by A. B. Keuser
The fewer people to hear her crawling around the shafts, the better.
Everyone’s schedules had shifted, but the whereabouts and movements of her neighbors was something she had to keep track of if she didn’t want to draw suspicion.
Stopping in front of the door marked 16-78, she looked at the exterior of her pod one last time. It was a masterpiece of peeling paint, and scuff marks. There was a red slime mold crawling its way up from the decking, and she was pretty sure there were some housing code violations with her door. But that didn’t matter now.
She touched the heart shaped creature Aaron had scratched into the metal before pushing inside.
Living in a single, Mack had thirty-eight square meters to call her own. Thirty-eight square meters that she’d spent a month making perfect.
The door let out its familiar screech as she pushed through into the space she managed to keep clean by not having next to nothing to clutter up the space. Her clothes ended up on the floor more often than they did in the column of drawers set into the wall beside her bed, but aside from that and the tools of her trade, she’d shipped everything else she owned off to her parent’s home. It would have had to go eventually.
The walls were webbed with coiled cording and half the lighting was non-standard. She was pulling twice the amount of power than she was technically allotted, a fact she forgave herself for when she increased overall station efficiency by twenty-two percent in month one. But the most important change she’d made was the button three feet away from the lighting control panel. She smacked it with the back of her hand and the grav plating in her quarters disengaged.
The cubes to either side would experience gravity anomalies, but in a station this old, no one questioned it.
All the little things she hadn’t bothered to put away floated around her, and she pushed herself up to the ceiling she couldn’t reach otherwise, catching herself on the air return cover. The vent was attached with magnets, and it took a single tug and shove to shift it far enough she could pull herself in and up.
Her small cache of parts clung to the ceiling, each suspended by a goo web, and she flipped through her mental catalog, pulling down the smallest, most valuable ones.
“The rest of you are going to have to stay behind,” she said by way of apology.
Walking herself back down,
Mack dropped to the rumpled bed as another shudder rocked the station, and alarms blared.
“PLEASE MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE NEAREST EVACUATION PODS IN A CALM AND ORDERLY MANNER AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.”
The words flashed on her wall as the disembodied voice announced them.
“Normal stress and settling, my ass.”
Mackenzie shoved the meager contents of her life into a duffle—down pillow first—and snatched her copy of the photo cube from her bedside table before stopping for one last look around.
There weren’t many opportunities for misplacement.
Satisfied, she grabbed Aaron’s service jacket from the peg by the door.
The halls around her were still empty as she stepped out, but the family next door had left their hatch open wide when they’d fled. She doubted anyone else had stopped to pack.
The lift button depressed and she watched the indicator light slide to the floor above her... and stop as a horrendous screech echoed in the well.
She stabbed the red square again out of spite. The light died.
Another shudder lurched her sideways into the wall as she headed for the stairs and she broke into a run as the lights clicked off. Emergency power took over, bathing the halls in that too familiar sickly green.
She reached the stairwell just as it opened and Cable grabbed her by the wrist.
“What are you doing down here still?” He shouted over the blaring alarm. “Didn’t you hear the evac?”
“It’s kind of hard to miss.” She shouted back.
“The maintenance techs have to get this herking piece of junk off. Disconnect is in less than five.”
“You want me to climb sixteen flights in five minutes?” She looked up the well over his head and grimaced.
She could do it, but it was not going to be fun.
Slinging her duffle over her shoulders like a backpack, she pushed past him and headed upward.
Cable pushed past her and grabbed her hand. “The lift still works, but only between fifteen and four. We don’t have time to climb all the way up on our own, come on.”
“Using the lifts in an emergency is against policy. You got mad at Bezzon for it yesterday.”
“We didn’t have as far to go.”
“Different situation calls for different rule breaking.”
“I don’t want to step into this tin can any more than you do. But you can’t lecture me about rules right now.”
He shouldered open the hatch at level fifteen and pushed her through ahead of him.
The lift was waiting.
“You’re sure this is the way to go?”
“I don’t have any better ideas.”
Neither did she.
She grabbed hold of the rail and planted her feet. Even if they weren’t about to shoot upward, she didn’t expect anything good to come from this ride.
Cable punched the buttons and stared at the closing doors with a glare toward the dark space beyond and Kenzie let out what felt like her first breath in minutes.
“The station isn’t okay, is it?”
“Not even a little bit.”
They moved upward. At a snail’s pace.
“The lifts decide to fix themselves now?” Her words were hissed, not meant for reply, and cable snorted a laugh.
“Of course.”
The floor number clicked over and she stepped to the middle. We could probably walk faster than—”
The numbers flew past and Kenzie cursed .
The lift lurched to a stop and her feet left the floor in a moment of weightlessness. She stayed upright because Cable caught her.
The hard groan of metal echoed overhead. And the lights died.
“Shit.”
Another screeching groan, and the sickly green emergency lighting shone in from the corridor as Cable wrenched the doors open.
