by Tony Peak
She swallowed and pulled the lever. The circular door hissed aside.
No decompression, no escape of their thinning atmosphere. Relieved sighs, weak laughs, and prayers sounded behind her as Kivita walked into the next corridor.
The air wasn’t as thin, but the temperature had dipped several degrees. As in previous corridors and rooms, an eerie silence greeted them. For a damaged ship, Luccan’s Wish gave off no creaks or groans yet. Since sound didn’t travel in a vacuum, the silence only worried Kivita more.
Some queen she’d turned out to be.
Her temples tingled. What about the ship’s mainframe computer? Focusing her mind, she tried to stretch out her thoughts to the computer. Navon said something, but she gritted her teeth and concentrated harder.
Luccan’s Wish tilted again.
“No,” she grunted, directing all her mental will into the ship’s computer systems. In her mind, locking mechanisms activated, three braking thrusters fired, and life support returned to a few cabins. After a few seconds, Luccan’s Wish stabilized. Kivita closed her eyes and fought back sharp pangs in her cranium.
“Kivita?” Jandeel grasped her arm.
“Leave her be,” Navon said in a hushed tone. “You are connected with the ship. You are pouring its data into my thoughts. What if I—”
“Can’t hold this for long. Which way?” she asked in a strained voice.
“There, on your left.” Navon followed her into the next corridor.
As Kivita drew aside the shaft’s thin metal safety door, a pounding erupted from the door into the next chamber. Through the door’s square window, a Naxan man screamed at them in silence while floating with terminal slowness.
“Stars darkening and setting, no.” Rhii pulled Basheev to her. The others all turned away and shuffled past. The Naxan continued to pound on the door, his lips turning blue.
“May the Solars have mercy on him,” Jandeel whispered.
Clutching her bandaged head, Cheseia sniffled.
Navon blocked the view with his body. “We cannot help him. Come, everyone. This shaft should take us down to Level Eight, where Frevyx is docked.”
Kivita gripped Cheseia’s arm, while everyone crept into the shaft on their hands and knees. During her time aboard Luccan’s Wish, Kivita had felt part of a family. When Navon moved from the door’s window, she avoided looking through it.
“You certainly must abandon me here,” Cheseia said, sagging against the bulkhead.
The throb mounted in Kivita’s brain. Holding the ship in place would fry her brain unless she caught a break soon, but there was something else touching her thoughts. Familiar, yet alien. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Cheseia hung her head. “No, I—”
Kivita grabbed Cheseia’s ripped tunic. “Listen to me. You can either weep about the pain you’ve brought these people or you can help a few escape. You think this is easy for me? I brought enemies here as much as you.”
Nodding, Cheseia entered, and her sniffling ended.
Kivita ducked and wriggled into the shaft’s cold metal housing, which measured three by three feet square. Noxious air made her gasp for breath. The others in front slowed down, their numbers depleting the shaft’s available oxygen. Small lamps at ten-foot intervals gave spare illumination.
“Hurry the best you can.” Kivita nudged two people who’d stopped to catch their breath. “You see anything, Jandeel?”
“There are three branches here, but I say we go straight across.” His voice traveled through the shaft in a metallic echo.
Navon entered the shaft and closed the sliding door. The lamps flickered. Several people moaned.
In Kivita’s mind, the ship’s computer indicated multiple power failures. She concentrated. The power cells didn’t fire; the energy couplings had burned through. Heart racing, she made the braking thrusters fire again. Nevertheless, Luccan’s Wish dropped slightly toward the gas giant below.
Kivita bit her lip. “Yeah, Jandeel, sounds good. C’mon, everyone. We can’t stay here.”
She coaxed the others as they crept along the shaft. The air chilled and thinned as the shaft resonated with their collective heaves. Dropping temperatures made Kivita’s lungs hurt and chapped her lips and nostrils.
Maihh faltered to her knees and gasped.
“Here.” Kivita clasped Maihh’s hand and they continued together. Maihh clicked three times and murmured her thanks.
