Breach the Hull

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  “Yakata to all crew, report.” She set the hail to repeat and went back to diagnostics. It was halfway through and there were no major malfunctions yet. A host of minor ones, but those they could survive. Of course, that assumed the diagnostics system wasn’t fried as well.

  She then input in the command to identify the locations of all on board, just as she had when she was looking for Dunn. It took longer this time. The computer spit out multiple conflicting responses. There was no way to tell which one was accurate.

  While she waited for diagnostics to complete, Yakata moved to the emergency kit. She selected an analgesic patch. After tearing it open with her teeth, she palmed it and slipped it past the collar of her coverall. It was cool, instantly soothing her bat-tered shoulder. That taken care of, she settled back into the command chair.

  Diagnostics was at ninety-five percent. Another alert went off as the logarithm completed. Yakata’s eyes moved from the diagnostics display to the main console. It was the proximity warning. It shouldn’t have gone off when they were under hyperdrive. She stood and went to the external monitoring station. Nothing appeared on the fore view. Yakata activated the aft cameras. Her finger trembled as she depressed the button. Her vision greyed out one moment, only to telescope into sharp focus the next. Something drifted by the lens out by the drive section, caught in the electromagnetic pocket of e’space surrounding the ship. Several somethings, in fact. Yakata swallowed against the acidic tang climbing her throat. Visions of her father’s helmet overwhelmed her, eclipsing the images she didn’t want to see. She distanced herself through extreme willpower and zoomed in on the debris.

  “ . . . all crew, report.”

  “Shit!” Yakata yelled as her own voice suddenly called out through both her comm hood and every speaker on the deck. Communications was back. She killed the auto repeat and sent out a fresh hail.

  “Command deck to Captain Kinney . . . ”

  Her voice trailed off as she tweaked the settings on the monitor. The objects had come into focus. Her eyes slammed closed. But even with them tightly shut she could still see the empty gaze of Captain Kinney staring at her from the vacuum of space.

  Personal Log Entry: 42.05.18 - 2230hrs, Dunn, K.

  FUCK YOU! I don’t know what you are, but I know what you’re doing now, so fuck you! You made me hurt her. I would never hurt her. She is the only one who cares. Who still means something to me . . .

  I know you can access what I’m writing here, because you knew how to mess with my head. Well access this: You will NEVER get me to hurt her again. You will never touch her again. I will destroy you.

  Duty Log: 42.05.19 - 1230hrs, Yakata, U.

  Reactor status - indeterminate; O2 levels - fluctuating;

  Power - data unavailable.

  Note: SC McKay operating under emergency conditions. Shipwide malfunctions worsen. Member or members of the crew unstable. Captain Kinney; deceased, means unknown, body expelled from ship by unidentified personnel. At least three others likewise expelled, positive id cannot be made. Crewman Chapman; deceased, accidental or by design. Crewman Dunn; unstable, violent, temporarily restrained in port lateral airlock. Remainder of the crew; status unknown. First Officer Ushimi Yakata assuming command.

  Out of habit, Yakata printed a hard copy of the duty log. Events must always be documented. Not that she expected anyone would ever read this account. As she tore the sheet from the printer, her eyes drifted across the page. She cursed and jerked her hand away. The page drifted to the deck, bold, black letters stared up at her. They’re all dead. You’re all dead. Die already, Bitch.

  There was the faintest of sounds behind her. She whirled. O’Neal came through the hatch across the command deck, the one leading to the cargo bay and rendezvous station.

  She took in the metallurgist’s appearance: his coverall was torn, and dark stains across his chest glistened wetly. There was no sign he was the party injured. At his side, his prosthetic arm slowly flexed, as if the motion were unconscious. Yakata met O’Neal’s gaze. She did not recognize the man staring back at her. His eyes were cold and hard, alien and bereft of humanity. His expression was neutral; as if she wouldn’t notice something else lurked beneath. There was so much wrong with this picture, Yakata thought fleetingly.

  “You plan to do what you’re told?” he asked in a slow draw, nodding toward the slip of paper on the floor.