They were stuck between floors and the space that opened into the fourth floor was about the size of the maintenance ducting. The one to the fifth was smaller.
Cable was not going to fit.
“Here.”
He held out his hands to boost her up and she gave the opening one last wary glance before she tossed her bag out and took hold of his shoulders, placing her boot in his hand.
“I think I can work the lift controls from the outside.”
“Just get out Kenzie, we don’t have time for you to fix this.”
She hesitated, and his first attempt at a boost almost shoved her knee into his chin.
“Whitney Alexander Carr. If you don’t stop talking like that, I’m going to make you rue the day my brother brought you home.”
His lips twitched, maybe in a smile.
“Fine, but if we hit the point of no return, you have to get out of here.”
She didn’t agree with him.
This time, she let him boost her, and scrambled out through the too small opening.
The lift controls were dark and when she pulled off the plate, she found a tangled mess. Slap dash repair jobs would be the death of her, but not today.
Cable made a noise in the dark below, but she ignored him, focusing instead on the twisted pairings that looked like they’d been gnawed by rats.
Vermin weren’t her problem right now. The echoing groan of a stressed structure was.
There was still power to the box, but the shifting had jimmied connections loose. And if she found the right one…. “Gotcha.”
She tugged the tangle away and stripped back the tattered jacketing.
“Please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle,” she said, grimacing at the rough connection she was about to make. “Also,
your head. I don’t want that pretty face of yours rolling about on the decking.”
The flash of a spark broke against her skin, but she ignored it. She could deal with a scorch mark later.
The Lift lurched downward and she scrambled to see through the sliver of an opening she had left.
“I can get out through the lower opening. Go. Get to the station, I’ll be right behind you.”
Fat chance of that. She took off toward the stairs, but she didn’t head up. She wasn’t leaving the hive unless he was with her.
The well was full of debris. Small pieces of paneling had knocked from their frames, whole steps themselves had fallen. She hopped over what she could, ducked under a panel that cut the well in half, and then she was at the door marked with a chipped away number five.
The hatch was blocked. A fallen stair had wedged itself between the rail and the lower edge of the doorframe.
Cable wouldn’t have been able to get out if he’d wanted to.
He reached it a minute after she did. A minute she’d spent trying to move the damned stairs.
The hatch hit the end and the stair buckled… wedged further.
“I told you to get out.” He said through the sliver of an opening.
“When have I ever done as I’m told?” Shoving the hatch closed again, she used a broken rail spike to lever the thing up.
He growled something she couldn’t hear, as she placed the final kick and set the stair clattering downward.
The hatch burst open and he all but threw her up the next flight.
“Aren’t you glad I disobeyed orders?” She shot him a smile he didn’t return.
“If you do that when we’re on Mersen’s ship, someone’s going to throw you in the brig.”
“Look at the situation, Cable. If we’re going to die in a stairwell—again—I don’t care if saving you puts me in a cell. And you shouldn’t either. Because this is the second time you’ve owed me your life.”
They reached a gap where three stairs had fallen away. And cable jumped up, grabbing hold of the steps above and climbing them backward, like a kid on a set of inclined monkey bars.
“Show off.” She called when he dropped onto the stairs.
Looking up at them, she grimaced. There was no way she’d be able to do that.
“Toss your bag and then jump.” He held out his hands. “I’ll catch you.”
She threw the duffle and then looked at the stair under his feet. She could only hope it would hold their combined weight.
There wasn’t time to worry about the fall if she didn’t get far enough. She leaned back, and used what little momentum she had to lunge.
Too bad the stair under her top foot fell through.
She screamed a moment before Cable caught her wrist and hauled her upward.
“See,” she said, trying to force away the shakes. “If I hadn’t gone to get you, I wouldn’t have made it out anyway.”
Her smile was weak, and she moved up the stairs, so she didn’t have to see his concern a moment longer.
“I guess you just cancelled out one of my saves.”
“We can call it even.”
“Not even, I’ve still got one. I was just hoping to bank them. You know, save up for something really big.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t. And not because I feel weird about owing you.”
Laughing, she thanked the Goddess her hands had stopped shaking as she grabbed hold of the rail and pulled her up around the final flight. “Fine, you can save me anytime you want to make us even.”
The stairwell ended at an unmarked hatch.
The hive shuddered and metal screeched against metal around them.
“Cable?” she asked as the floor shifted and the stairwell started to twist. “This is bad, isn’t it?”
“No, this is just… inconvenient. When it gets bad, I’ll let you know.”
“I meant for the rest of the station. Celesta isn’t settling, is she?”
He shook his head and glared at the hatch. “She’s tearing herself apart. The guys who attacked us knew what they were doing.”
The lights cut completely, another shudder skewed them sideways and grav plating died. Mack didn’t need to ask to know they’d been set adrift. She grabbed hold of the stairwell railing and hooked her bag over her shoulders.