For several freezing minutes, the group traveled the shaft. Kivita’s palms numbed from touching the frigid metal, until she rolled her long sleeves over her hands. Basheev gasped and winced, flexing his fingers. Rhii ripped patches from her skinsuit and fashioned makeshift gloves for him.
“I see another shaft door ahead,” Jandeel called back, wheezing.
Tasting carbon in the air, Kivita breathed only through her nose. She glanced back at Navon, who plodded on with slow, measured breaths. Cheseia kept pace though her arms trembled.
A passage on their right creaked; then air hissed somewhere and stopped. Something scraped over metal above them.
Kivita reached out her thoughts to the ship’s computer, but nothing useful returned. Though her head throbbed, she feared to release her hold on Luccan’s Wish.
“Almost there,” Jandeel said.
A dull thud, followed by an explosion above, shook the shaft. Its metal walls vibrated from the force, creating an earsplitting racket. Everyone cried out in pain. Kivita slammed palms to ears and closed her eyes in agony. The reverberation made her teeth chatter, her heart flutter. Cheseia bumped into her; then Maihh coughed and stumbled into Navon.
The throb became an incessant drumbeat in Kivita’s mind. It pumped in her veins, constricted with each heartbeat. She blinked as a repeating sequence entered her thoughts. It wasn’t from the ship’s computer mainframe. A chalky taste violated her mouth.
The sequence formed into an inquisitive sensation. Words came to Kivita’s lips, as if someone else spoke them.
“I’m here,” she whispered.
Warmer air blasted over them from the front. Light flashed into the shaft.
“Hurry it up!” Jandeel yelled. “The door’s open!”
The shaft shifted a few inches to the right. People yelled and screamed. Maihh tried to turn back, but Kivita caught her and, with Navon’s help, forced her forward. The hissing from the right passage grew louder.
“C’mon, go!” Kivita pushed those before her. The shaft shook again. Jerky light filled the shaft. Jandeel held the door open while Rhii, Basheev, and the rest climbed out, gasping. Maihh patted Kivita’s shoulder and rushed out.
Kivita exited the shaft with Cheseia and Navon as a screeching noise echoed inside it. Jandeel slid the door shut and locked it. They all jumped back as it buckled from within, but held.
“Decompression,” Navon said. “Let us find a lift.”
Shivering, Kivita tried to learn from the computer the location of the closest lift. This time, though, more sensors had shorted out. Luccan’s Wish was all but handicapped.
Focusing her will, Kivita barely managed to keep control over two braking thrusters and some life support.
“The computer is almost dead, so where now?” she asked, looking around.
They’d entered the other side of Level Four, across the thruster exhaust trench and cargo bay on the underside of Luccan’s Wish. On their left, a small galley held five cringing Thedes. Tiles had fallen from the ceiling, and one lamp flickered like a crazy firefly. Air and gravity remained normal, but the temperature was still dropping.
Kivita ran to the lockers and flung them open. “Everyone get into an envirosuit!” She grabbed one and slipped into it.
Her fellow Thedes also suited up. Even the five in the galley came and put one on. Navon faced them while he fastened wrist clamps around his gloves.
“Have you seen anyone else? What has happened?”
A Sutaran man with a broken arm answered. “We all ran to the airlocks for the ships. The whole ship shook, and the lights went on and off. We heard screams and hissing air from ahead, so we turned back. The corridors started collapsing, and . . . So many are out there now. . . .” He looked down.
“Out where?” Basheev asked as Rhii handed him a helmet.
“In space,” Kivita said. No use avoiding the issue. “Damn it. What about the lifts? Should be one the next corridor over.” She tried to contain the strange sequence running through her mind, but it almost blotted out everything around her.
“Broken,” the Sutaran man said. “It won’t come back up from Level Ten.”
Jandeel found an intercom panel and pressed the button. “Can anybody hear me?”
Static crackled on the speaker, and then a small girl’s voice came across it. “We can’t get out! We can’t get out! Please come get us out!” The connection clicked and went dead.
