No, she corrects herself. She is upside down. She must have done half a summersault on her way out.
Stetson comes forward, but appears stuck. He jostles from side to side. “We’re caught,” he says. He fights for control, his pack spraying out behind him.
She spots the culprit. The glove of Dino’s empty arm has somehow wedged between the handle and the wall. If Stetson doesn’t stop fighting it, he could tear the suit and kill Dino. “It’s the release,” she says.
He continues shaking from side to side.
“Stetson, you’ve gotta—” The rest of the words won’t come.
A large thing shambles across the hull. Multiple legs creeping in unison. Twelve or more feet across. It comes right at her.
She jets backwards.
Stetson spots the glove. He yanks it free and gives her a thumbs up.
He must see the look on her face, or perhaps the reflection in her visor, because he freezes and his mouth drops open, and then he blasts forward as fast as he can.
He’s too late.
The hydra has perched above the door. As he zips through the opening, it whips a tentacle down and wraps the base of his EM-pack. He screams and opens his rear jets wide, but the hydra tethers him to the pod and he swings wildly to the left and smashes against the side of the vehicle. Nitrogen crystals dance. The hydra twists Stetson and Dino to the other side where they crash again into the hull. Dino’s left leg folds the wrong way beneath him. Stetson shoots them forward with a hard burst, and before the hydra wrenches them back again, Lana acts.
She propels herself forward into Dino, gripping the safety harness over his chest. The hydra shakes back and forth like a shark tearing at its prey. The harness has a central push release. With all the movement, she can’t seem to hit it. They swivel right. Dino opens his eyes.
“Help me!” she says.
But his left arm dangles, useless and broken.
They skitter, the force of Stetson’s pack fighting the hydra’s impossible strength.
She loops her wrist under the safety strap and holds tight to Dino’s body, punching repeatedly at his chest. The button is stuck.
When she looks up, Stetson’s facemask has filled with eels. They press against his visor until the helmet pops off with an explosion of gore. The blood freezes, small shards of colored glass.
She pounds the harness release dead center. Dino slides free.
Stetson’s EM-pack explodes. What remains of his body goes shooting straight up, taking the hydra with it long enough for Lana to get a better grip on Dino and spray them backward. Stetson’s suit tears open and he is gone, just gone, his body replaced with folds of the hydra. It coils, preparing to strike. Lana’s off-center grip spins her and Dino in circles. She adjusts, releases him. He careens away from the pod. She holds back, steadies herself.
The hydra lashes at her.
She rams Dino full speed, aiming for his center of mass. Her momentum holds them together. The hydra doesn’t touch her, its base still stuck to the pod like a leech.
Chapter 48
Dandy lowers his hands, looks down at himself, and sees that he is unharmed. Confusion changes to relief, then to outrage. “The fuck are you playing at!” The bullets left dents in the metal around his head. It could have killed them both—firing eight bullets in an enclosed space like that—but it didn’t.
The barrel smokes. Jack pulls his collar down and rolls the metal along his neck, across the tattoo. At first he feels nothing. Just smells burning hair and hears a hiss. Then the stinging sets in and he fights the instinct to pull the gun away.
Dandy scowls with disgust.
Jack is nothing like this man across from him, this killer coward. He did terrible things in the past. That is true. These things will haunt him until his death, but he is not now who he was then, and it is only right that he remain haunted. If his conscious were clear, then he would be like the Dandy.
At last he pulls the barrel away. A bit of darkened flesh hangs off the end. He flings it into Dandy’s lap.
Dandy leaps up and swats at himself like he’s on fire.
“You’re on your own,” Jack says. He slides the handgun into its holster and returns to the plastic sheeting. There are no more strips to cut, so he wraps them around his arms, legs, and torso. He uses the tie-down straps to cover the remaining gaps. It’s no spacesuit, but to slightly diminish the exposure could mean the difference between life and death. In Bel’s shadow, with no air to transfer the sun’s radiation, the temperature dips near 3 or 4 Kelvin, very close to absolute zero. Outside of that shadow, forget it.
Dandy, sniffing back blood, steps forward and into Jack’s face. Still pretending he has the upper hand. “What does that mean, exactly, I’m on my own?”
“Let’s hear your interpretation.”
“I don’t know how to operate these!” He kicks at the shovers.
“Then I guess you’re in trouble, Jim.”
“That’s very fucking clever. You look like an idiot in that getup.”
“And you look like a dead man.”
“We’re both dead men.”
“That’s probably true.” But he hopes not.
Chapter 49
The Homunculus’s airlock is at the very tip of her bow, sandwiched between the plasma cannon and the viewing window of the bridge. Lana floats inside. Like being swallowed by a metal giant. She releases Dino and slips out of her EM-pack. Air rushes through the ceiling and gravity tugs at her legs. She ends up on her knees. A light flashes and a pair of boots step into view. She cannot lift her head. She is not quite sure where she is anymore, or what happened to Dino, but she knows she has to help him. They have to get to the Homunculus. Where is Hunter?
Something knocks against her helmet. She turns away.
Her helmet twists up and off.
The air tastes like burnt metal.
Something warm touches her face.
“It’s okay,” a voice says.
She looks up. The hydra is there, dressed in a space suit. It forces tentacles into her eyes.
She gasps awake.
Hunter leans over her, face full of concern. “It’s okay,” she repeats.
Something heavy holds Lana’s back to the floor, keeps her paralyzed.
Still inside the airlock. Pinned by the weight of her spacesuit.
“You blacked out,” Hunter says.
Gregorian lifts Dino by the legs and starts to drag him into the ship.
“His leg!” Lana shouts. “It’s broken!”
Gregorian makes a face and tenderly lowers Dino’s feet.
“Stetson’s dead,” she says.
“I saw,” Hunter says.
“Jack?”
“Let’s get you inside and out of this suit, okay?”
“Hunter, where’s Jack?”
“He’s still on Belinda. We’ll get him, but first I need you up.”
Lana wants to scream, to punch something, but it’s like someone has turned her upside down, shaken her empty, and she is so cold. She just wants to go to sleep. It will all be over soon, one way or another.
“Lana. I don’t know what to do. If Dino’s hurt, you have to help him.”
Dino. It’s possible he’s already dead.
Hunter helps her out of the suit and fetches a bottle of water, which she sucks down immediately. Gregorian rolls Dino onto a gurney and pulls him into the main chamber beside a red medic’s bag already open on the floor. The suit is too thick to cut, so they pull it off piece by piece. She diagnoses the femoral shaft fracture right away. The bone has torn through the coolant undersuit at the thigh. It stabs outward pinkish yellow. Blood loss appears negligible. His arm is in slightly better condition in that it is not an open fracture. She injects him with tranqs to keep him sleeping, then feels along the arm to judge the break. Gregorian produces a small ultrasound machine with a holoscreen on the back. She’s surprised by this before remembering that they are on a combat ship. They expect grievous injuries here.