by B. V. Larson
Jort’s face fell. “I withdraw my previous praise. Your new idea is foolish.”
I slapped his chest as I moved toward the hatch. “Come on. Lever this open.”
As the model-Ks had torn up the lock when they’d forced it open, we had to do some prying to get it to swing wide again. When it finally did, it flew clear with a loud clang.
We cursed and ducked out of sight. After waiting and listening to our own breathing for a few minutes, I crept out to have a look around.
The docking bay was full of icy vapors. It was as quiet as a tomb.
“Kersen has withdrawn his forces. He must have realized that Trask is the greater threat. Come on.”
My crew followed me. Jort and I carried Sardez rifles. Rose followed us with a shredder, and Sosa brought up the rear with an electric lash in her hand.
When we came to the end of the docking tube—the spot where it conjoined with the docking hub— we saw movement and heard voices on a radio ahead.
We crouched together in a shadowy area full of spare equipment and tools. “Sosa,” I whispered. “You’ve got the only silent weapon. Take the guard out.”
“Me?”
“He’s distracted, listening to the combat reports. He’s pacing back and forth, not paying attention.”
“So? Blast him down. You can do it from here with that fancy rifle.”
“Yes, but if we blast him, it’s going to make a lot of noise and punch a hole in these thin walls.”
Sosa grimaced, but then she nodded. She crept forward.
There was a heart stopping moment when she got close. The pacing man halted and turned in surprise. Perhaps it was the simple fact Sosa was a thin woman that made him pause. He had a shredder, and he could have easily whipped it around and gunned her down.
Fortunately, he was one of Kersen’s men, and he recognized her.
“Sosa? Finally! Is it done?”
“Not quite,” she said, and she took two steps closer.
Her whip snapped and flashed into life. She wrapped it around his gun-hand, and he dropped the shredder. It went off, stuttering out a dozen rounds.
She lashed the man again and again. He was struck around the neck, the gut, the balls. He crumbled into a groaning heap.
“She is vicious!” Rose whispered to me.
I shrugged. “The man’s still alive. He’s lucky.”
We rushed out and left the guard curled up on the deck. I took only enough time to grab his shredder and hand it to Sosa. I had a feeling an electric whip wouldn’t handle every fight that came our way today.
Sosa took the shredder and trotted next to me. “Now do you trust me?” she asked. “That was Kersen’s man. I took your side, not his.”
“I never doubted you would,” I lied smoothly.
She seemed happy with this response, so we left it at that. Whatever her plans might have been, she was committed to me and my crew now.
Unfortunately, we’d either triggered an alarm or perhaps the gunfire had been heard. A fire team of four androids approached us in a four meter wide passageway.
They were model-Ks, and they marched in a perfect square. Each unit’s left leg rising and falling again to form identical steps. They looked like mirror images of one another.
These guys weren’t guardians—they were soldiers. They were the real deal and spooky to watch in combat. Unlike police units, they wouldn’t give you a chance. They didn’t engage in foolish talk with humans. They didn’t order us to cease and desist.
Instead, the bots attacked immediately, moving forward to kill. I could see they were scripted for small arms combat. When they saw us, they unslung their rifles and advanced. Without any shouted orders or warnings, they went into action, acting as a team. Two took cover, hugging the opposite corners of the next intersection in the passageway. They aimed shredders in our direction. The other two advanced, doubling over and crouching low so the machines behind could fire over them. It was a classic overwatch advancement maneuver.
My team was nowhere near as organized. The only advantage we had was that we were walking with our weapons aimed down the passageway ahead of us. The women released curses and yelps as they fired a stream of rounds with their shredders toward the advancing machines.
Sparks and chips of plastic flew, but none of the bots were stopped. Skittering back and yanking the girls with us, Jort and I retreated to the last intersection and loaded heavy shot into our Sardez rifles.
The weapons had many properties. They were versatile as well as powerful, and I’d made and lost fortunes trading with them. To get full value out of them, you had to be trained in their use. Over the years, I’d become good with them, and I’d taught Jort all I knew.
“Use heavy dispersion shot,” I said.
“I know, I know!”
With shaking hands, we slammed special rounds into our rifles.
“Why didn’t you let us blast them with our shredders?” Sosa demanded from behind me. “We had the drop on them. We could have put them down.”
“These aren’t guardians. They’re soldier units. Armored—very tough.”
“What are we going to do?” Rose asked in a near panic.
“If we don’t take them down in the first blast—you ladies run for it. Got that?”
They nodded, and their eyes were wide. Rose might have been crying. Her cheek was wet—but I didn’t have time for hand-holding now.
“On my mark,” I said quietly to Jort, “…mark!”
He and I shoved our rifles around the corner, putting them into a groove in the wall. We didn’t expose our bodies. Only our hands were out in the open, holding onto the rifle butts.
The enemy shredders began to chatter anyway. The entire passageway lit up and chunks of insulation, plastic molding and the like went flying.
Boom! Boom!
Our two rifles both fired. We were shooting blindly, of course, trusting to the groove in the wall to at least aim the guns in the right general direction. Normally, this attack would be hopeless. The odds we’d hit anything without even looking or aiming were very low.