  His tone was as flat as his expression. Yakata’s eyes flickered to the printout. “I don’t take orders from a piece of paper,” she growled. “And I sure as hell don’t take orders from you.”

  “We all have to answer to someone.”

  “Yeah, well the only person I answered to is drifting out by the engines,” Yakata spat back at him. “Who do you answer to?” She moved to the side as she spoke, edging toward the hatch.

  “You’ll meet soon enough.” The neutrality was gone. Pure evil crept through O’Neal’s voice. He followed her movements like a raptor tracked prey. Forget that, Yakata told herself. With the line of her body to block the action, she lowered her right hand back into her maintenance kit. Very carefully, she eased out her utility knife, her hand through the wrist strap and the hilt solid in her palm. She depressed the release button on the pommel and the blade silently deployed. Yakata’s muscles rippled beneath her skin. She braced herself, poised to react to whatever move O’Neal made. Her only real option was evasion. If he got a hold of her with that prosthetic, he would crush her before she could even flinch. As the metallurgist advanced, a tremor went straight through Yakata’s body. It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t internal. She sucked in a sharp breath. Her gaze flickered away from O’Neal to the main display. Alert icons flashed, one by one. The system was losing power. Within moments they would no longer have enough to sustain hyperdrive. There was a boot dock just behind her and a tether up and to her right. She was going to need one of them shortly.

  It would have to be the boot dock; she had too few functioning hands to grab a tether and use the knife. She edged herself closer. Let him think she was afraid of him; that she futilely distanced herself.

  She was ready when the bottom dropped out of the universe. The ship shud-dered as the electrogravitic drive envelope disintegrated. Simul-taneously, she leaned back and jammed her heel into the dock. She was barely secure when there was a pop and a flash as intense as a hundred strobes going off right there in the room. Yakata squeezed her eyes shut just in time. From the heaving sounds, O’Neal had been caught unaware. She opened her eyes as reality uprighted itself in an or-bital orientation. O’Neal floated in an uncontrolled sprawl on the far side of the command console. Around him floated globes of acrid vomit. As he bumped them, they burst into a dozen smaller globes, minus what clung to him. Feebly, his hand reached for the edge of the console.

  Yakata grinned. In this state, he was no threat at all. He groaned, and she laughed. She couldn’t help it.

  She went somber quickly, though, as hatred sharpened his gaze. Smelt it as the stench of malevolence overpowered the odor of bile. He looked ready to launch at her. Yakata tightened her grip on the utility knife. Let him try. He was a ground-pounder. Vacuum was her element, and this was her ship.

  There was a clunk and the manual release on the command deck hatch spun toward open. Yakata froze. Once she’d keyed the lock, even the manual release required her personal code to open the hatch. Only one person onboard had the slightest chance of figuring it out. Dunn.

  Confusion infiltrated the evil glint in O’Neal’s eye. She watched fury flood his expression as the hatch swung out. The open portal remained empty. Yakata didn’t relax. Now she had to be on her guard on two fronts, and her ex was no rookie in vacuum. He must have been the one to disable the drive system. He certainly had the knowledge.

  “Don’t just stand there, ’Ta!”

  Dunn peered around the edge of the hatch as he snapped at her. The scratch across his face was crusting over. His expression danced between violence and panic. She s
hifted her grip on the utility knife and turned her body so that her good arm could strike at either O’Neal or Dunn.

  From the far side of the command console, O’Neal let out a serpentine hiss. She resisted the urge to turn to stare at him. Dunn was the more potent threat at the moment.

  She watched the muscles of his face clench and twitch in response to the sound O’Neal made. Dunn’s breath quickened. The massive spanner he’d used earlier came into view. She braced herself, ready to yank her heel out of the dock the second she knew which direction to propel herself. But his attention wasn’t on her. Dunn’s eyes were locked with O’Neal’s. Her gaze flickered from one to the other. Between them, they blocked the only ways out.

  “Will you move it before he figures out how to get both of us!”

  Yakata jumped, startled as Dunn spoke in rapid Japanese. She’d forgotten he knew her language. It wasn’t something they’d used often. They both knew that O’Neal didn’t share their knowledge. The entire crew was required to familiarize themselves with his profile before he came on board. She was surprised Dunn had enough of a grip on himself to use that knowledge.

