Now he felt his shoulders creep with tension and a prickling at the nape of his neck, which usually meant something hostile was close by. He scuttled along the base of the wall, shining a hand-light at the joins in the passage molding. Fifteen meters down he found an unusually thick panel border and stopped.
His helmet was still open, so he squatted down and closed his eyes, listening.
Back the way he’d come, there was an echoing grinding sound. Hatchway opening.
The tool-belt produced a cutting torch and he thumbed the plasma emitter to quarter power and bit in along the edge of the panel. The join came apart, revealing a dark access way carpeted with mold. Ah, brown mushrooms! he thought, a fragment of an old song unspooling in memory. In we go.
The panel pulled closed behind him and, duckwalking, he scrabbled along by helmet light. After only a few moments, the shape of the huge heat exchanger conduit loomed up before him. This time the mauve striping had been replaced by bright crimson bands and, to his surprise, lines of a different—familiar—script ran between the warning markings.
This was a Hesht ship? Astounding. I thought they suicided their—well, maybe the Khaid bought it from some bankrupt pack. Or a shipyard switched clients in midstream.
He did remember a bit of low Heshok, as well as most of the more important letterforms, and what he could make out of the warnings indicated that yes, this was an air circulator attached to the heat exchangers. On one of our ships, that means the outbound air will circulate through shipskin radiators to cool before being returned to the sterilizers.
Feeling grimly determined—Musashi himself would have been impressed by such a stoic demeanor in the face of such calamity—Hadeishi hurried along beside the conduit until, after squeezing past a number of stanchions, he found an access port to the exchanger itself. Finally!
The panel popped loose with a little help from his pry bar, and then—after making sure the things he’d looted from the Khaid guard were secured to his suit by lanyards and his helmet was snugged tight—he crawled inside. Immediately, a hot wind roared around him and his z-suit began to squeak alarms about the mounting temperature. He also felt his stomach quease with the loss of gravity and guessed he’d just moved past the last of the g-decking.
Quickly then, he thought, scrambling along the pipe as quickly as he could. I wonder how long my temperature regulator will hold out?
* * *
Some time later the character of the conduit changed. The pipe came to an abrupt end in a wall filled with hundreds of dimples, each with a much smaller pipette opening recessed within. Hadeishi stopped, feeling the hot wind beating at his back, and then retreated. This proved difficult—going with the airflow, he hadn’t realized how hard it was pushing at him—but three meters back from the diffusion wall he found an access plate. Now he pressed his temperature sensor against the opening, and saw with relief that the plate itself was quite cold.
They’d be fools to have open vacuum adjacent to the air exchanger, right? Don’t want to trip a pressure alarm.
Regardless, he forced open the access plate and eeled out into a dark, congested room filled with more pipes and machines of unknown provenance. Getting the panel closed behind him was an effort, one that left him exhausted. Hadeishi hooked one leg around a nearby pipe and let himself float.
A search of his pockets found a threesquare bar, which—after checking his environment readings—he ate. That quieted his hunger, but did nothing for his thirst. He licked his lips, trying to remember how many days or hours he could survive without something to drink. Probably the least of my worries, he thought. Hopefully, he went through the equipment belt and pouch taken from the Khaid marine, but found nothing edible. He did find a brace of thumb-length cylinders on the belt. Turning them over, he sighed—despairing for his fellow man—for they were Méxica Imperial Army HM-240 grenades long past their expiration date.
Why sir, I found these lying in the street. They must have fallen from an air-lorry.
Fortified, Hadeishi checked his chrono and tried to gauge how much time had passed since the Wilful was attacked. No more than an hour, I hope. I’ve got to keep moving. He didn’t remember feeling the over-under nausea of punching into transit, which meant the Khaid were probably still cleaning up after their attack on the freighter.
Searching the machine room he found a small door and another access plate. Both seemed temperature neutral, so he eased the door open and found himself looking into a service way lit by only a thin strip of glowlights along the walls. This struck him as a proper maintenance shaft and he looked back, trying to gauge which way was skinside from the heading of the conduit.
