The Furnace

by Timothy S. Johnston

  “But—”

  “Lingly,” I said in a soft tone. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Think about what the infection has become. It means more than the deaths of the ten Council members. It’s a plague that could spread across the galaxy. It could infect every human being. We would no longer be ourselves. Just...just controlled.”

  She looked from my eyes to Manny’s to Shaheen’s and back again. She glanced at Sally, and a look of understanding finally appeared on her face. She seemed to deflate. “I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. I guess I figured it was only the Council that was in danger.”

  I shook my head. “It’s everyone. It’s humanity. Malichauk has created an evolutionary leap for human beings, but it means our very extinction. Do you understand now?”

  She sighed. “Yes. I do.”

  Manny said, “Good. Then the sooner we—”

  A powerful explosion rocked the clinic.

  * * *

  A section of the exterior bulkhead blew out right before my eyes. One second Malichauk’s cabinets were arrayed side by side, contents arranged neatly, the next I watched them fly out into space amid a large fireball.

  Throwing myself to the deck, I grabbed the foot of a procedures table. I turned my head to the side and squinted against the flying debris. Lingly and Sally were swept up in the maelstrom and hurled into space by the outrush of atmosphere. I opened my mouth to swear, but couldn’t hear anything over the din. My breath was sucked away, and I snapped my jaw shut, realizing that in a second there wouldn’t be any air left to breathe.

  It was horrifying.

  Lingly reached her arms out to me. Her lips moved soundlessly; she had tried to shout something. Sally spun end over end and slammed into the jagged edge of the bulkhead on her way out to space. There was an immediate fountain of blood and her arm detached neatly just above the elbow. She clutched the stump in an attempt to stem the flow, but the wound wouldn’t make much difference; she would be dead in a minute regardless.

  A naked body followed the two scientists out; a second later, another flew through. They twirled grotesquely, arms and legs flailing. It took me a minute before I realized they were the bodies of Larry Balch and Anna Alvarez. They had been lying on the procedures tables with only blankets over them. The Y incisions on their torsos stretched as they moved—I could see the internal organs spewing out as they gyrated in the force of the explosion.

  I retched into my mouth at the image.

  Godfreid Grossman was next. I felt the thud behind me as he hit the deck face-first. The gale-force winds carried him along another two meters before he slid to a stop. He lay next to Rickets and Katrina; they had ground to a halt as friction with the deck kept them from being blown into space.

  I realized with dread that Grossman’s body had stopped moving because there was no more air to push him along.

  My ears popped with a sharp, piercing pain. The clinic was now in vacuum.

  * * *

  I surged to my feet with a sudden burst of adrenaline. The gravity field remained in place, thankfully, and I lurched to the hatch. I bumped into Shaheen and Manny on the way; both had managed to grab something to prevent the fatal exit from the clinic.

  Shaheen made it to the hatch first. She hit the open toggle feverishly and—

  Nothing happened.

  It refused to open.

  It was the safety protocols, of course—protocols that kept the air in the rest of the station from venting.

  Manny shoved her aside and frantically keyed in his code. I knew that we would pass out after fifteen seconds of such exposure. We were close to that already...

  The hatch finally slid open. The winds began anew as the module’s air rushed through the clinic and out the rupture. Manny and I reached around the hatch frame and pulled ourselves out. It was like fighting an upstream current. I extended an arm back into the clinic, and my fingers barely brushed Shaheen’s uniform. I seized a fistful of material and yanked with everything I had. She tumbled through and into the corridor.

  The hatch slid shut and the wind stopped. We fell to the deck, exhausted.

  The emergency lights strobed, and an alarm pierced the corridors. The sound was like a sledgehammer in my head.

  “Holy shit,” Manny moaned. “Brick went outside and planted an explosive on the hull. He knew exactly where we were. He’s trying to take us out.”

  The explosives were probably for security measures, in case they ever had to self-destruct. “It’s their only hope now,” I gasped. “They have to kill us.”

  “They’re doing a good job,” Shaheen muttered. “Only three left.”

  A jolt ripped through me as I realized that she was right. Manny, Shaheen and I were the only ones who remained. Since I had arrived, twelve people had died, been infected or been proven infected. It was a devastating number for someone sent to protect people. I hadn’t done a very good job.

  Only three left...

  “It’s either us or them,” I said. “They know that. They’ll kill us then try to call for help. Or they’ve already called. Either way, we have to find them first and kill them.”

  “They can’t call for help,” Shaheen said. “I locked out the FTL and the off-station comm after your last call to Dr. Higby.”

  I stared into her eyes with a look of horror on my face. She was right. Manny had thought it wise to lock out the system in case someone infected tried to use it. I realized with a shudder what it meant for her: they could kill Manny and me, but they needed Shaheen alive.

  They most likely didn’t realize that yet.

  * * *

  “Where’s your pistol?” Manny asked. We were still in the corridor outside the clinic, recovering from the depressurization incident and planning our next move.

  I felt my holster and grimaced. “Gone. Probably out in space by now.”

