Termination Shock

by Gillian Andrews

  I felt myself falter as I was hit. I didn’t feel any pain at the time, so I was able to push my legs into recapturing the momentum I had lost. I was on top of my three within less than a second.

  The pain flared just when I didn’t want it to. The hand holding the pulser pistol refused to obey me. I tried again, but all the fitzing thing would do is hang helplessly at my side.

  So I used myself as a human cannonball, propelling myself down and across so that my body would hit all three low and almost horizontally. They went down like skittles and we tumbled in a heap into the bulkhead. I snatched at my pistol with my good hand and tried to turn it against the traitors.

  The only thing close to me was their legs. I shot at their feet and their ankles as best I could. There were cries from under me.

  It was all I could do to shuffle slightly out from the bulkhead and train the pulser on the three of them. There was a pause as they considered their position and then all three dropped their weapons. All were bleeding profusely below the knee. They were not badly hurt, but at least I would be able to control them. I kicked their weapons out of the way, kept my pistol trained on them, and sat gasping. I was out of the fight.

  It was hard for me to see what was still going on around me. I caught only flashes of the fighting.

  Didjal had accounted for the three Tyzarans it had gone for. They were all lying unconscious in a heap. I made a mental reminder not to aim pulsers at aliens that come encased in glossy black exoskeletons. Didjal itself had moved on to another small group of attackers and was currently involved in bashing their heads together in the sort of scientific way you would expect of an engineer.

  Denaraz was down. He had paled with the pain, though he was attempting to stand, and he still held his own Tyzaran ZR in his hand and was using it, though with slightly less than his usual lethal efficiency.

  I blinked back the sweat from my eyes. Another huge explosion went off really close to our position. Denaraz caught my eye. He gestured towards the stairs down.

  “Members of the Enclave! Must be trying to trap us on this level. They won’t let you or Zenzara out alive. If they can’t kill you directly they are capable of anything.” His crests were rigid and white. “Anything. They are unpredictable.”

  I nodded. It didn’t help me know what to do. The only thing I could think of was to nod to Eshaan and signal to him that we should try to close with each other. There might be more safety fighting back to back.

  Eshaan sprung lightly to its feet and Zenzara blinked. I caught an extremely disgruntled face staring in my direction before the eyes widened as she realized I had been injured. Her face hardened. She began to unwind something I had always thought of as a necklace from around her slender throat. It unraveled to become a long piece of leather thong, with a heavy metallic arrowhead-like carving at either end.

  In one fluid movement she held this up above her head and whirled it around. Then she bent swiftly and released both ends at the same time.

  The length of thong hit one of our opponents just above the knee, wrapped itself around his legs several times, and brought him crashing down on the deck plating. I raised one eyebrow. He had been about to blow my head off with his ABlaser. Hmm.

  Zenzie was not finished. Now she was ripping a brooch off her tunic. I saw that it was not merely a brooch. It had two long sharp prongs attached, but these had been invisible as they had been threaded through the tunic.

  She stood there, a slim figure against the others, and her hand flashed. The brooch buried itself in the stomach of one of the guard of honor. He bent double, his eyes wide as his hands went automatically to his belly, covering the brooch. He stared at her for a few long moments before sinking to his knees and then keeling over.

  Zenzara looked away. She was already reaching for her remaining brooch. This, too, buried itself deep in an opponent’s flesh. Zenzara herself lifted her chin and stared at me with scorchingly angry eyes.

  “I was taught the use of the nivala and the thoria when I was five,” she snapped. “All Tyzaran girls are. We protect ourselves.”

  She gave poor old Eshaan a push and stormed past it towards the head of the stairwell, where I was. It looked at me. I shrugged. The Enif stared expressionlessly back and then trailed after Zenzara.

  I gave a shout and a beckon to Sammy and Mel, who looked over and nodded their understanding. That left Seyal.

  At first I couldn’t see her, but then she appeared behind me. She was disheveled and had clearly not held back from the fighting. She caught my eye and pointed behind us, just as another bomb went off. This time it shook the supports of our walkway, bending one or two of them so that the whole platform tilted towards the decks below. We all scrabbled for a foot and handhold. Seyal didn’t look away. She was staring insistently at me. I followed her arm, my eyes straining through the smoke to see whatever she was so sure of. There was another airlock, a smaller one used for water, waste and fuel pipes to be connected to a ship.

  I shrugged. I couldn’t see what she was saying.

  Then another shattering explosion rocked our position. This time they breached the third skin and it was hard not to be moved by the explosion of outgoing air. I grabbed onto part of the bulkhead to keep from falling over the railing.

  Seyal had touched Eshaan now. She was pointing again at the airlock. But it was tiny. We would hardly fit there.

  Seyal made signs of an explosion with her hands. Then she made a shape of containment. Of course! Blast waves can’t travel through space. Just putting a few meters of space between us and these blasts could save our lives. With no access to a ship there was only one way to do that. The portable safety airbag. My heart stuttered for a moment at the idea. Elderly spacers often state quite adamantly their preference to die rather than face a PSA airbag.

