The wrench slammed into his forearm, pain lancing through the limb, jarring him as far up as his shoulder. Worse, the blow sent him into a roll, spinning out of control toward the cockpit seat. He collided with it head first. Pat fought to get his feet between him and his attacker, but Pierce was too fast. He closed in before Pat had the chance to react. Again the wrench came crashing in toward Pat’s head. He tucked his head behind his arms, trying to protect his skull.
Pierce hammered blows against both his arms. Pat heard something crack with the third blow. The pain was more intense than anything he’d felt before, but he managed to deflect two more blows. Vainly he tried to push away, but Pierce grabbed his shipsuit by the collar. This close, Pierce couldn’t miss. The next wrench swing took Pat in the head, and he didn’t feel any more blows after that.
Carmen still felt more than a little queasy. She was glad she hadn’t had to fly the Hopper – she’d never have been able. That red-out had turned into a blackout. Fred wasn’t any better off – both of them were knocked out, and only woke up after Jacob parked the Hopper in the big cargo airlock on the shuttle.
So they were in. And they’d had a real stroke of luck – somehow, the inner door was already opening. That was something Carmen had worried about. Fred assured her he could open the thing, hotwire it. But she was just as glad to see it already open and waiting for them.
“I’d go for it,” Jacob said over the radio bud in Carmen’s ear. “Whatever you do, don’t hang around in the airlock.”
Carmen privately seconded that motion. She couldn’t help but remember the first time she’d seen this space. She remembered the sick man, already dying, remembered her desperate rush to lock him in. It was like it all happened just yesterday. And she remembered Patrick ejecting the hapless man into space. She shuddered at the thought. Jacob was right. They were far too vulnerable here.
Fred wasn’t so sure. “It don’t smell right,” he said.
“I think it was Pat, trying to help us,” Carmen said. “But trap or not, we need to move. The bad guys might not know we’re here yet, but that won’t last.”
She pushed off for the doorway into the rest of the ship. It was hanging halfway open, like someone had pushed the button but was even now considering changing their minds. Carmen shook her head to clear the thoughts. They had to move, yes. But if she started thinking that the bogeyman was watching them, waiting to pounce… She just had to hope that it really was Pat who’d opened the doors, and was looking out for them.
Carmen looked back over her shoulder, realizing that Fred wasn’t with her. “You coming?” she called back softly. She didn’t want her voice to carry through the open airlock doors.
Fred was rubbing his arm where she’d injected him with her cure. “You sure that stuff will work?”
“Nope,” she replied. “But you’re already exposed either way. So you’d better hope it does.”
“Shit,” he replied. Then he shook himself like a dog shedding water, and pushed off from the Hopper to join her in a motion that seemed surprisingly graceful in such a big man. Fred glided to a stop alongside her and peeked his head out through the opening. He ducked back inside.
“Looks clear,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Without waiting for her answer, he darted through the gap into the cargo hold. Immediately gunfire ripped through the space he’d just been, bullets pinging off the cargo door. Carmen screamed – she couldn’t help it, the noise was too loud, too sudden. She dove back behind the cargo door, the steel reassuring against her back.
Where was Fred? Had he been hit? How many gunmen were out there? She thought it had sounded like only a single gun – so maybe just one person? But she’d never fired a weapon before. She was more than aware that most of her education on the subject came from bad movies. The sound effects from films didn’t do the real thing justice.
She didn’t have a weapon. None of them did, really. The best she could do was slide the large multi-dose injector she’d brought along out of her pocket and palm the thing. Carmen knew that scream had given away her position. Someone was going to come looking for her.
It only took a few moments. But it wasn’t the menacing figure she’d expected. A boy’s face appeared in the opening of the airlock, barely old enough to shave but still dressed in fatigues and carrying a rifle. He brought himself to a rough stop, only just catching hold with a free hand before he tumbled into the airlock. He clearly wasn’t too good at maneuvering in space yet. He swung his gaze around and saw Carmen, his eyes widening. They had the telltale raccoon mask. He was sick – very sick. He only had one hand on his weapon, and he seemed confused about how to grip it properly while still hanging on to the airlock door.
