“It will take time.”
“You got an alternative?”
Erick looked round the lounge, inventorying everything in sight—cabins, lockers filled with food and clothes, emergency equipment
cubicles. All he had was a laser pistol.
Think!
Open the floor hatch and pick them off one at a time as they come through?
He aimed the laser at a cabin door, and pressed the trigger stud. A weak pink beam stabbed out, then flickered and died. Several
small blisters popped and crackled where it had struck the composite.
“Bloody typical,” he said out loud.
Look round again. Come on, there must be something. Those dreary months spent on CNIS initiative courses. Adapt, improvise.
Do something.
Erick dived across the intervening space to a wall of lockers, catching a grab loop expertly. There wasn’t much in the emergency
cubicle: medical nanonics, pressure patches, tools, oxygen bottles and masks, torch, processor blocks with ship’s systems
repair instructions, fire extinguishers, hand-held thermal sensor. No spacesuit.
“Nobody said it was going to be easy.”
“Erick?” AndrÉ asked. “What is happening?”
“Got an idea.” “Erick, I have spoken with Smith. Several other ships have been hijacked. He is taking some of his troops out
of zero-tau, but it will be at least another thirty minutes before anyone can rendezvous with us.”
The lounge was getting lighter. When Erick looked over his shoulder he saw a ring of small hemispherical blue flames chewing
at a patch of the hard grey-green foam on the floor decking. Little twisters of smoke writhed out from the edge. When a circle
of titanium roughly a metre in diameter had been exposed it began to glow a dull orange. “No good, Captain. They’re coming
through the decking, some sort of thermal field. We haven’t got five minutes.”
“Bastards.”
Erick opened the tool-box, and took out a fission-blade knife. Please, he prayed. The blade shone a cool lemon when he thumbed
the actuator. “Sweet Jesus, thank you.”
He flew cleanly through the air. A stikpad anchored him near the middle of the ceiling. He pushed the fission blade into the
reinforced composite conditioning duct, and started to saw a circle about thirty centimetres wide.
“Madeleine? Desmond?” he datavised. “Are you in spacesuits yet?”
“Yes,” Desmond replied.
“You want to do me a
real
big favour?”
“Erick, they cannot stay on board,” AndrÉ warned.
“What do you want, Erick?” Desmond asked.
“Hauling out of here. Soon.”
“I forbid it,” AndrÉ said.
“Stuff you,” Desmond retorted. “I’m coming down, Erick. You may count on me, you know you can.”
“Desmond, if they break into the lounge I will scuttle the ship,” AndrÉ datavised. “I must do it before they glitch the flight
computer.”
“I know. My risk,” Desmond replied.
“Wait to see if they break out of the lounge first,” Erick said. “That’ll give Desmond a chance to get clear if this doesn’t
work.” There was no answer.
“You owe me that! I’m trying to save your ship, damn you.”
“
Oui, d’accord
. If they get out of the lounge.”
The yellow patch on the floor had turned white. It started to hiss, bulging up in the centre, rising into a metrehigh spike
of light. A ball of fire dripped off the end, gliding up to hit the ceiling where it broke into a cluster of smaller globes
that darted outwards.
Erick ducked as several rushed past. He finished cutting a second circle out of the duct and moved along.
Another ball of fire dripped off the spike. Then another. The patch was spreading out over the floor decking, scorching away
more of the foam.
“I’m by the hatch, Erick,” Desmond datavised.
The empty lounge was awhirl with small beads of white fire. They had stung Erick several times now, vicious skewers of pain
that charred out a centimetre-wide crater of skin. He glanced at the ceiling hatch’s inspection window to see the sensor-studded
collar of an SII spacesuit pressed against it, and waved.
Erick had cut eight holes in the duct when he heard a shrill creaking sound rise above the hiss. When he glanced down he saw
the floor decking itself had started to distend. The metal was cherry red, swelling and distorting like a cancerous volcano.
He watched, mesmerized, as the top burst open.
“Erick,” a voice called out of the rent. “Let us out, Erick. Don’t make it hard on yourself. It’s not you we want.”