But the Sardez weapons had been designed for this kind of situation. We’d loaded them to fire dispersing bolts that expanded into a cone of destruction when they exited the muzzle. These blasts were broadly destructive. Within ten meters from the gun barrels, the force would be deadly. Farther away, at a distance of thirty meters, they would only singe the skin and light the hair on fire.
Fortunately, the two advancing robots were close indeed. They took our blasts and were tossed backward like toys.
“Standard rounds—get ready,” I told Jort.
He slammed in a magazine of regular combat ammo, and I did the same.
Periodic bursts of fire now came down the hallway in our direction. The entire passage was full of smoke and dust. We’d blown several centimeters of material off the walls and destroyed all the lighting. A vast dust cloud was expanding, but fortunately, the walls hadn’t been breached. The station was still airtight.
Since the two bots in the rear couldn’t see us, they were taking random shots, firing bursts to keep us ducking. Unfortunately for them, their fire was predictably timed, about two seconds apart between each half-second burst.
“Time it,” I said.
Jort looked scared. “I don’t know—you move, and I’ll move.”
I shook my head. “Just stay there.”
After the next burst, I rolled out into the center of the passage, hugging the deck. I released bolt after bolt, firing by dead-reckoning for the most part.
Two more bursts came my direction before I silenced them. Fortunately, the bots were still firing waist-high. They didn’t shoot for the deck.
When they stopped firing, I did the same. I assumed I’d knocked them out, but it was hard to be sure in the hazy mess.
The passage fell quiet, and Jort reached out a long, powerful arm. He grabbed my belt and yanked me off the floor.
“They could be advancing still,
through the dust,” he said.
“Yeah, better to be here than lying on the deck.”
We shut up. For two long minutes we waited, and we listened. Rose started to talk, but I shushed her. For once, she fell instantly silent.
“I hear… a hissing,” Jort said.
Rose nodded, and I realized she’d heard it too. About then, I saw Sosa, on the other side of the intersection. She was leaning back, gasping for breath.
“We’ve breached the walls,” I said. “We’re venting into space—losing pressure. Run!”
Grabbing Sosa, we ran for the nearest sealable bulkhead. On the space station, as on any pressurized craft, every zone could be sealed off from all the others. That way, if there was a leak, the entire structure wouldn’t become airless.
Already, the doors were shutting themselves. A revolving yellow flasher over the airlock left no doubt in our minds. We weren’t wearing full spacesuits, and we were about to be sealed in a zone that was rapidly losing breathable air.
Chapter Forty-Two
When the depressurization began, I could feel the air getting thinner and colder. Instead of a sudden and violent loss of air, it simply began leaking out of our module at a steady pace. That told me the leak was a small one, probably caused by a piece of shrapnel from firing our Sardez rifles inside a sealed environment. Compared to shredders, which were designed to throw a spray of fat, slow-moving lead slugs, Sardez rifles were like cannons. They could tear through the hulls of most spacecraft.
“Run!” I called out. “We’ve got to get out of this module!”
We ran as a group in a random direction. We were on the outer hub of the station, where ships came to dock. I was beginning to wish we’d docked under the station’s belly, the private spot where I’d first boarded Royal Fortune. I’d chosen not to do so in hopes we’d be far from the violent action and Trask’s marines—but that part of the plan hadn’t worked out.
As we fled, we heard the tramping feet of androids advancing behind us. Plumes of steamy vapor were visible every time one of us took a breath. Space isn’t just empty—space is cold. Within a few minutes, we would die of asphyxiation and then freeze solid.
We reached the next bulkhead, but the door had already swung shut. It was heavy metal, and there was no way we were going to get through it.
“These doors,” I said, “they’ll seal automatically when they sense the pressure loss.”
Jort nodded. He was breathing in gasps already. He turned and raised his rifle.
The two surviving androids came around the corner, and Jort shot one down. He’d loaded a regular round into his rifle as he ran. A hole was punched through the android’s chassis, and it pitched backward onto its plastic ass.
The second one began to open up with his shredder. I knew we were as good as dead. We were at a dead end, nowhere to run—so I fired my rifle as well. It was still set for a wide dispersion pattern, and the last of the four model-Ks was knocked off its feet. Jort sighted and fired too, killing it.
But now, we could hear more hissing. It was louder now, and the air was escaping faster. Jort’s shots must have created new holes letting out the last of our precious oxygen into space.
Slapping at Jort, I pointed at the sealed door. We couldn’t talk any longer. Every ounce of breath we had in us had to be saved.
He fired at the lock, and I did the same after I reloaded with penetrating rounds. My fingers were going numb. We shot the lock several times, sending up blasts of dangerous sparks. I knew we were spraying shrapnel, but we were out of options. I felt something strike my shoulder and my cheek—then we fired again. At last, the door swung open.
Dragging ourselves, our rifles, and the girls, we managed to get through the door. We pressed it closed again, and sucked in life-giving air.
“Patch it,” I gasped. “Patch the lock.”
