launching itself in a different direction entirely. I watched as the shuttle’s computer plotted its trajectory.
    “This debris is going to hit these two,” I said, pointing to the paired diplomats.
    “How long?” Aul asked.
    “Three ditu,” I said.
    Aul seemed to think about it for a moment. “All right, fine,” ze said.
    “All right, fine, what?” I asked.
    “You might want to make your center of gravity as low as possible. The inertial and gravity systems in this thing are pretty reliable, but you never know.”
    I hunkered down. “What are you about to do, Aul?”
    “It’s probably best you wait until it happens. If it works, it will be really great.”
    “And if it doesn’t?”
    “Then it’ll be over quickly.”
    “I’m not sure I like where this is going.”
    “If it’s all the same, Councilor, don’t talk to me until it’s over. I need to concentrate.”
    I shut up. Aul pulled up the diplomats’ positions on zis pilot screen and overlaid the trajectory of the debris. Then ze started moving the shuttle forward. Aul stared at zis pilot screen, typed furiously into it, and never looked up.
    I on the other hand looked at the external view monitor and saw a distant rising mass of debris, and our shuttle moving inexorably closer to it. We appeared to be on a suicide mission straight to the heart of that debris. I glanced over to Aul but ze was in focus, all attention drawn to the screen.
    At almost the last possible instant I saw on the monitor a white starburst which I registered—too late!—as a vacuum suit we were going to hit head on, just as the debris rose like a leviathan below us. I sucked in a breath to shout, saw the images on the monitor streak, and then clenched for the violence of the debris smashing into our shuttle from below. As Aul promised, it would be over quickly.
    “Huh,” Aul said, and spoke into zis headset. “You get them? Yes. Yes. Right. Good.” Ze looked over to me. “Well, that worked,” ze said.
    “What worked?” I asked.
    “High-speed rotation around the target,” Aul said. “It takes a tiny bit of time for the shuttle’s inertial field generators to register a new entity and adjust its velocity. If I picked up our new passengers on a straight path at the speed I was going, they would have turned into jelly against the interior of the shuttle. So I rotated us very quickly, to give the field just enough time to register