“Ten to twenty centimeters minimum,” the med-tech said. “But Polycon is softer than thermoplast.”
“It sure would have been nice to have a laser about now,” Billy said as he stopped to adjust his target to the wall surface. “Might be faster to go get it and come back.”
“Especially since there’s likely to be a metal inner surface once we get through the softer stuff of the wall,” Preston said. “They tend to overbuild radiologic lockers.”
The handler turned to look at Walker. “I can be back in five minutes,” he said.
“Do it,” he said, nodding.
Billy took off for the lift shaft at a dead run.
“While he’s doing that, I can try to get in through the air vent,” Preston suggested. “Once he gets back, it will take a while to burn through the door. I should make sure they’re all safe behind stuff before he starts cutting.”
“I should do it,” Angel said.
“I’m smaller than you,” the med-tech said, pointing out the obvious.
“Yah, and if the locker’s secure, it’ll have reinforced vents inside,” she said. “If it’s going to take brute meso, I’m your man … sort of.”
Walker thought about it for several seconds before he sighed. “Just be careful.”
“Always am,” she said as she turned and trotted off. “I’ll comm when I’m inside and get the lay of the deck.”
“Go with her, and see if she needs any help getting into the duct from the shaft,” he said, flashing the light down the hall behind her.
The truth was, he just wanted a minute to deal with his thoughts. It didn’t matter what was in there, whether it was kids or whatever, he’d flushed everything into the recycler. “Damn it, I know I’m doing the right thing here, but it’s foobed no matter how it plays out,” he whispered.
“We all know that Ethan,” Rene said over the command channel. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and this will outweigh the frakking downside.”
“That’s not why I’m doing it,” he said. It surprised him to realize that it wasn’t why he was doing it although he didn’t know exactly why he’d gotten himself in this deep.
“Real heroes never do it to be heroic,” Nuko said, joining in.
“She’s in the vent,” Preston hollered from the far end of the hall. “It’s going to be tight, but she should be able to reach them.”
“Keep an eye on her in case she runs into trouble,” he yelled back, leaning his forehead against the door.
“Boss, I’m outside, the sun’s gone down,” Billy said. “Where the hell are the shuttles?”
“You weren’t paying attention before we got inside were you?” he said. “Look up.”
“Got it,” he said. “Marti bring our shuttle down please.”
“I’m almost there,” Angel said. She was grunting as she crawled along the duct. “Oh shit it stinks in here. In a bad way.”
“When you’re inside, link in your optic to the comm. I want to see what we’re looking at.”
He looked down at his belt and realized his visor was missing. He must have taken it off after the energy drain lobotomized Marti and Billy had done the hard reset to get it operating again. “Frak. Preston do you still have your visor with you? I think I left mine upstairs.”
“Yah, boss I’m on my way,” the med-tech said.
“This is bad,” Angel said, her voice sounding like she’d just swallowed a shot of radiator varnish. “There are a crap ton of kids in here. It looks like more than a few of them didn’t make it, but there are at least ten that are still alive. They’re all in bad shape.”
“Oh holy frak,” Preston whispered as he collapsed against the edge of the counter in front of the door. He had his visor on and was looking at the heads up display. He peeled it off. His hand shook as he handed it to the captain.
“I think there’s at least a dozen dead,” she said. He could hear her swallowing hard as she tried to keep her voice steady. “Some of them have been gone a long while.”
“You really don’t want to do that,” the med-tech said, shaking his head and whipping sweat from his pale forehead as Ethan pulled the visor’s headband into place.
“It looks like they had a few days’ supplies when they were locked in,” she said. “But from what I can tell they haven’t had any in a while. It’s bad. Stand by.”
The captain lowered the visor over his eyes and blinked as he focused on the image coming in from her optic. She seemed to be kneeling down in front of a young boy. He was at most seven standard years old, but he had eyes that looked a hundred. They were dry and caked with grime. He blinked slowly as she shined her light at him.
“He looks to be the oldest one still alive,” she said.
“Can you tell me your name?” she asked, reaching up and brushing the hair out of his face with a gentle hand. He licked his lips and his tongue stuck to the dry and cracked edge of his mouth.
“Miguel,” he whispered. “You aren’t my mommy. Is she outside?”
“I don’t know, Miguel,” she said softly. “My name is Angel.”
“Are you here to take me away, too?” he asked, nodding. “Momma told me that if she couldn’t come back, the angels would come.”
Chapter Sixteen:
“Billy if you’re still at the shuttle, bring all the water you can carry,” Captain Walker said. “And hurry.”
“Cando,” he said. “Will slow me down a bit, but it looks like there’s a front entrance for the radiological medicine department. It might be shorter to come in that way.”
“Yah we can check that out once we get them out of the room. I don’t want you to waste time fighting your way through locked doors or on potential dead ends,” he said. “Just make feet.”
“On my way,” he said.
“Marti, once he gets clear, get both shuttles as close to that front door as possible,” Ethan said. “We’re going to be evacuating the survivors and we’ll come out that way if it’s shorter.”
