“I’m running out of time. This could turn into a shoot-out, and I don’t like my chances of surviving that on a space station.”
“Did you do anything useful to get in control down there, Lex?” asked Coal. “Maybe we can do that here?”
“I rammed a hoversled through a wall, Ma. I don’t think it’ll do you much good.”
“I’m not Ma, I’m Coal. And I was specifically told that ramming was not an option.”
“Ramming is always an option if you do it right. And… wait, did you say Coal?”
“Stand by. Testing new option.”
Michella’s eyes widened. She held tight to a rail on the wall. A moment later, something impacted the hull directly above her. Hatch and his men, all of whom quite reasonably had no reason to assume someone was about to ram the hull, found themselves tossed about, smashing into the roof and walls. In the confusion, Michella burst forward.
She emerged from the corridor to find Hatch holding tight to Preethy. She was tied up with power cables and struggling as best she could to free herself. Michella smashed into Hatch and Preethy with all her might.
The blow sent all three of them tumbling backward through the corridor. Michella’s smaller frame rebounded off the larger man, but the impact at least separated Preethy from him. Michella recovered a split second before Hatch did and made good use of the precious moment. She snagged Preethy and dragged the bound woman along with her. Navigating the corridor meant shoving the pistol into her handbag so that she could have a hand free, but even then the travel was mostly leaps and crashes.
“Get them! I don’t care if you kill them both! Just get them!” Hatch demanded from behind them.
Michella managed to haul Preethy out of the line of fire just before Hatch’s men recovered enough to take aim.
“Coal, we’re clear!” Michella said.
“That’s nice,” Coal said.
The station shook again as she rammed the hull a second time.
“Stop ramming the hull! We need the station operational!” Michella said.
“My investigation suggests this section of the station does not contain any critical operational components.”
Michella glanced about. She was surrounded by the largely dismantled equipment that the invading crew had used to gain the level of control they already had.
“We’re in the control room, Coal. That strikes me as a pretty damn crucial part of the ship.”
“You are in the control room. I am attempting to gain entry to the adjoining corridor. And I’ll thank you to watch your language,” Coal said.
She rammed the ship once more. Lights dimmed, red klaxons activated, and automated doors slammed shut, separating the ship into different sections.
Hatch and what remained of his crew hammered on the doors, trying to gain entry. Michella tugged the electrical cords free of Preethy’s wrists and ankles.
“Here, put this on.” Michella tugged at the strap securing the spare survival suit to her own and affixed own helmet. “I think this is going to get worse before it gets better.”
Preethy nodded and set about donning the gear. Her eyes widened as she looked over the screens showcasing the size and intensity of the dust storm the station was feeding.
“Look at those wind speeds…” she uttered. “We’re running out of time.” She pushed her arms through the sleeves and sealed the suit’s zipper, then clicked the helmet in place.
Coal rammed again. A full alert rose. Automated voices announced decompression danger.
“Coal, stop that now!” Michella demanded.
“I am trying to help,” Coal replied.
“Well cut it out! I’m wearing a lowest-bidder survival suit. I’d rather not test it!”
When a few moments passed without a fresh collision, Michella breathed a sigh of relief. That the AI who was supposed to be helping her was the greatest source of her concern was rather telling of the dire straits she found herself in.
Preethy pulled herself to the controls. “I’m punching in the command code,” she said. “And I’m transmitting the command code to the broadcast array. We’re going into full operation.”
“If you do that and they get back in here, then they’ll have what they want,” Michella said.
“Then don’t let them back in here. That storm is projected to overlap at least two towns in the next few minutes. Even if we just redirect it, at least one is going to get hit. If I don’t activate the full functionality of this station now and start countering the storm, people down there are going to die.”
She entered the code and started tapping her way through menus. A bullet shattered the glass in the door separating the control room from the corridor full of thugs. Preethy didn’t even flinch. She just kept working.
Michella felt the assorted points on the harness and checked her handbag. Her graceless trip to the control room had once again cost her whatever weapons she’d been able to secure.
“I’m really getting sick of zero-g,” she muttered.
She spotted the tool bag the thugs had brought along to bypass the systems. Some of the equipment was still wired into the station for power. She pulled a wrench from its tether and maneuvered herself beside the door. When a hand reached through the broken window to feel for a release latch, she smashed it with the wrench.
The man cried out and pulled back. A moment later, he and the others opened fire on the door.
“How much longer are you going to need?” Michella said.
“I don’t know. The station isn’t getting as much power as it is supposed to. Something is wrong with the transmission from the ground.”
“Trev! Trev, are you still there?” Michella said.
“Yes! What’s going on up there?”
“Preethy’s in control of the system and—” A hail of bullets dislodged a section of the doorway, very nearly slashing her suit. She gave herself a bit more distance from the door. “Coal? Can you link up with Preethy’s suit’s radio? I’ve got enough to worry about without relaying information.”