The triangular rips of radiant metal began to curl back like petals opening to greet the dawn. Shapes scuttled about in the
gloom below.
Erick kicked away from the stikpad that was holding him to the ceiling. He landed beside the floor hatch.
“We want the ship, Erick, not you. You can go in peace. We promise.”
A big bloodshot eye with a dark green iris was looking at him through the floor hatch’s inspection window. It blinked, and
the lounge lights came back on.
Erick gipped the manual lock handle, twisted it ninety degrees, and pulled up.
The possessed came up through the open hatch, cautiously at first, glancing round the sweltering smoky lounge with wide eyes.
Their skin was as white as bleached bone, stretched tight over long wiry muscles. Oily black hair floated limply. They started
to advance towards him, grinning and chittering.
“Erick,” they cooed and giggled. “Erick, our friend. So kind to let us in when we knocked.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Erick said. He had positioned himself beside one of the cabin doors, a silicon-fibre strap round his waist
tethering him to a grab hoop. Level with his shoulder, the environment control panel’s cover swung free. Erick’s right hand
rested on a fat red lever inside. “Your friend.”
“Come with us,” the one in front said as they floated sedately towards him. “Come join us.”
“I don’t think so.” Erick yanked the atmosphere-vent lever down.
The vent system on board a starship was included as a last resort to extinguish fire. It dumped the affected lifesupport capsule’s
air straight out of the hull, cutting off oxygen to the flames and killing them dead. And because of the danger a fire represented
inside the confined cabin space of a starship, the vent was designed to be quick acting, evacuating an entire deck within
a minute.
“NO!” The leader of the possessed screamed in fury and panic. His hands were flung forwards towards Erick in a futile belated
attempt to stop the lever clicking home. Spears of white fire arced out of his fingertips.
The panel, its lever, the circuitry behind, Erick’s hand, and a half metre circle of wall composite flamed into ruin. Molten
metal and a fount of incendiary composite blasted outwards.
Erick cried out in agony as his entire right arm was flayed down to the bone. His neural nanonics responded instantly, erecting
an analgesic block. But the shock was too much, he lurched away from consciousness, only to have stimulant programs bully
him back. Menus and medical physiological schematics appeared inside his dazed fragile mind. Options flashed in red. Demands
for drugs and treatments to be administered at once. And a single constant pressure alarm.
The very air itself howled like a tormented banshee in its rush to escape from the lounge. Thin, layered sheets of smoke drifting
around the ruddy cone torn in the floor condensed to form airborne whirlpools underneath the five ceiling grilles. They spun
at a fantastic rate, betraying the speed of the air molecules as they were sucked into the duct.
The possessed were in turmoil, clinging desperately at grab hoops and each other, their assumed shapes withering like glitched
AV projections to reveal ordinary bodies underneath. All of them were buffeted savagely by the tempest force drawing them
inexorably towards the ceiling. One flew up through the hatch from the lower deck, curving helplessly through the air to slam
against a ceiling grille. Suction held him there, squirming in pain.
Another lost hold of a grab hoop, to be sucked backwards up to a grille. Both of them tried to push their way off, only to
find it was impossible. The strength that the external vacuum exerted was tremendous. They could feel themselves being pulled
through the narrow metal bands of the grille. Sharp edges cut their clothes and began shredding the flesh underneath. Ripples
of blue and red energy shimmered around their bodies for a short time, delaying the inevitable; but the exertion proved too
much, and the ghostlight quickly faded. The bands of metal sawed down to their ribs. Strips of lacerated flesh were torn off.
Blood burst free from a hundred broken veins and arteries, foaming away down the conduit. Organs started to swell through
the gaps between the ribs.
Erick activated the Confederation Navy’s emergency vacuum-survival program stored in his neural nanonics. His heart began
to slow; muscles and organs were shut down, reducing the amount of oxygen they took from his blood, extending the time which
the brain could be kept alive. He hung inertly from the strap fastening him to the wall, limbs pulled towards the ceiling.
The charred remnant of his right hand broke off and smacked against a grille.
Blood oozed from the blackened meat of his upper arm.