  “What . . . and I’m supposed to trust you over him?” She slashed back in the same tongue. “He’s not the one who tried to cave in my head!” “Just move it, ’Ta!” Dunn continued in Japanese. Sweat gleamed on his forehead and his eyes were wild.

  Before she could dodge aside, he lunged. His free hand latched onto her belt. She snarled as he jerked her loose from the dock. Yakata gasped with pain, her damaged arm wrenched about by his handling. Her head spun at the sharp, sudden movement. Dunn angled her toward the hatch with practiced ease. At the same time, the hand gripping the spanner swung out, aimed at O’Neal’s head.

  There was a solid thunk: the sound of metal against flesh. Silence followed. Threat floated thick on the canned air. Yakata shifted her head to look back at O’Neal. His green eyes glowed with malice. She cursed and lost the thought as her quick glance took in his unbloodied head and Dunn’s spanner caught by the metallurgist’s flesh hand. Some oddly detached part of her brain wondered why he hadn’t just grabbed it with the prosthetic.

  Her answer was a strangled gasp from Dunn. With no visible effort, O’Neal’s cybernetic limb crushed Dunn’s wrist, the one holding the spanner. The sight refocused Yakata’s rage in an instant. She tried to wrench away from Karl’s grip, throwing herself back as far as his tethering hold allowed to lash at his attacker with her utility knife. The tip sliced through O’Neal’s shirt, barely scratching his shoulder. He didn’t even flinch.

  Her curses cut off abruptly as Dunn shook her hard.

  “Go! Now!” Karl snapped. Pain glimmered in his eyes, brilliant and jagged. Beneath that, he wordlessly pleaded with her. She stopped struggling, her brow drawn down in confusion.

  Executing an effortless turn, she used the tip of her toe to propel herself off the overhead toward the hatch. She torpedoed through the opening, dropped the utility knife to hang by its strap, and caught the hatch collar with her good hand. Behind her there was a sick grinding sound.

  She pivoted, catching sight of Dunn on his knees, his captured arm bent impossibly high behind his back. She growled and started to draw herself back onto the command deck. She couldn’t leave him to this.

  “No! I said go! One of us has to get away . . . head for the Cans, now!” Despite his obvious pain, he continued speaking in Japanese. Yakata hissed in objection, but she dipped her head in a brief, sharp nod before pivoting around to zip down the main shaft. Behind her, she heard a loud snap and the sick sound of laughter drifted through the hatch. She had to fight the impulse to turn around and tear O’Neal to shreds.

  “Yes . . . do run, little rabbit . . . I’ll be along as soon as I’m done here. Shouldn’t take long.”

  Yakata’s blood thickened and her heart froze. O’Neal had just spoken to her in flawless, textbook Japanese.

  An agonized scream came from the command deck. It rose sharply before an abrupt end.

  Her good arm burned nearly as bad as her injured one. She ignored it and grabbed another rung of the ladder-track, slingshoting herself down the shaft. The echo of Dunn’s final scream followed her. It filled her head until she heard nothing else. She tried to force the memory into the fading recesses where it belonged. It re-sisted.

  The flickers of movement were back. The flashes of light behind her, just to the side of her vision. Halfway down the shaft it got to her. Growling deep in her throat, she turned to confront the phantoms that stalked her. A practiced flick of her wrist sent the utility knife back up into her grip and a moment’s pressure deployed the blade. Her momentum sent her colliding with the substructure. The impact to her damaged arm sent true sparks across her vision, followed by a grey haze. She blinked it away and cursed.

  The shaft behind her was empty. There was nothing behind her, and nowhere anyone might hide. She retracted the knife and let it drift at the end of its strap. With a little more care, she turned and continued to haul herself along, both arms throbbing as she went.

  Her comm hood gave a sudden burst of static. Yakata jumped. Another growl filled her throat to pulse against her jaw. She nearly snatched the comm hood off to shred the delicate wiring.

  “What the hell are you doing?!”