“Accessing… Link established. Hello, Preethy. Nice to meet you.”
“Lex? Who is this?” Preethy said, now suddenly hearing new voices in her helmet.
“I am Coal. You and Lex have met? That’s nice.”
“Lex, what is the status of the ground array?” Preethy asked.
“Reasonably intact. The storm’s toeing the line, but I think the dust is screwing with the transmission a little.”
“Are there any technicians there with you?”
“Yeah. There’s most of the original crew. Though they’re a little worse for wear.”
“I’m getting less than a third of the power I’m supposed to be getting from the array. At this rate, both of the cities in the path of the storm will be gone before we can start slowing it down to safe levels again.”
Michella bashed another pair of hands as they reached through the rapidly failing door. “Is there any way you can take over controlling the storm from down there? We are quickly approaching the point where we should consider abandoning the control room,” she said.
“These are the hardware controls, and they’ve been working to bypass the network,” Preethy answered. “Anything they could do from down there could be locked out from up here. One way or another, we have to defend this room, and we have to get this place up to full power.”
Another salvo of bullets poured through the door, peppering the wall on the opposite side of the room and causing a bank of monitors to flicker and die.
“We’re not going to do either of those things unless we stop these guys.”
“I have a suggestion,” said Coal.
“Does it involve ramming into the station?” Michella growled.
“No. It involves using the tractor beam to pull off panels of the station.”
“How is that better!?” Michella asked.
“It is more precise. I shall demonstrat
e.”
Michella shouted for Coal not to do so, but she’d already begun. The roof of the corridor outside the control room lurched upward. A seam ruptured. At the sound of a strong, steady hiss of escaping atmosphere, the crew of thugs instantly lost their nerve. They backed away from the door, then scrambled for the nearest room with an intact seal. One by one, they piled inside and shut the door.
The section of the station began to depressurize, though mercifully not in an explosive manner. Instead, the atmosphere steadily thinned. For Preethy and Michella, this meant their baggy suits gradually inflated as the pressure difference took up the slack in the plastic skin. Finally, the control room and the surrounding corridors were in a hard vacuum.
Preethy fought against the resistance of the inflated suit and slapped a button on the side of the helmet. Lines weaving through the translucent material lit up, and the suit pulled tight against her, pinning her clothes to her body and replacing the balloon-like awkwardness with a nimbler but less comfortable shrink-wrapped configuration. Michella did the same.
When the last of the breathable air was gone, Preethy and Michella were left alone in the control room. If there were any thugs who hadn’t sought shelter, they weren’t going to be a threat anymore.
“That was… surprisingly effective, Coal,” she said.
“Don’t be surprised. I’m a very good AI. Right, Lex?” Coal said.
“Especially if you aren’t too worried about personal safety. Which raises the question, how and why are you here?” Lex said.
“That is an excellent question!” Coal said.
“… Are you going to answer it?” Lex asked.
“Not while Michella and Preethy are listening. I have obliquely referenced our temporal displacement too many times already. … Processing… Please disregard that. I’m not sure why I am having so much difficulty with that imperative.”
“We can settle this all later,” Preethy said. “Lex, do what you can to get the power levels where they need to be.”
“I’m on it.”
“Michella, where did you get these survival suits?” Preethy asked.
“I don’t know. A room near the drone maintenance bay. Why?”
“Because this alarm overlay is listing two emergency suit closets open. It is possible we still have company.”
Chapter 14
The members of the surface crew who were still well enough to do their jobs rushed to diagnose the transmission problem.
“It looks like the array isn’t fully focused yet,” Ecks said, making sense of the data on the screen. “I’m pulling the array into sharper alignment, but not all of the nodes are responding.”
“Why not?” Lex said.
He didn’t bother looking at the screens as he spoke. It was all incomprehensible gibberish to him. At the moment he was grappling with the bizarre presence of an old friend he’d believed had died in an alternate future, he had a mound of tied-up mobsters to babysit, and he’d taken a few blows to the head. That was distracting enough without having to recall the three credits he’d taken in wireless communication back in college.
“As you might imagine, the array was never supposed to be unfocused. The whole point is to direct all of the energy on a single point. In order to knock things as far out of alignment as these idiots needed, they must have manually retargeted some of the other nodes and pulled the power to the alignment motors to keep them from correcting.”
“Great, fine. Now that we know that, what do you need me to do?”
“Lex, Milliner is still out there somewhere. It is too dangerous to—”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s super dangerous. Blah, blah, blah. You guys have guns now, and I’m the guy who made a fool of him. He’ll come for me, not you. So what do you need me to do?”
She pulled open a nearby drawer and shuffled through it. “I think I’ve got a physical diagram of the array here… ah! Right.”
She pulled what looked like a laminated place mat out of the drawer. After slapping it down on the desk in front of her and fetching a marker, she started circling nodes. “I’m having trouble with this one, this one, and these three. You’ll need to go out there and get power to them again. Hopefully, it’s as simple as flipping the main power cutoff. It’ll be located along the north wall of each node.”
