"But I can't walk you through the steps once you get there. The radiation might interfere with the transmission. I should tell you now just in case." He rotated his holopad. "This is the helm. You see this large wheel. Rotate it as far as it will go counterclockwise."
"That's it?"
"That's it. No computers. No buttons. Just a big wheel."
"I'll do it," said Mazer.
"You're too small," said Wit. "The radiation will kill you faster. I'm the biggest and have the best chance of getting there. Mazer, you're in command."
Mazer looked surprised. "But ... I'm not one of your men."
"You're as much a MOP as I am. You always have been." He walked away from the group to the center of the aperture. He took out his laser cutter and started cutting a hole wide enough for someone to crawl through.
"Turning off the gamma plasma won't be enough," said Victor. "You also need to ventilate the ship."
"How?" said Wit.
"By opening all these launch tubes," said Victor. "They go all the way around the ship."
"That sounds like a lot of work. Do I have time for that?"
"There's a single wheel. Rotate that clockwise and all the tubes will open."
"Another wheel?" said Wit. "I thought these Formics were innovative."
"Fancy tech, simple controls."
"Show me where the wheel is."
Victor pulled up images of the ship's interior from his vid. "You'll see a console like this at the base of the tube. The wheel is here." He circled it with his finger and sent to Wit's HUD.
"Anything else?"
"Yes, all of us need to come inside this launch tube as well. We'll seal the bottom hatch once you go. That way, when you ventilate the ship, we won't be outside and bombarded with all the radiation."
"What about the top of the launch tube? Can I close this one, yet keep the other ones open? You need to be sealed in tight, both at the bottom and the top."
Victor showed him the image again. "Each individual console has an override wheel. At the base of this launch tube here. Turn it to close this tube only."
"Turn three wheels. This is easier than I thought."
He finished cutting and pushed the cut manhole down into the launch tube.
Victor got down beside him. "It should be me, Wit. I know the way. I've watched them turn the wheel."
"This is not open for discussion," said Wit. "Now follow me into the tube and seal it shut behind me." He pulled himself down into the manhole, got his feet anchored inside and launched downward toward the bottom of the tube.
One by one they followed him in.
*
Lem fired the shatter boxes, and they catapulted away from his fighter, spinning through space like a thrown bola. War was all around him. Juke mining ships of the shield were battling a swarm of Formic transports in near-Earth orbit. The Formics outnumbered them two to one, and the transports were just as nimble in space as they had been on Earth. Lem couldn't tell who was winning. Everything was happening too quickly.
There had been an order at the beginning--a coordinated effort to take the Formics together. But that had gone out the window the moment the shooting started. Now it was every man for himself.
Lem's spinning shatter boxes zeroed in on their target and snapped to opposing sides of the transport. An instant later, the tidal forces were ripping the transport to shreds, breaking down molecular bonds and turning every molecule into its constituent atoms. One second it was a transport. Two seconds later, dust.
To Lem's right, a mining vessel was sliced in half with a laser. The ship's lights flickered and extinguished. Screams were heard over the radio. Equipment and bodies were sucked out of the two severed pieces. Lem's fighter arced right, dodging a laser and avoiding the same fate. A transport had zeroed in on him. He released another set of shatter boxes at his pursuer, but the shot was wide and the shatter boxes spun off into space.