  The unexpected outburst stayed her hand. Dunn. How . . . ? Her gaze snapped to the command deck many stories above her head. She couldn’t see him. He must be watching her on the monitors.

  “I told you . . . to get out of here! Get to the Cans . . . now!” Dunn’s voice was thin, strained.

  “What happened to O’Neal?”

  “Don’t know . . . I passed out. He’s not here.” Sounds of movement filtered through the com; rustling, a sharply drawn breath. What might have been a sob . . . “Dunn? Dunn!” Yakata’s suspicions disintegrated beneath a fresh wave of con-cern.

  “Don’t yell, ’Ta.” Karl’s voice was low and weak. “You’re making it hard to think. “He left me for dead, which means he’s after you.”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on here,” she whispered.

  “It’s that damn artifact,” he snapped back, but his voice quickly lost its strength, slurred and lost focus. “None of this started until we salvaged that thing. It’s screwing with our minds. It’s screwing with the ship. Somehow it’s infiltrated the system . . . and . . . ” Static disrupted him in sharp bursts. “ . . . anything electronic . . . nly use manual overr . . . only. Not malfunc . . . deliberate.”

  “The artifact! I have to get the artifact!”

  “No! . . . amnit! Get the hell off this ship. Now!”

  Immediately, uncertainty sank firm fingers into her thoughts. She had more reason to doubt Dunn than to trust him. And O’Neal had already proven their attempt at speaking covertly had failed.

  “Move!”

  No. Perhaps O’Neal left him for dead . . . or not. Dunn had attacked her once already. She couldn’t help but wonder if this was a trap.

  She was getting her artifact, and then she was getting off this ship. It was foolhardy to continue to the airlocks, though. That’s where they expected her to go. Besides, the Cans—as the escape pods were called by any spacer with experience—had precious little reserve, and almost no maneuverability. The distress signal was a joke. She wasn’t ditching this ship just to suffocate slowly in space.

  Like a swimmer doing laps, Yakata flipped end over end and hauled herself the way she came. The pods weren’t the only option. There was that payload attached to the forward coupling, the inter-orbital shuttlecraft meant to transport Corporate big-wigs to their facilities surrounding Demeter. Even if O’Neal knew about it, he wouldn’t expect her to try and escape that way. Transports were shipped dry, no fuel, no ex-ternal tanks, and just enough juice to power the maneuvering thrusters and internals. Right now the shuttle was a big, floating box. But—most important for her—it was a big, floating box with enough air to support seven adult males for fourteen days, with-out cracking
the reserve tanks. That . . . and a state-of-the-art distress beacon.

  All she had to do was reach it. Yakata renewed her efforts, keeping her eye on the reflectors as she went. No one threatened to come through the hatches ahead of her. As she neared the hatch leading to the Temporary Science Lab, she again glanced both ways down the shaft.

  Wherever O’Neal had gone, he wasn’t stalking her.

  Yakata opened the hatch and dove inside. She thanked God that the drive had not reengaged. The only blessing in this whole thing: weightlessness certainly made it easy to get around. Not to mention the obelisk would have been a dead weight if the ship were still under gravity.

  Lights flared as Yakata slipped into the compartment where the artifact was stored. Immediately she noticed the door to the locker hung open, and nothing remain inside.

  “No!” Yakata hissed with rage. She looked around, her gaze darting frantically, as if the obelisk might be sitting right in front of her. But it was useless. It was gone. She slammed the locker door and whirled, her anger taking over. The spectrometer still sat affixed to the table. It mocked her. She’d known O’Neal was out to screw her over. Her good hand snapped out, denting the housing of his costly machine. She let it fly again. It felt good. She took aim once more, until a reflection in the battered metal caught her eye.

  O’Neal! She dove away from his raised fists, certain that any moment she would feel the crushing blow from his prosthetic. None fell. She twisted in midair, fighting to control her motions, to palm her knife and deploy the blade.

  As she came to rest against the far bulkhead, Yakata felt a ripple of laughter seize her throat.

  “What the hell?” she murmured aloud. The room was empty. No O’Neal hovered, ready to pummel her to pulp. Yet . . .