“Yes, Captain,” it said. “I will also discontinue repairs to my automech and focus on recharging as quickly as possible so I can provide transportation assistance.”
“Nuko, you and Rene get the MedBay ready,” he said. “And we’ll need mattresses brought up to the mid-deck from the staterooms. Do what you can to get it set up as emergency facilities.”
“The Magellan will be better equipped,” the engineer said.
“They won’t be in system for a couple hours yet,” he said. “Once they drop out of cruise they can’t do better than local safe speed. A multicruiser is big and can’t risk bending that limit, so they’re looking at twelve hours from when they get over the threshold before they can make planetfall.”
“That’s best case, if we tell them the situation is critical,” Nuko added. “If they come in at standard speed, they’re almost another day from the drop in point.”
“Yah,” Ethan said, realizing the situation wouldn’t get any better for him from here on. “We’ll have to let them know what we’ve found. I’m thinking from what we’re seeing down here, every second might be critical. We need to get these kids helped before then. Once MacKenna drops into K-186, send her the update. When she rendezvous with us, we can hand them over, but for now it’s all our mess.”
“Copy that, Boss,” Nuko said her voice told him that she knew what he’d just ordered her to do, would be the last knot in his noose. “We’ll be as ready as we can.”
“Angel, I need you to do a basic triage in there so we know who is most critical first. Cando?”
“Yah, Boss. Right now, it looks like we’ve got four breathing, but unresponsive. I’d bet they’re the most critical. One of them looks to be less than two standard years old.”
“There’s no adult in there at all?”
“There was. I didn’t find her body when I first came in. It looks like the children tried to cover her with stuff when she died. It’s not …” her voice trailed off. And he could hear her breathing hard. “I don
’t think it’s something I want to keep poking into.”
“Understood,” he said. “We’ll get you all out of there as quick as we can.”
“I don’t think any of them are strong enough to walk. We will have to carry them all.”
“How many are there?”
“I’ve got four of them alert enough to be talking and asking questions,” she said. “Five more of them are too weak to move, but able to respond when I talk to them. Then there are the four that are breathing but not reacting to anything.”
“How many didn’t make it?”
“Fourteen kids and the adult, I think” she said. “There are stacks of things in here and I don’t know what else might be buried.”
“We’ll need to bring them out too,” Walker said.
“I think we should leave that to the Magellan,” Angel said. “Seriously you don’t want to do that.”
“She’s right,” Preston said. “Until they can figure out what happened it’s probably best to rescue the survivors and then let someone further up the food chain deal with that.”
Billy skidded to a stop at the desk. He’d come up at a dead run and had the bottom half of an EVA suit tied over his back like a pack. It was stuffed full of waterbags and he had the laser rifle stuffed down one leg. He flung it onto the desk and stood there with his chest heaving.
“Let me do that,” the captain said, taking the rifle and tossing them both a bag. There were close to fifty liters crammed into the suit. More than enough to spare. “You two go see if you can find something to carry the kids.”
“We can let Marti do it with its skinsuit,” he said. “In another ten minutes it’ll have enough charge to make several trips the short way back.”
“I will be unable to bring my body down the stairs to the front entrance,” the AA said. “My damaged leg actuator does not allow me to move with an adequate safety margin to carry the survivors on steps. However, if you can bring them to the top of the flight, I can transport them safely from there.”
“If this place is typical, there will be mobility chairs and float gurneys in a supply room near any entrance,” Preston said. “It will also give us a chance to make sure we can open the other entrance doors.”
“Go. I’ve got this,” Walker said.
“Just be careful not to over cut,” Billy said. “It’s easy to burn through and you’ve got people on the other side of the door.”
“I know how to handle a laser,” the captain said, shooting him a hairy eyeball as he waved them away.
“I’m making sure there’s nothing close to the door in here that might go boom with some stray sparks,” Angel said. “Give me a minute to get them clear.”
“Good thinking, I’ll wait,” he said as he checked the charge on the rifle. He adjusted the beam aperture to the narrowest setting and pulled his borrowed visor faceplate down over his face.
“Clear,” she said. “Nothing within five meters so just be careful.”
“You two both have such little faith in your captain,” he said as he pressed the trigger and began incinerating a slice into the thermoplast. It sizzled and popped, kicking out a thick oily smoke. After several seconds, he shut the rifle down and looked at his almost nonexistent progress. “That is some tough shit.”
“It might be easier to cut through the wall,” Preston suggested. “The carbon nanotubes in the thermoplast conduct heat pretty well if I remember right.”
Why the hell don’t we build spaceship hulls out of this stuff?”
“Actually we do,” Rene said. They make the inner hard shell of the same stuff. They use it for heat shields too.”
“So what do they use it in medicine for?”
“Making temporary body shields for patients that need high dose radiation exposure,” the med-tech said.
“It’s so easy to manufacture that they use it in a lot of places even when they don’t need something that durable,” Rene said. “I think Preston is on the right track though. You might be faster cutting through the polycon wall a few centimeters back from the door itself and then prying the wall open once you’ve made a cut up one side and across the top.”
