by M. D. Cooper
Andy grimaced as the pain in his leg throbbed.
Fran laughed, her voice warm in his mind.
Andy reached the airlock and pushed the body back inside so it wasn’t blocking the door.
Andy grabbed the floating pistol and examined it.
Andy shoved the dead person’s pistol into his own harness and pulled himself back to the airlock’s control panel, then ran it through an emergency lockdown procedure.
Fran said.
Andy set the controls in the panel to emergency lock down. As the doors slid closed behind him, he kicked off for the habitat side of the tunnel.
Andy chuckled in spite of himself.
Lyssa said. Andy thought he heard a slight hesitation, but it was swallowed by Fran’s whoops of excitement.
Andy’s stomach flipped as he reached the gravity side of the tube. He scrambled through the interior airlock and set it to emergency lock as well, just to be safe. He stood in the corridor for a second, listening, debating which way to run, then turned in the direction of the interior airlock. If he started at the airlock and moved back toward the command deck, he was going to find either Cara or the breach team.
Why hadn’t he told her to stay with Fran? Had he?
Would she have listened?
Andy broke into a jog, listening for foreign sounds as he rounded the slow curve of the habitat ring. He was nearly at the external airlock when movement ahead forced him into a crouch near the wall, painfully aware how little cover was available.
I should have bought a mobile shield system with Ngoba Starl’s money. During all that time I’d had to spend it.
Andy crept along the wall, pistol ready. As he eased around the curve, Brit came into view. She was standing a few meters away, in black armor that made her look even more gaunt than he remembered. She stood with her hands resting on the pistols hanging low on her waist. The airlock stood another thirty meters behind her along the outside wall.
“Brit?” he said.
Her gaze caught him and she didn’t smile but a blank look passed over her face and disappeared, as if she didn’t know how to respond and then squashed the emotion. She was the same person but someone else, someone he didn’t know any more.
“Hello, Andy,” she said, voice controlled. “Have you found Kraft yet?”
Andy looked back at her, a strange muscle memory flashed through his arms to hug her. It blipped in his mind and disappeared, abruptly—it was just something he didn’t do anymore.
It took a moment to refocus. Tim and Cara had been the only things on his mind. The name Kraft didn’t make any sense. “We need to find Tim and Cara.”
Her face went blank again. “Tim and Cara? Where are they? Aren’t they with you?”
Andy spread his hands, angry at her single-mindedness. “Do you see them? I told Cara to stay in the command deck and she ran out to get Tim—who should have been in his room. Now I don’t know where either of them are. I killed one of the breach team down in the lower airlock and activated the emergency locks, but I don’t know what’s going on up here. Fran can’t see anything on the surveillance system.”
“Who’s Fran?” Brit demanded.
“My—” Andy searched for the right word. “Co-pilot, engine tech. She’s crew.” She’s been here helping this family.
“I can’t believe you lost the kids,” Brit said.
A wave of anger rolled over Andy, nearly blinding him. He choked on what words to say, when a sound from down the corridor made him stop. It sounded like something metal hitting the deck. Voices shouted, followed by weapons fire.
“Cara!” he shouted. He turned to run around Brit, the hab airlock visible about twenty meters down the curve, when an explosion shook the ring. A concussive wave hammered his body, throwing him backward. Andy landed on his back and looked up in time to see a wave of flame rolling over him. He twisted awkwardly in his armor so he was lying on his stomach, and covered his head in his arms.
The sound of another rifle firing close by—which must have been Brit—penetrated the ringing in his ears.
“What the hell was that?” Brit demanded.
Andy pushed himself upright and squinted into the burning smoke filling the corridor.
“Are you going to move?” Brit demanded. She waved with her pistol and walked, half-crouched, into the black smoke, not waiting for Andy to respond.
Squinting, Andy walked into the smoke, staying close to the inside wall of the corridor where the smoke seemed slightly thinner. He crouched, passing ribs in the bulkhead until a thin black shape emerged from the smoke—which he assumed was Brit—flattened against the opposite wall.
An opening in the smoke showed they were still ten meters from the airlock. Plas sheeting on the walls had melted like wax, revealing the centuries of bolted-on infrastructure. Andy took short breaths but his mouth still tasted like soot.
Somewhere in the smoke, Tim started shouting. Andy covered his face and rushed in, dodging a burning wall that was still spitting bits of plas. Specks landed across his armor, hissing. Through the blowing smoke, he made out Brit once more, and then another shape in a gray suit came into view—holding Tim.
Andy’s pulse skyrocketed and he almost missed Cara, moving past a body on the deck, a rifle held unsteadily in her hands
Cara saw him, and then Brit, and she let the rifle drop a little.
Andy’s gaze returned to the man holding Tim, and he realized he had seen him before, back on Cruithne. The memory came back with startling clarity; Cal Kraft had been standing next to Riggs Zanda in the dance club just before an attack had started.
“Step back,” Kraft warned.
Em ran out of the smoke near Cara, growling frantically at Kraft, and the man didn’t hesitate to kick the dog. Em slammed against the near wall and whimpered, then leapt up to run at him again.
“You want to leave?” Andy said. “The airlock is right there. Just let him go and you can leave.”
“I’m going to shoot that damn dog,” Kraft said. He raised the pistol toward Andy and Brit as they edged forward. “But I’ll kill you first. You want that in front of your kids?”