That way? he guessed, pulling himself quickly “down” the corridor. Twenty meters on, the shaft turned to the right and a heavy lock-style door emerged from the gloom on his left. O praise Ameratsu, bringer of daylight!
Mitsuharu kicked away from one wall and touched down beside the lock. A control panel faced the heavy hatch, but there was no glassite window showing what lay beyond. He wanted to rub his face, but found himself nervously tapping on the faceplate of his helmet instead. The controls had a keypad with twelve buttons around a hex-shaped bezel, some kind of card-reader beside them, and a touch plate.
Time for the old guard to lend a hand, Hadeishi thought. The severed Khaid forearm had been dripping globules of blood behind him as he’d moved and now they gleamed fitfully in the air, drifting past like tiny blue-black planets. He pressed the glove against the touch plate.
Nothing happened.
* * *
Then he felt relieved—Idiot! If they found those bodies, someone will have noticed the missing hand, and shipboard security will be on the lookout for these credentials. That meant getting through the airlock the oldfashioned way … the keypad was a guessing game he didn’t have time to play, the card-reader had possibilities—but a quick search through the pouch and the belt he’d stolen didn’t find an access card or crystal—and the touch plate was too likely to trigger an alarm. Instead he cast around in the immediate vicinity, looking for an emergency access hatch that would let him cycle the airlock on an override. This led him farther down the corridor without success.
Back at the lock, Hadeishi felt his chances of escape eroding with every chrono tick. At a loss, he examined the control panel and its various components again. This time, something tickled in memory and he found himself staring at the hex-shaped bezel. A ship built for the Hesht, six fingers on each hand, six packs to a pride … He took out his pry bar and jammed the metal tip under the edge of the bezel, which was not made of the same heavy steel as the rest of the lock. Indeed, the plastic cap popped off, revealing a deep socket—also hex-shaped—running into the hatch.
Emergency access! he gloated, fumbling through both tool belts for something that would fit the keyhole. A moment later he was spraying some unlok into the opening—it was a fair guess no one had manually opened the hatch since construction!—and then he wedged a number six socket wrench into the opening and then ran one handle of the bolt cutters through the socket itself. Then Hadeishi braced himself against the sidewall—thankful for once that he was working in z-g—and put everything he had into cranking his scratch-built key around.
For a long, long minute the socket and cutter combination resisted, going nowhere. His arms started to burn and he felt a twinge in his chest. Then, with a creaky vibration felt through his boots, the wrench rotated a centimeter. Breathing harshly, Hadeishi stopped—sprayed more unlok into the hole—and then put his shoulder into it again.
Now the mechanism creaked again, but faster, and then began to rotate smoothly. Letting out a long hiss of relief, Mitsuharu worked the balky key around until a dull thud reverberated through his arms and the control panel flashed a magenta icon. At the same time, a pair of handles popped free from the metal.
Now, he thought, I will truly be on the clock. Before opening the door, he carefully stowed all of his tools and secured the lanyards and pou
ches on both belts. Even the severed hand was tacked down. Then he took hold of both handles and pulled. The hatch swung towards him a little ponderously, revealing a dull gray chamber with a perforated grating as the floor. On the opposite wall was a thick glassite panel and beyond that—the wink and gleam of distant stars.
* * *
Thirty seconds, Hadeishi counted, watching the airlock cycle. A number of warning lights had come on as soon as he’d secured the inner lock and vented atmosphere. Thirty-five seconds.
The exterior hatch opened and the dull, ruddy light of the kuub streamed in, throwing harsh shadows on the walls. Mitsuharu checked his wrist, watching the radiation indicator fluctuate and then settle into the orange zone. Thirty-eight seconds.
He swung out of the lock, oriented himself, and then dialed up the magnification on his helmet to thirty-x and took a quick three-sixty of the horizon line. To his right a long profusion of radiating fins emerged from the shipskin, blocking most of his view. To the left the hull arced away into nothing but the abyss of stars. Behind him, however, he felt his heart leap to see the drive cowlings of the Wilful rising over the horizon.