“Cando,” the captain said, kneeling down and starting in on the wall this time. It was good to see the beam disappear into the material rather than just kick up a cloud. “That’s more like it. I’m getting about a half meter a minute now.”
He’d just reached the top of the doorframe and was cutting sideways when the floor under his feet shook violently. “Are you alright in there?” he asked, stopping and grabbing the bar that lay across the console behind him. He didn’t want to cut any more in case he’d split something open inside the room. That might be terrible.
“Yah, what the hell happened?”
“Did something go boom?
“Negative, we’re all still good,” she confirmed.
“Captain, an explosion has destroyed the front doors to the radiological medicine unit,” Marti said.
“What the frak happened?”
“Unknown. Shuttle Two took minor surface damage from the blast, but it is still operational.”
“Preston, what happened?” he paused for several seconds listening to the silence. “Preston report?” He waited again for an answer. “Billy?”
Twisting around, he shined his handbeam up the hall toward the front entrance. White smoke billowed toward him along the ceiling. “That’s nogo,” he said, slinging the laser rifle over his shoulder and looking around. “Angel I’ve got to go check on Billy and Preston. We’ve got a situation out here and they’re not answering. I don’t know if I got enough of the wall cut back for you to get the door open but you’re on your own for a few.”
“Copy,” she said. “Do what you gotta do. I’ll see if I can break something loose from one of these shelves to use as a pry-bar.”
“What have you got boss?” Nuko asked as he ran up the hall toward the end.
He swept his hand beam along the floor as he moved. The smoke got thicker with every meter and as he approached the corner, he had to bend almost in half to keep his head out of the roiling fumes. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Something blew in the lobby. It looks bad but I’m not there yet.” Sliding to a stop where the corridor turned, he squatted down and leaned against the wall. Glass and debris was scattered across the floor.
Ahead he could see a double sliding door ripped from its track its two panels of glass blown out and the frame twisted into knots of metal. “Please god,” he whispered as he took a deep breath and shuffled forward, hunched over and squinting into the smoky distance.
Climbing over the door, he got a view of the entire room. The ceiling went up more than ten meters and the smoke above him was rising and being pulled out into the night sky through shattered windows high above. He could stand back up after he got a few steps past the door, but as he looked around, his legs gave out and he collapsed down to his knees.
In front of him was a piece of a door. Sticking out from under it, clutching the handle was a pale lifeless hand. Preston’s hand.
His mind refused to allow him to grasp the realization that the entire piece was less than a half meter in any direction. There was no place for a body to be hidden beneath it.
“Preston?” he roared. His voice echoed strangely. Once. The smoke deadening the sound of the second repeat.
Behind him, he heard shuffling sounds. Glass shifting under feet. He spun, unslinging his rifle and bringing it up. He hesitated an instant before he pressed the trigger.
“Ethan, wait!” Kaycee and Pruitt both leaped in opposite directions out of his line of fire. “What the frak happened?”
He shook his head. His mind wouldn’t form words. He pointed the rifle at her.
This is her fault.
He wanted to shoot her. He wanted to shoot anything. “Frakking bitch,” he hissed.
“Captain, put the gun down,” Pruitt said quietly, startling him because his voice came from right beside him. He rolled his eyes
down to the floor and lowered the rifle with them. Elias reached out and gently took it from him. He offered no resistance.
“Where did you come from?”
“We were a couple floors down trying to get into the utility corridor when we heard the explosion,” she said. “We didn’t know you were down here.”
“We came looking for you,” he said, shaking his head and drawing in a breath. “Then we found the kids …” He paused and looked around in the near dark. Lights flickered in from the windows above.
“Something’s up there,” Elias said, pointing with the rifle in his hand.
“Captain, I am above the entrance. Is there anything I can do?” Marti said over his command channel.
“It’s Marti,” he said, standing up and reaching to take the gun from Pruitt. The man resisted at first but turned loose after a moment. “We need light in here, do you have the juice to beam the windows so maybe we can figure out what happened?”
“Lights take little power,” it said as light burst through the windows above and cast odd shadows around the interior of the lobby.
“You said kids?” Kaycee asked as she grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him away from something else his mind didn’t want him to see. He knew it even without making it part of his awareness.
“Yah, we found thirteen kids alive in a storage room back there,” he said, nodding toward the hall. He felt like his mind was trying to reassemble itself and all the pieces weren’t fitting back into place. “Angel crawled in through an air duct and is inside with them.” He held up the rifle. “We were using this to cut through the wall when the … explosion … happened.”
“Doctor, over here!” Pruitt hollered. He’d moved away and was kneeling beside a body. It was partially buried in a pile of rubble. A part of a door lay across him.
Billy.
Ethan dove across the distance and Pruitt stopped him, crushing him in a vice like grip as Kaycee darted around them and flipped the door off his body.
“He’s got a pulse,” she said. “Come on Billy, hang in there.” She shook her head as she tried to figure out where to begin. “Turn loose of him, I need you down here. We’ve got to stop the bleeding first.”
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