“He can’t use that in there,” Powell said. “If he does he’ll… he’ll… what the fuck?”
Several miners seemed to have been strapped into their seats. Their heads were tilted back, chests a mess of blood and ripped clothing, protruding ribs and flesh. One of them still writhed and shook, and there was something coming out of her chest. Pulling itself out. A smooth curved surface glimmering with artificial light, it shone with her blood.
Other miners were splayed on the floor of the cabin, and seemed to be dead. Shapes darted between them, slicing and slashing, and blood was splashed across the floor, up the walls. It dripped from the ceiling.
At the back of the passenger cabin, three small shapes were charging again and again at a closed door. There was a small bathroom back there, Hoop knew, just two stalls and a washbasin. And there was something in there the things wanted.
Those things.
Each was the size of a small cat, and looked to be a deep ochre color, glittering with the wetness of their unnatural births. They were somehow sharp-looking, like giant beetles or scorpions back home.
The bathroom door was already heavily dented, and one side of it seemed to be caving in.
“That’s two inch steel,” Hoop said.
“We’ve got to help them,” Welford said.
“I think they’re beyond that,” Sneddon said, and for a moment Hoop wanted to punch her. But she was right. Keech’s silent screaming bore testament to that. Whatever else they had seen, whatever the pilot already knew, the hopelessness of the Delilah’s situation was evident in her eyes.
“Turn it off,” Hoop said, but Baxter could not comply. And all six of them on the bridge continued to watch.
The creatures smashed through the bathroom door and squeezed inside, and figures jerked and thrashed.
One of the miners holding a sand-pick flipped up and forward as if his legs had been knocked from beneath him. The man with the plasma torch slumped to the right, away from the struggling figure. Something many-legged scuttled across the camera, blotting everything from view for a blessed moment.
When the camera was clear again, the plasma torch was already alight.
“Oh, no,” Powell said.
The flare was blinding white. It surged across the cabin, and for a terrible few seconds the strapped-down miners’ bodies were sizzling and flaming, clothes burning and flesh flowing. Only one of them writhed in his bindings, and the thing protruding from his chest burst aside, becoming a mass of fire streaking across the cabin.
Then the plasma jet suddenly swept back and around, and everything went white.
Baxter hit his keyboard, going back to the cockpit view, and Gemma Keech was on fire.
He switched it off then. Even though everything they’d seen had been soundless, losing the image seemed to drop an awful silence across the bridge.
It was Hoop who moved first. He hit the AllShip intercom button and winced at the whine of crackling feedback.
“Lucy, we can’t let those ships dock,” he said into the microphone. “You hear me? The Delilah is… there are things on board. Monsters.” He closed his eyes, mourning his childhood’s lost innocence. “Everyone’s dead.”
“Oh, no!” Lachance said.
Hoop looked at him, and the Frenchman was staring down at the radar screen.
“Too late,” Lachance whispered. Hoop saw, and cursed himself. He should have thought of this! He struck the button again and started shouting.
“Jordan, Cornell, get out of there, get away from the docking level, far away as you can, run, run!” He only hoped they heard and took heed. But a moment later he realized it really didn’t matter.
The stricken Delilah ploughed into the Marion, and the impact and explosion knocked them all from their feet.
2
SAMSON
Everyone and everything was screaming.
Several warning sirens blasted their individual songs— proximity alert; damage indicator; hull breach. People shouted in panic, confusion, and fear. And behind it all was a deep, rumbling roar from the ship itself. The Marion was in pain, and its vast bulk was grinding itself apart.
Lucy and Cornell, Hoop thought from his position on the floor. But whether they were alive or dead didn’t change anything right now. He was senior officer on the bridge. As scared and shocked as all of them, but he had to take charge.
He grabbed a fixed seat and hauled himself upright. Lights flashed. Cords, paneling, and strip-lights swung where they had been knocked from their mountings. Artificial gravity still worked, at least. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to recall his training. There had been an in-depth module in their pre-flight sessions, called “Massive Damage Control,” and their guide—a grizzled old veteran of seven solar system moon habitations and three deep space exploration flights—had finished each talk with, But don’t forget YTF.
It took Hoop until the last talk to ask what he meant.
“Don’t forget…” the vet said, “you’re truly fucked.”
Everyone knew that a disaster like this meant the end. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t fight until the last.
“Lachance!” Hoop said, but the pilot was already strapping himself into the flight seat that faced the largest window. His hands worked expertly across the controls, and if it weren’t for the insistent warning buzzers and sirens, Hoop might have been comforted.
“What about Captain Jordan and Cornell?” Powell asked.
“Not now,” Hoop said. “Is everyone all right?” He looked around the bridge. Baxter was strapping himself tight into his seat, dabbing at a bloodied nose. Welford and Powell held each other up against the curved wall at the bridge’s rear. Sneddon was on her hands and knees, blood dripping onto the floor beneath her.
She was shaking.
“Sneddon?” Hoop said.
“Yeah.” She looked up at him. There was a deep cut across her right cheek and nose. Her eyes were hazy and unfocussed.
Hoop went to her and helped her up, and Powell came with a first aid kit.
The Marion was juddering. A new siren had started blaring, and in the confusion Hoop couldn’t identify it.
“Lachance?”
“Atmosphere venting,” he said. “Hang on.” He scanned his instruments, tapping keyboards, tracing patterns on screens that would mean little to anyone else. Jordan could pilot the Marion if she absolutely had to. But Lachance was the most experienced astronaut among them.
“We’re screwed,” Powell said.
“Shut it,” Welford told him.
“That’s it,” Powell responded. “We’re screwed. Game over.”
“Just shut up!” Welford shouted.
“We should get to the escape pods!” Powell said.
Hoop tried not to listen to the exchange. He focussed on Lachance, strapped tightly into the pilot’s seat and doing his best to ignore the rhythmic shuddering emanating from somewhere deep in the ship. That doesn’t feel good, he thought.
The four docking bays were in a protruding level beneath the ship’s nose, more than five hundred yards from the engine room. Yet an impact like that could have caused catastrophic structural damage throughout the ship. The surest way to see the damage would be to view it firsthand, but the quickest assessment would come from their pilot and his instruments.