  All station airlocks are required to have them. They are one of the safety measures obligatory on all space stations in the Major Shells. These days, even most large ships are equipped with them. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Although my brain shied away from the possibility, I was coming to the conclusion that it was certainly an option.

  Seyal was staring at me, an earnest expression on her face. She gave an encouraging nod.

  I sighed. “All right.” I grabbed Denaraz and began to pull him towards the smaller airlock. He frowned and wriggled slightly to express his disagreement. I ignored him totally and dragged him towards the hatch. Between my useless arm and his leg injury, we made slow time.

  Zenzie was ahead of us. She had seen Seyal point to the PSA in the airlock and seemed to have realized what the new plan was. She had already ducked inside the airlock and was reaching for the small hammer that hung from our end of the long red cylinder that was stored high along the wall of the airlock. She took a deep breath then struck the red seal firmly with the hammer, breaking the seal.

  She had to leap back as the PS airbag deployed, ballooning out of its bulkhead stowage and inflating to claim half of the airlock space. Zenzie was still weak and had to pummel at the growing space burlap to avoid being pinned between the material and the bulkhead. She managed to glare at me during this process. I could see that she blamed me for something.

  She dragged the heavy duty zipper downwards. I knew that the gas cylinder would give a positive pressure outwards for twenty seconds, before the valve released the canister and the airbag could be deployed. The zipper needed to be closed by then. Twenty seconds is not a long time, but on some occasions it can seem an eternity.

  Zenzara stretched out one hand to help me with Denaraz. I let her take some of the dead weight. Denaraz stared at me with a meaningful expression, and I knew exactly what he was trying to convey. The one thing we were in total agreement about was the need to protect Zenzie. And I could tell from the look she had treated us all to that she wasn’t planning on q
uietly allowing herself to be evacuated.

  I nodded back to the spokesdesignate.

  He turned as if to say something to Zenzara. She bent slightly to be able to hear better over all the noise. He clamped a firm hand over her slender wrist and pulled her down and towards him so that she was inside the PSA.

  There was silence for a long millisecond as she processed these events. When she realized what had happened, and why, she glanced furiously over to me.

  I gave her an arms apart nothing-to-do-with-me shrug.

  The deep creases on her face tensed so much that she got a porcupiney sort of look about her. I took an involuntary step back and held up my hands.

  She was having none of it. She knew I had agreed to it. She stared down at Denaraz and I gasped, sure for a moment that she was going to lash out at him. Then she gave a sigh. The thin curvy bones across her shoulders slumped. She was unable to kick a downed man. Thank the Shells for that.

  All this had happened in just a few seconds. Denaraz gave me another nod, to tell me he had control of her, and I grabbed back at Seyal and pushed her past me inside the airbag. Her body felt resistant for a moment, then acceded. She stumbled past me, almost on top of the other two. Fully deployed, these airbags only measured a little over a meter in all three directions. They were meant for two to three people. I looked around. We were going to cram seven inside.

  Sammy and Mel had managed to get the attention of the two Enif and were helping them into the airbag. Didjal was trying to explain something to Sammy, but Sammy shook his head and firmly insisted that they got inside. Then he grinned at Mel and spoke, close to her ear. She looked up at him suddenly and her face fell.

  I knew what Sammy had said to her. He had realized that somebody was going to have to activate the outer lock, something that couldn’t be done once the airbag was vacuum zipped. He was volunteering, but I had reached the conclusion before him, and I knew who was going to do that small job.

  I placed my foot squarely at his back and pushed. He tumbled inwards, taking Mel with him. They tangled with Eshaan and then Zenzara, who was still staring at me with something like anger.

  I pulled the emergency closure cords and there was a metallic slithering as the vacuum zip began to seal. With so many bodies inside, it took longer than it should have to complete the operation. I could hear Mel scream as she began to hyperventilate in the tiny space. She would be absolutely terrified. I hoped Sammy would shut her up. She would use up all the air if she went on like that. Just as I had that thought, I seemed to hear a hard slap, and the high-pitched cry cut off abruptly. That wasn’t going to be good for their relationship.

  As soon as the light on top of the portable space airbag shone green, I stepped back out of the airlock. It was a second to press the inner lock button. The hatch rolled into place, finally shutting them off from the continuous fighting.

  I nearly didn’t make the second button. A large Tyzaran man slashed over at me with a knife. I only just managed to shrink back in time. I punched the final button, the red one, and the manual over-ride, just before I turned back to him. I heard, rather than saw, the outer hatch slide open.

  I was surprised to find Denaraz’s ABlaser in my good hand. He must have thrust it onto me before grabbing at Zenzie. The weapon, known to its users as the ZR, came up of its own will and fired.

  The man in front of me dissolved.

  I stared down at my hand.

  Some gun. This was one technological advance that the Tyzarans hadn’t shared with the rest of the races. Hmm. Interesting.