Forty-four seconds. Watching the radiation detector fluctuate wildly, Hadeishi wished he had a full EVA rig. His z-suit was airtight and temperature regulated, but it was not intended for lengthy stays outside of the shielding of a ship. Beggars cannot be choosers, he chided himself, and moved off towards the freighter as fast as his boots could adhere to the shipskin.
A hundred meters on he halted, catching sight of a pair of recessed cargo or boat-bay doors ahead. He crouched down and crept to the edge of the opening. The doors were closed, but he could see a porthole-like window not far away, on a smaller access hatch. Carefully he glanced around, checking the horizon. Nothing caught his eye, so Hadeishi worked his way down to the smaller hatchway, trying to keep out of line-of-sight from the window. Just a meter away from the opening, he froze, feeling the hull under his hands and feet begin to tremble.
One hundred and sixty seconds.
The bay doors began to separate, spilling a frosty wisp of atmosphere out into the void, and letting a sharp white light gleam through. Beneath him, the metal doors continued to roll back into the hull, carrying Hadeishi with them. One hundred, sixty-eight seconds.
He scrambled to the porthole and risked a look inside before the smaller hatch disappeared. Sure enough there was a boat-bay on the other side, holding a fair-sized shuttle. With the brief glimpse, he picked out a pair of Khaiden pilots visible through the beveled windows of the spacecraft. Then he took in the rest of the bay and froze, heart thudding in his throat, back pressed against the cold metal. The loading deck beside the shuttle was swarming with Khaid marines in combat armor; some of them were climbing onto EVA carts like the ones the Zosen used to ferry supplies and work crews around the hulls of larger starships.
Musashi was trudging through mud, in the rain, his head bowed beneath a peasant’s bowl-like straw hat, a simple bokutō over his shoulder, when the gates of the castle swung wide. Perforce, he stopped, moving to the side of the road, and watched in interest as a great column of samurai rode out, their armor gleaming wetly and their spear points bare to the sky. Weary, he squatted as they thundered past, wrapped in silken cloaks, their faces hidden behind armored masks. At the last, the banner man rode out, and though his uma-jirushi hung heavy in the pelting rain, Musashi could not avoid seeing the Tokugawa mon. Thus knowing the evil lord remained within the castle, his heart was gladdened—for victory or death over the Mongol overlords was close at hand.
Hadeishi glanced back at the shuttle, saw the bus-sized craft was not mounted on a launch rail like a strike-fighter, and raced to dig into his pouches. An instant later, he’d found the roll of stickytape he needed, then double-checked the grenades and the severed arm. Nerving himself, he moved to the edge of the still-moving bay door. Keeping out of sight of the Khaiden hunting party, he crouched down, tensing his legs.
One chance, he thought, feeling giddy. Watch for it.…
The bay doors stopped with a clunk, and then the shuttle separated from the landing cradle. Ponderously, moving only under low-powered thrusters, the craft wallowed out of the boat-bay. Crouched just beyond the edge of the opening, Hadeishi waited for the right moment—then he saw the port-side passenger door slide past—and he sprang outward, hands and feet outstretched.
He hit the side of the shuttle with a heavy thud, let his knees and elbows flex to absorb as much impact as possible, and then flattened himself against the hull. Seconds later, the Khaid shuttle had cleared the Qalak and the entire spaceframe shivered as its main engines went into pre-ignition.
Two hundred seconds. A cool sensation tickled his left wrist as his med-band started to inject anti-radiation meds. Ignoring the sensation, Hadeishi scuttled forward to the passenger door and peered inside.
Perfect, he thought, suppressing a laugh. A Khaid sailor in a blue-and-black z-suit was just inside, watching an environmental control panel as the shuttle started to pick up speed. After a moment of preparation, Mitsuharu began banging hard on the porthole with the severed forearm. Then, before waiting to see what happened, he secured the limb with two quick passes of stickytape so that the bloody glove was easily visible in the window, and scrambled up and over the roof of the shuttle.
Crouching, he took his bearings and saw the shuttle was turning away at an angle from both the Qalak and the Wilful. It was hard to gauge distance with no backdrop, but he guessed the freighter was a good kilometer away. Two hundred, fifteen seconds.