Carmen used his hesitation to her advantage. She reached out and grabbed the arm that was anchoring him in place with one hand, and then stabbed her hypodermic down with the other. The boy yelped – and let go out of reflex. He drifted, tumbling a few feet away from the door.
Carmen grabbed hold of the edge and darted inside. She glanced around, half expecting another shooter to open fire on her as soon as she came into sight. But there was only silence inside.
She knew just what to do this time, anyway. I quick push brought her to the airlock control panel, and she ran the sequence to close the door. It rumbled for a moment and then snapped shut. She heard the guy she’d locked inside yelp, and peeked in through the window to be sure he was all right.
He wasn’t really all right. The injection she’d given him had a sedative along with her cure. But the cure would take a good long while to work on him, if it could save him at all in this advanced stage of the disease. And the sedative would take a few minutes to work. In the meantime, the virus had him in a rage. His face was mottled with red, his mouth contorted into a grimace. He was yelling something – Carmen couldn’t hear what. But she saw the threat. He had his rifle in both hands now, aiming it at her. Before she could duck, he fired. The bullets hit the window and left star-shaped marks there. He saw that his bullets weren’t helping, and turned instead toward the Hopper. The first rounds bounced off, but if he kept shooting, he was going to eventually hit something vital in the small craft.
“Jacob,” Carmen called through her radio. “Anything explosive in the Hopper? If one was shot?”
“Yes, it uses compressed gas for thrust. It could explode if it was punctured.”
“Shit,” she said. She reached out to the airlock controls, her mind and heart at war. Her mind knew what she needed to do. The boy was still firing. Any moment he might blow the Hopper, which could kill all of them. She remembered the sequence to open the outer door by heart, even if she’d only seen it executed once.
Was this how Patrick had felt? His hand hovering over the control, knowing that he had to kill the man inside the lock, hating that fact and wishing there was something else he could do?
The thought made her understand him with a complete clarity she’d never had before. She owed him an apology.
Her hand pressed the button.
The outer door opened with a snap and a whoosh of air. The boy inside the lock never had a chance. He didn’t even try to grab for anything. One moment he was there, alive, someone she might be able to save. The next he was gone, drifting in space somewhere in the shuttle’s wake.
17
CARMEN LEANED forward against the panel, hot tears forming little bubbles that drifted away from her face and tangled in her floating hair. She’d been so cruel to Pat, back when she first met him. She’d been furious at him for making what she’d been so sure at the time was the wrong call. He’d looked like a callous monster, and in the back of her head she’d wondered sometimes what she was doing with a man who would execute someone like snapping his fingers.
And now she’d done the same thing. She’d killed someone to save everyone else on the ship, the same as Pat had done. It hurt to have killed the boy, even though she couldn’t see that she had any choice. And it was just as painful that she
’d been so harsh with Pat. She wanted nothing more than to see him again right now. For both apology and comfort. She cycled the outer door closed again, and pumps began refilling the inner lock with air.
“Unngggh.”
The groan came from somewhere behind Carmen, back in the hold, and made her jump. This was no time or place to fall apart, and she wasn’t a fall-apart sort of woman, anyway. She turned and looked for the source of the noise. Her instinct said that it was probably Fred. Was he hurt? Had he been hit by the gunfire?
She keyed her radio. “Fred? Where are you?”
“Over here,” he replied over her ear bud. His voice sounded ragged. Carmen saw a hand waving from a pool of shadow behind a stack of shipping crates. She pushed off from the door and flitted to his side. He was keeping himself from drifting by holding one of the crates with one hand. He had the other hand planted firmly against his left calf. Even holding as tightly as he could, some spheres of red blood drifted free.