  I had a moment to turn back to the airlock. The PSA had been pushed gently away from the ship by the small amount of air that escaped to the lower density. It was now floating slowly away from the hull. Only six meters or so at the moment, but I knew that would gradually increase. Six meters of space was enough to kill blast waves. They needed to be further than that to avoid shrapnel. That space burlap was strong, but it was only material. It was, quite literally, a sack. Pieces of metal would perforate it without even noticing. I was pleased to see that the emergency lights on both the bow and the stern were functioning. With seven of them stuffed inside the sack, they would have an extremely limited amount of air. Though the temperature of outer space would leave them like popsicles even before they could suffocate, I felt. I closed my eyes and wished them well. Then I turned back to the chaos around me. I was running out of time, too.

  What was left of Aurynth’s crew was still struggling with the men who had replaced the security detail. Worse, there were cries from the platform below ours, where the duty watch of the ship under ours were attempting to stop a large crowd from invading their platform.

  I ran to the railing, trying to judge how long we had.

  We didn’t.

  The main crowd was still at the lower platform level, but the advance had already reached my level. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a heavily built Tyzaran deliberately toss something across the decking towards the outer skin of the space dock I was standing on.

  I shot him, but I was too late. He disintegrated as the hand-held device detonated.

  I leapt the railing in one bound and let myself fall. It seemed like the only way to stay alive. Not a good way, just the only way.

  I dropped like a stone. Ironically, I was facing upwards, so I could see a cloud of shards of metal deck plating falling with me. I had time to do a mental check on Galileo’s theory. They were neither catching up with me, nor lagging behind. We were all falling through the air at the same rate. I felt some long-forgotten physics teacher would have congratulated me on my experiment.

  Then I realized that I was crazy. Who in their right mind would be doing physics experiments as they plummeted to their death? Who cared? Except Galileo Galilei, of course.

  I didn’t feel anything else. I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I felt dissociated, strange, detached from reality.

  Then everything changed. There was a sharp crack above me. My body jerked. Air was suddenly gushing past me, ripping up towards the platform. For a split second I felt almost weightless as the forces of artificial gravity pulling me down battled with the outburst of air. The explosion must have caused a massive breech in the hull.

  Then there was a sudden jolt as something wrapped around my legs.

  I wanted to see what had touched me, but at that very moment gravity won over the escaping air and I resumed my freefall towards the decking far below. Well, not so far now. I was accelerating fast towards it.

  Suddenly my legs were wrenched back and upwards. My body seemed to stretch and elongate as the rest of me was decelerated at a ridiculous rate. It felt as though my spine were snapping. What little breath I had left was forced out of me in an involuntary gasp.

  I was immobile for what felt like minutes, but must have been one or two heartbeats. Then my whole body seemed to spring back and I was rising again in a recoil, the tension on my feet gone. The pressure in my head built up and up and up. Why, I had no idea. My eyes spiked at my face in pain, crawling to get out of my head. Then the pull upwards reappeared, now more bearable.

  I blacked out.

  I opened my eyes. I could see nothing. I was invaded by sudden terror at the darkness. For some reason I was blind.

  I was upside down.

  I felt around me. There was nothing.

  I reached up along my body. There was stickiness on my clothes in several places. It could be blood from the slivers of metal.

  I shook my head and blinked several times. I still couldn’t see anything. I felt further up my leg. I was hanging from something. It seemed important to find out what.

  “Do not move.” The voice was calm. Impassionate. Distant.

  “What happened?” The air was thin. My voice was weak and tinny. It was also anything but calm. I could he
ar the near lapse into terror. I hoped nobody else could.

  “I saved your life.” The voice, still distant, appeared faintly amused. “Please make no sudden movements. I am attempting to reach safety. We have very little time.”

  My sight was coming back. It felt as though I were peering through enlarged blood vessels, but I risked looking upwards.

  My heart stuttered and nearly failed. I was hanging underneath some sort of small cargo shifter, being supported only by the loops of a thoria around my ankles and shins. I tracked the thoria upwards. Some five meters above, its upper end had been twisted several times around a stanchion.

  I closed my eyes again. In any case, the liquid in them was beginning to evaporate from the now near-vacuum inside the hanger. Cold was also freezing me in place. I began to shiver. From the cold, I told myself, though it might have been from sheer terror.

  I flicked open my eyes again, but wished that I hadn’t. Apart from it being more difficult to shut them again against the bubbling ocular fluid, the scene around me was ghastly. People still far below me were grabbing at their throats. Some were already down, wriggling feebly as the cold of outer space and lack of breathable air pinned them down in death. Others were stilled, already vanquished by the lethal combination. There was nothing good to see. At least I was still moving, being slowly transported across the huge bay.

  I tried to take a breath, but had to abort that brilliant idea. There was no air left to breathe. I clamped my jaws and my eyelids shut and began to send a mental goodbye to Sibby. My sister was the person who came to me at that moment. I wished I had told her how much I cared. I hadn’t always been a good brother.

  The links around my shin gave a little and I slipped slightly. The thoria was starting to unravel. I froze in place, not breathing, not moving, not even thinking. Now it was definitely sheer terror that held me in place. I dared not even twitch.