Cheseia glanced at Kivita, russet eyes wishing for her own death. Part of Kivita wanted to reach out to her; the other wanted to strangle the Ascali traitor. Across light years and depthless revelations, she’d finally learned to control her feelings. Vengeance amounted to an empty pursuit, and Kivita had others than herself to worry about now.
A strained male voice broke over the intercom speakers. “We’re on Level Six. I don’t know what the hell happened. We still have air but no gravity. Where are you? Can you get to us?”
Navon touched Jandeel’s shoulder. “Do not reveal our location, for we cannot help them. We still do not know who or where our enemy is.”
Kivita burned with helplessness, and the Thedes’ reaction to the attack still angered her. Damn fools, thinking they were untouchable. If they didn’t reach Frevyx or the other ships soon, they’d die within hours for lack of air.
“Whoever fired on us didn’t want to destroy Luccan’s Wish,” Kivita said. “Just disable it and cause confusion. We have to assume they’ve boarded, so I’m not sticking around. To hell with the lifts. I say we find a roll of flexi wire and rappel down the shaft to Level Eight.”
Rhii shook her head. “Stars darkening in the night, miss. We have wounded and children. How can we do that?”
“Carry them,” Kivita replied. “It’s what I’m going to do. We can’t just—”
Luccan’s Wish slanted a few degrees toward the planet. An alarm rang from a cryo chamber on their right. Behind them, the maintenance shaft door buckled in farther. Concentrating on the computer, Kivita tried to make the braking thrusters fire. One did, but the other lost power.
“Put your helmets on!” Navon shouted. Everyone obeyed him.
Kivita rifled through the lockers until she found two flexi rolls, perhaps fifty feet each. She handed one to Cheseia. “I’ll go down the shaft first. We’ll have to open the lift doors to Level Eight manually.”
Two explosions vibrated far above on their right. Luccan’s Wish shook. The lamps flickered off, and some didn’t come back on. Kivita felt her steps getting lighter as the ship’s computer finally went offline. Her slight control of the last thruster and scant life support ended.
Kivita affixed one end of the flexi line to a girder just inside the lift shaft. “Make sure it’ll hold us.”
Cheseia tugged it and nodded. Darkness waited below.
Jandeel nudged Rhii and Basheev after Kivita. “Hurry. I’ll make sure the flexi holds up here before following.”
“May the stars shine for us, miss.” Rhii pressed a portable lamp into Kivita’s hand, while Basheev passed out more to the others from a nearby locker. The ship vibrated again, longer and with greater intensity. Pods creaked from their casings in the cryo chamber. Crockery and foodstuffs spilled from the galley.
The intercom speaker buzzed and popped. “. . . And we can’t . . . no! . . . coming in . . .”
The whizzing noise of a kinetic shot ended the connection.
“Let’s get going,” Kivita said in a flat voice.
Cheseia helped her down into the lift shaft. Its spherical sides bore sensor pits and gravitational accelerators, which moved the lift without cables. Kivita activated her lamp, clamped it to her helmet, and hoisted herself down. They needed to travel four decks down, from Four to Eight. Each lift stopped at fifteen-foot intervals.
Kivita swiveled her head left and right, the cold lamp lighting her descent in quick glimpses. A tug on the line signaled others were following after her.
“How much farther, Kivita?” Jandeel asked over the helmet speaker. “I’ve lost all gravity up here.”
“Yeah, down here, too,” Kivita replied. “I’m nearing Level Five now. With less gravity, there’ll be less weight on the line. Cheseia, bring the other flexi roll and send everyone down. No one let go of it.”
A hissing sound exploded in the chamber above. Kivita vibrated on the line for a second; the galley had finally decompressed.
Shouts and sobs came over her helmet speakers, but Kivita magnetized her polyboots and descended, hand over hand on the flexi line. The lift exit for Level Five passed her by, and the one for Level Six came within sight.
“Everybody still with me?” she asked. “Just hang on to the line and try to keep your feet on the shaft wall.” Kivita’s muscles burned with the effort of pulling the rest behind her. Lugging all those small loads through zero-G derelicts paid off now.
Luccan’s Wish trembled for an instant. The flexi line shook.