Hadeishi pulled out the little plasma cutter, oriented himself towards the Wilful—looked back towards the passenger door with a wry twist to his lips—and when he saw the top edge of the door cycle outward, he rotated the strength ring to full and thumbed the control.
The plasma jet flickered out in a long, blue-white line and Hadeishi felt his boots tug—kicking away, he lost adhesion—and then saw the shuttle falling away below him. Long seconds passed … he imagined the hatch cycling open, the limb being retrieved, the Khaid sailor stepping back inside to examine the queer artifact. Then the portholes on the sides of the shuttle suddenly flared with a stabbing, orange-red light. The spacecraft shuddered, spilling debris. Out of the corner of his eye, Mitsuharu saw a swarm of combat suits boiling out of the Qalak’s boat-bay. EVA carts winged towards the shuttle, which was now leaking spheroids of gray-white smoke as the interior fittings burned.
Two hundred, forty seconds.
He switched off the plasma cutter and curled himself up into a ball. It was a long fall to the freighter and he hoped—devoutly prayed—that the Khaiden commander on the Qalak didn’t decide to turn on full active scanning for the immediate volume around his ship. Then I would fry like a sweet dumpling!
At two hundred forty-five seconds a wave of metallic debris, intermixed with charred cushions, chunks of piping, internal framing, and bits of z-suit accelerated past him. Buffeted by the flotsam, he looked back and saw that the entire shuttle had vanished in a blast cloud. The Khaid marines—barely visible at this range—were in equal disarray. Score one for the army! Good thing, too, he thought. That combat armor will sport an IR mode for extravehicular combat. Gritting his teeth, he dialed down his suit temperature regulator. Can’t go to zero, but I can draw down my signature.…
* * *
Sixteen minutes later, his limbs numb with cold and his radiation monitor strobing red, Hadeishi collided with cargo hold B on the Wilful’s port quarter. Shocked out of a hypothermia-induced daze, he bounced along the pitted, scarred surface of the freighter for five or six seconds until he managed to get his hands flat against the metal hull and his z-suit adhered. The jerky stop sent stabbing pains up each arm, but he managed to hold on. Ah, now that hurt.
Now able to dial up his suit temperature, Mitsuharu scrabbled along on all fours, looking for the nearest airlock. If memory served, there was a cargo door between two of the drive fairings. The last six meters seemed a vas
t distance, but he managed to drag himself to the control panel and punch in his access code. Human-friendly lights flickered on inside the lock chamber and he fell in, feeling utterly drained. Hands shaking, Mitsuharu managed to get the outer lock closed and atmosphere cycling before he collapsed.
Gravity kicked in as he lay on the floor, inner door rotating open. For a long moment Hadeishi couldn’t even lift his head, but when he could, the cargo hold access way was empty. No alarms had triggered, no sirens sounded. Khaid haven’t reprogrammed the ship yet.
Dragging himself over the threshold, Hadeishi managed to prop himself against the nearest wall and close the hatch. His hands and feet were getting warmer, and he felt some strength returning. When he could get to his feet, Mitsuharu shuffled down to the cargo master’s office—really no more than a closet with controls to manage the gangways and cranes—and rummaged through the storage bins. This yielded up a Gogozen bar—a kind of high-fat candy he usually avoided, but now stuffed into his mouth without delay—and far better, three cans of Kuka-Kolo—a carbonated chocolatl beverage sweetened with the sap of the Nopal cactus. When all three were drained dry, Hadeishi began to feel human again. Ah, sugar. Very delicious. Now I need a weapon, or more than one.
He missed the grenades, but they seemed to have done well by the Khaid shuttle.
After searching the closet one more time, Hadeishi signed into the shipboard net and paged through the security camera views available to him. Restricted to below-decks, he found nothing in ten fruitless minutes. No Khaid down below … they must be up on the bridge.
Picking up a long pry bar stowed behind the comp panels, Mitsuharu slipped out of the closet and made his way towards the shipcore with his helmet external audio turned up, listening for anything beyond the usual groaning and hissing of the old ship.
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