Scraps of paper, clothing, tools, miscellaneous litter, and personal items from the cabins and lower deck plunged through
the lounge to crash into the grilles. There might have been enough material to block them, at least long enough for the possessed
to rally and try and shut down the vent or retreat back into the spaceplane. But the extra holes Erick had cut into the duct
allowed an unrestricted flow of smaller articles into space. Tattered ribbons of water from the shower and taps in the bathroom
poured through the open door to streak through the nearest hole.
The uproarious torrent of air began to abate.
Through pain-hazed eyes, Erick had watched the group’s leader turn from semi-naked ogre to a podgy forty-year-old man in dungarees
as the micro-storm raged. He was hanging onto a grab loop two metres away, legs pointing up rigidly at the nearest grille,
trousers and shirt flapping madly. His mouth worked, bellowing curses and obscenities that were snatched away. A red glow
grew around his hand, bloodlight shining through the skin, illuminating the bones within. Mucus and saliva streamed from his
nose, joining the flood of debris and liquids vanishing into the duct. The seepage began to turn pink, then crimson.
Now the glow from his hand was fading along with the sound and the fury of the evacuating air. He fixed Erick with a disbelieving
stare as tears began to bubble and boil from the surface of his eyes. Balls of blood were spitting out of his nostrils with
each beat of his heart.
The last wisp of air vanished. Erick swung round as the force waned, rotating languidly on the end of the tether strap. The
physiological medical schematic his neural nanonics were displaying appeared to be a red statue, except for the right arm
which was completely black. Each turn swept the lounge into view. He saw the surviving possessed struggling through the solid
cloud of junk that filled the achingly silent compartment. It was difficult to tell which of them were alive. Corpses—two
badly mutilated—floated and tumbled and collided with the ones trying to reach the floor hatch. Dead or alive, everyone was
weeping blood from their pores and orifices as capillaries ruptured and membranes tore from the immense pressure gradient.
They were acting out a bizarre three-dimensional wrestling match in slow motion, with the hatch as their prize. It was macabre.
It swam from his view.
Next time round there were fewer movements. Their faces—those he would remember without any help from his neural nanonics
image-storage program. Turning.
They were slowing, running down like mechanoids suffering a power drain. The vacuum was turning foggy with fluid. He realized
some of it was his own. Red. Very red.
Turning.
All purposeful movement had ceased within the lounge. There was only the gentle stirring of soggy dross.
Around and around. And the redness was fading to grey with the ponderous solemnity of a sunset.
Around.
Ilex
and its eight cousins flew into a standard defence sphere formation two and a half thousand kilometres wide. Their distortion
fields flared out to sample the masses and structure of local space. In their unique perceptive spectrum Lalonde hung below
them like a deep shaft bored into the uniformity of space, radiating weak gravity streams to bind its three smaller moons
and Kenyon, as it in turn was bound to the bright blue-white star. The interplanetary medium was rich with solar and electromagnetic
energy; Van Allen belts encircling the planet shone like sunlight striking an angel’s wings. Starships and spaceplanes were
revealed in orbit, dense knots in the fabric of space-time, pulsing hotly with electrical and magnetic forces.
Electronic sensors detected a barrage of narrow-beam maser radiation flying between small high-orbit sensor satellites, communication-relay
satellites, and the starships. Terrance Smith was being informed of their presence, but there was no hostile response. Satisfied
there was no immediate threat, the voidhawks maintained their relative positions for another ninety seconds.
Near the centre of the formation a zone of space the size of a quark warped to an alarming degree as its mass leapt towards
infinity, and the first frigate emerged. The remaining twenty warships jumped insystem over the next six minutes. It was a
textbook-sharp manoeuvre, giving Admiral Meredith Saldana the widest possible number of tactical options. All he needed was
the relevant data to evaluate.
The normal background murmur of voices on Arikara’s bridge died away into a shocked hush as the first sensor scans came in.
Amarisk occupied the centre of the planet’s daylight hemisphere, the red cloud bands above the Juliffe resembling a jagged
thunderbolt captured in mid-discharge.
“Was there ever anything like that on this God-blighted planet before?” Meredith Saldana asked in a voice that strained for
reasonableness.