EPILOGUE
Sabbath pulled himself along the passage with his right hand, thirty centimeters at a time with long pauses in between. His left hand clutched his right ankle. His right leg, and the rest of his body below the navel trailed behind the ankle, bobbing along inside the bottom half of his suit in a soup of blood and urine.
The top half of his suit had sealed itself at his severed waist, clamping arteries to keep him from bleeding to death, closing off his digestive tract, and poking needles and tubes into him to keep him alive and conscious.
“Mind if I hitch a ride?” said Daslakh on a new private channel, dropping onto his back from the ceiling.
“Yes,” Sabbath said in a kind of half moan.
Daslakh jumped off of Sabbath and took hold of his hand with two of its limbs. Its shell switched from stealth black to rescue orange with a green diamond symbol. “I guess I’ll have to give you a tow. Where’s your capsule stashed?”
“South end. Level 3. Section 235.”
The mech dragged the two halves of the man along the corridor for about twenty meters, until they reached a radial shaft leading up toward the center. “It’s going to be tricky to drag you up the ladder in two parts. Do you really need those legs? They’ll be pretty nasty before you can get yourself put back together. Simpler to just print some new ones.”
“I like my legs. I’m attached to them,” said Sabbath.
“That’s a pretty lame joke.”
Sabbath managed a faint chuckle, though it sounded a bit like a gasp.
Daslakh said, “Sigh,” and then took hold of Sabbath’s arm again and began to haul him up the wall of the shaft, ten centimeters at a time. Sabbath hung on to his severed limbs for perhaps half a minute, and then with a genuine sigh he let the severed lower half of his body drop. It fell a dozen meters, bounced off the wall, and vanished into the darkness.
“Thank you,” said Daslakh. “That makes this a lot easier.” It climbed faster now, and reached Level 3 after another minute.
“How did you know?” said Sabbath.
“About your capsule? It’s blindingly obvious. You got here, ergo you came in something. I was kind of amazed none of those others even thought to ask. If you mean how did I find you, well, I just followed the trail of bloody goo you left behind.”
They scuttled along in silence to the next lateral passage, where Daslakh turned left. “Not far now,” it said. “How are you doing? Your suit won’t talk to me and I don’t have time to crush its puny mind.”
“Still alive,” said Sabbath. “Need a medbot soon.”
“Hang on for another three minutes.”
They turned right at an axial passage which led to the viewing gallery at the south pole of the hub. The diamond-sheet windows gave a glorious view of Jupiter, now spanning a quarter of the sky. One window had been neatly punched out and a small disk-shaped spacecraft, no more than four meters across, sat atop some broken tables and chairs.
The top of the disk opened like a pair of beetle’s wings as they approached. Inside was a single pilot’s couch, squeezed between propellant tanks with a little power plant under the seat.
Daslakh dragged Sabbath into the seat and stood back as it enveloped him from the neck down as the doors closed. A visual display of Sabbath’s vital signs appeared on the smooth white surface, accompanied by a long list of everything wrong with him. The words “MASSIVE TRAUMA” were in bigger letters than the rest.
“Maybe I should drive?” said Daslakh, occupying the footrest since Sabbath’s feet were half a kilometer away. “We’re running out of time to get away.”
“Fine,” sighed Sabbath. A second later the spacecraft’s tiny mind linked up to Daslakh’s, granting full control.
Daslakh wasted no time, pivoting the disk with its gyros into takeoff position. A burst from the maneuvering thrusters pushed it out of the hab. Daslakh powered up the main engine, heating up a few grains of metastable helium metal suspended in water. The resulting blast of hot plasma kicked the disk well away from Safdaghar at a gratifying two gees of acceleration.
Once clear of the hab’s debris halo, Daslakh plotted a path which would drop down into Jupiter’s atmosphere and shed enough velocity to rendezvous with the Jovian Ring on the far side of the planet. It lined the little ship up with the proper vector, then used nearly all the propellant in a long burn to put them on the right course, keeping just a tiny reserve for docking.
With that accomplished, Daslakh looked at Sabbath, whose eyes unfocused as the suit stopped keeping him conscious. “Good thing you’re going to be out of it. I expect we’ll hit about fifteen gees during aerobraking,” said Daslakh. “So if you don’t wake up before we dock, here’s something I pieced together on the hab. It’s the last work of Pasquin Tiu. Be sure to tell your bosses.”
Pride’s eye inflamed by truthful dust
Hunts what it fears to see.
No hate as red and hot as love,
Hungry cubs born in blood,
But gnawing icy spite
And empty greed no feast can fill
Snap blind with broken fangs
Tearing with no care or will.
No mercy can I beg, no peace
From ceaseless silent chase.
The poorest shelter me,
The weak stand guard.
Fearful and unwilling,
Yet refusing to betray.
No shield but right, no sword.
We will not win, we shall not yield.