Kivita glanced up. Cheseia had wrapped the flexi around her waist and now helped Kivita pull the others via the shaft’s sensor pits.
“Just keeping going. We are truly right behind you,” Cheseia said.
Along the shaft, several lamps shone their beams over the walls and across her fellow Thedes. Almost thirty of them. Kivita had no idea, out of four hundred, how many still lived aboard Luccan’s Wish. The thought drove her on. Her shoulders and legs shook with exertion; sweat pooled in her envirosuit collar.
“Kivita, there’s—” Jandeel’s voice cut off.
“Just hold on, I’m nearing Level Seven,” Kivita said, unable to keep the relief from her voice.
“Flaring red stars, someone’s shining light on us from up there!” Basheev cried over their helmet speakers.
Maihh clicked several times. Some of the others mumbled and cursed, but no one stopped moving along the flexi line.
“Don’t panic. It could be friends,” Rhii said.
Impacts vibrated down the shaft into Kivita’s legs. “Jandeel? Jandeel, can you hear me?”
No one answered. The lights kept shining from above.
“Kivita, keep going!” Navon shouted.
A hard shake traveled down the flexi line. Kivita glanced up as something flashed far above them; then the line went limp in her hands. Cheseia bumped into her. With her boot soles knocked from the shaft wall, Kivita plummeted down.
The gravity had reactivated.
“It’s been cut!” Basheev screamed over the speaker.
Though the gravity remained weak, it still yanked Kivita down with terrifying speed. Below, her lamp illuminated the top of the lift on Level Ten.
Mind racing, Kivita shouted over her mic. “Shit—grab the sensor pits!”
Her fingers scrambled over the shaft wall. Some of her fingertips caught on the pits, and her feet skidded along the surface. Kivita’s polyboots stuck to the wall again as Navon and the others scrabbled past her.
“Grab me!” She leaned out and took Navon’s hand until he found a foothold near the next lift entrance.
Rhii got a handhold opposite them and clasped Navon’s other hand. An Aldaakian latched onto Rhii’s ankle. Above, Cheseia held Basheev with one arm, but the weight of the rest slid the flexi down her waist and past her ankles.
The other people fell past them.
Without atmosphere in the shaft now, Kivita heard no impact. The flexi line sunk in noiseless gloom.
Voices came over her speaker: people in pain, afraid, cursing, calling for help. Kivita walked up the wall as two light beams shone from above.
“Hurry, Kivita! Those are not friends!” Navon called. Rhii and the other hangers-on climbed down using the sensor pits for handholds.
Kivita pulled Basheev from Cheseia’s strained grasp. “Here, climb on my back.” She took Cheseia’s arm. “And, you, hang on to me.”
“I am definitely coming,” Cheseia said, renewed strength in her gaze.
Glancing down, Kivita’s lamp revealed more than twenty Thedes lying in a crumpled heap atop the lift. Some had gained their footing, but most remained motionless. Maihh stood, hands reaching up to Kivita.
Level Eight’s lift entrance waited three feet away.
“Kivita, definitely put me on that lip next to the lift door,” Cheseia said. “I will certainly try to open it. With your boots, try to help as many down there as you truly can.”
Kivita released Cheseia and Basheev on the lip and walked down the wall. Her heart thudded in desperation as she tried not to think about who watched them from above, shining lights on them. Who had cut the flexi line.
While Kivita neared those atop the stalled lift, Cheseia grunted and strained with the door; Navon helped her. Kivita reached for Maihh’s hand as it came up to meet hers.
“The Solars bless you, dear,” Maihh said.
“I’ve got you now. Just—”
The lift shook and slid away from Kivita with increasing speed. Maihh’s fingers brushed hers, then disappeared into the darkness. The wall vibrated under her boots. After a few seconds, the lamps of those who’d fallen winked out.
Kivita’s gloved hand remained extended. Ready to save a life, to give hope.
She wanted to scream, wanted to follow and help them, but her lamp didn’t penetrate the black hole beneath her.
“Kivita, come back! The lift must have gone to the power level,” Navon said. “We have forced the door open. We’ve got gravity—”