“And if it isn’t so simple?”
“You’ll need to link up to the main power conduit. There are jumper lines in the equipment shed where the crew was being held. Every node should have its own shed. Someone on the crew should have keys, and I’ll give you access to any electronic locks.”
“Okay, good. I’m on the case,” he said, reaching down to pluck a slidepad from one of the tied-up gang members. “Out of curiosity, is there anything out there besides a murderous mobster I should worry about?”
“The dust in the air is reaching critical levels,” she said. “The energy output from the nodes will keep them safe from any molten debris, and all of the main power interlinks are underground, but the space between the nodes is unprotected. Look.”
She switched one of the main displays to an external camera. Conditions outside had sharply declined since his little race to this facility. The air was heavy with blown dust, giving the facility a reddish haze. Shifting swaths of plasma swept through the sky above them, illuminating everything in a psychedelic clash of color. All around, globs of molten stone plopped and splashed down, like some sort of hellish inverse blizzard.
Lex glared at the screen as though it were mocking him. “So what’ve we got? The sky is burning, and it is raining fire and brimstone,” he said flatly. “That about cover it?”
“More or less,” she agreed.
“I’ve seen worse.” He turned to Squee. “Listen up, Squee. The weather’s a little biblical out there. I’m going to need you to stick around and keep an eye on these guys, just in case they try something. Sound good?”
Squee hopped down and planted her feet wide, her teeth bared and her eyes set upon the mound of mobsters.
“How will I know if I did the job?” Lex asked.
“You’ll hear the motors spin up. And with any luck, as the final nodes come into focus, the interference will drop and you won’t need to be linked up to our system to get a message through.”
“Okay then. Wish me luck.”
#
Michella tried to calm her breathing. Now that she was in a space suit and the atmosphere inside the station was gone, her breath was the only thing she could hear besides the radio. It was profoundly isolating, but more worrisome, it meant she couldn’t hear someone approaching. If there was still a gangster active on the ship who could get to them, he wouldn’t have to sneak up to them. The noisiest, most violent approach would be utterly silent.
“Preethy, do we have an update?” Michella asked, desperate for anything to break the silence after a prolonged lack of radio traffic had left her alone with herself for a few minutes.
“The power levels are rising, slowly,” she said. “If I’m right, that screen is listing a drop in wind speeds. It’s going to be close, but for now I think there’s nothing to do but wait for it to happen. And try to stay alive.”
“That second part might be tricky until we figure out if we’re being stalked. Can you check the cameras?”
Preethy tapped through some menus. “It looks like the repeated collision with the station has left the cameras largely inoperative.”
“Nice work, Coal…” Michella muttered.
“I didn’t hear you complaining while I was saving your life.”
“I’m pretty sure I was complaining the whole time, Coal.”
“Then I didn’t hear you complaining loud enough to make me stop.”
“Whatever. Can you find out if and where another survival suit might be?”
“Possibly, but only if the radio is active. I will attempt to do so. Processing…”
Michella took another breath and placed her
back to a wall, eyeing the badly damaged door that the thugs had tried to slip through. Her options were to stay clear of the door in order to reduce the possibility of being shot if their potential foe still had a gun, or keep the door in front of her so that she would spot him if he arrived. True to her journalistic nature, she erred on the side of having more information.
She looked to Preethy. The executive seemed as cool and collected as ever.
“Listen. I always thought I was calm under pressure, but you’re something else, you know that?” Michella said.
“It is a survival mechanism. As you have pointed out, I am not without my contact with an unsavory element. Showing weakness is inadvisable. One learns to bury it deep.”
“You know what would be a better survival mechanism? Avoiding organized crime altogether.”
“That advice is a bit hypocritical, coming from you. My involvement with organized crime is a circumstance of my birth. You’ve chosen it.”
Michella shook her head. “Boy, I wish that were true.”
She felt about until she found her purse dangling behind her. She slid a pen and pad from their snug pockets and started jotting down notes.
“Is now the time for that?” Preethy asked.
“If I survive, I’m damn sure going to make sure I’ve got the story straight.”
“I admire your dedication.”
“It’s more of a compulsion.”
“All great people suffer similar compulsions.”
“Yeah, and look how many of them crashed and burned because of it.”
“That’s because you have to rise before you can fall.” Preethy took a look at the readings again. “I want to thank you for coming back to the station for me.”
“It was the right thing to do.” Michella’s gaze drifted aside. “And… when viewed at from a certain angle…”
“This is your fault.”
“… Yes.”
“If it sets your mind at ease, there may be enough hubris to go around. You disrupted our development, certainly. But it was still my job to vet the contractors. Had I taken my time, I would have spotted the link to Kelso’s organization sooner. But I wanted to meet my deadlines. I let my desire for success blind me. Perhaps if we survive this, it will serve as a lesson for both of us.”
Indra Station Page 23