A dim glow erupted in the hatch ring, fluorescing to life and bathing them both in blinding white.
A sickening crunch made her shiver.
“The hive’s structure was damaged too. Without the ship’s systems to sustain it….”
Mack flinched at the sound of buckling far below them. “She’s starting to crush under the strain of the vacuum.”
Ten
Cable checked his comm band. The time on the inside of his wrist showed they’d had a minute and a half left at disconnect.
“They went early?” Kenzie asked, her features sharp in the harsh light of the hatch ring.
“Yeah.” He sighed and tapped a knuckle against the hatch. “Things must have been worse off if they ditched us ahead of schedule.”
“Especially with you onboard.”
He laughed as he turned back down the stairwell. “My life is not worth those still on the station. We both know that, and Lieutenant Stacy knows I’d throw her out of the nearest airlock if she risked lives for mine.”
“The only place you’d throw her is in the brig. But yeah. Stacy has her head on straight.” She followed him, boots clanking. “So what now? Did the hive builders put in a secret escape pod? Are we doing a spacewalk?”
“This isn’t a vid-flick Kenzie. We’ve got to hunker down somewhere safe and wait for the Dendratic to show up and rescue us.”
“Not a fan of the ‘twiddle your thumbs’ plan.”
“I know.” Another thing she and Aaron shared.
He shouldered open the fourth level hatch, and held it ajar while Kenzie slipped through ahead of him. The door protested as he shoved it back to its seal and threw home the bolt.
That could be a problem.
Not that he had time for another one of those. Turning, he started to speak. Stopped with the word lodged in his throat.
In the bright halo of the hatch ring, Kenzie looked… almost alien.
She wasn’t looking at him, her eyes were narrowed at the wall to his left. “So what now? I assume there’s an SOP for this sort of thing.”
“Find a defendable position.”
She tossed him a tired look and then tapped the etched lines on the bulkhead.
“Stairwell is out. It’s internal, but on the hive, it’s missing too many internal bulkheads, and with as limited of power as we have, I can’t guarantee they’ll close anyway.” She tapped the map on the wall and scowled at the hexagonal space under her finger. “We should get to the initial control panel. Power would have rerouted itself there on disconnection. I can work my magic, close down any enviro systems that don’t need to be used, redirect any oxygen that’s left back up to us.”
“Sounds good to me.” At least it sounded better than asphyxiation.
The disconnect had left the corridors littered with random detritus and a compartment door hung skewed, into their path.
Their hinges opened inward. So unless someone had modified their unit….
Kenzie dropped her bag with a heavy thud and followed it down to the deck plating as Cable stopped to inspect the column of computer components covered over by the remains of station life.
The initial control panel, a piece of equipment that had been used when the hive was still being connected to the station, looked as dead as it had the last time Cable had passed it by.
He hadn’t paid much attention to it then, but now the scarred metal made him cringe.
The panels were covered in at least three layers of graffiti.
“Are you even going to be able to see the interface?”
“Don’t need to.”
She popped the lower panel open and began digging in the wiring
.
“I’m not saying I know anything about what you’re doing in there… but I’m pretty sure you need some sort of input device to get the intricate stuff done.”
“Yep,” she said dropping to the deck plating and flipping over.
She wiggled into the tangle of components on her back, only stopping when she was in the mess down to her waist.
The lights strobed. Died. Came back.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“A live panel?” she asked, her voice muffled, but still holding that same amusement he’d heard before. “I mean, there’s an increased risk factor of death, but taking it down to make the alterations would mean killing the full power grid and we probably couldn’t get everything back online and that definitely would kill us before your ride comes to pick us up.”
“Don’t do anything foolish. It’s just you and me here, you don’t need to show off.”
“Hey, your life’s on the line. I’m not going to do anything that’ll risk that. If it was just me, I’d try to figure out what these connections over here are.”
The lights flickered and she muttered something he couldn’t hear in the corridor.
“Kenzie….”
“I said if and, clearly, this isn’t an if situation.” She nudged him with her foot. “I’ll stop poking at the curious wiring, you stop acting like my mom.”
Dark lines scrolled across the interface, peeking out from under the cracked paint. And Kenzie was too quiet.
A shower of sparks spat out at him and he instinctively jumped back. Kenzie only laughed.
She was going to get herself killed.
He grabbed her by her ankles and yanked her back out. She squawked in protest.
“You’re not going back in there without some personal protection equipment. A suit at the very least.”
She sighed and looked back into the dark hole where she’d just been. “There’s no PPE on the hive. And even if there was, I don’t have the time to go hunting for it. What you see is what you get, and I’ve got like… three connections left before I can hook this up to my portable pad. I’m not going to cause an arc flash, and we both know I’m good to get electrocuted every once in a while. I’ve survived until now, today’s not going to be the day I meet a zap I can’t handle.” She pointed into the darkness, and then up to the ceiling, “I have to get in there and play with proverbial fire so we can survive this.”