“Why? They’re diagnosing her. She should be there for a while.”
“She should,” Yu said, “and so far as I can tell, she still is.”
“What do you mean, so far as you can tell?”
“The lab isolated itself.”
“What does that mean, isolated itself?”
“Maybe the three medical programs we just bought overloaded the system. That’s what I hope it means.”
“You think she could’ve done something.”
“I doubt it,” Yu lied.
Nafti squared his shoulders. He looked reluctant to leave.
“When you’re there,” Yu said, “you can have the medical system make sure you’re healthy, okay?”
Nafti brightened. “Okay.”
He kicked the suit aside and left the bridge.
Yu summoned one of the cleaning bots and gave it orders to pick up the suit and send it through the ship’s disintegration unit.
Then he tried the security monitor again. Nothing. He couldn’t get through to the lab. He tried opening a back door and going at the lab from the basic part of the system. Still not possible.
He might have to dismantle the system from the outside just to get to her.
Yu sighed. That would be too much work.
If she wasn’t out by the time they got to the rendezvous point, he would dismantle the system.
Otherwise, he would wait to see if Nafti could bully his way inside.
If anyone could do that, it would be his hypochondriac employee. Nafti was too scared to be denied access for long.
Yu was beginning to panic.
The medical lab had been on its own for almost an hour, which was long enough for someone with hacking abilities to find links to the ship’s control panel.
Yu had realized that about ten minutes ago and set the panel to respond only to his vocal and touch commands, hoping he wasn’t too late.
Damn that woman. She was smarter than he had thought.
And Nafti hadn’t contacted him, which Yu had thought he would. The moment Nafti had gotten a diagnosis from the medical personas, he should have told Yu. He would have told Yu.
Which led Yu to believe that Nafti hadn’t gotten into the lab yet.
Then the door to the bridge opened. Finally. He checked the controls and saw that the lab was still offline.
“Took you long enough to get here,” Yu said. “What’s she doing down there?”
Something felt wrong. He couldn’t quite say what it was—a faint scent, a sound—but whatever it was, it made him turn.
Just in time to avoid being jabbed with a hypo.
The woman was in front of him, her hair falling across her face, her skin covered with reddish blisters, her eyes wild. She dropped the hypo and grabbed something from her belt.
He reached for her.
She slashed at him, and he yelped. Pain burned through his palm.
She was holding a laser scalpel.
He cursed and backed away. A laser scalpel was a close-up weapon. His hand was useless. His fingers ached, and two of them wouldn’t bend.
She’d severed something.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked as he continued to back away. She came forward, the scalpel extended as if it were a knife.
“Saving myself,” she said.
“Where’s Nafti?”
“In the medical bay,” she said. The tone of her voice was odd.
Yu’s heart started to pound even harder. Nafti had confronted her, and he wasn’t here. Had she attacked him too?
She lunged at Yu, and he moved to the right, grabbing her shirt with his left hand. More hypos fell onto the floor. She whirled, slashing with that vicious laser. It nicked his side—he felt the burn, knew it wasn’t as deep as the cut to his right hand.
He had to do something, and quick.
He yanked her toward him with the shirt, let go, and for a brief moment, thought she’d regain her balance. She didn’t. He grabbed her by the hair and forced her head back.
He shoved his foot into her knees, forcing her down. She slashed, getting a thigh this time, and the wound brought tears to his eyes.
He felt a moment of surprise—she might actually win this fight—and then he smashed her face into the side of the console.
She went limp, but he didn’t trust it, so he smashed her face again. Then once more just because she had pissed him off.
Stupid woman.
He let go of her hair and she toppled.
She didn’t move.