“How bad is it?” Carmen asked. Fred must have been hit by one of the bullets. Carmen had a sudden and savage sense of satisfaction over spacing the soldier, and then immediately felt a pang of guilt for feeling that way. Too confusing to worry about right now anyway.
“Are you both OK?” Jacob asked over the radio.
“I’m fine, but Fred’s hit,” Carmen replied.
“Went right through,” Fred replied. “Hurts, but wrap it up and I should be OK for a bit.”
Carmen looked around trying to gauge how much blood Fred had lost by measuring the balls of blood floating around. Maybe only a few ounces? It looked like less than a pint, anyway, and a man Fred’s size could generally spare a pint without feeling it too much.
“At least you won’t have to walk on it,” she said. The bullet hole had weakened the fabric in the leg of his ship suit enough that she could rip it off and tear it into strips.
Fred chuckled, then inhaled sharply as she put direct pressure on the wound. He got several shades paler as she wadded cloth into both sides of the wound.
“You sure you’re OK? You’re not going to fall out on me, are you?” she jibed. She hoped he wouldn’t. She needed his help, and the best way she could think of to ensure he stayed with her was to imply he might be too weak.
She was right. He looked affronted, and glared at her. “Took worse hit than this, lady,” he said. “Jus’ patch it up.”
Carmen wrapped the dressing with strips of cloth, and tied the ends tightly over the wound. It wasn’t perfect. Fred really ought to have a proper cleaning and surgical care for his leg. But it would keep him from bleeding to death for now, and that would have to do. Carmen let go of Fred’s leg and he wiggled it experimentally. He gave what sounded like a satisfied grunt and then looked up at her.
“Come on,” he said. “We need to move. I’m surprised nobody else has wandered in here yet. Let’s get somewhere more quiet.”
“Jacob, we’re moving now,” Carmen said. No response came back over the radio. “Jacob?”
“They’re jamming him. Which means they know we’re here and where we came from. Let’s go,” Fred said.
Fred pushed off from the cargo, carefully favoring the injured leg but working his way across the hold with an agility that Carmen envied despite his injury. He led them off to the rear of the hold, near the engines, and opened a hatch.
“Inside, quick,” he said.
Carmen ducked in. Lights flickered on as motion sensors picked up her presence. The space wasn’t large, and was mostly crammed full of space suits. It felt positively claustrophobic once Fred joined her inside and closed the door.
“We should be safe here for a bit. Now, tell me how you planned to take on an entire ship full of armed soldiers?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” she replied. “I planned to cure them. I find that people who aren’t in immediate danger of dying tend to do less stupid things. This whole mess happened because people are afraid. Take away the fear…”
“And you take away the reasons for these guys being assholes? Might work.”
Carmen sighed. “It might have, if I’d gotten here a day or so earlier. Now I’m not so sure. The infection is pretty advanced in some of these people.”
“Will it still work?” Fred asked. He looked alarmed, and she felt the same. What if Patrick and her father were wearing already bleeding in their brains? She wasn’t confident that her cure could save someone that far along.
“Maybe,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “But they’re likely to be irrational, even violent. They’re not just going to sit down and listen to reason just because we have a cure.”
It was a real mess, and she didn’t see an easy solution. The problem wasn’t going to solve itself, either. In fact, it would get worse, the longer they waited. And every minute that went by dropped the chances that her cure would help the people she loved.
That word was still sending an icy ripple down her spine, but it still felt right. Which made her more determined than ever to find a solution.
“Fred, how do we disable everyone on the ship without killing them?” she asked. There had to be a way, and if anyone knew it, she had a hunch it would be him.
“Well, a few ways. Most of them require a little more prep work than we seem to have time for,” he replied. “But the easiest is jus’ to mess with the air from the environmental control panel. Change the gas mix a bit, and people will likely jus’ pass out.”