  His lips turned downward. “Mine too.”

  “What about the one you took from Rickets earlier?”

  He gestured to the hatch. “In the clinic.”

  I exhaled and thought furiously. No weapons. We needed something in order to fight them. But what? I glanced at my watch in anger. Dammit! Time was running out. We were now past the twelve-hour deadline we had set for ourselves. Theoretically, we still had perhaps a three-hour buffer, but that would leave us no time in case we had to argue our case with the CCF. A ship would have to be dispatched the instant we called for help, which I knew would never happen.

  Damn!

  “What can we do?” Shaheen asked as she sent darting glances up and down the corridor.

  I grunted. “Sally suggested jettisoning the modules one by one. Maybe it’s our only hope now.” The plan formed itself in my mind slowly. We could detach modules and announce each over the station’s comm. It could force them to a location where it would be easier for us to deal with them on our terms, rather than theirs.

  But where? Where could we drive them?

  I chewed my lip as I considered our options. There was only one place that made any sense. “We’ll drive them here, to this module,” I whispered. “The command center is located here. We need it to eject the modules anyway, right?”

  “Yes,” Manny murmured. Then he swore.

  * * *

  In the command center, one level up, Manny sat at the central console. His face was drawn. “I’ve never even trained to do something like this before. I’m not sure what security measures are in place to prevent this from happening. They don’t generally program this sort of thing into the system components.”

  “Why would someone ever need to eject modules?” I asked.

  “A damaged module can sometimes compromise the integrity of the station,” Shaheen said. “That’s why the programmers built the jettison command into the systems.” She looked at Manny. �
�But there are a lot of safeguards. It’ll request your access codes a number of times. It might take a while.”

  He frowned. There was a look of failure on his features, as if his command had beaten him. He sighed. “Which one first?”

  I thought for a moment. “Do Module I.” It was the one already damaged by the meteor strike, and it made sense to start at G, H and I—the ones farthest from the command center.

  It took nearly an hour for the captain to bypass all the safety precautions. As he entered each command, there came a request for a new set of codes. After thirty minutes, the security became so tight that he had to retrieve his personal code book from a safe in his quarters. After that, he entered codes with one eye on his book.

  “I want to make sure I get these right,” he muttered. “No sense screwing up and having the computer lock me out.”

  He entered the final code and a recorded message startled me.

  “Attention Captain,” it said. “Permission to detach modules now granted. Enter module letter and access-code Zulu to begin the ten-second countdown.”

  “Wait.” I held my hand up. I punched the comm to address the entire station. “Attention Brick and Malichauk. We’re detaching Module I. You don’t want to be anywhere near it right now.” I gestured at Manny. “Do it.”

  “Countdown initiated,” the computer said. “Ten, nine, eight...”

  The recording played over the station’s comm. It reverberated into the command center from the corridor with a tinny echo.

  “Here we go,” Shaheen said. Her fingers gripped the edge of the console.

  There was a station schematic display on the bulkhead that showed all ten cylinders. Module A, the engineering/life-support module, had a blinking red label next to it that warned of the power loss and the failing batteries.

  Module I on the schematic also began to flash.

  The countdown finished, and I felt a thunk vibrate the deck at my feet. The module on the schematic turned black.

  “Module ejected,” the voice reported.

  “It worked,” I said, surprised. There had been so many levels of security to bypass, I wasn’t sure if it would actually happen.

  Shaheen grunted. “Of course it did.”

  I studied the schematic. “Let’s do H next.”

  * * *

  We ejected five more modules. Before each one, I broadcast a warning to give Malichauk and Brick ample time to move to the adjacent cylinder.

  “Why not just eject the modules with them inside?” Shaheen asked with a raised eyebrow.

  I’d had that thought some time ago and had gone over it in my mind multiple times. It would have been an easy way to kill them, but...”There’s always a chance the nanos would survive, Shaheen. Even after the host died, they’d still be there. We have to make sure no one can salvage the cylinders later and somehow become infected.”

  She looked skeptical. “Surely the nanos would be dead.”

  I shook my head. I had learned something from my research that she hadn’t. “In unfavorable environmental conditions—such as heat or drought—a bacterium will develop a thick outer wall and enter a resting stage. Someone could find one of the modules in the future and inadvertently expose themselves to the infection.”

  She pressed her lips into a thin line but didn’t speak.

  Eventually only four cylinders remained: A, B, C and M, the mass driver. It remained connected to Module B, although the solar arrays hadn’t been so lucky. When we’d ejected D and F, it had severed the array connections. They now floated beside the station, close but no longer in direct contact.

  Module D had been the last to go. It contained the energy-conversion equipment and the transmitter that beamed the microwaves to the receiving satellite in Earth orbit. As Manny detached and ejected it, he murmured, “There goes SOLEX.” It housed the station’s very reason for existence. SOLEX was essentially now gone—it was just a shell, a shadow of what it had been.

  He sat back and snarled, “If my career wasn’t over before, it is now.” He paused, then, “In fact, I might face execution for doing this, even if we survive.”