“Get back!” Kraft shouted.
“You’ve got nowhere to go,” Brit said.
“He’s got the airlock,” Andy said. “Let our son go and you can leave. It’s right there.”
Kraft shifted the pistol, pressing the muzzle against Tim’s temple, forcing him to tilt his head. Tim still held the EV suit helmet but had stopped trying to swing it at Kraft. Instead he hugged it against his stomach.
Kraft pulled Tim toward the airlock and jabbed the control panel with his elbow.
“Everybody’s back together,” Kraft said, smirking at Brit and Andy in an odd way. “You’ve got my AI, don’t you Captain Sykes?”
Andy shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She does,” Kraft said, nodding toward Brit. “She stole quite a bit of Heartbridge property.”
Andy looked at Brit but stopped himself before he asked the question. She was staring hard at Kraft. She didn’t seem to see Tim at all.
The inner door of the airlock opened and Kraft stepped inside, pulling Tim with him.
“Let him go!” Andy shouted. “Her shuttle’s out there. You can get it all back.”
“That’s not good enough,” Kraft said. “Have you got my other seed, Captain Sykes? Tell me the truth.”
“I— I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s a terrible trade you’re making,” Kraft said.
Brit raised her pistol and fired into the airlock. Tim screamed as Kraft pulled him against the side of the small space. Kraft hit the interior control and the doors slid closed.
“No!” Andy shouted. He ran for the sealed door and hammered on the window. Through the clear plas, he saw Kraft inside with Tim. The blond man nodded at him, then turned to face outside door. Still holding Tim with one arm, he holstered his pistol, then shoved Tim against the outside door and reached for the EV helmet hanging from his harness. Tim had time to turn around and look at Kraft, then past him to Andy in the window.
“Put on your helmet!” Andy screamed. “Put on the helmet, Tim. Right now! Put it on!”
Fran said, her voice frantic.
“Move!” Brit was shouting. “We can blow out the panel.”
Andy knew it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t take his eyes from Tim’s face.
Tim looked at Andy, frowning slightly, then turned to Kraft.
Brit shoved Andy out of the way.
“Tim!” she shouted. “Tim, put on your helmet!”
Andy pushed his way back beside Brit, so they were both staring through the access window.
Kraft reached for the exterior control with a gloved hand and hit the emergency release. The airlock flashed a decompression warning, which Kraft acknowledged.
Tim’s eyes went wide. He looked from Andy to Brit. He pursed his lips as he blew out. His hands came up with the oversized helmet between them and he struggled to get it over his head, his chin still visible.
The outer door opened.
“No!” Brit screamed.
Andy watched Tim spin away into vacuum.
Cal Kraft must have activated his mag boots. He turned in the airlock, dead black behind him, and waved at Andy. His face was hidden behind a reflective faceshield, showing Andy his own terror through the access window.
Kraft kicked out into space.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
STELLAR DATE: 09.23.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Jovian L1 Hildas Asteroids, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
There were five angry stars out in the dark, moving in unison against two, and a third bright spot farther away, watching.
Lyssa saw them all. She watched the bright stars swoop amongst each other, avoiding Fran’s point defense cannons until in a flash five drones became four, and then three. Before any others burned out, Lyssa called out into the dark:
They didn’t answer. The stars marking the attack drones continued to dart close to Sunny Skies, attempting to burn the hull with close laser fire. They were out of missiles and had run their projectile weapons dry.
Andy said, feeling a detachment that threated to dissolve into terror.
Andy said.
He had grabbed an EV helmet from the storage cabinet and pulled it on, then furiously worked at resetting the airlock.
Brit tried to
push him away again but Cara grabbed her arm. Brit stared at her.
Cara had one of the dead woman’s pistols in her hand, finger on the trigger. She raised the weapon, hesitating at first, then leveling it on her mother’s chest.
“Let him go,” Cara said.
Brit worked her jaw. “Let go of me, Cara.”
“You can’t just come back here.”
“We can go out together.”
“There’s only one helmet,” Cara said. “You’re not taking his.”
Behind them, Andy pulled the helmet over his head. His breath fogged the inside of the faceshield as he stared at them, obviously torn for a second about leaving. Beside him, the door slid open and he was out of time. He stepped into the airlock.
Andy said, sounding desperate.
He slapped the interior control and faced the outside doors. The doors slid apart and he launched through the opening. Lyssa felt a strange shift as her visual information from Andy shifted to the ship’s sensor array, pushing her perception outward. She immediately felt the other AIs around Sunny Skies.
Lyssa said.
The drones were going to fight until they burned, that became obvious. But the farthest point—the Heartbridge shuttle—should have answered. Lyssa read the presence of the AI in the signals coming off the ship
she said.
She listened to Andy and Fran, and then found Tim’s fading heat signature dancing among the scattered returns from the sensor array. She passed the data to Fran.
Lyssa felt Andy’s terror like a wave hanging over them both. Every part of his body was vibrating with anger and helplessness. She realized some of that emotion was seeping into her thoughts, making her furious with the AI outside the ship.
Why wouldn’t they answer?
The message was received but the AI didn’t respond. Lyssa started to wonder if this AI was one of the variants Fred had described. Maybe they weren’t able to communicate using a method she had expected. She thought of other parts of the spectrum she might use, or maybe variant radiation or protons—something decidedly non-human.
