The High Five

A Mortifying Accident

Eeaah—Milo! Bobby—aghhh! Help—Stuck! Agh—hurts!

"Hold on!" Milo shouted. "I'm coming! Just—hold on!" He slapped his phlex onto his wrist and launched himself into the corridor, colliding hard into the wall. His leg thrashed out reflexively. His instincts were telling him to run, hop, kick—but even with two legs that wouldn't work in null gravity. It only caused him to thrash about. He forced himself to stop, plant, and push off.

"Just stay calm and don't panic," he said for Tayen's sake. "I'm on my way." But his inner voice was screaming, Oh my God! Oh my God! He caromed off a wall as he came around a bend. He didn't feel the impact.

Glancing at his phlex, he saw that Tayen's dictation had stopped. Had she blacked out? How badly was she crushed? The outer doors were designed to make a tight seal. A few inches of flesh and bone wouldn't put up much resistance. Best case, mangled feet. Worst case, a slow and torturous death, writhing in agony as she bled out inside her suit. What would he do when he got to her? He had undergone basic medical training, but crushed and shattered limbs was a level of trauma he was not remotely prepared for.

He arrived at the suit-up chamber and threw himself at the airlock door. Through the small, round window, he could see Tayen floating in the room's center. She was in a bad way. Both ankles were pinned in the portal, crushed down to a couple inches across, and her legs were twisted around at an odd angle; she must have dislocated her knees or hips. She writhed about in intense pain, pounding at her helmet with her gloved hands as if she had gone berserk. A fresh string of consonants ran across his phlex. She was alive at least.

Milo tugged on the door's handle, but it wouldn't budge. A small arc of lights above it was only halfway lit. The pressure had to equalize between the two chambers before it would be allowed to open. Another fucking safety precaution. He pounded helplessly at the window. Collecting his wits somewhat, he opened a band to Bobby. "Goddammit, why haven't you stopped the burn already? We've got to get that portal open!"

"Listen, captain," came Bobby's voice, calmer than it had any right to be. "That's not what—"

"Just do it!" Milo killed the connection.

Finally, the arc flashed green, and the door to the airlock squealed open. There was the hiss of leaking air accompanied by a loud whirring. The outer seal wasn't airtight, and the blower was working extra hard to compensate. Through the noise another sound could be heard: muffled human groaning.

Not knowing what else to do, Milo took hold of Tayen's helmet in both hands. One side was loose, but the other was still latch-locked. At least this was one problem he could fix. He pressed the loose side back down into its groove. Once the tension was equalized, he was able to flip the remaining latch and give the helmet a final twist. As he was pulling it away, matted clumps of red hair came billowing out.

"Arhhh!" Tayen gasped. "Finally! I couldn't get the blasted thing off. It's like having your head stuck in a fishbowl." Only it wasn't Tayen's voice. And the red hair certainly wasn't Tayen's either.

"Vivian?" Milo said in shock. "How did you—"

"Can we do the debriefing later? After a shower, maybe? I'm all covered in sweat and ick. And I may need to change my underclothes, if you know what I mean."

"You're..." Milo was finding it hard to process. "You're all right?"

"Aside from the fact I can't feel my legs. Oh, that's right. I don't have legs, just these little paddle thingies. I could use a little help getting out of this suit. I wrenched my shoulder pretty bad doing the thruster jiggle."

* * *

Now there was a second empty chair at the mess table. Tayen had not responded to the all-team assembly, and Milo hadn't gone seeking after her.

"Thanks to Vivian here, the first correction burn is under way," Bobby said. He had realized what happened before Milo and ignored his last command to terminate. "If all goes to plan, we'll be safely inside the moon's shadow before the leading edge of the CME arrives. The nav-AI can handle it from there. We'll have about twenty hours of full protection. That should be more than enough."

"Speaking of the CME," Milo asked. "What's the latest? How bad is it?"

"Bad." Bobby picked at a scab on his neck. His color was returning, but his skin was as bruised and scabrous as a centenarian's. "We just got our first direct measurement from a forward sat. It's even worse than we thought. The readings are off the charts. If there were a Class Six, this would be it. It's a long one too. At least twelve hours start to finish. Within the CME there are multiple high intensity pulses. Even one of those would be bad news if we were in its path."

"Lucky for us that we won't be," Vivian reiterated. But her expression darkened as the implications caught up to her. "Is Earth in danger?"

Milo felt a rush of concern followed by a pang of guilt. All this time, he had only been thinking about the ship and its crew.

"As far as a lot of people dying, probably not," Bobby said. "Still, it's going to be a rough ride. There is a shelter in place warning, only the second ever issued for a solar event. Anyone out on the beach will get one hell of a tan. The biggest problem is what this thing will do to the global techno-sphere. There will be power and communication outages on an unprecedented scale. No one knows exactly what the effects will be. The last time something like this happened was before computers. It electrified train tracks and telegraph wires."

"The Carrington event," Jess said.

"Exactly," Bobby continued. "This could be even worse. Satellites will get hammered. Except for the military ones, most don't have near enough shielding. I'm expecting major space carnage. GPS, weather, broadband, telescopes—you can kiss them all goodbye."

"Oh my God, the stations," Vivian said. "Jake."

"He should be fine," Bobby reassured her. "The bunker on Paranor Station is heavy duty, and they're piling on even more shielding. Space Fleet got lucky in a way. The Mars transit ships are outside the CME's range, and all manned vessels within the Earth-moon system except one were able to redock."

"Which one was that?" Jess asked.

"Us. Did I mention that Vivian really saved our asses?"

"Only ten times at least," Milo said. "But it was your plan." If they came through this in one piece, it would be due to the comms engineer. "Thanks."

"Yeah, sure," Bobby mumbled.

Despite having pulled off the operation, the mood remained subdued. They all realized what a close call it had been. It was easy to picture an alternative version of events with one crewmember lost to space while the rest awaited a slow, agonizing death in the bunker. Even success had not come without a price.

"Anyone ready to talk about the elephant that's not in the room?" Vivian said.

"What's there to say?" replied Bobby. "Tayen choked, end of story."

"We don't just ditch team members because they screw up once," Milo said.

Bobby grunted. "A screw-up is what happens when you clog the Cuisinart, not when you almost doom the entire crew to roast alive. Besides, it's not like this was the first time."

"Other astronauts have overcome personal failure," Jess said. "Mary Olliver was operating the robotic arm of the USF Ulysses when it punctured a hydrogen tank, causing an explosion that killed two of the crew. The guilt of that always haunted her. But she went on to become the third chancellor of the Allied Space Federation. Some say she was the best. The Federation never lost an astronaut on her watch."

"Then let her go get a desk job like this Mary whoever," Bobby said. "I'm not saying we should toss her out an airlock. Just keep her out of the way until we can dump her off at the station."

"She was and is still a member of this crew," Milo said firmly. "And that's not going to change."

"He's right," Vivian spoke up.

"Now you're defending her too?" Bobby said. "You're the one she almost got killed. If you weren't already a cripple, you'd be one now."

"And that's why I should be the one to talk to her."