  I watched him for a moment. He was right, but he had neglected something important. I placed a hand on his shoulder. “I would speak for you, Manny. I would tell them that there was no other way. We’re trying to save humanity here. If I were you, I wouldn’t worry much.” Besides, I thought, at that moment there were much greater things to be concerned with.

  I glanced back at the display; only four cylinders were still lit. “Let’s stop there,” I said. I looked at Shaheen and Manny. “Let’s go get them.”

  * * *

  We no longer had our pistols, so we grabbed anything that would make a good club. Shaheen had a steel table leg, and Manny had a rather large wrench he had grabbed from a tool locker in the corridor. I found a sledgehammer with a pick on one end. It was a little unwieldy, but would definitely make an effective weapon.

  “What the hell is this used for?” I muttered as I eyed the tool.

  “Installing coolant pipes,” Shaheen said. “Tightening seals. There’s a lever on adjacent pipes that needs to be whacked.”

  I frowned at it as I turned it in my hand. A pistol would have been far better. Using this, I would have to be close. And if blood splattered me...game over. Infection might occur and I wouldn’t even know it.

  My fingers tightened on the hammer.

  * * *

  The three of us clustered together as we moved through Module C. The command center on level three, the clinic on level two and the common mess on level one made up the bulk of the cylinder.

  “This time we search everything,” I said. “Ducts, maintenance crawl spaces, whatever.” An idea struck me before the sentence was out of my mouth. “Wait a minute.” I halted abruptly and the others bumped into my back.

  “What is it?” Shaheen asked. Her eyes were wide. “Do you see something?”

  I waved her worry aside. “No, no. Just an idea.”

  I turned to them and offered a sly grin.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The vacsuits were located in an emergency locker just outside the command center. We pulled on the skintight coolant layer first. I tried to avert my eyes as, beside me, Shaheen pulled hers on. I caught a glimpse of her brown skin and a flash of dark in her pubic region. I turned away quickly, but once our suits were on, I noticed the hint of a smile on her face.

  I cleared my throat. “Ready?”

  “For sure,” she said with an arched eyebrow.

  The situation was absurd. Here we were, hours from death, and this beautiful woman was making me horny.

  Manny ducked into the command center and yelled at us, “Make sure your helmets are secured—I’m venting the station!”

  Because we had already ejected the majority of the modules, there were now a number of tunnels that led to vacuum. Depressurizing the station was a simple matter of remotely opening the hatches on both ends of each tunnel. Manny accessed every single hatch on the station, even cabins and storage areas and lavatories. He had to refer to his code book on occasion, but it was a speedier process than ejecting the modules had been.

  “Hang on to something!” His voice rang in my ears through the suit’s communit.

  The alarms sounded again and the red emergency lights began to flash. An instant later, I felt a tug as the air currents started to churn through the corridor.

  “Here we go,” I murmured.

  I didn’t feel an incredible outgassing of air like I had in the clinic; the nearest tunnel to space was down on the first level. It had once led to Module F, the scientists’ labs and quarters.

  It took almost two minutes for the station’s atmosphere to fully dissipate. If we needed to repressurize, each cabin and corridor had reserves
in tanks under the decks that could replace the air.

  “It’s done,” Manny said finally. “All hatches are open and I’ve exposed the station to space in three places. Unless they were wearing a vacsuit—or had one real handy—they’re gone.”

  * * *

  We resumed the search in Module C. We checked every storage space and lavatory. We looked inside the freezer in the galley. Shaheen led us through access junctions, crawl spaces and ventilation ducts. We poked our heads in the spaces between hulls that housed power cables and hydraulic pipes. We examined power-distribution nodes—just big enough for a man to crouch in—all over the module.

  We searched everywhere.

  No luck.

  We sealed the tunnel hatch with a captain’s code that would prevent the others from passing through and moved to Module B.

  The number of hiding places they had was dwindling.

  * * *

  Module B—officers’ quarters and rec facilities—was a little more difficult to search. We had to look under bunks, in closets and in showers. Through the gym, games rooms and lounge. Shaheen led us into the twisted innards of the cylinder.

  Nothing.

  They had us convinced they were within every shadow or around every corner. And when we rounded that corner...we’d be dead before we knew what had happened. It wasn’t about infection anymore—it was about survival.

  We finished the search of the module and looked at each other in surprise. Empty.

  A much smaller tunnel than the ones that connected the cylinders attached the mass driver to Module B. In the corridor outside the officers’ cabins on level three, a narrow ladder led upward and disappeared into darkness.

  We poked our heads into the mass driver and quietly searched the entire structure. There were fewer hiding spaces there than in any of the other modules; everything was out in the open. There were no maintenance crawl spaces or access junctions to conceal anyone.

  Again, nothing.

  They had to be in Module A—life support and engineering. There was no doubt now. It seemed fitting: the infection would end in the same location in which I had discovered it, where Brick had inadvertently left a drop of blood with a single nano within. Jimmy had witnessed the infection and paid the ultimate price as a result.