As with most vessels in space, there were handy patch kits for emergencies along the walls. The kits were down low, near the deck. I’d always wondered why they were placed less than a meter from the floor on any module, and now I knew why. It was wisdom.
I crawled weakly as I deployed the patches and slapped them onto the lock in a clumsy, layered fashion.
A few minutes passed. We sat on the deck, mouths wide open, faces turning blue—but we began to feel better. The passage was warming up. The module had detected that its integrity had been restored. Automatically, it had begun to refill the region with air. Fortunately for us, such decisions and processes aboard ships and stations were handled entirely by computers linked to sensors.
Climbing to my feet tiredly, I helped the others stand. “We’ve got to keep moving—and we should find some spacer gear in case we lose pressure again.”
“Why didn’t we come aboard with helmets?” Sosa asked.
“Because it would have looked odd to the dock crew that greeted us.”
Jort laughed at that until he coughed. At last, he was able to speak. “A lot of good that did for us—looking harmless. They came to kill us right away.”
“Agreed,” I told him. “No more playing innocent. We’re invaders, and everyone knows it.”
We plundered a locker and pulled masks over our faces. The bulbous oxygen tanks dangled until we snapped them into place.
“Come on,” I said, enjoying the taste of my own personal oxygen supply, “let’s keep moving.”
They followed me at a trot until we found a storeroom. We ducked inside and found there was a public access point in the storeroom to be used by maintenance types.
“Androids don’t need a screen,” Rose said. “They just hook directly into the local network.”
“They have human janitors here,” Sosa explained.
“What? Really? I’m surprised—most space stations use model-Ds for such work.”
I laughed. “Maybe the kind made of flesh and bone are less expensive. Kersen has always been the type of guy to cheap out.”
“That’s true,” Sosa agreed.
“I found it!” Jort said. “A pathway—a low pathway to the umbilical.”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘low’?” I asked him.
He pointed at the deck. “In the tubes. Where the shit is.”
Rose made an unhappy face. I was quite sure she’d never even smelled a sewer, much less swam in one.”
“Too dangerous,” I said. “How can we disable the cannons?”
“Difficult…” Jort said, tapping at the screen. “We would have to storm the bridge. Take control.”
“That’s not happening,” I sighed.
“There’s another way,” Sosa said quietly. “We go down to engineering. They have an override system there. It’s redundant, built in case the bridge is knocked out. From engineering, they still can control the station’s basic systems.”
We looked at her, and I nodded. “Show us the way.”
Sosa shouldered her way to the console, and Jort stepped aside. She worked on it for several minutes. “The pathway is laid out in green. I do not suggest taking such a direct route, however, as it is likely to be guarded.”
“Drag the lines—show us a safer path to engineering.”
She did so, and we all groaned.
“There’s nothing else?” Rose asked plaintively. “I’ve got a dozen cuts on me—I’ll get an infection or something.”
Sosa laughed at her. “You’re wearing a pressure-suit. You’ll be fine.”
We set off, and Rose fell to the rear of the line, grumbling. When we finally opened a large grate in the deck and Jort splashed in, showing the way, she balked again.
Sosa went in without hesitating. She was a tough girl. A sewer wasn’t something to get upset about. Rose, however, was struggling with the idea.
I heard movement behind us. Tramping plastic feet—at least four sets of them, maybe more.
Having no more time or patience, I turned around and grabbed Rose and tossed her in. She flailed like a drowning cat, hissing and cursing.
I foll
owed her, craning my neck to see behind us. The passage was lit up and the lights played on the walls in perfect rhythm.
“Help me with this,” I ordered, and Jort moved closer
Together, we slid the deck-plate back into place. We were doubled-over, thigh-deep in brackish water. Overhead, the pounding feet rang on the deck plates. We hunkered down, barely daring to breathe.
The patrol soon passed, and that was enough for Rose. She reached up and began pushing upward on the hatch. I pulled it down again with a mild slam. “We’re not leaving this pipe until we get closer to engineering.”
We slogged behind Sosa, who seemed to know the way. Not for the first time, I wondered at her past.
“It’s hotter now, feel it?” Jort asked. “That’s the cooling jacket on the reactor. They dump the reactor water in here. It’s full of phosphates that will eat your skin!”
“We can’t go too much farther,” Sosa said. “We might reach the cleansing tanks if we do.”
“What’s that?” Rose demanded.
“That’s where they break down the water and turn it fresh. It’s a continuous process of disintegration, tearing apart complex molecules and making them very simple.”
Rose looked at me with wide eyes. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse—we have to get out of here!”
I paused. “All right. How far from here to engineering?”
Sosa shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe a hundred meters.”
At the next hatch, I pushed upward. It was stuck. I got it to bounce a little, but that was it.
“Jort,” I whispered. “Come over here and help me. Put your back into it.”
Together, we shoved and heaved. The hatch flew wide with a resounding clang.
Bright lights shown down at us then. Gun barrels were behind every one of those lights—and there were a lot of them.
It was a bad way to end our adventures. I figured the four of us must have looked pitiful down there, hunkered low, blinking, and covered with shit.
Chapter Forty-Three