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would normally have been able to recover some function were failing, and even with the references and augmented reality overlays that the central engineering systems and his own in-suit computers could provide, there was only so much he could do to fix any of them. Most of the status board showed red, with considerable splotches of yellow and virtually no green anywhere.
    At least I can manage to spend a fair amount of time out of the suit. The suits had been designed well and a man could live in them for a long time…but everything chafes, everything becomes dirty, no matter how well designed, no matter what special materials or even self-cleansing materials and miniaturized systems exist.
    The air of Odin was almost clean, but the sharp, urgent smell of burned electronics and heated metal still hung in the air, perhaps permanently a part of Odin ’s surfaces by now. Still it was far better than being a prisoner to the suit, giving him time to take zero-G showers, clean out the suit, refill its vital reservoirs (and empty other, equally vital, reservoirs), and even to rest in a suspended hammock—with a helmet always nearby, naturally.
    The lack of additional crew also meant that he did not have to ration out the better remaining supplies, such as the actual meat content of his sandwich; even though many storage areas had gone with the other half of Odin , the giant vessel had been provisioned for a hundred people for over three years. Even a very small fraction of that would sustain General Hohenheim for as long as he was likely to survive.
    That might not be for too terribly long; the critical indicator of air supply was a brilliant amber and there were times he thought it was starting to shade to red. Overall, though, he was fairly certain of the integrity of the remaining hull of Odin , even if a large proportion of her main air supply had been lost. There were very small leaks somewhere, but whenever he could trace them he sealed them, and the cold, hard fact was that ninety-nine percent of his crew were gone; he didn’t need all that much air. Oh, it would run out eventually with the slow leaks bleeding it away; a month, two months, three at the outside and he’d be reduced to staying in his suit, trading and refreshing air supplies until the rechargeable oxygen renewal systems finally gave out, but that didn’t really matter. His real mission would be complete long, long before that. It was a simple mission, just one that had required a good deal of work, but was now almost complete.
    Back to work. Hohenheim made sure he had no significant crumbs in the air and carefully placed the wrappings from his lunch in a disposal chute. He unstrapped, shoved himself with practiced ease over to his suit, and donned it, running through the full functionality checklist before sealing the suit and making his way over to his tool bundle. One more set of connections to go.
    The theory was very simple, and the practice not much more complex. While Odin ’s structure incorporated a lot of composites, it also included a great deal of metal, and some of that structure could be used as a gigantic antenna. Not, perhaps, the most efficient of antennas, but he could spare power to make up for that. Indeed he could, with virtually all other ship systems shut down, the mass-beam drive offline, and even environmentals only required for a fraction of the original vessel. The important thing was to make sure he could transmit with enough power—across a number of different bands—to make sure that he was heard.
    Because what he was going to say…was going to be something many people did not want to hear, and he could not afford to be silenced. His honor—the only thing really left to him—demanded that much. The truth about Fitzgerald’s actions, and those behind him, had to be known. That was the least that he could do for those on the Nebula Storm , as well as his own crew, who had been their victims.
    It was in a way terribly