That wouldn’t be great for patients already ill, whose bodies were fighting for their lives against the virus. But once they were out, she could get them on oxygen if she needed to. The first aid station on the shuttle wasn’t bad. The aid station back on the moon was even better, of course – but they’d be stuck in quarantine until it was certain that none of them were infectious anymore, so that was out. Earth was the best bet, but it was days away. She’d be stuck with what resources she had on the shuttle – or what could be carried in from the moon base – to keep these people alive until their immune systems could take over.
“We’ll do it. Where is the panel?” Carmen asked.
“Either the cockpit or engineering. The cockpit will be guarded like mad. Engineering is a better bet, but for sure they’ll have someone down there too,” Fred said in a warning tone.
“Who’s sick, and who already knows he is dying from an incurable disease. I doubt he’ll be at his most vigilant,” she replied.
“Fine, we’ll try it,” Fred said. Then he started shucking off the top of his ship suit.
“What the hell, Fred?” she said.
“What?” he asked, tossing the top aside. “Got to be in space suits, otherwise we’ll get knocked out at the same time as everyone else does, right? Space suits are here. Now get undressed.”
Carmen grumbled, but he was right. Someone needed to invent a suit you could just get into with street clothes. She stripped her top off, grateful for the sports bra, and ignored Fred’s struggles to get his pants off over the dressing she’d put on his leg. Carefully not looking his way at all, she shucked off her pants as well so that she could slip into one of the skin tight coolant suits you had to wear inside the suit.
But the tight garment got stuck somewhere around her shoulders. She blushed furiously, knowing what she had to look like. She had no leverage, nothing to push against. No gravity to help her guide the garment down her body. And enough of it was covering her face that she couldn’t see where it was stuck.
“Hold still,” Fred’s gruff voice was gentle but firm. She did as he asked, blushing so hard that she was sure her bare midriff was bright red too. His hands reached up and pulled something by her shoulder, and then pulled down on the coolant shirt. It was magically unstuck now, and slid easily down over her body. Fred’s fingers avoided her skin with the same grace that he glided between cargo boxes outside.
When she could see again she looked up at his face, half expecting to see a leer there, but his face was bland and businesslike.
/> “There,” he said. “You should be all set. I’ll need your help getting the leggings over this dressing.”
She pulled the rest of the coolant suit on herself, wondering at how badly she’d misjudged the man. He was much deeper than she’d figured. But then, he was a friend of Patrick’s – so deeper made sense.
Helping each other out, they were quickly suited up. Instead of hooking up to large backpacks full of air, Fred connected their air supplies to small bottles of oxygen that could be clipped to their belts.
“Less bulky than the big ones, so we can move around faster. But only good for an hour,” he said. “You’ve got to get another before then.” He showed her how to change out the bottle. “You can find these in the emergency lockers all over the ship.”
And then they were out of excuses to wait any longer. Carmen took a deep breath of canned air, the taste odd on her tongue. They had a time limit now, even beyond the one they had before. She was acutely aware of each second passing by as she tucked her clothes away into a cubby. She took out the big injector first, though. She had a hunch she might need it. That, she tucked into a loop on her thigh, and fixed in place with a velcro strap.
Fred opened the door cautiously and peered out. He was moving more slowly than he had exiting the cargo airlock, and it wasn’t just pain from his wound. Carmen realized he was taking the soldiers much more seriously now than he had before. They were a deadly threat. She followed his lead, looking all about for any movement before leaving the suit locker.
“Engineering is right this way,” Fred said. He led the way out of the cargo hold into the rear of the ship. A door waited at the far end of the hall. It was closed. Fred didn’t pause. He tapped a code into the panel. Carmen heard whooshing sounds from the other side, and shouting.
“I pulled the fire alarm,” he said. “Compartment inside is being filled with non-flammable gas. My guess is anyone in there will spill out here about…”
Over the Moon (Star-Crossed Book 1) Page 17