“You got an alternative?”
Erick looked round the lounge, inventorying everything in sight—cabins, lockers filled with food and clothes, emergency equipment cubicles. All he had was a laser pistol.
Think!
Open the floor hatch and pick them off one at a time as they come through?
He aimed the laser at a cabin door, and pressed the trigger stud. A weak pink beam stabbed out, then flickered and died. Several small blisters popped and crackled where it had struck the composite.
“Bloody typical,” he said out loud.
Look round again. Come on, there must be something. Those dreary months spent on CNIS initiative courses. Adapt, improvise. Do something.
Erick dived across the intervening space to a wall of lockers, catching a grab loop expertly. There wasn’t much in the emergency cubicle: medical nanonics, pressure patches, tools, oxygen bottles and masks, torch, processor blocks with ship’s systems repair instructions, fire extinguishers, hand-held thermal sensor. No spacesuit.
“Nobody said it was going to be easy.”
“Erick?” André asked. “What is happening?”
“Got an idea.”
“Erick, I have spoken with Smith. Several other ships have been hijacked. He is taking some of his troops out of zero-tau, but it will be at least another thirty minutes before anyone can rendezvous with us.”
The lounge was getting lighter. When Erick looked over his shoulder he saw a ring of small hemispherical blue flames chewing at a patch of the hard grey-green foam on the floor decking. Little twisters of smoke writhed out from the edge. When a circle of titanium roughly a metre in diameter had been exposed it began to glow a dull orange. “No good, Captain. They’re coming through the decking, some sort of thermal field. We haven’t got five minutes.”
“Bastards.”
Erick opened the tool-box, and took out a fission-blade knife. Please, he prayed. The blade shone a cool lemon when he thumbed the actuator. “Sweet Jesus, thank you.”
He flew cleanly through the air. A stikpad anchored him near the middle of the ceiling. He pushed the fission blade into the reinforced composite conditioning duct, and started to saw a circle about thirty centimetres wide.
“Madeleine? Desmond?” he datavised. “Are you in spacesuits yet?”
“Yes,” Desmond replied.
“You want to do me a real big favour?”
“Erick, they cannot stay on board,” André warned.
“What do you want, Erick?” Desmond asked.
“Hauling out of here. Soon.”
“I forbid it,” André said.
“Stuff you,” Desmond retorted. “I’m coming down, Erick. You may count on me, you know you can.”
“Desmond, if they break into the lounge I will scuttle the ship,” André datavised. “I must do it before they glitch the flight computer.”
“I know. My risk,” Desmond replied.
“Wait to see if they break out of the lounge first,” Erick said. “That’ll give Desmond a chance to get clear if this doesn’t work.”
There was no answer.
“You owe me that! I’m trying to save your ship, damn you.”
“Oui, d’accord. If they get out of the lounge.”
The yellow patch on the floor had turned white. It started to hiss, bulging up in the centre, rising into a metre-high spike of light. A ball of fire dripped off the end, gliding up to hit the ceiling where it broke into a cluster of smaller globes that darted outwards.
Erick ducked as several rushed past. He finished cutting a second circle out of the duct and moved along.
Another ball of fire dripped off the spike. Then another. The patch was spreading out over the floor decking, scorching away more of the foam.
“I’m by the hatch, Erick,” Desmond datavised.
The empty lounge was awhirl with small beads of white fire. They had stung Erick several times now, vicious skewers of pain that charred out a centimetre-wide crater of skin. He glanced at the ceiling hatch’s inspection window to see the sensor-studded collar of an SII spacesuit pressed against it, and waved.
Erick had cut eight holes in the duct when he heard a shrill creaking sound rise above the hiss. When he glanced down he saw the floor decking itself had started to distend. The metal was cherry red, swelling and distorting like a cancerous volcano.
He watched, mesmerized, as the top burst open.
“Erick,” a voice called out of the rent. “Let us out, Erick. Don’t make it hard on yourself. It’s not you we want.”
The triangular rips of radiant metal began to curl back like petals opening to greet the dawn. Shapes scuttled about in the gloom below.
Erick kicked away from the stikpad that was holding him to the ceiling. He landed beside the floor hatch.
“We want the ship, Erick, not you. You can go in peace. We promise.”
A big bloodshot eye with a dark green iris was looking at him through the floor hatch’s inspection window. It blinked, and the lounge lights came back on.
Erick gipped the manual lock handle, twisted it ninety degrees, and pulled up.
The possessed came up through the open hatch, cautiously at first, glancing round the sweltering smoky lounge with wide eyes. Their skin was as white as bleached bone, stretched tight over long wiry muscles. Oily black hair floated limply. They started to advance towards him, grinning and chittering.
“Erick,” they cooed and giggled. “Erick, our friend. So kind to let us in when we knocked.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Erick said. He had positioned himself beside one of the cabin doors, a silicon-fibre strap round his waist tethering him to a grab hoop. Level with his shoulder, the environment control panel’s cover swung free. Erick’s right hand rested on a fat red lever inside. “Your friend.”
“Come with us,” the one in front said as they floated sedately towards him. “Come join us.”
“I don’t think so.” Erick yanked the atmosphere-vent lever down.
The vent system on board a starship was included as a last resort to extinguish fire. It dumped the affected life-support capsule’s air straight out of the hull, cutting off oxygen to the flames and killing them dead. And because of the danger a fire represented inside the confined cabin space of a starship, the vent was designed to be quick acting, evacuating an entire deck within a minute.